BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 341: Money with Katie’s Middle-Class Myths and The Great Roth vs. 401K Debate

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Katie Gatti Tassin from Money with Katie had her “financial awakening” earlier than most. She saw the middle-class wealth trap of working, spending, and repeating for what it really was. This cash-gobbling cycle is one that many Americans fall into, but once you see the light, it’s hard not to almost automatically do better. And that’s what Katie did, trading twenty-dollar daily lunches and “hot girl expenses” for more saving, investing, and skyrocketing net worth. Through a few short years of self-education, Katie was able to more than double her income, build profitable side businesses, and have a master-like grip on her finances. She’s become an expert in retirement investing, passive income, and saving simply through reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, and starting something of her own. This, coming from someone who just a few years ago had less than $500 to their name. Katie walks through what spurred her “financial awakening” and how sharing the same thought process could activate your own. She also touches on financial myths that the middle class commonly falls into, the great Roth vs. 401(k)debate, and why lifestyle creep isn’t such a bad thing. She’s proof that you can turn your entire financial situation around in only a few short years, and if she could do it, why can’t you? In This Episode We Cover The “financial awakening” that’ll have you saving more and spending less Financial “truths” that could destroy your wealth if you follow them Self-education and the best personal finance podcasts and blogs and you should tune into Retirement investing and whether it makes sense to invest pre-tax or post-tax Starting side hustles and job hopping to more than double your salary The bright side of lifestyle creep and using it as a reward for your hard work And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Mindy's Twitter Scott's Instagram Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place 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 Finance Friday: I Want to Cash Out My 401k Early, Should Mr. Money Mustache The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirements The Money With Katie Podcast Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast, where we interview Katie Gatty Tossan from the Money with Katie podcast and talk about financial awakening, questioning conventional money wisdom, and also have a good old fashioned pre-tax versus rock debate. In either case, like having all tax deferred or all tax free, like both are pigeonholing you into the, you know, in one case, it's pigeonholing you into now having to figure that out now. Whereas like if you went all Roth, but like wouldn't have needed to or then you're being pigeonholed into like you've kind of overpaid probably on your tax at the time. If you were contributing to a Roth while you were paying a 37% marginal tax rate. Like that is that's cutting out a third of that contribution. So yeah, I would say like having all of either is probably not going to give you the most flexible outcome. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen.

And with me as always is my money-loving co-host. Scott Trench. And great to be here with my 401. Okay, co-host, Mindy Jensen. 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 financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. With you and retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or just have a financial awakening. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams. Scott, today is a super fun episode. We talked to Katie from

Money with Katie the podcast, Money with Katie the blog, Money with Katie the Everything. And this is a super, super, super, super fun episode. I really enjoy talking to her. I enjoy our lively debate at the end, Roth versus traditional 401ks. I enjoy her story of her financial awakening where she discovered that you don't actually have to spend every dime that comes into your pocket. Who'd have thought. Yeah, I think Katie is a fantastic, she's brilliant. She has immersed herself in this world of personal finance, built a philosophy of money that I think is really strong, and she's done it from the ground up. There's a lot of familiar concepts in there, and there's a lot of brand new and controversial things or challenges to the things that we take for granted in the world of financial

independence and early retirement. So I think she's worth listening to, really enjoyed the conversation, and loved the debates that we had. 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 tax 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, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pock. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at Monarch.

for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com Code Pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it.

Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing, get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses,

organizes invoices and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Sound makes everything easier,

expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by LeadBank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Foun.

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 impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Liener 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. Today we welcome Katie Gatti Tossi on to the podcast. Katie is the host of Money with Katie, which you probably have heard of as it is screaming up the money charts. Her podcast focuses on building wealth, questioning conventional wisdom, and creating a great life. Katie, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much, Mindy, and Scott. I am honored to be here. This is going to be so much fun. Let's learn all about Katie.

Katie, Katie, where does your journey with money begin? Well, I should caveat everything that I'm about to say by saying the honest, real beginning of my journey with money and how I think about it is the fact that I was born into like a middle class family with two working college educated parents who consistently lived beneath their means and clipped coupons and tracked their spending and, you know, drove used cars that were 15 years old. So I think it's impossible to extricate me and my perspectives and my outcomes from that environment in which I was raised. I don't really think it's all that surprising that I grew up to be an adult that tracks everything I do in a spreadsheet because those are the two humans that I learned how to be a human from. And I also think that like the fact that I was never concerned about where my next meal was going to come from or how we were going to pay for my school. lies like that definitely influenced my kind of fundamental sense of security and confidence around finances. That said, I basically had no inclination to save money whatsoever as like an adolescent or a young adult. Any money that came my way, whether it was from birthday or Christmas

gifts or from part-time work, it really didn't matter. It basically just got spent immediately. I had no concept of opportunity cost. So when I was graduate, from college, I didn't have any student debt, which was a huge leg up. I now realized in retrospect, at the time, I didn't realize it was that big of a deal, but now I see how impactful that was. But I also had no money. Like I had less than probably $500 to my name when I walked across the graduation stage. And I wasn't really concerned about it until I started living on my own postgrad and was kind of kicked off that family payroll of like, all right, you have a college degree now and an intern. So here's the bill for the car insurance. Godspeed.

