Should I Chase a Higher Savings Rate? Can We Semi-Retire in Our 40s? How Do We Rebuild After Bankruptcy? (Money Q&A)

Transcript:

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going AS what's up everybody?

And welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of Master money.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be answering your questions in this Money Q&A. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter.

And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews.

They truly mean the world to me. Now today we're going to be diving into a bunch of your different questions. We're going to be talking through should you rate Chase when it comes to high yield savings account? We're going to talk through bankruptcy and the hardships that go along with that. And when should you consider filing for bankruptcy?

We're going to talk about how to find a good CPA and when does it actually make sense to hire a financial advisor? Plus what are the best books for learning about real estate and someone wants to retire in their 40s and they want to figure out how they are on track for that and a smarter place to to park short term cash.

Plus we're also going to be talking about 3 new scams that have come up this month and we're going to do another part of Health Corner and talk through Health Corner as well. I know a lot of you have always asked about Health Corner. We have brought it back on the last few money Q&A's. So we will continue to be talking about that at the end of this episode in Health Corner.

So we have an action-packed episodes. Without further ado, let's get into it. All right, so the first question we have coming in is from John. John says hi Andrew. I have a high yield savings account with Synchrony currently at 3.4%. APYI started about two years ago and it was 4.1% and I have about $50,000 in the account.

Is it worth it to switch and chase higher rates? So this, this is a great question and many people ask this question when it comes to their high yield savings account. Now you want to think about what your goal is in that high yield savings account. Many times it's for your emergency fund and saving for other lifestyle goals as time goes on.

And when it comes to a 3.4% rate, I've looked at some of the rates recently right now and you can get better, you know, rates at 4% or 4.2%. If you start to, to look at some other banks. Some of my favorite out there are Ally or Sofi, which are probably going to have comparable rates to where Synchrony is right now.

Now, what I would do is anytime you're thinking about this situation, I would run the math on this to see if it is worth rate chasing. And I ran the math for you here. I'm going to take a look at it in a second, but I want to talk about the philosophy behind this this because the last thing you want to do is spend way too much of your time just moving your money around to optimal savings accounts because it is .1 or .2% higher every couple of months.

So for most people out there, I would look for a couple of different things. One, run the numbers and we'll run the numbers for for John here in a second. But 2 after you run the numbers, see if if you do move it, see if you can find a high yield savings yet that maybe gives you a little bonus. Maybe they'll give you 300 bucks or 500 bucks to move your money over there because that's going to boost your rate as well and make it a little more worthwhile.

Now the other thing I want people to note is why did this drop happen? Well, typically the drop on your high yield savings account is going to happen because the Fed dropped rates. So when the Federal Reserve drops interest rates, typically this is really good when you want to borrow money, but it is not so good for folks who have money in high yield savings accounts.

So there is a give in a poll. If you remember during COVID times, we had a really high interest rates in our high yield savings accounts and we had the ability to save even more because interest rates were so high. But this is when people were getting 7% mortgages and 8% mortgages.

And so it doesn't help with borrowing, but it can help with your savings account. So that is the reason why this is happening and why Synchrony's rates have dropped over that time frame is because interest rates have dropped during that time frame as well. Now let's run the actual numbers on this to kind of see what would happen.

So $50,000 at a 3.4% interest rate and high yield savings account, that is about $1700 per year. This is why we tell you to put your money in a high yield savings account that you are saving for your emergency fund because it's going to produce an income for you and keep up with inflation.

That 3.4% will likely just maintain and keep up with whatever the inflation rate is. According to this year. Now $50,000 at a 4.2% interest rate is going to be $2100 per year. And so that's like the highest that you can get right now is $2100 per year.

So you run the numbers here and you look at this and say, OK, that's a difference of $400.00 per year or about $33 per month for some people. That may be worth it for you. You may be interested in making that extra $33 per month for some of you, you may know it's OK. Well, this is one of those things where if I move it to this new high yield savings account that has this introductory rate of 4.1%, you know, is it worth my time and energy to do that?

And what if these rates drop? Am I going to move it again time after time? So you just need to ask yourself that question again. It doesn't take that long to do this. So it's not something that's going to take you four or five hours. If $400 is worth an hour or two of your time, then more power to you. I think you can go ahead and do this for sure.

But if it's not worth your time and energy, the OR if the introductory rate is only for one year or a little less than a year, just note that you may have to do this year over year. Now, I don't really have a problem with people if they want to do it every single year. If you got the time on your hands and you're not really worried about it. But don't rate Chase every couple of months just because a new savings account came out.

It's really not worth the time and energy long term. Again, remember, a lot of banks out there, they'll put out these teaser rates that are higher just for a certain period of time and then those rates are going to continue to drop down. And so you don't want to add in this additional tax complexity because there is tax complexity when you actually move around in some of these accounts.

And the spread is going to close constantly. It's going to move, it's going to ebb, it's going to flow based on what the Fed does. And so those interest rates just move because of that. So in reality, I would consider it if you feel as though the $400 is worth your time and energy, But me specifically, I am not usually interested, John, in, you know, rate chasing just because it's not worth the time and energy in a lot of situations.

I would rather focus my time and energy on other things. And simplification is the name of the game when it comes to personal finance. So what I would really do is I would pick one solid competitive high yield savings count that has savings buckets because that's very important to me and I would just stick with it long term.

That's the easiest path forward. But I have friends who are optimizers who do move stuff around all the time. And so it is up to you and what your personality is long term. I just probably wouldn't move it. So hope that helps answer your question, John, and let me know if you have any other questions.

Let's jump into the next one. All right, so the next question is from Daniel. So Daniel says good morning, Andrew. I've been listening for a bit over a month, and I've been loving all the great knowledge that you have been preaching. I'm 40, married almost five years with three little kids ages 3.51 and a half and eight months, and we are in the late stages of filing for bankruptcy.

I never thought that we'd be here, but we're here. How can we bounce back from this? What are the first steps to rebuilding, getting my wife on the same page and staying motivated when I'm exhausted and feeling completely lost? I listened to 1 of your episodes every single morning on my drive to work. Any words of advice would help tremendously.

