The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Start Your Millionaire Mission Wth Brian Preston

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk to Brian Preston about how you can be on your millionaire mission. How Andrew Can Help You:  Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Monarch Money: Get an extended 30 day free trial at monarchmoney/pfp Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Delete Me: Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off!   Links Mentioned in This Episode:  The Millionaire Mission The Millionaire Mission Book Tour Connect with Brian Preston Website Instagram Tiktok Facebook Linkedin Youtube X Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we're going to talk to Brian Preston about how you can be on your millionaire mission. 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 Brian Preston about how you can be on your millionaire mission. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, at MasterMoney Co, and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player,

you love listening to this podcast on it. If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review. Now, today on the show, we have Brian Preston, who is the host of The Money Guy Show. You've seen them probably on YouTube and or listening to a podcast. And he has some amazing content. And he is coming out with a brand new book called Millionaire Mission. And so at the time this episode comes out, you can pre-order it. But his book is going to come out in the next week.

And so I want you to grab that book. I think this is going to be an amazing read for a lot of people. Today, Brian and I are going to dive into mindset a little bit and why your mindset is so incredibly important when it comes to your finances. We're going to go through the financial order of operations and talk through each and every single piece of the financial order operations. We're going to talk through how Brian actually manages his own money, how he handles finances with a partner, and we're going to talk about luxury cars and a whole bunch of other

questions as well. So this is an action-packed episode. So without further ado, let's welcome Brian to the personal finance podcast. So Brian, welcome back to the personal finance podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Andrew. This means a lot. I'm super excited about what we're going to be talking about today. And today I'm really excited to talk about this because you have a new book coming out called Millionaire Mission.

And I want a lot of people to understand how powerful this book can be. There we go. There it is. And I'm so excited to have this on because I think this could be one of those things with your systems in place. You know, we're very familiar with you when you came on last time and all your systems that you have in place. I think this could be something like the next millionaire next door, which I know you and I are very fond of that book. Stop it, Andrew. Please say more. And so that is something I think is going to be amazing.

And so I'm really excited for everybody to pick up this book. I want everybody to kind of top of this show. I want them to make sure they get a copy of this book. This could be something that's life-changing for a lot of people and their financial situation. Because I know you and I are both believers that we believe that anybody in this world can become a millionaire. And they just have to have an understanding of what they need to do and have the right mindset in order to push forward. So tell us why you got started and why you decided to go out and write this book. Well, I mean, it all kind of goes back to the origin of what even got me into

doing a podcast that then turned into a YouTube channel, which has now led to even doing this, what I call tip of the spear with having hopefully a book that even if you're not familiar with all the content creation stuff, you'll come across this book to get interested and know what you can do. but I remember coming from a family that had more love than money growing up, watching my dad struggle with, you know, losing his job when I was in middle school and those things. And then I got out into the workforce as an accountant and I started making money. And I was like, I want to do things differently.

I actually want to have my money work for me. I don't want to just be good at saving because my parents, even though they had some hardships, they were really good at saving, but never knew what to do with their dollars. to actually make them work for them. And I found even though I was in this now public accounting job, had these cool credentials like being a CPA, it didn't mean I was good with money. So I went on this journey of trying to figure out what to do with my next dollar.

And I've learned a lot through that process. And that's where in 2006, you know, I was in this situation where I was now a wealth manager helping primarily people with seven figures plus, you know, so definitely very successful people. but I felt this whisperer in my ear that, man, it's a shame that most people just don't have access to good conflict-free or even my stuff has some conflicts. I'm willing to talk about that. But just trying to get people to get the best investments that will streamline and accelerate their success.

And so that's why I started podcasting. And then, you know, we've grown this into doing YouTube in 2017. And now when the pandemic came around and I had all this extra time because we were all working. working from home, I was like, this chaos seems like maybe this is the next facet and I actually sat down and wrote the book. And that was, I'd always aspired to write a book, but aspiring and doing are completely different things. And it was a lot of work, but it's been just an incredibly enjoyable experience. I mean, it's been some hard times. I can tell you after, because this book is its best version of itself. It's actually on its fourth version, because I was going to

self-publish this. And then when I hired an agent to help me market it, he shredded the first version of this book. I mean, it got a lot better. I'm glad he really gave me some tough love on some things I needed to work on with it. And I just can't wait for people to get it. Because I really do hope, because I remember my journey back in the mid-90s when I was, like I said, a young accountant. And I picked up the wealthy barber and I picked up the millionaire next door and they changed my life because it was kind of unlocking that it was turning the key and unlocking the gateway into how to do money better. And I've tried to even build on that because I feel like, you know, a lot of books are either good at the mindset or they're good

at the math, but very few kind of give you the combination of those things. And there are other system books out there. But I've really tried to give you the intersection of both the analytics and the math, but giving you the mindset so you don't get to turn 60 years old and go, man, I wish I'd have done my 20s better. I wish I'd have done my 30s. It doesn't matter where you are. I'm going to give you the insights from working with clients for 30 plus years plus my own journey.

And then the last thing, Andrew, and then I promise I'll ask more questions is that I always ask with any system, where did the success come from? It's kind of the chicken or egg. Was it the person selling enough? of the system that they became wealthy or was that the system was so good that actually created the success and wealth. And I'm here to promise you that if you'll go on this journey with me, you'll see I lay it out there in a very transparent way, all my mistakes, all the things I've done, but all the things I've also picked up and learned from my clients, successful

clients, that this system really does work. And the system created success before I started trying to sell it. So I think that's a key thing I always try to draw attention to. And that's what's so exciting about this book because your blood, sweat, and tears have been put into this from experiences to the mistakes and then going forward. What I do love about this is that you do have that intersection because it's so important to have the mindset piece of this. And the mindset, I would say, is about 90%. You know, it's mental in terms of money and personal finance where it's a huge portion of it. But once you get to that 90%, you got to know what the heck to do. So having both sides, the mindset and also having the systems in place is one of the most powerful things that someone can have

because when you have both sides, you can truly be so powerful when it comes to building wealth and you can build a tremendous amount of wealth over time. And so let's talk about mindset first because you have three key ingredients to building wealth and the mindset surrounding that. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think that kind of what makes our content so unique is that I really am trying to be a student of the craft through all things. I remember I'd have to go look it up to see when we did our first show on the three ingredients of wealth. But I was trying to take apart what creates wealth and success. And what I found was is that first you've got to have discipline.

And when I talk about discipline, it's really that key concept of deferred gratification. If you can live on less thing you make and be disciplined with the way you, the income that comes in and the way you spend it, That will create the second ingredient, which is the margin, aka the money. The money is the second ingredient because you have to have money to kind of work within our financial system. And then if you can take that money and not just build the money and save the money, I'm talking about actually invest the money, then put that with the third ingredient, which is giving it enough time to grow upon itself with that's wonderful eighth wonder of the world compounding growth. And those are the three ingredients. So it's really simple.

