The Wealth Building Plan that Could Change Your Life

Introduction – Does the FOO Really Work? (0:00)

Brian: The Financial Order of Operations shows you exactly what to do with your next dollar. But does it really work in every situation?

Bo: And Brian, I am so excited because today we’re going to see what it looks like for a person to actually follow the FOO step by step. And we’ll even throw some wrenches in there to see how it affects their journey and their wealth over the long term.

Brian: I’m Brian. He’s Bo. And we’re financial advisors here to help you navigate the FOO. With that, let’s dive right in.

Bo: That’s right, Brian. The Financial Order of Operations is a nine-step guide to help you to decide exactly what you ought to do with your next dollar. But it’s not a straight line. A lot of people think that. A lot of people think, “Okay, I go from step one to step two and step two to step three.” But oftentimes that’s not how it plays out.

Brian: No. I want you to know we’re as you can tell we’re pretty proud of this system because I like to say it’s all terrain, all weather. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life. We got you covered. And Bo, you’ve already kind of alluded to it. We even have a visual to kind of show this. A lot of people think it’s just a walk up the stairs to you go from step one to step two and so forth. No, we know life is going to happen. There’s going to be all kind of things that happen to you. The examples we give here is of course you’re going to have weird things happen with the vehicle you drive. You might lose your job. You might have big life things like you’re going to buy your first house. We have a system that’s going to get you through all these different elements.

Bo: And what I love about today’s show, Brian, is that a lot of systems are academic in nature and they’re theoretical, but we thought, hey, let’s step away from theory for a moment and let’s talk about actual practical implications. What happens if we track a real individual in a real life scenario navigating the Financial Order of Operations? So, we want to introduce you today to FOO Following Freddie and we’re going to walk you through Freddie’s life and how the Financial Order of Operations actually applies to him and what it could look like in a real world scenario. So, Brian, we’re going to start with Freddie. Freddie’s young.

Meet FOO Following Freddie (2:09)

Brian: So, here’s the thing. I feel like maybe I resemble more of Manny the Mutant. And now we’ve moved on to FOO Following Freddie, right? And Freddie might have some protein powder in his life. I mean, you can just sense this might be really falling on the line of Bo.

Bo: Even though you are older than 25. I am older than 25, but FOO Following Freddie is not. He is 25 years old. He has an annual salary of $58,500, which is right now the median salary for someone in the mid-20s right now according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So if we have an annual salary of $58,500, we know that the monthly take-home after we factor in taxes and payroll taxes and things like that for Freddie is going to be just under $4,100 a month, $4,087. Well, we’re going to assume that Freddie wants to keep his lifestyle in check. So, when we factor in all of his monthly expenses and factor in groceries and utilities and rent and all of those things, we’re going to assume that his monthly expenses are $3,500 a month. So, if we have a total take-home pay of $4,087 and we have monthly expenses of $3,500, that means that right out of the get-go, there’s some margin available to Freddie of $587. And we’ve already said this, Brian, he’s starting at the very beginning. So, he has zero savings. He is starting out at the beginning. Blank slate.

Brian: Yeah. Don’t let Freddie’s good looks fool you. He’s actually already a financial mutant because you’re looking at the monthly expenses and you’re like, how in the world can we be doing this for $3,500? He’s got roommates. He’s thinking about things. I mean, the big takeaway here for me is that margin part is he’s already living on less than he makes. So, he’s got $587 that look. And what’s crazy is we’re going to show you how that little bit, $587, is where that is the seed that’s going to get planted and really spring forth this huge elm of a tree that is going to build wealth in the long term.

Step 1 – Highest Deductible (4:13)

Bo: So let’s jump in. If Freddie is going to begin walking through the Financial Order of Operations, he’s going to start at step one, highest deductible. And we know through our case study that Freddie has a high deductible health plan through work. So, he’s got his first job. When he thinks about the highest deductible that exists in his life, it is going to be his health insurance deductible. And for this case study, we’re going to assume that it’s $2,500 for that deductible.

