BiggerPockets Money Podcast - Take More Risks in Your 20s? It Could Help You Reach FI Faster

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Your 20s can be the best time to take risks, but knowing which risks are worth taking can make all the difference in reaching financial independence. In this episode, we break down how to take smart risks with your money, career, and lifestyle to build wealth faster. Learn how to invest for long-term growth, negotiate a higher salary, start a side hustle, use house hacking to build wealth, and protect yourself with insurance and an emergency fund. We also cover the risks to avoid, from high-interest debt to speculative investments, so you can pursue financial independence without putting your financial future at unnecessary risk.To go beyond the podcast:Interested in a Flat Fee Financial Planner? Go to https://biggerpocketsmoney.com/fipro/Interested in Learning More About Buying a Franchise? Check out: biggerpocketsmoney.com/franzyGet 50% Off Your First Year of Monarch by using code ‘Pockets’: https://www.monarch.com/pocketsConnect with Evan Lawler:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_financialfoundation/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The_FinancialFoundation We believe financial independence is attainable for anyone no matter when or where you’re starting. Let’s get your financial house in order!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everyone says your 20s are the time to take risks. Start the business. Invest aggressively. House hacks. Switch careers. Move across the country. You have plenty of time to recover if things don't work out, right? But if your goal is financial independence, how much risks should you actually take? Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen.

And joining me today is my co-host, Evan Lawler. Evan, thanks for joining me. Absolutely, Mindy. Thanks for having me on again. I am so excited to talk about this today. as someone in their 20s pursuing financial independence. I know this topic well, and I can't wait to discuss it with you. I think it's so important that we define risk because I think often people, when they hear

the word risk, they really think volatility. Volatility in the stock market, how often the value of their portfolio goes up and down. But risk is kind of a broader category than that, right? Because it could be the risk that you lose your job or the risk that you don't have enough money in retirement, which is totally decoupled from the volatility that we think of. So, Mindy, how would you define risk? Okay, that's really interesting because I define risk as volatility. I am not in my 20s.

I'm in my 50s. And I don't want the stock market to take a huge tumble. And then I don't have as long to recover in my financial life as you do in yours. But another risk that I have that is actually a lot more applicable to you and people who are in their 20s is not living my life to the fullest. I was talking to a friend yesterday. and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm in my 50s. I probably have 20 years left. And I was like, whoa, we have more than 20 years left, but also like maybe 30 years, I've got a lot of things that I want to do. So one of the things that I would love to see people in their 20s doing is

like mitigating the risk of not doing everything that they want to do. And, you know, start a bucket list. In your 20s, you don't have a ton of money, so you're going to be doing, you know, the lower cost items, but you're still checking these things off your list. and you're getting to experience this. So yeah, risk means volatility and risk to me also means, you know, not living my life, doing all the things that I want to do. I totally agree with you. I think that risk can be applied to kind of like, what have you experienced in your life? And kind of systematically approaching that can be a way of reducing that risk. As far as investment, as someone in their 20s, all my investments, other than the cash I keep for my emergency fund,

is 100% in stocks. And sure, when it goes up and down, sometimes it hurts. a little bit to see the value of those assets change day by day. But as someone who's specifically pursuing Coastfire, I know I have such a long timeline to allow that asset class to go up and down and then over time grow, that for me, the risk of volatility is not a big one. Yeah, I love that you're 100% in stocks in your 20s. And I think anybody who is in their 20s has no business being in bonds. I am not a financial planner. This is not financial advice. However, because of this long time horizon that you have, I think 100% stocks is absolutely the best way to de-risk your retirement because you've got the long time horizon. And if you put money into

bonds, they're not growing nearly as much as the stock market is. On average, past performance is not indicative of future gain, blah, blah, blah. But you have the risk, the real risk of not having enough money for retirement, which you mentioned, if you are not in these aggressive investments like stocks. I totally agree. And it's almost a counterintuitive thing when we first kind of start getting into understanding what is investing. I think people often define categories that, quote, stocks are riskier than bonds. But then you say, do you risk your retirement by being in stocks? It's such a good point. And it kind of hits the nail right on the head as far as the risk of past performance of bonds has been much lower than stocks. And so maybe the value of them grows more steadily

over time. But if you get to retirement, there's not enough. That's a huge risk. That's, I would argue, riskier than it going up and down in your 20s and 30s and 40s. Evan, as somebody in your 20s who has been investing in the stock market, what would you say to someone who puts money into the market and then there's a drop. I would tell that person who just invested and then to see that money drop off, first off, I understand your pain. Even if you've been investing for only five to 10 years, you've probably seen a large market pullback and you can lose sleep for a night or two.

