We Have a BIG Announcement!

The Big Announcement: Millionaire Mission Paperback (0:07)

Brian: We got a big announcement, and it might have something to do with a little Millionaire Mission.

Bo: I am so excited because this has been something that has been working in the background. It’s been happening, it’s been going on. But we couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t talk about it. And finally, here we are. Now we can talk about it.

Brian: Yeah. And just for catching anybody out there who’s new to the channel, I’ll share that I released my first book, Millionaire Mission, on May 28th of 2024. And what that was, was a passion project that kicked off in 2020 that I started. I used the pandemic and all the extra time to kind of actually do the bucket list item of writing a book. And there was a lot of insecurity. You guys have no idea. When you write a book, you don’t know if anybody’s going to read it. And then the fact that I wrote a financial book with a bunch of personal stories in it, I got really insecure. I was like, is this thing going to do well? And I’m happy to report you guys showed up in droves. It became an instant New York Times bestseller. You loved the stories. I still read the comments on Amazon and the other bookselling websites. But there are things that, because if you’ve ever written a book, the book is never, ever done. They eventually just rip it out of your hands and say, okay, we’re going to go take this to publish. So as the book came out, there were things that I was like, we can do better. And I feel like it’s not perfection, but the best version of itself is about to come out to you in paperback form.

Bo: Now you said something a second ago. You said I wrote my first book. I just want to make sure that wasn’t like a double announcement.

Brian: Just in case my publisher Matt is out there. I have not written a second book yet.

Bo: I mean, look, we yet. You see these words he keeps using: first, yet. It’s almost like this thing is writing itself.

Brian: No, I mean, I’ve told you, I do daydream. I would love to write a book with Bo. That’s something we’ve daydreamed about. I should probably whisper that or at least we should figure that out before we say that to the world. But it’s just hard because coming up with a concept and then actually having enough meat to where you feel like you’re adding value to the world is a big undertaking.

What’s Updated in the Paperback Edition (2:38)

Bo: But we felt like, let’s give you some flavor. Every year we ask our clients at Abound Wealth about car ownership. How long do you drive your cars when it comes to consumption? What is the ownership period that you have for cars? Because generally speaking, if you own a car for longer, that would suggest you’re more of a financial mutant. If you own a car for less time, we know that automobiles can be financial napalm. And so we asked this question and 83% of our clients, so over eight out of ten, say that when they buy a car, they actually drive it for more than seven years. 14% said they own their cars for less than seven years. 1% said not applicable, maybe they live in a city or don’t own a car. And there were 2% of respondents who answered that they lease.

Brian: So seven-plus years is a financial mutant. Under seven years is the typical American. And by the way, I didn’t fill out this survey because we leave it for our clients. But I do want to share, because I do lease now. And if you read the updated book, I said, you know what, this is something that other people are going to be on this journey, just like I am. That’s my favorite thing about my whole adventure with money: starting with very little, from humble beginnings, and now having this success. I would love to kind of share what I’ve learned, because nobody’s really done a good job of explaining what you need to know about money, from the beginning, to the middle, and into the sophisticated stuff. So I would put this under the sophisticated stuff. Obviously, if you’re somebody who’s in your 20s and 30s and you’re leasing cars, that is so outside of financial mutant territory. But if you’re somebody who’s beyond step eight of the Financial Order of Operations, I have the anecdotes and the things you ought to go through from a decision matrix that I want you to understand the mindset that goes into leasing cars. And I give you the details on that.

Bo: What I love is we talk about all the time that there is a better way to do money, but also the way that you do money evolves. You likely do money differently when you’re in your 40s and 50s than you did in your 20s and 30s. And that’s okay. And what I love about Millionaire Mission is it kind of walks you through that. It’s not just behavioral changes. Some of the stuff that’s changed even since the original release of the book, a lot of stuff out there in the financial world has changed. One of the things, and this is just such an easy one to draw attention to: in 2024, when the book was released, the amount that you could save for retirement, the amount that you could put in certain types of accounts, is very different than it is today. If you think about the 401k salary deferral, in 2024 you could only save $23,000. Now you can save $24,500. IRAs went from $7,000 to $7,500. Saver’s credit increased. HSA contributions increased. So we want to make sure that when someone reads this book for the very first time, they read it with today’s numbers. We don’t want them to say, oh, this book was written a long time ago. It must not apply. No, we’re going to update it for today’s numbers so that it’s still applicable.

