What It’s Really Like Planning for the Future When Tomorrow Isn’t Guaranteed

Introduction: When Tomorrow Isn’t Promised (0:00)

Katie: When I was born in 97, the life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis was 30. We never talked about retirement because that future just didn’t exist. Frankly, that conversation has drastically changed. We’ve been saving so much, but I think part of that is because of all this uncertainty. There is a reality where I may not be able to work in the future, and we don’t know if that’s 60 or 35 or 40.

Brian: You’re so strong on the discipline muscle. You need somebody whispering in your ear, “Tomorrow is not promised.” I just want to make sure that when y’all look back in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, and 60s that you go, well done.

The Childhood Friends Love Story (0:42)

Bo: So, from Columbus and live Columbus now?

Dom: We actually met when we were 3 years old. So, our parents met each other. Well, younger than that because maybe, maybe even younger, but our parents met each other in church. Like my mom was running the nursery and she has a twin brother and so turns out we lived in the same neighborhood and so growing up I was at their house all the time, they’re at my house all the time. I was like best friends with her twin brother growing up. Yeah, with her brother growing up.

Katie: He has a sister who is not much younger than us, a couple years. So growing up, you know, I would hang out with her, he would hang out with my twin brother. So we live five houses apart.

Dom: Obviously I had no interest in, you know, Katie at the time, right, of course. It’s your buddy’s sister, right, obviously. So then yeah, growing up we went to, we ended up going to different high schools. We went to different colleges and then I ended up going to Ohio State for college and then I stayed in Columbus.

Katie: And then I went to University of Dayton for my undergrad and then I came to Ohio State for graduate school. Okay. It was right around the 2020 like pandemic time. So we, he had stayed because it was a job offer that he had and he took it and he’s like times are weird. Who knows what’s going to happen. So he stayed. About like a year into my graduate school, we came across each other on the dating apps actually.

Bo: Is that right? Oh my. Had y’all stayed like in friendship with or like were you still friends with her before the reunite? How about her brother?

Dom: We had kind of gone out of contact.

Katie: Basically since college because we just hadn’t, we were never home and it wasn’t like Yeah, it was just a little different.

Bo: So, I kind of came in after the days of the dating app, but it’s like you, I guess it’s like swipe. I don’t know which way you swipe, but you like swipe. Whoa, that’s, that’s my, that’s, it’s kind of funny.

Dom: She messaged me.

Bo: Oh, of course you had to. He had to get that on air in front of the whole world right there. I love it.

Katie: But he, but I didn’t actually recognize him because I hadn’t seen him since like high school and so we, and then I grew up calling him Dominic, but now he goes by Dom, you shorten it or whatever. So, I just didn’t really put it together until because the dating apps don’t show you the last name until you match. So, I had no idea. I was going off of location. I actually knew some people in his pictures. I was like, I feel like I have to know him then, you know, like that’s wild. But we’ve been dating ever since and now we’re engaged.

Bo: So, congratulations.

Katie: Thank you. So, we get married in three short months.

The Professional Backgrounds (3:00)

Bo: You went to Ohio State and you went there as for the master’s program. What, what do you guys, what did you study? What do you guys do professionally?

Dom: So, I studied computer science. I work at a healthcare IT company now in, in Columbus and I do, I’m, I guess you could call me a technical analyst. I do a lot of database work and help with workflows for different healthcare offices.

Katie: My master’s was in genetic counseling. So I’m a genetic counselor in Columbus.

Bo: What’s genetic counseling mean?

Katie: That’s the first question I get.

Bo: Well, I like, I just, I’m not going to pretend like I know and that sounds good.

Katie: It’s a healthcare profession and basically I work with patients and families that have genetic disorders and help them understand the genetic conditions, kind of assess their risk for genetic conditions, especially if they’re at-risk family members, help with like kind of orchestrate genetic testing, get that process going, explain results to them.

Bo: Is it more science or psychology?

Katie: It’s a, it’s actually a very mix of both. I mean, so the, the genetics piece is definitely the, the science part, the education, understanding the different conditions and inheritance and then the counseling is definitely the psychosocial piece of helping them cope and understand kind of what resources are available for them and, and how that looks and helping communication through family.

Brian: That is so much better than when I first heard that I was like Gattaca with Ethan Hawke. If you’ve seen that sci-fi,

Katie: I have not seen it since high school biology.

Brian: I know that’s the way my brain works. You know, Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

Bo: And how old are you guys?

Dom: 28.

Katie: We’re both 28.

The Impressive Net Worth (4:37)

Bo: So, here’s what’s wild. You were kind enough to share with us a net worth statement. You sent that over to us. And for 28 year olds, when we look at this right now, you have a total net worth of $443,000. Wow. If we just pause there for a moment, there are a lot of 28-year-olds out, there’s a lot of 20-year-olds that are going to watch this that are not in that spot. How did you guys get here? Like, what was it that got you?

Brian: I want to make one other observation. When I looked at this pre-show planning, I was like, “Wow, look at Dom.” And then I was like, “Whoa, look at Katie.” I mean, it was kind of, you both, you know, so there’s obviously a lot of good stuff going into this net worth statement.

Dom’s Saver Origin Story (5:11)

Dom: Well, I’ve always been a saver.

Bo: Why?

Dom: That’s a good question. So, growing up, my parents super frugal. I grew up with two parents. Both of them were teachers. One of them ended up being a stay-at-home mom. So, I was kind of growing up with just one teacher that’s a parent and didn’t talk about money all that much growing up, but the one big things were, you know, what I saw growing up was being frugal and saving money and they taught me, you know, some good habits like paying off credit cards and everything like that, but we didn’t talk all that much about long-term planning and investing and all of that. And so, just growing up, it was always difficult for me to spend money. And to be honest, it’s still kind of difficult for me to spend money. It’s something I’m working on, working on it. But you know, not the worst problem to have, but if you’re in that position, it’s like not everyone understands not being able to spend money because a lot of people spend money. I always kind of naturally was more of a saver. And in 2020, like Katie mentioned, I stayed in Columbus and I had a couple of months before starting my job. And at that point, I basically had no personal finance. Like I didn’t have very much knowledge at all as far as long-term investing, long-term planning. Just kind of knew what I grew growing up. It’s good to save money, but didn’t know anything about investing. Didn’t know anything like that. Started watching YouTube videos. I found like, you know, Graham Stephan. I think I found you guys reacting to Graham Stephan. And so, it’s kind of how I found you guys. Started getting all into the personal finance space and listening to all of that. But because I’ve always been more of a saver since I started my first job, I, I think I was making $50,000 in my first job. And I’d set my retirement to save at, I think I set it to 20 or 25%.

Bo: Let’s go.

Dom: And, and they had, they, they even like messaged me and they’re like, “Are you sure you meant to send this?” They messaged me. They were like, “Most people don’t do this high.”

Brian: Like speaks volumes right there.

Dom: They were like, “Are you, did you mean to do this?” And I said, “Yeah.” And I was living with roommates at the time. Like expenses were super low. So I didn’t have much else more to do with my money, especially in 2020. So that kind of just started the trend. And then really, I think the biggest thing has been just automating everything and making sure everything just gets invested and set aside without even thinking about it. I think, I think the automation has really been the biggest piece. And to be honest, I feel very fortunate to be where I’m at now. Like I, I’m honestly, I think I’m very, it kind of shocks me with how far I’ve come. And I’ve been tracking my net worth for the past 5 years. And after graduating college, it was zero. So we started at zero pretty much five or six years ago. And so all of this has been since then. And it’s, it’s really kind of crazy to me just seeing all this and after learning about compounding and that, you know, compound interest and compound growth that really kind of set me off.

