How To Pull The Levers of Wealth Creation (By Age)

Introduction – The Two Levers of Wealth Building (0:00)

Brian: If wealth building is a machine, guess what? We’ve got the instruction manual. And today, we’re going to teach you how to pull the levers that you control.

Bo: Brian, I am so excited because when it comes to increasing your financial margin, there are really only two levers you can pull. And today, we will give you actionable tips on how to pull those levers based on your age. So, with that, let’s jump right in. So Brian, we know that when it comes to building wealth, there are really three main ingredients that we talk about and we talk about this exhaustively. We talk about discipline, we talk about money, and we talk about time. First of all, if you can live on less than you make, that is discipline. That’s the first requirement to create any type of wealth.

Brian: Yep. And you know why that is? Is because that discipline of living on less than you make is going to create the margin that yields the money that if you give it the most powerful ingredient, the third one, which is the time, you get to let that magical component of compounding growth do all the wonders of the world.

Bo: And so today, we’re going to focus on that second ingredient. We’re going to focus on money or margin and specifically how can you increase, how can you improve that margin? And we’ve already said this that oftentimes when it comes to how we impact our financial lives, we really have two levers that we can pull. We can either pull the make more money lever or we can pull the spend less money lever. It’s really that simple. Those are the two things that live inside the onus of our control.

Brian: But it is going to change in different seasons of life. Like it’s going to be different for somebody in their 20s versus somebody in their 50s. So with that, let’s go ahead and talk about what does it mean like pulling the levers to create that margin in your 20s.

Your 20s – Increasing Income (1:46)

Bo: Yeah. So when you think about this, this is the very beginning of your journey early on. So perhaps you don’t have a ton of leverage to pull these levers, but there are things that you can do. And if we start on the income side, one of the very first things you can do in your 20s is figure out how do you acquire valuable skills? Maybe you’ve already put in the hard work of going to get a degree, get an education, get a certification, those types of things. Or maybe it’s just adding a technical skill set that you did not have previously. It’s wild that if you can do those and you can begin to add the skill sets early on, as you move through your 20s and hone those skill sets, they actually become more and more and more valuable. So when people ask me what’s the best investment you can make in your 20s, a lot of times I’ll say investing in yourself.

Brian: But you got to be smart about this. And let me tell you what I mean about this is that we’ve done every year we do a survey of all of our millionaire clients and we have found that 67% of our clients say they work in their associated field of study, their major. But if you go and the other side of this is if you ask the general population how many of you with college degrees actually work in your field of study, it’s pretty close to 70% do not. So don’t mishear us. I want you to invest in yourself, but be very deliberate about it. I don’t want you running up student loan debt and all these other things and then not even get a value out of it. But if you can actually stick the landing and understand, hey, how can I improve myself and actually make myself more marketable and have a new skill set that will actually yield more money, this can be super super valuable.

Bo: Another thing that you can do in your 20s is figure out, okay, is there some sort of side hustle? Is there some other thing that I can do? Because oftentimes when we are at the beginning of our career, we’re in our 20s, we likely have the most amount of energy that we’re going to have, we have the most amount of discretionary time that we’re going to have. So if we have energy and we have time, why don’t we think about how we can deploy that into some sort of fruitful endeavor that could be driving for Uber or food delivery service or pet cleaning or house cleaning or fill in the blank of that thing that creates just a little bit of extra margin because when you are young, it does not take a lot to make a big difference. A little can go a long way.

Brian: This is one of those components where it’s no different when we get to the spending lever. I tell people this is why you have to budget. You have to do things because the little things, that latte effect does have a big impact. It’s the exact same way with your time is that I would never tell a 45 or a 55-year-old that you ought to go drive an Uber or these other things. But when you’re young and you have so much extra capacity of time without obligations, this is the time that you can do these little behaviors. And let me tell you why also this is different than a 45 or 55-year-old is that you have what’s called the wealth multiplier. That little small incremental decision and changes you make have huge ripple effects. And what do I mean by this? Look at this. For a 20-year-old, a $1 that is invested at 20 years of age, by the time you retire is worth $88. So once you understand what that is from an investment, you’ll change how you spend. You’ll change how you use your time. But take it to the 55-year-old, it’s only a dollar invested is worth $1.91. You see the broad difference in those decisions. That’s why side hustles in your 20s can yield huge results for your future self.

