Roth vs. Traditional, Dividend ETFs, and Catching Up in Your 40s (Money Q&A)

24:57So you're looking at NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, which is Google, Broadcom, Micron Technology, Meta, and Tesla. So you have some pretty large companies within VTSAX, which I think can be very, very helpful. And then the second one is having a bond fund. So the bond fund would just be holding bonds there. The second portfolio you're looking at is the same VTSAX, the Total Stock Market Index fund, which is great. It's a great core holding. And then VTIAX, which is going to be the international fund. Now, again, Vanguard has an international fund. that's an ETF that you can look at.

25:28So you don't have to have that$3 ,000 minimum, but it's an all stock globally diversified portfolio that is going to allow you to have, you know, that international exposure. Now, for those of you out there who are thinking about this, if you wanted to have all three of these funds, just so you know, well, you can have all three of these in the ETF version. That's the route I would go. But if you're looking at this and thinking through the international portion of their portfolio, then that is a great international fund to be looking into if you want international exposure. So you can't go wrong with either of these portfolios currently, especially where you currently stand.

25:59Let me give an example of this. International funds you want to hold to hedge against the U.S. economy just helps diversify your portfolio into other regions throughout the world so that you are not just all reliant on the U.S. economy. Me specifically, though, my argument has been that I believe many of the companies in the U.S. also do international business. And so for the most part, the top 10 holdings in something like VTSAX also have international exposure. Now, people would argue with me about this all day long. And in reality, a three fund portfolio, and if you look at the Bogle heads, for example, a Bogle head three fund portfolio would have something like a US based index fund, a international based index fund and the bond fund.

26:42So they'd have a three fund portfolio of all three of these of what you're currently looking at. And you can do that with the ETF version. If you want to have be fully diversified in a true three fund portfolio, just look deeper into the bogle heads and kind of how they structure some of those portfolios for me specifically though i still currently do mostly all stock portfolios unless i am going to be living off that portfolio and i am now in preservation mode instead of accumulation mode then i typically will have my portfolios as all stocks and the reason for that is i want growth i want to see my portfolio grow over time and then i don't hold much international funds either so i usually will hold more uh u.s based stuff but if you want international exposure and i i get why people want international exposure, then more power to you.

27:23Add that into your portfolio so you have that diversification. But for me specifically, I am more so heavily weighted in the US economy because I think the US companies, when you look at the top 10 holdings of a US portfolio versus the top 10 holdings of an international portfolio, I want to own that US portfolio for sure. So really, really good thoughts here. You can't go wrong with any of these portfolios, but again, you can also mix them in as a three fund portfolio with the ETF version. So hopefully that helps answer your question if you have any other questions about that diversification though just let me know but i would definitely look deeper into the etf version because i think that's going to solve and answer your question because i think you're juggling two different portfolios when in reality you probably want all three and you can't have all three with the etf version so if that's the case look into the etf versions do your research on those and then let me know if you have any questions awesome next question is from dominic so dominic said i just turned 20 and have about eleven thousand dollars in my bank and about three thousand dollars in Fidelity index funds.

28:19I owe about$5 ,500 on my truck and I'm not sure what to do with my money. So Dominic, this is a great question. I'm going to walk you through how I would think about this. First, awesome job being 20 and having$11 ,000 in the bank. You can do some pretty cool stuff with that and have an additional$3 ,000 into your Fidelity index funds. Congratulations to you. Most people have$0 when they get to be that age and have zero investments. So you got your head start going here and you owe about$5 ,500 on your truck. So here's how I would think about this. One is if you are working then and you have an employer match, you can look into getting that employer match.

28:53But if you're not working, if you're in college or if you're working trades or whatever else you're doing, no worries whatsoever there. But then what I would do is make sure you have enough cash on hand for one month of emergency fund. OK, once you have the one month in place, then what I would do is look at this debt, this five thousand five hundred dollars. If your truck payment is above a 6 % to 7 % interest rate, I would be considering paying that off with some of my cash. So this would be considered high interest debt. So if you have any other debt outside of this, pay it off, get debt free.

