Rich Habits Podcast - 173: Your Business Bank Account Is a Liability

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

In this week's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz chat with Ryan Saleh, co-founder of Waldo.---🏦 Interested in earning yield on your idle business cash? Check out Waldo AI by clicking here!---⁠🏆 Wall Street Favorites⁠⁠ is LIVE! ⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠ to see what Wall Street is buying before everyone else. ---🧠 Ready to build your own investable index using AI? Generated Assets on Public makes it easy. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to try Generated Assets!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---🚀 Join 900+ other podcast listeners inside of the Rich Habits Network and invest alongside Robert and Austin, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---⚡️ Sign up for the Rich Habits Newsletter and never miss a market-moving headline again, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---⭐ Download our FREE Financial Planner –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Download our FREE Budgeting Template –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Optimize your portfolio with Seeking Alpha –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---👤 Explore everything Austin does –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👤 Explore everything Robert does –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠❓ Ask us questions for our Q&A episodes – @richhabitspodcast on Instagram📬 Inquire about working together – [e-mail]---Disclosure: Paid endorsement. Brokerage services provided by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Investing involves risk. Not investment advice. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠public.com/disclosures/ga⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and investment values may rise or fall. See terms of match program at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://public.com/disclosures/matchprogram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.*Rate as of 11/6/25. APY is variable and subject to change.This content is sponsored by NEOS Investments. The creator is compensated by NEOS to discuss NEOS ETFs. This content is for informational purposes only, and is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice, and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell any security. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Before investing, carefully review the NEOS ETFs prospectus at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠neosfunds.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

All right, everyone, before we jump on this episode, which we are joined by Ryan Sala, the co-founder and CEO of Waldo.a.I. Let's make sure we're all on the same page about what this company is doing because it's really interesting and Robert and I are like really fired up to talk about it. We all talk about the emergency fund and how important it is to have a personal emergency fund for yourself. We use the public high yield cash account. Others might use a SOFI or maybe a wealth front or, you know, whatever, but you have an emergency fund sitting in a high yield savings account earning some interest. But the problem is a lot of businesses like restaurants and food trucks and junk removal and even venture back startups and whatever, they don't have that. All this cash is sitting

in that Chase checking account or that, you know, whatever business bank account that's earning literally nothing. And so what Waldo has done is they've essentially been this middle layer where they say, hey, we're going to open up a brokerage account on behalf of your business and then you deposit it whatever money you want that you're not using as working capital into this brokerage account and will automatically invest it for you into short-term T-bills and other very risk-free products like that to earn the three and a half or four percent interest on your cash that you're not using in your business at that time. And so Waldo, it's a very interesting product, really cool background from Ryan here. He started a company, sold it for $50 million and now he's starting this new

one. But we want to make sure we're on the same page about what they do in the beginning. So like as we kind of get up to that. You guys completely understand it. But it's an awesome product and there'll be more information about it in the show notes below. But Robert, just want to make sure we set the stage there. Definitely. I am so excited about Waldo and moving my accounts. You mentioned rich habits moving our money over there too because it solves a huge problem. And that is you can't just go get a traditional high yield cash account or high yield savings for your business capital. So your business capital sits there underutilized many times in these companies. And so now we can put it into these products on Waldo and actually earn gains while we're waiting to use it or deploy it.

I'm super excited about it and can't wait to dig in and learn more. So you guys heard it here first, waldo.a.I. Let's jump into our interview with Ryan. Hey, everyone. And welcome back to the rich habits podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify brought to you by public.com. By the end of today's episode, you're going to understand why where your business keeps its cash might be one of the most overlooked decisions an entrepreneur ever makes and why the future of corporate treasury looks almost nothing like the checking account you are using right now. My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur with lifetime revenues of over 300 million and I'm a multimillionaire in my early 30s with a background in finance

and economics. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset. So, Robert, who are we sitting down with and talking to today? In today's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're joined by Ryan Sala, founder and CEO of Waldo. Waldo is a robo advisor for company cash that helps everyone from early stage startups to enterprises earn better yield on their idle cash by managing the kind of balance sheet risk most founders never even think about. Before Waldo, Ryan co-founded Gatsby, a commission-free options and stock training app built to make options approachable for a younger generation of investors that the legacy brokers

had basically ignored over the years. Gatsby rode the pandemic trading boom and was right on the front lines of the 2021 game stop and meme frenzy. And Ryan and his team raised 15 million, scaled to around 40 employees and ultimately sold the company to Eitoro. for $50 million, where Ryan went on to serve as global head of options solutions. So, Ryan, your background is very impressive, and we're excited to have you on this show and unpack all of this for all of our entrepreneurs and listeners out there.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited. Before we jump into Waldo and the exciting news surrounding that, I want to start at the beginning. Ryan, you co-founded Gatsby back in 2018 with a specific mission, make options trading simple and approachable for the younger generation. What did you see in the market back then that made you say this is the company I want to build? The story of me getting into options trading was as a user and a trader more than as a options, you know, somebody with experience in the options sector. I, like you, Austin, graduated with a degree in economics. Pretty much in one of

the worst years after the financial crisis for finding a job in finance, dove into investment banking, got into some really boutique investment banking. And then, Around 2018, I was wanting to short a stock, which is something a lot of people want to do. And I was watching as day trading and retail trading and really the early days of crypto, broad-based crypto trading were starting to take off. And I knew what options were from the industry and from school and just realized it's kind of ridiculous that I don't have an easy way to trade options as somebody with a finance background and some understanding of what I was doing and dove into the industry from that angle and

had no idea what I was getting into. And it was quite a ride. I think that is probably how a lot of entrepreneurs start their entrepreneurial journey. It really comes down to like, hey, I want to go do this thing, but the solution that I'm looking for doesn't yet exist. So I need to go solve this problem myself. Now, Gatsby, you guys launch it. And then in 2020 and 2021, we see craziness. Pandemic trading boom, game stop, a chaotic moment in the markets. And you were right in the middle of it. I'm sure as a lot of these options traders, were trying to figure out how to piece the puzzle together.