Brian: Yeah. We wanted to make sure we updated all the numbers, because I know a lot of you also have to share the book and give it to young people, give it to relatives and friends that you’re trying to help improve without seeming like you’re the all-knowing one. It’s a great way to share the knowledge of how to be good with money, and now it’s just going to have the most updated tax laws and information. And look, we even went beyond that. I shared more about my life, and I also updated the case studies. One of the things the book attempted to do, there’s a section where it’s really in the debt section where I talk about car buying. I look at cars as being so bad for young people and their money, and that is the biggest trap or hole that I feel like young people fall into. But I made a case study in there in the original book on how the timing of major purchases matters. And the way I structured that case study, I used an example of a Corvette and somebody in their 20s versus the actual age that somebody buys Corvettes, which is in their 60s. And for me, it hit because I was the nerdy kid in high school who thought when I turned 25 I was going to go out there and buy a Corvette. But I don’t think that’s most people’s dream. That’s not what most people are aspiring to. So I felt like I missed the mark a little bit in the first book. I’m glad I got another bite at the apple because I got this one much, much better. Instead of using the timing of purchases with a Corvette, I did it with a luxury SUV. I remember there was a couple that was in their 30s that was leasing the exact same car, and they had little kids that were running around. And I remember thinking, holy cow, this is a horrible decision for them. Yes, she is going to look awesome and cool to people who don’t care about her money whatsoever, but this is a horrible decision that she and her husband are making for the family. So I put a much better case study on the timing of major purchases that I think will really hit people, and hopefully be even more motivating to understand the traps of the car you buy and those type of decisions you make. And look, if you want to know whether or not I disclose in the book what the actual make and model of the car is, you have to pick up a copy to find out.

Brian: Also, Brian and I have been busy. The company has grown. We’ve made more. I’ve learned more about money. I’ve tried anything I’ve learned, I want you guys to know it. So I’ve updated that stuff in the book and shared more about what I’ve learned. I even have a whole section on what I’ve learned about psychology and the way you can ruminate and be your own worst enemy when it comes to financial decision making. I even leaned into that to update some of that content. Also, how to be a better steward with your resources. Bo and I are always trying to figure out how money is nothing more than a tool. If I can tell you how to squeeze the most happiness and fulfillment out of it, but also how to be a better person who’s making the world a little bit better, I’m going to share that stuff as much as I can. And this is still going to be the wealth-building framework we believe in, the Financial Order of Operations. So I’d invite everybody out there, I know you’ve gone on this journey with me once and I thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s even better now. And it’s going to be in paperback, which means it’s going to be more approachable, more bendy, which will be a big improvement. Think about how much easier it is to pack a paperback than a hardback book. So hopefully this thing is going to get a little more travel opportunity or give-as-a-gift opportunity.

Preorder Perks and Release Date (11:10)

Brian: The official release date is November 10th. But right now preorders are live as of today. This is the day. And all the big sellers like Amazon have a price guarantee on there, that if the price drops, they’re only going to charge your credit card the lowest price between now and the release. Paperbacks are typically much more affordable, so I tell you that so it takes down any resistance about what you’re paying for this book. I’d love for you to support the cause. Give this thing as a gift. It will help us get the word out. Because publishing a book, despite what the comments say, you don’t make a gazillion dollars. If you’re trying to figure out the chicken or the egg, we definitely had the egg that became a chicken, and then the chicken started sharing the knowledge after they had created the success. Because that’s why I do this, really. This is the educator heart that I have. I love that something as simple as a book can literally change people’s lives. There were some reviews, I’m not a big crier but I definitely got the hair standing up on some of the things you guys have shared, because I feel like we’re changing people’s lives. Look, yes, I make a little bit off of these books, but publishing is more for nurturing, getting the word out, and feeding the soul and making it approachable than it is for the money. So I was just happy to have another opportunity to make things better, improve, and share, and hopefully have an even bigger impact. Because that’s where I get a lot of fulfillment and happiness.

Bo: So the actual release date is November the 10th, but right now preorders are live as of today. And we want you to buy this book. We want you to have a copy. We want you to share it. We want to get the word out that there really is a better way to do money. It’s so awesome to us when we see, for example, someone in the medical field right outside of Clemson saying, hey, I just love that I’m able to be an adjunct professor and speak to students about this. I want to give them copies of this because I want them to know that as soon as they get out of school, if they can just grasp these concepts, if they can understand how money works, and they can avoid some of the pitfalls that their peers are making, they will change their lives. And that’s a cool thing. We hope we have a tool that you can use to impact the lives of folks around you.

Brian: And look, I share a lot of my mistakes as well. But I do love what I’ve built with this book. I think I mentioned last week two other books and I said this is in the sweet spot, because look, I haven’t had a huge failure out there. I’ve just always been really kind of good with money. But I’ve also been a natural educator because I love seeing people catch concepts. And that’s why I really do this. If you don’t believe me, go look at the reviews. There are some really great ones.

Bo: There are some preorder perks too, right? There are some things that are coming that you guys have asked for over and over and over again. With a preorder, you will get exclusive access to the Millionaire Mission merch store. You also get a ticket to Brian’s book club after release. Brian’s going to be hanging out with just the members of the mission crew, everyone who preorders the paperback version of Millionaire Mission, and he’s going to be answering your questions. He’s going to be talking behind the scenes of the book. He’s going to be talking about the updates. So if you want access to a more exclusive, smaller group in a live stream type setting, a conversational setting, that’s what Brian’s book club is. And then you also get a special role in the Moneyverse Discord channel. If you’re not in the Discord, you should be, because it’s wild in there. People are talking in there and it just amazes me. And when you are a preorder of the book, you’re actually going to have a private Discord channel inside the Moneyverse where you can talk with other financial mutants about the book.

