How This Young Couple Turned Crypto Into a Massive Net Worth

18:10Yes, yeah. Assuming like -

18:12Brian Preston:Is that within 10 years or in 10 years? In 10 years, yeah. Here's a little funny thing, but we didn't have a wedding. So we got married at the courthouse. Needed the Bitcoin money. So that's just like, I mean, I'm not set on it, but it'd be nice in maybe like for our fifth year anniversary to have like a nice wedding to re-know our vows and stuff. That's just a little fun bit. What's that look like from like a cost perspective and logistic perspective? That's a little scary. because weddings are expensive, and I have a huge family. What would be your budget? How many people? Close to 200. Oh, wow.

18:49Okay, so that is a big family. Yeah, and that's not even everyone. You got to invite that family, this person, that person. We had a recent guest, and I even gave that type of sound on 150. So hearing 200, like, whoo.

19:00Brian Preston:And I'm assuming for you guys to do this wedding, it's going to be on you guys to pay for. It's probably not like families that are going to pay for this. Is that a safe assumption? We'd want to pay for it. Yeah. Okay. So what's it cost to have a 200 person party? I'm guessing at least like$50 ,000, right? It probably depends on the location as well. I know in Mexico, you could probably get it a little cheaper, but. Are you thinking about doing it in Mexico? Yeah, it's a possibility. Yeah. I guess my questions would be more like technical. We're doing a lot into our retirement accounts and some into our brokerage as well.

19:31So I was wondering if we should continue to ramp up. Like I said, I have, I can do employee year as well as employee. if I should just max out completely for that, or if that would be too much into retirement. If we're looking into, not fire, like retire early. I still always want to work, but maybe to pull some of that out.

19:50Brian Preston:So you say you're going 24-5 in each of your 401ks. Are you also doing Roth IRAs? Are you maxing out Roths? Yeah, Roth IRAs and HSA as well. All right. Family for the HSA, the 87. Yeah. You know, obviously a lot of the loading up the retirements because of the huge tax benefits. Y 'all are paying a decent sum of taxes probably as well. What's the need for the money? Because the problem with retirement accounts is that you lose access to it. So that's why the brokerage account gives you that bridge. But what are you thinking that y 'all need money for? Like house down payments? What are the life needs over the next five to seven years?

20:25I know there's a$50 ,000 party happening.

20:27Brian Preston:I know that one. I got that one down. Yeah. And I think for me, I always look at things as like a deal. So I didn't, I've always been like, oh, I don't want a house. because same type of thing I did with the markets. It's like, oh, it's high. Like housing's high. I'd rather just rent. But I think down the line, like we do want to house. Yeah, we do. Or you want to house. You said I think. She did not say I think. She said, no, no, we do. Once we like start getting, like growing our family, I think it'd be nice to have. By the way, y 'all are already growing your family. We have a six month old.

20:56So welcome to the journey. We're here. So have y 'all talked about that as a couple? When do y 'all want to buy a house? We've talked about it. I could probably do a better job. I kind of just shut it. I shut it down a little bit, you know, because I'm like, it's not a good time. Or it's, I always see the videos where it's like, it's better to rent right now than to buy. You can save more money. So I kind of throw all that knowledge onto her. And she's just a trooper. She's just like, okay, if it's better, you know. But at the end of the day, that's one of our goals. I want to provide it.

21:23Brian Preston:So is it, is homeownership a goal for you? Yes. Eventually. Yeah, eventually. I just don't know. Oh, for him. I was asking, but I think we're seeing something like that. We're pretty locked in on you, Victoria. It is very much a goal. So this is a little bit of a hot take that we have. When it comes to buying your primary residence, when it makes sense, it's way less of a financial decision than it is a life decision. Same way as it is with children, right? When is the right financial time to have kids? It's not a financial answer. It's a life answer, right? Now, you want to make sure there are some financial metrics and parameters that you stay inside of when it comes to homeownership.

21:58Brian Preston:but just because prices are high and interest rates are unfavorable does not mean it might not make sense to purchase a home for you guys. Now, have there been more attractive times? Perhaps. Yeah. But again, that's only looking at the financial aspect, not looking at like the life aspect and where you guys want to be and set roots and establish. How nomadic are y 'all? Are y 'all locked into where you are in Arizona or is there a chance y 'all are moving in the next five years, five to seven years? There's definitely a huge chance we'd be moving. Yeah. We're pretty nomadic, I would say. We don't need to buy a house.

22:32Well, I think it's more like we've lived our lives in San Diego. We've recently moved to Phoenix for a job opportunity. We don't know whether he's going to go into something else. Maybe there's another opportunity for him, so there is a chance. I think that's kind of why I'm agreeing with him on the whole house thing. I don't want to just go into something not knowing whether we're going to be there long term. I mean, there's always the chance of like, you know, renting or if we end up moving, right? But long term, like a house is a goal. Like I do want my family. I just don't think it's a rush because I think I don't want to rush into something and then be kind of like screwed over where it's like, we're stuck here or stuck in this house.

23:11I'd rather just like take our time with it. Don't make an emotional decision. And then down the line, if, you know, 10, 15 years, whatever it is, we want a house, then great. I was just curious. And obviously you're using the universal skill of sales. That's how you've ended up doing the roof sales. Now you've used that talent. Are you just in a job or are you in a career? Because that's the only thing that seems like it has a little bit of a question mark on it. Yeah, I feel like I'm in a career. But especially with the career that I'm in right now, you can move different places. Like there is the chance, like right now we're in Phoenix, but even my company, we're branching out to Colorado.

