Rich Habits Podcast - 50: Real Estate is Not the Best Way to Get Rich in 2024

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz delve deep into their theory -- real estate is not the best way to get rich in 2024. Products, brand building, and services will allow you to generate cash flow quicker (and without as much debt) than real estate. Let's dive in!---Public has finally released options trading on their platform! To learn more about all of the product features Public offers, ⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠---⭐ Download our FREE Budgeting Template – click here⭐ Earn 5.1% on your savings with a High-Yield Cash Account – click here⭐ Automatically buy stock where you shop with Grifin – click here⭐ Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance – click here⭐ Watch the replay of our covered call webinar – ⁠click here⁠⭐ Use code “Spotify” for 15% off our 4-module video course – 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]---Hankwitz Group LLC has an existing business relationship with NEOS Investment Management LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and the author owns several NEOS ETFs.

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My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with more than 200 million in company exits under his belt and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset. However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives, one from an industry veteran, which is Robert and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of

building wealth and figuring it all out. Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? In today's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're going to explain why we believe real estate is not the best way to get rich if you're starting your wealth building journey in 24. Don't get us wrong. We're both real estate investors and real estate has made us both a lot of money. However, real estate is a very long-term game. If you're looking to build serious wealth over the next several years, real estate might not be the right way to start, especially with interest rates the way they are right now. Throughout this episode, we'll share three alternative ways to build serious wealth faster without going into massive amounts of debt to do it.

This episode is really important because if you're like me, you like to see cash money hitting your bank account, not just to see the value of your real estate tick higher on Zillow, right? Real estate has always been a diversification method in my mind, not exactly a way to build cash flow in generational wealth allowing me to quit my nine to five job. Some people think that, oh, I just go buy a rental property, a cash flow from it, I'll buy a couple more, and I'm good to go. Sure, that's a way to do it, but it's a little bit slower of a process than you might think. So I'm excited to dive into these three different methods, Robert, because not only are they really easy to comprehend, but anyone could start these and really start

2024 off with the bang and make tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, depending on how successful some of these methods might be for them. So kick us off with method number one. Yes, method number one is creating a product. Everyone listening and following along knows that I've been a product guy for 30 years. Silly Bands was my biggest hit. We've got several really good products right now that are in the markets. And what I love about creating a product, it can be a consumer product. It can be a tool, a beauty product, or it can even be an existing product that's been in the market for decades, but hasn't been updated in all these years. So that's really important to understand. And with TikTok shop, it's easier than ever to make your first one million in sales. So for example, I found a guy who's selling these $108 handcrafted leather belts out of his freaking garage because he published great videos demonstrating how the belts work. Everyone wanted them.

This guy did over a million dollars in sales in only six months in 2023 selling freaking leather belts. I want everyone to understand it's not as daunting as you think. there are so many ways to get started in this product development world and be able to either create your own product, white label a product, or create a new version of an already existing product. I have actually seen that guy on TikTok as well. I don't know who films his videos, but they do a really good job. It's literally him like punching the holes in the belt. But then you can click to see how many belts have been sold in the reviews and stuff. And you do the math.

It's well over a million in sales. So, Robert, as someone who has been, built countless products throughout their life. Walk our listeners through the idea to go to market strategy with some of these products, right? You have an idea. How do you take an idea to an actual product? I love it. And we have an example that is happening right now today right in front of our eyes.

So a few months ago, Elizabeth, she is very much into puzzles. And we were sitting there. And one night she was just kind of mumbling on and complaining about how all the puzzles had these antiquated graphics in the big flimsy boxes. And I was like, why don't we start a puzzle company? You love puzzles. You know the market. I know products. We can do it different. So we started going through it like, what could we do better and different in the puzzle industry? And so we came up with this idea to do these really outlandish designs. We use AI to really create these beautiful, in-depth colors and really intricate designs. But then the key stroke of genius was,