29:25And luckily, you have the cash on hand and you're doing okay to where you can kind of get rid of this debt and then move on to the next thing if it's high interest. If it's low interest debt, if you, you know, owe 2 % or 3 % on that truck, then you are okay keeping those dollars or investing those dollars instead, or moving on to some of the next steps that we always talk about. So if that truck payment is lower than the 6 % or 7 % interest rate, then what you can do is move on to the next step, which is getting to a three-month emergency fund. And so once you have three months in place, then you have this safety net set up where you have basically a fortified starter emergency fund where you can then start investing as well.

30:00So breaking off half towards investments, half towards your emergency fund until you get to six total months. Now, we talk about this in our episode called the 136 method to your emergency fund. If you haven't heard that episode yet, let me know. We also, if you go to mastermoney.co slash resources, we have a guide on the emergency fund and the 136 method if you have not heard that either. So I would highly recommend checking both of those out because that's going to get you started. Then once you're there, then you can continue to invest and continue to grow your dollars over time. You're young, getting as much money into investments as you possibly can early is going to allow you to do a couple different things.

30:34One is you can start to target what is called Coast Fire. Now, Coast Fire is where you get to a certain point in time where you have enough money invested, where if you stopped investing that day, those investments would grow to enough to be able to allow you to retire at a traditional retirement age. Now, many people try to hit this first and they try to hit this early and often. So they do not have to worry about savings in the future if they don't want to. If they have an off month, if they feel as though they just want to live life and they don't want to worry about savings anymore, you can get to your Coast Fire number and not have to worry about it anymore.

31:05So Coast Fire is a wonderful, wonderful goal to have to start off. And then from there, you can really start to grow your money and your wealth. So that's the steps I would take. One month emergency fund. Two, if this is high interest debt, then pay it off the$5 ,500. Three, if it's not high interest debt, then you can continue to make the minimum payments and start to save for your three month emergency fund. once you have that three month in place, splitting it off half and half into investments and emergency fund until you get to six months is perfect. And then once you get there, then you are a-okay.

31:31So that's the way I would think about this and the way I would operate my money when it comes to building this up, especially since you're young, you can do some really, really cool stuff. But if you have any other questions on that, please let me know. Next question is from Nico. Nico says, hey, Andrew, I'm a longtime listener to the podcast and had a quick question regarding my Roth IRA holdings. My portfolio is split between VOO, which is 70%, which is Vanguard's S &P 500 ETF, for those of you who are listening, and SCHD. So SCHD, for those of you who are listening, is a dividend ETF by Schwab.

32:03I recently met with my company's financial advisor, and he mentioned I shouldn't be holding relatively high dividend yielding ETFs in a Roth IRA. What are your thoughts on holding dividend growth funds like SCHD in a Roth IRA? Well, it's an interesting comment for him to make because let's talk about the funds first. Okay. A S &P 500 index fund is a growth fund that's going to help you long-term in terms of like, if you want to build wealth, it's what I hold a majority of my portfolios in. And a dividend fund pays you income on a quarterly basis. And so inside a Roth IRA, money grows tax-free.

32:39And so when an ETF, that is a dividend ETF, is producing an income, that means you're not gonna be taxed on those dividends. And so many people who have dividend portfolios, they hold those dividend portfolios inside a Roth IRA because they're not taxed on the income that that portfolio was producing. And so when that is being said, I'm curious as to why that would be stated. There may be some personal situation on why that would be stated, but I would definitely double check that because for me specifically, I'd rather hold a dividend stock inside a Roth than I would inside of a taxable. Because if you have it in a taxable, you're gonna have to do more taxes because it's producing those dividends.

33:16So that's one thing to definitely look into. And that would be kind of a red flag for me if somebody was saying that because I want to understand why that is and what the reasons behind it are. The reason could be because typically like something like SCHD produces an income, but it doesn't grow as fast. So it doesn't grow as fast as like a VOO or a VTI would. and so long term the total return on your money would be a little less than would be like a voo or a bti so potentially that could be the reason why but for me specifically i like having dividend stuff inside of the roth ira and the reason for that is because it produces an income that income does not get taxed uh so if i was going to be holding dividend etfs personally that's where i would hold mine is in my dividend uh it would be my roth ira and so that's how i would think about it i would double check to see why that is and then have them if they say okay well you want the growth fund in there, then have them run the numbers and show you why based on your specific situation and what you're contributing.

