How Scott & Virginia Trench Think About Goals, Spending and Investing

26:04They're not very meaningful, probably around 1 % to 2 % of my position. I have not had a winner like Google or Tesla or SpaceX like you have, Mindy. That's the stock portfolio there. And that's actually done really well at that portfolio. I probably got very lucky in just the timing of learning about small cap value and putting my positions in there at the end of last year. But that has been a rocket ship for us. I think most people investing in the stock market are either get, like when they go up, they're getting lucky. They have a fortunate series of events that are happening that are raising their stock market valuation.

26:40Again, what is that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You can't take care of the opportunity if you don't have any sort of preparation behind you. I mean, I could just throw money in any stock, but some of them go down. Some of them go down to zero. So I'm curious what individual stocks you hold, Scott. Before I get to that, because I actually have to go look. I haven't really checked in a while. They're such small positions and I haven't made any active moves in there for a long time. I should have to go and look at them. I wasn't prepared for that question. But let me just ground the thesis one more time here, which is I don't like being concentrated in mega cap tech.

27:15And so I have attempted with this portfolio to buy everything else in the equity market, maintaining a 70-30, like the market cap weighting allocation to U.S. and international. And then I've bought into this concept of the factor premiums in value and size, thanks to the great guests we've had like Ben Felix. That is not saying other people should do that. But I like this for us because it puts 5 % of our stock portfolio into the mega cap tech complex on a holistically weighted basis instead of 40%. And I don't like having 40 % of the equity portfolio betting on a very small handful of companies.

27:58I like this better. I've been reluctant to do this episode because I'm not really loving the secondary bet I'm making, right? There's two decisions here. One is stay away from mega cap tech. I can defend that and feel really good about that. People can disagree, but I feel like I have a really good intellectual rounding in that. Then it's build this portfolio, which is a secondary bet that is also, that is making decisions that are different from that, right? And I've learned that from that mistake last year in buying rental properties, right? It's one thing to move away from the large cap tech.

28:26It's another to buy that rental property in Denver. I can be right about make a cap tech in five years maybe, and I can still lose depending on how the rental property performs. So that's what I'm trying to work through intellectually with the position here. But I feel pretty good about this portfolio and how we've constructed in Virginia. I think likes the reasoning as well. Carl wouldn't. Well, you know what? Are you married to him? No. So it doesn't matter what Carl thinks. It matters what your partner thinks. I've had to know Scott explains this to me many times to follow it. But yes. We have a diversified portfolio in index funds that make a decision about moving away from mega cap tech.

29:05That's what this is. It's not individual stock picking. You asked about the individual stocks, though. It did at one time pick individual stocks, and I have like a small handful of them. Well, while you look that up, I want to share with our listeners who may not be on our newsletter list, which you can join when you go to biggerpocketsmoney.com slash newsletter. Scott wrote a really great article on our blog called Mega Cap Tech. Individually, each giant makes sense. Collectively, they don't. Is it an AI bubble? And this can be found at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash AI-bubble. And in this article, you reference a really awesome calculator that you created at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash mega cap, where you can, once you read Scott's article, you can see what he's talking about and start sliding around all of these different ideas that you have about these 11 stocks that are the fangs and the big, big, big tech stocks, and see what you think might happen.

30:12Next Friday, Scott and my husband, Carl, are going to have a conversation about their differences of opinion on this mega cap valuation. Because in some regards, Carl's like, yeah, that makes sense, Scott. In some other regards, Carl doesn't agree. So I think that's a really great conversation that we're all about to have. And you should tune in if you are interested in this mega cap stock valuation? Because, I mean, somebody has to win and somebody has to not win. And this mega cap calculator that Scott created brings up some pretty interesting theses. My belief is basically not that the mega cap tech complex companies are bad companies or that they're going to go bankrupt or anything like that.

