From DINKs to Single Income and 2 Kids

Their Biggest Financial Problem (0:00)

Bo: Brand new baby, and not really that old of a baby before the brand new baby. Man, that sounds messy. How’s it going from one to two right here in the early stages?

Brian: It’s silence. Silence. The only thing that scares me about you guys is that your income is kind of in flux.

Tyler: We’ve been at step four for a while now and it feels like instead of step four growing, step four keeps on dwindling.

Brian: You want to move through step four, not back.

Tyler: We’re going backwards. It’s like we’re trying to stay away from step three here.

Meet Tyler and Shelbi: Savannah, Georgia (0:26)

Bo: And where’d y’all come from?

Tyler: Savannah.

Shelbi: Savannah, Georgia.

Brian: Let’s go.

Tyler: You’re going to like this. She’s a Dog.

Brian: Oh, go Dogs. So, we’re Dogs, right?

Shelbi: Yeah. We are Dogs.

Tyler: I’m married into it. So, yeah, I’m a Dog now.

Shelbi: My son actually knows the “Go.” He does that all the time.

Brian: So, you actually graduated from Georgia. Is that okay? That’s what you meant by that.

Shelbi: Yeah. I root for him.

Tyler: I root for you.

Bo: Where did you go to school?

Tyler: So, I went to the University of West Florida in Pensacola.

Bo: Okay. Yeah, we’ve got no beef with West Florida. It’s fine. So, where did you graduate?

Shelbi: ’15 from UGA.

Bo: What did you study?

Shelbi: I was a psychology major, but I worked in foster care for two years with my degree and then I went back to school for nursing.

Bo: Okay. What did you study?

Tyler: So, I studied communications, minor in business.

Their Careers and the Mortgage Market (1:20)

Brian: What do y’all do now? What’s the thing now?

Tyler: Yeah. So, we just recently went into… she’s full time at the house with the kids.

Bo: Hardest job ever.

Shelbi: Right. It’s different.

Bo: No break.

Brian: Yeah. Congratulations, by the way.

Tyler: Yeah. We’re very blessed right now. And then we made the very smart decision to go commission only. I’m a mortgage consultant now.

Bo: Normally, when you go to one income, that’s what you want to do. You want as much variable income as you can possibly have.

Tyler: I’m the brains of the operation here, with the decisions we’re making.

Brian: But yeah, that must be busy right now?

Tyler: Not super busy, but busy enough.

Brian: Because I see all the headlines on my feed about how the real estate market, because of interest rates obviously and then pricing, we’re just not seeing as many closings as historically normal for this time of year. So I didn’t know if that’s also, or if there’s enough refinancing into these rates. Curious how busy things are.

Tyler: Yeah, it’s not as busy obviously as it was in 2020 and 2021. You have to be a lot more creative. So there are creative ways to get people into homes, but you also have to balance that with, am I getting someone into something that’s not a financially responsible decision? So I have to kind of toe that line a little bit.

Bo: But just out of curiosity for our audience, when you say creative ways, what are some of the creative ways? Because there’s a lot of folks out there trying to figure out how they get into houses right now.

Tyler: Yeah, there’s a lot of different things. I mean, there are down payment assistance programs. Sometimes I’ll advise on that. Most of the time, if there’s a way to avoid that, I’ll tell a client to avoid that. I just had a retired couple. On paper, their income doesn’t allow them to qualify for a mortgage to get into a house. But I knew they were going to pay that mortgage off pretty soon after buying it. They just needed something to get into a house before it went off the market. So, we were able to do a distribution, dividing their retirement balance by 36 months. So they just start a monthly distribution. They just have to do it for one month, one time. We close them qualifying off of that. And then they’re going to sell another house they have, pay it off in cash, and then they’re going to kind of ride off into the sunset, no mortgage, stuff like that.

Bo: So a lot of retirees, that’s okay. You’ve got to be able to show it. That’s a fascinating, just creative way.

Tyler: If I knew they were going to be doing that and just trying to live off of that, I would say sure, not a good idea. So I like to put that disclaimer in there. I’m not recommending it. I want you guys to know.

Brian: I’m actually like, get this guy out of here right now.

Life With a Newborn and a Toddler (3:33)

Bo: Okay. And you said you’ve got some kids. How many kids now?

Tyler and Shelbi: Two. Two kids.

Shelbi: I just had my little girl. We had her June 12th. So, I’m fresh, two months postpartum.

Bo: That’s my anniversary. You’ll always remember it now. Awesome. All right. So, how old are the kids? We’ve got one that’s a few months old, and how old is the other kid?

Tyler and Shelbi: Two and a half.

Bo: Two and a half. Oh, man. That’s a good spread. So, you’ve got two and a half and just a few months. And how old are you guys?

Tyler: 33. And we’ll be about to be 34 soon.

Bo: 34. So, man, that sounds messy. Like in a wonderful way, right? But you guys are in the thick of it. How’s it going? How’s it going from one to two right here in the early stages?

Brian: It’s silence. Silence.

Shelbi: It was an adjustment for sure. Our little one, he is pretty rough. He is all boy, and he would roll his cars on top of her if we don’t stop him. He’s really sweet now.

Bo: That’s what little sisters are for though, right? That’s what you’re supposed to do.

Shelbi: You have to train him not to be rough, while he’s tumbling around on the bed. He about kicks her in the face. You have to really watch him. But he’s really good and sweet with her now. But yeah, it’s taken me a minute to adjust. I actually just stopped working my 12-hour shifts, which were really hard as a mom, by the way. I used to love them, and then I became a mom and I’m like, oh. And then I don’t get to see my kid all day. It was hard. But in April was when I stepped back completely from nursing. So, I’m temporarily retired from nursing.

Bo: I mean, a lot has changed here very quickly. 12-hour shifts to sort of zero hour shifts, but also kind of like 24 hours, and then adding a new baby and figuring out how to be. Man, how are you guys doing it? How are you navigating that?

Tyler: It’s literally one day, one week, one month at a time, especially with my income. It’s a one month at a time thing. So that’s been a little bit difficult, but I would say it’s not as overwhelming as going from zero to one, but it’s a lot busier on top of the changes that we’ve made.

$383K Net Worth at 34 (5:33)

Bo: Well, you guys were great. You shared a net worth statement with us. So I think it’s great to kind of level set what you guys have been doing up to this point, up till age 34. As it sits right now, at 34 years old, you guys have a total net worth of about $383,000. Let’s just pause there for a moment. It feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

Shelbi: It does.

Bo: That’s awesome.

Brian: Did y’all know that, or is this the first time you’ve done a net worth statement?