23:46And then we're going to be opening up different branches as well just because there's a lot of hail in Colorado. We're not storm chasing, but you do want to go to a place that gets hit with storms, right? So we're not storm chasing, but we're storm chasing. I'm locked in on the career, but the place I'm actually going to be working, it could be working in Phoenix. I could be working in Colorado. I could be working in Tennessee if they open up an office here. I can sense there was something under the surface between you, but I think it's more of just the, there's a huge question mark on where you land.

24:18Because what I was trying to figure out was that we couldn't tell if your job was at this, but it sounds like it is. It's just the location might change on you. I love what I do, and I love sales. I want to stay in this industry for sure, especially roofing sales. Like, it's a need that everybody needs.

24:33Brian Preston:There's a house out there, and this is so hard to think about, but I want to think about how we think about, like, casting a plan and moving in a direction. When you guys think about houses, let's use Phoenix as an example. If you were going to buy a house in Phoenix right now, what's the price point of houses that you're looking at today? I've always been the guy where like I'd wear, let's talk about shoes. I'd wear like beater shoes, like$5 shoes until I could get the shoes that I really, really want. And then I'd buy the most expensive shoes. I feel like I'm the same way with like the house where I'm like, dude, I'll just rent up until I get to the point where we can get the house like we really, really want.

25:05I don't like starter homes or middle homes. I want like the home. Can I introduce a concept to you? Have you ever heard of the hedonic treadmill? Never. There's this whole thing on happiness and fulfillment is that this is where lottery winners get hosed because they do it all wrong. They think that they're going to find happiness in spending the money, not actually the journey. The way a lot of this all works is you do things incrementally, meaning that when you buy your first nice car, and look, I'm going to use some horrible examples, but I'm just trying to tell a story here. Because I'm thinking of some of my friends that I've seen in my life.

25:42Like you buy the two-door three-series BMW because that's a, you know, you start hitting the lick with your money. You're making money. It's a cool car. You know, you buy that. It's only going to say keep happiness for a certain period of time. But you didn't go buy, start with the seven series. You went with the three series. Or you didn't start with a Range Rover. You started with a two-door, you know, three series. So there was, you enjoy the journey up as you're buying. It's just like you buy the starter home. And then now we're not counting. Look, I want to tell you there's a fault to this.

26:16There's an asterisk I have to put because nobody counted on interest rates to do what they're doing. And affordability is messed up right now. So you don't get to do the normal stair step that you're supposed to. But I'm just telling you, there's something about the human experience that you get to do something a little nicer because it's not going to last. I will tell you, it's all fleeting. It's temporary on how long you enjoy the things you do. So that's why you at least have somewhere to go up. That's why you also have to be careful about spoiling your kids because if you give your kids here, when they get out of college, they go back down to here and they're like, what the heck happened?

26:52And that's why you always have to be mindful of where you are in this journey because you sound like you go from I'll do nothing, nothing, nothing, and then let me only eat steak. It's like hamburger helper, hamburger helper, hamburger helper, and then you go steak and you skipped all the other stuff in between. You know, that's pretty accurate, actually. I would love for you to discover kind of the journey because then it gives you just more stops on the way to celebrate. I can already tell you all have some achiever mentalities and you set goals for yourself. The problem with achiever mentality in some ways is we're playing to win a game.

27:28That's exactly it. And you're not actually in a game. You have goals and mile markers. If you play to win a game, you're going to get to what you think the game is at in the future. You go get there and find out it's empty. And that is a scary, scary thing. Because believe me, it gets heavy when you realize, hey, because maybe your numbers, I'm going to save until I get to five or seven million dollars. You go get there and be like, I don't feel any different. So you have to understand that your mile markers are the goals. But you're on a journey. You're not winning a game. Yeah. Yeah, I've experienced that for sure.

28:02Yeah, I think that's great advice. But I think the reason he has that mindset is kind of like his background of where he came from. Well, share more. He probably is not going to tell us, so you tell us. We know you've all been together for a long time. Yeah, I would start with me. I grew up like middle class. I know we probably struggled, but my parents never, as kids, let us see that. And so I kind of got both of my parents. My mom is very not spender. She's a controller, so that's kind of where I got the accounting background from.

28:27Brian Preston:Oh, literally, that's her job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were just describing her. No, no, no. She's literally just describing her. I got it. The CPA got it. Okay, I'm trying. Yeah. So she's more of the financial person where my dad is like, you know, God's going to always provide for us. So we're always going to have the money. He's not really worried about the money. So I think I got both aspects where I'm, I don't like to spend, but I also am like not worried about the money. Yeah. I'm not like fixated on the money. Whereas, so when we met, like he didn't always have money growing up.

28:56He came from a completely different situation from me. To see where he is now is like amazing. And it's like, he did it all on his own. So a lot of scarcity mindset. Yeah, for sure. Back then. Just because you never knew like it was always like prominent. Like you knew you didn't have money. Like, yeah, some people that grew up like poor where it's like they hide it, you know, know that you're poor, but there's the poor that grows up poor.

29:18Brian Preston:And you know, yeah, it was in my face for sure. So then I just like I had this like different outlook on money. Like I thought it was like this end all be all like hoard it all like keep it. That kind of gave me like a bad relationship with money. So I'm kind of trying to like outgrow that. Like even when I look at this, like when you're talking about chasing that, I've been chasing numbers, looking for like a feeling. But yeah, you don't really get the feeling. You know, it's just like you chase like more numbers, more numbers, more numbers. Even like I told myself, like when I saved my first 10 ,000 was like the best feeling in my life.

