They Were Burned by a Bad Financial Advisor | Making a Millionaire

20:51If you look at our regular budget, what we bring home versus what we actually have, there's a couple of thousand extra dollars.

21:00Brian Preston:Okay, wonderful. And that would probably could all go to some sort of savings. There's a few things that we do want to save for. Our youngest child will need a car. We do help with an inexpensive car. The boys already have one. Our daughter does not. And so somewhere in that$5 ,000-ish range, we help them with a car. No one deserves a luxury car when they're a teenager. Just to get them a leg up. I noticed y 'all had some sinking funds, though. So very large sinking funds. So is that already accounted for? Okay. In the sinking funds, a lot of that is actual college money. Because when we had that experience with him, when we pulled out some money, it was such a short timeframe for our oldest to go to college.

21:44And again, we were like, we're not trusting anybody. A big chunk of that is to pay cash for college. The other side of that, we call that our flex account from that side. So as you need to pay six months or a year worth of insurance, in essence, we pay monthly into that flex account. so then we can pay some of these larger bills. So that's what my question, when I saw the budget that's up on the screen right now, I mean, there was, I didn't see college on here. So I was immediately, that was a big question. I was like, if they got three kids in college, there's got to be money coming out. I was like, maybe because your biggest category outside of your house is miscellaneous.

22:19And that always, that's always a scary thing for me when I see, because that's a catch-all is what that is. It means you don't necessarily know where it's all going. And normally if you're saving, and investing the 25%, you know, that's a-okay. I don't care how big your miscellaneous is, but y 'all got some big things you're trying to figure out is because we're trying to land the airplane when Max makes it to 60. And then, so we've got to, and we got three kids in college. We've got to hone in. We're no longer playing horseshoes, you know, where we're just hoping to get a few points because we got it close.

22:52You actually need to know specifically different, you have phases. While the kids are in college, what does that burn rate look like? Kids out of college, out of house, but Max is still working, what does that burn rate look like? And then, hey, what do we need to just sustain us in retirement and a happy retirement? That's Facebook. So I see three different levels in this journey that we've got to kind of hone in and know exactly what's going on for you guys. If that's not the messy middle, I don't know. I know. That's why it's so much easier to say that than to actually do it. And that's the hard part.

23:29And that's why it really breaks my heart that y 'all got burned by somebody. Because this is what turns into a lot of people say, well, just give me a plan. And I'm like, well, I'll give you a plan. But your plan is going to be completely different next year. It's going to be completely different the year after that. Because your financial life is in such a state of flux right now. Because every year the expenses are different with the kids' college. Every year it's different with what's going on with your benefits at work. We have to be there to navigate that throughout the entire journey. And that's why we try to do that for our clients as best we could.

24:04That's why I love that we get to do Making a Millionaire because it really lets you kind of open the curtain, see what's going on. That's why I want to make sure we don't let too much time go by. If anybody out there is watching this and has red flags that the person you're working with is not doing it right, I really do want to encourage you to go to moneyguy.com slash resources. is we have a resource that's free to download, eight questions to ask your financial advisor. And I think if you will take these eight questions, and it should expose a bad actor if they're not doing the right thing.

24:33And we've been doing content together. I mean, gosh, it's 20 years now. And I remember when Bernie Madoff came on the scene, and I did some after-action reports on going and pulling his ADVs and showing people all that. There's usually some big telltale red flags when somebody's not acting in your best interest. And that's why if we can give you the tools or the questions that will uncover that, I want anybody who's watching this to save them the heartache that you guys have had to live through. It's just not good. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think credentials are important. We didn't – he said it.

25:11We didn't know how to research it. And so the credentials were falsified or they were rescinded from people that he had gotten in trouble before. The other thing that was big was he was not properly insured. And I don't know if that's one of your questions, but he was only insured for$250 ,000 total. Not per incident, not per year. And so people were just kind of left stranded because we thought at first, oh, we'll take some. They'll take some because it's per incident, but that was not the case. He was not properly insured. It is interesting because it's funny, as we go to conferences, and this has been years since this was talked about, there was a financial advisor who had gotten sued.