Bo: I think you just, you said something that’s so great that I think so many young people miss. I graduated college and I had made it through college learning how to live on the cheap. Live on the cheap. Live on the cheap. Once I got my first job and I got that $50,000 salary, I just lived the same way I lived in college. I had roommates and I was frugal. And it’s amazing if you can have that mindset and you can start out early on and you can just start socking that money away at 22, 23, 24, you do get to age 28 approaching 30 with almost half a million dollar net worth. It’s, that’s awesome. Good. Good for you.

Katie’s Different Financial Journey (8:14)

Bo: Is your story similar, different?

Katie: It’s actually a little different. And I think that’s what’s so interesting because we’ve grown up knowing each other. Our families have always known each other, but my family background is, is very different. So, my mom is a stay-at-home mom and she’s, you know, that’s absolutely a job in of itself. And she, I know we’ll probably get to this, but I have cystic fibrosis, which is a chronic genetic condition. It’s how I got interested into genetic counseling. She was my primary caretaker and my dad was the individual that worked and, and was the primary income holder in the household and he is in finance. He’s worked at the same place his entire career so he’s really moved up the ladder and he’s learned a lot obviously and our household was, it was very transparent between us. I, I remember when we would do allowance as kids, my dad would make us budget. There’d be different jars. One would be charity and one would be college savings.

Brian: Give, spin me and your dad are buddies. Do whatever you want.

Katie: And so, and then for each year of our life, it would go up a dollar. So like if you’re 17, you’d get 17 to budget there. And literally since I was little, I can remember doing that every Sunday night in the kitchen. When we went to college, he was very open about credit card usage and how they might come after you and really want to try to kind of take advantage of those types of environments. And so, kind of from the get-go, even with a credit card, I was very cautious of what I spent it on and making sure it didn’t feel like free money. Obviously, it’s not. And, and that sort of thing. Even growing up when I would have conversations with my mom and especially as I got older and I was transitioning from like pediatric care to more young adult care, there were a lot more conversations about health care expenses and costs and navigating insurance and all of that. It opened up the door to realize how expensive all of that is. Thankfully, I already had practices set in place where my spending wasn’t, you know, kind of off-the-wall or crazy. But I think it fueled this idea of saving for future. I worked through college. It was primarily, I’m very fortunate that my parents, especially given my dad’s financial background and when they were first married, they kind of made this decision up front that they were really going to help save for our future education. And so I’m very fortunate to not have student debt. That was a huge piece that put me ahead of the game and I, I don’t take that for granted.

Brian: What was your savings rate? Because we heard Dom came out right out of the shoot 25%. What did you start out the when you got your first job?

Katie: Basically, the place that I work, the benefits are fantastic. So,

Brian: I know you have a large pension, so probably some of that’s forced saving, but give us both the force as well as what you chose.

Katie: When I had started my first position, I, it was 2022. And so, we had already been dating for 2 years. And so he was also a big help in helping me understand the finances because he had already gone through it for the past two years. In the beginning I did focus primarily on kind of getting a bucket of just cash built up that I just didn’t have with a, you know, job working at a hair salon kind of thing. So, so I focused on the pension because it was just automatically taken out. And so my position, if you put 14% in, matches 14%.

Bo: So it’s a big, yeah.

Katie: Part of that is because I don’t pay into social security with the type of benefits. So, it is truly the, the pension piece from paycheck one. I maximized that. And actually, on the first paycheck, I thought it was a different account that I was eligible for that they matched 14%. So, I put 14% into the pension, 14% into something else, and then they matched 14%. But then I came home with like virtually no. I was like, what happened?

Brian: You had a different conversation with HR and be like, “Hey, I’m chosen.”

Katie: Which is funny because I was telling him I was like, “Uh,” and then he goes, “Trust me, you’ll like it later.” The other account was a 403(b). And so that had this like lump sum in the beginning. And now, for a while, I was putting like $200 a month into it when we got engaged and we’re trying to kind of cut back on some things for wedding.

Bo: On top of the 14% that you were already doing on the pension, that’s great.

Dom: That was like the main savings. And then with the, with the match of that we didn’t think we needed to save too much more for her because she was getting such a big match. And then she has access to a 403(b), she has access to a 457. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that we probably want to talk about here, but yeah, based on the pension and the match, and then there’s stuff we could talk about with the pension, like there’s a defined contribution versus defined benefit option that she has. And we think based on, given our circumstances, we’ll probably talk about more. It’s probably best to be in the defined contribution plan, which is what we’re in.

Brian: So right now, do you have to choose which plan you’re in or is this down the road? It’s a lump sum versus?

Katie: Like I had to choose when I set it up. I actually don’t know.

Brian: So they have multiple plans essentially on the pension.

Katie: I chose like day one of signing.

Dom: Basically I think it said if you don’t choose anything they’ll put you in the defined benefit plan. Otherwise you can choose this defined contribution plan or like this hybrid option, sort of a mix between them. And they said if you don’t choose a defined benefit plan, they give you like up to the first 5 years that you work there where you can like change to a defined benefit plan.

Katie: And I am still within that 5-year piece. I’ve been working for three years now at the same position. And similar to Dom, just to like finish off that one piece, I guess the, the main question I, I automated everything. So obviously the, the pension piece was automated and was taken out before I ever even saw it. And then same with the 403(b). I moved it down to like only 50 bucks a month or something like that just because I was trying to put something in there. But when we got married, cut back a little bit. And then it was the same with the Roth IRA that I have. I’ve started with 200 in it and then moved that down to 50 as well, but that’s continued through the wedding planning. And I’d like to bump that back up again eventually. But then, and then the rest of it like it would come in as the, my deposit at the end of the month. And then that would pay off whatever daily expenses, credit cards, stuff that we had, mortgage, rent, whatever. And then I also was automating after that. There was still some left over. And so then I would automate it into a high-yield savings account. And that’s where I built up some cash, too.

What’s the Problem? (14:32)

Bo: As you guys sit here, you’re 28 years old. Your net worth is incredible. You guys have a lot of awesome stuff going on. Where’s the friction? Like obviously you came, you came on to this show like, hey, we have an issue or a thing or we want some thoughts, but there’s a lot of people that are going to be watching this being like, oh, this, these folks are crushing it. Yeah. What’s the goals and struggles?

Katie: The biggest piece and what made us apply is like we said we know we’re fortunate where we’re at. We know that we’re saving a lot more than most people our age. With cystic fibrosis, to give you both a little bit of background,

Bo: I know nothing about cystic fibrosis. I’d love your education on that.

Understanding Cystic Fibrosis (15:14)

Katie: Yeah. So, cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition. It primarily is known for affecting the lungs. But it affects multiple different body systems. So, basically the root cause of it is there’s genetic mutations in a gene that is usually helpful in making sure that like mucus buildup doesn’t get too thick. So, people when they get sick, there’s a whole system in your body that basically helps thin that out so you can get it out and, you know, decrease risk for infections, that sort of thing. The genetic defect in cystic fibrosis doesn’t allow that to happen at all or sometimes well enough depending on the mutations that you have. It increases the risk for recurrent lung infections, progressive damage over time and then impacts other body systems like the digestive tract, reproductive tract, all that sort of thing. When I was born in 97, the life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis was 30. So it’s something that has come a long way, partly in due to the science advancements and medication advancements that have happened but primarily the endstage is lung failure needing a lung transplant. When I was first born, like I said, that was a life expectancy but in the next 20 years that I was living, so I just to give you insight of my day-to-day. I do two breathing treatments a day, one in the morning, one at night. They range anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the medications that I’m on. I take medication anytime that I eat to help digest my food. I have diabetes as kind of a result of some of the damage from CF. So, I’m on all of that sort of medication as well. When I was growing up, it was about four different times throughout the year that I would have regular checkups with specialty doctors, which incurs across, I had frequent hospitalizations pretty much on an annual basis when I was a kid growing up.