Brian: It’s kind of just extending and carrying on that idea of the book club, because in addition to us preparing information and putting it out there, we want you guys to be able to interact and communicate with one another. Is it called flair? You know, if you’re old like me and you remember the movie Office Space, you get something on your Discord channel, you’re going to get a little “Mission Crew” icon. So is that the official title, is it flair?

Rebie: Badge works. Flair. There we go. It’s an accurate title. I’m so excited about these preorder perks because it speaks to why do phase two of Millionaire Mission. It’s because our whole purpose of the book was to have a really tangible way, an entry point that you could share with your friends and that you could benefit from yourself as a fan. And this is just accomplishing that mission even more so by getting it out to even more people, making it even more accessible, more up to date, sharing even more of Brian’s stories. And so I know that a lot of our people are going to be pre-ordering this. And so as a thank you, and to help the powers that be see that this book is really purposeful and meaningful, because pre-ordering lets them know that, we want to say thank you. That’s why we’re opening the merch store. That’s why Brian’s going to be doing extra content for the Mission Crew. That’s why we’re trying to connect you on the Moneyverse and build that in as a perk, so you can actually get extra value from your purchase of the book and your read through of the book. I’m really grateful to everyone who did that for the original launch and who’s going to help us with phase two of this mission with this paperback launch. So if you are interested in being a part of this, just go to moneyguy.com/millionairemission. All of the retailers where you can purchase from are there linked, and also the page where you can cash in on your preorder perks once you make your purchase.

Bo: I’m really excited for you, Brian. It’s going to be good. Let’s add some value and actually answer some questions. But some of the comments are just too good in here and I can’t help myself. This one: someone said, “Hey, will the purchase include the story of Brian’s almost fight with a waiter in the parking lot?” I wish. Maybe that’s going to go in to whatever comes next. You know, and a lot of people have asked are we going to do another book tour? The fact that you guys want to hang out with us in person and come out and see each other, you don’t know how much that means to us, and just knowing that you’re willing to do that is huge and it’s not lost on us. So we’re trying to figure out ways we can make that sort of stuff happen. Thank you so much for just communicating to us what it is that you find value in, what it is that we can do to better serve you. Because at the end of the day, that’s really what we are here for. We want to load you guys up. It’s why we show up every single Tuesday at 10 a.m. to answer questions. So with that, creative director Rebie, I’m going to throw it over to you.

Rebie: Awesome. We are going to kick it off with a question from Jonathan V. Are you ready?

Bo: Yes, ma’am.

Q&A: Best Way to Redeploy an Inherited IRA (20:24)

Rebie: It says, “What is the best way to redeploy inherited IRAs or Roth IRAs? I’m 36 and have about $80k to withdraw over the next seven years. What do you think?”

Bo: Yeah. So for those of you who are not aware, the way that you have to handle inherited IRAs has changed over the past couple of years. Previously when you inherited an IRA, it depended on if the person you inherited it from was over required distribution age or under required distribution age, and depending on the answer to that question would affect how long you had to distribute the assets out of that IRA. Well, as of a few years ago, the laws changed and said, hey, if you receive an inherited IRA, whether it’s Roth or whether it’s pre-tax, the entire IRA has to be fully depleted by the end of the 10th year. And based upon recent guidance as of the last two years, if it’s a traditional pre-tax IRA, you also have to take required minimum distributions based on your life expectancy over that ten-year period, and then deplete the whole thing inside that ten years. And so what used to be a really easy thing to stretch out from a tax perspective now has kind of this tax bomb that you have to plan around. Okay, I know that either this year, next year, or between now and the next ten years, I’ve got to take this money, I’ve got to take the tax hit, and I’ve got to figure out how to navigate that. And I think Jonathan’s question is, okay, well, if I have that IRA, how should I redeploy it? What are the ways that I should use those dollars? Brian, I’m happy to share some ways that we’ve done this for clients. But when you hear this question, what comes to your mind?

Brian: Well, there are two things that jump out first. Are you one of the exceptions? Because look, if you have a daughter who will probably never be able to live on her own, or you have a family member with medical challenges, those individuals are not subject to the ten-year withdrawal rule. So that’s the first thing. Now, Jonathan, I’m assuming you’re like the majority of people and you will be subject to the ten-year rule. So I would immediately run this thing through a filter. Because you said both inherited IRAs and then said Roth IRAs. The big difference between Roth and traditional inherited is that Roth is growing tax-free. So I love some tax-free growth. I’m probably going to defer my withdrawals out of that Roth portion as long as possible, all the way out to the last moment, so you maximize the tax-free growth. If you have any cash flow needs or anything you want to streamline, do that out of the traditional inherited IRAs that are going to be taxable to you as you pull them out. What I would think about specifically over this next seven years is: are there any things that are going to happen that might be unique? Meaning, am I going to have lower income years because I’m going to enter into retirement? Or might I be changing jobs? He’s 36. If we’re a two-income household going to a one-income household, if any of those things might be happening over the next seven years, ideally you would want to take distributions from the inherited IRA in a lower tax year, as opposed to having to take it in a higher tax year.

