BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 301: Why You’re (Probably) Wrong About Prenups

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Asking for a prenup (prenuptial agreement) can be an exceedingly scary ask. To your partner, a prenup may seem like a way of telling them that you’re planning for a future divorce. But, in reality, it could be the thing that secretly saves your marriage. The everyday American knows very little about the prenuptial agreement and has gotten most of their information from movies, reality TV shows, and hearsay from friends and relatives. We wanted to know the truth about prenups, so we invited attorney Aaron Thomas on the podcast. Aaron Thomas has a wide range of experience in family law, divorce law, and anything that comes from legally joining (or separating) a couple. He knows how difficult divorce cases can be and saw the same mistakes repeated by couples. The lack of communication over finances, minimal planning (if any at all), and wishful thinking led to more and more couples seeking separation shortly after marriage. Now, Aaron and his team work with couples to form strong prenuptial and postnuptial agreements so that they have a rock-solid financial foundation to stand on when dealing with the daily joys and struggles of marriage. Aaron argues that the prenup may be the most important step in mitigating a divorce and that the protection of a prenup goes far beyond wealth. If you never thought about getting a prenup or postnup before, you definitely will after this episode! In This Episode We Cover Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements explained and what they protect Added stipulations in a prenup that most couples don’t know about The optimal way to combine finances as a couple and how to split uneven paychecks How to bring up a prenup or postnup to a partner who’s feeling averse to one The cost of divorce vs. a prenup and why you DON’T want to leave a legal separation up to state laws Which couples shouldn’t look into signing a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Mindy's Twitter Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets Check Out Mindy’s 2022 Live Spending Tracker and Budget ATL Aaron Thomas Law BiggerPockets Money Podcast 24: Getting Financially “Naked” with Your Significant Other — With Erin Lowry Prenups.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, show number 301, where we talk to Aaron Thomas from prenups.com about, can you guess? Prenups? Yes, prenups. You know, people talk about, you know, making big financial decisions, you know, there's some, there's a, I think, a quote about the biggest financial decision you'll make in your life is buying a house wrong. It's getting married.

It's getting married is the biggest financial decision you'll ever make. And so the idea that you do that without some planning. you know, again, whether you get a pre-up or a post-nup, you've at least got to sit down and have, you know, kind of a plan for how you manage your finances. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And joining me today is David, the military millionaire. Hooray. David 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 financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. Whether you want to retire and travel the world,

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free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Okay, David, today we are talking to Aaron Thomas. He is an attorney in Georgia, and he is from prenups.com. Guess what we're going to talk about. Preups, you already guessed. Yeah, I'm excited about this one because I don't know much about the pre-up world. I did not know much about the pre-up world. And I actually learned a lot.

You can hear me learning a lot today. You actually, there's a lot of light bulb moments in this episode today. I feel a little silly when we're, when we're recording. I even make a note. I feel like a fool for not noting this. But this is an episode. If you are married, we talk about the post-nuptial agreement. If you aren't married but are considering getting married, there's a lot of really great advice.

I didn't get a pre-nup. You don't have a pre-nup, David. but taking the information from this show, I probably would have been more receptive to Carl's suggestion that we get a pre-up if I had listened to this before we got married. Yeah, I don't want to call listeners idiots if they don't get a pre-up, but I consider myself an idiot for not having gotten a pre-up after listening to this podcast. I mean, I would say 80% of what I thought I knew about pre-ups was a lie,

and there's so much more to this than I ever thought. and it's almost like setting up guidelines for how you want to run your marriage ahead of time. I mean, it's, it's, you'll hear it through the episode. I was just like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. And yeah, it's great. Yes. So clear your mind of what you thought a pre-up was because it isn't. And listen to this show.

Aaron Thomas is a well-known litigator having won dozens of jury trials and bench trials across the state of Georgia. He exclusively practices family law representing clients in cases of divorce, custody, and child support. And he joins us today to talk about the super exciting topic of prenups and post-nuptual agreements. So Aaron Thomas, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I am so excited to be here.

Thanks for having me on, guys. So I want to kind of jump right into it with a little bit of background. about my own marital situation. I have been married for 20 years. My husband, my fiance at the time, suggested we get a pre-up. And I did not respond nicely because I suggested to him that he was planning our divorce. We didn't have anything. I think I had a $50,000 condo and he had $50,000 in, like with a $49,000 mortgage. It wasn't like paid off. And he had $40,000. and student loan debts. Like, we didn't have anything to bring into the marriage. So there was nothing worth protecting. So when I said, absolutely not, we're not getting a pre-up. Don't even

ask me again. He never brought it up again. And we got married and we've been happy ever since. So I think that I kind of represent a lot of people, especially those getting married in their 20s and 30s, you know, I don't have anything to protect. Why would I get a pre-up? And now I have something to protect. But, you know, until you applied for this show, I didn't really understand what a post-nup was. So, first let's define pre-nup and post-nup, and then let's jump into it. And let's, I'm going to put you on the hot seat and ask about your marital situation, too. So first, let's define things. Yes, absolutely. So pre-nuptial agreements and post-nuptial agreements are essentially the same thing. prenuptials are signed pre the nuptials so that are signed before you get married and post nuptials are

signed afterwards. And I'm glad that you asked me to kind of define what these things are. So a pre-nup or a post-nub are essentially a written document and agreement that a marrying couple or a married couple will sign that defines how they will handle their finances. Yes, in the event of a divorce, also during the marriage itself. And I think a lot of people kind of miss out on that second piece of it is they think, well, you know, I'm never getting divorced or I'm never going to plan for the divorce. And they don't recognize that there are a lot of benefits to the actual marriage itself. A pre-up can be beneficial, even if you never get divorced.

Okay. So today I learned that the pre-up can also dictate how you do your finances in your marriage. that's very interesting. Can you give us some examples of what a pre-up would include about how you handle your finances during the marriage? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the way that I kind of guide my client through the process of repairing their own pre-up is I like to split it up into three categories. There's kind of before the marriage, there's during the marriage, and then there's what I euphemistically call the contingency plans or or potentially after the marriage, right? And so before the marriage, you know, you have to disclose for a pre-up to be enforceable in Georgia or any of the other 50 states. Each spouse has to disclose all of their assets and debts. In fact, when we prepare these pre-ups, we literally attach a schedule for one spouse and for the other spouse to the back of the document where they each lay out

all of their assets and debts. And just that kind of initial act of transparency, at the beginning of the relationship I found can be hugely beneficial. And how many people do we know that got married? They're like, oh, I had no idea. He had, you know, 200 grand of student loans or 50 grand of credit card debt. So, you know, just kind of that transparency off the bat is a great benefit before you even get married. Wow. Yeah, that's a huge help.