Bo: So, is that still, are you still like hospitalized annually?

Katie: No. So, that’s where this medical advancements kind of really came into play. So when I was in high school, there was a new class of medication that had come out called CF, TR modulators, which essentially was a very specific drug that targeted the underlying protein defect in CF. So it’s not a gene therapy. I still have the condition. It doesn’t alter the genetic change, but it targets the defective protein to try and get it to maximize its ability to work essentially. Really though, the benefits from that and like clinical trials and, and just once they establish one, it led to kind of a cascade effect of establishing a bunch of other ones and the impacts of it have been tremendous. So the life expectancy of a, a patient with CF born today is just about 65, 66 years old. So it’s, it’s doubled the life expectancy from when I was born. And then me personally, I’ve been on this medication now. Thankfully, I, I was on the first class in high school, which really kind of stabilized me and that’s when the hospitalizations stopped. And then in college, my junior year, I believe it was senior year, the kind of more recent class of these medications came out and from there I saw a 15% bump in my lung function. So, I went from 60% up to 80%. And I’ve stayed there for the past six, seven years. And so, I’ve been very fortunate. It’s allowed me to do a lot more in my life. But ultimately to get to, that’s the background on CF that I think is helpful. But to get to the root of the question, the life expectancy for people born today is significantly greater. The question of what that means for people that had CF long-term before these medications came out and also what the long-term effects of the medication could be or just living longer with CF, what health risks that could bring is completely unknown. So, we don’t have any sort of data or insight into that right now. The thing that was really kind of a 180 twist is when I was growing up from that pediatric into adult time frame, we never talked about retirement. We never talked about saving for future medical expenses because that future just didn’t exist, frankly. And now that is, that conversation has drastically changed. Thankfully, again, I had this foundation of spending that and saving that allowed me to not start, you know, 10 miles back from the start line. But I don’t know what the future holds. And so I think a lot of our questions come down to that where we’ve been saving so much, but I think part of that is because of all this uncertainty and I have fantastic health benefits right now too, but there is a reality where I may not be able to work in the future. And we don’t know if that’s 60 or 35 or 40. We’re hopeful it’s not obviously and, and I don’t feel right now like that’s the case but, a lot of the data that has come to light with CF that could be very real in the near future, or not near future but in the future is cancer risk is much higher for, for CF particularly colon cancer and, and pancreatic cancer. We don’t know what that would look like and the, you know, knowing that we might be living longer makes that more of a reality too in of itself. So I think it’s a combination of wanting to make sure that, I don’t, I, I’ve never wanted to be in a position where I financially am stressed because of my health. Like I want to be able to maximize that. So that’s a big piece for me. And adding somebody else into the picture. I don’t ever want that to be a burden on somebody else. We still want all of the things that people getting married want. Like we want a family. There’s costs associated with that. Not only from a, you know, with the genetic piece if he is a carrier. So CF is a recessive condition. So you need both mom and dad to be carriers of a condition where the carriers themselves don’t have the disease but if they pass on the mutated gene then that’s where the risk of having CF comes from. So for me since I only have the mutated genes, like I will be passing on that, for him, if he’s a carrier then we have a 50/50 shot each pregnancy of a kid having CF. Okay. And so we’ve decided that if he was a carrier we would not want to conceive naturally. We think more about adoption or IVF or that sort of thing. And that, his genetic status is currently unknown because we just have been focusing more on like the present day 20-year-old life. So we haven’t crossed that bridge yet. But I think that’s one portion of family planning that we’re trying to realistically keep in mind that could be more expensive. But then in addition to that, taking away how we started a family, once we have a family, what, again if I can’t work and we don’t have that, the means and now we also have a family involved. Yeah.

The Plan: Pile Up Money and Hope (21:35)

Dom: Obviously there’s a lot, there’s a lot to take in there.

Bo: Yeah. I mean all of us have unknown unknowns. That’s a reality of the life in which we live. But yours are very unique. That’s a, a unique thing that not a lot of people have to navigate. I’d be curious to know between you guys, how have the conversations gone? Like when, like obviously you guys have put a ton of thought into this as you’re planning for it and thinking this, what, what plan have you guys already thought about putting into place?

Dom: And that’s partially why we’re here. I think we have kind of the saving done kind of down pretty well. I think we’re good at saving, but as far as the plan, the plan right now is just put, pile up money and hope for the best.

Katie: And we don’t know if that’s the most advantageous and, and, and also like we don’t want to sacrifice things in the present day just throwing all of that into a future that may not happen.

Tomorrow Is Not Promised (22:18)

Brian: You just said a, a key part. First of all, thank you for sharing that. That’s, that is, we all, nobody ever knows. That’s the thing about being a human on the planet is that you can have everything in the world look like it’s working for you. But we are all like ducks where our legs are under the surface just going at it because we, no matter who I deal with, it seems like no matter how good the brochure looks on somebody’s life, there’s a lot going on with everybody. And for you to share so transparently is awesome. But I do tell you what’s funny is the typical American says tomorrow is not promised. And they spend like tomorrow is not promised. And they go run up car debt. They run up credit card debt. And then here you guys are. You’re so strong on the discipline muscle. You need somebody whispering you in your ear. Tomorrow is not promised. Because y’all are so wound up tight on this side. I just want to make sure that when y’all look back in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, and 60s that you go, well done. Because I understand the desire that you don’t want to be a burden. So, you want to, you want to stack it in the background. But, we got to make sure y’all are also doing stuff that just is flourishing, blossoming memories that will for, for decades and, and beyond will just carry you on and build into that happiness. So, I didn’t even realize when I talked about the family and all the other social structures and the spiritual and other things that go into happiness, the memory building is a big part of that as well.

Dom: And as far as like how we live right now, we don’t necessarily feel like we’re holding ourselves back. We don’t, we don’t necessarily feel that way, but also,

Bo: Because, what’s that, what’s household income for you guys? Where are you at from an earning standpoint?

Dom: It’s about $190,000.

Bo: $200,000 at 20. So, y’all got a big shovel, too, right? So determining, even determining what we do with this is,

What Do You Do for Fun? (24:09)

Brian: So what do y’all do for fun? You say you’re not leaving anything on the table. What do y’all do? What’s the hobbies? What’s for fun? What do y’all go on vacation on?

Dom: Well, we play volleyball at least a few times a week. We go to the gym three, four, five times a week. We, we try to try to travel two to three times a year, I would say.

Katie: In, I don’t think we get that. I think that is one area where we could be better or maximize that. I think part of it has been like just because we are so busy in this time of life, but like I could foresee in the future after we got married, that sort of thing before we have a family, like that might be a time we want to optimize that more. We’ve had some great traveling experiences, but I think that there’s a lot of other places we’d love to see.

Dom: Being someone that saves so much, I don’t necessarily know what it feels like to spend more, right? And I, I don’t know what that could mean for me. And I feel like that’s kind of exciting to think about, you know, having more to spend and doing more with the money. It’s just maybe needing to think more about what are the things that I would be doing or we would be doing if we were spending more money.

Brian: Well, to give me some baseline, like typical vacation for you guys, if you say you’re traveling three times a year, what are y’all doing?