Bo: Another thing to do in your 20s is figure out how you can be flexible. Be open-minded to potentially changing the position that you’re in, the vocation that you’re in, or maybe even your location. It’s not uncommon, Brian, you had a really good friend tell you, hey, while you’re in your 20s, go live in one of these high cost of living areas where you can live on the cheap, get roommates, find some way to do that. But likely by living in that area, you’re going to give yourself the opportunity to be around successful people, and likely have a higher income. So, be open-minded and be flexible in your 20s to put yourself in the situation where you can increase your income.

Brian: Yeah. You know, if you’re looking outside in, meaning you can’t even figure out how you’ll get into this new career field that’s much higher paying, you might have to change your setting. And that’s what my friend did is he moved from the Midwest out to the coast in San Francisco and that area and landed a great job. Then he did move back to the Midwest and used the skill set and the knowledge to get back home. But now he was in a much higher income position because he had now had the pedigree that allowed the opportunity and the doors to open for him. So it doesn’t have to be forever that you’re moving, but you at least have to change your setting and your surroundings so you get that initial opportunity.

Your 20s – Decreasing Expenses (6:29)

Bo: So remember, there are two levers that we get to pull. We just walked through some ways that you can increase your income. Now let’s talk about the other side of the equation. And what can you do in your 20s to decrease your expenses? And one of the biggest expenses that we see folks in their 20s struggling with is housing. How am I going to afford the place that I live? And we would argue again just in that same be flexible mindset. Figure out ways that you can live more affordably. And I feel like this is we were talking about this in pre-show planning, Brian. Living with roommates used to just kind of be the norm. It used to be the thing that we did when we graduated college and got out. It was just the natural thing. A lot of people don’t recognize that’s a great way to decrease the cost of your housing.

Brian: Well, here’s the thing and look, it’s exactly right. I had roommates until I got married. So, I guess I’ve never not had roommates because I just went from buddies as roommates to my wife as a roommate. But it is one of those things if you look at the stat that 50% of renting households spend 30% or more of their income on housing. This is a hack that you can do in these really high cost of living areas or just in general housing is so expensive now. Don’t sleep on the fact that if you divide this amongst many, it’s going to make the situation that much easier even in a high cost of living area.

Bo: Another thing we want you to do in your 20s is we want you to avoid high interest debt. It becomes so easy to just swipe and live in the consumption mentality that what you end up doing is rather than having compound interest beginning to work for you, beginning to be wind in your sails, it becomes a headwind. It becomes a thing that begins working against you and you dig that hole deeper and deeper and deeper. So in your 20s, you want to be so careful that you don’t start racking up debt that you’re going to carry throughout the rest of this decade and even into your 30s and 40s.

Brian: Well, it’s one thing to say avoid high interest debt. Well, what is high interest debt? Not all debt is created the same. So, we’ve actually kind of fine-tuned this to a degree. So, if you think about student loans, we’re talking specifically about people in their 20s. We know that you have a lot of opportunity in your 20s to invest in things that will grow for many decades and let compounding interest do its magical work. So, that’s why you can still have a student loan with a 6% plus interest rate and that’s still not considered super high. Anything 6% or greater is high interest. But if you have an interest payment of 5%, I don’t consider that super high interest because you’ll get that spread of risk by investing in your Roth and other things. Car loans, you got to get to your first J-O-B. That’s going to be your initial engine of creating wealth. We understand that sometimes it stinks. We want you to pay cash for all vehicles. But if you ever get in that moment, I have a no hypocrisy policy. I didn’t have any money for a car, but I needed to get to my job consistently. I had to go take a car loan right out of college and use something like our 20/3/8. If you wonder where this stuff came from. So, yes, you can have up to 10% interest rate on your car loan and pay it off 20/3/8 and it’s still not considered high interest. Now, this one, the last one probably shocks a lot of people. Credit cards. We all know credit cards are high-interest debt, but they get you. They’re like the dope man who gives you your first hits for free. And so, just because it’s that dangerous. I think that credit cards are just as dangerous as illicit drugs. And just because the credit card company offers you 0% doesn’t mean that you should take advantage of it. I stand by that. I know that’s going to be a hot take, but it’s just don’t fall for it. That 0% a lot of financial mutants think that 0% is going to be their friend. No, it is just the introductory offer to try to trap you in this world of high-interest debt.