So you're saying I can't believe somebody would, or people are saying, oh, I didn't know he had this. I can't believe you would get to that point of, yes, I'll marry you, but I don't know your financial situation. But I guess, I mean, I live in this little la-la land where I just know. I can attest having served in the Marine Corps for 13 years that that is a very common thing. I had a couple of different instances with service members who they married their spouse. Their spouse had six figures in collegiate debt, you know, student. loan debt or credit card debt or whatever. And they had no idea because these guys and girls, they like come out of boot camp and they're like, I'm on top of the world. I'm going to

get married. I'm in love. Everything's amazing. And they get married to somebody. They probably have no business doing in a timeline. They have no business doing with no information about any of that. And then when things go south, things go really south. And finances is, I mean, I'm sure we're going to get into this. But finances is one of, if not the leading cause of divorce. Right. And especially if in a situation like that, like I had a service member who, he was in love with somebody who was like 14 years older than him and brought like four kids into the relationship. And then he found out that they had like a quarter million dollars in like student loan credit card, you know, delink like all kinds of stuff. And then also had like the magic credit card that is it just never

runs out of I can spend all your money. And it was it was a train wreck to try to like, unwind and help this guy out of. And that's obviously not the norm. But just to throw out there, it's a real world situation where people for some reason get married and have no idea, which is just crazy. Yeah, yeah. Mindy, I think you're like me where, you know, you just never get to that spot without having had some friend conversations about your finances. But I think in reality, you might be surprised how many couples make it into the marriage without having had that conversation. It's not exactly first date material, you know, or third date material where you open up your quick books or your, you know, your balance sheet and show it. And I think a lot of people just kind of follow that,

you know, that same, that path of least resistance and never have the conversation. There's, you know, money's so taboo and there's shame around talking about, you know, how much debt you have or you haven't saved as much for retirement as you wish you had at that point. And so a lot of people just kind of put their head in the sand. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's probably like you said taboo if i'm thinking about this it's probably equivalent to like some people with age right like so i'm going to use my uncle as an example and he's going to love this but like he met his wife at i don't know a club or whatever and she lied about her age and said she was younger and he lied about his age and said he was older and it was quite a while they'd been dating

when they realized that they were i think 17 years apart and had no idea right and finances is probably similar, where if you have $150,000 with the debt and you feel like you're drowning, you're not going to come to a relationship and be like, hey, here's all my baggage financially, please help. And if you are loaded, you're not going to come into a, I would assume, right? I'm not going to go around like, look at all this money I got. Come date me because I'm rich. So I would imagine it's similar where you're like, I'm going to play it really low key here because I don't want this person to like me more or less because I have X.

And so it probably puts you in this weird conundrum where people lie or just don't bring it up for various reasons. And yeah, that's interesting. Wow. Okay. Let's get back to the question that I asked 20 minutes ago before we went off on these big tangents. But like what are some things that you can, that your prenupt says about how the money is handled during the marriage? Because like I said, I just learned that right now that that's what a prenupt says about how the money is handled during the marriage. that's what a pre-up can do for you. So you have all of your, you've gotten financially naked with

your potential spouse. Here's all of my assets and debts. Yes. And so when it comes to managing your finances during the marriage, there are, there are some things that work and there are some things that don't work. You know, you mentioned your intro. I've been a family law attorney for years and years. I've done hundreds of divorces. And so I've seen kind of the patterns of things that that people do, ways that people manage their finances that work and ways that don't work. And so, you know, our parents' generation, it was very common for all of the expenses to be paid out of one account. All the money goes into one account. All the expenses get paid out of one account. And for most couples today, there is a better system. And so I usually recommend

that couples have kind of three categories of accounts. You'll have your joint account or accounts. And then one spouse will have their account, the other spouse will have their account. And the joint account is funded by, you know, both parties' income. Some people will deposit both of their incomes into that joint account directly, and then they each get kind of an allowance, if you will, out of that account that goes into their separate accounts. Other people will have their income go into their separate accounts, and they contribute to the joint account, kind of agreed upon an amount or agreed upon percentage of those expenses.

But you want to have these three kind of buckets of different money. You know, spouse one's money, spouse two's money, and then the joint money. And then you can sit down and talk about what are our truly joint expenses and make sure that only those expenses are coming out of the joint account. So, you know, for most couples, that's going to be, you know, mortgage or rent, utilities, groceries, you know, insurance, those kinds of things that are truly joint expenses. And then your separate accounts, you can spend however you want without kind of oversight of the other spouse or, you know, for example, in my relationship, you know, I'm the kind of guy. I got to have the new, I got to have the new phone every year. Yeah, I can't even tell you what the, I can't even tell you what the features are, but I got to have, I got to have the new phone when it comes out. And my wife, she just, she wouldn't spend her money on

that. So to her, that would look like a waste. So I'd buy that from my separate account, you know, on her side, she's a, you know, she likes to go and eat lunch, you know, during the, during the week. I'm a brown batter. So, you know, that would look like a waste of money to me to go out and drop, you know, 20, 25 bucks on lunch every day. And I think if we were seeing each other's expenses come out of the joint account, that can tend to cause, you know, some friction, whereas if you set up this kind of, you know, three account system that I'm talking about, that it can reduce a lot of the tension. And, you know, as Dave was saying, a lot of the arguments that couples have during the marriage. So that's just kind of one example is how do we set up the accounts and what expenses come out of what accounts?

Okay. So you just noted that you are married. Do you have a pre-up? I sure do. Okay. I wouldn't have gotten married without one. Yeah. Oh, good. Now, I'm going to, since you're an attorney and attorneys tend to marry attorneys, I'm going to say, is your wife an attorney? She is. She is an attorney. Okay. So that's going to make it a little bit easy. Okay. Okay. I would assume that that's going to make it a little bit easier to broach the subject of, hey, we should get a pre-up because she's probably got more, uh, astute legal mind than I do and probably understands the whole contract thing more than I do and probably has seen divorces more than I have and the, you know, the horribleness of a divorce.

