BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 198: Finance Friday: Are You Spending Too Much Time on Low-Pay Jobs?

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

Many of you know that Mindy loves live-in-flips, and although she can definitely swing a hammer, she doesn’t have the skills of a finish carpenter, but today’s guests, Serafina & Darrin, do! Serafina and Darrin were both working at non-profits, but over the last year have transitioned to running their own business named Carlucci Woodworking. Serafina takes care of the bookkeeping while Darrin takes care of the carpentry. They’re a dynamic duo! All this is happening while they are trying to build their dream home out in the country. If you’ve ever custom-built a house you’ll know how time-intensive and (often) expensive it can be. Serafina & Darrin want to know whether or not Darrin’s high hourly rate would be better served doing jobs, as opposed to working on their own home. With dreams of sailing around the world with their children, hitting a not too far away FI number, and living in their countryside getaway, they’ll need to focus on optimizing their business, getting connections, and keeping up with their investing!  In This Episode We Cover The pros and cons of leaving your job for self-employment How to optimize your business so you’re working billable hours whenever possible Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, and pensions  Setting up your emergency reserve so you always feel financially secure Using your business in creative ways (to make more money!) Knowing the ARV of a new construction (even if it’s custom) And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Mad Fientist Etsy Yelp HomeAdvisor HSA – The Ultimate Retirement Account Roth Conversion Ladders Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/moneyshow198 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 198, Finance Friday edition, where we interview Sarah Fina and Darren and talk about building a business and spending your time on endeavors that have the highest ROI. Yeah, at some point when you're DIYing things and I end up thinking, oh, I can do that. You know, watch a YouTube video, right? Of course. And then rent the machine. And yeah, but, you know, at some level, it's like, what's that balance between efficiency and like being able to say that You poured all the concrete fear. Hello, hello, hello.

My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my intrepid co-host, Scott Trench. I love how you're always exploring new ways to describe me, Mindy. Thank you. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right.

Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, or simply sail around the world for a year or two. We'll help you get money and problems out of the way so you can live the life of your dreams. I am super excited for today's episode because yet again, we have a very different set of circumstances, but I don't really consider them unique circumstances. We just haven't interviewed these people before or people in these circumstances. Serafina and Darren are self-employed. They have two kids.

they're about a third of the way to their financial independence goal, and they're looking for a little bit of advice. And we give them some suggestions to follow, definitely not advice, but definitely some suggestions to look into things like an HSA, things like the Roth IRA, the over 50 catch-up in just a year for Darren. And I'm super excited for all the things that their future holds, which I think is vast. Yeah, I think that they've done a remarkable job with what seems like not a lot of income over the past couple of years and put themselves in really good position. And so today, it wasn't about capital allocation. It wasn't about expense reduction. It wasn't about these other types of things that we kind of normally get into in the fundamental side of things. Their fundamentals are really strong.

It's about income generation. And so I think that it's about income generation and perhaps a new way for us in running, a business as a contractor. And I think that that was a really fun discussion and a new look at solving this problem of personal finance. Yeah. And I like how you and I approach it in a different way. I have a very different set of experiences than you do. And I love your big picture overview of what they should do. I think that everything that you said was spot on. And I think everything you said was spot on. I love the great detail and additions and tactics that we can move to move things forward in addition to your excellent big picture skills as well,

Bindy. Oh, thanks, Scott. Okay, before we bring them in, let's make sure that our attorney is satisfied when I say the contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice, and neither Scott nor I nor Bigger Pockets is engaged in the provision of legal, tax, or any other advice. You should seek your own advice from professional advisors, including lawyers and accountants regarding the legal, tax, and financial implications of any financial decisions.

you contemplate. Okay, let's bring in Serafina and Darren and give them a couple of financial decisions to contemplate. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more importantly where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life,

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Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest information. impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leeners Stronger for Fitness, the anxious generation for parenting perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting,

and more. All accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Sarahina and Darren are debt-free. Hooray! They've got two young kids and are about one-third of the way to their financial independence goal of $750,000.

They're self-employed and have dreams of sailing around the world with their children post-financial independence, but they're not quite sure where to invest and how to prioritize spending. Sarahina and Darren, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm super excited to talk to you today. Thanks. We're excited to talk to you too. Thank you so much.

So, Sarah Fiona, let's start with your income. Okay. We are currently self-employed, and right now I have us having an owner paid combined of $3,500 a month. Awesome. And what do you do? We have a, like, a carpentry, custom woodworking boat building business. So Darren's the boat builder and the woodworker, and I do the bookkeeper. And I do the bookkeeping and the paperwork and the invoicing, things like that.

Awesome. And is that income fluctuate or is it reasonably steady there? It definitely fluctuates, but I've been trying to, I recently got the book profit first that suggested that you set it up so that you have a steady income as best you can. So I think we can maintain that. So that's kind of how we came up at that. This is also our first year in this, paradigm. We both worked at a nonprofit

woodworking school for, I don't know, like 17 years. Yes, we just started this last June. Yeah. And has this changed your income significantly lowered it or increased it? I think it's a little bit lower just because I'm not, I don't also have a job. I worked part time for the nonprofit. So, I mean, we're both working, but it feels like we have one

income. Okay. And, Do you feel, given it your first year, are you seeing a slope of growth in your company in revenue and those types of things? Or do you kind of feel like this is going to be pretty steady at its current level of 3,500? I think it could be steady. I think it just depends maybe on how much, how many jobs we get. So if we were able to have time to take on more jobs, then we could probably increase that.

I think we get stuck or stuck with feeling like we have to. put time on building the house and put time on making money on the jobs. Yeah. Okay, great. So you're also undertaking a large additional profit or a bit of work that's going to add value with the house construction. Correct. Love it.

Let's go to expenses. How much are you spending and how much of that 3,500 are you able to keep each month? We have a pretty great rent situation right now. Our rent's really low at just $200, so that's pretty nominal. we do pay property taxes on our property where we're building our house. That's about $1,000 a year. Electricity where we're living ranges from maybe $80 to $100. Heatings, $200 on average. Groceries, we spend about $800 a month. Gas, maybe $50 to $100 depending. We have car insurance, which is about $550 a year. We do like library dues and

the kids violin lessons and things like that, average maybe about $160 a month. What we call our family fun, which is like sometimes we've got to eat or we do movie rentals. We used to do more adventures out in the world, but not right now. So that's about maybe $100 a month

that we put aside for that. We each have our own personal like fun money category, which is about $100 or $200 a month. And right now I've got to set it maybe about $300 a month to put towards retirement. And there's also a liability insurance. That's on the business side, I think, yeah. You know, there's a lot in there.