Screw the box. We're going to put them in bags, these cool coffee bags that are resellable. So then all of these people that are living in van life and traveling a lot and couch surfing can take their puzzles with them. Whereas in the past, all puzzles were in boxes. So they're really hard to travel with. So we created a company called Paragon Puzzles. If you want to check it out, it's Paragonpuzzles.com. That's my shameless plug. But anyway, we started out by finding one of the graphic designers that we currently use. very gifted in AI art. So we talked to him. We came up with the concepts for the first drop. We got the AI designs ready. Then I went to work finding the best possible manufacturer. So a lot of times what I'll do here is I'll use Alibaba. And what you need to do and understand with

Alibaba is be careful. Make sure you sign a contract, at least an NDA with these factories before you lease your designs or your concept. And don't tell them any more information than you need to until you have these contracts signed. So anyway, a few steps ahead, we find a great factory, really modern tools, great quality. We got samples from them first of a current puzzle that they'd made, not related to us. So we could check the quality, the thickness. I guess in puzzles, you know, not having a lot of dust in the puzzle pieces is really important. And so that was it. We wrote a contract with them. They were our factory. So we moved ahead to the bags. We wanted to have these really cool coffee bags that were resellable that could have this really

vivid art on them. And that was the next step. And that was a little bit of a bumpy road. We found a factory. Then they bait and switched us on the pricing. But we got through it. And the whole process from start this iteration process of that first conversation to having puzzles in my warehouse was about five months.

And, you know, let's say $40,000. But what's beautiful about it is we can. control it. We own it all. Elizabeth and I, it's our baby. She's running it. And it went from idea to concept, to design, to on the shelves now and tons of interest. It's really doing well all in the course of four or five months. And this company like any other product company could go on to generate millions of dollars a year of revenue. So that's what I love about products and why I think it's number one in this episode because I think if you develop, invent, or reinvent or redesign an existing product, that in my opinion is the fastest way to massive wealth. You see it

all the time on TikTok where someone has a product that gets really, really viral. They go huge and they do 10 million in sales in year one, which we could have never done in the past without the likes of TikTok or Instagram. So that's why I put products as number one here in this episode and why it's a great example and illustration of Paragon puzzles of what you can do from start to finish. It's not that expensive like you would think. It's not this mind bending hurdle after hurdle. You just have to do the work, put one foot in front of the other, and kind of follow these steps to be able to create that product brand on your own. And I think what's really important to share here as well, Robert, is this cost you about $40,000 from start to finish, right?

Where maybe someone else has an idea for a product and it might only cost them $6,000 or 15,000, right? You don't need $40,000 to go start a product. And additionally, something else I wanted to call out as well, Robert, you know, let's say that you sold out of this first drop. I mean, I'm sure you guys are going to make out like a bandit and the money you'll make from this. I'd love to think like, okay, maybe that's around $80,000, like, well, Robert, Newsflash,

the annual median household income here in the United States is about 70 grand. So like this for you is a fun project that you're enjoying and you're scaling and having a blast with while also making as much money as the average American household, which is crazy to think of. Yeah, the simple math on Paragon puzzles for this particular project is we did six designs, a thousand puzzles of each. So that's 6,000 puzzles of inventory to start. And if those sell out at $20, each, then you're looking at $120,000 in revenue. So with an expected rate of return of 20 or 30%, we could even see, you know, 40, 50, 60,000 dollars in profit, depending on what we spend in marketing, just on the first

drop while we're building the company. And then each drop is going to get better and better as we get momentum because we're going to be able to bring our costs down, obviously, because we'll buy more inventory. And we're going to have more and more sales each week. each day. So it's really exciting. It's just always important for everyone to understand and why this episode is really important and near and dear to my heart because I believe creating a product is the best way to create great wealth in a shorter amount of time than anything else. And for Robert, that might be silly bands and puzzles and other products for you listening.