34:09Otherwise, if they can't run those numbers, then figuring out the angle, the one that you want to take in terms of like the tax, you know, the tax is what is important to me. And so that's the angle that I would look at, especially as your portfolio grows. Imagine you have a million dollars in a Roth IRA and SCHD is producing 3.4 percent or whatever it is. So that's thirty four thousand dollars per year. You don't pay taxes on it's just being produced by your portfolio. And so that's where I like the Roth for this, for me specifically, is because of the income that's being produced. There's a lot of cool stuff that you could do with that.

34:39I would definitely have them run those numbers. But for me specifically, I would keep any dividend stuff inside of a Roth. And that's the way I would look at it. All right. So there is a new thing that is out right now that I want people to understand when it comes to protecting your data and your information when you're using AI tools. So this actually came up with Claude as of recently, there have been exposed search links inside of people's actual cloud chats have been put onto search engines, things like Google, for example, and Google has been indexing some of these cloud chats. And I'm going to show you exactly how this happens.

35:09So when you use clouds, share feature, meaning if you have a chat inside of cloud and you want to share that chat with someone else, it actually creates a web link that can be indexed by search engines. And so Google can find and index those links, meaning that if you send a link and maybe you have a private chat that you are chatting through when it comes to Claude and you want to send it to a coworker or you want to send it to your spouse or you want to send it to a family member and show it what it is saying, anyone searching the web can actually potentially stumble upon this when you share it.

35:43And so this is going to be something that could even be sensitive data. It could be passwords. And because you pasted this into the prompt, it could be a really, really problematic thing. and so by default anthropic can use your chats to train and improve its future ai models and if you are on the free or the pro or even the team's plan when they remove personal identifiers your conversations are still reviewed and stored unless you manually turn this setting off so i want you to make sure you're manually turning this setting off is the first thing newer versions of claude and a lot of these other even there's a bunch of companies out there that you could do this with can interact directly with your computer and read local files use browser extensions it can go into your Google Drive.

36:22It can run terminal commands. There's all these different things that can happen there. And so you got to make sure you are extremely cautious when it comes to some of this stuff, because I was seeing this time and time again, where if this gets indexed, people have been showing this on Reddit and on X and different places where stuff that is very sensitive is getting indexed because you're sharing it with someone else. It creates this link. This link is an index by Google, which is a huge problem for you. I don't want this to happen to you. So if you use Claude, even if it's just for casual tasks, the risks are low.

36:47But if you use it to paste company data or medical info or passwords into a chat, this data could be stored for training and accidentally exposed online through shared links. So if you want to turn this off, here's the exact steps. Okay. Open up Claude AI and sign into your account. Then check your profile, go to settings, and then click on the privacy tab. On the left side of the panel, there's a toggle called help improve Claude, and you can actually turn that off, which is going to help you tremendously long-term on the privacy side. And you can also do this on mobile as well, but you want to turn the setting help improve Claude off.

37:20Also, don't share links to your chats. Don't do it with chat GPT. Don't do it with Claude. Don't do it with perplexity. Worst case scenario, pull it into a Google Doc if you want someone to see it and make a private Google Doc and send it over that way or make a private Microsoft Word document and you can send it to them in that way. But don't do it with the chats because if Google starts indexing these and they've already shown it, people's medical information have been exposed. People's passwords have been exposed. and if you know how to search on these Google things, then that's gonna be really, really problematic.

37:49So make sure if you are sharing links on any of your chats, you try to turn that off or backtrack it so you do not have your privacy exposed. It's a huge, huge deal when it comes to this. Speaking of privacy, if you don't have a financial protection plan right now and you don't have one in place, make sure that you listen to our episodes where we talk about how to develop a financial protection plan. We have multiple episodes on this. It is really important in 2026 and beyond to make sure you have that protection plan in place. Because if you do not, you could be exposed to all different sorts of things like this.

38:21In fact, today, I just got my report from Delete Me where Delete Me was saying, hey, we removed your personal information from all these different websites. Now, if you don't know what Delete Me is, Delete Me is a company that will go to data brokers. Now, data brokers can put your information on the internet. If you Google your name, you Google your address, and you put it in quotations or even your phone number, you'll see your information pop up on all these different websites. Well, Delete Me goes and removes that information because it's dangerous to keep it on those websites because if someone gets a piece of your information and they're trying to find the rest of the puzzle so they can open, you know, a bank account in your name or they can open a student loan in your name, which happened to me, or they can open something else in your name, then you could have your identity stolen.

