This One Expense Is Breaking People’s Retirement

Healthcare Costs Breaking Retirement (0:12)

Brian: This one expense is breaking people’s retirement.

Bo: Brian, I am so excited to talk about this because I think so often people don’t think about this. They don’t plan for it. They don’t take it in consideration. And this expense can be a huge part of how much you spend when you actually retire.

Bo: Oh, I think they think about it. It’s just they think about it at the wrong time. So that’s what we’re hopefully going to be able to put the train back on the tracks so you don’t fall into this trap for your own retirement. So we found that 63% of Americans, this is according to eHealth, 63% of Americans age 60 to 70 say that health care costs are their top concern in retirement. It’s the number one thing that they’re worried about that could potentially derail their retirement plan. Now this ranks higher than if you look at number two and three. It was running out of money was 58%, inflation was 53%. But I know a lot of you are probably looking left to right and you go, “Guys, I’m not 60 to 70.” We know you’re not 60 to 70. We know what our demographics are for our audience. But this is still something I think you ought to pay attention to because think about this. The majority of bankruptcies in America is because of medical things that are happening. So healthcare is not something just for retirees. We need to be thinking about this for all of us because this definitely falls into the financial order of operations of making sure you don’t put your life in the ditch because you haven’t prepared accordingly.

Brian: And when we actually look at numbers, we can put some hard data to this. Fidelity does an annual study and they found that the average 65-year-old retiring in 2025 can expect to spend over $172,000 on health care and medical expenses in retirement. So, this is stuff like out-of-pocket drug costs, Medicare Part B and Part D, co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, all the things that get wrapped into health care fall into this number. And it is substantial for most retirees. And then I think if you roll that in, this is back to I think people don’t think about this until it’s too late. Because if you look at the next stat, one in five Americans say they have never considered health care needs in retirement. So remember what I was talking about. Yes, you’re not in that 60 to 70 age group of who was interviewed for this survey, but you definitely probably fall into the category of just not giving this enough mental awareness.

Bo: Yeah, I think even though it says one in five have never considered it, that means that one in five have never planned for it, have never factored it into their retirement plan. And what makes me concerned about that is that if we fail to plan for something, if we fail to think about it ahead of the time, it’s going to make it that much harder. I mean, when we sit down with clients, Brian, one of the things we want to do is we want to kind of iterate what are all the possible outcomes that we could see? What are all the things that we think could happen? What are all the unknown unknowns that we could apply some estimations to? And the better we can do that, the better prepared we can be for retirement. And yet one in five folks aren’t even thinking about this. It’s not even crossing their radar. So the ultimate question then becomes, okay, well, you sitting out there in audience land, what can you do?

Health Savings Accounts (3:20)

Brian: Well, you know, once again, applying this back to the financial order of operations, we love the fact that why not start out and see if you even qualified for a health savings account.

Bo: Yeah. And for those of you that don’t know, HSA, health savings account, is literally a triple tax advantage savings vehicle. When you put money in, you can get a tax deduction on the front end. If you’re like 13% of Americans that recognize this, you can then invest those dollars to grow for the future. And if you use it for qualified medical expenses, you get to pull those dollars out completely tax-free. So you get a tax deduction on the front end, tax deferred growth and then tax-free distributions for medical. It is literally triple tax advantage. It is an amazing savings vehicle that you can use both for current or intermediate term medical expenses as well as future retirement medical expenses.

Brian: Even in our show meeting this morning, one of our video editors when he saw the $173,000 that Fidelity estimated, he goes, “That’s a big number.” But then you jumped right to this point. And this is something we want to kind of change everybody’s perspective. Remember, you more than likely, if you’re watching this and you’re in our key demo, you’re somewhere between 25 to 45 years of age. Your number is not the same as the 60 to 70 year old. So look at this. A 20-year-old who woke up and realized, “Oh my gosh, I better make sure I have my health care covered in the future.” We’re only talking $33 a month or $4,000, a little under $5,000 lump sum right now. For the 30 year old, $76 a month, a little under $11,000. For the 40-year-old, more realistic probably thinking about these type of things, $182 a month or a little under $24,000. And even for the 50-year-old, my fellow brethren, actually, I’m older than that now, it’s $499 a month or a lump sum of around $52,000. Still a big chunk of money, but if you take that into that’s a third, less than a third of the $173,000 that is sitting out there waiting for people as they approach retirement.

Bo: Yeah. I think when we think about $173,000, it’s this big mountain that we think we have to overcome. But what you just said, Brian, whether you are age 20 all the way out to age 50, if you can just save somewhere between $30 to $500 and you can just do that consistently, you can be prepared for these expenses. These don’t have to be things that slip up on you. So, a little bit of preparation can go a long way. And that is also true in how you incur your health care costs later on in life. And so one of the things that we would encourage you is be proactive with your health. Obviously the decisions that you’re making today, no matter what age you are, will have implications to the standard of living that you have later in life. So the earlier you can make healthy decisions around how you feed your body, how you move your body, and how you recover your body, the earlier you figure that out, the likely the lower the probability is you’re going to have higher health care costs later on in retirement.

Brian: Bo just put a lot of words to basically saying health is wealth. That’s it. And look, Bo has done a great job of keeping himself fit, but he’s always just kept himself game ready. Let’s be honest here. Whereas I am the before picture that has definitely created. So I think I would be on the pitcher element of somebody who just took my health for granted and then one day realized you know what probably in my late 30s about the time Bo is right now I realize you know what I’m not headed to be where I want to be from a health perspective maybe financially and I think a lot of you guys if you look at yourself in the mirror you’ll say yeah I’m doing a great job as a financial mutant but am I applying the same discipline am I applying the same mindset of I’m preparing for the future with deferred gratification to my health. And I think if you put it through that lens, a lot of you, like I said, you’re in that key demo, 25 to 45 years of age, go ahead and start investing in that right now. Because you know what’s great about being a financial mutant and having all this wealth that will come to you at a later date is being healthy and being able to actually use this and create memories and live your best life, not only financially, but also from a health perspective.

Bo: There’s no point in having all the money saved up and not actually being able to enjoy, not actually being able to carry out those goals that you have. And if you’re a financial mutant, this is just something worth noodling in the back of your mind. It is less expensive to prepare to be healthy than to wait and get sick and have to spend money. That prevention is much cheaper. So, if you can begin making those decisions early on, there’s a really good chance that you can set yourself up for success. But maybe you are someone who is later on in your working life cycle and you’re thinking about entering into this stage where you have to make some decisions around things like when am I going to take social security or how am I going to cover my health care costs? Make sure that when you get to that stage, you measure two, three, four times and you select your Medicare plan carefully because the fact is the type of insurance you select when you hit age 65 can have a huge impact on the costs that you incur as you move through retirement.