I mean, that might be, you know, an example I recently bought was a drinking game with like a deck of cards. I guarantee you, some random person in their 30s was like, oh, I've got witty ideas for a drinking game. Like, I bet I can go find a manufacturer. And I spent 30 bucks on it, right? Like, that's the type of products we're talking about. We're not saying to reinvent the wheel. We're not saying to invent the next MacBook pro here. We're just saying there are so many cool ways everyone listening is so creative and thoughtful. And there's so many things that can inspire us to make cool products. And this episode will hopefully inspire you to make something fun in 24. Now, Robert, with that being said, what is the second method that people can begin to build

real wealth quicker than real estate? Yes, number two is create a brand. It's never been easier to share your unique perspective and experience on life with millions of strangers on the internet. By creating a brand, this could be a personal brand, a travel brand, a lifestyle brand, or it could be any other popular niche that you can grow and monetize. You're building not only a recognizable, but also a lucrative business by doing this. You hear about it every day. You see it every day on TikTok and Instagram and some of these other platforms. And so you have to think, why can't it be me? You can create a brand around any niche, any career, anything that's interesting that has an audience. And it can be you. And so that's why creating a brand is number two for me. I'm right there with you, man. There are

thousands of people on the internet making an extra $50,000 to $150,000 a year building out their own personal and lifestyle brands. This might be Amazon affiliates, TikTok affiliates, advertisements, subscription support via Patreon or Substack, or even ad revenue generated on Twitter. I've got friends making thousands of dollars a month right now just by tweeting.

And thinking about these sort of niche lifestyle brands as well that I've seen on TikTok, I used to follow this person whose whole thing was the afternoon soda, the afternoon drink, right? So what she would do is she'd have all these different flavored soda and she'd make a video of herself, pouring the soda into a nice glass, adding her little syrups and sugars, and then that was her little thing. And she made a really cool video about it.

She posted it every single day. Well, before you know it, companies like Poppy and SpinDrift and other companies were sponsoring her so she can make videos about their brand. It's crazy, right? People love little things. You all listening right now have your own little thing if it's cleaning, if it's sodas, if it's technology, like whatever your thing is. Talk about it on the internet, because I promise there are tens of thousands, even thousands of people, I guarantee you, elsewhere around the world that also resonate with what you're doing. Yes, we live in the greatest time in history for making money. And we see it every day where people are talking about some crazy thing that someone went viral.

And there's another thing where someone's doing this and they went viral and now they're making millions of dollars and they're famous. You've got Alex Earle out there who they get ready with me. She's created that craze. and now she's a multi, multi-millionaire. It is happening before your eyes. So it's really just important for our listeners to understand that when building this personal or lifestyle brand, it really just takes creativity and consistency.

And always remember, I know it's easy to want to give up. You do 30 videos. Nothing goes viral. You're stuck at 500 views. You're not sure what to do. And you don't want to do it anymore. But if you're passionate about it, you're good at it. You're learning.

you just have to understand you truly are one viral video away from huge success. Look at me. I've had massive success in my career over the last 30 years. And a year ago, a year and a half ago, I had 72,000 followers on TikTok and everyone was clamoring saying, why don't I do more in social media? I should come out from behind the brands. I should build my personal brand. So I said, okay, I've got an idea.

I'm going to do this. So I did two videos. and this is how I met Austin. And in those two videos, I went from 72,000 followers on TikTok to over 650,000 followers on TikTok in 30 days time. I found my niche, I found my calling, and people loved it. So just don't give up because you can be so, so close and not even know it.

And I hope this episode resonates with you and gets you to keep going because in life there's no greater way to live and build well, and build your career than doing something that is what you set out to do and what resonates with you, with your heart and your soul and gets you excited every day to get out of bed. And for me, that's teaching and giving educational insight in finance, business, and mindset. And that's why the Rich Habits podcast has become such a huge success because I've got 30 years of experience. And Austin is extremely gifted in his parts of this as well.

