HELP! I’m Financially Responsible But It’s SO Boring

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0:40Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Boring. Let's be honest. When you're doing the right things with money, it doesn't always feel exciting, especially in those latter steps of the foo, which can take a while to get through. So what do you do when things start to feel slow and boring?

0:58Brian Preston:Bo, what do you do? Brian, I am so excited because today we're going to be talking to those of you in what we like to call the mundane middle. It's your middle of career, you're saving regularly, likely around step six or seven of the FU, and we're going to give you some guidance for what you should do in that boring between, including some milestones that you can aim for and even celebrate through the process. So I'm Brian, he's Beau, and we're financial advisors here to guide you through that mundane middle to get to your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. And with that, let's dive right in.

1:37Brian Preston:So, Brian, when we say the mundane middle, what we're actually talking about is this part of financial wealth building that feels monotonous and slow. I've already said it's around step six and seven. And it just feels like, man, man, I was go, go, go, go, go, go. And now it just seems like I'm wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, I mean, look, in the early stages of the financial order of operations, there's a lot of stuff going on. You're trying to get your emergency funds set up. You're trying to get that free money from the employer. You're protecting yourself from paying 20 plus percent. So then when you start getting to steps five, six, and seven, I get it.

2:16It is going to feel slow. Even if you're doing the right thing. And that's what I've made the analogy before, but I think it's important to kind of bring it back because I think this will give you a visual that will help. It might make you a little hungry too, is that when you smoke meat, if you think about some of the best eating, especially if you're from Texas, you're from the South, we love our barbecue where we do low and slow. And a lot of people, when you think about this, a lot of barbecue and other things is humble meat. A lot of millionaires come from humble beginnings. And I know when you're trying to sprinkle that special stuff that makes that meat turn incredible, you hold it on with some yellow mustard.

2:56There you go. That's the discipline of your financial life is going to help hold the salt and pepper, which gives it that delicious taste. That's the compounding interest. So then as you start cooking this slow and low, just like you're building wealth, it takes a while to get there. You're going to notice this weird thing that happens when you're cooking meat, just like when you're building success. When the temperature gets to be around 160 degrees, it's going to hit what's called the stall.

3:22Brian Preston:Okay. So a lot of people will try to speed this up. They might even make mistakes like take it out, microwave it, or do whatever. No, that's a complete disaster. You just have to be patient. Let the special stuff work that's happening behind the scenes and don't rush the process. It's the exact same thing with wealth creation and wealth building. It's okay if it's slow and low on developing because we're going to help you through with some tips so you don't try to microwave your wealth creation and make mistakes with crypto and all the distractions. You're actually going to focus on what matters and use these tips.

3:56Brian Preston:So the question becomes, what can you do during the stall? What can you do during those times when it feels like, okay, I got a lot accomplished early on and I know where I'm going, but right now, again, it is this mundane middle. And so we're going to share four tips with you that we think will help. And the first one, it might seem intuitive, but so many people forget to do this. We want you to right now look how far you've come in your journey because if you are in the mundane middle, it means that you have already knocked out some pretty big planning areas of your financial life. Well, I mean, a lot of us come from humble beginnings.

4:36and you look at to fund and then you go through periods like where we just had an inflation run up in the 2020 and beyond. And you start saying, man, this thing's running away from me. You can start feeling overwhelmed. Stop, it's going to be okay. Remember, time is going to be your superpower because of compounding growth. Look back, log into those retirement accounts. Think about just how magical. It's one of those things, I even use this in Millionaire Mission. When I try to show people how much of their account is actually the growth versus their contribution, guys, you got to see this. Look at this.

5:08For somebody who starts saving when they're 20 years of age, they run the potential that 95 % of their account value in retirement is going to be from the growth. Even if you're one of the typical Americans and you start saving and investing when you're 30 years of age, it's going to be 89 % growth. That's what is amazing about compounding interest. And that's why we can say things like for a 20 year old, it's$95 a month. For a 30 year old, it's$270 a month. A little bit goes a long way, but the thing is you have to start the process and then always be buying.

