In short
A 28-year-old graphic designer discusses whether a $120,000 graphic design degree was a “huge mistake,” how he went from about -$120k net worth to +$70k in six years, and what to do now that he’s moving out and his savings rate will drop.
Guests
Joe (main guest). Wentworth College (Boston), graphic design/brand identity. Graduated Aug 2020 with ~$120k student loans; started with ~$10k assets. Lives with family to save; now moving out. Has W-2 income around $107k–$92k range plus side design work (sporadic; discussed as ~$10k+/year). Investments: maxes Roth IRA monthly; contributes to an HSA (~$80–$100/mo); holds Bitcoin on Coinbase as a “hedge.” Also lists ~$4k in collectible Jordan shoes (mostly hobby), ~$10k gold jewelry (family heirlooms).
Key claims
Degree wasn’t the problem; lack of planning and debt management was. Living at home + heavy budgeting enabled aggressive repayment. Crypto is held, not traded; shoes/gold are non-core “use/hobby” assets. Moving out will reduce margin, so debt payoff and budgeting must be recalculated.
Notable examples
Net worth trajectory (-$120k to ~$70k); paying ~$1,500/month student loans for ~5 years; prioritizing minimum payments initially; using side hustle margin to fund future debt payoff; “lifestyle inflation vs progress” framed via savings rate (target ~25%+).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Student Debt
0:30 to 1:00
Discussion about the guest's initial financial situation after college.
“You start at negative 120 six years ago, and here you are with a net worth of$70 ,000.”
The College Experience and Its Costs
1:00 to 2:00
The guest discusses their college experience and the cost of their degree.
“collection, you know, it's what we go do with them if you don't wear them.”
Changing Perspectives on Education
2:00 to 3:00
Exploration of whether the guest would change their college decisions in hindsight.
“Hey, give me the mindset because you're not that far removed.”
Financial Realities After Graduation
3:00 to 4:00
Discussion on the challenges of working with student debt and starting salary.
“In total, all everything in was$120 ,000.”
Navigating Debt Repayment
4:00 to 5:00
The guest shares their approach to handling student loans and budgeting.
“I don't think that I really took away anything from the experience if I did that.”
Living at Home: Pros and Cons
5:00 to 6:00
The guest reflects on living with parents post-graduation and its financial benefits.
“So for me to have the opportunity to go to college, it was like, oh my God, this is like, I want my son to go through this, you know what I mean?”
Strategies for Budgeting and Saving
6:00 to 7:00
The guest outlines their budgeting method and savings strategies.
“you are not at negative 120 ,000 anymore.”
Understanding Loan Prioritization
7:00 to 8:00
Discussion on how to prioritize student loan payments effectively.
“So that definitely did wonders in terms of the ability to save some money.”
Investment Decisions and Asset Management
8:00 to 9:00
The guest discusses their investment choices and asset management.
“It was like, if I want to be able to, you know, move forward in my life post this, you know what I mean?”
Collecting as an Investment Strategy
9:00 to 10:00
Exploration of the guest's shoe collection as a hobby and potential investment.
“That is another expense that we see that's going to be on the list.”
Show all 28 chapters
Understanding the Value of Collectibles
10:00 to 11:00
Discussion on the current market for collectibles and personal insights.
“So it's not like necessarily that it goes into the brokerage.”
Shoe Collecting as a Hobby
14:00 to 15:00
Explore the motivations behind shoe collecting and its value as a hobby.
“This is not, you're not like showing these shoes off.”
Gold as Family Heirlooms
15:00 to 16:20
Discuss the role of gold and jewelry as sentimental family possessions.
“And honestly - How big is your apartment?”
Cryptocurrency Insights
16:20 to 17:20
Examine the rationale behind investing in Bitcoin and its speculative nature.
“you know, when I see these other things, what's going on there?”
Challenges with Speculative Investing
17:20 to 19:10
Delve into the risks of speculative investment and the need for financial stability.
“It sure does seem like the governments have no problem navigating around these systems.”
Understanding Income and Expenses
19:10 to 20:40
Analyze take-home pay versus expenses and the importance of tracking finances.
“still allocating to it, or do you have this position and you're just holding it?”
Side Hustle Dynamics
20:40 to 23:01
Learn how side income can influence financial goals and budgeting.
“Your salary or your pay was around$107 ,000.”
Side Hustle Dynamics
23:03 to 23:27
Learn how side income can influence financial goals and budgeting.
“We'd love to connect and see if we're a good fit for you.”
Preparing for Financial Independence
23:27 to 28:01
Discuss strategies for building wealth and preparing for future commitments.
“If you take$98 ,000, you divide that by 12, that'd be a gross monthly income of about$8 ,100.”
Building Financial Independence
28:01 to 28:54
Learn how making smart financial decisions in your 20s can impact future independence.
“But that's okay if you've built up enough income and assets that you can start buying back your time with that.”
Evaluating Life Goals at 40
28:55 to 30:08
Discover the importance of setting financial goals for your future self.
“Partially just because I felt like I was at a point in looking at the numbers for myself.”
Career Aspirations and Income Potential
30:09 to 31:01
Explore how career choices can affect financial growth and aspirations.
“Like that's 100 % the number one thing that, you know, it's been with me for so long that I'm like, we just got to get rid of this.”
The Reality of Entrepreneurship
31:02 to 33:10
Understand the challenges of starting your own business based on real experiences.
“It's more of just like, what can we do to kind of make it so that I can live my best life as early as possible with the decisions that I've made.”
Planning for Financial Success
33:11 to 35:18
Learn about the importance of a detailed plan for financial independence.
“like and then run it in three different scenarios.”
Living Within Your Means
35:19 to 37:17
Discover how to balance lifestyle inflation with financial responsibility.
“When you hear that and you think about entrepreneurship, this is something you said, this may be a little more aspirational.”
Creating a Cash Flow Plan
37:17 to 39:46
Understand how to develop a cash flow strategy for financial stability.
“if they're ahead of the curve, behind the curve, right where they're supposed to be.”
Debt Repayment Strategies for Student Loans
42:00 to 46:30
Explore effective methods for Joe to tackle his student debt while building wealth.
“When you add those two up, he's got about$2 ,350 that he can throw towards debt on a monthly basis.”
