Is the Middle-Class Trap Something to Worry About? | Ep 543

25:47Her entire net worth is$750 ,000. She is$119 in cash,$101 in her Roth 401k,$24 ,000 in a Roth,$36 ,000 in a SEP IRA, and$306 ,000 in a brokerage account. She is an anomaly in the people that we are speaking to. And the 103 emails that I have that I still have to read because it's 103 people that have said this show that there's a lot of people who aren't thinking about their brokerage account. Carl and I have had an after-tax brokerage account with investments since before we were married. But that's really an anomaly in this whole FI community, I would think. And I am happy to be wrong about that.

26:32I just don't think I am. I was just kind of trying to do math while you were talking, which is not easy for me to do on the fly. But what I've seen working with clients, a lot of people who are at that border, like they're wanting to make a transition and looking for a second opinion, I've not come across ever anybody that doesn't have substantial Roth and taxable in addition to tax deferred. So I've just not seen it. And so I kind of tend to more agree with Brad. I mean, I'm trying to just make the scenario in my head, like you would have to be living on a very small amount of money, like a very frugal lifestyle.

27:05And in which case, even if it's again, like all tax deferred, a lot of that's going to be under the standard deduction, which is not taxed. And then maybe into the 10 % tax bracket. So you're still going to be paying a low rate, but I'm trying to really paint the picture and I've just not seen anybody actually who is in that position where they don't have assets outside of a tax deferred and they're able to be reasonably financially independent. I just found a really good one. Now, this person has$3.8 million in net worth. Cash is$225 ,000. HSA is$35 ,000. 401k is$1.2 million. No brokerage account.

27:44They have$3 million in their primary house. In fact, I think this is the one that inspired the idea of the middle-class trap. I believe she lives in California. She has a$3 million in her primary residence that she's owned for like 20 years. She bought it way early or way lower. So she has all of this money and not any way to really access it. She doesn't want to sell her house. She loves her house. But$1.2 million in her 401k, she's going to have to tap into that. And yes, Brad, you included the link to the Mad Scientist article, How to Access Retirement Funds Early. This is a really great article.

28:24It's kind of the article about accessing retirement funds early. And he says the early penalty withdrawal might just be the option to go. Go the Roth conversion ladder, do a 72T, substantially equal periodic payments, or just pay the penalty. Yeah, that was an interesting analysis. So, right, I would say that article is clearly the gold standard. And I would follow that up with Choose FI episode 475, where I had Sean Mulaney on. And it was how to access your retirement accounts before 59 and a half. And same, we go through all the different options and there are an extraordinary range of options of how to access this money, including the 72T, the substantially equal periodic payments.

29:09Like that's something that wasn't actually in that episode. He opened my eyes to that really wasn't a viable strategy for most people prior to I think 2022 is when the rules changed. But now it's actually an exceedingly viable strategy. I know our friend, Eric Cooper from the Louisville Choose a Buy group uses that. And I think he might've talked about it on your episode, Mindy, but that was a really wonderful, wonderful episode. And so we actually have more options now, which is really great. And because I want you to talk about this, but for the longest time on Choose a Buy, we've always talked about the Roth IRA conversion ladder.

29:42So basically you don't need to have an equal amount in your brokerage account and your 401ks or IRAs, not at all. What you actually need to do the Roth IRA conversion ladder is basically five years of expenses in either your cash accounts, your taxable brokerage. I think, frankly, even, Chris, I would say Roth IRA actual contributions that you've made. You could pull those out at any point. There's probably others that you can fill in that I'm not thinking of right off the top of my head. But basically, this is not a matter of, oh, I need to have all my money into taxable brokerage. No, I mean, there are massive advanced five strategies that we literally have been screaming from the hilltops for the last eight years that you should be using because we are the smartest people in the world in the fight community.