What was it like to actually operate through that insane moment as a founder? And for other entrepreneurs listening right now that are optimistic to hopefully catch a tailwind like that and have a big break, what advice can you share with them to help them navigate what could be a chaotic time in their own business? If you're succeeding in any way, it's going to be chaotic. And that's almost a given, you know, whether it's as chaotic as, you know, as shorts, squeeze on GameStop, maybe, I can't say, but it's going to be chaotic at some point in the journey. So we started the business in 2017. It was a broker-dealer. It's a regulated space. It took us,

you know, the better part of two plus years to get our licenses in place and to get the product approved by Finran, to get, you know, the team staffed up. It's a pretty capital-intensive business. You know, I think everybody kind of remembers the day in March of 2020 when the pandemic got real and it wasn't going to be a short thing. That was the day we launched. It was actually the same day that Robin Hood had had an out, a big outage that, you know, had lasted most of the day. And so we actually got some users on day one. So literally day one, we came out of private beta, day one.

We already were seeing the chaos. And we were seeing users, you know, coming over from other platforms. We definitely felt like we had struck a cord. Certainly we felt like we were out over our skis. I think part of the, you know, some of that is normal. That's how startups work. But it was trial by fire from day one. And I would say the worst feeling when you start a business,

is not having that chaos. When you feel like you're languishing and your product isn't finding product market fit or any sort of traction, and you're not getting the stress of trial by fire with a live product and live users and error feeds and logs blowing up everywhere and customer service complaints left and right,

that's actually a worst feeling. So while it's stressful, I would say it's a necessary part of having a business that's getting some adoption. The sort of worst feeling that you have when that starts to happen is imposter syndrome, and that's what you really have to fight. It's normal. It's going to be normal.

Everyone who started a business and sold it has millions of stories where they woke up some morning, updated their resume because they thought the business was on the ropes, lost all hope, and then literally the next day you're riding high on something else. So keeping your own imposter syndrome in check is a necessary part of getting through those moments of chaos. I love it because you speak of chaos and that really lends to the authenticity of this interview already because so many people in our world on the internet that are so-called gurus and experts, they always paint this picture of entrepreneurship like it's rainbows and unicorns and it's a hockey stick of growth and we all just get all this money.

They never talk about the chaos and I've lived through 35 years of chaos in building various companies to various levels after the fact when Silly Bands was a global phenomenon, everyone was like, oh, it's so cool how you built that. And it was so easy. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I live through so much chaos for like two or three, four years of it. It was madness. And like you said, it's the highs and the lows to get there. So I love that you speak of the chaos because I think it's important for all of our listeners to understand entrepreneurship is not as easy as it seems. It does take many times years to get to a point where you feel achieved and you can lose that imposter syndrome and feel like you've actually got it under control. So I really appreciate you being so authentic about that. But let me click back on

it a little bit. What did that era teach you about retail investors? Because of a lot of our audience live through that as investors, but you saw it from the inside looking at the real data. So what mistakes were these people making? And what were the successful investors doing correctly during that era? Yeah, I mean, options are a powerful tool, and when we launched, we were options only, and that's really what our core stayed throughout the life of the business. We wanted to be the options house, options express, think or swim of this generation of younger mobile-oriented traders.

Options can be a powerful tool, and they can be a really dangerous tool. The difference between a good options trader and a bad options trader is, you know, a learning curve, but the problem is getting there and getting to the point where you can trade multi-leg and you can understand Greeks and you can hedge your downside is at times expensive. And so the entirety of what made Gatsby different was we didn't, it was, you know, we often use the, we use a few analogies for how we described the business, but bowling with the, you know, bumpers up was one that came up frequently. And it was really about, you know, going way beyond what the suitability requirements are, the regulatory suitability requirements

are, and it's not in our interest to have our customers lose money. That's the easiest way to churn out an account and to increase your customer acquisition costs. And so a core tenant of the product through, you know, even when I was running product and then we hired a product manager and then a VP and then the engineering team got up to 20 people, that remained our core sort of North Star was it's in nobody's interest to see somebody come in by a 20 Delta call that expires Friday on Tasso. you know, maybe they get lucky and that one's in the money and they roll it into a Netflix call the next week.

That's not in our interest. And so we spent, you know, a very large portion of our product development energy helping people get over that curve. And that really is unique to options. There are other assets where, you know, you can buy them and the learning curve is less expensive. But options are unique in that they lose value if nothing happens. Simply the market stays the same. The option will go down in value. And getting users, you know, over that hump was.

a huge part of the learning curve for me and like figuring out our unit economics as a business. And that meant understanding what young new traders needed and wanted in order to go from their first long only options contract to a four-legged condor six months from now. I think that's important, though, that it speaks to your credibility as a founder because something I always say when people ask, who do you invest in and why? I like to bet on the quarterbacks. And when I hear something like that come from you that a big portion of what you wanted to do every day was figure out how to help the customer, which lowers your turn rate, makes everyone more money, which is great for you. So that's really important. And when we

speak about that, you raise $15 million. You built a team of 40 people and you exited for $50 million. So from the outside, that's a clear win. But you said you'd be open to talking about the mistakes along the way. And I think that's where the real value comes for our audience. Many of our audience are various ranges, various levels of their entrepreneurial and business building journey. So once something you got wrong along your journey, and what would you tell an entrepreneur building their first company today from those mistakes that you learned along the way? Absolutely made dozens and probably hundreds of mistakes along the way. Even today, I'm probably making an entirely new set of mistakes.

