BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 519: HSA vs. FSA and When to Drain Your Emergency Fund to Pay Off Debt

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's episode, we're going to be pulling your questions from the bigger forums to your trademark. I'm trademarking that particular term. I love it made it up just now. And the Facebook group. That's right, Scott. I love doing these episodes because we get to really zoom in and get under the hood on a couple of real life and sometimes complicated financial situations. And today we'll be covering health savings accounts versus flexible savings accounts. What are they?

Starting point is 00:00:23 Is one better than the other? Should you have both? All those types of questions. We're going to get into all kinds of fun stuff, like Amanda said. That will also include things like how to avoid, defer, or deal with capital gains taxes. We're going to talk about when it's acceptable to put no money down on houses. We're going to talk about lending money to friends and family and whether you should do that or not. And we're also going to talk about credit card repayment and emergency funds and when it's proper to do one of the other.

Starting point is 00:00:51 So it's going to be a fun episode, all fun topics, all controversial topics. So stay with us. You're going to want to listen to this one. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm Scott Trench, and with me today is my co-host, Amanda Wolfe. Hi, Scott's always great to be here. As always, we're here to make financial independence less scary and less just for somebody else.

Starting point is 00:01:09 To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter where or when you're starting. Okay, let's get started. The first question we have here comes from our forum and it reads, My partner is planning on selling her condo. However, I am in the midst of purchasing my first property and we plan on living together. So where can she move her money after selling in order to avoid capital gains taxes? What do you think, Scott?

Starting point is 00:01:34 All right, a couple of frameworks that we have to work through to understand how to behave in the situation with our money, right? So first off is folks need to become familiar if you're dealing with a situation like this with a tax rule where if you have lived in a property for two of the last five years, you can exclude huge chunks of capital gains from that property. So for example, if you bought a home, 10 years ago and you're selling your condo now to move in with a significant other, all of the gains for the last 10 years up to $250,000 if you're a single person, up to $500,000 if you're married. And as Mindy Jensen recently discovered, one of our other co-hosts, you can actually put additional people on title and exclude up to $250,000 per person if you really want to get

Starting point is 00:02:22 into the technical details there. So this person may not have any capital gains tax and should go look that. and determine if that rule applies to them here. If this is a rental property, there's also an option to do what's called a 1031 exchange. This is not a way to get around capital gains tax. It is deferring capital gains tax, and you can take the equity in the property and place it in another property, like a rental property, for example. So that would be another option to do that.

Starting point is 00:02:50 If this person is not using a 1031 exchange and has lived there for less than a year, there is a short-term gain. and if they've lived there for more than one year, there's a long-term capital gain. So thank you, Uncle Sam, for the deep complexity of the situation and all of the scenarios that we as homeowners need to be aware of. My bet, though, is that this person has a very simple situation where, if they're like most people, they've probably lived in this condo for at least two years. And in the transition to a new property, that my default is always heavily weigh the option in. deeply favor selling the property. You're not going to get that tax-free ability to harvest a gain like that in three or four years when the property rolls over, and you can then take that cash and

Starting point is 00:03:39 deploy it in an investment that you feel is the best one for you. And I feel much better about that 99% of cases than just leaving it in the condo, for example, that probably wasn't purchased as a thoughtful investment property five years ago whenever they moved in. What do you think about that, Amanda? Yeah. So I guess my question to you then would be, where do you think she should be storing that money? Because you mentioned she should be investing it in something else since it likely wasn't an investment property in the first place.

Starting point is 00:04:08 So what would you recommend she invested in when she does that? Here at Bigger Pockets, I'd be like, buy a rental property, right? So I would take that cash and put it into like a true rental property, like a small, multifamily property or something like that nearby wherever she's going to move to. And that would be my preference. So I think it's going to depend on a few factors. Like one, I want to know how old they are, what their goals are in life. Are they prepared for retirement? Do they have any other types of debt lying around out there? So all of those questions are ones that I would want to consider before I would go popping money into a property. So I think those are the things I would think about first. But you know me. Like I'm I'm a big fan of just setting it and forgetting it, putting it in the stock market type situation. So I think that's probably what I would be doing. That's probably a much better answer than mine about what to do with the money. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Our next question is about loans and whether you should ever take out a loan in your name to help out a relative. Stick around and find out what we think right after this quick break. 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.