30:30That's, that's what I've seen. And we have such advanced strategies. Like, and this is why I said this, the middle-class trap is the polar opposite of what I've been espousing on choose a vibe for so long, because we get to use all these amazing strategies. Like when you have this stuff, you have some taxable brokerage. because of the wonderful benefits of our tax code, we can do tax gain harvesting, as I talked about with Cody Garrett on the podcast, and pay a 0 % tax up to, I think it was in 2024, is$94 ,050, which is astonishing. That's the gain. That's not the proceeds. That's the gain. And then we have this massive standard deduction that is fairly new in our tax code over the last, I don't know, handful of years, eight years, whatever it is.

31:15And that allows you to do these Roth conversions up to, I think the standard deduction, somewhere right around$30 ,000 now for married filing joint in 2025. And it's like, that is free. There's 0%. You basically say to the government, Hey, I've got all this money in my traditional IRA. I want to take 30 ,000 of it out. It goes on the tax return. It looks taxable and you pay a whopping$0. So like, this is literally what we want to do. This is the greatest thing ever. You can put the money into these traditional accounts, 401ks and IRAs at your highest marginal rate when you're working, when you're making a lot of money.

31:49And then because we are in the FI community and we have our expenses under control, we're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. You're spending, you might have a paid off mortgage. Your life might cost 40, 50,$60 ,000, which might sound crazy. But when you think about it, like even if you made 150 grand at your highest working years, you have taxes on that and you have all those savings. If you're really honest with yourself, your yearly expenses are probably half that or less just by virtue of having to have gotten to fly your savings rate had to be massive. Right. So like, especially in your early forties, as we're defining this middle-class job.

32:25So it just suspends disbelief that like this person who has done all these things right by putting in controlling what they can control, which is, I want to get the tax deduction now when I'm paying so much, and then I'm going to reap all the benefits of probably getting this money out at a 0 % tax rate or a very low, because probably a sub 5 % effective tax rate when it comes to it. It's like, this is the dream. This is not a trap as far as I'm concerned. This has literally been my dream for almost a decade now. Yeah, but I would just kind of add. So I agree. Like, I think most people like, because I get a lot of tax questions and I think most people overestimate whether in fire or traditional retirement, what their tax rate is going to be in retirement.

33:06I think people assume the goal is like, again, because I think it comes from that idea of escape. Like, I don't like where I'm at now, so I want to escape. And people think just never working again is the goal. But like, clearly all three people on this call, like we're by all metrics, financially independent, we're all still earning money. And like, again, people say, oh yeah, like you're podcasters or bloggers and you're like, whatever. But like, again, I work with real people, real clients. And like, I had two meetings this week with two separate people who are clearly, if you look at their projections, they're a hundred percent.

33:37And I'm actually encouraging them, like you can spend more money, but they're like telling me like they have different jobs and like we're planning for their income this year. That's the norm. And so like when you're assuming, you know, I want to have this money in my taxable account so I can access it. But a lot of times people don't need it anyway. So worst case scenario, you pay the 10 % or you have to go through the effort to set up like the SEPs. But a lot of times people don't need it. And now it's like creating this tax drag where it would be nice to have that tax shelter because they use those accounts.

34:04And once you miss that opportunity, like you have limits every year. So if you don't put money into your 401k or your HSA this year, you can't go back and say, well, I wish I would have did it in 2024. I'm going to just do it now. Now, once that year ends or the tax deadline for like HSAs or IRAs, once that tax deadline ends, you can't go back. Whereas, you know, you might pay a little penalty in a worst case scenario. But a lot of times I'm just not seeing that. Whereas a lot of people would be benefiting from having the tax shelter. And I think that's a great point. One of the things that Scott and I really wanted to bring to everybody's, the forefront of everybody's mind is you don't know what you don't know.