You, you know, you tend to not repeat your mistakes, but, you know, as businesses grow, there are a whole new menu of mistakes to choose from. The number one thing I always point to in terms of what I got wrong, and what was probably the thing that took me the longest to get my head around is when you start a business, you have this sort of sense of confidence in your instincts around what you're building. You built it because you were passionate about it and you wanted to see it, you wanted to use it. And so you developed this confidence that as the business grows and you start to get really good data around what the users are and who they are and what your customer profile is, you really have to teach yourself to not trust your instincts and to go with the data. And it's very, you know, what makes investors believe in you, what makes venture capital get excited, what makes, you know, early hires join and line up behind you, is that confidence and that sort of conviction.

But product in today's world, where there's 8 billion people, anyone can have an idea, really anyone can start a business, you know, with finance is a little more difficult because it's regulated. but, you know, even in finance, it's pretty easy to start a business. I tend to be, you know, on the spectrum of team versus idea, I tend to be on the team side of that spectrum. I think team is a lot more important. And I think as a founder, it's really important to check your instincts against the data and live in the data.

I mean, you will find that, and maybe this is a good segue into the other thing that I would say is a common first-time mistake. You know, you find that as your business is growing and your headcount starts to get up there, everyone isn't reporting to you anymore. I have found that you often hear, like, I certainly was true of me, and I hear this from other founder friends, your life basically becomes a combination of onboarding data to watching your funnel and watching the drop off and tweaking the onboarding funnel, and HR. HR becomes 50 and maybe more percent of your time is keeping your team happy, keeping things on the rails.

So, you know, another really common mistake that I see is you raise a bunch of money. your instinct is to hire fast. And that was the conventional wisdom for a long time. In venture capital, in Silicon Valley, it was hire fast, move fast, break things. While I, you know, I don't tend to be the biggest evangelist in the world of agentic coding and agentic, you know, sort of full-stack AI businesses, I do think that things have changed in reactive hiring on the engineering and products and really all areas of the business. is becoming the new norm.

So I would say my hiring the second time around has been much more sort of reactive and selective than the first time around. Maybe talk more of that because we completely agree, right? We think that artificial intelligence has absolutely enabled the everyday person out there to build their own apps, to go create their own platforms and websites and tools and whatever they want to do. And we've seen and heard countless times now over the last call it 12, 18, 24 months that the best companies out there are, are running on smaller and smaller teams. And so how are you now, as you're building this new business, which feel free to talk about, how are you as that scales, how are you approaching hiring, how are you leveraging AI,

how are you building your own applications to assist in that entire process, like sort of a recursive, how is all this coming together for you as someone who has been on both sides of the pre-AI, idea, scale, exit, now in the post-AI, idea, and scale, and hopefully cool exit in the future. Yeah, I mean, there's the obvious, there's the sort of narrative that you hear that engineers are now more productive because they can, you know, spend their day writing markdown and sharing agentic output rather than, you know, staring at a screen and trying to figure out a bug for hours. And that's real. Like, that's undeniable. And we're a big believer in that. And our team today is five people.

It's way smaller than, you know, I think a company at our scale would have been five years ago, especially in a regulated space. The other aspect of it that I think is really powerful specifically for founders is like there are things you do as a founder where your impulses to hire an expert who can, you know, sort of bring a been there, done that mentality to a sector that maybe you're new to or maybe is evolving very quickly. And I would say AI, if nothing else, makes founders, whether their first-time founders are very experienced founders, orders of magnitude more productive. You can do compliance things yourself that, you know, you, that would have taken either an outsourced contract to get done. You can

figure out sort of conventional wisdom with making offers and management and team structure. And There are hires that, you know, you don't make not because your team is more effective because of AI, but because you specifically as a founder become more effective. And I, you know, I'm not a believer that, you know, people are unnecessary anymore. I don't, you know, I think this is a tool that's extremely powerful and, you know, we can see it today and it's already showing. But I think something that gets overlooked sometimes is not, you know, everyone on the team is more powerful or the AI is going to do things on its own.

It's that founders, you know, specifically themselves, can hold on to things that they would have had to hire out for for much, much longer. Sales is a good example. Oftentimes you find that founders, they raise their first big round, and sales and marketing and customer acquisition or growth are the first thing they have to go outsource. And that just, like, simply isn't true. And you get to own those things for much longer than was true 10 years ago. And that I have found is a palpable difference for myself from, you know, say 2017 to today. That's great feedback to hear. And I think a lot of people listening right now that might say, okay, I want to start a business or I have started a business. And, you know, we're getting some

traction. It's exciting. I need to go find outside investors so I can go hire people, I go hire salespeople, go hire, you know, whatever. Now you're saying, wait a second, maybe you don't jump to that gun so fast. Artificial intelligence, applications, clod, like, whatever it might be, can augment a lot of that in the early days where you might not be able to achieve so much without hiring. Now, today, you're saying because of AI and because of some of these applications and sort of platforms and tools and whatever else, you can get a lot further before you have to actually go out and raise money or hire a big team or do these things that, you know, call it seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, you had to go raise a lot of money. You had to go hire, you know, put bodies in seats

and put them to work. Absolutely. And, you know, there's the obvious things. like, you know, coding and legal, right? Those are the main two things that you see people use AI for today. But it goes well beyond that, and it can be painful for founders to give up. You know, when you start to scale, it can be painful to let go of things. It's your child, you know, you pour your life into it, and, you know, you've used every ounce of emotional energy that you have and reinvested it back into the business. And it can be painful to give up things like sales and marketing and growth and brand. And the obvious things like compliance and legal and engineering come up a lot. But I think people,

sort of miss that there's a benefit to letting founders hold on to things longer. And I think those benefits reverberate through the life of a business. And you'll see those downstream. I think it's early. We haven't, you know, been at this for a long time. But I think a business where the CEO ran sales for the first two years instead of the first one year, five years from now, you'll be able to tell those two businesses apart. Robert, before we jump to our next question with Ryan, got to give a shout out to public.com, the investing platform for those who take investing as seriously as we do. On public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, cryptocurrency, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index using AI.

