The Top 10 Ten Investing Mistakes We All Make | Cody Garrett | Ep 535

24:14It's like, how much headspace is this requiring to not only implement the thing, but now I'm having to think about, okay, where's my money? I have my money at here, here, here. I have 50 credit cards, right? So consider the return on hassle when chasing some of these optimization plays. Yeah, that is great advice. I know Nick Majuli came on the podcast a couple years ago and talked about precisely this. And yeah, it's important for us to be mindful of it's easy to over-optimize, Cody. And sometimes you're chasing pennies and nickels and not thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I know in my life, I am craving and chasing simplicity.

24:50So do I really want to move everything? I think about this with credit cards. Like, do I really want to move all my auto pays around to get a new credit card? Like, that's a big hassle. And sometimes the return's worth it. Sometimes it's not. And I guess really our call to action here is just be mindful of what you're doing. And is the juice really worth the squeeze? And that's all we can do. And everyone's threshold is their own. And it's personal. and we're not telling you what the threshold is or isn't, but you just need to be aware of it. And by the way, like I'm not a Grinch on this. I will say that I just paid my property taxes, including paying the additional credit card transaction fee, you know, to hit the bonus on a new credit card, right?

25:29So I would say like sometimes it is worth it. Just keep in mind, kind of measure how much hassle it's worth along the way. Yep, wholeheartedly agreed. All right, my friend, number four. Sure, so we're on this, we're talking about cash a lot today. So the next is actually on charitable giving. So a big mistake people make is they own appreciated securities within taxable brokerage accounts, like those taxable along the way accounts that we talked about, but they're still giving cash to qualified charitable organizations, right? So what I mean by that kind of, I guess, more traditionally, you might think of somebody who maybe gives to church, whether they put money in the plate during the church service, or they might have an ongoing ACH, a withdrawal from their bank account to their charity of choice, whether religious charity or otherwise.

26:09But what I find is pretty much everybody in the FI community starts building up these appreciated securities within taxable brokerage accounts. And a lot of them are thinking, okay, I'm one of the 90 % of households, tax households, that's claiming the standard deduction, right? So when I give money to charity, I'm actually not receiving any additional tax benefit. I'm not able to itemize my charitable gifts. So what's the point of thinking about taxes at all? But I would say that, first of all, that standard deduction that went up with Tax Cuts Jobs Act in 2018, married filing jointly in 2025, you're receiving a$30 ,000 standard deduction, which effectively the government saying your first$30 ,000 of AGI is tax free.

26:51So if you're not able to itemize or you're taking the standard over the itemized, you don't receive any additional itemized deduction on your tax return for giving charitable gifts. But keep in mind that even if you're not itemizing, you can give appreciated securities directly to charity rather than selling those securities and giving that cash to charity. And by doing that, when you give it directly to charity, whether directly to the charity itself or through maybe transferring those funds to what's called a donor advised fund, which is a way to potentially stack and give the gifts on a secondary transaction, you can actually effectively reset the cost basis of those securities that you're giving.

27:30One simple example here is a lot of people own a lot of Apple stock right now. They bought Apple when the first iPhone came out. Lucky them, right? Let's say they bought, just keep it simple. They bought$100 worth of Apple. It's now worth$1 ,000. So if they sell that$1 ,000, they're going to be taxed on the$900 of capital gain, right? Rather than that, they're saying, hey, I give$1 ,000 to charity. Rather than giving$1 ,000 in cash to charity, let me get the$1 ,000 of Apple stock. And now I've just removed that future capital gain that I would be realizing onto my income taxes by selling that security and then giving the cash.

28:03Yeah. And that is a permanent elimination of that unrealized capital gain. So that's critical. And it's funny because when we've talked about this in the past before on the podcast, I've actually had a couple of people email me like grumble, grumble, grumble, like as if like we're sticking the charity with this tax liability. It's like, yes, we are horrible, horrible human beings. And that was our intention. No, come on. Let's be clear. Like the charity is not paying the tax on that sale. They get it. They sell it. They get the fair market value. They're not paying the tax on it. So hopefully, hopefully when you're listening to this, you know that we always have the best intentions in mind and we would never do that to charity.