Bo: So, obviously, we’re talking about avoiding high-interest debt, but we also want to avoid the things that are needlessly expensive and a lot of them have high interest debt associated with them. And one of the things we see folks in their 20s do so often is they end up buying way more car, way more automobile than they can afford. I finally graduated college. I got my first salary. I had my first big boy or big girl job, and all of a sudden I’m going to go reward myself and I’m going to buy a car that is way far ahead of where I am in life right now. If you as a 20-something can avoid making that decision, you will likely set yourself up for success. It’s why we have our 20/3/8 rule. When it comes to buying your first car, whether you’re going to buy a new car or a used car, we want you to put 20% down. We don’t want you to finance it for any more than 36 months or 3 years. And we do not want your payments to exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. And this only applies to non-luxury cars. If you’re a 20-something and you’re going out and buying the Mercedes, the BMW, the Audi, and you’re not paying cash for it, we would argue that you cannot afford it. You are not at the stage where you ought to be buying that car. And you should always check yourself to make sure is the amount that I’m saving on a monthly basis, the amount that’s going into my Roth, that’s going into my 401k, that’s going into my taxable brokerage account, is that amount more than my car payment? And if it’s not, we would argue that you have things in the wrong order.

Brian: Well, sadly, you’re like, why are y’all spending so much time on this? Bo, in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Edmunds, more than one in five new car shoppers committed to a monthly payment of $1,000 or more. That’s insane. This is all over social media. So, you said it, you just didn’t finish it. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. I’m telling you, buying cars can blow up your financial life if you’re trying to fake it before you’ve actually made it.

Your 30s – Increasing Income (12:15)

Bo: All right, Brian. We’re talking about how we can pull the levers at different ages and different stages. So, now let’s talk about the 30s because we kind of made it through the entry level. We’ve made it through the 20s. Let’s talk about what happens in your 30s and how you can pull the first lever, which is increasing your income. Because there’s a really good chance that by the time you get into your 30s, your job is likely not just a job anymore. It’s likely become or turned into your career. So, are there ways that you can focus and lean into that? Are there ways that you can ask for more responsibilities? Ask for leadership opportunities. Seek out people who are in the place that you want to be in and figure out how can you have those people pour into you. And if you recognize at this stage that those opportunities are not available to you, this may be a signal, may be a sign that it could be time for you to start looking for somewhere else where you can find those.

Brian: Well, I mean, this is the headline says it all. You got to focus on career. We didn’t say job, we said career. And I want you to be honest with yourself. This is some tough love moment where you look at it and you say, “Am I going to have opportunities here?” And if you don’t, if you know, if you don’t see any mentors above you that can really pour into you and make you better, if you don’t see opportunities or career paths, you might have to switch jobs. And that pains me as an employer to say that out loud, but I want people to be honest with themselves, focus on your career, try to get away from the jobs once you’re in your 30s.

Bo: And one thing that has likely happened for the 30-somethings out there is that you’ve been in this vocation, you’ve been in this field for a decade now. And so you’ve begun to develop very marketable, very valuable skills. So even if you’re going to stay in the job that you’re in, figure out are there ways that you can monetize the skills that you’ve mastered. We’ve already said that for the 20-somethings, go do food delivery, go do pet sitting, go do Uber, go do those things. But in your 30s, you now have a very real, very marketable skill. Are there ways that you can set up a side gig inside of your expertise, inside of your specialty? Are there consulting opportunities? Are there freelancing opportunities? Are there ways you can take the things that you’re doing right now and increase your income by finding alternative ways to exercise that skill set?

Brian: I resemble this. You know, I started my first business in my late 20s, and in the first two years, I just didn’t have enough clients, but I had this skill set that I’d worked in public accounting. I’d prepared taxes for a number of years. So, for the first two years I started my business. So, I was my late 20s and probably the first year of my 30s. I was going in during tax season reviewing tax returns for another CPA firm just because I needed the money. So if you have a skill set that is very marketable, you might be able to go out there and monetize this with some extra hours. Now you have to be careful of moonlighting provisions and other things, but for me I had I was starting my own endeavor. This is a way to subsidize while I was backfilling the clients. Don’t sleep on those skills that you’ve mastered with all that time and energy.

