How 595,000 People Reached MILLIONAIRE Status (And How You Can Too)

595,000 New 401(k) Millionaires (0:00)

Brian: 595,000 millionaires were minted using this tactic, and you can do it too.

Bo: Brian, I am so excited about this because we love being able to share stories of how people can reach financial independence. And for a lot of people, the road to financial independence has to pass through the two comma club. They want to hit that millionaire status. And we know right now that there are 595,000 people that have been able to do that one very specific way.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, this is one we kind of look quarterly that this data gets released and it’s kind of fun to celebrate because there was a 16% jump in the amount of millionaires and should we share Bo? Let’s show it to them. It’s from Fidelity. You know, Fidelity is one of the largest 401(k) providers in the United States. And wouldn’t you know it, that 595,000 individuals at the end of quarter 2 out of their 24.6 million 401(k) participants, that’s about 2.4% for those that are really quick with their math. That’s amazing.

Bo: Yeah. And this is not incredibly surprising to us while it may be incredibly surprising to you because we know that from various studies, whether it be the Millionaire Next Door or from the Ramsay Solution study or even from us doing our millionaire survey, we know that a lot of millionaires out there use the 401(k) as one of the very main tools to building their wealth. And for a lot of folks, it is the account that actually crosses into that 7 figure status. And it sounds like that number just what we saw from Q1 to Q2 is growing and growing and growing.

Brian: Well, I mean, if your only information source is social media, you might be like, well, why would you do a 401(k)? From everything I see, I should be doing whole life insurance and crypto and all these other things because 401(k)s, according to these guys, are dogs. Let us show you why the 401(k) is the secret sauce. Why? Exactly what Bo shared. This is the biggest, the first account to cross into double comma, seven figure status for most people. It’s because it’s got a lot working for it. And we want to go into the three ingredients of wealth. Just for those who don’t remember, I’ll go ahead and give you the summation. Discipline is the first ingredient. We’re going to show you how the 401(k) checks that box. If you have enough discipline that creates margin in your life, you can create money from that. We’re going to talk about how the 401(k) definitely gives you some money. And then the third and most valuable component is of course time. With that Bo, let’s talk about why 401(k)s rock.

Why 401(k)s Rock – Three Ingredients of Wealth (2:44)

Bo: Yeah. So discipline, discipline is the first ingredient to wealth creation. And 401(k)s are a fantastic mechanism for you to set something up that automates your discipline process. All you have to think is when you become eligible or when you get that job or when you start with that new employer, they’ll give you some wage deferral form or they’ll give you a login where you can go in and select how much do I want to put in your 401(k). And for most folks, you just go and you have to select a number. I want to put in 5%, 10%, whatever that number is. And then you are off to the races without having to think about it every pay period, without having to think about it every month, without having to do anything on your own. You can get this wheel spinning in motion all the way towards your wealth building great big beautiful tomorrow without having to waste a whole lot of mental calories.

Brian: I love that we actually said quit fighting it. Let’s just go ahead and go with what Brian says automatic for the people because look there’s a lot of quit out there. We often tell everybody building wealth is surprisingly simple. Now don’t mishear us. It’s not easy because if it was easy everybody would do it but it is simple. And what I like is with a 401(k), it doesn’t let people quit as easily. So the stick with itness is getting easier and easier. And if you want to know what we mean by this, the government has been trying. Remember, there are a lot of, for all the things we talk about the government, they do understand that from a policy standpoint, it’s good if your citizens are saving and they’re disciplined in their own right because more people who are financially independent don’t need as much from the government. They can hopefully be just net providers of taxes.

Bo: Yep. So, if you look at the data that’s coming out of what Vanguard and others are doing, the government has set legislation up to where it’s encouraging employers to create automatic enrollment and they’re giving additional incentives to employers for this. And man oh man is this like watering the garden of opportunity is because look at from 2006 all the way through 2024. The amount of plans that have auto-enrollment and getting people to jump into automatic for the people, always be buying is really something that’s going to be good and the next generation is going to be rewarded for it. Now look, we don’t want you to take a passive role. We want you to be active in how you build for your future. But the system is now being set up in a way that even if you maybe miss it or maybe you miss that enrollment window or maybe you’re going through all the HR forms and you don’t see them, there are now automatic enrollments to get you moving in this right direction. But since you are a financial mutant and since you’re going to track your net worth every year and since you’re going to be keeping an eye on this, if you are someone that was auto-enrolled, it’d be a great time for you to go revisit and say, “Man, oh, I got auto-enrolled at 3%, but you know what? I could really be doing 5%. I could be doing 10%.” Or at the very minimum, I could at least be doing enough to make sure that I get that free money. Because another great benefit of 401(k)s is they oftentimes come with a free money component.

Brian: Well, this is the one that it’s a social media crime. When I see people on social media trashing, they’re like, “Why do you care that your 401(k) gives you free money? It’s only 3%.” And I’m like, only 3%? Only 3%. Think about, I mean, have you done the math on that? If you make 50 grand, that’s $1,500. That’s significant right now. I walk in, I reach out through the screen, you know, like some sci-fi movie, horror film, and I just instead of doing bad things, I just pop $1,500 in front of you. Every one of you like, “That’s a pretty cool trick. I love that.” Or if you make a hundred grand as a household, $3,000, it’s free and clear. That’s pretty amazing stuff. And that’s exactly what’s happening with 401(k)s. Now, a lot of you are like, “Well, your employees are counting on it and it’s already built into your pay.” Yeah. So, you’re crazy if you leave it on the table because I can tell you as people who hire, you know, dozens of people every year to two years is that we do take that into account in your compensation. So, when I find out that 25 to 30% of people are not maxing out their 401(k)s to get the full free money, don’t leave that money on the table. It’s just it literally is money that should be working for you in your army of dollar bills.

Bo: And it’s so important. It’s so valuable when we think about how you should prioritize what you do with your money. It is literally step two of the Financial Order of Operations. If you’re not familiar, Brian, can you hold the thing up for me? It’s hidden under here. The Financial Order of Operations is a nine-step process to show you what you should do with your next dollar. Well, after you get past step number one, step number two is don’t leave any of the free money on the table. So if you participate in a 401(k), 403(b), 457, one of those types of plans and there is a matching component available, make sure that you are getting that because once you figure out the discipline and now you have the money, now you can apply the third ingredient of wealth creation, the most powerful one, which is time.