25:48Now, I think this person was acting in the best interest, but they just, you know, litigation happens even for people trying to do the best thing. But they were self-insured. They didn't have any insurance. And the attorneys all dropped off the case, meaning the plaintiffs dropped the case as soon as they found out they had no insurance. I hate that. By the way, not that I want to get sued, but we have lots of insurance. We operate on the other side of that spectrum. But it's an interesting dynamic that the world we live in is that – because you said that statement is that they only had 250. It seems like it's weird that the system rewards you for not doing the right thing.

26:23And that just – in my brain, that clicks. It's like that doesn't seem like that's the right way that the world should work. But somehow that's the path we're on when it gets to litigation and holding accountability. That was our experience actually. We were talking to the FINRA attorney and we said what was going on to try to get some reconciliation with that. And they said, because you pulled your money out first, you're no longer going to be a candidate for you to be included. And so we happened to be on vacation. I know exactly where we were. And we were just so wrong. It's so devastating because we thought we were doing what's right.

27:00We also pulled out when we felt the red flags. And in the end, thankfully, I mean, he did lose his license. And so he can't do this to other people. But a lot of people lost a lot of money. And some in the sense of 70 % of their portfolio. Goodness. That's awful. Yeah.

27:17Brian Preston:As we think about planning forward, I want to, because you said, if we look at your sinking funds, we notice that there's a big chunk in there, about$88 ,000. Does that cover what you guys are planning on paying for college? or does saving for additional college also need to factor into our plan? Like is college taken care of or does that need to come in as well? That is a majority college. I would say we're probably$8 ,000 to$10 ,000 short, but it's in a high-yield savings account. And over the next four years, the interest we earn on that should cover the shortfall that we have. There's a few other things in that sinking fund.

27:52Like the new house we purchased is there's no yard, so we have some grass and some landscape stuff we have to do. And he is a car guy. And so we have a car repair budget in there for a car that he wants to work on. And so there's a few little projects. Like a car guy like you, you, uh, what you work on yourself? You restore cars? Like working on cars. Let's go. What are you working on? What's the right now? I have a 99 lightning. Let's go. It's a family heirloom, but next is Fox body. But that was one of the jokes I was going to tell her. It was, uh, when you say, what is our goals? I said, how do I retire?

28:24And I was going to lay this whole. So you're a Ford guy? I am a Ford guy. Okay. I can pick up on that. And then I would want to say, plus get all the toys I want. Plus get all the, I want to retire and get to do my hobby.

28:35Brian Preston:I love it. And I know that math doesn't matter. Well, maybe. We'll see. That's what's fun about putting together a plan. What we'll do is say, okay, you've laid out some goals for us. Hey, we know that our burn rate is somewhere between$6 ,000 to$8 ,000 a month. We know that around age 60 is our timeline. If we can save and if we can do the 401k and we can do the HSA and we can do the Roths And we know that right now we're at 730 and we're gonna do this for the next 12 or 13 years. Where does that put us? And what kind of life does that put us at? That's the fun thing to begin to uncover. Because we may determine that you're able to fund the six to 8 ,000 and there might be even extra for a hobby or for travel, for the things that you guys wanna do.

29:15Brian Preston:That's the fun part about getting to put a plan together. And I love that you guys are starting to think about it seriously at this stage. It's not like you are two years away from retirement saying, okay, I guess we better have a plan. You guys have over a decade to work on this, which I think is going to be awesome and gets me super excited about the planning. Yeah, you make me smile because you sound just like her. Like finding joy in planning. Oh man, it's awesome. It seems very interesting to me. Brian, I love being a business owner, but I think people underestimate how fast things move from I've got an idea to, all right, now we actually have to build this thing.