But what you really need to do is kind of back out and zoom out and see that over the long term, the stock market has gone up over time. And there have been these large drawbacks. but you need to kind of keep a long-term perspective and recognize that you're not investing for tomorrow or the next day or even a year or two from now. You're investing for 30 or 40 years from now. Yeah, I was running in my head. How many crashes have I seen? I was in high school in 1987 when the stock market crashed in October.

It was the biggest crash ever, I think, or like second biggest crash. I can't remember. But I remember specifically being at economics class and we had a whole lot of discussions about that. And then came the dot-com bust in the 2000, 2002, the Great Recession in 2008, COVID in 2020, 2020 was a terrible year. I've seen a lot of these. And that's just ones I can think of off the top of my head. And the market now is higher than it was at any point that I just mentioned.

Yeah, you mentioned kind of some of your investing history. I shared that I was invested 100% in stocks and I am right now. How did you invest in your 20s? Invested in my 20s? What are you talking about? We didn't have podcasts when I was in my 20s. I got married when I was 28, almost 29, and we had just started investing. So in the beginning of my 20s, I didn't invest in anything. I wasn't making a lot of money. I was probably making $24,000 a year and spending $24,000 a year. Interestingly enough, I read an article in my 20s that said, if you invest, X, dollars a month from the time you're 22 to the time you're 30, and then you never invest another dime, you will have more money at age 65 than if you invest 2x from age 30 to 65 every single month, every single year. And I was like, no, that can't be true. And I did the math and I was like, wow, that is actually true. And ask me how much I invested from age 22 to 30. Almost nothing.

I probably didn't invest much of anything in my 20s besides a house. I got tired of paying for rent. I was throwing my money away. So I bought a condo for $49,000. And then when my husband and I got married in 2002, we sold my condo for $75,000. So I was like, whoa, I just made everything that I was making in a whole year at my job with one sale of my condo. I want to do that again. So we started live in flipping. But we were

investing in the stock market in the early 2000s, like 2003, 2004. But that was after I had turned 30. So I can say I probably didn't invest anything in my 20s outside of my real estate. Okay. So be like Evan. Don't be like me. Mindy, you mentioned that you experienced lots of recessions and stock market pullbacks over your investing career. I have experienced, in some, not quite as many, but when you start investing, intellectually, you think, okay, you know, the stock market goes down, but it climbs back up. But I'm sure you would agree, even the most steadfast investors, there's an emotional reaction when you see that number start to fall again and again day after day. And especially when it sits kind of flat for a

year or two, I would just encourage young investors, especially people who are going after such an ambitious goal like financial independence to kind of really fall back on your fundamental understanding of investing, that things are going to go down, they're going to go flat, they might come back up and then shoot back down again. And it's okay to kind of have an emotional reaction, but kind of staying strong and understanding your investing philosophy is so important. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business. identity from day one, a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement,

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Use our link so they know we sent you. Terms apply. Subject to approval and eligibility. Bilt cards are issued by column N-A member FDIC pursuant to license from MasterC International Incorporated. I have to say, I don't love watching the stock market go down even now, but one thing to keep in mind is you're not investing for tomorrow. you're investing for years down the road, especially if you're pursuing KOSFI.

You've got such a long time horizon for that to come back. And if you look at the historical S&P 500 returns, you'll see lots of ups and downs. But if you zoom out to the entire time that it's been around, it's up and to the right. Absolutely. And if I can share one quick story during 2020 in the summer, there was a huge drop in the stock market, right as COVID kind of came around. But then it kind of came back up and through the summer, things were looking pretty steady. And I kind of, despite all my learning and kind of everything I had read, I had this like idea in my head that the stock market was going to tumble when the job report came out through the summer.

