How to Retire in 10 Years or Less!

23:07Is tax advantage accounts are a big portion of what they do. And we'll talk about how to access those early in a second. For the most part, filling up tax advantage accounts can be really, really important. But there is a trade-off to this, which we'll talk about right after, okay? So 401k all the way up to the match first is gonna be the one place that you really want to consider when you are thinking about investing your dollars, okay? Your 401k match is a 100 % rate of return. It is free money. Every single person listening to this podcast, if you get a 401k match, you need to take advantage of it.

23:36It is the most important thing that you can do with your dollars is get that 100 % rate of return. Even before paying off high interest debt, I want you to get that 401k match because that return is so high. Number two is the HSA if you have a high deductible health plan. This is going to do a number of different things for you even when you retire early. One is first, it's going to give you those triple tax benefits, meaning money goes into an HSA tax-free, you invest it and it grows tax-free, and you can pull the money out tax-free as long as you have that qualified medical expense. And so for folks who retire early, if you have some qualified medical expenses, this is going to allow you to pull some of that cash out of your HSA early in retirement.

24:17And so it gives you one option that allows you to do this. It may fund a portion of what you spend every single year. The other thing it does is once you get to traditional retirement age at age 65, it basically turns into an IRA later on down the line. And so it can grow tax-free and have the ability for you to have some flexibility there. Next is to look at the Roth IRA. So the Roth IRA allows you to put$7 ,500 per year currently. And if you are over the age of 50, you have that catch-up contribution available to you. But the Roth IRA is one that you want to try to max out if you are not above the income thresholds.

24:49if you are above the income thresholds, then doing a backdoor Roth IRA is another great option. And then going back to the 401k and maxing that out at$24 ,500 per year. If you wanna retire in 10 years, you most likely need to be maxing out the majority of your retirement accounts. But the other option is, okay, you say, well, how am I gonna access this money? Sure, there's a number of different ways on how you can access this money. You could do a Roth conversion ladder. You could do things like a SEP, substantial equal periodic payments. But these are complicated strategies. In reality, you want to talk to someone when you were thinking about doing some of these strategies.

25:22And so one of the easiest ways to look at this is potentially looking at something like a taxable brokerage account. Now, there are tremendous tax benefits to contributing to these tax deferred accounts or these tax advantage accounts. And so you want to make sure that you look into the benefits of those, but also look at the additional benefits of something like a taxable brokerage account. If you are deciding to invest in a taxable brokerage account, there are no income limits. There's no limits to how much you can contribute every single year. And in addition, you can pull the money out whenever you want.

25:51Now you need to note the tax differential on taxable brokerage accounts versus something else like those tax advantage accounts. When you put money in a taxable brokerage account, if you pull it out within that same year, then you're gonna pay short-term capital gains. These are not good things to pay because it's basically the same as your income tax. And so for most people, when you sell inside of your taxable brokerage account, when you've owned the stock for less than one year, that's when you'd pay those short-term capital gains. Not the best situation for most people. Number two, though, is if you've owned the stock for longer than one year, you are gonna be paying long-term capital gains.

26:27And when you do that, it is a much more tax-efficient way to think about investing in a taxable. Why? Because there are three different brackets when we look at how much you pay in long-term capital gains. And so for 2026, the federal long-term capital gains rates, If you are taxed at the 0 % rate, meaning you make less than$49 ,450 per year as a single filer or$98 ,900 per year as married filing jointly, then you would be paying the 0 % tax rate. So think about this for a second. You retire early and you decide I'm going to be retired. If you make less than that in income, you don't have an income anymore.

27:06If you make less than that in income, you're going to pay 0 % tax on that money. Plus the standard deduction. So when you look at the standard deduction, this allows you to also save an additional amount on this, which is going to be a really, really cool thing for those of you who have long-term capital gains rate. Now, if you make over$49 ,451 as a single filer, all the way up to$545 ,000, or if you're married filing jointly and you make$98 ,901 all the way up to$613 ,000, then you would pay the 15 % long-term capital gains rate. And so that is going to be one where for most of you, you either fall in the 0 % or the 15 % rate.

