Rich Habits Podcast - Q&A: ADUs, HELOCs, and $175K in Savings

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz answer your questions! Be sure to check out Public's new ⁠High Yield Cash Account paying 5.1% APY.⁠ This is higher than anything else on the market and is FDIC insured up to $5M. ---Earn 5.1% APY using a Public HYCA, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Opt-in and share your email, ⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠4-module video course!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download our FREE Budget Template, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To learn more about Robert: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://stan.store/RobertJCroak⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To learn more about Austin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://stan.store/austinhankwitz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact: [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.

Hey everyone and happy new year. Welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast question and answer edition. We are so thrilled to announce that public.com is the exclusive title sponsor for these Q&A episodes. Now, as a reminder, public.com is one of our favorite online brokerage platforms. We talk about them all the time. They offer, though, much more than just stocks. They give investors the opportunity to own cryptocurrency, tea bills, bonds, and even music royalties. Yes, and they even just launched their own high-yield cash account that pays a higher yield than Robin Hood, M1 Finance, Ally Financial, and literally everyone else at 5.1% with no subscription fees required. Did I mention the funds are insured for up to $5 million. They're also fully liquid so you can withdraw your funds at any

time. Be sure to move your existing savings accounts over to Publix's high-yield cash account by visiting public.com front slash rich habits. Yes, they even built us an awesome landing page. Yes, it is a very cool landing page. Again, that's public.com forward slash rich habits. There's also going to be a link to it in the show notes below. And if high yield cash account and optimizing your savings isn't something you're interested in, which is like mind boggling to me, you should absolutely be interested in that. But anyway, they also have a lot of information on three other really, really important things we talked about, bonds, tea bills, and music royalties. So if you want to earn yield in 2024,

just go click the link. Go check it out. You're going to love it. It's going to be a really, really good time. And who doesn't like some extra passive income, Robert? Absolutely. Public is one of my favorite platforms. You guys hear me talk about it all the time all year long.

So yes, definitely check it out. With that being said, let's now jump into the question and answer edition of the Rich Habits podcast with our first question coming from Karen P. Karen says, my husband is 41 and I am 33. We have about $175,000 in a high-yield savings account. We haven't been maxing out our Roth IRA, but we plan to in 2024. Now, my husband has retirement through his law enforcement job and a deferred compensation account through his new job as well.

We're also wanting to buy a house to raise our young children in, but the market is insanely high where we live here in Bay Area, California. And I want to make the most financially sound investment possible. Should we consider doing house hacking or should we go for it with buying the regular house? Thanks for all the help. Robert, I saw this question and my jaw dropped. because I thought they actually just had $175,000 sitting in a high-yield savings account,

like just for fun when actuality, it's probably for a down payment. So obviously I'm not mad at that. It's good to have a down payment, right? But Robert, what's your first thought on this? Yeah, I think $175,000 in a high-yield savings account. Thank goodness it's in something, but I think that's a lot. So let's back up a little bit. If they're looking to buy a house, I would be scared to death of thinking about buying one

right now in the Bay Area because those house prices are so incredibly high. So I think you're definitely on the right track here, Karen, by thinking about house hacking. I would love to see you guys house hack buy a duplex, buy a triplex or buy a quadplex, be in that for say one, two, three years to be able to get some capital appreciation moving, hold on to some more of your cash and get that invested and diversified. And also make sure you're maxing out that Roth every single year. Remember, you and your husband can both have Roths, and they have now increased to $7,000 a year from $6,500. So we definitely want to see those get maxed out. So in my opinion, use as little as you can of the $175,000, get the rest of it,

invested and diversified through your portfolios and different options we talk about on the podcast. And look at some of these new programs that are available. Fannie Mae has a great program right now where you can put 5% down on up to $1.3 million dollar property with up to four doors. This is an incredible program that could be great for you and hubby. So I would look at that as well. But for me, be careful. The Bay Area is extremely overpriced right now. And I would hate to see you buy at the top of the market and then end up being house broke and upside down on that property in the coming years. And Robert, you mentioned putting the other, you know, let's say they have the down payment of the 175 and then putting the other balance there to work doing something differently.

