Q&A: Retiring at 54, Becoming an Overseas Land Lord & Trading Oil Futures

0:00Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast. question and answer edition brought to you by public.com and a very exciting happy new year. Today is January 1st, 2026. We've got so many tools and resources that have been published here on Spotify through, of course, the Rich Habits podcast that are going to help you win with money in 2026. Robert, what are you most excited about personally for 2026? I just think it's about having that abundant growth mindset and there being so many secular growth trends that we've been right about for the last three years in this podcast and in the Rich Habits Network.

0:39And it's just more of that growing the network because the coolest thing for me in life, I'll be honest, is walking down the street or in an airport and a family stops me and says, hey, can we take a picture? You've changed our lives. We love the Rich Habits Podcast. Or you've helped us so much financially. So that's it for me is more of that. Helping people figure out their money, figure out their mindset and figure out their businesses so they can live financially free. So that's it for me. That's exciting. I think the thing I'm personally most excited about for 2026 is the introduction of what we hope to have at least one, maybe two live events.

1:17Inviting as many of you as possible here to Nashville to host some sort of master series over the course of a weekend. Calling it the Rich Habits Rodeo, perhaps. we'll figure out some fun stuff with that but 2026 I think is the year that we really try and introduce a in real life event where we get to meet all of you and learn and we all get to you know incorporate a bunch of different cool speakers and a lot of fun things of that nature so 2026 is going to be the year where we do a little in-person stuff and I could not be more excited about it but we're wishing everyone a happy new year we hope you're not too hung over this morning considering last night was new year's eve at time of filming this I'm in Nashville but on actual New Year's, I will be in West Palm Beach, Florida, celebrating the new year with my fiance and Christian.

1:59And I'm just so excited for 2026 and so grateful that so many of you are following us into the new year and tuning into the show on a weekly basis. Well, make sure if we do this event, you do not talk me into riding a mechanical bull. I want to keep this body intact for 2026. So we'll have a lot of fun, but no mechanical bulls for me. No mechanical bulls. Now, this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, of course, is powered by Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. Because on Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, crypto options, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index using AI.

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3:20Paid for by public investing and full disclosure in the podcast description. and for those of you that haven't joined the Rich Habits Network yet, you can get all of our generated asset strategies right in the Rich Habits Network and there is a seven-day free trial in the show notes below. So our first question comes from Amber S. Amber says, hey Austin and Robert, I recently found your podcast on a long drive and I started back at episode one. I'm currently at episode 100 and doing my best to get caught up. I really enjoy the nuggets of knowledge you guys share in every episode. Here's my question.

3:52I have money in a 401k from a previous employer that recently got moved by the employer from Mutual of Omaha to John Hancock. After looking at the statement, it is definitely underperforming. On a previous episode, you had talked about moving a 401k from a previous employer into a Roth IRA. And as I consider the taxes at the point of moving, it might cost me north of$34 ,000 to do this. Is it better for me to take the loss now so that I've got the money growing for me tax-free versus later? Or should I just keep it in this 401k, adjusting the investments into something with a better rate of return, and then perhaps adding to a Roth IRA elsewhere?

4:34For context, I'm married. I'm 42 years old. I have$164 ,000 in a 401k, and my husband has$24 ,000 in a 403b. Or maybe I should roll it into public and get that uncapped 1 % match. Thank you so much. Looking forward to your feedback. Amber, love where you're at. So let's talk about your situation. You've got, I'm assuming this $164 ,000 in a 401k. Maybe that's what the number is here. So you've got this$160 ,000 in your 401k from a previous employer. Because you no longer work at that employer, you are able to roll over that 401k without any penalties, taxes, nothing into a traditional IRA, which is a pre-tax IRA, where you have full autonomy over how that money is invested.

5:18That is super simple. You can do that today and you can go open up this IRA on public, roll over, get your bonus match and have some extra money and make your investments work harder for you. That is totally something you can do right now. But you're asking if instead of rolling it over into a traditional IRA, completely normal, free, like no taxes, right? You are considering rolling it over into a Roth IRA. And remember, Roth IRAs are all after tax contributions, so you would have to pay taxes on this entire rolled over amount. This is a really, really tricky question because, in my opinion, you are in that kind of gray area.