27:45And then if you make over 545 ,000 or 613 ,000, then you pay the 20%, which is still significantly less than what your income tax would be. So what does this tell us right here? Taxable brokerage accounts are way more tax advantage than people give them credit for. And in fact, I am starting to really consider a taxable brokerage account to be one of the coolest accounts out there because of the way that these income limits, when it comes to long-term capital gains are changing. They're changing in our favor and they are increasing every single year. They're doing a great job at keeping up with this.

28:18And so because of that, I really, really like these accounts, even as some tax advantages come into play. Now, if you are someone who has an income or you're going to take a part-time job and you feel as though it's going to take you above those thresholds, then maybe looking at the tax advantage accounts could be great. But these are also really wonderful for people who decide to retire early because you have the flexibility. And if your income doesn't rise above$120 ,000 plus per year, if you are married, then you're in a pretty good situation to maybe pay 0 % capital gains tax. So check with your CPA, check with your advisor if you have one on this kind of stuff, because I think it's really important to run those numbers when you're thinking about retiring early and developing this plan and putting that together.

28:57So that's going to also bridge you to 59 and a half is having that taxable brokerage account. So you need to have that available for most situations, especially if you want to retire early. I think that's the account to use. I think that's the main one to use is the taxable brokerage. Uh, when we go through these steps next is you want to figure out what your gap is. So the difference between your income and expenses, you're going to aggressively invest that as fast as you possibly can. And so you look at your income, you look at your expenses and you figure out what that percentage is. Once you do that, based on all the stuff we just talked about, you invest as much as you possibly can.

29:27And then adjust that gap. if you can, as time goes on. If you increase your income, the gap is gonna grow. If you decrease your expenses, the gap is gonna grow. And here's the beautiful thing about a high savings rate that I want most people to know. The more you save, it actually works in your favor in two different ways. One is you are increasing the amount that you're saving over time, but you're also decreasing the amount that you need to spend every single year. And so it's a two-part equation that allows you to accelerate your path to financial independence by increasing that savings rate because all of a sudden you realize okay, if I make$120 ,000 per year and I save$60 ,000 and I'm able to live off$60 ,000, well, that means it reduces the amount of money that I need to live on.

30:08Is that 60 ,000? Maybe you were spending 80 before and now you reduce it down to 60, but it also increases the acceleration rate of your financial independence by your savings rate, meaning that you also are saving 60 ,000 and that$20 ,000 difference can make a huge, huge deal. So these are the steps that I want you to take. These are the things that I want you to think about if you want to retire in 10 years, but you got to map it out with your savings rate. You got to understand what your retirement number is going to be. You got to understand what your expenses are going to be in retirement and how much you truly want to spend.

30:37And once you have those three numbers, you can really make a huge dent in your financial independence timeline. Now let's look at a case study for this because I want most of you to look at this and see, you know, what would this look like in reality? Well, let's look at Marcus and Priya who want to retire at the age of 39. So Marcus and Priya are a couple. They're in their late twenties and they live in a mid cost city and they don't have kids yet. Okay. And they start around$150 ,000 combined as household income. So maybe each one of them is making$75 ,000 per year. Then there's one move that they do that drives everything.

31:10They lock in their lifestyle at spending$60 ,000 per year. So they make$150 ,000 between the two of them. they lock in their spending at$60 ,000 per year and they never move it okay so from year one to year 10 they decide we're going to spend 60 ,000 and we're okay with this the number one thing they decide to do though is during this 10 years they want to increase their income they want to make this easier to get to and so increasing their income is their number one goal so they go on offense they do everything they can to get promotions so Marcus stacks a couple promotions Priya builds a side business into a second income.

31:46And the household income grosses about$300 ,000 by year 10. So they doubled their income over the course of 10 years. I have seen this happen with plenty of people in Master Money Academy. I have done this time and time again over a decade. It is not a massive leap to double your household income over the course of 10 years. 10 years is a long time when it comes to working years, and you can absolutely do that. And so by keeping their spending pinned at$60 ,000 per year the whole way, their savings rate runs from a 50 % savings rate to start all the way up to 70%. And everything above that$60 ,000 that they need every single year gets automated into things like low cost index funds and things like their taxable brokerage account that allows them to be able to build up this portfolio.

32:31And their number at 25 times$60 ,000 per year is going to be$1.5 million dollars. So with that small head start and a 7 % rate of return, they cross over in 10 years. Now, here's the interesting thing about this case study is of that 1.5 million dollars, about three quarters of the money is money that they actually had to put in. It's money that they had to contribute to this account. Whereas someone, if they had a 30 year time, it would be pretty much reversed. But because it's only 10 years, they had to contribute the majority of this money and only about 25 % is compound interest. Now, once they retire, compound interest will take over long-term.

