The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Get a Guaranteed 5% Return on Your Emergency Fund - Money Q&A

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Starting point is 00:00:56 We're 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 about how you can get a guaranteed 5% rate of return on your emergency fund. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram at Mastermind. Money Co and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player you are listening to this podcast on right now. And if you want to help out the show, please consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. Now, today, we have a money Q&A. So we're going to be

Starting point is 00:01:39 going through four different questions that you guys have sent in via Instagram or via email. The first one is we are going to go through how to get that guaranteed 5% rate of return on your emergency fund. And we're going to walk through how you can build out a T-bill ladder as well. Then we're going to go through what to do with your three paycheck months. Because every single year you get three paycheck months. We're going to talk through how you can take advantage of those three paycheck months if you get paid by weekly. And if you get paid weekly, what to do with those five paycheck months as well.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Then we're going to talk about how to negotiate your credit card interest and the step-by-step ways that you can do that, especially if you're in credit card debt. This is very important to understand. But if you're not in credit card debt, it's also important to do up front. And then the last thing we're going to talk about is, is it okay to buy a house if you don't have a 20% down payment? And is it okay to pay PMI? Those are the four questions that we're going to be going through today on Money Q&A.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Really excited to share this episode with you. So let's get into it. So today we have a big announcement because T-Bill or Treasury bill rates in the six-month time frame have hit 5%. Now it has been a very long time since this has happened. It's actually been like 2007, 2008 since the last time this has actually happened. And this is amazing for us for a number of reasons. Now we have a place to park our hard-earned dollars that we put into an emergency fund, or maybe short-term savings, maybe a wedding fund, a car down payment fund, a home-down payment fund. We have a place that we can actually get a respectable rate of return by

Starting point is 00:03:12 doing this. Now, obviously, the interest rates and a number of other factors are what causes this, but at the same time, when we get into these T-bills, and we're going to talk about how to do this in a second, when we talk about T-bills, we're going to be talking about this is a fantastic place for you to park your extra cash that you have sitting in place, and you can get a 5% rate of return. Now, if you don't know what a T-bill is, it is a U.S. Treasury bill, and this is backed by the Treasury Department of the United States. This is a guaranteed 5% rate of return. This isn't some pie in the sky thing that you are hoping it's going to get 5%. This is a guaranteed rate of 5% rate of return that you can get.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Now, this is backed by the same government entity that also backed IBonds. If you remember, we talked about how IBonds got to 9.62% last year. This is the same government entity that backs IBonds. And so the cool thing about T Bills, though, is you can get more money into T Bills. And so with T Bills, you can actually put a lot more money into T Bills. So this is a great place to park large lumps sums of cash. Now, where do you buy T bills? The best place to buy T bills is TreasuryDirect.com.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Obviously, it's a really clunky website. We talked about this a little bit when we talked about IBonds as well. It's not the greatest website in the world. In fact, it seems like a website that was 15, 20 years old, and they really haven't updated it much. But this is the best place to buy T bills. You can see the current rates as you are buying them as well. And you can go through the process of buying those T bills

Starting point is 00:04:32 to get them ready to put them in either your emergency fund or whatever else you want to do for this. Now, one thing I want to note here is at the time I'm recording this, the T bill rates are right around 5%. CIT Bank, for example, has a high yield savings account that's right around 4%. So this 1% differential may not be the best option for you. But at the same time, what you can consider here

Starting point is 00:04:53 is if you set up a T bill ladder, which I'm going to explain exactly how to do that in a second, you may be able to reap the benefits of even higher interest rates going forward in the future as you have that set up. So this is something, if you want to get an additional 1% on your money, if you don't have to utilize that money right away, and it's guaranteed T-bills are a fantastic place to do that because once you lock that T-bill in,

Starting point is 00:05:14 that rate's not going to go down. Whereas in a high-yield savings account, that rate can go down at any point in time when the bank chooses. So you got to make sure that you have this in place as well. Now, some quick facts about T-bills before we dive into the rates and the T-bill ladder. So some quick facts on these. The minimum purchase of a T-bill is $100. So this is fantastic if you have an emergency fund. This is fantastic if you're saving up for a wedding. Maybe you know you have a wedding coming up in another year and you are saving up funds for that wedding. Well, this is perfect for something like that so that you can have extra money in your wedding fund and maybe it can pay for certain little things in your wedding. This is perfect for a down payment on a house or a car.