So about six to 12 months into working full time, I realized like, oh my God, I'm just kind of treading water. I don't really have a plan. And that didn't really sit well with me. And I think simultaneously around that time, I realized that this idea of working in a cubicle for the next 40 years sounded like moderately terrible to me. So that combination of my own insecurity around. like my ability to manage money, the fact that like my paychecks were coming in and then

suddenly kind of gone and okay, cool, well, when's the next one going to get here? Because I'm going to use that one to pay off this bill. And that whole sentiment didn't feel great. Combined with my fear of never being able to retire, that was mostly what kind of kicked me into gear and got me interested in personal finance and knowledge is power. So it all really built from there. but that was probably age 23, I would say, thereabout. And what year is this?

This would have been like mid-2018, probably. Okay, so you graduate college in 2017, and a year later in 2018 and age 23, you're like, I'm out. This is not going to work with from a cubicle, a cubicle job for the next 40 years. I'm going to learn about personal finance. Yeah, I didn't last very long, did I? What was your job? I worked in marketing at an airline. And it's funny because I had a great job, realistically.

Like I worked for, you know, one of those employers that's always on the lists for like being a great employer. And I had a solid income, like my starting salary was like $52,000. So it wasn't, it wasn't like I wasn't making enough money or that I, you know, was working some horrible job with toxic people. I mean, it was a great gig. I think it was just in general. that realization of, oh, I mean, I remember like down to the moment when this all kind of hit me like a ton of bricks because I was walking into the building one morning. It was like 8 a.m. Like my heels on. I've got the lunch bag in one hand and the purse in the other and I'm kind of like teetering along. And it was just kind of this jarring moment of like, oh my God, is this my life for the next 40 years? Like is this it? And that was really rattling because I don't

know, I think you go through life and you go through school and there's always something else on the horizon. There's another semester or another class with a syllabus that tells you exactly how things are going to unfold. And there's very clear benchmarks. And I think that kind of endless expanse of a traditional career was a little bit unnerving to me because I was definitely ambitious and motivated, but I didn't necessarily feel like I was directing that ambition toward the right thing at the time. Yeah. And this is your story. So I'll only chime in about my for a moment here, but rewind five years, this was exactly, this is in almost eerie detail, the same, you know, I didn't have the heels and the lunch and the purse piece, but I, but I, I had

the same thing, except I was working at a Fortune 500 company. I was a financial analyst, and I remember, and my company was consistently ranked in the top of the worst companies to work for in America, things there. So, you know, I, I guess it took me three months, that, that was the difference of three months there instead of six months into the job for that. But I remember I had a similar type of moment and discovered in the weeks following concepts like financial independence and Mr. Money Mustache and changed my, um, my outlook and how I want to pursue my career. Yeah, I think that's everyone has a financial awakening. I think it just depends on how, uh, I don't want to use the word self-aware, but I'm kind of tempted to like how in tune you are with your own happiness and

fulfillment and how, I guess, willing you are to question it and to really honestly examine it. And I think there's a good Gary V quote about this, not that I want to be like the one that goes around quoting Gary V all the time, but something to the effect of like, if you are living for the weekends, your life is broken. And it's really harsh. But what it's getting at is kind of this same concept that if you are just putting your head down and grinning and bearing it through. 75% of your week, 80% of your week, it's going to be a long 40 years.

And there's probably a better way through. And I think that that's why the Mr. Money Mustache and Mad Fiantist and kind of that old guard of five, why their messaging is so impactful and kind of like red pill situation. Because it's, oh my God, there is another way. Like I thought I was trapped, but turns out there is this whole subculture that has figure it out kind of a more optimal path. Awesome. So what changes once you have your financial awakening, which I think is a great term that I'm going to steal? Yes, my financial awakening, my

baptism. And then I turned around and evangelized to everybody I knew. But what changed really was, I think the idea that I had before that, well, what difference does it make? If I spend a dollar now or a dollar five years from now, like it's a dollar either way, that misalienable. That misalienable. alignment kind of corrected because I understood opportunity cost and that, oh, no, actually, a dollar I have today is far more valuable than a dollar I have in five years from now because I can invest a dollar that I have today. So that shift in how I viewed the money coming in was certainly powerful psychologically. But I think what I really started to notice once I began listening a lot to shows like bigger pockets and to choose FI and some of those.

kind of, I consider them like the OG personal finance content. I think I became far more critical of my own, unquestioning of just the way things are, like the fact that almost every day my coworkers would go out to lunch. And I'd be like, sure, I'll join you. Because you just, you don't think about it unless someone points at that and says, that's actually not very, like, that's probably not what you should be doing. Like, you know, you're going out and spending 15 or $20.

a day on lunch and then maybe going home and picking up food on the way home. Like those little choices that I never really thought much of before are just kind of considered normal because it's what was modeled to me as normal. That's what I started to question. Same with, I would say, some of the more traditional quote unquote, like beauty or like feminine expenses of like always having to have your hair done and your nails done and to have trendy clothes and nice things and things like that. again, that I hadn't really questioned. I just thought, yeah, I mean, you have to get your highlights and

your gel manicures and you have to have, you know, nice makeup on your face every day. Those are also things that I kind of started to look at through a different lens and say, well, actually, how much am I spending on these things? You know, what percentage? And it turned out, it was like 10% of my take home pay was going toward what I now call the hot girl expenses. And sure, now that I'm earning more, I've introduced some of them again. I, you know, get my hair done again. But at the time, it was kind of like, oh my God, that is kind of an excusable that I would spend 10% of my take home pay just on the way that I look. But unless someone really shines a flashlight on it for you and kind of points out, this is the trajectory that you're

putting yourself on with these choices. It's very hard to notice or question those things on your own. So I think it was just that attitude that shifted. Yes. And this is why I think Mr. mustache has been so popular. And so in a way that who's the early retirement extreme was not, is that Pete showed you you could do it. This is something that's possible. Here's a math problem. And if you believe in math, which you should because it's real, if you believe in math, I can

show you that this works. Where Jacob is wonderful, but he's showing you that early retirement can be achieved. through extreme measures, eat rice and beans every single day and live in an RV. And he's happy doing that. Not everybody would be. So his message misses a lot of people where Pete's kind of hits a little bit more. And I mean, sometimes Pete can be a little bit harsh. So his message misses some people.