33:10And if they reduce their spending enough, they could be able to get to a point in time where this portfolio grows over time and they can actually spend more. I've seen this happen to people who retired early, like in the 2010s, where they retired early and all of a sudden their portfolio continued to grow because we've had wonderful market returns. And so they are actually able to spend more now than they did when they originally retired. Now, the big thing you're thinking here is, well, what about inflation? You're going to adjust for inflation every single year. So you need to adjust for that inflation rate no matter what.

33:39And so a lot of times the 4 % rule bakes that in. But if you have a longer time horizon, I would adjust it down to 3.5 % or 3 % is the way that I would truly think about it to be conservative. Now that may be overly conservative for some of you. And if you look at some of the most recent research on the 4 % rule, in reality, they say you can spend right around 4.9%. So maybe if you retire early, the 4 % rule can work out, but I just like to be a little more conservative, especially in those early years, sequence of returns, risks, those types of things we want to make sure that we are avoiding.

34:07So that is an example of how this could work for someone who is a high earner. Now you're saying to yourself, well, I make$60 ,000 per year. I can live off$40 ,000 per year and save 20. Can I get there? Most likely not. Most likely you need a higher savings rate to get to that point in time. Since your savings rate is going to be the throttle that allows you to get to early retirement in 10 years. You need to make more money than that. And so for most people, unless you're willing to live on a very small amount of money, which in 2026 is pretty difficult, you need to figure out what your timeline is going to be and then get to that point in time where maybe it's 15 years, but that's a okay because you are buying back your freedom.

34:46And so even if it's 15 years, that is an amazing feat. That is half the time of when most people retire. In fact, it's faster than half the time. And so that's, I think, for most of you is really, really cool. Now, I want to dive into a couple of things on the psychology here right after this. Summer's almost here, and I want to spend time planning trips and making memories with my family, not stressing about whether I can actually afford anything. That's why I try to get organized ahead of time so the money's already handled before summer really starts. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, accounts, investments, savings goals, and spending.

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37:23All right, so a couple of things I want to talk about that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about when it comes to fire and retiring early. and some of the things that I think we need to talk through is number one, understanding, obviously, this is a grind. I have said that throughout the entire episode. This is not an easy thing to do. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Saving 65 % of your income is not an easy thing to do and not everyone can do it. But two is I want you to make sure you actually want this because when we think about early retirement, it might be a wonderful dream to get to the point in time where we can retire early.

37:54But let me just give you an example of this. When I was in my 20s, I told myself, I want to achieve lean fire. And lean fire means that you achieve financial independence. And when you achieve financial independence, it's basically the bare minimum that you need. So I told myself, okay, I want to get to the point in time where it's the bare minimum I need, then I'm going to be happy and I'll be able to retire and do whatever I want with my time. And I realized pretty quickly when I got to that number, I don't want to spend this amount of money for the rest of my life. That doesn't feel like a life fulfilled to me.

38:20I wanted to spend more. And so I changed my goals once I got closer to that goal because I had changed. I got married, I had kids, and so a lot of things had changed within my life. And so for you specifically, I want you to think about, is this what you actually want? And there's ways to test this. So one of the ways to test this is you could do something like a mini sabbatical. A sabbatical is basically where you take a certain amount of time off, and when you take that time off, it gives you a pre-test to see if you actually like spending time, you know, doing other things. So let's say, for example, you go to your boss and you say, okay, I would like to take a three month sabbatical and you can give whatever reason you can.

39:00Obviously not everybody can do this depending on what your job is, but you could say, I'm going to take a three month sabbatical and see if this is what I want to do, because you could take a sabbatical every five years or so, for example, and Jillian Johnson has a great book on this, talking about how to take sabbaticals, how to talk to your boss and those types of things. So if you are interested in this concept, definitely check out her book, but you can take these sabbaticals every couple of years. And this gives you that feeling of early retirement without having to be so aggressive on it.

