This New Money Trend TERRIFIES Us

The Terrifying New Money Trend (0:00)

Brian: So, here I am sitting on my front porch in my favorite rocking chair about to scream at the sky about this terrifying new money trend.

Bo: I am so excited to talk about this because I feel like this is one that we can stave off. I feel like this is one that we can get ahead of because it’s not uncommon all the time. We’ve seen weird things happen in the world of investing and interesting products and things pop up, but this one is especially concerning because I think it’s hitting a very vulnerable part of our population.

Brian: Well, let’s go ahead and let everybody in on it. So, here’s the headline, guys, is Robinhood is rolling out NFL essentially gambling and prediction markets on their platform. What really troubles me about this, we’ve got some data we’ll go into on it, but you think about if you’ve really taken Robinhood serious and this is going to be your account that you’re going to set up your financial independence building. Do you want to really lay it next to the gambling money? Like every time you go check, you just see it, right? Because it literally is set up. We have folks on staff who opened up, they have Robinhood accounts, they roll down and it’s like your investment accounts and then I think there’s the crypto taglines and then right under there is the prop bets and then it gets into individual stocks right after that. This it’s just I think it’s a temptation that I don’t like it. There’s a whole thing that’s going on in society right now where our greatest minds, instead of trying to figure out how we can solve big world problems, they’re trying to help us with more consumption or letting us gamify spending every dollar that we have in our back pocket. And I’m just that’s the trend and that’s the old man in me that sees it. And I’m just trying to help our people not be the pawn or the victim that is being set up to make this go really bad.

Why This Trend is So Dangerous (2:06)

Bo: Well, and let’s think about it from a business perspective. I imagine this is wildly profitable for these companies that get involved, Robinhood and that sort of thing because it’s really interesting, Brian. There was a show that we did recently that was talking about money trends by generation. And something that is unique, I think, to our younger generation right now that perhaps is not the same as generations past is that now a lot of people are mixing the idea that, oh, no, well, sports betting or the way that I do this or the way I’m interacting inside the prediction markets, I’m not really gambling. That’s just the way that I’m investing. That’s the vehicle that I’m choosing to invest in. And those lines, especially now that major custodians and apps are getting involved with it, are beginning to get blurred. And it’s trying to make it look like gambling and investing are synonymous, that they’re the same things, but they in fact are not the same things. Not even close.

Investing vs. Gambling: Understanding the Difference (2:56)

Brian: Yeah. We actually created a slide so we can compare and contrast because it’s crazy. We have to go back and do this is I call this remedial understanding of investing versus gambling. But here we are. Let’s give some basics out.

Bo: So investing is a method of compounding your dollars with historically observable returns. A little bit turns into a little bit more turns into a little bit more turns into a little bit more. And the underlying idea with this investing is that you are actually taking ownership in something. You are purchasing shares in real companies that produce real outputs, real products. So you are actually participating inside of an economic enterprise. And realistically when you invest oftentimes it’s kind of a slow burn, right? Like you stack a little bit and then a little bit more and a little bit more. But for a number of folks that have done this, that have gone this path on their way to financial independence. It has led to financial freedom. It’s not something where I don’t know if I’m going to make it. Folks that have done it and stuck to it have been able to do that. So that’s what investing is. Now let’s talk about what gambling is. Gambling is a game. And it’s a game that is designed for you to lose and the house to win in the long run.

Brian: Well, I mean, the first question I asked when I heard about this, I was like, what’s the house’s take? And we quickly see, and there’s a slide. If you go pull from this is from 2024. For every $100 bet, the average expected loss is around $9.30. That is a lot of that is the drag from what the house takes for the transactions. Yep. And so you can see yeah this is crazy lucrative. This is why they can offer you $200 of free bets and stuff to try to prime the pump just like a good dealer does. You know the first hit’s free. Seriously. I mean what do we this is what we’re doing with our finances. We already the typical American is absolutely horrible with their money. So, let’s go ahead and let’s line up and make it that much easier to grease the skids so they can go down the path of not building financial independence and assets.

The Real Dangers of Gambling (5:07)

Bo: The other thing I think that’s so frightening with gambling is that when you gamble, there is exposure to the chance to lose 100% of your funds. You could be 100% right or you could be 100% wrong. And that’s different from the way that the world of investing works. And then gambling, honestly, it can be a potentially incredibly dangerous road to go down because it always starts small and seemingly insignificant. But when unchecked, it can get out of hand, out of whack, out of control very, very fast.

Brian: Well, and there’s even research on this. 14% of sports bettors say that they’ve gone into debt to gamble. And look, I have personal feelings on this because I’m not a teetotaler in the fact that I was just out in Vegas two months ago, three months ago with some buddies. I mean, it’s all relative. For me, believe me, they’re not giving me anything free. They give me discounted stuff. Nobody’s chasing me around because I’m too good with my money to give it to them. I actually, if you watched how I gambled, I’m trying to lose as little as possible. It’s just like when we’re at the craps table, I’m playing the pass line. I’m not playing and I’m putting odds behind it because I get the best thing, but I’m not doing any of the other crazy bets because I recognize what this thing is and I recognize what the why is, they’re trying to get as much money in their pockets out of my pocket as fast as possible. But back to what really gets me just all twisted up on this. I had a dear friend in college who was just a beast of a personality and the fact that he was the one who go work a summer job and he was a natural salesman, strong personality and he’d make a lot of money selling knives and other things but then got into a lot of sports betting through bookies in college. It got him in a lot of trouble and this is that’s what the thing I don’t like about this is that it can bring into human side of compulsions and other things. Why do you think every time you see gambling sites, they have to very quickly like the micro machines guy does read very quickly that there’s a lot of people that will have natural addictions or compulsion issues and if you need help call this 1-800 number. Do you think they really want you to call that 1-800 number? No, but it’s just this is the stuff. This is we’re taking something that is the value of your time and money to let your army of dollar bills work. And we’re completely, it’s like every other sin in the world is that we’re taking something that should be good is like the ability to let your money work for you and we are turning into something very dark because there’s a way to make money off of it.