29:51That's right. The idea is the fun part, but then you've got logistics, operations, marketing, all the stuff that actually makes the business run and work.

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31:14Brian Preston:Go to shopify.com slash money guy. That's shopify.com slash money guy. What questions do you have for us? And what are some things that we can speak to or that we ought to know about as we begin to put together a plan for you guys? So I know we've got to diversify better. And it has worked for us and it's been working well. Like as I've tracked how the VTSAX and VU and all that have been, we've been doing really well since we left them. But I know as we age, it's supposed to be more diversified, that we need to figure out how to make it a little bit safer for us. And so that is a gap we definitely have.

31:53So I don't know how to appropriately fund our account if we start pulling out of that. And for me, she tells me that you're the tax guy. And that's the thing about me that we just haven't mastered. I think that we've got some tax opportunities on whether or not we're needed to take distributions or whether or not we should. like just our tax approach from that side. I'm not necessarily sure that we've got that pinned down. Two things that y 'all just talked about on the taxes. I'll hit that first is that so far, it looks like everything's been loading up into the traditional side. So you're taking the deduction right now with the understanding that down the road, when you pull this money out, you get to pay an ordinary income tax rates.

32:33So y 'all are very heavy in what we call tax deferred assets, which are great from, because even if you look at the financial order of operations, This thing is very tax-focused because if you look at step five, these are the tax-free growth opportunities. A little nervousness on why you weren't funding the Roth completely. We're going to get that back on track. But then the next step is just maxing out those retirement benefits, not only to get the free employer match, but also just so you get the tax savings. Y 'all are kind of doing those things, but it is interesting. And this is why when we design the financial order of operations, we talk about this step seven, the hyperaccumulation.

33:06This is when I talk about the three buckets of getting access, because as you start thinking about how we're actually going to use this money, we're going to need to be able to navigate what is the tax rates and how's the impact. Because, yes, you have$700 ,000 of investment. But when I look at that and I see close to$600 ,000 of that is all tax deferred, there's going to be a headwind from the taxes. It's going to be expensive every dollar you pull out of that. So we better make sure your tax rates are low that year or have access to some other asset somewhere else so we can get you through the bridge period of how we're going to use this money.

33:45So that will definitely be something we help analyze. The other thing that y 'all brought up in Vauer, you talked about your 100 % index right now. I'm not going to pick on that necessarily. We're going to talk about it internally and figure out a plan because there definitely needs to be some type of asset allocation. But the question, I think we have a good case study that I'd love to get while y 'all two are sitting next to each other and put you on the spot and ask you the question. Last year was a pretty dynamic year, 2025. And by, was it April of last year? Between March and April. March and April.

34:19The market was down 20 % in that. Now, everybody remembers 2025 is a great year because we ended up the year strong. But if I had gone back in time and said, hey, while we're in this March and April period where the market got its teeth completely kicked in, and y 'all wrote it 100 percent because it's not like you were diversified and you got 60 percent of the volatility. You got 100 percent of it. You're like, give me more. So how did y 'all feel? I mean, did y 'all have any conversations? Did you not even notice, Max? I mean, where was y 'all's – what was the emotional impact of that? I'll be very vulnerable.

34:55I did not notice it as much as probably I should have because that's not our plan. Our plan all along has been not timing the market, but time in the market. We love that. And so this whole thing about dollar cost averaging and all the other kind of stuff, right? All the terms that have kind of been thrown out there. And I know you just have to write it. And I know that there's some, I don't have the stress capacity for me to daily trade nor really watch it that close. Were you just not looking though? Was your strategy just, I'm working. And look, that's a pretty common behavioral tactic. everybody while you're working, it's like, you know what?