And so I was super nervous about it, reading a lot of things, kind of like self-confirming myself that there was going to be this huge drop in the stock market. And I went to my dad and said, like, I'm so worried about this. And he said, well, if you're so worried about it, don't sell a huge part. of your stock. Maybe take out $100, right? So I sold $100 in my brokerage account, even though it was thousands and thousands of dollars, just to kind of make myself feel a little bit better. And then, of course, the stock market didn't fall and it kept climbing. And then that $100 I eventually invested back in. But it was such an emotional experience, and it's one that I'll always remember. That's a really great experiment. Like, let me pull a little bit out and see what happens.

There's this idea that if you miss the 10 best trading days over long periods like 20 or 30 years, missing the top 10 days cuts your total in half by about 50%. And do you know when those top 10 days are? No, they come randomly for no reason whatsoever. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the stock market. It just randomly goes up and randomly goes down. I mean, yeah, some of these things had, like COVID had an effect on the stock market dropping. I don't remember what happened in 2022 that the stock market dropped.

But missing these top 10 days over the course of 30 years, like how many days are in 30 years? It's a lot more than 10. 50 percent. That's insane. Yeah, totally insane. So, Mindy, to recap, I think in your 20s, you have to redefine what risk is. And I would argue it's not volatility. If you have a long-term time horizon, volatility is not risk.

I think the risk that you face on the investment side is really not having enough in retirement. or for your future goals. And so I'm not an investment advisor, and this isn't financial advice, but I think that means you have to have substantial exposure to the stock market. I could not agree more, Evan. All right, let's talk about careers. What does career risk mean to you? Well, career risk is an interesting one. It's a bit different than an investment risk. We know that recently that job hopping could be something that could increase your income over time, but potentially that has an impact on your long-term career goals. So I think that's a potential for a career risk balancing that higher income with a potential long-term career impact. And there's also

things like, you know, working towards in a startup or something where potentially higher pay, maybe part of your compensation is equity, but who knows how it's going to play out? How would you define career risk, Mindy? Not taking enough interest in yourself and what's going to benefit you most. is risky to stay at the same job because you're scared to go out and try something new. You could be giving up quite a bit of income. The new hire budget is always bigger than the retention budget, which seems so backwards to me. If I have a good employee, I want them to stay. I don't want them to leave for $5,000 more someplace else. It's going to cost me way more than $5,000 to train them. So be a great employee and then advocate for yourself so that, that you can get these raises. It's very risky to stay at the same company and not get different exposure over time. I think a couple of years, three years at a company and then moving to another company if the job market is good is a great way to get different experiences, round out your resume and learn new skills, which only benefits you. I would caution the job hopping like less

than every two years. And if you have a resume that you're turning in, you're like, oh, look at this, you leave every two years and we're looking for a long-term employee, I'm that interested in you. I wouldn't make it a on the dot job hopping, but also you don't want to be 26 years old with a nine-page resume because of all these jobs that you've had. You want to give yourself an opportunity to look like a stable employee. That's such a good point. And I think you give such a great perspective there. And I may have let my own personal circumstance and the bias kind of come through. I've been at the same company for like three and a half years now.

And there's part of me that's a little bit nervous to kind of do that like job hopping thing. But, you know, the data has supported in the past that jumping around and kind of looking for other opportunities, not only for higher income, but like you said, to expand your skill set, to work on different projects. So I think that's a really great point. And the thing about pursuing that higher income opportunity is that just like investing, it compounds over time. So if you're paid $10,000 less, then that's $10,000.

less this year and next year and the year after that. And you kind of have to go claw that money back. So I think that's a great point. Yeah. Another risk is that you're not doing compensation research. Let's say that you are making $80,000 a year at your job and you go on to Glass Store and you look, oh, what does somebody in my position in my area make? Everybody else is making $100,000. I need a raise. Either I go to my company and I ask them for a raise or I start looking for companies that are paying what the going rate is. Maybe your company is never going to give you a raise. Then it might be time to leap. At your age, Evan, you're 25, 26 and you have been at your company for three and a half years.