You're putting $300 towards retirement. How much are you able to save on after all that spending every month? Is that accounting for every dollar or is there any leftover that goes into savings? Yeah, I have like various savings buckets. Like we put aside money for gifts and car maintenance, medical and dental kind of things come up, like an annual visiting family for Christmas trip with four people. Kids, like what they need for school, like that's maybe $50 a month I set aside for that. And then house building, we usually put in extra money towards the house building.

But I will say like at the end of the month, usually like it depends seasonally where the money goes. Like usually around January we start to think, oh, we got to start saving up from the house. so all the extra money goes towards the house. Then at the end of the summer, we think, oh, we better save for retirement now. So we haven't been doing that for a while. So it kind of fluctuates. Or plane tickets are really expensive. We didn't quite make that.

So we kind of skim off the top of the other categories that are doing well. Well, makes sense to me in terms of how you're thinking about it. How are you able to get the rent so low? The house is owned by our mother-in-law. and when we were transitioning out of where we were living and working before, we were looking at different options. One was, because we don't make a ton of money, we weren't quite sure what we were going to do, was to buy like a trailer and put it on our property so we could be closer to our house to work. But they ended up letting us rent the house here for basically expenses.

But yeah, for a nominal rent. Perfect. So you're able to live there while you build your future home. And what do you expect that future home to be completed by? I don't know. We've been working on it for a while. We've been building it ourselves. Like Darren and I have been actually building it.

And in the midst of that time period, we had kids. So that kind of knocked me out of the game a little bit because I'm taking care of the kids. So it's been going a while. I think we would like to get the house done sooner than later, but it might still take us another year. But it's also we run into the position where we're coming up against things that we need a little bit more money for, like putting in power or, I don't know, bigger, bigger expense, like putting in the drainage system. Whereas before, we were getting wood off our property, and the material expenses were pretty low. But yeah, we're just running up against, I guess. both time and money constraints.

And then will you have a mortgage on this house once you're finished with it? No, right now we don't have any debt. We're just paying as we go. Yeah, we paid. We did have a loan for the property, but we've paid that off. And then the materials for the house we've been paying as we go. Okay. Part of the reason it takes a while, too.

Scott's never built a house from scratch. I've never built a house from scratch personally, But I went to school with a girl named Kara, whose parents were you. They did live in a trailer on the property. And I knew her for probably seven years. And they were building the whole time because, you know, you start. And then you've got to do other things. And it's a big undertaking just by yourself.

Yep. I'm saying, yep, like I know. I have no idea. But there you go. It's a breezy sky, just like kids. Just like kids. It just happens. That's right.

So I like that you have a, what did you call this in another episode? Scott, a personal CAPX fund for your personal expenses. Hey, I've got some expenses and I'm not sure how much they're going to be. So I'm just going to throw money into these buckets like the gifts and the car maintenance. I love that because unless you can do the work yourself and even if you can, parts still cost something. Mine always break the expensive parts too. But they're also super old. But medical and dental, there's always something weird that comes.

up. I just broke a tooth last week, eating a salad, which is so stupid. And it's going to be like $1,700 is my portion with good insurance. So, yeah, you don't plan on breaking a tooth. It just happens. And on and on and on. So I love that you've got the, what are we going to call that, Scott, the personal cap X? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like, it sounds like, yeah, I think they have personal capex. I don't really, we need a term for that. Maybe that's something we can crowdsource to the Facebook group or something. With that, whatever we call that. But I love that you're doing that.

And I think that makes a lot of sense. And it's something that I think is really important given the way, I mean, you've got those types of expenses, and you're trying to build a house with everything left over and save for retirement at the same time. And, you know, obviously it's not a ton of income for the family on that. So this is going to be an interesting discussion here. The good news is you have lots of different levers you can pull.

You own a business. You work on. I'm sure there's flexibility. and freedom that comes along with that to some extent. You're creating a massive asset, I presume, in the form of the house, once it is complete. So there's a couple of really cool levers that we're already starting to see, but there are definitely some challenges here. And cash would solve a bunch of those, as I'm sure you're aware,

it seems, especially in the house component. So let's get into the assets and liabilities as well and say, you know, what do we have in terms of retirement accounts? What do we have in terms of cash on hand, debts, those types of things? Okay. So for me personally, I have a Roth IRA with 18,000 and a traditional IRA with 9,000. And Darren has a Roth IRA with 19,000 and a traditional IRA with 9,000. Oh, and then from our previous job, we each got a pension annuity.

And that for me is 59,000. And for Darren is 74,000. and then together we have a joint investment account, and that has 136,000 in it. Okay, great. So you've got, and that joint investment account, that is after tax in a brokerage fund? Yes. So you could sell that without having to pay penalty. You have to pay gains on anything, any gains. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great. How much cash on hand do you have?

I mean, we have about 10,000 set aside for the house building and then... For the summer. Yeah, for the summer. I mean, I guess, yeah, that's about it besides just our operating kind of expenses. And that's it. That is just assets and cash and there's no debt. There's nothing else complicating the balance sheet here. Yeah, no debt.

Nope. I said they were debt free at the beginning. Well, I know, I know. I'm just admiring. He's admiring the cleanliness, you know? and those types of things. Yay, big debt free. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the pension slash annuity from the former employer.

That's a lump sum. That's not a $59,000 a year, $74,000 a year. Oh, you know, right. That's how much is in the account that the employer put in the account. And how can you access that? Do you have to wait until you're 55 or 65? Yeah, you just call it on that. 59, 59?