35:28I can't control this, but I have a job. I'm just going to ignore it. And you're also not the financial spouse, if I'm being honest. That's true. We hear who's talking. So let me pivot it back over to Valerie, because I bet you were paying attention. I actually don't. No, really? I look at it maybe every six months. And then at the end of the year, I do my, like, so since 2021, when we took over, like, the 2019, 2020, when we took it over and moved it to Vanguard, I keep track of what our percentage has been. Not a true net worth. This was the first time I did an actual true net worth, but I just didn't look at it.

36:04So did you not even remember that we were down 20 % mid-year? I just don't look at it.

36:08Brian Preston:So let's take that, right? Then that's great. We love hearing that that's the way. So you've got, I'm going to do round numbers because I can't do math in my head real well. You got$700 ,000. We have a 20 % downturn last year. So all of a sudden, 140 ,000 evaporates quickly, right? And you don't even pay attention to it. Great. Let's fast forward 13 years. And let's say that your portfolio is now doubled and you just retired. You got a million and a half dollar portfolio and then we see a 20 % drop. And now all of a sudden,$300 ,000 disappears. You retire at one and a half and then you're at 1.2 at the end of the year.

36:45Brian Preston:Yeah, all joking aside. That's not a joke. Then we didn't do something right with our homework here. That's right. That's my intent. So obviously something has to change. It's okay that it doesn't feel painful right now, but you both acknowledge at that point it would. So there must be some sort of path that we ought to be on to get from where we are now to what that needs to look like. Yes. Logically, I know we need to diversify. It's a gap. From everything I've read and studied, I don't know what to do. Awesome. I love that. We definitely need help there. Because I'm saying this more from an educational standpoint because I have people who write us and share that they always think that they're going to – I always use the analogy of landing a plane.

37:31But they always think that they're going to be 100 percent index funds. And then right as they retire, they're going to slam it down on the ground into the most – and then they'll start diversifying and things. I don't get the feeling y 'all would be okay if you landed the airplane like a commercial plane, where you actually came in and you're like, oh, that was a nice landing. That felt pretty good versus let's nosedive this thing and just slam it down the ground and hope that we kept the landing and gear intact. Yeah, definitely. Is that a good read? Okay. His risk profile is higher than mine, but definitely as we start to get to a point where he's ready to be done working, we don't want to lose the money.

38:12We don't want him to have to go back to work. We don't want to have to be like, and we've been shaped by our past of not losing a lot. So a lot of that also contributes to not watching to see that same approach is we understand that we've seen the trend of the market as a whole. We know that it's going to be positive from, well, we assume it's going to be positive from that side. And so we write it out in hopes that it gets to a corrected spot. And you're right. We're not pulling that money out for a long time. The plane is not landing yet. And so I know that we were heavy invested in some of these not maybe tax optimized scenarios, but there's a spot where we're ready to make sure that that landing gear, the suspension, whatever's necessary for this to be a comfortable landing is there.

38:56And that's why we need help. I love it.

38:59Brian Preston:I love it. All right. I've got some. So we're excited. We've got a plan that we can be able to put together. We're going to paint a picture for you, but I've got some homework I want you guys to do in the interim. The very first thing I wrote down is we ought to look at refinancing, at least just beginning to have the conversation with lenders. Hey, I'm at 7.375. What are rates right now? Now, that's not suggesting that you should refinance, but what I would do if I were in your situation, if I know that rates are at 6 % right now, I would calculate, man, if my interest rate dropped to 6%, how much would my interest savings be on a month-over-month basis?

39:32Brian Preston:And do we believe, because you said this is likely not our forever home, whatever that break even is, if it costs me$3 ,000 to refinance, how many months will it take me to recoup that $3 ,000 cost in terms of interest savings? And I can just do the math on that to figure out, okay, yeah, if it's going to take me 14 months, and we believe we'll be in this house 14 months, refine could make a lot of sense. And that's going to immediately provide immediate reprieve to your monthly cash flow, which is going to give us additional margin to be able to fund some of these other goals. I do think since we are coming up on tax time, you guys ought to just go look at what your income was last year, verify that you were indeed Roth eligible, and you can still go back in time right now and you can fund your 2025 Roths, even though we're in 2026.

