538: Late Start, Early Retirement: The Huge Advantages of Investing Later in Life

26:13And, you know, things like vision, like, man, I used to always have 20-20. I have to wear glasses now when I'm long distance, you know. My hearing is not what it used to be. I got my volume turned up on my headphones. I never needed to do that. My daughter tells me the TV is too loud. So all these little things will start to add up when it comes to health and related things. So we do have to, and I have come to the reality, I feel very lucky that both my daughter and I have been very low consumers. She's an adult now, so she's not on my insurance anymore. But when she was, we were both very low consumers of health care and we hardly spent anything on health care.

26:49I know that that's probably not going to be the case post-50, post-60, as I get older. You can just look at your older relatives and any older people that you know. A lot of them, when you start the conversations, they start telling you about their health problems. And I hope to not be one of those people. I'll keep you in check, Jackie. But, you know, one thing you can do now that you are, I mean, hopefully we are all going to get older and we are all going to need Medicare. And one of the things you can do now is start contributing to an HSA. You have to have a high deductible plan in order to be able to do this.

27:26But your HSA dollars don't have to be spent right now. So if you are older, still in good health, you can cash flow your expenses currently. You can save up those receipts and then cash those in later or use your HSA dollars for your medical expenses down the road. Yeah, that is a great way to use an HSA. And before I even knew what I was doing, we were on an HSA because honestly, like I said, me and my daughter were very low consumers of health care. So we weren't even meeting the low deductible, like the$500 deductible. So when my company introduced a high deductible plan with an HSA and I knew I could invest in it and they were putting money in it too, that sounded great.

28:09But as time goes by, you know, Mad Fientist, he wrote that amazing article called The Health Savings Account, The Ultimate Retirement Account. I'm like, ooh, I'm doing something right. So I maxed out my HSA for 12 years. I started like it as soon as my company started offering them, 2008. So from 2008 to the year I retired in 2019, that was about 12 years. I maxed, I did the family max. And this is a key for family. All you need is you and one of the person. So if you're singleton with a kid, that is still considered, you know, family. So maxing that out and I invested it as soon as they would let me, I think I had to keep $2 ,000 in there.

28:47So I stopped contributing to my HSA once I retired because now I'm on a traditional plan. But I continued letting it grow. I just have a straight up index fund. I think it's like a total stock market index fund that's in there. It's a growth fund. But today, that HSA has now grown to about$200 ,000. I would have never imagined. And I don't want to die with it necessarily. So Mindy, to your point, what I've decided to do with it, I thought a lot about the drawdown strategy because when you inherit an HSA, it stops being an HSA. So it's taxable. It's not like a regular retirement account. So what I decided to do is to use my HSA to start drawing down to pay, one, my Medicare premiums.

29:36You can do it for the Part B and the Part D. And you get a nice annual statement. So it's super easy. You don't have to track very much. And then on top of that, again, I'm banking on additional expenses and health care costs once I am a little bit older. So I'll use it for out-of-pocket. I can use it for co-pay. I can use it for vision, dental, hearing. So that is my strategy for drawdown with that HSA. And it could be very, very valuable. And for people, I feel like it is a mental shift when you go from paying$5 every time you go to the doctor to now paying, let's say,$82. But when you start to add all the pieces together, your premium is much cheaper for a high deductible health plan.

30:21and you don't have to be on it forever. You change your health insurance every year. So for me, I had it for 12 years. So even if you have yours for five years, it could create a pretty powerful little nest egg. Yeah, I completely agree with everything Jackie said. We have our HSA, we max it out. It's in a single index fund. And I have to plug one company here because I think Jackie uses it as well. Fidelity has a no-cost HSA, and they do a great job with the HSA. So I would encourage your audience to look at that too. A couple of things here. If I'm zooming back out to the parts of the discussion we just had here, and I'm looking, the first thing that we should be doing is saying, can I downsize my house?