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Starting point is 00:08:06 Our next question is about taking a loan out in your name for a family member. My mom has always struggled with finances. Recently, with the cost of living rising, she's had trouble making her mortgage payments. My brothers, who are 18 and 14, live with her. My whole life, she's only worked part-time and she has no real reason for not getting a full-time job. except that she says she will get too tired. Her health has gotten worse now, and she's had to pay more emergency health expenses. Because she does not qualify, she has asked me to take out a loan to help her while she plans to

Starting point is 00:08:36 sell her house. She says that when she sells, she will pay me back and get herself out of this hole. I'm afraid selling the house is just a quick fix. Is there ever a time where it's okay to use a loan to help someone else? What would you do? Oh, my gosh. I have so many feelings that come up with this question. first of all, I'm imagining this person is like fairly young too. And the fact that she has

Starting point is 00:09:00 all of this pressure on her just like really hurts my heart because she has younger siblings. And this is like she should be navigating her own life and like having to figure all this out like quite frankly just really sucks. For me, the like immediate answer is no, I would not take out alone to help a family member. I would not take out alone to help anybody really, especially in a situation like that, I think that if you're not good with the money you have now, having more of it later isn't going to make you better with money. So that is like my initial thought. In addition, I'm really against just lending money to people. I think you should either gift it if you have it or set that boundary and not and not loaned out at all because

Starting point is 00:09:46 I've just seen way too many relationships damaged that way or destroyed all together. So So I know it's so tough because they're probably your favorite people in your whole life, but I would not recommend taking out a loan on her behalf. I would remember that you have to be your priority, take care of yourself first. And maybe consider getting your mom some mental health help. It sounds like she probably has so much to manage and is just kind of letting things go down the gutter that way. I don't know. What do you think, Scott?

Starting point is 00:10:19 Yeah, I completely agree with your framework first. right don't don't loan money to family or friends just if you're going to go down that route give them money and set it and forget it right a loan to a family member is problematic for so many reasons not just because they won't pay you back but also because it creates a power dynamic that i think is unhealthy inside of the family context so i'm completely on board with your your framework here and would not loan the money and i would consider gifting the money that's a hard conversation but it will not get better in the future if that money is not paid back at some future point. If there's a house involved, then the mother should be able to get a loan against the house

Starting point is 00:11:03 or sell the house in order to get cash to pay down these finances. But that would be my interpretation. Maybe that's heartless. Maybe that's tough. But I think that this is going to be a troubling situation that will spiral if we start taking out loans to finance things to other family members. Absolutely. I think spiral is the perfect word for it too because, you know, to your point, once she takes out that loan, then what? Is she, it, I haven't seen any moves being made to help pay that money back, right? So she's not working a full-time job. And, you know, it says here just because, you know, maybe her health is not great. But if she's made no strides up until this point to try to better her situation, why would she do that later? So I think she's just really going to be putting herself in a worse position. And I just wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. And I feel, I just really feel for this person. It's probably a hard thing to watch.

Starting point is 00:11:58 I agree. And I think, I think it's, I think it's tough. And I think it's also like a philosophical item here is this person has written in their question that the mom only worked part time the whole life here. And this is, you know, that's really tough, right? This person is now going to be in trouble. They're not going to have enough to live a high quality of life. But there was also nothing that built up towards this moment is that now the next generation's problem, I don't think so for this person. I think they need to say no, say I'll help out where I can with small gifts if they so choose, but there's no obligation to take out debt financing to resolve their parents' financing

Starting point is 00:12:38 problems. Absolutely. And I think that could also just bring up a whole other conversation around, you know, kids now needing to take care of their parents or parents who haven't prepared for retirement and now that burden is falling on them. So I feel like this is one specific situation, but there's so many other situations out there. And I just want to say, remember that you have to take care of you first because you cannot

Starting point is 00:13:04 pour from an empty cup. Okay. Let's go ahead and keep it moving. So our next question here is about buying a house with no down payment. The question reads, I'm 34, single, and live in a high cost of living area. My income is $245,000 a year and it's unlikely to increase significantly. My savings are $60,000 in an emergency fund and about $50,000 across my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA. Right now, I'm paying $3,300 a month in rent, and I'm able to save $4,000 a month

Starting point is 00:13:36 that I'm putting into savings. I have no debt and I have a paid-off car. I'm looking to buy a house in the $500 to $650,000 range. I do not have money for a down payment, but I do have access to a zero down payment position loan if I choose to use it. It would take me another year or two to save a down payment, and by then, home costs could keep going up. This makes me want to buy now with zero down,

Starting point is 00:13:59 but is that irresponsible? What are the downsides here? A lot here. First, congratulations to this person for earning such a high income. They must provide really valuable services to someone. the savings are $60,000, which is enough for a down payment in many situations. That would be enough for a 10% down payment on a $600,000 house, for example.