Your 30s – Decreasing Expenses (15:18)

Bo: So we’ve talked about ways to increase your income. Now let’s talk about things you can do in your 30s to decrease your expenses. And we said that in your 20s, one of the most expensive purchases you’ll make is an automobile. You want to make sure that you don’t buy too much automobile. But by the time you get into your 30s, for a lot of folks out there, the ante has been upped because now we’re not thinking about buying too much automobile. We’re beginning to worry, uh-oh, am I going to buy too much house? Am I going to end up getting into a long-term financial commitment that I can’t afford? Because we know that right now the typical mortgage payment has increased by 100% from 2020 to 2024. In a 4-year time horizon, the average mortgage payment has doubled. It’s a problem for a lot of people when we think about home affordability.

Brian: So, I don’t love that stat. That breaks my heart. But that doesn’t mean we can get away from that. We still got to do this right. And when I say do it right, what do I mean? Well, fortunately we’re not going to leave you just hanging out there in the cold. We have a rule for you. It’s called 35/25. And what we mean by that is we want you to put 3% down on your first home. We’re like the only talking heads I hear talk like this. You know, forever everybody was like, put down 20% on your first house or any house. And I’m like, what? I didn’t do that. Bo didn’t do that. A lot of our financial advisers didn’t do that. Let’s quit fibbing to people. Let’s have a no hypocrisy policy and actually tell people the truth. Most people on your first house, that’s why you get an asterisk on the first house, not the upgraded house in the future, but the first house, it’s okay if you only put down 3 to 5%. We want to get you on that train as fast as possible. But you also have to be honest with yourself. Can you live in this house for 5 years or more? There’s a lot of friction costs and other things. You might not even be getting the greatest of deal just because housing prices have gone up. Time is going to make that better. The longer you can live in this place, the better it’s going to smooth out the friction cost as well as the fluctuation in prices. And then here’s a big one. This one’s tough. Believe me, I want to make this one better, but we’re just going to have to let the system catch up to it. But I still think it’s important that we make sure that you’re not house rich, life poor. And the way you do that is by prioritizing making sure that housing doesn’t exceed 25% of your gross income.

Bo: If this is something that you’re investigating, you’re thinking about, we have a great tool that you can use. Go out to moneyguy.com/resources and check out our home buying calculator. You actually plug in your numbers, plug in your variables, plug in the things that you’re looking at because you want to make sure that when you make this decision, when you go from a renter to an owner, when you decide to jump onto that side of the equation, you want to make sure that you make that decision right because a right decision can be a wonderful financial decision over the long term. But if you make the wrong decision and you buy too much house and you overextend yourself, you can put yourself in a world of hurt as you carry through this decade into the next.

Brian: These next two are going to be somewhat related. The first one is just plug the money leaks. What I mean by this is look, in this day and time, nobody wants you to buy anything. They want you to basically have a subscription to everything in your life, a little bit a month all the time. Make sure you’re auditing those subscriptions so that you just don’t have stuff showing up on the monthly statements. It’s just kind of embedded there and it’s just building in the background. You can go and check that out every month. Also, identify if you have some expensive habits that are keeping you from reaching if you’re not fully funding Roth IRAs and making things happen with getting to a savings rate, an investment rate that’s going to set you up for the future, you might have to get really strict with how often you go out to eat or the way you’re living your life. And that’s why it ties right into this last one, which is avoid lifestyle creep. I get it, guys. We all as we get older, we want to reward ourselves. But I’m telling you what is so sweet about life is if you do it right, you’re going to be able to do everything you want to in the future. But don’t mishear me. I’m not trying to get you to be a miser through all phases of life. I’m all about bedazzling your basic life. Look, I went on trips in my 20s and 30s where yes, I was dragging the suitcases through the cobblestone using the public transportation in the cities. And yes, it had a lot of drama to it, but it still had a special sweetness that I have matured and now have more money and I do trips a little bit differently. I still look back on those bedazzled basic trips with a warmness because they were great. It’s the same thing like going out to eat. Maybe if you can’t afford to go out to eat every weekend, how about do a cookout, have friends over. It’s amazing how you can bedazzle your basic life to create incredible memories. It doesn’t always have to be expensive.