29:48Like when I had 100 ,000, I was just like, oh, it's only 100 ,000. When we had like quarter millers, oh, we only have a quarter miller. And I know that sounds like probably to people, it's like, dude, that's very ungrateful. But that's just like my situation with money. How much you need more. More, yeah, exactly. I don't think you're uncommon in that.

30:04Brian Preston:I don't think you're uncommon in that, especially from someone who comes from a very humble background. It is a reality that, okay, I was there. I never want to go back there. I'm going to do everything in my power to move in the opposite direction. And that's a testament to why you are in such a wonderful spot. But I do think if you're not careful, you do end up chasing a goal that shouldn't be the goal. And the goal should be, okay, what do we ultimately want the money to do for us? That's why some of the questioning is like, okay, hey, well, when do you want a house? When do you want to grow the family?

30:34Brian Preston:What are the goals you're working towards? Because the way it looks right now, and if you guys have done this, you can go to moneyguide.com slash resources, play the Wealth Multiplier. And if all you did was take$719 ,000 and you were to drop it into our Wealth Multiplier for a 26 and 27-year-old, you can see without doing anything else, you're probably well on your way to tens of millions of dollars by the time that you retire. So you've done so much good work and have such a head start. it's going to be really hard to screw it up. So the question becomes, okay, well, how do we do this really well?

31:05Brian Preston:How do we do this? Because there is no point in getting to 60, 65, 70 years old with tens of millions of dollars and no memories up until that point, no experiences up until that point, no fulfillment up until that point. And I think that's going to be the bigger risk that you guys are going to have. What do y 'all do for fun? Pickleball. Okay, I like that answer. You've never played pickleball before. But that's a good answer. But keep going. What other things do y 'all do for fun? It seems like you might work out. I don't know. You work out. It seems like a thing that maybe you do. I don't know.

31:41Brian Preston:Game spot game. Y 'all look at each other. It seems like a thing. There's a little back hop or something over here. That's a good thing, right? I bet. Yeah, work out, outdoor stuff. So work out, pickleball, tennis, things of that nature. I would say, too, like prior to the baby, we loved traveling. We love experiencing things together. So we're not really like materialistic where I want this new bag or I want this new outfit. We're pretty like basic on that. We like experiences. I have a hard time spending money on those. Even experience, do you have a hard time spending money on those things?

32:14Not really. Not experiences, but definitely like items. Like we'll wear the same thing like forever. Like it doesn't matter, like towels, this, that. But like I literally, we just started going. We're like, okay, let's look at this Lululemon. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about it. So like we'll go and we'll, but like we're just now getting into like, okay, we can start spending money. But before it was just all like chasing freedom. So like when we got the ability, because she would always clean the house, but when we got the ability, it's like, okay, cool. Let's get a home cleaner.

32:44Yeah, we love convenience as well. Yeah, convenience.

32:47Brian Preston:Any anxiety around that? Like hiring someone to offload that service? Was that a hard decision for y 'all to make? or was it pretty easy to make that decision? I think because the position that we're at and like I, with a baby, I cannot do it. And we need our home clean. So it was kind of like, okay, well, we can do this. So we decided to hire someone. At first, I'm always the guy that's like, I don't think we should do it. Like I just always, that's like, it's easier for me to say no, think about it and then say yes. So you always default to no. I always default to no. Like whatever it is, I just always say no.

33:22and then, or like, if she's like, let's take a trip to San Diego to see our family. I'm always like, we can't do that. And then it'll be like the day before. And I'm like, oh, let's just go for Christmas. Which I don't like. I have to like say no. And then I think about it, think about it, think about it. And then if I've done all the research in my head, then it's like, okay, cool. And I do that with every purchase. I would say friction in a way to where like, I like knowing what's going on. I don't like just spur of the moment. I like to plan for it. That's the only way. You should go into accounting.

33:50Brian Preston:It seems like that would be good. Accounting versus sales. You can see the two right here. Yeah, no, for sure. Completely different. I think we're really different personality-wise, but we also work really well together. It's that yin-yang. It works for most of our relationship. For a long time. And we grew up together. Yeah, we did. We essentially grew up together. That also helps. We essentially raised each other. Yeah. If you think about it. So like all my habits, all her habits, we kind of like got into it together. So yeah, it works. If money was just not anything you had to think about, is there anything that y 'all aren't doing that would create more happiness?

34:26That's a great question. I think so, yeah. What would you do? I would see family a lot more. They're in San Diego. We're in Phoenix. See family a lot more, a lot more convenience things. Like we got a home cleaner, but I think it'd be cool to like get lessons in some things. Like I'm a very recreational tennis player. I'm not good, but I think tennis lessons would be cool. Like it would all be around what I do now, but I'd want like a trainer for it. Like even like mobility, like get a mobility person. I'd want to go get massages more often or like we go to the spa. Like things like that where now I'm always like, dude, I need a massage.

34:59But I'm like, that's like$200. Like I don't want to do that. So more like convenience things.

35:04Brian Preston:Do you feel like you can't afford those things? I feel like we can, but we just like choose to do it wisely in a way where we'll get one every six months or something. But I think we're super health and wellness too. We like to take care of ourselves. And I guess sometimes that can be a little expensive with massages and buying the organic food and making sure the ingredients are really good for our bodies, especially these days. You don't know what's in your food. But yeah, and I would just piggyback off him. I do miss being home with my family. I grew up around all my family. So that's kind of like one thing, like it's a little, I guess, hard to grow up, like, especially with my son now, like not being always around family.

35:53Whereas like growing up, your aunts, your uncles, your grandma and grandpa, like are all there, like, and you see each other like almost every day. So I think that's also one thing that we have to maybe eventually see if we want to go back to California. But if it's not in the cards, you know, it's okay.