Brian: Well, think about it. 401(k)s. These are retirement accounts that don’t make it easy for you to get access to the money because they’re set up for your retirement. Where do we see when we get the Fed data, the Federal Reserve data on where Americans’ wealth is, it’s usually in home equity. Because what is that? That’s a forced saving vehicle. You buy a house, you start just making monthly payments on your mortgage, it builds up the equity. The 401(k) is the next best thing because it once again it is defining your behavior and making the stick with where you actually get 10 years, 20 years, 30 years of compounding growth. And that’s where the magic stuff is. It starts really slow. You’re going to feel like, man, this is slow. I’m going to quit after the next five. Fortunately, the 401(k) doesn’t let you get access to the money. So, you’re like, okay, well, I guess I’ll just keep doing it. And then voila, 20 years in the future, you’re like, “Holy cow, this thing actually works. This whole compounding growth thing.” It’s actually and we actually have a concept, an idea that you’ve heard on this show a ton of times called the wealth multiplier. So, we have these little koozies showing that for a 20-year-old, a dollar can turn into $88 if you can give it time. Compound interest really can be the eighth wonder of the world. So, if you have a 45 year time horizon, $1 can turn into $88. If you have a 35-year time horizon, $1 can turn into $23. If you have a 25 year time horizon, $1 can turn into $7. The earlier you figure this out, the more powerful your dollars can be. And a 401(k) is a great place to figure this out because it can likely set you up for huge financial success in the future.

Bo: I can see people are going to see this and they’re like, “Wait a minute. I’m 23. I’m 27. I’m 32.” Don’t worry. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. We have calculators. We have, we’ve gone all in on this wealth multiplier thing because we want you to get that excited about it. So go out and find out specifically what your wealth multiplier is and start thinking about how you spend your money differently, how you need to be saving and of course investing your army of dollar bills because of the wealth multiplier. Brian, I love that this quarter it was 595,000. I think after this episode is released, it’s probably going to jump up to a million new people.

Brian: Well, and that’s not just that’s just Fidelity. Think about Vanguard’s another big 401(k) provider, Charles Schwab, and there’s a bunch of other small 401(k) providers. If you added them all up, I just get excited that it shows more and more people, especially through auto-enrollment, hopefully through education sources like the Money Guy Show, you too can join the ranks. Don’t let everybody out there telling you the system’s stacked against you. It’s stacked for you if you just take a little bit of today and build your great big beautiful tomorrow. And we love that we get to share this kind of information. We love that we can load you guys up because we genuinely do believe that there is a better way to do money. So, every Tuesday at 10 a.m., we like to show up right here and answer your questions and speak to the things that you guys care about. So, if you have a question, if you want to get our take on something right now, we have the team out in the wings collecting your questions. Make sure that you get them loaded up because I don’t know, maybe we’re going to give some stuff away today.

Matching Outfits Discussion (10:59)

Brian: I don’t know, maybe we’re going to give some stuff away. There’s an elephant in the room, though. I didn’t know. And I was trying to figure out is this is this like Boys to Men? Is this like New Kids on the Block? Is this In Sync? Backstreet Boys. Maybe even we go back. Who did—

Rebie: Oh, wait. I know what it is. Boom. I know what he’s talking about. It took me all that time though. I was like, “Where’s he going?”

Brian: We do. I mean we all showed up today wearing the same outfits without even, I mean we look like we’re about to go on tour. We ought to kind of stay get back to back and like cross arms together. I mean, we couldn’t—What was funny is I walked in and I saw Bo and I was like, “Dad gum it” because I had on a completely different outfit. My wife when I was making my coffee this morning, she goes, “It’s show day and that’s what you’re going to wear?” And I was like, “Shots.” I was like, “It doesn’t look good.” Yeah. Well, it was this black—It was a camo but with black camo. And she’s like, “I don’t know if that’s on air ready.”

Rebie: Okay, I’m actually with Jennifer.

Brian: So, I was like, it looked cool to me, but I guess conquering the money world in black camo was not doing it for my wife. So, I was like, “Okay, I’ll go change.” And I put this on and I walk in and I see Bo and I’m like, “Well, crap. Now it’s going to be like we’re going to have the Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Danny DeVito twins reference.” And I’m definitely going to be the Danny DeVito. Then Caleb on the content team goes, “Y’all look like step brothers.” And then now y’all just need to know the lay of the land. Rebie shows up a little. She always makes like the Kramer type entrance into the content meetings at 8:30. So, she comes barreling in at the last minute into the content meeting. I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I mean, look, Kramer was one of the most popular people on Seinfeld. So, your entrance is actually a good thing. And the whole content room just went, “Oh my god, she’s wearing the same shirt, too. I’m literally wearing the same brand, very close color, Money Guy logo, all of it.” It’s unbelievable that if we were going to assign—I’ve never been compared to Kramer before.

Rebie: That’s a compliment for me.

Brian: Yeah, it could have been Newman. By the way, he’s a UGA grad. He did go to, I don’t know if he graduated but Newman. Yep. Both of them. There we go. And the guy from Lost. I don’t know that one. Good looking guy from Lost.

Bo: Is that who it is? Matthew Fox.

Brian: No, it was the other one. The one Sawyer.

Rebie: I don’t know. I don’t know their names. I’m sorry. Never seen the show before.

Brian: And Brian and Bo.

Brian: That’s UGA alums. I love it. They put us up on the wall. It’s like Sawyer. My goodness. It’s like Newman, Brian. We’ve discussed University of Georgia TV and the fact that we are all matching. Did I say the thing?

Brian: There’s one more thing you got to do that’s sitting out in the room. Quack-quack quack quack quack quack quack. It is tumbler day.

Rebie: There you go. As Brian just said, the tumblers, remember they are transformers. They can be hot beverage containers or cold beverage koozies. Koozies or tumblers. Cold beverage koozies. So, let’s give away some tumblers and talk some personal finance.

Roth IRA Contribution Limit Question (14:15)

Rebie: Interesting question from E-Money up first. It says, “Since the IRS rounds to the nearest dollar, can I technically put $7,049 in my Roth IRA?” And of course, the limit is currently $7,000 annually. What do you think?

Brian: That one actually got, because I mean, it’s getting a little cold outside, so I got a little snap bubble that popped out a little bit there with that one that I was like, it got me. E-Money got me a little bit because that would make me laugh a little bit. So when I saw this is a financial mutant question if I’ve ever seen one.

Bo: If my kids, E-Money, were asking this question I’d say kids just because you can do something does not mean that you should do something. Just because you could potentially get away with something that’s against the rules does not mean we should break the rules just to see if we can get away with it. That’d be my first answer. So if the Roth IRA limits are $7,000, you should indeed stick to $7,000. And even if you thought you could figure out some backdoor way to get in, but let me tell you this and a lot of people don’t realize this and a lot of people this is very helpful at the end of the year. Most custodians, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, if you have auto contribution set up, but maybe you have like your credit card rewards also, your cash back also gets paid into your Roth IRA and you get to the end of the year and you didn’t factor that in, you’re like, “Oh no, I’m going to overfund.” Most custodians will cut off your contribution exactly right at $7,000. So most custodians won’t even let you put in more than $7,000 even if you wanted to. So they kind of try to protect you from that. Now obviously if you’re changing custodians, you can run afoul there. If you have other stuff like that going on, but I don’t think it would be a super easy thing to do, but even if it was easy, I don’t think I’d recommend it.