And just because, you know, in, well, I guess you practice family law. Does she practice family law? She does not practice family law. Oh, okay. And I think it helped that she's a lawyer, but I think probably even a bigger aspect, was that she was previously married. And so she had already been through one divorce and all of the financial craziness that comes with that.

And I think that was a big factor in her being open to the idea of a pre-nup when it was our turning to get married. Okay. Did you bring it up or did she bring it up? I brought it up. But by the time I brought it up, it was really a foregone conclusion because when we met, we were both anti-marriage.

So I had been a divorce. attorney for a few years at that point. And early on in my career, I literally used to give all my friends and family the advice. Don't ever get married. I was just, I was absolutely, I wasn't even talking about, you know, get a pre-nup. I was like, don't get married because people have no idea what they're getting into and I'm divorcing these people every day. And, you know, no one's disagreed with me on this. A messy divorce is best avoided at all costs. I don't feel like that's a controversial statement to make. And because I saw, you know, the turmoil that couples were going through, you know, in divorce and the expense and the fact that, you know, the average divorce takes a year to complete

a year out of your life and the impact on children and your job and your stress and everything else, I was just anti-marriage altogether. And then it was only after I kind of, you know, like matured in my ideas and, you know, met my special someone that I said, okay, you know, if I were, I've seen all of the pitfalls that divorcing couples or that married couples go through when fighting about money. If I were going to draft a pre-up that would actually help me stay married, what would that pre-nup look like? Could I reverse engineer a financial system for my own marriage that would let me avoid all of the mistakes that all the divorcing clients that I've had over the years have made? And that's really what kind of like birth the idea for preempts.com. I was trying to draft my own free-up and kind of eliminate the money arguments that I saw

my clients happen. This sounds a lot like when you ask an EMT if it's a good idea to buy a motorcycle. It's like, well, all they see is the motorcycle wrecks. So no. And as a divorce attorney, I'd imagine it's kind of a similar, like, you don't ever hear about the like, oh, this person's happily married. That's not what comes into your daily life. Fair.

Yeah. I see only one end of it. People don't come and hire me when their marriage is going. and fantastic. So yeah. So a moment ago, you suggested that spouses have three bank accounts, his, hers, and theirs. And is that something that you do in your life? Do you mind if I ask you super personal questions? And because I have always been of the mind that it is our money. My parents are still married. My husband and I have been married. for 20 years. When we got married, we went on our honeymoon, came back, and combined everything.

And he made more than I did, but not grossly more than I made. And we just always assumed that they would be together. And we've never had a fight about money, but we're both considered personal finance experts. So we talk about money all the time. So it's not like we are not normal. I think that most people don't have all these conversations about money. But it seems like your way could be great, but I can also see issues popping up when there is such a income disparity. Later on in life, my husband made, I think, four times what I was making. And then I stayed home with the kids for a while and I was making zero.

and I'm just wondering how you handle that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. I actually think that these kinds of setups can be fantastic, especially in cases where there's a big disparity in income. So I'll give you a couple examples. You know, in my own relationship, we kind of do what I call the inside out plan. So all of the income goes into the joint account.

So we both see all the money that goes in there. And then we each get an allowance of an equal amount of money that goes into our separate account. So even though there might be a disparity in our incomes in our own household, we each kind of have our own spending money. You know, one of the things I like to say is, you know, you can't have two people living in the same household, but in completely different socioeconomic brackets. You know, that's a recipe for disaster. There's got to be some kind of, you know, sharing of the wealth, like inside, you know, under your roof. And, you know, for example, I mean, this is one of the cases that led me to come up with this system. I did a divorce one time where, you know, the husband made like 200 grand a year and the wife stayed home and was raising their children.

And he gave her an allowance of $300 a month to spend. A month. A month. And, I mean, it's, you know, borderline abusive, you know, financial abuse, you know. And, you know, if you, what a lot of couples will do, is when they're contributing to the joint expenses, they'll contribute proportionate to their income. So, for example, if you have, you know,

one spouse is making $10,000 a month, and the other spouse is making $2,000 a month, and let's say the joint expenses are $3,000, so that'd be $1,500 per person. Well, if, you know, if spouse one is making $10,000, and they contribute $1,500 to the joint account, that's no sweat, they got $8,500 left to spend. If the other spouse, though, is making $2,000,

and they're contributing $1,500 to the joint expenses, well, then they're left with 500, you know, at the end. And, you know, they can barely, you know, go out and get their own lunch. But what a lot of couples will do is they'll say, okay, we will each contribute, you know, our proportionate expenses. So like the higher earning spouse may contribute 80% of the joint expenses, and the lower earning spouse will pay 20% of joint expenses. Or some couples will say, we'll each contribute 50% of our income to the joint expenses. count no matter how much we make. And that way you kind of, you know, even out the impact of disparate incomes between the spouses. Yeah, I think it's, it's important to have the conversation. If you don't have the pre-up, if you do have the pre-up, you have to have the conversation about money, unless, well, unless you're on the same page. So I'm sitting here, like, do as I say,

not as I do because I didn't have the conversation about money before we got married because I didn't need to. I knew he was frugal. I'm frugal. I knew that we weren't spending every dollar that we brought in because we used coupons all the time and we ate at home instead of going out all the time. And we would I'm very old. We would rent a movie from Blockbuster instead of going to the movies. And, you know, these are ways to spend time with each other without breaking the bank. But there's, you know, if you aren't getting these same context clues from your partner, then you need to have these conversations. Like, how do you spend your money?

And, you know, we both drove really crappy cars. It's not like one of us was, you know, living high on the hog and the other one was scraping by. But then, like I said, once we got married, we just combined everything. And I think one of the things that makes our marriage so successful is we don't fight about money, but we've also always had a surplus of it. We're just really frugal people. We don't spend as much as we bring in. And that is, I mean, that's going to be key right there is when you're not spending every dime that comes in,

there's already a surplus so you don't have to fight about money. But there's also a lot of respect among, like, between the two of us because I don't spend money on things without just checking in with him. Hey, do you care if I buy this purse for $200? And because he's like, no, I don't care. And he's, oh, do you care if I buy this bike for $1,000? I'm like, do you really need another bike? He's like, well, this one's a road bike and I only have a mountain bike.