Complexity of Success (8:42)

Brian: Well, I think that this transition is perfect is because we’re not the only people that say health is wealth. You can go out there and find so much content on eating better, living better, exercising, but when you go out there and try to find content on how do you choose the best Medicare plan, it gets much much harder. You know why? Because once again, personal finance is very personal and everybody’s got different structures. They’ve got different health needs. So, it all gets very personalized very quickly. And that’s why it’s a great transition, guys. As you create success, we can give you all the content in the world telling you how to get there, but you’re going to quickly realize as you create success, it’s going to have more complexity in your personal life. Not only for your health, but for your finances. And that’s why we say this is why we can fulfill the abundance cycle. We can give you all this free information because we know if you just do what we tell you to do, you’re going to be so successful that you go, “Okay, this must be what the guys are talking about because I just need to know what Medicare plan to do. I don’t know what to do. There’s a lot of options for me.” And we’re going to leave the porch light on for you and let you know we are taking clients all across the country. This has been the greatest success point that my passion that started in 2006 and then we fulfilled this thing where we hopefully give you all this free education to be the best version of yourself. There is a payoff point down the road after you’ve created monstrous success that you’ll say, “Hey, I remember those guys planting those seeds in me. I would love to, you know those seeds of information that have turned into nuggets of just gold, wealth, and just living my best life. Why not give these guys a chance?”

Bo: There are unknown unknowns that are going to come your way when you retire and when you reach financial independence. If you can plan for them, if you can think through them, if you can have some logical problem solving while you’re in your working years, they don’t have to be scary. They don’t have to be frightening. Yes, there are going to be things that are unknown. Yes, there are going to be costs that you did not know were going to happen. But the better you can plan, the more comfort you can have when you reach that stage. And that’s exactly what we’re here for. We want to take all the confusion and all the chaos and we want to turn that into confidence. That’s why we show up here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. to load you guys up because we want you to be confident in your great big beautiful tomorrow. We want you to understand that there is a better way to do money. And so if you have a question that you want us to weigh in on, that you want to get our take on, make sure you get it in the chat right now. We’ve got the team out in the wings collecting your questions so that we can load you up. So, with that, creative director Rebie, I’m going to throw it over to you.

Financial Mutant Survey Reminder (11:31)

Rebie: Yeah, I have some questions queued up. And I just wanted to share there’s another way that you can tell us what you care about, what you’re working on in your financial life, and what your situation looks like. And that is going to inform us so that we can make some really awesome episodes that show where the Financial Mutant family is and their journey and also hopefully speak to some of the pain points that we see. And that thing that you need to go do to help us do that is our financial mutant survey. You can go to moneyguy.com/survey. And today is your last chance to take it. So that’s why I had to tell you about it at least one more time because we would love for your voice to be included in that. So go to moneyguy.com/survey. It’ll just take like four or five minutes tops to fill out and it will really help us build the show and hopefully make it even more helpful for you.

Brian: Well, I resemble this in the fact that all the time, you know, you’re listening to your favorite podcasts or you see something come across on YouTube and you go, “Oh, that’s super exciting. I want to do that.” But then time passes and you’re like, “I didn’t do it.” So guys, this is don’t be the procrastinator. This is the last day to do these surveys and it’s super exciting for us because I was blown away when we started doing surveys on our millionaire clients. I loved the content that came out of that because it reminded me of Millionaire Next Door and I remember how motivating that was for me when I read that book for the first time. So to be able to kind of take it decades in the future now and update the data to what our clients doing. And then when we had the brilliant idea that we were like, you know what, maybe we ought to see where the financial mutants of our audience overlap with our clients so we can kind of know who’s out there listening to our content. Ding, ding, ding. That happened last year and you guys showed up in force. But we’ve actually realized it’s like most things. Last year we’ll call it the beta. You know, we didn’t know what we were doing completely. It was great content that came out of that, but this year it’s even better because we already have two or three show ideas. We just need the data to now kind of shape that content even better. And so this is the new and improved version. So, I really would strongly encourage you, please, if you want to help shape financial mutant content, go out to moneyguy.com/survey and get that in there because this is your last day. We’re not going to pepper you with too much stuff, but we do want to kind of make sure that we get that data in the system so we can create great content.

Bo: What I love is how well synced our team is because I was literally going to lean over and say, “Hey guys, we ought to do a poll. Have you done,” and as I’m thinking that in my mind, it pops up right here wondering, have you done the survey yet? I’d love to know just in our live stream audience and like our diehard hardcore group of folks, have you done the survey yet?

Brian: Isn’t there gonna be some bias in that survey?

Brian: Yeah, because if you did the survey, if you did the survey, you gonna be proud to say I did the survey. If you’re a procrastinator, you’re like, “Well, I don’t want to let that,” this is a human psychology, social contract. You’re going to see it like, “I’m going to do the survey real fast. Come back, click yes, and it’s all good.” Because 97% of the audience said yes. And it’ll be like 300 people did it out of, you know, the thousands of people in the live stream. I don’t know.

Brian: That’s, oh, you’re right. Hey, let’s take down the survey quick to get rid of it. I don’t know. Okay, shame on me.

Rebie: Let’s jump into some questions because like I said, I’ve got a lot of good ones queued up. The first one is from—

Brian: You’re missing something. What? This is a Tumbler day.

Rebie: I was going to tell them that after the question.

Bo: Brian, now the questions are going to come in. No, no, I like it. I like it. That’s totally fine. I’m just giving you—

Rebie: If you do have a burning question today, we would love to put a Tumbler in your hand. So, make sure you get the question in the chat right now, answer your question, and we’d love to send you a Tumbler.

Dividends and Capital Gains in 25% Savings Rate (15:22)

Rebie: And so we will kick it off with Carly N. She says, “Can you count reinvesting dividends and capital gains into your saving 25%? I make over $10K in passive dividends and paying taxes keeps me below the 25% savings rate.”

