The Most Underrated Investment Account in 2026

21:34We're balsam hills.

21:35Brian Preston:I really should have known. Are you real or fake? We're a real Christmas tree family. Wow. My kids, literally, we were driving around, they said, Daddy, will we ever get a real Christmas tree? And you said, absolutely not. The needles get everywhere and sap. It's really not that bad. They're nice and they're pleasant but not in my house. I used to like going to my next door neighbors and we'd burn all the trees. We'd try to get as many neighbors to give us their trees so we could burn them on his backyard. Is that not here? If you've never seen a Christmas tree. Is that here at this house? Yeah.

22:08You remember Crazy Mike. If you're from Chicago and you can just sit on your back porch when it's 20 degrees outside because that's the way people from Chicago are, but he used to love setting Christmas trees on fire because they are like kindling. It makes you realize these things are huge fire hazards at the end of the season. Really spectacular to burn in your backyard.

22:28Brian Preston:The other thing that I told him that's nuts to me is if you get a real tree, you've got to do the lights yourself. It's hard enough just getting the ornaments and all the bows on there, but having to wrap the lights. This is why Bo doesn't have a dog either. Do you see a window into Bo's brain. I'm lazy about a lot of stuff like that, but I grew up with a fake tree and still had to put the lights on. This is a normal thing to do. My fake tree growing up, the lights were, I think, were outside lights, so they were the type of lights that if you bumped into them, they'd burn you. Then we'd throw tinsel on top of it.

23:06I was like, I just made fun of the fire hazard of real trees. Fake trees can be a fire hazard too, based upon the way my parents did it when I was growing up.

23:13Brian Preston:You want to hear a crazy tightwad hack. I'm going to tell you anyways. The year was 2013. My wife and I had just gotten married. And Brian was like, hey, Bo, you got this house that you're in. I got this big, beautiful Christmas tree. But the lights are out on. Only like one or two strands works. Pre-lit. I'm going to throw it out, but do you want it? And 2013, Bo was like, hot dog, I'll take it. So I literally took that Christmas tree I pulled every single light off of it, went and bought my own. And I zip-tied and strung that whole thing that first year. Still the same Christmas tree we put up every year.

23:54Brian Preston:Still the same one we use right now. You're still using this in your new house? Press an original. Oh, my God. Isn't that wild? Isn't that wild? It's a wild turn. I was not expecting that. Isn't that wild? I was not expecting that. That is disgusting. At this point, I know what you've got going on. You could afford to get a new tree. You ought to. What are you doing? It's still great. Right now. I mean, if it works. By the way, that wasn't even a... Have you liked it? I don't even think that was a Balsam Hill. That was probably something I bought at Costco or Sam's Club. You know, those trees are disposable.

24:23They're like one year done, one and done, and then the warranty goes out. No, this tree, it is great.

24:27Brian Preston:It is. It's in pristine condition still. Oh, my God. We put up our stuff. I'm normally like an after Thanksgiving putter up our decorations, but this year we did it a lot earlier. Trees been up for like three or four weeks now. Not one ornament on it yet. By the way. Because that just hasn't happened. Real Christmas tree, we are three minutes into your question and all we do is your name. You know, that crossed my mind when I marked it to ask it. What can we help Real out with? Yes. The actual question says, should step four of the FU be increased if you change from a two to a one household income?

25:03Brian Preston:So I think this is a great question. Step four is that emergency reserve step. So how should they think about that? Should it be increased? The answer is it depends because it depends on some factors. Should it change when you go from a two to one income household? Almost certainly. It's unclear, though, if it's going to get larger or smaller, because if you go from two incomes to one income, what I don't know is, okay, well, how are your living expenses changing? And if you were at two incomes, were you a two income household where you only had a three-month living expense emergency reserve? or were you one that had six months?

25:41Brian Preston:So I think anytime you have a major life change, income change, job change, family change, kid change, location change, any of that kind of stuff, I think it's always worthwhile to revisit your emergency fund to make sure that it aligns where you are. When we try to give indicators of levers that could change the way your emergency reserves look, without a doubt, the number of incomes in your household has an impact because there's risk associated with it. If you have two incomes in your household and they're both pretty similar, that takes out some of the risks. That pushes you closer to a traditional three months of cash reserves.