So that combination just really resonates with people because everyone, is looking for those insights to be able to build wealth for themselves. And please do not listen to your friends that might call you cringe or weird for posting about stuff you love on the internet. Post that first YouTube video. Tweet that first tweet, share that first Instagram real because you never know what's going to happen. I've got a friend named J.C. Rodriguez on Instagram. He was stuck at a couple thousand followers for a long time. And then he made a video of him cutting his own hair. That video got 20 million views in two days on Instagram. It was crazy. So like, you never know what's going to go viral. You never know,

but like what you do know that you all have a very specific knowledge, a very specific niche that you just are super passionate about. Again, Robert and I, that's business finance and mindset for you that might be cleaning, that might be garage sailing, that might be sneakers, that might be anything else, but just share it, talk about it, build that brand on the internet because I guarantee you, people will resonate with it. Now, Robert, what is our third method for building wealth faster than real estate. Number three is create a service. This one is my favorite way to build high income fast. This could be using AI, video editing, copywriting, or any one of hundreds of other online services. I get asked about it every single day and there are so many ways to do this. At the end of

the day, you have specific knowledge of a service that is marketable and monetizable. A service I would love for someone to create that I would use and likely invest in would be like tech stack creation and management for small businesses. Right now we use ClickUp and they do an amazing job for my project management and it's great. But I was very fortunate to know one of the founders of ClickUp to help us put everything together and get it organized. So look at a service-based business for those of you out there that are tech savvy that you could literally create a service-based business where you're going to help small businesses with their tech stack from start the finish. You're going to charge them a monthly retainer. You're going to charge them service fees.

whatever, just to help them create a manageable tech stack so everything is not so fragmented. Trust me, there are thousands and thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs out there that need help like this that do not have an in-house tech person to help tie all the services together in a way that makes it make sense and makes it affordable. So that's just one idea that I have that someone could run with and really thrive. And with that business, think about it this way. If you mastered the art of cold DMs and cold emails for this service, oh, my God, your sales would go through the roof because everyone needs help with this. Yeah, speaking of things that I would happily pay a pretty penny for and do right now is video editing, right?

If it's for this podcast, my own content, YouTube videos, things like that, right? Video editing is never going away. Other services, I know my friends pay a pretty, pretty penny for right now are, ghostwriting LinkedIn posts and Twitter threads, UGC videos for their startups or their brands, appointment setting, I think like virtual assistant stuff. And even my favorite because actually I did this is building and selling websites. It is so simple to build a website these days. Go to a mom and pop.

Go to these boomers who have these terrible websites on Yelp. You know, find these crazy people who had never thought about SEO or website design, any of that stuff. Build a website for $1,000, $2,000 and sell it to them. make an easy $2,000 a month, right? Like, that's $24,000 a year, which invested into the stock market is going to be your first $100,000 before you know it, right? That's the type of stuff we're looking for here, people.

We want you all to be creative. We want you all to be thinking about what you have, again, that specific knowledge in. For me, I've got specific knowledge, I guess now in podcasting, so I could, I guess, go and sell that as a service. Robert's got specific knowledge and building businesses. That could be, you know, he'd be an advisor for small businesses, right? There's a ton of different ways that all of us. can monetize our knowledge, our skills, and different experiences that we've created and used

throughout our lives. So when you think about selling a service, I just want everyone to realize that it's a lot easier than you think and to reflect upon what you're good at. If you can be self-aware enough to know what those things are for you, the sky is the limit. Yeah, I have a friend right now and it's kind of a funny thing when you think about how simple it can be. He makes good, good money, six figures for sure. And all he does is optimize people's LinkedIn pages. I have a friend. I want to mention his name here, but he has 40,000 followers on LinkedIn. And he pays someone thousands of dollars a month, ghost writing posts on his LinkedIn. Obviously, he approves them and edits them and stuff. But like thousands of dollars to write like 10 posts.

