The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Become a Millionaire by Age 30 With Brennan Schlagbaum

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, we’re going to talk to Brennan Schlagbaum about how to become a millionaire by age 30.   Join Our Newsletter here! Index Fund Pro: https://mastermoney.co/index-fund-pro-pre-launch/   Connect with Brennan Schlagbaum: Brennan’s Twitter  Brennan’s Instagram  Brennan’s Website Brennan’s Tiktok Brennan’s Youtube Brennan’s Facebook Brennan’s Books   Checklist of relevant episodes:  How to Become an IRA Millionaire in 2023 (With the New IRS Rules!) How Much Should You Have Saved and Invested (By Age!) The Million Dollar Money Decisions You Should Be Focusing On How to Find the Perfect Side-Hustle (Plus The 4 Types of Passive Income!) with Nick Loper How to Create Your Dream Life With Jamila Souffrant Should I Take Money From My 401(K) to Pay Down Credit Card Debt? Money Q&A   ============ Sponsors:     Thanks to Ka’Chava For Sponsoring the show! Go to kachava.com/pfp and get 10% off on your first order.  Thanks to Mint Mobile for supporting the show! Cut your phone bill to $15 a month by going to https://mintmobile.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/pfp and get on your way to being your best self. Get 10% off your first month! ============   Want to Support the Show? Follow on Spotify or Follow and Leave a 5-Star Review on Apple Podcasts!   ============   Check out all the Stuff I Recommend!  Check out all my favorite Credit Cards https://milevalue.com/top-offers-mastermoney/    USEFUL RESOURCES: The Year-End Money Checklist https://mastermoney.co/year-end-money-checklist/  The 75 Day Money Challenge https://mastermoney.co/75-day-challenge/  Finally, Get That Raise https://mastermoney.co/resources/   ============     DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser. This Podcast is for educational purposes only. Investing of any kind involves risk. While it is possible to minimize risk, your investments are solely your responsibility. It is imperative that you conduct your own research. I am sharing my opinion.    AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links on this channel are affiliate links, meaning, at NO additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase and/or subscribe. However, this does not impact my opinion.   ============     Check us out on social fam!    Twitter   Tiktok   www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com   www.mastermoney.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk to Brennan Schlagbom about how he became a millionaire by 30. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.com, and today on the Personal Finance podcast, we're going to be talking to Brennan Schlagbom about how he became a millionaire

by 30. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram or TikTok at MasterMoney Co. And follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or whatever. whatever podcast player, you love listening to this podcast. If you want to help out the show, leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcast. So today I'm so excited to share this interview that we had with Brennan because Brennan became a millionaire by 30 by doing a lot of things that we talk about on this

podcast all the time. And Brennan runs an online business called Budget Dog that helps you with your money. He talks about personal finance all the time. And it's really interesting to see how he walked through these simple steps to become a millionaire. Now, the path to get to be a millionaire is not an easy path, but the concepts are simple. And we're going to walk through a bunch of different things, including how he set up his budget to get this far, how he paid off his debt, including his mortgage.

He is absolutely mortgage-free, and we're going to talk about why that is, and how he got to that point. We're going to talk about how he invests his money so he'd get to millionaire status. In addition, how he increased his income and some of the things that he did. He was willing to do a lot of things that most people were not willing to do to increase their income. And lastly, he just left his job to pursue his business full-time. We're going to talk about that as well. And how somebody else who is interested in pursuing their side hustle maybe full-time can also do that in a safe way.

And he did this in an amazing way. So this is something we're incredibly excited to talk about. So if you're interested in learning how to become a millionaire at a young age, then this is the episode for you. So let's get into it. So Brendan, welcome to the Personal Finance podcast. Thanks for having you, Andrew. So we are so excited to have you because you just hit Millionaire status this year at the age of 30, which is absolutely amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment to be

able to do that. And one of the big things that I wanted to talk about today is I think you did it in a systematic way than a lot of people can follow. I think people can mimic the steps that you took. And really, what we talk about in this podcast all the time is I truly believe anybody can build wealth. They just have to have the head knowledge and they have to have the ability to actually put the right habits in place. So I kind of want to talk through some of these habits as well. But before we dive in, where did your passion for personal finance in helping people actually start? Yeah, it was at home in our own situation. So at 23 years old, we got out of college and quickly amassed like $304,000 a debt really fast. Part of that was a mortgage, but in general, it was just

very scary. It was like, oh my God, like, you know, we were going through college. We were told that we were doing all the right things. We got great jobs after school. I was at Deloitte. And my wife was working a great job, W2 job. And boom, $304,000 just piled on. And as a CPA, I had a balance sheet. And so I looked at it. I was like, wow, we have 300. $104,000 a debt just like that. Within like a year period, essentially, we just kind of amassed that. And it was really intimidating. I was like, oh, this, we need to fix this ASAP.