Bo: Absent all of those things, it’s worth doing the analysis to say, okay, if I wait all the way until the end of year seven and I take this big tax distribution, even though those dollars grew tax-deferred, if I were to take all of the income in that year, is it going to push me into a higher tax bracket? If the answer to that question is yes, then perhaps I would rather sprinkle it through the next seven years in sort of an equal-weighted manner so that I can stay inside of one tax bracket as opposed to popping into the next one. This is one of those things where if you’re trying to figure this out and do tax projections, these are the exact sorts of things that we help our clients figure out. It’s why we do annual tax projections, figuring out what is the appropriate timeline, what’s the appropriate strategy, and how should we think about that. Because there are a number of different nuances that make personal finance so personal. With $80,000, there’s a chance that depending on where your income is, you might be able to just maximize that 12% bracket every year. Pay attention to where you are in the marginal tax brackets. Remember, marginal is what the next dollar is taxed at. There’s a big jump when we go from 12% up to 22%, and then from 22 to 24%. For a married couple, that 12% bracket goes all the way up to around $100,000. And 22% goes all the way up to a little over $200,000. For single individuals, 12% gets you to right around $50,000, and 22% takes you to a little over $100,000. So pay attention to where the tax brackets are. And if you wish you had access to something that laid all that out, we actually have a Money Guy tax guide. If you go to moneyguy.com/resources, you’ll find a totally free quick one-page reference. It shows you where the tax brackets are, what the Roth IRA limits are, how much you can put in your HSA, how much you can put in your 401k. It’s a free thing. Go download the PDF, drop it on your desktop, wherever you keep that kind of stuff. It’s a great quick reference tool.

Rebie: In celebration of the paperback launch, I am declaring today a Tumblr day. Jonathan V, if you’d like a Money Guy tumbler, just email winner at moneyguy.com.

Brian: One of my favorite things about having YouTube content that lives forever: every now and then I’ll just get a little mustache comment on a video. Someone’s saying, “Right here.” Let’s be honest, nobody can tell when you grow out a mustache anyway. Why did he choose violence? He’s over here reading the comments. I can grow even less facial hair than you. It’s all on the relative scale.

Bo: I don’t want to derail us too much. But there’s a record that needs to be righted here, Brian. And you owe me and all of our audience an apology, because I did something a few weeks ago and I want you to tell them. You can’t tell the story unless you show the picture.

Brian: Me and my girls, we were swimming, and I was like, “Hey guys, let’s see how long we can tread water, because Mr. Brian doesn’t think I can swim. Let’s show him.” And I’ll have you know, me and my two daughters, I treaded water for 13 minutes. Now, look, that’s not impressive. The Navy is not calling me saying they want me in their special operations division. But that is somebody who can swim. I just want to be very clear. So I accept your apology.

Brian: I think it’s so great that you wanted to set the record straight here in front of millions of people, and I’m not upset about it. I wish the team had the picture you shared. Did you share that with us? Because it looked like Bo was giving it all he had. And he might have made it 13 minutes, but oh my God, he’s literally staring at the clock. Lord, please get me out of this thing. If y’all think that looks like a swimmer, I got some oceanfront property sitting right in the middle of the country. 13 minutes and six seconds, it was.

Bo: And look, I told my girls, “Hey, girls, we’re gonna work on this. We’re gonna get better. We’re gonna do this more and more.” I’m not a very efficient treader. I ChatGPT’d: “Okay, what’s the most efficient way to tread?” And it said you kind of sit in a chair, lean back, do the egg beater. Buddy, I tried the egg beater. I sink like a rock. I am 100% arms on my tread. I need to do a little more time in the legs. That’s what I’ve got to work on.

Brian: You know what, you and I need to take the ladies to the beach again because when I was in Mexico like two weeks ago, I was telling my wife how many fun stories we’ve gotten because of that trip we did with Bo and Jenna. We should do that again.

Q&A: Should We Buy a House If It Means Not Hitting 25% Savings Rate? (31:04)

Rebie: All right. Next personal finance question is from the Dinko Bergs Capital. “We’re 38 and 37. $114k household income, $235k net worth. Would it make sense to buy a house, even if it meant that we might never reach a 25% savings rate? Buying would cost $500 plus per month more than renting.”

