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In this episode, we reveal why Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are the most underrated investment account for 2026, offering a rare quadruple tax advantage that even beats Roth IRAs. Only 10% of Americans use HSAs, and shockingly, 85% of those who do aren’t even investing the funds, they’re using them as clearing accounts and missing out on decades of tax-free growth. We break down the 2026 contribution limits, eligibility requirements for high-deductible health plans, and the powerful strategy of saving receipts for future tax-free reimbursements that can fund Roth conversions and retirement distributions.
We also debuts exciting new search features on our website, making it easier than ever to find specific episodes, ultimate guides, and resources. We show how viewers can now search by topic across all shows, articles, and calculators…all completely free! Then, our Q&A session covers essential financial mutant questions including emergency fund adjustments when transitioning from dual to single income households, why target date funds for retirees are limited, strategies for recent college grads living at home rent-free, 529 contribution approaches for newborns in the “messy middle,” the 25% housing rule breakdown, and more.
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Brian: Financial Mutant Quiz. Do you know the most underrated investment account for 2026?
Bo: Brian, I am so excited to talk about this because when it comes to investment accounts, you’ve got plenty of options that are pretty incredible. You’ve got 401(k)s, you’ve got Roth IRAs, you’ve got traditional IRAs, but there is a single type of account that I would argue is the most exciting, the actual sexiest of all of the investment accounts.
Brian: Well, I feel like we’re single-handedly changing the dynamics of this account. So, without creating too much more suspense, we’ll go ahead and share. We think health savings accounts are fascinating and very powerful for your financial future because they’re not only triple tax advantage. There’s potential to get a quad benefit in there if you play your cards right.
Bo: So what is a health savings account? Well, quite simply, it’s a type of tax advantage savings account offered to people that are specifically enrolled in a high deductible health plan. And the goal of these accounts are to pay for qualified medical expenses. And so these things are absolutely incredible. Brian, You already led in with one of the most incredible things about them. The thing that makes them so exciting is that they have tax benefits that combine tax benefits for some of our other favorite accounts all into one singular account.
Brian: Think about this. I mean, for me to say this is potentially even better than Roth accounts, we better have the receipts. And here’s the actual receipts. Triple tax advantage. What do I mean when I say triple tax advantage with the potential for a quad is that all of your contributions, assuming you qualify and can make contributions, these accounts are tax deductible. You get a deduction on the front end. That’s powerful. You get to actually take a tax deduction on the front end. The second thing is tax deferred, meaning whatever you invest these accounts into as they grow you’re not having to pay income taxes on an annual basis. And then the third thing, if you use these distributions for qualified medical expenses they are tax-free. Now here’s the thing that’s crazy. We’ve all heard you know Roth IRAs get tax deferred growth. They also get tax-free growth when you pull them out for retirement. But what they don’t get is contributions. The government doesn’t typically give you both sides of it. That’s too many, that’s too good to be true in most cases. So they don’t let you get the contribution and they don’t let you get the tax-free growth. But you do with health savings accounts. And here’s where the quad comes from. If your employer is tax-savvy enough, we did this for our employees by the way, and they make this as part of, you get to pull it out of your paycheck to fund these health savings accounts. You also get to exempt yourself out of Social Security and Medicare. That’s a huge benefit. It’s not only for you, but also the employer because that’s 15.3%. 7.65% by the employer, 7.65% by you. This is powerful stuff.
Bo: But they are so good that there are limitations. Unfortunately, not everyone has the ability to take advantage of health savings accounts. And we’ve already said this that HSAs are an account that is only available for those with a high deductible health plan. And in 2026, this is what that means. The plan has to have an annual deductible of at least $1,700 for self-only coverage or $3,400 for family coverage. And the out-of-pocket maximum, including annual deductible, does not exceed $8,500 for self only or $17,000 for family. Now, here’s one of the things, and we’ve seen this a few times in open enrollment. This year specifically, we’ll have clients reach out and say, “Guys, I’m so excited. I just got a brand new plan added in, and my deductible is $1,900. So, man, I’m in a high deductible plan. That means that I get to take advantage of an HSA.” Well, not necessarily. You want to make sure whenever you do opt into your health insurance plan, it actually states that it is HSA eligible because just because you meet those deductible limits and just because you meet those out-of-pocket limits does not mean it’s going to qualify. A lot of plans will have co-pays in there or they’ll have office visit prices that are different that will preclude you from or that will exclude you from being able to participate in the HSA. So, you want to make sure that you are actually eligible and your plan says HSA eligible when you enroll in it.
Brian: Yeah. Most of the exchanges and when you’re talking to insurance brokers, I’ve always experienced where there’s usually a search feature where you can make sure it’s HSA eligible because it is kind of quirky and weird that there are products that are put together that meet all the goals but are off $100 here or have this one feature that blows it all up. So, you have to be very careful as you’re making sure this is HSA eligible.
Bo: And so, not only do they limit who can participate in it, you have to be a member of a certain type of health plan. They also limit how much money that you can put into a health savings account. So, if you are covered under individual coverage in 2026, you can put $4,400 in there. If you are on family coverage, you can do up to $8,750. And if you’re 55 or older, you can do an additional $1,000 based on if you’re individual or family. Now, one thing to keep in mind, this is inclusive of all of your contributions as well as your employer contributions. If you have an employer that puts $500 or $1,000 into your HSA that goes into that total. So, the amount that you can contribute on top of that will be after you’ve accounted for the employer contribution.
Brian: Now, we did a teaser that set this up. It says underrated. So that must mean Bo that there’s a lot of people that are sleeping on this. Do we have any data to actually support that this is an underutilized tool?
Bo: Well, so we know that right now only 10%, and this is according to Americans for Prosperity, only 10% of Americans actually use a health savings account. So it’s not a huge portion of the population that are using these. But there is a statistic that is a little more saddening than this one because we have 10% of folks that use it. But 85% of those folks, 85% of the folks that are using HSA accounts are not actually investing. They’re not taking advantage of the triple tax advantage.
Brian: Well, if you think about it and look, when we first started covering this, this is where I think there is a little bit of a Money Guy echo. There was only 6% of the population that was maximizing this. Now we find out it’s 15%. So I feel like we are at least pushing the water slightly up the hill. But the reality is I think most people are only taking advantage of the contribution deduction but then using it as a clearing account, meaning that whatever health expenses they have for the year, they’re immediately reimbursing themselves. So that actually pushes away or doesn’t take advantage of the tax-free deferral growth as well as the tax-free pulling it out when you make the money in the future. It’s just missing out on some of the key components that really add the sizzle and the excitement for the long term.