36:10Brian Preston:But why don't y 'all do this? Like, why don't you do the massages more often, go see the family more often, go travel? I get caught up in like, the money will be better here. Like, oh, well,$200 in the S &P 500, 10 % compound, like CAGR is going to be, you know, so I'm just like, oh, well, one day when we have the ability and there's this amount of money in the account, then I'll do those things. Like, I've always done that. It's like, once we hit this number, then I'll get massages. Or once we hit this number, we'll start, because we used to never eat out even. Like it was like, we only cook our meals, but now we've been starting to eat out a little bit more.

36:46But even then, like I would love to get like locally sourced, like organic, somewhere like local to us and then just go eat food every day. Like, hey, we get our breakfast here every day. But in my head, I'm like, well, that's, if we make breakfast, it's like$10,$8 for both of us. We go out, it's like$40, that extra money we could just invest it or say like, so my brain automatically goes to that. In the beginning of the journey, deferred gratification, discipline is the most important first ingredient. But the thing is, you've already shown it. You've already done it. And this is why you have to be careful.

37:20There's a very fine line between being a financial mutant and being a financial miser. And I'm going to go ahead and ruin life for you. I've been to the top of the mountain. I can afford to buy anything and everything I want. and what's actually important. And you realize once you get to the top of the mountain, you guys talking about family, because if you do any research on what creates happiness and fulfillment, it's your relationship with your spouse. It's your relationship with the family. I know everybody who's watching this can be like, yeah, it's easy to say. I'm telling you, top of the mountain here.

37:51It's who you spend your time with. It's who your family. And it's the little things. It's the morning walks for me, listening to the birds and the trees and trying to make sure you get inside yourself to say, this creates this i'm happy with this is because it's the little things because if you only do big focus on get to five million ten million or whatever you're gonna find out it's so empty and it's not what you're designed for in a lot of ways and i know that's it's so because you come from a scarcity and i deal with this with bo because bo was you and bo are very similar and the fact that i think bo was probably trying to prove to a lot of people he was good enough for a long time.

38:28And I've had to, you know, essentially try to help mentor you in some ways to slow down, deep breath in, enjoy what you got. Because you're going to wake up one day and be my age. I mean, it just happens. I didn't plan to be this age in the past. It just kind of happens. And that's why I'm just telling you, you have done, you're already way ahead of the curve. So I'm here. And that's what a lot of people think financial advisors tell everybody no, because your default is no. And no is a powerful tool. I like it. But it's supposed to be a tool that allows you to own your time that much sooner to get back to doing those things that are truly fulfilling, which is her, the family, the memories, and all that stuff.

39:10It troubles me a little bit that your default, even on those things that are so healthy and so nourishing to your happiness and fulfillment, you put up some roadblocks on that. And that's a mindset thing. You've got the hard part, the tool of money, but now we've just got to work on the coaching of the mindset. And that's what, go do the massages, go get the stretch labs and all the other things that do that stuff. But then I'd love to know what you want to do too. I mean, what else? House cleaning sounded like it was great. Anything else that we should be checking the boxes on to make sure you feel like you're getting all of your stuff too?

39:47Honestly, I feel like we're pretty similar in our interests. Y 'all go do couples massages. Yeah, that's why. Oh, a couple of massages. This is my wife and I had this discussion. We were down in Florida and she goes, let's go get a massage. And she immediately, because we're in Orlando property, she starts looking at massages at the Grand Floridian. And I'm like, uh-uh, uh-uh. I was like, we can go get somebody to rub on us for a heck of a lot cheaper than going to the Grand Floridian. So I went on Yelp and found a perfectly good place. And it was probably half the price. It was half the price for sure.

40:21So there is a better way to do money that you can still get all the fulfillment of the memory without having to go stay. You don't have to do hamburger helper anymore. You graduate. But you don't always have to do the filet either.

40:35Brian Preston:Well, and I think one of the things, obviously it seems like you're sort of like rules-based and rules-driven in terms of how you operate. I just did some math. If you're both maxing out your 401ks, you're maxing out your Roth IRAs, you're doing the HSA, that's like$72 ,000,$73 ,000 a year that you're saving sort of automatically systematically. automatically. On a$216 ,000 household income, that's like a 34 % savings rate. I never want to say over-saving because perhaps you're saving the right. But we tell people, hey, save 25%. Save 25%. You realize if you just had an extra 10 % back that you weren't saving on 216, that's like an extra$21 ,000.

41:10Brian Preston:That's almost two grand a month. Imagine if you had an extra two grand a month to go travel to see your family, to go create memories, to do those things. Now, that's not a prescription or recipe to go find ways to spend that money, but you are no longer, sometimes we got to sit across people and say, hey, you're not doing enough. You need to do more. You're not doing enough. You need to do more. You guys may potentially possibly be doing too much and it would be okay to take your foot off the gas a little bit so that you can make room for some of these other things. That sounds awesome. And I think that was one of our questions too, because I feel like he was saying that we might have a lot of like cash sitting.

41:47So doing

41:47Brian Preston:nothing. Is that something we invest, used to invest, or do we enjoy ourselves? Well, I'll tell you what I would do. You said your monthly burn rate, in terms of how much you guys spend a month, was what, like 7 ,000, 8 ,000? Probably like eight is the average. So if we just said a nice full emergency fund, you should probably have about$50 ,000 in cash, right? For six months, fully funded emergency fund. Well, where your cash is right now at$150 ,000,$155 ,000, in cash. You had a hundred thousand dollars of excess cash. Now, obviously we have like this wedding thing and this house thing. So maybe we have an emergency fund that is a little frothier than we might want.