39:25So that's one thing I think is really cool. You could do is kind of have these, you know, timeframes where you take time off or you save up to take time off. And that's how you plan it out because you can, you know, work much longer when you have these longer breaks. And so I think that's a really cool way to think about this. So making sure you actually want this as number one and finding ways to test the waters is really, really important. If you are going to retire early, I want you to know what you're retiring Two, we did an entire episode on this talking through thinking about when you retire, what are you actually going to be doing with your time?

39:56Because it has been shown that people who retire, if they don't have a plan in place on what they're going to do with their time, they end up not living as long. They end up not being as happy or fulfilled. And so you want to know what you're getting into. Is there a charity or cause you believe in? Do you just want to spend more time with your kids, be able to homeschool them maybe? Or maybe you want to spend more time with family members or aging parents. Maybe you want to do more of your hobbies or your interests, or maybe you just actually want to finally start that business. And so once you do that, you have the flexibility and the ability to do this by retiring early.

40:27So there's a lot of things you want to make sure that you were thinking through. But if you have no plan in place, your days begin to drift and you become bored. And then all of a sudden, if you become too bored, then you can become depressed or anxious. And I don't want that for anybody out there. So making sure you understand what you're retiring to, I think is a conversation that you need to have. Also, you can explore lighter versions of this. So there are things like Coast Fire, for example. Maybe you want to get to the point in time where you're just reducing the overall days that you're working.

40:53You want to work four days a week. Well, you can get to Coast Fire and all of a sudden you reduce the amount of days that you're working and you don't have to have that high savings rate. Coast Fire is basically where your savings get to a point in time and all of a sudden compound interest can kind of take you the rest of the way all the way until early retirement age. So that is something that you can consider. The other option is to do something like barista fire. I love barista fire for flexibility. So it originally was called barista fire because people would take a job, a part time job at Starbucks in order to cover their health insurance when they retired early.

41:23But what I like about barista fire is you could take a part time job to cover the rest of the expenses that you need. Maybe you get your portfolio 50 % of the way there. And then the other 50%, you decide, actually, I really enjoy spending time surfing. And so you go and move to a location where you can surf more and more. But in addition, you become a surf instructor. And so the other 50 % of your income is made up by becoming a surf instructor. So you spend all day long spending time surfing. I think that's a really, really cool concept. We've talked about this with a number of different things.

41:56Maybe you love Pilates. And so you decide, hey, I'm going to get 75 % of the way to my goal. And then the other 25%, I want to teach Pilates classes. And that's going to be my income. And I'll do it one to two days a week. And that allows me to be able to retire early and do something that I love and spend my days doing things that I enjoy. Maybe you love pickleball and you want to be a pickleball coach. Maybe you love fishing and you want to be a fishing charter captain or spend time out in the water. So many cool options out there of things that you can do. Maybe you love your hometown and you want to be a guide or a tour guide.

42:25Maybe you love travel and you want to be a travel guide. There's really great ways to find additional income sources with Barista Fire. And I think there's so many different creative options that you have out there. So that's another one to think through. Also, you want to make sure that your partner or your spouse is all the way in on this if you are going to do it together. Otherwise, it could be very difficult to achieve this goal, and it could be something that you really want to think through. And another big thing to note is health care. So health care can kill this plan pretty quickly if you don't have a plan in place.

42:52Health care, depending on where you live, can cost anywhere from$1 ,000 all the way up to$2 ,500. And if you're saying to yourself, well, I can live on$60 ,000 per year, but it costs$2 ,000 per month for health care, and you didn't factor that in. Well, in reality, you're going to need$84 ,000 per year in order to be a okay. And so if you're used to your employer paying for your healthcare, you want to make sure that you develop a plan for healthcare or look deeper into the costs. One of the things that I like to do is go and shop your healthcare. You can go to ACA, for example, or you can go to your local state healthcare plans and kind of see what those costs are.

43:26So you have an understanding of what your options are. This is something that doesn't look like it's going to get any better anytime soon. So you probably are going to have to factor these numbers in for anybody retiring early. I don't care if you're retiring at 55, 69. But anytime before Medicare kicks in, you want to make sure that you're factoring in healthcare, because this can be something that can blow out your budget entirely. So you do all this planning, you get to early retirement, and all of a sudden, healthcare just absolutely wipes you out. So that's why a lot of people like barista fire, because you can get a part time job that will carry you through early retirement and into Medicare years.