You know, if you want to make sure that you are looking out for your children, we always talk about the 529. It is a investment account that's used for college purposes only. For example, I opened up a 529 account on Vanguard's website with about $3,000 in 2023, and I've been adding about $100 to $150 per month to it for my niece and nephews. And that account is already north of $4,000 in value, which is cool. But in 18 years, which is when they will be college age, it should be worth closer. to $70, 80, $90,000. And assuming that they do not go to college, which I know everyone's like,

well, what if they don't go to college? If they don't go to college, you can literally roll over up to $35,000 from that account into their own Roth IRAs, which is something that you and your husband are looking to do here and max that out for yourself in 2024. So there's a lot of really good ways to kind of think about, you know, not just from a house perspective, but maybe also like, okay, we optimize for that. That's great. But like, now you have all this extra money. How do you optimize that now too because 175 grand is a lot of money. I mean, that's life-changing money for a lot of people. So Karen, we appreciate the question. Fingers crossed that you do get a really cool duplex or a triplex or a quadplex. You take advantage of that awesome loan that Robert had mentioned and you only

put 5% down and you're cash flowing and having a good time. And by the way, we also answered a very similar question in our last episode, specifically how to find the duplexes, how to go through the whole process of like getting this type of loan, things like that. So, If you're gung-ho on doing this method, go listen to our last episode to learn a little bit more about the intricacies. Now, our next question comes from Namy. She says, hi, guys, I love your podcast. I only recently discovered it, so I'm not completely through it. So please forgive me if my question has already been answered in an episode or a Q&A episode.

I want to sell my car at some point because it's just too big. I'd probably get about 20 grand for it. Would it make more sense to instead of buying another car, lease one and then invest the $20,000? So as we talked about in literally Tuesday's episode, so a couple days ago, we think it is a very good idea to get rid of all of these monthly payments that are leaving your wallet and your bank account every single month, right? Robert talked about the average car payment in America right now is over $1,000. And I said, $1,000 invested over 20, 30 years is millions of dollars in retirement, right? So $20,000 might not seem like a lot. And sure, you could probably take all that money and put it into something and just have a payment every.

single month. So just for some quick math here, if you were to go borrow $20,000 or lease it or something like that, your payment would be probably close to $400, maybe $500 a month, that is an entire year's worth of maxing out your Roth IRA. So I would much rather just cut the check, get that used car, maybe even get up $15,000 or $12,000 car, right? And take that extra funds and invest it. Buy some Bitcoin, some bonds, some T-bills, some SPYI, whatever you got to do. But I would probably vote to not have the monthly payment for the next five years of my life. But Robert, what's your perspective. Yeah, I'm really torn on this because I like the idea of taking that $20,000 in investing it, but let's do some simple math. If you invested $20,000 immediately from the sale of the

vehicle, and you were to put it into a basket of index funds, and let's say you make 10% for the year. So with $20,000, you would make $2,000 in profit for the year at 10%. That would be less in upside potential for yourself than just not having a car payment at all and avoiding that $400 a month car payment by just paying cash for the vehicle. So this is one of those where I'm 50-50. I always want the positive arbitrage in my favor and not somewhere else. But I think in this instance, it might be best just to use the 20,000, find a car that you can buy that's suitable for your needs, pay cash for it, be done, and then move ahead with not having the car payment and using that money monthly that you would be putting towards the car payment and investing in your Roth IRA and your other diversified

investments in your portfolio. That's the key part here, Namy, if you want this to work. You have to actually invest that $400, $500 that would have been a car payment or would have been a lease of some sort, right? You have to actually find out your budget and invest it, or all of this was for not, right? If you're going to write the check, buy the car and cash, you have to also invest along the way. So that is so, so important. Really good question. Our next question comes from Devin L. Devin says, as the rumors spread of rate cuts in 2024, home values are likely going to climb again. What's your opinion on capitalizing using a HELOC to expand your real estate portfolio? For example, if a house you own was purchased at $450,000 and it immediately shoots up to $550,000,

what would your strategy be to try to use a helot to buy another house or property? Is this a smart idea? Robert, you know this stuff way more than I do, so I'm going to let you answer this one. I love this question, Devin, and I think everyone, hopefully everyone listening is taking notes on this because I think it's so important because we discuss this frequently that when you buy an individual, a primary home, your money and your equity and upside potential really is dead money if you do nothing with it. That's why I love the HELOC program. And for any of you listening that don't know what that is, that is a home equity line of credit. And basically what it does is you qualify for a certain