I'm like, yeah, I don't care. Or, you know, hey, do you care if I buy a motorcycle? You haven't had a motorcycle in a while. I don't care. We've never had an argument about it, but it's just checking in. He's not telling me what I can and can't buy. It's just a respectful checking in as opposed to I'm just going to spend this money without talking to you. And that's only on like frivolous purchases.

Like when I go to the grocery store, I'm not calling up to say, hey, do you mind if I spend $100 on groceries? Because I'm the one that's cooking. I'm going to spend $100 on groceries because I need all that stuff to make the meals. But I forgot where I said. going with that. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, if I could jump in on that because you said something that I love, and I love that you drop the word respect in there because, you know, Mindy, what you and your husband are doing is you're kind of naturally doing what I kind of coach my clients to do in their own marriages and in their prenupt. So, for example,

a provision that we have in almost every pre-nup or post-up that we draft is conversations about money that's coming out of the joint account over a certain amount, right? So for some couples, that's $500. For some couples, it's $1,000. For, you know, one pre-up budget just recently drafted for, you know, a professional athlete, it was anything under $10,000 they didn't need to discuss. You're free to spend, you know, $9,900, you know, however you want, but anything over $10,000 you want to discuss. But most couples have some threshold amount that if the other spouse is going to be spending that much money from the joint account, they want there to be a discussion ahead of time. And just like you said, it's respect. It's not, you know, going and begging for permission or,

you know, that kind of thing. It's just a mutual respect of, hey, if I'm going to make a purchase, a significant purchase from the joint funds, that's something that impacts you. I should at least give you a heads up and give you a chance to say, you know, voice your objection or be like I'm okay with it. And, you know, my wife and I do that. And we'll even do it for amounts that are under the out because it's just, it's an ingrained habit, you know, and anything, you know, for me, these preempts are drafted on three principles. It's communication, fairness, and transparency. And anything that promotes one of those three principles is a good idea for me. And so that's, you know, that kind of hits all three. You know, we're being, we're communicating, we're being

transparent. And, you know, some of the idea, maybe I'm being naive here, is that if you kind to build into your relationship, these habits of communicating, even about the little things, about being transparent, even about the little things that some of those behaviors will bleed over into other parts of your relationship beyond just the financial part of your relationship. I love that because you said you were going to reverse engineer the divorce so that you didn't have to get a divorce. And here's all the things that I'm going to do so that my marriage is good. I love that because, yes, the number one thing is you have to communicate with your spouse. And if you want your spouse to know something, you have to tell them because they cannot read minds.

And if you want to know something from your spouse, you have to ask them because you cannot read minds. I can't convey that enough. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Yeah. Along those same lines, we will put provisions into our pre-nups or post-nups that are not strictly financial. So, for example, we'll put provisions about counseling into prenups. You know, some couples that I have worked with over the years, whenever one spouse, whenever the husband wants to go do counseling, the wife isn't interested. And when the wife comes around and wants to do it, the husband isn't interested. And so we will often put into our agreements that either spouse can trigger marriage counseling,

say no more than once a year, but either spouse can just put it in writing, send an email or text to your spouse and say, we need to do counseling. and you were contractually obligated to do three counseling sessions or six counseling sessions, something like that so that, you know, when that time comes and a spouse is like, hey, I want to do counseling, all right, you've already agreed ahead of time, you know, once a year, I can trigger it, and we've got to go do a couple sessions. And we even put that kind of provision in before either spouse can go file for divorce. You've got to go do three counseling sessions. Sometimes it's to try to save the marriage. Sometimes it's, you know, if we're going to split, can we do this at least in a

respectful manner and not give all over our money to the lawyers. Even though I am one of those lawyers myself, I still, you know, would prefer to kind of help my clients avoid, you know, having financial ruin coming from, you know, making the lawyers rich. So, you know, counseling is another big thing that will put into these agreements that I think help couples, even if they never approach a divorce. When you're writing a pre-up, are you writing the pre-up with one spouse or with both spouses together? So under the law, I can only represent one spouse. And so I am writing it for one spouse, but I also don't do the kinds of pre-ups where somebody comes and is like, I just want to, you know, if anything ever happens, I want them to be penniless, out on the curb, out of my life.

There's just, there's enough people that just want fairness and a fair pre-up that I don't have to take those types of cases. And I think that most people come in wanting their marriage to succeed. So when I start proposing, you know, these types of solutions and saying, hey, look, you know, even if you've got all the money, they've got a benefit from some of it by being married to you. Otherwise, it's not going to work out anyway. So, you know, that's, that's, you know, another one of the things that I try to help

my clients navigate. So you can only represent what spouse is the other spouse. being represented by a different attorney? So in some states, it is required for the other spouse, for both spouses to have their own attorneys. In Georgia, you don't have to. You just have to have the option or have had the opportunity to go meet with another attorney. Sometimes a lot of my clients, to avoid having to pay a second lawyer, will bring their

spouse to meet with me as well and essentially waive their attorney-client privilege for the purpose of having kind of these open conversations in front of the other spouse and let them know, hey, there's no back dealing going on here. I'm not telling the lawyer to slide in some stuff that's going to benefit me and hurt you at the end of the day. And they'll do it kind of, you know, the whole process will be 100% open. You know, I can't go share what the client tells me, but the client can go share what I say. That's their prerogatives. So that's how a lot of couples will do it because they don't want it to be a fight. They don't want to get two lawyers, you know, kind of going back and forth, you know, and a big prolonged negotiation.

So, yeah, a lot of people will just kind of do it openly. You do have to check the laws of your state, though, because some states do require there be an attorney on each side. Okay. I'm curious, if I can ask you, put a salesman hat on for a moment, to try to help my normal demographic that I speak with a lot of service members. So I always frame things that way. The knuckleheads out there who, so I guess.

Going back to what Mindy originally said, right? In my head, if you're somebody with money, whether it's the husband or the wife or soon to be, and you bring up a pre-up and the other person is adamantly vehemently against it, I view that kind of as a red flag. Like, okay, well, you know, in a case where you already have money. But if in a case where you don't have money, there's still, in either case, there's a lot of emotions that come up when you say, hey, I want a pre-up because, you know, I can absolutely see why that would trigger the like, are you not in this for the long haul? Curious, if you have any thoughts or advice on how to bring that conversation up in a way that's not going to put you in the doghouse. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the advice I give might sound a little counterintuitive, but if you want to talk to your spouse about a prenup, my advice is don't go to your spouse and say, hey, I want a pre-nip.