Bo: So what should you do if you want to make sure you’re taking advantage of this? Well, the first thing, make sure that when it comes to open enrollment, you confirm that the high deductible plan is indeed your best option. And again, this is a question we’ve seen with a lot of clients. The HSA option will be available and they’ll say, “Guys, guys, guys, I’ve listened to the show. I’m such a huge fan. I’m going to do the HSA. This is my first year.” We’ll be like, “Whoa, not so fast. You have a highly subsidized Cadillac insurance coverage.” Even though we love HSAs, we also love when you have really, really great health insurance that’s highly subsidized by your employer. So, you want to make sure that the high deductible plan makes the most sense for you. So, if that’s the case, here’s how you maximize it. Step one, you got to make sure you actually put money into it. A lot of times people will do the high deductible plan. Their employer will say, “Hey, I’m going to put in $500 or $1,000.” And we review the tax return. We say, “Man, I only saw that $500 went in, or I only saw that $1,000 went in.” Make sure that you’re actually using this as a vehicle to put dollars into. It’s why it’s in step five of the financial order of operations.
Brian: Yeah, this is, I loved also that you just drew attention to the fact that you have to pay attention when you go through open enrollment if this benefits. I went through, my wife and I hit the magical age that we are at the same time and I knew there were some big expenses. So, I actually took a year off from the HSA last year, went with our more subsidized plan because I knew I had a lot of procedures coming up. So, it’s okay to be strategic with your open enrollments as we’re in this season, too.
Bo: So then once you get the money in the HSA, we want you to be a financial mutant. We want you to actually invest those dollars inside the health savings account. And based on where you are in the financial order of operations, perhaps you invest all of those HSA dollars or maybe if you need to have your deductibles covered inside the HSA, maybe you invest a portion of them. But the big thing is we want you to get those dollars working. And then as you incur medical expenses moving forward, we want you to pay for those medical expenses with outside dollars. Don’t use the HSA dollars. Use other dollars. But make sure that you save the receipts. You can either scan them into some sort of digital locker or you can keep a spreadsheet where you notate what the expense was for, who it was paid to, when it was paid, and whose behalf it was paid on. Because if you save those receipts, not only can HSA distributions be made tax-free for qualified medical expenses, they can also be used to reimburse yourself for past medical expenses. So, if you have this large docket of receipts that you’ve saved, you can then go reimburse yourself for these receipts at any point in time in the future.
Brian: That’s where I’ve seen it actually work out for clients because a lot of you are probably saying, “Well, so when do you actually use this money?” Well, because, you know, I want to be careful. What happens if I die with it? You know, we got you covered on all that stuff. We’ve done a lot of show content on this. But in practical terms, what I’ve seen with clients is, you know, when you leave the workforce, you get this great opportunity where you want to consider doing Roth conversions and other things because now you can legally manipulate the tax code because you get to control which pots of money you pull your retirement distributions out of that might allow you to lower your tax rate and really kind of take advantage of some really cool planning opportunities. This is a great bucket to pull from. I had a client who when we were trying to figure out, not only were they moving and they wanted to have a cash-free purchase of a brand new home as they downsized, but they also wanted to be using Roth conversions. And we’re like, well, what’s going to pay the bills while we’re going through this unique planning period, the season of life? And we found out the health savings account was a great opportunity. They could get access to money completely in a tax-free way that didn’t blow up the tax planning that we were doing. It was a really cool opportunity.
Bo: Another thing where I’ve seen this with a lot of my retirees is maybe we’re doing some sort of tax planning where we’re trying to stay in the 0% capital gains rates or perhaps we’re doing Roth conversions and we want to avoid Medicare IRMAA surcharges or we want to watch how our Social Security is being taxed. HSAs are fantastic what we call fill-in vehicles that if you do have a shortfall in your living expenses, these tax-free distributions in retirement can be incredibly valuable. So, if you have access to an HSA and if you are participating, make sure this is something you continue to use every single year. It’s why it’s in step five. It’s why when you do your annual net worth statement, we want you to revisit the financial order of operations to make sure, okay, do I have access to this account and am I fully taking advantage of it to take advantage of the possible quadruple tax advantage that HSA accounts represent?
Brian: Man, mic drop. You can tell we get so excited about this. We just did 12 minutes, which is supposed to be a six-minute teaser, and we just got so hyped up about it that we went twice as long as we should have.
Rebie: Bo, Brian, do you know how many Money Guy episodes you have done in the history of the Money Guy Show?
Brian: Oh my gosh. You didn’t tell us. You didn’t put me, I didn’t know you were going to ask me.
Rebie: Spoiler. There’s so many. I don’t know the number either, but that’s the point. I mean, that’s always something I should have been trying. There’s so much amazing Money Guy content, resources, shows, there’s so many, and that’s an amazing problem to have, but sometimes it can be hard to find that exact episode you want from a few months ago, from a few weeks ago. So, I am on a mission to make that vast amount of Money Guy content extremely findable for you, much easier to access when you need it. So, I’m going to show off a little bit of a phase one of moneyguy.com, a new update. So, Bo’s going to help me out. If you go to moneyguy.com, if you’re watching, we’re going to show you on screen. If you’re listening, you can go check this out for yourself later at moneyguy.com.
Bo: Moneyguy.com. Check. I’m there.
Rebie: So, if you go up to the top, you’ll see some new things up there in the navigation. If you would just click on shows for me, Bo, you can see a list of all of our types of shows. Go ahead and click on the Money Guy show. That’s our main full episodes that come out every Friday. And if you scroll down, there’s a search bar where you can search for a topic of any Money Guy show. So, go ahead and search net worth by age. That’s a really popular one everybody seems to love that we do every year. We’re going to be doing it again soon.
Bo: Search bar, age by age and capitalize.
Rebie: When you click enter, you’ll be able to see all of the net worth by age shows that we have ever done. So, you can even compare how our strategy has changed and see how our thumbnail strategy has changed.
Brian: That’s so true.
Rebie: But yeah, you can go find Money Guy episodes. It’s that easy now, which I am so excited about. Try another one, Bo. Go up to the top again and click on articles. Okay, click on ultimate guides. Our ultimate guides, if you have not checked them out, you need to. First of all, if you just click on ultimate guides, you can see deep dives, very comprehensive write-ups about specific topics. But you can search these, too. Why don’t you click or search saving for college, Bo, and see what pops up?
Bo: You may wonder why I keep capitalizing it. I don’t know. It’s just a habit. I don’t know why.
Rebie: This is how he searches. I guess we’re really seeing something about Bo. But you can see we have right at the top an ultimate guide all about budgeting and saving. And then right underneath it, an ultimate guide all about paying for college, how to do it the financial mutant, the smart way, whether it’s for you or your child. So you can go browse those and search those. And again, I know if you’re watching, you definitely know all about our show, but if you haven’t seen the Ultimate Guides yet, I think you’re going to really, really love those, too. If you’re into personal finance and are wanting to learn more about your specific situation. And then last but not least, let’s just try one more and show it off. If you click on topics, Bo.