Starting point is 00:05:50 T bills are a great place to park that cash. It's a great place to have that available to get a higher rate of return. And you buy them in increments of 100 as well. So when you buy a T bill, you can buy them in 100, $200, $300 increments or all the way up to thousands of dollars when you buy these T bills. Now, when is the interest paid? So when you buy a T bill and you have the money inside of that T bill, the interest is paid when that Treasury bill matures. What does that mean? That means if you buy a one-month T-bill, you have to wait an entire month for it to mature before you can reap the benefits of that interest. So you got to make sure that you are holding it in holding time periods that fit your exact criteria. Now, the way you actually buy T-bills is actually

Starting point is 00:06:29 an auction format. It's very easy to buy them because there's a lot of them available, especially if you go to treasury direct.com, but you can also buy them on brokerages as well. But the easiest place to me is Treasury Direct. And then how are taxes paid on T-bills? Taxes are paid or just on the interest earned. So that's the only place you will pay taxes on there and you get a tax form and then fill that out. You can have your accountant do it. Turbo tax can do it. Anybody can do it if you have treasury bills that you have purchased within the last year. Now let's get to the good stuff. So what are the current T-bill rates? Now, if you were listening to this way in the future, obviously they may be different. You can just Google what are current T-bill rates, but

Starting point is 00:07:03 As of today, at the time I'm recording this, these are the current T-bill rates. The one-month Treasury bill is 4.58%. So you can buy a T-bill for one month and get an automatic 4.58% rate of return. The three-month Treasury bill is 4.82%. The six-month Treasury bill is 5.03%. The two-year Treasury bill is 4.71%. The three-year Treasury note is 4.4%. Five years is 4.14.

Starting point is 00:07:32 seven years is 4.0, and 10 years is 3.9, and 30 years is 3.9. So you can see there's a sweet spot here. The sweet spot is the six-month treasury bill. That is the highest yield, and that yield is 5.03%. So this is how we're going to think about this when we set up a T-bill ladder. We want as many of our T-bills to be in that six-month treasury rate as possible. So if you've never heard of a T-bill ladder, it's very similar to a CD ladder, and we'll talk about how you can do that here in a second. But this is really good stuff, because this is how you can set it up for your emergency fund, and you can lock in the highest rates and still be able to reap the benefits of those interest rates.

Starting point is 00:08:09 Now, for this example, when I set up this T bill ladder, I'm going to set this up for someone who has six months of expenses saved into an emergency fund. Now, if you have six months of expenses and anything outside of those six months, when you're saving up maybe your separate wedding fund, all of those, you can put them in as long of a time horizon as you want, but obviously get as much as you can into that six-month T-bill

Starting point is 00:08:29 and then re-up every time that T-bill matures. So what you're going to see here is I'm going to talk about this by month. And if you are subscribing to the master money newsletter, you may have seen me set this up inside of that master money newsletter. So if you're not, sometimes you can see some of this stuff early. So make sure you are subscribed to the master money newsletter. We teach you how to get better with your money in five minutes or less. It's linked up in the description down below. Now, the way you're going to do this is you are going to actually buy all of these T bills at once. But I'm going to label these by month, meaning the month that you would use this money in your emergency fund if you lost your job.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Say you need $10,000 per month. In month one, you'd have $10,000 that you buy in the T bill. In month two, $10,000, month three, $10,000. But you're going to do this all at once and you'll see exactly what I mean here in a second. So remember, every time you have money saved, every single dollar gets a job. So that's why we're just labeling these as month one, month two, month three. But really what it is, it is the amount of money that you would need in all six months as you go along this time frame. So in month one, you're just going to keep your money in cash.

Starting point is 00:09:29 The reason for this is so you at least have one month of cash available to you, and preferably it'd be in a high-yield savings account, like CIT Bank is my favorite place to park that money, or Ally Bank is another great place to park that money as well to get those high interest rates. But you want one month in cash, so it's always available because if something happens, you need that cash right away. It needs to be available in that emergency fund. Month two, you're going to buy a one-month treasury note with one-month's expenses.