34:43And I would hate for somebody to have read The Simple Path to Wealth or worse, have heard about The Simple Path to Wealth, throw everything in VTSAX in their retirement accounts, set it and forget it and never look at it again, have this idea that I'm going to retire based on my 4 % rule number, which is 2.5 million. And then they get there and they're like, oh, where do I go now? So I found one more instance that really highlights what I'm talking about. This person has an 800 ,000 home equity,$69 ,000 in cash,$234 ,000 in a traditional IRA, and$60 ,000 in after-tax brokerage. And how long is your after-tax brokerage going to be able to fund your lifestyle?

35:27It's$60 ,000. So I want people to start thinking about this, especially in the middle of their FI journey as opposed to the end. But Chris, you're absolutely right. You can't go back. I missed an HSA contribution like three years ago. That's$7 ,000 or$6 ,000 that I could not put into my HSA, and I can't go back and put it in there now. So you're absolutely right. All I can do is take advantage of what I've got now. I want people to be making decisions on their investments based on information and education, not just because they heard from their best friend, sister's boyfriend, brother's girlfriend that JL Collins wrote this book that said, put it all in VTSAX, then you don't have to do anything anymore.

36:10What I would just respond to that is like, I'm trying to, again, listen and process the numbers that you're doing in real time. And I struggle with that. I need to see things written, but like what I'm sensing from all these examples is again, I still don't think it's a problem with using the tax advantage accounts. I think a lot of people are house poor. That's a real issue. And that's something that again, with clients, that is absolutely something I see. And we just choice. I don't judge anybody if you want to own a$3 million house. What I see more often where people have made really big changes, I've had multiple clients own two homes, like a second home, like a vacation home, or like they think they want to snowboard.

36:48When you show them the impact of owning that, that's the way people are house poor, that they're much more willing to say, okay, yeah, I don't need two houses, like when they see the numbers. But even, you know, it's the same as true, like the person with a$3 million house, they're making a lifestyle decision And that's their choice. But that's why I think they're stuck is that they're making that choice. And that's their choice to make. But I don't think it's an issue of retirement accounts or not retirement accounts personally. Chris, it's funny because you literally beat me to it. As you said that, I was going to say, like, these examples are actually kind of wacky in the sense that, like, again, with the caveat that it's a feeling.

37:24And I think, let's be clear, if these people have the feeling, then it's real to them. And I'm not trying to denigrate that in any way. but yeah like these are typical house poor people and they're every day you don't sell that house and i'm not arguing they should sell that house they're making a decision that that's the most important thing for them and so somebody it's very hard to look at somebody who really won the lottery in california and has three million dollars of equity and basically has nothing else left like well that person probably didn't save that very much over the years like they probably really weren't on the path to FI, they more or less won the lottery and have$3 million of home equity because they only had a couple hundred thousand dollars of net worth.

38:03Otherwise, it's hard to look at that person as a FI person and be like, oh, my net worth is 3.6 million. Yeah, but 3 million of it is stuck in these walls. So you're making a decision. That person could be FI anywhere else in the world, literally anywhere else, like tomorrow. So they didn't make a bad decision by putting money in brokerage or 401ks? Not at all. They won the lottery and they're not cashing in on it. They're sitting on their ticket, right? And it's the same, you know, with the most recent, with the 800 ,000 of equity, it's like, it's the same deal. Like you're house poor, but you're making an overt decision to be house poor.

38:40And that's fine. But like, you can't lament and cry about it. I made the wrong decision to put my money in a 401k when the actual burden decision here is that you're not selling your house when you're sitting on, that's where most of your net worth is. So I think we're conflating things and we're conflating things based on emotion. And when we try to give advice to people on like, what's the actual right decision? Like, that's what I found so fascinating. And Mindy, I know, obviously you love the Brandon, the mad scientist, the how to access retirement funds are like he, as we know, Brandon is smarter than I'm going to just say myself here, but I don't want to say anybody else, but Brandon is brilliant.