59. Okay. And then that's just a monthly. I'm not sure how pensions work. I don't get one. I have to say, I'm not totally sure how they work either. Market research. So my first bit of homework for you or suggestion for you is to look more into how you can access that, how you can best utilize that information or that money because neither Scott nor I have pensions. I do think bigger pocket to start one so that we could do research for the podcast. Oh, great. Perfect. But I would reach out to the plan or ask for the documentation and read through it and see

at what age can you start accessing it. If it's 59, is it like Social Security where you wait a little bit longer, you get more? Or if not, then maybe you start taking it as soon as you can. I'm not sure really what to say about the pension. And is it a pension or an annuity? Does that matter, Scott? Do you know anything about pensions? I'm really weak in this area, actually, because again, we don't have them. We've now had a few folks with pensions on there, but either it's been, hey, we're receiving the pension and income that's meaningful right now or we're not. And that's typically how we've simplistically viewed it. So without having more information, I don't know how to give you advice on the pension thing. But it seems like that's a good thing to figure out, like, how much income is that going to produce for you? and when or when are you going to be able to access the lump sum amount. Yeah, and I guess one question we had around it also is like,

should we combine that with something, like should we move it over to something else? Because possibly partly because we don't know what to do with it. It seems kind of an outlier. Yeah, we can't contribute to it. My belief is that when you don't understand it very well or have some of these questions, that there's an opportunity to make an improvement there.

But in the absence of no, knowing what what's in there. I think for our purposes today, we'll just kind of ignore it as a as a potential asset until further information comes to light. Yeah. And I am going to say right now, I will post a question in the Facebook group. Do you know about pensions? Do you have any advice about these pensions or pension slash annuity? Are you in our Facebook group? Yes. Yes. Okay. Oh, good. Then we'll give you this homework to do any more research that you can on this and maybe share more information. I'm sure somebody who is listening has some information and suggestions about the pension.

So I'll make a note to post that in the Facebook group, which can be found at facebook.com slash groups slash BP money. Okay. So just we say this earlier, but could you kind of reiterate what is your goal here? You've got about a two quarter million dollar net worth here. You've got a business that you started. You're building a house. what's the end state that we're looking to achieve and timeline that you guys have?

I mean, we definitely would like to retire and have money for that. That seems pretty big. We'd like to finish the house because we've been working on that for so long. We're ready for that to be done and kind of start living in it so we can use all that work that we put in there. We would like to go sailing. This is more of a long-term goal. take the kids sailing around the world in our sailboat for a year or two maybe while they're still kind of little. And then in the meantime, like on a shorter term thing, I feel like we've been, we haven't been doing many trips for just our family, like even smaller trips.

Like we do like once a year we go to the obligatory family gatherings, but it'd be nice to have some adventures in the meantime, even if they're little ones. you know take advantage of the kids while they're young let me ask a couple questions to follow up on those starting with the short-term goal are you guys feeling like it's it's pretty stressful right now like it's a lot of work all the time and it's not a lot of time to get out on these adventures is that is that right yeah i feel like the way that we're either saving or spending our time is pretty haphazard like i'm not sure how to prioritize everything and make it all happen And I always feel like, well, we should be doing this. Well, we have got to do this.

But we should probably be putting it over here. Yeah. And I just even this past couple weeks, I dedicated myself to working on the house for, I don't know, a month, month and a half. Basically until the money runs out. But then a job comes, you know, like somebody says, oh, could you do this for me? And I was like, oh, this seems like a pretty straightforward job. I could do this. And so I pull myself away from the house.

And so now I'm not working on the house. on this project. But. Okay. And when you say the money is running out, I hear you have a $10,000 emergency reserve. Is that, does that dwindle and rise?

Or is that kind of your floor? And when you feel like you get to $10,000, that's when you feel like you're running out of money. No, that's like how much we've saved or been able to put in there over the year. Just for the house. Just for the house. Yeah. What's your personal save emergency reserve?

That's varied over the past. I used to have probably like three to four months budgeted out ahead of time. And then when we moved over here and left our jobs, it all kind of reset. So right now, I think I've got like a month ahead, basically, in our personal account. But on our business side, because you just finished this big job, I think we have, like, coming from the business to us, We have probably about seven months of salary, and the business can kind of can do that for about seven months right now. You have a seven months of business operating cash in the business.

And then you've got, but you've got less than one month for your personal. So you have cash in several locations I'm hearing. You have cash in the business. You have a $10,000 set aside for another business, what you're calling the house project. That's in your mind just for the house. Right. And then you have very little for your personal life set aside. Is that what I'm hearing?

That sounds about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to start, right? I mean, if we go back to, you know, Dave Ramsey, who I think has a lot, a really good strategy for the first couple of things here, you guys have a good net worth. You're doing a lot of things really well. You have retirement accounts and brokerage funds. But I would start and stockpile six, six months at least in the emergency.

reserve for you, for the simple reason that you guys are one income and it's self-employment income. You know, you could get away with, I think, a lower, a less emergency reserve. I think that's, that's what's contributing to stress. That's a factor that I think could be, could be contributing to stress for you right now is the fact that you don't have that because of your self-employment income, the nature of you having a business and those types of things with that. And that could be you just shift cash out of the house or out of the business to create that, or you go out, you go and make that a primary savings goal for the short run. That's not going to, that's not the big piece of the strategy to move you towards the retirement goal, but that's, that's one lever that will

have a very modest impact on your, on their timeline for that. But I think that could make a big difference in your life right now. Mindy, what do you think? Yeah, I think an emergency fund, a, oh my goodness, what am I going to do will be removed when you, you have the emergency fund. And it's just sitting there and it's doing nothing. And, you know, if you've got a great big job that you know you're going to finish next month, you can dip into the emergency fund to put to the house because there's something you need to purchase. And then when the big job is done, you replenish the emergency fund.

But having a cushion there could be something that you're unconsciously really concerned about. So I like that suggestion a lot. You had mentioned custom woodworking and carpentry along with boat building. The building market right now is going crazy. So is there any opportunity to pick up an extra side job that can help you fund your building fund while you are waiting for the time to build? Can you take Fridays off to work on the house and every. everything that I can accomplish on one Friday will be able to be done. Or is it more financially advantage of this crazy market we have right now with building going on everywhere and just

kind of stockpile jobs? And, you know, could you barter? You said that you needed to get power. Can you barter woodworking services with an electrician? Or, you know, everybody's looking for people to do work for them and nobody has any skilled labor. So I'm trying to think, and I'm hoping that this is sparking ideas for you instead of just going off of my very stumbling words. But I think that there's a lot of opportunity for a little bit of thinking outside the box with regards to your skills and getting somebody to come in and help you with skills that you don't have. How much is your house going to be worth once you, once you finish instruction.

Oh, my. I saw that face. I mean, it's a non-traditional house. Yeah. We're building a straw veil house. Yeah. It's a timber frame. It's lovely.