31:08Because that's going to be the single biggest variable. I think that's going to change the trajectory of finances. That may or may not be reasonable in your situation. Then it's what you drive. Then it's your food budget, right? Then it's tax leakage, but we're actually going to probably attack the tax problem with the investment approach, starting with the HSA as we go through our financial planning approach here. And then it's healthcare, right? And once we've made really good decisions on those other three, if we can get those costs down to reasonable, so we're still living a happy life, but really making sure that we're getting the value in those three decisions.

31:43You know, the rest of the pie chart is just controlling the expenses and making sure that you're getting value out of all of those other things, all these other categories. Control it, watch it. But those big three are going to make, those big three or four are going to make all the difference here. And then I love it. Like the first thing in a financial plan, if I'm starting from zero at age 50 or 55 and trying to catch up to five is max out the HSA and put it in the index fund. Mindy, of course, has supercharged the returns in her HSA by investing it in Tesla. That's a gamble. We can get into that another time about why that might not be the best investment advice there.

32:22Mindy, do you have Tesla in your HSA? Yes. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I went safe with a growth index fund, but yeah, that's super smart because that's another account where you do want to have high growth assets because when you take it out as tax-free for medical expenses, look at that smart girl. Yeah, and it's not all Tesla, but it is, you know, I want some growth in there. I want that to grow because you put it in tax-free. It grows tax-free. You withdraw it tax-free. They call it triple tax advantage. And I want to pay all the taxes I have to and none of the taxes I don't have to. Well, if there's one place to take risk, it's in your HSA for maximum growth.

33:10I mean, that's what we do too. I'm going to have to revisit my allocation in my HSA. Look, I'm already writing that down. That's a to-do once we're done here. Just a couple of things for folks that are thinking about this HSA, because I agree. This is the first thing. You're thinking about how to catch up to retirement, max out the HSA. Now, you only can have an HSA if you have a quote-unquote bad health insurance plan, one with a high deductible, a higher out-of-pocket max, and those types of things. So if you're someone who regularly meets your deductible, you may not want the HSA or are likely to meet that deductible over the next two or three years for whatever reasons.

33:48That may be a decision if your employer offers a plan that has better coverage for you. You may not be eligible for an HSA. And then we just move down to the next item in the list from a financial planning perspective and put the cash into that bucket. So that's just one thing to note. And then as you're thinking about the HSA, we want the HSA to grow because it is the supercharged retirement account, even if we don't invest in Tesla stock inside of it. And we want that money to grow. So you have to make a decision. Am I going to pay my health insurance costs when they do come up with the cash in my HSA or am I going to let it grow?

34:25And I think a lot of folks that get serious about this make the decision. hey, I'm going to actually pay my copay at my doctor and my regular medical bills just with my credit card and my bank account statement because I want that HSA money to grow because it's a really nice security blanket going into retirement. What do you guys think? Is that how you approach it? Absolutely. That's how we approach it. And all the things Jackie said about paying your Medicare costs and copays, we've saved, as Mindy said, all of our receipts. and there have been lots of expenses over time and you can pull that out tax-free and spend it on anything you want, actually.

35:03Yeah, there's no time limit to use those receipts. And some people don't wanna be bothered with the receipts even if they're digital, that's totally fine too. But again, I can guarantee you, your health expenses are gonna be a lot more later on in life. So there's probably not gonna be a shortage of being able to spend down that money. And you mentioned the triple tax savings. And so that's how most people label it, you know, tax-free going in, tax-free going out, tax-free while it grows. The other little bonus that you get, and again, this is back to taxes, Scott. So if you have your contributions to your HSA taken through payroll deduction, you don't pay the FICA tax, that's Social Security and Medicare.

35:41So that's another little extra piece that you get. So if you have the opportunity to make contributions through your employer, make those contributions. Even if the investments that your company is, the company's HSA is sucky or whatever, still go ahead and get it in there because you can always open up, you know, we, you know, Fidelity's one of the most awesome ones that's low fee, but you can, you can have one, you can have more than one HSA and you could certainly move it out if you want to. So it's not like your 401k or your employer sponsored retirement plan. You can have multiple HSAs. You don't have to wait till you leave the company in order to move it.