39:20Let's be clear. And his surprising conclusions. And he said, there are a few surprising conclusions here. The first is that even if you don't want to mess with things like the Roth conversion ladder or the 72 T it's still makes sense to max out your pre-tax retirement accounts and then just pay the early withdrawal penalty, which we know is 10%. And he has all these scenarios and like that to me is literally the most conclusive proof. So Brandon went through all these examples in his Brandon style and did a ton of analysis and actually came to the conclusion, like it's still the right decision, even in the worst case scenario, which is I'm getting paying this 10 % penalty, which again, many, you said earlier, like none of us want to pay penalty, like in an ideal world, it doesn't feel right.

40:06But what's so important about personal finance at the end of the day is like, we look with eyes wide open at like, what are our array of options? And if this is the worst option and Brandon has concluded that it's still makes sense to put money in your pre-tax vehicles, I'm inclined to believe him, you know, and then we have a whole range of better options, which I think you can do and pay almost no tax on. So like, to me, the worst case scenario is still better than putting in your brokerage account. And then all the other options we have that Brandon and Sean Mullaney laid out are better in many, many, many cases.

40:44So it's like, to me, this is like a non, it's not a thing. It really is not a thing at all. I want to throw out a challenge then, Brad. I'm going to give your email address and mine, brad at choosefi.com or mindy at biggerpockets.com. We're going to send you a very quick down and dirty net worth sheet for you to list your assets. You don't have to put your name on it. You do have to make a copy because it's like it's a Google sheet. So everybody will see your numbers if you don't make a copy first and then email it back to us. Email us for the sheet. Email it back to us. And I would love to see in a couple of weeks, Brad, how many people have submitted it and how many people are saying, oh, I really do feel like I fall into the middle class trap.

41:34Or you know what? Brad's right. Chris is right. I love these tax advantage accounts and I'm going to use this mad scientist article to help me decide how I'm going to do it. And I've already thought of it in advance, not I'm retired and oh no, I don't know what to do. I love the challenge, Mindy. And I guess, and Chris, I'll let you jump in here because I'm yapping a little too much. But I wonder how many of these people, again, because it's a feeling, I wonder how many of them with a straight face would actually say they are five. Because I think that's what we're saying. It's like, you know, net worth of one to 2 million thereabouts.

42:07And like, I think the vast majority of people, maybe I'm, I'm, I'm leading the witness here, but are going to look at these numbers when they actually put it on paper and say, Oh man, I'm actually, I'm house poor. And I'm not going to send these numbers in because I like, I don't think we're going to find that many people who are in a scenario that we like, I can't even concoct a scenario essentially where if they're not including home equity and they're just looking at the remaining money they have in their brokerage and in their foreign case where they are in dire straits like i don't think it essentially mathematically exists and i know sean mulaney is gonna write an article on this he came up with a couple different scenarios and he's like oh yeah the effective tax rate is five percent on this or even the worst case it was a single person was paying 8.79 percent in one scenario yeah in both of his scenario.

42:58So it's like, again, it's a feeling, which I think is important. And I'm not trying to diminish that in any way, because I think for a lot of these people who look like they're rich on paper, but they have made a concrete decision to leave their money in their house. I think we need to be clear that that is a decision and it doesn't negate a decade's worth of five strategies because you, in your random little situation where maybe you won a lottery in a hot housing market that you've decided to keep that house. You should be doing cartwheels. Like Chris said, you have so many options that you should be doing cartwheels that you won a lottery.

43:36But I mean, really, if that is more than half your net worth, or in some of these cases, 60, 70, 80 % of their net worth, you're still on the path to FI. You need to be clear about that because if you only have a couple hundred thousand dollars saved, you're not even close to FI. So you're still on the path unless you decide to sell the house, move somewhere else. But again, that's a decision and we're not telling you to make that decision. But I think it's important to get all these things straight. So, okay, Chris, I will let you jump in. No, I was just going to actually argue against myself a little bit and kind of make, and against Brandon a little bit, because one thing he doesn't, I went back and looked at that article too.