Bo: Okay, I got to think through the math of this. The answer is no. But let me make sure I understand the question. “I make over $10K in passive and paying taxes keeps me below the 25% savings rate.” In my mind when we think about dividends and capital gains or capital gain distributions those are two components of return. So when we invest there’s generally two different ways that we get a return on an investment. We either get income that flows in that’s dividend or we get price appreciation. I bought a thing for $10 now it’s worth $12. Like those are the two ways that we get returns. So when I think about dividends and capital gains coming in, I’m thinking about that in terms of a total return perspective. That is an ROI, return on my investment. What I don’t get to do is I don’t get to say, “Oh, well, my portfolio did so well, I don’t need to do my part.” No, no, no. Until I reach financial independence, until I have defined what my number is, until I understand what’s the goal that I’m trying to work towards, I still need to be saving 25% of my gross income. But what’s fun is, and if you’ve not done this, we have a number of milestone episodes that you should go check out. What’s fun is is right now you see those dividends and those interest. I think you said it was like $10,000 that just came in for you this past year on that. That’s amazing. What gets really exciting is when the amount your portfolio makes in terms of dividends and capital appreciation is bigger than what you save. That’s awesome. And then what about when the amount that you have in dividends and appreciation is more than what you spend? That’s awesome. And then what happens when you reach that point that the dividends and capital gains and appreciation you see from your portfolio actually makes more money than you do? It actually is working harder than you. That’s when the seesaw begins to tip towards financial independence. And so what you’re looking at is awesome, but it is not permission yet to take your foot off the gas pedal.

Brian: Yeah, I love it. You know, we do have that resource because people are like, where did this 25% even come from? So if you go out to moneyguy.com/resources, we have, you know, what you should be saving or what 25% can do for you. So how much you should save is actually what the resource is titled. The content team threw it up there really quick. I know I’m slow. No, no, it was like three different names, but we’ve caught it all. I was trying to give the content team enough time to give me the little prompt to be able to see it. Bo kind of shared, you know, I hate giving only bad news because we just basically said no, you don’t get to count that because that’s part of the rate of return. So I wanted to kind of give the offset of first the motivation. Why, where did we come up with 25%? That’s what we’ve already shown you that illustration. I will give you one little asterisk that does offset this is that if your income, household income is less than $200,000 for a married couple, $100,000 for a single individual, you can actually count your employer match in that number though because that’s where a lot of people will get overwhelmed by the 25% especially if you’re in your 20s where it’s very much an aspirational goal because you’re just brand new to this whole wealth building journey. It’s nice if your employer especially if you have a really generous employer. We have employers out there who are doing, you know, somewhere between 7 to 10%, you can imagine if the goal is 25% and you have an employer doing 10%, this thing gets a lot easier at 15%. So go out there and take advantage of that match offset. And then maybe you’re somebody because when I first read this, I read the $10,000 as bigger than per year. You know, this was it could have been, which it’s not, but I’m just saying. But it’s important because we’re giving you a benchmark of what you should be saving because you’re at the beginning of your journey. And sometimes those benchmarks or rules of thumbs or other things we can give you are great starting points because it makes something that’s somewhat complex with lots of variables something very approachable and easy. But there will come a point once your assets and that’s why I love that Bo was talking about the milestone episodes we do. There will come a point to where your income coming in from the portfolio or the appreciation or the change in value is going to match either what your savings rate is or even what your income is. And you’re going to quickly start realizing, hey, that savings rate means less to me because my assets are at some critical mass or boiling point that has obviously changed for me. So, I need to know if I’m ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where I need to be. And that’s where we’ve tried to create resources with the Know Your Number, but also ultimately it ends to the abundance cycle is that if you have started being the field general or the CEO or chief financial officer for a soon-to-be approaching seven figure enterprise, get some help because you just don’t know what you don’t know. And we’d love to leave the porch lights on for you to help fulfill that abundance cycle so that you don’t have to try to figure this out the first time and only time you’re going to approach this. You’ll have somebody who’s done this hundreds of times.

Bo: Love it. Can I throw one more little thing out there? You may. You know, me personally, what I like to do in my portfolio, I like to have all my dividends and all those capital gain distributions automatically reinvest. One of the beautiful things is when you do that inside of your account, it naturally just sort of creates some automated dollar cost averaging. Now, if you’re someone who’s taking distributions or you need the capital for some reason, maybe it makes sense to pay into cash. But if you’re someone who’s just buying like low-cost index funds and it’s things that you don’t mind purchasing more of, I love those automatically reinvesting so that 100% of those dividends and 100% of those capital gains that come out just end up going right back in making this thing rock and roll.

Brian: This is outside the question, but I fell prey because I fall prey to social media trends just like you guys who are watching the audience. A few years ago, this is the worst performing asset in my portfolio. And that’s not a testament for or against what I’m about to share with you. There was a trend on social media that said if you drink Starbucks coffee if you will just go put this sum of money into Starbucks coffee their dividends will essentially buy you a cup of coffee every, you know, I figured out how much coffee I drink. It’s not a ton. It’s not like Bo level, but it was enough to where I figured out how many shares I need to buy and then through the automatic reinvestments, it’s buying that much in coffee. I’ve done that. It actually, it is fun from a non-financial perspective. It is fun seeing on my quarterly statement the reinvestment of those shares.

Bo: All those cups of coffee coming in.

Brian: All those cups of coffees coming in. But I’ll tell you from overall because we all know return is made of multiple components. It’s not only the dividends, it’s also what does the stock price do from a capital appreciation. And it’s had some fits and starts. You know, there was a time where it was really good and then I’ve quickly realized Starbucks, you know, it has some ups and downs. It’s not the S&P 500. Interesting stuff. But I don’t like being transparent that if you get caught up in those trends, it’s okay as long as it is part of the fun money, right? You know, that essentially the basket of vacation money. It’s not the eating money part.

Bo: Love it. Vacation money, not eating money. Absolutely.

Rebie: Carly N, thank you for the question. Since we used your question on the live stream, we’d love to send you a Tumbler. Email [email protected].

Bo: Awesome. Did you see the I think our poll results came in.

Rebie: They’re here. Yes. We have 76%. Look at that. Have taken the financial mutant survey already. And we’ve got 23% who said they will right after this. So 23% that’s like one in four of you need to go take that survey so we can get—

Brian: Look at our honest audience though. I mean because I would assume if you had no, you just it’s easy just to stay silent and not but our audience our financial mutants like yeah I’ll tell them I haven’t done it yet.

Rebie: Yeah we did have a few comments too saying like just took it, just took it. So, we appreciate you guys. We tried to make it moneyguy.com/survey.

Mega Backdoor Roth Explanation (23:40)

Rebie: Levi S has the next question. It says, “Can you explain what a real-world use of the mega backdoor Roth would look like? For example, I get paid weekly and after maxing my 401(k), I would like to put $100 a week into the mega backdoor.” So, can you explain how this actually works?

Bo: Sure can. You want me to or you want to go?

Brian: No, we can explain. I’m just, at first—

Bo: Yeah, Brian brain is working.

Brian: No, no. When I’ve done the episodes on Mega Back Door, I think of what’s the type of predator, apex predator? There is nobody. So, I always think about, you know, so immediately you think about like great white sharks, but then you’re like, “No, but I think orcas take out great white sharks, so they’re not an apex predator.” And then I start for somehow this transitions into Godzilla and you know fighting in the city and, in your eyes, oh my gosh you know how do you use this super powerful entity that you’ve set up. So mega back door is Godzilla now.