36:19So you have a lot more flexibility than you would with like what you have with a traditional retirement account. I do want to just throw out here that we are starting this discussion about catching up to retirement from an investment perspective, assuming that folks are going to invest in low fee, low cost index funds. in a variety of vehicles, which include after-tax brokerage accounts, DHSA, retirement accounts, these other types of things. And we're going to talk about the superpowers that folks are catching up to FI have in terms of tax advantages and additional access to investment opportunities that younger folks like myself, for example, don't have access to yet right after this ad break.

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42:16I'm 33. I don't have access to some of these, you know, these catch-up opportunities that we're going to talk about, I think, here. So, okay. Some of our over 50 superpowers. My favorite one is the over 50 catch-up contributions. You have the regular, in 2024, the regular amount that you can contribute to your 401k is$23 ,000. That's for everybody. But because I'm over 50, because Bill's over 50, Jackie, are you over 50? Don't ask me that, Mindy. Okay. Jackie, when you become over 50, you will be able to do the$23 ,000 plus an additional $6 ,000. That's not small potatoes. And because you're over 50, you probably have the income to be able to contribute that.

43:03But wait, there's more. Your IRAs have a contribution limit of$7 ,000 this year, Scott. But me and Bill and Jackie, when she turns over 50, we'll have an additional$1 ,000 that we can put into there. And if it's the Roth IRA, that's an additional$1 ,000 that I've paid taxes on now that grows tax-free. So when I pull it out after I turn, what, 55 and a half, I think I can reach that money. I pull it out tax free. So that's just one of the benefits of our being mature. Yeah, well, there's one more, actually, we forgot with regards to the HSA. When you're over 55, like moi, you can add another$1 ,000 to your contribution.

43:47Per person that's on your plan. So you and your spouse are allowed the extra$1 ,000. Is that right, Bill? I'm not sure about that. Don't quote me. I'll defer to you. You're the CFP. I know, I know. Look, I was just checking your knowledge a little bit there. But yes, it's$1 ,000 per person, but each individual must have their own HSA. Like you couldn't put an extra$2 ,000 in your HSA for both of you. Karen would have to open up her own HSA to get the$1 ,000 catch up. Oh, hold on, because I got to dive into this. I'm an older mom. I started later. I'm a later start on parenting. So if I have four people on my HSA currently, and I'm over, well, I'm not over 55 yet, but I will be before one of them gets off.

44:37So can I contribute$4 ,000 extra and they just have to have their own HSA plans? Well, just remember the extra thousand we're talking about is for those over the age of 55. Are your kids over 55? Oh, no. Okay. So only, well, my husband's younger too, man. I got to trade him in for an older model. But I can tell you this, Mindy. So your kids are either of them, are they over the age of 18 yet? Not yet. Okay. So I'm going to mention this for anyone else that might have older, because I had the situation with my daughter. If you have older children, they could be on your health insurance plan until they are 26, but they may not be a tax dependent.

45:16So if you are on a high deductible plan with an HSA and you've got your kid on there that's no longer a tax dependent, they can actually have their own HSA and contribute the family max. That's a very nice little nuance for people that have adult children. I was able to do that for my daughter for several years before she was mandated by law to not be on my plan anymore. That's a very nice provision. But the key is they can no longer be a tax dependent because technically you can't use your HSA dollars to pay for someone's expenses that is not a tax dependent. So that is their answer to it. I wouldn't call it a loophole, but it is amazing provision.

46:01So if you're able to contribute, I think it's like$8 ,000 this year or close to it. You're able to do$8 ,000 and your non-tax dependent adult child that's under 26 that's on your plan can also contribute the family maximum. And you could give them the money to do it. They probably are not. They don't have an aid. Yeah, exactly. So just a little nuance for older people. That situation may happen for at least a few years. That is the first time I've heard of that hack. And I'm already behind the eight ball on that one. I got a couple of years where I could do that. There you go. Bill, you should have asked me.