Starting point is 00:09:55 Okay? So that means you have month one in cash. Month two, you're going to buy a one-month treasury bill. So that rate of return is 4.58% at the time of recording this. Month three, you are going to buy a three-month treasury note with one-month's expenses. In month four, you're going to buy a three-month treasury note with one-months expenses. In month five, you're going to buy a three-month treasury note with one-month expenses. Then, in month six, you're going to buy the six-month treasury note with one-month expenses.

Starting point is 00:10:25 Then all other savings that you do not need within that first six months is going to go in a six-month T-bill if you were going to follow along on this strategy. Then as you go through this, as each T-bill matures, you buy six-month treasury notes. In six months, all will be at that 5% rate of return, that sweet spot that's available there. So as this starts to happen, then you're going to have the first T-bill mature, the one-month T-bill, is going to mature. Then you have that available and you're going to buy a six-month T-bill because now, coming down the pipeline, your three-month T-bill only has a couple of months left. Then you're going to repeat the process.

Starting point is 00:11:00 And as you go through this, you make sure you have enough liquidity to cover you, if anything happens in life. So maybe if you're parking it in between that time frame, you can have a cash buffer and you can have one month of emergency fund available to you just so you have that extra protection. But then you can start to buy these T-bills in six-month increments. And then eventually what's going to happen here is you are going to have all of your months in six-month T-bills and getting the highest and

Starting point is 00:11:25 interest rate that you possibly can. Now, you can do the same thing with CD. So if CDs in the future are ever at a higher interest rate than T-bills are, then you can do the same exact strategy with CDs because CDs also have a pretty high interest rate right now as well. I think they're right around 4%. I've seen a couple of places that have been a little higher than 4%. So if you have a bank where you're just comfortable keeping your cash at this bank, you can do the same exact thing with CDs. But T-bills honestly are an amazing place to hold cash. Even Warren Buffett himself, when he parks cash, he parks it in T-bills. Right now he owns $75 billion in T-bills through Berkshire Hathaway. He talks about them in his yearly shareholder letters all the time as well. And if you haven't

Starting point is 00:12:02 read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, they are some of the best investment reads in the world. So make sure you check those out as well. So if you guys have any questions on this T-bill ladder, make sure you let me know. Now let's get to the next question. All right, so one thing I want to talk about here, and we talked about this on TikTok and it went viral. And then we talked about it on Instagram as well is three paycheck months. Now every single year, there are people who get paid biweekly who are going to have three paycheck months. And most of us are aware that these happen, but most of us don't take advantage of three paycheck months. So what I want to do today is I'm going to go through what the three paycheck months are for this year. In addition, if you get paid weekly,

Starting point is 00:12:41 there are some people out there who get paid weekly. We had a number of comments under TikTok and a number our comments under Instagram, and I'll tell you when you get those five paychecks months as well so that you can do the same exact thing that we are talking through here. But these three paycheck months are really cool and very powerful if you actually plan for them. Now, a couple of things I want to note before we dive into some of these dates is that obviously on three paycheck months, you may not be able to save the entire amount, because why? You're going to have maybe an additional week of groceries. So maybe you need a couple hundred bucks for groceries for that additional week that's coming into play. But at the same time, I want you to think,

Starting point is 00:13:15 about this. For the rest of the money, most people just lose and commingle the money inside of their checking account. Maybe they spend a little more than they typically do and they don't even know that they're doing it. But what you got to do here is when you can plan out these three paycheck months, you can use this money for what you value. Because what I'm trying to teach you here is the skill of spending. The skill of spending is you make sure that your dollars are going towards your priorities. That is what money is there to do, is to bring you value. So if you can take these dollars, Put them towards your priorities, it is a powerful way to spend every single dollar that you make. So imagine, for example, you live on two paychecks every month if you get paid biweekly for 10 months out of the year.