It's crazy. So seriously, y'all, money is everywhere in 2024. And we want you to go find it, take it, take what's yours, take that money, invest it, build your cash flow around your investments if that's with SPYI, QQQI, or writing covered calls. Reminder, we have the covered call webinar coming out here. February 7 at 4 p.m. There's a link in the description below to go learn more about that. We're going to walk you through how I generated $4,050 writing covered call option contracts against my Tesla stock since September 12th. I'm going to show you all my transactions. Every single thing you need to know, we're going to be joined by the Nios team. The Wall Street experts about covered calls, it's going to be a really great webinar. Right now, I think we only have about

200 spots left. So if you've not yet saved your seat, you need to do that now. Register using the link in the description below. Robert, what a wonderful episode. I feel so motivated. I feel so excited now to get after it in 2024. And I want to add one more thing because, yes, I'm obviously pumped up from this episode and no, it's not from caffeine, but I just think this is something that just should be able to shift so many people's mindset to understand it's all possible. And there's an older quote that I really love. And I think it's really relevant for this episode. And let me see if I can get it right, but it's, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate for. And I've always really loved that quote. And I think it resonates well with this

information because I think so many people sit on the sidelines and they think they have that lack mentality. They think like, that's not for me. I'm not meant to be rich. I could never do that. Well, guess what? There are people that I see every day in my private community that I'm shocked at how good they are what they do, whether it's someone that's really, really great at organizational skills or really, really great at mortgages and understands the complexities of every different type of mortgage. That's a niche in itself that you could build off of. So there are so many different ways you can build these brands, build these services, and you just have to know that it's for you and put the work in. Trust me, I am a prime example of what it can do if you go

all in on yourself and what you're good at. So please, please take notes, take action. because I love this episode as well. I don't know about you, Robert, I'm ready to run through a brick wall. Man, I am so excited and pumped up for 2024. So I hope all of our listeners are, to your point, taking notes and taking action. Before we jump into everyone's favorite section of the episode, our question and answer section, let's take a quick moment to hear from this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Rich Habits podcast is brought to you by Nios Investments.

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The equity securities purchased by the fund may involve large price swings and potential for loss. A fund's income may decline when yields fall. Fixed income securities will decline in value because of an increase in interest rates. With that being said, Robert, they have just announced two days ago their QQQQIETF. That's why we can now say the NASDAQ-100. index is a part of this ad. We are so excited.

The distribution yield, Robert, of this ETF. Not only are they aiming to track the performance of the NASDAQ, which news flash was up like 40 something percent last year, but they're also paying out 13 to 14 percent of that in income, tax efficient income every single year to those shareholders, right? You get monthly income distributions from this ETF. It's how I generate passive income for myself. I use it to pay my mortgage, fill up my gas, tank by my groceries. It is incredible. So go check out QQQQI right now. If you've got SPYI already in your

portfolio, you're going to love QQQI. It's the same thing, tracks a nice index similar to the S&P and has a better distribution yield. Yes, I can't wait to get some money. I'm jumping at the bit to get some money into QQQI. So thank you for the reminder, Austin, because I think it launched a couple days ago and I am ready to get some money moving in there for 2024. So our first question of Our question and answer segment comes from Thea C. Thia says, I've got a million dollars inside my 403B, and 95% of that is invested into BlackRock's 2040 target date fund. I see you all talk about target date funds and how they've underperformed. Should I consider selling my shares and moving the money into an index fund? I'm going to take a stab at this one first, Robert.

Now, how I'm thinking about this is if you have a 2040 target date fund, right now it's 2024, you plan to retire in the next call it 15 years. So maybe you're about 50 years old. 55 years old, just depending on when you plan to retire from an age perspective. If it were me, I would probably not just sell all the money right there and put it into index funds. I think at your age, you probably want a little bit more stability, a little bit more, you know, smoother portfolio volatility. So I could understand why you want to keep that 2040 target date fund.

However, with that being said, I think all new money invested into your 403B should be into the index funds we talk about. E-O-O-Q-Q-Q-G-T, V-T-V-I, things of that nature. Because I looked up BlackRock's 2040 Target Date Fund, and it has underperformed, to say the least, over the last one, three, five, and ten years, Robert, what's your perspective on this question? Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Austin.