Yeah. But it's definitely not usual. Yeah. I think that property tax assessment is at maybe at 98 right now, and it's halfway done. I mean, it's not done yet. It mostly looks like a barn right now. Yeah.

So I don't really. know. Okay, that's, I think, another piece of homework is you need to know what we're call in real estate investing the after repair value of your property. And so that's what your property will sell for, even if it is unusual. You need some sort of guess at what the finished product, once it's complete to your vision and specifications will look like and a timeline on that. And that will give you some inclination. And let me just pose this. Your annual income is somewhere in the ballpark of 40,000 right now. And, and, If the house is worth 100,000 and it's going to take you several years to complete,

it says to me that your job, the woodworking business, may be the more valuable asset to focus on in terms of those types of things. And money generated from that can be used to help fund construction rather than the other way around. If you said once the house is complete, it will be worth $500,000, I'd have a completely different thought, process on that. But that's that's kind of where my mind jumps to. And we have not, I don't think we've actually asked this on the show so far. Where are you guys located? We're in Maine. Rural Maine. Yeah. Rural Maine. Okay. Okay. And it is probably going to be closer to 150 or maybe 200 at the high side, depending on how big it is. But rural Maine doesn't have really,

really high prices. Well, I mean, with the pandemic, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Think everybody's building everywhere here. Interesting. It's crazy. Yep. Well, again, that will tell you something as to, is if you can get, if you can get some sort of reasonable guess, and you might even just ask an agent, a local agent or, you know, if you're, if you're not sure where to start, and they might be able to give you some inclination of it. But I think if you can have a band, even if it's $30,000 to $150, or whatever it is, that will give you some inclination about whether this is a good strategic area for you to be. spending countless hours on or whether that time is better invested in your business.

And from, you know, from what you just said, my assumption is that the business is going to be the biggest leverage point in your finances right now that I see. Do you guys agree with that generally? Does that feel right? So you're saying if the house isn't going to be worth mega million dollars, um, we're going to working for the business will generate more money. so we should use that money to pay somebody else to build it? Right now, financially speaking, you're in a great position with your housing.

Completing the home is actually going to cost you more, I think, after you move out than what you're currently paying to live right now with your housing, right? So once you complete the project, your finances are going to get worse, not better, because your property tax assessment is probably going to spike the property taxes on the property. There's going to be, you know, the bills and utilities to pay just that there is. more maintenance that you're not going to share. So there may be good reasons to complete the project and do that because that's the lifestyle that you want. That's great. But that's that to me, if it's less, and I don't want to like, there's a lot of nuance here. So I could be completely wrong

on some of this. But if we're directionally getting there, then it just says that, hey, time spent on the business is going to be higher ROI for you guys than time spent on the house. Doesn't mean don't work on the house. It just means that, you know, all else equal, you're going to be moving towards your financial goal much faster by working on the business, if that's correct. Okay. Another thing I would just look at, if you are going to start working in the business more, look for jobs you can do, quick jobs you can do. I mean, right now you can kind of just write your own quote, oh, that'll be $25,000 because nobody else will even answer their phone. And I don't, you know, I'm not trying to diss the building industry.

If I had work so much that I couldn't even keep up with it, I probably wouldn't answer my phone either. But it is, you know, making connections in the carpentry world could be really, really beneficial for the house project. So I like the idea of looking into leveraging that. How long can you rent your current house from your mother-in-law? Is she putting any sort of pressure on you to leave? Not yet. Not currently, yeah, but I mean, I would be surprised that she would, you mean, I think she purchased this as an investment, and she'd probably want some return on it.

Eventually. Yeah. Fair enough. Right. When we leave, it will be a regular rental property. Yes. Yeah. And so if that pressure begins to mount or if that affects your timeline, that changes the dynamic

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Let's go into the business for a second here. How does your business work? How do you get orders? How do you decide on your pricing? What's the, like, what's an order like, and how much profit do you make on that order? How many hours do you invest? how much materials cost do you have for that? Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have anything regular,

and it's, like I said, it's only really been since last June, no, maybe August, that I got a really big custom order from a nature museum, and so I built these, you know, giant eggs and some other things, and, you know, we've just kind of played that out. And then, but to answer, your question. It's been word of mouth for the most part. It's been how I've gotten the jobs. And when that slowed up, I've worked with, you know, friends of mine who do house repair

just to kind of keep my hand in and learn some new skills or, you know, as many who's talking about, make connections. How would you rate your skill set as a carpenter? Well, I mean, I think I would. You'd say you're a master or? Yeah. I mean, I would be called a finished carpenter, you know, in the house. building trade and then you know I build wooden boats so it's um you know I feel comfortable charging you know like $70 an hour typically you know for much of what I do if I'm working on somebody's house I don't depending on the job I don't typically charge that maybe I charge like 50 bucks an hour you know that's kind of the average I think in this area we don't have a lot of

overhead right that's nice and Darren has all his own tools really already so oh-huh So right there, that's perfect, right? So we have $50 an hour to $70, $75 an hour. That is $100 to $150,000 a year in annualized income. And so to me, that says that's where it smells like opportunity for me and this is if you can operationalize. And look, you're going to have to invest in some systems and figure out like how to get the right, you know, how do I get these jobs scheduled so that I'm not driving all over creation all day? I don't know your business. maybe that's not even a problem for you.

But I have one job I go to, I work a 10 hour a day and on that project, and I'm bringing home $500, $700 that day for that work in labor. And my billing structure reflects that so that all that kind of stuff. If you can get that set up, that'll make everything else that much easier for you on the housing construction, you know, on the home construction side, then you can figure out, say, math, hey, this is costing me $50 an hour, because I could be billing that out this weekend when I'm actually working that on the house. And so it'll take, like, that's not an overnight project.

That'll take you at least six months to a year, maybe longer, to get to a point where you're consistent with that kind of stuff. But if you could approach that, I bet you could double your annual revenue reasonably quickly, even while making lots of mistakes and not having all the systems in place in the next couple of months. I'll leave that there. What's your reaction to that? I mean, that's, yeah. I mean, yeah, that sounds like the smarter way to go, honestly. Yeah. I mean, I would probably have to do some work, you know, getting my name out there, advertising, et cetera, et cetera, which is, I haven't done, which, you know, it's not something I am like keen, you know,

I'm not like a self-form voter, so I struggle with that, but, you know. Okay. We got a podcast here. Right. What's the name of your business? Carlucci woodworking, which is our last name, basically. But a buddy of mine has suggested, Carlucci, no, what do you say? Carlucci custom,

Carlucci custom creations or something like that. Carlucci custom creations or Kalerji, so first you've got to settle on a name. It doesn't matter what the name is. That's right. But, you know, don't spend six weeks of the name. That's a trap a lot of people fall in, too. So, of course, here we are sitting, you know, I don't know how long Josh spent on bigger pockets.