43:57So people would work at Starbucks, because Starbucks used to give, you know, healthcare benefits to people, even when they worked part time, there's probably a full list somewhere of companies that will do that. So I think that's a really cool option and one to keep thinking through. If you've ever felt like your bank is working against you instead of for you, you're not alone. Between overdraft fees, monthly fees, and just trying to access your own money, it all adds up fast. That's why Chime is changing the way people think. Chime offers fee-free banking built for you, not the bank. That means no monthly fees, no overdraft fees with SpotMe, and access to thousands of fee-free ATMs, so you're not paying just to get your own money.

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45:16Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime Card provided by Chime Bank Partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Checking account ranking based on a JD Power survey published October 20th, 2025. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, SpotMe, and travel perks, go to chime.com slash disclosures. We've got a lot planned this summer. Trips with kids, time outside, long weekends, and just more moments together as a family. And honestly, the older I get, the more I realize how important it is to protect it all. The good news is getting life insurance doesn't have to be this huge, stressful project anymore.

45:47That's why I like PolicyGenius. PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that helps you compare life insurance quotes from top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you figure out the right coverage, answers your questions, handles the paperwork, and helps you find the best fit for your family. It's one of those things that feels like it should take forever, but they make it surprisingly straightforward. And honestly, it turns life insurance into getting more of a summer win than a chore. And there's real peace of mind knowing that your family is protected while you're actually enjoying life together.

46:22With Policy Genius, you can see if you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for$1 million in coverage. Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com. Now you may be saying to yourself, okay, all this is great and all this is grand, but why would I even want to do this? What are some of the reasons why you'd want to do this? Well, you get your healthiest years back early on, you get your highest leverage years, and you get the years where you are the most fresh. And for those of you who are high performers out there, my guess, and most people who retire early, they find something that's going to allow them to make more money.

47:01In addition, because they have all this additional free time, it's just in their nature to go out and try to find something else that is going to allow them to make money. But now they have the flexibility to do things on their own terms. So you get your early years back, the times where you really don't get those early years back if you retire at 60. If you're in your 30s or 40s, you get those back where you are the healthiest. Two is time with your kids. So if you have young kids, this is one of the most valuable times that you will ever have. You will lay on your deathbed if you spend all your time working and not spending time with your kids and you will lay on your deathbed and you will regret it.

47:30That is the number one regret for most people is not spending enough time with your family. You wanna look back and say, I spent some wonderful memories and wonderful time with my family. And if you haven't read the book, Die With Zero, I fully encourage you to read that. Three is you have full control over your calendar, your time, your energy, and everything else that you could do. And for most people, that's gonna bring joy, that's gonna bring happiness and really, really give you the opportunity to reduce your stress and anxiety around everything in life. So those are just some of the things that you can do with this that I want you to just consider.

48:02Make a pros and cons list if you are considering doing this aggressively and decide if this is right for you and your family because there are a lot of factors that come into play. Even if you just save aggressively or try to get to this goal and you do it in 12 years or 14, 15, 20 years, it's really really cool goal to try to achieve and i think for most of you out there you're gonna be very happy that you did this in the future i know for me specifically i was pretty frugal in my 20s and looking back i am so happy i was it allowed me to have that financial foundation that everything else is built off of so very very important to make sure that you think through that so that is the plan on how you can retire in 10 years those are some of the steps that you can take if you guys have any questions on that feel free to shoot me an email and right now we're going to dive into a couple of your questions that you sent via email.

48:50Join the Master Money newsletter if you haven't already, and you can respond to any of those newsletters, and we will answer your questions there. But let's jump into a couple of your questions. All right, so the first question comes in from Lauren. Lauren says, thank you for the great content. What is a reasonable rate to pay a CPA to do our personal and my husband's business taxes? I feel like every year my bill goes up by hundreds of dollars, but it also feels like a lot to move the needle to someone new. Not sure if$2 ,200 is reasonable or not. So Lauren, thank you so much for listening and thank you for the kind words.

49:23This is something where when you're thinking about your CPA, I think for most people out there, especially if you have a business like your husband does, you need to have a CPA in your corner. Now, for some of you, if you have a simple W to return, it may feel as though it's a waste of money to have a CPA unless you're a really high earner. So for some of you out there, you may be better off just going with the TurboTax or something like that, but you can evaluate the cost and kind of figure out if that's something that makes sense for you. But for others of you out there, if you have a high income or you have a lot of complicated things happening with your taxes, maybe you own real estate or you own businesses, a CPA is very, very valuable because they can put together a tax strategy that saves you much more than what their fee costs.