28:41Certainly that we care enough about to donate a significant amount of money to. So yeah, Cody, this is just one of those things. And the other caveat that I hear sometimes, and I'd love your thoughts on this, is maybe for very small charities, this might be more of a hassle than it's worth for them. If this is like an uber local charity, then we might be getting into scenarios where like they've never done this before and they have to figure it out. And it's hours on the phone for you to save$150 on a - Turn on hassle for the church and you, right? Exactly. Exactly. Or whatever your local charity of choice is, right?

29:16It's like, okay, let's be reasonable there. But for any major nationwide or international charity, they have done this millions and millions of times. You are not hassling them. Okay. So it's just very simple. Think about it like this. Let's say you sold$1 ,000 of stock. You had long-term capital gains, unrealized capital gains on$1 ,000 of stock that you happen to have like$0 of basis in, right? So we're saying it's all capital gains. You would pay 15 % federal, most likely on that will go with 90 plus percent of people. So what would actually happen is you would net$850. Now that's probably what you should give to the charity at that point.

29:56So it's$850 versus if you just sent them the stock, the thousand bucks in stock, they get the full thousand. So that's really the summary of this. It is as simple as that from a conceptual standpoint. And you're not screwing them. I promise. They've done this millions of times. Yeah. And just a last thing on that is, yeah, just like you said, give more to the charities that you love and less of the IRS. Unless you love the IRS, you can always donate more to them if you'd like. You can always tip the IRS. I mean, the last thing then, even if you're working with a smaller charity, keep in mind that you might be able to open a donor advice fund at your custodian of choice, Fidelity, Schwab, otherwise.

30:32Just keep in mind that the administrative fees for donor advice funds are typically 0.6 % of the assets within the fund. So if I were to donate the$1 ,000 of Apple to a donor advice fund, they're going to charge administrative fees on that along the way. But one good thing about a donor advised fund, as you know, is not only can you kind of choose after the fact, like, who do I want to give this money to, you can actually have the donor advised fund send a check to your charities of choice. But you can also say, hey, what if I have a lot of appreciated securities, and I plan to give to charity over the next five, 10 years, you can actually stack those gifts.

31:03So you can stack the transfer of securities into a donor advised fund. Now you can itemize your deductions. And I've seen families actually save over 50 % effectively make their given securities go 50 % further by itemizing their deductions and eliminating the future realized capital gain. Right. Okay. At the federal and state level. Yeah. Okay. That is super interesting. Right. And this goes back to what Cody said a couple minutes ago that might really have gone over a lot of our heads is in this day and age of the new significantly larger standard deduction. And this happened a handful of years ago at this point.

31:42almost nobody, well under 10 % of people are itemizing their deductions. Okay. So on your tax return, you are getting this significant standard deduction. And in order for all of these other smaller deductions, state taxes and charitable contributions and things of that, like to mean anything for you in terms of a tax deduction, they have to add to more than that standard. And then Cody, you're only getting the benefit on that tiny little difference in most cases. So for most people, the tax benefit of contributing to charity has been reduced to very little, if not zero. Hopefully most people are not contributing to charity for the tax deduction, but I know that's always been that extra little carrot.

32:24But what we're saying here, and this is another deep dive, and we've done this on donor advised funds. And I know we talked about the effective giving on episode 483 of the podcast, and that was a phenomenal episode for anybody who hasn't heard that one. But what you can do is you can take multiple years worth of future contributions to charity, dump it all in a donor advised fund. And you can do that. So you do that in one calendar year. And the fair market value, like the total of that contribution is what you get and get to put on your tax return this year. So picture somebody who donates$10 ,000 a year to charity.

