“I Want To Be a Millionaire in Two Years… What’s the Roadmap?”

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2:53That's the power of us. Equal housing lender. Member FDIC. Trademark 2025 U.S. Bank. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.

3:15You know you're getting older when you start to say, I can't believe it's fill-in-the-blank month at the start of every month. But honestly, I cannot believe it is already June, which means we're almost halfway through the year, which means my daughter is almost six months old. What the heck? 2025 has been going by so, so quickly and also so, so slowly all at once. But because the end of the year can sneak up on you around this midpoint, I do try to give myself a little performance review with my money. Yes, I really do do this, or I try to anyway. The whole newborn thing and rebuilding thing is very time consuming.

3:48But I do try to put time on my calendar to sit down and think about what money moves I've made so far this year that I'm proud of. And also what I want to do differently for the rest of the year. I found that the best way to do that is to make sure I stick to the financial resolutions that I made at the top of the year. So today you're going to hear a conversation that I had with a money rehabber at the end of last year where we basically did the same thing. We took stock of her 2024 and we set goals for her 2025. And I love this conversation because it's a really great model of how you can track your own financial goals and progress.

4:21Susan Kianpour, welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you for having me. I love Money Rehab. I'm so excited I'm on here. I feel like I've won a game show. You have in some ways. You also are a lady after my own heart being a journalist and a passport stamp collector. Extraordinaire. Yes. I also, I don't know about, I don't know if you did this, but I got into collecting currency and now I get like way too attached and get really annoyed if I leave the country and I forgot to keep a quarter or something. How many do you have? So I'm on a journey to a hundred countries and I just passed 90. Wow. You're almost there, sister.

4:59I'm almost there. I mean, I was like, okay, I need to get this done in two years because I just keep adding competition for myself. Well, you have some interesting financial deadlines that I want to get to. But first, you are such a boss. Can you tell many rehabbers a little bit about yourself and also your mission with Helmet to Heels? Yeah. So I, like you, was a TV journalist, started out at NBC News, was there for a couple of years and kind of climbed the corporate ladder, spent over a decade at the BBC. When I started out at the BBC, I was told I would never get on air with an American accent.

5:33That was 2011. and by 2023 end of 2023 I had been shortlisted for presenter of the year for my women building peace series and which is a series about women in war I connected globally influential women with women on the ground living the story so like our award-winning episode was we had Hillary Clinton speaking directly to an Afghan girl hiding from the Taliban so I started really thinking and I had been thinking about women in war zones a lot because I was shuttling Washington and war zones for my job that's my beat was foreign affairs and global security and I posted a picture back when Instagram was still new and we used to over filter everything and thought we were all Andy Warhol so I was packing everything and I just got back from a really difficult deployment to Iraq I was based in Lebanon for the BBC then and it was my first foreign hosting and I had asked to do it because I told my boss I used to be on the foreign affairs beat so I had to run around Capitol Hill, State Department, White House, and grill the most powerful people in the world about U.S.

6:39policy towards the world, except I hadn't lived on the receiving end. So I really wanted to be able to tell the story from all sides. So anyway, long story short, I was packing to come back to Washington, and I put my flak jacket and my helmet and my boots and my outfit that I was going to wear to Capitol Hill because I'd go like playing to politics. And I looked over and I'm like helmet to heels. For the years, this kind of was behind the back of my head. And I would kind of use it more as like a phrase or like an endorsement because it was this idea of women, especially we are expected to be either or, and I'm about and both.

7:16And so I left the BBC on a high retired as the NBA players do when you're at the top of your game. So I decided to launch my brand helmet to heels and venture on this entrepreneurial journey. And I found that being a female founder is a whole different level of perilous. Like I thought being a woman in national security and in war zones was difficult. This is next level women in the business world, next level. So that's why I follow people like you. Well, thank you. And you have a passport full of stamps and a lot of incredible stories, but it seems like your bank account might not be matching in the same heft.

7:57In your personal life, too, you have a lot going on. You're getting married in a month, right? Less than a month. You're planning, what, three weddings on two continents? Tell me everything. It's insane. When I hear it said back to me, it's like, what? so my soon-to-be husband is British my own Mr. Darcy stiff upper lips stubborn and you know his family is in the UK and my family and friends are here and we actually were living in Dubai and so we thought okay well you know we can't it is difficult to get everybody to come to Dubai for various reasons particularly older parents and ailing family members and so we thought oh how hard could it be to kind of split it up across our cultures as I'm Persian Sicilian so we do the Persian Sicilian bit in Washington which is my home and then we cross the pond to England and have the English Scottish bit also I came across this amazing atelier that is a very helmet to heel story what we do is we make you know foreign affairs relatable basically in style so we blend lifestyle and current events.