amount of your equity in the property that you can pull out and do whatever you want with it. I love this question and I love this idea. And for me, it's a resounding yes. Because I know that if I pull out $100,000 to buy another duplex or buy another property, it could be a quadplex, whatever it might be, then I'm getting that money moving. I have a much better chance of making more money with that money. As you always hear me talk about positive arbitrage of your money is one of the most important things you need to always be looking at. And in this instance, especially with rates coming down, helocks are going to be back down to six, six and a quarter percent. And right now in the markets, even with VOO or QQQ or VGT, you could be making 15 or 20 percent on your money. So I love this question

and the idea of pulling that equity out to buy another property or a small business. So you have additional cash flow and upside potential. Robert, can you add some additional color? Because like, for example, I bought my first property for, I think it was $280,000. Right now it's worth close to $400 or $415. And there was a mailer. I got in the mail that was like, hey, pull out your equity, we'll give you a loan. It's called a He lock. It's at like 7% or 8% interest.

And so I was able or I could have rather pulled out like 60 grand or 70 grand or whatever the number was. So let's say I was Devin and I took out that 60 or 70 grand to go buy another property. How would I, is that the downpayment? I mean, what property should I buy? Like, how would someone think about turning debt into a smart money move? In my opinion, as we speak here on January 4th, 2024, I think it's a great idea. If I were to pull out that $60,000 or $70,000, let's say I find a duplex in a growing

area that I can buy for a reasonable price. Then I would institute using the money from the HELOC for the down payment and any remodel cost and closing costs, but then also I would look at the 5% Fannie Mae loan program that's out right now. And then you're kind of double dipping because you have this incredible mortgage program, but you've also then pulled your equity out of your house, a portion of your equity. So then that way all of your money and your equity is being optimized. So I would get the he lock, pull that money out, buy the property with the 5% Fannie Mae program. And you would be so far ahead of most people in building wealth.

and you can do that over and over again over the years. Not only are you creating additional tax advantages, but you're also creating capital appreciation and potentially cash flow if this duplex, triplex, or quadplex is making you money right out of the gate. So I love this on so many fronts, and I think it's a strategy everyone should look at doing. Got it.

So the upside is both potential appreciation and like a duplex or a triplex over, call it five, six, seven years. You might also get some month-to-month cash flow depending on tenants and rents in your area. But more importantly here, you're taking what would have been dead equity in a house, call it $60,000, $60,000, and generating more appreciation, more cash flow with stuff that would have just kind of been hanging around. Yeah.

And also you can look at it that you can have depreciation benefits as well against your earned income. So there's so many different ways to really kind of skin this cat, depending on if you're a W-2 earner, if you own your own company. Are you a 1099 person? It really depends on your situation, but there's so many benefits to this strategy. I think everyone should look at it, especially for those people that bought their homes before the big run-up because you have that equity already in the home. And sometimes it's quite a bit of equity. So why just let that sit there and be debt equity?

I pull it out. Got it. Okay. Cool. See, this is this dichotomy. I don't know what I'm talking about with real estate. So I got Robert to answer my questions. And you all get to hear the behind the scenes of how this stuff actually gets answered.

It's great. I love it. Yes. Okay, so the next question comes from Brian G. Brian says, hey guys, I love the podcast. Finally getting some direction on how to invest. Thank you so much. Brian, you're very welcome. One quick question.

I'm a self-employed graphic designer. I've been putting money into a Roth IRA for many years, but only until your show did I realize I can actually invest this money. How do I take this money out of my crappy Wells Fargo Roth IRA making 0.25% and put it into something like VOO. I've got $24,000 in there. Brian, I wouldn't sweat it, man. It is all good.

You know, people make this mistake all the time, and we're only talking about maybe $10,000 or $15,000 and like total capital gains that you might have lost here. So you're going to make that much money up in no time. You're going to invest your whole life. You'll be fine. So don't beat yourself up over this. How do you get it out of a Wells Fargo account into something like VOL? Well, if it's on Wells Fargo, that's where a Roth IRA is, and it's just sitting in like a cash

account that they automatically put you in, you can likely straight up just invest the money and type in VOO, click invest and fund it with this checking account. And like, that's how you can get started. If you are super confused and don't want anything to do with Wells Fargo from a Roth IRA perspective, you could also transfer the Roth IRA out of Wells Fargo and onto a platform like M1 Finance, Wealthfront, Betterment, one of these other platforms. If you want to be hands off, which it kind of sounds like you already are, no, no offense, I would suggest a Robo Advisor like Betterment, or wealth front, you literally deposit the money. They invest it for you. They optimize. They rebalance. They do all that stuff for you automatically. So you just have to add more money and more