And so I started like thinking through strategies and I went pretty much crazy in my head as to how I was going to get out of this debt. And my wife didn't really understand the what we were in or the situation we put ourselves in. And so I started kind of throwing things her way and she wasn't really receiving it as well as I wasn't my head at least. And so we were playing personal finance podcast and et cetera. I was trying to have a third party voice in her head.

And she started thinking, like, oh, that would be really cool for your debt free. If we could do X, Y, and Z. And I was like, yeah, I had the exact blueprint. Let me show you. And so we started talking about it. And we really, really aggressively kind of put together a financial plan that worked for us. And we wiped out $76,000 of non-mortgage debt in one year. And it lit us on fire for the next six years to where we are currently.

And along the way, what was really cool was once we knew the blueprint, how to attack this, I started helping friends and family, not even thinking this was like a business idea or anything like that. And I created the budget dog account just kind of for fun to share what we're doing. And it was a hobby of mine. And it was a hobby for pretty much 16 months. And then people started realizing like what we did. I shared my story.

And people started reaching out to me of like, hey, man, can you help me pay off this debt? Can you help me invest? And it was like, sure. Why not? Like I would love it. I was doing like free consultation calls, just having a good time. And I was like, wait, this is like an actual thing people would do. this, I need to turn this into a business. So really quickly, my business mind went into, okay,

how do I create a business out of this? And that's where budget dog was kind of born. I absolutely love that. And I think you have a very similar story to like where I started too, where I had to kind of convince my wife and I had to use third party things like podcasts and YouTube videos to kind of go through that process. Because it does take that third voice. Because sometimes, you know, when you're having this discussion with your partner, they're like, oh, that's just a crazy idea that they're having. But it's one of those things that once you start to get that voice and they can actually see what's happening, I think it's an amazing way to actually get to the next step. And then I was the same way too where I would just start to help people

on the side, friends and family. So it's amazing, like how that can start and turn into a full-blown business as well. So I want to talk about your business a little bit here because obviously the name of your business is budget dog. And so I want to talk about your spending plan and your budgeting first because you have a really cool budgeting framework. And that's one of the core principles of what you teach. So how do you set up your budget and do you use an app? Do you use a spreadsheet? What's your favorite way to do that? Yeah, my main focus is Excel. So it's really simple and bare bones. But what I've really done is built an automated, basically Excel template that's so easy to use where you really don't do much from a manual perspective. So a lot of people have, like, you know, fright when you

hear the word Excel, but like, really, it's hard to mess it up. Like, you kind of enter a few keystrokes in as a number, and everything else spits out and kind of gives you a formula to give you your results. And so I think that's really beneficial to come to the conclusion. You know, a lot of people are using these budgeting apps out there. They're not really budgeting, right? They're tracking what happens after it happened. And budgeting's planning for the upcoming month. So what I always do is kind of walk through that process and that involves a budgeting app to make it a lot easier from extracting your information from the bank account into your categories, but you still have to go to the extra step and input it into your actuals within your Excel.

But we need to plan before we get to that point. So it's a really simple process. I would say I spend no more than 30 minutes per month doing this and all my students do the same. So building the automated systems, financial systems in total around you, where they're operating by themselves without your input, every single month. hitting all your goals aligned in alignment with all your goals that you have set up, and spending a very little amount of time, but also enough that you are making real, real progress.

And that's amazing because if everyone listening, if you listen to how Brennan's talking about this, wealthy people are proactive with their money. They're not reactive with their money. And so they're planning ahead of time so that you can actually plan properly for the entire month of what you're trying to budget out. And that's what this budget is based on.

It's based on being actually proactive so you can actually plan your whole month. and have that set up so that you can accomplish all your wealth goals. That is the best part about that. And one big thing for you is income. And income plays a major role in getting to the million dollar status, especially by so young at turning the age of 30. So a year or so ago, you left your job to pursue budget dog full time.

So how has your income grown over the last eight to ten years? It's been substantial in the last year. From zero to about 800,000, it was just two W-2 jobs. Pretty reasonable average salaries. I wouldn't say anything like outstanding or incredible. It was really intentionality. One thing we did do throughout this, you know, six, seven years ahead of time where we were working with side hustles. I want to say we were close to $25,000 extra dollars in side hustles.

And what we did, the two main avenues for that were I was doing construction on the side. So as a CPA, I had a lot of PTO. I would take like an entire week off and I wouldn't go on like vacation sometimes. I would straight up go to a construction site, put my hard hat on and make sure. $12 an hour, but I worked a lot of hours in the weeks when I was off, weekends, and I added up a lot of money. Now, my wife was a lot smarter than me, and she was a graphic designer, so she could use a system called 2020, and she would basically do drawings on there for $50 an hour under the table as well. So she was getting around the taxes. I hope the IRS doesn't come at me for this,

and she was really, really doing well fast. She was like really helping us fast forward this track. I remember the first year we started doing this towards the end. I think she racked in like $14,000. And we would use 100% of that to go to her debt, to go to our investments, all these kind of things. And so everyone's like, well, you must have made so much money. It's like, we really didn't make a tremendous amount of money the first, you know, five, six years.