26:18Obviously, if now just one income is driving the entire house, that's riskier because now if that one job gets laid off and you have a hard time replacing or finding a new job, you can quickly see why you want to expand your emergency reserves to six months instead of that three months that you got used to when you had two people working. So I think that in most cases, you've now increased the risk to your household. So that increased risk probably lends itself to where you're going to want to expand your emergency reserves.

26:49Brian Preston:Love it. Love that. Real Christmas tree, thank you for the debate and the question. It took longer for us to talk about Real Estate Christmas tree. I'm in a mood today, so y 'all have to keep me from the tangents. That's my bad. Because there's just so much just swimming around in my brain. I mean, I almost single-handedly derailed the content meeting this morning. You actively did derail it a few times. I knew we were in trouble when I hadn't even made our cups of coffee, and it was like 45 after and we were still in the content room. All right. Next question is from Devo6912. It says, there are target retirement date funds.

27:28Brian Preston:Are there funds for retirees like, quote-unquote, I plan to live to 2070 fund? You know what's funny? Which is a funny way of saying it. Devo, here's the thing. I know Vanguard toyed with this. I wonder if they did away with them because I haven't seen anything in years on this. But this was a number of years ago. They tried to go the other way with it. Whereas if you could, for retirees, exactly what Devo's asking, you could tell them how long you plan to live to. And it would actually help you with the distribution plan as well. But I have seen absolutely nothing on that in the last few years.

28:05So I'm starting to think that maybe it didn't get as much uptick or approval or acceptance from the general public that they walked away from it. I know it was Vanguard had them.

28:15Brian Preston:The way that a lot of target date retirement providers, whether it's Fidelity or Vanguard or Schwab or pick your custodian or pick your fund company, what they'll normally do is they'll have like a 20-25, 20-30, 40-45, 50-50, so on and so forth. But then they'll also have this one conservative allocation, usually called something like fidelity freedom income or target retirement income or something like that. And what I think happens in a lot of them is that they kind of consider that the terminal allocation. So, okay, I'm going to be in the 2030, and then once we pass 2030, I'm probably going to be in the income fund or whatever that case may be.

28:52Brian Preston:Here's why I think, and you hear us talk all the time about, we really like target retirement index funds early on in your accumulation journey, because it's a really good generalist strategy. It's going to give you some very generalized allocation so that you can move roughly towards a generalized horizon, right? But as your assets grow, and as you kind of reach that critical mass, as you reach that tipping point, as you reach that boiling point, as you reach that point, it might make sense for you to go from some sort of generalized solution to a more specific solution, specific to your unique needs and circumstances.

29:28Brian Preston:Well, when we get to retirement, I think that most of us, when we start in our careers, all of our accumulation journeys look pretty similar. We start with nothing, we need to save something, and we want to get that something working for us. So target retirements are a great solution. But when we get to retirement, man, our retirements can look vastly different depending on where we live, what our expenses are, what our debt looks like, what our Social Security is, what our other sources of income is, what our account structure looks like. So a generalized asset allocation for retirees may be a little harder to pin down than a generalized allocation for accumulators.

30:07Brian Preston:And I think that's probably why they haven't done that just yet. Well, I don't think they probably got a lot of acceptance. And I think that that's partially wise because this is why we talk about taking a relationship to the next level is we're all so unique that I think that that's probably where you probably need to go. Don't want some generalized thing that on the distribution plan, because you're going to be so unique. You're go to your tax planning, your Roth conversion strategy, your social security, your IRMA, all there's so many things that come into play. I will tell you, here's a hack on target retirement funds.

30:39I'll blow your mind when you do the research. I haven't done this in the last 18 months, but I imagine it's still the case. If you go look at all the big providers, if you think about Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, once you get about 20, 25 years in the future, there's no difference between their most aggressive ones. They just change the years. I remember when we were doing some research and I was like, wait a minute, so you mean that 2065 fund is the same as the 2045 fund?

31:05Brian Preston:Yeah, what changes the speed of that change? But they quit. There's no change between some of those. They just go to their most aggressive and they just change the years. So ticker symbols are different, but they're the same allocations on some of those higher ends. So that's why it does make sense to go research each of your custodians. They are slightly different. So don't just assume one is the best for you. If you're one of those people that hear us talk about index target retirement funds, you go, but I hate bonds. Go look at all the three and see which one lines up with you the most. Well, Devo6912, thank you for your question.