Bo: All this happened in your mind, which is where my brain goes. I saw the wheel, but here’s where this is why you saw my face go, you know, it was like the air, you almost like a pin prick and where it’s deflating. I saw $100 a week and I was like, well, okay, that’s more of like a little extra because mega, what makes mega is I mean we’re talking about you can go up to what’s the new threshold under 415 limits? Is it $70,000?

Brian: $70,000. That’s Godzilla scream big. When you see $70,000, when you see $100 a week, I hear, you know, it’s a predator. It just might be a barracuda or something swimming around in the water. What sounds do barracuda make? I don’t know. They scare you. They still scare you though. If you see them in the ocean, that fish got teeth.

Bo: So, for those of you that don’t know, when you contribute money to your 401(k), most often we know that we have two different ways we can do that. We can do pre-tax contributions or we can do Roth contributions. But there is a third type of contribution that is allowable if your plan has implemented this and that’s called an after tax contribution. And the way that after tax contributions naturally work is you put money in, you don’t get a tax deduction. Those dollars then grow tax deferred and then when you go to pull that money out in retirement, you get your contributions back tax-free, but you got to pay ordinary income tax on the earnings. That’s the way that it normally works. And so Levi saying, “Hey, okay, walk me through how this works practically.” Well, a lot of plans will work in such a way they say, “Hey, before you can even do after tax, you got to max out your salary deferral. You got to max out the $23,500 into your either pre-tax or your Roth and then you can start doing after tax.” So, it sounds like Levi’s done that and now he wants $100 every single week to be going into his after tax bucket. Well, my first question for Levi would be, man, if you’ve already maxed out the $23,500 at this point through the year, you’ve been saving like a certain dollar amount every paycheck, why drop down to only 100 bucks? It’s exactly what Brian said. The great thing about after tax contributions is you can go all the way up to the section 415 limit of $70,000. They are not capped at the $23,500. So, one of the things that you can do if your plan allows is you can every week or every pay period put money into the after-tax contribution. Well, then if your plan allows it, you can either convert those after tax contributions to Roth or you can do an in-service rollover where you take that after tax money that you put into the after tax portion of the 401(k), convert it to Roth or roll it to Roth and now you’ve turned those dollars into tax-free dollars. And once they start growing on the Roth side of your ledger, not only are your contributions going to be able to be pulled out tax-free, but also all the earnings that those contributions make are going to be able to be pulled out tax-free. So it is an amazing thing to figure out, okay, one, is it available to me? Does my plan allow it? Does my plan allow either the in-service rollover or in-service conversion? And am I at the place in the financial order of operations? Have I thought through this that I’m in step six and I’ve gone to step seven where it makes sense for me to do mega back door or might I be better served if I’m going to go into the after tax bucket and I want to start building up that third bucket. You want to think through when I think about my next dollar, what’s the very best next use of it? And if you’re someone who happens to have the mega backdoor available might be something worth taking advantage of.

Brian: And I think to my point, put words to bring this back in even better perspective context is that 52 weeks, that’s how many weeks are in a year. $100 a week, that’s $5,200. That’s less than what you can even put in the Roth IRA. So when I first heard this question, Levi, I was like, it sounds like I would just confirm if you make too much money to do a Roth IRA contribution, we would have you under the financial order of operations under step five at least check out the backdoor Roth contribution if you have the right account structure and then of course get to step six which is max out. But that’s why when I saw the number was less than even what the annual IRA contribution limits are, it didn’t feel, I didn’t know if it meant if it really wanted mega because mega means we’re going well beyond what we can annually put in what the government typically allows you to put into the Roth or 401(k). It was more Barracuda than Godzilla.

Bo: Definitely. Got it. Barracuda versus Godzilla. There you go.

Rebie: Levi, thank you for the question. Just email [email protected] if you’d like a Money Guy Tumbler.

Nate Bargatze Sidebar (29:37)

Brian: Can I have one another sidebar? I know we have a lot to get through, but I just can’t help myself. So, last night I needed to, I was in between books and y’all know where I’m going with this. I downloaded and I’m a little disappointed in our audience. I’m a little disappointed. And I don’t know if Nate put this in there as an Easter egg or a love letter to me. And I just I want him to know that I had the secret decoder ring and I saw it, Nate. I just wanted you to know I saw it. And if you planted the seed, I’m here. I’m here for it because you know he lives not too far from here. I know that might be a little but it could have been because what’s the odds that he has the same speech impediment that I have? If you listen, okay, give everyone the context. You haven’t said who this is or what you were listening to. Only us are on the inside. Let’s let all of our friends onto the inside of this.

Brian: So I don’t offend the guy I’m trying to win over, Nate’s last name. Bargatze. Yeah. Nate Bargatze. Did I get it right?

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. You nailed that. Okay. He was going to give me grace because I have the same speech impediment he has. But if you listen, he has this book out. I don’t even know how long the book’s out. It was just it was in my audible suggestion list and I was like, you know what, I like Nate, so let me go ahead and hit the, yeah, I’ll listen to this. And it was Big Dumb Eyes. Not big demise, big dumb eyes. You know, this is like I said, we have the same speech impediment. So his jokes work for me, too. The thing though is if you listen to the intro chapter, there is a section where he’s going to go. He’s setting up essentially the ground rules to listen to his audio book. And one of the things he says that he struggles with is he was like, “Bull and boil are going to sound the same.” Like Super Bowl is going to sound the same as boiled peanuts. And I was like, “Oh my god, he obviously knows about the boiling point and knows I struggle with the exact same issue.” So I was excited that Nate had planted this seed out there for me to discover essentially to go out there and unearth. This is like, you know, all these new kids do all this geosplunking where they go around and find like a bottle and then they sign their name on it with the coordinates. Nate put that stuff out there for me. I found it. Shame on my financial mutants. Either we don’t overlap or you guys just nobody brought it to our attention because I think this book’s been out for a while. Yeah. I would have thought you guys when you heard that he couldn’t say those B words that we were in the same boat.

Bo: Maybe they just haven’t read it yet and you’re just spreading the word.

Rebie: Or here’s the crazy thing. Maybe they read it and didn’t listen, read it.

Bo: Maybe they started since Nate really does not live far from here. That is true. If you read it, you wouldn’t have, he wouldn’t have had a—

Brian: Now, if you guys will start peppering him with, “Hey, I found this book because Brian from the Money Guy Show was telling me he suffers from the same speech impediment being southern as you, Nate.” You know, maybe we can make some collab happen here.