I think that is what turns it off. You know, people, I think, you know, everyone has a conception of what a pre-dup is that is based on kind of like Hollywood and TV and celebrities and the Kardashians. And so, you know, you bring up the idea and they think, oh, you know, they either think like, you know, they're planning for my divorce already or, you know, when you just say the word pre-up, you know, what comes to mind? Usually, usually, it's like an old man and some young gold dick and wife looks like Anna Nicole Smith. something on those lines. I'm dating myself now. And they think, how does that relate to me? But if you just go and talk about the component parts of the pre-up that we're talking about, you know, if you go to your spouse and say, hey, I think it's a good idea for us to be transparent about our finances and just put everything down on paper on the table before we get

married. I think it's a good idea for us to kind of establish bank accounts and have a conversation about what money goes into what accounts. How much access to money do you have? How much access do I have to money? How do we pay our joint expenses? Do we want to, you know, my wife and I have a provision in our agreement where, you know, travel is our big thing that we'd like you do together. So we wrote in a provision where 5% of all over income will be set aside for our travel

fund. So whenever we want to travel, that money is there. For some people, it's, you know, that first rental property that they want to buy. Or it's, you know, saving up for the house or saving up for the baby, you know, kind of planning in, you know, or retirement, you know, planning in how they want to spend their money, save their money over the course of the marriage. Or then, you know, even if things go wrong and you don't work out, can we agree what would be fair ahead of time so that we don't have to pay that money to lawyers when all the trust is broken down and we don't communicate and we don't like each other anymore,

you know, to go fight about the money? Can we just say we both keep whatever we brought in and everything that we built together, we split 50-50? And then we can skip paying, you know, 20% of our net worth the lawyers on the back end. You know, so, you know, I think if you just talk about the component parts, should we be transparent with each other? Should we come up with a plan on how we spend money during the marriage? Should we come up with rules where, you know, one spouse can trigger counseling provisions, you know, can we agree that we're each going to have X amount of life insurance with the other

person as a beneficiary, you know? And then maybe after you've, you know, gotten a number of these yeses, can we also just kind of be realistic and say, hey, you know, a third of our friends are, you know, getting divorced or in marriages, you know, that have ended. Can we just agree now what would be fair if things didn't work out? And if you agree on all of those different things, like, can we just document this? You know, I talk to a lawyer says it's a good idea to put these things down on paper. You know, you don't ever have to even mention the word prenuptial agreement to kind of get agreement on all of the different pieces of it. And then if the final step is, let's put this down

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It's the divorce laws in your state. state. If you don't want somebody else to dictate how your money is divided, then you need to do it with a pre-up. And Aaron is not an attorney, so I'm going to check in with you, Aaron. Is that correct? Aaron is a wise woman because let me tell you, that is exactly correct. In fact, I've got a YouTube video and I'll share the link with you that you can give it to your listeners. That is basically entitled, even if you don't have a pre-up, you've got a pre-up. And the message is, exactly that. I mean, if a pre-up is essentially just a set of rules that governs how your finances are treated, if things don't work out, then, you know, you're either doing that, or you're either

choosing those rules on your own, or you are allowing the state that you live in to choose those rules. And let me tell you, the state's rules that you are probably defaulting to are some of the most unintuitive and potentially unfair things that you can imagine. So, you know, every day, people that are getting divorced coming to my office and say, it's okay because we kept everything separate. I've got the houses in my name and I paid the mortgage and she kept her retirement in her name. And then when I have to tell people that, you know, it doesn't matter, and this is in all 50 states, it does not matter whose name is on a bank account. It doesn't matter whose name is on a retirement account. It doesn't matter whose name is on a piece of property or a mortgage.

If you acquired these assets during the course of the marriage, it's considered marital property, regardless of who paid for it, regardless of who earned the money. All of those things are lumped in together. And for a lot of couples, it's the first time they're here. They've been married 20 years, and they've been paying all the expenses associated with this mortgage or this rental property all along that time, thinking that they've protected it by keeping it only in their name, only to find out. And they come and they say, what do you mean? He wants half of my retirement. What do you mean she wants half of the equity in the house that I paid 100% for? And finding that out after 20, 30 years of marriage is heartbreaking.

And there's a different way to do it. The way that I recommend that my clients do it is let's flip the script and make the default what most people think. So if I go get a rental property, if it's meant to be a joint asset, we'll put it in for joint names. If it's meant to just be my project or your little project or my side business or your side business, then we'll put it in separate names. And that way, everyone knows where they stand at any given time with respect to the finances based on how something's titled. And so if you got your separate

accounts, those belong to each of you. And if you got a joint account, then that belongs to the two of you. And you split what's in joint names 50-50 and you keep what's in your own names to yourself. And it makes the untangling if things go south much, much easier. But it also makes managing it during the marriage itself a lot easier as well. I love so much of this. I love so much of the. So one of the things that I always tell people when they're filing for LLCs in a partnership is that you need to plan for the dissolution of that LLC immediately because you're amicable now, but when things go really south, that's when things get ugly and you don't want to be trying to figure out how do we solve this? How do we resolve this? Then it sounds like a pre-up is essentially the exact same advice as that. So when I put it that way, it's like, oh, you'd be silly not to get this.