33:03Well, if they put five years worth in, they've got a$50 ,000 deduction. That certainly is going to exceed your standard deduction. So if you knew that, if you are a five person who has the money put aside, this is not like a cashflow issue for you. You can make a very strong case, especially at a high marginal tax bracket. Like Cody just said, he's seen clients who get between foregoing that long-term capital gain forever, the permanent reduction of that, plus the increase in the tax deduction you get in the current year at a high marginal rate, this can mean massive savings, 30, 40, 50 % with both Fed and State.

33:39So this is not insignificant at all. So you really need to think through this. And we're not advocating that you put five or 10 years worth of charitable reductions in a donor advice fund if the cashflow is an issue. But darn, Cody, if this is plausible for people, they can save a bullload of money. Right. And also go onto the IRS website. There's also thresholds for what percentage of AGI you can include in your charitable donations. So just keep that in mind. Agreed. Agreed. Yep. Always things to look into, but this is just seeding you with the idea. So you always have to do your own research, obviously.

34:10Thanks for listening to ChooseFI and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support ChooseFI is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at choosefi.com slash cards. I keep this page constantly updated, so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. All right, Cody, number five. Yeah, and by the way, Brad, I'm gonna go faster on the rest of these so you can - No, this is great, my friend. That's awesome. So number five, we talked about the idea of giving to charity or giving to the IRS, but I wanna remind everybody listening that there's only four different parties who will spend your money.

34:46You, the people you love, right? Family, friends, charitable organizations, or the government, right? So I know that sounds kind of crazy, but like start to think to yourself, hey, if I look at my total portfolio, I look at my real estate, right? I look at like what I own. you know, there are only four different possible parties that will spend that money, right? So be very intentional moving forward on like how you are going to intentionally set that up to give to those places. And again, not to get political here, but most of the people I talked to, they'd rather spend most of their monies, you know, including investing in experiences and memories with their family, maybe giving that money to their family or friends, give money to qualified charities, usually as a last resort, they'd like to give more, you know, tip the IRS, as we said before.

35:26So number five is actually related to family giving. I work with a lot of retirees, including early retirees with adult children, and they're on track to die with multiples of what they retired with. By the way, you might be thinking, this is crazy. Why would people die with multiples of what they retired with? Why don't they spend that money? This is actually one of the biggest issues within the FI community is we've had decades of frugality, saving and investing, saving and investing, but we never learned how to intentionally spend and give. So Frank Vasquez is a great reminder of this very bluntly in a beautiful way in the Chooseify Facebook group.

36:00He reminds people all the time that if you're frugal, if you're saving half of your income for decades and then you retire, behaviorally, emotionally, you're not going to be able to flip that switch and suddenly feel comfortable spending at a higher level than you were when you were working. So these people, they're on track to die with multiples of what they were retired with, but they aren't willing to give that money or spend that money with those they care about family and charity. And what ends up happening is they end up giving money to their kids through inheritance when their kids are also in their highest earning years and when they no longer actually need the help, when they no longer actually need money to support them.

36:37So ultimately, I encourage you to start having these thoughtful conversations about what I call the financial family tree. And just a quick example of this is, if you have adult children and you're listening here, you might be considering this idea of oops money versus ooh money. Oops OOPS money means if your child got in a car accident, they wrecked their car, they might have medical expenses. If they come to you and say, hey, mom and dad, I need help financially. My car broke down and I have these high medical bills. Could you help me out? That's kind of like that OOPS money in emergency situations.

37:08Most parents will be willing to help financially with their adult children in those circumstances. But beyond that, I also encourage you to start thinking about this idea of OOH money, which which is, would you be willing to help your adult child with a financial opportunity? Let's say that your child is an actor and they said, hey, I really want to move to LA or Chicago or New York, a place where I can be closer to doing real Broadway musicals, but it's really expensive to live in those places. But with your help, with the parents' help, who, again, I've worked with families who could technically give each of their kids a million dollars and still be okay.