30:59It's just, I believe that they're valued at a level that requires fairly preposterous assumptions as a group. Anyone could win. Google could win. you know, Tesla could win, SpaceX could win. But when you try to combine them all as one company, because there's a lot of interrelations, it's just fairly preposterous that they could all win or that any one could win enough to make up for the losses that will inevitably happen in other companies. So we'll talk about that and the circularity and all that kind of stuff. I'm not alone in this. I'm not even like particularly original in this framing. There's plenty of people who have this opinion and plenty of people who have counter opinions.

31:30And so we'll discuss it. And that's where I'm at. But hopefully you can see our portfolio is relatively conservative. We have a significant cash position that's at least a year, well, maybe approaching the 18 to two year mark in terms of our household spending. We've got a portfolio that's diversified across all these different funds. It's not contrary to any individual stock. My largest individual stock holding is Crocs, actually. Crocs and Franklin Covey. I don't know why I bought Crocs and Franklin Covey at one point. Red Robin? Red Robin I have owned for years, and I have one share. It is worth$8.06.

32:03Oh, down five to ten. I'm down 33, down, down five cents today. I'm down 33 cents. I'm up 33 cents on my holding, but that's been a rough ride. Oh, the three ever. Yeah. Scott is very passionate. Well, he's a niche passionate grill master. You master at the brisket and your buffalo wings are very good. Yes, I bought a Traeger and then I bought the equivalent amount of Traeger stock there. That has gone very poorly for me in that particular investment. So there's just like a few things like that. They're very small positioned parts of the portfolio though here because I can't resist. and I enjoy turning my brain on for these analytics, but I've made a few thousand bucks across these individual stock positions over like 10 years.

32:42So it's not really that interesting. I think that if somebody is interested in following a stock, buy a couple of shares, buy$100, buy$1 ,000 in a stock that you really want to follow. Daphne, my 16-year-old, has recently started following NVIDIA. I don't know why. She just got it in her head that this was a great stock to follow. All the stocks that we talk about, and this is the one. We don't even own NVIDIA except whatever's in the index funds. We own a lot of NVIDIA. Yeah. Okay, so we own a lot, but none individually. And she's like, I want to buy NVIDIA. It is going up, and I want to buy it.

33:24And I was like, well, okay, what do they do? And she's like, I don't know, but it keeps going up. I'm like, well, so this kind of goes against all of my advice for people who want to invest in individual stocks. If you want to invest, you should do some research at it. At the bare minimum, you should know what they do. Frankly, I have a vague idea of what they do, but it's also, I don't own it, so I don't need to know what they do. She is also getting a Roth IRA now that she has her very first job at Taco Bell, and we will be matching her contributions dollar for dollar into her Roth IRA. So she will be able to buy this NVIDIA stock.

34:03That sounds like a supreme approach to parenting and investing. I was talking to Carl and I said, oh, we should put it in her Trump account. Oh, wait, we can't. So reminder, we did an episode a couple of weeks ago with Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club on the pros and cons of a Trump account. If you have a child who is under the age of 18, you have the opportunity to get up to$5 ,000 per year into their Trump account, their 530A account. And if they're born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028, you have the opportunity to get an additional$1 ,000 into their account from the government.

34:48They'll just to you, all the rest of the 5 ,000 you have to put in. But I think that's a great opportunity for people who are looking to help their kids get a leg up. So go check out that episode that we did with Jeremy, very informative about all the different ins and outs of these accounts. Yep. And we've set up Trump accounts, which I actually have not added to the Monarch portfolio yet because they're very small, but I'll put those in and consider them like the 529 or DAF inside of this. So that's a good little to do. That's like one of the to do's I would have from a financial plan discussion is just like, oh, got to add those to the account.

35:23Just a couple of points I want to talk about with the portfolio here. So we have the stock portfolio with the real estate. That's the vast majority of our position plus our cash and some of these side bets here. Over the last several months, our spending has been about three and a quarter to 3.5 % of the financial value of that portfolio. And that's kind of like right where I feel much more comfortable. I get very uncomfortable when that number bumps past 4%. I know that there's plenty of research and people who debate and don't like the conservatism, but that's how I feel. And that's like one of the reasons why I really like this meeting is I definitely need to do a better job of, you know, contributing around the house more consistently and those types of things.