Brian: Okay. Hey, can you remind me how much does this website cost?
Rebie: Yeah. What was the annual membership for this to be able to add?
Brian: It’s free.
Bo: Wow. Look at that. That’s the abundance cycle in action.
Brian: It’s free because by the way, all the people we have working on the behind the scenes is not free. So, I’m sitting here just taking notes first and I was like, well, we’re not, yeah, it’s not free, but it’s free for you.
Rebie: Anyway, if you go on topics, you can search kind of more specific ones that we’ve called out there like real estate and mortgages. That’s a hot topic right now. We talk about that a lot. We have all these things we throw out like we have a checklist, we have a calculator, we have an ultimate guide, we’ve done a show on that, we’ve done a show on this. So right there even without searching, right at the top are some of our most popular topics.
Bo: Refinance guide is a drop. We got Making a Millionaires on here too.
Rebie: Yeah. So even Making a Millionaires where real estate comes up in the conversation as a part of their financial plan is on that real estate and mortgages page. So awesome. I’m loving it. I’m super pleased with how it’s going. And this is really all for you because we saw that there was like that pain point of like this content is so awesome but sometimes it’s easy for one to like, oh what was that one called? or where did I see that? And so hopefully this makes it easier and then even as these things come up in your own life, you can use moneyguy.com as a resource. So I’m very excited. Thank you for helping me show it off, Bo.
Bo: That’s really cool. And what’s the why? Why did we do this? Because we really do believe that there is a better way to do money. We believe that how you navigate your financial life and how you gather your information, how you collect your information matters. And so if there are ways that we can make that easier for you, if there are ways that we can make that more valuable, the ways that we can put it at your fingertips, we want to invest in being able to do that. I love someone said, I saw this comment come through. It says, “Guys, the search function on the website is incredible. A couple weeks ago, I needed to look up something on IUL, index universal life.” And so I just typed that into the search function, and it gave me everything I needed to be able to do that. And that’s exactly what we want you guys to be able to do. I was going to see how good it was, but they took it away from me, so I guess I won’t see how good it was.
Brian: Well, I think it’s probably for the best because then once we start yelling out suggestions, I was going to start searching some of our favorites because we have some all-time favorite shows that me and Brian had a lot of fun doing, but I was going to see if it pulled up really easily.
Bo: Let’s go check it out. So not only do we love that we can spend time and effort getting this stuff available for you, we love that every Tuesday at 10 a.m. we can show up right here to load you up. We want to answer your questions. We want to speak to the things that you guys care about. It’s why we have the team out in the wings right now collecting your questions. So if you have a question, you want to get our take, you want us to weigh in on it and you don’t want to go search it on the website, then right now you can get your question in the chat and we will load you up. So with that, creative director Rebie-
Rebie: Did you guys know we ran a poll during your HSA talk?
Brian: No, we did not.
Rebie: This is why financial mutants are different. How many, what percent of Americans use an HSA? 10% use them. 85%, well over 50% of financial mutants using an HSA because we have 45% say I don’t utilize an HSA. And maybe that’s for various reasons, but 47% said yes, I use it as an investment vehicle. And then even 8% said they are using it as a clearing account. So, I just thought that was kind of fun and interesting because financial mutants like they get it, you know, they’re listening to you guys and they are benefiting from it.
Bo: Well, and here’s something we love. Whenever there’s something good in the financial world, we love to see that a good thing gets better. We’ve talked about HSAs for a long time, but they used to be kind of hard. There were only a handful of custodians and you were kind of stuck with a custodian you were with. Now that we’ve seen some big players get into the game like Fidelity got into the game a number of years ago. Now that we’re seeing that HSAs are more accessible, easier to open, easier to fund, easier to transfer dollars into, it’s a great tool that’s getting easier and easier and easier. So, we are systematically removing barriers to not taking advantage of these kinds of things, but you have to be willing to do it. You have to do a little bit extra to be able to know where your dollars are going and how you’re taking advantage of.
Brian: I do like that it’s gotten easier because that takes down one more barrier because when we were dealing with all these obscure providers on HSAs, it just made implementation that much more difficult. Now it kind of integrates in probably with how you’re managing your monthly investments and everything else. I love that. My wife’s very first HSA, we were able to defer money into it, but then you had to open an account here. You had to open another account at a different custodian to be able to invest it. You had to transfer every pay period. It was a nightmare. It’s so much easier now.
Bo: Well, yeah. It used to be like most of your HSA custodians were banks and then you had to, if you wanted to do the investment side, they had to have a separate arrangement with a separate login.
Brian: Yep. It’s streamlined now. Super clunky.
Rebie: All right. We’ve got some questions now. Okay. Real Christmas Tree asks, “Should…”
Brian: No, we’re definitely not. We are. We are artificial.
Bo: I wanted to start with that. We’re Balsam Hills. I really should have known. Are you real or fake?
Rebie: We’re a real Christmas tree family.
Bo: Wow. My kids literally, we were driving around, they said, “Daddy, will we ever get a real Christmas tree?”
Rebie: And you said, “Absolutely not. The needles get everywhere and sap…” It’s really not that bad.
Bo: They’re nice and they’re pleasant, but not in my house.
Brian: I used to like going to my next door neighbors and we’d burn all the trees. We’d try to get as many neighbors to give us their trees so we could burn them in his backyard.
Bo: Is that not, is that not illegal?
Brian: If you’ve never seen a Christmas tree at this house. Yeah. You remember Crazy Mike? If you’re from Chicago and you know, you can just sit on your back porch when it’s 20° outside, you know, because that’s the way people from Chicago are. But he used to love setting Christmas trees on fire because they, man, they are like kindling. It makes you realize these things are huge fire hazards at the end of the season, but really spectacular to burn them in your backyard.
Bo: The other thing that I told them that’s nuts to me is like if you get a real tree, you got to like do the lights yourself. Like it’s hard enough just getting the ornaments and all the bows on there, but having to wrap…
Brian: This is why Bo doesn’t have a dog either, by the way. Do you see? Do you see a window into Bo’s brain?
Rebie: I’m lazy about a lot of stuff like that, but like I even, I grew up with a fake tree and still had to put the lights on. Like this is a normal thing to do.
Brian: No, we got the lights on my fake tree growing up, the lights were outside lights so they were the type of lights that if you bumped into them they’d burn you. And you know, so remember then we’d throw tinsel on top of it. I was like there’s no way. I just made fun of the fire hazard of real trees. Fake trees can be a fire hazard too based upon the way my parents did it when I was growing up.