46:38Are you kidding? I didn't even think about that. You should be doing that already. Well, you are my co-host and you are a CFP. Why aren't you edumacating me? I know. I need to edumacate you. But we will talk after. But definitely you need to get those. Because once they get old, even if they're in their mid-20s or even late 20s, a lot of times it's hard for them to get traction and be able to live. We're still sometimes supporting them a little bit. And that's a little something extra you can do for them, especially when it comes to the medical stuff. So yes, that could be a nice option. These are awesome tips.

47:13But I think we're all aligned that the HSA is a superpower and one of the first vehicles that you should maximize. And you should take advantage of it to the maximum extent because there's so many use cases for it. And you're going to need a big bucket of money. can never be big enough to fuel healthcare expenses in retirement and later in life. But I want to kind of come back to another question here. Again, we're saying like basics of the financial plan are lower expenses as much as possible. I'm starting with the implicit assumption that those listening to this are already maximizing their income or don't really have a means to job hop and make$40 ,000 more.

47:50If that's part of your plan, you should definitely take on that one. We're not going to have a big discussion. But the big decision point, I think from an investment – and cut your expenses. But the big decision on an investment standpoint I think is for most after the HSA, Roth or 401k. I think it's no contest for someone catching up to FI to put it in the 401k and not into the Roth for most people that are trying to catch up to FI. But Jackie, I want to hear your opinion on that as a reaction to that. Do you agree with that or disagree? And if so, why not? Kind of. So I think some people kind of get confused.

48:26So your 401k or your employer retirement plan, you have an option to make traditional contributions or Roth. You get your choice. Now, with your IRA, you got the same two choices. You can choose Roth or traditional. So those are two separate things. The biggest chunk, obviously, is going to be your 401k because that's like$23 ,000. Here's my bottom line. I want people to have a mix of the two to give you as many options as possible. Sometimes you might want to pull traditional because you need to show a little bit of income. Sometimes you might need to pull Roth because you don't want to show any income.

49:05If you do traditional, I love the fact that it reduces your taxable income. And because you may be closer to that 59 and a half where you can take it out without a penalty, there's another benefit to that. with, if you ended up doing Roth, obviously you're not going to get the tax deduction now, but it grows completely tax-free. And when you leave that company, and this is what I did, when I left my company, when I rolled it over, now the contributions that went into my Roth portion, I could get that out tax penalty free for anything. And that became very valuable to me because I had a few years before I turned 59 and a half.

49:44And I hate to always use depend, in, but those are things you want to think about. But no matter what, make sure you have a mix. You don't need to have all Roth when you retire and you don't need to have all traditional. That boxes you in. So have a little bit of both. Let me just push back there because I think someone who is, I'm going to put myself in the shoes of someone who's 50, you know, 55 years old, who is starting from zero and says, I want to catch up as much as possible by retirement age. I make$78 ,000 a year and last 10 years, I just spent all of it. That's why I have no retirement savings here.

50:20I'm going to immediately think about ways to downsize my housing, but it's going to take me six months to a year to enact that. It's going to take me, you know, I need to figure out I'm going to sell my fancy new car and get a, get a downsize one there. I'm going to start packing lunch, but like this year, I'm not going to generate$40 ,000 that I can deploy nicely down the capital stack with a$7 ,000 HSA contribution, 23 ,000 to my 401k and another 6 ,500 into my Roth here. I have to make a choice. How do I make that choice, the hard choice of which buckets to fill up? Do I just 1 ,000 into the Roth, 1 ,000 to the 401k?