35:58And I also like being able to say, okay, our spending is here. And I don't like it because we host this podcast. I don't want to be beyond these reasonably conservative rules of thumb with my own spending. So, you know, there's a little bit of circularity to that, that I think is important to try to live our life the way that we talk about on the podcast here. And I get uncomfortable when we drift. And so that's been one of the valuable things for this is we are living within this framework. How are you tracking this? Do you have an idea like my net worth is$100 ,000, therefore three and a half percent of that is$3 ,500.

36:32So as long as I'm not spending more than$3 ,500, I'm good. Yeah, exactly. It's just here's the number we want to stay under from a spending perspective each month and averaging that. Okay. I think that's really great to just like, then you're not really budgeting. Because you have reached financial independence, you don't really need to budget, but you do need to have an idea of where your money is going so that it doesn't just fly out of your pockets. It's so easy to be like, oh, it's only a dollar. It's only$20. It's only a hundred dollars. And then all of a sudden that adds up real quick. And you're like, ooh, I thought I was spending$60 ,000 a year.

37:09And look, I spent$150 ,000 last year, and I didn't plan on it. Yep. So you got it. That's kind of one of the key goals for the meeting is make sure that we're tracking that way across the average for the year. We're really conservative in all this stuff, right? Because, again, we have a – well, even with our portfolio, right? I mean, paid off a very lightly leveraged rental portfolio, the stock position here, the large cash position, some of the side bets, and then marking or not considering, not even factoring in some of the equity in the businesses, you know, other businesses and those things.

37:43So that's probably a criticism of our portfolio. And the other thing I don't love about our portfolio is the rental real estate concentration in Denver here. I didn't really like have that framework a year or two ago around it, but I think it's less bad to own real estate here in Denver than it would be to have them across the country. But it is a real risk that makes it harder to model the portfolio because of the geographic concentration. Forget Denver's specific promise or lack of promise. I actually am a big fan of Denver and like the area over 20, 30 years. But any geographic concentration with that part of the portfolio just changes the dials a little bit on the risk profile, the risk reward profile for the whole portfolio.

38:22So there's some things I like. I feel great about our portfolio and the way that we've set it up, but I don't love all of it. And there's some risks that I'm reasonably elephant about. Tradeoffs, yeah. With the real estate, I don't think this is appreciated very much by a lot of people. But one of the thoughts I have around the way we've structured our real estate portfolio is we bought these things at like a six to seven cap, between six and seven cap. And so if you just look at the zoom out at long-term average, we should generate something around that in terms of annual cash flow from the two properties.

38:52and we should get something close to historical appreciation. If you stack 3.5 % appreciation with 6.5 cap, you get a 10 % return, which is still a little too crude, a little too simplistic, but you're there. And so I should generate that from these properties for the foreseeable future, but I also have the option to refinance them at any time. I routinely go through and try to make sure I have financing available for the primary residence and the rental properties as an option. I don't know if I'll ever exercise it, but it's there. And I think that that's a very valuable part of the portfolio here that may be underrated by some folks with the payoff rentals.

39:29That option is worth something. And I'm not paying very dearly for it in the meantime. I'm just collecting cashflow. So I think that's something to consider. And I'm not sure exactly how that will play out in the future. But I think that one day that may be something we're very grateful to have. In a deeper session, maybe it's harder to get financing, but I should be able to get something if not nothing from that portfolio. So that's an idea. Where would you buy real estate if you weren't buying in Denver? I would probably move into the REITs space or maybe pick a market or two and buy a handful of single family rentals enough to make a difference in my portfolio, but not so much that it would create another set of major geographic risk.