Brian: Yeah. Now, look, a lot of you, if you’re brand new to the Financial Order of Operations, why do we even have this step in here? This is to keep you from making the desperate decisions that really derail you right out of the starting blocks. And the big thing you have to protect yourself from is the catastrophic stuff that can come your way. That’s a health issue, that’s a car accident. These are the type of things that you can insure away the risk. But it means that you do need to be prepared to cover the deductible. And that’s why we start off with the highest deductible. Not all of them. You don’t have to sum them all up, but we do want you to have the highest, which in this case is probably Freddie’s health insurance. It’s $2,500. We’ve already said he has margin of $587. So, he’s going to be able to knock this out in about four months.

Bo: Yeah. It’s going to take him four months to get through that. At the end of that four months, once he has that $2,500 saved up, guess what he gets to do? He gets to check off step one of the Financial Order of Operations. So, we’ve checked off step one. We’re four months into our career, and then we get to go to the exciting one. We get to go to step two of the Financial Order of Operations, employer match.

Step 2 – Employer Match (5:42)

Brian: Yeah. Now look, Freddie fortunately is working for an employer like many of you are where the government has incentivized our employers that say, “Hey, if you will put a little bit, prime the pump. Let’s get the engine of saving for the future going. If you’ll put a little bit in for your employees, we’ll give you some tax benefits and other things as an employer.” And it’s really created this nice cohesive system to where just like for Freddie, his employer said, “Look, if you will put in 3% of your salary, we will match this dollar for dollar for another 3%.” So that is a 100% guaranteed rate of return that’s going to give Freddie a 6%. You can’t sleep on that. That’s pretty powerful, Bo.

Bo: So right out of the gate, Freddie says, “Okay, I have some margin. I’ve filled up my highest deductible. So, I’m going to take advantage of that free money.” So, 3% of Freddie’s salary, the $58,500 is $1,755 a year or about $147 a month. Remember, he had $587 once he filled up his highest deductible. So, he’s going to pull out of that $147 a month to be able to max out his employer match. So, he sets up automatic contributions to start happening from his paycheck starting in month five. So, he’s going to be automatic for the people beginning to build wealth. You know what he gets to do at this point? He gets to check off step number two, employer match.

Step 3 – High Interest Debt (7:12)

Brian: Yeah. But here’s where we’re going to, you know, when you scratch a cat, you’re supposed to always go with the fur. Step number three is you’re going to see the intersection of two and three is where you’ve actually now rubbed the cat backwards because there’s going to be a whole group of people out there be like, “Wait a minute. He has high interest debt and you just told this guy to do his 401(k) first. We’ve already blown up another system that’s pretty popular out there.” How can this be the case, Bo?

Bo: Well, the answer is because that employer match free money is even more attractive than how scary the high interest debt is. When we look at Freddie, because he is a young person, he does have some credit card debt. Right now, he has a balance of $3,000 on his credit card, but the interest rate that he’s paying is 22%. And while 22% is egregious, it’s awful. It’s bad. It’s nasty. It’s not 100%. And that’s what his employer match is. That’s why we prioritize step two over step three, high interest debt. So, if we think about his minimum payment that he’s required to pay, it’s going to be $75 a month. But remember, Freddie is a financial mutant. He does not want to pay the minimum payment. He wants to follow the Financial Order of Operations. So, after going to get his employer match, we know that he has margin of about $440 a month. Well, with that $440, we want him to extinguish this debt. We want him to knock out that $3,000 of credit card debt so that compound interest does not begin working against us.

Brian: This is where the discipline really does kick in because I think a lot of people, you get that first job, you get excited about the employer money that’s coming in, but then you have this credit card and for a lot of us, we see the number is $3,000 and we’re like, “Yeah, but if I make over $50,000 a year, $3,000 is just not that much.” And then you see your minimum payment $75. There’s a lot of temptation to kind of try to go ahead and get into Roth IRAs and doing other things to start growing your wealth. No, I want you to stay the course. Use that margin, that $440 to get out of debt. You’re paying 22%. You’re not going to get rich ever if you’re paying twice what you hope to earn to the banks. So, that’s why I want you to go whole hog. Let’s pay off this high interest debt for the seven months that it takes. And then we can continue the journey with the Financial Order of Operations.