money starts to grow. It's great. So look up how to transfer Roth IRA from Wells Fargo to a wealth front or to a betterment or some other robot advisor you like and transfer the money and forget about it. Like that's probably what I would do. Yeah, I agree with Austin totally on this. And don't beat yourself up. So many people think that the Roth IRA is an investment and it is not. It is just the investment vehicle that gives you all of these tax and retirement benefits. So always keep that in mind for everyone listening. We want to make sure everybody that follows along the Rich Habits podcast is always recognizing that the Roth IRA is very, very powerful and everyone should have one from 18 on. And it's very, very important. But so many people get it wrong, believing that by putting the

money into the Roth, they are investing it and you are not. So we want to make sure you get that Roth going, get it invested. Look at the VOOs, the QQ, QQ, Q's, the V-G-Ts of the world, the funds that we love, and get a basket of those and get this money active and moving forward, just forget about what happened and you'll be on your way to financial freedom and just be happy that you have that 24,000 already in there. It hasn't grown, but that's okay. It hasn't shrunk either. So that's a good thing. And just a pro tip here for people who have a Roth IRA, but they want a little bit more diversification opportunities. I use a platform called carry money, C-A-R-R-Y, M-O-N-E-Y, carry money.

And they allow you to literally invest into things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, a bunch of different alternative asset classes, bonds, T-bills, all these straight-up things that you likely wouldn't be able to find on betterment or wealthfront. So if that is something you want to have some exposure to in your retirement account, definitely go check them out. Really good question. Our next question comes from Dorothea H. She goes, hello, I'm a 40-year-old single mom who just purchased my first home for me

my children. After the appraisal, my realtor mentioned that I had instant equity now in my home. I don't plan to ever sell the property because it came with a nice chunk of land. So having this equity, what advice would you give me as to how to use it to benefit for the future? What a great question and major congratulations on buying your first house. So, so, so proud of you. I'm sure you and your children are thrilled. I remember when I got my house, I was just on top of the world. So congrats, and you got a nice chunk of land. Like, now I'm jealous. I'm very jealous. Robert, what do you think here. I love this question and I love this situation. So it's going to be two part for me. We just talked about the heloc and I really like the idea here with this extra land about thinking about taking the

he lock. So you're going to pull some of that money out the equity that you have through the helock. And then I would look at are you zoned correctly to do an ADU, an additional dwelling unit? So look at it this way. Bear with me as I explain this. You pull that money out. You go buy this additional dwelling unit that you're going to make a rental that's on the land. Maybe you get two of them. See what the comps are in the area of what it would rent for for this tiny home or this trailer or whatever you put out there. And then just analyze the cost to see if it makes sense for you. Because what if you could get two additional revenue streams from these two ADUs on this property? That might be enough cash flow to pay your main mortgage on your house while not going any

further into debt because you're already just pulling out your own equity. I love this. idea. I'm actually very close to buying back a property that I sold in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, very similar. I would have instant equity in the primary house. And then there's three outlots, very large outlots. And I'm considering, and the jurisdiction allows it, of putting three ADUs out there. And each one would rent for about $850 a month. And so it could be a really, really profitable real estate endeavor for me. And it's very similar to what you're thinking about. That's very cool. Yeah, I never heard anything like that. My head immediately goes to the other side of the equation. It's like, you know, we know of SPYI. We know of some of these other covered call

ETFs and some of these other yield generating opportunities. You know, if a HELOC, rates are going to get cut by probably like 75 basis points this year. So maybe a HELOC is now, call it 7%, 7.5%. So if I can borrow at 7 and a half percent, but then earn 12, 14, 16 percent in income with SPY or QQQI, then that's kind of where my head's at. This is fun. This is a very interesting question. And it's really cool because having instant equity in your home is really exciting and very, very important. So congrats on that. And again, you know, really, really pumped for you and your children. And be sure to follow up and let us know what you end up doing. We're really invested now into this question. These questions for this episode in the last few episodes have just been incredible. I love to see people thinking more in

diversity and thinking outside the box. You know, you can't always make more money that easily with your job or your business or whatever. But when you start thinking creatively of how can I do more with what I already have, that's when wealth building becomes interesting. Because there's always so many ways you can get creative with finance and creating more wealth from within. And I I love these questions because they're so deep. And it really tests the boundaries for me thinking like, oh, my God, this is awesome. How could we do this? And this is a great question.