The Power of Compounding Growth
46:30 to 46:41
Learn how Joe's financial decisions can lead to significant growth over time.
“Joe should definitely feel encouraged and realize that he's looking in a really good place from really hard decisions in the beginning, but now it's just, it's kind of building upon itself.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app.
0:30Brian Preston:You start at negative 120 six years ago, and here you are with a net worth of$70 ,000. When you came out of school, what was your plan? After we took out these loans, I never touched them. I didn't know what was going on with them. If you went from 120 down to 76 ,000, in fact, that's not... I didn't want to start paying down debt with nothing to my name. I can't remember how much your shoe collection was last year. Do you remember? I don't necessarily use it in an arbitrage way where I'm trying to make money off of it. So what is this? It's just a hobby? collection, you know, it's what we go do with them if you don't wear them.
1:02What about the crypto? If there is an opportunity to change the way that we do money, I'd like to at least have exposure to it. Are you really changing the world with a Coinbase account? Not changing the world. It's a hedge.
1:17Brian Preston:All right, Joe. So give us the background. Who are you, man? What's the background? Where do you come from? And why are we sitting down here today? I applied because I think that what you guys do is absolutely amazing. First of all. So thank you for that. Yeah, man. My story basically goes back to the good old get a college degree. The college degree that I got was something in like graphic design. Where'd you go to school at? I went to Wentworth in Boston. So right next to Fenway. What's funny is I went to a couple of years ago. I'm in this like entrepreneur group. We went to, we got to go to Boston and we got to like go do Fenway.
1:48Brian Preston:We actually got to take batting practice in the cages, not on the field, but like on the in the background or whatever. That's a cool area. I had never been there before. Had never like walked around, seen all that. It was awesome. So I ended up going there and not really like understanding what it is to take out a bunch of debt at the end of the day. You're not alone in that. A lot of folks, that's their story. Hey, give me the mindset because you're not that far removed. We'll get what your age is here in a second. What does a student feel like when you're, so the young people who watch this can kind of watch out for the trap?
2:18The thing that I did was I just went to school and had fun. I mean, listen, I didn't do anything bad in terms of like, I got really good grades. But did you use student loans for lifestyle? No, I actually didn't really use it for, I mean, a little bit, maybe. I mean, I wanted to live off campus one year. So because of that, I took out a little bit of debt to go ahead and like get an apartment with some of my friends and stuff like that. But that wasn't super major, I don't think. More was just like the degree that I got itself was way outside of like some of the stuff that you guys preach today with, you know, being inside a certain amount of range of money so that you're not, you know, spending this incredible amount of money.
2:51And then the job that you get out straight out of school is, you know, not covering the amount of money that you had.
2:56Brian Preston:How much is one worth cost? Like how expensive a school is that? I feel like it just kind of depends on obviously what, how much it costs for you. Yeah. In total, all everything in was$120 ,000. 120 grand. How much student loan debt you run up? That was it. That was the whole thing. So no scholarships, no outside money, just student loans. You know, and that's another thing that I would say that people really need to do and take part in is like, I was, I just didn't care. You know what I mean? I was like, Hey, you know, like we're taking out the loans, you know, starting salary coming out of college around 65.
3:25So way outside of the guidelines that we would have liked to be in just in thinking in the beginning, going back in time, would you have changed colleges, changed majors? What would you have done differently? So I don't think I would have changed the major. I think a lot of the people that I met, you know, the experiences that you get that's, you know, once you experience it once, you really wouldn't trade it. So it's like hard to say that you wouldn't do that again, right? But in terms of how much I would have paid, the things, the scholarships that I would have applied for the off-campus housing that I would have gotten, like I would have definitely stripped a lot.
3:55Would you have considered going to community college for two years and then transferring in or would that not be feasible? I honestly don't know. I feel like I would. I don't think that I really took away anything from the experience if I did that. So I probably would. We're not here to go back and redo. We don't have the DeLorean. Of course, yeah. So we're going to get you out of whatever situation you're currently facing. I'm just curious because I think that's, It's truly something that all young people are facing right now. So if we can kind of put a light to something that somebody can watch and be like, hey, I just – or maybe you've got kids that are close to going to college.
4:26I just want to kind of shed a light on that because college is so noble, but it's so noble that we've all fallen into its kind of alluring trap of not thinking that you have to pay attention to what the end goal is. We think it's all noble. Just go to school and it'll all work out and get that degree. just like you said, get the college degree. But if you don't know what you're actually going to be making your living and what the debt's at, you can find yourself in a bad situation. Exactly. And I mean, my dad's first, not first generation, my mom's first generation here. My dad moved here from Italy when he was 21.
4:59He didn't know the language. You know what I mean? So for me to have the opportunity to go to college, it was like, oh my God, this is like, I want my son to go through this, you know what I mean? And experience that. So I went straight into it. I was like, this is exactly what I have to do, regardless of the job that I was going to get outside of college and whatnot. And that put me in a pickle, um, straight out the gate. And then that's kind of when I found you guys, like literally at that exact moment, I was like, I have to figure this out. I have to do something. There's got to be a better way to do it.
5:26Um, and started watching you guys back in 2020. Cause I graduated August, 2020.
5:30Brian Preston:Okay. So you're, and how old are you now? Uh, 28, 28, 28 years old now, and you graduated in 2020. And when you graduated, you had$120 ,000 in student loan debt Right out the gate. If you did a net worth statement in 2020, were you like negative 120? Did you have anything else going on? Or was that - I probably had around$10 ,000. Okay. So it was like, you're starting from a hole. And again, I think a lot of young people find themselves in that position. What I think is really awesome though, you're 28 years old. So we're six years removed. You were kind enough to share a net worth statement with us.
5:57Brian Preston:When we look at it right now, six years in the future, you are not at negative 120 ,000 anymore. I mean, I was already impressed to take 120 down to 76 in a short period of time. Pretty impressive. already. And then to see that you actually have stacked on top above and beyond the debt, dude, you're kind of painting like a sad story here. And I'm trying to figure out how we can throw some rays of sunshine and then you've already done it. I mean, this is already kind of a redemption story in the making right now. Yeah, definitely. And it was just through everything that you guys preach and also a lot of hard work at the end of the day.