That's a decent amount of time to start looking. If the going rate is, I would say more than like five or 10 percent more than what you're making, maybe it's time to move on. If you've got the going rate, then maybe some risk is you leave the company that you know and like to go to a company and be like, oh, I don't like this company at all. I once left a job and six months later, I was looking for another job again. At this particular company, one of the owners was like throwing books across the room. He was so angry. I'm like, I don't want to live in this situation. No way. It was crazy.

I was like, I can't believe you're doing it. You're in a grown adult doing this. Like, that's not the kind of company you want to work for. Leaving a stable company that is compensating you well, that could be a risk too. Yeah, and you mentioned that you need to advocate for yourself, and I think that's so important because you could, what is it, the squeaky wheel gets oil, right? Or hungry mouths get fed or something like that. So you have to speak up for yourself. And something that you've mentioned in the past, Mindy, and that I love and started to do myself, is creating a praise folder. So at work, every single time someone says something nice about you or something that, you know,

you could use in a future discussion with your boss, just saving that into a folder inside of your outlook or Gmail. And then when you go to your boss, you have all these examples of people praising you saying, oh, wow, Evan and Evan, Mindy did such a great job on this project. They're so amazing. And I think that's awesome. Yeah, that is a tip that we got from Aaron Lowry from broke millennial. She advocates keeping that in your inbox. I would go one step further. And every time you get a message saying, thank you. Like, even on a company Slack, hey, could you send me an email about that? Can you email this to me? I want to keep this in my folder. And then keep that in your folder, but also send it to your personal folder just in case you

lose access to your company email. But yeah, when it's time to ask for a raise, hey boss, I'd like money or hey boss, I'd like more money and here's a stack of people printed out, kill some trees, printed out, here's a stack of people who think I'm awesome. So we've talked about, you know, what you can do at your W-2, your full-time job. But then people also talk about maybe starting your own business or working on like a side hustle, which can feel really risky, right? You know, I think kind of the storybook example of that is that you're working your full-time job and then you want to go do something so you leave your job and you go start something else, which can feel really risky because it is. But that doesn't always need to be the case. I know, Mindy,

you have worked as a real estate agent while also working full-time. Yes. I see. I see. I see. I started my real estate agent career actually before I started working at bigger pockets. And I didn't have a ton of business in the beginning. And that's okay because I also had a job. I got this new job and we were talking about real estate. I was a real estate agent. I started getting leads from my job, not only from like working at bigger pockets, which is a real estate investing website, but also the people that were in the office were buying houses. And I was selling houses. I was selling houses. I sold houses to people's parents. I sold houses to people in the office.

It was a really great way to generate some leads, but also very low risk as my income source because it wasn't my only income source. And now I host this podcast, and I'm still a real estate agent. And I still do that on the side. And you can make a lot of money. I actually make more money as a real estate agent

than I do hosting this podcast. And I work probably less. as the real estate agent than I do hosting the podcast. But that's a great one that you can start. Evan, do you have any experience with side hustles? Absolutely. Yeah. So I started my own social media business. And I started posting at the beginning of 2025. And before I ever did anything, I went and set up a meeting with my manager and said, hey, you know, I want to start this blog. I'm kind of worried that there's going to, it's going to somehow pose a problem to the company. And he was like, well, do you plan on ever work? on this while on company time? He said, no, of course not. He's like, does this have anything to do

with the business, the company that I work at? And I say no. And he's like, well, you know, we don't care at all. And so that was such an eye-opening experience for me. You know, I would encourage anybody if you're going to start that and you're really worried about it, whether it's a social media business or any other side hustle. Go talk to your manager and kind of just be honest from the get-go. But in all reality, you know, what do they care? I'm an engineer. I'm talking about personal finance online. You know, they don't care about that thing at all. But, you know, the risk that people sometimes associate with starting a business, I think the underlying real risk there is if you kind of step away from your full-time role or somehow put that in jeopardy. But as Mindy and I have