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32:44Brian Preston:Next question is from Liam C. It says, just graduated college, making$65 ,000 gross. Nice. And parents are letting me live rent-free for a year. Stacking. It says, does it make sense to save 25 % while building my emergency fund? I don't want to miss out on time in the market, and I should have the emergency fund done by the time I move out. So I think he's kind of doing steps at the same time. But is that okay since his living situation is different? His emergency fund ought to be built out probably by month two, I would think. Month one? I know, what are your expenses? There's not a lot of expenses here.

33:24I mean, the savings rate is going to go way beyond. If you're living at home, you're probably your savings, unless your parents are making you pay just like real cost of living rent. But it doesn't, that's not the. This says rent free. It's rent-free. You need to be stacking.

33:38Brian Preston:Yeah, I would do an assessment on what are your actual living expenses. You did not say your age here, but perhaps it's a car payment, car insurance, cell phone bill. Well, I'm not going to go there. You're probably still in the family cell phone bill. Right. There's a funny – well, it's not. I'm not going to go there. About to get yourself in trouble. No, no, no. No, no, no. There's just a funny NFL football player whose mom just made him get on his own cell phone bill, and he was very upset about his mom making him get off. So I would add up what the realistic living expenses you have are right now, and I would imagine at a$65 ,000 a year income with no rent and relatively small footprint, I bet you could fully fund that very, very quickly.

34:24Brian Preston:So I would knock that out in the first month, two, three months, so that then you really can start building 25%. You can blow through getting your employer match and maxing out your HSA and maxing out your Roth IRA and even getting potentially into your 401K or your employer-sponsored plan. I don't think funding that emergency fund should take a lot of time at all. I want the why to make sense on this. It's a choice to live at home. Eventually, you're going to want to be out on your own. but use this as an opportunity to give you a leg up. I mean, I watch on my TikTok feed, there's somebody who's set up a trailer in his driveway for his kids to live on because it's a way for them to essentially stack, and I was like, people are getting creative, but make sure it's actually creating fruit.

35:11What I don't want you to do is live at home, and then you hear us say save 25%, and that's what you did, and then you just go blow the rest on something else. So make sure the why intersects so that you're actually getting something out of this unique opportunity. Because when you're young, this could be a turbocharger. A funny thing for me, I have pleasant memories when I graduated college. I was moving in with a few of my college roommates in Atlanta, but they were still building the building. It was a very old apartment complex. My dad had lived in the exact same apartment complex. Are you serious?

35:50on Peachtree in the city of Atlanta, and they were building three townhomes just in this old apartment complex, but they put these brand-new three, and we coincidentally drove by as they first put the sign, and so we got the bead on these brand-new townhomes that we were going to rent, but it was three months in the future, so I had to live at home for three months and commute like an hour to get from my parents' house. I used the savings. I'll never forget to buy this burgundy, like Birkenlounger, you know, I was so happy that I paid cash for it. We all bought, I remember Rob bought the leather couch that he bought secondhand, which is kind of weird in some ways.

36:28And then it was just fun. You think about what's the why on why you save up this money, the sacrifice so you can pay cash and tax, you know, so you can let this money grow for you. Let's actually bear some fruit.

36:42Brian Preston:Good stuff. Good memories, though. Good story. Liam C., thank you for asking the question, and good for you for maximizing this year without any rent. Who would have thought that? Peachtree Park Apartments. Who would have thought the guy that started in Peachtree Park Apartments buying a burgundy Berka lounger is now the Cybertruck guy, right? Who would have thought? Cybertruck. Who would have thought? So here's the thing. What's funny, y 'all have no idea. That video, if y 'all knew how that video went down, it cracked, and I give the content to you. For those who don't know, what video are you talking about, Brian?

37:17So there is a video that got put dropped last week that, did I buy a Cybertruck? Yeah, it's a short.

37:22Brian Preston:So Instagram, YouTube short. It was only one minute. And it had to be short because you knew how the recording went down. I'll go ahead and spill the tea on this. Is that I was unfortunately involved in a car accident. It was not my fault. I was minding my own business at an intersection. And the person behind me, I don't know if they're distracted or what, but they got confused. And when the left turn signal turned green and we were sitting in the center lane, which was still a red light, they gunned it and piled in the back of my car when the left turn signal. I think they were distracted and got confused when the cars to the left of them started moving.