39:01So you want to make sure that you are removing your personal information from the Internet, especially in the age of AI, where it is way easier to find this stuff. It is way easier to find your information. You've got to fight back. And so Delete Me helps you fight back. So if you go to joindeleteme.com slash PFP20, you can get 20 % off of Delete Me. Again, this is a service I have been using for years, literally just got my report today because they continue to keep removing your personal information, but you can get 20 % off if you go to joindeleteme.com slash PFP20. If you have any questions on Delete Me though, feel free to reach out to me because they are a service.

39:36Again, I've been using them for years. They've been a partner of this podcast for years now because I truly, truly believe in them. and they saved me so many hours. And in fact, when they send that report, they show me how many hours I've saved throughout the year. And it said 27 hours have already been saved throughout the year by just utilizing DeleteMe. So if you are serious about protecting your finances online and you're serious about protecting your privacy online, then this is definitely something you want to do. All right, so the next question is from Brittany. So Brittany says, I've really been joining your podcast.

40:06I'm 48 and a single mom to a 10-year-old. How do you best take regular income from your taxable accounts during early retirement while minimizing long-term capital gains tax. My long-term gains in Vanguard are high because a lot of the money went in 10 to 15 years ago when I was a high earner. I have plenty in IRAs too, but obviously can't touch those at 48. So a couple of things I want to talk about here, because I think there are some cool things that you could do here. And I truly appreciate the kind words and congrats to you on being able to work on retiring early here. So long-term capital gains are going to have their own schedule and the lowest bracket is 0%.

40:42So for 2026, if you can stay in that 0 % bracket, that is going to be a place that you could stay. So if you are early retired, for example, and your income sits below$66 ,200 for head of household, which a single parent with a dependent typically files as, so you could be filing as head of household or below$49 ,450 as someone who is single. And the standard deduction is on top of that, which for head of household is$24 ,150 in 2026 means that you could have a meaningful amount that is the 0 % tax bracket. So you could be paying, if you are filing head of household, we're looking at a little over$90 ,000 that is going to be in the 0 % long-term capital gains bracket.

41:21Number two is only the gain portion of a sale is taxed, not the whole withdrawal. So I want you to understand something is when you sell shares to generate income, this does not tax the entire amount withdrawn because the money that you put in does not get taxed. It's only the amount that is gained. So if you put$100 in and then over the course of 15 years, that$100 grew to$400, well, then 300 of that is going to be taxed. The 100 will not be taxed. And so that means that there will be less overall that could be taxed and what a lot of people think there will be. They think the total amount is it's not the total amount.

41:53It's got a basis involved there. And that's the amount that the money has grown. Now, we actually did an episode with Katie Gaddy from Money with Katie. She talks about kind of this same situation where we kind of went through this on a deep dive. We could talk through, you know, how to pay almost nothing when you retire early with the taxable brokerage account. And we went through even doing Roth conversions and some cool stuff that you could do there as well. So that would be an episode I would definitely recommend listening to as we start to talk through this. But I think you are in a great situation where if you keep your income to a certain level or your income isn't, you know, above some of these thresholds, you could pay a minimum amount.

42:25Then if it is above those thresholds, the rest of those dollars we paid at 15 percent, unless you're making well over a half a million dollars a year, then it would be at 20%. So it's still lower than your overall income tax level. And so this is one of those things that you should be paying significantly less than during your working years. Now, if you're gonna start withdrawing on some of this stuff, I would even have a conversation, even if it's a one-time consultation with a CPA, just to look at your specific tax implications when it comes to this stuff, if you're in the zero, 15, or 20%. But the highest it can go for long-term capital gains is that 20 % rate.

42:54It can't go above that. And so if you're worried about it being taxed at like a 37 % rate or whatever else, it's only zero, 15, or 20, depending on where you currently are right now. So that's what I would definitely look at. And you can also do conversion. And there are other things that you can do as well, but I would definitely have a conversation with the CPA, even if it's just a one-time consultation, just to look at this, make sure they have the tax strategy involved and they know what they're talking about. But this is just based on your specific situation and your income. It's gonna help you to understand exactly how this would work.