Thank you so much for sending this question in Daniel. I want you to understand a couple of things before I dive into this is bankruptcy is not an easy thing. It is not something that is just financial. It is also emotional and the emotional toll that you are feeling right now can weigh heavily on people.

I understand that concept completely and I think this is something that I, I really, really commend you for recognizing the emotional toll. I'm sure you feel exhausted if you have a 3 1/2 year old, a 1 1/2 year old and an 8 month old. That is exhausting in it of itself.

And so it's one of those areas that you are trying to make some moves for your family. Let's talk through some steps that can help you build out generational wealth, even though this is the point in time where you're at right now. You hit bankruptcy, but let's talk through this. It's not over for you. It's not over for you or your family, Daniel.

Instead, what we want to do is we want to build out a plan to know, OK, we hit rock bottom. This is the lowest it's going to get. And now we're going to transform our lives and transform our finances. And guess what? It comes down to one decision. You can make this one decision right now that you were going to do a total turn around and you when your wife can sit down and make this one decision right now that you're going to transform your finances and transform your life for these young kids.

And you can absolutely change your family tree by deciding right now. I want you to know that because this is something that is in reality the rock bottom point that you can climb yourself out of. Now let's talk through all these steps and for people listening, I want you to note, I'll kind of talk through bankruptcy and some of the things that you want to consider and then some of the things that you want to think as we go through this.

So bankruptcy, if for anybody who doesn't know, is a legal tool that exists for this exact moment. It's the reset button. It's not the scarlet letter, but it is something that you would need to understand does have an impact on your finances. And if you're 40 with three babies and you're still showing up, that is a huge, huge deal.

Now, let's talk through some of these rebuilding steps first, because when we think about rebuilding our life after bankruptcy, this is something that you can absolutely do. I wanted to point you to one example. Dave Ramsey, one of the most famous finance creators out there, filed for bankruptcy. He hit rock bottom where he was investing into real estate.

And when he was investing into real estate, he had a bunch of different loans. And when he had these loans, there was a financial crisis that happened and he had all these different properties with loans on them. And all the banks called the loans at the same exact time. The way these loans were structured, they could call the loans where he had to pay them back whenever they called up on these loans.

And he all of a sudden was in a situation where he was owing millions of dollars all at one time. This is the reason why he had to file for bankruptcy because he didn't have enough money to be able to cover all of these loans. And this is the reason why Dave Ramsey is so anti debt, because then he pulled himself up and said, OK, I'm, I'm never going into the debt again because this happened to me because I was into debt and I don't want it to happen to anybody else.

So for a lot of people out there who are like, well, why is Dave Ramsey so gung ho on you not going into debt? It's because he experienced this and he went bankrupt. And so for most people out there, this can happen to anybody, anybody who is even good with money. Dave Ramsey was a multimillionaire when that happened to him.

And this can happen to anyone. Do not think you are bad with money just because this is happening to you. I want you to understand the psychology behind this. So first steps into rebuilding order is I want you to let this discharge finish before you do anything else. So don't open any new accounts or make any big moves before your filing is complete.

Number 2, after discharge happens, you need to make sure that you check your credit because every discharge debt will show up as a 0 balance and is marked as discharge. And so one big thing to note is that errors are common in this situation. And so you want to make sure that you are disputing those errors when that comes up #3 is I want you to build up that starter emergency fund first.

So even when we are talking about our starter emergency fund, typically with us here at the Personal Finance Podcast and Master Money, we want you to have a one month of expenses in that emergency fund because this is going to help you make sure that this does not happen again. We are building out the foundation for the 136 method.

And Daniel, since you are newer to the podcast, if you have not heard our episode on the 136 method, I highly encourage you to check out that episode because this is going to be one that is impactful to how you build out your emergency fund and how you think about financial protection going forward. That is really what that episode is all about is financial protection and protecting your finances moving forward.

We want you to have one month, then pay off high interest debt, then three months, and then eventually having six months of expenses in place. Then I want you to rebuild a budget. So when you are getting started at the very beginning, I think people should have budgets early on, meaning they should have an idea of where their money is going and what is happening here.

If you really cannot get the team on board with the budget, do what we call the reverse budget, meaning you save off the top and then you spend whatever is leftover. So when you make $100, you save $20 and then you spend $80 on your bills, expenses, family needs, all those different things.

You pay yourself first, you save first and then you spend whatever is leftover. Now Part 2 of this is let's work on rebuilding our credit. See, most people think their credit is going to be ruined forever when they file for bankruptcy. And the reality is that's it's really not true. It is something that you will have a mark on your credit report for a little while.

Usually it's like 12 to 24 months, but most people are pretty surprised at how quickly their credit score actually can recover. Your credit score can recover in 24 months after filing for bankruptcy. And so this is something that could be helpful. 2 is if you can try to get a secured credit card.

Chime has a great one that we have linked up, I think down below in the show notes, as Chime is one of our sponsors here. They have a great secured credit card. Discover has a great one. There's a bunch of them out there that you can really, really get something going here. And when it comes to a secured credit card, what I would do is, you know, just get the highest limit you can.

What you do is you put a certain dollar amount on that secured credit card, but it also helps you build out your credit. 3 is watch out for predators. This is something that happens post bankruptcy where you will get a flood of letters. You will get a flood of people trying to help you through these.

These things that are in your exact situation. Most of them are traps and they are trying to target people who already feel like they are down. Do not do that. Instead, I would really work on just building out healthy financial habits and don't chase credit. Don't chase something that you you really should not be going after.

A healthy score is a byproduct of just healthy financial habits. It's not just something that habits happens magically, that because you made special moves. No, just having good financial habits is gonna help you build your credit score over time. Listen, this is a long game. This is something that we're gonna do over time and we still have plenty of time at your age to rebuild your financial life.

Now let's talk about how to get your wife on the same page 'cause that's one of the questions that you had. This is a story of two things. One is you both got buried together and you're climbing your way out together. This is gonna help you build a marriage. It's gonna help you build a foundation. And this is something I think overall that if you can become a team with one vision, you can absolutely transform this.

This is going to be so incredibly important. Right here is this portion of this. If you can get together and start talking about what are our dreams? What are our goals with our family? We have these young kids, we are tired, we're exhausted. We are running around everywhere. We're up all night with the kids. But what are we dreaming about when our kids are 7/10/12?