Be disciplined, live on less thing you make. That discipline will reward you with the margin of money. That money invested over a long enough period of time will create the wealth that you didn't even know was possible. And that's the beautiful thing about building wealth is it truly is simple. It's just getting that mindset rolling and kind of get into that point in time where you have that mindset in place. What do you think holds most people back from building wealth,

specifically when it comes to mindset? No, it's the first ingredients, the discipline. Because even if people read a book like mine, Millionaire Mission, and they get on fire to try to change their life, there's a big risk that in year two, year three, after they started, maybe they funded their Roth IRA the first year. But then year two, they get distracted because life gets busy and they just don't stay consistent. That happens to a lot of people. I think so it's all back to the discipline and consistency. And the way you overcome that, by the way. And I talk about this throughout the book.

and it's back to the mindset is how do we make the good habits extremely easy and how do we make the bad habits that distract us as hard as possible? And what I have found is automation. So if you can just set up automatic investments every month, every time you get a pay raise, you increase that automatically. You create what I call force scarcity, meaning that even as you're making more money, you're allocating that to more automatic savings and investment strategies and other things. So even though you're making more money, having more success, you're not increasing your lifestyle to where it's overcoming the goals, objectives, and all the things you want to accomplish. Absolutely. I think that's the most important thing is first just establishing that discipline,

putting your systems into place, automation, like you said, really, really helps with that. And then you can get the ball rolling. And once you get that ball rolling, then all of a sudden, you can start to see all of this start to compound and flourish and you're actually accomplishing your goals and you're doing the things that you want. And it is so freeing, you know, having relief of that stress and anxiety around money, which is what we're all trying to teach people how to do here, which is absolutely amazing. So one of my favorite things, because I am a fee-only financial advisor, you know, is my day job, is that I look back, and I've been doing this now for right, close at 30 years, is I look at my client list and the ones that I have, I really do attribute that

I made them wealthy because I, every year, you know, as we're having meetings, I'm like, hey, I notice your cash is starting to build a little bit, why don't we increase your monthly savings by $200, $300 a month? And then it is really those incremental, small little decisions to just take a little bit. They didn't even notice that we took the two or $300, you know, after the conversation and set up the automated. And I look back and now when these people have multiple seven figures, when they're not, and I'm just being honest, some of these people are not the most disciplined people in the way they lead their life. But because we automated it and we've kind of, of push this behavior on them, got them over the finish line. And it just, it makes me feel like

we had a really big impact on somebody who maybe struggled with that behavior themselves. That's absolutely amazing. And that kind of reminds me of something we just did on a recent show where we had somebody increased the amount of the error saving for $300 per month. And so $300 per month, they invested it with an 8% rate of return. And we increased that $300 per month by 1% every single year for 30 years. And in the end, they had an additional $1.6 million just on that example, just from doing that small incremental change. So it's so incredibly powerful. And as we know, compound interest is just so amazing what you can do if you make those small changes. Everybody always, they see, hey, I want to have two or three million dollars. And they get

overwhelmed thinking, well, I make $50,000 a year. How am I ever going to get to two or three million dollars? And I'm like, don't look at it as the big objective. You won't start anything big in your life. If you look at how complex are all the steps, you've got to break it down into the simplest, what are the next steps? What's the small decision to make? And that's exactly why the three ingredients to wealth. I think so I'm always trying to figure out how do we dissect something so we can give people the smallest, easiest path forward so that you don't get distracted or overwhelmed with the complexity that will happen. It just happens naturally, but don't get caught up in that in the beginning.

Focus on the small decisions and the little things you can do to keep the process going forward. Exactly. And speaking of those small decisions and the roadmap to do this, last time you and Bo were on here. And we talked about the financial order of operations. And you guys dove into, you know, just the steps and did a quick overview of what those steps are. So can you talk about the financial order of operations? And there it is. There's the laminated version, which I love.

You got to shake that thing. And this is, you know, I remember kind of the origin story of this. This is, I don't know, 2014, 2015, I was, I saw on LinkedIn, there was a question and they were using symbols, but they were putting parentheses and exponents and the symbols represented, you know, numbers. And they were saying, can you solve this math problem? And I remember looking at this question somebody to ask, I see these from time to time now. And everybody was getting it wrong. And I was like, these poor people do not remember Pimdas. You know, please excuse my dear Aunt Sally, where you got parentheses, exponents.

you know, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. And I was like, and then it hit me. I was like, wait a minute. If people can't even do basic math and get it right, finance is the exact same way. There is definitely an order of operations with everything you do financially. And that also will unlock the ability to do with your next dollar. That's the most important thing because it's back to those small decisions. So we have created this non-steps.

And I got to tell you, Andrew, you've been following our content, too, is that we've been doing Q&A shows, live stream. So, I mean, we're on the spot for years now. And this thing is an all-terrain vehicle. It is yet to be stumped on being the ideal system, I think, that can really help people. And I just love talking about it because I think anybody and everybody, it's back to something you said earlier. Success and wealth is waiting for you. I don't care what background, you know, how humble your beginnings are. You just got to do something.

Just get it going, find a system like this, and I think you can do it. Don't let people tell you otherwise. Well, let's dive deeper into it because I think it's really, really powerful for people to understand this and understand how you guys have laid this out and put this system into place. Because I think this is something where if they know where to put their extra dollar, like you're saying, their very next dollar, it can be really, really helpful to really just simplify your finances, which is what we're talking about and just kind of make it easier for most people. So the first one is deductibles cover.

Can you talk about deductibles cover and why you want to have your deductibles covered? Yeah, there's a lot of systems out there that talk about you got to have emergency reserves and other things. But a lot of them, because there's a conflict. There really is a battle that bruised between how much liquidity, meaning aka cash, you should have, versus when do you start paying down those credit cards that are charging you 20 to 30 percent? When do you get your employer match? Because, I mean, if your employer is incentivized by the government, government to give you 50 to 100% guaranteed rate of return, you ought to be thinking about that a

little bit. So that's why I have created in the system. And by the way, anybody can go download this. It's completely free. Money got.com slash resources. If you want to download the free copy, you can get a copy. It's not going to be laminated, but it's going to be free. Step one, I was like, we've got to get people from filing bankruptcy or finding that, you know, getting in that desperate decision where they start running up debt and all the other things that are completely not let them get out of the starting blocks of creating wealth and all the successes that's in store for them. And I was like, you know what really you need? It's not a number. It's not like $1,000. It's not $3,000, $5,000. You know, like I've seen other systems. What it actually is is somebody

doing the homework of writing down all of your insurance deductibles on your health insurance, your auto, your renters, your homeowners, and figuring out what's the highest. out of all of the deductibles, what's the highest? And more than likely, it's either going to be your medical or probably your homeowners, something like that, depending upon where it is. But once you have that highest deductible covered, now we can know anything catastrophic in your life that's going to happen, that's going to derail you and make you choose that desperate decision of credit cards

or doing payday loans or any of the other stuff. That stuff is now going to be covered. You don't have to make those desperate decisions. So then we can move on to step two, three, and beyond and really get this thing moving. And that's why this is so powerful because the majority of people out there who are living in that paycheck to paycheck cycle, they just don't have this set up. They don't have the deductibles covered. They don't have this piece set up. So they just keep falling back into this cycle over and over and over again because life happens every single month.