Brian: I love where your mind is, E-Money. That’s kind of like an Ocean’s 11, 12, 13, 14 type strategy or Superman 2 or whatever where you’re basically going to take a penny off of every transaction. I like where your brain’s at, but unfortunately I think Bo’s right. Even though the IRS probably would have be none the wiser. Your custodian is going to be the gatekeeper that probably shuts that down.

Bo: Could you imagine how boring Ocean’s 15 would have been if it was all about how to get an extra 49 cents into my Roth IRA?

Brian: Money edition. It’s 49 cents. We’d make it entertaining. We all show up in our Money Guy swag. What could go wrong? Never catch on to us. Be a great caper. We’ll do something.

Rebie: E-Money, thank you for the question. I’m honestly pretty sure you have a tumbler, but if you don’t, it is tumbler day. Email [email protected].

Two W-2 Incomes and 401(k) Limits (16:56)

Rebie: All right. Icee L is the next question. It says I will have two W-2 incomes coming in and both offer 401(k) contributions. What is the max amount I can contribute? Also, is there a limit to how much employers can contribute to 401(k)s?

Brian: What a great question. Like this is a very unique and it lets us get really nerdy and cool because we’re going to say Icy. By the way, I thought that was a great rapper name until I saw how it was spelled and I was like that makes me think of cola and cherry. So, it’s a little different, but you are limited by 415, what’s called 415 limits. So, the government even if you have multiple employers or jobs, you only get to make one maximum contribution of salary deferrals into your retirement plans. And that goes for 403(b)s. That goes for 401(k)s. They’re all under that code section 415. So for this year, was it $23,500? So you could do $23,500. Now the crazy thing is you could do $12,500 at this one. You could do $11,000. Did I say $500 on that other one? So $11,000, whatever. You could do whatever math you want to do to get to $23,500. But that’s it. Now here’s the other part. Bo, what happens to the employer portion? Do they have the same restrictions or is there a really big opportunity there?

Bo: Yeah, so this one is a little unique. 415 limits have salary deferrals of $23,500, but they actually go all the way up to $70,000 if you’re going to fully fill up that across your contributions and your employer contributions. Well, one of the things even though the salary deferral aggregates that $23,500, employer contributions do not aggregate. So you could have one plan where you have $70,000 a year going in and then if you had another 401(k) that you had access to while you as the employee could not put more money in there, your employer could elect to make an employer profit sharing contribution into that one. So you only get one $23,500, but employers can do multiple sources. Now there is one small caveat that’s worth noting and this might hit some of you. You mentioned Brian, 401(k)s and 403(b)s and those different plan types, they aggregate across that $23,500. However, there is one there’s one that does not aggregate because it’s in a separate code section and that is a 457. So, if you’re someone who has access to a 401(k) plan or a 403(b) plan and also a 457, you can actually fill up those salary deferrals twice. You can do $23,500 into the 401(k), 403(b), and another $23,500 into the 457. So, you can double dip if you have that account structure combination available to you.

Brian: Yeah, that’s a major hack. That’s awesome. Good stuff. Icee L, if you would like a Money Guy tumbler, we would love to send you one.

Bo: Got thirsty.

Brian: Just email [email protected]. Well, you saw how it was spelled. That’s just like the little icy machine. You were thinking it was like Ice-T like right like that’s, I was like I-C-Y-L. Yeah. Coming out with a hot new track and then I saw and I was like it’s like cherry and cola mixed.

Bo: Nailed it. Delightful.

Credit Card Rewards as Savings (20:02)

Rebie: Okay. Next question is from Jay B. It says, “Can you count credit card rewards towards your savings rate?” No question mark. How would you? It says in the question, hear me out. You already can hear me judging it. The next part says, “I have the Fidelity 2% cashback card that goes into my brokerage. Can I count this towards my savings rate? Smart fancy financial mutant or getting a little too cute with it? What do you think?”

Brian: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s getting a little too cute with it because also this falls under the category of, because I saw somebody ask the question of why do you after your certain level of income do you not get to count your employer match, is because we’re trying to create structures to where you are very deliberate with every dollar that comes into your army of dollar bills. Why would I want to give you a shortcut that lets you basically cut the corner off of 2%? By the way, hopefully you’re not spending, if you make this amount of money. Hopefully, you’re not spending just as much on the credit card to count that as 2%. That just think about that. The logistics of trying to figure out how this, I guess is not that hard because you’d be like, “Oh, $300 got deposited. $300 divided by whatever my annual income is.” But still, I think it’s not worth the squeeze of the fruit. I mean, this is the hassle factor. Plus, I want you saving as much as possible within reason, but bedazzle your basic life. But this is something that I don’t think is worth it.

Bo: Yeah, saving is saving and consuming is consuming. Now, if you’re going to consume and you’re going to make the decision to buy stuff, we love the idea of you doing it in a way that’s as cost-effective as possible. Maybe that’s through a credit card where I have some reward structure. Maybe that’s through some online portal where I get a discount. Maybe I’m using coupon codes. Whatever that is. If you’re going to spend money, we want you to spend as little as possible and get as good of a deal as possible. But that is a different line. That’s a different behavior than the saving side. I would just consider credit card rebates, rewards, deposit going in as like gravy and cherry on—that’s a gross mixture. As either gravy or a cherry on top, not together, but it does not get to count as savings.

Brian: Well, and I think it also works against I want you doing automatic for the people in the fact that you set up automated processes, make the good habits as easy as possible. And if you’re doing some weird convoluted calculation where you say, well, I know I got rebate, credit card rewards coming in this month, so let me make sure I leave enough room on my savings. It just, it’s working against it. It’s don’t get busy doing nothing. It’s just not worth all the factors in there. I’d rather you make it automatic and set up the monthly savings and investments and live your best life.

Bo: Love that. I love, I see I love the Fidelity card getting tons of love in the comments too. Tons of love.

Brian: Yeah, I mean I use that one. Not that Fidelity gives us any thank you for being an advocate for them on that. I’m sorry I said that.

Rebie: So great cash back though. JB, thank you for the question.

Investment Property Equity (23:38)

Rebie: All right, we’ve got another question. Well, did I give JB a tumbler? JB, if you don’t have a tumbler, email [email protected]. Now I’m going to get to Doug P’s question. It says, “My question is what to do with equity in investment properties. I refinanced the mortgages on those properties four years ago. Rates are at about 3.75%. The equity is just building up just sitting there. Should he do anything with this? How should he think about this? He seems bothered.” What do you guys think?