5:57You're not so old where it's an immediate no, right? If you're like 55 and you've got money, roll it over to it. Like, no, it's all right. Just, I mean, you're gonna be able to touch the money in 5, 10 years anyway. Like, just don't worry about the taxes. Just do your thing. You're also not young enough where you're in your 20s or 30s where I could say, yeah, like roll it over to a Roth, pay your taxes now so you're good in the future. You're 42. You're about 20 years away from being able to really enjoy this money. But again, we're only talking about$160 ,000. I wish I had a better framework or sort of equation that I can share with you that's rules based.

6:32But to be quite honest with you, I'm just going to go off vibes on this one. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say take that money, roll it out of your John Hancock or whatever it is into a traditional IRA on public.com and then what I want you to do is contribute to your Roth IRA. So literally put it in a traditional IRA, let it grow and compound for you over decades, make sure it's invested into the index funds and ETFs we talk about and then all of your contributions going forward are going to go toward a Roth IRA. You're going to max that out every single year and you're off to the races. Now, the only part where this gets a little convoluted is when you want to start doing backdoor Roth IRA contributions because you make more than the income limits.

7:16To do a backdoor Roth IRA, you're not supposed to have any money in pre-tax IRAs like a traditional IRA, like messes up the conversion there. So it gets a little convoluted that way. But depending on your income and the way you describe this, I'd probably argue you and your husband make below that$236 ,000 a year. You said he's contributing to a 403B, which makes me think he's maybe a teacher or somebody like that. So if you're making more than 236, of course, like just do the Roth, pay the taxes, get over it. But if you're not, then I would do what I'd said before. I agree 100%, Austin. Get that rolled over.

7:50No penalties, no fees, just rock and roll. Let it perform better because you have autonomy now and then start maxing out that Roth IRA every year. You still have 20, 25 years of a really strong horizon to build your wealth. And getting the Roth started now is better late than never. And that's exactly the playbook I agree with you, Austin, that I would do. Yeah, just kind of zooming out, right? I mean, at the end of the day here, you're$160 ,000, assuming that's what you're rolling over to your traditional IRA. The rule of 72 tells us the stock market doubles every seven years or so. So this$165 ,000, assuming it doubles four times, is north of$2.5 million.

8:27You're going to have so much money. Don't even worry about it. You're going to do just fine. So our next question comes from Sam J. Sam says, Hey, Austin and Robert, I found your podcast almost a year ago, and I can't thank you guys enough. For some background, I'm 19 years old. I live in California, and I've got 30 ,000 in investments. I do dump runs in odd jobs for work. However, the issue is I have$0 in my Roth IRA due to not having any taxable income. My question is, should I take the hit and pay the 15.3 % self-employment tax on my 7 ,000 so I can invest that into the Roth IRA? Or should I just keep piling into a traditional brokerage account until I have taxable income?

9:05I personally would take the hit. I feel like if, well, also it's like, what do you mean you don't have any taxable income? Like I understand like the odd jobs and stuff, but like, yeah, like just pay your taxes, dude. Like I don't know what to tell you, like let's not do tax evasion, right? Let's pay our taxes, which is really not that much money, especially if you just need to do that$7 ,000 to invest in the Roth. And then yeah, rock and roll that way. Robert, what do you think? Yeah, I would just form a single member LLC. So you could get the tax write-offs against your gas and your auto repairs.

9:34And you probably have a dump trailer repairs and all those things. You can also write off some internet and mileage and all these other things. And I would just claim the income. So many people try to cheat the system to save a little money, but you end up cheating yourself because like you said, you can't open the Roth without taxable income. So I would do that. Get yourself rocking and rolling. Keep hustling. Do things the right way now. Set up that foundation the right way and build your wealth along the way and you'll do just fine. Yeah. The thing that you need to be careful of, though, is to make sure that you are, you know, if you do this single member LLC and you've got these write-offs, you're not writing off everything because, again, you have to pay taxes on some sort of income of$7 ,000 or more.