Starting point is 00:13:57 But there are three months that are absolutely perfect for you to utilize towards wealth building activities, or maybe you put them towards Christmas presents at the end of the year, or maybe you put them towards a bunch of other things. And we'll talk about some places to put them by a financial situation. And at the same time, you can use this money so that you can grow your money. well, that much faster. So here's what the three paycheck months for this year are going to be based on the first time you got paid. So if your first paycheck in 2023 was January 6, then your three paycheck month will be March and September. So March and September, if you got paid on January 6th. If your first paycheck in 2023 was Friday, January 13th, ooh, that's spooky. Then your three

Starting point is 00:14:38 paycheck months will be June and December. That's a pretty sweet spot to land in because it's halfway through the year. So maybe you need to catch up on your investments, for example, then you can utilize that paycheck to do that. And December. So maybe coming around Christmas time, you have this available for you for your Christmas presents and whatever else you utilize at the end of the year. Now, you get 10 other months with two paychecks. You survive with two paychecks on those 10 other months. That's why you can do this, except for the things that are a weekly occurrence. Maybe you have daycare that you pay weekly or you have groceries that you pay weekly. So part of that paycheck may need to go to that. But outside of those weekly occurrences, then the

Starting point is 00:15:13 rest of the money you can utilize towards wealth-building activities to vacation, all these other things. So here's a couple suggestions on what to do with your money based on financial situation. So if you have high interest debt, any debt above 6% interest rate, you want to put that money towards that first, get that paid down. So this is the people who have credit card debt or personal loans that are very high interest rate. It is a pants-on-fire emergency to get rid of this. You definitely want to get rid of this. The second place is your emergency fund. If you do not have emergency fund in place, you want to make sure that you start to build up this emergency fund because that's not if life is going to happen. It is when things in life will happen to you

Starting point is 00:15:48 in your finances. You got to be ready for this. If the recession is coming down the pipeline, you have to have an emergency fund as place. It is imperative to have this in place. And so we've talked about this for a long time. Three months expenses, if you can get a job very quickly, if you're in a field where you know you can get a job quickly, but you have to know this, Don't just assume it. But if you can't get a job very quickly, then six months will be absolutely perfect for you. And you can use something like T bills, a high yield savings account, whatever else you want to put this money in. Third, if you are not hitting your investment goals, this is a great way to supplement your investment goals.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Imagine if you just took your tax return and you took these three month paychecks and invested those dollars, you would have millions of dollars into play if you did this. So this is something it's very powerful to do the right things with these very, very simple little things, instead of blowing the money, if you invested those dollars, depending on how much it was, it could be either high six figures, two millions of dollars invested if you got like an 8% rate of return. So this is very powerful stuff that we were talking about here. And it could be a six figure decision if you invest those dollars. Now, if you're only hitting part of your investment goals, and this could be a supplement to your

Starting point is 00:16:55 investments as well. That means that maybe you want to max out your Roth IRA. You only put $5,000 a year in there and you want to get that extra $1,500 into there. You can use that for this as well if you were not hitting those investment goals. And then lastly, if you are hitting your investment goals, there's a bunch of options you have available to you from utilizing it for Christmas to vacations, to additional investments in wealth building, to saving it up for a cash flowing asset. Maybe you want more cash flowing assets so that you can reduce the stress in retirement. So you want to buy a rental property. You want to buy an ice machine or you want to buy something that can actually produce cash flow for your life so that you don't have to worry so much in

Starting point is 00:17:30 retirement. It's a great place to have this as well. You can also use it to make extra mortgage payments. If you want to pay down your mortgage faster, then this is something where you can take these extra dollars, put them towards your mortgage, and your mortgage could be cut down 5, 10, 15 years, depending on how large your paycheck is. In addition, you can donate a portion of this money if you are charitably inclined. If you like to give money, this is another great option for you you if you don't know what else to do with this money. But taking advantage in planning for these three paychecks months is incredibly powerful. And the way that I would look at this is if you're giving every dollar a job already, maybe you're getting ahead in your budget a little bit.

Starting point is 00:18:04 If you budget the way we've talked about early on in this podcast, we have a bunch of budgeting episodes in the first 100 episodes of this podcast, if you want to check those out. But if you're budgeting the way that we talk about budgeting here, you're starting to get ahead with your money, then this is perfect for you because you can plan out these three paycheck months. You have aged money within your budget, and you can plan out these three paycheck months

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Starting point is 00:21:56 All right, the next question. This one's coming from the Graham or Insta. So how do you negotiate credit card interests? So if you haven't heard our episode where we talked to Nicole Lapin, she talks through this a little bit as well. But really, this is an episode that we talk through how you should be negotiating everything. And if you didn't know that you can negotiate your credit card interest,