Time Works For Investors, Against Gamblers (7:37)

Bo: I think what troubles me is that when it comes to gambling, and when you think about the way that the entire gambling industry is set up, they know that the longer you are at the table, the longer that you are placing bets, the longer you are participating, the more likely your odds to lose are. They want you to be there as long as possible. That’s why they’ll give you the free stuff and they’ll incentivize you to stay because they know that over the long term based on the law of large numbers, if you stay there long enough, you will lose. That’s the way that it works. When it comes to investing, it’s actually the exact opposite premise. The idea with investing is the longer you participate, the longer your timeline, the longer you stay quote unquote at the table, the higher your probability of winning, the higher your probability of success. We have a great illustration that shows this. If you look at S&P 500 returns from 2004 all the way to 2024 and you just look at okay how did the market perform on an annualized basis over one year, two years, three years, four years, so on and so forth, you can see that over that 20-year period if you could just stay invested for five years or we’ll even say you could stay invested for six years, by staying invested for six years there was not a period in that entire 20-year period where you would have lost money, where you would have had less than you started with. The longer that you can participate, the longer you can stay at the table, the more likely you are to be successful as investor, the longer you stay there, the more successful you become. It’s the exact opposite of gambling.

Brian: And that’s such a key part. I mean because it’s like you’re saying that whenever you walk around and that’s what I don’t have a problem with gaming or even if it’s a hobby because if you go to it, but what I don’t like is this trend in society where we’re adding it everywhere. There used to be boundaries on this that you had to go looking for it. Now you can get tripped over it. I mean I think about every sporting event I watch now. You think about all the commercials you see for the DraftKings and all the others. Now we’re seeing the same thing happening with Robinhood and it just disappoints me. I get it. I know this is the trend. I know there’s a lot of money to be made by going down this technology rabbit hole, but I just from the educator as well as the person who wakes up every morning hoping that people are going to get better with their money. That’s the movement we’re trying to build. This is a step backwards.

There’s a Better Way to Do Money (10:11)

Brian: And that’s why I would encourage every one of you guys. I know, look, I’m preaching to the choir here. I’ve literally turned around and I’m preaching to you guys because if you’re in here watching a live stream on a financial content channel, more than likely, you don’t struggle with these things, but I bet you have a friend. I bet you have a family member or a loved one that is struggling. And I hope that you’ll tell them that there’s a better way to do money. And that’s why I wrote Millionaire Mission. And that’s why we have the financial order of operations, is that we want you to understand that money is a tool that you can learn to harness so you get to own your time that much sooner.

Bo: Yeah. We want you to actually have a plan for your dollars. And frankly, gambling or prediction markets or sports betting, that’s not a plan. The financial order of operations is an actual plan that lets you know what you should do with your next dollar. Because you already said it, Brian, we really do believe there’s a better way to do money. We believe it so much that every single Tuesday at 10 a.m. we show up so that we can load you guys up and answer your questions. We love being able to speak into the things that you care about. So, right now, if you have a question, if there’s something you want us to weigh in on, something you want to get our take on, we would encourage you to get that in the chat. We have the team out in the wings collecting your questions and we want to load you up. So, with that, creative director Rebie, I’m going to throw it over to you.

Q&A: Getting Your Spouse on Board with the Financial Plan (11:31)

Rebie: Absolutely. I have some queued up. The first question is from Monday bingo night. It says, “Hey, money guys. I’ve been watching for just over a year and love the FOO, the financial order of operations. I’ve been trying to bring my wife along so we are both prepared, but she has been resistant. Any tips to get a spouse on board?”

Bo: I think one of the questions I would ask is what is she resistant about? Like she’s resistant about following the financial order of operations, resistant talking about finances, resistant about changing the saving to spending dynamic. I’d want to know what she was resistant about so that we could speak into that. But I will say that in my marriage or even as I’ve worked with clients or I’ve talked with folks who’ve had an issue trying to get on the same page, often what I find is that if you can get on the same page on the desired outcome that you want, it’s much easier to then begin talking about the process. So I don’t start with, hey, we got to fund our Roth and do our 401(k) and do this and do this. I say, hey babe, what do we want the future to look like? When do we want to be financially independent? What do we want to be able to do for our kids? What kind of travel do we want to do? What do we want our life to look like in our 50s, 60s, and 70s? And if we can together paint the picture of what we both want and we can arrive at the same place on our goals, well, then it becomes, okay, what’s the most effective way for us to reach those goals? And by the way, not all of those goals have to be long-term. They don’t have to be 30 years in the future. My wife has said to me, look, I love our home. I want to continue to make it a home. I want to decorate. I want to do this stuff. I want to do a renovation. And I’m like, great. That’s part of the things that matter to her and we’ll figure out from a finance standpoint how we can satisfy that without foregoing the future opportunities that we want to do. So, if you can get on the same page with goals, it then makes it a lot easier to get on the same page with, okay, what’s the best process to move towards those goals?

Brian: As the guy who’s been married 27 years, I have to believe it’s probably about the way you’re framing this. And let me explain. A lot of us financial-minded, the spouse that is in the relationship that’s financially minded, whenever we play this game with finances with our non-financially minded spouse, we play a game of gotcha or intervention, where when they come in and say, “Hey, did you spend money on this? Did you?” And then you set them over on the side be like, “Let me tell you why we can’t do it this way.” It’s all negative, negative, negative. And it is really it’s very understandable why the other spouse is like, “Man, anything it seems like this guy’s getting from this show isn’t really connecting with me.” Here’s I would like you to reframe it. What I’d like you to do is basically open up the line of communication. Ask, it ties into what Bo was saying. What are your three biggest goals that you’d like to accomplish when it comes to finances? And then say, “Hey, I hear these guys talk about doing a net worth statement every year because it’s a great communication tool for spouses to kind of look at what we have, what we own, what we owe, where we’re at this year.” And for a lot of you at the beginning of a relationship or if you have student loans, other things it might be negative, and that’s okay for it to be, but it let you at least see where you are. And then Bo and I both do this. We take a skip day from work and we take an entire day to go through where we will have an agenda and everything where I go through what are the goals we had for last year, what are the three things, bring two or three things. Everybody should bring stuff that they want to talk about or want to focus on and then y’all talk about it together. Go through the net worth statement together. Turn it into a fun date night or day experience. That’s what we do because we treat it like a day where we’re skipping work and go and have a fun day with it. And I think you’ll see by reframing it into a positive and creating an experience out of this, it will turn it into a better event for you.