What do we want to be doing with our life? What do we want to be doing as a family? How do we want to spend our time and how do we want to think about this? Cause guess what, you can have this transformation over this time frame and absolutely have a full turn around and be so happy. And you look back at that time frame and you said to yourselves, man, I'm so glad we made this choice.

We got together as a team and we started to figure out what RY is. So what I would do is at the beginning, I would start with a weekly money date. I tell most people to have a monthly money date. I would have a weekly money date, 15 minutes, maybe over a glass of, you know, wine or Coke 0, whatever your beverage of choice is and just have a conversation about your why and the end.

Maybe you want to travel more. Well, if you want to travel more, I want you to spend more time talking about that and how you can start to point some of your dollars towards that. Maybe you want to buy a vacation home one day. Well, if you want to do that, you can start saving right now. Maybe you want to spend more time with family or friends and you put more dollars towards your financial freedom, but dream about what you want to be doing.

And let's start talking about that on a consistent basis. So you both are on the same page. And once you lead with the Y and then you have a conversation about the XS and OS, that's going to have a big difference long term. Always, always, always though, begin with the dream.

Begin with the end. Don't start with the spreadsheets ever. Always begin with the dream. You know, I would also encourage you, if you, if you can budget, you know, use something like Monarch Money as, as something that can automate your finances and your budget. That's what I use personally and so that can really help you long term when it comes to some of this, when it comes to staying motivated, especially when you're running on empty, there's a couple of things that you can do. 1 is I don't want you kind of looking at this big giant mountain that you're about to climb over and trying to think, OK, this thing is going to take forever.

No, just start with a small timeline. When I set money goals, I set them over the course of 12 weeks. Maybe your first money goal is just to get one week ahead over the course of next 12 weeks in your emergency fund where you want to get a one week emergency fund set up side of that. I think that's a great goal.

Make some of these goals starting off small and you're going to slowly turn up this dial. Next, I want you to make this progress visible. Maybe there's a way that you can do, you know, the old fashioned charity move of having the written thermometer on the wall and they start to fill in the red thermometer as they get more donations or more money coming in.

That works because it is one of those psychology things that helps you see your progress. So tools like Monarch Money help you see your progress. But if you don't use a tool like that, just figure out a way to visually see your progress as a family. Because then when you sit down on your money dates every single week, you could say look how far we came this week, Look how far we came over the course of the last two months or three months so you can visually see your progress and stay motivated. 3 is I want you to automate everything that you can when you think about this, automation is going to allow you to build wealth on autopilot without even having to worry about it.

And we have a full episode on how to automate your money if you haven't checked that out yet. So you can check that episode out and it will really help you do this. You can automate your money in one weekend. And so that is something we talk about at Master Money Academy all the time. We have a course in there called Automate Your Money in One Weekend. And it is one of those things that I believe most people can do this pretty quickly and remember what this is all for.

This should be your biggest motivation. It's for your wife, it's for your kids, it's for your family. And if you both come, if you all come together to work towards this, you can absolutely do this. So the truth I want you to hold onto, Daniel, is most people never get a financial reset.

They never get to restart. You are going to restart here and you are gonna rebuild this. You can absolutely transform your family tree if you point to it. Yeah. I really hope this helps. And if you have any questions on that, please let me know. But I am here for you for anything that you all need.

And I really, really appreciate you sending in this question. All right. The next question is from Brenda, and Brenda has a wonderful one here. Hi, Andrew. I would like to find a good CPA. How do you recommend I find one? Also, is there a specific life stage when I should work with one and one when I don't?

So the honest answer for this is it is going to entirely depend on how complicated your money is, Brenda. So this is something that I am so glad you are thinking, thinking about this because many people should have ACPA that don't. And then there was a lot of people who may have ACPA that maybe their finances aren't that complicated.

And so we want to just figure out exactly what that is. So when should you not have one? Let's start there so we can figure out. OK, well then who needs one? If you're AW2 employee, you go to work every single day as AW2 employee. You just have a regular old a job and you just take the standard deduction.

So for those of you who don't know what the standard deduction is, it's just when you're not itemizing your deductions on your tax return, meaning you're not writing off your Home Office or you're not writing off all these different very specific things. But instead you are just taking the standard deduction every single year. And if your return is just a few forms and you've been doing on TurboTax for the last couple of years, it takes you an hour or so and it's very, very simple and tax softwares can handle it, then there's nothing wrong with just using something like that and moving on with your life.

Because with ACPA, you'd be paying for convenience, which is still good to have ACPA on hand if you want to, because you're paying for convenience. But if you are someone you know who is making $75,000 per year and you feel as though you really don't need someone to help you. Your returns, simple finances don't need ACPA on hand because it's just a hey, I go to work, I come home and that's the big difference.

But when do you need ACPA and when do they actually earn their keep? Because ACPA is someone you want to hire. A If you just don't want to do your tax returns, I get it, that's one thing. But B, if you are someone who feels as though your finances have become more complicated, so you could be AW2 earner but you're a high earner, that could be 1 instance.

You could be a business owner. You absolutely should have one. If you are or a business owner, you could be AW2 earner that also has a couple of side businesses or LLC's. That's a great reason. You could be a real estate investor, another wonderful reason to do this. So you got to figure out, OK, if ACPA is going to help me, do I have a bunch of other things or 1099 income, those types of things.

Those are going to be reasons that you may want to consider this. If you have Rs US or company compensation or company stock, that's going to be another reason to consider this. Or if you're filing a bunch of K ones because you are an investor or part owner of a bunch of different companies, that's going to be another reason. Because what they do is they're first going to prepare your taxes and file your taxes, but they also are going to give you tax strategy.

And when you are in a situation where you're not taking the standard deduction, then you need some tax strategy in place to figure out all the deductions and all the credits that you have available to you so that you can ensure that you are paying less to Uncle Sam or less to whatever your home country is.

I know we have a lot of international listeners here. And so that's going to help you a lot when it comes to getting started. Now the question then becomes, well, how do you find a good one? How do you find a good CPA that can actually help me earn more than their keep? Because let's say for example, you pay ACPA $2500 to do all of this stuff for you, OK, You want them to get you way more than that in terms of the amount that you're going to get back or save you in taxes when it comes to that.