Starting point is 00:22:14 it is absolutely something you can do. Now, the worst thing that your credit card company can do is say no. There's two times to do this. One is, if you're not in credit card debt, you can negotiate your credit card interest to make sure that it's as low as possible, and it just takes a phone call. We'll walk through the steps here in a second. But secondly, if you are in credit card debt, it is way more imperative for you to be able to do this to lower that interest rate. If you have some sort of credit card where you can't transfer

Starting point is 00:22:38 the funds or it's not transferable to maybe a 0% interest rate or APR credit card, then this is something where you definitely want to do this and you want to do this with some dramatic fashion. Get a little dramatization in here. Put your best actor or actress face on so that you can go through this process and really start to hit the feels for whoever is on the other side of the card. So if you don't know what your APR is or the interest rate on your credit card is the percentage of interest that you are paying to have this debt in place on a credit card. And it is a pants on fire emergency. You need to get rid of credit card interest as fast as you possibly can. Why? Because it is compound interest working in reverse against you. And this

Starting point is 00:23:15 is an interest rate that is going to destroy your wealth building ability. And it really just shocks the momentum that you have when you start to build wealth. So getting rid of credit card interest is something you definitely want to do. Now, we have a free debt course. If you have no idea how to get out of debt, we have a free debt course that we offer to you. You go to mastermoney.com slash debt course. And this will show you a step-by-step plan. It's under an hour.

Starting point is 00:23:37 You can learn exactly how to do this as well. But here are the steps to negotiating your credit card APR, your credit card interest. So you're going to take out that credit card that you actually swiped maybe one too many times or the credit card that you are responsible with. and you can call your credit card company, there's a number on the back of that card. So when you get on this phone call, you want to make sure that you are getting to the right person.

Starting point is 00:23:55 Sometimes they transfer you around a little bit, but make sure you are getting your right person who can actually make a decision on this. And if someone is rejecting you, ask for a manager or see if you can get someone at a higher level to see if you can start this process all over again. Now, step two is you're going to ask them to lower your APR. And again, when you do this,

Starting point is 00:24:12 they might transfer you to a couple different places, but just be patient and try to get to the right person. Step three, they're going to ask you why you want this lowered. So you can get theatrical here, but you want to make sure that you have some solid reasons in place on why you want to lower that interest rate. Just because you want it lowered is not the best reason overall. But a lot of people that we've talked through doing this have gotten their interest rate lowered a few percentage points. Two, three, four, five is the highest I've heard where you can get that interest rate lowered down so that you're not paying so much. And then step four, this is the reality of this situation, is they either are going to lower it or they won't lower it.

Starting point is 00:24:44 But at the same time, it is worth asking because the worst that they can do is say no. Now, if you have a credit card interest payment that is really, really high, consider transferring it to a zero balanced credit card, meaning that it has either a 0% interest rate or a much lower interest rate so that that debt is not killing you. Then prioritize your dollars towards paying down that debt. You need to take advantage of this. You need to take ownership of this and really focus on paying off high interest debt. Now, this is not for something like low interest debt, like a mortgage, for example,

Starting point is 00:25:14 that has a 4% interest rate. What I'm talking about here is high interest debt, anything above 6% and really, truly, if you have any debt above 10%, you are really having an emergency here, and you need to get rid of this as fast as you possibly can. So high interest debt needs to be taken care of,

Starting point is 00:25:29 and this is one way that you can look at that, and if you can't do that, then look for 0% balanced transfer cards and see if you can do that instead so that you can consolidate this debt in one place and have a much lower interest rate or not pay interest at all so that you can pay down that debt.

Starting point is 00:25:44 even faster. All right, the next one is from Insta. So it says, is it worth it to buy a house with 20% and paying PMI? So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to lay out some of the reasons why I absolutely hate PMI, but at the same time, there are some situations, especially right now when housing costs are really, really high. Sometimes you could be trying to save up for a down payment on a house, saving that 20% up. And it feels like it is impossible to actually catch up to save enough because housing prices keep rising, meaning that you have to save even more money, get it at a 20% point, and that is just a difficult situation to be in. So I'm going to show you a couple of different scenarios here where it may be okay for you to pay less than 20% down,

Starting point is 00:26:27 pay that PMI, but you need to understand the ramifications of doing this. So the reason why we put 20% down is for two reasons. If you're unfamiliar with buying a house, the first reason is you avoid PMI, which what PMI is, it's private mortgage insurance. It is additional insurance that you have to pay on your mortgage if you do not put 20% down. So if you get something like an FHA loan or you use a traditional loan and you do not put down 20% on that house, then you are going to have to pay PMI. And what it is, it's truly just like throwing money away. I mean, that's truly what it is. But sometimes there is no other way to do this. Now, the second reason that you put 20% down is to make sure that you are not underwater on your house immediately.