Bo: And that’s right at $440 a month. It’ll take him about seven months to knock out that high interest debt. But once he does, boom, he gets to check off step number three.

Step 4 – Emergency Reserves (9:49)

Bo: And then he gets to move into step number four, which is emergency reserves. Now remember, he has already established $2,500 for his highest deductible. He already has some seed money in the emergency fund. And we always say that when it comes to an emergency fund, we want you to have somewhere between 3 months and 6 months of your living expenses available in cash ready for you if an emergency comes. So Freddie looks at his situation. He says, “I’m single. I’m not married. I don’t have debt. There aren’t other people depending on me.” So, he is going to determine that a three-month emergency reserve is what likely makes the most sense for him. And remember, he has monthly expenses of $3,500. So, if we take $3,500 times three, his need of an emergency fund is going to be $10,500.

Brian: This is going to be the biggest trap for my financial mutants. And by the way, how do I know this is a trap? Because I fell into this trap myself. A lot of you look, you’re going to get to step three. You have $3,000 of credit card debt. You’re paying 22%. That’s common sense to say we can’t get ahead by paying 22%. However, you’ll get to step four and your emergency reserves and you’ve always heard the term cash is trash. You want to get to your wealth-building journey ASAP. Don’t skip step number four. We think financial reserves and being prepared for emergency situations is not a one step. It’s actually a two-step part of the process because this is the part where my financial mutants all the time will skip this step. But here’s the thing. You might lose your job. We all know bad news doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s typically when it rains, it pours. You’ll not only lose your job, but the stock market will go down. Your housing market will get destroyed. All these things very likely could happen at the same time. And what you need to not do is take the cash which acts like the oxygen that we breathe for granted. You need to go ahead build up the three to six months. Don’t skip this exercise. Be patient. Yes, I know it hurts that this is very likely for Freddie here. This is going to take 18 months and that’s going to hurt because they’re going to be thinking about Roth IRAs. They’re going to be thinking about what they could be doing investing this money in the S&P 500. Just hold. Be patient. There are going to be plenty of stops on this journey to compound growth, but we’ve got to protect you by understanding the value of having good emergency reserves.

Bo: So, remember Freddie just paid off his high-interest debt. So, now he has $440 to work with. And if he’s already got $2,500 in the high deductible pot, he’s got to get to $10,500. He has $440 to do it. It’s going to take him just over 18 months to get there. But once he does that, once he commits to putting that money in that savings account for 18 months, he gets to check off step four, emergency reserve. So at this point, Freddie is 27 years old. He’s now been working the FOO for 2 and a half years. He’s made it all the way through step 4. He is already in great shape. A lot of 27-year-olds do not find themselves in this place. They have debt. They have no emergency fund. They feel like they’re behind the eight ball. But because Freddie began to take it seriously at the beginning of his journey because he had a system, because he put a system in place, it took him two and a half years to get on solid financial footing where now he can really begin building for his future.

Brian: What I like about the system also is that it’s going to motivate you. I mean, I’ve been in positions to where I was so ready to move to the next step of what I was trying to do in my financial life that I was literally rolling coins. I’ve been at points where you’re counting on if your grandparents give you 50 bucks, we’re excited because that accelerates. I know this sounds ridiculous, but you’ll also I’ve had don’t go out to eat weekends where you just say, you know what, this weekend so I can save an extra $200 towards my goal, I’m just not going out. This is the type of mentality that a financial mutant will have to get to step five and beyond so that you can actually start building your army of dollars to really start working harder for you than your brain, your back, and even your hands.

Freddie Gets a Raise – Steps 5 and 6 (14:05)

Bo: All right, so let’s remember Freddie’s been working the Financial Order of Operations for 2 and a half years. He’s now into his career. He’s 27 years old. Now, let’s assume that Freddie gets a raise. He ends up advancing his career, making good decisions, adding value, and so now he goes to an annual salary of $70,000. Well, as soon as that happens, some automatic things happen. He’s already saving 3% into his 401(k) because he was getting that employer match. So now his 3% contribution gets increased up to $175 a month. Well, in addition to this, he also has a higher take-home. His take-home pay is now after taxes, after 401(k) withholding, $4,628. But you know what Freddie doesn’t do? Freddie recognizes, man, I’m a financial mutant. I’m still young. Just because I got this pay raise, just because I have more money now, I’m not going to change my lifestyle. And Freddie says at 27, I’m going to keep my monthly expenses at $3,500 a month. I’m going to keep them right where they are. And when he does that, he now has $1,128 of margin available to him every month. And keep in mind, he’s already made it through step four. He didn’t change his living expenses. So his high yield savings account, his emergency fund is at $10,500. He is ready to start rocking and rolling.