44:12He doesn't really talk about like ACA subsidy. So a lot of people, once you leave the workforce, you do have to buy insurance. And so even if you're in low tax brackets, if you're paying a penalty, plus you're paying every dollar, even if it's under the standard deduction, so you're not really paying tax on it, it's counting as income against your ACA subsidy. So it's certainly not optimal to have 100 % of your dollars in tax deferred. I get that. But again, I just keep coming back to if you are in that position, you probably aren't financially independent, you're probably house poor. And so you're going to end up, if you are truly having a high savings rate, you're going to naturally end up with some tax diversification, which I think where everybody ultimately should be.

44:49And if you're not able to do that, then I think using your tax advantage accounts first is the optimal choice. And Mindy, this is one thing I love about really the underlying point of what you and Scott are getting at is taxable brokerage accounts are really important. They really aren't because of that diversification. We want to have the entire array of FI options. I think that's what's so beautiful, like tax gain harvesting on, hey, I put all this money in my taxable brokerage. And now I have all these unrealized gains that when I sell, if I've owned them for more than a year, I'm going to have to pay most likely 15 % tax on, which is still great.

45:25It's a preferential rate. So let's be clear, like the government, again, is showering benefits on the five community and investors alike. But yeah, you have this tax gain harvesting strategy where, again, because we're five people and because we have our expenses under control, there's a real chance where you could do a little bit of that where you get some money out because you need money to live on, right? So you could pay almost 0 % tax on tax gain harvesting, basically selling at a gain, all these unrealized gains and realizing the gains, which means, hey, this goes on my tax return. but because there's this astonishingly high 0 % long-term cap gains bracket, like the likelihood of you paying more than 0 % on that is very, very, very slim, like exceedingly slim.

46:09So most of us at FI are going to pay 0 % on long-term cap gains. And then again, you want to do a little bit of all of it, right? Like you want to be able to pull some money out of your 401ks and tax deferred amounts, which you have this standard deduction. Maybe you still have a child tax credit. Who knows, you might be able to pull even more out. Right. And then as Chris said, and I know Sean Mulaney talked about this, like the ACA subsidy is like, we need to be mindful of that. So this is what's so beautiful about diversification. And Mindy, I think to me, the most important point of what you and Scott brought up is you don't want to be a one trick pony.

46:42You don't want to just put all your money in 401ks because we get a lot of benefit being able to thread this needle of, We want our taxable income to be high enough so that we, I think it's what, 400 % of poverty level or something like that. So we need it to be over that. But like there are these different things to thread here. But having these options, having some Roth, having some taxable brokerage, having some traditional accounts, like that gives us all this array of options that we should, again, be doing cartwheels about. Yeah. There were a couple more points I wanted to make before we're done.

47:18Chris's article said something very interesting. I have nearly half of my savings in taxable investments. That's awesome. That means that a little bit more than half is in pre-tax, but he's got the taxable investments. And then he went on to say, in contrast, I've never encountered someone who couldn't do anything they wanted because their money was trapped in retirement accounts once they understood their options to access those funds. And that's the whole point that Scott and I were trying to make is we wanted people to be making conscious investment decisions, not I heard investment decisions.

47:56And we wanted them to realize this investment decision has this kind of consequence and this kind of benefit and just continue to make decisions based on your end goals, your end goals, not somebody else's end goals or some book that you read one time. So yeah, I just wanted to make that. And again, I want to reiterate that challenge. Reach out to Brad at choosefi.com or Mindy at biggerpockets.com and we will send you this document. I just would love to see what people's net worths are and where is that? If I could just chime in with one thing real quick. I know I've shared my backstory on Chooseify and I may have talked about it when we were on BiggerPockets money, but the reason I have half of my money in taxable, that was not a conscious choice.