Brian: Here’s another little tip. When we bring spouses in to do studio tours, I’m amazed at how many of the drag-alongs when they leave, I think they realize, hey, this is all right. This is okay. These guys aren’t so bad. They’re not poisoning my spouse’s brain. So, there’s different ways that you can use us to make it fun. I mean, I think about some of the content my house consumes on YouTube and so forth. We can become the good time rock and roll fun person to hang out with and talk about finances where money doesn’t have to be so boring and so uptight that it’s the no version of money. We’re hopefully empowering you to live your best life.

Rebie: My two cents is sometimes I wonder maybe you’re starting too in the nitty-gritty. Like can I be honest? Like maybe she doesn’t really care what step you are in the FOO and understandably so, but she does care like oh I do want to buy a house someday, I do want to retire at a certain age, and that’s more fun. Like oh I do want to vacation, I do want a big vacation for our 10 year anniversary or like those are far more fun and then you can kind of back into like okay well I’m going to be saving to those goals, if you have any questions let me know. I don’t know, maybe broaden it a little bit because it’s okay if she doesn’t want to know we’re 67% of the way through step four or something. That’s just more boring. I’m just going to be honest. I’m just going to be the voice of the other side here. But I think what you guys said was great. And I think like if one of you is following, like paying attention to the FOO, you’re well set up. So, Monday bingo night. Thank you for your question and for being here on the live stream.

Bo: Do you know that this week is mine? We’re doing me and ours in just a few days, we’re going to be doing our day date and it’s going to be awesome. I’m really looking forward. We’ve already started talking about hey what are some of the stuff we going to talk about? Like so we’re even now beginning to like build the agenda of the things that we’re going to do and we’re talking about what activity we’re going to do. Like we’re going to go to brunch and then go for a hike and it’s going to be awesome. Super fun. I love that money can be fun.

Rebie: It can be.

Bo: And romantic.

Brian: Put that on a t-shirt.

Audience Reactions to the Gambling Topic (17:40)

Brian: Hey everybody, because I really did have a very strong reaction to this whole gambling thing with the money. What is the team, what is everybody out in the wings and the chat saying?

Bo: We had some people say, “Hey, I’m really so glad that you guys have addressed this because it’s become so popular and so commonplace.”

Brian: Well, we’re social creatures and I just see that this is, you could have people who could be doing the right thing with their money, but this just seems more fun.

Bo: I don’t, the sports betting prediction market just me personally, I’ve never bet on sports before like even like they offer you like the $100, $200, that just doesn’t get me going right. Like it’s not, Did you really? What did you think, was it fun?

Brian: I won, I think my freebie was $100, I can’t remember which one of the platforms I used. I won Tom Brady, doubled my money and I took the money out and that was it.

Brian: And that was it. One bet. See, that’s the way you ought to do it.

Bo: Well, I think they now, if you read the fine print, I think I had to play two games. They don’t let you, the way it was back when I did it, they made me, I had to go two for two. So, I won two bets and then I was out.

Brian: Gosh, maybe you shouldn’t have stopped, right? If you win two, you’re kind of on a streak, right?

Bo: I know how this really works. So, yeah, that’s when they get you. It works that way in Vegas, too, by the way, is that if you’re actually winning money, put it in your pocket.

Rebie: Well, and I’m not spending a ton of time researching, but now they have like prediction markets where you can bet on anything, right? How many days in the next week is it going to rain? And you can like place bets on those kinds of things. That just seems wild.

Brian: If you need an indicator that this is a compulsion for some people, bet on the weather.

Rebie: Yeah, I don’t want to take that bet personally. I’m not betting for rain. I’m definitely not betting for it.

Q&A: Marginal vs. Effective Tax Rate (19:38)

Rebie: All right. Next question is from Mike D. It says, “When evaluating Roth versus traditional, I hear you referencing marginal tax rate as the main factor. Can you help me understand why you use that instead of blended and effective tax rate or tax liability?”

Bo: Well, let me do a little bit of vocabulary, then you explain why. Right. So, when we use the term marginal tax rate, what that means is that’s the rate that you’re going to pay on the next dollar of income that comes your way. So, if you have a certain income and you fall into the 22% marginal bracket, that means if you make one more dollar of income, you’re going to pay 22% federally on those dollars. So, that’s your marginal tax rate. Well, then there’s your effective tax rate. And because we live in a progressive tax system, meaning you work through one bracket and then you go to the next one and then you go to the next one, you’re not paying your marginal rate on all your dollars. Instead, you’re kind of working up the tax bracket. So your effective rate is really your total tax liability divided by your total income. It’s some blended rate between zero and your marginal rate. And so Mike’s asking the question, okay, if those are the two things that I have to think about, why do you guys use marginal? Why don’t you use effective and why does that matter?

Brian: Well, it’s exactly you gave it when you gave the definition. The marginal is what your next dollar will be taxed at. And that’s really when we’re trying to figure out which path you’re going to go with your decisions. You want to know how the next dollar is going to be taxed. And you’ll add both the marginal tax rate federally plus if you have state income tax, what the marginal rate on that is. You add those together. Now you can effectively see, hey, so for this decision that I’m about to make, if the government is going to, let’s say you’re in the 37% bracket and you have a 6% state tax rate, you could say this is a 43% decision. Now, you might do look at your effective rate and your effective rate on that might be 27% or 30%. But that’s because we ran through all the lower tax rates earlier. But your decision is not on that 25%. It’s actually on that 43% because that’s the next dollar. I think it just helps you with those incremental decisions trying to figure out what to do with your next dollar. And that’s why we’re one of the few people when we talk about concepts of Roth versus traditional. We actually put some meat on the bones with, you know, look, if you’re paying less than 25% and you’re a young person. I mean, because historically rates are pretty low right now. Get in there and take advantage of Roth assets because you got to win on the time. You got to win on where we are historically from a tax rates standpoint. But then if you fast forward to somebody who’s in the like the example I gave with the 37 and the 6% state marginal rates, you’re at the tippy top. I bet if we could play what’s going to happen to my taxes in the future, that person as soon as they remove, whether it’s business income, earned income, wages from their income situation, all of a sudden their tax rate doesn’t sit at 43%. It drops way down to where their marginal rates might be in the mid-20s. At that point, you can quickly say, “Hey, it’s better to take the deduction now and then hopefully have a tax arbitrage opportunity when I retire, when I lose all that high income, my annual income and start doing Roth conversions and other planning opportunities then.” So, the marginal lets us get to the heart of the matter better than the effective tax rate does.