40:16Brian Preston:And then I think it would be helpful. Brian laid out sort of these three different spending areas you're going to be at. You have spending right now while the kids are in college, you've got spending post kids in college, pre-retirement, and you got spending in retirement. I think it'd be good for you guys to do some homework around figuring out what those numbers are and how they change. Because just like we have, when a lot of folks retire, they'll have their go-go years, their slow-go years, and their no-go years. A lot of folks, as they're approaching retirement, they do savings the same way.

40:48Brian Preston:All right, we kind of have our no-go saving right now while we have kids in college and all this stuff. And then we kind of have our slow-go, the kids are starting to get out. And then we're able to really kind of finish the drill as we run right into the last couple of years of retirement. So I think thinking through that would be super valuable for you guys. Okay. Awesome. We're going to put together a plan to see what 60 looks like. We're going to put together a plan to see what a glide path might look like. We're going to put together a plan to see what a personalized foo for you might look like.

41:14Brian Preston:And I think it's going to be awesome. Brent, how awesome was it sitting down and getting to talk to Max and Valerie? What a lovely couple. Yeah, I have a little soft spot for them because unfortunately, Unfortunately, they're so willing to share with us. But we heard in their story, they got taken advantage of. They did. And sadly, in the wonderful world of personal finance, there are some bad actors out there. And we tried to address that. But still, I could tell that they were wearing the weight of that still heavily, even though they have tremendous success in their current state. It just broke my heart to see that they had that.

41:49Brian Preston:Well, I think a lot of people that had that experience would bury their head in the sand and say, okay, the financial world is broken. I love that here they are saying, okay, no, no, no. We have these goals. We have these things we want to accomplish. We know that there are things we don't know, and we want to seek out some help. I think, one, it's just super brave of them to even put themselves out there to do that. And what I'm excited about is now that we got to play with the numbers, I think their future looks pretty bright. Well, and this is kind of unique because we're going to talk about savings rates.

42:19And anybody who watches our content, we pretty much are pretty straightforward as we want you saving 25 % of your gross income. Well, here we are. This is why personal finance is definitely personal. When we talk about Max and Valerie, it looks like we might be going in a little different direction.

42:34Brian Preston:Yeah, we started to design a financial order of operations for them. And obviously, we want Max to continue taking advantage of 401k. And for those of you that don't remember, 401k, if you put in 5%, they'll also put in 5%. So pretty exciting stuff. But they make over$200 ,000. But they make over. So they can't count it towards their savings, right? But it's still there. It's still going into the pot. So if we're going to base things off of a$255 ,000 salary for Max, that's going to be his base pay plus what we assume a bonus is going to be. We know that he's going to have$12 ,750 of his money going into the 401k.

43:12Brian Preston:Yes, we're not going to include it, but there is still another$12 ,750 going in. It's out there in the background. But in addition to that, we want them to max out the HSA at$8 ,750. We want them to max out his Roth IRA at$7 ,500, then max out her Roth IRA at$7 ,500. If we're doing that, they're going to be saving on their own about$49 ,000 a year, which is about$14.3. And a lot of times at this point we say, okay,$14.3, where's that extra 10 % going to come from? But for them— Well, remember, they also had three kids in college. Yep. I mean, there is a lot of— when we talk about the messy middle or that life just is going to happen to you, they got a lot going on in their life.

43:49But here's the good news. They already have$731 ,000 working for you. And at their age, that's a lot of money that can start really building momentum in the background. So it was kind of fun to say, okay, what can they save with all this life that's happening, but still reward them with all the hard work they've done in the past? How does this all line up?