Brian: Yeah. Now we can come into step five with momentum because you can imagine not earlier before the pay raise he only had a margin of 500 bucks but then after you put that towards the matching money, the credit card debt and other stuff, it was 500 bucks. Now he’s over $1,000 a month. We’re going to crush not only step five, we’re going to crush step six. This is going to be fun to watch how your army of dollar bills can do if you just can be patient, be disciplined. There will be your just reward in your future.

Bo: So now he’s putting 3% into his 401(k). He’s already saving there, but now he wants to kick it up a notch. And he knows that in order to max out his Roth IRA this year, he needs to save $7,500. So he just takes $7,500, divides it by 12, and he starts putting $625 a month into his Roth IRA. So he maxes that out and even when he does that, he still has $418 a month left over. So then he says, “Hey, I’m already participating in a high deductible health plan at my work. I’m going to go max out the individual HSA.” And the max this year for individuals on HSA plan is $4,400 a year. So now he starts putting $366 a month into his HSA. So, even after maxing out his Roth IRA and maxing out his HSA, Freddie still has $137 of margin left over that he gets to do something with.

Brian: I think it’s interesting. We started this in his early 20s and he was very disciplined, but I got to tell you, it took a while and look, I don’t mind being completely transparent. I’ve shared going through the Financial Order of Operations, I didn’t feel completely comfortable or feeling like I had money and margin, a lot of margin in my life until I was actually in my early 40s. So, I think it’s pretty normal that here’s Freddie doing his best life, but even at age 27, it’s probably not until he gets to step five that he feels like he’s an unleashed financial mutant because now he’s actually loading up his Roth IRA and doing things. I share that only so you see the transparency of it’s okay if you get frustrated that this is going to take some time to build this success.

Bo: So once we get the money going into the Roth, going into the HSA, we get to check step five. We get to check maxing out those tax-free accounts. So now that we’ve maxed out the tax-free accounts, we’ve maxed out the Roth, we’ve maxed out the HSA, now we get to go to step six, max out your retirement account.

Brian: Yeah. Now, look, we’ve always been very transparent about this, too. A lot of people get to step six and you see max out retirement, you’re like, “Wait a minute. Okay, I got to start doing some math on this.” If the maximum you can do is $24,500, that’s $2,041 a month. He doesn’t make that. He doesn’t make enough money. So, does that mean now I’m trapped in step six forever until I get huge pay raises? No. At some point we’re going to need to do a check to figure out what’s your savings rate where you are because we know that Freddie’s margin has $137 to put into this 401(k). That’s a far cry from $2,041. But this is also a good time to stop and evaluate and say, “Hey, where are we at with our 401(k) and our contributions?” Because maybe we can actually increase this margin if we take into account all the things that are working for us.

Bo: Yeah. Freddie’s not able to max out step six, but he is able to improve. He does add that $137. So now he’s putting $312 a month into his 401(k). So if we think about Freddie’s monthly savings, we know that he’s got $312 going into his 401(k). We know that he has $625 a month going into his Roth IRA. We know that he’s got $366 a month going into his HSA. So, if you add all of that up, he’s saving $1,303 a month. But if we think about his $70,000 salary, and we know that we want him saving 25% of his gross income, he needs to be saving $1,458 a month. Brian, it looks like Freddie’s fallen just a little bit short.

Brian: Yeah, this is where people often wonder where do your numbers come from. We always say, look, if you’re close enough to the social safety net, if your income as a single individual is less than $100,000, $200,000 for a married couple, you actually get to count your employer match in that 25%. Well, we already know his employer is giving him 3%. It’s a dollar-for-dollar match on the first 3%. So, that’s incredible. That immediately pushes him up to $1,478, which actually beats the 25% by 20 bucks a month. This is magical because this means actually Freddie is a financial mutant who’s not only graduated through steps one through six, he’s now into step seven of hyper-accumulation.