6:34Brian Preston:Well, I want to know more 2120 six years ago, and here you are with a net worth of$70 ,000. What'd you start doing? Like when you came out of school, what was your plan? You said you're making$65 ,000 a year. How would you even find money to start chiseling away at this? Like walk us through what you did. So one of the blessings that I did have was being able to live with my family. Okay. That is - Like after school? After school, yeah. I stayed at home. So that definitely did wonders in terms of the ability to save some money. And then also just heavy budgeting at the same time. A mixture of those two things created enough margin for me to be able to go ahead and start the Roth.
7:12And that was the beginning of my journey.
7:14Brian Preston:I think it's so great for young people to hear that. You made the decision. Do you still live at home now or are you out on your own? I move out the 28th of this month. You've been living with your parents. Do you regret that decision? Do you? Because, you know, a lot of people, they graduate, they're like, oh, I can't go back home. And I got it. Not recognizing that it could be this wonderful opportunity. If your parents are in a situation that that's a possibility to let you really start stacking cash and changing your future financial trajectory. If you were talking to a graduate right now that's trying to decide, okay, do I go back and live at home or do I just go huff it on my own?
7:45Brian Preston:What would you tell them? I would tell them that obviously personal finance is personal. That's number one. For me - Where did you get that from? I don't know. That's an echo. That's exactly what I would tell them though, because it was like, for me there, that was the option. It was like, if I want to be able to, you know, move forward in my life post this, you know what I mean? Like that was the sacrifice that I had to make. And I just wanted to be smart about it. Did I want to do it? No, not necessarily, but we all do a bunch of things that we don't want to do at the end of the day, looking at it from a holistic view and not trying to sugarcoat it, I think is the best way to go about it.
8:17Brian Preston:So you're living at home, you're saving money on rent. You said you started budgeting. How'd you set up your budget? How'd you know how much to pay towards student loans? How'd you know how much to spend eating out? Like how'd you design categorically where to put your money? I think I kind of worked backwards from it a little bit. I was more of just like, I really want to knock down this debt. And what's the best way for me to do that is to say, hey, I want to put this amount towards the debt to get rid of it in this amount of time. And then whatever was left over was the thing that I kind of played with.
8:43So what is that playing right now? Because it must be pretty aggressive to go from 120 down to 76. Yeah, I was probably saving for a long time. I was probably saving close to 40 % of my income. Okay. That's awesome. Now, part of the reason why I also wanted to come on the show was to get your advice on some of the things that I can do moving forward now because I am moving out, right? I am moving out next month. That is another expense that we see that's going to be on the list. And the savings rate is dropping dramatically to around 11%, even though I found I'm living with someone so that the price would be a little bit cheaper.
9:17And, you know, 11 % is just not going to cut it for me, though. So it's like, you know, building a plan around that and figuring that out would be awesome as well.
9:23Brian Preston:Well, walk us through your current saving. When you think about where your dollars are going right now, how much are you putting on student loans and how much you're putting into your other investment accounts? Like, how are you navigating that? I just max out the Roth every month, religiously. In preparation for the show as well, I stopped doing all of the excessive investing that I was doing. And I kind of pulled back and said, based on what kind of recommendations I get here, at least I'll have a little pot of money to go ahead and make some decisions with. But other than that, the debt is also something that I have to tackle that is massive.
9:49So the only thing that's set up automatically currently is just your Roth IRAs being fully funded. And then basically everything else that's outside of the budget just goes towards a savings account. And then I delegate that where I think it should be that month. So it's not like necessarily that it goes into the brokerage.
10:05Brian Preston:About how much is going into that savings account? Like what's the excess capacity with which you have to work every month? It was all of the rent basically that I'm going to start paying now. So about$1 ,700 a month is what you did have in excess, but now that's about to get consumed by rent. And when we look at your student loans, you have a number of different student loans, number of different interest rates. How have you prioritized paying them down? Like if you have a bunch of different ones, a bunch of different rates, what strategy have you employed? So I have done something that I think is kind of a sin over here.
10:39What is this? I basically just make minimum monthly payments on everything. And I didn't prioritize any of that stuff to begin with. And the reason why I say that that's kind of like a sin based on what we're doing now is because some of these interest rates are like really high. I didn't want to start paying down debt with nothing to my name, you know. And I understand that that may be a little bit out of order, depending on the way that we look at things. But that was really what I wanted to inflation to eat everything away. But if you went from 120 down to 76 ,000, you obviously have been paying back.
11:09That's got to be more than minimum payments. That's not the minimum. Well, the payment that we see there, the$1 ,500, is what I've been paying for, it's been five years now. So it's not like interest only. This does have, what's the repayment window that you've elected? I don't know necessarily.
11:27Brian Preston:Probably 10 years from graduation. It's probably a shorter, yeah, it's probably a shorter window. But I didn't, after we took out these loans, I never touched them. Like I didn't know what was going on with them. I was not informed with anything. I didn't make any good decisions behind it. I kind of just let whatever happened happen at the end of the day. My guess is if we're six years into this and it's gone from there to there, we're probably on a 10-year amortizing note paying$1 ,500. Do you know how much is going towards each loan? Like if I ask you how much is going towards parent plus one, parent plus two, do you know those numbers or you just know 1 ,500 total is going?
11:59I could probably break it up a little bit. I mean I know that there's like 700 for the private student loans or something like that. I honestly couldn't give you the exact details. I have it in the slide sheet, but not necessarily off the top of my head right now. Yeah, we'll probably make that part of the homework because I can imagine we're going to have, you have competing goals here, so we're going to need to prioritize your goals. And we will use the interest rate because you have about$42 ,000 that we would probably want to be somewhat aggressive on. And then some of these others, they don't panic me as much.
12:34if you're balancing between funding a Roth versus paying down a low interest rate, you know, student loan, I'm going to want you still keeping that Roth going. So we'll have to work through the priority on that.
12:45Brian Preston:And I want to give you, you said, okay, well, it's probably going to be a sin over here that you paid some of these down. We would argue at your age, in your 20s, not all of these would qualify as high interest. I think when we look at this, maybe perhaps one of them would fall into high interest, maybe two of them, but the others don't give us a lot of anxiety because we do think that your money could likely be deployed better elsewhere. But I need to understand about what you've been doing from an investment standpoint, because I see two asset categories on here that I was, or three asset categories on here that I was not expecting to see from an investment standpoint.