10:15So if you're claiming$7 ,000 of income and then you have write-offs of$3 ,000. Well, now your taxable income is only$4 ,000, which means you can only contribute$4 ,000 to your Roth. So make sure that your taxable income after your write-offs is that$7 ,000 a year. Our next question comes from Fernanz S on Instagram. Fernanz says, Hi, I'm a big fan of your podcast and I appreciate all the insights and work you do and want to genuinely thank you for that. I was wondering what your take is on oil and oil pricing for 2026, considering geopolitical changes in CFDs being and what to buy if I want to invest in energy, primarily oil.

10:53Thank you very much. Robert, I'll let you kick this one off. Yeah, this is a tough one because we don't really have a backstory. We don't know what this person's net worth is. We don't know their age. We don't know if they're trying to get too fancy with their money. So we'll make some assumptions. I'm going to say Farnas is 40 years old, has a net worth of a million dollars and wants to dabble in the fine art of contracts for difference. So what does this mean? You don't own any physical oil. You're not a JV or a GP or any of these in any of these funds. If I can understand this correctly, you're basically just investing in the difference.

11:27You're trying to arbitrage the difference on these oil contracts to be able to make a profit. So I wouldn't do it. I think sometimes people try to get too fancy, especially earlier on in their financial careers. So I personally wouldn't touch it. I've had bad experiences with investing in oil myself, just illiquid and some other things and a lot of volatility. But that's what I would do because you have to be careful here because you're going to have a lot of leverage and you're going to have just a lot of volatility. And I just don't think it's a great strategy unless you're very well versed in it and understand what you're getting yourself into.

12:02That would be my take. So I'm looking at the price of crude oil right now. I'm doing this on tradingeconomics.com. A barrel of crude oil is currently at$56 a barrel, 57, somewhere in that range here. It's down 20 % over the last 12 months. And it's down dramatically, actually, from the peak that it experienced in 2022. It peaked at 116 a barrel. Now it's down to 56, which I think is just great in general because I don't like paying an arm and a leg for putting gas in my car, which also it's good because it should make it cheaper for people to move and companies to move goods around the world, therefore bringing down inflation.

12:42But again, who knows because capitalism. But anyway, to answer your question, would I invest in oil right now? What do I think of 2026 oil? Here's my perspective. And this is coming from a guy that is no expert by any stretch of the imagination in oil or many other commodities, but I don't invest in commodities. No one invests in commodities. In general, they trade commodities. Investing means, my name's Austin. I have a thesis that this is going to profit over the next three, five, seven, 10 years, and I'm going to invest my money into this underlying thesis because I think it's going to go up in value, and that is defined as dividends or share price appreciation or whatever else, corporate profits, however you want to think about that, right?

13:29But it's like that's investing. Commodities are different. The price of a commodity is a function of supply and demand. And a commodity is defined as a good. Think soybeans. Think oil. Think gold. Silver. Precious metals are commodities, right? Commodities are things. And things don't pay you dividends. Things don't report earnings. Things don't have profits. They're just things. And the price of that thing goes up or down, again, as a function of supply and demand for that thing. And so if you think that crude oil will go up in price because of geopolitical something or I don't know, like insert whatever your idea is here, then theoretically you could use a CFD to profit from that.

14:15A CFD is just making a bet on the price going up, kind of like a call option is for a stock. And so if that's what you want to do, rock and roll. I don't know enough about oil to want to put my hard-earned money at risk to potentially go down if I'm wrong. But I do know a lot about companies. I do have conviction into Amazon. I'll buy Amazon stocks. I know I understand it. It's hard for me to put my money into things I don't understand. Now, I guess the flip side of that is I do have money in things like gold and silver and palladium and different types of precious metals. But I see that more as a hedge against volatility than I see it as a trade to make a lot of money, if that makes any sense.

14:56So my opinion, I wouldn't do this. I think you're better off just putting your money into the S &P 500, the NASDAQ. Maybe you're better off putting your money into a specific company that you really are passionate about and understand their growth trajectory for the next three, five, seven years. Buy NVIDIA. Heck, I don't know. Like, put your money into something that you clearly see as operating in a secular growth trend. Cybersecurity, talking about that for a long time. Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, those names are crushing it. So I would put my money in something like that versus trying to roll the dice on the price of barrels of oil.