37:45But you might not be at that level, but you might be thinking a little bit more in depth about, hey, what are some opportunities where I could actually give my adult child a push, not necessarily because they need it, but because it would actually set them up for a healthier financial situation in the future, including with potentially their spouse and their family. So, so many people that I work with, they've inherited money from their parents. And they were like, I just inherited$2 million from my mom. And had I received that$2 million along the way, my life wouldn't have been so hard. And I could have retired maybe five to 10 years earlier, had my family just had this deeper conversation with me about potentially helping me along the way, not just when I inherited their money in my 60s.

38:25Yeah. And this goes along with what Bill Perkins talked about in the book, Die With Zero, where precisely what you're saying, hopefully, we're all going to live into our 90s and beyond. And at that point, if you have kids, they're probably in their 60s, 70s, or potentially later, do they really need the money at that point? Now, we're not telling you. Certainly, this is a put your oxygen mask on first. I think we'll always say that, right? Like I see people who have credit card debt and are putting money into a 529. Like that was a recent question I saw on the Facebook group. And you know, my brain is exploding because it's, you have to take care of yourself first.

39:01So nobody is saying, start giving money away before you're financially secure. What Cody is saying is there's a high probability that many of us are going to eventually die with millions of dollars just based on our savings and spending habits. Now that might mean, Hey guys, change your spending habits a little bit, right? With life, spend time with your family now. Yes. Yes. And then it's right. Okay. You can start spending time as Cody just said, or you can start giving, instead of giving them a million dollars when they're 70 and they don't need it, give them a hundred thousand dollars when they're 35 and it could make a massive difference, right?

39:38The down payment, the car, the student loan repayment. Exactly. So again, not advice. Nobody's telling you you have to do something, etc. But these are just things that we often miss. And just giving you that framework is going to really help. So Cody, number six. So number six has to do with HSA contributions. We're huge fans of health savings accounts. I'm sure we had lots of conversations about this in the Chooseify community. But the mistake is they're not maximizing their HSA contributions, although they think they are. So this is a really funny thing I see all the time when I look at I review pay statements a lot with clients who are still working.

40:12And what I find is a lot of time, rolling into the new year, this is perfect. This is coming out in the new year, because I would guess a majority of our listeners are maxing out their HSA contributions based on last year's limits. Now moving into 2025, they haven't necessarily updated their HSA contributions. When you elect your HSA contribution through work, you do it as a dollar amount, not as a percentage. And I find that people don't change that dollar amount moving from 2024 to 2025. So a quick example there in 2024, for self-only coverage, HSA contribution limit was$4 ,150. And for a family, it was$8 ,300, which is exactly double.

40:49By family, by the way, that means you plus at least one other person. So it doesn't necessarily mean parents with kids. It just means you and at least one other person on your coverage. But good news, by the way, if you didn't max out in 2024, you have until April 15th of 2025 to maximize that contribution. For 2024, you can't contribute that through your employer anymore, but you can contribute directly through your brokerage, your bank account until April 15th of 2025. Moving into 2025, those limits have increased a little bit. They increased by$150 for self-only up to$4 ,300 and up by$250 for family coverage of$8 ,550.

41:28So that's for people under age 50, first of all. That includes employee and employer contributions. So I've also seen the mistake for people put too much in because they forgot their employer also contributes to their HSA through a workplace plan. But here's one of the biggest mistakes I see pretty much everybody 55 or older. When both spouses covered are 55 and older, they can each contribute$1 ,000 to their HSA. And the specific of this is you have to contribute that$1 ,000 catch up to two separate HSAs. So one example is let's say you have a family HSA. One spouse contributes$85.50 in 2025 to the family HSA, and then they add$1 ,000 to it, which makes it$95.50 in 2025.

42:11The other spouse that's over age 55 has to have a separate HSA and contribute their own$1 ,000 to that. So what I find is that usually only one of those spouses over age 55 is actually contributing the catch-up. So the catch-up is per person, not per HSA. Okay, that is very good to know. And yeah, we clearly focused on HSA contributions here. But this is just good information for all types of accounts is I do this every year, because there's nothing, there's nothing inherent about what the limits are that I could somehow intuit it in my brain. It's just not possible. Just simply Google, hey, it's the new year, HSA contributions 2025, 401k contributions 2025.