Bo: I love it. Could you imagine a react video with Bargatze? That’d be awesome. Hey Nate, if you’re out there, we’d love to do a react video with you.

Rebie: I was just making sure Brian had told his whole story.

Brian: It’s just the odds that that needle is planted in that hay stack. I think it was a love letter to me. I think it was for me.

Bo: Brian played us the clip this morning and it was very, it was very on brand for Brian speaking to him a little bit.

Brian: Oh my gosh. You should have seen me walk in the neighborhood when I heard that clip. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to clip this so I can play it for the content team because what’s the odds?”

Rebie: All right, let’s dive back into personal finance questions. It’s okay. I loved it. It was a boiling point, boiling point sidebar that people needed to know about.

Bo: Well, we got a question from before you had the Tesla. Yeah. When you had to take your car in for maintenance every like 3 to 5,000 miles. Yeah. What were you taking it in for?

Brian: Oil changes.

Bo: Oil changes. Yeah, just making sure. I just making sure I want to make an oil change.

Brian: Oh, people say that weird. I say that weird.

Bo: Well, it’s just the last half of boil. You know, the other thing I’m surprised he didn’t bring up is birthday and then like Monday, Tuesday.

Brian: Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, southern people we say it a little different. It’s at the end. It’s e at the end. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Bo: Oh yeah. Thursday. I can keep going on this Rebie if you need.

Rebie: I’ll just go into the question. You know, I think we’ve heard enough. Thank you, though.

Social Security Timing (34:13)

Rebie: All right. Rempo has a question. It says, “Is it better to wait to age 70 to claim social security so the benefits max out while drawing down your portfolio or claim early and let your army of dollars keep working?”

Brian: If you know, look, the easy answer is that yeah, we want you to take it at 70. And I’ll tell you the positives, but I’ll tell you why that’s not the perfect answer because personal finance is personal. A lot of people don’t realize that full retirement age, a magical thing happens once you hit full retirement age and then the deferral to age 70 is that your benefits will go up 8% per year and there’s not too many guaranteed rates of return that are that high as 8%. So that’s why there is a lot of school of thoughts if you don’t need the money, deferring social security is a good thing but there is a big thing in the background that I’m a victim of my family is and anybody who else has lost a loved one at a young age is that if you die without taking your benefits and say your spouse and you make about the same amount of money so it’s not like one has a big benefit over the other, your death benefit on social security is like $255. So, there’s, now look, I’m glossing over some other benefits because there are survivor benefits, but like I said, that’s why I put that caveat. If you make about the same amount of money as your spouse, those survivor benefits just ain’t as, they’re not as popping as they would be if there was a big disparity there. So, I don’t know if I left any meat on the bones for you, but the answer to your question, Rempo, you said, “Is it better?” And the answer is it depends.

Bo: And a lot of people don’t recognize that the decisions you make around social security can have huge implications in retirement. And we mean huge to like hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on your unique circumstance. We have had clients that have retired early. And we have recommended, “Hey, you need to start drawing at 62. And here’s why.” Even though you’re going to take a reduction from your full retirement age benefit, but based on their account structure based on their living needs, age 62 made the most sense. There have been other clients who said, “Hey, you really need to wait until age 67 because you’re still earning income or whatever else. We don’t want you to get penalized because of income that you’re making.” And then there have been others where we’ve said, “Hey, it makes sense you make all the way till 70 because it’s some of the best longevity protection you can have inside of your portfolio.” But then it’s not only an individual decision when it comes to social security. If you are someone who’s married, then it gets even more nuanced because you might even say, “Okay, well, I’m going to start drawing early on my record at 62, but then when my spouse hits full retirement age, they’re going to start drawing and based on the disparity between our earnings, I’m actually going to get an increase to the spousal benefit.” And so, it can be incredibly nuanced. And so often we’ll see people come in and we’ll kind of work through this social security analysis with them and we’ll recognize, “Hey, the plan that you had or the plan that you’re leaving some money on the table like you should really think through.” And we’ve even had this before where somebody said, “Oh, you know, I’m going to start drawing at 62 because I paid in. I want to get my money out. I’m nervous about it.” And we’ve actually walked them through the analysis saying, “Hey, just so you know, this is how much it’s costing you by making this decision. Let’s actually make the decision to go undo this election. Let’s see if we can go back in time and change this because it was that significant of a change.” So, social security is one of those things you want to make sure you make the decision well and you factor in all the other pieces of your financial life because it can have huge implications when it comes to your retirement.

Brian: So the big thing because I think social security is one of those it’s part of the public, do you know, discussion we always, social security is just part of society but I think it has very strong emotions depend upon how it’s been used or for me forever I was so mad about social security because of what it did for my family with my dad dying in his 50s and watching those benefits just evaporate to where my gut reaction at first was when I turn 62 I’m taking that money. Don’t let this be an emotional decision. There is actually a lot of moving parts. And it is once again back to the personal in personal finance. So just don’t let those falsehoods or those other things that you know just kind of somehow seep into our beings guide you into thinking this is what you’re going to do with social security. There’s actually a big analysis that needs to go into it where it’s very personalized, not driven by emotions, but actually what the nuts and bolts of your financial success are built off of.

Bo: Love it.

Rebie: That’s great, Rempo. Thank you for your question. We’d love to send you a Money Guy Tumbler since we featured your question on the show. Just email [email protected].

Employer Stopping 401k Match (39:14)

Rebie: Next question is from Cranny. That’s great. It says, “My employer just announced they are going to stop matching our 401(k) contributions, which is a bummer. Any advice on what I should be doing or changing, which is a great question because 401(k) match is step two in the financial order of operations for a reason.”

Brian: I would love to know, I’ll let Bo do the technical part, but I would love to know the context on why an employer announces that because that sometimes can be a very big red flag. Sure. I would first want to go know the financial strength of my company. If they were shutting down because most employers when you turn on doing these benefits, you kind of know this is a switch. When I flip this switch, I kind of need to be prepared that I’m going to fund this every year. Because, you know, it’s kind of a promise I’m making to my employees. And so for an employer to now say we’re going to shut down doing matching funds, I’d love to know is there a, is it going, is that money going to something else? Are they firing up a pension in the background or a cash balance plan where the same amount of money is being diverted to be used in a better or more strategic way or is this a red flag that there might be problems in the operations of this company? I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just trying to tell you this is one of those things when I see a change in benefits I’m like hm I wonder what’s going on.