What we did was take all that extra income and 100% put it towards our goals. And we were extremely in line with our goals. And we had a lot of intention. Then post that stage of my 9 to 5 life, I transitioned into budget on. And at about 800,000 in August of 2021 is kind of where we were. And over the last year, the business since I've left my 9 to 5 has exploded and has been incredible what I've done. And there was crazy because leaving that job, that 9 to 5 secure job was really scary.

There was a lot of anxiety around it. I shared my story and how it was even feeling internally when I left about a month in because I was riding high from leaving my job, paying off my house. And we had a baby on the way at the time three weeks before. and I bought my wife a surprise Peloton that week, and I went out to California to do a surprise birthday for my buddy, Chris Johnson, his 30th birthday. And so, like, all of that came from like five years, six years of work or whatever in one week.

And I was riding really high, like emotions out of this room. And then the reality struck, I had a kid. Logan Lee came into the picture. And I was like, wow, I'm a stay-at-home dad. I run my own business and I have to provide for a family now. And all of a sudden, that, like, high kind of came back down to reality. And while the business was actually doing really well, I was feeling all sorts of emotions inside. And I voiced that to all my email list.

I basically told them straight. I'm very transparent. I told them how I'm feeling like the anxiety, the nervousness, the unknown, something very foreign to me after 29 years of my life was to know, hey, I'm going to go to the Deloitte route, get my CPA, safe job, 9 to 5. And it was like that for a couple months. The business was doing well. And it was kind of a scarcity mindset.

And I kind of got myself out of that scarcity mindset. ever since that scarcity mindset kind of, I would say, like, went away. We've done tremendous things. I want to say we've at least two, three X to the business since that point, which was already doing very well to begin with. And so we're consistently growing. I'm looking to expand. I'm almost overwhelmed by all the opportunity that is thrown my way. It's incredible. It's a good thing to have. I always tell my wife every day, like there's so much opportunity. Like, it's overwhelming almost. And man, where we're at right now is such a good place mentally and stuff like that. We're just looking to help as many people as possible. That is absolutely incredible.

And thank you for sharing that part, because I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, when they're new to entrepreneurship, I felt the same exact thing. When you are doing this on your own, there's a lot of pressure on you, especially when you're not earning like that paycheck every single week or every other week. It just feels completely different. And it's a different feeling. So a lot of people go into panic mode. And there's a, it's a very different feeling than what you've ever felt if you're used to collecting that safe paycheck every single week. So that is something that I've definitely felt as well. But it's amazing how you've come out of that. And it's amazing. And and started to grow your income and do all these different things.

And it's so interesting that when our firstborn is the same way, when our firstborn was born, that's when our income really started to accelerate even faster. It's like something just goes off. A switch goes off in your head. And it's really like, oh, so many different things happen. I've had so many friends with that's happened for as well. So it's really cool how you can go through that process.

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Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. So what are some of your favorite income streams that you work in your business, right now. Yeah, I'd say the number one, my pride and joy and kind of my baby is Budget Dog Academy. So this is like a whole six-month program that basically gets you from point A to point B, accomplishes all your financial goals, connects the dots for you essentially in a nutshell, and provides you with everything you ever need from a financial perspective. That's my number one, my biggest, the best piece of this whole thing. I have a course income as well. So I do have a course

that I sell budget to financial freedom. I have products, books, resources like that, like debt payoff calculators. I have investing. one-on-one book. If you have no idea where to start investing, I have that kind of stuff. There's promotional revenue here and there. I kind of stay away from that because I'm not a huge fan of promoting other stuff than my stuff. I'm very loyal to my own brand. And I don't want to push a bunch of different products I don't believe in. So if you ever seem to do push a product, you better believe I believe in it heavily and I've used it myself and I can back it. But you won't see oftentimes that I do any of that kind of stuff. And then the other one would be like

other affiliate partnerships. I have a free service capitalized. You know, there's a partnership there that I have and little other ancillary things that kind of drive the revenue. I'm part of Discord and so I get paid from that as well. And there's other ventures out there outside of kind of the core business I'm working with as well. That's amazing. And the big thing that you did here was you took that big leap a year ago. Now that's kind of what made the big change for you.

So how would you advise someone who's maybe considering taking that leap or leaving their job for their business to do that in a safe way? Yeah. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like YOLO and they're like, hey, let's just jump off the and figure it out. I'm not like that. I'm very conservative. You know, I have CPA, my title for a reason. Like, I feel like most CPs are pretty conservative. And so with the way I approach this was, um, a very, very long, drawn out process of 12 months. I basically told myself if I can do at or

above my nine to five income for 12 months, I will leave my job and take the leap of faith because I can always go back to it. So one thing we did was we got me, made sure our emergency fund was there and plus some. And we also made sure that my wife's bill or my wife's income, cover basically the bills if I made zero dollars fell flat on my face and was trying to figure it out because when I took this leap of faith, I didn't want to freak out and go right back to safety. I wanted to give myself some time. I wanted to make sure I could fully devote all my time and build a real core business versus just an Instagram account. And so that's what I've been working on in doing at great length. So I think, you know, maybe it's not 12 months for everybody.