40:12But that's the question I struggle with is, do I buy in Denver or do I buy out of state? And at the end of the day, you can see where I put my money. It's here in Denver. I just think that even if another market really does well for the next 10, 15, 20 years, I may actually get a better return in Denver because I can be involved in major decisions and go and handle it. One of the suggestions I would make when I was the community manager at BiggerPockets and people were asking, oh, it's too expensive where I live, where should I invest? Was where do you know people or what other markets do you know?

40:43Like Scott, I know you grew up in Maryland. You know that state, you know that area. You may not want to invest there, but that's a great place to start looking. Oh, maybe there is a great market in Maryland. I actually am incredibly unfamiliar with the rental market in Maryland, but I grew up in Illinois. I still know people who live in Illinois, I could look around in the different like Chicagoland area cities and say, oh, this actually kind of makes sense. And I used to live there so I can check it out. So is there any place that you know, like, oh, didn't you go to school someplace that isn't Maryland?

41:24I have thought about this a lot, but I'm like, you know, I don't want to get on a plane and go deal with problems in any of those areas. And so if I'm going to own real estate, I'm going to own it in the area where I can, if, you know, like, let's say things go terribly over the next several years, the market tanks in my equity position there, there begins to dwindle, you know, things thing, we have some sort of historical disaster, whatever. Well, I can manage these properties, we can move into one if we needed to, we lived in one of them for we've lived in several of them for many years. So that's, that's a real risk mitigate, I feel, for our situation that I wouldn't get in if we had a bunch of properties back east.

42:03Okay. And that's valid. That's something that you have thought of. This show isn't just for you. It's also for our listeners. So if our listeners are thinking, oh, it's too expensive where I live, where else do you know? Could you rent out a space? My friend Jake used to live in Ohio. His dad is still there. He owns rental properties in Ohio. And when there's an issue, his dad helps him out. So having somebody local who can help you out in an area is priceless because property managers are great, but knowing somebody who can help you is even better. Let me go through a couple of other kind of key concepts from our plan here.

42:41So we've talked about the buckets of our wealth. We've talked about why we've made decisions and the optionality we think it provides and how it provides a really, really great quality of life, I think, here. And we're very lucky. We have to talk about cash. So the cash is a small amount in checking, significant amount in the money market. And I also consider the small bond position that we have as part of the cash position. So just for anyone wondering there, if we own bonds, we do own bonds, very small amount. And I kind of bucket into the cash position. I also think that the real estate is more bond-like for us and gives us that differentiation from the stock market to let lower correlation.

43:11So we get a little bit of that kind of risk parity benefit to some degree by having that real estate holdings there. On tax strategy, I'm very aggressive. So, Mindy, just to draw a comparison to you, you have a lot of your wealth in the 401k pre-tax in SpaceX. I don't know if you've actually been able to liquidate SpaceX or not or if that's coming up. We have gone the complete opposite route. We have very little wealth in the pre-tax bucket, much larger Roth position here. And much of our wealth is at basis, effectively, because I've been aggressively resetting that basis. And one of the reasons why I reset that basis is because I believe I'll have business interests.

43:47Virginia will have a writing career and those types of things. And we will not really be in a very low income tax bracket like some people in the FIA community who choose to stop working entirely. I'm skeptical that that day will ever come that will really be in relatively low tax brackets. And so I like harvesting at the 15 percent capital gains bracket if I can. And so much of our wealth, we have very little capital gain in the portfolio other than the real movement from some of that small cap value stuff in the last year. and I may reset that at the end of the year. So I think that now is a great time to pay taxes.

44:18And I've been happy to do that because I think I'll pay much, much less taxes in the event that things go well for our financial position in the future. Or if the tax code changes with future administrations, I do not think that that will be friendly to somebody who has not harvested gains in a situation like ours. So that's the governing theory of that. This year, we'll continue that by moving into the Roth position there. There have been a few years where I've deferred though, especially when we're in a particularly high income tax bracket. I wrote an article at the end of June called, You Don't Have to Sell What You Love, You Just Have to Sell It for a Second.