Tyler: No, we know it. I track it probably too much, a little bit. And I’ll try to bring it up every once in a while.

Shelbi: He tries to show me, like, once a week where we’re at.

Brian: Do you really do it weekly?

Tyler: No. No. We don’t do anything formal. Every once in a while I’ll just bring up, hey, this is where we’re at right now, you know?

Brian: So, I’m going to put Shelbi on the spot. How often does he show you the net worth statement and y’all have discussions on it?

Shelbi: Maybe once a month.

Brian: Okay, that’s good. I was just making sure it was a few times a year.

Tyler: Every day.

Shelbi: He really is into numbers and finances, and so he loves it. For me, it’s a foreign language. I was just working, putting my money in my 401(k), putting some in savings, like before we met. So I didn’t know much about investing or any of that.

Bo: But you knew the hard part: save, live on less than I make, put it to work. That’s probably one of the reasons why you’re sitting here. Even if we don’t look at the total net worth, just in terms of investments, a quarter of a million dollars in investments. We have this great tool out on the website, if you go to moneyguy.com/resources. Check out our wealth multiplier. If you guys didn’t do anything else at all, all you did was take the $250,000 you have saved now, put that in the wealth multiplier, it’s going to be a huge number by the time you retire, just based on the hard work you guys have done up to this point.

Brian: Well, and you know the goals that we talk about on the show loosely. These are just broad benchmarks. By the time you’re 30, we like you to have one times income. By the time you’re 40, you’re hoping you get to three times. I mean, you guys, depending on if we’re talking about $80,000 to $120,000.

Tyler: Mhm.

Brian: You’re at 33, soon to be 34, but that’s incredible. Y’all were way ahead of the schedule. Now, I do have to ask, because you had a career transition. What was y’all’s income pre-transition, though?

Tyler: Yeah. So, different. I was still in mortgage when we met. I was processing. I had a salary and then I was originating loans just kind of on the side. We were probably somewhere between $120,000 and $150,000 a year depending on the year, which we had a couple of years of that. So, before we got married, the main thing that both of us knew is, work enough, make enough to pay your bills, and don’t be in debt. So I was very thankful when we got married we weren’t in debt. We weren’t optimizing where every dollar was going. We weren’t optimizing our investments. After we got married, I was like, I’ve got to start taking that more seriously. And so we met with a friend at our church who worked for Northwestern Mutual. You probably know where this is going. We had a couple meetings, and this guy’s great, by the way. I really trust him. I do think he was being genuine. He wasn’t forcing us into anything. After our second meeting with him and his manager, I walked out of there more confused than the first time. And I was like, I really need to just do some digging and do some research. I’ve got an uncle who’s very good with money. He’s been a very good resource for me. He recommended Mr. Money Mustache and a couple of other things. And I read Simple Path to Wealth and all that stuff. And then that led me to content like your guys’ channel. And I just consumed it as if I was getting a master’s in finance for a couple of years. And so I realized I was very passionate about it. I wish I had stumbled across that a little bit earlier in life. And maybe in college I would have gone a different direction. But that’s kind of what has led us, over the past four years, to really start focusing on investing and optimizing it.

Going From Two Incomes to One (9:13)

Brian: So tell me about the transition though, because y’all were making an income of $120,000 to $150,000, and I know Bo hasn’t pulled it up, but y’all were nice enough to also share your budget. How was the transition to go from two pretty good incomes, obviously, down to one? And now this is it. I mean, your income is not even. It’s not like every month it comes in nice little cubes. It’s great sometimes, it’s bad. So that transition is amplified even more.

Tyler: Yeah. And to be transparent, I have not been very strict on budgeting. I’ve never consistently budgeted line items, like zero-based budgeting. This is more so kind of a general estimate, and I try to be conservative, averaging out the past few months of different costs that we’ve had. But it is kind of tough knowing what to do each month, how to allocate the dollars, how to plan. I guess the best way is to know, hey, these are the loans I’m closing, this is what my commissions are going to come out to being, and then kind of knowing if we have anything to set aside there. But it does feel a lot tighter. There have been months where we have to dip into savings, and last year, halfway through the year, I had to stop contributing to our Roth IRAs, and that was so painful. So painful. Like, I have to stop doing this. The HSA, which will come up in some of the questions we’ll have for you, I want to get your guys’ take on what we’re doing currently with our HSA, what you would recommend. But it’s tough. It’s definitely tight. Where our savings is right now, it looks like we’ve just been skinny dipping for a while. A lot of the reason that it’s as low as it is is a lot of things that are very recent that have happened that have caused it to go that low, but even before those things happened, we didn’t have enough in our savings. We’ve been at step four for a while now, okay? And it feels like instead of step four growing, step four keeps on dwindling. So that’s one of our main…

Bo: You want to move through step four, not backwards.

Tyler: We’re going backwards. It’s like we’re trying to stay away from step three here, you know?

Brian: How often is he bringing… because I look, I think sometimes I project what goes on in my household. I can remember in those early years, you go home and you say, that’s it, we’re not spending another dime for the rest of the month because we are way over on everything, and I’m just scared. Does he do that, or is it more balanced?

Shelbi: No, he really isn’t super strict with it. I truly just try to do groceries and gas, but I mean, sometimes groceries, depending on where you’re shopping, can be really expensive. And of course with the kids, it’s just new expenses that maybe you didn’t have before. Just very different going from the DINK life, you know, double income, no kids. We were definitely living the, we’ll go out to eat when we want, and felt comfortable. And you have kids and it’s a lot more expensive. And also, I stepped back, and we’re on different health insurance, which is still good under him, but being a hospital employee, I had really good health insurance for us. And then I step all the way back, step completely out of nursing. And it has been different and kind of scary, but I trust that he knows everything that’s going on. And honestly, I’ve just kind of handed over the finance part to him. Mostly because most days I don’t have the brain capacity. I’m just trying to take care of these two little humans.

Bo: So, you guys said when you were dual income, no kids, it was super comfortable. We didn’t have to think about it a whole lot. You said, I’ve never really budgeted a ton.

Tyler: Mhm.

Bo: Do you feel the need, or have you guys had the conversation, or is it something on your radar that, okay, well, now that the income is variable, and now that it has come down, and now that we have more expenses and less income, we probably do need to budget? And look, we get a bad rap all the time because we talk about how we don’t budget anymore. And I think that budgeting is something you definitely can grow out of, and it’s not an absolute necessity for a healthy financial household. But there are seasons and epochs where it does make a lot of sense, just so you can kind of reestablish habits. The habit of, right, hey, going out to eat, we can do it, that’s fine. A lot of you have got to kind of break that, right? Is that something you guys have talked about? Like, hey, what if we sat and actually figured out a budget that we’re going to try to stick to? What if we use some sort of tracking software, some sort of system? Have you all had that conversation?

Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a muscle that I’m trying to start working out again. It’s been since probably college when I’ve been more consistent with it. So we’ve just been slowly trying to get more honed in on that. But being scheduled to be here and to talk to you guys has really helped us kind of start already preparing and getting those steps in place.

Shelbi: I feel like we’re both frugal to begin with. I grew up pretty frugal, but I feel like now, if we had a set amount per month to spend on groceries or XYZ, I feel like that would help me too, maybe mentally kind of track what I’m doing and what I’m spending.

Brian: So, you’ve obviously said you’ve been listening to content, taking in content, digesting content. What do you think we’re going to say to you? Because obviously we’ve got your net worth statement. We’re looking at where you are. I’ve got some immediate thoughts. What are the three struggles that are just like, man, I’ve got these guys in front of me, this is what I’m hoping to get out of this?

Tyler: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, a few of the things I think you guys are going to say, I mean, number one thing is we’re sitting way too low in cash.

Shelbi: I like how he hit us with that before we could get there. He was like, let me tell you what’s going on.

Tyler: Yeah. I already know. I made the joke with her. I was like, if they still do the thumbnails and stuff, it’s going to be something about skinny dipping or having too little cash available. And I was like, 100% skinny dipping. I don’t know if you’ve said that on an episode before.

Brian: We are… That’s right. That’s it. There it is, with your cash right now.

Tyler: Yeah. That was not the intention for where we currently are. But yeah, obviously I knew budgeting was probably going to come up. I know we’re now in a cash management stage. I know that’s the case, but it’s just a muscle I’m working on. And then, what’s the best way in our current situation to allocate our funds to manage what’s currently invested? And then I’m going to have a question about, hey, if another emergency comes up and our cash isn’t available, I will ask you guys your take on the most efficient use, what’s the next account to tap into as well. That’s a whole lot to say all at once.

How Much Emergency Savings Do They Need? (15:28)

Bo: But, well, give us some insight into cash flow right now. We know that your expenses are $4,700 to $4,800 a month, right? That’s kind of your baseline expenses.

Tyler: Mhm.

Bo: So, just doing some real easy math, you’re not a dual income, you’re a single income household, six months is probably the number. So, six months at $4,800 is going to be about $29,000. Somewhere in that ballpark is where you ought to be from a cash standpoint. When you think about the monthly dollars that you have allocated going somewhere, walk us through that, whether it’s going into your savings account or your 401(k), your Roth, how are you guys currently saving money that’s not in this budget right now?

Tyler: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So my employer, which I love this, usually when you’re in sales and you’re a commission-only employee, you’re 1099, you’re not W2. They W2 us. They give us a 401(k). They match 4% if I put in 8%. So 50% up to 8%. So at least we have 12% no matter what. So that’s going to my 401(k). Early on I converted it and just made it all Roth. So some of the money in there is still traditional. Most of it’s Roth. We have an HSA. They have two health insurance options that they’ve given us. And when I did the math, I knew we were about to have our daughter Zoe before my elections this year, but when I did the math, it didn’t seem to be enough of a difference to just choose the other plan. And the other plan, it seemed like there were more hoops to jump through to pick which providers will do what. So, we did the HSA. We’ve been just maxing that out as kind of, you know, I’ve been investing in it, but I also made it kind of a buffer.

Bo: And we say maxing it out, like family max, $8,750?

Tyler: Yeah. Family max, to just take it out of each paycheck, and so we’re getting that triple tax advantage that you guys always talk about, which has been very helpful, but also using it like you’re pulling some out to use for healthcare expenses. We haven’t been, so far. So I know that’s probably something we were going to talk about. I’ve been, you know, they make you keep $2,000 in cash and the rest has been automatically being invested. That’s another thing I wanted to center part of the conversation around. For one paycheck, this is going to be a little bit of a laugh, but we’ll see how this goes. For one paycheck a couple of weeks ago, I finally stopped contributing to it and I was like, I just can’t do that. So I started contributing again.

Shelbi: Yeah.

Tyler: So, started doing that. But my thought is, we’re saving money on the taxes there. There’s more money going into there than if I was taking it out of the paycheck into our bank account. What are your guys’ thoughts? Is it ever acceptable, especially in our situation, to continue to put it in the HSA? We have plenty of health expenses we’ve already paid for, and in an emergency, it can kind of be like a secondary emergency fund. Is that something that you guys would ever say is an acceptable strategy to utilize there?

Roth IRA and HSA as Backup Savings (18:06)

Bo: Well, there’s a right way to do it, and then there’s the wronger way to do it. We won’t tell you which one you’re doing yet. But are there any other dollars going anywhere else? Are you doing Roth IRAs? Or is this it, it’s really the 8% to the 401(k) and the HSA, and that’s the extra money outside of…

Tyler: Yeah. So we’re not doing Roth IRAs right now. I was doing like $50 a paycheck into my Robinhood that I’ve stopped. The only other thing that recently I did, that’s another thing I meant to mention, I did take the half that was remaining for last year’s Roth IRA contributions, both in mine and hers, and I put that in right before April. And I heard someone ask on one of your guys’ shows, can you do that and just keep it in a cash fund just so that you can take advantage of maximizing the contribution limit, and then if I have to pull it out… So we do have that in both of our accounts too as kind of another buffer. Invest in those Roths. So there’s about $3,500 in both of ours that we can take out of that. I put it in SGOV, so that’s what it’s in right now.

Bo: All right. So, we’ve got $7,000 of cash in the Roths. And how much cash do you have in the HSA right now?

Tyler: Just the $2,000. That’s cash right now. And then the rest is invested.

Bo: Weirdly, very weirdly, I actually feel a little bit better. Now, look, you are like every single caveat and disclaimer we give on the show, you’re like, oh, I’m going to do that one. I’m going to do that one. You are looking for the asterisk on everything, just a little bit. But your cash is not really at $4,000. It is higher because it is in accounts that you could access, and you’ve done pretty good in the Roths. And this is going to sound crazy, and we’ll get some hate in the comments, but I really do think it’s the right thing. The fact that you’ve not invested that is probably the correct, right, and prudent decision.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: And so I’m not going to fight you on having that cash there, because you can go get it and it’s sitting there. So you’re actually not in as dire of a situation as I thought.

Tyler: Sure.

Brian: Still going to improve, but I’m trying to give him some credit here. But I am curious, because you have a $22,000 HSA and only $2,000 of it in cash. What’s the other $20,000 in?