42:27Brian Preston:Anything above and beyond that, I think I probably would invest, but here's what I would do. I would not dump it all in today. And you're going to hate this because you're kind of a market timer and you're kind of a crypto timer. Rather than doing that, I'd pick some number I feel comfortable with. And maybe it's 5 ,000, maybe it's 10 ,000. I don't know the number for you. But if I have an extra$70 ,000 to$100 ,000 to invest, I'm going to say, all right, every single month, I'm going to invest$7 ,000 a month. And I'm just going to start drawing down my cash so that I don't care. The S &P is high, low, left, right.

43:01Brian Preston:I'm just going to buy every single month, every single month. So if the market's going up, great. That money I invested last month makes money. If the market goes down, great. I'm getting in lower and lower. I don't have to get it all right, but I prevent myself from being in the situation where I have been wrong and I've let the cash accumulate. So I'd figure out how much of that 156 is excess cash. And I'd put together a plan. Okay, if I start investing this over the next 10 months, 12 months, divided evenly, what's that look like? And here's what's crazy that I think is going to happen with you guys.

43:31Brian Preston:You're going to notice your cash doesn't actually go down that quickly. Because you just told us that last year you made$85 ,000 selling roofs. And this year you're on pace to make$175 ,000 selling roofs. there's a good chance you're going to start doing$7 ,000 a month, try to buy that down, and you're just never going to stop. And it's just going to keep on building, keep on building. I'm also seeing that y 'all have a list of life things that y 'all, you know, services and experiences y 'all need to be doing that you need to backfill. There's nothing that says that you can't create an anticipation of the journey.

44:02You know, meaning y 'all go out on a date night. You know, look, you came here. Got a babysitter for that, obviously. You know, y 'all go out on a date night. You got a night tonight.

44:10Brian Preston:Y 'all do this tonight. We're excited. I think date nights are very important for married couples. But then y 'all can use that date night to kind of write down what over the next quarter, over the next six months, you figure out the timeframe for you guys. What do y 'all want to do? Do you want to do maybe a massage every other month? Do you want to go do a trip to see the family? And y 'all actually put it on the calendar or loosely. You can write it in pencil so that you can move around a little bit. But then that way y 'all can start anticipating it. And you not only get the blossoming memories of the great experience, but you also get the anticipation.

44:44Because it's all back to that hedonic treadmill is that good stuff spread out. Bad stuff, like when really bad things, do it all at once. Cut it without mercy. That's why when most people, when we look at their stuff, we have to go, you have to budget. You have to work this app. You have to do this to try to find more money. You guys are the exact opposite. So we're trying to tell you, no, go figure out how we can spread this out. still live your healthy, productive life, but also put enough experiences so that when you get to be my age, you look back at your 20s and we go, job well done, 30s, job well done, 40s, job well done.

45:19And you have no regret. And then you look back and go, why was I even worried about this? And you'll be so happy that you actually put the effort into it. Yeah, I feel like I get nervous because we're so young. Like you said, we're so young that I just see it as like, there's so much time for things to go wrong. I don't know why my brain goes like that, but I'm like, okay, yeah, we're at 882 at the 20s, but what if something goes wrong in the 30s or the 40s? We've heard our benchmarks, though.

45:44Brian Preston:Hold on, let's do this exercise. It's called the seven sell ones. Let's say that you get all your stuff going. You got$50 ,000 in an emergency fund to cover you for six months. Let's say that roofing dries up. You are no longer a roofer. What are you going to do? No longer selling roofs. What are you going to do? Go to another sales position. Go find something else to sell. It's going to take you six months to go land in that sales position, probably? Maybe less. You're not going to let yourself do that. I can just tell you're a hustler. You're going to go out there and you're going to find a job.

46:12Brian Preston:And all right, of the$8 ,000 a month y 'all are currently spending, if you really had to get lean, how lean could you get on that? Probably like$4 ,000. Right? You could have had. See how this is all falling apart? Okay, if things go bad, if things go bad. And look, we should not say this, but we're going to say it. If you go take that number, that 719, and put it in the wealth multiplier and see what it turns into without you saving anything else, so long as you can keep lights on and food on the table, you've done a lot of the hard work so far, assuming nothing goes crazy with crypto. That's the one wild card there.

46:46Brian Preston:You've done a lot of the hard work so far that you have already bought yourself freedom and flexibility in your 30s by being in your mid-20s with almost a million-dollar net worth. You're in a fantastic position. I think a healthy fear of things going away is great, but it needs to be realistic. And so you go through the seven so what's. Okay, if this happens, so what? If this happens, so what? If this happens, so what? So long as by the time you get to seven of those so what's and you're still healthy and alive and your family's still healthy and alive, things are pretty good. You know what I mean?

47:16That's true. It's full circle back to what actually creates happiness and fulfillment. That's what we all look, and don't mishear me. I'm not saying money doesn't buy happiness in the fact that it does pay for your basic necessities. food and shelter and those type of things. But beyond that, it does start to lose what it can do for you. I mean, if you start thinking about wealth and riches, what's the difference between somebody who has five, 10 million versus somebody who has a billion? It's probably just an airplane. I mean, that's really about it. Their hot water feels the same as your hot water.

47:54And it's one of those things where you start thinking about those things. And then you can say, okay, now that I've freed myself from trying to keep up with some false goal that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme, you can actually focus on what really makes me happy. Now, some things do cost money. I mean, forever I bought a Jeep Wrangler that for about 12 to 14, it was probably 15 years of my life, gave me tremendous happiness because I couldn't get it when I was a kid. I wasn't as poor as Bo, or it sounds like your situation, but I was poor enough that I couldn't have what I wanted.