9:12And so I found this came across this amazing story of this nonprofit atelier in Paris, run by a designer who used to design for Karl Lagerfeld, and it's like proper haute couture. And he takes unwanted materials, up cycles them. And in the process, trains and employees refugees on how to become masters of their craft, and gets them jobs in the big fashion houses in Paris. So I suddenly found myself needing to throw multiple weddings and doing a documentary around the dress and all of this in the span of a month and some change. But you planned a wedding in 44 days. So honestly, you were my inspiration.

9:52Thank you. But mine was very small and there was only one and it was only one city. This sounds like a big to-do. Well, you know what? I know Persian families. They're big. And Sicilian families? Girl. Yeah. Yeah. These are not small events, it sounds like. But you know what? The groom is very involved because he has to be because we've got two countries and one of them is his. It's a good partnership exercise. Agreed. Let's dig into all of it. We're obviously here to talk money, specifically your money. We have some marriage. We have some wealth stuff to really dig into. But first, let's talk about your goals.

10:34I hear you have one mega goal with a deadline, as usual. It's to be a millionaire in two years. Right? Tell me more. Yep. Yep. Well, I mean, I've just launched my business, right? And I'm making this transition from public service broadcast journalist to entrepreneur in the media and lifestyle space. And so I figured, you know, I set goals in my broadcast career. So it is time to set goals in my new entrepreneur career. And you just came up with the million bucks because it sounded good. Well, I mean, it's not like I don't have any money saved. Great. Well, how much money do you have saved so i have my own condo in washington dc i have high yield savings i have a 401k and that total is i'm about 75 there okay okay you know i have a mortgage if i had my own house that was paid off would be a different story so like when you say like somebody's network is a million dollars is that net worth including sorry this is probably a very dumb question but is that Net worth, including, so like, is my house, even though I have a mortgage against it, considered the full value of it, considered part of my net worth?

11:56It's your assets minus your liabilities. So everything you own minus everything you owe. So the mortgage part, whatever you owe is subtracted from what you own. Yeah. Okay. No, that makes me more poor. All right. So let's get you on the track of becoming a millionaire. I love that we're talking specifically right now because I always like to give myself an end of year money intervention to set myself up for the new year, which you have a lot to celebrate and a lot to look forward to. Are you ready to do a little money exercise with me? Yeah, let's do it. All right. I'm stoked. So let's start with the good stuff.

12:35What money moves from the last year did you make that you were really proud of? Oh, God. OK, so like 2023, I made some good moves. 2024 has been rough. I invested. I still haven't seen the returns, but I invested in my business. But two things I matched, I maxed out my Roth IRA. I was like, okay, go me. I felt very proud of myself for that. And I also paid off debt. So I have no debt, which is great. And how much did you invest in your business? I invested about 50 ,000. Awesome. We're bootstrapping now because we're noon. So we're like getting ready to go into different fundraising rounds. So I've been bootstrapping, but I've maxed out my Roth IRA and I put$50 ,000 into my high yield savings account.

13:23All right. And how about the flip side? I would like to point out that like, okay, this is maybe controversial, but I feel like it needs to be said. So journalists get paid very poorly. Public service journalists get paid even worse. So like I was at the BBC, which is public service. So like it was virtually, this is the first time in my entire career that I actually have cash saved, that I was capable of having cash saved, which is just crazy. I had a 401k obviously, but like I couldn't afford to save money. How much were you making? The most I ever, this is so embarrassing. I can't believe I'm telling this on a podcast.

14:02You're a good journalist, but I feel like it's really important to be real. I agree. The most I ever made, and this is me, I had a great job. I was making documentaries. I had my own series. I had my own segment on Capitol Hill. I was running around the world with presidential candidates and the secretaries of state. And the most I ever made, including my professor job, was$90 ,000. I've never made six figures from a corporate job. And I'm in my 30s. Well, let's talk about the flip side. Can you talk about some times in 2024 that you felt like you needed money rehab? When I went to Morocco in August, I spent so much money on that trip.

14:44So unnecessary. That was not like, all right, I need to like, make a plan to make my money, make money for me. And why do you think you splurged in Morocco? Was it just pent up like you wanted to treat yourself and you hadn't for a long time? What happened? peer pressure. I went with a girlfriend and you know what it's like. You're like, oh, it's so nice. Oh no, you should totally get it. Like you'll make it back. So yeah, that's what happened. All right. So moving to 2025, we want to have more of the good stuff and less of the challenging stuff. Is that fair? We want to max out our Roth IRA again, keep saving more in high yield savings account, maybe even more than even beyond a high yield savings account, more budgeting on travel, maybe just in general.