Tyler: It’s in Optum Bank’s version of VTI. So, like, the total stock market.

Brian: Vanguard Total Stock. Okay. And then the brokerage account that’s $19,000. What’s in that?

Tyler: The majority of that’s also in VTI. And then we do have like $3,500 to $4,000, you’re going to love this, in Bitcoin. So, yeah. But the rest of it’s VTI.

Brian: Okay. What type of gains do you have in that brokerage account right now? If it’s not worth $19,000, how much of that is gain and how much of it’s your basis?

Tyler: I think we’re probably in the 30 to 40% of that is probably gains if you average it all out.

Brian: Is it long-term or is it short-term?

Tyler: Like, what we’re trying to use it for?

Brian: No, no. I’m just saying, if you sold it, is it long-term capital gains, or is it stuff that you bought within the last few months?

Tyler: Yeah. So, most of it is stuff that I bought like a year, two, three years ago. Most of it’s long term.

Brian: Okay. I’m just trying to figure out what access points you have to cash.

Tyler: Yeah, absolutely.

Bo: We needed to, because the only thing that scares me about you guys is that your income is kind of in flux.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: And meanwhile, part of running a household is peace of mind, so you can sleep at night, not feeling like, man, where are we going to come up with cash now? You’ve built it into the systems with the cash reserves being in the Roths and the HSAs, but man, would it probably be better if you didn’t have to jump through hoops?

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: If we needed to make sure Shelbi had access to money, she didn’t have to call a custodian. But kudos to you, because I look back on my life at the years I missed as Roth years and I’m like, gosh, they still haunt me. So kudos that you were last minute, like, let’s get it in there, and then let’s build a better system going forward. So I give you kudos on that, but I do want to make sure we’re building a better system for the future.

Tyler: Yeah. Absolutely.

Wills, Life Insurance, and Protecting Their Kids (22:17)

Bo: And obviously, look, we’re here to talk about optimizing and building and moving forward, but I think we’d probably be doing you a disservice if we didn’t talk a little bit about risk management right here, because brand new baby, and not really that old of a baby before the brand new baby. You guys have stuff in place like wills, healthcare directives, life insurance, those sorts of things?

Tyler: I did know this conversation was going to come up.

Bo: So, look, did you see how nervous that laugh was? He’s nodding and she’s laughing nervous.

Shelbi: We may or may not have had our will done the day before we flew out.

Tyler: We literally…

Bo: But you know what? It was worth it.

Brian: This is the big thing: as financial planners, we’re the same as all other humans too. Accountability is so important. It’s just like, when I’ve worked out with trainers or done a boot camp in the community and they make you do a diet log, I am so much better when I know somebody is actually going to ask me about it in the future. Whereas other times I’m eating Almond Joys, I’m doing everything else I want. So financial planners are the exact same way. So the fact that coming on this show got y’all to do wills, we will take it. And I hope anybody watching this will pretend that we’re looking over their shoulder at their assets, or whatever else they’re dealing with, so that they can get their wills done as well.

Tyler: We were very happy to finally get that done. We’ve talked about it for a couple of years now, but it was wanting to do it. This was our first time traveling without any kids, though. Zeke, our son, comes along with us pretty much everywhere.

Shelbi: Me having her in the hospital was the first night I spent away from him. So it was really our first time being like, okay, we’re both traveling without them. It makes those thoughts come up, like we need to have this in place.

Bo: And again, for our other young folks out there who’ve not done it, how hard was the process, doing a will, having the conversation, figuring out who’s going to watch the kids? Was it this unbelievably crazy, hard, super arduous process that everyone should avoid as much as they can?

Shelbi: No, no, it wasn’t that at all.

Tyler: Right.

Bo: And how much more peace of mind do you have now that you just got it in place?

Tyler and Shelbi: A lot more peace of mind.

Bo: I try to tell young parents in the messy middle this all the time. You’ve got these other million things going on, so the last thing you want to do is focus on legal documents. But it’s unbelievable just the release you’ll have. Okay, I’ve got that. Like Forrest Gump said, one less thing, right? Just one less thing. So kudos to you guys. What about life insurance for each of you?

Tyler: So, a couple of years ago I got a million-dollar policy for me, and then a year later I got a million-dollar policy for her. So both of our kids will have that if something happens to both of us, and they’re both term. They’re 20-year policies. I think mine goes out in 18 and a half years, and hers is like 19 and a half years from now.

Brian: So, check mark, check mark, check mark.

Tyler: Most of this stuff, I’m not just doing this because I’m a fan and I’m on the show, but most of this stuff can be attributed to information from your guys’ show and content like that. So I appreciate that.

Bo: Awesome.

Abound Wealth (25:18)

Brian: Bo, we’ve heard some crazy stuff when we’ve been recording Making a Millionaire.

Bo: And buddy, have we. From things like roommates turning off their heat for two years to save money, someone buying expensive Thanksgiving pillows without their spouse knowing, and who could forget the $100 horse massages.

Brian: Yeah. And you know what? We don’t judge. Well, okay, maybe a little on the horse thing. But look, our job is not to stop you, or even your horse, from enjoying your money. It’s to make sure your entire financial picture is solid so you can enjoy it guilt-free.

Bo: And that’s what we do every day at Abound Wealth. We sit down with our clients, learn what’s important to them, and build a plan around their actual life, horse massages and all.

Brian: If you’ve been watching these episodes thinking, I wish I had someone who could do that for me, we’d love to have that conversation. We’re fee-only fiduciary advisors and we’re here to help.

Bo: Just head over to aboundwealth.com or click the link below. We’d love to connect and see if we’re a good fit for you.

Brian: No judgment. Mostly.

Their $500K Investment Goal by 40 (26:20)

Bo: So, as we sit here, we’ve talked about risk management and the present day-to-day. Where do we ultimately want to move towards? What are the financial goals you guys have? And obviously you have questions for us, but if this all works out and all moves in the right direction, what do you guys hope the future looks like?

Tyler: There are some things that I have that are retirement-wise, and then there are some things that I have just in the next five to seven years that we’ve both talked about. If it’s retirement-wise, I personally would love us to be in a situation where, I’m never going to actually coast, but I would like to reach a certain number by 40 in investment accounts to where we have more flexibility. I would love to be in a place where we have enough in our investment accounts to where if something happened, we never contributed again, there’s enough that’s going to grow in the background where we can comfortably live off of it. That number I have in mind is about $500,000 invested. Now, that is not…

Brian: Hold on. How old are you?

Tyler: 33, going to 34.

Bo: 33, going to 34. Help me with the math here. They’ve got $253,000 now. And I’m going to do it as of 34.