Bo: I think a lot of people whether it be your primary residence or whether it be investment properties have this struggle. They end up thinking to themselves, man, all right, I got this piece of property. It’s gone up in value and I see all this wealth accumulating. I have all this built-up equity inside of this illiquid asset. Man, is it just wasting away? Should I be doing something else with that? I think that is flawed thinking. I think that’s flawed logic. And I think that people who try to get really, oh, okay, I’m going to buy it and I’m going to have the equity increase and I’m going to go borrow against that equity. I’m going to go deploy that. You are now going likely further out on the risk spectrum than I think you really want to go because one of the things that you’re going to notice, Doug, is if the rates when you refinanced are 3.75% and you’re going to go now try to tap into that equity, you are likely not going to get 3.75% again. You’ll get something closer to 6 and a half, 7, 7.5%. Now, I just don’t think that makes a ton of sense.

Brian: Agree, disagree, you want to—Well, I think you have to, markets have different, there’s a time and a place, different decisions come into vogue and with a higher interest rate environment and you got 3.75% mortgage rates on your rental property, those are like people are very excited about those rates. That’s because that’s allowing you to do multiple things. It allows you to have lots of flexibility on tenants because now you don’t have to cover. That’s the problem I think a lot of people don’t understand is that when you sell a piece of real estate, the previous owner might have had it at a three and a half percent mortgage, when the new investor comes in and buys a piece of rental property and they’re paying at 6 and a half percent, the carry cost on just making the note is much higher. And that probably means there’s going to be higher rent. Whereas I like that you have a lot of flexibility because this is going to cash flow much easier at the 3.75%. The way I’m handling this with clients because I do have a number of clients who they’re doing it because remember real estate in our eyes under Financial Order of Operations is a step eight. Of the Financial Order of Operations. You won’t have this because hopefully the typical financial mutant, you’re not only going to have rental real estate, if you did this right in step eight, you’re going to have Roth IRAs, you got 401(k)s, you’re going to have taxable brokerage accounts, you’re going to have a whole plethora of opportunities of how you’re going to get access to money in retirement so you can choose the most efficient and best one. And that’s why I have clients that they love the real estate game and they’ve had tremendous success with it, but it’s going to be part of their retirement plan as they kind of simplify because no, real estate is not passive despite what the brochure says. I mean, we own a number of real estate properties and if you’re going to do it right, you’re going to be in the weeds on it. And for some of my several real estate clients, we’re going to be divesting out of some of these properties, simplifying the financial life, and that’s when we’ll take that equity and roll it into the diversified portfolio.

Bo: At that point, I think another thing, and this might help, this was Doug, right? If you are doing an annual net worth statement, I do this. You don’t have to do this, but this is what I do, and I know Brian does the same thing. Whenever it comes to real estate that I’m not planning on selling anytime soon, rather than valuing it on my net worth statement at market value, I instead value it at cost plus any improvements. So, what it prevents me from doing is like looking at my primary residence. You know, I bought my house in this town a number of years ago. The housing market’s gone really well. So on paper, value of my house looks awesome, but I don’t want to count that as part of my net worth because I’m not going to sell my primary house. It’s where we’re going to be. It’s where we’re going to stay. It’s where we’re going to live. So I value it at cost. I do the same thing for any long-term investment properties I plan on holding. I think if you can do that, it will curb you from saying, “Man, I’m missing out on this opportunity. I need to be capitalizing on this equity.” I don’t think that’s necessary in order to keep building financial independence.

Brian: Well, I know I have several clients that have because they bought real estate residential rental properties in like 2009 or 2010. I mean, these are key demo times that if you bought in, you couldn’t do anything but make money. So these are large portions of their future retirement. I do like the fact of you have to be mindful that real estate is illiquid and you have to have a plan for how you’re going to turn it into a liquid part of your retirement if you’re not doing it through the cash flow because a lot of people now if you’re a person that loves real estate and you’re going to be active even in retirement with it because maybe you’re retiring at 55. You know, there’s nothing wrong if the cash flow is now essentially a pension. You’ve created your own pension. But for a lot of people, if you need access to the equity, you’re going to have, probably because I don’t know that I want you in retirement, say 60 years old, going and releveraging the asset. I mean, because that really is pushing you out on the risk spectrum when you’re trying to be as financially independent and remove obligations off of your life because obligations are risk in retirement. So that’s why I would think build it into your total plan. This is the part where we talk about take the relationship to the next level. It’s very personal in personal finance is how do we take all these complicated decisions and successes you’ve had and now streamline it into your best version of yourself. This is a big part of it right here is how do we take an illiquid asset, bring that in with all your liquid assets and find the most optimal from a tax efficiency as well as from risk as well as how do we maximize the returns. These things all work together but it gets complicated really quick.

Bo: Love that.

Rebie: Doug P, thank you for the question. Thank you for being here. If you really—It doesn’t love it because that’s like it depends. I hate giving it depends answers, but do you see how many variables are out there? I mean, there’s a lot of moving—

Brian: It’s a blessing. I’ve heard very wise people say personal finance is personal, Brian. So, I think you did great.

Rebie: Doug P, thank you for the question. And if you would like a Money Guy tumbler, just email [email protected].

Brian’s Fitness Journey (30:26)

Bo: I have a question. Can I ask a question? You may. You don’t have to give me a tumbler. I’ve got one. Okay. A lot of people in the comments, I’ve been seeing this in our comments and I saw one just come through. People have been noticing you’ve been on a little bit of a fitness journey, right? Like people have been commenting like Brian seems to be doing all right. I just thought so one of the questions we got, hey, what’s Brian’s fitness routine like? Like this new Brian, what’s he begun focusing on? What’s he began diving into? Anything you want to share?

Brian: I don’t mind because I want, you guys are financial mutants and I find out when y’all come and do studio tours that I am, when a show creates an avatar of who their audience is. There’s really two avatars currently and it seems like it’s Bo and Brian. I mean because you guys come in and we could all hang out really. And that’s not a guy girl thing because I mean a lot of you like you’re like my brother or my uncle or you know so but here’s what’s happened to me and y’all have heard me talk about it. Health is wealth. When I crossed 40, I had that great sage advice from my former pastor Gary. I was in a small men’s group with him and he had talked about because he was a few years older than me and in my late 30s and he was already in his 40s. He’s like, “Man, a fork in the road, you got to start exercising.” So, and hanging out with Bo is a great influence because I mean, look at him. He’s a specimen. So, he makes you feel like you should be doing better. So, in my 40s, I was doing something, nothing great. And then, but y’all know I’ve crossed into my 50s. And that kicks like a donkey. I mean, it really does. And not that I feel like I’m going anywhere, but there’s definitely I have a 50s hangover in the fact that my father passed away at 55. And I know I’ve got to be very deliberate with and so I’m proactive with my health care with making sure I’m trying to stay ahead and I’m happy to report like because I’m proactive. I’m getting heart scans and all these things that you hear about like executive stuff because I want to be giving you guys financial advice for decades. I don’t want to be done with this thing because I like to think even though I’m in my 50s hopefully, according to a lot of my trackers, I’m in my 40s from a health standpoint, I want to be that way with the content creation, too. I’ve kicked up the cardio side. I’m walking. I mean, truthfully, that is the—So, when do you walk, Brian? I walk in the morning, I walk in the evening. It’s really—That’s why I will tell you this is the first year I’m kind of depressed about daylight savings time because it’s going to squeeze my window down because we’re central time here in Tennessee and central time is the greatest thing in the world except for when we fall back because I’ve already and through my daughter because she’s now, because I probably because I put out these vibes. I’ve gone through Grok and asked it, hey, when are we going to have the least amount of light? And it’s like December 1st through 11th. It’s gonna be dark here at like 4:30. How stinky is that? I mean, that’s just that’s not cool. Let’s get on that fall back. We don’t need to be falling back. I’d like it to be 5:30 if we could. But I’ve been walking. I still go to Orange Theory probably three to four times a week. I was doing that probably twice. But I’ve been doing that three to four times a week. And I’m just not, and here’s the other thing. It’s kind of like what’s that comedian? I love her because I saw her at the Grand Ole Opry recently. She’s got the Netflix show now, but she was like, “Avoid the bread and the sugar.” Leanne Morgan. Is that right? Is that the comedian? Yes. But yeah. So, I’ve been avoiding the bread and the sugars, too.