43:22I think it could be in a better spot than even you realize. So really great job, Brittany. I appreciate the question. If you have any other questions on that, please let me know. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings goals and spending.

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45:47That's PolicyGenius.com. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. All right, the next question is from Jacqueline.

46:21So Jacqueline says, I'm investing, but still trying to stop the bleeding with some spending. I didn't really start investing until recently, and now we're in our 40s. I'm wondering if I'm doing enough damage control. We're investing one income and living off the other, more than doubled our income in the last year, sold our home in Apollo Beach, and downsized into a bungalow in Tampa. I'm worried it's still not enough. Are we doing enough to catch up? Well, first of all, Jacqueline, the stuff that you have done thus far, I really, really commend you on that. I think that is absolutely amazing that you were willing to take some of these drastic measures in order to start working towards building wealth.

46:54And the cool thing is you're in your forties and in your forties means that you still have a lot of time for this money to compound. A lot of people who were in their forties feel as though it's just too late or they're way behind or whatever else. And sure, you could have started earlier and a lot of people beat themselves up about that, but I don't want you to beat yourself up about this because this is a situation where you still have time and you can catch up. And because you're saving one whole income, that is absolutely incredible. I mean, being able to save one income because you took some drastic measures, sold your house, moved to a bungalow, that is absolutely killer.

47:25I mean, you are really motivated and you want to make sure that you make this happen. So starting in your 40s, the first thing I want to say, it still roughly leaves about two decades before you actually want to retire. My parents didn't retire until they're 65. I know a lot of people are working longer now and you may want to retire even earlier than that. But really, you know, accessing retirement accounts and some of those other things, you start to access those at the age of 60, 59 and a half. And so because this, we want to make sure that we're thinking through, we still got a good time horizon here.

47:52We still got time left. 40s is still young. But secondly, is once you get to age 50, you have catch-up contributions available to you. So when you get above age 50, you can start to contribute more to some of these accounts. So a 401k catch-up contribution, for example, is$8 ,000. If you're over the age of 50. The IRA is another$1 ,100. And you can look at some of the other ones out there as well. They're super catch up contributions after the age of 60 through 63, which is$11 ,250 that goes in place of the$8 ,000. So there's a lot of catch ups that you can do in terms of the contributions that you're putting into some of these accounts.

48:26And if you're saving one income, you should be crushing it on that front. And because you downsized, because you downsize into a cheaper home, you lowered your overall target. You lowered the overall amount that you're going to need on an every month basis. Because if you were in a more expensive home, that means you would have to pay more of a mortgage and have this higher cost of living. But because you downsized, you downsized into a cheaper living situation, that allows you also to just not need as much. And so because of that, that's going to help you tremendously moving forward. And enough is going to be defined by your expenses.

48:56It's not a universal number. It's going to depend on each and every single person. So here's how to do it quickly with the back of the napkin math. When you're looking at this, you say to yourself, okay, well, we spend$100 ,000 per year. Well, if you spend$100 ,000 per year, you can draw down 4 % on a minimum by the time you hit retirement every single year, meaning that$2.5 million will get you to the point where you can spend$100 ,000 per year off your portfolio. But you're going to have things potentially like social security, for example. And so if you have social security and you make, let's say you have, you know,$25 ,000 per year coming in from social security.

49:30Well, then all of a sudden, Now you only need$75 ,000 from your portfolio every single year. And so you can see how this math gets better because now that's a little less than$2 million that you would need invested in order to be able to retire. And so you have some opportunity here. You still have time and you have the ability to really make this happen. And if you run a compound interest calculator, you may be saying to yourself, okay, let's say you're saving one income and you are saving that one income. And let's say it's$40 ,000 per year. I don't know what it is. if you were live on the call i'd ask you and forty thousand dollars over the course of 20 years at a 10 rate of return let's see where that lands that's 2.29 million dollars and so even if you were to continue to invest these dollars over the course of the next 20 years at a 10 rate of return it's 2.2 million dollars let's get conservative when we're planning for retirement i like to get conservative it's 1.639 million dollars and so if you have social security if you have any other money saved up and you have you know you've already started this is starting from zero, by the way.