Dom: I’d say we, we probably fly somewhere once a, once a year and then do road trips.

Bo: Three vacations. You’re thinking we do like smaller road, smaller road trips.

Dom: I think typically, you know, we’ll, we’ll fly somewhere and then stay at an Airbnb or hotel and then typically just have fun enjoying the city going on.

Katie: We were having trouble coming up at the three vacations.

Bo: What was the most recent trip that you went on that was like, oh, that was a super fun trip that we did.

Katie: So we went to Ireland which is where we got engaged and that was like, I mean it was fantastic. We went for a week and it was his first time overseas and it was just a really neat experience. But that is definitely like, that is the vacation. When I think of vacations we’ve gone on, that is the one that I think of. Like we’ve maybe done, we’ve, we’ve gone to Colorado and we’ve done hiking and then we’ve drove to, to the Smokies here in Tennessee and we’ve gone hiking. But that’s the kind of what I would consider vacations in the past since 2020.

Bo: I heard, I heard three vacations, right?

Katie: Yeah.

Bo: 2020, I’m, I’m not, I don’t do public math a lot, but 2020, we’re in 2026. That’s five. Three vacations a year. Math is not, math is not mathing here.

Dom: We’ve done smaller little trips to Florida or-

Katie: We have. and that, and that is like, I guess some of those wasn’t family. My, my parents have a house down in Florida that they go to for the winter. So, we have done that. I think I count that in my head as family, but it is still us making a trip and we are there for like a week or whatever, but a lot of the expenses are covered because it’s a house that’s already, you know, we’re staying with my family. So outside of activities and food, it’s mostly paid for. It’s more of like chilling on the beach and things that don’t cost a lot.

The New House (27:00)

Bo: So in terms of things you’re missing, it sounds like you would like, travel is the one we’re honing in on. You would like to travel more and have more experiences and do more things.

Katie: I think we both would. I mean, I, I definitely think that he comes to me and he’s like, “Hey, I’d really love to take a trip.” And sometimes I just feel like I’m, my work’s really busy at a certain point in the time, like getting our schedules to line up sometimes can be challenging for that like everybody else. But, yeah, I think travel is a piece that I would love. We did just recently purchase a home and so like we, you know, I would like to make that home, is probably the simplest way to put it.

Brian: How, how recently was this purchase

Dom: Within the last year.

Katie: Last January.

Bo: How much of a home did you buy?

Dom: $363,000.

Bo: $363,000. And then what’s the mortgage on that? Do we have that on the network statement?

Katie: Yeah. So this is a little bit odd. I see an A and I see an A and a B.

Brian: There’s one that somehow the bank is not very good at, at banking.

Katie: So, this is actually a little interesting. So, when we first were starting the home searching process, the, the bank that our mortgage is through offered a first-time home buyers plan essentially, I guess you could call it, but it splits it into two mortgages where they provided $20,000 at 0% interest to help with down payment.

Bo: Wow. What, the bankers just love you or is this like a common thing?

Katie: It was, so it was income based and at the time we qualified for, for that, or I did at least. So the, it, I took out the loan and then the other portion of the mortgage is at the typical percentage which was the 7%. So blended it’s a little bit lower.

Bo: When does the mortgage be have to be paid off?

Dom: I’m, it’s 30. It’s a 30 year, 30 year.

Katie: It’s a 30.

Brian: So, we, we just did a live stream and about affordability by state and somebody in the comments had listed they were a mortgage broker and they had listed that a lot of states will have these subsidized programs for first-time buyers. Probably some content ideas there that we could, we could cover.

Bo: So, we bought this home. You got in the home and you’re talking want to turn it, we want to turn it into a home. What does, what does that mean? Does it mean like furnishing renovations? What, what’s turning into a home mean? What’s that mean?

Katie: I think I have a different answer.

Dom: That’s a good question. I can live there. There’s a couch, you know, comfortable for us.

Katie: I can, yeah. So, I mean, I think-

Bo: She said, “I’ll take this one.”

Katie: And I don’t necessarily think I’ve ever voiced it to him either. But I think just, you know, like we, we, we’ve walked into a house that a whole other family had lived in. Like I would love to just be like one day wake up and be like, you know what, this room I don’t like this color anymore. I want to be able to like do something where I make this guest room feel like it’s our own. And, or, you know, right now I am using one of the bedrooms as an office but I would love for that to be a nursery at some point and then a child room and, and a lot of the furniture that we do have is furniture that we’ve had for years and like, it’s, it’s fine and it, it works but like I think realistically like I wouldn’t want our spending habits to like hold us back from wanting to change something or make it feel like it’s more our own space.

Brian: So you bought this house roughly a year ago now. Why have you not done some of those things up to this point?

Katie: I think it’s more time at, I mean part of it’s money too because we’ve been saving for other things like the wedding and, and I think also just the conversations that we’ve had, but I think a big part of it time as well.

Bo: A lot of the issues you’re like, hey, we want to travel more. Wow, we just can’t get our schedules aligned or oh, we really want to work on the house, but I just don’t have the time to. You’re not describing a lot of money problems as much as you are time issues.

The Anxiety Around Spending (30:27)

Katie: I do think that one of the things and you could probably comment on this because we once a year at least have sat down and like looked at our finances and everything, but part of what triggers that is I start getting nervous we’re spending too much. And so like if I see, and it’s, it’s arbitrary. I don’t have a number in mind for example, but like if I start seeing my, my high yield savings dip below a certain point, I’m like, oh, I can’t spend anymore. That seems like this is becoming too much. So, I think even if we had the time, all of the sudden spending $5,000 on a trip and doing that consistently throughout the years, I think mentally would actually be a struggle.

Brian: Well, what’s the sinking funds for? Because that’s typically for, so, for people who are regimented and disciplined, you create the sinking funds so that it frees you to go spend the money without the regrets and other things. So, what’s, I see on the, the network there’s a sinking fund.

Dom: We kind of labeled that because of the wedding. Those, that’s going to be funds that are going, that are going, that are going towards the wedding.

Katie: Before this, we added up everything that’s due for the rest of the vendors and added a couple like thousands for miscellaneous, that sort of thing. But the, the rest of that, we’ve always just considered savings, emergency fund, don’t touch.

Bo: Got it.

Katie: So, we haven’t like outside of those sinking funds, we don’t label any of that as that. So, I think that’s a big, like what you’re mentioning, we’ve never had that mindset.

Bo: Okay. Do you guys budget?

Dom: I think we, we do. I think I’ve heard you refer to as like a cash management plan.

Bo: Tell me more about that. How do you guys have-

Dom: We have, we have all of our costs that we know we’re going to have every month. We guess refer to them as fixed costs where every month we know this is how much we’re going to spend. This is how much is going into our Roth. This is how much is going in, you know, 401(k) and everything. And then this is how much for long-term savings. And then whatever’s left over is kind of just this pile of money that we say we can kind of do.

Brian: You’ve automated the process is your cash management where there’s force savings.

Dom: A majority is automated. Everything’s forcely saved and then we don’t have like, you know, an every dollar where every, everything we have goes into a certain bucket but we just kind of have this miscellaneous bucket of whatever we want to.

Brian: Does it grow every month? I mean do you all find that you, you have money left over?

Katie: I think it grows by the time we use it.