Tyler: Right.

Brian: So we have six years, and our goal is to get… 12 times 6 is 72. Public math is always scary. And I was going to 34. So let’s just say 8%. 8% I think is reasonable. And $253,000. I’m putting zero for payments, meaning you’re not going to put anything else in. We’re trying to figure out, are you already on track? You’re already going to be at $408,000.

Tyler: Yeah.

Brian: Without putting another dollar in anything. So, assuming that we’re going to be putting… And look, if I wanted to just goal seek this thing to $500,000…

Bo: No, you’ve got to save some for the planning we’re going to do. What are you doing here, guys? You guys shouldn’t say that number out loud.

Brian: Should I say that number out loud? Can I say…

Bo: No, let’s leave it. Let’s not say it out loud. Let’s just say it’s doable.

Brian: Okay. So, the goal is to hit a number by 40 so that you could coast if you so chose. Not necessarily coast, but you just want to have that kind of thing.

Tyler: Flexibility.

Brian: Awesome. Got it. What else? What other goals do you guys have?

Tyler: So, within the next seven years, if possible, and again, we’re not hard set on these things. We’re very flexible. We’re frugal. If we stay at this income and my business never grows, we’ll be okay. We would like to eventually buy new cars, not brand new, but cars that are more long-term for both of us.

Cars, Cash, and Avoiding New Debt (28:30)

Bo: What does that mean for you? Can you give us a…

Tyler: That was a recent expense when we… Yeah, we had car trouble. So, when we started this year, we had over $20,000 in emergency savings. So we didn’t go into this year going, let’s just keep it as close to the ground as possible. But her car broke down. She had a Toyota Prius, and you’re just like, Toyota, why are you doing this? I’ve never had a Toyota break down on me. It broke down on us like three times, actually, on the highway.

Shelbi: Scary with kids in the car.

Tyler: And then my car started having trouble. I’ve got a 2015 Nissan Rogue.

Bo: Those are both very reasonable cars.

Tyler: Both paid off. And I’ve never had a car payment, and so we didn’t want to have a car payment. I had to put three or four thousand dollars into my car. We had to just offload and sell hers for as cheap as we could to CarMax. And then fortunately, her mother-in-law was selling her 2018 Nissan Murano, and we got that for nine grand. So that worked out really well.

Shelbi: No, my dad’s wife.

Bo: You said mother-in-law.

Brian: Your mom.

Tyler: Yeah. Like, thanks, Mom. I do that all the time.

Brian: That’s hilarious.

Shelbi: Yeah. My stepmom. Very, very nice. She kept it in really pristine condition. It was so new to us. We love it.

Tyler: And no car payment. What’s funny is, right after I wrote the check for that, you guys had the video where someone asked, if my emergency fund’s at a certain place, should I take it out of the emergency fund or should I get a loan on it? And the conclusion was essentially, most likely you should get a loan on it, as long as… I was like, okay, well, we didn’t. So we just took it all out of savings.

Bo: But you’ve done some good things to give yourself some contingencies, by what you’ve done in the Roths, by what you’ve done in the HSA. So again, it’s not quite as dire as the net worth statement makes it look.

Tyler: Sure.

Bo: But you don’t have any other debt. The only debt that I see on your books is a mortgage at 2.99%. I can tell you people are going to troll you so hard. They’re going to be so jelly.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: Because when I saw that, I was like, 2.99% and $200,000. You buy your starter home and you’re like, ah, we’ve got to stay in our starter home. We can’t ever leave the starter home because the rate’s too good.

Tyler: I bought in 2020.

Shelbi: Right before we met.

Tyler: The month before we met, I closed.

Brian: Is that how you met? You were the loan officer?

Tyler: I wish.

Shelbi: Oh, that would be cool.

Tyler: Yeah, that would have been hilarious, actually.

How They Met: Flying 500 Miles for a First Date (31:04)

Tyler: No, so we actually met on an online dating app.

Bo: Okay.

Tyler: And I’m very old school. I didn’t want to do it. I was reluctant. And she was the same way, but we had friends and family that had us go on it. I don’t know what happened. I was in Pensacola, Florida. She’s in Savannah, Georgia. I don’t know if the distance filter was off, or if she had visited something an hour away or something, but we connected. It’s like, where do you live? Savannah, Georgia. 500 miles away. And it just worked out. So, yeah.

Bo: That’s awesome.

Brian: So, how does the first date happen if you realize you’re 500 miles away?

Shelbi: He flew.

Tyler: Yeah, I flew. Well, funny enough, you know…

Brian: This is awesome. Wait a minute.

Tyler: We were talking on the app. We connected. We’re talking on the app, and you guys, this will bring back memories of this time period. I’m sitting in the car with my roommate in line at a hospital to get tested for COVID while I’m messaging her, and we just decided to FaceTime. That FaceTime went really well. And then I was like, how about I just fly to Savannah, we hang out for a little bit, and it went really well.

Shelbi: I had to make sure he wasn’t Ted Bundy. So I brought my whole squad with me. I’m pulling up in a big old truck. My friend, he’s got his gun. I’m like, hey. But we pick him up from the airport that way, where there’s like five of us picking him up, so I make sure he’s a legit person.

Brian: How good was your profile write-up that a guy was willing to fly across the…

Shelbi: I literally asked him when he was there. I was like, so, how many other girls have you been doing this for? How many times have you done this?

Brian: Now that y’all have children, you’re married, obviously it seems very like, oh, this worked out. But there are a lot of red flags. It was like talking to my daughter, be like, yeah, no, man. This sounds, he’s flying to see you.

Tyler: Yeah. Well, the way I sold it was like, hey, it’s Savannah, Georgia, it’d be nice to go visit the town. A lot of stuff to do. And it was really helpful. I would recommend this to anyone. I’m sure you guys would too. The two main things that I’ve seen in family members and friends that have caused the most trouble in relationships, or have helped grow it the strongest, are common faith and being in a good place financially together. And I feel like when we talked, faith-wise we were both on the same page. You have a good job. You weren’t waiting to get married to start living your life and being responsible. You’re not in debt. And so it was just a really awesome thing to connect with her.

Staying Out of Debt in the Messy Middle (33:18)

Bo: Well, and I love that obviously you guys were on the same page. You said obviously the same page faith, which is huge. Same page financially. And even as you guys came together, it could have been real easy, when the Prius went out, to be like, hey, we’ve got this cash, instead of us paying cash for the car, let’s just go use that as a down payment and let’s get some… Hey, we’ve got a family, we need…

Shelbi: Trust me, I was very tempted. I didn’t want to be in debt. I knew I didn’t. But, I mean, just with the new baby coming, it was very tempting.