Step 7 – Hyper-Accumulation and Long-Term Results (20:27)

Bo: Yeah, it’s wild. If we think about this, Freddie is just 2 and a half years into his journey, two and a half years into his working career and yet he’s already built a solid financial foundation and he is starting to stack up dollars for his future. We just figured out that based on his income, he’s saving 25% of his gross income at the ripe age of 27. Well, if you go out to moneyguy.com/resources, we have a great deliverable called How Much Should You Save?

Brian: You should shave enough to have the least amount of facial hair that you want.

Bo: Which shows that starting at his age, he’s somewhere between age 25 and 30. If he can save 25% of his gross income, by the time that he gets to financial independence, by the time that he gets out to age 65, he’ll be able to get a pay raise. He’ll be able to retire with a higher standard of living than he had during his working years. Or what’s more likely, he’s going to be able to have more options sooner and earlier in life. This is how powerful the Financial Order of Operations can be if you figure it out early and begin putting these parts and pieces into place.

Brian: Well, and look, we recognize this is a non-step system. And here’s Freddie. He’s in step seven. There still leaves two additional steps. We’ve got prepaid future expenses, which is step eight. We also have step nine, low interest debt. Well, this is the part where Freddie kind of gets his choose your own adventure. We already know he’s single. He doesn’t have children yet. He doesn’t necessarily have any mortgage debt to pay off. So, step nine’s not really a big consideration. Step eight, maybe he’s traveling a little bit more. Maybe he has a little bit nicer car payment or maybe he’s living life on consumption a little bit more. He could or he could save this. Whether it’s additional cash, whether it’s additional investments, it truly is a choose your own adventure at this point for Freddie.

Bo: What I think is wonderful because what I want you to see is okay, what do we do? We followed the Financial Order of Operations. We just followed the nine-step process. And so one of the questions you may be asking is, okay, well, where is this leading Freddie? Okay, yeah, I get it. He did this. And yeah, I get it. He did this. What does he actually end up at? What does his future financial life look like? And we never assumed that Freddie’s income made it to $100,000. We didn’t give him any big promotions or big pay raises. This was just taking some behaviors he figured out in his mid-20s and applying that across the remainder of his working career. Do you realize if he does this over an entire working career by the time he gets to retirement, he would have a portfolio of almost $5.8 million. Now again, we didn’t do pay raises. We didn’t do cost of living adjustments. That’s $5.8 million in today’s dollars just by executing the Financial Order of Operations starting in his 20s.

Brian: I think it’s, you know, this shows is a great case study is that we know the data out there of when people cross into millionaire status is typically your late 40s. And look, Freddie, even though he never made six figures income, he crossed into seven figure status, the two comma club. Right at age 48. So, I’m telling you, this is the thing when people what I love about this is I want you to use this as motivation is that we wrote this scenario and went right down through it, but everybody’s going to be different. A lot of you will get a later start. Some of you will get a later start. Some of you will come into this with a later start but a bigger income. Wherever you are, the Financial Order of Operations will meet you where you are and help you maximize what to do with the next dollar. I just want you to get motivated. I want you to get excited and not feel like the system is stacked against you.

Bo: One of the things I think is beautiful about this illustration is you can see that in his first 20 working years from 25 to 45 he goes from $0 to $800,000. But in the next 20 working years from 45 to 65 he goes from $800,000 to $5.8 million. If you can let your money work for you, it will do incredible things.

Throwing Wrenches – What If Life Happens? (24:40)

Bo: But I can already hear the naysayers out there. They’re saying, “But guys, what you laid out is unrealistic.” That’s not the way that life happens. Sometimes curveballs get thrown our way. And we already alluded to at the very beginning of the show. We said the Financial Order of Operations is not a straight line. And what we just showed you through the Freddie case study was kind of a straight line. So we said, “Hey, let’s throw some wrenches in there. Let’s say, okay, how does it impact it if some things change?”