44:53And it talks about capital gains harvesting. This is not something that Carl and I ever thought about. And now we sit on a good problem to have, but it's still an issue where our cost basis for almost all of our after-tax stocks is close to zero. Definitely for the bulk of the after-tax stocks. So when we sell, we're just paying all gains. But there are definitely years over the past 25 where we had space in our lower or even middle tax brackets that we could have filled up that will be very different than our current tax bracket. So I want to encourage people who have never capital gains harvested to look into this option and look into this idea.

45:41Because if you have after-tax stocks that is significantly appreciated, on the one hand, hooray, I've made money. On the other hand, the government is going to come calling. So if you have space in your tax portfolio, reset the basis periodically. I love that you've been doing that. I think there's a world where we could have had a significantly larger pre-tax net worth, but that this approach that we've taken will ultimately generate a lot more post-tax net worth for us to enjoy in our life and maybe pass on to our girls one day. So that's been my philosophy. That's a real debatable point. And I think that there's a certain aggressiveness or maybe even arrogance to that belief set that I bring to the tax strategy.

46:21but I certainly bias towards the belief that this is a relatively good time to pay taxes for someone in our position. I think it is right now. And I mean, you don't have to just sell everything and pay it all at once. Look at around the end of November, beginning of December, look at where your income is, what moves you've already made and see if there's any space at the top of whatever your current tax bracket is to take advantage of this. So, you know, next up is estate planning. We have all of our estate plans set up, revocable trusts, all that kind of good stuff. I was worried in preparing for this episode that we were way behind on not updating that, but we had a great setup for that and it rolled through and carried through and has all the things that apply to our firstborn, apply to our second child.

47:05And so it was really well-structured. And there was just a few things to clean up and beneficiaries and that kind of stuff on some of the complexity of the accounts that we had. That's generally up to date with maybe like a few to-dos between now and the end of the year, just to get that into good shape. One of the things that I think is interesting is the inheritance tax is way beyond our net worth. But I think that's one of those things that could change at any point. And so that's something I'll be looking at is if some policy change in a future administration places taxes on inheritance at different levels, we would be in a serious conversation about setting up irrevocable trusts to some degree as part of that.

47:40But that's not something we fired at this point. Ooh, I want to plant a seed. I got an email from a listener talking about South Dakota legacy trusts. Yeah, we're not doing anything like that. Well, not right now, but that a South Dakota legacy trust in a nutshell, definitely do more research, helps you provide for future generations and you skip all of the 40 % inheritance taxes when like you don't leave it to your kids. And then when they pass, they have to pay 40 % inheritance tax to their kids and so on and so on, it kind of skips all of that. So it's an irrevocable trust. I would definitely encourage you to read a lot about it, but it sounds like something I want to do some research on.

48:28Yeah. I think that that begins to apply when you get to your level of net worth and begin to think about, oh, well, if I double that a few times, I'm going to be in this problem. Maybe it's time to start thinking about these advanced tax planning structures. That's real big league stuff. So we'll see how that goes. Scott, you have 18 years between you and me. So what is the rule of 72 talking about in 18 years? You're going to double two times, two and a half times? I think it's very possible that happens with our portfolio. But what I was trying to communicate is we're not there yet, but it's in the back of the mind if that ever happens to begin thinking about that stuff, especially if that tax law changes.

49:08And everyone's got an opinion on this stuff. I believe it's smart to err on the side of they might raise the tax bracket. You may not be in a higher tax bracket later if you fire or stop working or stop maximizing active income in the near term for some point in time. I'm betting on clearly and making high stakes tax decisions here that tax brackets will go up. I agree. So let me see here. Let's summarize. We talked about where we are at, chubby fat fi. We talked about the portfolio. The high-level goal, just to restate it here, is to maintain financial independence in our spending band and give ourselves the option to let the portfolio continue to grow.