50:58Or how would you advise someone in that position to make that trade-off, especially in the first year or two before they start ramping their savings rate? If I can chime in quickly, We have a whole episode on this with Sean Mullaney, and he is a 100 % advocate for traditional 401k for late starters. It's unequivocal. You're at your peak income years and the tax diversification there. Well, it's important. You want to have in the tax triangle taxable Roth and traditional 401k type contributions so that you can manage your taxes later. But you can also do Roth conversions later. I don't completely agree with Jackie.

51:37And we do all traditional 401k. We don't do any Roth 401k at this point in time. Well, I think that you're in a different position. I like the Roth for somebody who has a longer timeline to allow it to grow tax-free. You're a higher income earner, and I'm in this position. you are, I want to reduce my taxable income as much as possible rather than growing my Roth contributions because they're not going to be as effective as tax-free wise, in my opinion. But that's always something that somebody can do the math on and send me a spreadsheet that's easy to read. Yeah, it's really going to depend on your situation because then if you factor in things like, what if you have a pension?

52:26That's going to be coming. That's going to be taxable. Let's factor in Social Security, where already 85 % of your Social Security benefit could be subject to tax. So there's a lot of moving parts. That's why really the only thing I can definitively say is that having a mix of the two, I think the baby boomers, so our predecessors, the Roth was barely available during their working life. So they hardly had any Roth at all. Most of us, me and Bill's age, sort of in the middle, we've been doing Roth for quite some time. So we have plenty of Roth. Like I have plenty of Roth. So I honestly, in my 401k bill, I was doing all.

53:07Now, as I was learning this and as we're learning, we make a lot of little mistakes. I kept going from like, no, I should be doing traditional. Then I'm like, no, no, no, no, I should be doing Roth. So I went back and forth until finally I settled on doing traditional 401k. And then I was doing a Roth IRA because for my income, I was right around$80 ,000. For my income, I still qualified for it. Now, if you're a really high income earner, you can't contribute directly, you can do the backdoor. It's just going to be an extra step for you. And I guess I may as well come clean, Mindy. If anybody does the math, I retired when I was 49, December 2019.

53:46So I am over 50. But the fun thing was that I got to max, I got to still max out my 401k and get the catch-up contribution the year I retired in 2019 because my birthday is in December. So as long as you turn 50 before the last day of the year. So I did do the catch up for one year. I no longer have an employer, obviously, so I can't do that. But I can still contribute to an IRA if I have any income that would allow me to. The way I think about all this is I think that if you think you're going to be earning less in retirement, you're going to have less taxable income in retirement than you do now, you should go with the 401k.

54:31And if you think you're going to have the same or more, you should go with the Roth. And because I'm 33 and have a long investing time horizon ahead of me, I mostly invest in the Roth because I think tax rates are going up. And I think that I'm going to be glad that I have this tax-free growth ahead of me. But I think if I was catching up, unless I had one of these exceptions, like you said, Jackie, like these like pensions or whatever, that the 401k would be the place I'd really emphasize before the Roth, like if I had to make the tradeoff there for like that average scenario, I think, in many cases.

55:10Do you agree with that one? Yeah, and I think that's a longstanding debate, Roth or traditional. So there's really no wrong answer, but I think you're thinking about it the right way, Scott, because people do want to try to come to their own conclusion and they need something to go on. So some of the things you suggested, I think those totally make sense. And again, I try to stress to people, you know, with your 401k, within that, you can do Roth or traditional. And then you have the same two choices when it comes to your IRA. So I ended up deciding to do traditional inside my 401k and then Roth the other way.

55:45But yeah, if you think that is one of the components, if you think tax rates are going to go up, more than likely, you know, historically, you know, long term tax rates are probably going to go up. So you think about that. But even so, I just defer to having some kind of mix and trying to go through your own checklist of what you have going on. We use the backdoor Roth because we are high income earners. But don't forget, you have a spousal contribution as well. People may forget that. So you can do two. Awesome. So we have HSA, 401k and or Roth downstream there. What should I do next? What are the next things that I should be doing with my money after I've started investing in those?