So there's a couple of ways to do this. One is you can ask for referrals. Ask business owners who have been in business for a very long time for referrals for a situation like yours. So you can ask people who are real estate investors. If you're a real estate investor, you can ask business owners. If you're a business owner, you can ask folks who are specialized in whatever industry you're doing, you can ask them as well.

Now, if you don't know anybody in those industries, then I would continue to try to ask maybe people online or in your peer group to see if they have have a good one that you can look deeper into. Two is you want to confirm they're ACPA because there are like tax preparers for example, that's not what you're looking for. You're looking for ACPA who also has tax strategy backgrounds and then find someone who works year round and does planning for you.

I meet with my CPA a couple of different times per year to talk through what has been going on over the course of the last quarter. That's what you want. You want to be talking to someone who does tax planning throughout the entire year for you. So we sit down at the beginning of every year and put together what we call a tax plan.

And so he asked me a bunch of questions, asked me about my goals, asked me about certain things that I am doing, what has changed since last year. And we go through the tax plan and he develops this tax plan for me and then we begin to execute it throughout the year. Many business owners will realize, oh, I made way too much money this year.

I'm going to have to pay a lot in taxes. And then they get to November and all of a sudden they, they are saying to themselves, oh, I got to go find someone who can help me with tax strategy. At that point in time, it's almost too late. You got to start at the beginning of the year, have someone who you are working with throughout the year and then be able to figure out what your tax strategy is.

So that is something else that you want. If you want to find a really good one, make sure you ask that question. Now there are some additional questions. I'm going to list off a couple of questions I want you to ask them that can help you with this. We have a big master list of questions in Master Money Academy for all my Master Money Academy members. You can check that out in our resources link there.

But here's a couple of questions that I'll give you so that you can figure out exactly what to to ask them. So beyond filing, how do you proactively help clients lower their tax bill? So what are some of the things they do to help clients lower their tax bill? Those that answer is going to be very important. Do you do tax planning throughout the year or just prepare returns?

You don't want someone who just prepares returns. You want to make sure they're doing planning throughout the year. What strategies would you typically recommend for someone in my situation? And listen for specifics, not vague reinsurance. You don't want them to just vaguely say certain things. OK. Are you available for questions year round?

And how much do you charge when I want to ask you questions because a lot of Cpas will charge you an hourly rate. Mine's very expensive. And in fact, sometimes I'm like, I don't want to ask him a question because he's going to charge me a couple 100 bucks to, to go get on this phone call, but I do it anyway because it's one of those things that I really have to do.

And then the best test is if they will are willing to do this, hand them your last two returns and ask them what they would have done differently. A strategist can spot opportunities on the spot and a preparer will just shrug. So you want them to understand, you know, what your tax returns look like and, and say, what would you have done differently here?

If and if I hire you, what would you do differently for next year if everything all else being the same? You know, those are just some of the questions that we can put on the screen. You can screenshot them here if you're watching via video that you can check out. But you want to make sure that the your CPA is going to save you more than they cost. You want to make sure that they do tax strategy.

You want to make sure they're not a preparer whatsoever. And you want to make sure that they'll put a plan together and meet with you throughout the year for that plan. Then you want to get the price and make sure it's not an arm and a leg. But you know, a good CPA is not cheap. Usually it is going to cost you a few grand to to have a good one.

So, so that is just some of the things that I would consider. But again, if you have a simple tax return, you are likely not going to need AACPA unless you just want to have them do your returns because you hate doing them, which I know I hate doing them so and most people hate doing them. So if you want that convenience and you make good money, that's also a reason to consider that.

Hope that helps and if anybody has any questions on that, please let me know. All right, the next question is from Johnny. So what are your thoughts on financial advisors and when is it helpful or right to work with one? I have a buddy who is a fiduciary and can get me in even though my net worth is lower than their typical client.

I also want to understand how to actually use and withdraw invested money later. Am I doing myself a disservice by managing my own account and missing strategies like tax harvesting or strategic withdrawals? So the short answer to this, Johnny, is that a couple of things.

One is there are excellent financial advisors that are out there, but there are also a slew of advisors who are not good whatsoever. So just because your friend is an advisor, I would not say that's a reason to hire someone whatsoever. People feel as though they may have their best interests at heart, but it is still one of those things that in reality, you got to be very careful on who you pick on this because this could cost you millions over your lifetime if you are not careful.

Now, there are two fee models that you need to understand before anything else. One is there is the AUM model, which is stands for assets under management. This is when a financial advisor is going to take a percentage of your investment portfolio on a yearly basis.

A common model for this is 1 and a 1% or 1 1/2% where an advisor would take 1% off of your portfolio. And if you don't run the math on this and understand what the implications are, 1% doesn't sound like much. It could be millions depending on how much you're invested with them. 2 is flat fee or hourly pricing.

And so this is a second way where you pay your advisor to build out a plan and then you manage the money yourself. So you say to the advisor, OK, if you build out a financial plan for me, this is going to cost 7000 to $10,000 and then I'm going to manage the portfolio myself and just make sure I'm continuously investing for those types of advisors.

A lot of times, you know, we talk about index funds and ETFs a lot on this show. They'll put you in a portfolio that makes sense for your risk tolerance. They'll talk about kind of ways to manage your dollars, ways to think about accounts, and some of the best things for you. So first I want you to kind of run the math on this. And when you think about advisories, 1% sounds tiny, but on a $500,000 portfolio, that's about $5000 per year.

Now for some people, that's worth it. If you are just spending all of your time and energy on your career, working through your career, then a 5% fee could be worth it for you, especially if you're making good money. But over a long term time horizon, 1% can quietly cost you over six figures because it's not just the $5000, it's also the opportunity cost of that $5000.

You just want to make sure you're careful on that. And then 2 is that doesn't mean you never pay it. That doesn't mean it's not something that you do whatsoever. There's a lot of people out there that probably should have advisors, a good advisor that just don't understand finance enough to manage it themselves. But there's also a lot of people who have advisors who understand a lot that probably would be a OK on themselves on their own.