49:46And if it does, then we may continue to increase our lifestyle or maybe do some other things or continue to donate to our charitable fund or donor-advised fund. But we would like that option. We don't want to rule it out and attempt to spend as much as possible right now. We have a comfortable life. We want to eliminate waste. We don't want to deprive ourselves, but we want to stay within the bounds of financial independence. And then if it grows, let that continue to let our lifestyle spending grow. And that's that. We're giving up some maximum expected return in exchange for the floor on that.

50:15But we're also staying reasonably aggressively invested with our stock portfolio to give us a higher ceiling on that. So kind of high floor, but with ceiling growth opportunity there. We talked about public. We talked about real estate. We talked about we have some controls in place here. We talked about cash and liquidity tax, estate plan. Oh, insurance. Last one to cover here, which is we have a small insurance policy that would pay off the debt on the levered portfolio. For me, we do not carry life insurance on Virginia. I have never filed a claim, right? Maybe we've filed one claim in 10 years on rental property insurance.

50:49So what I do with the rental properties is because I'm, I don't like to file claims because it's a pain in the rear. And then your premiums can go up after, you know, for a long time. And usually the claims aren't that large. So all of the premiums in our portfolio are at the highest possible deductible, like literally 20, 25, 30 grand. And that keeps our insurance rates much, much lower. It's a pretty big, pretty dramatic difference. We forego a lot of the wind and hail stuff because it's like almost the same as the deductible on these policies. And that's paid off huge for us. We've had a few roof replacements and that kind of stuff over the years, but I think that the premium savings across the portfolio has drastically overwhelmed that.

51:25So that governs all of our insurance thoughts here is what is enough to protect against catastrophe, but we're going to float any large deductibles or that kind of stuff. And that keeps our costs really low from an insurance perspective or that. And I shop that pretty aggressively every year or two. I have a similar stance on insurance, but also I would like to point out that you and I might be in a different financial position than somebody else who is listening. One of the tips that I have heard from people who are suggesting increase your deductible is to have that much money, your deductible, in an account that isn't in the stock market.

52:04This is your savings account, maybe a high-yield savings account, that is specifically in case you need to file a claim. Like, let's say we live in the Colorado area. We get a lot of hailstorms. Let's say your deductible is$10 ,000 to do a new roof. I mean, I've got a couple of roofers that'll do it for 12 or 15. So is it really even worth filing the claim when you're going to pay that much anyway? But have that$10 ,000 in a bank account. So if you do have something like, God forbid, a fire, and it's a significant expense to rebuild the house or remediate or whatever, you've got your deductible already.

52:42That's not now a new burden for you to try and figure out if you are not already financially independent. And Carl and I have the highest deductible that our lenders will allow. Yeah. And we also have a high deductible health insurance plan, of course, that's HSA compatible and do max that immediately. Yep. You max the HSA. Yes. Okay, Virginia, now that you have reached financial independence, how does it feel? I think Scott and I both are ambitious people and we have a tendency to think about the next thing, the next thing, next thing endlessly. so we try to really enjoy it's a big undertaking because they just enjoy life i think we're too we're too anxious we're anxious people so it's just a matter of being intentional with enjoying the freedom the financial freedom that we have and being grateful for what we can do and the flexibility that we have like going for a walk in the middle of the day the gratitudes are so important as part of our weekly check-in.

53:44And we do stuff that's like big and small and math, like just because we have that flexibility that Scott worked very hard for. And there was a good amount of luck. We had the ability to slow down and say, I want to write down how grateful we are for how our youngest says the word shoes, which is ooze. She's, she puts on her ooze. This is a real threat to early retirement. Yeah, the princess dress economy is absolutely out of control. For our oldest, she is obsessed with these princess nightgowns. They cost maybe$15 each, but we frankly run out of princesses. And now we're moving on to Paw Patrol, Spider-Man.