Dom: I think we, we probably should track that more, but we’re probably not spending as much as we could because,

Bo: Because one of the things that, people will budget and, and generally when you budget is because you don’t have enough resources to be able to fund the expenses you have and then you kind of graduated this cash management plan and what a cash management plan is supposed to do is it’s supposed to free you up and remove the guilt from spending because you already said, “Hey, with our cash management plan, we’ve already got the money going to the pension. We’ve already got the money going to the Roth. We’re already doing the savings.” And so if I know that my money is going where it’s supposed to be going in the pockets that it’s supposed to be going in, I can spend freely. So I’m a little curious about the psychology behind, oh, when I see my high yield savings account get down, I start to worry we’re spending too much. That’s never, you never like cut back your savings, right? It’s just,

Katie: I don’t know. I, I think a big part of it is I have, I have this ability in my brain to just really catastrophize. And so like I am always worried the shoe’s going to drop on the other side. And so for me it’s always kind of this feeling of like, well you could have, never have too much savings and I, you know, I, I see the retirement savings and all of that but I also have this other piece of my mind, I’m like, well you don’t want to take that, you can’t take that out to some degree in certain areas. And so like I also feel like sometimes I think about the actual cash that’s available and I always question is it enough?

Managing Finances as a Couple (34:03)

Brian: I thought a different thing when I heard you say you looked at your high yield. Do y’all, how are y’all running your finances? Are y’all joint on that or, and I know, we got a marriage coming up and that’s going to kind of legally tie it all in, but are y’all doing separate savings for emergency funds? How are y’all handling that?

Dom: Yeah, so right now our, our accounts are separated. We’re planning to combine everything once we do get married. And to be honest, right now we, we don’t, we don’t Venmo for anything. Like we don’t, like send each other money for things at this point. We’re kind of, we kind of just treat things like they’re both of ours.

Brian: With it all separated like who pays the mortgage, who pays, how do you, how do you all deal with that stuff?

Katie: Well, he do Venmo me for the mortgage. So, I, like how you said we don’t Venmo each other and the very first,

Dom: No, no, you Venmo me for that, for the small, for the small expenses and everything out of principal.

Katie: I, we’ll Venmo for the mortgage, but once we, once we are married, it’ll all joint. With the loan and everything in my name. I’ve kept all of that tied into one thing. So, I, I pay the mortgage, but he does send over the money. And then same with like utilities. I’ll, I’ll have that automated out and then I don’t ask him for money on that. But that’s because on the weekends basically any events, things that we do, dinners, that sort of thing, he’s just paying with his card off. So I think a big part of that is, like I think the available cash that I have in, I say I, but you know, in, in the account that’s under my name, like the available cash I have is basically where I’m also paying out all the wedding stuff. And again, he’ll Venmo me for. Like I think the account numbers I see it’s like maybe $25,000 in the Ally knowing that I’m going to have $16,000 going to wedding at some point and there’s like this block in my brain where I don’t think of our finances jointly yet. So it’s like I, even though I know we are, I don’t see his finances growing necessarily because I don’t go into his accounts and we don’t have a joint account or that sort of thing. So, I think it’s a little bit of a mental block.

Bo: But outside of the wedding, has there been a time in your life where you felt a similar anxiety to watching the money fly out? Or perhaps is this a unique moment in time where there’s this big event, these big expenses that’s creating a heightened sense of anxiety that’s maybe not normalized?

Katie: I don’t think, I think it is kind of now. But I, I think the other part of it is I, in this time of life where we are getting married, there’s obviously these high expenses now, but I think it has me thinking even more futuristic because we’re starting this new life together. So I think of like I, I’ve have been thinking of, of family way more now than I ever did 10 years ago or something like that or even three years ago.

Bo: So family meaning like your, like the, you guys family planning, children.

Katie: I think that I have this other piece in my brain where I’m like, “Okay, well the wedding’s going to go away at some point, right? And we’re going to recoup that price or we’ll save on that.” But then we’ll have a kid and then what if we have another kid and, you know, I start kind of going down this snowball there.

Current Savings Breakdown (36:57)

Bo: Let me ask you because there’s some work that we’re going to want to do, right? We’re going to want to do some work. Walk us through currently how you’re saving and investing. You’ve got this, this systematic plan. We’ve automated everything. Walk us through the numbers. The one I’ve got right now is I know we got 14% going into your pension. Where else do we have money going?

Dom: Yeah. So, for my 401(k), I, I just set it to 25%. That’s not enough to max it out with my current income. And then I get a 3% match plus it’s then it’s like it’s 3% match and 50% match on the next 2%. So, essentially a 4% match on the, the 401(k) contribution. I max out a Roth IRA every year. I’ve done that since 2020. I maxed out an HSA. Did want to ask about this. So, because Katie and I are on different, so we’re on different health insurances, we’re both on individual plans. Prior to us getting married, she was putting, so, we’re not married yet, but she was putting money in an FSA. I was putting money in an HSA. She was spending out of the FSA. As far as I can tell, in the year that you get married, you’re not allowed to both put money in an HSA and an FSA. Maybe can be corrected if I’m wrong, but because we’re both on individual plans, I’m still only able to contribute the individual amount. So, I’m maxing out the, I’m maxing out the HSA, but as far as I can tell, Katie is no longer allowed to contribute to the FSA. And so, anyway, I’m contributing like the $4,000, $4,000, whatever the,

Brian: Typically you don’t mix FSAs and health savings accounts except for like the dependent care expenses, you know, for child care and other things like that. But that, that is true and that’s what, that’s why it allows you then to go from an individual plan to the family HSA contribution once, once you clear, clear up some of that stuff.

Dom: kay. Because yeah, how, how we are right now, Katie should stay on her health insurance because it’s good health insurance and so it, and my insurance is pretty cheap through my employer so I’m staying on my individual plan.

Brian: And that might still be the case. I mean, but, and, but we can also find out. I mean, if they stay on their individual plans, there’s no issue with,

Bo: Well, if they’re both, if they’re both HSAs, but if you’re doing the FSA instead of the HSA, then that’s, that’s totally fine. You just can’t contribute in the same place, right? If you cannot be a FSA contributor and HSA contributor.

Katie: So, if we’re separate though, I could still use,

Bo: We’ll do a little bit of, we’ll do a little bit, a little bit of research on that because,

Katie: I think the other part with this that we’ve talked about is like if he’s on an individual plan and we can’t do both an FSA and HSA, he can only contribute in the individual amount to the HSA. I basically on an annual basis am spending anywhere from 3 to four plus grand on health insurance even with the benefits that I have to date. And so like what’s currently in his HSA for example, I’d spend that in two years. And, and so like he’s talked about, well sometimes you can spend the cost now and reimburse yourself later, but I don’t know if that plan makes sense for us when we know that it’s basically reoccurring.

Bo: Do you have an HSA available or just the FSA?

Katie: FSA.

Brian: Well, and, and also realize one of the caveats. We love health savings accounts. Triple tax advantage. We, we talk about that all the time on the show, but we always do put a little asterisk next to it and say you still might not be able to do the HSA if you have an employer that’s offering you Cadillac type benefits. So, I mean, and everything y’all shared so far, y’all are loaded up with benefits at your employer from your employer. So, I, I, I applaud you for the excitement for the health savings account, but I, it’s, it’s a mathematical exercise because I, I have a feeling you’re getting lots of benefits even though you’re paying $3,000 a year out of pocket. I bet your employer plan is pretty, pretty good based upon everything you’ve shared so far.

Katie: I think that’s the other thing too that we’ve talked about is like staying on separate insurances because right now like I know what I use. I know that I hit my deductible. I know that the insurance that kicks in after that is great. He’s on a, a low premium plan, high deductible because he never needs it kind of thing or we, you know, never hope.

Bo: So, what about on your side?