48:25So when I got enough money, I went and bought that. And I loved every time I went through a drive-through that every high school kid was like, that is the coolest cheap. The big old lift kit, the subwoofer and all the other stuff. But then it ran its course and I let somebody else have that joy and I moved on. There's nothing wrong with enjoying those elements, but just making sure that you are taking the time to figure out what the happiness factor is at that moment. And that's where right now I'm worried. You go from nothing, nothing, nothing. I can do this because I come from nothing and then give me the best.

48:56And that's just, there's so much in between that I've got to get you to slow down and enjoy. So y 'all get the best version of yourselves. One thing I will give him is where I saw that he was improving on as we bought a Tesla. Okay. What kind of Tesla did you buy? Tesla Model Y. Okay. He did his research. So we got the best deal, right? But I was happy because I think it was a step because we had beater cars forever. This was like our first big purchase.

49:27Brian Preston:And what do you think about the Tesla Model Y? I love it. It's wonderful. It's a car that you love and it's fun. And it's family. And it's a family car and it's safe. And you made that decision and it wasn't going to buy a beater and it wasn't doing the, and it's okay. And it's okay. Lifestyle creep gets such a bad rap and it is bad in a lot of circumstances. But we all naturally want our lives to improve throughout the lives. We don't want it to be a lifestyle cliff where it's down, down, down, down, down, down. And then up here, we want it to kind of creep up. I think that's wonderful. And you guys have lived that and experienced that.

50:00Brian Preston:You start getting stretched out once every two months, you're going to feel the same way. You're going to be like, holy cow. I would now. Look, I do want to give y 'all one, because y 'all are still young. When you start traveling, you don't have to go four seasons immediately or the St. Regis and all that stuff. is because give yourself... He's like, no, no, I was just going to wait for that. I can tell how you're wired and you're like, I want to give myself the best now that I've earned this. You go here from us. And I do think you've earned it, but I would encourage you to take some steps so that you can enjoy all the versions.

50:33Because I remember when I went on my honeymoon, I mean, I look back, I don't think I'd like that resort anymore. But at the time, I was like, oh my gosh, so we get to do this and this and this. And then I think about how we slowly, now look, I'm bougie as all get out now, but I didn't start that way. You've got to give yourself enough threshold as you're going through here so you live your best life. So that's why ease yourself up through what you think would be nice now. Do it. I'll try it. I'll try it. It doesn't have to be the best yet. You know, you can go through steps and really enjoy the journey.

51:06Cool. Yeah, thank you guys for that.

51:07Brian Preston:I've got an idea of some planning we can do to hopefully free you guys to feel more comfortable. What other questions can we answer for you? What are some things you're curious about we could speak to? So one more goal, and then I do have some other questions as well. One more goal I think we missed was right now our son, he goes to daycare. But I think it would be cool to have like a, not like a live-in nanny, but like a nanny that comes to the house. And right now we pay like, what is it? $1 ,800 in daycare. But I think we did the research on a nanny. If she were to come in, do like eight hours or whatever, like meal prep, do all that stuff.

51:41I think it was going to be out to like four grand. So I don't know where that could fit, if it could fit like later on. But I think it'd be cool because at first I didn't, because she would drop our son off at daycare. And I was like, dude, it's daycare. And then you drop him off and you're like. It's hard. He's like looking at you. You're like, dude, I have to walk away right now. So it'd be cool to have somebody come to the house. So she's there too. We have an extra bedroom. They could take care of it. We all are growing the family though, right? Yeah, of course. So, I mean, this is something that probably is a multiple benefit because the daycares go get more expensive.

52:16Yeah. I want as many kids as possible.

52:18Brian Preston:And again, in the vein of not doing everything at 100 miles an hour, my wife and I went to the exact same thing, exact same thought process, exact same idea, and we eased into it. So when we had a nanny when our child was young, it was two days a week. Not all five, two days, right? You know what I mean? And so it's something you can kind of stagger into and figure out what works. You don't have to wait until you have a full-time on-staff employee in the house. There are ways you can kind of ease into that. And I think there are going to be ways that we can budget for that and figure out how we have a bucket of money that you can feel comfortable serving that goal.

52:52Because money is nothing more than a tool that allows us to accomplish our goals.

52:56Brian Preston:And if one of the goals you want is for your child to be in your house with a caretaker, with a provider, there's nothing wrong with that. I was also, while we're talking about your son, 529 would probably do a lot of good. He's six months old right now. Yes. Man, think about the compounding. You know, I just, my oldest graduated college. Yeah. And all I did was when she was born, I front and loaded a little bit. But then I was, because Georgia forever was, you got a deduction for$2 ,000 a year. That's about all I did for pretty much until she was 18. Okay. Might've gone into 20, but it paid for everything but the final semester of her college.

53:31I mean, there was one semester that, because my mom had funded a 529 when the day my daughter was born. That covered one semester. and then mine covered the other three years. It was fabulous. And you don't have to do a ton because I don't want y 'all to throw the whole kitchen sink at the 529, but just a little goes a long way. I have a question on a 529. Is it, say they don't want it or they don't go to college, can they use it for something else? You can use it for trade school. You can use it K through 12 private school. You can use it to fund Roth IRAs. I mean, when they come out, I mean, they've actually made it better and better.

54:05So I think it's so universal. Now, look, you put your oxygen mask on yourself first before you take care of the kids. Because we have a lot of people, they're not even funding their Roth IRA, and we find out they're doing 529s for kids they don't even have yet. And we're like, look, you're screwing this up. But you guys are in a perfectly good situation. You could do that.