Bo: I mean, man. One of the first things I do before I even do the mathematical exercise, I would do the goal exercise. Like, hey, what are our financial goals? What do we want our money to be able to allow us to do? If home ownership is one of those things, if home ownership is something that you guys value and you want to have, I’ll say, okay, great. If we want to own a home, what financial decisions would we have to make that would allow us to do that? Okay, if we do that, what is the opportunity cost? Maybe what that means is that instead of being able to save 25%, we’re only able to save 15%. At a 15% savings rate, based on a $235,000 net worth, based on being age 38 and 37, we might not retire at 55. Rather, we might have to work until 65. But we’re okay working until 65 because we love what we do and we’re not planning on early retirement. Is that a trade-off that we’re okay with? And if the answer is yes, then there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing that says 25% is a goal that you should have to give yourself the most amount of flexibility until it makes sense for you to have a specialized plan. You may be amazed to hear this, but a lot of times when you guys reach up and say, hey, I’m ready to take the relationship to the next level, we’ll have our initial call, we’ll go through your accounts, we’ll go through your savings. One of the things we might uncover in our very early meetings is, hey, I know you’re saving 25% because we tell you to save 25%. Do you realize that you’ve done a lot of work, that you can either keep saving 25% and you’re actually able to retire a number of years before you thought, or you could actually back your savings rate down to 17% or 18% and you’re going to be okay. 25% is a wonderful generalized solution until your financial situation reaches the place where you should have a specialized answer to how much you should be saving.

Brian: Dinko, I’m going to be honest with you. You’re 38 and 37. You’ve done good because your household income is $114,000 and you have $235,000 net worth. I don’t know how much of that is liquid versus how much is emergency reserves, but we have a loose goal that by the time you reach 40, we want you to have three times your income. So that’s $342,000. We’re almost $100,000 short. So for you to go into buying a house to the point that you’re going to, on a perpetual basis, be $500 a month behind where you should be, I think that’s going to set you up for long-term disappointment on what the terminal or use value of your assets are in retirement. What I’d prefer for you to do is take a moment in time and say, look, our down payment rule is 3 to 5% of your purchase. But that doesn’t mean that’s where you’re trapped. If you look at this and it becomes a math equation and you say, what if we as a family for the next two years, whether it’s side hustles, whether we cleaned out the closets in the basement or attic or a storage unit, and we tried to come up with every absolute penny that we could to where we put down a significant enough amount so that instead of being behind $500 a month, we just front-end loaded that by sacrifice, you could still reach all of your financial goals. Because homeownership is great, but it’s not the end-all. I don’t want you to live a life where you’re house rich and life poor because this goal is going to make things so much better, and then be disappointed. I’d rather you get hyper-focused, figure out how you can make the math work, and still allow you to catch up to where your financial goals need to be. It’s easy to give out rules. It’s hard to make personal finance personal and bring it back into your life. But I would say use the motivation to make it happen. That’s where the mindset kicks in.

Rebie: The Dinko Bergs, thank you for your question. We’d love to send you a tumbler. Just email winner at moneyguy.com. Everybody got a kick out of your username, so thank you for that. All right, next question is from Fourtune Here’s a Few. Good morning. My parents are considering retirement around age 55 and are worried about marketplace health insurance costs. What are important things to consider, and would you consider cost sharing?

Q&A: Health Insurance for Early Retirees at 55 (36:18)

Bo: One of the things worth noting is that pre-Affordable Care Act, it was a real concern when early retirees wanted to retire. It was really hard to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions and all this other stuff. And then the healthcare landscape did change. One of the things that came out of that legislation is early retirees now have a much easier job getting coverage in place than they were able to previously. And I think a lot of people, when they’re thinking about early retirement, are so worried that marketplace coverage and healthcare costs are going to be like this very, very big boogeyman. And I don’t want to minimize it. It is expensive. It’s often not coverage that’s comparable to when you were working. But for the majority of clients that we’re helping navigate and put together a plan, it’s not something that’s an insurmountable mountain. One of the things you can do is there are a number of services out there. You can go out to healthcare.gov and start looking at what sort of plans are available based on the doctors you use, the medications you use, and where you live. What sort of marketplace plans would be available to you? And you can begin getting an idea of where the costs are going to be.

Brian: And what you have to do is if you’re going to retire at 55, you’ve got to bridge that all the way to 65 when you become Medicare eligible. You just got to factor it in as part of your budget. Like, okay, I looked at the cost of plans that would likely make sense for my family, and this is what it’s going to be. It’s just going to be one of the expenses that I have in retirement, no different than groceries and utilities and mortgage or whatever those things may be. But I want you to do the planning ahead of time. Don’t get to 55, say you’re going to retire, do Cobra, and then figure it out. That’s when people get themselves in a mess. When the marketplace came on the scene, it at least gives you a backstop to know you can go price it and know where it is. Now, the problem is that here in Tennessee, a lot of the providers dropped out. So there is some coverage but I would use it as a worst-case-scenario backstop. First, see if you qualify for subsidies, because if your assets are structured in a way where income subsidies are something you can get, you definitely need to take that into account. But if you price out without subsidies and start looking at the coverage, don’t sleep on the fact that there are a lot of membership groups or trade associations, like Farm Bureau. A lot of people use those programs for dental and medical and they’re pretty competitive. Now, I will tell you, they do have the pre-existing condition issue. If you have pre-existing conditions, the marketplace is probably going to be where you end up. But if you’re healthy, this is something you can consider. You can also look at cost-sharing programs like MedShare and others out there where you essentially create what insurance companies have done historically: you get a pool of people and you’re all in this together. The big asterisk always on that is the pre-existing conditions issue. And then we’ve even had issues where we’ve known people who’ve used these, and there was either not the right documentation or some type of communication issue where you thought you were covered and went and did a procedure, and then all of a sudden the MedShare said, no, we didn’t agree to this. And then that can be very scary because medical procedures are very expensive, especially when you have to figure out how to navigate that without the insurance companies’ discounted pricing.