Right. It's genius. I have some thoughts on this. So, Carlucci woodworking, Carlucci custom creations, Carlucci whatever. Does Carlucci have a website? Does Carlucci have an Instagram account? Does Carlucci have an Etsy shop? You're shaking your head.

So I'm going to say there is, I'm sure. Sure, because I have a cousin, you have a lot of extra little bits of wood, right? Oh, yeah. They're just like everywhere. Yeah. Okay. What can you do with those? I burn them, excuse me.

You what? We, you know, we heat with woods. Did you say you burn that? That's like burning dollars at this point. Gold is not heating oil. You know, it's not heating oil. Okay. Here is an assignment.

Go to Etsy.com, ETSY.com. And search woodworking or wood. And see what's there. See what you can easily replicate with your little bits of leftover stuff. My cousin used to work for a door company that made very, very high-end front doors. I think they're high-end, $20,000 for the front door. That's not what I'm buying. And he was able to take home any bits of wood that he wanted.

And he turned them into gorgeous cutting boards. and butcher blocks that I have a huge butcher block. It's like two feet by three feet. It's enormous. And it's this thick. And it's mahogany and cherry. I mean, it's a, I don't know, $50,000 cutting board, let's say. Ha, ha, ha.

Nobody's going to give you that. So don't make a $50,000. Right. But you could all, he made beautiful trivets that are just routed in the middle. And they're gorgeous. And I would pay $20 for that. But he gave it to me for free because he's my cousin. And there's a lot of things that are very easy to do for you.

not for me, but we're not talking about me. They're very easy for you to do. It's all the scraps that you were just going to burn anyway. So look and see what you can do with what you've got left over. That's a really easy way to generate some income. And there's a lot of competition on Etsy. I'm not going to say you're going to list it and then just have a billion orders. But, you know, Instagram is a great way.

Take pictures of everything you do. Promote it on Instagram. Hey, here's the latest set of bowls I made. or wooden spoons or whatever it is you're going to make. Oh, rolling pins. I couldn't think of the word. I want a little rolling pin. It's like this big.

And I placed an order with somebody and they never made it. Do you have a turning? Like, do you have a lathe? I don't have a lathe right now. I'd like a lathe. Okay. So maybe when you get one, you will send me a rolling pin because now your rolling pin business is cranking out 10,000 a week.

And you're selling somebody. And there's rolling in the dough. Oh, my goodness. Be smashing it. Oh, I love that they groaned. I love that they groaned. Me too. But there's all sorts of things that you can do that it might not come to your mind.

Oh, well, that's too easy. I don't care if it's too easy. I want it to be too easy. I am assuming that you throw a block of wood on the lathe. You take your little chisel or whatever and you just kind of smooth it out. And wow, now you've got a rolling pin. That's basically it out. Yep.

whatever you've got. I mean, I'm looking for like a six-inch rolling pin. I've got a great big one. I don't need a great big one to make dumplings. I need a little one to make dumplings. So here's a dumpling rolling pin. I mean, look for, oh, there you go. Now that's your first project. Oh, thank you. Yeah. So I like that approach that Mindy has, but I also think that just getting paid by the hour with this at $50 to $70 an hour, that is a proven business model that's You don't even have to get creative and see if people buy your rolling pins with that as well. You should do both, I think. But, you know, I think that that's, you know, the little scraps of wood there while you're

waiting for that. That's if you can operationalize this business, I think you've easily got $100,000 a year income. I think you've got a executable $100,000 a year income. It won't be easy, but it will be something that is repeatable and lots of other people are out there. There's, and like some ways to get started on this. look up some business systems, decide on a name, incorporate if you need to, make sure all your

licensing isn't, you know, all the eyes are dotted, eyes are dotted, T's are crossed, all of that kind of stuff is set up. Insurance, those types of things. Put your company on Google Maps, put it on Yelp, put it on wherever folks are going there. Maybe you look at going on like home advisor or Angie's list or those types of places and just fill in all of the boxes, set up a phone number that actually goes to a device that one of you guys is monitoring on a constant basis and get those basics right so that you can get lucky with inbound business and begin building that back catalog of work with that kind of stuff. So it's not just through word of mouth. Get some testimonials on the page. Put up a website for, you know, just like take a weekend and knock

out a bunch of this stuff and perfect is the enemy of good. when you're getting set up with this kind of stuff. But that would be how I would start doing that. And like, if you can get to a place where you've got jobs every day of the week, I mean, that's going to explode your income here and make a huge difference in a lot of these types of things. And it's not that much more work. It'll take you a good, it'll take you a grind for the next quarter to get set that set up. But you'll probably be working 40, 50 hour weeks with this and and rolling in the dough.

Can I use that twice? Another thing to tag on to what Scott is saying is if you can get $50 or $75 an hour as a finished carpenter, maybe, you know, if you've got a great big project for your company, of course, do that. But reach out to general contractors. Hey, I'm a finished carpenter. I have 17 years of woodworking experience. I'm a master, boat builder, all of the things. I'm looking for work if you ever, you know, have a project that your current finished carpenter can't handle. because what I'm hearing over and over again in the building industry is that general contractors can't find subs,

subs can't find helpers. Like, nobody can find anybody. So throw yourself out there. I'm available. Call me. I want to do the work. Yeah. And it sounds like you guys would really benefit from having a friend who's a general contractor

with a housing project as well, right? Because if you can do some work for that person, even if it's paid work, and also barter at the same time to be like, Like how to how to heck do we finish this thing in less than a year? You know, maybe it's as simple as great. I general contractors working on several of these projects. They need you to do a job for one day. And in exchange, they will get one of their subs to come in and work on your project for that. There's, there's, I think that that will, that's, that way you're not, I imagine, I don't know,

but I imagine because I never build a house that when you're building a house, you've got to figure out how to use the little thing that pours the foundation. You've got to run the electricity. These are not your skill set. Your skill set is the woodworking, and I'm sure you can figure it all out. But you're doing five, you have at most $5 an hour skill, I'm making this up, in electrical wiring. But you've got a $50 an hour skill in the carpentry stuff, right?