Bo: Yeah. The way I think about it is your marginal rate tells you the cost of the decisions that you make. Your effective tax rate ends up telling you how good were you at tax planning because your goal is you want to, everyone wants to have a very high marginal rate because it means you have high income, but you want your effective tax rate to be as low as possible. You want to pay no more than you have to from a tax standpoint. Well, the way that you end up affecting the effective rate is by making decisions on what hits the marginal rate. That was very confusing. It made sense in my head, but halfway out I was like, walk this back.

Rebie: It was great. Well, Mike D, thank you so much for the question.

Q&A: 403(b) vs. 457(b) Prioritization (24:10)

Rebie: Next question is from TheSecondRush. It says, “My wife started with a new employer that offers both a 403(b) and a 457(b). My understanding is they both offer tax advantage savings, but is one better to prioritize over another?”

Bo: It depends. It depends.

Rebie: Brian said yes.

Bo: You want me to let him walk into this trap before?

Brian: You know what I can say? 403(b)s more likely are going to have a match on them. There you go. You got to pay attention to that. So, first go look and see if the 403(b) has a match. But if neither of these plans have matches, on paper, well, in practice, the 457 has a unique thing that the 403(b) doesn’t have. And the fact is that you get access to that money at 50 years of age. Even, oh, no. There’s actually no limit.

Bo: So, yeah. So, there’s no limit. That’s I always think about people retiring at 50, but there’s no age limit. Whereas the 403(b) is going to have all the traditional stuff, you know, 59 and a half, 55 in service, those type of things to get access to avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty that you have out there. And here’s the cool thing. These are two that fall into the and category, meaning that if your income is high enough as a household, y’all can do both.

Brian: That’s right. So those 415 limits that you see on 401(k)s and other things where you can only do one contribution limit for your retirement plan, these are, if you have a high enough income, you can double dip. That’s where a lot of times you see this with doctors who work at hospitals and other things because they have these type of structures where you get a 403(b) and you get a 457 and it’s not either or, it’s and.

Bo: So when I think about this, if you’re not someone who can fund both, you’re trying to figure out which one, the flowchart I would go through is: is there an employer match? Okay, I want to get whatever the employer matches in either one and then it’s likely going to make sense to go to the 457, but not always because I do want you to verify. You want to make sure that the investment options inside of each one are comparable because you may have one plan that’s really good, low-cost provider, really good custodian, robust investment options, and the other may have just been an afterthought. Oh, it’s this bolt-on plan that we added and it’s not that great. So, you want to ask yourself a few different questions. Is there a match? What are the investment options? When do I think I’m going to use these dollars? And that will help you figure out which one should I prioritize and which one makes the most sense for my situation.

Rebie: Yeah, good stuff. See, no traps were fallen into there. No traps. TheSecondRush question. Hopefully that helps you make your choice in a way that you feel confident.

Q&A: Old Car vs. High-Interest Debt (27:14)

Rebie: All right, next question. Cameron G has a question for you guys. It says, “I’m on FOO step three. My wife’s car is 15 years old with 200,000 plus miles on it, but running. We have enough saved for a new car. Should we keep attacking debt, which is step three, or pause to save for a cash car in case the current one fails?”

Bo: Do you, Cameron, own the current car outright? And I hope so. I hope when it says it’s 15 years old, I hope that means you guys have owned it for 15, but this may be one that you just bought a used car. I would like to assume that you own this car outright. So if that’s the case, I think, let me think through this because I want to be true to the financial order of operations, but cars is not necessarily specific thing in the financial order of operations. But if the car is running and it’s operable and I feel like there’s a high likelihood it’s going to continue running, I think that you have to still continue knocking out that high interest debt because it’s working so desperately against you. Likely your interest rate on that credit card is somewhere 15, 20, 25%. So I want to see you continue knocking that down, getting rid of it, and hopefully what happens is you get that to a zero balance. It then frees up your cash flow to then start socking money away in step four emergency fund which can serve a dual purpose. It’s an emergency fund, but it’s also going to be that seed money if you did have to get a new car. Agree, disagree, want to fight?

Brian: This one’s hard. Yeah, this one’s tough because I’m sitting here thinking I always put myself in the situation of the person asking me the question and what I would do. And I don’t love the idea of my wife driving a car that’s got 200,000 plus miles. And I don’t know how it runs. You’d have to tell me now. Maybe this thing’s just, it’s an Accord. It’s a Toyota. I mean, it might maybe be on its path to being that commercial Toyota commercial where you jump up and say, you know, I got 450,000 miles, but we don’t know the details on that. So you need to put that into the triage equation of is this car going to leave your wife on the side of the road? That safety would come into play. But then if it did come into play for me, it would be how do you do this and fix this situation for as cheap as possible. And that probably means buying not a beater, but the most affordable used car that’s reliable. This isn’t going to be a flex car by any means because you still got debt. I mean, so we don’t want to pile on and turn a bad situation worse because the timing of a car kind of fell in. This is another reason I don’t like about cars is that if you run it so close to the line, it can get you in a lot of trouble because we need the car to get us to the job. We need a car to get around in a lot of cities because a lot of cities don’t have public transportation. And if you’re getting yourself out, this is that danger zone where you’re so close to the line and that’s why if you can get yourself out of this, never ever fall in that trap again.

Bo: So, are you saying that you think that they should pause the debt payment and build up cash for the next car or are you saying they should get rid of this car right now?

Brian: If he’s worried that we’re on a ticking time bomb in two months, three months, this car is going to leave my wife stranded and her safety will be in jeopardy, then yeah, I would take two or three months and just be complaining the entire time being like and use a lot of conversations with my spouse to say this is why, unfortunately I’d love to one day let’s daydream about the car you’re going to drive, but right now we’re going to get you this reliable transportation that’s going to be as cheap as possible. It might not even be the brand that you want it to be, but it’s going to at least not leave you sitting on the side of the road.