54:23Brian Preston:But also, 529s, any money that you put in always comes out penalty-free, tax-free. It's only if they don't use it for college that then you have to pull the money out and pay tax and penalty on it. But it's only the earnings, not the money you put in. So there's a little bit of a natural, so long as you don't get crazy with overfunding, you've got some protections in there. Another thing is if we should start switching over to traditional, because everything we have right now is Roth. So I didn't know what metric we should use to figure out like when to go to traditional versus Roth. Arizona's tax rate.

54:53What is that? What's in Arizona right now? 2.3. Yeah, 2.3. Okay.

54:58Brian Preston:So you guys are probably going to be, now, again, this year is a little unique because you're going to have$175 ,000 gross income. tons of deductions through your business, or is that pretty much if you make 175, you're going to show 175? No, there's deductions. Okay. So y 'all might be in like 22 % marginal federal bracket, another two to 3%. I think Roth probably still does make sense. You're right around under the 25%. Where we generally see pre-tax or traditional make a whole lot of sense is once you cross over the 30 % marginal tax bracket, when you add your marginal federal, and marginal state.

55:35Brian Preston:Because every dollar you put in pre-tax can save you 30 cents in taxes. It's like an imputed 30 % rate of return. And there's a good chance if you build your assets right, when you get to financial independence, you can manipulate the tax code to be in a lower than 30 % tax rate. And as you've already detailed, you're going to be doing both sides of the solo. So you're going to have some pre-tax money as well. So you'll have a nice mix. You'll actually have all three buckets. So do you guys suggest that I do both sides of the, like, should I still be funding both sides of it? Well, we're going to put together sort of a financial order of operations for you.

56:09Brian Preston:Okay. Only because your savings, like right now to do all the things you're doing is a super high savings rate. Yeah. We're likely, I don't know the planning we're going to do yet, but we may decide, Hey, here's what would have looked like you saved a little bit less, but I do want us to make sure we're thinking through these other things. Cause if you have all of your assets flowing to retirement and we're going to assume that the crypto is like not in play. Just put that on the shelf. Then we do want to make sure you have, if you're going to need like a house down payment or you're going to need to pay for the wedding, that can't come from retirement accounts.

56:40Brian Preston:So we may have to be a little bit inefficient in how we plan for those goals. So that'll be something we'll put together as we plan forward. Cool. Perfect. We're going to get to work. We'll start putting together a plan of what this could look like, some things to think Think about it. And hopefully some things that will help you have a little more peace around, hey, we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. I'd freak out. I'd call her at 11 p.m. and tell her to go buy more crypto. Things are going to be okay. And it's going to be super fun. Thank you, guys. Y 'all were blessed. Brian, what a fantastic conversation with Quentin and Victoria.

57:11Yeah, this one was interesting to me. First of all, I'd like to know who could bench press more. Oh, come on. I mean, both of you guys looked like y 'all knew your way around a gem. The other thing is I felt like when Quentin came into the room, There was a little bashfulness. I think he was really nervous. How were we going to handle him having so much of their net worth in crypto? Now, here's the reality. When you're 27 years of age and you have as much money as they have with a lot of that success coming from Bitcoin, we're going to smile. We're going to be so happy for your success because we're glad that you actually are so far ahead of the curve.

57:49but that does leave a lot of room for us to talk about what do they do now that they are so far ahead of the curve.

57:55Brian Preston:And I think what's so interesting about them as a couple is that you couldn't help but pull for them. You hear their backstory, you hear some of the adversity they've overcome. High school sweethearts. And they were high school sweethearts. It's just a couple that you love being able to pull for. And one of the things I want to show them is because of how well his crypto play turned out for him and because of how far ahead of the curve they are, in their late 20s, they have$700 ,000 in investable assets. Without saving another dollar, without adding another dollar to the portfolio, if they just let that$700 ,000 continue to grow, and we just said if that can grow based on their wealth multiplier at 9.3 % annualized over the lifetime, by the time that they get to age 55, it could be over$9.5 million.

58:41Brian Preston:By the time they get to 60, over$15 million. By the time they get on 65, they can be worth$24 million. Now they've done a lot of the, I don't want to say heavy lifting because he was at the right place, right time, right investment. It turned out really, really solid for him. But because of that, I think what it can do is it can remove some of the pressure I think that is on them that they're already on a great track or great trajectory, they don't have to focus on optimizing every single thing from this point out. Well, there should be one big disclaimer on all this because we are super excited for their success.

59:17It should really set them up for an easy path. But over half of this net worth is in crypto. And as we know, that's one of the things I even experienced when I was dabbling with it is the level of volatility on a day-to-day basis is not for the faint of heart. Nope. So this is not going to be a smooth ride. So that's just definitely something they should take into account with this plan.

59:40Brian Preston:Well, and look, it could turn out well. Crypto could go crazy and blow up, but it could also go the other direction. And so they as a couple need to have a very real conversation. Hey, we've kind of won the game, so to speak, at this point. How much risk do we want to continue to take? Do we want to potentially diversify? Do we want to take some of these chips off the table to protect us from that downside? Now, I don't know which direction they're going to go, but I think they ought to have an honest conversation so that they know realistically what opportunities are ahead of them, but as well as what risks are ahead of them.

1:00:10Another thing that was interesting about them is, and I loved how transparent they were, Quentin kind of shared with us, their cash is frothy. And a lot of that is the side result of them trying to time the market. Because we often say that even if you're right on getting out of the market at the right time, you might be left sitting in extra cash because you don't know when to get back into the market. So we want to try to figure out, they got some big goals as well as I think they're going to have more cash than what they even need in cash reserves. What can they do to get back on the right path?