37:59But anyway,$11 ,000 of damage later. So she gave it a go. I mean, it was something. But anyway, I needed a rental car while they were repairing my car. and Tesla had the opportunity that I could rent a Cybertruck for$60 a day. I was like, you know what? I'm curious. So for the month long that it took to repair my Tesla, I drove a Cybertruck. And the content team was like, you must let us make a video. And this dragged on for weeks. We didn't make a video. And then finally I came in, and I think it was a Tuesday. It was like it might have been last Tuesday because these guys turned it around so fast.

38:40And I was like, by the way, I've gotten notice from Tesla that my car is ready to pick up. So I think I'm taking the Cybertruck back tomorrow. They're like, well, we must record a video. And I'm like, when are we going to record a video? I was like, today's a recording day. We are slammed. They're like, we'll follow you out to the parking deck. So I kid you not, we really did film that video in 10 to 12 minutes. And I felt so guilty the next morning I came in. I said, guys, I felt like I rushed you. I know how excited y 'all were about doing this. I rushed you if you need to use some b-roll I'll come back and we can do voice over work so we can actually expand that and they're like it's done they already had the clip done from that 10 to 12 minutes it was fascinating it was fun you were very like

39:22Brian Preston:cheeky about it because you don't reveal till the end whether you rented or bought it it was great I give Josh and Ken mad props the whole drive off at the end was all their idea too I'm not that creative with it I mean all I did was walk around and gave opinions and they're like you know what to answer that question we ought to just drive off and i was like okay we'll do it so we did it it turned out really good and um i appreciate so if you're curious and by the way i do feel better for driving this thing i mean it was it was a fascinating experiment to drive this thing for a month um it was funny is that my kids both were highly embarrassed i think my wife was too um everywhere i drove but my daughter like anytime i dropped her off she was embarrassed but i did have a little boy come up to me in the car rider line knock on the window and he was like love your cyber truck and so that was that was kind of a unique experience but it is the thing and i said this got cut you know so they didn't take all 10 minutes they only gave me one minute of my 10 minutes i did say the fact that that cyber truck is such a brutal design um it reminds me of the 70s architecture you know where it just it's so in your face that um people love it or hate it, it works if you were the only one in town with that car, but when you live in a county or town like we do, and there's three of them in your pickup line at school, it kind of loses some of that specialness.

40:44Brian Preston:Some of that luster. Go check out the video, though. It was quite fun to look at. I was shocked at some of the comments, too. Some of the people... Well, some people instantly judged you for buying it, and then you didn't even... You didn't even buy it. Spoiler, didn't buy it. Yeah, I mean, I was like, that's why I'm rewarding the live stream to give the context. Yeah, I was in a car accident, so I figured I'd turn a negative into a positive because it created a fun little thing to go try this vehicle out. And by the way, the four-wheel steering really is cool. But a lot of people in the comments will let me know probably a lot of parts it could break.

41:20And that made me think of my dad because my dad, we never had power windows in most cars. It was always manual transmission because it was easier for him to work on. and it was easier. So when I always say, it's just more crap to break is what my dad would say. So I mean, when I saw that comment, I was like, yeah, you're right.

41:36Brian Preston:Not wrong. Well, yeah, it's good stuff. So if you want to go see that short, if you haven't yet, it's on all of our socials, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, I believe too. Yes. Yes. So go find us at Money Guy Show. Oh no, they loaded it up. I mean, I saw that thing dropped and it was everywhere. For sure. And I had a lot of people, you know, who I know in my personal life who came up and said, I saw your Cybertruck video. I thought that was pretty funny. That is funny. All right. Let's get another question going from Giggle and Goals Galore. Go ahead and make any comments, and then we'll get to the question.

42:10Great.

42:11Brian Preston:No comments. Triple G. Triple G. We, the question says, we, we're 47 and 43, have a gross income of$170 ,000 net worth. Nice. Of$170 ,000 and a net worth of$2 million. Let's go. We have retirement with work. Even though the resource shows us as a prodigious accumulator of wealth, so they must be using our calculator at moneyguy.com, things always feel tight. What are we doing wrong? Well, it sounds like they're not taking their foot off the accelerator. It sounds like you're doing for scarcity. You didn't mention what your savings rate is, but to have a net worth of$2 million by 47 and 43. Most folks hit millionaire status around 47, 49, kind of in that range.