But I want to just throw something else out there. We mentioned, Mindy mentioned like the income disparity where her husband at one point was making like four times as much as she was, whatever. So my wife and I are in an interesting situation financially where incomes aside, I am very, she is much more risk averse. So she is very frugal, no debt, cash, kind of more the Dave Ramsey philosophy of finances. and I'm like leveraged to the hilt, how low can my down payment be, buy everything and hold it till I die, whatever. And so we have, I don't want to say issues, but our view on finances

is very different in that regard where if I see $5,000 in a bank account, I'm like, oh, I can invest this somewhere. And I'll figure it out, you know, and if she sees $5,000 in a bank account, she's like, oh, I should probably save some more money. And so I think this is valuable, not just from the income disparity, but from the spending habits disparity, right? Because two spouses who both make $5,000 a month at the end of the year, one may have $40,000 of that sitting in a savings account, and the other may have $2,000 sitting in a savings account. And it's like, well, now if we split, I don't want to be stuck giving them $20,000 because they didn't save. You know, so I love all of this, and I just wanted to throw that out there, that this is awesome. I am curious, what if, and I think we were

going to get into this anyway, so I hope I'm not jumping ahead. But what if? So Mindy and I were both in similar situations, it sounds like, I had a negative net worth when I got married, and my wife had student loan debt and worked at a high school. And Mindy and her husband were not financial gurus at the time. And so I'm curious what it looks like if somebody, or if there's even an option, I've heard the term posting up, but what that looks like or when that is or is not viable when you've been married for six years and you're like, huh, there's a lot more money involved in this than there used to be. You know, I'm curious if you could just kind of talk me through a post-nup and when it's appropriate. Yeah, absolutely. So we do a number of post-nups and they come in a couple different varieties.

So, you know, a lot of the post-ups that we draft, just to be honest, are people who wanted a pre-nup and just got caught up in the wedding planning and didn't get it signed until after they got married. So they're just doing a post-up because they're doing a pre-up late. But for a lot of couples, The post-nup acts as kind of a reset. It's a couple that recognizes that, you know, something's broken with the way that they handle their money and they want to be able to have, you know, kind of a better situation. And so people have come to me in situations. I'll give you kind of a common example that might relate to some of your listeners.

A couple gets married and one person, one spouse already owned a house and the other one is moving into the house that was owned by, you know, the other spouse. And the spouse that's coming into, you know, let's say the husband is moving into the wife's condo that the wife already owned prior to the marriage. And, you know, the husband's paying, you know, half of the bills and half of the rent. But it's kind of like, wait a minute, am I even getting any equity in the house? And the wife is like, well, I already had, you know, half the mortgage paid off before you moved in here. So it wouldn't really be fair, you know, for you to, you know, just kind of come in and get 50% ownership of what I've

been paying on, you know, for eight years now. But the husband doesn't want to feel like he's just renting and making the wife rich, you know, in her condo. And so, you know, we've done situations where we'll say, okay, let's section off, you know, if the house is worth 100 grand and there's 20 grand of equity, then the wife will just own 20% of the house, no matter how much it increases over time, she'll own the first 20% off the top of the house. And now that you guys are married and you're splitting the bills, any equity above 20, 20% of the value of the house that you build up is going to be split 50-50.

And now all of a sudden now, you know, the husband doesn't feel like he's just throwing as a money away to, you know, you know, give rental income to the wife and the wife, you know, feels like, doesn't feel like she's giving up the equity that she'd already built up in the house before the husband moved in. And they both kind of have a fair situation. And so often couples will come to me and say, we're in crisis. We're in financial crisis. We don't want to get divorced. But something's got to be fixed in terms of the finances. And because I've seen so many of these situations over the years, years, I can, I can usually suggest some kind of compromise that'll help get the couple back on track. We'll draft it. We'll put it into a post-nup. And the couple can sign it. And, you know, hopefully it acts as a way to, you know, save the relationship. But also, if things don't work out, then at least they've got kind of a game plan for, okay, this is, we know what, who owns what, and how things will be divided in the unfortunate event that things don't, don't work out. Okay. Now, tagging off of David's, how do you bring up the pre-nup question? How do you bring up the post-knup question when only one of you is thinking about it? Yeah. You know, I think that it would be kind of the same process of discussing the pre-up, which is very carefully. You know, I think that if you just come out of the box, you know, I don't think that people hate what pre-ups can do.

as much as they hate the word pre-nup or post-nup. And so, you know, if you don't make that kind of the front end of the pitch, it will be better received if you say, hey, you know, we seem to be having some tension around, you know, money. We've had fights about money, you know, the last three weeks, you know, I'm feeling some kind of way, you're feeling some kind of way. Can we get some help as to how we can meet in the middle and find out, you know, what is a fair way to handle our finances?

And, oh, by the way, you know, I know this great. attorney, Aaron Thomas, who I know has helped out other couples in this kind of situation or have them listen to this podcast and kind of learn some of the benefits that can be gained from getting a post-nuptial agreement. After you're already married and you're going down one path and somebody is not feeling like they're being treated fairly, oftentimes both spouses don't feel like they're being treated fairly financially. And let's get somebody who can act somewhat somewhat as a neutral and help us figure out what's a good, a good setup for managing our finances and reducing some of the arguments we're having. Now let's talk about money, but not in the,

in the context that we've been talking about. How much does something like this cost? And what sort of timeline are we talking about it taking to like start to finish? Are we looking at like a three-month process, a 20-minute process for the post-nup and for the pre-nup? Like, is this a, $1,000 am I investing $10,000 in this document and, you know, a month's worth of back and forth with you? Or, I mean, I'm sure everything's different because everybody's different. But like, what's a ballpark? Yeah, yeah. Right now we do pre-nuffs and post-nups for a flat fee of $2,500. Okay. I know, you know, the way that I like to explain to people is, you know, kind of the average wedding budget today is like $25,000. So this is, this is a piece of that.

and, you know, just kind of budgeted in. And it's, we have done, we've turned them around in a week. I've had people come to me and say, hey, I'm getting married. We're going to Vegas on Saturday. You know, usually the longest part of the pre-up is, or the post-nup, is getting people who have not paid a lot of attention to their money to actually sit down and write down all their assets and debts in one place. Now, you know, Mindy, I know you for sure, probably have a spreadsheet and you know where every dime

and everything goes and you carry the one and it's all tallied up. But for a lot of couples, especially those who, you know, are having challenges with, you know, the intersection of the relationship and their finances, this may be the first time they've actually put everything down on paper in one place. So, you know, but we can turn them around. Generally, I like to say budget at least a couple of weeks, you know, the sooner prior to the marriage that you start the process, the better, in my opinion, because it gives you plenty of time to kind of sit down and discuss and have conversations about, you know,

how you want your money to be handled. But the process does not take a ton of time, you know, usually two to three meetings with me and my office and filling out the questionnaires that we provide people to fill out. I've even got, you know, some things that people can do to learn more on the front end on the website on preempts.com. We have a free e-book. that is entitled seven financial strategies for building a rock-solid marriage. You can get it for free on the website. And, you know, like I like to tell people, even if you don't get a free-knup or a post-nup, you know, like you were saying earlier, Mindy, like, just have the conversations.