And I just love this episode. As do I. So be sure to tune in every Thursday to our question and answer episodes. And if you have a question to ask us, head on over to Instagram at Rich Habits podcast on Instagram. Shoot us a DM. That's where we got all of these awesome questions. You can also sign up for our email updates and ask us a question that way.

There's going to be a link in the show notes below to sign up for those. We have a really cool challenge coming out in January here that just started. We'll walk you through for free, of course, is just emails we send you on how to better track your investments, how to diversify, how to have velocity with your money, as well as how to automate the entire process. So there's a Google form in our show notes below. Dropping your email there. We'll add you to the queue. We're at about 34,000, 35,000 emails now, which is really exciting.

So it's a lot of people who are getting these updates. Okay, Austin, before we jump into the next. next question. I want to remind everyone about how excited I am about the new public.com high yield cash account. This account pays 5.1% APY on your savings. And to put that into perspective, if you're an average American with three months of savings in a checking account, you could earn an additional $1,000 every year on your $19,000 in savings that you have just sitting there, making no money. That's why we love these new programs from public.com. Yeah, don't forget. Yeah, every dollar you save on public.com's platform is insured by the FDIC up to $5 million.

There's full liquidity and there's no subscription required. So be sure to click the link in the show notes below or visit public.com forward slash rich habits. Again, public.com forward slash rich habits. Public is literally our first title sponsor and we're trying to really show them that we are excited about this and we are very excited about this. So if you want to support the podcast, do us a favor. Just go open an account. Just do us the favor.

open it, drop in some funds, transfer some funds over. You're not going to regret it. I mean, the bottom line is I talk about public pretty much every day, just like you do, Austin. But it's only because we love what they offer. You can do your crypto purchases there. You always hear us talking about our love for treasury bills. We were probably the only two people on all of TikTok and Instagram talking about T-bills this year. And guess what? They were one of the best sound investments you could have made in 2023. and moving into 2024. So we love public not just for ourselves, but for everyone that follows along and listens

and is with us on this wealth-building journey. So I'm very happy to have them as a title sponsor. Absolutely. Our next question comes from China. She says, hi, I know you both are very bullish on Bitcoin, and I wanted to know your opinion on the purpose Bitcoin yield ETF. I have a decent chunk invested into the actual coin, but was curious if it's worth also investing into the ETF,

for its yield and tax benefits if I held it in a tax-free account. Okay, this is a really good question, China. And to be honest, Robert and I didn't know much about this ETF before you asked it, which might be for good reason, but let's dive in. So this ETF produces about a 12% annual distribution yield to its investors, which means if you buy the ETF today and hold it for an entire 12 months, so one whole year, you will earn about a 12% yield on what you paid for the ETF today. In cash paid to you to your brokerage account, right?

Now, if you kind of back up and look at the last six months of Bitcoin, you can see its price went up by about 42, 45, 47%, depending on the day. Let's call it 45%. Now, the total return of this ETF over the same six month period was only 33%. So about a 12% difference there on average. Now, for me, I would rather own Bitcoin itself. I think there's better places to earn yield while not sacrificing so much upside that we might see in the price of Bitcoin. It's not something I'm going to add to my portfolio, but it's a really

good question because as 2024 kind of begins to roll around, we're going to see a lot more Bitcoin ETF and a lot of more Bitcoin spot ETFs. All these fun things are going to happen this year regarding cryptocurrency. So if you guys have cryptocurrency questions, keep them coming. We'll do our research and get back to you with the most accurate answer we have with the most information possible at the time. But Robert, what's your perspective on the ETF? Yeah, it really is the time of our lives. The next two to three years are probably going to be the greatest opportunity of wealth gain and transfer in our history, at least in our lifetimes. And so when I look at something that's associated with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin specifically,