43:00Brian Preston:You guys have hit multimillionaire status even before that age. And so obviously you must be doing something right. You've probably been saving. You've probably been exercising for scarcity. You've probably been really stretching that discipline muscle. And so one of the questions that you can ask yourself, just like you said, Brian, is can you take the foot off the gas now? Can you maybe ease off a little bit? What's the why for your money? I mean, once again, this is another reason why if you go to learn.moneyguy.com, what's your number? We want to help you figure out are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you're supposed to be.

43:37So that way you actually have the understanding to know, I don't have to put the kids in the closet when we go on vacation to sleep in. Or maybe we want to do adjoining rooms instead of piling us all on two queen beds. I mean, these are the things that when you say it always feels so tight, I mean, a lot of those things are blossoming memories when you're in the early stages of setting up budgets and still trying to bedazzle your basic life. But if you're a multimillionaire and you're still doing some of these things to the point that you're now starting to get complaints from the family, I mean, this was something I even had to internalize.

44:12Because, I mean, I'm such a knucklehead that, I mean, my oldest daughter, I want to incentivize her to go on as many vacations with us as possible. But when she was like, Dad, I'd really like to just have my own bed. I get it. I mean, I was like, you know what? I'm screwing this up. I ought to probably start making sure that she always has a bed so that I can keep her coming on these vacations. Because if you don't, I'll just go ahead and tell you the cautionary tale. If you're too stingy or too tight with the money, you might lose out on some of the key people who bring you the happiness and the joy.

44:49Because who wants to go hang out with this tightwad who's so cheap with everything? So just understand it's back to what's your why. You can graduate. That's why we quit doing Tightwad Nation. is. Bo and I were so tight in our younger years, but as we started having success and we started realizing what it took to make even better memories with our family, we used the tool of money the way it's supposed to be used, but without the sacrificing of the saving and building a foundation in those early years.

45:18Brian Preston:Yeah, I think that's exactly it. Recognizing that money is nothing more than a tool that allows us to achieve our goals. Accumulating more money and just having money for the sake of money isn't the goal. It's just, it's toolkit. It's the mechanism by which we are. So if I were you and your spouse, I'd sit and I'd say, okay, well, hey, what are we building towards? Here we are at 2 million. Where are we trying to go? Are the steps that we're taking right now to get from where we are today to where we want to be, are they going to get us there? Are they going to get us there sooner? Are they going to overshoot?

45:50Brian Preston:Are we behind the curve? Are we ahead of the curve? Are we on the curve? And then you can kind of reassess. And then you can give yourself a little bit of like, sigh of relief like holy cow okay we did all the hard work now maybe we can start enjoying the fruits of this labor good stuff well giggle and goals galore thank you for your question and we hope that helps you think through um where you are in your financial journey

46:19you have something you want to share i just i read the comment people people are like

46:24Brian Preston:Bo hadn't left Tightwad Nation yet. Go get a new tree. Buy a new Christmas tree. Get you a new tree. But Bo is so funny, and I'm sure if we ever did like a Money Guy After Hours or Peach Pit After Dark or whatever you want to call it, where we brought the wives on. Oh, buddy. They could probably share. It would be an hour of getting roasted is what it would be. It would be funny because I think my wife would share, I'm cheap about certain things but not cheap about other things, and I bet you're the exact same way. Honestly, just hanging out with you at work, you're like that. You guys surprise me sometimes.

46:59Brian Preston:You're like, that costs that much? And I was like, you spend this much on this other thing. Like, what? Okay. All I can say is if you come here and like the studio tour doesn't consist of us showing you the snack closets, but the snack closets are legit. Sometimes Bo and I look at him, he goes, why do we need? Now, I know they can hear me through that wall, so I'm going to get blasted. I was like, why do we? I was like, how many peanut butter M &Ms can we have? Because I don't think anybody's eating peanut butter M &Ms, but we have them for days. We get to end of times, I got your peanut butter M &Ms.

47:32We're covered. We are your hookup. We don't have ammo. We don't have water, but we got peanut butter M &Ms for you. That's hilarious. Oh, that's good.

47:42Brian Preston:All right, good stuff. Let's go on to Jessica's question. Why would I buy a new tree? It works fine. There's no utility. Because I probably bought that tree for$170. I actually am with Bo on this one. 15, 20 years ago. It's a beautiful tree. Here's the – it's great that you can spend more once you get to certain milestones, but, like, you can't spend on everything all the time. Right, right. So maybe you're just doing other things with your money. It's just a tool, right? That's it. If your wife sees this video, you're going to be – she's going to immediately be – I'm going to give her a coupon code.