44:09Brian Preston:Yeah, when we actually look at their path, starting at$731 ,000, saving that$49 ,000 a year, just doing that by age 55 gets them to about a$1.9 million portfolio. By age 60, it gets them to about a$3.2 million portfolio. Well, they told us, hey, based on the life that we want to live and the things we want to do, we need about$7 ,000 a month in living in today's cost living expenses. What's great is even at a 14 % savings rate, They are on track by age 60 to be able to replicate that lifestyle, to have a portfolio that provides for them that level of income without having to go up to 25%. Well, here's the good news.

44:50We use some pretty conservative assumptions in here, and the kids aren't going to be in college forever. That's right. And I imagine when the kids get out of school, they're going to feel like, holy cow, what are we going to do with all the success we've built? So good on them. And who knows? Maybe the savings rate goes up even more, or they just reward themselves with more life.

45:09Brian Preston:And what happens is if their savings rate does go up because cash flow frees up, all it does is give them more options, more flexible. Maybe it's not 60 where they are able to exit the workforce. Maybe it's 58, 57. So that's kind of the way their plan looks. But there are some tweaks that we think might make sense because one of the things that they let us know is, hey, our portfolio right now is pretty much all equities. Think about Max at his age doing 100 % equities. That seems a little aggressive. And so in order to be able to design an appropriate allocation, you really need to understand someone's unique risk personality, their risk capacity.

45:42Brian Preston:You need to have a real view into their entire financial picture. And we have a pretty decent view, but I would argue it's not quite a full view just yet. But I do think that it would be possible for them to determine, okay, what sort of allocation might make sense for us? And just to kind of give them an idea, we went and pulled the Vanguard target retirement funds, looking at those that are far dated to those that are more near dated to kind of show an example glide path of what that might look like. And based on their age right now in their mid-40s, if they were just using like a target retirement type structure, they might want to look like something like 82 % risk on, 18 % risk off.

46:20Brian Preston:Now, that's not prescriptive, but that would be with the Vanguard. Based upon the Vanguard allocation. And then as time moves on, as they get into their 50s, okay, maybe it shifts to 75 risk on, 25 risk off, and then 70-30, and then 60-40. And then what Vanguard would have is by the time you get to retirement, they'd be recommending a portfolio somewhere around 50-50. Now, in our experience, perhaps that's a little more conservative than someone retiring at 65 should be, but it at least gives Max and Valerie an idea of what they should be thinking as they adjust their allocation. And look, I know there's, for a lot of my financial mutants out there in the audience, you're thinking, well, you know what?

46:55I just, I can go a hundred percent risk on and then right before retirement, slam in some diversifiers. But here's the reality. We always worry about, it's not just risk tolerance on what you can handle. It's also risk capacity of what you actually have the time to wait for your accounts to recover and to make sure you're still, your financial goals are fulfilled. Don't do this. Don't get, you know, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. So you want to make sure you really honor the asset allocation.

47:24Brian Preston:So we think their savings rate is great. We think that their asset allocation could probably use some adjustments. And then one of the things that we uncovered is we noticed that on their current mortgage, their current interest rate was over 7%. It was 7.375. And we know that interest rates have decreased over the past couple of months. And right now, if you just look at the average interest rate on 30-year mortgages in this country is somewhere around 6%. We've even gone below 6%, but we want to be somewhat conservative because I know this will go out and it's bopping around all over the place.

47:57It's still a pretty significant change because it's greater than 1%, which is the first indicator we always say, hey, at least go do the math on refinancing once you get a greater than 1 % delta.

48:08Brian Preston:So there are two options they ought to think about. The first is they ought to call their mortgage company and say, hey, I noticed that rates have dropped. I'm currently paying 7.3. Would you consider giving me a rate modification? Could I decrease? Now, the mortgage company may say, no, we're not interested. That's not something we want to do. Totally fine. No big deal. Then they could begin investing. Okay, what it'd look like if we refinanced our mortgage. Instead of having our 7.375 % mortgage, we now want a 6 % mortgage. Well, refinancing is more expensive than a rate modification. There are closing costs associated with it because it's a brand new loan you're undertaking.