I think based on this strategy, I would leave the money where it is, but all new money, we need to get that into higher-performing assets. Because right now, what you don't want to do, yes, there's stability in the target date fund, but you're going to underperform the market for years and years, just like it has in the past years. So getting it into these higher yielding assets, like we talk about the VOOs and the QQs, it's just a better strategy overall to get more growth. We always talk about that positive arbitrage and getting as much money going our way versus

into the hands of these platforms or these funds. So I definitely agree with you. And that's what I would do moving forward. And, you know, don't get me wrong here. How I'm thinking about this is really like, cool, you built up a million dollars. You've got it in Target Date Fund. Think about that as your permanent nest egg, right? That's going to be kind of rebalanced every year. However often, the 2040 target date fund is rebalanced. You've got your bonds, your T bills. I mean, you are very well diversified. Call that the nest egg. All new money to Robert Nye's point. Put that into something more aggressive, right? Put that into actual index funds that are going to do 26 percent, like happened in 2023, just for perspective, BlackRock's 2040.

Target date fund only did 11% last year. So not that great. But best luck to you, Thea, and thank you for your question. Our next question comes from Christy M. Christy says, my husband and I are in our mid-40s and we're trying to diversify away from such concentration in real estate and have a little bit more money in stocks. We have two rental properties and they're cash flowing just fine, while we only have 20% of our net worth in the stock market.

We'd love to buy more. We just don't know where to start. What's your thoughts? I'm going to take this one first, Robert, because I love me some stock markets. Good job on the real estate. Having two cash flowing properties, that's incredible. You know, this episode was about real estate. We know real estate's a great way to diversify and build wealth over a long period of time.

You're in your mid-40s. We have another 20 years before traditional retirement. So don't sweat that. You're doing a great job there. Now, to your point of diversifying more into the stock market, a couple things that I would do. The first thing I do is make sure that I'm doing the match beats Roth, beats taxable sort of playbook that Robert and I always talk about. So what that means is all new money that comes in that you want to now invest into the stock market, make sure that you do it in this specific order by

priority. Up to the match of your 401k employer, right? You want to make sure you get the free money from the match. Once you get all your free money from the match, then any additional money to invest goes all into the Roth IRA, both you and your husband can do this. By doing this, you'll be able to max that out at $7,000 a year, put it inside of the awesome index funds that we talk about, perform just as great as the market, you're going to do just fine with VOO, QQQ, VTI. And then any additional funds, that's when you open up a brokerage account on public.com. You can diversify that, sure, with the stocks that we always talk about, or perhaps buy some cryptocurrencies, some collectibles, some music royalties like I have.

It's a great platform. It's an all-in-one investing platforms to go check them out. Now, that's how I would approach it. Straight index funds, super simple. And in case you make a little bit more than I think the income limits allow for the Roth IRA, check out a backdoor Roth IRA. I use carrymoney.com to do mine. Very simple process.

It's completely free. Highly recommend it, so go check them out. I'll leave a link in the description below. But Robert, what do you think about the strategy? Yeah, I think it's great. And without knowing all of the details, Christy, great question and congrats on your current situation. But I think what you laid out is really smart.

And for the third part of that, after the Roth is maxed, after the match is met with the 401K, that's where you could start to get a little more. creative and a little more aggressive. You can open that brokerage account like Austin alluded to and start looking at owning some of these staples in crypto like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Chainlink, have a portion of your portfolio there. And then also look at other alternative investments. Or also an investment that Austin and I really enjoyed in 2023 was investing with VinoVest, looking at, you know, whiskey and wine. So there's a lot of different things you can do once you're maxing out all of the traditional stuff to add diversification to your portfolios.

So great question, Christy. Great question. And thanks again. Don't forget y'all to ask us questions. Head over to Instagram. Rich Habits podcast is our at symbol. And just shoot us a DM. That's where we got these questions for the episode.