5:42Brian Preston:And so again, this is about remembering, because remember, there was a point in time where you first opened your Roth IRA and it had a$0 balance, or when you first signed up for your 401k and there were$0 in there. If you have moved any length of period since then, you likely have some money in there. So take a moment to celebrate that. Take a moment to log into the accounts, to view the accounts, to see where you are. And then what we want you to do is we want you to take that and we want you to bottle it up. We actually want you to take it even a step further because we think that at least annually, you should be tracking your net worth, not just logging into a account to see how many dollars I have in a single place.

6:21Brian Preston:But when you think about your overall enterprise, we want you to list out, okay, what are all the things that I own? What are all the things that I owe money on? And what's the difference between those too. And when you take what you own and subtract out what you owe, that gives you your net worth. What that is, that's basically your starting position. Or if you've been doing this for a while, it's not your starting position, it's your current position. It is showing you where you are right now today. If you do that, it's going to be amazing. Holy cow, right now today, I've maxed out my Roth IRA.

6:55Brian Preston:I've got 7 ,500 in there. This time last year, I had zero. That is progress worth looking back on and worth celebrating. Look, I look at the net worth as your dashboard, and you're going to be the CEO of a multiple seven-figure enterprise. So you need to start acting accordingly. That's why if you want to know exactly the tool that Bo and I are using for our net worth, we actually have a great tool. If you go to learn.moneyguy.com, this is the actual net worth tracker and tool that we personally use. And what I like about it is, look, I like to see where's the debt at? What's been the change in the last year?

7:30How are my emergency reserves holding up compared to what the investment performance compared to what I made through my labor? All of this is available as a dashboard view. And then think about step seven, where we're talking about the three bucket strategy. Are you after-tax assets, tax-free? Are you tax-deferred? All of this is in your purview so you can be better with your money.

7:53Brian Preston:How on earth can you know if you are ahead of the curve, on the curve, don't even know where the curve is if you don't know where you're starting. So if you've not started tracking your net worth, start right now today. And even if you're someone who says, oh, well, guys, I just graduated. I have student loan debt. My net worth is negative. I'll wait till I get, don't do that. Because again, even if you're going from really, really negative to slightly less negative, that is still an improvement. That is still worth tracking. That's still worth notating. So tip number one, no matter where you are in your journey, notate how far you've come and the strides that you've made, and then we're going to take you to step two.

8:32Brian Preston:Now we want you to calculate, okay, I know how far I've come. Now I want to think about where I'm going. What is that great, big, beautiful tomorrow that I'm actually working towards? Yeah, I think when we all feel overwhelmed, I've already told you to go back, look backwards and see how far you've come. But now let's look forward and say, hey, remember, you potentially are a billionaire of time. There's a lot of potential for that component of time to really grow your assets. And look, don't let it just be us telling you this from our lips to your ears. I want you to go to moneyguy.com slash resources and look at our compound interest calculator because you can then put in your specific numbers, see a visual, see it calculated, see what saving a little bit more is going to do for your future.

9:15Let's actually visualize this and actually see what the results of your hard work are.

9:20Brian Preston:What I think is wild is if you remember back to math class or if you've ever plotted something out and you've looked at an exponential curve, it seems like it's increasing slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then all of a sudden it ramps up. You see this hockey stick type improvement. Oftentimes when you are in the mundane middle, you might be right there at that threshold. It's felt slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, but you are at the point where if you can continue to give it time, if you can continue to let your money work for you, the exponential growth, the slope of the line increases, and it gets really, really exciting.

9:57Brian Preston:And if you don't believe us, let me walk you through a really quick example. So if you go to moneyguide.com slash resource, we have this compound interest calculator. That is incredible. So let's just say that you're someone and you're starting out with$10 ,000. That's how far you've come. You were at zero, now you're at$10 ,000. Let's just assume that you believe you can earn on average an 8 % rate of return. And let's say that right now on a monthly basis, you're saving$200 per month, how does that sound to you? $200 sounds great. $200. So let's say that, okay, you know what I want to do? I am a 30-year-old.