13:17Brian Preston:Now, Brian, you and I, every year, we do our net worth statements and we're buddies, right? So we're super close. We kind of share them with each other. I can't remember how much your shoe collection was last year. Do you remember? I don't remember what that was. And full disclosure, Joe's profile photo that kind of put him to the top of the heap. I'm sure there's a fancy name for them, but they looked like Elmo shoes. I mean, so some of these shoes are eclectic. Is that a fair way to say? Yeah, 100%. Some of them are like, you know, a little bit of an investment. Some of them are just personal stuff.
13:51A lot of the things that I collect now are like 1990s, like Jordan retros that have never been worn with like the original box and stuff like that. And that's just something that's fun for me.
14:00Brian Preston:So you don't wear them. This is not, you're not like showing these shoes off. You buy these shoes, hold them. It's a collectible type investment. Yes, exactly. Have you made, like you're saying this is worth four grand. What do you have in this? Probably close to that. I was getting four grand. It's not. The reason I ask is, look, we know people, and I've used this example before. We had a Disney pin collector who was incredibly good. We had, you know, you always hear the saying, the two best days to own a boat is the day you buy it and the day you sell it. But I got to tell you, we had a client who knew the boat market so well that he was flipping them for profit left and right because there's a lot of inefficiency in the boat market.
14:36There's a lot of inefficiency in the Disney pin market I've come to find out. I would be curious, the shoe market, I have no problem if you want to do this, if you've created an expertise that lets you be the shark versus the lamb. But right now, are you shark or are you more lamb? I don't necessarily use it in an arbitrage way where I'm trying to make money off of it. So what is this? It's just a hobby. It's a collection, you know? What do you do with them if you don't wear them? Glass display cases, you know? Maybe that works at the end of the day. And honestly - How big is your apartment? I will say that this collection that I've been building has been since high school.
15:09It's not like something that I've just recently started dumping a bunch of money into. Will this be displayed in your apartment? It depends. If you come over, I might hide them at this point, you know?
15:18Brian Preston:How many shoes does it take in a shoe collection to equal$4 ,000? Probably wouldn't be much if I had really, really high-end stuff, but, you know, 30, 40 shoes. 30, 40 pairs. 30, 40 pairs of shoes. It's enough to take up a whole wall. What about, okay, so, you know, maybe that's not really an investment. Maybe that's more of sort of a use. This is a thing that you enjoy that you perhaps could sell, but it's not so much an investment. That's exactly what I would refer to it as. Okay, so what about the$10 ,000 in gold? What's going on there? That is 100 % just all jewelry. It's all handed down, basically, like...
15:51Okay. Like family heirlooms. So this is something that's passed down. You didn't go out there trying to buy gold. Yeah, no, definitely not. Okay, okay, okay, okay.
15:58Brian Preston:So we've got a use asset on here, the shoes. Not really a use asset, but like a hobby enjoyment asset. It's like home decor. Gold is more of like a family heirloom. Okay, I'm feeling better. I thought I had visions that you're out there buying ounces of gold or something. All right, so what about the crypto? That's the third one that I'm like, all right. you know, when I see these other things, what's going on there? A little different. The crypto is strictly just Bitcoin at the moment. And the reason why I gravitated towards having a percentage of my portfolio being in crypto is if there is an opportunity to change the way that we do money in that sense, I'd like to at least have exposure to it at the end of the day.
16:40That's probably the best way. So you keep in cold storage or do you have an account? It's just an account. So like a Coinbase? Yeah. Are you really changing the world with a Coinbase account? Not changing the world. It's a hedge. That's all. It's just a little hedge. You realize, because this is the thing I always talk to crypto people. I mean, if you had a cold storage, I get it because you're kind of independent. You just don't lose passcodes or whatever else. But when you're part of Coinbase and other things, are you really changing the financial system? Because I don't know if you saw the big stress test was, I mean, I've seen it with the Iran war that they're doing.
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17:13You see it with the Canadian protesters. They went in and took wallets. So, I mean, it seems like we have the illusion that we've created a new system, but it's not as independent as what's in the brochure. It sure does seem like the governments have no problem navigating around these systems. Yeah, and I won't argue that point at all, right? It was more of just like this is something that I've always just kind of bought and never sold. There was no gambling. And I'm not against it, by the way. I've even dabbled. I've dabbled at Bitcoin. Exactly. I was just always curious because I dabbled and then I got out because what got me was just the volatility of it.
17:51I couldn't believe how much we were ripping and riding on this thing all over the place. As a matter of fact, the last time I talked about this, I was picked on because Bitcoin has gone where it went all the way up to what, 128? Something great. 128 ,000 and then now we're back in the 60s. you know it's um and then it's it's just it's been a long ride and that's the thing is that before we actually can treat it as it's not a currency and i don't think it's because the pricing is going way up because if you're dealing if you imagine if you're buying pizza you know using humphrey yang's example and the pizza one day is going to cost you 10 bucks but then the next time it's 64 you'd be like heck this isn't a good thing to pay for pizza with completely unsustainable.
18:38So it's more of a speculative play. Of course. As long as it's a hobby, I'm okay. But the problem I'm worried about with you, Joe, you don't really have room. If you think about the pyramid of investing, speculating is kind of at the tippity top after you're at the fun stage of, hey, what do we do with all this money we got laying around? You're kind of still at the fundamental. Let's make sure these army of dollar bills have a purpose so they can hopefully help me quit working so hard or at least extinguish some of this debt over here. I think it's the wrong time to be jumping on the speculation train.
19:10Brian Preston:And with the crypto, are you allocating to it, still allocating to it, or do you have this position and you're just holding it? Yep. Just a position that is holding. Okay. Yeah. What about the HSA? Is that something that you're actively contributing to and letting invest and grow? Or are you using those dollars for current medical expenses? I actually got access to that this year. Okay. So I've been contributing to that and investing it just per usual. I think it's about a hundred dollars,$80. So if you had a, If you had a medical expense pop up, would you use that to pay for it? Or would you pay for it with outside resources?