Katie: Outside of the 14% into the pension, I currently am just doing like $50 into the 403(b) and $50 into the Roth on a monthly basis. The FSA previously had been taken like I have to elect at the beginning of each year, right? And then take that out. So, this upcoming year because we’re getting married, I chose not to elect. So that in 2026 I don’t have anything from that. So, so the rest of that for me goes into savings.

Brian: We’ll get you clarification on that too so you can know going forward.

Dom: I didn’t, I didn’t want the government coming after us.

Brian: We, we’ll get you some clarification on that.

The Savings Rate Reality (41:35)

Bo: So do you know the dollar figure y’all save, a year or roughly?

Katie: Pretty much all of this if you took what our, our annual or our monthly take-home is and subtract, like that’s genuinely what’s going into.

Bo: So what’s the monthly take-home for you guys right now?

Dom: Well, it’s minus taxes. Right. But monthly take-home right now is around $9,000.

Bo: Okay. So, about $9,000 a month coming in. We got about $6,300 a month going out in expenses. That means that the net difference between that’s going to be your savings. Yeah. On a monthly basis. But you got to add in the 401(k) and that kind of, well, so we can, we can do some math on that. What I’m guessing here, savings rate’s going to be, oh, well beyond, well beyond 25%, 28% if you could count your employer’s contribution.

Brian: I mean, I don’t think the savings is the issue for you guys whatsoever.

Bo: It’s really going to be interesting because I’ll go ahead and spoil it for a little bit. One of the exercises we’re going to work through is kind of walking through the financial order of operations to see where you guys are and are you filling up the right buckets. And you guys are likely going to be in those later stages. You’re going to be in like the seven eights and nines where one of the things we want you to do is if you’re following the financial order of operations and you’re putting the money in the buckets where they should be going. You don’t have to have some of this anxiety around because if you just do that at 28, one of the beautiful things that you’ve done is you’ve given you guys yourselves a huge head start. If we just looked at your wealth multiplier for a 28-year-old, took your $350,000 portfolio, applied the wealth multiplier to it, you’re likely already well on your way to financial independence even without saving anymore. So then the question becomes, how do we bridge the gap between that future unknown unknown and the things we want to accomplish today? Because you said you’re always waiting for the shoe to drop. I’m always waiting for the next thing. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? What I worry is I don’t want you to have that remorse when you look back say, “Man, I wish we would have gone in that trip. I wish we would have painted the room. I wish we would have.” Because for all intents and purposes, it looks like you guys are going to have the ability to do that stuff, but you’re going to have to mentally get to the place where you’re okay doing it.

Creating Systems to Free the Anxiety (43:41)

Brian: Well, Katie, I can already tell you’re kind of the field general on a lot of the finances right now with the paying the bills and other stuff, but you’re also the one carrying this financial anxiety for because you’re overthinking, worried about because you know anxiety and you deal with it, dealing doing the genetics counseling and all the other things that you understand fears and all the other things. And what I would encourage you, because we have the word sinking fund on there, but it doesn’t sound like y’all are using it the way it’s actually meant because what that is supposed to do is what we alluded to earlier. We could like, because you’ve already talked about family planning. There’s going to, I don’t know if it’s going to be in vitro or if it’s going to be adoption. There’s going to be costs, but we could go ahead and, and name a budget on that and, and put a sinking fund. You could go ahead and set up a plan to fund it. And now that anxiety or that fear for the future just, it should be addressed and it should free you because that’s the thing. I hate seeing somebody who’s got so much potential and you’re already carrying so much weight from the health struggles that if we can create systems that will kind of check the box on that stuff. Now you no longer, it’s automated and automatic for, for the family and you guys are going to be in a great place. I had to modify. I don’t know why. I always say automatic for the people because but it is one of those things where I just, I hate to see you struggle on something that we have a system that can fix that. If you just use sinking funds for what they’re supposed to do.

Katie: I think a big part of a lot of my anxiety comes from I’ve just never been able to conceptualize like because the uncertainty is such a gray box. I’ve never been able to really conceptualize like that space. And then also I, I’ve learned a lot from him and just being an adult and functioning over the past like six years, but I don’t have the background to understand all of the nuances and intricacies of, of finance. And so like I always can get myself to this point where I’m like, “No, you’re doing okay. You can, you can spend this. You can do that.” And then there’s a voice in the back of my head that’s like, “But wait, you, you don’t know.” And so like having somebody else like actually seeing it, looking at it that has the, the knowledge and the background and all of that and then being like here are some bucket examples, I’ll feel so much more at ease to like follow that.

The Achiever’s Brain (45:51)

Brian: I’m going to go ahead and save y’all a lot of, you have an achiever’s brain which I, I deal with this constantly with clients. I deal with it with myself. I’m constantly, Bonos. I mean, because I talk about I walk around looking for things out of place so that I can go back and fix them, you know? So, if I, if my wife misplaces her phone or keys, I typically know where it is because I’m always running a mental inventory. That’s great for being a financial planner and creating success. But it does create, and this I see this with all achievers, and I picked on Bo about this, too, is because he was so focused on making sure he did everything for while he was in his 20s. He wasn’t thinking about the present to, to, to make live your best life. Now, this doesn’t get better. It actually accelerates because you’re rewarded. This is the problem with an achiever’s brain is that you are rewarded for that hyper vigilance. But at some point, your brain says, “Whoa, I can only do so much.” And the anxiety starts backing up and it, and it, and it manifests in some weird places. You know, it could be sleep, it could be other things. We’ve got to go ahead and create systems now that acknowledge, hey, brain, I see what you’re doing. You’re, thank you for being awesome and creating the success and giving my, my special place, but let’s also make sure we’re doing today well so that I can enjoy because we’ve already alluded to y’all’s big problem is not money, it’s time. And I think that’s all comes back to are y’all being present in the moment to make sure you’re not just all doing everything for tomorrow and, and making sure everything’s the box check. Let’s make sure that, that not only for mental health, but also just for your long-term legacy of, of memories. Y’all, y’all can do this in a way that, that kind of frees your brain not to have that anxiety.

Dom’s Perspective on the Future (47:44)

Katie: When I think a little bit of that uncertainty in the future, like where my thought process goes is like paying for health care that I would need or like making sure that I’m not in a position where I can’t afford a treatment that I need or a doctor’s visit that I need or that sort of thing. But I think on the flip side for you, if I can’t work and we’re down to one income, like you’d be the one working. And if we had kids and, you know, that you were the one working, like I also kind of am wondering on that side of your brain like is there anything like honestly that, that does from, from your standpoint makes you concerned about the future that you would want more answers on more than just what I’m asking of.

Brian: That’s a great question, that is a great question.

Dom: I’m a very optimistic person. I, it’s, it’s hard for me to think negatively to be honest. You know, we hope that those things don’t happen, but if they do, I would love to see like what those numbers would look like if I’m the only one working and she’s no longer working. How does that look? I feel a little bit better about it because we already have this kind of big cushion built up. I feel like that gives us more flexibility. A part of the reason I really like saving is that it means to me it means more flexibility and potential to have independence and do what I want when I want. We haven’t really talked about this, but I would love to, you know, be financially independent at a bit of a younger age, maybe 50, 55, something like that. I don’t know what that would look like as far as with our current numbers and spending, but financial independence again is something that I was like those, those people have it, but like we, like I would, like how would I ever get there? And so it’s like the fact that now it’s like seemingly something that is achievable, it’s hard for me to understand like what does that mean as far as,

Career Trajectories and Family Planning (49:18)

Brian: So 50 or 55. Also, go with me on this. What is y’all’s income breakout? Who makes what?