Maybe it's less than that. Maybe it's six months. But I think you have to have a good consistent revenue model that's producing income for an extended amount of time. Once you're there, you've got to take that calculator risk on yourself because you never know what's going to happen. And if it fails, like I said, and you do this for a year, when you look back in your ADA, you're going to be really upset. You tried something for a year and it failed. Probably not. You're probably going to be really, really happy because honestly, you're probably going to fall in love with what you do and make it a career, which is what I'm doing right now. Exactly. And if you don't do it, you're probably going to regret it for the rest of your life.

And I think what you did was probably the most safe way that you can do. And I think that's the best way to do it, is to have that where if you have two incomes, one of those income covers all the expenses. the rest of it, you can kind of take that risk and see how you can grow your wealth for you and your family. And speaking of that, that's probably a big factor in terms of how your savings rate has grown as well, because your savings rate has grown significantly since you started the business. And if your wife's covering the bills, you can really have a really large savings rate. So you talked about your savings rate a little bit on social media as well. So what do you think the ideal savings rate is for someone? And how did you increase that savings rate over time?

Yeah. So that's a good question. I'm going to answer the first one first. So I think ideal savings rate would be at least 15% of your gross income. So if you make $100,000, I think 15% is a really good aim or target to have. And if you hit that, I think anything over and above is kind of like, get to fast forward your goals, but make sure that 15% is just not aim, like just kind of a random number. You got to really connect your goals to what your savings rate is in on a timeline perspective and what those numbers are. 15% for somebody that makes 50,000 versus 100,000 are two different things. So just make sure that 15% works in line with your goals. Now, the other part is, how to How did I actually increase my savings rate?

We went from like 20 to 70, 75 roughly. We've been at 86 at one point in time a monthly basis. But I'd say roughly about 70 something, 75. And the biggest benefit of this whole, or the biggest like trick, I guess I could say, is I've kept my living standard the same since 23. We're very comfortable with what we'd live in, what we drive. Obviously we've picked off our house. So like, we love our house.

We absolutely love it. We absolutely are totally fine with our cars. We don't need the best stuff or material items. It's not what we spend our money on. We will spend money on vacations all day long, which we've done for a long time. And so I think the biggest thing is don't worry about what the Joneses are doing, what your neighbors are doing, your family, your colleagues, your boss and stuff like that, people are going to consistently compete in weird ways. It's just how life is. And so if they go get a BMW, do you need one?

Probably not. If you're confident in yourself and you believe in what you have and you're focused on the right things from a values perspective, you won't be chasing that stuff anyway. and that will help your savings rate increase substantially. So that's kind of the biggest way. It's 23 to 30. That's a seven-year gap. And you've got to assume 23, we were making right out of college a way lower income than we are now. So as that income has gone up, we've literally flatlined from an expense standpoint.

And it really hasn't hurt us. If anything, it's just grown that savings rate to a big, big amount to where we can kind of choose and how we would like to spend our money. That's absolutely incredible. And I think the coolest part about that is for people listening is if you notice, Brennan did not let his lifestyle inflate. But what he does spend his money on is things that he actually values that he actually brings him joy, bring him happiness, like travel. And that's one of the best ways to actually utilize your money because I think this is what most people do is they let their lifestyle inflate as their income increases. But he increased his savings rate instead. And that's how he actually got to this level to be able to be at millionaire status by the age of 30. And one big factor in your journey was the debt payoff. This is something that I think is, absolutely amazing that you did this early on. And most people don't have a paid off mortgage by the time they turn age 30. So this is a really cool thing that you did throughout this process. But you also had some other debts that you paid off as well. So what went into that decision to pay off your

mortgage? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the biggest thing behind it was the opportunity to leave my 9 to 5 and a temporary short-term double income, right, or triple income per se. Like we had our W-2s, one, both of us. We were also doing side hustles, and I had new, all of a sudden, newfound business income out of nowhere. So I looked at it like this. I was like, you know what? Is it the wisest decision from a math perspective?