15:26Yeah. And the other thing I want to add to this for everyone else is to understand the opportunity costs. Because if you're going to trade Forex or you want to day trade and you want to do all these things, it's a full-time job. You have to be watching the markets. You have to understand why oil is going up, down, sideways. And this is a full-time job. So you have to ask yourself, is it worth me spending three, four, five hours a day to do this strategy, are the profits going to be there enough and consistently enough to do this versus being a long-term investor, finding your convictions, finding the right stocks and ETFs that we talk about, and just investing in dollar cost averaging?

16:05So that is another consideration when you're looking at these types of strategies. Our next question comes from EF on Instagram. EF says, Hi, Robert and Austin. What an amazing job you guys do. I really appreciate it. I built my base and I'm still adding to it. I've got no debt, but I don't really have any real estate either. I now wonder whether it's time for me to enter the real estate game as well. I do have a friend who purchased a apartment in Dubai and they have an agreement with a property management firm and he's got some tenants, he's making some money from it, and they of course take care of the maintenance.

16:35Do you think someone should do this with real estate? Be a long distance landlord. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work. E-F. Robert, what do you think about long distance landlording? What's been your experience as a long distance landlord? I think in the short term, if you're just getting started, it's a terrible idea. Because if you have something, especially out of the country, which is, you know, another level of long distance, I just don't like it. Because if something happens, you have to sue somebody, you have to chase somebody. Guess what? Depending on the contracts, you're going to have to go to that country to fight for your money and your rights.

17:10So just keep that in mind. I've lost millions of dollars with international contracts where I've had to fight them in other countries. And I don't like that idea. Now, long distance, if it's in the United States, and I'm assuming you are, I'm OK with that because I can get in a car. I can get on a two hour flight in most instances, go to the property, go fight it, do what I need to do and fix the problem. But for any of you that are just starting out, don't fall for this because right now it's all the rage because Dubai has all these tax breaks. and all of these really cool features for US citizens to be able to go buy real estate.

17:45But I don't like it because you can't touch it, you can't feel it, and you can't control it. I would stick to the basics to get started. If you get yourself into millions of dollars of real estate deals and you want to venture out of the country, go for it. But not until then. You're just trying to get too fancy, chasing a trend, and it's not worth it. So what advice would you give someone that is trying to do long distance landlording for their first time in general here in the United States. Use technology as your friend. I would find the right rental apps, the right management firms. You want to check out and make sure whatever area you're buying, you have a really good management company that can handle it all.

18:25And that's okay with me because if you have an established rental company that manages properties and you can verify that they're good at what they do, you're going to be in really good hands 95 % of the time. And if not, then I would just stay out of the real estate game and invest in REITs like on Fundrise or something like that, where they do all the work for you and it's just passive income. If you are someone who is long distance landlording, just think about the opportunity cost on your time, right? Is the money you're earning long distance landlording worth the time and headache that might come with being a long distance landlord, like Robert said, having to hop on a flight or drive a couple hours, whatever it might be, versus just passively investing into real estate via the IYRI, NEOS funds ETF that invests in real estate for you and then pays you a monthly distribution yield and all that other fun stuff.

19:15So yeah, really, it's just balancing how you prefer to have exposure to the asset class that is real estate. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Real estate is something everyone should own, But I always like to tell people, start out small, get your feet wet, understand what you're doing, do your research, become good at it, and then expand and get a little fancier and do bigger projects elsewhere. But in the beginning, keep it simple, make the money, and learn the industry. So our next question comes from Shane W. Shane says, hello, gentlemen. I've been listening to the show for a while, and I really enjoy it.

19:48I was wondering if you could provide your opinion on who the best solo 401k provider is. I've got two small businesses and two rental properties. I also have an IRA with about$190 ,000 inside of it. My wife is working in corporate America where she has good benefits and stock options. Should we open up a solo 401k and max it out yearly? Do we keep maxing out our IRA, our bridge account? What do you guys think? So in your situation, it seems like you've got two small businesses and two rental incomes, which is awesome because I'm assuming that means you've got some business profits. Now, how a solo 401k works is you're essentially creating a 401k account, except you're a solopreneur, right?

20:29So it's like you're working for yourself here. You're a self-employed individual and you're creating your own 401k because you work for yourself. You don't have a 401k elsewhere. Like you're going to do it that way. That's what I have. So Robert has, it's a very simple way to do it. We use carry.com, C-A-R-R-Y.com to do that. I do something called a mega backdoor Roth solo 401k. I'm not positive if you'll be able to do that because I don't know if you pay yourself a salary. You need to pay yourself a salary to do the mega backdoor Roth, but assuming you do pay yourself a salary and it's not all just self-employment tax, you should be able to contribute to a mega backdoor Roth solo 401k in that instance.