19:43Probably outside resources. A lot of the money that can be invested is invested. So I'd rather not touch it at the moment. What's your deductible? Do you know what your deductible is on your plan? No, I don't. Because that's what I typically like people, if you're going to start investing the HSA, let's at least put the deductible kind of in a cash equivalent. And then that way we can go above and beyond. And I bet your deductible is going to be higher than$1 ,600.
20:07Brian Preston:When I'm thinking about what's about to change in your life right now, you said you were kind of sharing your budget with us. Right now, once your rent starts, you're going to have about$5 ,000 a month flowing out, right? Like going out for expenses. How much extra, because you're trying to figure out how do I prioritize paying off the student loans, saving, building, how much extra margin are you going to have on a monthly basis to fund some of these goals. That's the tough part. What's your take home? My take home is... Because we see your salary. Your salary or your pay was around$107 ,000.
20:44$9 ,000 gross a month. Yeah, so what's your take home after your health insurance? And do you have a retirement plan? I do not. No, I don't have one. Your employer doesn't offer one or you just owes not to be part of it? Doesn't offer one at the moment, no. You've got to go out there and lobby them. Are you an independent contractor or are you a W-2 employee? W-2. How many employees does your company have? 13. I think. They don't have a 401k? No, not at the moment. Come on, guys. Get this going. You know, send this video to your boss and be like, hey, do you realize, especially boss man, you can, do you realize how much money you can hide from the government legally with a 401k and do good work for your employees?
21:19I'll have to be the initiative on that one. There you go. All right,
21:22Brian Preston:we can keep it going. All right, so$9 ,000 gross income. What hits your checking account every month? So I do a little bit of side work. So that kind of like muddies the water in terms of what I actually get. Is that in the 107? Yes. Okay. It's not a lot. It's probably close to around $10 ,000 a year of just, you know, side income. So, you know, deducting that and whatnot, I probably have around$5 ,200 to work with every month. Oh, wow. So, okay. So, if you have$5 ,200 net coming in. Somewhere around there. We got$4 ,800 going out. We really got 400 bucks access to work with. Is that right? Yeah.
21:59Brian Preston:And is 400, is that what you've experienced? No, wait a minute. You're letting him off way too easy. I'm just doing math. 4 ,800, 5 ,200. I have a screen here that says your income is 107 ,500 and your net's 5 ,200. There's a spread there. How much is this side hustle? It's more than 10 grand then. But one of my favorite things about recording Making a Millionaire is every one of our guests has a different situation. That's so true. One couple needs help getting out of debt. Another person's trying to figure out retirement. Then there's the guy who's just spending way too much on horse massages.
22:32Yeah, that's true. Each person has different goals, different opportunities, and different blind spots. And it reminds me a lot of what we get to do every day here at Abound Well.
22:41Brian Preston:Yeah, we sit down with our clients, we learn what's important to them, and we build a plan that's tailored to their life and their specific situation. If you've been watching this conversation and thinking to yourself, hey, I wish someone would help me figure out my situation, we'd love to have that conversation with you. We're fee-only, fiduciary advisors, and we're here to help. That's right. Just head over to aboundwealth.com or click the link below. We'd love to connect and see if we're a good fit for you. How much is this side hustle? It's more than 10 grand then. No, no, it's not. Well, maybe my income is a little bit higher, maybe 56 or something like that.
23:16It's not that different. Because it's just too much of a spread here.
23:20Brian Preston:Well, so if we take$108 ,000 and you take$10 ,000 off of that, now we're going to be at$98 ,000. If you take$98 ,000, you divide that by 12, that'd be a gross monthly income of about$8 ,100. So we've got$8 ,100 gross coming in, and you're saying that you're netting about$5 ,200 of that$8 ,100? Yeah. That would be a 36%. Health insurance coming out of that? Yes. Okay, so health insurance. How much is health insurance? That's a great question. I don't know. Joe, give me a guesstimate. Because this is the accountability side of things. Yeah, I really don't. $500? $400? Probably close to$400. He's on a high deductible plan, so you're going to assume it's going to be one of the less expensive plans.
24:00Brian Preston:So maybe it's like probably$400 to$500 individual for a high deductible plan. Anything else come out of your paycheck other than your health insurance? Well, the HSA, of course. And that's, you said about$100,$80 a month? Yeah,$80,$100. Okay, keep going. That should be it, really. All right, so the math that we're doing is if you take$8 ,100 minus$8 ,100.
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24:52Brian Preston:$8 ,200 for HSA, that takes down to 8 ,000, minus another 400 or so for health insurance. That takes down to 7 ,600. You gotta help us. 7 ,600 is what we've calculated should be hitting your checking account, but you say you only have 52 to 5 ,600. Where are we missing? It's gotta be in the side hustle income at that point. Maybe I've overestimated the amount that I kind of get from that on a month to month basis. Because the reason we're squeezing on this is we want to know. How much money do we have to work with? Yeah, because I mean, I don't want to give you false perspective that we're going to be able to pay these student loans off in 18 months.
25:29Yeah. And then we find out, no, I mean, you couldn't even eat ramen and make that work. That's why the important part of personal finance is the quality of the data that we put into the system. because especially for young people, I mean, we changed a variable on your rate of return from 8 % to 12%, and it looks like you could - Oh, you're great. You could make it with 26 cents a month, and you'd be all right. But in the reality, I'm being facetious, of course, but that's why we have to get the data points right. Otherwise, we're gonna give you false sense of security, and that wouldn't be doing you right either.
26:04Yeah, so net that's coming into my account on a month-to-month basis from my job, from my W-2 is closer to around 56. Okay. That's the number that I want to work with. And then the side hustle income is sporadic, but I can make extra money on the side. And what do you do with that side hustle? So I'm a graphic designer and like a brand identity person. So I do a lot of logos, colorways, fonts, you know, advertising, stuff like that for people. Would it be okay if we earmarked that for specific purposes? That's not what I'm thinking.
26:36Brian Preston:If we build a budget or if we build a plan off of 5 ,600 based off of what you have going on automatically going out, then essentially we assume like the side hustle money doesn't exist. And then when it does exist, that's what we want to go deploy towards student loans or towards building assets or towards these other goals just because you're pretty lean with your inflow and your outflow. So your side hustle is going to be where all the margin exists. Does that make sense? Yep. I love that. And so realistically, if we're going to operate on how much can you make side hustling, how difficult would it be if you make$10 ,000 a year side hustling?