This month I've had six things happen to me that I didn't expect. And so this is going to happen for a lot of people too. And so making sure you have this available is going to protect your wealth building. ability going forward. And so it's just so important to not skip this step and make sure you have this first step in place, in my opinion as well. So I think this is just really, really powerful stuff. The next one is employer match. Now, the employer match is something that really, it can accelerate your path to wealth with making some of these small decisions as well. So can you talk about how powerful the employer matches and why it's really important to do this up front?

Think about this. And the fact that I talk about it, you even see it on my coozy's, you know, I really do try to draw people's attention to the power of compounding growth to the point that we have created what we call the wealth multipliers. It's what every dollar has the potential to become. And once you understand what every dollar has the potential to become, like for a 20-year-old, $1 has the opportunity to become $88. But the sad part of this is that when you're 30, every dollar has a potential become $23. Still incredible, but there's a big drop-off. And then by the time you're in your 40s, by the time you reach age 40, that potential for a multiplier on your dollars is seven. So you see how, yes, I get it.

When you're in your 20s, you're broke. You probably don't have any money. But I'm here to tell you with the multiplier and understanding the power of compounding growth, it takes very little to turn into a lot because of this multiplier effect. So that's why I want people to understand that when you're starting your first job, or you get out there, there is an incentive for your employer to give you free money. And I found out from some of my peers when I, you know, when I graduated college, I got an attorney friend and she was doing so good. But I found out she wasn't doing her 401k at work.

And I was like, why aren't you doing your 401k at work? And she's like, well, I got pay off my student loans. And I was like, come on. I was like, you're not. I was like, you've got to get in there and get this free money because, you know, your student loan interest rate is what, 6%? six and a half percent, you know, but that your employer, because I knew the law firm she was working at, I knew they were given dollar for dollar contributions.

So that's a hundred percent guaranteed rate of return. She will never get that time that you're 25, 26, 27 years of age. She will never get that free dollar, you know, hundreds, if not thousands, actually thousands of dollars with her compensation level at the time. You'll never get it back. And what saddens me, Andrew, is that we do a lot of. research and I do a lot of 401k presentations because we represent some large 401ks. And I always tell people, I was like, look, when I'm giving that 401k presentation, I'm like, when we leave here, there is right outside the door there.

I've got one of my cohorts handing out $100 bills to every one of you guys as you'll leave. And there's not a single one of you guys that would leave this auditorium and not take that $100 bill. However, 30% of the typical Americans are missing, maxing out their 401k match. And that just breaks my heart because, I mean, if you will fall all over yourself for a $100 bill, but yet you walk away from thousands of dollars of free money, what are we doing? We've lost the plot. And it just saddens me.

I think it's because people see retirement savings is not real because it's something decades in the future. We as Americans have an instant gratification problem. and that keeps us from doing the deferred gratification because we'd rather have what we can have now. It feels good. So just do what we have. But I'm telling you, just a little bit, just a tiny bit of today can really give you that great big, beautiful tomorrow. Absolutely.

And I tell everybody, free is my favorite number. And if you can get free money, a 100% rate of return, it is one of the most powerful things that you can do. And if you look at this on a longer time horizon for most people, you can look at what the match is going to be, you know, 4%, 5%, 6%. A lot of times this is going to be six figures to over. million dollars if you have a 30 year career. And so this could be something where you just add those dollars in and it's so powerful what this can turn into over time. And that's why this is so important

to do up front. It's so much more important to do than even some of these other steps that we have here is you just got to get that free money first. And the opportunity cost that you're losing out on is massive if you don't take advantage of that. So I think it's so incredibly powerful. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy. Clothes don't fit anymore and routines are changing. And it just hits you. Life is expanding. And when your life grows, your responsibility grows with it. That's something I've been thinking about more this spring, making sure the safety net we have in place actually matches the life that we're building. And that's where PolicyGenius comes in. PolicyGenius is an insurance company. They're an online

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Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. Next one is high interest debt. And so paying off high interest debt is obviously really, really important for a lot of people. Debt will absolutely destroy your wealth building ability. And it's one of those things that we really need to focus on. A lot of people are in credit card debt and personal loans and those types of things that really have this high interest. So what in your eyes is classified as high interest debt?

Yeah. Well, it's easy to pick on credit cards because, I mean, it's just a no-brainer. If you're getting charged twice as much to three times as much as you hope the stock market will give you, you'll never get ahead. So you've got to get that under control. Also, I've been shocked with where interest rates are right now. I found out from some people recently, the car loans, people are paying 15% on some car loans. And I'm like, that's definitely high interest debt. You know, that's outside the scope of what I even think is reasonable.

And then, of course, student loans I would pay attention to. But that really, we're kind of nuanced on that. And I cover this in Millionaire Mission is that, you know, when you're in your 20s, you're in a different place than somebody who's in their 30s, somebody who's in their 40s. And so we've done an analysis looking at risk-free rates of return historically. And the risk premium you get when you invest your money and trust, because you do have this decision. It's an incremental decision of do I pay down debt on my student loan or do I start building assets that are working for me? And those things, you need to kind of have a process to kind of go through that.

What we've done, I know it's unique right now because interest rates are, you can get 5% on your cash right now, which is not normal for what we're used to in the last 20 to 30 years. But it is one of those things where I tell people, student loan debt, I think in the sixes in your 20s is okay to move on to step four, five and six. But I think that once you're in your 30s, that number probably drops down to 5%. Once you're in your 40s, 4%, because you want to get student loans paid off. You don't want to be 50 years old, still paying for your undergrad degree. So it's one of these, by the way, the stats show that there are a lot of people that just don't pay off their student loans. So we're trying to help you get on the other side of that. So you can be, you know, have your walk towards being completely debt free by the time you're retired.

And here's one of those scenarios that I think a lot of people think through as they start to pay down some of this high interest debt is they want to get rid of that high interest debt. But at the same time, they don't want to lose out on the time horizon of. compound interest by investing their dollars. Is there ever a scenario that you can think of where someone should be, you know, paying off high interest debt and starting to invest at the same time? Yeah, that's why step two is there. I mean, obviously, if you've got an employer giving you 50 to 100 percent, you've got to make the decision that that 50 to 100 percent guaranteed match from your employer is better than even the 20 percent that the credit card company is charging. The other thing is back to that point I was when I was talking about the attorney. You know,

if you're thinking about the fact that you've got student loan at 6% versus paying off all debt, which might take years. I mean, like I said, this person will never get their 26, 27, 28 year old years back in the compounding, the wealth multiplier of every one of those years. So those interest rates are, you know, they're not fond to pay a 6% interest rate, but it's not so detrimental because you likely could make more over the long term. investing some of that. So there's a time and a place. I always say, you know, there's a conflict that's going on and debt fits into this is that you've got get wealthy behaviors and you've

got stay wealthy behaviors. And we try to give you the perfect, you know, balance between those so that while you're in your 20s and 30s and that money is worth so much because it has so much time to compound upon itself, there's strategies of where do you prioritize investing versus debt. But as you get wealthier, say post-45, where your wealth multiplier is much, much lower. And you're now thinking about I'm going to retire in 15 to 20 years anyway. That's stay wealthy behaviors. We've got to extinguish as much debt as possible. But there is a delicate balance between the maximization and de-risking your portfolio.