But he has that chart, Mindy, the, it's like infamous now, the chart that shows you your save rate and then years to retirement where he basically just emphasizes like, this is just math. Like if you are saving this much, that means by definition you are spending that much, which tells you it can then spit out the number of years you have. So if you think, oh, I'm cool with like a five to 10% save rate. And then you look at that and you're like, oh, I have to work for 48 years. Maybe I'm not so cool with that. And it really drives home, like the time, money equilibrium and like how connected those two concepts are, which I think is an unnatural jump to make on your own. Like I don't think we often think about those two things as kind

of equalized like levers in that way. Exactly. And like you said, this is what's modeled for you. I remember working in corporate America. I was one of like zero other people who brought their lunch to work. You always went out. I didn't go out because there weren't that many restaurants around and it was such a hassle to go and get something. And I'm super cheap. Spoiler. Everybody who listens already knows that. Who would have thunk? It was so much easier just to make lunch and bring it. And every once in a while I'd forget. And I'm like, man, my entire lunch hour is wasted going out and finding something to bring back. And then I have to eat it at my desk anyway. I might as well just eat at my desk and like surf the internet or just get more work done. You know, it just it seemed like such a waste of time.

But when you see everybody else doing this same thing, it's part of like fitting in with your coworkers. It's part of, you know, just life. And it's fun to go out to lunch. So it's super easy to just do that every single day. And you hit on something like so interesting about the timing and how I think there is a bit of that misconception, not to like drill down too deeply on this one example, but that going out to eat is easier. And in reality, when I kind of realized about a lot of these things,

going out to eat, going to the gel manicure appointments, going to get your hair done every six weeks, like all of these things do not just take money, but they take time and planning and mental energy and brain bandwidth. And that's kind of why finding the financial independence philosophy was like a release valve for me, because it just totally gave me the freedom to like wash my hands of all of it and be like, I'm out. I'm just, I'm going to embrace simplicity and like try this. And I was kind of shocked to find that like, oh, my life is so much easier now. Like, it's not harder. It's actually easier. And like I don't really miss many of those things. So what happens, what happens next in your financial position? You've, you've embraced this,

mentality. You're obviously not working at the same job now. How do things progress for your story? Rapid fire. Yeah. Yes, very quickly. Um, so. I did stay at that same job until 2021. Yeah, last year. So I continued to work there for a while, but the key kind of differences that changed things. So the spending definitely got reined in. I instituted a far more strategic and kind of austere plan for myself. So like we had said, the first six to 12 months that were kind of like Lucy Goosey, or like I've jokingly called them like the free of my personal finance journey where it was just like, whatever, lunch every day. It doesn't matter. That period in that time on that $52,000 a year and like keep in mind relatively low structural

expenses. So like the fact that there wasn't much money left over meant I really was finding, you know, a thousand different paper cut ways to like spend it. I had saved 10 to $15,000 that year, kind of on accident. Like kind of just like that was the money that was left. over every month or that kind of accumulated in savings with no real plan. So it took me a year to to save 10 to 15K. Without my income really changing at all, but with this new strategic spending plan, it took me, I would say 18 to 24 more months to get up to 100,000. So it was kind of like once we really like got things right and tight, we were off to the races, I also got a side hustle teaching group fitness. And that added another incremental like $500-ish per month in income.

which pretty much entirely just got saved and invested too. So we're not talking about life-changing amounts of money, but as a proportion of like the take-home pay I had at the time, it was relatively substantial and kind of gave me that ability to kick it into high gear. And are we talking about $100,000 in personal net worth or $100,000 in cash share? Oh, personal investments. Awesome. Where were you putting that money during this period?

It would have been 401K Roth IRA, and I did have a taxable brokerage account as well, that I was contributing to. Awesome. How did you think about a cash in your savings account? I think at that point I had my emergency fund in a CD and it was, I want to say like $15,000 in that CD. At the time, you could get like a 3% rate on a CD. So that was, I was like, all right, that'll be, that's fine. And like I said, because my, this was pre-pandemic, so I was a little bit naive about like how easily someone could be furloughed. But I, because my, because my, expenses were so much lower than my income and I had like a lot of margin every month,

I never really ran into cash flow issues. Like I, it was kind of just because I was just naturally living beneath my means and, uh, investing the extra every month. I felt pretty confident with like the amount of money coming in, uh, the, the emergency fund in that CD. And, and in that, you know, two year period, fortunately, I didn't really ever run into any, uh, issues. I don't know that that's necessarily like recommendable, but, you know, for me, it ended up working out okay. I think it's a paradox, right? If you, if you spend more, you need a larger emergency reserve because you don't have any margin. If you spend less, you need a lower emergency reserve because you spend less and you will be able to replenish it very quickly.