56:25Yeah, Bill, I think one account that's highly underestimated is a regular taxable brokerage account and certainly real estate as well, if you have that. But with a brokerage account, you don't have to worry about the normal restrictions as with a retirement account. So the brokerage account, there's no age limit, there's no contribution limit, and it could give you some additional tax treatment of an investment account that is different from your retirement account, your Roth or your traditional or your HSA. So I think that's something that probably deserves to be in everyone's portfolio or everyone's mix of investments and tax treatment accounts going into retirement.

57:14What do you think, Bill? Is there anything else you could think of that probably should be a part of that, too? Yeah, as your cash flows down the waterfall, absolutely. It's a natural. And we do that as well. I think it is important because that helps you bridge the gap if you retire before Social Security. Yeah. And you know what? Going on the topic of 401ks, there's that rule of 55. So for late starters, they're closer to 55. And there's a provision if you have an employer retirement plan, that would be a 401k, 403b, and a thrift savings account. Those will, if you retire the year in which you turn 55, you're able to get money out of that account without paying that 10 % penalty.

57:58So you got an extra five-year bonus that you can take advantage of. You couldn't do that at 45. You couldn't do that at 32, Scott. So that's another little extra maneuver that older people can use if they caught up and decide that, hey, I think I can step away at 55. You have access to that money. You know, we've spent a long time talking about all this stuff, but it really boils down to like a very beautiful simplicity, I think, that we've kind of aligned on here, right? It's like, understand your numbers, slash expenses if you can in housing, transportation, food, minimize leakage from taxes using these accounts like the HSA and 401k, invest in index funds and widen that spread as much as you can over the next five, 10, however many years it's going to take you to get to that goal.

58:49And you just chunk it along. Now, there's a whole bunch of frameworks and jargon and all these accounts and limits and all these other things to cover in there. So I think that kind of leaves us like one last component of the financial plan because that's the essence of the financial plan. It's that simple at the highest level and that complexes a whole other language if this is your first intro to financial planning here. But I think that that brings me to the last thing here, which is an unending journey of learning more about investing in money. And I'd love to hear just a quick recap, Jackie and Bill, if that's been true for you guys on your journeys and what that immersion may have looked like, how long it took you to feel comfortable with all this jargon.

59:30Well, you just summarized it perfectly. I mean, it's like a 10-step recovery plan, maybe less. And your summary, definitely that should be the real because that is the bullet point. It is simple. You've got to unload the jargon. I mean, the financial industry wants to make it complicated because they want your money. You know, and if you take over your finances and follow your six, eight step plan, you got to work through the messy middle. It's going to take time, but you'll get there. I mean, it's possible. That's what we're trying to tell our audience. Start, start now, and you will get there.

1:00:07It's never too late. Yeah, I think the biggest part is, you know, it will take time, like Bill said, and you You should celebrate your wins along the way. Like there are going to be some mistakes like me trying to, you know, pay ping pong back and forth between the traditional and the Roth until I figured it out. That's okay. Once I decided to do that, you know, that's a win. You know, when I sat down to do my expenses or to look at my investments, that's a win. So celebrate along the way. And this learning does not stop. Bill and I are just learning. Bill didn't know about the HSA and his adult children.

1:00:42Mindy's investing in Tesla in her HSA. Look, I got all kinds of notes just from today. And I retired in 2019. I'm still learning. Jackie's going to bet on Rivian and her HSA. Exactly. There you go. Look, I need to have, you know, I keep, I'm so happy about how well my Nvidia has been doing. I do own some single stocks and I'm a very proud owner of a single stock portfolio, but I'm a nerd like that, that enjoy doing the analysis and things like that. So I can say that after being retired for five years, nearly five years, my main thing is that I've learned that precision is not required. So I try to go into this as precisely as possible.