Bo: If you can do this and if you can recognize this, what you begin to do is you set yourself up for the next decade. You set yourself up in the 40s for that season of life to be even better than the 30s was.

Your 40s – Increasing Income (20:16)

Bo: So, as we come into the 40s, let’s talk about the ways that you can pull the two levers. Either increase your income or decrease your expenses. And the first thing that you can do in your 40s is you can now really lean into your profession. It’s likely for a lot of Americans, you are entering into or about to be in the stage where you’re going to make more money than you’ve ever made before. You are now rapidly approaching your peak earning years. And so what you want to figure out is okay, as I’m coming into this stage of my career, are there other opportunities I ought to be pursuing? Are there leadership roles? Are there responsibilities that I can take on? Are there ways that I can engage in my profession, in my organization that I’ve not been able to in my 20s and 30s because I didn’t have the experience required? But now that I have that, are there ways that I can even level up what I’m doing professionally?

Brian: Well, I’m going to give one. It’s not right here in the show notes, but it definitely I think it was my 40s that I got wise enough to start saying no to certain committees and other things that didn’t pay money just because I realized in my 30s I was so impressed when people would ask me to do something. It was in my 40s I was like no I need to learn the power of no because maybe my time focusing into my profession could yield more results. I’m not saying be stingy with your time but just be honest with yourself on what is actually a good use of your time. And I think leaning into your profession and knowing what your time is worth will be very valuable for you. And then that leads to the next one is keep investing. This is I got to tell you by the time you get to your 40s, man oh man, we talk about critical mass and kind of boiling point and watching everything kind of come together is that this is one where you start really realizing, man, all those investments, all those decades of saving a little bit today for that great big beautiful tomorrow starts coming together and your money potentially could start out earning you. And we’ve done milestone shows where it starts off where maybe the change in investments is more than you make in a week. And then maybe a change in investments is more than you make in a quarter is more than you make in a month. And then you start seeing the closer you get to the change in your investment portfolio from what it’s made and earned in capital appreciation is closer and closer to what you make, that is one step closer to financial independence.

Bo: But I think so often people in their 40s, they forget about the excitement. We think about our 20-year-olds and it’s 88 times over. And then we think about our 30-year-olds and it’s 23 times over. But then you get to your 40s and you lose some of that fervor, not recognizing that even in your 40s, your dollars still have a lot of juice behind them. You’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting. You’ve done a lot of the hard work, but if you can keep doing it, if you can keep putting your dollars to work, you can keep saving and investing, even the work that you do in your 40s can have a huge impact. We do, you mentioned this at the beginning of the show, Brian, we annually do a survey of all of our financial mutants and we do it of all of our Abound Wealth clients and we ask, “Hey, how did you reach financial success? What was the thing that you did? What was the thing that made you unique? Were you an executive? Were you some sort of virtuoso? Did you inherit the money? Where did it come from?” And we found that 76% of our clients, three out of four of our clients said they reached their first million dollars simply by saving and investing. It wasn’t by being a senior executive. It wasn’t by being an entrepreneur. It wasn’t by having some skill set that no one else has. It was by recognizing if I put a little bit of today away for tomorrow and I do that over a long enough time period, I can build wealth if I just stay consistent.

Brian: This is why I think our react shows do so well is because we knew the market needed us because there’s so many people out there saying you can’t make it. You can’t build millionaire status with a nine-to-five job. Baloney. Look at this stat. I mean right here we got 76.4% of our millionaires said that was by just doing exactly what Bo said. A little bit a day for the great big beautiful tomorrow. For all the people out there telling you your 401k is a joke, that’s not gonna do it. They’re wrong. Can you see? We know the data. We know the numbers. We cut through the nonsense and all the other junk that people are out there trying to sell you to actually get on top of the hill and yell as loud as we possibly can. There is a better way to do money. Don’t fall prey to the grift that’s out there from people telling you that slow and steady doesn’t win the race.