48:40it's because I was working with a quote unquote advisor who like had access to better funds out of my retirement account. So I was missing all of those tax deductions and all that tax advantage growth. And he absolutely had better options. They were just better for him, not for me. So I wish I did not have half of my money in taxable. Again, it's good to have some, but yeah, the proportion was not at all intentional. Oh, and Brad, since we're talking taxable and pre-tax, where would you say your net worth is yeah i would say because again and this goes to my uh my contention of i find it hard to believe somebody with a high savings rate would have all of their money in retirement accounts yeah i mean we filled up those buckets a lot of years most years and had money left over to save to put in taxable accounts so it's probably i would say at least a third of my assets are in taxable brokerage accounts it might be higher frankly but yeah i mean i think i think that's the natural consequence of having a high savings rate and having limited amounts to put in retirement accounts which yeah to me is why like again i don't think the middle class trap aside from people who are house poor like i don't think it's that plausible just mathematically i know chris said he's seen that in in most of his clients so yeah i think i totally agree with you man and i'm thrilled about you know frankly because i did the best i could i wanted to put as much as i could in retirement vehicles because i i always want to control what I can control, which is getting that tax deduction at my highest rate, because I'm pretty darn sure that I'm going to be able to pull that money out in my fifties and sixties and beyond at essentially a 0 % tax rate.

50:19So like I wanted the money in those retirement accounts, frankly, but because I was, I was a diligent saver, it overflowed and I needed to put it in taxable records, which again, I'm not unhappy about because the government showers benefits on me and allows me to tax gain harvest. So I still think I'm going to, well, I didn't get the tax deduction up front, I don't think I'm going to have to pay tax again on those unrealized gains. So yeah, I definitely, to your point though, it's a significant percentage. No question. Yeah. And we are so in love, Carl and I are so in love with the concept of the pre-tax.

50:53My goal right now is to reduce my taxable income. I'm in my highest earning years and I want to reduce my taxable income. I am putting a lot of money into my 401k and I'll go you one further. I'm self-employed as a real estate agent. So I have a self-directed solo 401k, which allows me to put even more money into retirement pre-tax accounts. And I do that. I don't think we've ever maxed it because Carl is an employee of mine. So he has the same benefits because we're married. Lots of nuances with the self-directed solo 401k, but it is working for us right now. So I'm definitely not dogging the pre-tax accounts.

51:33I just want people to be really conscious of what they're doing. Yeah. And for us, even now, post-fi, so my entire Abundo pay goes to my tax-deferred account. My wife uses her tax-deferred. We're maxing out our Roths and then we're spending down that taxable account again, because we want to get rid of the income that we don't need that's kind of costing us when it comes to health insurance time because we do work very limited and we buy our own insurance. So yeah, we're trying to basically take money out of one pocket and put it into another to lower that taxable account because we, in retrospect, we wouldn't have done it this way, but that's where we are.

52:09So we're just kind of playing the hand we're dealt now. Nice. All right. Well, Mindy and Chris, this has genuinely been a lot of fun. I think this is a really, really important concept. And Mindy, I give you and Scott, obviously, no, I love you both. I give you a ton of credit for coining this phrase because it has struck a chord with people. And I think the best that we can do is continue to talk about it. I don't think this is the conclusive episode forever on the middle-class trap. I think we're going to be talking about this for a while because again, most of personal finance and FI is psychological.

52:39So if people are feeling this, and again, I know people in my life who feel this way. And I think it's important that no matter where we come down on this, we need to educate people, right? And I think there are a ton of ways to access money early. I think a lot of people just say, oh, I can't touch my money until 59 and a half. Well, again, listen to episode 475 with Sean Mulaney. It's extraordinary. Read the article. We'll have it in the show notes that how to access retirement funds early by Brandon, the med scientist. It's really great. Okay. Yeah. Maybe you're not going to take action on that tomorrow or five years from now, depending on where you are on your path to fight, but at least you know it's there.

53:16And maybe you're not quite as stressed anymore. Maybe you're not so stressed that all my money's locked up in this. Like you could make an argument after reading those and listening. Wow. I'm thrilled that my money is there and I just need to have different strategies. Like go back and listen to way back at the beginning of choose a five, the Roth IRA conversion ladder. Just Google that. We had a couple episodes on that. And it was like, oh, this is a really cool strategy. And now again, we have more strategies. We have this 72T. We even have, again, in the worst case scenario, and there are plenty of strategies, but worst case scenario, just pay the penalty and you're still coming out ahead.