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That's public.com slash rich habits. And be sure to try generated assets when you're over there. Paid for by public investing, full disclosure in the podcast description. All right, back to our interview with Ryan. Yeah, Ryan, I love this. And I want to linger for a minute, Austin, before you go to your next question. Because I'm living this right now every day, Ryan. I just launched a Reg A platform for real estate called VestFunder.

And we went through all of the last 16 months of compliance and everything through FINRA and the SEC. But one of the biggest uses we have found so far to create a ton of efficiency and lower the cost is in our underwriting for new deals. By using Claude, we have built. built out this amazing system with Claude and some other tools to where now, instead of underwriting, taking two or three weeks and thousands of dollars, we can really underwrite a big project, even a 50, 60, 70 million dollar project in the matter of a couple hours just by feeding that AI and really working with it. So I think you're really spot on here of what the future of entrepreneurship looks like

for people and founders to be more efficient and not have to go out and hire all of the this expensive labor right out of the gate. So it gives them a more efficient future. And when they're raising capital, it's going to mean the capital is just going to last longer as they get more efficient as founders. I have great reference for regulation. And I think, you know,

especially in the financial services sector, it's absolutely necessary. But much of compliance and regulatory overhead around, you know, reggae and capital raising, and we, you know, I've used, in fact, almost every time I raise money, I sort of peel off a portion of it for, retail or for, you know, individual investors just because I like having them around and I think

more voices is better. But there's a lot of regulatory overhead starting a broker dealer, starting an investment advisor, raising capital using either registered securities or, you know, exemptions that require some nuance. But the thing about it is they're repeatable. You're doing the same thing that other people have done many times over. And that's where AI shines is, you know, doing something again. I think reggae specifically is something that can be used much more effectively in a world where you can utilize the work that's been being done since the Jobs Act was written 15 years ago. Right. You know, have Claude or ChatGPT help you build a circular or a, you know, PPM. What a great conversation. So many nuances that I'm living with right now

and I've lived with for the last few decades, you as well, Austin also. But you've spent your entire career in retail in that consumer-facing world. Then you made a pretty big pivot to build holding Waldo just for businesses. What was the insight that pulled you out of the retail space and into this corporate cash management space? And why? Towards the end of the Gatsby journey, and during my time at Itoro,

every big FinTech had raised huge amounts of money during the pandemic. You know, FinTech was a really green category, really hot category for venture capital. And all of that money really went into customer acquisition, right? And they were, it was a feeding frenzy, fighting each other over the same users, in many case, and the cost of acquiring a customer grew probably by a factor of 10.

We saw those numbers. Of course, every FinTech saw those numbers. But in my opinion, financial services is about finding ingress and finding where you can add some value. And so I looked, you know, when I made the decision to dive back into this, I looked around, you know, retail is saturated, it's very crowded. And spending years swimming upstream against Robin Hood was difficult. You know, it was, it's difficult to get to feature parity and find a reason for, you

for existence in a world where Robin Hood is the competition. That's an extremely competent business that's done some great things. We were up against, you know, a lot of powerhouses, SoFi, public, Weble, you know, all businesses that were moving fast and driving a lot of customer value. And all the while, it coincided with this sort of new trend as we left a zero interest rate environment. You were seeing these products pop up that were called Treasury.

So all the neobanks like, you know, Mercury and Ramp and Meow were launching. things that they called treasury. But in reality, their treasury products were, you know, mostly just money markets. They were just selling you a money market. And they, you know, in many cases charged advisory fees. But the real sort of irritating part of it, maybe not irritating, but sort of prohibitive part of it, was that you had to switch to that bank in order to use these treasury products. And so you had to keep a minimum balance at the bank. Then when SVB had their weekend of chaos, everybody sort of all at once came to the realization that no startup, no funded startup is below the FDIC limit on their deposits.

And you are at the mercy of your bank's balance sheet. And so those two, you know, leaving zero interest rate, interest rates rising, and then, you know, having this sort of SVB crisis brought this world sort of to the forefront of FinTech. And that's when I realized, you know, banks don't make good brokers. Brokers don't make good banks. Somebody needed to step in here and build a brokerage product. an advisory product, to do this. And so that meant, one, they'll make them switch banks.

Switching brokers is easy. Switching where you do all your payments from is annoying. It's really difficult. Two, more options, you know, and lower fees and higher yields. The things we buy on behalf of our clients are the things the bank buys or the money market buys when you give them their money after they take their fee. So we, you know, the vast majority of our clients are in ultra short-term U.S. treasuries. That's what ends up, you know, getting purchased in most cases. so giving people direct access to the products. And then we do a lot of other cool stuff. There's just a lot you can do.

We help businesses hedge currency risk. If all your employees are in Mexico and all your customers are in the United States, you have a huge amount of exposure in today's environment where the U.S. dollar is fairly volatile. You have huge amount of currency exposure. You could have interest rate exposure. A lot of businesses have commodity exposure.

Businesses that make chocolate bars are very oil dependent or depending on, you know, some food or other crops have exposure. to the price of these commodities. And it's not sort of rocket science. This is what treasury teams or bankers have been doing for big companies for 100 years now. If you're a big public company,

you probably have a treasury manager. You may have a private banker at one of the big wirehouses who does this for you. For over a decade now on the retail side, you've been able to have a robo advisor, manage your money without an expensive banker in the middle. That was never done on the corporate side. And so that's what we do.

We basically offer everything that you would get from, you know, a late stage treasury manager at a 5,000-person company, and we bring that down in market. We would say fixed income, which is, you know, the majority of what we do is generating yield. It's taking the cash you have and making sure that you're getting the most possible yield on that. It's not as exciting as options.