Dom: We make about the same.

Katie: It’s around, I’m right around $95,000, $95,600 and then yeah, the rest would be him, but he, you currently do like a little bit of on call work, which is-

Dom: It evens out. It’s about the same right now.

Brian: And what career trajectory is? I mean, is it conceivable you’ll make $200,000 at some point in the future or are you kind of capped out? What, what, what does y’all’s careers look like?

Dom: I see it continuing to go up. $200,000 would probably be far in the future. I could see it, you know, going up 3, 4, 5% a year.

Brian: And y’all were both, I think in the stories that y’all given us background, both of you had stay-at-home mothers, correct? What is y’all’s plan when you come to family planning?

Katie: I think realistically, so I work for an academic medical center right now, so it’s a little bit different in terms of like how you progress in your career. It’s, it’s promotion tracks essentially. So big pay raises come with that sort of promotion from an assistant to associate professor and so on. There’s like an annual bump each year for kinding inflation and that sort of thing. But, I think realistically I know that if we had kids or my health at some point, like I could see that one of us would have to be part-time. That could potentially make more sense for me but we don’t, we don’t really know. Yeah. And, and I think the, the piece that you’ve brought up about like financial independence too, like to be clear and have it on the record, like he’s never made me feel like a burden that I ever was now or would be in the future and he is a very optimistic person. But like I’ve also seen how hard he’s worked and how much he’s like learned and taught himself. And there’s this piece of like you build up all this, you, you’ve built all of this from you doing the work. I don’t want to be the one to drain that. Thinking about this where there’s a way if there’s a way to optimize everything that we’re doing. And maybe that’s why I think about saving so much that like we could be financially independent by 50 or 55, even if that means I haven’t been working for the past 10 years, but not having that all fall on him.

Brian: I don’t, I think you’re doing enough worrying about that. He’s not, nobody, nobody in this house is feeling like y’all aren’t all doing great work on, on, on that aspect. I really do feel that.

The ABLE Account Discussion (51:33)

Dom: Just as a another question, given Katie’s condition, she may be eligible for an ABLE account. Just given the amount of health things that she has to worry about and future health conditions. I believe she may be eligible for that. So, potentially another savings vehicle.

Brian: The two triggers, you know, and it’s even gotten better starting as of January of 2026, is that you either have to be receiving, you know, benefits from like SSI, Social Security, for disability, or just a, a note from a doctor saying that, you know, you have a, a, a disability or something that impedes you. There’s actually a great if you need details and I can, I can talk a little bit more about it, but if you go to, I believe it’s ablenrc.org, it’s, national, resource center I believe. I’m just making sure I get it right, but it definitely ablnrc.org. Great resources on, on what and they even have some examples of what a statement from the doctor looks like. But yeah, as long as you get that in place before age 46. It used to be 26, but they’ve expanded the legislation to where, it’s now 46. And for those who don’t know out in the audience, an ABLE account is under the same code section as 529 that is similar to like college savings plans and as long as you’re using it for qualified expenses and it’s pretty broad with ABLE. It can even be some lifestyle stuff and, and other things. It’s completely, the growth of these accounts is completely tax-free. The first $100,000 doesn’t count against your social security. And then you even have up to the state limits. And each state’s a little different. You even qualify for some other benefits. So it’s a really cool thing that the government has put in place to help people pay for expenses when you have unique struggles. You know, I have a daughter who’s on the, the autism spectrum and we use ABLE accounts. So, they are a very powerful tool in the financial planning.

Bo: I’m excited to paint a picture for you guys. I think we’re about to paint a pretty exciting picture that kind of walks you through what the future, even the unknown future could look like.

The Analysis: Saving Too Much (53:38)

Bo: Man, Brian, what an awesome conversation with Dom and Katie.

Brian: What really hit me is that people are going to see, and this is what the audience is going to take away. Here’s a young couple crushing it. I mean, they’ve already built a tremendous net worth. They’re saving a lot. And I think that that’s, I hope the audience is kind because they’re going to look at that and, and be like, “Wow, these, they got everything working for them.” And then we’re gonna find out because I think this is a lesson about being a human is that no matter what the book looks like, we all find out that there’s still struggle. Nobody ever knows what’s going on behind the scenes. And, and Katie was very honest and very vulnerable with us that yeah, they have a lot of this great stuff going on with their income, their career, their net worth, but then yet she has some health struggles that might in a lot of ways need to draw attention to how they’re using these assets in the long term.

Bo: Yeah. They felt like they were doing all these things right, but didn’t feel like they the freedom to enjoy the here and now. And given the unique constraints, the here and now is pretty important for them. So, we said, “Hey, what if, what if we got to peel back the layers and say, okay, what are you guys doing?” Presently. Let’s kind of uncover. Let’s triage your current situation. We look at their current financial order of operations. As expected, they’re absolutely killing it. They’re saving 14.5% into Dom’s 401(k), another 14% into Katie’s pension between her contribution, the match. They’re putting money in Dom’s Roth. They’re putting money in Katie’s Roth. They’re putting money in Dom’s HSA, and they’re even putting a little bit into her 403(b). When you add up all these different sources, if you asked them what their savings rate would be, I think they would say something along the lines of, “Oh, we’re saving about 35%.” And that would be accurate based on this, but that’s only telling part of the story.

Brian: Yeah. Because there’s actually like another $2,700 a month that’s just sitting out there. So, the savings rate is likely over 50% at this point. Yep. And, and here’s what I worry about. This is typical achievers slash financial mutants that are quickly getting into financial miser space is that they’re being so dedicated, so responsible that they might be missing out on today. And here’s why. Because of Katie’s condition and health struggles that might be something that needs to be even a deeper focus right now. We need to work on them kind of taking that into account so that they don’t miss something and have regrets later.

Reconstructing Their Financial Order of Operations (56:00)

Bo: And even in terms of the good financial decisions that they’re making, it seems like it’s kind of all over the place. There’s not like a lot of rhyme or reason into what they’re doing or how they’re doing. I say, “Okay, what if we were to rework their financial order of operations? What if we were to rethink through, okay, when we think about the next dollar they’re deploying, what would be the best use of that?” And so we reconstructed and relooked at what we would recommend, and this is how we think they should prioritize. We want Dom putting in enough to get his full 401(k) match. So he puts in 5% and then he gets a 4% match. He’ll have 9% of his pay going to his 401(k). We’re not going to touch or affect any of Katie’s pension. We’re still going to have the 14% going in there. And we want both of them to max out their Roth IRA. So $625 each for each of them. And then we want Dom putting money into the HSA, maxing that out at $367. So, if we can do that, we are now well into step seven. We’re at a savings rate of 28.6%. Even backing down some of their savings. That’s what’s wild to me is just doing these basic steps gets them to 25%. And now they’re going to be able to do some other things which includes even some realignment on what their savings should be because we had a conversation about ABLE accounts.

Brian: That’s right. And because we know that there’s some medical expenses and other things they, they should take advantage of. Maybe there’s some tax preferred or, or tax favored ways that they can fund it. An ABLE account definitely makes sense. And I love that we actually created a way for them to have a contribution of around $1,667 a month into a brand new ABLE account.