At the time, I said no. Looking back based on the timing, it actually did work out in our favor based on where the market was. And then once that mortgage was gone in the basically two-year period, the market dipped. But we had an extra of $1,500 to put into the market every month because we paid off the mortgage. So our math actually worked in our favor, which was a lot. surprising to many because along the way I talked about like how that wasn't really that big of a deal,

but we calculated that. We made sure we knew exactly what that would look like 20 years from now and the opportunity cost supposedly lost. The biggest reasons behind this was if we could pay this off right before our daughter came, I could be a stay home dad. We could save on daycare. That's a pretty big benefit that we wouldn't have if we had the mortgage. Two, I am conservative, like I said. So for me to take that leap of faith, it's really nice not having hardly any expenses, no debt payments, you know, basically bills like cable and food, but it's really nice not to have that. And so decreasing our expenses when we're in that kind of a change of lifestyle and change of life with a new business was really comforting, which really helped me kind of focus on

building the business, not worrying about my bills. And I was on a podcast with Jesse Kramer called The Best Interest Podcast. And I told him along this way, I was like, something that I'm not going to be that guy, I told you so. But I did tell him, I said at the time when we were paying it off, I don't think people are calculating into this opportunity. opportunity cost, the idea of my confidence that goes into me leaving my job, which will produce more income. And here we are about a year and a half out of that job. And my income has increased

substantially because I had the confidence to leave my job and make this happen. And that was the opportunity cost not calculating that decision that I knew myself better than everyone in the internet telling me it was a bad decision. And so I think that's really key in decision making. Also like, you know, bigger goals, making sure that's not taking away from those goals. Because anybody that pays off their mortgage early, typically, you know, 15, 20 years, you probably are going to have a lesser return if it's a low interest mortgage. Obviously, times have changed. So there's a lot to that question in that equation. I like to bring context to the forefront to kind of understand where I came from when I made that decision. But it's been the best decision of my life,

and I don't regret one second of it. We've had a couple of other people who have paid off their mortgage on this podcast, and that's the best answer we've had by far, because I think the opportunity cost side of it is overlooked so much because there's so much opportunity there. In addition, even those daycare costs are massive. If you've never had kids before, I have two kids. My daycare costs are like $2,500 a month every single month. So there's so many extra benefits there that you add it in there. But being able to take that leap, so you did the safety of having your wife's job paying the bills. You had the safety net of the emergency fund. In addition, you had a paid off house. So really, almost nothing can go wrong. And worst case scenario, you just go back to work. So you have this

entire safety net around you, which is what we talk about this podcast all the time. You've got to create a bulletproof wealth plan so that you don't, have to go backwards, and that's what you did, which I absolutely love. But the opportunity cost available to you by paying off that mortgage. And a lot of people don't think about the compound interest of interest on that mortgage and stuff like that as well, because I think a lot of times if you pay it off faster, you're saving yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars and $130,000 be precise. That's absolutely amazing. And you wouldn't make that return on some of those investments within that time frame. So there's a lot of things to kind of look through there.

And now you're investing those extra dollars. So there's so many cool things that you did there by paying off that mortgage to allow you the safety net to be able to do what you're doing now. What are some of the other benefits, if any, that you can think of of a paid off house? I think you change the way you operate when you're debt-free. I really truly believe that. Now, that's me speaking from my perspective and how I feel about things. But I really think when you are debt-free and you have really truly no one to owe money to, you're going to take different opportunities.

You're not going to be as tight. I think a lot of people that opportunity cost people that are so tight on like margins and percentages, don't ever like get out of that spreadsheet and they don't think and feel differently about taking opportunities because they're so worried about what the numbers stand in the spreadsheet. And one of the cool things we did, like I feel the risk level go down like tremendously. And I take big calculated risks when I have that opportunity. So I always talk about, hey, set the foundation of your finances.

Like you said, I don't want to go back. So I want to make sure I'm real safe. And then I'm going to take a huge swing, home run swings. And if it pays off, it does, which in my case so far, it has. I mean, I've had losses as well and, you know, big swings I've struck out on as well. But overall, it's been a net positive in a big direction. And I think that people don't realize that the way you feel is the way you operate and see the world. And you're going to see a lot more opportunity when you don't have as much risk on your plate, whether the numbers say it or not.

Absolutely. I think that's a perfect way to actually think through that. And you had some other debts that you paid off early on as well. So how did you kind of decide what order to pay those debts off? And did you do like a debt snowball or did you do the highest interest rate? How did you kind of go through that process to get rid of those debts early on so that you could attack the mortgage? Yeah, it was definitely a mixed approach, avalanche and the high interest in the snowball method. So I remember specifically the first that I paid off was my bed, like the bed we slept in.

It was like $3,500. I think we were paying like a $75 payment per month or whatever, zero percent interest, I believe. And I remember talking, we were building our deck or a porch in the backyard and talking like in my father-in-law and his workers out there. And I was like, we were talking about debt. And I was like, man, I have a debt on my bed. Like I walked in that night. I said, Aaron, what are we doing with this bed? Like, we're paying it off. And that was the snowball per se of the beginning. But it was a $3,500, zero percent bed. But it was the emotion behind. I was like, this is stupid. Like, this is driving me crazy every month to pay. And so once I kind of paid that one off, then I kind of looked at it from like a balance and a percentage. Like if we had like a $500 balance or something small, I didn't really care what the interest rate was. It was an emotional feel. It was like, I wouldn't just want to get that gone right now. And then our student loan was a big one. It was like $40,000 of that. And we then, you know, you chunked away at that and eventually paid that off. So it was definitely a mixed approach.