Bo: So, I’ve seen you you’re doing a lot of walking. Walking in the mornings, walking in the evenings, even sometimes you’ll get a midday after we have lunch or whatever, which I think is awesome. And what I think is really cool is on those walks, you’ve been doing something else, too.

Brian: This is Bo. Y’all wonder where ideas come from. You know, we went to that Press Publish conference. And Bo was like, “Man, well, that’s walking. We want to do something with that.” I always, and so Bo and I created a notes database that we’re sharing back and forth with just ideas and we’ve got like a hundred of them. I mean, that’s how, it’s crazy how we know each other’s brains and it’s fun. I mean, I’ve just been having a blast kind of coming up with tidbits of parental advice or things I wish I’d have known when I was younger or just I don’t know that I’m going to share the Taco Bell 3-2-1 strategy yet, but I’m willing. But it might make it in there eventually. But I’m definitely sharing a lot of funny things that I’ve figured out in life. And you guys y’all been great. I love the comments that y’all are saying when you’re watching these because I think they’re going out on Instagram. They’re going out on TikTok and Facebook. Matt, what’s our handle so I can throw it out there? The Money Guy Show. If you go check out Money Guy Show on Instagram, Money Guy Show, I wanted to make sure I was like know that it’s Money Guy Show on Instagram. Money Guy Show on TikTok. If you want to have some tangent time with Brian, that’s what these things are. That’s what they’re designed to be. So, if you haven’t checked that out, make sure you go like, subscribe.

Bo: I love them. They’re very warm. Like, it makes me feel just like it’s like going on a walk with Brian. It’s like hanging out with Brian.

Brian:We also, I mean a lot of time when we have studio tours, people say, “Brian, I love the tangents you do.” But from a content standpoint, it’s not always great that I go on random tangents. I don’t mean to. It’s just how I’m wired. So this just gives me a creative way to put those in a place that’s probably constructive for the content. Doesn’t mean that tangents are going away. I can’t help myself, but it at least gives them, they’re here to stay. We’re just finding the right places to put them, right?

Bo: Yeah. It seems like so they’re probably now live streams are probably going to get a little extra. I mean, always get their portion. Always gets a little extra. We’re just spreading the love.

Financial Advice Before Marriage (36:15)

Rebie: All right. Doug P, I did give you a tumbler, I believe. Email [email protected] if I did not. And I have another question queued up from AusTheBoss1216. It says, “Hello, Money Guy team. I am proposing to my girlfriend of two plus years this Thanksgiving.

Bo: Let’s go. Congrats.

Brian: Hope she doesn’t watch the Money Guy show.

Bo: I feel bad. I want her to watch the Money Guy show.

Brian: Hopefully not. Ruin the surprise.

Rebie: The question says, could you share financial advice that you wish you knew before getting married? For context, they’re both juniors in college. They’re both savers. Thank you.

Bo: Well, you know what? I think you’ve already, the fact that you’ve already made the assessment, hey, we’re both savers means that you’ve had some conversation around, hey, how do you look at money? What do you think about money? Because I think one of the things that couples can do really, really well before you enter into marriage is have the conversation around finances. Hey, what does your balance sheet look like? And maybe don’t make it sound that nerdy, but like, hey, do you struggle with credit card debt? Do you understand what a Roth—So that way you can figure out are you guys on the same page because it’s amazing when you see two people come together and one is like an incredible saver and the other is an incredible spender, it creates a lot of friction. So if you can figure that out on the front end and begin working on, okay, how are we going to set up our financial situation so that we can be successful through this marriage, so that we can be successful through this partnership. It’s going to be a lot easier than trying to figure that out as you go through it. So, I think the fact that you and your girlfriend are already having those conversations around, okay, what do we want our future financial life to look like? What are our goals? Both short-term, intermediate term, and long term. I think communication is key. And the more you can have those conversations early on, the less surprised you’ll be when all of a sudden you find out your spouse spends like 40 or 50 bucks on shampoo or you find out that throw pillows are a necessity inside of a household. If you can talk about this stuff in the front end, you’ll set yourself up for success.

Brian: I have a fun exercise for Austin the Boss. Now it’s not going to be video form because we’ve been doing this long enough that this doesn’t have a video equivalent of itself, but back in 2012, Bo got married. That’s how long we’ve been doing this because you’re like, “Wait a minute, it’s 2025.” Yeah, we’ve been doing this show a long time. And one of the funnest shows I think I’ve ever done is I asked Bo a bunch of financial questions of what he thought marriage was going to be like. Now, I think we did a 2013 show where we did a year in the future and but those are some just stellar content. So, Austin the Boss, if you want because that way you get to hear a young Bo talk about how he thought his wife was going to spend more than like 20 bucks on stuff. That was our check-in number, was it 20 or 40?

Bo: It was 40.

Brian: 40 bucks. And I think I said in that show I was like I bet her shampoo costs more than 40 bucks. So it’s one of those things where it’s fun to kind of hear and reminisce where Bo is a financial mutant just getting married what he was thinking. You might resemble yourself in listening to that content. Now here’s where the advice is is open communication. Of course Bo kind of hit that. Y’all need to be talking about. First of all, don’t skip out on the big life stuff. I mean, this is I’m always amazed because it’s going to help you out tremendously if you start talking about, hey, where are we at with kids? Where are we at with religion? And then next is, you know, probably third on that is like, hey, what do you think about joint accounts versus are we going to keep things separate? How much debt do you have? I mean, you don’t want secrets. Secrets kill marriages in a lot of ways. So, you just want to have open conversations about what you have going on because I mean, I’ve watched enough Christmas movies. You want to make sure that who you’re marrying is not a princess or a prince and they just not telling you and then that creates its own little diabolical thing that y’all have to work through. But it is one of those things open communication. And then I think about what’s the parable of the, is it the magi or whatever, is just try to be selfless.