50:27And if you have any other money saved up or invested already, then you should be getting a headstart where you have enough time to make this happen. If you're saving more than 40 ,000, let's just say you were saving$60 ,000 every single year. That's 2.5 million at a 7 % rate of return. And at a 10 % rate of return, that is going to be$3.4 million. The things that you're doing, if you're saving a good chunk of cash every year, you're doing some great stuff and you have some time for this money to compound. You have this time for this money to get to a point in time where it's going to serve you.

50:58And that's what you want. Take a big, deep breath. We're going to get you there. So take a deep breath. You're going to get there. I know it. I can see based on the tenacity that you have, that you have the grit and you have the wherewithal to make it happen. And that's what is so powerful about your situation is that you're willing to do the things that it takes to make this happen. So congrats to you. Congrats to everything that you all are doing. And please let me know if you have any other questions on that. I'm always here to help. The next one is from Gabriela. So Gabriela says, hello, Andrew, my husband and I are at the beginning of our money journey.

51:32We made bad decisions and got into a lot of debt. We're now trying to pay off all of our credit cards and cars, then buy our first house because our employer matches. We have not put anything else into retirement so far. I'm trying to get a clear path to make sure we are really maximizing all potentials when it comes to money while also being able to buy a house for our two kids. Any help would be greatly appreciated. So this is a great question, Gabrielle, and I'm so glad that you're working towards these goals. I think that's really fantastic. Here's what I would say. A couple of things. One is first, looking at paying off those credit cards is going to be very important.

52:08Credit cards are number one by far. So if you're making extra payments towards the car and you're foregoing some of those extra payments towards the credit cards, I would focus solely on the credit cards first, because the likelihood that your credit cards have the highest interest of all the debts would be really, really important. So looking at those, they most likely have anywhere from a 15 to 35 % interest rate. I'm not sure what the interest rate is on them, but that's probably where they land. And if that's the case, we want to make sure that we are identifying those and paying those off as fast as we possibly can.

52:36So that's the pants on my, that's the emergency number one, getting the employer match is great. And then also making sure we get to that one month emergency fund is also great. So the order is employer match, one month emergency fund, getting rid of those credit cards is going to be important. Those are the first three steps. Once we're there, then we have a couple of choices to make. We pay off the credit cards and we look at the car loans and say, okay, what is the interest rate on these car loans? If it is above six to 7 % and it's like a 10, 11, 12 % interest rate, which I've seen some people have, well, then we want to get rid of those car loans too.

53:08But if it's below that six to 7 % interest rate, then we can look at making minimum payments in the car and continuing to start to think about building wealth, meaning that we want to make sure that we are putting dollars towards our retirement as well. And when I evaluate the difference between thinking about a home purchase and thinking about retirement, we want to make sure that you are thinking through those two things because a home purchase makes sense in some scenarios, but not all scenarios. And you want to run what we call total cost of ownership. And so this is going to help you decide, should I buy in my area or should I rent in my area?

53:40and which one makes the most financial sense. So when you're thinking about this, what I would say, and we want you to own homes here. We are pro owning a home here. I have owned a home for a very long time, but the math says differently in a lot of different regions. And so when we start to think about this, we have a free calculator if you go to mastermoney.co slash resources, but you want to evaluate, okay, what does it cost to buy a home? What is the down payment? What are the closing costs? In addition, what are the maintenance costs of owning this home? What are the insurance costs? What are the taxes?

54:10all those different things need to be factored before deciding that you actually want to buy a home. Now, I know a lot of people want to plant roots and that'd be a reason to buy a home. But we just want to run the buy versus rent calculations because we also have to save for retirement. And so when we're thinking about retirement and we want to save for retirement, we also want to evaluate that is going to be like for me specifically, that would be more important on my list is saving for retirement than buying a house because homes over the long term, if you look at the data and the math, you can look at the Shiller Index is what it's called.

54:37and the Shiller Index will show you that homes have only appreciated about 3 % over the course of the last few decades. Whereas when you factor in total cost of ownership, whereas something like your investments, for example, are gonna go anywhere from seven to 10%. And like I just said in some of the earlier questions, up to 15 % for like the S &P 500 over the last decade. And so 3 % versus 15 % is a very big difference when we look at the historic data. Now, future results are not gonna be the same as the historic results, but we just wanna make sure that we are looking at that, we evaluate our decision.