15:33So I think one mistake we often make when it comes to financial resolutions is we make them way too challenging for ourselves or unrealistic. There's no problem with going after low hanging fruit because there is low hanging fruit when it comes to growing your wealth. So for example, let's talk about your savings account right now. You have 50K in a high yield savings account. First of all, that's awesome. I know. I feel super proud of myself. I'm proud of you. Kudos on the high yield savings account and not just using a regular savings account. Did you learn that from Money Rehab? Do you know what?

16:07I probably did. Great. I didn't really know what a high yield savings account really was until last year. But also, I will say, I've noticed that the interest rate is going down. Yeah, interest rates are going down in general. Oh, I see. So if my high yield savings accounts at 5 % and then dropped to 4.5%, it's because the Fed dropped the rates. Yeah, it all sort of trickles down from the Fed funds rate to the prime rate to mortgages. It takes a while, but when interest rates go down, the vehicles that you're investing in, like high yield savings accounts or CDs, go down too. Does that make sense?

16:50Yeah, it makes sense.

16:56hold on to your wallets money rehab will be right back and now for some more money rehab

17:09so reaching your financial goals is all about how you get your money to work harder for you I think that we can agree that that's a big goal for us a high yield savings account is really a simple way to do that because you're taking what you already have and just making sure that it's in the right place and it's working as hard for you as possible because comparatively to a regular savings account you're not making nearly as much interest how much are you contributing to that account per month approximately so right now i'm not i'm not putting anything further in it however i have like something like a kind of chunk coming.

17:49And so I'm deciding what to do with that. Can we come up with a way to automate some contributions? To the high yield savings account? Yeah. I mean, setting and forgetting it is one of the best ways to streamline finances. It's easy. You set it up once in the beginning of the year is a really good time to do it. And then you actively are doing something that's helping your financial future every single month. Like having that consistency is key. yeah okay so what amount should be going in it monthly well what amount is coming in well exactly that's the issue right it's like the as an entrepreneur it's like the income is not as consistent as when you have a corporate job well could we just start with something really small just to get that muscle memory going like a hundred dollars yeah a hundred dollars.

18:42Okay. And then you can always boost it. You get a windfall, your business takes off, you get funding, you change it. But start with something so you're creating that habit for yourself. But it's not just savings that is important, Suzanne, it's also investing, which brings us to a more complicated undertaking. In reality, investing can be made much more smooth, less stressful in general with the right strategy for your situation. and, you know, support to guide you along the way. But I know you have a 401k. Do you know how much is in there? Well, it only went down. I noticed that. So we were about at about 70.

19:22Well, last time I checked, I didn't check after the election. But before the election, it had gone down. Okay. I'm at about 75k now. And is that the only investment account you have? Do you have a brokerage account? I'm like scared to kind of, I feel like I don't really know what the best trades to make. And like, I'll kind of have gut instincts, or I'll be reading and kind of seeing the trends, especially as a, you know, global affairs journalism, like, but then I don't pull the trigger. Well, investing is not trading, by the way, trading is something totally different. I think it's really important to index funds and chill, which is basically buying the entire market.

20:02An S &P 500 index fund basically gives you a little piece of the entire S &P 500. So you're not actively trading. You just set it and forget it. And as the market goes up, so does your investment. It's really hard to beat the market. You've heard this before, right? So let's not try to beat it. I agree. And I was thinking like, oh, I need to invest before the stock market. I mean, before election day. And I just completely forgot. I want to start like, for my goal for 2025 is I want an investment plan, particularly because we're getting married. And so you know i want to invest our money properly okay yeah historically the stock market gets eight percent year over year which is more than sounds like your high yield savings account is getting you less than five percent so if you're gonna you're gonna put your money to work we want it to work as hard as possible it doesn't make more sense so you kind of have like what ratio should you have in high yield savings account stocks and index funds that's a great question I think ideally you want your emergency fund that's more accessible to you, that's more liquid.

21:12You don't want to go if, God forbid, something happens and you need to get your hands on that money. You don't want to sell your stocks or any more intricate investments that you might have, especially not your retirement funds. So what would be three months of expenses, bare bones expenses? Yeah, bare bones. I mean, ideally you'd have like six months or a little bit more as an entrepreneur that you think? I'd say about probably about 5 ,000 would be bare bones. What you have right now in your high yield savings account gets you 10 months of an emergency fund. So can we think of that as your emergency fund?