Bo: So, we said, “Okay, very first wrench. What’s this look like if all of a sudden Freddie has an event take place and it wipes out his emergency fund?” Emergency funds are supposed to be for those unknown things that come our way and it completely wipes them out. And so, the example that the content team came up with, they’re big Zootopia fans. They said Freddie’s nephew took his phone and bought 11 non-refundable VIP tickets to a Shakira concert in Rio de Janeiro. This wiped out all of Freddie’s emergency fund. So what does he have to do? He has to go all the way back to step one. Remember this is a guy who was crushing it. He was in step seven of the FOO and then this thing happens and he has to go all the way back to the beginning.

Brian: So let’s see. It’s going to take approximately, if you did the math on this, it would be about seven months of missing investments. And that’s okay because as we actually show you what the cause and effect relationship is, is that you recover. This is what I love about the Financial Order of Operations is even when life happens, and I know we took some liberties trying to be funny with this, you’re going to be okay. The system will meet you where you are and help you navigate out.

Bo: So, I’m going to say it even differently. Taking off 7 months of investing to step back and rebuild instead of Freddie retiring with a portfolio of $5.76 million, his portfolio still makes it to $5.47 million. He still makes it to financial independence. Okay. What if we have another type of wrench? Remember one of the things we said is that Freddie had this great thing where he worked with an employer that gave him a dollar-for-dollar match on the first 3%. So he got free money from the jump. Well, what happens if at age 28 when he is starting to get some traction in his career, he decides to shift jobs. And when he shifts jobs, he now moves to an employer that does not have a 401(k) match. They still have a 401(k) plan available, but there is no match. What does Freddie do? He goes back to step two and there is no employer match in step two. So it doesn’t necessarily change his investing behavior. But what it does change is he now misses out. And we said if he’s with his employer for 10 years, he now misses out on that employer match. $175 a month he was getting from his employer for 10 years. Even if that happens and the free money goes away, it’s still not a detrimental blow to his financial life.

Brian: What I think is, look, this is where I’m an optimist even in negative situations, because when we actually do the math on this and when we ask ourselves, what is $175 per month invested turn into? You can see the difference here is close to $400,000. If you would have told me, hey, if we go invest $175 a month for the next 10 years, what’s the impact going to be? I don’t think a lot of people because $175 times 120 months that’s only $21,000. To say $21,000 impacts your life to close to $400,000 shows the power of compounding growth. Now yes it stinks that his account is worth close to $400,000 less, but he’s still going to be okay. He’s still okay.

Bo: So then let’s say, okay, well, what happens? Maybe it’s not losing an employer match or maybe it’s not some emergency fund thing. Maybe Freddie is just a normal person that wants to make normal people decisions and he decides, you know what, one of my financial goals is I want to buy a house. And I know that the average first-time home buyer is somewhere in their early to mid-30s. So we say, “Okay, what happens if Freddie decides age 35 he wants to buy a house?” Well, the very first thing Freddie’s going to do is say, “You know what? I understand there’s a better way to do money. So when I go to buy my first house, I’m going to make sure that I follow the 3/5/25 rule.” That’s 3% down, not 20% down necessarily, but at least 3% down. I don’t want to be in the house or in that home for any less than five years because I want to make sure I can see myself there and I want to make sure that my monthly housing costs do not exceed 25% of my monthly gross income. Now, this is a place to pause, Brian, because what a lot of people don’t recognize is that the three and the 25 have to coordinate. A lot of people, I want to put 3% down, but if I only put down 3%, I may run afoul of the 25%. I may have to put more down. And what Freddie determined was, man, you know what? In order for me to follow these home buying rules, I’m going to have to put down more than 3%.

Brian: Yeah, we backed into the math, we’ll go ahead and do that for you. We figured out it was going to be 9%. To still qualify under the 25% amount. So, yes, we gave you know, if you know our 3/5/25, we do give a lot of grace on that down payment where it can be as low as 3%. But we do want you to pay respect to the fact of so you’re not house rich life poor. This actually would hold Freddie back. He wouldn’t be able to invest. It would take him 18 months to come up with that house down payment. That’s a big deal for a financial mutant. So you can imagine and not only that it didn’t only take him backwards on saving up for the down payment. We figured out because a lot of people if we’re having an honest conversation when you buy the house there’s some additional expenses that come into your life too. So, we even took into the consideration that now your monthly housing and living expenses are going to be higher. What did we assume? About $1,000 a month?