Bo: You want to hear a crazy tight wad hack? I’m going to tell you anyway. The year was 2013. My wife and I had just gotten married and Brian was like, “Hey Bo, I know you just bought this house that you’re in. I got this big beautiful Christmas tree. But the lights are out on only like one or two strands works, pre-lit. I’m going to throw it out, but do you want it?” And 2013 Bo was like, “Hot dog. I’ll take it.” So I literally took that Christmas tree. I pulled every single light off of it. Went and bought my own like strands and I like zip tied and strung that whole thing that first year. Still the same Christmas tree we put up every year. Still the same one we use right now.
Brian: You’re still using this in your new house. Pressing an original.
Bo: Oh my god. Isn’t that wild?
Rebie: I was not expecting that. Isn’t that wild?
Brian: That is, that is disgusting. At this point, I know what you’ve got going on. You can afford to get a new tree.
Bo: What are you doing? It’s still great right now. I mean, if it works.
Brian: By the way, that wasn’t even a, I don’t even think that was a Balsam Hill. That was probably something I bought at Costco or Sam’s Club and it had, you know, those trees are disposable. They’re like one year done. One and done, the warranty goes up.
Bo: It is great. It’s in pristine condition still. We put up our stuff. I’m normally like an after Thanksgiving putter upper of decorations, but this year we did it a lot earlier. Tree’s been up for like three or four weeks now. Not one ornament on it yet, by the way. Because that just hasn’t happened.
Brian: Real Christmas tree. We are three minutes into your question and all we did was your name.
Rebie: You know, that crossed my mind when I marked it to ask it. Okay.
Brian: Yeah. What can we help Real out with?
Rebie: Yes. The actual question says, “Should step four of the FOO be increased if you change from a two to a one household income.” So, I think this is a great question. Step four is that emergency reserve step. So, how should they think about that?
Bo: Should it be increased? The answer is it depends. Because it depends on some factors. Should it change when you go from a two to one income household? Almost certainly. It’s unclear though if it’s going to get larger or smaller because if you go from two incomes to one income, what I want to know is okay, well, how are your living expenses changing? And if you were at two incomes, were you a two income household where you only had a three-month living expense emergency reserve or were you one that had six months? So, I think anytime you have a major life change, income change, job change, family change, kid change, location change, any of that kind of stuff, I think it’s always worthwhile to revisit your emergency fund to make sure that it aligns.
Brian: This is when we try to give indicators of levers that could change the way your emergency reserves look. Without a doubt, the number of incomes in your household has an impact because there’s risk associated. If you have two incomes in your household and they’re both pretty similar, that takes out some of the risk that pushes you closer to a traditional three months of cash reserves. Obviously, if now you’re just one income driving the entire house, that’s riskier because now if that one job gets laid off and you have a hard time replacing or finding a new job, you can quickly see why you want to expand your emergency reserves to six months instead of that three months that you got used to when you had two people working. So, I think that in most cases, you’ve now increased the risk to your household. So, that increased risk probably lends itself to where you’re going to want to expand your emergency reserves.
Rebie: Love it. Love that. Real Christmas Tree, thank you for the debate and the question. It took longer for us to talk about real versus fake Christmas tree than…
Brian: I’m in a mood today. So, y’all have to keep me from the tangents because there’s just so much swimming around in my brain. I almost single-handedly derailed the content meeting this morning.
Bo: You did. You actively did derail it a few times.
Brian: I knew we were in trouble when I hadn’t even made our cups of coffee and it was like 45 after and we were still in the content room.
Rebie: All right. Next question is from devo6912. It says, “There are target retirement date funds. Are there funds for retirees like quote unquote I plan to live to fund?” Which is a funny way of saying it.
Brian: Here’s the thing. I know Vanguard toyed with this. I wonder if they did away with them because I haven’t seen anything in years on this, but this was a number of years ago. They tried to go the other way with it. Whereas if you could, for retirees exactly what DVO is asking, you could tell them what you know, how long you plan to live to and it would actually help you with the distribution plan as well. But I have seen absolutely nothing on that in the last few years. So I’m starting to think that maybe it didn’t get as much uptick or approval or acceptance from the general public that they walked away from it.
Bo: So I know it was Vanguard had them. The way that a lot of target date retirement providers, whether it’s Fidelity or Vanguard or Schwab or you know, pick your custodian or pick your fund company. What they’ll normally do is they’ll have like a 2025, 2030, 2040, 2045, 2050, so on and so forth. But then they’ll also have like this one conservative allocation usually called something like Fidelity Freedom Income, Target Retirement Income or something like that. And what I think happens in a lot of them is that they kind of consider that the terminal allocation. So okay, I’m going to be in the 2030 and then once we pass 2030 I’m probably going to be in the income fund or whatever that case may be. Here’s why I think, and you hear us talk all the time about we really like target retirement index funds early on in your accumulation journey because it’s a really good generalist strategy. It’s going to give you some very generalized allocation so that you can move roughly towards a generalized horizon. Right? But as your assets grow and as you kind of reach that critical mass, as you reach that tipping point, as you reach that boiling point, as you reach that point, it might make sense for you to go from some sort of generalized solution to a more specific solution specific to your unique needs and circumstances. Well, when we get to retirement, I think that most of us when we start in our careers, all of our accumulation journeys look pretty similar. We start with nothing. We need to save something and we want to get that something working for us. So, target retirements are a great solution. But when we get to retirement, man, our retirements can look vastly different depending on where we live, what our expenses are, what our debt looks like, what our Social Security is, what our other sources of income is, what our account structure looks like. So, a generalized asset allocation for retirees may be a little harder to pin down than a generalized allocation for accumulators. And I think that’s probably why they haven’t done that justice.
Brian: Well, I don’t think they probably got a lot of acceptance. And I think that that’s partially wise because this is why we talk about taking a relationship to the next level. We’re all so unique that I think that’s probably where you probably need to go. Don’t want some generalized thing on the distribution plan because you’re going to be so unique. Your tax planning, your Roth conversion strategy, your Social Security, your IRMAA, it all, there’s so many things that come into play. I will tell you, here’s a hack on target retirement funds that’ll blow your mind when you do the research. I haven’t done this in the last 18 months, but I imagine it’s still the case. If you go look at all the big providers, if you think about Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, you know, once you get about 20, 25 years in the future, there’s no difference between their most aggressive ones. They just change the years. And that blew, I remember when we were doing some research and I was like, “Wait a minute. So, you mean that 2065 fund is the same as the 2045 fund?” And it’s just, yeah. What changes the speed of that change. Well, they, but they quit. There’s no change between some of those. They just go to their most aggressive and they just change the years. Ticker symbols are different, but they’re the same allocations on some of those higher ends. So that’s why it does make sense to go research each of your custodians. They are slightly different. So go don’t just assume one is the best for you. If you’re one of those people that hear us talk about index target retirement funds, you go, “But I hate bonds.” Go look at all the three and see which one lines up with you the most.