So it's kind of a paradox and it's just, it's a huge multiplier. Going back to what you're talking about earlier with Mr. Money Mustache, that post you're referring to is called the shockingly simple math behind early retirement, which I think. everyone should check out. And it just, it compounds on that. The less you spend, the less you, the more you accumulate, the less you need long term to generate from a passive income perspective. It's more tax. It's just, it's way, it's just, there's so many different benefits that come from that single lever in starting your, your, your, um, wealth building journey here. Yeah. So that was, um, let's see. I think where things really took a turn for the better,

I would say, like, where things really shifted. Uh, that would have been like late. 2021 because at that point, I had been writing money with Katie and kind of building up money with Katie as a side project turned inadvertently into a business for about a year. So we had kind of picked up some steam and we were starting to see. I'm saying we as if there was more than just me. It was me. I was starting to see some really like impressive revenue months that gave me a lot of like confidence about there might actually be something here. Like this might be worth, you know, going all in on. And I had also changed companies to go work for a tech company and effectively doubled my compensation, like kind of overnight. So that was the point at which it was

like even just a year earlier, my financial position was like unrecognizable. So I think it's, it kind of gives off that aura. Now I realize as I'm saying it of like, oh, overnight success. It wasn't really like that. There were there was a lot of groundwork that. had been laid over the last 18 to 24 months to get to that point. But it did, and for me, feel as though things were all kind of culminating at the same time and kind of paying off in spades at the same time. So that was really cool because for me, it was like I went from being a relatively average earner, you know, if we're talking like literal averages for like the national scale average earner

to being like an objectively high earner. and realizing, oh, wow, like, there's a lot more you can do when you have so much more investable income to work with. So that was a very fortunate, uh, lucky break. And that has been kind of the last, I would say how the last year or so has been. So not, not exactly like a long-term thing. So yet working on making it a long-term thing, but it's, it's played out really well, I would say over the last like 12 to 18 months. Awesome. How during this three, three-year period leading up to 2021, how much self-education would you say that you conducted in terms of hours? Is it 10 hours of reading? Is it 100? Is it 1,000? What's the order of

magnitude here? I would say we're in the thousands by this point. Because I mean, I was reading every personal finance book I could get my hands on. I was listening to all the podcasts. It kind of went from being like, oh, this is something that I should know about to be an adult to like, I'm now obsessed with this. And it has become like a hobby in and of itself to learn about it. And I, to this day, I'm not really sure why. Like, I'm not sure why it gripped me or continues to grip me as much as it does because growing up, I never really cared. Like even as a young adult, it was not interesting to me. And I would say I was just as kind of intimidated. and avoidant about it as a lot of people are. So I'm not sure why, like, once I kind of got into the weeds, I was like, oh, my God, I want to know everything. I want to spend all of my time learning about these things. And not only do I want to read about them, I want to write about them, too, and, like,

put my own opinions out onto the internet. So, yeah, I mean, definitely, I think, in the thousands by that point. Yeah, I can completely empathize with this. This is, it's just, like, oh, I've equated money with freedom and control over my life. And now I'm going to spend thousands of hours. mastering the subject because that is the amount of importance I placed on it. And then for me, it has transformed into like a passion for doing this with my day job over a long period of time. So it's perhaps similar in your situation. That was a far more succinct and beautiful way to put it,

Scott. Yes, that's exactly correct. So Katie, you pride yourself on questioning conventional wisdom with regards to, you know, traditional money concepts. What are some of the big financial truths that you've discovered are actually wrong or being preached and there are alternatives that you, uh, that you prefer. Yeah, it's funny because I think that almost to answer this, you have to kind of like, I have to contextualize a little bit because I think that there are quote unquote truths out in like the broad, in broader society that like when you compare that to the financial independence world, it's like, oh, well, that all of that is, wrong and this is right like for sure but I think within the financial independence world and

kind of the things that we teach ourselves and learn about and kind of believe and prescribe to others I think there are things that maybe lack nuance or miss the mark a little bit so like a classic one that I had to reckon with personally was you know this idea of DIYing everything and you know if something breaks you figure out how to fix it like basically if you can if there is even like a chance that you can do something yourself, you should do it yourself. You should not be paying somebody else to do it. And I think that that makes sense up to a certain point. Like if you are me, circa 2018 and you're making $52,000 a year, yeah, you should probably be making your own lunch. You should probably be cleaning your own apartment. Like, you're not, you're not there yet.

But there, but there did come a point where I was working so much because I was working this new tech job and I was trying to build money with Katie nights and weekends. And, the kind of ROI on my time that I was getting for spending an hour or two working on a product launch or, you know, impressing my boss at work. The ROI on that time was far higher than the ROI that I was getting from vacuuming my house and mopping my floors. So it got to a point where I thought, all right, I can actually pay somebody else to do this for me. I can buy back my own time that way because now I've reached this point in my life where I actually have more money than I do time. I have more income than I do expendable hours in a week because of the expectations and the

workload that I have. So I need to actually give back some money to buy back some time, get those two things a little bit more in equilibrium. And for me, like the economic output equivalent was that my income continued to go up and went up at a rate faster than, you know, the increase spend that I had on some of those services, goods and services that I was paying for to buy back that time in my own day. I will say that the flip side of this or the kind of the watchout is that it can become very easy to start to see everything through that math equation and to say, well, I'm going to outsource everything. I'm not going to do a damn thing for myself. All I'm going to do is work. And then you kind of only be like, it kind of flattens your life into this

one dimension. So I don't always recommend that people like take that approach and fully run with it. Um, because I yeah, it can kind of mess with like, you know, well, if I don't have to cook, if I don't have to clean, if I don't have to watch my own kids, well, now I can sit at a desk for 14 hours a day. And you kind of get to the point where you're like, but is that really like the lifestyle that I wanted when I set out on this path? Is that actually like the best way to structure a day? So I think it's, you know, as with all things, not black and But I do think that there does come a time when it makes sense to start exchanging a little bit of money for time again. Yeah, that first part I feel a little targeted isn't the right word, but definitely seen.