Bo: It was not a fight, but slightly different answer.

Brian: No, I mean because I think the safety, I mean that’s it’s the same thing we talk about when we’ve done it on Making a Millionaire. When I find out somebody’s putting their kids in a beater of a car that’s got bald tires and could hydroplane on the road and is not going to crank in the morning. That stuff scares me. I don’t like it. That would I would feel like I need to fix that situation.

Rebie: That was a good answer though because I think you introduced kids in, you built a whole Hallmark movie in there because now I’m like well yeah of course I don’t want the kids in the, I think that’s for you to judge though and for you to decide.

Brian: 200,000 mile car that’s like rocking and rolling. Maybe it is and that’s why I don’t know the situation. I would be curious what type of car it is and how reliable it is because by the way if you crank that car up and it’s just purring, then that’s a different situation than if you crank it up and then on a cold morning it’s like and then you’re like oh heck and then you have to keep starting it over and over, you know that this thing it’s going to die anytime now.

Bo: Now, this is important because our people need to know this. What’s the sound they need to listen for? What’s the bad sound?

Brian: You know, when a car is running so rough that it is pretty much just cutting itself off or you have to give it a little gas just to get it going. Or if you have plumes of smoke coming out the back and you have to, if you can’t go to the grocery store without pouring a quart of oil into it, you might have an issue. These are things that I know and I don’t have that context to know because I’ll think about my wife’s car. We had a car that was paid for and it was probably close to 10 to 12 years in, but it started burning oil bad and I was like, “Okay, this car.” Even though it’s one of these Japanese brands that’s supposedly going to do well, I think something’s gone awry.

Rebie: Still some good context there. Now, Brian has even helped you know what sounds you should look for to help you make that decision.

Brian: And go listen to it when he cranks up. I mean, you know, when you sit, haven’t y’all ever been in a friend’s car and you’re sitting at the stoplight and you’re like, “Oh, man. Uh oh. Like, is this car going to get us to where we’re going?”

Q&A: Does 3525 Apply to Houseboats? (33:54)

Rebie: All right. Okay. This next question, it’s not spicy, but just she had to think about it. I think it’s a little bit funny or interesting, different than what we usually would ask, but it’s from Stevie P. It says, “Does 3/5/25, so our house buying rule, does it still apply if I want to buy a boat to live on full-time?”

Rebie: So, this is his living expenses, guys. But it’s not house. It’s a boat.

Brian: No, it’s a houseboat. Listen, I’m going to be the good time fun guy answer here and then I want you to give the real answer. I had a pilot come, this is probably 10 years ago at this point, 12 years ago, I had a pilot who was getting close to retiring but he had inherited some money and he was single and his whole thing was he came in to get a financial plan and he said his goal was to go buy a boat and he was going to go down and he was going to be the captain in the Virgin Islands and do charters and all kind of other things with this boat. And when he laid out his life and his goals and I was like I mean you don’t have any kids, you’re single and this is your, or your kids were, I can’t remember if they were grown or whatever the situation was, but I was like go buy the boat, but buy it in cash and then have enough to be able to keep things going. And I think he was shocked by the answer, but I was like, “No, this actually makes sense if this is where you want to live your life.” But now this is a little different because I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. We don’t know enough about Stevie P.

Bo: Look, let me throw this out there. We have a housing rule, right? And our housing rule is that when it comes time to acquire housing, we want you to follow 3/5/25. You put 3% down. You plan to be in the home, the abode, for at least five to seven years. And you want the total cost of the abode to be no more than 25% of your gross income. So, I’m thinking about if someone were living in New York, right? And they were going to buy an apartment. Apartment’s not necessarily a home, but you can buy those in New York or a condo or town home, whatever. We’d say, “Yeah, 3525 applies to that, right?” That is a home. But you’re saying but it’s not like a traditional house, right? You’re buying a thing to live in.

Brian: The asterisk is RVs and boats.

Bo: I’m just saying if it’s a home, if it’s a home and that’s where you’re going to live and you see yourself being in this home for the next five to seven years and you’re going to live in it full-time, I think that 3/5/25 applies. Now, here’s what I don’t know. I don’t know if you can qualify for a boat loan only putting 3% down. I’ve never bought boats before, so I don’t know if that’s even a thing.

Brian: But why are you not answering the question? Can he buy a boat with financing?

Bo: No. No. This is his home, though. He’s saying he’s going to live on this boat.

Brian: It’s a boat. It’s his home. It’s where he’s going to live.

Rebie: But does appreciation of the asset have nothing to do with 3525 rule?

Bo: I mean, sure, it’s not going to be a great investment, right? But this is where that’s where I’m saying this. I think 3525 applies as long as his housing expenses are housing.

Brian: Who would have known buying a boat was going to be what breaks the money guy show? Because we’re assuming he has no other home. This is his only place that he lives, right? He says he’s going to live there full time. He’s buying a boat. But have you not seen some of these boats? I could see you have this dream that you go live on a boat. And now look, this is where my creative brain just goes, I see people going to a marina. You’re like, “Oh, man. What could be with this boat if I buy this thing?” And then, but it’s going to require a lot of sweat equity, a lot of elbow grease going into cleaning this thing up and rehabbing. I’ve watched all those videos on TikTok and YouTube of people rehabbing boats and then living their best dream, their best life, but I don’t like the idea of taking on debt on something that the dream might not be what you think it is.

Bo: I agree. It would not be my preference. It would not be my preference. I would hope if you were going to make the living on a houseboat decision, that’s something you could do in cash, but it’s his home.

Brian: All those people, like you think about all the people during the pandemic because we went on a catamaran charter and I remember all the people I ran into on all those little small islands that had basically gone and bought these single sailboats, and they’d have an attractive young couple with a dog living on it. We’re going to tell them they can go finance this?

Bo: I don’t think that the people on the sailboats in the Caribbean, I don’t think that’s like that. Those are people that like sold their homes and they’re living there exclusively and it’s their only, I’m at least going to say we need more information on if the boat is recreational at all. Of course it doesn’t apply. But like I have some family members, surprise surprise, that lived on a houseboat for like 10, 15 years. Like that was where they live. They had a houseboat pulled in the marina and that’s like that was their home. You know what I mean? I’m not saying I like it and I’m not saying that I’m recommending it.