10:34Brian Preston:I'm going to work for another 30 years and I want to see what this money can turn into by the time I turn 60. I put in my email address, hit calculate, and watch what happens. Now you can see that exponential graph curve that we talked about. And early on in your journey, years one, two, three, four, five, the majority of your account value is contributions. The first five years, your contributions are$22 ,000. The account's only worth$29 ,000. But as you begin to move through time, what you can see is that the growth gets further and further away from your contributions. That is literally compound interest, the eighth wonder of the world taking hold.

11:16Brian Preston:And you can see that for this person who started with$10 ,000 and is just saving$200 a month, in 30 years of doing this, they will have over$400 ,000 saved up just by doing that. Pretty incredible. Now, Bo, I noticed that on year 15, there's a blue line there. If you highlighted that blue, what is that showing us? This is the boiling point. This is an exciting, this is where your account has now reached a point to where it is actually growing even faster than you're saving. The rate of return on the assets you've built up is now saving even harder than you are. It's an incredible milestone. It's an incredible thing to celebrate.

12:00Brian Preston:And if you play with a compound interest calculator, you can see exactly where your bowling point is. So by the way, if you want to see how comedic our content team is too, they didn't say bowling point. It actually has bowling point in there where they're taking advantage of my trouble to pronounce things so that you can be better with your money. So that's why, look, what I also love about this, Beau, shows you if you can just do a little bit more,$100 a month,$200 a month, or even it breaks, it calculates. Because you said, hey, what if I want to be a millionaire? What if$400 plus thousand dollars wasn't enough?

12:32We back into that math. There's a lot of functionality here. Get out there today. Moneyguy.com slash resources. Go check out our compound interest calculator.

12:40Brian Preston:Or if you're someone who maybe you have a young person who's asking for advice, maybe you have teens or children, or maybe you just have friends who haven't caught the personal finance bug, this is a great tool to share with them, to show them just how powerful their dollars can be. So tip number one was to celebrate how far you've come. Tip number two was to celebrate and think about, okay, where am I going? What am I projecting moving towards? And then tip number three, and this is one that I think is maybe even the most valuable inside the mundane middle. We want you to celebrate the mini milestones.

13:17Yeah, this could be its own show. Matter of fact, it has been a show when we talk about these milestones, but we felt like it was so powerful. Let's get in there so we lean into this celebration so you actually know what some of these stops of success are going to be in your journey.

13:30Brian Preston:Well, there are these big milestones, right? There's financial independence and there's reaching the boiling point. But then even inside that journey, there's little mini pieces. There are these little things. They might not be... Picks up steam. Yeah, they might not be the huge ones, but they are certainly worth celebrating. We want to walk you through a few that we think could be viable. And the first one, Brian, I still remember when this happened for me in my life. It was the very first, you know, I started contributing to a Roth IRA pretty early. And I was doing 50 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month.

13:57Brian Preston:But 50 bucks a month was not getting me maxed out. And I remember, I still remember the very first year. I think it was$4 ,500,$5 ,000 a year where I maxed out my Roth IRA. And I was like, holy cow, that's something to celebrate. Let's fast forward to 2026. The maxing out Roth number right now is$7 ,500 a year if you're under 50, and that's$625 a month. If you can reach that, it is a time for celebration. I love it. Another thing, if you are someone who is married or there's a spouse, you can also celebrate that point in time where you both max out your Roth IRAs. Again, we're talking about many milestones to keep you motivated.

14:40Brian Preston:Another milestone that's even worth thinking through is when you hit that next tier of savings, when we say tier of savings, we're talking about whatever tier that you're defining. So for you, maybe it's when, hey, I'm saving a hundred bucks a month. And then I go from saving 100 to 500, or maybe I go from 500 to a thousand. If you can celebrate when you're making those changes, it's going to give you that motivation to keep changing and keep improving moving forward. I still remember when And when my wife and I crossed$1 ,000 a month. It's a big deal. We went out and we went to our favorite restaurant to celebrate.

15:15Because remember, these are milestones to celebrate. So actually go out there and celebrate when you cross into these points because it is that important.