Attacked is not the right word, although, you know, not the wrong word either. I struggle with that, though, because on the one hand, I want to do it myself because I don't, I don't identify with my current bank balance. my current investment balance. I am still the kid that has to shop at the thrift store, not wants to shop at the thrift store, but has to shop at the thrift store. I'm still the kid that brings lunch from home because that's the only option there is. If you want to, you don't buy lunch at school because that's more expensive. You bring it from home because that's what we can afford. And getting over that is really hard. And when you can do it yourself, why would you hire out. Also, can you talk to my husband because he won't stop DIYing stuff. Good for him.

What I thought you were going to say is that like all of these things fall on you, which is traditionally how it works in heterosexual couples, particularly if like one person is working from home or whatever, that like you just kind of, oh, that's odd. Like I do tend to be the one that does the laundry and cooks the meals and then cleans up after. Like you just kind of, I don't know, every single time I talk to a woman that's married to a man, this is like, I hear the exact same thing. So I'm like, I don't think this is just me, but that I think is the other reason why I'm kind of a fan of this, because I think it helps to assign some economic value to these tasks. And, you know, someone should be, if someone else isn't going to come in and get paid to clean the

house, I should be getting paid to clean the house because it's labor. Like, I don't, it's my unpaid labor at this point. But no, that makes sense. I mean, I think that's, totally fair. Like, we definitely, I think, inherit and internalize that those types of money scripts, like very early in life. And yeah, I don't think that that's unusual at all to find that, like, your behavior or your feelings about money are not necessarily representative or correlated with the amount of money that you have. Yeah, I think that this is a fantastic framework to think through in a toolkit I would offer up here is to just value your time on a per hour basis and use that to make a number of decisions about this, right? I mean, and, and, and, and, because, you know,

we can't resist bringing, you know, real estate investing into all of this stuff. I'll use a rental property example, right, where, when I first started real estate investing, I self-managed my property, and I would fix up everything myself. And then as my income went from $48,000 a year to $75,000 or $80,000 a year, you need to start hiring out some of those tasks and doing others, DIA. why. And then as income grows and grows and grows over time and you're building wealth and investing in those types of things, then you move on and outsource more and more of that. But I think the vast majority of folks are going to be in this kind of gray zone for much of their lives if you're building wealth. And you're going to be constantly having to make

those tradeoffs bit by bit in the general tendency of stopping doing low value work, whether that's at work in your business or at home. and do the things that make you happy, do more the things that make you happy or that are higher value. And that's an art and a science to your point. But at least a good toolkit is valuing your time after tax and saying, I'm not going to pay somebody twice my hourly rate at work to do a task I'm capable of doing. And I'm also not going to do a task that I can pay someone half of my hourly rate at work

when I don't like doing that. And knowing those extremes and avoiding those extremes can be a really good way to solve for this. but I think it's a great framework. I love that. Okay, let's talk about more of your, you've put together, I think, a really robust philosophy about money in a general sense. And you've, you know, out of those thousands of hours of self-education and writing

and creating stuff, I love to go into a couple of areas that I think are really interesting that you've come up with. And the first one, I think, is the Roth versus 401K debate. Can you give us your thoughts on this? You have a very strong stance, I believe, and I love it. I do. As with most things. come out of the gate with a strong opinion. No, I think my, I'm going to try to say this as

concisely as possible. I'm going to take a page out of the Scott playbook and try to be really tight with this answer. But I, um, my approach is that I think a very optimal combination is taking full advantage of the traditional 401k because it has the highest kind of a highest contribution limit. really of any qualified account that you're going to have access to, for the most part, to get enough of an upfront tax break every year to then turn around and create more

investable income than you would have had otherwise. So in order to determine how much you are going to save personally by contributing $20,500 to a traditional 401k, you just look at what your marginal tax rate is and multiply that by $20,000. thousand five hundred. So if I make, you know, somewhere in the 24% bracket and I contribute the full $20,500, then I'm going to save almost $5,000 on my taxes. And that's money that like theoretically is staying on my balance sheet because it's not being turned over to the IRS, right? So I can then turn around it and take that $5,000 theoretically and invest it in a Roth IRA. So I think for me it just comes down to doing more with less and trying to kind of create the most

optimal, you know, upfront investment to get the most money into the accounts. And then, you know, you play this out 40 years down the road. You can actually use some pretty, I would consider them relatively simple. I think they sound kind of complex on their face, but I think in reality, they're relatively simple methods of then strategically withdrawing money from these various accounts in such a way that you are minimizing your tax liability on the back end, too. So it's, I don't think it's for everybody, but I do think that to suggest that like, everyone should just be doing entirely Roth strategies kind of ignores like a big piece of the puzzle in that upfront tax break. And, you know, if you're putting in 20,500 and getting 5,000 back

on your taxes as a result of that, that's what an upfront 25% ROI like right there. So I don't know why we like tend to kind of just discount or ignore that. I love it. No, no, let me, I'm a big proponent of the Roth IRA as a significant component. So I have a slightly different view on this. But I want to, I want to see if I can summarize your position and then give you even more supporting ammunition for the argument, including what you said there. So first, I think that the, uh, the argument that you're positing is you can have both. But if you're all in a Roth IRA and have no 401k, you're missing out on potential tax advantages today. and optionality down the line that can only be done from a 401k to a Roth because you can't go back the other way from a Roth to 401K. Is that correct?

That is correct. And I'd also say that some people will say go do full Roth 401K and Roth IRA. And again, that's making the bet that your tax rate in retirement is going to be, your effective tax rate in retirement is going to be higher than your marginal tax rate now.