Brian: How about RVs?

Bo: If your RV was your only home, like I’m going to only have an RV and you plan to live in it for five years.

Brian: I mean, I do give Bo credit because this now applies to mobile homes, RVs, right? Like he’s consistent whereas I’m always, this is my problem. I’m too transparent. I’m actually thinking about the vision the life that’s actually going on with this. Bo’s like no my rules, my rules. You and Dave stick to your rules.

Bo: Look, if you’re asking me for life advice, Stevie, should you go live on a boat? I want to know more about your life. Should you go live in an RV? I still want to know more about your life. It’s not what I would recommend. It’s not what I say. But I don’t want to assume that for you to live in a home and live the life you want to live, I need to put my bias that a home has to be tethered to the ground with grass in front of it and a picket fence. If your home is an RV or your home is a boat, I think the rules apply. If it is recreation at all, then it does not apply. That’s where I’m going with it.

Rebie: It’s a fair take. Like it’s not exactly equivalent, but it is when it comes to money out of your pocket and how you’re budgeting. I get it. I’m not recommending buying boats. Like that’s something that you really want your friend to do. You don’t own one. You want your friend to own one, but in this situation, I think we’ve said enough. I think Stevie, I can’t wait to see what you do.

Brian: Stevie, send us a picture of the boat. Better yet, put a picture of the boat that you’re thinking about in the live chat. I mean, we could really have some good conversations about this thing.

Rebie: Yeah. Somebody said, “I hate when mom and dad fight.” That’s what the chat said. We also did go ahead and poll our current live audience. Does a houseboat count for the 3525 rule? So far, 63% said stick to the land. 37% said, “Aye aye captain.”

Bo: Hey, look, I stick to the land. I agree. My recommendation would be don’t go the waterway, but maybe we’ll check back in. We’ll give that poll another minute and check back in.

Brian: Here’s the real Bo Hansen hack. Put a boat on some cinder blocks in a yard.

Rebie: Wait, what? Live in the houseboat that’s on land because he can’t swim.

Brian: Oh, we can go there, too. Okay, I’m out. Flip the table.

Rebie: Maybe I missed some of that context looking at the chat, but I was like, “Oh, he’s making fun of his swimming abilities.”

Bo: I can swim. Again, it’s not my strong suit. I’m a land animal, but I can swim.

Brian: There’s only one way to know if people really can swim, and I’ve been there and seen it in person. If you can go in the open ocean and you look in somebody’s eyes and you can see the fear that’s there, then you quickly realize they don’t know how to swim. A swimming pool is completely different because you can not swim and then fall down to the bottom, push yourself up and come up and get to the side because what do you got to go, 20 feet? In the ocean, I saw the white of your eyes. I saw in your soul, Bo, you can’t swim. I was trying to figure out how I was going to bring you back.

Bo: I don’t do open water.

Q&A: Retiring Early While Friends and Family Cannot (43:03)

Rebie: All right, let’s go ahead and move on to the next question. Oh, this is a good one, too. I’m interested to see what you say here. This is from moneygal2038. Nice username, by the way. It says, “I need some finance therapy. I’m on the path to retire by 50. Nice. But my friends and family are not in the same position. How do I avoid the guilt of retiring early while my friends and family cannot?”

Brian: Why is it guilt? It ought to be like, “Dad gummit, why are they not doing what I’m doing?” Literally anger. No, just kidding. Don’t be angry.

Bo: I have this conversation with my buddies all the time and I want to give credit where credit’s due because I stole this from you. I tell my buddies all the time, I’m like, “Guys, you need to start getting serious about this because look, I’m going to be financially independent. I’m going to be able to check out or I’m never actually retiring, but if I ever did retire, I don’t want to do it alone. I want to be able to hang out with you guys and go do the fun stuff. So, you better take this seriously or you’re not going to be able to do it when I’m able to do it.” So, I don’t think it ought to be guilt, money gal. I agree with Rebie. It ought to be inspiration. You ought to be telling them, “Hey, let me tell you what I figured out and this thing that I figured out. You too can have it.” And boy, is it awesome when we do it together.

Brian: Yeah. I would change that guilt into get inspiration of how do I go and motivate some of my friends and family to start making good decisions. You know, if you’re looking for gift ideas, I can think of one called Millionaire Mission. And then also just our content. I mean, it’s one of those things. I don’t think it’s a guilt thing because I know when I first started and figured out this wonderful world of personal finance and I realized, hey, my money could work harder than I could. I literally did go buy books for a lot of my friends and I think to some degree I’ve had some success with it. I have a few friends that have done pretty well. But it is one of those things where you know spread the word because I will tell you that it gets more serious the older you get, the more sentimental you’ll get about things. And I have, I’m a collector of friends and the fact that I still go on annual trips with my high school buddies. I go on annual trips with my former neighbor buddies. I’m going on, it seems like every seven-year trips with some of my college buddies. We’re not as organized, believe me. It’s like herding cats. I’m trying to work on one of those trips right now because I’m more and more sentimental. And I even told my high school buddies, I was like, “Look, we do this once a year. We’ve been great going to spring training. I’d like us to do this two or three times a year because I just don’t see you guys enough and we’re all getting a little bit older and it seems to be harder.” That’s where I’m starting to run into issues. And that’s where because it’s legit if you haven’t started saving early and often. It gets harder when you get to be in your 50s and you want to take more time off, but you realize, oh my gosh, no, this is crunch time. I need to be saving because at some point I have to live off this money. So do it early and often and it’s much easier decision-making in the future.

Bo: And my advice here, I want to be very clear, is not to get different friends. Don’t mishear me here. But one of the things that I have noticed as life has gone on, it is interesting that you naturally gravitate towards people that are thinking the same way that you are and doing the same things as you are. So I would not be, it would not be surprising money gal if you started to notice that even your social fiber and your social structure adjusts a little bit, that maybe the childhood friends that you spent a lot of time with or the college friends perhaps if they were not taking these types of things seriously, moving in the same direction you are, there are going to be other people in your life you interact with that do and they kind of become this other group social network and I think that’s totally okay. I know that I have some friends or my wife and I have some friends that because they’ve made good decisions and they’ve saved well and they’ve lived below their means, they can travel and do experiences and have opportunities that perhaps other friends can’t because they did. And that’s okay. It’s recognizing the reality if something that is very important to you is retiring at 50 and being financially independent and leaving the workforce early and having people to socialize and spend time with. I do think that’s worth figuring out before you get to 50 and like well man all my folks are still clocking in 9 to 5 right now.