So somebody else has a $50 an hour electricity skill. So that's where it's, it can be inefficient if you're using those types of things. It's interesting way to look at it. Yeah, it's very true. Yeah. I mean, yeah, at some point when you're DIYing things and I end up thinking, oh, I can do that. You know, so, you know, watch a YouTube video, right? Of course. And then rent the machine. And yeah, but, you know, at some level, it's like, what's that what's that balance between efficiency and like being able to say that you poured all the concrete for your foundation? Yeah. If you're not, if you're not generating income, then of course it's better to earn to figure out that skill in those types of things. But it's. if you're generating $100,000 a year, if you believe that if that back of the napkin math sounds anywhere in the ballpark of approachable to you guys, then that makes no sense at that point downstream. It makes perfect sense for what you're doing right now. It just may not if you can change the business model and begin generating more meaningful income from the business.

Not that you're not generating meaningful income, but moving into that $100,000 a year of market. To a greater range. Right. Right. Okay. Some other questions I have about your numbers. I didn't hear anything about health insurance. And that is the number one question that we get is how do I pay for health insurance once I no longer have a job?

So what are you doing for health insurance right now? Right now we're on a state health insurance. Okay. Is that a regular plan or is it a high deductible plan? It's just like the main care plan. Okay. Do they have a high deductible option? Because with a high deductible health care plan, you get access to contributing to an HSA, which is, according to the mad fientist, it is, what is it the best retirement plan ever or something, a secret retirement plan? I should have looked that up before I announced it. But he has an article, and I will send you the article, and I will include it in the show notes on this episode, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show. 198. He has an article about the HSA plan. In a nutshell, and there's more to it, but in a nutshell,

you contribute up to $7,000 or $7,200 this year for a family into a pre-tax account, and then you can use that account to pay for medical bills, or you can cash flow your medical bills and keep that account. I think once you have over $1,000 or $2,000 in the account, you can start investing it, almost however you choose. I invest mine through fidelity and I can literally choose anything that fidelity offers. And then I do cash flow my expenses. So now I have something like $25,000 in my HSA that I'm just going to keep on letting grow because we are generally healthy. We don't see the doctor frequently. And that's one of the drawbacks of an HSA is that you're coming out of pocket for a lot of things. So if you are generally healthy,

and a high deductible plan is better. If you visit the doctor frequently, you should probably look into which option is going to be better for you. So that's something to think about. And generally, you can't change until the next time your interest is up for renewal, which is typically at the end of the year, but not always. So something to think about, and I'll send you that article, read through it and see if you identify with that. But, yeah, you can just put extra money in there. And then what I'm doing, ever since I have the HSA, is saving all of my receipts. I take a picture of them.

I upload them to the cloud so I don't lose the receipt because I will. And then when I separate from service, I will be able to take as much of those receipts as I want and get reimbursed. It's tax-free. It's penalty-free because it's, well, I don't know why it's penalty-free. There's no penalties. It's tax-free. So if I have $25,000 worth of income or worth of receipts, I can pull $25,000 out of that account. I would rather let it grow right now because I have little ones and twos doctor's visits.

I don't have anything really big, like I said. So that's something to look into and you probably have probably six months to do some research before you have to make a decision. But that's something that I really, really like as well. And that comes right back to the business, right? Your business is going to have to generate more income to cover that cost as things move on. And I think that's where, yeah, another thing, and I don't, you know, as you kind of look at this business, you've got a theoretical large amount of income to come in.

I keep coming back to this because I think that this is the leverage point to me. I don't think it's, I don't think it's finishing your house based on what I heard is going to fundamentally change your financial situation. I think that moving your business to a better place is going to. is going to be the lever. You guys seem like you're doing a really good job managing household expenses. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of leaky buckets, a leaky bucket there at all with that.

And you sound like you have a good investment approach and a number of assets there, which I think is really impressive for you guys to have built. So, anyways, I keep coming back to that. In addition to the things I said earlier, I have a book recommendation for you called the E-Mith, which I think would be, it's a pretty simple short read. It was written in like 1988.

I think there's a new updated version that you can come back. But I think that would be a good start to think about your business with this as well. For the first year of a brand new company making $50,000 is huge. And you're in, I'm not trying to talk smack about Maine. It's a beautiful state. But you're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. You made $50,000 that year.

last year. I really do like what Scott said about the business is only going to continue up. Custom woodworking, that's, start advertising on Craigslist and Facebook. And like, there are some very inexpensive levers you can pull to generate more income. And, but I know that I could keep you busy for 80 hours a week. So. Okay. Yeah, that's another thing.

Is the house keeping you there? Do you want to be in Maine? Or is there another, or is that like, I don't know, how is that? That's also never been to Maine. Yeah, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's pretty nice. I mean, we're not on the water, but we are coastal. So that's pretty nice.

And sailors at heart. And I think it's all we've always thought about it as like a place. Like, if we went traveling, that we would always have this property to fall back on. It's just paid off and like with, you know, just a place that we could end up in if anything went wrong. Great. Yeah. Yeah. I do like what Scott is suggesting about concentrating on growing the business.

I, shockingly, I like what I'm suggesting with growing side income. I mean, that's like basically free supplies for your woodworking, for your Etsy woodworking shop. And there's some really interesting and. cool things that I would never think of, but, you know, maybe something will spark something else that you come up with that's very unique and sells really well. And it's a Martha Stewart living because she always shows Etsy stuff on the back page. Here's, I completely agree with Mindy. And here's where, here's the nuance that I'm trying to point out is it's completely aligned

with what Mindy saying. But if the Etsy work is only generating $15 an hour because you got to make the thing, ship it, sell it and all that kind of. this stuff and your contract work is making $70 an hour, that's inefficient arbitrage. If the Etsy work is making $150 an hour and the contract work is making $70 an hour, then that's really efficient arbitrage. That makes more sense of the side hustle. That's the nuance that I'm trying to point out with that is don't, sometimes, you know, you can make money by doing work and selling it. It may not, it may just be far less than what

you could make with the, the, the, the, the, the skilled carpentry work at that, at those types of jobs. You guys were asking about FI in general and the number you need to get there with this. So the question then is like, what do we do with all this cash once we start generating it from the business? I think that's where you pile up an emergency reserve that makes that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable. I would start with, I would start with that. And then I don't think you have a bad approach in a general sense. I think you're, it seems like you pile money into the Roths and the traditional IRAs. As you build your business, you're going to have even more fun options for those types of things, like self-directed IRAs and those types of things. So I think