48:14Brian Preston:I was going to say, no one texts my wife to tell her about this. We're just going to keep this. She has great taste, though. She would pick out a beautiful tree. Oh, she would. What's more funny is probably your neighbors now walk in, because I know them. It's more likely your wife will not hear this, but I've met your friends and neighbors, and they do listen to our content. They're going to so judge you guys hard when they walk in. So that's Brian's secondhand tree. That's exactly right. That's hilarious. All right. Want to go to Jessica's question? Yes, ma 'am. We had a couple versions of this.

48:42Brian Preston:Since we were talking about HSAs earlier, it says, what happens to these HSAs if there is a balance and you pass away? So some questions about inheritance or like what happens to these accounts? Is there anything special? What do you think? This is a great question. And this, Jessica, is a truly a financial mutant question. Because, Brian, you and I asked the same question one day. We were like, man, okay, we're doing this strategy. What if you do this for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years? But what happens? We actually, now look, maybe you can use our brand new updated search feature, but one of those early shows, we actually went and pulled the tax code on these questions.

49:20And it definitively said, you know, look, your executor, your estate can still pay these benefits out. But this is why you have to be very clear that if you are using this strategy, don't keep it a secret. Because whoever's in charge of, you know, processing your assets would need to know where that spreadsheet is. know what you were trying to accomplish here. So it could actually extend, but now your executor or executrix would need to be very aware of this and go get the reimbursements and pass it on to the beneficiary and heirs of your estate.

49:55Brian Preston:So it's super silly, but if you are someone who keeps a hard copy of your estate documents or a hard copy of your net worth statement, you keep it in a safe in your home or there's some sort of digital place that you keep that, you may want to keep that expense tracker for your HSA with those same documents and update it annually. So every year when you put your net worth statement in there, when you save your net worth statement, or when you update your state documents, make sure that you have that expense tracker in there as well so that your executor knows about it. You might be a financial mutant if.

50:27Well, Jessica, thank you so much for that question.

50:31Brian Preston:It was a great follow-up to our HSA conversation. All right. Next question is from Tricky Puffin. It says, hi, Money Guy team. For the 25 % rule for home affordability, what are all the costs we should include in this number and why? Is it based on gross? Should we include gas and electric, insurance, et cetera? Why not gross minus needs? So maybe let's just level set the 25 % rule is you shouldn't be spending more than 25 % of your gross income on housing, whether that's your mortgage or your rent. But what else is included? Can you expound on that a bit? Well, let's first talk about the why here, right?

51:12Brian Preston:Why do we have the 25 % rule? It's for guardrails. People ask us all the time, hey, housing for most folks is the single most expensive thing that you will ever spend money on. It's the largest asset that most people will ever buy. And so they said, okay, hey, give us some guardrails so we can make sure that when we make this huge decision, we don't make it poorly and we stay inside the lines. And so that's why I say, hey, the total cost of your housing, the principal, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, the total cost of your housing should not exceed 25%. But if you're a financial mutant and you want to make sure that you stay on the conservative rung of that calculation, there's nothing wrong with including other housing costs in that.

51:56Brian Preston:If you want to include your utilities, if you want to include maintenance, if you want to include those costs in there, we're not going to fight you on that. That's just keeping your actual percentage for housing costs lower than the 25%. What we want to tell is if you're a young person just starting out, you're like, man, things are tight, things are uncomfortable, and I'm early on, but I need a home and I need a place for my family. I need a place to establish roots. Where are the boundaries? What's the thing that if I go beyond this, it's going to get me into a bad spot? That's why we came up with the 25 % and we made it the total housing cost as opposed to adding in all the other stuff.

52:35Brian Preston:But if you want to add in all the other stuff, Tricky, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just going to put you in a more conservative position, which is fine. If you want to know the bare bones, though, it's PITI. It's P-I-T-I. It's principal interest taxes and insurance. I know some of you live in high cost of living areas, so the last thing I need to do is add more stress to you about that. So if you're trying to figure out where the bear line is for that boundary, it is the principal interest taxes and insurance. I did think on the question, though, the question answered itself. And I wish it was.

53:06Can you pull it up two more seconds? Because the question was, why not gross minus needs? Why do we use gross? By the fact that you said, why not gross minus needs? Do you realize how many people say, why not net? Do you see how quickly we run into a problem where everybody wants to use a different metric? Whereas, why should your health insurance choice change this? Why should your, whether you're participating in your retirement, change it? Because that's where a net comes in. You're trying to use needs. You know what doesn't change through all these things? You're gross. You're gross. That's the why on why we use gross on all these indicators is because it's harder to manipulate.