But I always think when I talk to debt crusaders, because I don't like debt either. But there are people who kind of get it out of sorts, and they just all they want to do is pay off debt. And I'm like, well, there's a big risk. You won't be wealthy if you don't do this in the right time or place. And that's why I've tried to give you, and I know by the time we get to step nine, paying off low interest debt, I've put some charts in the book to really walk. I don't care if you're a non-analytical thinker. I want to talk about how your stages of life will change and your disposable income will change

and your disposable time will change. Those things all go into this whole decision of maximizing, when to pay off debt versus when to grow and invest your money. So we really have tried to think of everything. I love that. I think that is the way to kind of think through it as well, is kind of see where you're at and what's going on in your personal situation. And you can kind of analyze some of that based on some of that stuff that's going on there. Now, the next one is emergency reserves. This is a big one for a lot of people. Most people that cannot build wealth do not have this in place. And the reason for that is they're stuck in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Life's going to happen.

and then they have nothing to cover that. So they go backwards once again. And so this is something I think is really, really important for a lot of people to really be thinking through. And the conventional wisdom is to have three to six months in your emergency fund. I'm a big proponent of six months.

And the reason for that is just because if you lose your job or something like that, you know, it's going to take, you know, at least three months to go and find a job, go through the interview process and then come back and then you have another three months runway possibly. It could take longer than that. So are there scenarios where you see that,

you know, people can take a three-month emergency fund or do you think it needs to be a longer time horizon closer to that six month? Well, we do a deep dive actually in the book on this because there's definitely life things that impact, whether it should be three to six months or even beyond, because we even detail that as you get closer to retirement, you already go have some weird psychological stuff that happens once you start consuming your assets versus saving because you've spent decades building. So we want that cash to be probably closer to 18 months.

But when you're in the workforce earlier, obviously, if they're, a two-income household, or you have a harder job to replace, or you have more dependence, you know, counting on you. All those things go into that, are you three months? Are you six months? I mean, obviously, the preferred is the more, the better, because that's more peace of mind. And also one of the things I cover in the book is because cash is so important because we really, Americans take it for granted. And how do I know that's true is because bank rate every year comes out with stats to show what percentage of Americans cannot come up with $1,000. And unfortunately, you can pretty much set your clock to 60%.

So this year, it's 56% of Americans cannot come up with $1,000. So that means that they're at the whims of whatever is going on economically or they're not really in control of owning their life or their time. And that bothers me because I have found that cash is so powerful not only for the peace of mind, but it's actually an incredible contrarian wealth builder. Because since the majority of Americans are actually running so lean, when we do hit economic chaos through downturns that happen pretty much twice every decade, when you hit bear markets or recessions,

it's actually very powerful if you have cash when nobody else does. Because when assets get disconnected from their intrinsic value, it's actually nice to have a little bit extra. So I'm never going to fight somebody on having a little extra. extra cash on hand, but you do need to do the homework and the exercises to know what actually fits your specific situation before you can move on to steps five and beyond. I think for myself, when I was younger, I had much leaner cash to the point that I made some mistakes because I thought access to cash was just as good as having cash. And that's a trap of financial mutants,

I always say, is because you think you're maximizing, but you're actually opening yourself up to additional risk. But now that I've gotten older, I've got multiple companies. I've got 35 plus employees here and a bunch of contractors who help us. I mean, I have to keep cash because when things go ugly out there in the economics scape, it's not just me. It's 35 other families that are counting on us to have cash. So you need to make sure you are doing the homework to know what you need so that you're protected. I agree. And that's the same situation like all the businesses we own. We have about 50 employees. So my cash runway. is just much longer. So business owners, if you have employees or people that depend on you,

it's important to have a longer runway for cash for sure. And then going forward, even, you know, as you approach retirement age, a big thing for me is, you know, as I get closer to retirement age, I want even a longer cash cushion and time horizon there just for extra security. There's a lot of different reasons why. But really your life situation, like Brian is saying, is really, really important. And the book is going to lay that out for you as you go through it, which I think is really, really cool. Now, the next one is one that our listeners are very, familiar with hearing and people have told me stop talking about the Roth IRA, stop talking about the HSA so much, but I love talking about it because it's so powerful what these accounts can do.

So the Roth IRA and HSA are next. And so if someone had access to both, which one would you have them pick or is it depending on the situation in terms of how they would actually handle that? That's like asking which child do you love the most? I mean, that's a hard one to talk about, but it's, but look, I've put some thought. This isn't the first time we've been asked. What I'd do think is unique about health savings accounts. Now, look, not everybody has access to this. This is the only way you can fund a health savings account is if you have access and you're actually participating in a high deductible health plan.

Now, there's a tradeoff on that. The government is essentially trying to incentivize your behavior because they're saying, look, you're going to choose a health insurance plan that really doesn't cover much unless it's a, you really got big expenses because you're going to self-insure on a lot of the small, office visits and all these other little things out there. But if you'll sign up for this, we'll allow you to make contributions that are triple tax advantage. And when I say triple tax advantage, I'm talking about your contributions into the health

savings account are completely deductible. If you decide to actually build up money in that health savings account and then invest it, whatever it grows is going to be tax deferred. And then here's the kicker. if you actually use it for qualified medical expenses, it's going to come out completely tax-free. So, I mean, that's a pretty sweet deal if you qualify for all those things. Now, the Roth is very powerful as well because it's tax-free.

Remember how I was talking about that dollar could turn into $88? How cool is it that if you let your money do that, and then you never pay taxes on the $87 of growth? I mean, because that's the reality of a lot of people don't realize when they look at their retirement assets when it's seven figures, if they started in their 20s, there's a good chance that 90 plus percent of the account is not their contributions. It's actually the growth if you actually look at how this thing builds upon itself.

So that tax-free where you don't get a deduction on your contribution on the Roth, but you get the tax-free growth, pretty sweet gig. But now that I've laid out those two distinct tax-free growth opportunities, I'd probably have to choose the health savings. account. Let me explain why. I look it as a twofer because you saw step one is actually funding your highest deductible first. And I've already kind of giving the clue that more than likely your highest deductible is going to be your medical insurance. So there's a good chance that you could already kind of being doing a joint effort with doing step one and step five together if you're

funding your health savings account. Here's the other thing because a lot of you're now go start doing research on health savings accounts. Only 4% of people who open health savings accounts actually do the investing and then the tax-free growth. Most people use these things as clearing accounts. They made the contribution into these health care plans and these health accounts and then they take the tax deduction, which is one of the triple tax advantage. But then they pull it right back out to reimburse themselves. The only way this actually works, and you have to have a little extra cash to pay your current medical expenses is if you actually start investing that money. And that's what, you know, I'll tell you how I use it, is that I have a, my youngest

is on the spectrum. So she has autism and she goes to a very special school. And this school sends out letters and we have doctors notes to saying that she needs a special experience. And it's very expensive. So I'm letting my health savings account grow upon itself. And I'm hoping that many times over, I'm going to get back some of that tuition for all these years that we've been putting her in this specialized school. And that's a great thing. It's a really cool opportunity to let your money work for you and then reimburse. And then even if you don't have a special situation like I have, Fidelity estimates that health care costs and retirements are going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So this could benefit everyone. Absolutely. And I think that's one thing where