Starting point is 00:14:25 So I think that that's like that's in the emergency fund. I understand that, but that would also, like this person is a very responsible financial situation. When I frame the, what good looks like to me in terms of a financial position going into a home purchase. I think that one needs to have the down payment plus their emergency reserve, plus an emergency reserve of three to six months, ideally six months, maybe $10,000 to $15,000 at minimum with a house purchase. So this person has that, right? With a 5% down conventional or FHA loan, they would put down $30,000, easily have six months emergency reserves and probably have enough for any other repairs on top of that.

Starting point is 00:15:11 So I'd say you can go for it in this particular situation. I'm a little confused or concerned and hope that the $245,000 per year income is a relatively new phenomenon because of the small relative net worth this person has to that income. Perhaps there were student loans in the past or something else that would explain the situation. But if this person is truly able to save $4,000 per month plus another $30,000,000, 300 to rent, they can responsibly buy a house right now, I think. It's just a question of whether it's more economical to buy our rent. And that comes down to if they're ready to settle down for 10, 15 years, go for it. Yeah. And I think the question, though, that she asked that I would love to

Starting point is 00:15:52 hear your input on is that she's afraid that the home costs are going to keep going up and is now a good time to buy. I feel like that is such a common question. So use your crystal ball over there, Scott. And what do you think about that? Timing the market is impossible, right? So I will tell you this, that housing prices are either going to stay about the same, go up or go down over the next few years. So hopefully that's very helpful to this person. And I think that's why all we can do is say, like, long term and housing prices are

Starting point is 00:16:24 going to inflate, are going to appreciate around the level of inflation. So that's going to be 2% per year, which is if the Fed hits their target, and probably closer to 3.5% or 3.5%, which is what the case Schiller, existing housing index has shown over a long period of time. So that's what you should plan on in a long term sense. That's why if you're going to live in a house for a long period of time, if you're going to live in a place for a long period of time, it's better to buy because of high interest rates and the rapid rise of them. And the recent increase in interest rates that we saw over the last couple of years was not accompanied by a similarly large increase in rents. So right now that break-even point,

Starting point is 00:17:05 If it was seven years, on average, across the U.S., you have to live in a house for seven years for it to be better to buy than rent, it's now pushing out to 12 or 15 years in many situations. But if you know you're going to live in a place for the next decade or two and you're ready to settle down, buying a house can still be a better option than renting in many places. But that's the bet that you're making, essentially, right? So the one thing you can control is how long you intend to live in the place. And if you don't intend to live there very long, you should rent. and if you do intend to live there for a long time, you should buy. Of course, I think they should always house hack. So that wasn't a part of their question. I love it. So we'll assume that her $650,000 home is not a starter home, and she's probably going to be there for a while. So I think that's

Starting point is 00:17:50 some really good advice. And then I just have to add in that the savings that she does have, that $60,000 in her cash savings. Hopefully she's keeping that in a high-yield savings account, just to try to beat inflation a little bit along the way. So if you don't know what that is, it's just like a regular savings account kind of on steroids. So hopefully she's got that in a high yield savings account. So I want to actually chime in something else here on that note that that made me think of, is right now if that person buys a house, they're probably going to get a six and a half to seven percent rate on their mortgage. And the stock market, you know, has historically yielded between seven and 11 percent. We can get into a whole debate about which number to pick there.

Starting point is 00:18:31 But let's say if we're going on the conservative end of like 7.5% there, the opportunity cost between investing and paying off a mortgage early is very minimal at that point. And I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. Like, would you say that this person, once they buy the house with the 7% mortgage, should they just start paying off the mortgage and taking their guaranteed 6.5% percent return or should they start investing in the stock market? So I like to say that I think that you should invest in the stock market because, you know, history shows it's returned about 10 to 11 percent over history or over the long term.