You've got to have these frank conversations about money. And it's just going to be so much better than sticking your head in the sand on these issues. Whether you decide to get the document or not, it's worthwhile to have the conversations. a lot of ways pre-nup post-nup almost sounds like a trust like it's it's similar price point similar timeline whatever but you know people think of a trust and they think of estate planning but they but when you really dig into trust it's like well you can set all kinds of ground rules for how the money's to be treated where it's to go and you need to meet this box in order to check this widget to do this thing and unlike an LLC where you can't relate you just like okay this is

our agreement the pre-nup post up almost sounds like kind of that for a marriage where it's, I mean, so I had the three account things, for example. I just heard about this yesterday on TikTok of all places for the first time in my entire life, although he said four accounts. He did a joint account, two separate accounts, and then a forced savings account, kind of like it sounds like your travel plan, 5%. But it kind of blew my mind and got me thinking. And now we're having this conversation.

I'm like, oh, my goodness. Like it's almost like a trust where it's like, well, hey, if one person, person wants to go to counseling, you're going to counseling. And if your finances do X, then we need to tweak Y. And I mean, laying those ground rules out, I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't see any reason for anybody to not do this. And I guess my question would be, is there any situation where this doesn't make sense? And there's not a reason to get a pre-nup post-nup. Yeah, yeah, great, great question. I'm so glad you asked that because I think a lot of the people listening to this are going to say, you know, well, you know, I'm 28 years old. I don't actually even have any money. We don't

have a ton saved up. Like, why would we get a pre-up? And I mean, there's a couple things on that. And this is, you know, touching on something else that you brought up, David, you know, the comparison to, you know, kind of like the business agreement or the LLC I love because the way that I like to describe it is, you know, is twofold. One is we totally today, we underestimate the complexity of our financial lives. People say, oh, I don't really have anything. I just got this and that and this and that. When our parents' generation got married, you know, so I'm in my 40s. And when my parents got married when they, in the 1960s, and when they got married, first of all, the average age of couples getting married was 21.

You know, usually the husband was 22 and the wife was 20. So they were very young. Credit cards didn't even really exist. Back then, they were just coming around. Student loans weren't insane like they are today. You could usually just work your way through school and not have six figures of student loan debt. People had at most, you know, one bank count. People usually kind of had, had, were going straight from living with their parents to getting their first house together. You know, so they really were a blank slate. You know, the couple getting married in the 1960s was like two people starting a startup business together from complete scratch from zero. The couple that's getting married today, the average age is 29. And each

spouse usually has four or five credit cards. They've usually got four or five bank accounts. They probably got a couple retirement accounts because they didn't roll over their first 401k into their second job because people change jobs more often today. Usually one or both spouses has a mortgage, one or both spouses has a car note, student loans. And so, you know, whereas the couple in the 1960s getting married, it was like a startup, a couple getting married today, it's like forming, it's like merging two already formed corporations into one. You know, and you're doing it. And besides all the assets and debts, because people are getting married later in life,

they usually got a decade of financial habits that are baked into their lives because they've been living on their own outside of the parents' house for a decade before they got married. And so, you know, and you would never merge two corporations without some kind of business agreement, without some kind of plan for what would happen if it get dissolved. And, you know, people talk about, you know, making big financial decisions, you know, there's some, there's a, I think a quote about the biggest financial decision you'll make your life is, is buying a house wrong. It's getting married. It's getting married is the biggest financial decision you'll ever make. And so the idea that you

do that without some planning, you know, again, whether you get a pre-up or a post-nup, you've at least got to sit down and have, you know, kind of a plan for how you manage your finances. And so to the couple that says, well, I don't have a ton of money. It's not about what you have coming in. Number one, it's about what you could potentially have if the marriage doesn't work out. That's where all the money is going to be lost is on that back end. So couples that don't have a lot of money at the beginning, that's not a reason to avoid, you know, a pre-up or a post-nup. And, you know, I would say, you know, to me, when I hear, is there a reason for not getting a pre-up or a post-nup? In my mind, I hear, is there a reason for not planning out, you know, and how? how you're going to manage your finances during the relationship?

Is there a reason not to get on the same page about how your accounts are going to be set up? Is there a reason not to be transparent with your spouse about what assets and debts are bringing into the relationship? And so, you know, if 2,500 is just so far outside of, you know, your economic resources, certainly I understand that. But you can sit down, you know, and use a pen and paper and at least have some of these discussions and kind of come to some agreements on your own. So when David started comparing marriage to a partnership and an LLC, that was like a lightbulb moment. Oh, my goodness.

I spend so much time in the Bigger Pockets forums talking to people about structuring their partnerships. Hey, I'm getting ready to partner with somebody on a real estate deal. Is there anything I need to know before I do this? And I'm like, yeah, you need to get, I've said this. I've said this. I can't believe I didn't make the connection until just now. I've said, you need to put everything in writing before you buy the property, before you are financially obligated together while you're still friends. Because, hey, David, let's partner on a deal. We're great friends. We're going to make so much

money. This is going to be so great. And then we partner on a deal. And, oh, wait, David wants to do this stuff. And I don't want to do that stuff. Man, I wish I would have talked to him about this. before, like, what are our plans for managing this property? What are our plans for managing our money while we're married? The parallels are so crystal clear now. And I feel like a fool for not seeing it before. David, you're brilliant. And I feel like an idiot. I don't know about that to retract the brilliant statement. I'm just going to... You're the okayest co-host I've ever had. So to create a laugh here, you're talking about the LLC and we talked about all the, you know, if something goes wrong, all the ways that you mitigate that, right?

And you have to plan that out. Well, you know, John. So you'll get a kick out of this and the audience will love this because this just shows how goofy and quirky I am in my whatever. So we have, well, we're in two LLCs and they, you know, whatever. But one of them is just John and I, the other is three of us. The one that's just John and I, we have all of the normal mitigation measures. The last bullet point, we put in, if all else fails, that John and I will have a duel with paintball guns. And we put in a score system, a point system, how much ammo, how many paces, like the whole nine yards.