27:09I would say not very difficult.
27:10Brian Preston:How about$20 ,000 a year side hustling? Way more difficult. How about$15 ,000 a year side hustling? Still probably cutting it closer. Okay, so$10 ,000. $10 ,000 is... And that's giving it all you got if we were really motivated to try to get this debt and other stuff out of here? Giving it all I got, it's probably not. No, I probably could go a little bit harder, but I would say let's keep it at the time. Well, here's the reason from a mindset standpoint. You're young and single right now. So you have this whole trade-off with how you use your time. You're going to be one day, you're going to blink and you're going to turn around and be my age.
27:44And you're going to find out, oh my gosh, I don't have this abundance of time. And it's not only just because you're getting older, but it's also because the older you get, it feels like there's more commitments, whether it's family and your business responsibilities or whatever. you just don't have as much control as you'd hoped. But that's okay if you've built up enough income and assets that you can start buying back your time with that. Only if you've made really good decisions when you're in your 20s and you turned your time that was in excess at that point into assets that you own. But if we don't, but that's why we have to figure out how much capacity you have so we can get aggressive.
28:23Because the only way this all works, we got to get the debt paid off and we got to start owning stuff. And now you've done a good job. The fact that you have$70 ,000 of net worth above and beyond even this debt means you understood that, but you were also, you had a tailwind with living at home. Now that we're going to be out on our own, it gets a little more raw and you've got to be even more disciplined and purposeful with everything you do.
28:48Brian Preston:Is the lease already signed? Like the apartment? This is happening. This is happening. We're making it happen. How did you decide now was the right time for that? Partially just because I felt like I was at a point in looking at the numbers for myself. 20 years old. Yeah, 28 years old, A, first of all. I get it. I didn't ask you. I didn't ask you, Brian. Why are you moving out? But I also felt like, I don't know, I had done the dirty work. I had made a lot of sacrifices and decisions for the past five, six years that if I don't push myself a little bit more and put myself in a situation where like, hey, I just have to make things happen.
29:26I have to go find a better job that makes a little bit more income, or I have to continue with the side hustle a little bit more in order to create that margin and that aggression that got me to do these things in the first place, right? Because the debt's dwindling down. It's almost like the tiger that's chasing you is dwindling. Can we get a new tiger to chase you? Yeah.
29:44Brian Preston:All right. So, okay. We've talked a lot about where you are today and what you want to see change in the near future. What about ultimately where you're heading? Like what, But when you think about, I don't necessarily, you're 28, so I don't want to go all the way to 65. But when you think about life at 40 for you, how does life at 40 look differently than it does today? And what do you want to say at 40 that's true of your life from a financial standpoint? Yeah. From a financial standpoint, I'd say, obviously, we want to get the debt knocked out. Like that's 100 % the number one thing that, you know, it's been with me for so long that I'm like, we just got to get rid of this.
30:19Now, whether or not that's the best thing to do in terms of cumulative money that I could make over time, that would be why I'm on the show and what I want information from you guys for. And then besides that, I know you said you didn't want to push it all the way out to retirement, but figuring out my numbers for some coast fire or type of retirement plan in that sense.
30:42Brian Preston:When you think about coast firing, since you brought that up, When is the coast part and when is the full retire part? You got to give us those two numbers. Yeah, I think it would be landing close to that 45, 50 year mark. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be, I enjoy working. You know what I mean? I really did find a passion and something that I like to do. So that's not a problem for me. It's more of just like, what can we do to kind of make it so that I can live my best life as early as possible with the decisions that I've made. So get to age 45, age 50, be able to coast then out until a full retirement age of 65.
31:19That would be awesome.
31:20Brian Preston:Talk to us about inside the graphic design world. What does income opportunity look like? Are you, is the income you're making right now probably going to be the same thing you're going to make for the next 10 or 15 years? Or does it scale up? Is there a range? How does that work? How does your side hustle play into that? Yeah. So from my actual W2, I'm probably in the$92 ,000 a year range or whatever that math can, 97 or wherever I'm at now. Senior graphic designers in my area can make$120 ,000,$140 ,000. So there's definitely a little bit of room to grow there. And then you get up to art director and other titles that are much more substantial.
32:00Brian Preston:Is your desire to move into one of those roles? Do you want to be an art director and that sort of thing? The thing that I would say I'm debating at the moment is like, hey, do you really go off and do something on your own? I know that you had this experience, you know, going off on your own and really taking that gamble. I was 28. Well, we might have some answers. But full disclosure, now look, I had a big life element. I lost my father. I wasn't really thinking rationally when I did it because I went from making right at six figures. I think my first year I made$17 ,000,$18 ,000. dollars. So not exactly a blowout success in the first year out of the gates.
32:38But it is a decision that you had to make and that you made and it actually worked out for you. So even if we do it in a somewhat better way than you did, which could or could not be possible, I wonder if that's feasible for something like me. Because obviously there's the, if you want to do it yourself, like if I want to be a business owner. Is this a serious thing or just an aspirational thing? I would say that it's more aspirational at the moment. And that's why I gave you the information. on the actual job. If you're serious, you've heard us talk about putting on your 3D glasses, where you have to actually lay out a business plan for what the next three to five years looks like and then run it in three different scenarios.
33:14There's the dream of, man, I can't believe all these people, these prospects just keep showing up all over the place. There's the down to earth is, hey, this is probably gonna be hard to go get clients. Because that's what, you know, a lot of people have passion. I can remember when I started my first company, I just thought everybody, Because I was always a likable guy. I think I was perceived as a pretty smart guy growing up. So I thought as soon as I started my first company, all my childhood friends, parents, and everybody would want to come. We can't wait to hire Brian. Wait to hire Brian and either let him do our taxes or manage our assets or so forth.
33:49This was what the daydream was. And then when I went out on my own, the phone doesn't ring. And I was shocked. I was like, obviously, I have a false sense of myself. Because nobody, I should take that back. I had a neighbor who called me, one of my parents' neighbors, Mr. Ronnie Stewart. He actually reached out. And then the mother of one of my childhood friends, old Franny Fran, those were the only two that showed up. I mean, my in-laws didn't even show up at first. They're supposed to love me no matter what. Now, my mother-in-law is going to see this and she's going to be upset about it. There it is.