just shown here, you don't necessarily even need to do that. So then in that case, really, what is the risk? Exactly. What is the risk? Having a side hustle, there's very little risk. Both of us are talking about successful side hustles, but you could start a side hustle that doesn't pan out with your real job, still paying you income, it's okay that it didn't pan out. You can just start another side hustle. Scott likes to say, if nine out of ten small businesses fail, the answer is to start 10 small businesses, because then you'll pick one winner. I like that logic. But yeah, now is absolutely the time to start a side hustle while you're still employed. A hundred percent agree. Evan, have you ever done any house hacking? I have actually never done any house hacking. I live in

an apartment now and a one-bedroom apartment and I'm moving to a two-bedroom apartment here in a couple weeks. But I've never actually done house hacking, but Scott and I actually dove into whether house hacking is still worth it. So that was a really eye-opening experience for me and made me think about it a little bit more. So I didn't catch that episode. Did you ultimately come to the conclusion that house hacking is or is not worth it? We came to the conclusion that it is worth it, And we really dove into a lot of the details. So if like Mindy, if you haven't seen that episode yet, go check that out. Yeah, that's the episode that released on October 7th.

I am going to definitely listen to that. But also, I do think house hacking is still worth it. And if you are listening to this and you're in your 20s, maybe you don't have the money to buy the house. You could be somebody else's house hack. You could be the one who rents the room from somebody else. You are still reducing your housing costs. And when you reduce your housing costs, that helps you say, for your first house hack yourself, if that's something you're interested in. I did house hacking

in my 20s. Like I mentioned, I didn't invest except into a two-bedroom condo. And my brother lived with me. Back when it was called having a roommate, it didn't have this fancy house hacking title. But, yeah, it helped cut down on my expenses and gave him a place to stay that also cut down on his expenses and was a lot closer to his college than my parents' house was. That's a great example because I would say when we're talking about risk here today, I think you could make the argument. It's a risk in your 20s. If you're trying to pursue financial independence, it is a risk to not have roommates. Your housing expense is part of the big three that we always talk about, housing transportation and food costs. And so lowering that housing expense can be a great way to free up that monthly cash flow, either to put towards saving or investing, even if it's outside of your retirement accounts to pursue that house act that we're talking about. But I've always lived. with roommates. A lot of people that I graduated college with went on to go live by themselves in the nice luxury apartment, and it tied up a ton of their income. So exactly right, I think getting a roommate living with somebody else can be a great way to kind of de-risk your

housing situation. Exactly. Plus, if you lose your job, you lose your source of income, you don't have nearly as much to come out of pocket to put down for your rent every month if you are sharing housing. You're not covering the entire $2,500. You're only on the hook for $1,250. And there is a risk when it comes to investing in real estate. When we're talking about real assets, potentially having tenants, even if it's a house hack where your tenant is a roommate or just across the other side of the building, there is a risk that there could be costs that come up that aren't necessarily something that would happen if you're just investing in the stock market. So while I think that it can be a worthwhile investment strategy to look into real estate,

early on through a house hack or a rental property, I do think it's worth considering that if you're going to go into that asset class, you might need to have a little bit more cash on hand or be ready to kind of handle those unexpected expenses. Yes, and you can de-risk your investment by educating yourself about the landlord-tenant laws of your state. Evan, we've talked about a lot of risks to take in your 20s, but there are some things you shouldn't risk in your 20s. What are some things that you would not risk in your 20s? Yeah, exactly. There's some things that are just hugely risky, and I would say you should avoid at all costs. One of the things that comes to mind is high interest rate debt. So if you're talking about credit cards or some other form of high interest rate

debt, it's so hard to get in front of that, and it's just so risky, even if you're trying to get into an investment or some other kind, I would say just avoided at all costs because it can really just go sideways so quickly and set you back decades? It really can. One of the best money lessons that my parents gave me was I have a late birthday, so I graduated from high school when I was 17, and I couldn't get a credit card on my own. So they opened up a credit card for me that was a combination credit card and calling card, because we didn't have cell phones either. And they said, you can put anything you want on this credit card, but you have to pay it off at the end of every month or you have to give it back to us until it's all paid off because they did not want me to