Bo: It’s not something that is insurmountable. Exactly what Brian said. But you need to budget accordingly. It is not cheap. So when you’re putting on your 3D glasses and figuring out your retirement plan, just make sure you put in very conservative assumptions and you’re going to be okay. It will get you through this. You’ll make it to 65. But just go in with your eyes open. This is definitely going to be something you have to measure twice, cut once and do a lot of homework on. One of the interesting things that’s gotten a lot of hype is Barista FIRE. Because 55 is retiring early whether your parents think about being part of the FIRE movement or not. That is an early retirement. A lot of folks will say, hey, I’m going to retire. I don’t want the same stress, the same obligation of the job I’ve been doing. But what I might do is go work at a job where I can work fewer hours, less stress, but it makes me benefits-eligible where I could go get health insurance coverage. You’ve got to make sure that you work with an employer that provides it and that your actual hours worked qualify for that. But even that, if you find the costs of paying for insurance on your own are perhaps insurmountable from an early retirement standpoint, you’ve got really two options: figure out another way to get health insurance, like get another job, or decide to retire later. It’s worth working through that.

Rebie: Fourtune Here’s a Few, if you would like a Money Guy tumbler, just email winner at moneyguy.com. All right, it is time for our new segment, which I am very, very excited about, called Moneyverse Milestones.

Moneyverse Milestones Segment (42:28)

Rebie: We talked a lot about the Moneyverse, our Discord server, on the show today, and we have a channel in there that is all about celebrating milestones. We talk about different benchmarks, different goals, personal goals, Money Guy milestone markers, all of those things on the show a lot. So we created a channel and a place where people can actually go in there and have people who get it, who can celebrate with them and speak into their life.

Brian: Are we going to give them a tumbler if we use their milestone?

Rebie: Sure, let’s do it.

Bo: Can I tell you just one thing I love about this so much? It’s so unique about this community. We often don’t get to celebrate that kind of stuff. Like, how many times did you hit millionaire status and you go to your neighbor and be like, “Hey neighbor, I’m a millionaire now?” You just can’t do it. “Hey, my income finally hit this threshold. Hey, I maxed out my 401k.” You just don’t get to do that. And obviously for obvious reasons we don’t do that publicly. But when we can do those sorts of things in the context of other people who are navigating the same sort of stuff, it’s kind of awesome. It’s a unique place to be able to communicate that kind of stuff. And we even heard that from you. We would sometimes hear it in the comments or on Reddit: “Oh, I don’t really have anybody to share this with, but I hit this milestone.” So that’s why we did it.

Rebie: All right. So let’s dive into the first one. Milestone one is hitting $350k net worth. This is from Always Be Curious. The update says: “I update my financial accounts in YNAB every six months and rebalance my portfolio. Today with growth, I crossed $350k net worth, $380k invested. I still have some student loans at 45 years old, but those will be paid off this fall. I was trying to figure out why this particular number felt so big when $250k was just dot dot dot. It didn’t feel as big. I think it’s because I took out $350k in student loans.” Wow, $350k in student loans. “I was foolish because I started my plan before I found Money Guy and thought of my interest as low interest at my income. In less time than many, I kept investing, maxing my 401k and Roth IRA while pouring everything else at my debt, about $8k per month. And I’m glad I did and I’m glad I didn’t miss the returns of the last few years. I’m also glad I found the Money Guy to help me focus on those student loans. Next is student loan payoff and I’m really excited about that. Also, thanks to the Moneyverse for being supportive.”

Brian: You know what’s amazing? I can tell you why I think $350k hits a psychological mark too. We’ve shown content where the first milestone takes you almost two decades to reach if you’re in your mid-40s. But then the next five years or so, the compounding growth and the army of dollars will do the work. It took you 20 years to do, but what’s going to happen in the next five to ten years will be incredible. I think that’s what you’re feeling, Always Be Curious. The compounding is starting to grow upon itself. You’ve had compounding interest working against you with the student loans, and you’re about to have that extinguished. Now you’re getting the dividends. And imagine what’s going to happen when you pay off these loans in the fall. I bet a lot of those resources, if you can keep piling it in, you’re going to instead of feeling behind, be right where you need to be.