Bo: Magi. We’ve done this. The gift of the magi.

Brian: You just want to go into marriage knowing that it needs to be a selfless thing. And I think if both people come into the marriage understanding you have to give of yourself, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success. And go through, I mean I know I think one of the important things I did was we did some counseling through our church or something like that just to kind of make sure we were priming the pump on the communication and other things because don’t just because you have love and passion doesn’t mean that you got all the boxes checked. You need to do a little, you know, measure twice, cut once. So, making sure you all have good open communication.

Bo: Love that. And congratulations, by the way.

Brian: Yeah, very exciting.

Rebie: Great advice, guys. Thank you, Austin the Boss, for your question. If you would like a Money Guy tumbler, if you don’t have one yet, just email [email protected].

Roth Conversions with Pension Income (41:14)

Rebie: Next question is from Drew H. It says, “First-time chatter, longtime watcher. Welcome. What are you laughing at, Bo Hansen?

Bo: Did you not see the pump fake right there? That’s fine. That’s okay.

Brian: Well, here I’ll let you—You got something about because I was thinking, you know, we have Making a Millionaire. Would be a fun show because I had such a good time with Bo’s show where we ask the questions. And I don’t know if Making a Millionaire if we even have any candidates out there. But a show like that with two young people that are about to get, you know, like compare and contrast and talk about money.

Rebie: Didn’t we have an engaged couple on?

Brian: That would just be fun. Maybe because Bo was fun. I mean, I wish if we could have gotten if I could go back in time and put a young Bo and Jenna on the Making a Millionaire that way, it would have been hilarious. It would have killed. It would have been a lot.

Rebie: Okay, back to Drew H. I’m sorry I interrupted you there, Brian.

Brian: No, you didn’t. My brain is just like it was a little delayed.

Rebie: Okay, back to Drew H’s question. Wonderful. It says, “First-time chatter, longtime watcher. He’s on FOO step eight. Congratulations. Is there a point where Roth conversions become counterproductive if your pension income will fill most of your retirement spending needs?”

Bo: I think the question that Drew is asking here is can you have too much Roth? Now I don’t know your answer, Drew, so I want to think through that because I’m, let me explain to you a scenario where I’ve seen Roth conversions be slightly detrimental. Someone has a lot of pre-tax assets and they have a little bit of after tax assets and they want to start converting to Roth and so they retire early and they begin doing these Roth conversions so that they can move some of the pre-tax bucket into the Roth bucket. Well, they end up using all of their after tax assets to pay the taxes on those Roth conversions. So, they finally find themselves in a point where all they have are Roth assets and pre-tax assets. Now, if you’re over 59 and a half, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because you can get to that Roth money just as easy, if not easier, than you could get to the after tax money. But if you’re below 59 and a half and you don’t leave yourself any dry powder to pay for living expenses, you could potentially have an issue. However, you said in your question, man, I actually have a pension that’s going to be coming in. So, if I have provided for my living needs and I’m going to have a pension coming in, what I’m likely concerned more about and thinking more about if I’m in your situation, Drew, is what are required minimum distributions going to look like for me at age 73 or if I’m younger at age 75. And I may want to begin doing Roth conversions now so that I don’t have these huge RMDs later in my 70s and 80s. And I’m actually going to let my Roth converting be less of a strategy around how am I going to pay for my retirement living expenses and more about okay what’s my estate planning and legacy planning look like because Roth assets are some of the absolute best assets to ultimately leave to your heirs.

Brian: Here’s my take on this by the way. I love that you’re already in step eight and I don’t, did Drew give us his age? He did not. So, I don’t know how early in the process to be a step eight, but it’s still pretty cool that you’re thinking about Roth conversions. But here’s, you need to know the negatives of Roth conversions because they also are part of why there’s positives because our favorite account structure. You’re not supposed to tell who your favorite child is, but I’ll tell you ours is Roth because they grow tax-free. And man, we all get excited about tax-free, but there’s a game you’re playing. You’re hoping for tax arbitrage. That’s the whole thing with Roth conversions. Meaning that you want to be able to turn your pre-tax assets, your tax deferred assets that are in 401(k)s and other things because you know the government there’s a clock ticking in the background with required minimum distributions. You’re trying to figure out how, and it doesn’t matter by the way if you die with these, your heirs will eventually pay the tax. Somebody’s paying the taxes on all those pre-tax assets. So, you’re trying to figure out how do you get them out of the tax structure with as little tax as possible. Well, some people get so excited about Roth assets that even when they are in peak earning years, they lose their mind and they start doing Roth conversions way too early. And when you’re in a higher tax bracket, that is not a tax arbitrage situation. You’re actually paying maximum taxes when you do that type of stuff. We’d much more prefer for you to find to play the tax arbitrage when hopefully you’re out of your peak earning years, you drop your earned income because maybe you retired early, you’re part of the FIRE/FINE movement and all of a sudden your tax rates go to the cellar and you’re able to essentially convert assets with minimal tax impact, minimal tax drag because taxes are a problem because what happens is that you have to pay the taxes from some assets and as Bo just shared a lot of times that comes from your taxable assets which might be your bridge account if you’re part of that, moving and you’re retiring before 59 and a half. That could be your bridge money that you’re actually spending off of. There’s also the opportunity cost of anything you pay in taxes. No longer is in your army of dollar bills working for you. So that’s why it has to be a very deliberate calculation to make sure that you’re taking advantage of the lowest tax rate possible that won’t hurt your long-term future, but you’re also working against the cash flow. And that’s why once again this is another one of those when it might make sense to have a financial advisor is because this is what a financial planner does for you. It’s not just asset allocation. Everybody thinks a financial planner is just going to put you in index funds and asset allocate. No, a good financial planner is going to start running tax projections. They’re going to start running through cash flow analysis of what retirement looks like in the first five to seven years. What is it if you convert this amount this year versus then? What’s the opportunity cost lost by us doing this? Is this truly an arbitrage or are we just paying taxes earlier than we should? This is what we do for a living. And I think that’s why whenever you see all the people who trash financial advisors, I’m like, you haven’t really talked to a financial planner because if all you’re doing is investment management that’s already been commoditized. You just go buy an index target retirement fund. You don’t even need to hire a financial adviser. So if we’re going to pay for this building and all these people in here, we better be doing a heck of a lot more than that. And Drew, that’s where actually we have to help you put the personal in personal finance of figuring out what your best path forward is. So that’s the negatives of Roth conversions are taxes, reduction of taxable assets, and then the opportunity cost that money will never get to work again once you pay the government. So you just have to kind of understand those negatives and then figure out how you can find the most optimal time to work through because you do have that clock in the background with required minimum distributions.