34:23But that's what I tell you is you have to put on your 3D glasses because there's a dream of what you hope will happen. But there's the down to earth plan. And then truthfully, mine went more like the doo doo plan. And I think you have to kind of account for that. Now, the good news for me was I had saved up three years of what I thought I needed pretty much in cash so that I had a little room for the doo doo to kind of get cleaned up. And that's what it took for me to figure out how to do this well. So if you are serious about doing the entrepreneurship side, you've got to create that cash flow plan.
34:58and then figure out how you'll get business. Because that's the hard part. You can be the most talented person in the world, but if people aren't going to be able to find you or you're not going to be able to go sell that passion or that talent to somebody, it doesn't matter how skilled you are. And that's the hard part that I found is that you can be smart, you can be talented, but if nobody knows you're out there with the sign on the door, it's a dream. I agree completely, yeah.
35:21Brian Preston:When you hear that and you think about entrepreneurship, this is something you said, this may be a little more aspirational. This isn't something you're trying to do in the next year, next two years, next three years. This is maybe down the road one day I might want to do my own thing. Yes. But more if the stars align, not that's something I'm going to hard charge and drive towards. Am I hearing you correct on that? We've got some plans here. Our plan is we've got to figure out how do we get the debt knocked out? What's the strategy for that? How do we get to a good place in the near term? And then ultimately how to get to a good place maybe by the time we're in our mid forties in order to be able to do some sort of coast, coast fire and figure out what that looks like.
35:56Brian Preston:What other questions can we answer for? What other things can we speak to that might be valuable? Being a saver and being someone who's been diligent for a really long time, my question would be like, how do you know when you're lifestyle inflating versus you're actually making progress, you know, and you can actually start to afford some of the things that, the life luxuries that, you know, you can kind of bear the fruit of what your work is. At your age, I think it's a function of savings rate. If you can get to the point where you're saving 25 % of your gross income, you don't have to worry about lifestyle inflating beyond that, right?
36:27Brian Preston:Like if you have money left over after saving where you need to be saving, putting money in your retirement accounts, putting money in your Roth, doing your HSA, building your taxable account, having your emergency fund where it needs to be, and you're doing that on a systematic and automatic basis, getting that debt knocked out. If you want to move into the nicer apartment or buy the automobile or go on the trips, you get to do that and do it guilt-free. You don't have to worry, oh, is it okay if I'm doing this? If I'm paying all the stuff I need to be paying first, I get to spend freely or guilt freely and enjoy what I'm doing.
36:59Brian Preston:I have to second guess and have remorse over the decisions I'm making. Yeah, we've got, by the time this episode airs, we actually, so you're gonna get some behind the scenes here because the day we're recording it, our Know Your Number course that we sell for$100, we're actually converting that into a free calculator that's gonna be on our website. So that way anybody who wants to know if they're ahead of the curve, behind the curve, right where they're supposed to be. I think it really pays respect to what Bo was talking about. If you use that tool and you could see that you're ahead of the curve with having a good savings rate and being disciplined, it should free you to start living your better life.
37:35Because the problem is a lot of people, they base it off of their cash flows. The same thing when you show up at a car dealership, they don't try to help you figure out how much car you can afford. They say, how much is your monthly car payment? And that's the opposite way of where you're supposed to live your life. I think you're supposed to kind of, you know, figure out what your income is, what your goals are, figure out how you build the lifestyle to where it matches that income and then the future goals. So then you can kind of bolt together the plan that actually fits within all those things.
38:07I mean, I already feel pretty good because I think I've got your numbers figured out a little bit better and we'll go into when we get into the full planning phase of it, I bet you're going to find that you have just on a monthly cashflow wise about$9 ,600 a year. So if you think about that$9 ,600 a year, that's going to work out to be about$800 a month. You're going to be, we're going to be able to create some automatic plan, whether it's debt, whether it's savings or investments. And this might tweak up or down a little bit, depending on what the planning team comes up with. And then I think probably of that side hustle, even accounting for taxes and so forth, hopefully you can come up with 9 ,000.
38:44You know, if you were pulling 10 to 11, you know, we can come up with, you know, another$800 a month or$750 a month. And if you do that, and I think if you really looked at where your income really is, I think it's probably a little overstated at 107 ,000, but we're for closer to 100. If you're saving 18 % of that, that's pretty close to 28 years old. And, you know, That's a really good thing for somebody who's under 30 years of age. Because a lot of times when Bo says 25%, that's somewhat aspirational for people in their 20s. Because you just haven't had enough time for your natural talent to reach the level of experience where you have mastery.
39:24And then you reach those peak earning years. Most people's peak earning years is in their 40s and 50s. But you're well on that path. It's just a matter of being patient. That's the only thing that I see from looking at this is yes, your student loans are there, but I think if you're patient and we create a plan, you have the elements to be very successful here. That's awesome. Thank you guys so much.
39:46Brian Preston:Well, I think I know what we need to put together. I've got some, I think we've got some good thoughts. I think we can do some good planning here. Thank you guys so much. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. Joe, thanks for coming on. This has been great. Thank you. All right, Brian, I'm going to say it. Joe, I think Joe should be an inspiration to young people out there. I mean, how do you start with in the hole 120 grand, and then you come out, and by the way, he's still in his 20s, come out the other side with a net worth positive by$70 ,000? It's wild. It shows that he was willing to make some difficult decisions, move towards his goals.
40:19Brian Preston:I think he has a bright future, but there's some stuff that needs to triage today. Obviously, the big thing that came up, we look at his net worth statement, he has debt on his balance sheet that we need to get off. Right now, he has these five different student loans, and some of them I'm going to say qualify as high interest. 6.75, over 6%, certainly high interest in the 20s. I'm going to argue even that one at 5.5%, because it's his biggest loan, since he's about to be 30 in the next couple years, I think those are for sure high interest. How conflicted were you in the fact that, because a big part of Joe's success has been he lived at home, so that allowed him to really go hog wild with paying down the debt.