I think most people should take a mixed approach to it, not one or the other, is like low interest, but small balances will give you that momentum to knock out the higher ones as well. And I love the approach that you took on that because really if you look at the avalanche and the snowball, a lot of times if you do the math,

the difference really isn't that much if you do the math on how much faster you're going to pay it off in terms of how much interest you pay. And what you did was, you know, removed the stuff that was stressing you out the most and bringing you in the anxiety and all that kind of stuff,

which I think is the most valuable thing that you can do with your money. And then from there, then you kind of tactically went through and paid off what made the most sense at that time. So I think that's a really, really cool way to approach it. Now, you paid off all this debt. And so obviously you're going to have this extra income to start investing and putting it towards other things. And you and I align a lot on how we invest our dollars. So what is your favorite way to invest? And what are some of the best ways that you think beginner should invest as well?

Yeah, dollar cost average into low cost index funds in ETS. I feel like a broken record on all the podcast. I guess I talk about. But, you know, I realize outside of social media and the people that we interact with, a lot of people don't know what that means. So I'm going to say it a million times. And what this really is is basically setting up a periodic schedule of the same dollar amount, let's say 500 bucks every two weeks into 401k or whatever you have, and put it into a low cost, meaning it's an inexpensive product that encompasses the entire world, the entire U.S., whatever that may be of assets like a stock or a company. So the apples of the world, the Microsofts of the world,

all in one big wraparound present, you just put money in there consistently for a long period of time. Ignore the news. Don't get caught up in the hype. And you're going to see tremendous returns long term. Let's say that's 8 to 10%. That's significant when you couple time and contribution with that. The asset percent return is not as substantial as people often think. I made a YouTube video on this of showing actual examples of like somebody that got a 16% return versus an 8% return, but the 8% return had more time on their side or maybe more contribution and it smoked the 16% return. So people are so caught up in the return. It's more so, hey, just put money inconsistently away for a long period of time and get average market returns. And those average market returns aren't really average in

accordance to the average investor. So over the last 20 years, the average investor returned 3.6%. The average market was 9.5%. That's a grand difference. And it's not just a 6% difference with compound interest as well. If you annualize that compounded over 20, 30 years, it's significant. For sure. And I think that is the best example of what we talk about in this podcast all the time. We are huge index fund investors on this podcast. And I think it's one of the best ways for beginners to get started, but everybody. Because obviously, if you look at the average returns of even professional investors, 90% of them do not beat the market. And of the 10% that do, they are not the same year in and year out, which is one of my favorite kind of ways to look at it. What made you originally choose index funds?

How did you find index funds? And what are some of the pros of index funds that you found? I owe most of my beginning to my uncle. So he was kind of my mentor along the way. And he taught me everything from like, I don't even know where to start type of thing. He was like, just do an S&P 500, you know, just automate this process. And then I started learning more about it. I read a lot of books.

I did a lot of YouTube searches. And I started feeling comfortable with exactly the approach that he was telling me from the beginning. And so that really sprung me into the low-cost index fund ETF route as well. And so the biggest pros of the index fund is it's less stress. It's simple. I always talk about my finances is I simplify everything. Whether it be one account, one broker, one credit card. I don't want a lot of like chaos in my life. I want to simplify everything. My wife last side. I always like talk about minimalism. Just simplify everything in life. That applies to outside of finance. But my financial approach is the same way. And people are like, how'd you become a millionaire by 30? I'm like, I just simplified. I threw all the trash out. Like when people are locked in and intentional on a simple path, they'll have the best results versus trying to convolut and complicate everything.

So that's really the approach I went. And that's kind of what index funds provide you is like set it, forget it in a sense. Obviously, don't forget it entirely. But set it and forget it for a long period of time and just automate this process. And you're going to see really good returns without worrying about the day-to-day stressors. Exactly. I think the simple path to wealth is just the best way. That's the kind of the path that you followed.