So I just thought that was funny. There's really no value add to that other than at least we thought it through on all the other things. but that's in there. So if you ever see John, you should ask him about paintball duels and LLC. I don't think I'm going to see John in real life. I've been so close so many times. John is my lender and David's partner, real estate partner. But yes.

I love all of what we've talked about. I do too. This has been fantastic. I wanted to make one more point before we get away from it, though. When I asked how much it was, you said $2,500. That's what your firm charges. and I'm assuming that you're going to be like that's going to be a normal fee. You're not going to be like, wow, everybody else is a dollar and you're $2,500 or everybody else is $10,000 and you're $2,500.

I'm assuming that's going to be kind of a, you know, middle of the road purchase, but or price tag. What I wanted to say is how much is a divorce? I mean, it's 50% of whatever you got, right? Yeah, the, I mean, the average cost just for the lawyer's fees in a divorce. is 15 grand per spouse. Per spouse. And per spouse. And that's the average.

You know, I mean, there are some people that do it uncontested or they agree and they, it's fast. But there are also ones that go, you know, to $7,500,000. I've worked on a case where one spouse alone dropped a million dollars in attorney's fees over the course of the relationship. And, man, even if his pre-up costs $10,000 instead of $3,500, it would have been, It would have been worth it. You know, obviously, he had a lot of assets to be able to spend that much, you know, in fees. But it is, you know, to your point, it is a fraction of the cost of a divorce.

And, you know, beyond the difference in the financial cost, you know, the stress and strain, you know, the uncertainty, the leaving it up to a judge, a complete stranger who knows nothing about you or your life. And it's going to hear each of, you know, you and your spouse talk for a few hours and make a decision that impacts. your entire financial future. Gosh, I'd sure like to put that back in my hands rather than leave it up to chance. So, you know, in my view, the cost is well worth it. I don't ever plan on getting, you know, a divorce, but I've already seen tons of benefits of having these conversations and getting on the same page with my spouse in terms of how it plays out in our relationship. So, you know, hopefully this is a benefit to some of your listeners. Hopefully somebody who's

listening right now is going to go sit down with their spouse and say, hey, got a few things we need to talk about. I hope so. Well, obviously, this isn't the example, but I just laugh. When you said the million dollars on a divorce, my thought process immediately went to the fact that McKenzie Scott is the third wealthiest woman in the world because she divorced Jeff Bezos. And obviously, she had a lot more to do with all of that. I'm not saying like she deserves no credit. But it's like, if you think about from like the standpoint of somebody like holy crap divorce. I mean, I can only imagine what kind of fees went into all that. And so you're absolutely right.

Like planning ahead is so much more affordable than not planning ahead. Absolutely. Oh, Aaron, this has been a very enlightening episode. And I really appreciate all that you have shared with us. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, where can they find out more about you? Yes. So if you want to learn more about me, if you want to learn about pre-nups or postnups, you can go to prenups.com, P-R-E-N-U-P-S dot com. And there's also links on there to the YouTube

page. You can download the free e-book. And if you're in Georgia and want to hear about our other family law services, you can find me at aaronthomaslaw.com. Erin, this has been fantastic. Thank you so very much. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been a blast. I was just going to ask if we missed anything, if there was any question that you think is worth tagging on before we get off. Because as much as we've probably gone longer than we normally do, I am loving this and learning so much.

So if there's something we missed, I would love to hammer it out before we let you go. You guys ask the right questions and let me get in, you know, get my pitch it. I mean, the one parting thought that I would leave, you know, people with is just to, you know, improve your communication about these things. You know, marriage is the most, you know, it's the most important financial partnership you'll ever have. And, you know, it deserves, it deserves conversation. Oh, I love that. Love that. Yeah. So good. You're going to mark that as a quote. You better mark that as a quote. Yeah, I'm going to. Aaron, this is, I mean, this is awesome. I'm going to probably hound you sometime after the show and

see what it's going to take to get you to come talk to my mastermind about this so they can pick your brain because this is, I've never thought about any of this. And I know so many people, it's the exact same thing. And I, my goodness, yeah, I had no idea. You're exactly right. What I thought I knew about pre-ups was what is in movies, TV, and the news. And I never knew, probably 90% of what we just talked about, which is I clearly get excited when I learn new things. Yeah, I'm glad it's been to help. I'm, I'm open for speaking engagements, as you see. So reach out any time, David. It's been great. Holy cow, David. That was such a great episode. What did you think of Aaron?

It's the second best episode that's ever been on Bigger Pockets Money, right under your mind. No, that was in a real note, I mean, you heard it through the show. This was amazing. I got, it's not very often. So much good information. Yeah, it's not super common for, not to say that I know everything, but like for me to go through an episode and literally like every single conversational point, I'm like, I didn't know that. Oh, yep, didn't know that.

Oh, wow. I didn't know. Oh, oh. Like the whole thing was just gold mine after gold mine after gold mine. I loved it. What a great point. What a great point. Oh, my goodness.

I never even thought of it. I never made that connection. the whole time. He was fantastic. Clearly has a mastery of the subject and is not there just to push, push, push. He's just presenting this information. Look, this is a really great thing for you to have to help you run your marriage, to help with communication. And it's a tool to help guide you through marriage. Marriage is hard. Marriage is work. And marriage is work every single day. And if you're not doing the work every single day, the harder it's going to be. And this gives you kind of like an outline or guidelines for how you should be communicating, how you should be spending, how you should be

handling different aspects of your marriage. And it's not just money. It's, you know, what do we do? If we want to have counseling, well, I want to get counseling and you're not receptive to it. Oh, he even said, you're contractually obligated. I don't, I don't know that maybe that's the best way to phrase it, but if that's the way that you have to phrase it to get your spouse to counseling, you need to go to counseling. And there's just so many good nuggets in this episode. I really, really hope that if you are listening to this and you know somebody who's about to get married, that you share this episode with them and just say, you know, this is not what you think it is. Just listen with an open mind. I really loved this episode and I really loved Aaron.

Yep. I got nothing. I mean, that's. was phenomenal and I agree. I mean, this was so much information. He was so good. Okay, David, should we get out of here? Not if we can interview him again, because I'm sure I still got stuff to learn, but if not, then I guess we could. Well, he's already gone for the day, so we'll have to bring him back another time. We should leave for now. So David, from episode 301 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is David Perrae from the military millionaire group. And I am Mindy Jensen saying don't forget to floss, Albatross.