Starting point is 00:19:11 However, the thing that I think people forget about is that you need to remember to actually go and invest that money. Because what I see too often is people then are like flush with cash and then they, you know, elevate their lifestyle in ways that they hadn't envisioned before. and now they're not paying down their house and they're not investing the extra money. So if you are disciplined and you are going to actually invest the money in the stock market, I personally think that is the better route to go. But I would say automate it. Don't trust yourself because having money can be fun. So at least go ahead and automate those investments if you go to that route. But that

Starting point is 00:19:49 would be my choice. Awesome. I love it. And this is one where we'll disagree. I agree with you from mathematical perspective, you'll be richer in 30 years on that. But I think that when the spread between the rate that you're the return, you're likely to get from a long-term equity investment and a guaranteed rate on the mortgage is this tight, I'm like, what am I going after here? I'm going, I'm going for financial freedom early in life. And a paid-off house has no principal or interest payment. And that means I can invest all of those cash flows that I'm not paying back into the market. And so at the end of 30 years, my spread is only about 1% different on the initial pool of capital. So let's say I had a $500,000 mortgage, right? If I

Starting point is 00:20:28 compound that for 30 years, that'd be about, I think it would be about $5 million. And if I were to instead pay off the property and then invest the P&I over that, I did the math on this the other day. It would be within about 7 or 8% of the end pool. So it would be about $4.5, 4.6 million at the end of that. And I'm like, hmm, during that period, maybe I sleep a little better. maybe I'm able to take another risk on something. Maybe my cash that I have to generate from a future portfolio is much less because I have a paid off house. So I don't think there's like a right answer to it, but I think it's close enough where it's like a fun debate at this point in time. And it wasn't from three or four years ago if you have an old interest rate. Yeah, no,

Starting point is 00:21:11 totally. And I think you make a really good point too because going into retirement or, you know, financial freedom, but not working, if you will, right, no matter how old you are. I do think that having a mortgage can add an additional layer of complexity because you need somewhere to live, right? That's kind of one of our basic needs in life. So I think that's a really good argument too. And yeah, I don't know, I think I don't know that there's necessarily like a better answer than another. I think it just depends on your own personal circumstance and what makes you more comfortable. All right. We're going to take a quick break and hear a message from the show sponsors. But stick around because when we're back, we're going to break down the differences between

Starting point is 00:21:49 HSAs and FSAs and we'll tell you which we think is the better option. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more importantly where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress.

Starting point is 00:22:13 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.

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Starting point is 00:24:58 Next question comes from Facebook and it's about HSAs. It reads, I keep hearing about health savings accounts. Can someone explain to me the benefits of having this account? Is there an optimal age for starting one? And what is the benefit of opening an HSA over an FSA's FSA, which is called a flexible spending account, or vice versa. Can we or should we have both? Amanda, you want to take this one? Yeah, I will say I am a big fan of the HSA, the health savings account. I like to say that it's like this, you know, it's a triple tax advantage like a unicorn account.

Starting point is 00:25:30 No other account out there exists like this. And a lot of people don't realize that it's actually an investment account too. So it's called a health savings account, but you can invest it as well. The limit is pretty low. So for 2024, if you are single and under 55, it's 4150. If you have a family, it's 8,300. So I think whenever the government is giving us these accounts with like real low limits, that means it's some good stuff and we want to take advantage of it. So the cool thing about it is you put in your money tax free. So you're not paying any taxes on the money you put in. You can invest the money and let it grow. And then you're not paying any taxes on that as well. And then when you go to pull it out for a qualified expense, you're not paying any taxes on that either. So there's no taxes

Starting point is 00:26:15 at any point along the way. And I don't know of any other legal thing out there where you don't have to pay taxes on any of the money. Do you, Scott? I think it's called by a lot of people, and I agree with it, like the ultimate retirement savings account for the HSA, because you're going to spend the money on health care stuff. That's something that's related to health care at some point in your life. Exactly. And the extra cool thing is that if you are someone who has the cash, to pay for your medical expenses today, and you are organized and keep those receipts, you can actually reimburse yourself later in life as long as you had that HSA. So let's say that you are 35 years old right now and you have your HSA and you are living

Starting point is 00:26:58 that like dink life. So you got a couple extra bucks in your pocket. You're paying for your medical bills. You're saving them. Well, you can keep investing that money. And then when you hit like 60 years old or 55 years old or whenever, you want to repay yourself, you can actually go and pull that money out of your HSA to reimburse yourself from years and years ago. And in the meantime, you allowed your money to compound in the

Starting point is 00:27:21 stock market. So I think it is just like the coolest account out there. So only those who are on a high deductible health care plan can participate in or can have an HSA. But I would say if you are on one of those to definitely take advantage, it's my favorite account for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that that high deductible point, you know, is worth one more or low. level of depth there because that is something to consider like the health care plans that are HSA qualified that allow you then to contribute to an HSA are worse. I'll use that in air quotes here because they have higher deductibles or higher out of pocket maximums.