It's not as volatile. It's not as salient, I would say. But it does offer us to do something that just isn't being done by competitors right out the gate. As a small company, you know, raised a few million dollars and built a really cool product. And right out the gate, we can be at feature and beyond feature parity with some of our peers, you know, and that's a nice feeling. It was rough having to fight with public.com and Robin Hood over every feature. They tend to move fast.

So let's talk a little bit more plainly about what Waldo does. You're saying that the problem is, you know, Silicon Valley Bank and any venture-backed company that's got tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of cash. on around their balance sheet here. FDIC insurance is not obviously millions and millions and millions of dollars like that. So what you're saying is Waldo solves this problem by taking their cash

and putting it into short-term treasuries. Absolutely. So this is why people don't keep their personal money in a bank, right? You don't want to be at the mercy of the bank's balance sheet. The bank can go under. Banks do go under routinely.

Securities are custodied with DTC. We never lend them out. We sip and insure them through our custody firm up to $75 million. And even if, you know, your advisor goes out of business, even if your custody firm goes out of business, those securities are in street name in your beneficial ownership at DTC, and they can't go anywhere. And that's the same exact reason why when you see your personal net worth go from, say, five to six figures or six to seven figures, you stop leaving

money in banks because it just simply isn't a safe place to leave large amounts of money. Just so I understand this. For the everyday listener that's got, I don't know, maybe they're running a business of 12 people and they've got $180,000 at any given time in their, you know, checking account. They're trying to make sure that they're getting the best yield possible. Are you saying that they open up a brokerage account on Waldo in their business's name and then deposit, let's call it. They keep in their checking account a month or a month and a half's worth of working capital and the rest then goes into Waldo and is then parked to earning three or four percent. That's exactly right. That's actually what's happening when you open up a treasury account on,

you know, one of the neobanks. They're opening a. brokerage account for you, usually with a custody firm, and they're purchasing a money market for you. And instead of a money market, we tend to purchase, you know, sort of higher yield, virtually identical securities that kind of lower the overall load on what you're purchasing and increase your yield. So, you know, we pride ourselves in making sure our clients are getting the lowest load and the highest yield and that we're passing as much of that through. And then what you do is you set up automated transfers to send your monthly requirements back to your checking account. But that's best practice. And we have no minimum. So, you know, again, a lot of

these neobanks, you know, force you to keep a quarter million dollars with them in order to open a treasury account. That's great when you're big. And, you know, it's prohibitive when you're bootstrapped or very early stage company coming out of an accelerator. So we don't have any minimums. You don't, you can open an account with a thousand bucks. But this ends up being real money. And we live in a time where interest rates are at least flat and they might be going up. And, And, you know, this money is real per million dollars. There's, you know, $40,000 a year, whole people that you're missing out on if you're not generating yield. So we, you know, this is best practice. This is what big companies do. And what we're trying to do is make it something that's really easy and approachable for startups. Yeah. No, you're totally right. I remember when I worked out of MediSys, which I think at the time was a $9 or $10 billion publicly traded healthcare company. I remember on our team was a guy that was in charge of the Treasury, right? And so they had hundreds of millions of of dollars of cash that they had to strategically move around and do, you know, park in the right places to ensure that, one, it was liquid and, you know, it wasn't just sitting in some sort

of bank account, but two, it was earning as much as you possibly could. Now, help me understand this part because this is what confuses me. FDIC insurance is $250,000 for me, right? SIPC insurance is like half a million dollars. So how are you able to insure up to 75 million? It's done to our clearing firm. And to be clear, it's a policy through the custody firm. We use Alpaca, it's the, you know, sort of like most tech forward billion dollar custody firm. And they have a separate insurance policy. But the reason they're able to do that and the reason, you know, it seems almost too good to be true, right? How can you insure something up to that level? But the reason is they don't really need to insure much at all. Those securities are in your name. And if they're

not lent out and there's no leverage, then those securities are yours and they're yours at the DTC. You know, so the insurance itself doesn't actually have that much risk exposure. FTA, FDIC needs to step in if an entire bank fails and cover all the deposits. SIPIC insurance is there to cover things that are sort of leveraged, things that are, you know, kind of shortfall between, you know, cash in the account and securities. In our case, we don't hold any cash in customers' accounts. It all goes into yielding products. We don't lend anything out.

And so at the end of the day, there's not a ton to insure. It's, it's, you know, just a safer proposition. And it's the reason people have been doing it with their personal money for 100 years now. Now before we ask Ryan, our final question, got to give a shout out to Nios investments. Nios offers ETFs that seek high levels of monthly income with a keen focus on tax efficiency while providing core portfolio exposure across equities, fixed income, real estate, cryptocurrency, and cash alternatives like T-bills, something we're talking a lot about on this episode. Their ETFs may be especially interesting for investors looking to generate tax-efficient monthly income,

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Neos ETFs are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. All right, Robert, back to our interview with Ryan for this final question. So let me just make sure, before we wrap up this conversation, you have built a high yield savings account for corporations. And that high yield savings account, right, I think about it for myself. I've got a high yield savings account. I earn about three and a half percent on my emergency fund, right? So let's say there's a corporation out there. Or maybe there's someone that's just like starting out, that's listening right now. And they've got like 20 grand and they're seeding this business and they're trying to go do something cool with a food truck. And instead of having it sit in the business

Chase checking account earning $0.0 and zero cents every month, they can put that same money in a Waldo SIPC, $75 million insurance high yield savings account in the business's name. Then Waldo then takes that, parks it into yield-bearing assets like short-term treasury bills, which are T-bills, which are backed by the U.S. government, right? These aren't corporate bonds. And then they earn their three and a half or four percent or whatever the blended average there on that might be. And so you've essentially solved the problem of businesses going around and saying, I unfortunately have all this cash in my chase checking account with my business. That's not earning anything. And we love any business.