53:48So again, none of us are trying to convince you to feel a different way today, but like you have to educate yourself. And that's the important thing. There are a lot of strategies. The five community is really my estimation, these smartest people around, and we've come up with these extraordinary ways to really win. Okay. But that said, it's not to negate your feeling, how you're feeling today. but I think as you learn more, I think you're going to start feeling better about this. I think you're going to realize like, I have a ton of ways to win at this game and I'm doing great. Like, that's the thing.

54:21Like these people who, even the people who are house poor, and I hope we didn't overly castigate them in any way, like they're still doing great. They have a ton of options. They have so many options. This is wonderful. The woman who won the lottery in California with the$3 million of equity, like she's doing incredibly well. Yeah. Like she might not have a ton of brokerage accounts or 401ks to access right now, but she still has options. And I think that's what we all want in life. That's the point of FI is to accrue more of that power on our side of the court. And I think that's what we're all trying to do.

54:53So to me, this was a really fun episode. I cannot wait to get some of those, uh, those emails. I want to hear your questions. All three of us do. We can come back on. We can do a follow-up episode to this really easily. We can have some of our friends run scenarios on very precise examples where maybe someone is trapped. Maybe there's an example that I just don't know about where they had an exact amount of income and they maxed out their 401ks and they had nothing left over. Like we could probably come up with some, some crazy examples, but like maybe there are strategies still, and that'll, that'll be fun to work through.

55:25So this is a really important topic. Both of you, thank you for being here. And Mindy, thank you and Scott for, for really raising this. I think it's really critical. Thank you for having me, Brad. It's always lovely to talk to you. And Chris, I really enjoyed our conversation. Yeah, and thank you both. And I think like what my closing thought here is like, this conversation kind of highlights the best, but maybe also the worst thing about the FI community. Like the best thing is just like, we can disagree. Like we have all these strategies that are amazing and we can disagree. I don't even know how much disagreement there was, but we could have a respectful conversation.

55:55But maybe like a takeaway is like the downside is like, you can start to compare yourself to other people and you feel trapped. And yeah, just realize that you have so many options and you're doing a good thing and you're improving your situation every day if you're on this path. Love it. Before we leave, Mindy, obviously BiggerPockets money. Where else can people find you? I am all over the BiggerPockets website, but Twitter is my social media of choice just because when I started out, Instagram couldn't be done on your computer and I have terrible eyesight. So I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Mindy at BP, BP like BiggerPockets.

56:30or you can email media at biggerpockets.com. Wonderful. And Chris, as we said earlier, can I retire yet.com and you are the lead author on choose a fi your blueprint to financial independence, the book, which is absolutely marvelous. It's amazing how long ago we, you slash we wrote that, but, uh, any other ways for people to reach out? Yeah. Um, I'm not much for social media, but yeah, can I retire yet.com is my home on the web. And I mentioned, I've been doing some financial planning with a bundle wealth and I'm personally not taking clients, but it's a pretty cool model that I really believe in.

57:03So yeah, I'd love if people check that out. Nice. All right, friends. Well, again, thank you for listening. Really appreciate your time. And this is an important one. If you have questions, comments, follow-ups, send it in. Like Mindy said, go on my newsletter, chooseof.com slash newsletter or slash subscribe and just hit reply to any of those emails. Just let me know what you think. And we'd love to do a follow-up on this. So until next time, thanks for listening to Chooseify. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first, subscribe to the podcast.

57:36So you're listening to this on a podcast player, just hit subscribe. And then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand. And I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to chooseify.com slash subscribe. And it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there. and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show.

58:11And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways. Choose a FI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. And even though it's a couple of years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence?

58:46What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life. And then Choose a Vi created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.