53:47So many of you guys will have different net numbers. Some of you have different needs numbers, but I can tell you, if you tell me what your gross is, we can come up with some rules of thumbs and some ideas for you to, it's pretty universal across the board.

54:01Brian Preston:Yeah, that's great. Tricky Puffin, great question. Thank you for being here and for asking it. Let's move on to Asher's question. It says, my newborn was born on Friday. So first of all, congratulations. Newborn, money got you. And they are first time parents, he says. So that's amazing. That's awesome. You're probably right now. I was like, where's the instruction manual? Where's the foo for kids? Where is it, Brian? Well, I mean, but you know what I mean. What I mean by that, just so I don't get myself in trouble. I just remember when they pull, they say, hey, go pull the car around because we're going to discharge you guys with that newborn.

54:38And I remember, you know, I barely knew how to put that car seat in the back seat. I think with the first kid, I definitely went to the fire station so they could check it because that was some service that they offered in Georgia. Maybe they offer it everywhere. So they put the kid in that car seat, and then you're riding home, and you look over at your spouse, and you're like, what have we done? Because you're like, did they really just give us this kid? And I don't know. I've read a few books, but I don't really know what I'm doing. That's the way everybody feels, Asher. So if you had this child on Friday and she had a brand-new newborn, it's going to be okay.

55:12Just the fact that you're tuning in and you're curious, you're going to be a great parent.

55:18Brian Preston:Oh, so sweet. All right, well, that was just the beginning. The question says, what are your thoughts on contribution amounts to 529 plans? I'd like to be aggressive on contributions, but we're in the messy middle. So what advice would you have? What guardrails would you have when it comes to investing for this new baby? Well, every new parent, every parent thinks this, man, I want to make sure that I'm saving for my kids. I want to make sure that I'm providing opportunities. I know that likely if they're going to go for some higher education, college is going to be expensive. And I'd like to be a mechanism to be able to help them pay for that.

55:55Brian Preston:So the earlier I start saving, the easier that path will be. And that's an incredibly noble cause. There's nothing wrong with that. But the question you have to answer for yourself, Asher, is am I doing it in the right order? It's the very reason we came up with – Brian, will you hold the thing up for me? It's the very reason why we came up with the Financial Order of Operations. It's a step-by-step process to tell you what you should do with your next dollar and when you should do those things. Because right now, if you are in the messy middle and you feel like you have a thousand different things pulling you in a thousand different directions, and both money is tight as well as time is tight, putting money in the 529 may not be the best solution for you right now.

56:38Brian Preston:Now, the best solution may be beefing up your emergency fund or maxing out your Roth IRA or putting money in your HSA or getting to a 25 % savings rate. That might be a better use because while we want to love on and take care of our kids, we often have this temptation to do that at the expense of making sure we take care of ourselves. And I think far too many parents fall into that trap, and that's getting things out of order, out of whack. Well, I wrote down some quick notes here. I said, where in foo? So that echoes what Bo just said. I thought that I was immediately also go figure out what the state tax benefits are in your community, because some states like in Georgia forever, it was$2 ,000.

57:19They've moved it up to$5 ,000. $8 ,000. $8 ,000 now. So it's been expanded. So go figure out what your state benefits are. And then, by the way, once you know this, and if you maybe are not in the foo step for yourself where you can fund it, there's nothing wrong with you going and telling your parents or other loved ones that, hey, instead of giving us these expensive Christmas gifts, how about you go set up a 529 and make your grandchild the beneficiary? You could even qualify for some state tax benefits. I just figured this out. Ask your advisor or maybe you ought to consider doing this. And then here's something just to give you peace of mind.

57:53Because as Bo shared, a lot of us want, everybody wants to help these little kids, these bundles of joys that even if you're not a kid person, as soon as you have your own, and you're like, oh my gosh, where did all this love come from? I've never thought I liked babies until I had my own baby. And so it's an amazing thing that happens, but I want you to take a little pressure off yourself. I have a daughter who's in her senior year of college. We just paid her last semester. And for her 529, the state benefit for most years that I was in the state of Georgia was$2 ,000. So that's pretty much what I did in that 529 to maximize that benefit.