40:57Now I get it. He's at that threshold. He goes, no Moss, I'm moving out. He had a roommate and they're going to go live their best life. But I was sitting there going, wouldn't it be cool if we just had a little bit more live at home so we could completely extinguish those student loans? Because now it does make us, requires to make bigger, harder decisions.
41:16Brian Preston:That's right. I definitely think that maybe if he could have just done it for a little bit longer, he would be able to get further along. But again, I think he's in a great spot. And for 28, Joe does have a big shovel. We discovered that his take-home pay is somewhere right around$5 ,600 a month. And that doesn't even include the$10 ,000 a year in side hustle income he has coming in. And so when we think about his living expenses and where he's going to be, he's going to be spending about$4 ,800 a month. So he has about$800 a margin available. That's what's there. And don't forget that$4 ,800 includes, I think, a little under $1 ,600 a month.
41:54It's like$1 ,550 that's going towards paying down debt payments. So he has a pretty small footprint.
42:00Brian Preston:Yeah. When you add those two up, he's got about$2 ,350 that he can throw towards debt on a monthly basis. So when we model it out, it's pretty incredible what he's going to be able to do if he just takes that$2 ,350 and begins applying it to the debt. And we just said, let's go with the avalanche method. Let's pick the highest interest rate and let's knock that down and let's go to the next highest and next highest and next highest. He's going to have the parent plus loan paid off in 11 months. The parent plus number, uh, first loan paid off in 20 months, private student loan paid off in 32, the direct subsidized paid off in 35 and the direct unsubsidized paid in 37.
42:34Brian Preston:Now I know some people are saying, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, you said only three of them were high interest. Why do you have them paying off all five? Well, I just think that behaviorally he's done such a good job of building assets. He's in a great spot. Even when to look at his net worth in the asset column, that I think he's afforded himself the ability to give himself this behavioral win of just getting all of this debt knocked off of his balance sheet in the next couple of years. Well, personal finance is very personal. And the good news for Joe is he did build up some wealth and some investable assets, even as he was paying down these student loans while he was living at home.
43:07Look, there's a part of me, I felt a little conflicted and we ran it both ways to where we were like, hey, there is a path here where he is knocking out the student loans aggressively, but he's also funding his Roth IRAs because I love the tax-free growth. But man, it did look compelling when you looked at, hey, if we just went with debt crazy, just call it a debt crusader, if you will, to pay off the debt. And then still when you're in your early 30s, be able to then go ham on the saving and investing. It's pretty exciting stuff.
43:38Brian Preston:Yeah, we said that, okay, originally, if he just sticks to our plan of using that$2 ,300 margin to pay off the debt, he's going to have it paid off in around 37 months. But if he took that side hustle income and instead of doing the Roth IRA, instead of doing that, he just applied all of that and he had about$3 ,000 a month going towards his loans, he could have every single one of his loans paid off in 27 months. So we're only talking about, we're foregoing essentially a year Roth contribution. Maybe eight or nine months. Yeah. Between the two that we're talking about one Roth contribution difference between these two.
44:09Brian Preston:That's exactly right. So he's going to have to look at this and figure out what I want to do. Do I want to live more in the present by using my side income for lifestyle? Do I want to take my side income money and max out my Roths? I'm still building assets. Or do I want to buckle down and limit the debt? He's going to have to choose based on where he is, which one of those paths he's going to go down. So I want to know more about the Coast Fire thing? Because it sounds, being so young, conquering so much debt, how does this start stacking up and how much momentum does it build and how quickly?
44:41Brian Preston:Well, here's what we said. He's already done the hard work at his age of building up$100 ,000 in assets. So he said, okay, what if we jump forward, have all the debt, all the student loans knocked out, and let's get him to a 25 % savings rate starting at age 31, right? Which will actually be less than what he's throwing at the debt. That's exactly right. He's actually going to get a free lifestyle upgrade once those are gone. So If he just hits 25%, he'll be saving about$2 ,200 a month, starting at$100 ,000 at 28, saving$2 ,200 a month. By the time he gets to age 50, he will have amassed a portfolio, assuming a 9 % rate of return of about$2 million.
45:18Brian Preston:That's pretty wild. And so then we said, okay, well, if the idea is to coast, if he stops saving at 50 and he just lets that$2 million grow from age 50 out to age 65 without saving another dime,$2 million turns into almost$8 million. Even in the content meeting, we had to pull out the financial calculators and make sure it does really show the power of compounding growth is because to see that$2 million with just a little bit of momentum and consistent growth can grow that level was just, it was kind of shocking. They're like, let's check those numbers one more time to make sure that we're telling everybody the right thing.
45:58Brian Preston:Look, Joe has a big shovel, but he's not this guy that's making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he's not doing anything unbelievably remarkable. And I think that if he'll recognize, man, I'm in this situation, if I can knock out this debt, not carry it through the next decade with me, if I can focus on keeping my footprint small and building for the future, because he's so young, because he's already done a lot of the hard work, he's going to have options later down the road to live the life that he wants to live on his term, the way that he wants to live it if he can prioritize knocking some of this stuff out.
46:30Joe should definitely feel encouraged and realize that he's looking in a really good place from really hard decisions in the beginning, but now it's just, it's kind of building upon itself. The essential definition of compounding growth. That's right.
46:44Brian Preston:He's a financial mutant and going to continue to be a financial mutant. Joe, we loved having you on. Bo, if more people like Joe want to come on and show how they can conquer their finances, where do they need to apply? Yeah, if you want 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 free tools and calculators, go to moneyguide.com slash resources. Joe, thanks again. And for the rest of you, remember, small, small decisions can have huge results and help you live your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr.
47:13Bo. Money Guy team, out.
47:16Brian Preston: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. Abound 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.
47:47All 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. Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels, and crave-worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon Brussels side.
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From the publisher
At 28, Joe has gone from roughly $120,000 in student loan debt to a positive $70,000 net worth—but now he faces a major personal finance decision: should he aggressively pay off student loans or keep investing for retirement? Brian and Bo break down his budget, Roth IRA, HSA, Bitcoin, side hustle income, savings rate, debt avalanche strategy, and Coast FIRE goals to build a financial plan for his 30s. If you’re wondering how to pay off student loan debt, whether to invest while paying off debt, or how much you should save in your 20s, Joe’s financial journey shows just how powerful intentional money decisions can become.
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Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life.
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