Bo: I hope you’ve been tracking your annual net worth, because one of the beautiful things is that you had $350,000 of student loan debt and you’ve chipped away at it and knocked away at it to now only having $30 or $40,000 left. That’s insane. That’s something that is a milestone worth celebrating. And at the same time, you’ve been able to build up your net worth on the other side. You’ve got $380,000 invested. And one of the great things about investing and building wealth is that the bigger the numbers get, the bigger the numbers get. We have a year where the market makes 10% on $380,000. That’s amazing. And then you have 10% on $500,000, then on $750,000, then on $1 million. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. What an awesome thing. I would love to see your net worth template showing where you started, $350,000 in the hole, to now today being $350,000 positive. That’s awesome. Great work.

Rebie: Milestone two is a financial and relationship goal hit from Jake S. It says, “Hey folks. My wife and I, over the past five years, more like four and a half years, were able to pay off $103,000 in high-interest-rate student loans at 6% plus. Wow. This was done with having a combined income of less than $100k for three of those years. I still have $24k in student loans sitting at 4%, but we’ll be doing minimum monthly payments on those for about ten years. Originally, my monthly payments would have been $1,000 plus, but now they will be $240. This really is a post about how amazing my wife has been for being on the same page with me, trying to be as frugal as possible, and sending everything we could at those loans, with a wedding and buying our condo.” What do you guys have to say?

Bo: People ask us all the time, “Hey, I’m getting married. What’s the most important thing that my spouse and I should do to prepare for marriage?” Or, “Hey, I’ve been married for ten years. What’s the most important thing?” And it’s interesting that in all of those various stages, the answer surprisingly stays the same. Communication, communication, communication. If you and your spouse can be on the same page in terms of how you make financial decisions, the priorities that you have, and how you’re going to attack those priorities, man, it is an awesome, awesome, awesome ride. Even when those priorities change, your priorities in your 20s might be, let’s pay off this debt. Great, we’re going to do that. And then in your 50s it might be, let’s retire early. And you do that. And when you’re able to do that stuff together, it’s amazing how efficient and effective a household can be. Now, when you think about the contrast to that, we see it all the time. One of the number one things that people end up splitting up over, one of the biggest points of contention in a lot of marriages, is finances. So if you can remove that or work through that, holy cow, it just makes it work so much better.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people when they get married get all the lovey-dovey stuff. But I can tell you, if you do this right, it’s the scars, or the things that you overcome in the marriage especially, that are going to define you. For a lot of people, money becomes an element of conflict. But if you get through it together, it’s kind of like going into the trenches of warfare. And if you are together and you survive, you come out the other side. These are things that strengthen the bond. And that’s what I get excited about. You should celebrate these things. And then make sure, by the way, with the five love languages: make sure you’re sharing these and affirming and actually turning these into words to let your spouse know. Don’t just assume they know. Make sure that you’re actually giving them the words to affirm how far y’all have come, how much you appreciate them. And I think you’ll see that this could be something to celebrate that just makes the marriage that much better. Communication is hard. And being on the same page is hard. And pursuing financial goals is hard. But it’s worth it. It’s worth the work. It’s worth the conversations. It’s worth the tension. Because when you come out on the other side, you get to look back and say, holy cow, look what we did. Remember when we had $103,000 of high-interest student loan debt at 6% plus. And we said we’re not going to go on the trips, we’re not going to go out to eat, we’re not going to do this. And we knocked that out together. Hey, if we could do that over the last four and a half years, imagine what we can do together over the next 45 years.

Rebie: All right, one more milestone. Number three is a fitness goal hit from Diligent Dog 99. In the past 18 months, I’ve been on a huge grind to lower my body fat percentage and become more fit overall. Today is the first measurement I’ve had with sub 20%, now down to 17.2% from my 32% starting. And he ends it with “health is wealth,” which I know you guys love.

Bo: I bet everything else feels good. I bet your joints feel good. I bet you wake up better. I bet your sleep is better. By taking that active role over the last 18 months, I would be willing to bet that your quality of life has improved drastically. Because going from 32% body fat down to 17% is a huge change. Kudos to you. That’s something that is not easy. I’m sure there’s a lot of things you had to move your body, you probably had to feed your body differently than you were feeding it, and you probably had to focus on getting the recovery you need. But when you put all those three things together and you start seeing changes, you literally turn into a different person.

Brian: Yeah, I love how you close it with health as wealth, because we always make the correlation that a lot of things with your fitness and health overall are very similar to wealth building. Small decisions can have huge results. Kudos to you for creating this over 18 months. That’s definitely something to be celebrated. I love that because money is nothing more than a tool. And look, we know a lot of people. One of the heartbreaking things about doing this for a living is that you do see people who have this goal. They think when they reach a million or $2 million that they’re going to live their best life. And I’m here to tell you, you’ve got to make sure you do things right, where you enjoy every decade that you’re on this planet. A lot of that is making sure that you’re focusing on your health, the memories, the memories with loved ones, because it’s a complete package. You know, it’s all about a little bit of sacrifice and deferred gratification to get to exactly what’s important to you, to create happiness. And I love that you shared that with us. That’s awesome. 32 to 17 is a big, big change.