Bo: The only thing I’m going to add to that, and this is just a practical thing. A lot of people think, “All right, I want to see I can do a Roth conversion. I’m going to go Google or I’m not even going to Google anymore. I’m going to use AI and say, ‘Hey, should I do a Roth conversion?'” It’ll spit out, “Hey, here are the pros of Roth conversions. Here are the benefits.” And you give it all the details to give you some stuff. It’s interesting whenever we do a full Roth conversion analysis for a client, what we do is we lay out a best-laid plan. Hey, you retire at 58. Here’s our Roth conversion strategy that we’re going to anticipate implementing from age 58 all the way out until age 75. It’s really like 58 to 63 because you got Medicare surcharges. You got to figure out when social happens and after that it’s from there until 75. So you lay out this best-laid plan, but you know what actually happens in practice every single year? You revisit, iterate, and adjust that plan. So it’s not uncommon that we might start for the first three years of someone’s retirement planning on this, but something changes. They move, they change states, they buy a piece of property, whatever that thing is. And all of a sudden now that plan that we were on needs to pivot, needs to shift. It is a dynamic process. A lot of people think that retirement’s super easy. I’m just going to retire and I’m going to have 4% withdrawal rate and that’s all there is to it. It is very nuanced and Roth conversions are one of those that are very, very nuanced and can have huge implications over the lifetime of a financial plan.

Brian: And I’ll tell you just to kind of get behind the curtain of what financial planners do. Typically it’s a two transaction discussion is because we’ll, it’ll start at the beginning of the year we’ll kind of game plan at the beginning of the year what we think we’re going to be able to do in a Roth conversion this year but we don’t actually pull the trigger on it until typically fourth quarter. And here’s why it’s typically fourth quarter. Clients, you guys and you’re going to do this for yourself too. You’ll have outside income sources that just come out of the blue. You’re like oh but this happened. And you’re like, “Well, crud, that kind of screws this up because now,” because Bo just said it. You have to realize your Medicare surcharges, your Medicare premiums, your taxability of social security, all these things every year get reset and we have to take that into account. And so that’s why it’s usually a two conversation conversion is because you have your best best-laid plan where you’re kind of in the beginning of the year thinking about things, but then when you actually go to implement, you have to make sure that you double check all the variables that came into play.

Bo: Love that.

Rebie: Fantastic. Well, Drew H, welcome to asking a question. He’s a first-time chatter, longtime watcher.

Brian: This reminds me, I don’t mean to belabor things, but I think about when I got LASIK surgery, you know, when I got LASIK surgery in the mid 2000s, they and I’m sure it’s this way now, too, is that the robots had gotten so good that all you had to do was go to these, if you in the Sunday papers, if anybody even has a Sunday paper anymore, I’m sure they advertise just now on social media, you could get your eyes done for $500 a piece or something through LASIK, right?

Brian: Back then?

Brian: Yeah, it was something cheap because, you know, basically these places, these clinics were set up to basically just blow and go and cut your eye and do it. And I’m sure for 90% of the people that was great, but for me, I was like, “Hey, I want to make sure I only got two of these things. Look, I might be willing to stay and pay, I’m $500. How about if I pay $4,000 and I get the same eye doctor as Greg Maddux, who was one of the world’s greatest pitchers. That way when the robot doesn’t or some scenario hits that the robot doesn’t like, I’ve got a world-class person that’s going to make sure that I don’t give up my eyeballs because I was just trying to save $3,500. It’s not like a buy one get one free deal. Yeah. I mean, it’s just because I’m only going to do this transaction once, so maybe this isn’t where I need to save my 3,000 bucks. So, I feel like good financial management, that’s why we get a bad rap, financial advisors and some, look now there’s a lot of people I think if you, I was out with a great friend and he works with one of these, I’m not going to say the name but the custodians that do financial planning and charge an asset under management fee and I was like are they looking at your property and casualty, are they looking at, are you doing a tax projection or anything? He’s like no they only do my investments and they tell me they can’t do anything outside of what they manage and I’m like is that even financial planning what they’re doing for you? It sounds like they’re just managing your money. So just be careful with that. There is a better way to do money. That’s why we share so much. You know, we try to give you the ins and outs of this thing. So we agree. I mean, we probably jump in on the bandwagon when Ramit and others are kind of like, yeah, that’s probably not great financial planning. But if you actually see what is really going on behind the curtain, it’s different. It hits differently and you kind of know that. And I think that’s where we’re going probably with all the AI stuff too is that the robots are going to get really good but at the end of the day you’re gonna be like is that really where I should save my money or is maybe some personalization okay on that.

Bo: Love that.

Humphrey Yang Joins Chat (53:07)

Bo: Yeah. I don’t know if you know this, a good friend of ours just popped into the chat. Did you see that? Did you are you aware of—So is it true that the Humphrey baby’s here because I think that everybody loved that I said so talk to us about baby Humphrey, baby Humphrey.

Brian: And what’s funny is Humphrey because I tried to do prep when we had Humphrey on and the story he told was not any of the prep. It was the coolest thing. I had no idea. I’m realizing a lot of these content creators have really cool parents and Humphrey is definitely one of them. His father, you know, flying unmarked planes for the CIA.

Bo: No, don’t tell them. If you don’t know what he’s talking about, you need to go make sure you listen to that episode.

Brian: Last week’s live stream. See what I did there? That was good. See, I’m good. I just tell it all. I just lay it out there for you. But welcome, Humphrey. We always love it when we have friends show up like that.

Bo: Oh, that’s hilarious. Incredible. It was a great episode. I think we have some more. I think there’s more Humphrey content to come.

Brian: Both his channel.

Rebie: Yeah. Be sure to go subscribe to Humphrey Yang’s channel and to this Money Guy Show channel because there’s more coming pretty soon actually.

Bo: Very soon. Very, very soon.

Rebie: Drew H, if you would like a Money Guy tumbler, just email [email protected].

Charitable Giving Funds (54:12)

Rebie: All right. Next question is from JustJoshinYa. It says, “Is there a certain level of wealth where it makes sense to start using a charitable giving fund?” Or can that be done at any point in your financial journey? And I know this is one of those behind the scenes things that gets you guys really excited. So, can you give us a little insight?