Brian: Well I mean and look we’ve worked with enough FIRE people that they tell you it is so odd when you’re in the Target on a Tuesday afternoon or 10 in the morning and you’re there and you feel awkward. I mean, there’s things that happen when you retire early that you just realize and that’s why I think camaraderie or people and that’s why it’s so good that we have channels like The Money Guy Show and other stuff where you guys can connect and look, we’re going to try to help you in the long term. We’re going to create more personalized ways for our community to connect, too, because I see that’s what I see the world as going to is that we’re becoming more and more AI and artificial based to where it’s going to become a premium to put people together and focus on relationships. So hopefully my being so sentimental about that stuff will actually create some dividends for the money guy community too because I have some ideas and it’s been part of the surveys and other things that we’ll be rolling out here in the coming months and weeks too.

Rebie: I’m not even mad for him teasing that because I like it. I like these ideas. I’m on board.

Brian: But money gal, I appreciate that you’re at least thinking about it. I would just tell you to reharness that energy. Don’t make it a negative. Try to figure out how you make it an inspiration.

Rebie: Yeah. No, I like what you said, Bo, and she didn’t say how old she is, but you probably have some time before you’re 50. So, like I think it’s probably good that you’ve noted like, oh, maybe there will be additional people that will be important to my life. And I think that’s great. It’s not like an either or. It’s not a bad thing.

Brian: I like, tell them, I mean because that conversation can’t go bad necessarily. If you have young friends or friends around you and you say, “Hey, I love spending so much time with you. Make sure you’re doing something good with your money so that we can do this. We can hang out more.”

Bo: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. No, it’s great. It’s not like somebody even if they don’t do it, they’re like, “Hey, they actually like me.”

Mutants Mingle: A Dating App Announcement (49:31)

Rebie: Hey, did we tell Brian what we did on the Reddit while he was out for the holidays? Speaking of connections.

Brian: Oh, no. Oh, no.

Rebie: We did. This one, we haven’t had our planning session now, but this is coming up the 2026. We’re actually rolling out a dating app. It’s a dating app for financial mutants so people can connect with like-minded financial mutants.

Brian: Who came up with this?

Bo: No, this is the thing. I think the audience came up with it. It’s going to be, we’re still out on names. The leading contender right now is Mutants Mingle is where we’re at. But any ideas? There were some other really good ones though. So we’re, it’s in the development.

Brian: Did this happen in the live stream? Is that where this all came about?

Rebie: Yeah. Yeah. You leave us alone for one week.

Brian: Obviously, I need a few more sparrows and birds in my corner that tell me these things when I’m not around because y’all dropped this on me in the middle of a live stream.

Bo: So, just so you know, that’s coming.

Rebie: Yeah. No, we really did have some people like chatting, meeting each other on Reddit. There was an entire, there were a number of threads that popped up of people, hey, I’m single, I’ve got this going on and here’s my net worth and I’m single and I got this going.

Bo: Maybe we’ll help them find love. See, this stuff is writing itself. Think how good these meetups are going to be. Think about how wonderful our first Making a Millionaire episode is going to be for our first mutant baby from the relationship that comes from this.

Brian: I love it because y’all know like I love it when employees start growing their families. I already see this. This could, okay, I could get on board. I see how this bears fruit. Mutants mingle.

Q&A: Rolling Home Equity into New House (51:24)

Rebie: All right. Next question. Totally different from SadPackerFan1. It says, well, if you saw the score last night, you understand that. It says, “My wife and I are moving this year.” They’re both 34 and they have $230,000 in liquid investments and $260,000 in the equity of their home. Should we put all equity into the next home or 20% and the rest in liquid investment?

Brian: We need more information. Tell them what information we need and why we need it. Yeah. And we’re not just trying to skip out on the answer, but we hear have this happen all the time, SadPacker, in the fact that people just, you need to figure out are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you’re supposed to be because this is a great opportunity. Because you’re about to have a windfall moment where this cash is going to come your way when you sell this house that you have to now figure out in your choose your own adventure of your personal finance of hey maybe I need the catch-up because I don’t know what your goals and objectives are. It sounds pretty good. I don’t know what do they say what their annual income is. So I don’t have enough context to know if you’re ahead of the curve or behind the curve, but it’s definitely worth going through the exercise. And that’s why I’d go to learn.moneyguy.com. We actually have, we call it a course, but it’s really a tool also in the fact that it’s a spreadsheet that you can put in your goals, play, tweak around with it, and then you’ll quickly figure out, hey, no, I’m right where I need to be. And if you’re way ahead of the curve, then a lot of times, especially with interest rates where they are, I’m like, yeah, go ahead and put it down and that’s fine. You’re not going to hurt yourself. But then there’s a lot of people that do this calculation and like whoa, my goals, I really need to have a lot of money in my army of dollar bills for the future. This is going to be a great way for me to kind of catch up on some things I might be behind on.

Bo: Yeah. I think we’d want to know the income. I’d want to know what your account structure looks like and I want to know your long-term plans for all of the reasons you just said. Sad Packer fans said that the annual salary is around $230,000.

Brian: So see right there that, so on paper you sounded like you’re way ahead of the curve until I heard your income because he’s 34. At 30 is where we have one times your income and by the time you get to 40 we want you to have three times your income. It’s kind of just the benchmark. It’s not even tied to your goals. That’s just generalized when we do the net worth by age. By the way, if you haven’t checked out that, we dropped that show. It’s crushing. Go out there and check it out, be part of everybody else catching in on that. But you now just hearing that you’re 34 and you make $230,000, because you have a big shovel, you might not be as far ahead as I would initially thought.