And in order to make that happen, you've got to be spending a lot of money in retirement or not earning very much now. And that I don't think is very representative of how like most people, like most people in order to actually like have enough money in retirement to be like spending that much in retirement, you'd have to be earning a lot. Right. So I think that's where the logic kind of breaks down. Now who's feeling seen, Scott? I know I love it. I think I think it's a great argument. And I think I think that I agree with the premise that having no 401K contributions, no tax-deferred retirements, and 100% Roth over the course of an entire career

is a mistake. I think you're missing out on those advantages because there should be over the course of 40 years of a career working or not working, there will be years when your income is very low. Or you have a large taxable loss. For example, you're a real estate investor and prices go down or you end up doing a lot of acquisitions one year. That will be a loss. And you can use that loss to move the money from a tax deferred account like a 401k to something like a Roth IRA. The end goal, however, is to get all the money into a Roth IRA when it's time to withdraw, right? And so that's where we want to start with. And for a lot of people, the most efficient way to do that will be to start with most of the contributions in the Roth and then put enough

into the 401K to harvest some of these tax advantages as they come up. Now, I personally put the vast majority of my stuff into a Roth 401k and then into the Roth IRA as well. And the reason I do that is because I'm so arrogant about my financial profile over the course of my career, no, literally, that I believe that I will be in a high income bracket today and an even higher income bracket in retirement because I plan to build businesses and own assets that will have passed through income on my tax return at that point in time. Interesting. Okay. But there's what I would highlight, though there is that that strategy is a conscious choice and a plan based on kind of your track record of being a successful, you know, business person and real estate investor where you have

reason to believe that your income in retirement, that you actually may be able to live quite large in retirement if you have a crap ton of income coming in that you want to be spending, right? And I think, so I would really find no fault in that approach. I think where I do find fault is people that do not have that plan and say, I don't need the 401K. I'd rather just take the money now or like, oh, put it in it. It's like, you really don't want the upfront tax break?

Are you sure? Like, it's $5,000. That's like not insignificant. Yeah. And I think like by and large for most people, like their spending in retirement will probably be lower than their highest earning years. So I think that's great. I think one other question I wanted to ask you about this is you're not really, you're keeping the $5,000 in your example on your balance sheet, yes, but you're not really doing that unless you have a plan to arbitrage that with using a loss

or a low-income year to move that money from the 401K. You're just deferring the tax and paying it later. And I think one of your arguments that I think is really interesting is that you don't think it's necessarily a good bet to bet on income tax brackets increasing over the course of a career. If I think I remember that correctly, if I remember that correctly from one of your posts. Like not thinking that the marginal rates are going to go up. Is that what you're referring to? Because that's another big reason why I also contribute to the Roth is because I figure, oh, tax brackets have to be higher in 30 years.

Now that's anybody's guess. But that to me seems like unchallengeable until you challenged it. And I love it. Well, I think the reason that I challenge. it. I say there's two reasons I challenge it. The first reason is because politically, it's very unpopular to raise tax brackets, marginal rates for the middle class and lower. Obviously, this country has an issue with figuring out how to tax billionaires. We haven't really gotten that straightened out yet. But when you look at like even the numbers that are they're like jockeying

back and forth, we're usually talking about should the top marginal rate be 37% or 39%. Like we're not often being like, okay, that 10% bracket, now it's 20. Like we're not really changing those lower ones measurably. So I would point to that just like kind of the political incentive to keep taxes low in the popular brackets. The other thing I would point to comes back to that marginal tax rate versus effective tax rate because your income today and the income that you are putting into the Roth account is being taxed at your highest marginal tax rate and the income that you're going to be

spending in retirement is filtered through the bottom up, right? So you're going to be looking at your effective tax rate. So the marginal rates would actually have to rise quite substantially for your effective rate later that is bottom up to be competitive with the top, you know, your personal top marginal rate now when you're being taxed top down. So that's kind of the other, I guess, piece of this that I think we, it's really not apples to apples, I think, in the same way that it would appear on its face. 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 tax 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, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone

or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focus on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.

How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts.

The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit

to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed. com slash bigger pockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses. for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. With over 1,500 corporate guides who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated

ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data, and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit northwest registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. I'm not an astronaut. I don't need an astronaut. Audiences have spoken. Project Hail Mary is an awe-inspiring masterpiece.

So I met an alien. If you've fallen out of love with going to the movies, this one will bring you back. Ryan Gosling, in the first must-see movie of 2026. Project Hail Mary. Only theaters March 20th. Okay, final question on this from that, because I think that's another good argument. If you are middle class today, middle or upper middle class today, and you plan on having a portfolio that allows you to live a middle or up a middle class lifestyle at retirement,

then it's reasonable. I think you have a very good argument that you should not, that there's a good chance that tax brackets won't be materially different, inflation adjusted at that point in time because tax brackets do change with inflation as well. Now, the one question I would ask is, you know, if you're 30 years old and you spend your free time, your commute to work, listening to Money with Katie or Bigger Pockets Money or Choose FI or these other things, and you're doing that for a long period of time, is it reasonable to assume that at retirement you won't be having a middle class level of wealth because you're

going to become financially free fairly early in life? And that financial freedom, we find nobody actually starts withdrawing their portfolio when they become financially free. They all find other creative ways to cover their expenses and then some, many go on to make even more, even more money, and they have multiple decades of wealth growing. And therefore we will have to withdraw more money from their 401k. Oh, like from an RMD perspective? From an RMD perspective. So, I would love your thoughts on that particular last point. You're like, so figure that one out. Yeah. I think so, okay, I guess for this one, I will kind of use myself as the guinea pig, because I am maxing out that 401K. I'm like, let me let me get as much pre-tax money in these

buckets as I can to try to lower my tax rate this year and pay less in taxes this year. My kind of grand scheme here is that at some point in my call it early 50s, we'll say, I would want to start, you know, assuming things are going as well as you're describing and like, yeah, I got more money that I know what to do with. I've spent the bulk of my life earning and, you know, creatively whatever. Now I'm not sure how, you know, having a substantial real estate portfolio would change this. So I don't want to, you know, go as far as to say that this would apply to everybody. but my hope would then to be in a position in my early 50s where I'm sitting on several million dollars, like, you know, hopefully we're looking at like 8, 9, 10, like a lot of money, right?