Bo: I think one of the hardest things about the messy middle is… I’m sorry, what kind of car was it that you got, the family car?

Tyler: A 2018 Nissan Murano.

Bo: Great. So it’s a great car. A lot of people will justify in the messy middle, hey, we’ve got this family, so we need to go get the minivan, we need to get the big SUV, we need to get the new… I love that you guys were measured enough to say, hey, there’s going to be a time and a season to do those things. It’s one of our next seven-year goals. But right now, what makes sense for us is to get the car that’s reasonable, that will work, that will not put us in debt, so we can still work. That’s huge. And I think a lot of people in the messy middle, they get blinded by all the other stuff. And that’s how you wake up at 40-something saying, holy cow, how did we end up here? Good for you guys.

Brian: Well, y’all are in the separation phase of life. Everybody, all these small decisions you’re making, when you get in your 40s, people will be like, wait a minute, we were hanging out with them. They weren’t living life any differently. How do they have money now? And it’s because of these small, incremental things that I don’t think anybody actually sees. Some of us might call it the bowling point, or boiling point, if you use good English.

Income Growth, Private School, and a Bigger House (34:51)

Bo: So, as we think about projecting forward and how we’re going to put together a plan and how we’re going to look at this, give us an idea of what your career trajectory looks like, because obviously it’s variable, obviously it’s commission.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: What if we were going to do sort of a 3D plan for you guys, kind of looking at the doo-doo plan, the down-to-earth reasonable plan, or the dream plan, if things go really well? What’s that look like for you? And then for a going assumption, are we going to assume that you stay at home indefinitely, or will there be a back-in-the-workforce at some point, or have you guys even thought that far into the future?

Shelbi: One of our main things for the future that I really want to emphasize is we want to put our children in a private school. If we stay in Savannah, we know which school we would want. We’ve already looked at the cost of that. It’s the cheapest one in town, which is good. A lot of kids at our church go to that one.

Tyler: Yep.

Shelbi: And then in my head, it seems like it would be a cool idea when the kids go back to school. It’s part homeschool program too, so it’s kind of half days. I would love to work at a little nonprofit pregnancy resource center that’s right across in the square downtown. So it would definitely not be much income I would be bringing in, but it would give me the ability to pick up the kids from school and be flexible. Whereas when you’re going in for your 12-hour shifts, it’s just not flexible.

Brian: So, from a planning perspective, there might be some income there, but it’s not going to be back at the nursing income, back at the full… Great. What about your trajectory?

Tyler: Yeah. For me, I’ve only been full-time originating for a couple of years. So last year was my first full year of doing it. And I would say this income range, that’s probably going to be the base. That’s probably worst-case scenario, unless the sky is falling everywhere in the US. So I would say I’m probably going to be six figures, multi-six figures, for a lot of my late 30s, early 40s, if I continue to grow the way that I’m growing. So I do think it’s realistic to say, hey, maybe $120,000 or more might end up being my income a few years from now.

Bo: So, if you feel comfortable with this income in this market, I would agree with you. Mortgage brokers, they’re feast or famine. And this is pretty much the famine right now. So, if you’re making this in the famine, I think there are probably some pretty good times, because there are seasons where, with refinances, if we ever get the opportunity where interest rates go down a percent or two percent, you would be pig slop. I mean, it would be so good. So I think I see a lot of potential in that. It’s just, you have to survive this period of time.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: So, you think realistically right now, if we’re going to project, household income right now is probably around $100,000, right? If I’m just going to go right in the middle.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: And again, from a projection standpoint, maybe it stays that way for the next two or three years, but as you continue to build, it’ll likely move closer to that $120,000, and then it will continue to move up from there as you get into your late 30s, early 40s.

Tyler: Perfect.

Bo: And that volunteer position, is that $20,000, $30,000, $40,000?

Shelbi: Honestly, I don’t know.

Tyler: You remember how much it was hourly?

Shelbi: It was like $20, $22, and I was making closer to $40 an hour.

Bo: But you’d be doing, like, five days, 20 hours a week, at about $20 an hour.

Shelbi: 20 hours a week.

Brian: Just curious. We’re trying to figure out, giving us flexibility when we’re doing the modeling behind the scenes.

Shelbi: Mhm. I’m like, if I made enough to just pay for their school, the tuition…

Bo: When the private school starts, is this like a K through 12, or is this starting…

Shelbi: I think they start at four years old.

Bo: Awesome. So this would be starting in a year and a half for Zeke.

Tyler: Zeke.

Bo: Okay.

Tyler: Yeah. And I think the cost can be somewhere between $7,000 or $8,000 to like $11,000 or $12,000 a year, depending on which grade. So it probably averages out to around $10,000 to $11,000 a year per kid. And the only other thing that’s a big ticket item that we might potentially want to do in the future is, by 40, we might want to move into a more long-term house that’s slightly bigger, just to have an extra. Right now we’re a three-bedroom, two-bath. I work from home a lot, and I moved my whole setup into our master bedroom because there’s enough room in it. And I’m like, sorry, honey, I’m going to be… I have no office anymore. Zoe got that room. But it would be nice to do that. But we’re not going to do it unless it makes sense to do it financially. And another conversation that’s going to come up, and we’re both split on this, I’m not very hard set on where I’m at, or she, but with our current house, I would love to rent that in the future and hold it, because I think it’s a really good asset to hold. Not trying to be a landlord, but that one house is good. She would be more comfortable, I think, selling it. And so that’s a conversation we’ll have in the future too.

Bo: The market value is a little over $300,000 right now?

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: Okay.

Tyler: And my loan amount that I got was like $193,000.

Bo: Yeah. And what could you rent it for?

Tyler: We pay that $1,200. We can probably realistically rent it for $2,000 to $2,400, just depending. And it’s probably not anytime in the near future.

Bo: No.

Tyler: Yeah.

Bo: Awesome. All right. So, I’ve got a pretty decent idea of how we can put together a plan, how we can move forward.

How Couples Should Talk About Money (40:01)

Bo: What other questions do you guys have while we’re sitting here? What else can we answer for you before we actually go to the drawing board?

Tyler: Yeah. So, this one’s not as analytical, but I want to get better at how I bring her into our financial plans and everything. It’s always hard for me to know how I best communicate and structure that. And I was going to ask you, how have you guys done that with your spouses? What has worked, what hasn’t? Because I would love to do a better job at conducting that and getting us on the same page. She’s so supportive. I can do whatever, and she’s like, that’s cool. But I want her to get excited about things too, and to have more of a say than she might feel like she has.