42:52You just have to have a sense of what this is. Yeah. By the way, we'll put all those limits on a one page PDF in the show notes for you. Beautiful. And I know you always send people to measure twice money dot com slash choose fi. Correct. That's kind of where you keep all of our resources, which is absolutely awesome. So that almost certainly will be where we where we have it or we'll have a link in the show notes if you have a page specifically. But I suspect it'll be at measure twice money dot com slash choose fi. That's right. Cody, we're up to number seven. Awesome. So number seven. So this is more for like the later retirement.

43:23Irma, you might have heard of, by the way, Irma is not a lady. It stands for something related to Medicare premiums, which only apply typically if you're 65 or older. But what I found is a lot of people, not just in the ChooseFI community, but also other Facebook groups like the Retirement Education Facebook group, Andy Panko's amazing group. What happens is when people get into their 60s, 70s and beyond, they start getting really stressed out about these increases in their Medicare premiums related to household income, that modified adjusted gross income gets to a higher level that hits them into those higher amounts that they're paying for Medicare premiums, part B, part D along the way.

43:59So just keep in mind, I don't want to go into the details of all the numbers here, but I will say that your total Medicare part B and part D premiums, if you are 65 and up, they will never exceed based on today's limits. They do not exceed 3 % of household income in any of the IRMA brackets. So just keep in mind that paying IRMA, paying higher Medicare premiums will never make or break a retirement plan, right? It's not like if you pay more for Medicare, you suddenly won't be able to retire. It's just going to be up to 3 % of household income. With that said, keep in mind that the income thresholds for Medicare premiums are cliffs.

44:33So literally, if you go$1 over and modify to adjusted gross income, you could potentially be paying, you know, a thousand plus more a year for Medicare. So again, do pay attention to the cliffs along the way, but please do not fear retirement based on the cost of Medicare premiums. Love it. Nothing further to add on that one. I'll do it, Charlie Munger, and we'll move on to number eight. Sounds good. So a lot of you listening are not 65 and up. You're still on the path to and through retirement. So health insurance before Medicare, the biggest mistake people make, I see this so many times is they wait until age 65 to retire because they're worried about the cost of health insurance premiums.

45:10They say, oh, there's no way I could afford healthcare before Medicare starts. So I would say if you have a combination of what we talked about earlier, the taxable, the pre-tax and tax-free investments, you may actually be able to pay little to nothing for health insurance and early retirement, even if you're a millionaire. So some people talk about kind of the ethics of these things. I just play within the rules we've been provided by the IRS. I've helped people who have$2 to$3 million net worth pay nothing for health insurance because we can control their sources of taxable income, specifically their household income, which is modified adjusted gross income.

45:44Very technical stuff. But just a simple example I want to share before we move on is I just looked up in my own area in Houston, Texas, a husband and wife age 55 retire early with no kids, and they want to be covered by an HSA eligible high deductible health plan. And by no kids, I just mean no dependents. They might have adult children, but not on their tax return. What's really interesting is if they choose the lowest cost HSA eligible high deductible health plan, they'll pay$6 ,000 a year for that plan, just the premiums, if they have adjusted gross income of$110 ,000. And that's not how much they spend.

46:17That's how much income they have coming their way, right? In terms of withdrawals from the pre-tax accounts, the capital gains that they're harvesting and things like that. Next is they'll pay$3 ,000 a year if they're modified adjusted gross income, if they can bring that down to$79 ,000. So they just split, they just cut it from 6 ,000 a year to 3 ,000 a year by just cutting their income by about their taxable income by about 30 ,000 for the year. What's wild is if they bring it from 79 ,000 down to 60 ,000, they'll pay nothing for their health insurance premiums in 2025. So just keep in mind that this is a family that could potentially be spending 100 ,000 a year, but because they have cost basis, what they bought the investment for within taxable brokerage accounts, they might be taking some money out of Roth, which is tax-free.