I'm going to just buy the asset. I think Bitcoin, yes. Is it going to 100x still? No. Is it going to 5 or 10x in the next few years? Yes. So the upside is just too great for me to think about holding that Bitcoin opportunity into a ETF like this just because you're limiting your upside. So for me, I would buy the asset itself, keep rolling because the next two to three years are going to be the greatest years in cryptocurrency adoption, you know, and valuation increase that we're going to see in our lifetimes. And I can't wait. Every day is so exciting. So great question, but just own the asset. I wouldn't do this ETF. I think it's a better play just owning the asset directly. Yeah, really great question, China. We very much appreciate it. Now, our final question comes from

Kirsten. Oh, Kirsten says, hi there. I absolutely love the show. I'm actually in the top 3% of your listeners. Kirsten, you're the best. We appreciate you very much. Thank you for everything you've done for me so far. I started at zero having no financial education and I'm slowly building my wealth. I wanted to ask your team a question now that student loans are back. I'm stuck between investing the extra money I have per paycheck or paying off my student loans quicker. What do you suggest? Thanks again. what I would do, and this is not me just telling a random person on the internet, my girlfriend also has student loans, and this is what she's doing because I believe that's the best plan of action to do it this way. Okay, so she has probably an extra, maybe $300 to $400 per month to invest with

or to pay off her student loans quicker. She has decided that she wants to max out the Roth IRA with that money, so $7,000 a year. And if she's able to do that and there's stuff like left over, the extra on top is what's going to go to the student loans. Because here's the deal. Your student loans are probably at like four and a half to six and a half percent interest, which, you know, it's mid single digits. It's not terrible. It's not great. It's not that intimidating. It's just kind of meh. So now you have this two, three, four, $500 per month payment coming out of your bank account every single month to pay off these student loans that you're likely going to have around for 11, 15, 20 years anyway. Sure, you can pay it off quicker and we want you to pay your

student loans off. We don't want you to have a 20-year loan payment. That's very silly. But it's very irresponsible to forget about the power of compound interest, especially over a long period of time at such a young age. I would much rather have, even if just like a couple hundred bucks a month, put toward my Roth IRA and getting invested into the markets, because on average, your investments double every seven years. So over the next seven years, if you're able to invest $20,000, $40,000 or pay off your student loans, would you rather have $80,000 and still have student loans or would you have no student loans and also no investments? I don't know. That's just where my head goes. I think compound interest is definitely going at work here when you kind of have the

strategy. You don't have to be so black and white about it. But Robert, what's your perspective? I agree totally. For me, it's always about having the positive arbitrage of my money in my favor. So, and the other part of this is, too, there's always this kind of ace in the whole that student loan forgiveness programs are going to continue to exist. And so depending on who becomes president and what happens, you know, in the next few years. So there's always a lot of, always that hope that there's going to be forgiveness or better repayment programs. So for me, I'm with you, Austin. I would maximize that Roth IRA. I would keep the minimum payments on the student loans at that lower interest. And I would use the rest of that money in the markets and get

diversified into crypto and just really maximize the benefits for yourself and minimize the payments of the student loans. Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway here, at least for me, right, it's like we absolutely want to have what these student loans paid off. But we don't don't want to completely ignore investing during the same period of time. I know Dave Ramsey is like, you should be super focused on one thing that's going to help you do it faster. Yes, if you're super focused on paying off your student loans, yeah, you'll pay them off faster than if you did both investing and paying off the student loans. But I would much rather feel like I'm getting somewhere with my money over the next four or five years, depending on how long it's going to take you,

Kirsten to pay off your student loans. I would much rather have a pot of $40, $60,000 at the end of five years waiting for me because I invested rather than paying off my student loans two years early. You know what I'm saying? It just doesn't really check out in my book. Yeah, it always comes back to positive arbitrage and why Dave Ramsey and I never see I die on any of this. If I can borrow for five, six percent or less, and that's what my interest is on that debt. And I know over here on the other side of the fence, I can be making 10, 12, 15, 20 percent. I mean, I think QQQQ was up this year, something like 40 some percent. So the way I look at it. it is getting the positive arbitrage benefits on my side and paying the minimums on the other side.

That's just the way and the best way to look at positive arbitrage and having the money benefit you the most and not someone else. I love this question. Really good question, Kirsten. And we also very much appreciate you being a top 3% listener to the Rich Habits podcast. With that being said, everyone, have a great rest of your week. The new year is rocking and rolling. We hope you are writing down your goals, getting after it. You're joining us in January's email challenge about tracking your investments, automating your investments, diversifying your investments and having velocity worth your money. If you're not, is a link in the show notes below to add your email address to that.

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