I mean, we have late stage series D startups with 50 million in an account. We have law firms with 50,000 in accounts. We have restaurants with 5,000 in accounts. To us, it doesn't matter because it's the right thing to do with your money. It is not a savings account by, you know, the definition of a savings account at all. it's a brokerage account, but it is, you know, buying zero and very, very short duration U.S. Treasuries, which is what ends up backing your savings account, in many cases, in your money market fund.

So, you know, there is an element of this that's cutting the middleman out. And the cool thing about Waldo is if you want, a lot of businesses want to yield higher than just U.S. treasuries, right? Say you're a marketplace business like Etsy where you float cash. And so the money that comes in and the money that goes out, you hold for seven days. A huge portion of your revenue comes from yielding that. cash. And so a lot of businesses say, I want exposure to either floating rate or investment grade fixed income or even some high yield credit a lot of times. And we want to offer those

to people too. We want to be able to cover, you know, businesses that want to increase their yield. Maybe they're, you know, they're less, they're very profitable. They're less concerned about extending their burn rate or their runway, but they're more concerned about actually generating yield from their cash and cash equivalence on their balance sheet. We love doing that. We have copy portfolios, if you want to just copy what Berkshire Hathaway does with their cash, you can subscribe to that portfolio and it'll do exactly what they do with their cash. Our belief is that none of these concepts are new in the Robo Advisory world, right? These have existed on the retail side forever. You could, you know, go on betterment and pick from 20 strategies and

do this, but this doesn't exist in the corporate world and it should. And so that's where, that's how we dove in here. But you are right that the vast, vast majority of what people hold on Waldo is very, very short-term U.S. treasuries, you know, the sort of like sweet spot today of no duration risk, no principal, very, very low principal risk. It's the U.S. government and high yield. Wow, Ryan, what a fantastic conversation. You've definitely built the better mouse trap. I can't wait to get Vest funders signed up because we're raising all this capital right now for multiple projects. And I want to make sure that we get as much return as we can. That yield you talk about while the money is sitting waiting to be deployed. So for the founders, the operators,

and the business owners listening, make sure you check it out. And Ryan, let them know where they can learn more about Waldo and follow along of what you're building. Yeah, you can go open an account anytime, waldo.a. And you can also send an email, hello at waldo.com. We'll chat. A lot of people have questions. A lot of time we, you know, we want to sort of help people understand what's going on. There's a big learning curve. You know, there's elements of this that are sent, you know, real nice. But you got to be comfortable with it. So both are a great way to get started, but Waldo.a.i. And you can open an account anytime. This sounds super cool. I need to do this for Rich Habits, Robert. We got to put our money to work harder than what's doing right now. I love this. And again, we'll have the link in

the show notes below. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us on the Rich Habits podcast. I feel as if a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening right now that have a side hustle, own a restaurant, or have, you know, maybe a venture-back startup that they're doing. They now have this lightbulb moment of wait a second, I'm earning yield on my emergency fund. Why am I not earning yield on my business checking, my business cash? And waldo.a.i is that solution for them. So again, Ryan, thanks so much for joining us, my friend. Thanks for helping me. It's great to be here. Robert, I'm jazzed. Waldo sounds really exciting. I'm so glad we had Ryan on the show here to talk about what he's been building because it's a problem that people have. It's a problem that, I mean, I'm over here

thinking about all the money I've left on the table over the years by not using a product like this. It's kind of, it makes my stomach hurt. Well, think about it this way. A business out there, let's say you own a roofing company or a law firm or whatever and you have a million dollars in cash. You use Waldo and make 4%. That's $40,000 a year, $333 a month of free money for the capital that you still have access to and it's still very liquid. So what a cool product. I'm super excited to get more involved with Waldo and use the product. Robert, this episode was a fun one, but it's not an episode until we actually do some Q&A. So we've got our Q&A questions here from Instagram.

Actually, all three are from Instagram. So if you want to ask us a question, DM us on Instagram at Rich Habits Podcast or email us at Rich Habitspodcast at gmail.com. Our first question comes from an anonymous listener. That anonymous listener says, hey, I'm 24 years old. I'll be 25 in September.

I make $47.50 an hour and I live in California. I have a one-year-old son and a girlfriend. I've got $14,000 saved and I'm looking to buy a house or start investing or just do something. I don't know where to start. Can you please help? Robert, I feel like these are some of the best questions to answer because it's kind of like a clean slate. I love where this person's heads out here. 24, turn 25, very young.

They're making great money, right? They're call it $100,000, $120,000 a year depending on how many hours they're working. Yeah, that's in California. So cost of living's high. Taxes are going to kill you. You know, I get that, but we're talking about solid income here. And depending on how well you're able to keep your expenses as low as possible, which at 24, 25 years old, you can keep them very low. I don't care how many roommates you have or how crappy your apartment is. And, you know, oh, my one-year-old

son needs this perfect, you know, white picket fence house. No, they don't. They're not going to remember anything until they're probably five years old at least. So you've got some time here to be flexible and really scrimp and save your money. Number one, first thing I would do is build that honest budget. Robert and I talk about this all the time. It's super, super important understanding every dollar that's entering your bank account on a monthly basis and every dollar that's leaving your bank account on a monthly basis. You treat your budget like a business. You want to know exactly what that revenue is, exactly what those expenses are, and figure out what that profit margin is on a monthly basis on your budget. You then want to take that profit margin on your budget and

start setting it aside in an emergency fund. Now, good news is you already have $14,000 and you are emergency fund. That to me seems pretty good. I'd call that probably three or four months of expenses depending on what's going on for you here in California. So check the box on that. Now that you've got that emergency fund, the next step is to ensure that you are investing toward your future, toward your girlfriend slash wife. I'd make sure y'all are married first before you start investing your money toward their future. But regardless, your future and your son's future. So Roth IRA. Go to public.com. Open up that Roth individual retirement. retirement account and start contributing whatever you can afford. Hundreds of dollars a month up to,