47:00they're able to control their income sources, where they take their money from. And as long as they're able to keep their modified adjusted gross income at$60 ,000, by the way, that number changes depending on where you live, your household size and things. Always go to healthcare.gov forward slash C dash plans. We'll put that in the show notes as a link. But this family in this example, they have taxable income of$60 ,000 and they'll pay nothing for their health insurance premiums. So again, some people actually end up working multiple years longer just because of the fear that health insurance is going to be a lot of money in retirement.

47:33Yeah. This is a myth that needs to die at this point, Cody, because I just, I don't understand we're so many years into the ACA. I don't know if it's some weird political opposition to it or just like willful ignorance or just plain old, just not knowing, but this exists people. Okay. This is not like it exists. And I don't mean that in a, in a patronizing way. Like it exists. This is great, Right. Like we listen, the health insurance and health care in America, it's a freaking mess. We all know that nobody's trying to say otherwise. But for people in the community who are worried about how am I going to get health insurance when I leave my job?

48:12Guys, the ACA exists. It has existed for quite some time now, unless something crazy happens is not going anywhere. So not only does it exist and you can buy health insurance for basically what you would have been paying, but you can also get these massive premiums. As Cody's saying, so it's modified adjusted gross income. This is just a line on your tax return. It's easy to find. And if you can manipulate that, as he's saying, like, hey, this would have cost maybe closer to full freight, like$6 ,000 a year for this husband and wife. But if you can lower your modified adjusted gross income, in this case, 31 ,000 to still a pretty hefty number in his example of 79 ,000, it cuts your premiums.

48:53So the amount you monthly have to pay down in half in this case. And if you could lower it$19 ,000 further still, it lowers it to zero. That means you get health insurance premiums for$0. Okay. So let's be clear. This exists. And with a little bit of planning, like we are great at in the fight community, we are great at this. You can maybe pay little to nothing in terms of premiums. So we'll move on here, Cody, but, but this is really important. And I don't mean to be, like I said, patronized as we say, that is. worth the hassle. That's for darn sure. All right. We got two left. What's number nine?

49:27Oh, cool. So number nine sounds a little biased because I'm a financial advisor, financial planner, but I'm going to just kind of tell you in advance that even though I'm a financial planner, I'm not accepting any new financial planning client relationships. So keep in mind, this is not, I'm not telling you to hire me in this number nine, but number nine is the retirement order of operations. So a lot of people going into early retirement, they feel confident enough to retire, but don't consider a tax optimized distribution order of operations. Effectively, what's happening is they end up retiring and then just kind of taking money out of their accounts all willy nilly.

49:59All right. But I would say that, again, it's worth the hassle to consider, hey, you know, just like I had an order of operations for contributing to accounts, a lot of you see those kind of the buckets filling up the other buckets of the water of, you know, first, you know, get the employer match, then max out your HSA, then max out your 401k, Roth IRA, those things. you should also have a retirement order of operations. So which accounts are you taking money out of in which order? And I go, there's a lot of general information out there about kind of what's the most tax optimized way in general.

50:28But I would recommend to anybody here, I kind of say here, like, if you're like, you know, within a few years of retirement, or you're kind of two and through retirement on three years on either side, I do recommend that you hire somebody, a financial planner, whether hourly, literally, even just maybe one hour at a time, project based or even ongoing on a monthly basis, please consider hiring a financial planner to help you create an intentional personalized system, not just for your retirement order operations, but they'll also help you consider, hey, what's worth consolidating, simplifying, helping you measure that return on hassle.

51:00So even though I'm not accepting new clients, the two places with no conflict of interest, the two places I recommend the FI community to look at is adviceonlynetwork.com, which is a list of probably a few dozen financial planners who don't manage investments. So they're not going to try to convince you to move your money over or charge you a percent of your investments under AUM. They also don't sell any insurance products. You just pay for your advice in a general word advice, and that's it. The other place I recommend is Nectarine, hellonectarine.com. This is an amazing place. It was actually started by Jeremy Schneider and Shane Sedaris, who have the Personal Finance Club Instagram account.