48:47Brian Preston:And so what we wanted to figure out was, okay, what are the interest savings if we refinance? What are the costs of refinancing? And are those justifiable when you put them next to each other. Now, this is a thought experiment. We like people to keep their payments the same so you don't reset the amortization schedule, but you can do the math exercise to see that there's close to$200 a month interest savings by just getting the lower interest rate. And if we went with a pretty conservative number, we said about$6 ,000 of estimated closing costs. We could quickly see that their break-even point on this was right around 31 months.

49:26So a little over, if you think about what that means in terms, as long as they stay in this house for at least the next three years, they're going, and they told us they were going to be in this house for the next five to seven years, if I recall.

49:37Brian Preston:Yeah. If they stay in the house for the next 31 months, the interest savings alone would pay for what it costs them to refinance. So we think it's kind of a no brainer if they're there for five or six years. And there's also a lever I like to pull because we are, it's an interesting time in the wonderful world of finance right now is that interest rates have gone down on mortgages. I don't love paying the$6 ,000 out of pocket. What I've done in the past is ask your mortgage brokers, can you take a little bit of a premium on the interest rate and then have zero closing costs? So instead of maybe like a 6 % rate, maybe it's a 6 and an 8th and 6 and a quarter or something like that.

50:13So you could do the math on that, figure out. Now, look, if you're going to live in the house for a long time and you don't think interest rates are going down, probably paying for this makes sense. But this at least gives you an option if you don't want to have to come out of pocket for the expense of refinancing. Because it's nice when we're in these following interest rates environments, if you can actually take advantage and let the premium on interest rate cover the uncertainty of what the closing costs are.

50:40Brian Preston:Now, remember, if you are someone who's going to refi, what we don't necessarily want you to do, and Max and Valerie, we don't want you to do this, we don't want you to refi and just start paying that lower payment because all you're doing then is just extending your debt out. Rather, we'd love for you to keep making the same payment on the same timeline or even if you're not going to make the same payment, at least pay in the same timeline that can provide some reprieve on your monthly cash flow. But there's a really good chance that interest savings could be substantial over the next four, five, six years for you guys.

51:11Now, there is an issue we want to put an exclamation point on because it broke my heart. I kind of started off talking about this. They got really burned by a bad financial advisor to the point that the person actually lost the ability to even be a financial advisor anymore. And they're still carrying the weight from that. We tried to talk about how do people and how do we educate the general public on this. We shared with them, go to moneyguy.com slash resources. We actually have eight questions anyone should ask their financial advisor. If you think your financial advisor is a good person, and doing a good job.

51:45I still would go check out these questions because it's really important that you make sure that your advisor has your interest front and center so that you don't get caught in one of these bad situations because there's several things that are going on here. You need to have your army of dollar bills working harder than you can with your back, your brain, and your hands, and you don't want to squander that valuable resource of time also. That's exactly right.

52:09Brian Preston:I think that, again, it was so kind of Max and Valor even let us take a peek into their financial life, given they have that baggage. But what I hope that people hear and take away from this is just because there was a bad event, just because there was a bad circle, just because things didn't go exactly the way that you would hope they would, that does not dictate what the end of your journey looks like. And from where we're sitting, I think the end of the journey looks pretty exciting for Max and Valerie. So Max and Valerie, thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for coming and sharing. I think a lot of people are going to be educated and learn how to not even fall in that mistake or even maybe discover that they're working with a bad advisor, we're going to get them through that.

52:49Bo, if others want to come on Making a Millionaire, how do they apply?

52:53Brian Preston:Yeah, if you'd like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguy.com slash apply. Or if you want to check out any of our free tools and calculators, go to moneyguy.com slash resources. Max, Valerie, you're well on your way to your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy, out. The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston 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 the securities, laws, and regulations.

53:26Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through making a millionaire. 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. 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.