I think it's $600 or $700 a month now to max it out at $7,500 a year. Invest all of that in V-O-O-O and QQQ. Don't try and get cute. Don't try and get fancy. The goal here is to get $100,000 in index funds in ETFs. And something else I would do, honestly, Robert, is I'd love to see our friend here, go to Vanguard's website, open up a 529 account, seat it with $1,000 or $2,000. Go part of that in your VLOs and your, you know, Vanguard growth funds, whatever you want to do, and just have that now going in the background as their one-year-old son continues to grow up, because over the course of several years here, you're going to see that grow tremendously. Oh, and Robert, how do you forget the Trump account? Go get your Trump account set up. Go get that seed money. Maybe you can get

some Michael Dell seed money. Get a free, you know, a couple hundred, couple thousand, whatever it is over there. Do some research on that. But look into that. Also make sure that that you're taking advantage of whatever free money is out there coming here from the billionaires. I love that take. And the only thing I'm going to add is you crush the breakdown. I would park the thought process of taking the money now to buy the house. I think it should wait. You should get your base built. You should do everything Austin alluded to because the number one thing is we don't want to see people do is buy the forever home or the dream home first without having any investments making money while you sleep. So that's the only change.

We like to see people have $100,000 saved and invested in the items that Austin mentioned. So that way you're rocking and rolling and you don't have to worry and then come back to the house idea in maybe two, three, four years when the base is built. I love that breakdown. Our next question comes from blue collar wealth on Instagram. Blue collar wealth says, hey Austin and Robert, I have a question for both of you. I'm 27 and I have $100,000 invested in my brokerage account with $0 of debt. However, my wife has $7,000 of credit card debt, $10,000 of student loan debt, and $11,000 on her car. I didn't know about any of this until after we got married.

Should I take a chunk out of our investments to help us become debt-free? Or do I keep paying it off little by little for the next several years? Robert, kick us off. First and foremost, for anyone thinking about getting married or getting engaged, have this conversation first. Get a notepad out, get a laptop out, get all of your bills and all of your debts on the table, because you should never be already married and not know about all of these debts. Now, this is manageable because it's only $30,000, roughly $28,000, but imagine if it was $100,000 and you didn't know that, then you got married.

This could delay your ability to create financial freedom by years, maybe even a decade, by not knowing that. So for anyone that's not married, make sure you have the conversation first. In this instance, I would first and foremost tackle the credit card debt. You're absolutely right. Wipe that out. You can't out-invest high-interest debt. Number two, look at the student loan debt.

I would start paying off the higher interest ones first. You don't have to knock them out all at once because you still want to make sure you have some money invested for the future and compounding while you sleep. So I would look at the student loan debt second. And then third, with the car payment, if she's working, let her keep paying her car payment, especially if it's not an egregious loan amount and the interest is maybe below 7%. Let her keep paying it. Let her ride that out so you're not continually reducing what you've already invested for yourself, I'm guessing prior to the marriage in your brokerage account.

That's the order of operations of what I would do rather than just taking $29,000 and wiping it all off because that's over 25% of what you have spent years saving and investing for your future. Yeah, I think the credit card debt got to get rid of that, right? Got to throw that one out the window because you can't out-invest high-interest debt. Despite the NASDAQ ripping 33% in the last two months, that's not normal. So your 30% interest rate on your credit card, definitely, I get it, right? The stock market's done pretty good comparatively, but that's not normal. You can't predict that. So we're getting rid of high-interest credit card debt here. The student loans, it really depends on that interest rate on that. What we like to say as a rule of thumb is have at least that amount of money invested or. more before you start paying off those student loans. Obviously, you've done that. So if you want to pay off some student loans, do some action there, that's fine. But I agree on the car payment. It's like, I don't know. It all comes on these interest rates. Because like if your student loan interest rate is like three, four, five percent. And then payments, 100 bucks, 150 bucks a month. It's like, yeah, maybe keep that around for a little bit. Same thing with the car payment,

depending on how big or small that is. Now, if it's a $786 car payment and you can take $11,000 to wipe it out. Yeah, I would probably take that. I'd wipe it out. And now that's $780 a month payment can go toward investing, right? Now that compounds tremendously. Maybe that can go out to maxing out her Roth IRA or something of that nature. So there's a lot of different ways to kind of, you know, put this one together. The most obvious one is to call out that credit card debt and to really call out how important it is to be on the same page with money. It really bothers me that you didn't know about any of this until after you got married. Now I'm not going to blame or, you know, fault anyone here. Maybe you never asked. Maybe she never felt comfortable. Like, I have no idea.

But for everyone who is listening right now that does want to get engaged or is engaged or is trying to figure out how do we work toward marriage, could not agree more, it's so important to what Robert said to sit down, get the notepad, get the laptop, do what you got to do and say, all right, here's my debt, here my bills, here are my expenses, here's what I got saved, here are my investments, here's how much I got going on here. Because after you all get married, you, the then become a unit. You become a household. It's not my debt. It's not her credit card. It's not, you know, this, whatever. It's our credit card debt. It's our student loan debt. It's our car payment. It's also our 401k, our IRA, because you can use whatever verbiage you want. But the courts,

they say it's our, right? Like the courts look at it as a unit there. And so if anything happens, you know, that's what we're talking about prenuptial agreements. Either you wrote the prenupt, and you got this figured out or the court writes it for you and it's called you know divorce law and they've already got that figured out for you so that's why it's just it's so important to be on the same page of money it's so important to have all this stuff spelled out ahead of time because what is it robert half of marriages ended in divorce and the number one reason is money fights and money problems and there's no better easier way to prevent that than having it all in the table and saying let's get past this and let's make sure that we're on the same page with money yeah it really all