And a lot of people who are new to this are like, well, that's going to take too long or it's boring. they'll say all these other things. I hear all the time like on TikTok and stuff. And so you talk through some of that stuff and they just don't get it. But then once you look at how fast, look how fast you did this here. And it's a perfect example of like it's the slow but fast process at the same time where it kind of get you that point the fastest way that you can get there. So that's some of the stuff I love about it as well. And you talk about a lot of some of the non-money things that you did to get to millionaire status. So can you talk about some of those and why those are important? Yeah, I think there's a lot of, I tweeted out a kind of a list of

a few things the other day about kind of non-money, things that's got me to millionaire status. And I can't recall exactly the list I discussed in particular. But I think the biggest thing is like simplification, not keeping up with the Joneses, not worrying about other people, having the self-confidence, doing self-work, understanding what makes you tick, not what the TikTok guy said of what makes you rich. Like, understand you as a person. And when you understand you as a person, you're going to be able to create systems around you that worked for you. Shocker, I know. But when something works effectively for you, you're going to move a lot faster in a more efficient pace and you will see a lot better results than if you just kind of go with what somebody

on the internet tells you to do. Exactly. And that's the perfect answer because there's just so many little things that you can do outside of money items that you can actually put into place so that you can actually become successful with this. And one of those is consistency. And I think consistency is one of the most important things when it comes to your money or anything in life, whether it's health and fitness or anything else along those lines. But consistency is extremely important if you want to get to millionaire status, you know, by the time you turn age 30. So how did you maintain your consistency over the course of getting to millionaire status? Yeah, I love consistency. I didn't really even mention that, but that's the number one thing that I always talk about. And everyone's

like, that's guru. I'm like, yeah, but it works. So consistency is the biggest contributor to my success by 30 years old, by a large margin. And so as humans, we aren't always motivated. And so one thing I try to do is build systems like I've talked about in automation around me because I know, hey, on every Friday, am I really going to invest in my taxable brokerage if I manually leave it up to me? And how much stress and how much time does that, you know, in decision fatigue, does that cause me to take away from other things that are more important like my daughter? So it's one of the things if you set up systems like automation and stuff like that and you do it every single day. And, you know, I do with my, even my simple as like my water, right?

I have a water bottle that's 20 ounces. I make sure I fill that up five times a day. I don't have to really think about it. It's almost like second nature at this point, but I want 100 ounces of water. So instead of saying, hey, I just want 100 ounces of water and I'm just going to fill up random cups, like I will have a good system in place per se with a 20 ounce water bottle, very simple system that's just kind of automated in a sense. Scheduling blocks a time on your calendar, writing stuff down, whiteboarding.

All of those things have helped me tremendously retain that consistency. I think the other thing that is lacking with a lot of people is a passion to want to do those types of things. So obviously motivation comes and goes. It's fleeting. But having a deep down passion for what you're trying to accomplish and do will light you on fire and make sure you push through the things that suck or the resistance that comes at you through when you're getting into the places you want to get to. Exactly. And you hit all the perfect points on the consistency side because I think the automation side is one that we talk about all the time in this podcast, too, because you're not going to want to send it to the brokerage account every single time. but if you automate that and the money just automatically goes there, it takes willpower

out of that equation. And that's what we want to do as much as possible with our money is take willpower out of the equation. It's the same thing with fitness. You're not going to want to wake up and work out every single morning. But if you actually just make that the system that you follow, you wake up, it makes you feel better, everything. You go through that whole process, then it's going to make it so much easier. So having those automation systems in place is one of the most important things. So after working so hard, you did all this work to kind of get to millionaire status. How big of an impact was that on your family and how freeing was it and kind of just talk through what it felt like to actually get there?

Yeah, it's kind of weird. So I think a lot of people look at like, hey, you hit millionaire status. You should go party. You should go do all this kind of things. And like, honestly, the way we partied or celebrated was like pizza and wine. So it wasn't like crazy by any means. And some people were like, oh, that's boring. You should do more and whatever.

I think this is what happens along the way to any successful mile market that you hit, which is millionaire status is not like the end all be all. It's just kind of a mile marker, in my opinion. So I think like once you're locked in and you see a vision to get to somewhere, you have to change as a person. And along the way, you are changing and kind of adapting and expecting that intended result. And when you expect that, when you get there, it's like, I expected this. Like it wasn't like, whoa, I won the lottery to yesterday and like the power ball of $2 billion or whatever it was. It's like, hey, I expected to get here.

And I have other goals at this point in time that are, I have expectations to hit. And I think when I hit them, like I'll be happy. they'll be like satisfied and content, but it also won't be like confetti drops from the ceiling and like, it's just one of the things. I think it's the journey of success is, um, the people that have the mindset of like celebration in a big, big way often don't have what it takes to get there because they never change themselves as a person. And all it is is kind of like, uh, I guess a celebration in their head is the best way to put it versus like, hey, this is a journey. And I want to enjoy the journey along the way and changing as a person to get to that actual end goal.