Brian: I’m going to let Bo tell you, but I want to at least kind of set it up. You know how when you’re trying to make sure your kids get vegetables, so you start making smoothies where you put spinach in with the fruit and they don’t even taste the spinach? She’s naturally good. You know, some people are just naturally good, and you’re mad when you find out somebody can juggle, or they can hit a baseball 300 yards, and you’re like, how do they do that? You can’t hit a…

Bo: I was about to say, if you hit a baseball 300 yards, you’re 300… fine.

Brian: Yeah. 300 feet. She’s naturally pretty good at it, but it’s still one of those things where you have to make it fun. Because if it’s something she, even though she’s good at it, you’re trying to make it where it’s enticing. So Bo does a great job and I’ve copied it. Tell what you do every year.

Bo: Yeah. So once a year, my wife is not into the financial thing at all. So once a year we do sort of our little annual net worth date, and there are really three things we do on it. One is I do the contingency plan.

Brian: Hey, it’s offsite too.

Bo: Yeah. We go somewhere, we’ll go have brunch, that’s our favorite meal of the day. And I’ll say, hey, if I die, what do you do? And she has to tell me, this is in the safe, and I call Brian, and I do this and do this and do this, right? So she kind of knows that. And then I go through the net worth statement. Hey, here’s everything we have. Here’s where it’s at. Here’s where it’s located, all this stuff. And then I say, okay, great, now we got that boring stuff out. Hey, what do we want our money to do for us? What do we want to do? What trips do we want to do with the kids? What experiences do we want to do? What sports are we going to play this year? All these things. And we just kind of list out all the stuff that has a financial impact and say, okay, great, we can do all of these things, but this is the opportunity cost, or, hey, okay, if we want to do this thing, that means we can’t do this thing. So that’s what we do. Now, back in the early days we would use the now-defunct Mint, it’s not a thing anymore, but there are tons of apps like Monarch Money now where you can put all your stuff in there and you can track it. And we would have check-ins. Hey, on the 15th, let’s say we’re going, oh man, hey, remember we went out with that other couple last week and we kind of blew through our eating out budget this weekend. Why don’t, hey, let’s do a little thing at home. Let’s do, oh, so-and-so has a birthday party, we can’t do that. And I made sure she had her phone so she didn’t have to depend on me to pull up the spreadsheet and walk her through it and do the VLOOKUP, because she’s going to fall asleep before that’s over. But giving her real-time access to something that has really good UX. And then just having very casual, not like a… and I did this very poorly. How many years have y’all been married?

Tyler: Almost going on five.

Bo: Very early on in my marriage, I used to tell my wife all the bad decisions she was making financially. How I can’t believe you did this, and I can’t believe you did this, and I can’t believe you. Once I learned that that was not helpful or constructive for anyone, it made it much better. It’s like, hey, I noticed that we spent this much on hair care this month. Is that something we want to prioritize, and where would we like to not? You know what I mean? And it was just a much better conversation to have instead of me telling her, hey, this is what we ought to do. Because she told me that we need throw pillows, and so we bought throw pillows, and now we have throw pillows and it’s great. And it was something we had to mutually agree upon that made sense.

Brian: Yeah. I think you make it fun, you make an agenda, because it needs to be well thought out. And then what I like is, when you make an agenda, now you have something concrete you can review next year. So when you set the goals for what we’re going to do this year, the beginning of next year’s agenda is, hey, did we do the things we said we were going to do? Why or why not? And it just creates a fun little dashboard of an annual tradition we’re doing. It’s fun. We have a net worth tool that we actually use, the same one that’s on our site. It’s really good because it lets you see how much debt you paid off. It lets you see how much the assets went up, the investment assets, what’s the mix of them. It’s just fun things like that. And I think it’s become a fun little tradition. Yes, you get to do the other things, but it’s back to my point, you’re putting spinach into the smoothie and all the vitamins come from that.

Shelbi: I just made chocolate muffins with spinach in them before we left, for my toddler.

Brian: You left them for him?

Shelbi: But he didn’t want them.

Tyler: He still didn’t want them. He still knew there was something in there.

Brian: These kids, they’ve got a sixth sense.

Tyler: Yeah. They just know.

Bo: The other thing too is, I try with my wife not to major in the minors. I give her the big picture ideas. It’s not like, hey, what’d you get at Target? What’d you get at Target? What’d you get at Target? It’s, hey, this categorical thing. So it’s not an everyday conversation. It’s a once-a-month conversation. That way we don’t build fatigue around it. She doesn’t feel like I’m constantly looking over her shoulder, and she’s not having to give me receipts and that kind of stuff. I think the more you can do that, it just allows you to be on a better page. Because I know in the early days of our kids, she couldn’t think about anything. It was kind of survival mode and wiping butts. She said, all I do is I feed these kids, and then I clean up when they poop, and that’s all I do all day long. And so I had to recognize that, oh, having financial conversations might not be top of mind. So how can I make this as palatable and digestible for her as possible?

Tyler: Yeah.

Brian: The last thing, because I know we’re closing out here, I’ll tell you the old man type thing. Y’all are dead in the weeds. I mean, you’re what we call underwater right now. I would say once y’all are done with having the babies, once the kids get a little bit older, start doing some trips, weekend trips, do something for you guys as a couple too. The date nights, other things. That way it just keeps it fresh and doesn’t make it all about the kids. There’s a tendency for all couples, the kids require so much attention, they kind of get the attention. And I always just kind of nudge people. But I don’t sense that being an issue for you guys. It’s just you’re underwater right now. So me telling you, hey, go do that, you’re like, yeah, you come change these diapers and do all this stuff. But I think down the road you’ll see those moments.

Tyler: Yeah. Absolutely.

Bo: Well, I think you guys are in a great spot. I’m excited to get to work. I’m excited to see what we can put together.

Brian: Yeah. Oh, y’all have been a blast. I’m super excited. And I’m glad to hear we’re going to put some clothes on y’all so you can get out of the water.

Tyler and Shelbi: Thank you so much.

Post-Session Analysis: The Emergency Fund Triage (46:25)

Bo: Brian, what a great conversation we got to have with Tyler and Shelbi.

Brian: Yeah, I kind of feel like there’s the beginning of a good country song, because you hear about “I drove all night so I could date somebody.” Meanwhile, Tyler was so enthralled with dating Shelbi that he literally flew to meet her for the first time. I mean, that right there shows some commitment to get this thing rolling.