Rebie: Well, devo6912, thank you for your question.
Rebie: Next question is from Liam C. It says, “Just graduated college, making $65K gross.” Nice. “And parents are letting me live rent-free for a year. Does it make sense to save 25% while building my emergency fund? I don’t want to miss out on time in the market and I should have the emergency fund done by the time I move out.” So, I think he’s kind of doing steps at the same time. But is that okay?
Brian: Since his emergency fund ought to be built out probably by month two, month, like what are your expenses? That’s what I was thinking. What are your expenses here? I mean, the savings rate is going to go way beyond. If you’re living at home, unless your parents are making you pay just like real cost of living rent, but that’s not, this says rent-free. You need to be stacking.
Bo: Yeah, I would do an assessment on what are your actual living expenses. You did not say your age here, but perhaps it’s a car payment, car insurance, cell phone bill, but well, I’m not going to go there. You’re probably still on the family cell phone, right?
Brian: Right. There’s a funny, well, it’s not, we’re not going to go there.
Bo: About to get yourself in trouble. No, no, no, no. There’s just a funny, there’s a funny NFL football player whose mom just made him get on his own cell phone bill and he was very upset about his mom making him get off. So I would add up what the realistic living expenses you have are right now. And I would imagine at a $65,000 a year income with no rent and relatively small footprint, I bet you could fully fund that very, very quickly. So I would knock that out in the first month, two, three months. So that then you really can start building 25%. You can blow through getting your employer match and maxing out your HSA and maxing out your Roth IRA, even getting potentially into your 401(k) or your employer sponsored plan. I don’t think funding that emergency fund should take a lot of time at all.
Brian: Liam, I’ll put it, I want the why to make sense on this is because look, it’s a choice to live at home. I mean, eventually you’re going to want to be out on your own. But use this as an opportunity to give you a leg up. I mean, I watch on my TikTok feed, there’s somebody who’s set up a trailer in his driveway for his kids to live in because it’s a way for them to essentially stack, have some, and I was like people are getting creative but make sure it’s actually creating fruit. What I don’t want you to do is live at home and then you hear us say save 25%. And that’s what you did and then you just go blow the rest on something else, you know? So make sure the why intersects so that you’re actually getting something out of this unique opportunity because when you’re young this could be a turbocharger. I mean, a funny thing for me, I have pleasant memories when I graduated college and there was about, because I was moving in with a few of my college roommates in Atlanta but they were still building the building. It was a very old apartment complex. My dad had lived in the exact same apartment complex.
Bo: Are you serious?
Brian: On Peachtree in the city of Atlanta and they were building three townhomes just in this old apartment complex but they had put these brand new, and we coincidentally drove by as they first put the sign. And so we got the bead on these brand new townhomes that we were going to rent. And but it was 3 months in the future. So I had to live at home for 3 months and commute like an hour to get from my parents house. I used the savings. I’ll never forget to buy this burgundy like Berkin lounger, you know, thing that I was so happy that I paid cash for. We all bought, like I remember Rob bought the leather couch that he bought secondhand, which is kind of weird in some ways. And then it was just fun. You think about what’s the why on why you save up this money, the sacrifice so you can pay cash, you know, so you can let this money grow for you. Let’s actually bear some fruit.
Rebie: Good stuff. Good memories though. Good story. Liam C, thank you for asking the question and good for you for maximizing this year without any rent.
Bo: Who would have thought that Peachtree Park Apartments? Who would have thought the guy that started in Peachtree Park Apartments buying a burgundy Berkin lounger is now the Cybertruck guy, right? Who would have thought? Who would have thought?
Bo: So, here’s the thing. What’s funny, y’all have no idea that video, if y’all knew how that video went down. It cracked and I give the content team, for those who don’t know what video are you talking about, Brian?
Brian: So, there was a video that got dropped last week that did I buy a Cybertruck? Yeah, it’s a short. So Instagram, it was only one minute and it had to be short because if you knew how the recording went down, I’ll go ahead and spill the tea on this is that I was unfortunately involved in a car accident. It was not my fault. I was minding my own business at an intersection and the person behind me, I don’t know if they were distracted or what, but they got confused and when the left turn signal turned green and we were sitting in the center lane, which was still a red light, they gunned it and piled into the back of my car. When the left turn signal, I think they were distracted and got confused when the cars to the left of them started moving. But anyway, $11,000 of damage later. So she gave it a go. I mean it was something. But anyway, I needed a rental car while they were repairing my car and Tesla had the opportunity that I could rent a Cybertruck for $60 a day. Okay. I was like, you know what? I’m curious. I want to. So for the month-long that it took to repair my Tesla, I drove a Cybertruck and the content team was like, you must let us make a video. And this dragged on for weeks. We didn’t make a video. And then finally I came in I think it was a Tuesday. It was like, it might have been last Tuesday because these guys turned it around so fast and I was like by the way I’ve got notice from Tesla that my car is ready to pick up. So I think I’m taking the Cybertruck back tomorrow. They’re like, well we must record a video. And I’m like when are we going to record a video? I was like today’s a recording day. We are slammed. Like we’ll follow you out to the parking deck. So, I kid you not, we really did film that video in 10 to 12 minutes. And I felt so guilty the next morning I came in. I said, “Guys, I felt like I rushed you. I know how excited y’all were about doing this. I rushed you. If you need to use some B-roll, I’ll come back and we can do voiceover work so we can actually expand that.” And they’re like, “It’s done.” They already had the clip done from that 10 to 12 minutes.
Bo: It was fascinating. It was fun. It was fun. You were very cheeky about it because you don’t reveal till the end whether you rented it or bought it.
Brian: I give Josh and Ken mad props. The whole drive off at the end was all their idea too. I’m not that creative with it. I mean all I did was walk around and gave opinions and they’re like, “You know what? To answer that question, we had to just drive off.” And I was like, “Okay, we’ll do it.” So we did it. It turned out really good. And I appreciate, so if you’re curious, and by the way, I do feel better for driving this thing. I mean it was a fascinating experiment to drive this thing for a month. What was funny is that my kids both were highly embarrassed, I think my wife was too, everywhere I drove it. But my daughter, like anytime I dropped her off, she was embarrassed. But I did have a little boy come up to me in the car rider line, knock on the window, and he goes, “Love your Cybertruck.” And so that was a unique experience. But it is the thing. And I said this got cut, you know, so they didn’t take all 10 minutes. They only gave me one minute of my 10 minutes. I did say the fact that Cybertruck is such a brutal design. It reminds me of the ’70s architecture, you know, where it’s so in your face that people love it or hate it. It works if you were the only one in town with that car, but when you live in a county or town like we do and there’s three of them in your pickup line at school, it kind of loses some of that special.