Your 40s – Decreasing Expenses (24:49)

Bo: So, that’s how we increase our income in our 40s. How do we decrease expenses? Well, what we want you to do is we’ve given you a little bit of a pass, a little bit of leniency in your 20s and in your 30s. Say, hey, we want you to start decreasing your high interest debt. Start working on your high interest debt. Start knocking it out. By the time you get to your 40s, we want it to be completely gone. That’s something that you no longer want to have. You no longer want to be taking with you. So, if you still have step three high interest debt on your balance sheet in your 40s, go ahead and start knocking that out and get it gone.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, we’re talking about you shouldn’t be really running up a lot of car debt anymore. Your student loans should be paid off. You know, credit card debt’s always no-go land for us. All those things need to be eliminated as you’re in your 40s and beyond. It just doesn’t make sense. And then here’s another one we already picked on. In the 30s, it was like subscriptions and other things. In your 40s, shop around those ungrateful service providers like your insurance companies. Make sure you’re paying attention to, hey, if you have homeowners, vehicle insurance, umbrella coverage, make sure you’re getting multi-policy discounts. Make sure that every three years you’re at least shopping this stuff because they will take advantage of you if you’re not going out there and keeping them honest on your insurance rates.

Bo: So often it’s easy to renew and I’m just going to, okay, whatever I did last year, I’m going to do this year and I’m going to do this again and do this again. The average savings for bundling just for bundling home and auto is almost $500 a year. But I personally this past year I had a buddy said, “Hey, let me shop all your property and casualty. Let me look at your umbrella. Let me look at all your stuff.” And it literally saved me thousands of dollars. Not $466, but thousands of dollars. Make sure that at least every few years you’re shopping this because again in your 40s that can be a meaningful sum of money that can have a big impact in your financial life.

Brian: You know, you would think I’m noticing a trend here because we did this for the business last year, you know, because we have a bunch of different insurance we have to do whether it’s errors and omission insurance, workers comp, the exact same thing. So, this is an industrywide problem is that they are going to take advantage of people who just kind of pay the renewal. So, be proactive in your financial life and you will save money.

Bo: Another thing we want you to do in your 40s, and this is a way to decrease expense, and this sounds a little counterintuitive, but we want to make sure that you prioritize your own oxygen mask. So often we as parents want to take care of our kids, and we think about it in terms of, okay, we want to save for college or we want to save for this goal or we want to save for this, but a lot of times it can just be in where we’re letting our monthly expenses go. Maybe my kid instead of me putting money in my Roth, instead of me saving in my 401k, we’re doing the travel ball or we’re doing the dance lessons or they’re buying the nice clothes or they’re having the fill in the blank. Make sure before you start doting on and creating a lifestyle for your kids, it’s going to be hard for them to maintain. You’ve got yourself on solid financial footing.

Brian: That’s why look, financial order of operations, guys. This thing is the instruction manual. Your kids’ college and so forth, that’s a step eight. I know that sounds cruel, but I promise you, your future self will thank you. Your kids, your adult children will thank you if you understand you need to prioritize your financial security before you start loading up the kids.

Your 50s and Beyond – Transitioning to Financial Independence (28:07)

Bo: All right, Brian. Now, let’s talk about the 50s and beyond. As we get into this section and station of life, again, we’ve talked about these levers that we have. We can increase income, we can decrease our expenses. We said that in your 40s, you are likely approaching the time when you’re going to be in your peak earning years. But for a lot of folks, when that happens is actually in their 50s. This is now the point where you are likely making the most money you’ve made in your entire career. And it’s less about knowing how do I increase the lever? How do I increase the income? And it’s more about knowing when can I begin to pull that lever down? When am I at the place where I no longer have to worry about how much money am I making? I’m more concerned with, okay, is the money that I’ve built to this point going to be able to provide for me for the rest of my life.

Brian: Well, it’s such a unique thing if you’re in these peak earning years, but you’re also, it’s sadly because I’m in this phase, you know, your time is at the leanest. It’s going to continue to dwindle down. You’re no longer the billionaire of time you were when you were in your 20s. Your time is becoming more and more scarce with every day that you wake up. So with that understanding, you have to say, “Hey, these things are on equal footing now. I have my financial independence, but I also need to be where do I want to spend my time to live life on my terms.” So you need to work on how do I land this airplane for retirement? Because it’s not about how do I maximize every dollar, it’s how do I live my best life. That’s why we talk about it’s not only the math, it’s also the mindset. And that’s why guys, you got to know the number. What is the number to know if you’re ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you’re supposed to be so you can even make these decisions that you’re owning your life. That’s why we try to hook you up. We have the tool/course called know your number. If you go to learn.moneyguy.com, you can answer that question today.