15:22Brian Preston:Another one, and we all remember this, and I've been saving for any point in time. When your savings, when your investments, when your portfolio adds a new digit. So, okay, I saved my first$10, and then I saved my first$100, and then that$100, I save$1 ,000 and then my$1 ,000 turns into$10 ,000 and then$10 ,000 turns into$100 ,000 and then the$100 ,000 turn into a million, turn into the two comma. Every one of those milestones, every one of those steps is worth celebrating, is worth saying, man, it's incredible that I made it to this new tier, this new portfolio value. That is an accomplishment.

16:01That's why I love it when people go in the moneyverse and they share like when they've crossed into six figures or even cross into seven figures. Definitely celebrate those moments because it is really powerful when you start seeing your army of dollars work just as hard as you do with money.

16:16Brian Preston:Brian, do you remember when we decided to go all in on our YouTube channel, but we just didn't know if all the hard work was actually going to pay off? Oh yeah, it was a little scary at first because you have all the what ifs. What if nobody watches our videos? What if this doesn't work? What if we're just talking to ourselves? But thankfully we took the leap and honestly, it's been one of the best decisions we've ever made. And if you're thinking about starting a business or launching a side hustle, let me tell you, having the right tools makes all the difference. And that's where Shopify comes in.

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17:24Brian Preston:Look, you don't want to miss out on what's next because you're so worried about a bunch of what-ifs. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash moneyguy. Go to shopify.com slash moneyguy. That's shopify.com slash moneyguy. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed-sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs.

18:06Brian Preston:So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Now, it's interesting, Brian. We get this. I don't want to say hate. No, it's hate. I'm going to appropriately call it hate. There's a lot of people out there that say, okay, guys, yeah, big deal. You save them a million dollars doesn't matter anymore. Well, you know what's true? You can't get to$2 million unless you get to$1 million first. And you can't get to$3 million unless you get to$2 million. So celebrating adding these digits, your portfolio value growing is moving you to the place that you want to be.

18:41Brian Preston:And one of the ways that you get to influence how quickly that happens is based on your savings rate. Yeah, so let's actually do this. Let's look at what does it take to reach that first crucial million dollars. If you're saving$1 ,000 a month, yeah, it's going to take you a little over 25 years. But you have control on this. If you want to choose your own adventure and make this happen even faster, if you increase your monthly savings to$2 ,000 a month, you can make it there in as fast as a little over 18 years. That shaved off like seven years of saving just by increasing. And by the way, it doesn't.

19:13I started off with a few hundred bucks. I remember when we crossed into$1 ,000. Then I remember we went into$2 ,000. This doesn't have to happen all at once. We're just making an example here is that if you don't like it fast enough, you can speed the process up through your choose-your-own-adventure. If you're doing$3 ,000 a month, it's under 15 years. If you're doing$4 ,000 a month, it's a little over 12 years. You can see that you can speed this process up by controlling how much you contribute.

19:38Brian Preston:What I think is wonderful is oftentimes in our financial life, we end up stacking these. So, okay, maybe in my 30s, I'm saving$1 ,000 a month, But then maybe I get into my 40s and I've still been saving the$1 ,000 a month. But if I can increase my savings by another$2 ,000, if I can get to the point where I'm saving$3 ,000 a month, and if I'm just thinking through that, that's maybe maxing out my 401k and then maxing out both the Roth IRAs. And all of a sudden I'm saving that$3 ,000 a month. That is another million dollars that I'm adding on top of the million dollars that I started building in my 30s.

20:14Brian Preston:And so this stacks through time as you're beginning to move towards your financial independence number. Again, it's all about celebrating these small little mini micro wins along the way. Because another one we see, Brian, that I think is worth celebrating is when you're doing this and you begin saving and you've been stacking, but then the actual portfolio itself, it's able to grow by more than you're saving. Like, okay, I'm going to save$100 a month, or I'm going to save$500, but then the portfolio actually does that on top of what you're saying. Yeah, a lot of these earlier steps was going to putting more and more on you.

20:51And what I love about what we're putting here as a milestone, mini milestone number four is this is when your army of dollars actually start doing more than you. This is when the compounding interest really starts paying dividends, is when actually, instead of you working more with your brain, your back, your hands, your army of dollar bills actually starts producing more money than you save.