1:01:28And I know that I still made some mistakes. Well, even the mistakes that I made or the things where I knew I wasn't optimizing 100%, that was okay. You know, by the time I figured out, oh, Social Security, I didn't even count that. So that's a backstop. And then I would look at, oh, when I retire, my net worth was$1.3 million. And five years later, it's$1.8 million, right under, you know,$2 million. And I've been withdrawing from my portfolio. That gives me a little more confidence. I'm like, I shouldn't have been so worried about that, you know. And not that it's not important. You do need to know these numbers.

1:02:06You do need to go through the process. But as you build in buffers, that's going to help you feel comfortable that you won't get thrust into reverse if something gets messed up or if you make a mistake. So I think sometimes we're a little bit hard on ourselves, especially late starters. And I learned to not be so hard on myself. Just keep learning. Keep learning. Keep talking to smart people, you know, like, you know, you and Scott and even my co-host Bill. He's smart sometimes, too. Start a podcast. What you got to do is start a podcast. You get to meet all these smart people and learn from them.

1:02:42Exactly. And Bill, how much have we learned doing a podcast? There's just so much. And it becomes a lot of fun. It becomes a challenge. And you should say, what is going to help me enjoy this? You know, Bill, you're still working. You know, you're a hardworking ER doctor. And I like to say, when you're not saving lives at the hospital, you're podcasting with me. Because you really love it. And so you find that thing that you really enjoy doing every day all the time. I'm not getting paid anything for doing a podcast. So when I think about working, I hate it to even work 40 hours a week because it just wasn't my true passion.

1:03:22And now I just feel so differently about it. So even if I'm getting three, four hours a week, sometimes more with podcasting, I'm still going to bed with a smile on my face. Well, guys, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for a great two-part discussion here on building a financial plan. It starts with acknowledging the problem, understanding the situation, reliving the mistakes, but also coming up with a dream and a vision and a plan and then translating that into a specific projection model. Projection model is much more fancy than what you actually need to do in this process here. But that's what we're doing here.

1:03:57We're estimating what our expenses and income are getting there. And then, yeah, it'll take you years to really optimize this path. And that journey comes alongside hundreds of hours, likely, of self-education in whatever form works for you. But you can get there and you can make a huge amount of progress, maybe even a million dollars worth of progress inside of the next 10 years if you start now. Totally agree. Yeah, you have to because he's right. And you want to connect with other people who are in a similar position to you. So go listen to the Catching Up to Fi podcast, join their Facebook group, chat with people who are in a similar position.

1:04:34Don't listen to the people who are telling you you can't do it. I know that you can. Yep. And we all do. And one of the big things I want to mention as far as continuing to learn is think about how you learn the best. Are you an auditory learner? Are you a visual learner? Are you, do you like reading books? So find the podcast, find the blog, find the YouTube, and that will continue your learning. Find the community. That was a huge, huge pivotal time for me and a realization that this is the stuff that keeps feeding my brain. Well, Jackie and Bill, thank you so much for coming here today on the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast to talk about this.

1:05:12This is a huge, huge problem for a lot of folks out there. And hopefully we helped a lot of people get inspired and then actually begin the process of formulating a plan. Thank you for having us. Yeah, this has been amazing. Love you guys. Love you too. And we will talk to you soon. Thanks so much. Okay. I was today years old when I learned that my adult child on my insurance, but not on my taxes can contribute the family match to their HSA. And you can bet I am going to be putting that to good use in a couple of years. Perfection is the enemy of good. I think this is a great mantra for people to think and take to their heart and really remember when you're trying to be perfect.

1:05:55Good is really good. I just spoke with Christy Shen from Millennial Revolution, and her retirement portfolio over the past 10 years has grown from$1 million to$1.5 million, even after withdrawing, according to the 4 % rule, every year for 10 years. I think that's pretty amazing evidence that the 4 % rule really works. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is the Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen. And because this is an episode for our later starter friends, I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning of the alphabet and say, see you later, alligator. BiggerPocketsMoney was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench.

1:06:34This episode was produced by Eric Knudsen. Copywriting by Calico Content. Post-production by Exodus Media and Chris Mickin. Thanks for listening.

1:07:02We'll see you next time.