I think the step that you're pointing out here is to invest the money inside the health savings account. Most people miss that step, especially if they're getting it through their employer. Sometimes their employer just doesn't explain that portion of it. That's the powerful part about this account is you can invest those dollars and then ring and burst yourself on the back end. If you're thinking through, you know, well, how do I keep track of this and all that kind of stuff? I just kind of throw all my receipts in a Google drive and, you know, just label it by year and then I have a little spreadsheet there. It takes like two minutes every time. I know it's annoying, but it really is helpful, you know, down the line just to kind of track where you are.

and how much you can reimburse yourself. So it's one of those things that I think can be really, really helpful overall. Now, the next portion is maxing out those pre-tax accounts. And pre-tax accounts we know are the 401K, the 457, 4-03B, all of these different accounts that are out there. And so is there ever a scenario where you would max out pre-tax prior to something like the Roth or the HSA? Well, it all depends. We give the details as, you know, look, Roth is incredible.

I mean, but remember, you're not getting a tax deduction. So while you're young, both young and in a lower tax bracket, load up on the Roth employer plan, you know, because that's going to really benefit you. I don't think taxes are going down in the long term. So I think it's a great opportunity. So we've actually put a number on, I think if your marginal rate, meaning the tax rate you pay on the next dollar of income, that's going to be the highest rate. And add both your federal and state. And if it's over 30%, I like to say it might make sense to do pre-tax. So, and look, we had somebody who was on our Q&A yesterday with a question, 26 years old and their household income was $250,000.

That person, even though they're 26 years old, probably should be doing pre-tax. And you're like, why would you do pre-tax? Well, first, that deduction, when you're in those higher tax brackets, think about the fact that especially if you live in one of these higher tax states, if you had 40 cents out of every dollar going to taxes, that's money that if you put it into the pre-tax might be. be eligible to go somewhere else for you because you took the deduction, it lowered your taxes. Now you have more take home pay. Maybe you can do a backdoor Roth contribution. You can do more after-tax savings. There's all kind of things that potentially could help you bridge that.

But that's what once you start making more money, take advantage of the pre-tax because here's why. More than likely, if you're a hyper-saver like that, you're thinking you're going to leave the workforce earlier than, you know, than the 75, the government mandates required minimum distributions. And it's amazing once your earned income falls off and you enter into retired status. A lot of states give you tax favored status for older people. You know, a lot of your income will be tax free, tax exempt, as well as you'll be in a lower tax rate just because you won't have all that earned income anymore. And now you might be in a situation that you could convert some of that growth, those accounts

that they grew and you could convert them into Ross at much. lower tax rates than the higher marginal rates that you're paying while you're in the workforce. So that's why it does make sense to pay attention to where your taxes are, what your age is. And I lay all that out. I mean, if this sounds nerdy and you're like getting lost on some of this, I have tried to write this in the most approachable way. But to consider it like a CPA, a Southern CPA, just like I am, where, yes, I'm going to give you all the nerdy stuff that an accountant would tell you.

But I'm also going to write it in a way that you would not feel intimidated by. at all. And that's the type of stuff that I've tried to put in here. Like I said, the nerdy math is in there, but I've tried to make sure the mindset keeps it where it's digestible and easy to understand, because those are important things. Another thing, Andrew, I would draw attention to a lot of people, maybe if you're not a six-figure person, you're like, wait a minute, I'm never going to max out my 401k, because that's, you know, now it's $22, $23,000 a year. What am I going to do? Because that would be a lot of my income, I'm like, look, 25% savings rate is what you need to hit. Once you get 25%, even if you're not fully max out, you can move on to step seven. And then also realize if your household income is less

than $200,000, you can include your employer match in that percentage calculation. Because I understand, the lower your income, the closer you are to needing every dollar that comes in to just cover housing, health care, and just keeping the family fed. So I've tried to give you, things to think about and also things that help you to accomplish your goals because your needs are different from somebody who's making a quarter of a million dollars a year. Exactly. And I think that is the most powerful thing is looking at your own personal situation, looking at that tax situation, and that can really just help you assess, you know, where you need to go with these dollars and, you know, in tandem with your CPA and everybody else on your team. I think it's just really, really important

to kind of look at that before you make that final decision. Now, the next one is hyperaccumulation. Now, This is the fun stuff, I think, is the enjoyable portion of this is hyper accumulation. Brian, have you ever played pickleball before? All my neighbors do. I played high school tennis. So I'm sitting here thinking, why am I not playing pickleball? Because everybody who I know who plays pickleball is kind of like CrossFit was 10 or 12 years ago. All my friends who play pickleball talk about it constantly.

So it must be awesome. But I'm sadly, I've never played. Okay. So let me show you how fun this is because I start playing pickleball. about a year ago and then got hooked on it and I play it all the time. Well, guess what I did in my hyperaccumulation phase? I decided to go out and buy an indoor pickupall facility that was already functioning. So this is a business that we bought over the course of the last year. And it's been really fun. Now we're opening multiple locations. It's a whole ordeal now, but this is

something that seems like all the, all the gym around me have pickleball facility. So I think you're probably on the front end of something. Exactly. So we're excited and we're kind of rolling through this. But this is the fun part because you got to hit these first portions first, before you can do this. And there's so many different ways to kind of go through hyper accumulation. But can you kind of talk about, you know, what you can do in this phase and some of the things that are available here. It is a mindset thing because it feels like steps one through six are really making sure you're getting your financial foundation. Are we call it, this is the building the basics of your launch, whereas you got to go at some point, you need to start thinking about it's not just

the math of maximizing the tax savings the government's doing plus making sure our financial assets is actually how are we going to use this money? Because it doesn't make sense for you to be saving beyond 25% in all these retirement accounts when you're planning on retiring at 50 years of age, when you can't even get access to the 401k until you're 55 and the IRAs. You can't get access until you're 59 and a half. So you need to at some point say, okay, I've gotten through the basics. How do I use this money? Begin with the end in mind. And that's where I do like hyper accumulation stage is because this is once you've already automated your process, you're saving beyond the 25%, hence the name, you know, hyper accumulation, is that this is

where you're going to look at the three bucket strategy. When you're looking at your after tax, which is your individual and joint brokerage investment accounts, you've got your tax deferred, more than likely that's your employer match. And then you got your tax-free assets, you know, the Roth and the HSA. And we like to say, think about the tax location. of your investments, but also the tax location of how you're going to pull this money out. And it is the funds, you know, period. If you're a financial nerd, like we obviously are because we both have financial content shows,

is that, yeah, this is a lot of fun working through how you'll use this money. Because I think in the beginning, you're just kind of painting by numbers to take advantage of the taxes, the tax savings, but also to put the check on the box that I'm saving for the future and doing that discipline and deferred gratification, this actually lets you do the strategy. And if you think seven's fun, eight is that my fun and my favorite step because it's now, look, it's got a boring name. That's why we had to sauce this thing up a little bit. It's prepaid future expenses because this is where, but we call it, I affectionately call it,

the abundance goals because now it surprises people. This is where you really start loading up the kids college fund, but it also could be when you get into real estate. You know, you want to start doing residential real estate. You want to do commercial real estate. I love getting into those type of things at this stage because you've got steps one through seven underneath you. You're not going to get caught broke because a lot of times you're using levered debt when you're doing those real estate deals. But also like this is when you can kick it up a notch, you know, because when I talk about car loans earlier in the book in the high debt chapter, we talk about, you know, 238, put 20% down.