Rebie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian: So go check out the video though. It was quite fun to look at. And I was shocked at some of the comments, too. You know, some people instantly judged you for buying it and then you didn’t even buy it.
Rebie: Spoiler, didn’t buy it.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, I was like, that’s why I’m rewarding the live stream to give the context. Yeah. I was in a car accident, so I figured I’d turn a negative into a positive because it created a fun little thing to go try this vehicle out. And by the way, the four-wheel steering really is cool. But a lot of people in the comments have let me know probably a lot of parts that could break. And that made me think of my dad because my dad, we never had power windows in most cars. It was always manual transmission because it was easier for him to work on. It was easier. So when I always, it’s just more crap to break is what my dad would say. So I mean when I saw that comment I was like yeah you’re right.
Brian: Not wrong. Yeah. It’s good stuff. So if you want to go see that short if you haven’t…
Rebie: Yeah. It’s on all of our socials. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok I believe too. Yes. Yes. So, go find us at Money Guy Show.
Brian: Oh, no. They loaded it up. I mean, I saw that thing dropped and every, it was everywhere for sure. It was funny. And I had a lot of people, you know, who I know in my personal life who came up. I saw your Cybertruck video. I thought that was pretty funny.
Rebie: That is funny.
Rebie: All right, let’s get another question going from Giggle and Goals Galore. Go ahead and make any comments and then we’ll get to the question. Great. No comments. Oh, Triple G. Triple G. The question says, “We’re 47 and 43, have a gross income of $170K, net worth of $2 million. Let’s go. We have retirement with work. Even though the resource shows us as a prodigious accumulator of wealth,” so they must be using our calculator at moneyguy.com. “Things always feel tight. What are we doing wrong?”
Bo: Well, it sounds like they’re not taking their foot off the accelerator. Yeah, it sounds like you’re doing, for scarcity. You didn’t mention what your savings rate is, but to have a net worth of $2 million by 47 and 43. You know, most folks hit millionaire status around 47, 49, kind of in that range. You guys have hit two million multi-millionaire status even before that age. And so obviously you must be doing something right. You’ve probably been saving. You’ve probably been exercising for scarcity. You’ve probably been really stretching that discipline muscle. And so one of the questions that you can ask yourself, just like you said, Brian, isn’t can you take the foot off the gas now? Can you maybe ease off?
Brian: What’s the why for your money? I mean, this is once again, this is another reason why if you go to learn.moneyguy.com, you know, what’s your number? We want to help you figure out are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you’re supposed to be. So that way you actually have the understanding to know I don’t have to put the kids in the closet when we go on vacation to sleep in or you know maybe when we want to do adjoining rooms instead of piling us all on two queen beds. I mean these are the things that when you say it always feels so tight. I mean a lot of those things are blossoming memories when you’re in the early stages of setting up budgets and still trying to bedazzle your basic life. But if you’re a multi-millionaire and you’re still doing some of these things to the point that you’re now starting to get complaints from the family. I mean, this was something I even had to internalize when I, because I mean I’m such a knucklehead that I mean my oldest daughter, I want to incentivize her to go on as many vacations with us as possible, but when she was like, “Dad, I’d really like to just have my own bed.” I get it. I mean, I was like, “You know what? I’m screwing this up. I ought to probably start making sure that she always has a bed so that I can keep her coming on these vacations because if you don’t, I’ll just go ahead and tell you the cautionary tale. If you don’t, if you’re too stingy or too tight with the money, you might lose out on some of the key people who bring you the happiness and the joy because they just like who wants to go hang out with this tightwad who’s so cheap with everything. So just understand it’s back to what’s your why. You know, you can graduate. That’s why we quit doing Tightwad Nation. As Bo and I were so tight in our younger years, but as we started having success and we started realizing what it took to make even better memories with our family, we used the tool of money the way it’s supposed to be used, but without sacrificing the, you know, saving and building a foundation in those early years.
Bo: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Recognizing that money is nothing more than a tool that allows us to achieve our goals. Accumulating more money and just having money for the sake of money isn’t the goal. It’s not, it’s just a toolkit. It’s the mechanism by which we are. So if I were you and your spouse, I’d sit and I say, “Okay, well, hey, what are we building towards? Here we are at 2 million. Where are we trying to go? Are the steps that we’re taking right now to get from where we are today to where we want to be, are they going to get us there? Are they going to get us there sooner? Are they going to overshoot? Are we behind the curve? Are we ahead of the curve? On the curve? And then you can kind of reassess and then you can give yourself a little bit of sigh of relief like, “Holy cow, okay, we did all the hard work. Now maybe we can start enjoying the fruits of this labor.”
Rebie: Good stuff. Well, giggle and goals galore. Thank you for your question and we hope that helped you think through where you are in your financial journey. You have something you want to share?
Bo: I just, I read the comment and people are like, “Bo hadn’t left Tightwad Nation yet. Go get a new tree. Buy a new Christmas tree. Get you a new tree.”
Brian: It’s so funny. And I’m sure if we had our, if we ever did like a Money Guy after hours or Peach Pit after dark or whatever you want to call it, you know, where we brought the wives on for, oh, buddy. They could, the power of getting roasted is what it would be. It’s funny is because I think my wife would share I’m cheap about certain things but not cheap about other things and I bet you’re the exact same way.
Rebie: You honestly just hanging out with you at work, you’re like that. You guys surprise me sometimes. You’re like, that costs that much? And I was like, you spend this much on this other thing. Like what? Okay.
Brian: All I can say is if you come here and the studio tour doesn’t consist of us showing you the snack closets, but the snack closets are legit. Sometimes Bo and I looking at it goes, “Why do we need?” I know they can hear me through that wall, so I’m going to get blasted. They got to whisper, “Why do we?” Like I was looking, I was like, “How many peanut butter M&Ms can we have?” Because I don’t think anybody’s eating peanut butter M&Ms, but we have them for days. We get to end times, I got your peanut butter, we’re covered, we are your hookup. We don’t have ammo. We don’t have water, but we got peanut butter M&Ms for you.
Rebie: That’s hilarious. Oh, that’s good.
Brian: All right, good stuff. Let’s go on to Jessica’s question. Buy a new tree.
Bo: It works fine. There’s no, there’s no use because I probably bought that tree for $170 bucks.