Starting point is 00:27:56 So some employers like this actually came up as a problem at bigger pockets a few years ago, we offered a health care plan that we thought was excellent, right? It had a very low deductible and low out-of-pocket max. As a result, it was not HSA compatible. And so some employees actually like said, no, we want a worse plan that's more expensive for our company, or that's, that's cheaper for bigger pockets to provide to them so that it would be HSA compatible. And they were right.

Starting point is 00:28:19 And we offered that. And we saved money and they were happy. And that's the one I use personally these days. And so it's kind of interesting just to know, like, you will actually have to sign up for the worst health care plan depending on your employer in order to be HSA compatible. And that's probably a good move if you're healthy, if you have no reason to expect that there's going to be a major health event here. And then the other part of this question was around the FSA, the flexible spending account. And the FSA is a tool that is typically not compatible with an HSA.

Starting point is 00:28:49 You're going to have to use one or the other. And the FSA is, I think, much worse. It's still a useful tool to some degree. But if you know you're going to have expenses, you can set aside certain dollars and use pre-tax dollars, just like an IRA contribution, for example, like a 401K contribution to pay for medical expenses. So if you know like you're going to have some sort of recurring treatment or you know that you're going to have a kid or something like that, that you know is going to be a medical expense, it's going to come up in the coming year. An FSA can be a good, an FSA with a low deductible health care plan can be temporarily or in some cases permanently better option than the HSA. But for most of us, HSA is an ultimate retirement saving tool.

Starting point is 00:29:35 Totally, totally. And the other thing that I'll add for the FSA, because before I really understood the difference between these, like, years ago, I signed up for like the best healthcare plan ever and I did the FSA is I kept forgetting to use it. And this is a, if you don't use it, you lose it type of thing. So I basically just made a donation to the healthcare industry for a few years by putting money into this FSA. But yeah, just remember that if you are going to be putting money into it to not forget to actually go and use the funds because they do expire. It depends on the company you're with. Sometimes it's like at the end of the calendar year. Sometimes they give you a, I think a few weeks into the new year to use it. But they do expire, unlike the HSA. So I wanted to

Starting point is 00:30:21 actually add that differentiator to the HSA, you own it. So if you were to leave your company and go somewhere else or you, you know, reach financial freedom nice and early in life, the HSA stays with you unlike the FSA. The FSA, any funds you put in there if you hadn't used them, you would lose it at that point. That's right. You got to really know what you're doing and know you're able to plan if you're going to use the FSA instead of the HSA. I use both actually here, and this is how I do it. We have a dependent care FSA at bigger pockets. So I can set aside up to $5,000 pre-tax for child care and child-related expenses. And that is not hard to plan on using in a given year. Child care is much more expensive than that, but at least

Starting point is 00:31:09 $5,000 of that is paid out pre-tax through my dependent care FSA, which is a subcategory of FSA, and I'm able to contribute to an HSA and max that out. Yeah, I hear kids are pretty expensive. I feel like dogs, my dog child, should be allowed to fall under that umbrella, but unfortunately they don't yet. Well, we should just create a new product called the DSA, the dog giving's account. Yes. Perfect. All right. I feel like I could talk about these all days, but let's go into the next question, which is around credit card debt. So let's dive into it. About two years ago, I was met with some unforeseen financial circumstances, which caused me to rely on credit cards for necessities since I had no savings. I ended up maxing them out. Luckily, I'm in a better position now and have managed to build up two months of emergency savings, which is around $10,000. I have about $8,000 in credit card debt. I could withdraw from savings and pay off. I off my debt completely, but I'm scared to do that and then to be met with another unforeseen circumstance and have very little emergency money to fall back on. I've been doing the snowball method for a while, but I'm getting impatient and I want to be debt free. What should I do? Look, why do we have an emergency