And so in reality, not everyone needs an advisor. And that is where this is going to come down to you specifically and how you can think about this. If you're competent with your investments and if you're competent with your finances, you definitely don't need an advisor. And if you are someone who is just getting started, if you're someone who is, you know, doesn't have a ton of money yet and advisor's not going to want to take you on anyways because you don't make them enough money for them to want to take you on.

And that's the reality check. And so those are the two things that I want you to talk through. Now, let me give an example. So we, we have another show called Your Next Dollar and it's with NerdWallet Wealth Partners. So what they do is they have a, a fee structure where the more money you invest with them, the lower your fee gets. So they have actually one of the lowest fees in the industry.

It's like 0.9% is the way that they manage money for someone who just get started, just getting started with them. And then as you have more money invest with them, it goes down to .8 point 7.5 and the the number goes down over time, which is kind of an interesting strategy as the more you invest, the the lower that number gets.

Whereas I've seen it the opposite direction where like some advisors like the more money you're investing, all the more liability ability they have. So they increase the rate or the percentage that you were invested. So what you want to make sure you do is just understand kind of those fee schedules and what's going on there. And then secondarily though, what I love about Nerd Wallet Wealth Partners is they actually meet with you on a quarterly basis.

So I would try to find an advisor who meets with you frequently. Jesse Kramer, who's an advisor on the show too, he comes on here all the time. He meets with his clients all the time. There's a bunch of great ones out there, but you want to make sure they're meeting with you regularly. If they're not and they're just taking a percentage of your portfolio, that's ridiculous in my book.

So you want to make sure they are having conversations with you and they are, you know, meeting with you with on your goals, on your spending, on what you're doing, what your life goals are. And the cool thing is like, they'll look at your life goals and say, OK, you want to go on more vacations. Actually, you should go on more vacations based on this, this and this.

And so you want to look deeper into just how they think about this. Now fiduciary, you mentioned that your buddy, your buddy is a a fiduciary. And for those who don't know, a fiduciary means that they are legally required to act on your own best interest, which is a good start. But fiduciary tells you nothing about the fee.

It doesn't tell you anything about, you know, what they charge or what they do there and there. So you want to evaluate people like this as as if they were a stranger. So you want to look at them and say, OK, I want to ask you a couple questions. And you go through these questions and make sure that this is something that you don't mix close friendship with advisory services that are going to charge you an arm and a leg.

So when is an advisor actually right? That's the big question here. Well, it's when your finances get complicated is 1. Because if you have equity compensation, great reason to have one or a business or multiple income tiers, or you have a big one time decision that you have to make. Or if you're a high earner or a Henry who is not rich yet and you feel as though you should be getting wealthier and you just don't know what else to do.

These are all great reasons to have an advisor. But if you're someone who's just getting started, maybe you are, you know, just getting the ball rolling on your finances. You're investing in index funds, you're investing in, you know, your, your HSA or your Roth IRA and you're just getting the ball rolling here and you don't have complicated finances.

You have AW two job. Then you don't have to worry about stuff like this yet. This is one of those things where you know, if you feel as though you need more help later and you're not optimizing your portfolio. Sure, if you a are really good with money and you're managing your money well, don't need one or B, if you are someone who's just getting started, you don't need one.

You just need to have a plan in place and, and get started there. And then as your, your finances get more complicated, then you can look deeper into it if you feel as though you want to have one on hand. Now, if you want to talk to one on an hourly basis, there's also great tools out there that you can use to do that. And I think even Nerdwell wealth partners, they have something where, you know, if you don't meet their requirements, they have something like 900 bucks a year that you can, you know, talk to them and develop a plan and at least have conversations to quarterly with them.

So there's cool stuff like that that you can do too, that I think are cheaper options than what most people do out there. So hopefully that helps you answer your question. Once complexity comes into the picture, that's and you have one come into play, but if it's not complex, then I would just stick with, you know, the strategies that you're looking at right now.

Now, sure, tax loss harvesting, some of the things that strategies that you're talking about there. You can also do that with a robo advisor if your finances are simple enough. So those are just some of the things to consider as you start to have conversations about this. And I would, I would really, really slowly caution you to do this with a friend because I know people who do this with friends and then all of a sudden they get stuck in situations where it can break up a friendship because you want to leave that advisory after you make that decision.

So just be cautious about this stuff when it comes to doing business with friends. My one of my things is I don't do business with friends or family anymore and it's because of that kind of stuff. So just be very, very careful when you're thinking about that. So hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions. All right, the next question is, what would your suggested best book or books to learn about real estate investing starting from Ground Zero?

I followed your podcast and steps and I'm doing well. So thank you. You've changed the way I view and use money. Well, thank you so much for the question. I truly appreciate you sending this in and Congrats to you on following those steps. I really, really love Action Takers and it's so exciting to hear people saying stuff like that.

I think it's really, really cool. Now, some of my favorite books on real estate investing. Now, I will give you one author if you want to get started with this and go through a lot of his books. He's been on the show before, so I would highly encourage you to check out that episode, but it's Brandon Turner. So Brandon Turner is a person who taught me a ton about real estate and he has a bunch of books that were published with Bigger Pockets that are amazing when it comes to learning more about real estate.

So he has one on even how to do creative financing. So it's a book about low to no money down as I believe what the title is. He has one on managing rental properties. He has one on just investing in real estate in general. And I think he might have a couple others as well. All of them are phenomenal as using as almost like textbooks to learn more about real estate and understanding how the real estate market works.

But I'm gonna throw out a bunch of other ones too, just to help you kind of think about this. Bigger Pockets has a ton of really good ones. So like if you're just looking for a publisher that has a bunch of good ones, Bigger Pockets is great. I was just on the Bigger Pockets real estate podcast recently. So if you want to check that episode out, you can too.

But it's a it's a wonderful, phenomenal company there that they're and they're working through all the the cool stuff that they're doing. But for mindset, I think Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki has some great books on mindset. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a classic. He's little wacky now but it's a classic one for sure.

And then the Cash flow quadrant is also another good one by Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki, Wonderful, wonderful book. If you're looking at single family houses, John Schaub's Building Wealth One House at a Time is a wonderful book. John Schaub I have met a couple of times and is just a wonderful, wonderful book on building wealth.