Don't finance longer in three years, no more than 8%. By the way, cash is always king when it comes to cars, but this is for people making desperate decisions or entry-level decisions on their vehicle decisions. That's to get you the basic car, reliable transportation to get to work. By step eight, this is when if you want to drive the nicer car, have at it because you kind of get to reward yourself.

If you want to take the family to Europe and spend a lot of money on travel, it's okay because abundance goals is a wide open palette to let you kind of live your best life because you've lived a disciplined financial life. So let's do it. Exactly. I think it's a really fun one as well. And it's just so cool what you can do. Even if you're someone who wants to invest for your kids or things like that, we have a system we've talked about a couple of times where you're investing just $100 a month when your baby is born. And then if you do that over a long period of time over 18 years, you'll see you'll have about 80 grand in that account if you get a 10% rate of return. I like to use 10% for motivational reasons a lot of times when I

talk about some of this stuff, but planning side, I like 7 or 8%. But if you use a 10% rate of return, get to that 80,000 portion there. And then over time, if you don't touch those dollars again, your kids can have $7.6 million by the time they're age 65 in that account if you just do not touch those dollars. So it's so cool, like just some of the stuff you can do with these future expenses. And like you said, paying for college, paying for other types of funds or any type of thing you want to do with your family, there's a lot of cool things that you can do here as well. On that, I mean, because I did that with both of my daughters. I started the monthly investments when they were young.

But then additionally, because it's one thing to load them up, but you got to get the mindset right. Because, you know, unfortunately, a lot of successful families, their kids, it doesn't hit in the second and third generation. Statistically, it just doesn't. So that's why it really impresses me when people find out they come from money and they're really good with money. I'm like, what did your parents do? Because they obviously got it and they taught you or something was different. is that as soon as my daughter started working, whether it was babysitting when she was 14 and then when she got her first job, you know, at Chick-fil-A working, you know, doing that,

I started giving her a dollar-for-dollar match just like your employer does to fund her Roth, custodial Roth IRA. And I got to tell you, when I look at, she's now 20 years of age and I look and I did the, if you do the wealth multiplier on that, she's already a multimillionaire just off of what she's loaded up and what it's grown because that's the other thing. If you want to get your kids excited, let them see, because she was making $10 an hour at Chick-fil-A. And I was like, do you realize your account is up like $7,500? I want you to go figure out how many hours you have to go work to get $7,500 worth of growth. And it just like, whoa, that's what I was like, that's the power of

your army of dollar bills. If you really do this right, your money can work harder than you can with your brain, your back, your hands. But it doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow, steady process. And that's one, teaching your kids well, especially if you're doing well with your finances, don't try to shower them with everything. Put some scarcity in their life, but also prime the pumps so they're good with their money as well. I completely agree. It's the most important thing that you could do is teach them that skill on how to manage their money. And the millionaire next door, I think I even mentioned this when it was talking to that book is like most of the millionaires that they surveyed in that book also had, you know, self-sufficient kids. And so that was really,

really important that they actually had that financial education. And I think it's really, really powerful what you can do. The last one is low interest debt payments. And so this is one where, you know, if you want to pay off low interest debt and look at a lot of people's mortgages and things fall under this, you know, you can do that. So is there a situation where, you know, someone has anxiety about debt? They just hate debt. They get stressed out. Is there a situation where you say, hey, just more power to you, go pay off that earlier. Yeah, I mean, look, I give a lot of grace to, because there's always a relief valve for somebody who just is anti-debt. I'm like, I'm not pro-debt.

I mean, look, it's a tool. It's a dangerous tool. I always say it's chainsaw dangerous. And the fact, you know, cutting down trees, you want to have a chainsaw, but it also can cut off your legs. So you just, you have to use it with respect. And if you're not scared while you're using it, you're probably using it wrong. But there are people out there, just like it's probably people who don't want to use a chainsaw. Because people don't want to use debt.

But I would just say, just make sure you're not neglecting the get wealthy behaviors. So what I always say, if somebody who tells me they want to have their house paid off by the time they're 40, I'm like that more power to you. Just make sure that you're doing that after you reach saving and investing 25%. Because maybe that's a step number eight abundance goal, that you're just now dumping more money on that low-interest mortgage. Is it about maximization at that point? No. This is about the stay wealthy behaviors, de-risking.

I'm okay with that. What I don't want to see is that you're in step three. You pay off your high-interest credit card debt, and then you, instead of start funding your Roth and other things, you're loading up, paying down that three and a half percent mortgage. I mean, that's a disaster if you're in your 20s and 30s over the long term. It might feel good emotionally that you're wiping out this debt, but it's not going to be what gets you wealthy.

So that's why when we talk about this and I lay this all in, like I said, very deep dive in millionaire mission on the fact that sub 45, you really need to understand how powerful every dollar has the benefit of growing. And versus post-45, yeah, knock it out the debt because hopefully you've already made the hard decisions when you were under 45 years of age when compounding growth was doing all the heavy lifting for you. So just don't get that out of whack.

It also, if you'll use our systems, it's going to give you a little extra grace while you've got a house full of kids. And then you're going to find out one day that the kids are getting older. They're starting to leave. That's all built into the system as well because I think there's a lot of systems

that tell you only do 15-year mortgages and other things. I'm like, yeah, that's great. And like me, my current house, because there's a stat out there in the financial world that millionaires pay their house off in 10 years. What's hidden in that stat is this not the first home. It's usually it's like the second, third, or fourth home of this millionaire because it's like myself, I bought this house in Franklin, Tennessee. The debt will be extinguished here, and I haven't lived in the house for 10 years.

But this was my third house, fourth house. I'm trying to think of when I was upgrading from beginner home to end. So I just don't see a stat like that and not know the why because when you're 20, you know, eight years old or 33 years old and get your first home, do not be wide open to get that low mortgage. Now look, I know right now mortgages are six and a half percent or so and you're like, well, is that high interest or low interest? And it all is back to that risk premium versus where we are.

I think that I still would wait with a 6% mortgage to step nine because you're going to have the opportunity to refinance rates will come down at some point, whereas it's hard to get that money back into the Roth when you're 26 years old or 32 years old. I just, that stuff breaks my heart because, I mean, when I talk about what your money can become, I mean, a 32-year-old, I mean, every dollar is worth $18, you're never getting that back. You know, for a 28-year-old, every dollar's worth $29.7. So you're never getting that back. So just understanding, if you want a copy of this, you can go to money guy.com slash resources to see specifically what every dollar has the potential to become. Don't mess that part up because that breaks my heart.