51:37And they started an RIA, a registered investment advisory firm, they have 26 advisors, and you only pay for one hour at a time. So you can pay as little as$150 for personalized advice, including on your investments. So I do recommend, again, it's worth spending 150 bucks. You can measure twice before making this big decision moving into retirement. And again, I would say that I wish I knew this existed back when I was even in my 20s, 30s, even before I knew what an IRA was, it would have been really nice. I would even say that if you're a parent with young kids and they might not be able to afford financial planning, one of the best stocking stuffers, we just ended the holiday season, but one of the best stocking stuffers saying, hey, I would love to pay for an hour of financial advice for you where I won't be in the room.

52:20You don't have to share your information with me. You get to share your information with a third party who's working in your best interest. Just as one more reminder, I have no conflict of interest or I'm not paid by any of these firms. Yeah. And Cody, that's one of the best things about you and why I have you on so often is, Yeah, you're not making any money from anybody who's listening to this. There's no possibility you have more clients than you know what to do with. They're coming out of your ears, essentially. So you're not taking new clients. Like you said, adviceonlynetwork.com and hellonectarine.com.

52:49I know I have mentioned both of those in my newsletter. Hello, Nectarine. So the company is Nectarine. I guess they couldn't get the website. But Jeremy Schneider has been on the podcast before. Really great guy. I know a lot of people who've used that where, yeah, you just pay this really simple flat fee for an hour of just chatting with a CFP, basically. And you can pepper them with as many questions as you have. You can buy as many increments of an hour as you want. They're not trying to sign you up for anything. You're certainly not an asset center management. That's the thing we're trying to avoid here.

53:21As Cody's saying, sometimes you just need financial advice and it's worth paying a professional. There's nothing wrong with that. You might be a member of Chooseify. You might think yourself a DIY investor. But look, that's all well and good. But sometimes when it really when the rubber hits the road, like you just need some advice and there's nothing wrong with that. And to pay a nominal fee like one hundred and fifty dollars an hour or something like that. I mean, that is worth its weight in gold. So, Cody, I love this number nine. And we are on to the final one. Number 10. Awesome. And one little thing for that, I always say that they call them blind spots because we can't see them.

53:52So I would say, even if I hired a financial planner, which I probably should eat my own cooking, if I hired a financial planner, I'm sure they'd find blind spots that I've missed even as a DIY financial planner. So moving into number 10, we have holistic wellness. If you hung out with us all along the way, I'm so glad you're here because this applies to everybody listening. They did, Cody. Don't you worry. They're here. They're definitely here if they hear it today, right? So holistic wellness is that so many of us, we focus on financial wellness. Again, we're talking about literally one through nine was all about optimizing your finances, but we ignore our physical health, our mental health, which by the way, mental health is physical health, something we all need to learn, spiritual practices and relationships.

54:32So we're so focused on the numbers. And what I find that happens is people, they focus on the numbers so much, optimizing every dollar and cent. They have enough money to retire, but by the time they're able to retire, they turn around, their physical health and mental health are a wreck. They're not able to actually go on those big trips in the go-go years. They're not able to walk the Great Wall of China or walk the steps in their dream travel and retirement. Their spiritual practices, again, not just spiritual practices in terms of individually, but also religious communities, like community is a huge part, which actually translates into this next part, which is relationships.

55:06I've met a lot of people who have enough money to retire, but when they retire, they turn around and they've put their relationships on the back burner for so long because every time their friends said, hey, let's go out to eat or let's go on a trip together, like, no, no, no, no, I can't afford that. I can't afford that. So they dump a lot of their money and time and energy into optimizing their finances. And then by the time they have enough money to enjoy with the people they love, they turn around and the people they love is a very small number. So the quote I love to kind of test everybody with here is, don't let the number of your friends who've died exceed the number of your current friends, regardless of your age.