Bo: What I love is I think they are kind of like the stereotypical picture of folks in the messy middle, and yet they’re navigating it so well. Not because it’s easy, not because the problems aren’t difficult to solve, but I think they’re committed to solving them. And as we were sitting down, I think one of the things that we first uncovered is where they really have the biggest glaring issue. The thing they really need to focus on is getting their emergency fund built up.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, they’re pretty tight, and we’re being generous. When we even looked at this, we were like, man, they just don’t have a lot of cash. So we’re even going to take into account what they have in their health savings account to try to hopefully bridge this gap while they are building this up in the background.

Bo: Yeah. With a single variable income, our view is they really ought to be closer to six months of living expenses in true cash, but right now they’re closer to one month. So there’s some immediate triage we need to do, and then we think there are some adjustments we can make.

Brian: Now, they did note that they have about $7,000 in cash in a Roth IRA, and as counterintuitive as this seems, we want them to leave that $7,000 in the Roth. And we do think, because they have some HSA balances, they have some unreimbursed medical expenses immediately. We think that they should take the $4,000 they have in cash, reimburse $6,000 of those medical expenses, to get them to $10,000. And then when you include the $7,000 of Roth assets they have, that would put them at a starting position right now of $17,000 for emergency fund.

Bo: But they’re still on shaky ground. And this is going to pain Tyler, because in a lot of ways it’s got to be all hands on deck for the emergency reserves. So if we’ve got to create a plan that not only takes money out of the HSA but also freezes tax-free growth opportunities in the Roth, what’s the plan going forward?

Brian: Yeah. If they can get committed to it, it’ll only be for a short season, because what we want them to do is, since they’re technically in step four of the Financial Order of Operations, we want them to truly focus on step four. So when it comes to saving for retirement and building those dollars up, we want them to only put in enough to get the employer match. Everything else we want diverted towards this emergency fund. And for them, that’s going to be a little over $1,500 a month. The great news is, if their goal is to get to a $30,000 emergency fund, and we just figured out how they can get to $17,000 today, if they can commit that $1,500 every month, in nine months’ time they will have a full $30,000 if you include the Roth. But remember, we want those Roth dollars working. So we want them to save to that point, plus a little bit more, so that they can start investing those Roth dollars. So if they do that, in terms of true cash outside their Roth, we think they could get there inside of 14 months. Now, look, I know Tyler and Shelbi are going to watch this and they’re going to be a little bit disappointed because they have to take this step back from the emergency reserve, but we’re here to tell them this is why you have to have, sometimes, a long-term view.

Bo: They’re going to be a-okay. So focus on what’s important now, because once they get back on the horse of saving and investing in the Roth accounts, the retirement accounts, this thing’s going to take off nicely.

Can They Reach $9 Million? (49:52)

Brian: Well, if you remember, as we were having the conversation with him, he said, oh, I’ve got this goal, I want to have half a million dollars by 40. And you and I kind of looked at each other, like, wait, wait. Okay. Based on where you are in the barrel with what they already had, based on what we know, you’re already on track, just getting the employer match, to hit half a million dollars without any problem at all. But we know that the situation is going to look a little bit different. And we did the back-of-the-napkin math. We said, what happens if we actually do some actual planning based on what we believe your financial life could actually look like? And so this is what we said. What if they are saving 12% during the period that they’re building the emergency fund, just doing enough to get the employer match, but then after that, what if they’re able to actually grow their savings rate to the 25% we recommend?

Bo: So, you get done with step four and then you work towards 25%.

Brian: What’s amazing is, if they can do that and begin building in that direction, by the time they get to 55, they’ll have a portfolio of almost $3.7 million. By 60, it’s a little over $5.9 million. And by full retirement age, age 65, their portfolio would be worth over $9.3 million.

Bo: Well, and I think it’s important, because when you see a number like 9.3, you’re like, holy cow, that’s a ton of money. But if you bring it back into today’s dollars at 65, that’s a little under $145,000 a year. Now, here’s why this is important. We kept Tyler’s income, when we were doing the projection and the savings rate for the next two years, we said he’s going to probably be making around $100,000 where he is right now. And then for the rest of his 30s, we boosted it up to $120,000. Because I was impressed with Tyler. I think actually we’re probably undershooting this even with the $120,000. If we get in the right market environment, we get where interest rates are going down, he’s going to make a lot more money. But we wanted to stay conservative. And then beyond 40, we took him to $150,000. So if you take those things into consideration, know that they’re going to have a retirement that’s pretty close to his peak beyond 40s. They’re going to be a-okay.

Brian: Okay. And I still think that these are conservative estimates. I do think there’s a really good chance he could make more money. The portfolio could perform better than we’re projecting. I think that they are in the driver’s seat, but what they have to do is the short-term work first. They’ve got to get that emergency fund built up. They’ve got to commit to making sure they get their financial foundation in place first.

Private School and Their Future Home (52:20)

Bo: Now, I know there were two other issues that were outside these main focus areas. Shelbi had mentioned the private school for the kids. They had also mentioned a house upgrade. What are your thoughts on those?

Brian: Well, when it comes to private school, it seemed very reasonable that Shelbi at some point could go back to work in the future. And maybe it’s not the 12-hour shifts, but maybe it’s something. Or maybe she doesn’t have to go back to work. Maybe Tyler’s income increases more quickly than we thought, and they’ll be able to cover the cost of private school then. I don’t think that that’s something they have to focus on figuring out exactly how that’s going to work right now. They’ve got to keep the major thing, the major thing right now, and then we’ll see how those variables play out as we move forward.

Bo: And then on that house, I mean, look, this is probably a decision they don’t need to even worry about until they get to 40 and he starts getting into those higher earning years. Now, we can accelerate this if he does start having an outsized performance on his pay, but it’s also hard to walk away from a 2.99% mortgage rate. And I guess when they get to that point that they do upgrade, they’ll have to decide, do they want to be a landlord?

Brian: That’s right. Take the tax-free gain.

Bo: These are all good options for them to consider. But let’s focus on what’s important right now.

Brian: I just love so much, again, this is a messy middle couple that, without changing a whole lot, without having to do anything unbelievably miraculous, they have a very bright future ahead. They just have to make sure they do the right things now and don’t lose the plot through the process.

Bo: And I’m so glad that when she showed up with her six friends, because they’re like, what weirdo would fly 500 miles to go on a first date, it all worked out.

Brian: It all worked out. So that’s what this crazy little thing called love. So thanks so much, guys, for coming on the show.

Closing (53:53)

Brian: Bo, for others who want to come on Making a Millionaire, how can they apply?

Bo: Yeah, if you’d like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguy.com/apply. Or if you want to check out any of our free tools, resources, or calculators, go to moneyguy.com/resources.

Brian: Tyler, Shelbi, thanks so much for coming on, guys. Thank you for joining us. I’m your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy Team, out.