But yeah, I'm okay. If you're saving and investing 25%, it's back to the abundance goals. Maybe instead of buying a Tesla, you're going to go pay off your mortgage early. More power to you. And I would completely agree on that as well. It's kind of, you know, weighing those two options out. But your dollars can grow so much faster if you start to get those compounding and you can always refinance that mortgage. and the last thing you want to do is just plug in your really valuable dollars, your extra dollars

that you have to invest into something, which really it's not that great of an asset long term in terms of you look at the returns and total cost of ownership and that kind of thing. So really important to make sure you invest those dollars for sure. So next I want to kind of talk about how you manage money because we talked about at the top of the show a little bit about automation and how you should automate your money. We were talking about discipline and all that kind of stuff. But when you automate your money, what does that process look like for you? Let's say, for example, your dollars hit your checking account.

What does that kind of look like from a total automation standpoint? Yeah, I am a full-blown case of financial mutant. And the fact that I've kind of gotten ridiculous. And by the way, if this helps tell some books, I put it in there on purpose because it's back to, does the system create the success or was it, you know, how good the system was created the success is that the last chapter of this book is actually what I do with my money. And I go a full deep dive and try to be as transparent as possible. with how I'm managing my own family's money.

So that's why this is a great question. I have it coming out every week. That sounds ridiculous. But it's true is that I started off as that I was when I was doing dollar cost averaging with my, remember I practice what's called forced scarcity is I've made more money. I've actually increased how much is in an automated fashion going into my monthly investments. And what I have found is it started with once a month. But then I was like, okay, now let's do every other week.

And then after I looked at the, you know, I was like, well, how about every week? And the reason you're like, why? And I'm like, this is a sickness of a financial mutant. No matter what's going on in the marketplace is a financial mutant, you get excited. Like, the market's getting beaten up. And yes, you have this big portfolio that's getting beaten up too. But in some weird way, and I don't know if this is just a sickness or what, when I know that I have a contribution going in in two days and the market's getting beaten up, I don't think about the seven figures, figures of investments that are getting beaten up.

I think about how cool is it that this week's investment's going to be, you know, a percent and a half cheaper. So, I mean, I know it sounds, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing on this planet. But it is kind of the way I do things. So every month I have money. And look, I don't feel, even though because I've constricted my life to where I just don't I have a good life. I make tons of memories.

I go on really nice trips. I live in a nice house. but I think I could do more, but I've learned that my why is that I keep moving the goalpost. And I think this is a problem I see with people when they get in their 40s and they start having some success is that they keep buying bigger and bigger and bigger. And I'm like, why? You know, make sure that you are spending some time on the mindset stuff. So you just don't get caught up in the race of, hey, if I can afford it, why not a bigger house? Do you need the bigger house?

I mean, especially if the kids are starting to go off to college. Now, maybe you do because I know some older. people who have bought really nice homes because they plan on being the gathering place for all their family and the grandchildren and everything else. That's a different one. I'm all for that. Just make sure you're not doing it for the sake of doing it. Make sure you put some mindset and some purpose behind it. I think that's such a powerful message is thinking through, you know, what your why is behind that. And creating the memories is one of the most valuable ways that you could spend your dollars. I think it's just so important for people to remember that as they go through this. Do you have any

tips for managing money with your spouse. A lot of people struggle through this. We get a lot of questions on this front. Do you have any tips for people when you are managing, you know, money within a relationship? I mean, I've been married 26 years. You don't get there without some good communication. And so what my wife and I do is I do an annual network statement. And then I use that. It might not sound like the most romantic date night, but we like to sit down and kind of go through where things are. And then we'll put other things. Like we have a five year travel list that We update from time to time. But yes, use the tools of like a net worth tool.

And by the way, we have a free one if you go to money guy.com slash resources, but we have a high powered one with a dashboard and all kind of tools built into it. If you go to learn.moneyguy.com. But net worth is my favorite one, my favorite things to do. Not only because it lets me track and have a dashboard view of what's going on in my financial life, but it is a great communication tool. So make sure you're having good conversations. conversations with your spouse because I'm always saddened when I find out that spouses are not talking

about money, you know, or not talking about what their joint goals are. And I'm like, well, that must be lonely because it's, you know, if you're isolated and you're not talking or one person does everything and the other one is just kind of in the dark on it, I think that you need to work on that a little bit because it's just I can think it can be healthier if you're actually having a more transparent, open dialogue. And then it's fun to do things together. Having a joint effort towards goals, it's spicy. And I tell you, for all of me saying it's not romantic to do these type of meetings, when you get on the other side, we get a little older and start having a little more success and you start planning trips and other things off the fruits and the dividends of your discipline,

it can be romantic too. So it's all good. Absolutely. And I think that's really, really important to have those money conversations and make sure you're just open in the conversation that you're having. And I love the portion, you know, you have trips on that list and you have fun things to add on to that list to make this conversation enjoyable as well. And I think that's a really, really important piece to make sure that you take home on that one. Now, one other question before we dive into like some of the rapid fire stuff we're going to talk through here is you have a luxury car. I don't know if it's a horror story or just something that you hate about luxury cars. But let me tell you mine up front here. And then we'll dive into yours too is. in 2018, my wife and I decided to buy a luxury car. I'm not going to tell you the brand, but it rhymes with Mercedes. And so we bought this car, and I am absolutely hate this thing. Everything about it, every cost since we purchased it is the most annoying thing. Every oil change is like $2,000. Everything is just, it's absolutely the most frustrating thing.

I haven't gotten rid of it yet, but it's probably something that's down the line here. So kind of tell me why you hate luxury cars as well, and I know you do. If I asked your spouse, would they say the same thing? I think at first she would not have. And then as of late, as it's gotten older and older now, I think she would have. But up front, no. So you don't think your next car is going to be a luxury car like this? She's going to be able to take the Toyota.

That's the conversation that we're having now in these money conversations that we're having going forward. So that's what I'm tweaking it slowly over time here. I have to talk about this here because if I talk about it, at home, I get in trouble because the annoyance is a one-way street and the fact that my wife, if you ask her, she loves her car. Maybe it's because I'm the one that takes it to get the oil change. I have asked these people if they're embarrassed to themselves for what they're charging for everything. I mean, I remember the first month, it's a European car, by the way. I remember the first month that I'm driving this car because they advertise it's got 10,000 mile oil changes. I'm like, well, that's

pretty fancy, you know, 10,000 miles with synthetic oil. Well, after it's had 6,000 miles of that first 10,000, the engine light comes on. The oil, add oil comes on. So I go by the dealership, I'm like, man, I'm in the first 10,000 miles. This thing's a limit. It's already burning oil. And he's, oh, no, this is, this is just the way it works. You have to add a court between that 10,000 mile oil change. It's going to every oil change. I'm like, what? So I'm like, okay, there's the first thing. And then the other thing is, is that this car went through brake pads like I've never seen before at 35,000 miles. And I'm like, when do you change brake pads in 35,000 miles? And then the tires, because when you buy luxury vehicles, they don't put normal tires. I'm used to Michelin tires where