21:08Go check out kerry.com. They've got a bunch of awesome tools and resources here. The big thing you have to remember with a solo 401k is you don't have other employees in your business. You mentioned you have two small businesses and two rental incomes. If you have any employees on payroll and those two small businesses are those two rental incomes, that's not your spouse. You cannot do this, right? This is only for people who are solo, right? No employees plus solo 401k. It doesn't work like that. Yeah, I like that breakdown, Austin. And definitely, Shane, keep maxing out the IRA. Always, always do that.

21:42You want to make sure you get as many benefits as you can every single year. And just like we always say, just don't get too fancy. It's not necessary. Austin laid out the blueprint. Hope this helps. And just keep rocking and rolling and do things right. Robert, speaking of getting fancy though, we have been getting fancy behind the scenes when it comes to using Publix generated assets. We've created 13 strategies of our own generated assets inside the rich habits network they are the rich habits generated asset strategies and they are awesome they what's so cool about generated assets on public is you can benchmark your strategy against the s &p 500 over the last 10 years and like all of our strategies are in the you know 800 900 a thousand percent return back test over the last 10 years which is sick so if you want to start using generated assets go to public.com slash rich habits type in your own strategy, something like one that has worked well for us that I think y 'all should just steal and use is investing into companies that are growing revenue and their annual dividend by at least 10 % per year over the last, I think it was like three or five years or whatever I ended up using as a parameter there.

22:49Pretty good one. It's a good strategy. Back test pretty well. So stuff like that, right? Come up with your own strategy that you think will perform well, right? We did one with R &D, companies that are reinvesting at least 15 % of their market cap into research and development. That one backtested well. So one, go check out Generated Assets, public.com slash rich habits. And if you want more Generated Assets ideas, join the Rich Habits Network, and it's just pinned right there at the top. And I just want to put something out there for all the new people around here. We have been talking about public.com for years now.

23:21The reason is, and why we love them so much, not just for you and for ourselves, as our main sponsor, is because they build the coolest stuff to make your lives easier, our lives easier, and help us make more money. So I want to clear that up because people are probably like, why do they talk about Publix so much? Because it's awesome. It's a really great platform that helps all of us build wealth. So make sure you check it out. If you're new around here, public.com. There's a link in our bios. There's a link in the show notes. And it's just a great platform. Our next question comes from Chase M.

23:54Chase says, hey, Austin and Robert. My name's Chase, and I'm a loyal listener to the show. Listen for about a year and a half and implementing your financial strategies. I'm 20 years old. I got engaged recently to my fiance. We're both still in college, but started to contribute to our Roth IRAs and brokerage accounts last year. Obviously, we're only just starting with a little bit of money each month, but a little bit is better than nothing. While our wedding is still well over a year out, I was wondering what your thoughts are and how we could continue our investing journey after we get married.

24:23We're gonna graduate from college the year after we get married, We are currently investing through Robinhood, but I was wondering if we should roll over our investments to a joint account or remain separate after the wedding. When we get married, we plan to have both personal accounts and a joint bank account. What is your advice when it comes to combining finances? Thank you so much. Chase, Chase, Chase, if I give you a high five through the monitor here, I would. Good for you. That is so exciting. Well, congrats on getting engaged. Nothing better than falling in love. And it's just, it's great.

24:53As someone who's also engaged right now. It's incredible. Okay. So my best advice for building wealth after you get married, three things. One, you need to be maxing out your Roth IRA. She needs to be maxing out her Roth IRA. And y 'all do that congruently side by side until y 'all are in retirement, right? Despite being married, she has her retirement account. You've got your retirement account rock and roll because that's how you double dip essentially, right? You just keep on rocking. So do that VOO, QQQ, VGT, all the normal index funds and ETFs we talk about. The second part, when it comes to combining finances, when I talk about combining finances, I don't mean so literally that you guys share Venmo accounts and you guys share PayPal accounts and you guys share, like, I don't mean it that literally.