comes down to compatibility and if you don't know if you're financially compatible without having these hard conversations before an engagement or a marriage, it could cause you to spend years or decades struggling financially because one of you is going in one direction and the other is trying to save and build for the future. And you just don't want to be in that situation. And regardless if it's the male, the female, or who it is in the relationship, you need to make sure you're on the same page financially. Otherwise, it will end that marriage more than anything you can imagine because you just can't

get on the same page. So so incredibly important, and I'm glad you covered that, Austin. Yeah, I just want to reiterate, you call that out, it's really smart, right? Because until you both are on the same page, to Robert's point, maybe you're locked in on investing, and you want to go build some wealth, and you want to get some index funds, and you want to go rock and roll, do that, where your wife, maybe she just keeps swiping the credit card, maybe she wants a new car, maybe she wants to borrow against the house to do the helock, to get the vacation, to do the new kitchen, like, whatever.

and you're over here looking like, oh my goodness, what's going on? We can't build wealth. This isn't how you build wealth. And no one ever taught her, right? So like, we're not toss and blame around. But what we are saying is it's very important to be on the same page about how you want to move forward as a household when it comes to your money. Now, our final question here comes from Lori. Lori says, my daughter's 29. She's living paycheck to paycheck. She moved back home with the intention of saving money, returning to school with distance learning for a business degree while continuing to work full time. If she makes $50,000 a year, it's a good year. How should she allocate her income in a foundational way while she prepares for a more lucrative career? She

currently works in a family-owned jewelry store where she does lots of books, backup for the accountant and marketing as well as sales, which she's very good at, but doesn't love. Let's break this one down a little bit here, Robert. So 29, and it seems to me like this daughter never went to college, so she's doing, or maybe she did a little bit of college, but she's doing the books for a family-owned jewelry store, which is probably paying, you know, at 50,000 a year. Maybe she's working. So call it maybe 20 bucks an hour, $25 an hour is probably what she's, she's making here doing the books, also doing some marketing and some sales and whatever. So she's just, she's an employee working in retail. Totally cool. We get that. But also here, she's trying to go and say, hey, I want to go to

school. I want to get a degree so I can go work in a more lucrative career. Now, where my kind of brand immediately goes, Robert, and I want to get your feedback on this is, a business degree. What is a business degree? Is it management? And if that's the case, throw that out the window. If it's a marketing degree, who knows, AI is running marketing right now. It's like, I am really intimidated by this. I'm just going to go to school, get a broad business degree. Either you're paying for her student loans, Lori, or she's going, you know, $60,000, $100,000 into student loan debt. I don't know what's going on. But this situation isn't sitting right with me. Here is what I would do in She's 29. She's been working at this jewelry business for a while. She's been working retail. Maybe she's,

maybe she's, it's time for her to go take that sales role at that, that high ticket sales, whatever that's out there for her that she's interested in. Or maybe it's time to take that marketing to the next level and go join an agency as a marketing coordinator. Or maybe it's time to take this to the next level to the jewelry store. Say, hey, I've been here for seven years. I'm ready to rock and roll. I want to be part owner. I want to be part of the, the, the, the thing going on here. I just don't think the solution to the problem of living paycheck to paycheck here is going more in debt for student loans with a degree that's not going to probably matter in four to five years with AI. And then we say, okay, well, now what do I do? I'm just going to blame other people because I'm so confused on what's going on.

It's not your fault. AI's taken and doing some weird stuff here, Robert. But what's your take and what advice do you have for our friend Lori and her daughter? Yeah, she's not going to like it. I feel like millions and millions of people are in this exact situation. They're taking this willy-nilly approach to their lives, and they're never drawing a line in the sand and say, okay, I'm living to paycheck to paycheck. I'm 29. I'm 39. I'm 49. I'm 49. I've never gotten ahead in life and why. And it becomes a mindset thing, but also a lack of planning. I would stop everything. Go back to the drawing board. Get my budget in order. Okay, I don't have rent right now because I'm living at home, so I'm saving all this money. I'm not going to go further into debt to move ahead. Get the budget and order. figure out where you're lacking and where you're spending too much money because if you're living paycheck to paycheck and making 50k a year, an income problem and a spending problem, I would go back to the basics because I see this every single day in my DMs and in people that ask me what to do.

And it always comes down to, well, I'm 34. I'm 39 years old and I'm starting over. Well, you're starting over because you never started correctly in the first place. So for me, I would figure it all out. I would not spend the money on the school. I would get really dialed in because you do have a decent job right now. Get the budget figured out. Get your life figured out and not spend money on going and get a college degree. Like Austin said, if you want to go take a sales program so you can be an outside sales or an inside salesperson, great.

Sales is not going to get replaced with AI. But you need to get it figured out instead of constantly kicking the can down the road for a future degree that's probably going to be worthless. That's my take. I would have a really hard conversation with myself and say, all right, I'm 29 years old. I have to get my crap together and here's how I'm going to do it. And that's what I would do next. Everybody, thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast.

Be sure to go check out waldo.a.i. Hold breakdown on that one in the show notes below. We're super excited about it. It sounds really, really interesting to us. And shout out Ryan again for joining us here on the show. Do not forget, wallstreetfavits.com, the easiest way to see what Wall Street thinks. about your portfolio, price targets, historical valuations, technical analysis, hedge fund trades, price alerts, IPO alerts, all of it is inside of Wall Streetfavorits.com and it is

cheaper than your Netflix subscription. So really, really cool stuff over at wallstreetfavorits.com. And don't forget to come back on Friday for our Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast titled The Rich Habits Radar where we talk about the biggest things impacting you and your money on a weekly basis. And always remember, share these episodes with a friend. Everyone has blind spots and issues with their finances and their mindset. We are here to help and we'll see you guys next time.