Starting point is 00:27:09 So you can think of something like 2007, 2008, where a bunch of you. people were buying houses at really high prices, all of a sudden the market dropped. And if you did not put 20% down, you were completely underwater right away. So 20% down helps you not be underwater, even though your total cost is completely underwater. And that's one thing we're going to talk about as well here on a future episode. You got to understand what your total cost is when you buy a house. TCO or total cost of ownership is a very important metric to understand because houses, we've talked with this a couple times on this podcast already. Houses are not that grade of assets when they are your personal residence. So here is the scenario when maybe this would

Starting point is 00:27:48 be okay. And I'm putting maybe in an asterisk here because really, I'd rather you do it with 20% down. But if you cannot do it and you want to look at something like an FHA loan or maybe you want to just do a lower down payment, then here is the scenario where this would actually work. So our rule for housing is it needs to be 30% or less of your net income when you are spending that money on housing. This is very important caveat to understand here. 30% or less of your net income. Why? Because if you spend any more than that, you will be house poor unless you are adjusting in other areas. Maybe you live in a city and in that city, you don't pay any transportation costs because you don't need a car. Well, that would be a scenario where you could

Starting point is 00:28:29 spend a little more on housing and still be okay because housing costs more in city. So say you live in New York City, you ride the subway and your transportation costs are much lower than someone who has a car payment, they have car insurance, and they have all these other things, then maybe you can pay a little more for housing. But your housing costs as a rule of thumb in most situations needs to be 30% or less of that net income. You got to be able to follow this. And really, we want it below 25%. And if you want to achieve financial independence as fast as you possibly can, keeping it at 20 or below is also a key. Now, if this is your first home, this is the scenario where you can do this. The reason why, if it's your second home, I do not want you putting less than 20% down. Why? Because people who buy their second home,

Starting point is 00:29:10 can roll the equity from the first home into the second home. So this is an option where if it is your very first home, it is a very difficult time right now to be able to buy a house. But listen, I know human psychology. Most people are going to do it anyway. So making sure you're in the right financial situation first is very important. So if it's your first time home, you can consider this as long as the payment is 30% or less of your net income.

Starting point is 00:29:36 If it's your second home, then you need to either roll that equity and have that 20% down payment into that house. Those are the instances why it makes sense. Now, here's why I hate PMI. Number one is cost. It's an additional cost that you have to pay every single month within your mortgage, and that's cost that is taking away from your wealth building activities or taking away from things that you want to do with your money.

Starting point is 00:29:55 It's just an additional cost that you are going to have to be paying every single month. Number two, it's just no longer deductible. So up until 2017, PMI was tax deductible. It is now no longer tax deductible. You're just giving money away. You're just throwing money into the wind and you get no additional benefit out of it. This doesn't help your home appreciate. It doesn't help bring value into your home.

Starting point is 00:30:17 It doesn't help bring value into your financial life. You are just literally setting money on fire. Number five is PMI is very hard to cancel. In fact, it is one of those things that even when your equity tops 20%, you sometimes will still have to pay PMI. Specifically, it depends on your lender. So one thing you want to note is when you are buying your house, you want to see what does the fine print say when I'm getting this mortgage.

Starting point is 00:30:41 And then lastly, your payment could go on and on and on, meaning some lenders are actually going to require you to maintain that PMI, even when your equity gets above that 20%. They're going to require you to maintain that PMI for even a longer period of time. And sometimes they set parameters in the contract. So sometimes it could be up to 15, 20, 25 years that you have to maintain that PMI. So you can have this additional payment that goes on and on and on. So these are just some things to note about PMI, your PMI insurance, so that you understand what the ramifications are, what you're up against,

Starting point is 00:31:12 and making sure that you read that fine print. Make sure you always read the fine print when it comes to these additional items that mortgage companies want you to have within, in order to get that mortgage. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play Ojo, the online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games. What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws.

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The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Get a Guaranteed 5% Return on Your Emergency Fund - Money Q&A

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