Bo: Now, to us and working with the owners and we’ve analyzed they had a match on their plan in place because that’s the way it was set up you know 8, 10, 12, 15 years ago and what happened is when we analyzed we said you know what hey this match is actually costing a lot of money it would be more effective for you to move away from this match over to some sort of safe harbor formula where we’re going to do non-elective contribution. So it could be that. It could be that perhaps, not perhaps it is one of these red flags you ought to look at. And so what do you do? Well, first thing I think you should do is I think you should stop and go to moneyguy.com/resources and download your copy of the financial order of operations because Rebie already alluded to this. Employer match is step two. It’s a free money step in the financial order of operations. But now, if that ends up going away, I want you to retriage your situation. I want you to say, “Okay, do I have any high interest debt? Do I have high consumer loans? Do I have high auto loans? Do I have credit card debt? Should I now redeploy what I was doing to get my match to go extinguish that? No. Okay, great. Do I have a fully funded emergency fund? Do I have at least 3 to six months of my living expenses in liquid cash readily available for the unknown unknowns of life?” Okay, we got that check. Boom. Then I go to step five. Am I doing my Roth IRA? If I’m married, is my spouse doing their Roth IRA? Are we doing a spousal Roth IRA? And am I eligible for a health savings account? Am I putting money into an HSA? Okay, if I check that, boom, then I get back to step six. Then I can say, okay, even without a match, there are still compelling reasons to fund a 401(k). There are great tax benefits. I either put the money in and get a tax deduction on the front end if I’m justified in doing so or maybe I put money in the Roth and even if I’m not getting a match, there’s still some really exciting tax benefits that can happen from that happening and compounding through time. So, I think in your situation, Cranny, what I would do is I’d go back, rework through the FOO, and figure out where those dollars will best be deployed.

Rebie: Well, Cranny, thank you for the question. I think that you got a lot to think about there and a lot to consider. If you would like to sip on some coffee while you consider from a Money Guy Tumbler, just email [email protected] because we would love to send you one or to keep that icy beverage cold as a koozie. It could also be a koozie as Brian proudly models for us on the show.

Bo: Are we, I’m seeing we got some audio issues. Everything everything good back there audio team? We all cool? Okay. Looks like they didn’t, seems good on our end. A bunch of people in chat said the audio was kind of cutting in and out. So just make sure it’s not something on our end that’s happening. We will double check that for sure.

Brian: And if they wonder if this is really live and we really look, we really look at the chat. It’s really live. We actually do. Bo does. Rebie does. They don’t let this guy see it. We don’t let him see the, like squirrel. I thought it would be hilarious. What if we had a huge screen in the back of the studio like the chat was just, he would be like just reading. Did you listen to Cranny’s question? Like sorry I got distracted.

Private Equity for Accredited Investors (44:00)

Rebie: All right, we do have some more questions. Let’s go on to David G’s question. It says, “What are your thoughts about private equity investments for someone when they first reach the point of qualifying to be an accredited investor?”

Brian: Hang on, we have to start the question over because this is to prove the point of what we were just talking about. Somebody in our advisory team just sent a money guy blast because we got an audience member who said something really nice about us to the advisory team and they just blasted it to the team. Well, that notification shows up on my watch. So, I’m over here and I’m like, “Oh, don’t read it, Brian. Don’t read it.” So, we just proved the point. Okay, start the question.

Bo: That’s a great example of like who doesn’t see the, you’re gonna have to take off your wearables now. You’re going have to like take off the watch during the show now. Yeah, that’s hilarious.

Rebie: All right, let’s start this over. David G asks, “What are your thoughts about private equity investments for someone when they reach the point of qualifying to be an accredited investor?” And we should probably define what an accredited investor is.

Bo: So, Brian, you have some experience with private equity and where you’ve seen that be used and recommended. So, what are your thoughts on this one? Because it sounds like it’s my microphone that’s cutting out.

Brian: Oh my gosh. Oh wow. You have to answer this question. I feel like my spaghetti moment just kicked in here. Eminem’s starting to play in the background. That’s all right. We’re ready for it. Here’s the thing. Yes. When I was working for a very large fee only firm, we put clients, it wasn’t just private equity. We did a lot of private placements. We would structure real estate deals. We’d structure hedge funds. We’d structure all kind of things where we would go market to our wealthy clients. “Hey, this is where you should put your money in.” And look, a lot of these things, they can be very good. I mean, one of my neighbors works for a private equity firm and they seem like they have tremendous success for how they’re managing money. And I assume, you know, so a lot of these things, they do well, but it’s all like anything else. Who are you going into business with? Because they’re not all created equally. And is this, so that’s one thing. Is this private equity firm that you’re thinking about investing in going to be cream of the crop or are they just, you know, taking advantage of this is what rich people think they should be doing and they’ve put together this product that they’re now marketing well to get you in or, you know the other thing I always say is do you need it? Because what I found when I was managing people’s money at this other firm is that there were a lot of incentives for us to put the clients in this because realize when you put a client into a private placement this product probably they can’t get out of for 7 to 10 years. I mean it is going to, there is going to be, it is going to be something that will lock them down for close to 7 to 10 years likely. Can you imagine from a client retention perspective that’s brilliant. I mean, that’s a feature of you putting your wealthy clients in this thing. The other thing is that once again, the whole accredited investor. What’s accredited investor? Accredited investor means you have enough money that the government’s saying, “Hey, you’re rich enough that we’re not going to put the basic protections that we require on the general public to make sure you’re not getting ripped off and other things. We’re stripping a lot of those protections away because you’re rich enough that you know, buyer beware because you’re on your own.” And that’s why they’re required to give you all these offering packages and other things and they’ll write down the date that you received it is because then they can go, you know, this is a rich person. They’re not protected. We can take their money if we need it. I’m oversimplifying, but that literally is kind of what the breath of this thing is.

Bo: And the only thing I’d add to that and you kind of alluded to this a little bit. A lot of people feel like they don’t want to dance with the one that brung them. Like I got to this, I got to the accredited investor status. You know, I hit the, I don’t remember what it is for this year. It’s like $2 million or $2 million liquid or there’s a net worth threshold or whatever the accredited investor status. It used to be like $250,000. I don’t know what it is now. Google it. And people realize, “Hey, I got here by saving 25% of my gross income and by investing in low-cost index funds and by having very simple publicly traded investments and I was able to build this wealth by doing that.” Well, now all of a sudden I’ve hit this new threshold. I must need to do something else. I must need to go do something more complicated or more different. A lot of people would be surprised to find Brian a lot of our clients who have substantial portfolios. I mean talking about seven figure, eight figure multiple eight figure portfolios still do the same type of investing that folks who are at a million dollars or $2 million do. It doesn’t have to be more complicated. That’s not to suggest that you should never do private equity or that’s never a viable option. But I think far too many people think, “Oh, it’s the natural graduation point.” Just like, “Okay, well, if you don’t own a rental property, then you’re not serious about money.” That’s not true at all. If rental properties don’t make sense for you and it’s not something you want to do with your dollars, you don’t have to. Private equity and venture capital and those types of investments are the exact same. If it’s not something that you want to be doing and it’s not something you understand well, it’s not something you have to be doing in order to be able to build wealth.