Bo: Well, what we said is because they’re higher, he’s only going to be able to save $1,000 a month. Remember, he was saving substantially more than that. But now at age 35, he buys this house. It’s a new financial goal that he has, but he has to decrease his savings. Well, even having to decrease his savings to $1,000 a month at age 35, because he did a lot of the hard work early on, because he followed the Financial Order of Operations from 25 to 35, he still, even with a reduced savings, even not saving 25% of his gross income, he still gets to retirement age 65 with over $4.6 million. Again, even though it’s a lower number than original, I think that Freddie’s going to be okay.

Brian: So, we’ve done what I find interesting, Bo, is now none of this is bad. Besides the tickets, that was negative. But the next one, a life decision, that’s a choice, but life’s not always bad news or sideways moves. Every now and then, the world and life smiles upon you. And what if all of a sudden at age 40 he got a really large pay raise? What would that do to this?

Bo: Yeah. What’s great is we said, “Okay, what if he gets a significant pay raise and now because of that he’s able to save more?” So he takes this new job and he gets this new raise and he’s able to invest more in his 401(k). What if at age 40, even though he was following the FOO from 25 all the way to 40, what if he was able to kick it up a notch and he started saving $2,000 a month starting at age 40? Well, on his normal path, by the time he got to retirement, he was able to retire with about $5.7 million. Just by being able to save in his highest earning years from age 40 to 65, now his retirement nest egg is $6.3 million just because instead of allowing that money to go purely to lifestyle, he allowed it to also build for his future financial well-being.

Closing – Choose Your Own Adventure (33:02)

Brian: I’ve really enjoyed going through this exercise because when we talk about the Financial Order of Operations, I always say it’s the all-weather all-terrain type vehicle and this shows you because the other part about what we get to do for a living is that I love that we treated each one of these things kind of independently of each other is that I always say that there is not just one path to success. There are literally to infinity and beyond paths of success. And we’ve just now covered here’s five different paths. And what I think is interesting is they go from $4.6 million of success all the way up to $6.4 million of success. Your life really is a choose your own adventure. And you kind of have to figure out what you as a financial mutant want to get out of life because we’ll give you the numbers, we’ll give you the mindset, but at the end of the day, personal finance is definitely personal.

Bo: And what I love is no matter what life throws your way, no matter what thing happens while you’re in this accumulation phase, we want the Financial Order of Operations to be your benchmark. We want it to be your compass. We want it to be your guide that lets you feel confident that you know exactly what you’re going to do with your next dollar. We’ve built this both through our personal experiences as well as the experience we get to share with hundreds and thousands of financial mutants out there that have been able to successfully navigate their financial lives. This isn’t just theory. It’s not just academia. This is a real world system that we have seen really work in practice for real people every single day.

Brian: Yeah. So that’s why I want to invite you if you’re looking at this and go, “Yeah, but how’s this pertain to me specifically?” You got several options. The easiest, and by the way, we want to make this as easy as possible. If you go to learn.moneyguy.com, we actually have the Financial Order of Operations course. We updated this. We dropped the price to like a quarter of what it used to be. You heard that right. We really did shave off about 75% of the cost because we wanted to make this as accessible as possible to our audience. And by the way, if even if that’s too much, we also have my book, my New York Times bestselling book, Millionaire Mission. We’ll walk you through the Financial Order of Operations. Because our biggest thing is that I want you to live your best life. Bo wants you to live your best life. We want you to be a financial mutant without regrets. And we know that even though building wealth is relatively simple, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. Because what happens is when you start doing these simple steps over and over, you’re going to find that even though you’re trying to keep it as simple as possible, complexity will show up. And that’s when guess what? Once again, just because we planted that seed that turned into a giant elm of success, we’ll leave the porch light on for you. That’s why we work with clients in 49 states all across the country. Love to make it 50. So reach out to us. I’m your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy team out.