get into debt and I know my 17 year old self absolutely would have been like, ooh, new wardrobe, new stuff here. Oh, dinner's on me and then been in a ton of debt with no real plan to pay it off. So yeah, high interest credit card debt is one of the worst things that you can do in your 20s. And if you are in your 20s and have high interest credit card debt, rewind to the side hustle section and start thinking about what kind of side hustles you can create to generate income to crush your high-interest credit card debt as soon as possible. Totally agree. It's like we talk about the magic of compound growth

and how just a little bit of money each month can grow to a massive fortune. Well, high-interest rate debt, that's doing the exact opposite against you, right? It's just a little bit of money each month that you're adding to this credit card debt will grow to this massive burden over time, so really avoiding it at all. costs. Another one that I hear from my peer sometimes, and it makes me cringe a little bit, is when people decide to invest their emergency fund. In my opinion, it's not worth the risk. We've talked about some of these economic pullbacks at times, and I like to remind people that when it rains, it pours, right? If you're at risk of a job loss and you're working at a company,

there's a high chance that that also coincides to when there's a economic recession and we see a big stock market pullback. And so if you have $15,000 in your savings and you're just so tempted to put that into the S&P 500 or some other low-cost index fund because you want to see that money start to grow, I would encourage you to really reconsider that because it can be such a huge risk. Yeah, I could not agree more. The emergency fund is not there to grow. It is there when you need it. So if you put it in the stock market and the stock market drops, like you said, all of a sudden the $15,000 you had might only be $10,000 or $7,500 in the case of a really horrible stock market dip. But if you need $10,000, you no longer have your emergency fund.

The only place you should be putting your emergency fund is in a high-yield savings account and adding to it until you have a comfortable amount and then pretending like it doesn't exist. Absolutely agree with you. Okay, this one is going to seem a little cheeky coming from me, but one risk in your 20s is going all in on one investment. You need to be diversified. And an index fund is diversified. So if that is your one investment, that's not what I'm talking about. I have an investment in SpaceX. And that is a very large portion of my current net worth. It was not in my 20s. Like I said, I'm in my 50s. I would absolutely not recommend somebody doing something like that in their 20s because that is.

is a very volatile investment, and it is something that I am taking a risk with. It is a pretty risky investment, but I have a lot of faith that it will go to the stars. Scott's not here, so somebody has to make the corny jokes. Yeah, I agree. I think that you have to, you can't put all your eggs in one basket, and you really want to, I think for most people, that just means putting the majority of your portfolio into broad market, low-cost index funds. Sometimes we've talked extensively on this show and other people have talked about it, that, you know, having some like small side bets, sometimes they take off and then they become this large portion of your portfolio. I know, Mindy, you've had that happen to you in the past, which we can file under good problems to have because

you've made a great choice and it made a lot of money. But I think, yeah, exactly. For a 20-year-old pursuing financial independence, really looking into those broad asset classes with lots of companies in it, the SP 500 made up of 500 companies. And so even if one of them takes a big dive, right, you have all these exposure to other companies. Exactly. Another risk in your 20s is buying more house than you can afford. You should be able to comfortably pay your mortgage payment. And if you can't, then you should not be buying a house. It is expensive to buy a house. There is something that will always break almost the day after you buy it. I'm a real estate agent. I've seen a lot of people buy and sell houses, I've bought a lot of houses and sold a lot of houses. And the cost of that

item that broke the day after you bought it is inversely proportionate to how much money you have in the bank. So you have a ton of money in the bank. It's going to be a broken light switch. You have no money in the bank. All of a sudden, the furnace is gone or the roof has started leaking into the house and it didn't come up on your home inspection. So you need to be able to comfortably afford the house payment and comfortably afford any repairs. Absolutely. And I think also something to consider for a lot of young people is that if you're buying a house with your significant other and you're planning on getting married and maybe having kids and one person has to step back from their career for a period of time, I think it's also worth considering, are you going to be able to afford this house