I know a couple of his friends too that are really close with him. They have thousands and thousands of units and he's just the real deal. He's a legit guy. He lives in Sarasota, FL and it is the real deal for sure. Another one that I absolutely liked and and enjoyed at the beginning, at least on my my journey, it, it kind of gives you more motivation than anything else is the millionaire real estate investor.

I think it's by Gary Keller, the guy who owns Keller Williams, the the real estate brokerage. That's a good one. Ken McElroy has a really good one that I think is published by Robert Kiyosaki's publishing company. He has a really good one on like apartments, if you want to look into that.

There's a book called What Every Real Estate Investor needs to know about Cash flow. That's also a great book when it comes to understanding the numbers and the metrics when it comes to real estate investing. And in reality, the education you want to get is learning how to run your numbers and learning how to find good properties and learning how to source good properties.

So any marketing books are great pace Morby has a great book on creative financing. And that just opens up your mindset to the ways that you can invest in real estate and the ways that you can find creative financing because real estate investing in reality is a creative endeavor. And so that's another good one. I would, I would definitely look into if you haven't read that one as well.

Also published by Bigger Pockets. Bigger Pockets has all the best real estate investing books honestly that are out there as of recent at least. So all those are great to start with and ways to to kind of get the ball rolling as you start to think about this. And then in reality, I would then once you start to read a number of different books, then I would kind of move on to to try and take action if you do want to invest in real estate.

So, so really, really good stuff. Great question and love talking about books. So any book questions anybody has, please let me know. All right, so now we are going to go into a couple of new scams that are happening this week. So Google publishes this report that comes out on new scams that they have seen really getting folks over the course of the last quarter or so.

So every couple of months they come out with this report and there were three of them that stood out to me that I wanted to kind of come back to you. Now. Again, a reminder why we do this segment on a lot of Q and As or a lot of episodes is because I had my identity stolen once and it is the most painful thing ever and it can absolutely put a dent in your finances if you are not careful.

So I do not want this to happen to any wealth builder out there, which is why we do some of this. Make sure you tell your friends and family about some of these because these are really, really important to note. So first one is called quishing QR code phishing. So if you haven't heard about this, this is technically a subset of a couple of other scams that are going on, but basically scammers are putting fake QR code stickers over real ones and they send QR emails.

And what they do is they target certain areas. So parking meters or parking garages. If you go up, ever gone up to a parking meter and it says, hey, pay right here, go park and pay, you go scan the QR code and you put in your credit card information. Well, the scammers are actually slapping those QR codes on top of the parking meter QR code to make it look like you were actually paying for your parking and you're not.

You're actually giving them your credit card information. They do this with EV chargers. So if you have a an electric vehicle, they're doing this a ton with some of those one off chargers that can really, really get you restaurant menus. This is a wild 1. I don't really know how they pull that off. They must put a sticker right on the the top there donation boxes.

That's one of the scammiest ways to do it. Donation boxes for churches or charities or even small business counters and then e-mail attachments and PD s s pretending to be invoices or shipping invoices. So you scan the QR code expecting to pay or to sign in or whatever else, but instead you're just giving them, you know, all your information on a phishing page.

This can also even happen. I've seen like even at gas stations where they have been putting a tap and pay thing on top of the actual tap and pay at gas stations. So these stickers are pretty advanced for the way that they do it. And so we can, we'll leave up the specific Google guidance down below so you can check out the link to this, but that's the first one.

Number two, mobile banking app extortion. This is one that I think is really, really important to note, especially as us, all of us finance nerds out there. But this is one that is the most damaging long term consequences because it doesn't just steal money, it also ruins your reputation too.

So mobile extortion has grown, particularly through the malicious banking and financing applications disguised as personal finance apps. And many of these malicious attempts demand excessive system permissions like contacts, SMS history and photos. And so this is coming directly from Google here.

So here's how it works. You search for a loan app or a budgeting app or a short term credit app. You install one of the one that looks legitimate in the App Store and then during setup it asks for permissions for your contacts, photos, SMS history, and call logs. And once you grant it harvests everything.

So these are scammy apps that would try to look like a budgeting app for example, and it's 1 you haven't heard of, but it looks legit. They get ranked high on the Google or the Apple Play Store or the Google Play Store and then all of a sudden. You realize that you gave them a bunch of your information and this can really, really be a problem.

They can harvest your photos. Maybe you have intimate photos or embarrassing messages or fake debt notices and they throw them out to everyone on your contact list and threaten you that if you do not pay them, then they are going to continue to do this. Well, that is a massive problem because you gave them access to all those different things.

And for a lot of people that they don't even know where it's coming from. They don't know where they're getting this information. They don't realize that the app is where this information is happening. So Google's guidance on this is, once you install the loan or finance app from an official App Store, never grant an app access to your personal contacts. This is something that obviously most of us don't ever want to do, but if it's some sort of social app or something along those lines, some people still do it.

So you want to make sure you are very, very careful about this. Now, the third one I want to talk about is travel scams. So travel scams have been happening more and more and they have exploded according to Google. So fraudulent booking sites appear at the top of search results after purchasing ads.

So these fraudulent sites will purchase ads when you go search flight from Cancun to Las Vegas. OK. And all of a sudden all these different websites will pop up that say, oh, flights from Cancun to Las Vegas, $99.00 and it will show up this this Google ad that makes it look like this is a really, really inexpensive fee.

And so you feel as you're getting a really, really good deal on this website you've never heard of. And when that happens, all of a sudden you enter in your payment information, you enter in your personal information, and they have all of it. And that is the way that they steal your information is from these Google ads. So what I would say is do not book through any booking site out there that you do not recognize or you do not know that is reputable.

And if you're trying to figure out if it's reputable, you can throw it into Reddit, you can throw it into AI tools and figure out if those are something that is actually happening and actually makes sense. Because if it's not, do not do it. So you got to make sure you're going like the Trivago or the booking.com or the, you know, the, the ones that are credible to make sure that you know exactly where you are booking some of this stuff if you're going to do it on a booking website.