54:24Short story long answer to your question, it feels amazing, Mindy. And I get to pursue my creative career. We get to have wonderful family time. and it helps that we actually like each other. If we're going paddleboarding tomorrow, that's going to be fun. I was just going to ask, what does Tuesday look like for you? Today's Tuesday, but let's use tomorrow as an example because so tomorrow we're going to drop the kids off because it's largely a work day tomorrow for us at the local daycare. Then we're going to do a quick daycare. We like to do our dates if we can during that period because we're already paying for daycare.

54:57So we'll do that. And so we're going to go get breakfast and then do a paddleboarding session. And then I have various meetings. We're actually going to record two podcasts tomorrow, it looks like. And I have work to do. Yeah, I've got a one-on-one with somebody. I've got a call with one or two team members. Oh, we should talk about that. Yeah, then I'll work out, and then I'll go pick up the girls. And Virginia will go in and do her little thing tomorrow. Yeah, we do that once a week, too. We call it our quote-unquote night off, a break from parenting duties. So one of us does pick up through bedtime while the other might see a friend.

55:29in your case you are somewhat addicted to pho i'll go like get my nails done or something yeah yeah and that's like a good night like like okay i'm gonna hang out with my buddy and you know with the football season's coming up i'll probably take a lot of mondays for example and go hang out with my my buddies and go watch that and then on thursday i will do my night off what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna drive up to breckenridge and i'll do a little hike and then i'll go to a coffee shop and work for a little bit. And then I'll come home and might be there in time for a pickup or bedtime or might be home a little bit later after that.

56:03But this is as spontaneous as we get. Like this is a scheduled spontaneity to the extent that's possible with two young children. Yeah, so I'll throw in work. I'll probably do some Claude coding for something for BiggerPocketsMoney or read your blog post or something like that as part of that outing there. And then next week, I'll do it with one of the girls. So I'll take out Katie or Taylor. They love their daddy daughter skip days. Yeah, we'll do a skip day and do that. That's a real luxury that we get to have here. And it kind of weaves in all of this stuff. So that would be like the example for this week of how we would do that.

56:34And it is nice to be able to have that flexibility. Yeah. And as far as spontaneity goes with the three-year-old and the one-year-old, you got to plan it or it's never going to happen. Same with dates, same with nights off. Obviously, I survived, but we didn't do this. And I wish we would have, because that would have given Carl an opportunity to bond with the girls even deeper and me an opportunity to not have to answer mommy, mommy, mommy questions every 30 seconds from morning until night. And I think that's really important that you're doing that. I love that you're doing that. That's what that means to us right now.

57:10And it's not perfect. We definitely don't implement this all perfectly all the time. And much of it came from lessons learned the hard way, but life is good. Yeah. Life is really good. I love that for you. Okay. Scott and Virginia, I really appreciate you sharing all of this information with us. Scott, everybody knows where they find you. Virginia, where can people find out more about you and your books? Ooh. So I write psychological thrillers and you can learn more at virginiatrench.com. And I have a new book coming out in the fall. It's about a con man and women who will stop at nothing to take him down.

57:49Pretty much the antithesis of sound financial advice. It's about a financial scammer, but it's a thrilling read and I'm excited for people to read it. I am excited to read it. Mr. Disappear is the title. So November 10th, Mr. Disappear by Virginia Trench. So check that out. And yeah, that's, that's, it's a great, it's a great read. It's like, the guy's like kind of like the tinder swindler is kind of how I, how I think about it. I love that. I'm super excited for Mr. Disappear. And I really loved your first book, Our Secrets Were Safe. Thanks, Mindy. That's a fun thing too. If you like psychological thrillers, head over to virginiatrench.com and check those out.

58:25They're also available wherever books are sold, right? Yeah. Awesome. All right. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Before we go, I want to let you know that we have tons of financial information on our website, biggerpocketsmoney.com. We have a blog. We have a newsletter. You can sign up for that at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash newsletter. We have free resources and calculators and templates all designed to help you on your journey to financial independence. So hop on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com and check us out. Now that wraps up the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

59:00He is Scott Trench. She is Virginia Trench. I am Indy Jensen saying bye-bye, fruit fly.