there will be a homework, a lot of homework, which these are good problems. You're going to spend a hundred hours going down the rabbit hole of this stuff over the course of a few years to set up like a self-directed plan. If you have any employees in the future, you got a whole bunch of other cool stuff that you can do with their retirement. You can really dump a lot of money into these things in a tax-efficient way as things get going. But I think for now, you've got a really simple approach that makes a lot of sense, max out the Roth with those types of things. And I think the real estate's another good alternative. So you've got a reasonably diversified portfolio and the property you're constructing alongside the investments. So I like the investment

approach at a high level from here. And I don't think we, I don't have too many, deviations from it other than build up some cash, in my opinion, for your personal lives, because that'll give you flexibility. So you don't have to go and take that next job. You can spend the next two weeks focusing on building, dotting the eyes and crossing the T's for your business and reading a business book that might have a huge ROI for you relative to just taking whatever job happens to come in from a friend that week. One last thing I will say is once you do start reaching out to people and saying, hey, I'm available, keep a calendar and, you know, oh, this week should, or this job should take a week

and a half. I can start on Thursday and just keep pushing people out. One of the things that I see in the trades from personal experience is that they're really great at what they do, but they don't know how to run their business. So they just focus on the job at hand. And then towards the end of the job, there's this mad scramble, oh, I got to get another job, as opposed to answering the phone every time it rings. Oh, you know what? We're available to start July 17th. I can't wait till July 17th.

Well, you're going to call me back in like an hour and tell me that either nobody else answered their phone or they can't start until August 20th. Right. So keeping a calendar and, you know, like a big desk calendar and in one spot where you can both reach it and say, you know, even if he's working, you can still answer. the phone and say, oh, that sounds like a three-week job, we've got three weeks here. Or, you know, I'll have him call you back, but I know our soonest is this opening. As a consumer who needs people to work on my house, I can't ever find anybody who will even

answer the phone. But when they do, they're booked out for months. And you get frustrated, but they're the only ones that are answering their phones. Everybody else is super busy. So, yeah, it's too fun. It's too fun to get into the business stuff. But did I love it with this? Like this is like the key is your time, Darren, you are your time.

If every minute you're not working and applying your skill set in a billable fashion is a loss of 70 bucks. So you're going to have to, I imagine you're going to have to go to the site and bid it out. You're going to and know how much is going to cost and how long it's going to take, right? if you could train or if you could teach seraphina here how to do that that would be that would save you some time i don't know if that's i don't know how you know how much like like if you have to be a master carpenter to be able to actually estimate some of those types of things but if you guys could divide the labor in some way that allows you to spend as much time as possible actually doing the the work that's going to maximize your income and that's where i think i imagine a lot of contracts actors get hung up is like, hey, driving out to that site, bidding out the project coming back,

that's two hours that you're not billing, right? And picking up the phone in the middle of a job, that's minutes you're not billing or delaying your project there. The project's too far away, hours you're not billing. If it's not, if you're driving, if you have five jobs in a week and three of them are in one day and they're all over creation, you're not doing the ones next to each other. That's money wasted. So those are things, those are all opportunities for efficiency that, you know, maybe could be helped, you know, in many of those areas, I use Sarapina. Okay. Yeah, that would be interesting to see how we could better make that more efficient somehow.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure what goes into bidding out a job, but, you know, if there's main things that Serafina can do, she can go and take a video of the whole thing and measure the room and, you know, whatever. I'm trying to think. I do my own finish carpentry, and I'm sure yours looks better. I use a lot of cock. It depends on the day.

Or like a forum where this has talked about, too. Like, I would Google this and figure out, like, where, how are, everybody has the same problems in this industry, I imagine, right? Like, this is not, you're not reinventing the wheel. You're not inventing the wheel. Right. No, I mean, the, the, uh, woodworkers that I know, I mean, the, the high-end woodworkers, that's what they say. It's like, everybody goes to woodworking school and comes out and.

they can make whatever but the biggest problem is none of them know how to keep track of their own hours and you know that they get sheled you know uh trying to start their own business that way so they don't they don't make the the the money that yeah that they yeah and it's not it shouldn't be that much more work you'd imagine it's just that it's just applying those organizations it's it's it's work that's not going to generate any income for a few months while you set up these systems but then it'll explode okay um well i think we've gone until this point in great detail. But I think it's right. I think, I don't think there's a lot more, I don't think there's other big levers in your financial position right now. If you come back

with $500,000 to complete the house, okay, now we've got a different, you know, now that year of labor is going to produce $300,000 in net worth. That makes more sense to focus that time there. But in the absence of that, I think it's, I think it's going to be this job and, and, and, and crushing it with the, the carpentry business. Did you have any other questions that we maybe didn't answer or discuss at all yet? So I know you said you liked our investment strategy. I feel like what I've been doing. Well, now, well, so I think now I know I should be maxing out the Roth IRAs first.

Previously, I was hesitant to put anything into anything that was. like date specific. So that's why there's so much in the just investment account. So, yeah, so I guess one question I have is for the traditional IRA that I have, should I turn that into a Roth at all? Or also on the other side, should I be putting some of that money in the investment account into the Roth? I like a Roth because it grows tax-free.

So you pay your taxes now, and then it grows for you are 38, 39? 39. 39. So you've got 25 years before you can access. Is it 59 and a half or 65? Let's call it 65. 59 and a half for the Roth, I think. Yeah.

Okay. So that's 20 years then. You have 20 years until you can access that. That's 20 years of tax-free growth. growth. I would recommend first, the order that we recommend is first invest in your 401K to get the company match, which is moot here because you don't have one yet. Then I would suggest maxing out your Roth IRA and then if there's money left over, continue contributing to the 401k until you hit that limit. You are self-employed with no other full-time employees besides your

spouse? No. Okay. So you have access to this lovely thing called the self-directed solo 401k. You have the opportunity with the help of your company to contribute your 19,000 or 19,500 individual contribution plus Darren's individual contribution of $19,500. And then the company can match up to 25% of your salary up to a total contribution, yours and this company combined of $54,000 every single year. pre-tax. So let's get to a surplus where you have $54,000 in access to dump into this. Right.