So those are three of the scams that I wanted to make you all aware of. And again, one of the best things that you can do to make sure that you do not get scammed online is to remove your personal information online. So making sure that you do not have your personal information out there with all of these different data brokers that have your personal information.

If you if you Google your name or you Google your address in quotations, you could see a bunch of information pop up that could have your information out there. And so you want to get that information removed. Now the easiest way to get this removed is to use the service that I use called delete me. Delete me goes to these data brokers and they tell them to remove your personal information.

And the beautiful thing about Delete me is they continue to make sure that your information gets removed throughout the year. Because if a scammer gets a piece of your personal personal information, all they have to do is Google your name or your address or whatever else to find the rest of the information on some of these data broker websites. And the laws are ridiculous when it comes to how data brokers can present your information.

So you want to make sure that you get that removed as much as you possibly can. I tell every single person to make sure they have delete me because it is one of the most important things to protecting your finances online. So scammers can't get a hold and open bank accounts or credit cards or anything else in your name.

So if you go to joindeleteme.com/PFP 20, you're going to get 20% off. It'll delete me there. And I think that is one of the best ways to make sure that you protect your finances long term. And you should have that in your financial protection plan. So joindeleteme.com/PFP 20I highly encourage you to check that out.

Now let's get to the next question. So the next question is from Tanner. And Tanner says, hey Andrew, big fan of the pod. I'm 32, married with a net worth of around 900,000, including employer stock from a startup. Awesome, fantastic 300K and we're fireman accounts. 80K to taxable brokerage and cash for a future home.

My wife and I hope to semi retire in our 40s Love it. And should I keep maxing out my 4 O 1K or direct more to taxable investments for flexibility before 59 1/2? Well, first at 32, this is a great problem to have Tanner, and I think this is something that I absolutely love to talk through.

So you have a couple of options here. 1 is to consider the taxable brokerage like you're saying here. Now, the taxable brokerage for a lot of folks who want to retire early gives you that flexibility ability. And in fact, when I talk to people who want to retire early, they don't realize that the taxable brokerage actually has some really great tax implications as well that we'll talk about here in a second.

But I really want you to note that I love the taxable brokerage account, and it's just going to depend on a couple of things. One, do you plan on making more money in retirement? If you do, then we can talk about the tax implications there. But two, if you do want to retire early and he won't retire at 40, well, that's a long runway before we actually get to 59 1/2 to access his accounts.

So I do like the taxable brokerage account for that additional flexibility. It's just going to allow you to make sure that you have enough cash on hand. Now let's talk about a couple of other options here because I've talked about this, I think in the episode that we titled How to Access Your Money at the age of 50.

I can't remember the exact title. We'll, we'll kind of link it up down below show notes so you can check it out. But there's an episode that we talked about this where we talked through, you know, all the different ways that you can access your money early in early retirement. So there are things like the Roth conversion ladder. So if you have a lot of money in a Roth, for example, you can do a Roth conversion ladder where you convert money over to a Roth IRA from your 4O1K or your Traditional IRA and you move money over to a four O 1K.

But you want to do this in the right year. So typically what you want to do is move that money in a year where you're not making much money at all. So if you retire at 40, then you can start to move money over from the traditional 4 O 1K or the Traditional IRA to your Roth IRA. So when you move money over, you won't pay as much tax in that money because you don't have an income coming in anymore.

And so you want to do it in the right years in the right time to make sure you're doing that. But you got to wait five years before you can access the funds in your Roth IRA. Remember the Roth IRA, you can access your contributions penalty and tax free, but you got to wait five years, it's called the five year rule, before you can actually access that capital. So a Roth conversion ladder is one way to access that money early, but you want to plan it out properly and make sure you're doing it in the right years.

Otherwise you could end up with a big tax bill. So for most people, it's in your lower income year. So for you, if you retired early at 40, you could do it at 4041424340 4:45 and by 45 you'd be able to access that year one and continue to move that ladder on going forward. The second thing you could do though is you can also do things like a, you know, periodic payments where they call them the set payments.

So substantial equal periodic payments is what that stands for. And what they do is those are ways to set up, you know, a payment plan basically back to yourself. The problem with that is you are stuck with that payment plan for the entire time frame that you sign up for this. And so it's something that's a little more complicated and the, the, the way that they do the calculations is complicated.

And if you're like, actually, I don't want to do this anymore, you're stuck with a gap to continue taking those payments. So that's another thing that you could do. The Roth conversion ladder would be more so the way that I would think about this more. Now, third, again, is the taxable brokerage account gives you that flexibility and allows you to not have to worry as much about all these different hoops you got to jump through.

And so that's why I like the tax bull for especially when you're retiring that early. But between the taxable and a Roth conversion ladder, you could do some pretty cool stuff and really make it work. Now let's talk about the taxable as a tax efficient account because people think of a taxable as they're getting taxed heavily on this account.

But in 2026, OK, a married couple filing jointly can have up to $98,900 of taxable income and pay 0% federal tax on capital gains. Plus you stack that with the $32,200 standard deduction on top and you have shielded roughly $131,000 of income before you owe a dime on federal tax.

Now this is for long term capital gains obviously. But if you are someone who retires early at 40 and you make less than $131,000 per year, guess how much you have to pay in taxes on the money you withdraw from a taxable account? 0. So if you retire at 40 you stop your income source.

You have the ability to not have to pay any money on taxes on up to $131,000. Now here's the kicker. Only the gain counts, not the money you originally invested. So you can sell well over 131 K of shares and still keep the taxable gain inside that 0% zone.

This is where I really want people to note this because it does change the way we think about this. The tax implications aren't as bad as they seem when we think about this. So you can put and enter your exact situation and try to see, OK, well, how much would I be paying in taxes if I decide to maybe you start a side business or a side also and you make $50,000, what would happen there?

And so you want to think through that and, and think through how you want to work this. That's why I like the tax flow for your situation, at least to look deeper into and to research more because of that. So you have Roth conversions that you can do from your 4O1K and then you have that company stock.

I think that's a really, really great thing that you have available to you there. And there are some really cool stuff that you can do with your situation currently. So consider all these options. Tanner, I think that you are doing an amazing job hitting it out of the park. Congratulations to you on being a millionaire. That is absolutely amazing and cannot commend you enough.