50:04And what I've noticed, just like what Lauren's noticing, is that the costs have gone up over the course of the last couple of years and every year, most likely, they will continue to go up. And there's a number of reasons for that. One of which, though, is and I talked to my CPA about this for a while. The cost to even hire a CPA at a CPA firm has gone up dramatically. CPAs are very valuable. There's less of them available over the course of the last couple of years with experience is what he kind of explained to me. And so it does seem as though sometimes this stuff can go up over time. But two thousand two hundred bucks for a business and a personal return is right around standard and is something that doesn't seem overly expensive to me.

50:41But one of the questions that I want you to figure out and ask yourself is, is my CPA saving me more in taxes than the fee I'm paying them? Because tax strategy is a big part of this. And so for me, me and my CPA, we meet every single year and put together what we call a tax plan. The tax plan allows us to figure out the strategies that are going to work based on my personal situation that will allow me to save more in taxes. So how would this work? Let's say you're a high earner and you make$300 ,000 per year. Well, if you make$300 ,000 per year as a household, then you can go to your CPA and say, what are some of the strategies that I can look at?

51:17Maybe they'll look at your stock options. Maybe they'll look at some of the things that you own or the stocks that you own. You could do tax loss harvesting. There's a lot of different things that they can put into play to really help you save on your taxes. If you're a business owner, it's a must because of a number of different things. but even just making sure you're making your tax payments on time, making sure that you are, you know, categorizing your expenses correctly, making sure that you are taking advantage of every single tax advantage there is for business owners out there. And there's a lot of them this year.

51:44Making sure, you know, all those different things is really, really important. Ask your CPA, why did the fees or the costs increase from last year? What are the, some of the things that you're doing to make sure that we make up for these costs and ask them the hard questions. Cause that's really, really important when you are thinking through some of this stuff is you want to grill them and master money academy we give a lot of our members there a list of questions to ask your cpa it's like a two-page document we give them to make sure that they are making enough uh you know headway when it comes to some of this stuff so definitely definitely ask as many questions as you possibly can about the fees and then once you find one if you find a good one and it's pretty it's pretty annoying to move it to somewhere else but if you do have one who is just not doing enough then moving it is probably worth its weight in gold so um if you could find one that that makes a lot of sense.

52:28And then handing over your documents early, like there's a bunch of different things that you could do to make sure the fees go down a little bit. But I think that's a really, really good starting point. And again, 2200 bucks for a business return and a personal return is right around the standard rate, but have the business pay for it. It should be a business expense for sure. Making sure that you get that at least that write off on the business expense side is going to be very important. Thank you so much for that question. Let's jump to the next one. All right. The next question is from Melissa.

52:56Alyssa says, hi, Andrew. I love the show. Your Q and a episodes are my favorite and I've helped shape how my fiance and I approach your finances. We are both 28 getting married this year. And I am a physician assistant earning around$105 ,000 per year. That's fantastic. And he is a project manager manager earning around $129 ,000 per year. Wow. You guys are crushing it. We max out our Roth IRAs, his HSA and contribute heavily to our 401k and 403b. We want to buy a forever home, have kids, and ideally have me transition to per diem work for about four years to stay home with them. Should we shift some contributions from retirement accounts to a tax brokerage for flexibility?

53:36And how do you weigh in the tax advantages we would be giving up versus the flexibility we would gain over the next five to 10 year time horizon? Well, first, Alyssa, congrats on getting married. That is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for the kind words about the show. And you guys are absolutely crushing it. You're maxing out your Roth IRAs. You are contributing to your HSAs. You're contributing heavily to the 401k and 403b. And at age 28, that is rare. Plus the amount of money that you both are making is absolutely incredible. And you can do some really cool stuff with that right now.

54:08So what I would do is kind of figure out some of the non-negotiables first is I would make sure that you are obviously taking advantage of that 401k match, no matter what, or the employer match on the 401k and the 403b, that's free money and an instant return overall. But secondly, is that HSA, I would continue to contribute to that as well because you get those triple tax advantages. And so that's something, if I were in your shoes, I would make sure that I was continuing to contribute to. Now, here's a couple of things to do is one, you can decide, okay, well, if I want more flexibility, what would our income look like if we needed to draw down on this taxable brokerage account?