58:29and I'm happy to report that a little goes a long way. I was shocked at how well that account, because realize these accounts grow for 20 years, and so 20 years of compounding growth is pretty magical. If you want to go play around with our wealth multiplier or go play around with some of our portals on MoneyGuy.com on what compound interest even for college can do for you, you're going to be amazed to see that a little goes a long way, so it takes the pressure off of you in that messy middle because you are short on time. You're short on money, and I want you to take a deep breath. It's going to be okay.

59:02Go use some of those tools at moneyguy.com, and I think you'll see, hey, we got you covered, and you're going to be A-OK, even with a little bit of money.

59:11Brian Preston:Yeah, that's good stuff. Well, congratulations, Asher. Enjoy this newborn phase. It'll go pretty quickly, actually. So just enjoy it, and hopefully Bo and Brian gave you some good food for thought as you make some plans for this little one. Did she say food for thought? I said food for thought, but I should have said food for thought. Missed opportunity. Some more food for thought. We do have a new child checklist for free up at moneyguy.com slash resources. It lets you just kind of check the boxes on your cash flow, your insurance, your taxes, your long-term planning. So if you are looking to – What was the cost on that?

59:45Brian Preston:It's a free resource, Brian. I love it. Free. It's a free resource. It is. So just go to moneyguy.com slash resources if you want to check that out and just make sure your bases are covered and just think through what you need to think through before your baby comes into the world or after. And also on moneyguy.com, thanks for letting me show off our new search features. So be sure to check out all of the great content that we have, more findable than ever before at moneyguy.com. And thanks for being with us. We'll be back every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central. I got one more distraction. Excellent.

1:00:18I wanted to get this out there earlier, because now we probably have six people listening to this, but it'll be worth it. Millionaire Mission came out May of last year, and we'll have more details on some things coming up in 2026 about Millionaire Mission. People ask me all the time, is the book still doing good? I'm like, yeah, people are still buying it, and it's better than that. I still go on Amazon and read the reviews, and there was a brand-new review that was dropped on December 6, and it touched me. I mean, I got the tingles from it, so much so that in the content meeting, I read the entire and it's a pretty long review so long that Bo said Brian don't read that on the show but I would encourage you because here's what that person doesn't know when she wrote that review to me is that she embodied exactly what I was trying to do when I wrote Millionaire Mission is that I remember being a 22 year old who had this great education I got an accounting degree didn't even really know what that could do for me yet but I had nobody in my life that really knew how money worked.

1:01:20And I had to go figure it all out piece by piece. And I was sitting there thinking, man, wouldn't it be nice if somebody gave me what to do with my next dollar so I didn't waste all these mental horsepower and calories and time, which is your most valuable thing. And she gave me credit for I'm changing her life. I'm changing her generational wealth and her family. And that's just not something that's guaranteed. And it just, it touched me to my heart because that was the heart of what went into writing this book was, man, I know I have an audience out there that's watching and listening to the show, but I hope that this book will get in the hands of people who've never listened to our podcast, watched our YouTube channel, but this book would be enough to paint by the numbers to where you don't have to have that struggle that I had of what to do with your next dollar.

1:02:10So I just want to thank her personally for that review. I did read it, and it means a lot to me. So I don't know if she'll see this, but it still nonetheless will show just the value and the power of what we're doing here with the Money Guy show.

1:02:25Brian Preston:Love that. I probably need to close the show now. Don't know. Your show. You can do what you want. Yeah, you can do. That was lovely. Go for it. I get caught up. Like I said, it gave me the tingles. But it really does. It gives me the why of what we're actually doing here. This thing started with the purest of intent is that I always wanted to be a school teacher. I had the heart of an educator and really didn't realize this was the greatest marketing idea ever. That's why I love that the why was there first before all the dividends and the fruit came from it. You guys can see what drives this engine.

1:02:59That's why I just please take advantage of the free stuff. I kept drawing attention there. If you go to moneyguy.com slash resources, the website's free now yes we do have some paid tools and courses but that's stuff that's just used to accelerate your journey because what we really want to do is let you love on you so much use so much of this free content that you one day realize that holy cow I guess this is that complexity of success that Brian and Bo are always talking about and you'll consider taking the relationship to the next level I'm your host Brian, Bo Reby and the rest of the Money Guy team Money Guy out.

1:03:36Brian Preston:The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Presson and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with securities laws and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through The Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may 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.

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