55:39And I've met people, including, I'm thinking about myself here, right? How many close friends do I have even now in my 30s versus my friends who have passed away that I knew in high school, college along the way? Now the people that I've known who have passed away, it's more than a handful. And I think about how many close friends do I have? What is my community? What is the scope of my community look like? But I've also met people, this is amazing, I've met people in their early 90s who have more friends today in their 90s than they've known who have passed away, right? Because they surround themselves with not just individual friends, but communities within their church, within their nonprofit communities.

56:13So just keep in mind that they call it the wheel of life. So financial, physical, mental, spiritual, relational, just keep an eye on those things along the way. So you don't lose track of what actually matters. Yeah. Yeah. This is really important. And yeah, you wouldn't normally think of this as a common mistake of a DIY investor, but I think this is the common mistake of many humans. So therefore, of course it would appear on a list like this, right? Including me, by the way. Yeah, including me. I mean, this is something I'm trying to rectify. And I think I've done a reasonably good job with it.

56:46And frankly, this is why I go to FI events. This is why I'm going to Economy in March. And I'm meeting up with people who, Cody's wearing the Economy shirt, he just puffed it out there. I'm meeting up with people who I met in Bali beforehand in Louisville, Kentucky. And it's why we go to ChooseAvi local events, right? So always ChooseAvi.com, local. You can find your local group. We now have those local groups on our website. So you can sign up for an account just at the main homepage of choose of a calm and their events all the time. It's how can I get together with people? How can I play board games?

57:20How can I have great conversation? This is the spice of life. It's not getting to some number on a screen. Listen, that's really important. And nobody, you're certainly never going to hear me say it's not important, but don't be penny wise pound foolish in terms of, Hey, like Cody said, sometimes, you know, you go out to that dinner with your best friends, even if it costs you 75 bucks or a hundred bucks, who cares in the cosmic scheme of things? Are you going to do that every night? No, you're not because you're not going to be able to save any money. But if your friends ask, like, just say, yes, it's just, it's easy to say no to things.

57:52And I think this is something I'm working on. Cody is It's just saying yes to more serendipity and spontaneity in my life. So I'm glad you included this. Yeah. And lastly on that, you hear about the regrets of the people who are about to die. Like the number one regret that I hear from people not who are about to die, but are going to and through early retirement. I wish I had less stuff and more memories. Yeah. You know, even in their 50s, I'm not talking about people in their 80s, 90s. I'm talking about people who are retiring early 40s, 50s, 60s, who already wish they already have that regret of like, man, like I could have slowed down a little bit.

58:25Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. All right, Cody, this has been a wonderful list. I think people are going to take a ton away from this. So thank you as always for your time, your care, your expertise, and just what you give to this community really frankly on a daily basis in the Facebook group. And now hopefully, uh, yeah, no, I know. And soon enough on our, on our new choose a website that Jonathan has lovingly built. And we're going to have a lot of things going on there. And I think because of how giving you are, I know you're going to be a big part of what we're doing there. And yeah, I just, as always, want to say thank you.

59:01I appreciate you. I'm trying to get more control over my schedule so I don't just get addicted, get into the social media. But again, I have an addiction to helping, giving. You're helping. Right. Yeah. It's the addiction to helping. And I always say that kindness is defined by giving to others without expecting something in return. So my goal ultimately is like, how can I give more to others than I've been given? And I appreciate you inviting me to give that to the community. Yeah, no, I greatly appreciate it. As we said, measure twice money.com slash choose FI. Cody, is there anywhere else you want to send people or is that pretty much the place?

59:32Yeah, that's pretty much the place. Nothing to sell you. Just go have some fun. Keep learning. Beautiful. All right, my friends until next time. Thank you for being part of the choose of our community and thank you for being here. 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. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and 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.

1:00:03So 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 crowdsource personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a buy local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a buy.com slash local and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world.

1:00:41And 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? What 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.

1:01:16Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.

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