Rebie: Here’s the, here’s the, you do have, it’s great that you can spend more once you get to certain milestones, but like you can’t spend on everything all the time, right? So, you’re just doing other things with your money. It’s just a tool, right?
Brian: That’s it. If your wife sees this video, you’re going to be, she’s going to immediately be, I’m going to give her a coupon code.
Bo: I’m not about to say no, no one, no one text my wife to tell her about this. We’re just going to, she has great taste, though. She would pick out a beautiful tree.
Brian: Oh, she would. What’s more funny is probably your neighbors now walk in because I know them, is more likely your wife will not hear this but your, I’ve met your friends and neighbors and they do listen to our content. They’re going to so judge you guys hard when they walk in and be like, so that’s Brian’s secondhand.
Brian: Exactly right. That’s hilarious.
Rebie: All right. Want to go to Jessica’s question? Yes ma’am. We had a couple versions of this since we were talking about HSAs earlier. It says, “What happens to these HSAs if there is a balance and you pass away?” Okay. So, some questions about inheritance or like what happens to these accounts? Is there anything special? What do you think?
Bo: This is a great question and this, Jessica is a truly a financial mutant question because Brian, you and I asked the same question one day. We were like, man, what, okay, we’re doing the strategy. What if you do this for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, but what happens?
Brian: We actually, we now look, maybe you can use our brand new updated search feature, but one of those early shows we actually went and pulled the tax code on these questions and it definitively said you know look your estate can still pay these benefits out but this is why you have to be very clear that if you are using the strategy don’t keep it a secret because whoever’s in charge of processing your assets would need to know where that spreadsheet is, know what you are trying to accomplish here. Because it could actually extend but it would need, now your executor or executrix would need to be very aware of this and go get the reimbursements and pass it on to the beneficiary inherits of your estate.
Bo: So, it’s super silly, but if you are someone who keeps a hard copy of your estate documents or a hard copy of your net worth statement, you keep it in a safe in your home or there’s some sort of digital place that you keep that, you may want to keep that expense tracker for your HSA with those same documents and update it annually. So, every year when you put your net worth statement in there, when you save your net worth statement or when you update your estate documents, make sure that you have that expense tracker in there as well so that your executor knows about it.
Rebie: Well, Jessica, thank you so much for that question. It was a great follow-up to our HSA conversation.
Rebie: All right, next question is from TrickyPuffin. It says, “Hi, Money Guy team. For the 25% rule for home affordability, what are all the costs we should include in this number? And why is it based on gross? Should we include gas and electric, insurance, etc. Why not gross minus needs?” So maybe let’s just level set. The 25% rule is you shouldn’t be spending more than 25% of your gross income on housing, whether that’s your mortgage or your rent. But what else is included? Can you expound on that a bit?
Bo: Well, let’s first talk about the why here, right? Why do we have the 25% rule? It’s for guard rails. People ask us all the time, “Hey, housing for most folks is the single most expensive thing that you will ever spend money on. It’s the largest asset that most people will ever buy.” And so they said, “Okay, hey, give us some guard rails so we can make sure that when we make this huge decision, we don’t make it poorly and we stay inside the lines.” And so that’s why I say, “Hey, the total cost of your housing, the principal, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, the total cost of your housing should not exceed 25%.” But if you’re a financial mutant and you want to make sure that you stay on the conservative rung of that calculation, there’s nothing wrong with including other housing costs in that. If you want to include your utilities, if you want to include maintenance, if you want to include those costs in there, we’re not going to fight you on that. That’s just keeping your actual percentage for housing costs lower than the 25%. What we want to tell is if you’re a young person just starting out, you’re like, “Man, things are tight, things are uncomfortable, and I’m early on, but I need a home and I need a place for my family. I need a place to establish roots. Where are the boundaries? What’s the thing that if I go beyond this, it’s going to get me into a bad spot?” That’s why we came up with the 25% and we made it the total housing cost as opposed to adding in all the other stuff. But if you want to add in all those stuff, Tricky, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just going to put you in a more conservative position, which is fine.
Brian: If you want to know the bare bones, it’s PITI. It’s principal, interest, taxes, and insurance. If you’re trying to, I know some of you live in high cost of living areas, so the last thing I need to do is add more stress to you about that. So, if you’re trying to figure out where the bare line is for that boundary, it is the principal, interest, taxes, and insurance. I did think on the question though, the question answered itself and I wish y’all can pull it up two more seconds because the question was, why not gross minus needs? Why do we use gross? By the fact that you said why not gross minus needs. Do you realize how many people say why not net? Do you see how quickly we run into a problem where everybody wants to use a different metric? Whereas like why should your health insurance choice change this? You know, why should whether you participate in your retirement change it? Because that’s where net comes in. You’re trying to use needs. You know what doesn’t change through all these things? Your gross. That’s right. That’s the why on why we use gross on all these indicators is because it’s harder to manipulate. So many of you guys will have different net numbers. Some of you have different needs numbers, but I can tell you if you tell me what your gross is, we can come up with some rules of thumbs and some ideas for you that’s pretty universal across the board.
Rebie: Yeah, it’s great. Tricky Puffin, great question. Thank you for being here and for asking it.
Rebie: Let’s move on to Asher’s question. It says, “My newborn was born on Friday.” So, first of all, congratulations. Newborn Money Guy and they are first time parents, he says. So that’s amazing. That’s awesome.
Brian: You’re probably right now is like, “Where’s the instruction manual?” Where’s the FOO for kids?
Rebie: Where is it, Brian?
Brian: Well, I mean, but you know what I mean. What I mean by that, and just so I don’t get myself in trouble, I just remember when they say, “Hey, go pull the car around because we’re going to discharge you guys with that newborn.” And I remember, you know, we get to take, I barely knew how to put that car seat in the back seat. I think with the first kid I definitely went to the fire station so they could check it because that was some service that they offered in Georgia. Maybe they offer it everywhere. But so they put the kid in that car seat and then you’re riding home and you look over at your spouse and you’re like what have we done? Because you’re like did they really just give us this kid and I don’t know. I’ve read a few books but I don’t really know what I’m doing. That’s the way everybody feels Asher. So if you had this child on Friday and she’s brand new newborn, it’s going to be okay. Just the fact that you’re tuning in and you’re curious, you’re going to be a great parent.
Rebie: Oh, so sweet. All right. Well, that was just the beginning. The question says, “What are your thoughts on contribution amounts to 529 plans? I’d like to be aggressive on contributions, but we’re in the messy middle. So, what advice would you have? What guard rails would you have when it comes to investing for this new baby?”