And at that point, I would want to start doing those RMDs. And realistically speaking, not RMDs, I'm sorry, conversions, getting the money out of the 401K into the Roth IRA, you know, using that standard deduction, using kind of those, lower tax brackets, if you will, to start making those Roth conversions at a time when I have more control over the tax bracket because maybe I am living off of, you know, income from a taxable brokerage account. This is assuming the zero percent capital gains tax bracket sticks around. And I'm able to really spend quite a bit of money, you know, up to 80 something thousand this year as a married couple completely tax free. If I want to spend up to 400,000, I'm paying what,

15%, but really being able to leverage the amount of control that I would have in those years to make those Roth conversions and to start shipping away at that 401K balance. Now, sure, if you assume that someone is putting in the max for 40 years, yeah, they're probably not going to be able to fully empty or convert away that entire balance by the time they're 72 and a half. But I do think that at that point, like the problems, I'm going to put problems in air quotes. They're like the tiny violin problems of like, oh no, I'm going to have to pay a little bit of money on this RMD out of my $8 million net worth. Like, dang. So I think it's,

it's obviously like you're hedging your bets. And I think for me, um, having money across the different tax statuses, taxable, tax free and tax deferred creates the most, uh, optimal mix for flexibility later and isn't placing too big of a bet on any one outcome. Okay. So I hear what you're saying. I love all of what you're saying. I am a couple of months older than you. And I find myself in a similar position to what you just described.

And for you. I'm thrilled to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. This horrible problem. Like I am in a position that when I turn 72 and a half, I will have to take RMDs. in like, I don't know what they're going to be, but they're going to be a lot.

And I don't want to. I want to leave them in my retirement accounts because that's where I want them to be. But the government says that they know better than me and I can't argue with them. But anyway, I digress. When I chip away, like whenever I stop working, I have a W-2. I'm a real estate agent, so I have income from there. And I'm currently doing pre-tax 401K. It's a self-directed solo 401K.

so I can contribute way more. A lot. Yeah, my company contributes, and I have reduced my taxable income by as much as I can. But there's a big balance that I am going to have to chip away at. And I mean, you can chip away. You can convert the whole thing at once. You're just paying a boatload of taxes on it. If you're chipping away, there's a lot less that you can, like, in order to, let's see, tax advantageously do it. You're essentially like converting, what, $100,000 a year? And when you've got

a million dollar portfolio, that's 10 years that you can Roth ladder conversion over and then you've taken it all out. But when you've got multiple millions, then that's multiples of 10. And maybe you don't have that much. Like, it's, if I could go back in time, I would do what you're doing with the Roth 401k and the traditional 401k or what Scott is doing with I would split it because I'm all traditional 401k when did the Roth 401k come out because I don't know that I've had the option for a Roth 401k I think like early 2000s yeah bigger pockets offer is a Roth 401k Mendezso you know you might want to check up the HR team about that following this call yeah I got I max it out every year yeah but I mean that's that I would say though is a perfect case study of like yeah how

having, obviously, if you're going to, like, wake up at the age of 65 and get to choose, do I want an all Roth portfolio or an all tax deferred portfolio? You're probably going to be like, I'll take the Roth, like no quest, like all day every day. But I think in either case, like having all tax deferred or all tax free, like both are pigeonholing you into the, you know, in one case, it's pigeonholing you into now having to figure that out now. Whereas, like, if you went all Roth, but like wouldn't have needed to or then, you know, you're being pigeonholed into like you kind of overpaid probably on your tax at the time if you were contributing to a Roth while you were paying a 37% marginal tax rate.

Like that is, that's cutting out a third of that contribution. So yeah, I would say like having all of either is probably not going to give you the most flexible outcome. I'll try to wrap this up with one example that I think will highlight Katie's great point here, which is I think the optimal way to manage this is to max out your, 401k every year for 35 years. And then right before you hit retirement age and are capable of withdrawing from your Roth, you do some sort of business activity that creates a $10 million loss. And then you have that $10 million loss. You move the entirety of your $10 million dollars in your 401k to your Roth. That's no tax because you have a $10 million loss offsetting that income from the distribution, rolling it over, and then you have it all in a Roth. And if you contributed to a Roth the entire time, then you have missed out on an opportunity

such as this. And to lesser or greater degrees, things like that may occur in your lifetime, right? And a good one to Google, I don't want to get political or anything, but go Google how Mitt Romney was able to get so much money into his Roth IRA. Very similar concept to what I just articulated. Oh. Oh, he actually did. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So that's, yeah. So what I said there is absurd, of course, from a perfection state. standpoint. But the premise is really applicable. And I think it's a very powerful argument in addition to the other good points that Katie's made for having something in the 401k in the tax deferred accounts at some point in your career. Because that is true net worth arbitrage if you ever do have a loss or low income year. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm hoping that somebody who is listening who is a little bit younger, a little bit farther away from retirement than I am can pick up on this

and go with Katie's method of distributing it a little bit. I definitely recommend maxing out your Roth IRA for as long as you can. Scott, did you say you're eligible to participate in a Roth IRA? You're eligible to participate in your company's Roth 401K plan, Mindy. I guarantee you because... No, I know that I am. She's like, what I'm trying to do is go back in time, Scott. So unless you've got a time machine...