Rebie: Always Be Curious, Jake S, and Diligent Dog 99, if you guys would like a tumbler since you were featured in our Moneyverse Milestones segment, just email winner at moneyguy.com. And if you want to share your milestones just for the purpose of sharing in community and affirming each other and staying motivated, go to moneyguy.com/moneyverse to join our Discord channel and you have a chance to maybe be featured in one of these segments in the future, because we love to celebrate with you, whether it’s on Discord or here on the live stream.

Q&A: Savings Milestone at 40 — Does Age Gap Change the Target? (54:51)

Rebie: Thank you so much for sharing with us and participating in that milestone segment. We love it. With that, let’s go back to some more financial questions from the chat. We’ve got one from Jay Ram 86. It says, “I’m turning 40. My wife is 35. Should we target three times our household income saved this year, or adjust the goal because of our five-year age gap? Current income is $390k at the moment and we have about $770k in retirement. Thank you in advance.”

Bo: I am so glad that you read all of those letters because I was like, I don’t know what that means. I’m pretty sure TIA means “thank you in advance.” Pretty confident. $770k in retirement, $390,000 income, one huge shovel. That’s not a small sum. It’s awesome. And your question is, okay, should we shoot for three times? Where Jay Ram is coming up with that: for those of you who don’t know, we say that by the time you hit 40 years of age, your goal should be three times your annual income saved up in liquid investments. But it’s just a rule of thumb. It’s a hey, this is the trajectory you should be on at 40. You’re probably beginning to figure out what you want the rest of your working career to look like. Don’t want to work until 65? Don’t want to work until 55? What kind of spinning are we going to have? So you should have some sort of metric. If you’ve not defined the finish line, you should at least start being able to kind of see it. And so I would argue where you should be at 40, the milestones are super helpful, but this might be the time when it makes sense to figure out, okay, well, what’s our actual number? What’s the actual number that we need to get to by the time we get to 65, so we can live the life we want to live on our terms, the way we want to live it? And where are we today? Well, based on where we are today and based on the way that we’re saving, are we going to be able to accomplish that, or do we need to perhaps save more?

Bo: If you’re just trying to figure out a rule of thumb, I don’t think it’s crazy to average out your ages. One of you is 40, one of you is 35, meet at 37. I’d give you another three years to hit that metric if I had to. Because I don’t know how fast their income has moved or how long they’ve earned it.

Brian: No, there is a better question. Look, I’m going to play Sergeant Slaughter here. Why are you trying to get out of your obligation just because you married a younger spouse? That doesn’t get you a cheat code. 40 is the age that you base off of. Here’s the better question though: how long have you made $390,000? Because if you made $100,000 and $200,000 and then all of a sudden $390,000, I’d rather you average the last three years of income to figure out what the multiple is, versus you trying to take a shortcut just because you married a younger spouse and want to average your ages.

Bo: Let’s take your logic here. And you get somebody in the public who’s got a super young spouse. You’re not going to take a 50-year-old who’s close to a 25-year-old and go, oh, you just save for a 32-year-old and you’ll be okay. I don’t want people to be discouraged because they didn’t hit three times.

Rebie: Agreed, disagree, want to fight?

Brian: We’re almost at a fight. I love it. The older spouse situation can be leveled out by the last three years if you had a big jump in income.

Bo: Completely agree. But what I really want you to define is where should you guys be? Three times your annual income is more just like a spot check. It’s not an actual target you should be hitting unless it’s on your trajectory towards financial independence. I never want people to be discouraged about that, because they’ve got $770,000 saved up in retirement at 40 and 35. By any objective measure, that’s fantastic. Are you quite at three times? Not just yet. But again, there are some other things at play. There is the age difference, which, fine, I don’t care if you average it or not. There is an income trajectory change. What I want you to do is define what is actually the number that you guys should be at, and what decisions do you need to make to move in that direction. You’re just violent. All of a sudden I can swim and he gets all aggressive.

Rebie: On that note, thank you so much for joining us for this special live stream with a new segment and a new announcement of phase two of Millionaire Mission. Be sure to go to moneyguy.com/millionairemission to preorder your paperback so you can be part of those perks if you’re interested. And also just help us get that book into even more people who need to know what’s in there. That same framework we know and love, but revised, updated, and with new stories. We’re very excited. Thanks so much for being a part of that. We really really appreciate it. And thank you all for all the support.

Brian: There’s a lot of insecurity and a lot of fear when you put a book out: are people going to receive it? Is this book going to do what you hope it’s going to do? And y’all kind of answered that question with the first edition. So I’m happy that we get to even make it better. And thank you all for going on this journey with us. Because I know without my financial mutants, this thing wouldn’t be shared the way it is and it wouldn’t have had the success that it had. So y’all deserve a lot of that credit, and I really appreciate that. That’s what I love about what we get to do. It really keeps me coming every Tuesday, every Friday as we’re recording Making a Millionaire. It’s really exciting what we get to do. I feel like we, in our own little way, are making the world a little bit better place. So thank you for being part of our journey. I’m your host Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy team out.