Exactly. Falling in love with that journey to get there is one of the most important things that you can do because it's going to keep you motivated when that motivation is fleeting. But there's a lot of other things that can kind of come into play. So even enjoying the small things. Now I got to the point where I first, I used to hate budgeting. And now I kind of enjoy it because it's one of those things that you can kind of crazy. But it's one of those things that you can kind of add in. And obviously you don't want to spend a lot of time doing it. But it's just part of that journey making sure that you have everything set up in and play. So I want to shift gears here slightly because these are some questions that we ask everyone. And they're really interesting. we get different answers every time. So they're a little deeper than what we normally ask. But I think they're really fun some of the answers that we get out of these. So what part of your work or life makes you come alive? When I see somebody's or when I get a text or a response or a review that I've changed somebody's life like entirely, that will get me so far up out of bed versus like, hey, I got a big like deposit in my bank account. Like cool, it feels good for like five seconds, but that's really fleeting. Not to like rain on anybody's parade that's like looking to make big money. But like it's not really fulfilling. It's really not. But like,

I think the other day, I wish I could share my screen, but I think the other day, somebody told me that I was the sole reason they got to $100,000 in their taxable brokerage account. And that was like, I literally jumped on my IG live. I was on fire. And I was just like sharing. And another girl messaged me in my budget all academy. She's like, hey, I'm saving an extra $47,000 per year because of you. I jumped on my IG live again because I like to be very transparent show actual results. And she was talking to me live on like the chat or whatever in telling me all this stuff.

and I was just sharing it live. I was like, guys, this is really happening this second. And it gets me fired up. And obviously, you can hear me talking about it right now, like versus like, hey, if I got, I don't know, $10,000 check, like, cool. But like, it doesn't really do much for me outside of like provide the financial security we want. But really what fires me up is seeing impact in people's lives. I always say impact over income.

Absolutely. That's absolutely amazing. And some of those impacts you were making are absolutely life changing for some of these people. And so that's what's so incredible about doing what you love. you took the leap of faith to do what you love and loud. Look at all the lives that you're impacting now. That is absolutely incredible. The second one is what is the best advice about money you ever received? Maybe it was from your uncle early on. Maybe it was something else. But what's the best advice you've ever received about money? I think it's probably my mom with this. The funny thing,

my parents never really taught me much about money, but one really core message in general, just very high-level arching type of principle was spend saving give. So we would do chore money, maybe five bucks a week or whatever it was. And two, I think would go to spend, two would go to save, and I think one would go to church. So being able to understand that at a very young age, even if it's five bucks, is just don't save all your money. Don't spend all your money and don't give all your money. Just do a very balanced approach to what works for you. And it doesn't need to be necessarily 10% of tithing or whatever. It could be just randomly, you decide to give somebody 100 bucks. Like whatever it may be, like in my academy, every single 30 days every

month, the top engagement getter within the academy, the most involved person, I'll send some gift of some sort. It might be as big as paying off someone's mortgage. And that's a monthly payment, not the entire mortgage, but it might be like a gift card or something like that. It's just to like, or pay off someone's credit card debt or something like that. Those little things, like, I think mean a lot more when it's like, hey, I'm not just randomly giving like a fixed percentage, but I know I can impact someone's life if I do this and this kind of when I feel like it, honestly. If I'm just feeling that energy, I'm like, all right, boom, what's your credit card bill? I'm have paid off today. So, like, it's cool, but I also want to make sure, like, I'm giving the fish out.

I want to make sure I'm teaching as well. But it's kind of one of the added benefits. But I think balancing your entire life with spend, save, and give has been one of the most, like, touching principles I've ever had with money. And that's really honestly my mom. I love that. And I love the balance that you have there because I think giving is one of the things that a lot of people in the personal finance space don't talk about. We talk about a lot on this podcast as well, because I think it's a core tenant to building wealth. And giving is one of those things that imagine. if everybody learned how to build wealth, how much more we could give to people in need or causes we believe in and all those different things. So I absolutely love that you mentioned that as well. And the third one is my favorite question. So this is the one we get a different answer every single time. But what does wealth mean to you?

I think freedom is the easiest way to answer this. So like just having like the time to do whatever you would like, it doesn't matter. There's no like particular like, hey, this time, you need to do time with your family. You need to do time with your business. You need to whatever go explore the world. Everyone's time freedom means something different to them. But the cool thing about it is we give opportunity and flexibility to whatever that is. And so if you have money, there's two currencies in this world, time or money. And so you can trade time for money for a long period of time. But if you don't shift that active income to passive income so that money becomes kind of the base so you can go spend all your time, you're going to live a really empty life. So I really think it's really important to have time and time freedom.

And that comes with building wealth. That's the perfect answer. And that is kind of the exact same way that we define it here. so I absolutely loved that. So, Brennan, thank you so much for coming on. This was absolutely amazing. Where can people learn more about you and everything you have going on with Budget Dog? Yeah, they can find me on Budget Dog.com, which is my website or any social media out there,

Budget Dog in Twitter and TikTok, it's Budget Dog underscore. I got finally the blue checkmark on Twitter. So I have a bunch of fake accounts, but I intended to do that so people know it's the real me. I will not ask you about cryptocurrency or some asking you for money of some sort. So make sure that you are contacting the real me and not some fake accounts. account. Absolutely. That is perfect. We're going to link all of those down below and definitely make sure not to talk to the crypto bots because we get them all the time too and I absolutely hate them. So that's perfect. Well, Brennan, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.

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