There's still time this year. Well, no, I already maxed out my self-directed social. solo 401k, you can only do one. You can actually wait. Can I say something about that? Yeah. You could put Mindy $61,000 into your solo 401k as the employer and make no employee contributions because you know you're both. You're like employer employee like right?

Because you're self-directed. And then you can you can put $20,500 into your work 401k as the employee because they're two different sources of income. So that's just like a little loophole to keep in your back pocket. As long as your contributions, you may be able to switch them over to if you've already made them as like employee contributions. You could just say, yo, I've got, what is 6,000 would have to be your 20% of your net business income.

So as long as you've got like $300,000 of net business income, you could go, yo, putting 20% in 61K as the employer. That's it. No employee contribution. turn around, go to bigger pockets, put $20,500 in. Oh. Mindy's got open-mouthed, shocked at this advice, which is fantastic. I love it.

But I do want to call out Katie's point here that if you are a business owner and you have high, very high income, then the Roth argument goes out the window because you have incredible, you can put incredible amounts of money into the tax deferred plans through this where you should be taking advantage of those. And those are the match that, the plan that Katie just described. there are profit sharing plans. When you have employees, it actually gets even better because you can put even more. Oh, that's good to know.

More into that because you can put your spouse, for example, on the plan with those as well. And both of you can max that out. And you can do that through profit sharing things. So talk to financial planners and those types of folks when you get into that level. Yeah, definitely. I have to call up my plan administrator and see if I can see if my financial planners. plan allows for that or what I have to do to make my plan allow for that because when you're the boss of your plan you can change the rules it's really nice we are being told that we're coming up

on our time limit here which is unfortunate because we're having a wonderful conversation here so katie we're not going to get a chance to debate another issue here can you just bring up one and leave us dangling with your thoughts there and we can discuss that next time we have you back on ah would love to all right dangle away people um I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all the advice that says that you should never allow any lifestyle creep is it's sad and depressing. And I think that you should intentionally as you earn more money, you should allow yourself to live a slightly nicer, more comfortable life as a result of that. As long as you're still living beneath your means, right? Like, let's not go crazy. But I do think that there's a difference

between the lifestyle creep that we hear about. We're like, oh, mid-level manager gets a increase in pay and then suddenly like finds new ways to spend that money and like is like somehow is still not saving very much. I think there's a difference between that and being like, okay, my increase in income was 20%. I'm going to increase my spending by 5% and invest the rest. Like I do think that there's something very motivating about kind of like treating yourself in that way and intentionally scaling up a little bit just as long as you know, you're proportionally still in a good spot. that's my cliffhanger. Interesting.

Next week, we'll bring on a guest who is adamant that you should not do that for Katie's point. Katie, this has been wonderful. We really appreciate you coming on. I think you've shared a lot of wisdom. Your journey is really fun and the debate is really fun. So where can people find out more about you? So if you like podcasts, definitely check out the Money with Katie show.

If you go to Money WithKaty.com, I have hundreds of blog posts that you'll probably enjoy. free resources, downloadables, things of that nature. And I'm money with Katie on Instagram and Twitter, which are the two platforms where I'm the most active. So come follow along for the unhinged fun. And Katie, because 500,000 people viewed it and gave you a bejillion likes and all that. Can you just share your biggest financial mistake with us before you depart? My biggest financial mistake was being an eighth grade in 2009 when I should have been buying foreclosures. I don't know how you how you can live with yourself after making that. How can you call yourself qualified to give financial advice with mistakes that big, Katie?

You know what? We're just going to scrap this whole show. Never mind. No, don't publish it. Katie, this has been so much fun. Thank you so, so, so much for your time today. And we will talk to you soon. Thank you.

Okay, Scott, that was Katie. I love her even more because she is challenging you. She is challenging me. I think we both felt a little scene during her conversation today, and I think that's awesome. Yeah, I think she's got really good, smart challenges to a lot of these things that are taken for granted in the financial independence community. And I think that a lot of things that you might, that Mindy and I and that perhaps other folks that you hear talking about personal finance take for granted are really art decisions, not science. There's things that have been generated or thought through that are, hey, I'm going to make a long-term bet about where tax brackets are going to be 30 years from now.

And oh, that's what I accept as my reality. And I've done that for the Roth versus 401K debate. And that's a complete guess. There's no right answer there. That's a complete guess. I've just made that guess long ago and settled on it. And I just treated as my stance on a go-forward basis. But it's good to have those things regularly challenged because there's a,

is no right answer and no one can know the right answers to questions like that. Yeah, I really don't hear that a lot. Question conventional financial wisdom. Do it. Maybe you'll discover that what people are saying is right. Maybe you'll discover that what people are saying isn't right for you. But how many times have I said personal finance is personal? This is a choose your own adventure scenario and find what works best for you. And maybe what I'm saying doesn't work best for you. Maybe you identify more with Scott. Maybe you identify more with Katie or maybe you identify more with somebody who has yet to be on the show. But find what works for you and put that into play because that's what's going to help you on your path to financial independence. But yeah, absolutely question what people are saying and make sure

that it's going to work best for where you are at, what your financial, what your idea of financial independence looks like and how you're going to get there. Okay, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. This is the end of this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, share your power, you bright little flower.