1:00:42Brian Preston:Yeah. So right now they had$156 ,000 in cash just because he's been stocking it up so nervous to like put it to work at all time highs. So we think realistically, they can kind of think about that cash in three distinct buckets. You know, bucket number one is their emergency fund. We know that their living expenses are about$8 ,000 a month. So if they just want a six-month fully funded emergency fund, that'd be about$50 ,000 in emergency liquid cash. So there's 50 of it. We know they also want to have this wedding ceremony. It was something they said they got married at the courthouse. They never had the big party, the big celebration.

1:01:13Brian Preston:And that's something that they want to have in the next couple of years. So we said - It's going to be their five-year anniversary. So it's about three years in the future. So we said, if it's inside of five years, we want that to stay in liquid cash Again, so let's say we're going to chisel off$50 ,000 for this wedding ceremony, or not ceremony, but this wedding celebration, this marriage celebration. So that leaves$56 ,000 you got to figure out what to do with. And I know Quentin's going to be thinking, okay, well, I'm going to either go buy some crypto with it or I'm going to wait and time the market with it.

1:01:43Brian Preston:I think that he would benefit from just removing emotion from the equation. What I'd love for him to do is say, okay, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to just buy$5 ,000 a month over the next 11 months. and I'm going to have that just go into low cost index funds. I'm not going to overthink it. I'm not going to worry if the market's up, if the market's down just on the same day, every single month, I'm going to put that to work. And what that's going to allow him to do is remove the emotion from getting those dollars to work and not get so caught up and end up right back in the same place he's at today.

1:02:12I think it's cute that you think Quentin's only going to have the risk of putting this on the cash that needs to be invested. I'm worried he's going to be tempted to use some of the wedding money. No, you can't do it. I'm here to tell you, no, keep that in cash equivalence because that's a less than three-year goal. So we want to make sure that money is safe and it's definitely there so they get the celebration that they always hoped they could do two years ago when they got married.

1:02:37Brian Preston:So, all right, so we've triaged, okay, they've got this cash. They've got to figure out what to do with it. They already have a huge head start in terms of where they are presently financially. So what should their savings look like moving forward? How should they think about that? And we say that we really want your goal to be at this stage to think about tax efficiency and tax optimization. So we would love to see them do things like max out the Roth IRA, max out the HSA, do Roth IRAs for both of them. Because even though they're already at maybe the coast point or getting close to the coast point, it just seems crazy not to continue to still build those tax-free dollars, to still do things like get full advantage of her employer match.

1:03:24Brian Preston:I just think those are opportunities, even though they're not ahead of the curve, they should not walk away from it. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things, as we showed mathematically, they might not need to save more, but I think it's still good to flex the saving muscle or the investment muscle. And if you can do it in a tax efficient way with like, with you talked about her retirement plans. Also, he had the solo 401k. There's another opportunity that you could dabble in to make sure that that's maximized. I'm all right with them adjusting the savings rate, but I still think there's other areas like 529s, saving, you know, they've got really cool planning opportunities still ahead for them.

1:03:57Brian Preston:Well, and I think, I don't think they need to be caught up in over-saving. They need to appropriately save, but even if they were to back down their savings rate to something a little more palatable, a little more appropriate, even thinking about if they're doing the HSAs and doing the Ross and getting her employer match, even if they weren't doing the solo 401k, but one of the things they wanted to be able to do was have a nanny and pay for in-home help, that's going to free up like$4 ,000 a month, which is the number they said they need to do for the nanny. Now, we still don't know exactly what's going to happen with Quentin's income and how that's going to look, but if it keeps moving in a positive trajectory, I don't see any reason why they won't be able to spend money on the things that they're talking about wanting to spend money on without sacrificing being able to build for the future.

1:04:41Yeah, I mean, I think we've got the nanny kind of covered, But then one of the things that they shared what I was surprised about is Quentin is obviously a natural salesman because his income spiked up substantially. So they even made the statement that it seems like at the end of the month, there's just money left over. And I think that's a part that, because they did have a goal of they want to buy a house someday. Victoria especially seemed like that was important. I think that opportunity is going to come their way.

1:05:07Brian Preston:Yeah, I think they're going to be able to do the house or maybe early retirement. They're going to be able to fund the goals that they have, but they ought to be realistic about what those are. I think that because there's this anxiety around not wanting to go back to where they came from, not wanting to end up back at zero, that it's putting pressure on them to over-save and under-live. Where I would argue, if they save appropriately, they not only can prepare for a great, big, beautiful tomorrow, but they can also have a great, big, beautiful today as well. Yeah, the big thing that, and I think it came through, is if you're just chasing a number, you're going to find it's empty.

1:05:44So let's use this powerful tool of money that they've already got a huge head start on. And let's get the nanny in so they can have more time to focus on, you know, doing what they're good at, but also making sure the kids are loved on doing a 529. So there's going to be education opportunities, but then enjoying life. You don't have to keep saving at the rate that they've been doing. What a just fascinating couple. I'm rooting for them.

1:06:09Brian Preston:I am excited about what their future looks like. Quentin, Victoria, we had a blast and it's so good to see couples who met so young create so much levels of success that we want you to live your best life. Bo, for others who might have questions, just like Quentin and Victoria, how can they apply? Yeah, if you'd like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguide.com slash apply. Or if you want to check out any of our tools and resources, go to moneyguide.com slash resources. This was an absolute blast. Guys, thanks so much for tuning in. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team, out.

1:07:08may not be suitable for all investors and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss. The guests featured on Making a Millionaire are not clients of Abound Wealth Management at the time of recording. Their participation should not be considered a testimonial or endorsement of Abound Wealth Management.