The Sinking Funds Solution (57:34)

Bo: And I think one of the things that’s super interesting is that they were, they were saying, you know, we’re not so concerned about the future and about retirement and financial independence. They were more concerned about some of the, I’m going to call it intermediate term goals or unknown unknowns they might have. Whether that be how they’re going to start a family and what that might look like. Maybe it’s travel and creating experiences and memories or maybe it’s even some unknown unknown related to her condition. Like I don’t know what the health care costs are going to be and what that’s going to look like. And so we said, rather than have that sitting out there, you guys have plenty high enough income, plenty of margin that you could even create some sinking funds to be able to satisfy those goals. We said, okay, what’s it look like if you guys were just to compartmentalize and think through, all right, I’m going to put $500 a month into each one of these goals. I’m just going to think about as a sinking fund, whether it be for future family planning, whether it be for medical concerns, or whether it be for travel and experiences. Even just them doing that creates a ton of opportunities down the line. If they were to do that and begin to deploy that, by age 35, they’d have almost $60,000 in each one of those buckets. By age 45, they’d have almost a quarter of a million dollar in each one of those buckets. So that way if they decide to go the family planning route or if there’s some medical concerns, they don’t have to worry about sacrificing their future financial well-being because they know that they’ve allocated dollars for that. And if they end up not using those dollars for whatever those purposes may be, then they just get to become part of the true financial independence plan.

Brian: I thought, I thought it was good if, if you, if you do these sinking funds, it felt like a lot of their stresses was being able to free them to enjoy more of today and not think so much of the future. And I love that if we give them these sinking funds, it’s going to go ahead and let them check the box on the kids, the future kids, on the potential health care and the sidebars that that creates and the things it takes away from the current life. And then just having an additional $500 a month for whatever comes your way. Like it just, enjoying your life because that’s the difference between a savings account and a sinking fund is that the goal is we want you to spend this money, actually use it. So I hope it doesn’t get to the point where they’re 45 and these things are a quarter of a million dollars. I’m hoping that this actually goes to free them to enjoy their present life while they have the army of dollars working in the background building something pretty magical as well.

The Three Scenarios (1:00:01)

Bo: And I love what you said there is the goal of the sinking fund is to be used, to be spent. So we said, “Okay, now let’s run some projections. Let’s remove those sinking funds completely from the equation. Pretend that they’re not there. And now we’ve backed down their savings rate from nearly 50% down to about 28%. How does that actually play out for them? What does the future look like?” Well, what we found is even in a reduced savings rate, because they’ve done so much hard work building up to a portfolio of $350,000 today, if they just save that 28.6% or a little over $4,500 a month, they are well on their way for having a portfolio of $6.5 million by the time that they’re 50 or almost $11 million by the time that they’re 55. Not, not 65, not full retirement age, by age 55.

Brian: But here’s the thing, because these numbers are starting to get really big and starting to get away from us. This is what I would call the dream plan. You know, we’re always talking about putting on your 3D glasses, which is your dream plan. You’re down to earth and then don’t skip out on the doo-doo plan. I think we ought to kind of, this is awesome, but we ought to amend this because what they don’t know is life is going to happen. Whether that’s health, whether that’s kids, more than likely at some point, probably around age 35 or so, instead of them having this huge income that they have now, they might be more moderate around $150,000 a year. What would that, if they drop down to a single income at $150,000 or a combo income that’s at $150,000? What would that plan look like?

Bo: Yeah, obviously we’d still want to follow the financial order of operations. Let that be the guide. So, we’re going to assume that Dom continues to get his match. We’re going to assume that they continue to put money in the Roth IRAs, continue to the HSA, and they’re going to now take those sinking fund allocations and they’re going to split it 50/50. I’m still going to have some money going to the sinking fund, but I am going to now have some going to the portfolio so that we can still have that 25% savings rate. Even at $150,000 income and even if their savings dropped down to about $3,000 a month, they’re still on the path because they’ve done so much hard work early on that by the time they get to 50, they could have a portfolio of almost $5.9 million. And by 55, again, early retirement, a little over $9.5 million, even if their income were to drop down to 150.

Brian: Oh, okay. So, we, we’ve dream works, down to earth plan works. Okay, let’s do the doo-doo plan. What happens if maybe it’s a, me issue or something? What if the income went all the way down to $100,000 a year?

Bo: Yeah. So, we said, what if, if that’s where their income goes, then it’s likely going to be true that all they can do is put money towards Dom getting his full 401(k) match and then maybe maxing out one Roth IRA. That’s probably going to be all that they’re able to do. But even if they were to drop their savings down and now they make $100,000 and they’re only able to save a touch under $1,400 a month, they’re still on a fantastic trajectory at $350,000 saved today, assuming a 9.2% annual rate of return, by the time they get to 50, the portfolio would still be worth a little over $4.1 million. Or by the time they get to 55, over $6.5 million. And if, if you think about what a $6.5 million portfolio could generate, it’s still going to generate more income than they would be making in the illustration even with the reduced savings.

Brian: You know, this shows me the power of them just saving so early and often right from the beginning. It almost makes, it shows the power that their army of dollars is already so big behind them. They’ve already done that heavy lifting right now. So we can actually tell them, hey, you have a lot of options because of your hard work behind you. It’s time to start living for the now much, much more.

Bo: Now, even on the doo-doo plan, we didn’t even assume that Dom’s income would increase or anything like that. So even the doo-doo plan is probably a worse scenario than they’re likely going to face from a financial standpoint. So I think it’s super, super conservative.

The FSA/HSA Clarification (1:03:57)

Bo: Now, one little note because this came up in the conversation we had with him. It is true they will have to make a decision. If Katie is participating in a flexible spending account, even though they have, cover different insurance plans, he would not be able to do an HSA. So, they need to have a conversation around, okay, we’re going to do FSA or we’re going to do HSA. How are we going to approach that? How are we going to prioritize that? Because you can’t do both even though they’re under separate coverages.

Brian: Yeah, that was one of those things that, you know, we like to know all answers, but it’s nice that we were able to go look it out and figure out, no, it’s, it’s true. The FSA really does blow it up unless it’s some specific employee only FSA which those are really rare, you know, limited purpose dental vision. I, I doubt that’s going to be the case so it really does need to come down to which one are we going to do, flexible spending account or are we going to do the health savings account with the triple tax advantage.

The Homework (1:04:43)

Bo: All right so when we think about their homework, this is the first thing and I think this is kind of a fun one. We want them to get more comfortable living in the moment. For sure, they are in such a fantastic spot and have done so much hard work, they’ve now been able to give themselves freedom. And if they have anxiety around unknown unknowns, they have the margin to be able to create sinking funds to satisfy those unknowns. They just need to go look at these portfolio paths that we’re going to send them and then say, “No, it’s okay to go enjoy today.” And that’s why if, if you want to paint the house, by all means, paint the house. If you want to create the memory, by all means, create the memory. So, that’s kind of homework item number one. Number two, I do think they need to think through following the financial order of operations. They were kind of piecemealing it and they weren’t, they were a little FOO-

Brian: Katie wasn’t even maxing out her Roth IRA. I mean, come on. We’re, we’re missing some basic.

Bo: That’s right. So, we think they should go back and make sure they’re actually walking through the financial order of operations. And then number three, once they get these parts and pieces in place, trust the plan. One of the reasons we have the financial order, one of the reasons we even have financial plans at all is so that we can remove the anxiety associated with money. They have future goals. They have intermediate goals. They have now goals. They have the ability to be able to tackle all three of those if they can put the plan in place and stick to the plan.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, and, and I’ll just say it. Dom and Katie were two impressive 28-year-olds. I was so impressed with everything that they had accomplished. Bo, if other people want to come on Making a Millionaire, what do they need to do?

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

Brian: Katie, Dom, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on, guys. We’re going to keep creating great content both on the Money Guy Show as well as I’m Making a Millionaire. I’m your host, Brian, joined by Bo. Money Guy team out.