Bo: Well, every new parent, every parent thinks this, man. I want to make sure that I’m saving for my kids. I want to make sure that I’m providing opportunities. I know that likely if they’re going to go for some higher education, college is going to be expensive and I’d like to be a mechanism to be able to help them pay for that. So, the earlier I start saving, the easier that path will be. And that’s an incredibly noble cause. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the question you have to answer for yourself, Asher, is am I doing it in the right order? It’s the very reason we came up with Brian. Will you hold that thing up for me? It’s the very reason why we came up with a financial order of operations. It’s a step-by-step process to tell you what you should do with your next dollar and when you should do those things. Because right now, if you are in the messy middle and you feel like you have a thousand different things pulling you in a thousand different directions and both money is tight as well as time is tight, putting money in the 529 may not be the best solution for you right now. The best solution may be beefing up your emergency fund or maxing out your Roth IRA or putting money in your HSA or getting to a 25% savings rate. That might be a better use because while we want to love on and take care of our kids, we often have this temptation to do that at the expense of making sure we take care of ourselves. And I think far too many parents fall into that trap. And that’s getting things out of order, out of whack.
Brian: Well, I wrote down some quick notes here. I said where in FOO. So that echoes what Bo just said. I thought that I was immediately also go figure out what the state tax benefits are in your community because some states like in Georgia forever it was $2,000. They’ve moved it up to $8,000 now. So it’s been expanded. So go figure out what your state benefits are. And then, by the way, once you know this, and if you maybe are not in the FOO step for yourself where you can fund it, there’s nothing wrong with you going and telling your parents or other loved ones that, hey, instead of giving us these expensive Christmas gifts, how about you go set up a 529 and make your grandchild the beneficiary, you could even qualify for some state tax benefits. I just figured this out. Ask your advisor or maybe you ought to consider doing this. And then here’s something just to give you peace of mind because as Bo shared, everybody wants to help these little kids, these bundles of joys that even if you’re not a kid person, as soon as you have your own, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, where did all this love come from? I’ve never thought I liked babies until I had my own baby.” And then so it’s an amazing thing that happens. But I want you to take a little pressure off yourself. I have a daughter who’s in her senior year of college. We just paid her last semester. And for her 529, the state benefit for most years that I was in the state of Georgia was $2,000. So that pretty much what I did in that 529 to maximize that benefit. And I’m happy to report that a little goes a long way. I was shocked at how well that account because realize these accounts grow for 20 years. And so 20 years of compounding growth is pretty magical. If you want to go play around with our wealth multiplier or go play around with some of our portals on moneyguy.com on what compound interest even for college can do for you, you’re going to be amazed to see that a little goes a long way. So, it takes the pressure off of you in that messy middle because you are short on time. You’re short on money. And I want you to take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay. Go use some of those tools at moneyguy.com and I think you’ll see, hey, we got you covered and you’re going to be A-OK even with a little bit of money.
Rebie: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Well, congratulations, Asher. Enjoy this newborn phase. It’ll go pretty quickly, actually. So, just enjoy it and hopefully Bo and Brian gave you some good food for thought as you make some plans for this little one.
Brian: Did she say food for thought?
Rebie: I said food for thought, but I should have said foo for thought.
Bo: Missed opportunity.
Rebie: Some more food for thought. We do have a new child checklist for free up at moneyguy.com/resources. It lets you just kind of check the boxes on your cash flow, your insurance, your taxes, your long-term planning. So, if you are…
Brian: What was the cost on that?
Rebie: It’s a free resource, Brian.
Brian: I love it. Free. It’s a free resource.
Rebie: It is. So, just go to moneyguy.com/resources if you want to check that out and just make sure your bases are covered and just think through what you need to think through before your baby comes into the world or after.
Rebie: And also on moneyguy.com, thanks for letting me show off our new search features. So, be sure to check out all of the great content that we have, more findable than ever before at moneyguy.com. And thanks for being with us. We’ll be back every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central.
Brian: I got one more distraction. Excellent. I wanted to get this out there earlier, but you know, because now we probably have six people listening to this, but it’ll be worth it. You know, Millionaire Mission came out May of last year, and we’ll have more details on some things coming up in 2026 about Millionaire Mission. People ask me all the time, is the book still doing good? I’m like, “Yeah, people are still buying it.” And it’s better than that. I still go on Amazon and read the reviews. And there was a brand new review that was dropped on December 6th, and it touched me. I mean, I got the tingles from it that I, so much so that the content meeting I read the entire, and it’s a pretty long review. Matter of fact, so long that Bo said, “Brian, don’t read that on the show.” But I would encourage because it really, here’s what that person doesn’t know when she wrote that review to me is that she embodied exactly what I was trying to do when I wrote Millionaire Mission is that I remember being a 22-year-old who had had this great education. I got an accounting degree. Didn’t even really know what that could do for me yet, but I didn’t have nobody in my life that really knew how money worked. And I had to go figure it all out piece by piece. And I was sitting there thinking, man, wouldn’t it be nice if somebody gave me what to do with my next dollar so I didn’t waste all these mental horsepower and calories and time, which is your most valuable thing. And she gave me credit for I’m changing her life. I’m changing her generational wealth in her family. And that’s just not something that’s guaranteed. And it just touched me to my heart because that was the heart of what went into writing this book was man I know I have an audience out there that’s watching and listening to the show. But I hope that this book will get in the hands of people who’ve never opened our, listened to our podcast, watched our YouTube channel, but this book would be enough to paint by the numbers to where you don’t have to have that struggle that I had of what to do with your next dollar. So, I just want to thank her personally for that review. I did read it. And it means a lot to me. So, I don’t know if she’ll see this, but it still nonetheless will show just the value and the power of what we’re doing here with the Money Guy Show.
Rebie: Love that. I probably need to close the show now, don’t I? Your show. You can do, yeah, you can do that.
Brian: Lovely. So, that’s that. Go for it. I get caught up on the like I said it gave me the tingles but it really does, it gives me the why of what we’re actually doing here is that this thing started with the purest of intent is that I always wanted to be a school teacher and so I had the heart of an educator and really didn’t realize this was the greatest marketing idea ever. So that’s why I love that the why was there first before all the dividends and the fruit came from it. You guys can see what drives this engine. And that’s why I just please take advantage of the free stuff. I kept making drawing attention that if you go to moneyguy.com/resources, the website’s free. Now, yes, we do have some paid tools and courses, but that’s stuff that’s just used to accelerate your journey because what we really want to do is let you love on you so much, use so much of this free content that you one day realize that, holy cow, I guess this is that complexity of success that Brian and Bo are always talking about, and you’ll consider taking the relationship to the next level. I’m your host, Brian, Bo, Rebie, and the rest of the Money Guy team. Money Guy out.
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