Now our final question comes from Aredin. A readin says, I make $110,000 a year. I have $46,000 in my high yield savings account. And I maxed out my retirement investing in 2023. I want to save for a down payment on a house, which will likely be around $85,000 over the next five years. Should I completely stop contributing to my Roth IRA so I can save quicker for this down payment? I'm saving around $26,000 per year in total.

Arendan, congratulations on your incredible situation here. 110 is a great, great salary, $46,000 in a high-yield savings account, which I'm sure is your emergency fund. Maybe it's a little bit bulkier than it needs to be, but that's a great, great nest egg to have there and congrats on maxing out those retirement accounts. So I think about this not so black and white. I think there's a gray area where we can do both. You always want to be deploying new capital into the markets. I think you said you're in your early 30s and the Instagram DM. So you're definitely at an age where you want to be a net buyer of assets. So you want to be purchasing the index funds we

talk about in a way that is aggressive. And I think a good way to do that is inside of your Roth IRA. So let's say that you are doing $7,000 a year in the Roth, maybe even five if you want to a little bit softer, but you're doing the Roth IRA. That still leaves you at least $20,000 a year now to set aside for a down payment. If you have a five-year shot clock like you gave yourself, well, after four years, five years, I mean, at $20,000 a year, you're going to save enough for that. That's no problem. So I don't think you should see it as so black and white, but kind of, you know, do both. And one of the biggest takeaways here on this is to understand so many people think that when they're saving for a house, that money needs to sit somewhere like a savings account

or maybe a high-yield savings account. In a high-yield savings account is the absolute minimum. But if you're not going to buy that house for two or three years, you need to maximize your earnings on that money because we have to understand. Even if you have a traditional brokerage account and you have money in these index funds we talk about, it's always going to be liquid. It really is. You could look at treasury bills. There's so many ways to earn money while you're saving. the money for this investment of the house. So just I hope everyone listening understands. Optimize your earnings in the meantime because unless you're putting it in a CD or your Roth IRA or something else, you're going to have flexibility and liquidity with that money to get it out

when you need it anyway. So always maximize your earnings while you're waiting. Couldn't agree more, right? Having that in a high yield savings account is the very least you can do. If you're trying to buy a house in five years, yeah, throw it in the stock part. Throw it in a good growth stock mutual fund, throw it in a maybe low volatility index fund, maybe even throw it into SPYI, right? Like those are awesome ways to be generating more yield with your money over that five-year period. Now, if you needed to buy it in six months or 12 months, it's kind of unpredictable in the short term, but we all know over the long term, definitely five years, the stock market will

continue to trend higher. Really good question, erred in. Couldn't agree more with what you said, Robert. Everyone, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Rich Habits podcast. please share your email address with us. There's going to be a form below. We're kicking off February Strong. We are doing a how to optimize your credit card spend in February email challenge.

You're going to get five or six emails from us talking about specific credit cards, cash back, travel, rewards, everything to do so you are getting the most bang for your buck with everyday expenses, gas, utilities, groceries, rent, right? Things you're going to be spending anyway. So we're not telling you to spend more money. Don't go into debt, but optimize how you're spending money today. So share your email address. You're not going to want to miss that.

And finally, join us on February 7 for our covered call webinar. Robert, tell me a little bit about that and why we're so excited. Yes, we're so excited. There are limited seats for this. It is free. It's going to be an amazing event. We have some really, really great Wall Street experts. We've got a friend of mine joining Austin and I as well.

So everyone that's been hitting us up, and I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people have been asking us, how do we do covered call strategies? you're going to learn it all in this free webinar on the 7th, and it's at 4 p.m. Eastern, correct? Yes, that's correct. And we'll be walking people through in real time. I will literally show you, here are my stocks. I'm going to write a covered call on them right now in real time with you all. Here's the money that was deposited, and here's how I'm going to deploy that, right? It's so straightforward and simple. We can't wait to walk you all through it. With that being said, thanks again for supporting the podcast. We're top five right now. Maybe we see you guys in the top three next week.

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