54:42Because if you decided maybe you wanted to retire early, like we were talking about today, that is something where we can figure out, okay, well, does it make sense for me to contribute more to my taxable based on our current situation? And it definitely could. And in fact, a taxable should be probably part of your plan, especially if you're considering going to that per diem side of the equation and potentially even at some point in time, deciding that you don't want to work as much anymore because you want to stay home with the kids. Well, that's going to be something to definitely consider.

55:06But number two is I would continue to make sure you're making contributions to some of those retirement accounts like the Roth and 401k. even as long as you possibly can, because those tax advantages are something where you're young and that Roth IRA is going to grow tax-free. So definitely want to make sure that you are utilizing that. And the flexibility that you do have with the Roth, not that I would personally ever consider doing this, but the flexibility that you do have with the Roth is that you can withdraw contributions at any time. So this is one of those areas where, obviously, I don't want you interrupting compound interest, but you do have a little bit flexibility with the Roth if you absolutely had to utilize some of those funds.

55:41And then using the 401k and 403b, I would try to get as much money as I possibly could in there for as long as possible. And if you have extra surplus, then also looking at that taxable brokerage account. The taxable brokerage account, though, if you feel as though you could retire early or you feel as though you're going to want to have this money earlier, then you can prioritize that a little bit ahead if you want to to have that additional flexibility. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. In fact, if you're trying to compete with like the 401k and 403b and you're saying, OK, well, maybe we just want to, you know, have X amount of dollars in our taxable to give us that bridge.

56:13I have no issue with that whatsoever. And for folks out there who are listening who are young, even just getting a big chunk of money into your taxable early and letting it compound over time, it's a really cool idea. Because if you do that, then you have enough where you know it's gonna bridge you to the next step where you can either pull some of that down before you retire for cash on hand. You can use it for healthcare. You can use it for so many different things. And the flexibility is one of those areas where I absolutely love it. I've used my taxable to buy businesses before. I have a taxable account for vacations that I'm using as a portfolio to draw down on vacations.

56:45There's some, so many cool things you could do with the taxable account. So I definitely think that it is something that if you, if your timeline is, is retiring early, look into the taxable for sure. Now, how do you weigh the tax advantages you'd be giving up? Well, it kind of depends on where your finances are going to be when you have that taxable. Like I said in the episode today is you can have up to, you know, since you're married, you would be able to have up to a little over$120 ,000 per year after the standard deduction. So like right now in 2026, you could have up to$96 ,700 if you're married filing jointly in that account and pay 0 % on taxes.

57:22And then if you make over that, then you would pay, you know, 15 % on that tax rate. So the 15 % differential is the number that you would run to figure out what the difference is. But when you're looking at this, the other thing to consider is the standard deduction. So you actually have the$96 ,700 plus the standard deduction is going to allow you to save on that specific amount when it comes to your taxable brokerage account. And so I would run those numbers based on the taxable plus standard deduction versus kind of what you would have in your 401k and 403b. And that would give you an indication of the tax differences based on your personal situation so that you could figure that out.

57:56Because even if you're paying the 15 % tax bracket, it is something where sometimes that trade-off is worth it, depending on what is going on and what your personal finance goals are. So that is one thing I would definitely look at is see which bracket you fall into and then running the numbers based on that. So thank you so much for sending in the question. You guys are absolutely crushing it. I'm so excited for you guys. Let me know what you guys decide to do and good luck on the wedding. That is so, so exciting. I think that's fantastic to hear what you guys are doing and you're absolutely crushing it.

58:25So that makes me so excited. And thank you all for listening to this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. If you guys have any questions, again, you can shoot us an email by going to mastermoney.co slash newsletter. join the mastermind newsletter and you can respond to any of those there. Also, you can leave a comment on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else. And we may add your question to the show as well from there. So thank you guys so much for being here. If you want help from me directly, join mastermind Academy. We'll give you a seven day free trial down below in the show notes.

58:54So you could check it out, join some Q and a calls. You can check out all of our courses in there, check out all the other stuff we have going on, see behind the curtain. If it's not for you, No worries. You got a seven day free trial. So thank you guys again so much for being here on this episode and we will see you on the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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