on one of the incomes if that's something that you expect to see in your future? So definitely, and it's such a huge expense on people's budgets, monthly budgets, that it's definitely worth considering whether you can afford the house today and in 10 years. 100% agree. Another risk, Mindy, for someone in your 20s that I think is so important. And again, I see sometimes it makes me cringe, is ignoring insurance. Insurance is, in most cases, to protect you against the catastrophic outcome, the thing that you couldn't possibly expect the horrible hurricane that destroys all your belongings or, you know, an illness of some kind. And so, like, people sometimes when you're young, you can feel invincible, especially with health, you know,

like I see a lot of people who, you know, are foregoing that health insurance. And even though it could be expensive for you, could be a big part of your monthly income, it's definitely something that you can't pass up on. Because even if it happens to one in 10,000 people, it's such a catastrophic outcome that you can't. If you've been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you'd pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don't. Here's what I believe. Most BP money listeners need term life, and the right move is to build a ladder.

A few term policies of different lengths stacked together, so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer dating your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online. Same day coverage, no medical exam, You just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold.

Get your free quote at ethos.com slash BP money. That is et hos.com slash BP money. Application times may vary and rates may vary. When's the last time you enjoyed checking your finances? Well, Monarch is trying to change that. Open it up, and in a couple of minutes, you know exactly where you stand, with your spending, your goals, your net worth, your investments, everything all in one place. And it goes wherever you go. Quick check in on your phone between meetings or check the bigger picture on your laptop on Sunday night.

Everything sinks, everything refreshes whenever you want. Use the code pockets at monarch.com to get your first year of monarch core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code pockets. When I was 24 years old, I was still on my dad's insurance, thank goodness, and I was very healthy. I went to work. I'm like, oh, I really don't feel good. And my boss was like, you know, it's kind of slow. Why don't you go home?

So I'm driving home and my stomach is hurting more and more and more. And I get home, my mom was a nurse. And I get home and I'm like, Mom, my stomach just feels really awful. She asked me a bunch of, you know, mom questions. And then she touches my stomach. And she's like, oh, we have to go to the hospital. I had my appendix out at 3 o'clock in the morning. And it is always an emergency.

And my parents got bills for like $27,000 in 1996. If I had not had insurance, I might have had to file bankruptcy. I mean, that was, and I don't even know if you can discharge medical bills in bankruptcy. I would never have been able to pay that off. I was making $24,000 a year. That was a huge, huge expense. And appendicitis just comes out of nowhere. There's no cause.

There's no reason. It's not like I was doing something wrong and got appendicitis. All of a sudden, I have no appendix anymore. So, yeah, health insurance absolutely is a must. But there's also other insurance policies that you need to consider. If you have a house, you will probably have a mortgage, and you will have to have homeowners insurance as a condition of your mortgage. But if you're a tenant, do you have renter's insurance?

If something happens to the building that you're living in and you don't have renter's insurance, none of your stuff is covered. And that's your clothes. That's your TV and your gaming system. That's your computer. If you're working for a company that gives you a computer, they'll probably give you another one. But if you're not, that's money that you've got to come up with in addition to all the other things. So if you're a renter, you need renter's insurance.

Absolutely. If you're a car owner, you need vehicle. insurance and you need good vehicle insurance that covers all the things that you couldn't pay for out of pocket if you got in an accident that was your fault. And that covers all the things you can't pay out of pocket if you get in an accident that isn't your fault and the other motorist isn't uninsured. Absolutely. You mentioned renter's insurance and I have a story that two years ago, when I was living with a roommate, he wakes me up in the middle of the night and he's knocking on my door and I go out there, there's water pouring through the ceiling. And thankfully,

you know, as thankful as you can be, the water was pouring onto the ground, right? But just a couple feet over was his desk with his personal laptop, all of his technology, and it was just by pure sheer luck that it didn't pour all over his desk. Thankfully, him and I both had substantial renters insurance, but it's situations like that that could really have dramatic outcomes. And so you're right, you just can't ignore it. And the cost of insurance, especially a renter's insurance policy, is so low compared to what it gives you. Because not only are you dealing with like, oh, now I have to replace everything. This is a traumatic experience.