And if you have any other questions on that, please let me know. But I think it's you're in a really cool situation and Congrats on your goal of retiring in your 40s. All right, we got one more question and then we're gonna dive into Health Corner. So we have a question from James here. And James says is SGOV better than my high yield savings count for short term savings in Massachusetts?

So I'm gonna give you the short answer here, James, yes, for you in Massachusetts, it is a double win. And you're on to something really good here because you can do a couple of things. One is SGO VS 30 day SEC yield is about 3.55% right now at the time I'm recording this versus your high yield savings count at 3.1%.

So you pick up a couple of extra points in yield basis points right there. SG OV also holds short term U.S. Treasury bills and treasury interest is exempt from state income tax, which is good for Massachusetts. So since you have $128,000 that you send in ahead of time for me here on this, an HYSA at 3.1% after Massachusetts 5% state tax is going to be $3770 per year.

SGOV at 3.55% state exempt tax is roughly $4544 per year, which means that you have 770 more dollars per year if you plug it into there. So this is great that you're looking deeper into this but what to know before you move it is it is an ETF.

So if you buy and sell shares, the cash settles the next business day. So that's one thing to know and don't panic at the price because it does drift up throughout the month as interest accrues and expense ratio is at 0.09%. So you that's already baked into the yield and it is not FDIC insured.

So make sure you note to that as well. And so that is some of the other downsides of this. But yeah, I would consider it for sure. I think it's something to definitely look deeper into and do a little research because there is about a $770 difference there when you look at that. So great question. Congrats to you on looking deeper into that.

I think that's a really, really good idea. All right, now we're going to jump into Health Corner. So last health corner I was talking about some of the sleep issues that I was having. I have been working on those a lot and some of the things that I have been doing have been working. So kind of removing some of the blue lights that I have been using before bed and trying to read a lot more right before bed.

I have been doing that a ton. I actually got this little book light with an antenna on it that that I read at night. My wife doesn't love that book light but I but it's one of those things that I try to read right before bed. And so my sleep score has been improving. In fact, let's look at my sleep score right now. We had a 90 sleep score last night.

So we're getting there. We're getting better on that front, which is absolutely wonderful. But a couple of other things that I'll talk about in health corner that I'm working on right now is I'm working on some increased pacing on my workouts. I've noticed that when I lift weights, I have slowed down the pacing on some of my lifting and really my heart rate doesn't get as elevated as I would like it to.

So I have increased the pacing on my my workouts by doing a couple of different things. Number one, and this is going to be a fun one, is guess what I brought back. I brought back P90X. If you guys remember P90X, if you were born, you know, in the 80s or the 90s, you know what P90X is most likely.

It's kind of like, you know, at home workouts type of thing. When when those were big by this guy named Tony Horton, who kind of makes me laugh and then he gets annoying after a while, but he's this guy who basically makes these really hard workouts to try to help you build a muscle at home. So I did a couple of those workouts and I'm like, man, I love this increased pacing.

I am going to do that on my own workouts. So I kind of will do like a one or two P90X workouts a week just for fun to kind of get the blood flowing and get moving as I can't run yet because I have some knee issues. And so I've been doing that a lot and making sure that I am, you know, working through some of that stuff.

So P90X is great. I've increased my lifting pace. So basically with the P90X concept, for example, if you're doing chest and back. So I will kind of go into my chest workout where it's usually, you know, some sort of press and then I will jump on the pull up bar and do a bunch of pull ups.

So it's kind of super setting everything and making sure that you are keeping that pace up. And then I'll just do it again over and over and over again. So the whole time you're kind of moving and you're kind of pacing and your rest period is pretty much when you are doing the opposite end of the exercise and you wait maybe 30 seconds or 15 seconds in between each sets and then you get back on it again.

The third thing I'm doing right now, so with that increased lifting pace is I'm also spending a lot of time on a spin bike after my workouts and so I'm spending about 30 minutes in the morning. I've moved my workouts to the morning for the sleep thing and that has helped a truck ton because I was working out at night time before because a lot of times I used to like to melt the stress away when I would lift at night, but I've been shifting it to the morning.

It took a little bit of an adjustment, but now that I'm adjusted, I've also added in doing a spin bike right after my workouts. And so I'll do it just about 30 minutes burns 350 calories or so each time I do it. And I'm just kind of working on my phone the whole time that I'm sitting there.

So it's actually a productivity hack too, because your A on the spin bike is not like it's I'm not doing like full on, you know, Peloton classes or anything like that. I'm just kind of sitting on it and continually biking. And then I increase the tension on my spin bike when I'm ready to kind of increase the intensity, but I'm still sitting there and working the entire time for the most part.

And it's been a great hack to kind of get the day started, kind of answer emails, some of the low impact things that I need to be doing and allows me to also get a calorie burner, but an additional 350 calories per day in. So those are three things that I have been doing lately that have been helping a, shifting my workouts in the morning for sleep, but B, also just kind of increasing the pacing, especially for summer.

I live in Florida. Got your shirt off a lot in Florida, so lot of pool time, a lot of beach time. So for us specifically, got to ramp up the calories a little bit and ramp up the the burn a little bit and make sure we're burning more calories. And so that's why I'm I'm increasing intensity on both the spin bike and the way that I'm lifting.

So those are just some of the things that I'm doing right now. If you guys are doing anything for your health, let me know. I would love to hear some of that stuff and we'll dive into and continuously keep talking about this stuff in Health Corner on these Q. And as I know a lot of you have been asking for them, so we'll keep doing that for sure.

If you guys have any questions on this stuff, let me know. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you being here. If you want to dive deeper or you want to have these live coaching calls, we're talking back and forth and we're talking live, Please let me know by joining Master Money Academy.

So Master Money Academy is the place where we do live coaching calls weekly with me. But in addition, we have all of our courses and we have a community of people who are all working towards building well. You get a 7 day free trial, check out some courses, jump on a live coaching call. If you don't like it, no worries whatsoever.

We want you to want to be there. And so we'll also give you 50% off to all our podcast listeners with that 7 day free trial. So check out the link down below. Would love to have you there. Again, thank you guys so much for being here and we will see you on the next episode.