you get like 45, 50,000 miles guaranteed. They actually give you like a mileage guarantee. These fancy cars have sports tires or summer tires and they and they cost an absolute fortune replacing you're lucky if you get 20,000 miles out of these things they don't come with warranties it's just stinks to be you they have no sidewall so you're you're going to curb them every other week because yeah it looks good 16 year olds are going to love these cars on when they when they see you at the drive-through but and then I just feel like every little thing premium fuel premium insurance. There's just a lot to it. So I could go on. Everybody around here knows I do my luxury car rants. But here's where you can tell a marriage is all about communication,

is that my wife needs a new car. We've been having a lot of conversations. I think we are about to practice insanity in the fact that I think we're going not with the same. We're going to go to it. I'm going to tell her we had this conversation on Mercedes. So we'll go ahead and mark that one off the list. But there's another European brand that a lot of my neighbors have that I think that she's just got her mindset. Now, the good news is we're in the biggest SUV in this current brand we have. But since the kids, you know, our oldest is in college, my youngest, we don't, we don't haul a lot of people all over the place. We're going now to a smaller. So I'm hoping that maybe there's some correlation, but I don't think it will happen. But I think there's going to be a

correlation that the smaller European SUV is going to have a smaller cost. But I think that's wishful thinking. If I had my way, because my previous car before I got the Tesla that I drive was a Lexus ES. And that car, I drove that car, 12, 14 years. I don't even think it had a warranty check on it. That thing was, that thing purred like a kitten the entire time I drove it. I wish we would do that.

But, you know, like I said, communication, you don't get 26 years of marriage with without having good communication. Exactly. And I think if you want one more tool for your ammunition against the Mercedes, the last time I took it for an oil change, they told me, you know, here's the long list of things you wanted.

And it was very simple things. And the total cost was $8,000. I'm like, just forget this. I'm just done with what we guys are recommending to me. So this is a whole, there's a whole ordeal. But luckily,

we're having, she's due to have our third. We have a five-year-old and a three-year-old. So we're in the thick of it right now. But the third is coming later this year. So I think I've got her sold on just like a Tahoe or something like that. just to kind of get that. Yeah, exactly. So we'll see. But, but that's the, exactly, not a minivan. So that's the key. So anyways, I'm glad we, we talked through that too because I think it's just so important. But so I want to shift gears to some of these rapid fire questions here. And a lot of these, you know, a couple of these, I think we talked about possibly last time. But what are some of your favorite books that you have read in last year? Now, last year is a unique period. Normally, I am your who's who of financial content because I just love reading that type of stuff. But since I wrote, this book, Millionaire Mission, I have given my brain a break from nonfiction. I've been reading

a lot of fiction. I turned 50 this year and to celebrate turning 50, my wife surprised me with a road trip. So we went down this whole rabbit hole. I don't know if you've heard of these books, but fourth wing, I mean, it's a lady series. It's okay. I'm embarrassed that I'm telling you this, but it's okay. If it makes good communication and we listen to this audio book together and then we continued reading it later. I mean, that took a lot of the year because these books, I mean, I think her name is Rebecca Yarrow or something like that.

These books, like if you do the audio book, it'll be like 26 hours. And you're like, holy cow. I mean, after recording an audio book, I really have respect for the artist that was performing that audio book. But the other one, since I am turning 50, I've read some, I have read some nonfiction with how not to age and then outlive. You know, it's like Michael Greger who did How Not to Die, but he's also done now How Not to Age. And then Peter Atia has outlive.

You know, it's just one of those things because health is wealth and, you know, turning 50, I'm a little more aware of my mortality. So just like I'm disciplined and practice deferred gratification with my finances, I'm going to make sure that I'm disciplined in thinking of the future for, my health as well. Absolutely. Those are great ones as well. I love outlive. What is your biggest fear when it comes to money, if any? It's changed over the decades. I mean, in the beginning, because since I didn't come from money, you know, there's this whole relationship, do you have enough? But then I think as you get more successful, you've got to make sure it doesn't become the thing.

I mean, that's the, because I think that's the problem. It's only, money is only a tool. And if you don't understand that, that it's not going to define you, it's not going to be you. You have to do that work yourself to figure out who you are, what makes you comfortable in your own skin, what you value, and what wakes you up in the morning to feel like you have purpose. Make sure that's not just being driven by what you have in the bank account or what's in the investment account. So it's easy for a wealthy person to say that. That's like I said, it's changed over my life because in the beginning you're just trying to get enough so you can get to that stability of paying your bills. but I'm telling you, you know, and I do a lot of content. If somebody wants to go to MoneyGyat.com, look up five levels of wealth.

By the way, I covered a millionaire mission as well. I think that will give you some insight on that stuff as well. Because I do think I'm unique in the fact that not only am a nerdy accountant that can chart the analytics, but I've really tried to give you all the mindset stuff so that you live a life well lived. Absolutely. I love that. And then are there any causes that you believe in or any change? terrible causes that you like to put your dollars behind or anything in the world that you wish you could change or anything along those lines.

I mean, I definitely get involved in your local community. I mean, I think, you know, helping your church or your whatever church you're going to, obviously autism is important with some of the specialized schools that are out there. There's lots of things like that that just give me purpose and we've tried to support. And then, you know, mental health, like I was just at a charity event two weeks ago, I think post-pandemic and everything else is just a lot of healing that needs to happen. So just look out there and see if there's some charities that you want to pay it forward because that's the thing that everybody needs to be generous.

You know, I think being generous is a ground rule zero and our nine-step system. So make sure even if you don't have money, give your time. Absolutely. And the last one is what does wealth mean to you? Oh, wealth for me is really the intersection. of the money, but also having the purpose. That's living in abundance when you can do that. But you don't get there without really putting some thought into it.

It's not something you just, you know, play a lazy role in your own life. You have to really put some time and thought into what money can and cannot do for you. So that's the whole purpose of when I talk about abundance. It's knowing who you are, what I value. And like I said earlier, what gets me up in the morning to wake up and be excited to attack the day. Absolutely. And Brian, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been absolutely amazing. This has been so valuable for everybody listening here today. Where can people

pick up Millionaire Mission? And right now, I think they can pre-order it and then they'll be able to order it if you're listening a couple days later. So where can they pick that up? Where's the best place to grab it? Andrew, thank you for the platform. I mean, money got to com slash millionaire mission. We're going to tell you every bookstore, every retailer, everything that you can buy. We also might be some perks because we're running perks all the way up to launch. So I would encourage people to go to money guy.com slash millionaire mission. And by the way, we are going on a book tour. So if you want to go to money guy.com slash book tour, you can check out the details on those cities. But just, you know, look, I give away so much free stuff. If you go to

money guy.com slash resources, that will least get you in the door to see who we are. And if you're on that simple phase of your wealth building where you just need to make sure you're focusing on the discipline, deferred gratification, please take us up on all the free stuff that we're given out out there because I think it really will accelerate your path to wealth and success. Absolutely. And we will link all that up down in the show notes below, including all the resources Brian talked about today. So Brian, thank you so much again. This is going to be great. And I cannot wait for everybody to read this. Thanks so much. 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

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