Brian: Well, I definitely think it’s something that requires a little of your, I call it a boiling point indicator that you’re doing well is because what makes these charitable giving funds, these donor advised funds, really powerful is that if you have appreciated holdings, it can be stocks, it can be mutual funds, it can be anything that’s appreciated in your brokerage account, you can now if you’re charitably inclined, you can start giving these appreciated holdings if you’re charitably minded to the charity from these donor funds and then you get a tax deduction for the market value. The charity gets use of that market value, whatever the market value is, because they’re going to liquidate it and you never have to pay income taxes on that appreciated holding. So, a lot of you, I mean I just did a transaction last week and the holding that I did had an appreciation of 166%. Amazing. So, you think about what I was able to give to this charity is I mean, it’s amazing what I was able to give and I’m going to get a tax benefit. They’re going to get great use of this and then I’m going to basically walk away from all that appreciation and paying income taxes on it. So, it is but it’s not one of those things. I think, you know, it is one of those things where if you’re brand new in the journey, you’ll get excited about finding out about this thing, but it just might not have the juice yet until you have appreciated holdings. I should have said that better. Disagree or do you disagree? Because you always say agree, disagree, or want to fight.

Bo: I don’t want to fight. You’re too fit now. I agree with you completely but his question was is there a certain level of wealth where it makes sense. I do not think it has to be level of wealth and I wrote down sort of three different times that we see people do this. One you had already mentioned if you have any highly appreciated securities even if you had man I bought this stock for $500 and it turned into a thousand. Well that’s a great stock or that’s a great holding that you could give to a donor advised fund. You could get the deduction and you can essentially wipe away those capital gains. So obviously gifting appreciated securities makes a lot of sense. The second time where a donor advised fund or charitable giving account can make a lot of sense is if you’re someone who needs to do charitable bunching. Meaning hey I give, I’m going to make up a number, $10,000 to charity every year. But because the standard deduction is so high right now every year I just take the standard deduction. So even though I’m giving to charity I’m not really getting a benefit from that. Well, if you fall into that category, it might make sense for you to say, “Hey, instead of me giving $10,000 every year, I’m going to put $20,000 into my charitable giving fund this year, and I’m just going to do that every two years.” So, one year I’ll take the standard deduction, and the next year I itemize, and the next year standard, next year itemize. So, if you need to bunch, a donor advised fund or charitable giving account is great for allowing you to do that to actually get a tax benefit. And then here’s the third, and this one’s not as often talked about, but we see this with a lot of our clients. A number of people like to give to a lot of charities. Hey, I give to 25 different charities throughout the course of the year. Well, it’s really hard to track down, okay, where’s my giving receipt and I got to get this and I got to list them all. If you’re someone who gives to a number of different organizations or supports a number of different causes and you would like to consolidate what you have to keep track of, a charitable giving account is great for that because all you have to track is what goes into the charitable giving account. Even if you distribute it across a hundred different organizations, all that you have to report in your taxes is the one amount that went in. So, it’s a great tool for consolidation when it comes to charitable giving.

Brian: And also, it is interesting that you can, if you’re doing the bunching like Bo was talking about, you control when you distribute it later to the charity. So if you know your charity is kind of, think about your church and you’re bunching every two years, it doesn’t mean you’re only making contributions to your church every two years. You can actually still spread out your distributions to them so that their cash flow is not impacted either. It’s a really, it’s a powerful tool for financial mutants once you get in. And what I like is because initially you see a lot of charities, they’d say, “Hey, if you have appreciated stocks, let us know” because they’ve set up their own brokerage account, but if you had mutual funds or ETFs, they kind of not really ETFs, but mutual funds for sure, they had trouble. But I loved when these donor advised funds came around because a lot of, I’m an index investor and all of a sudden now these index funds you could even give to charity much easier through these donor advised funds. It’s a win-win. A really cool thing.

Bo: Love that. Love it.

Rebie: Well, JustJoshinYa, if you would like a Money Guy tumbler, just email [email protected]. I love what’s going on over at moneyguy.com. So, if you haven’t been there recently, head over there, see all of the content that we have. Have we launched the new stuff like the new organization stuff in there? Is that still not live yet?

Bo: Stuff like on the website. You know how we’ve been working in the background for months and months and months and months. Is that live yet or is that still coming?

Rebie: Yes. And I was actually just making a mental note to get some cool visuals of it so I could tell them about it next week. But since you are our loyal fans, yes, there is some really cool stuff up there right now that we have finally launched a little soft launch that is going to help you find things even more efficiently. We have really common topics, trending topics that you can sort by and it will show you all of our ultimate guides, resources, and full episodes that are covering those topics. So that should help you search and find content that matters to you even faster and better. So definitely go check that out. I’ll be talking more about some of the stuff that’s going on on the website in the coming weeks and months. But moneyguy.com definitely go check that out because we are always improving it and trying to make it the most valuable resource that it can be for our financial mutants because we really appreciate you guys and we’re on this journey with you.

Brian: I get excited because I know when we do studio tours and others, people are like, “Holy cow.” And I’m like, “Yeah, it’s, Bo and I don’t know how to turn on any of this stuff anymore.” So, I mean, that’s a good and it’s kind of that way. I love that about the website, too, because in the past, it was just a place to kind of just compile and keep a historical record of our content, but it has gone so beyond that now. Now, we’ve become very deliberate that hopefully you guys in the audience too, you know, that this is part of your wealth building journey. I mean, I was in Costco this weekend and there I fell prey to going over and talking to one of these kiosk workers who were selling something that I’ve seen on TikTok and I was like, “Oh my god, this is actually can see the product in person.” And but I’m not going to tell you what it is. It was embarrassing. But anyway, I was talking to this key, I’ll tell y’all off air later. But so this what she’s like, “Oh, so what do you do for a living?” And I don’t tell people like YouTube, so I just say like, “I’m a financial planner.” And she’s like, “Oh, well, my brother needs a financial planner right now.” I’m like, “Okay, your brother needs a financial plan. He’s not going to hire somebody that you helped fit this thing for.” So, she’s like, “Well, where do I go?” And I was like, “Well, just if you go to Money, you just go to moneyguy.com, it’ll be good.” And she goes, “So, I just tell them to go to moneyguy.com?” I was like, “Yeah.” And I think she thought I was being weird. Why did you say I’m a financial adviser? What am I supposed to say, Bo?

Bo: Anytime someone says, “Hey, what do you do for a living?” I say, “We have a personal finance YouTube channel.” That’s what I say.

Brian: That sounds so—Everybody wants to be on YouTube, so I don’t like to tell people I’m on YouTube.

Bo: Oh, I don’t want to—I don’t want to tell people the one thing that everybody wants to know and wants to know more about. I don’t tell—No, no, you’re right. Everybody’s dying. I tell everybody I work in finance. And what do they think? Oh, either one, he’s going to sell me something, or two, my brother’s uncle’s brother-in-law wants to come talk to you. That’s all it ever is.

Bo: Okay. I don’t even know why I brought up Costco at this point. I shouldn’t have done that.

Closing (1:04:13)

Brian: I should be much better at saying, “Hey, give us a little bit of today.” And if you just put something to work, it’s going to help you build your great big beautiful tomorrow. This is the worst closing in history. I’m your host, Brian. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. Trying to salvage it. Joined by Mr. Bo Hansen, the rest of the content team. Money Guy team out.