Bo: Yeah. And so I’d also have to consider the house that I’m selling. I’ve got $260,000 of equity and the new house that I’m buying. Like is this an upgrade? Is it a lateral move? And you actually have to play with the numbers to figure out, okay, if I’m only going to put 20% down and I do that, does that still fall inside the 3% or the 20%, five-year and then 25% of expenses? Like I have to make sure that I’m testing all of the different guard rails to make sure that I’m not running afoul. Because you may do this and may say, man, for the home that we’re moving into, we can’t just do 20%. We got to do 25% down so that we can keep the affordability there. But that still leaves us some money that we can put in the brokerage account that we can then get working for us. We can then get operating at our 34 year old money multiplier. So you’ve got to kind of, there’s some work to do when it comes to rolling in equity or not. It is not a one-size-fits-all decision.

Brian: Yeah. This is one of those things where all of a sudden money goes from being very simple to having some levels of complexity. And that’s what this is one of those decisions. This is why I’m not worried about our job is because there will be complexities where people say, “Hey, what are all the things I’m not thinking about?” Because as we just laid out, it’s not only just the initial purchase, it’s what does this do to my future goals? These things are all interconnected with each other.

Bo: Exactly right.

Rebie: Sad Packer fan one, thank you for the question.

Q&A: Prioritizing Windfall Between Mortgage, Student Loans, and Investing (55:37)

Rebie: All right, we’ve got one from Curtis G up next. It says, “Hey guys, I’m 33 years old, married, single income of $450,000. Wow. Net worth of $970,000 and $330,000 invested with a $200,000 windfall. Should I prioritize a 6.235% mortgage, $182,000 of student loans at 6.2% or invest? Much love.”

Bo: All right. I got a lot of, we got a lot of numbers here. Lots of numbers for you. 33 years old, married, but a single income, $450,000 income, $970,000 net worth, $330,000 in investments, $200,000 windfall. Should I prioritize?

Brian: I’m immediately when I look at this, I’m like pushing the mortgage down the list because that’s step nine. I’m pushing that down on the list as I’m going through this mentally. The student loans intrigue me because they’re in the 30s and that’s greater than 6%. So, that’s something that I’m probably going to want to draw, put an asterisk next to it and think about. But then I also want to know more about that income because that income is a striking number when you hear $450,000. But so I’d want to know, is this something that’s repeatable for many years to come or was this a one-off? Like there’s a bunch of bonus income built into this because you’ve got good things going on, but if you notice most of that investment, most of that net worth is not investments. It’s probably real estate or something because it’s $970,000, only $330,000 of it is invested. We’re not even, we’re already over 30. We don’t have one time our income. You can quickly see how some of these things are definitely in conflict with each other.

Bo: Yeah. One of the things I would do is I’m willing to bet that that $182,000 in student loans is not a single loan. So I wonder if what you’ve done is you’ve come up with an effective rate across all of your student loans. So one of the things that I might do to figure out how to really optimize and be as efficient as possible, I’d look at all the different student loans I have and if I have different interest rates assigned to each because perhaps that 6.2%, you may have some loans at 7.2% and some loans at 5.2%. And I think if you organize them that way, we actually did an episode of Making a Millionaire where we did this exact thing. They had on their net worth, it just said student loans effective rate, but we determined they had some very high interest student loans and it was a no-brainer to knock those out. And what we were able to do is deploy some dollars to satisfying those high-interest student loans and not worry about the lower interest student loans. So, I’d want to know that for your situation and then I let the financial order of operations be your guide, start knocking that out, looking at how much goes towards future wealth building, how much does it go towards truly high-interest student loans and that will let you know which is likely going to be the best path forward.

Brian: Well, I mean, and this question was debt focused, but I would immediately Curtis want to know what is your savings rate because when you have such a big shovel, $450,000, I’d love to know is 25% kind of automatic, are people being sent out, because I don’t know that it’s showing up now. Maybe this is all new to you and in the last you’ve only had this income for the last year, year and a half, but it’s just that, because you are pretty young still with that level of income, but it’s just I need to know more the behavioral stuff because you asked it from a debt perspective, I’d want to know what’s going on with your future dollars. Are you building the life as you’re making housing and other decisions to let you actually save that money? Because with that much level of income, there’s a big responsibility sitting on your shoulders. And I don’t want you to just live what you think is your best life and then get a shocker when you go to retire in your 50s because that’s a big income has a big responsibility for your future self.

Bo: Yeah. Just two little things to take away with that $200,000. One, I’d want to reassess the financial order of operations because you said you’re single income. Want to make sure you have a robust emergency fund to make sure, so perhaps that $200,000, if you have not done that or you’ve skimped on that, it fortifies that. And then if you do decide not to satisfy debt and put it to work, then the question becomes well how do I put it to work? We actually have a Goldilocks rule that you can go check out if you go to moneyguy.com/resources or just go to our search bar and type in Goldilocks, it should pop right up and it will walk you through based on how much you’re going to invest relative to your portfolio, how should you think about putting those dollars to work? Again, let that be your guide and try to remove some emotion from the decision-making process.

Rebie: That’s good stuff. Thank you for your question, Curtis G.

Closing (1:00:19)

Rebie: And thank you all for being here. Every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central, we’ll be live streaming and answering your money questions. So, we are excited to be back next Tuesday. And in the meantime, be sure to check out moneyguy.com for all of the free resources that we’ve mentioned on the show today. From housing to car buying to investing, we’ve got a lot of great stuff there for you to hopefully just help build your confidence about your next financial decision. And yeah, we made it for you. Moneyguy.com.

Brian: I feel like we’ve gone a broad spectrum here on covering topics. We started off with me coming in hard on the gambling trends. You and I kind of got in a little dust up over somebody wanting to live on a boat, which is kind of fun. That’s why I definitely, I guess nobody ever put the picture of the boat or what they were considering buying. I’d have loved to have seen how big of a boat we’re talking about here. And then we just, I mean, we got people meeting, potentially mutant, having mutant babies. I mean, it is, let’s not move so fast.

Bo: Let’s start. I mean, it’s been a good day. It’s been a good day. I feel like our work has been done.

Brian: And that’s why, guys, we will leave the porch light on for you. Whether you’re making mutant babies or buying houseboats or thinking about trying to figure out, hey, do I go and online gamble or do I fund my 401(k)? We’re going to leave the porch light on for you so you can make the proper financial decisions with your army of dollars. I’m your host, Brian, joined by Bo, Rebie and the rest of the Money Guy crew. Money Guy out.