Brian: I mean, I don’t mind sharing. At our firm, we don’t do private placements. Yeah, we don’t. I mean, I just, because I saw, like I said, there were a lot of features for the person who were selling it. I didn’t necessarily think it was necessary for, and that’s not an indictment or say something’s bad. It’s just that I just wasn’t compelled to feel like I needed to when I was designing my wealth management firm. I didn’t feel like it rose to the level that this was going to be something that I needed to add as a feature because a lot of what I try to do as a fiduciary adviser is treat your money like it’s my money. And if I don’t have my own money on some of these private deals, I’m like, why would I put a client? Yeah, it’d be great for me that I get to lock their money down for 10 years, but is that in their best interest? And it just didn’t rise to the level. It doesn’t mean these things are bad. I will, this I will give an editorial statement on something I’ve noticed in the economy. Like I said, I have friends that work in private equity, so I’m not against private equity, but I do think the whole game with private equity is they put a group of holdings together and they’re trying to get bigger because the bigger you are, the bigger your valuation multiple is going to be bigger. So, they take a bunch of small things, bring them together, and then they get to be a bigger multiple, and then they hopefully in three to five years get to roll up and do this whole transaction all over. What that has created in society and it drives me crazy because it’s landscapers, it’s your dentist, it’s your third party administrators. Oh my gosh, your TPA. It’s all these industries because they’re just trying to get bigger, not better, bigger so they can get the higher multiple. I think people have forgotten how to run businesses and how, you know, they go in there and they target sticky businesses. It’s very hard for you to go fire somebody for and the service goes to pot and it drives me crazy. So it has nothing to do with this question that David G asked, but I think that it’s just something we as a society ought to be looking at. You know, it’s like where is the value at on what’s actually increasing? Because it basically looks like it’s just a math game that people are playing and but there’s got to be trees don’t grow to heaven. And if we’re all trying to get bigger and bigger and get higher valuations, but we’re not actually making the product better. Because that’s the thing I’ve always liked about markets and systems is you create a better product and you do a service better than anybody else. The customer is going to naturally want to give you their money and then give you their money over and over again. This is kind of working against that in a way in the fact that it’s just saying no, let’s go find sticky transactions where it’s hard for people to want to move from this product and then let’s just cut all the service or the features out of this to save money and then let’s see if we can turn this into a bigger operation just because it’s worth more on paper and that’s not great. That I don’t love it. Okay, I probably went too far. No, no, no. We probably hear it from my neighbor. Okay. Hey, why did you pick on private equity?

Bo: No, I think, no, look, there’s a place for it and there’s like a time where it makes sense and there’s a lot of times that private equities will step in and create liquidity for a business or an owner who otherwise would not have had the ability to do that. I just don’t know for the everyday investor or even the everyday accredited investor, which is kind of a wild way to say that. I don’t know that that’s something that you have to be doing with your money. And again, you want to if you are going to do it, measure two, three, four times. Make sure you underwrite the deal well to know if it actually makes sense for you.

Brian: Are we helping people get married now? Is the Money Guy show turned into because I just got a note from the content team. “Hey, gang, can you please give a shout out to my fiancé Noah W. He’s a huge fan but doesn’t know that I’m listening too. We’re getting married in 11 days. Love Kinsey K.”

Bo: Kinsey and Noah, congratulations on your pending nuptials. That’s super exciting. And if you’d like to, if you have a compelling and interesting story you think the world could benefit from, you should consider coming on Making a Millionaire.

Brian: Some places have kiss cams. Now we have just shout outs, you know, to fiancés. So if that is something that you want to check out, go to moneyguy.com/apply if you want to apply to be a guest on Making a Millionaire because we love telling interesting stories about folks that are doing awesome stuff with money and that might be you guys entering into this new marriage. So congratulations. Hey, by the way, I’m glad you have a microphone. It made me, you know, swimming out there. This is what I felt like, is this is what Bo must feel like when he’s swimming in the ocean because I mean I was just, you know, I have, that’s a sick burn because I have, I had this, you know, I do this every week and you would think talking but then when I was told no you’re on your own Brian all by yourself it just felt like oh my gosh I miss my man Bo.

Bo: If you would have said something that was like wrong or off or I felt like I needed, I would have leaned in to the microphone. I need this microphone. I think you did awesome though. Honestly, I think probably at least one or two questions every live stream we all just take my microphone away and just think it’d be awesome with Josh running around trying to feverishly throw a line in into yours. Yeah. Shout out to the AV team. I don’t know if you know this. They actually replaced my mic core during that question. And I bet it was all done off camera. I bet they had the close on you. I didn’t see it, but I bet they had the close on. It’s amazing. You would never know.

Brian: Professional team over there. They’ll never know. They’re gonna know.

Rebie: Well, David G, if you would like a Money Guy Tumbler, just email [email protected] and we would love to send you one.

Brian: Man, it’s almost like in the Matrix where we’re trying to show people this is a live show, you know, because we’ve had people accuse us that this is not a live show and we’re like, okay, let’s make sure on this episode that we put enough gimmicks in there that people say, yes, definitely got to be live.

Bo: Pretty obvious. Yeah. If this is what the show were like after high production value, what are we doing?

Brian: That’s funny.

Step Up in Basis (55:39)

Rebie: Well, Amber H has a question for you guys. She says, “Can y’all explain what a step up in basis means in relation to inheriting property?” So, we’re, it’s a little game of what does this word actually mean? Please explain.

Bo: Brian, you are CPA by training. Stuff like this one is right up your alley.