You don't have water pouring into your house and be like, woohoo, free shower. You're like, oh, my goodness, what am I going to do? How do I get this to stop? And that creates a lot of emotions that you have to deal with. On top of replacing everything because it all got ruined. And I was thinking of fire. I wasn't even thinking of flood. Yeah, I think I pay like a little bit more than $100 a year. So it's really not a substantial. It's like, you know, go out to dinner one less time in the year to protect all your belongings. So that's like $8 a month. Yeah. Okay. One thing that I see a lot of people who are just getting started in their investing journey and, you know, in their 20s is they're listening to hot stock tips instead of the boring stock tips because it's not any fun to be like, woohoo, my portfolio.

up 3% this year. Meanwhile, Bob in the desk next to you is talking about how he made $20,000 yesterday because crypto went up so much. Crypto is not something you should be investing in as a 20-year-old. Any part of your 20s, if your age starts with the two, you should not be investing in crypto. And you can email me all you want. I'm never going to change my mind on this. However, if you have $20, $50, $100, I don't know how you've been invest in crypto, but if you have a small amount that you just want to like follow, fine, but the large portion of your portfolio should not be in crypto or any other hot stock tip. If you get a hot stock tip, chances are good that it is either at the top that it's going to be or it's a garbage tip. And it's so tempting, right?

Because if you have that long-term investment horizon and you say, okay, well, the stock market historically is around 10% nominal return, but then, you know, if this asset class would be at 20%, 25%, percent. Like, oh my gosh, I'd have a hundred million dollars. It can be so tempting as a young person, but the truth is, just like you said, if it sounds too good to be true, that's because it probably is. And so, like, avoiding those things, or if you just couldn't help yourself with the temptation, just the tiniest, smallest amount. And if it really is the world's hottest stock, right? And it's going to take off and run like crazy, you know, maybe $100 will still make you a million, you know, but try that. But if you are pouring money into this position because, you know, Joe down the row

told you that it's a great stock, you have to avoid it. There's a famous story where Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy family, famously pulled his money out of the stock market right before the 1929 crash because he got a stock tip from the shoe shine boy. If somebody thinks that they know so much about stocks, they probably don't. The best way to invest is index funds in your 20s. Yeah, Mindy, I totally agree with you. I'm 100% in index funds myself. And I would encourage people in their 20s, especially if you're pursuing financial independence, that if you're looking to reduce risk, you know, kind of considering all the things we talked about today and avoiding those hot stock tips or kind of the next big thing and just kind of investing in the broader

or stock market is definitely the approach. Yep. Evan, this was a super fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your experiences as someone who is currently in their 20s and letting me reminisce about when I was in my 20s. Where can people find you online? You can find me on any social media platform at the underscore financial foundation. All right. And if you want even more financial independence information, you can follow Bigger Pockets

Money on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at BiggerPockets Money. And we have a website filled with free resources, calculators, and templates to help you on your journey to financial independence over at bigger pockets money.com. All right, that wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Evan Lawler. I am Mindy Jensen saying I'm out, Sprout. I'm skeptical of a lot of financial products, but life insurance isn't one of them, at least not term life. For the vast majority of you listening, term life is simply the right answer. And the smartest way to buy it isn't one big policy, it's a ladder. Your need for coverage isn't flat. It declines over time. You've got a 30-year mortgage, a couple of young kids, maybe a spouse, mid-career. In 15 years, the mortgage is going to be smaller and the kids are almost launched. So instead of buying one giant 30-year policy you'll overpay for, you stack a few, say a 10-year, a 20-year, and a 30-year layer. So your total coverage steps down as your actual obligations step down. You only pay for what you actually need when you need it. Ethos is a platform that helps you find life insurance 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds and apply in minutes. There's no medical exam. you just answer a few health questions online. You can get up to $3 million in coverage.

Some policies are as low as $30 a month. That makes building a ladder genuinely fast. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash BP money. That's ethOS.com slash BP money. Application times may vary and rates may vary. You know that feeling you get when checking your finances means logging into five different apps?

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