Starting point is 00:32:17 savings account, right? We have it to prevent emergencies. In my view, from a financial perspective, credit card debt is an emergency. It's super high interest in the 20s, most likely. And so I can't see a better, like there's no point in having an emergency fund and having credit card debt, in my view. Right. So if this person's using the snowball terminology, which is a Dave Ramsey method, Dave Ramsey's first baby step is to build a tiny emergency reserve of $1,000, $2,000, and then to pay off all debt, all bad debt, right, like credit card debt. So I would just follow that. I would say, I'm going to leave a thousand or maybe 2,000 in your bank account so you don't run out of like liquidity in your term sense,

Starting point is 00:33:02 and then put everything else towards this and then rebuild your emergency account after you've paid off the credit card debt. Yeah. So I disagree with you a little bit. But first I want, I want to acknowledge the, we'll keep it PG, the mind fudgecicle it is to actually have to spend your emergency fund that you worked so hard to build up. But I think, what I would do is I would, I want, I want to keep one month of my living expenses just in case something happens. Like, I still want to be able to pay my rent and my groceries. I don't know, well, I guess we know about her living expenses are about $5,000 a month, right? So I don't want her to get in a position where something happens and she's very, very anxious. We're not robots,

Starting point is 00:33:45 right? We're humans with feelings. And if that's going to cause her a lot of angst, I don't want her to go and deplete all that. So my ideal is I would like her to have, one month of expenses just in case, which would wipe out most of the credit card debt, leave her just a little baby amount at that point. It would leave her $3,000. And then she would still have a month of her living expenses. I would also say, you know, I'm glad that she's in a better position now. But what can, and I am not the person who is like, you should be eating rice and beans for your whole life to be able to pay down your debt. But could we strip things down just for like one or two months? Like,

Starting point is 00:34:24 it's not even summer yet. Can we just can we strip it down now before all the fun things happen to get rid of the credit card debt completely? I think I would like to do that. Maybe we pick up a side hustle just for like a month or two, you know, waitress or drive for like Lyft or Uber or Grubhub or something like that. Let's just try to knock it out. But I wouldn't be depleting all of my savings. I would keep at least one month. And then I would try to go ham on the last 3,000. I'll just say I think that was, I think that was a great overview. And yeah, I think it's a very small difference between us. I would, you know, I'd probably pay it off. You'd say I'm going to keep a little bit more cash in there. But yeah, the answer is buckle up, pay this off. Don't get back in the situation and get into a more sustainable spot one way or another. And it's a, you know,

Starting point is 00:35:09 you have okay options here, but you need to get into a cash flow positive situation in your life. Otherwise, is it going to keep recurring and it's going to be very stressful. You know, and actually I thought of, you know, since we've been talking, I thought of a couple other potential options. Obviously, we don't know her situation. But another thing that she could do, because it seems like she has kind of figured her finances out, is if she has access to a 401K, she could take a loan from it. That is different from a withdrawal. Don't go withdrawing from your 401K because you can't put it back. But you can take an interest-free loan. I say interest-free. You do pay interest, but you kind of pay it back to yourself if you do that.

Starting point is 00:35:49 So if she has access to a 401K, perhaps she could not deplete her emergency fund savings and take a loan from her 401k, pay herself back that way. Another option would be if she has repaired her credit at this point is potentially getting a credit card with 0% interest and doing a transfer that way. That can be dangerous if you haven't fixed your spending problem. So make sure you're on top of it so you don't go accruing more debt. But that could be another option, too, if it makes you nervous to deplete your savings. Yeah, I love it. Any ability to refinance this debt would change my opinion of this, right? If this could be swapped out with a 401k loan, yes, that still needs to be paid off and there needs to be a plan to pay that off, but it no longer becomes the emergency where you would dip into the emergency reserves from my framework. So yeah, I think that's, I think that's, those are great points and great options to refinance it. Yeah, yeah. And again, make sure that it's a loan. That's from your 401K, not a withdrawal. Those are two very different things. So. All right. So those were our questions for this week. We love doing these types of episodes and hope you enjoy hearing them. To keep these going, please send us your questions. And you can post those on our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash BP money. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today. Really fun discussion and a couple of good debates in there. Yeah, no. I love hearing from these from real people and their real situations. This was so fun. So thanks so much for having me.

Starting point is 00:37:11 Well, that wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. She is Amanda Wolf, the She-Wolf of Wall Street. And I am Scott Trench saying, see you later, Alligator. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Bigger Pockets Money. Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaelin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by YouTube.

Starting point is 00:37:41 Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.

BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 519: HSA vs. FSA and When to Drain Your Emergency Fund to Pay Off Debt

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