Your 50s and Beyond – Decreasing Expenses (30:05)

Bo: So, as you begin to land the plane, as you begin to figure out what the rest of your working life is going to look like, as you transition into your non-working life, we also want you thinking about your expenses. How do I decrease my expenses? What should I be thinking about my expenses? And this is a great time to be evaluating your housing. Some of the questions you may be answering at this stage are, okay, I’ve had this mortgage that I’ve had for the last 10, 15, 20 years. Do I go ahead and pay it off? Is that something that I just go ahead and get off the balance sheet? Or maybe this was the house where we raised a family and we set roots and we established community, but now the kids are gone and we’re empty nesters and we don’t need the big house. Maybe this is the time that we ought to downsize. We want to relocate or we want to move somewhere else. In your 50s and beyond, age 50 is when you really want to make a strategic decision on, okay, what does my housing need to be and how will that decision affect the way I do all of my other financial planning?

Brian: Y’all know I paid off a 2.5% mortgage. That sounds insane, but it really had gotten to the point it was less than $100,000. The delta on what the opportunity cost was from just having it paid off was less than $1,000 or $2,000 bucks a year. It just made sense to just not have the obligation anymore. And that’s why I would love for you to get to the point in your 50s where you’re closer to financial independence, not financial obligations. And that’s a big part of that is being completely debt-free. And you know, you can also, this is the time we always tell you on your net worth statement, don’t count your housing as part of when you’re trying to figure out what’s investable, usable assets. A lot of times it’s not your housing because that’s what’s providing you shelter. But this is the phase when you get in your 50s and beyond. Maybe you are going to downsize. Maybe you’re going to relocate. This is the perfect way if you’ve made a tremendous amount of equity in your house that you can actually make that and turn that into usable investable assets is when you make the decision to downsize.

Bo: Another thing we want you to do at this stage is we want you to get serious about how you’re thinking about your taxes. Through our working years, it’s often how do I decrease my taxes this year? How do I pay less this year? How do I pay less this year? But as you get into financial independence and as you get into retirement, now you’re thinking about how do I pay the least amount of taxes over my entire financial life over the remainder of my drawdown years. And so you want to make sure you’re thinking about your distribution strategy. Am I going to pull money out of my after-tax account or out of my pre-tax account? When am I going to use my Roth IRAs? How do I think about Medicare? When do I start drawing Social Security? All these are conversations and thoughts you ought to be having as you enter into this station and season of life.

Brian: I don’t mind being confessional. I had a client, he’s been a client for 20 years, and you can imagine after you have a client for 20 years, you get kind of close to him. And he was giving me a hard time. And he was like, “Hey, Brian, I know what I pay you. I don’t know if I need a discount or if I just need to kind of let you go and we stay friends.” And I was like, “Are you crazy? You are retiring in the next two years. Do you realize how?” And I started naming off the IRMAA surcharges, the way we’re going to have to do Roth conversion strategies and all these other crazy things that were about to happen with taxes. I was like, I can’t let you fire us because this is what you’ve paid me all these decades while we were building this. This is when it’s game time that we actually get to add a lot of value as financial advisers is because there’s just so many moving parts that happens to retirees. That’s why look personal finance I love giving away tons of free advice. I load you up and I can do this under the understanding that the more I give you and the more success you have the more complexity that’s naturally going to happen with that level of success. Just like for my client that we know that you only get one retirement and you want to maximize it. You don’t know what your blind spots are. And also, when you lose 20% on a million dollars or $2 million, that hits a lot different than losing 20% on $100,000. So, we’re trying to help you navigate all these complexities.

The Abundance Cycle (34:10)

Brian: And that’s why I always tell people, let us load you up and level you up by giving you tons of free advice. Go to moneyguy.com/resources for all the free stuff. But if you do this right, I get the abundance cycle fulfilled is that you will reach the point that you’re going to say, “Holy cow, this is what the guys are talking about. My life is complicated. I have tried to simplify this as much as possible, but here I am. I don’t even know what an IRMAA surcharge is, and these guys must know what they’re talking about because they talked about that with Roth conversions and everything else. Maybe I should go check out this website, moneyguy.com, become a client.” And we’re going to leave the porch light on for you because we have been doing this literally for decades and we love connecting with clients all across the country. I’m your host Brian joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy team out.