That's that. I'm sorry. That's 54,000 each. Now we're not there today. But I can see if you call up a couple of general contractors and they're like, yes, I can have you work 20 hours a week or 20 hours a day, you will, I can see you getting there very quickly. So I will find an article about the self-directed solo 401K.

and send that to you, and you can see all the wonderful amazingness that you have at your fingertips because you are self-employed. If you do not have self-employment income or you have more than your spouse as your full-time employee, it's not financially advantageous to do. Gotcha. Okay. But then there's other options like the SD, the self-directed IRA. So maybe don't worry about where anything is right now, but just going forward to things. I wouldn't touch what's there. Okay. Set it and forget it.

But going forward, if you have not yet filed your 2020 taxes, you can open or you've already got the Roth IRA open. You can contribute to your Roth IRA up until the time you file your taxes or the tax deadline, which is May 17th for last year. And then you can contribute for this year as well up until the tax deadline of the next year, which is a nice little, nice little loophole. Yeah, I like the Roth and then as your income grows, beginning to layer more of that into the tax deferred plan, the self-directed IRA or the 401K equivalent, the self-directed IRA for self-employed business owners. So I like that approach.

And then it's an art, right? There's no right answer to like the question of how much to put into that. You know, the Roth, maybe you max out. But then like there's no right answer to like how much to put in tax. tax deferred or not. You got a goal of wanting to sail the world. If you want to do that in a few years, then you need to plan for that and build up a cash reserve for that at the expense of putting that into your tax deferred plan. But again, all those problems, all those questions are easier when your income is much higher, which is where that, why we spend all the time on that,

on that, the business front there. You can generate more income. You can make really good choices there because you have a surplus, a cash to allocate to these these buckets and get your goals sooner. I mean, it's statement of the obvious. I have two more things to think about before we wrap up. One is Darren is older than Serafina. True. Darren, once you hit, I heard a rumor.

Once you hit 50, you can contribute an extra $1,000 a year to your Roth IRA and an extra $5,000 a to your 401K. It's called the catch-up plan. So when you are contributing to the Roth IRA after Darren turns 50, make sure to max his out first, get that extra thousand dollars, and then put it towards Serafinas. And hopefully you can max them both out. But Darren gets an extra thousand. So let's get him first.

The question of should we convert the traditional IRA to the Roth? This is, again, a mad scientist article about the Roth conunders. conversion ladder. You need to have it seasoned in your Roth IRA for five years before you can withdraw it after you are no longer working. There is a cap, and this is where my information gets a bit hazy. I think it's $78,000 or $80,000 where that income you were paying no capital gains on. So I believe you can convert your traditional IRA between the top of your salary and the

cap, convert it to a Roth IRA. Oh, you're still paying taxes on it, though. I don't like this approach for them. Yeah. I don't like this. You know what? As I was talking it out, I'm like, as I was talking it out, I decided I didn't like it. So never mind. No worries. Ignore all of that. But we'll keep it in the show so people can hear that how I thought about it. But I'm still going to send you the article about the conversion letter because when you are no longer working and you have zero income, you can take of the traditional, turn it into Roth and start your conversion ladder. Okay. I see.

That's for later. And I will put a link to that in the show notes as well. Scott, is there anything else you wanted to add before we let them get on with their busy building and planning and business ideas? No, I think this is about organization of your business activities. Whatever rigor, you clearly apply a. some rigor to your household budget. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I definitely put time in it. Yeah, that's my job, my household job. Something's going on there that looks like it's going right.

You got a very clean set of spending. You know exactly what you're saving for. You know where every dollar is going. If you apply that same intensity to your time and your business activities, I believe you'll see huge returns on that investment that will that will generate a tremendous amount more income for you. I think read a couple books, track your time, get discipline with those types of things, focus on those types of skills and be concerned if your workday is not being spent doing labor. Like something's wrong with that for the construction, the carpentry stuff in the short run. And if you can get there, I think you'll be you'll be seeing from a really good spot.

So that's, I would start with that e-myth book. There's a million, you know, just go down the rabbit hole of Google and Reddit and those types of things, meet a couple of folks who are actually running a good shop, not just good at what they do from the skill set perspective. But that's going to make all the difference, I think, for you guys. And everything's going to be easier on the other side of that for your financial journey, I think. Awesome. Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah. Yep.

Well, that's why we hit you all up. I know. Thank you. Yeah. Well, it's fun. There's always a different challenge. We haven't had somebody in this, in, in your set of circumstances. So I hope this was helpful.

I think this is, it seems like the right approach. There's always different levers to pull. But I think that that's, that's why we were excited to talk to you guys because of the difference in your circumstance relative to other guests we've had so far. Nice. Yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah. And I think this is, I think this is going to be helpful to other people who are in similar situations or, oh, I'm thinking about starting a business.

Well, here's some things to think about, you know, before you start or here's some things to think. about and, you know, ramp up as you go. So, well, Serafina and Duren, thank you so much for your time today. This was a lot of fun and it was a delight to meet you. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I'm talking things through with us. Okay, that was Sarah Fina and Darren and that was a lot of fun. Scott, what did you think? I thought it was great. I am, I, and full credit to Mindy, Mindy selects the guests for these podcasts. What an incredible range of discussions we've had on this Finance Friday. We've had folks who are tackling student loan debt.

We've had folks who are starting contracting businesses like today. We've had folks who are millionaires but are create compounding cash flow problems because they keep buying properties with HELOCs and these types of things. We've had folks come in with families from Idaho who we have basically no advice for because it seems pretty optimized. It's just like a fun, awesome array of real problems facing folks that I think is really interesting. And thank you for bringing in such great guests and especially Darren and Serafina today. Well, you're welcome, Scott. But thank you to all of my amazing guests who are applying.

and if you have a story you haven't heard before, maybe you should be the one to tell it. We would love to review your finances or interview you and hear your money story. Please apply if you'd like to chat with us. The URL is www.biggerpockets.com slash guest to be a guest on the Monday episode, which is the money story episode. And biggerpockets.com slash finance review to be a guest with our. finance review, which releases on Friday. Scott, we had a lot of fun today, but we did run a little bit long, so we should keep this outro short.

I would like to thank everybody for listening. Thank you so much. We really enjoy you coming and sharing a sharing your Friday with us. Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. From episode 198 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench. I am Indy Jensen, saying, got to go. The power of the shower compels me.