Brian: Well, it’s what’s funny is that this actually came into my life yesterday. I had, because since it’s a client/mother-in-law, we met with my mother-in-law’s attorney yesterday on the phone and we were talking about just some quirky things, you know, that my mother-in-law, sometimes she listens. So, Ramona, if you’re listening, big shout out to you. Love you. But it’s so funny to me is that I say this to my wife. I’m like, “Everybody listens to me.” But the people that I love sometimes is because, you know, it’s just some quirky titling that has been done without my knowledge. And we’re working on, you know, getting all that fixed up on the estate plan for my dear dear mother-in-law who gave me the gift of my beautiful wife. But it is one of those things where you have to be very careful with how you title assets. Just don’t start strapping loved ones onto accounts because you can very closely or very easily screw up this awesome benefit called step up in basis. And what this means is we have an estate system. Now look, there’s issues and slowly because if you know if you die with too much money, the government will tax you. But for the majority of Americans out there, you’re not going to reach those estate exemption or limitations. So for most of you, the way the tax laws are written is that if you die with appreciated assets, it can be real estate, it can be your investment portfolio, but if it’s appreciated, when you die, your beneficiaries will actually inherit the assets at the new market value of what it was at the date of death versus, you know, all of your unrealized basis. Your basis actually gets stepped up just like the name implies. As you can imagine, that is a huge benefit for most Americans. Think about you bought your house with real estate being as crazy it is right now. I think about my parents. They bought their house in the late 70s for $60,000. Wild. Now they’re in South Atlanta, so it hasn’t run up as much, but still if they sold this for or they pass away with at $400,000 value, you don’t pay the income taxes on the $340,000 of gains. You get what’s called a step up in basis. Your grandmother who’s from, I’ll use another Atlanta example because we’re both from Atlanta. You know, great grandma bought into Coca-Cola, you know, back when Coca-Cola was just, you know, trying to figure out how they get the cocaine out of the recipe. You know, or I don’t know if that was ever in the recipe, by the way. That was a joke. That was a bad joke. Bad joke. Maybe it was because I think they did have cocoa in the recipe. But anyway, great grandma got into Coca-Cola back when it was pennies. Pennies. So you could buy tons of shares of this thing. Well, now you know if she passes away with it, you don’t pay income taxes on that appreciation. Now imagine how this gets screwed up if you screw this up. Whereas all of a sudden, grandma is sick and then you know at the last minute y’all go in and say, “You know what? She’s got all these shares of Coca-Cola. We don’t want to pay income tax on that. So let’s just, we’ll just start changing. We’ll just gift it. We’ll gift it, put it in your name.” That is a disaster. But somehow people do this all the time. They go and they put loved ones names on accounts or they just start gifting shares without understanding that you might be screwing up one of the greatest financial benefits of passing away with highly appreciated assets.

Bo: Yeah. And just to close the loop on that, if you end up gifting the appreciated securities or the appreciated property or whatever it is, your basis in that carries over to the gift receiver. So rather than getting the step up, if they were to sell it at some point in the future, from a tax standpoint, they’re going to have the same basis you had on it. So it’s much better for your heirs to inherit property than it is for you to gift property. Now, if you are someone who’s over the estate limits and you’re over $15 million or as a couple, you’re over $30 million, first you should go to moneyguy.com/workwithus and reach out. And secondly, you might employ some strategies where you want to begin gifting assets, but for the vast majority of Americans, that’s not the case. For the vast majority, it’s much better for your heirs to inherit. So, make sure you understand that. And if you happen to unfortunately be the beneficiary where someone passed away and left you assets, a lot of times people don’t automatically do this. So maybe there was a property or a home or a commercial building. One of the things you’re going to want to do is you will want to go get an appraisal, a property value on that thing or you want to know the value of the securities on the date of passing so that you have a record of what those market values were so that at some point in the future when you do sell it, you can say, “No, no, this got a step up in basis on this date at this value and this is my new tax basis in this property.”

Brian: Hey, did I say enough so we don’t get another cease and desist letter? He’s like, “Man, I’m trying to—” What’s the second one? Sometimes, I mean, this thing, this brain is so much faster than my mouth filter is. So, I just want to make sure that did we do, did we put enough disclaimer in there so we don’t get the cease and desist?

Bo: I think we’re great. I think we’re okay.

Rebie: All right. Great. Amber H, if you would like a Money Guy Tumbler, maybe you could fill it up with some Coca-Cola if you want to. Just email [email protected].

Brian: Sorry, I had just never heard that. So, you just sent me on a—

Bo: There goes that sponsorship.

Rebie: Oh gosh. I don’t know. I don’t I can’t comment.

Closing (1:01:35)

Rebie: Oh man. Oh my goodness. This was fun. We really love being here live streaming, hanging out with you, but also talking personal finance, hopefully helping you think through your personal situation and feeling a little more confident in what you’re doing with your next dollar. And hey, if you have not kind of put your voice out there and shared your story—

Brian: Stop telling jokes. We should have been telling everybody go moneyguy.com/survey. I don’t feel like we boosted that enough today we didn’t—

Rebie: Well I was about to do it so now you really did it for me which I’m very grateful for. Moneyguy.com/survey, go share your story your financial situation with us to inform future episodes we would greatly greatly appreciate it.

Brian: Hey has anybody heard from Nate yet? I figured is he in the live stream? Did he reach out in the chat?

Bo: But I mean he could be watching. There was a Nate in here whose name was just Nate but I don’t know if it was him.

Brian: Okay well Nate, if you’re out there, I’m still thinking it’s happening. I just am such an optimist. I’m like, there is zero chance that is by coincidence.

Bo: Somebody made this comment. They’re like, “Oh, wow. Nate Bargatze, he goes from like hosting the Emmys to like hanging out with the money guys.” And that seems to hurt the timing.

Brian: This star has risen to the point that I realized this yesterday on my walk. That’s just unfortunate timing.

Bo: You know, I told you this was two years ago, three years ago. I’ve mentioned this on the show before. I was at the Williamson County Fair here. Yeah. And he was just over there standing by the ride waiting for his family to get off. This is before the Netflix special before all that, but you know, I was a fan pretty early on. See, that’s what I, he was just hanging out there at the fair.

Brian: So, really Bo missed the opportunity. I should have gone to say hello.

Bo: So, he didn’t run up to you.

Brian: He did not act like it, but he may be a newer—

Bo: That works against my theory then. That’s not good if he didn’t run up to you. He may be a new listener potentially.

Brian: Okay. That works against my theory that he planted that for me. All right. Because he would, anybody who knows me, big old beefy Bo out in public and be like especially at the Williamson County Fair.

Rebie: I don’t really know why that she said maybe he would just recognize you and wouldn’t recognize trying to make Brian feel better but that’s pretty unlikely because you guys are kind of a package deal.

Brian: So did you go to Williamson County Fair this year?

Bo: I didn’t go this year. I still went twice. My wife and kids went but I had something going on that evening so I couldn’t go. So they were super juiced about it but I did not make it this year.

Brian: Too bad. There’s Bo. I have yet to go to the Williamson County Fair and not hear about celebrities roaming around. It happens all the time.

Bo: So, okay. Well, I have really taken the energy out of this. That’s a horrible—

Brian: Guys, I’m your host Brian. This is Bo, Rebie. Go check it out. Moneyguy.com/survey if you haven’t done it. You know, there’s probably only six of you left at this point. And if you haven’t gone and taken advantage of all of our free stuff, it’s moneyguy.com/resources. Money Guy team out. Sorry.