21:53Yeah. Cool. I mean, I think it's important to layer on all of the accounts that you have and look at it holistically against your goal of becoming a millionaire in two years and reverse engineer some of those set it and forget it habits because it's just about creating a system for yourself so that you don't have to think about it. You have so many other things going on. You have a business that you're running. You're going to be a newlywed. So I think it's about coming up with this system that you do once and the machine is moving and working in your favor. So between your savings, your 401k, your condo, it sounds like you're at 750k.

22:35So in order to become a millionaire in two years, you can either make a million dollars or you can have what you already have saved or in your brokerage account grow for you. So if you have your money invested and the stock market returns that 8 % historical year over year return, you could be worth a million dollars in two years by investing 875 grand. And that would be without earning any other income or getting any bonuses or windfalls along the way. How does that sound? Oh, that sounds good. So if I were you, I would look into how much money I really need waiting in the wings in that high yield savings account.

23:12How much is a bare bones expense plan? If God forbid something happens, somebody gets sick, somebody can't work. Is it$5 ,000? Do you feel comfortable with six months of that in the bank and the rest of it you can put into a brokerage account and start investing? Or do you want to have more saved? Does that make you feel more confident in your business plans? Is this a really personal thing? And that's a little soul searching that you have to do. I mean, to be honest, I think like, so are you're basically asking what I feel comfortable taking 25 ,000 out of my high yield savings and investing it?

23:48Is that what you're asking? I mean, I would think of that as your emergency fund. And just keep your North Star in mind that you want to make a million dollars in two years. And that has to come from somewhere. Okay, if I were to take$25 ,000 out, how would I invest it now for that to then happen? So you would go back to the index funds and chill plan where you invest in a low cost S &B 500 index fund, that would be the best way to get 8 % year over year. That's an easy way to start investing in the market. Again, it's not trading, it's long-term investing. So like, how do I choose which one? Because I looked, I actually remember going and looking recently because I've been kind of thinking about maybe I should take some money out and invest it.

24:35And then the ones that had the highest yields, like 15%, were all pharmaceuticals. And I just... Okay. I don't know what you were looking at. Were you looking at corporate bonds? Maybe? Maybe. Maybe I was. Because I would be like, that seems like a lot. So it won't tell you the yield for an index fund. So the ones that are of the ETF variety, there are two different kinds of index funds. There's the ETF exchange traded fund variety or the mutual fund variety. The exchange traded fund variety is not going to give you a guaranteed return, but it will give you an expense ratio. And some of the lowest expense ratios are VOO as a ticker symbol, for example, or SPY as a ticker symbol or IVV.

25:18These are all, you know, low cost index funds that you can buy in at any time. Just go into your brokerage account and search for the ticker symbol. I'm not suggesting one or the other necessarily, but take a look and you'll see, you know, it has really low expense ratios and historically it will yield 8 % year every year, but that's not a guaranteed return. Got it. Okay. Okay. Do we like this plan? Yeah. Okay. I know you want to talk about writing off wedding expenses from your taxes. Woman after my own heart. Instagram keeps pushing this stuff to me. And I'm like, is this true? Is it going to come after me?

25:58I thought I would ask the expert. Great. So there are certain expenses that you can write off. I know you have 400 wedding ceremonies. Do you know what kind of venue your ceremonies are going to be in? Yeah, so we're doing a sustainable wedding in line with the dress. And so we're being really intentional about what decor we use and flowers and food and like trying to keep things locally sourced, trying to not use plastic, single use, etc. And so we're being very mindful. we have the ceremony is at a church in Washington. And then we have a friend of ours is hosting our reception at her house, Juliana Glover.

26:43It's so nice of her to offer this. And so that that cuts down on costs just right there. Yeah. Well, if you are having your reception or getting married at a historical garden or a museum or even a state or national park, then the fee you pay there may be tax deductible as a donation but it becomes a little tricky because any fee paid in exchange for a service is not going to be deductible so you have to talk to the venue about what you can do about that if you're still thinking about venues keep those types of venues in mind have you been fed the flowers deduction video no well actually hold on Maybe.

27:25Is this where if you donate them to a certain, you have to donate them to somewhere specific, right? Yeah. So if you donate your flowers to a nonprofit like a homeless shelter or women's center, you can potentially deduct the value of the flowers on your taxes, but you can only deduct what the condition is at the time you donate. So what you can deduct might actually be less than what you paid, depending on when you donate those flowers, if they're droopy and, you know, browning or whatever. You can't write all of that off, but you could potentially write off some. Yeah. But this is a big year for you, Suzanne.