55:08And so I would recommend check out our free total cost of ownership calculator, run the numbers on that to make that decision. Because if you decide, okay, well, maybe we want to get our retirements going first and get our dollars going towards retirement first, which is what I would tell you to do if you were talking to me, then I would make sure that I'm investing my dollars in the right places first. Then I can go and buy my house. But I want to make sure I'm having my retirement plan in place. Otherwise, if you put all of your dollars into your home, that's a dangerous place to be. People who have too much of their net worth tied up into their home, but not enough into their future retirement accounts are ones who are never going to be able to retire because you can't live off your home.

55:44You can't live off the money inside of your home, but you can live off your retirement accounts. And so you just want to make sure that you're evaluating those decisions and looking at both sides of the coin there. So if you have any other questions on that, please let me know. But that's the way I would think about it. So at first, get through those debts. Then I'd make the choice of, OK, once these are paid off, now let's run total cost of ownership and make sure this is actually something we want to do because saving for a house is also going to lose out on the opportunity cost of that down payment money being invested.

56:10And so that's the other side of that coin too. And you want to make sure that you are thinking through all of this. So really great question. And thank you so much for sending it in. If you have any other questions on this, please let me know. All right. So last thing is we're going to do a quick health corner. So on health corner, a lot of you have loved this. I talk about the fitness and the health things that I am currently doing. And we have done a bunch of things in the past, even talking about sleep. We've talked about exercise, all those different things. And for this one, I've been testing out what we call the, and if you're watching on camera, you can see me holding it up right here, the Fitbit Air.

56:40So I have normally, I run a Garmin 970, a Forerunner 970 is my main watch that I normally wear. But when I wear a automatic watch like this, this is just a Seiko watch. And when I wear my automatic watch like this one, I like to still be able to track my steps and my health data and all that kind of stuff. And so the Fitbit Air just recently came out. It's 99 bucks. And when it came out, I was like, oh, this is awesome because it's trying to compete with whoop and there's no subscription costs. And so far I've been using it and I think it's great. I think for$99, it's one of those things that can, it can track your steps.

57:12It can track your sleep. It can track your fitness goals. And there's a paid version too, where they have like a coach and stuff like that. I don't think you need all that. I think if you are someone out there who is healthy and you kind of understand what your metrics mean and what you're doing with them, then this is a great option for anybody looking for a low cost subscription fee thing that can help them just track some of their health metrics. If you don't have an Apple watch, or if you don't have any of that other stuff or an order ring or whatever else, then this is a great option. And I've been using it over the course of the last two or three months when the Fitbit Air first came out, just seeing, you know, how I like it.

57:45And if I, if I actually want to wear it. And so far, I think it's been wonderful, especially when I'm wearing, you know, an analog watch or a watch that doesn't, you know, track my steps or anything. Now, what I would love is, and I know they're working, I've seen people come out with these, but I would love like a little device that you could just put on a watch that is automatic like this, that would help, you know, be able to track your stuff while you wear a watch like this. So you don't have to have two devices. That's my hope one day. But this thing has been great. If you are looking for something like that, I think it's, it's just a great, again, not sponsored, but just something I think is wonderful.

58:15And another thing I've been doing as of late is I have been adding in what are called the fitness dailies. And so there's a guy, I think on TikTok, I'll try to find his thing and link it up down below. But he does these things called the fitness dailies, where if there's like a body part that he's working on, or if there's a piece of his fitness that he wants to work on, he'll do a daily thing for about 30 days. And so I've been doing this a lot. So I've been doing it with calisthenics, for example. So I've been adding in a lot more pushups throughout the day. So I'll do two, three, 400 pushups in a day, every single day for a week or two, see how I feel.

58:46Sometimes my body gets a little tired after that. But I'll do that pretty frequently now, along with my lifting and my cardio that I do in the morning, but I'll do it just throughout the day. If I need a jolt, I'll drop down and do 30 pushups, whatever else. Um, as long as time permits and I'm able to do that. And it's been tremendous in terms of just feeling like I'm more energized throughout the day. And if I, my body feels tired or if it feels wrecked, then I'll just pause. I'll stop. I won't do as many that day, but it has been really, really helpful. And the guy that was, that I saw doing this does it for all these different things.

59:17So like if he's trying to, you know, improve his leg strength. They'll do it with legs, but just a lighter, you know, a lighter amount and just do a higher volume, that type of thing. So I've been testing that out. I'll report back on how it's been going, but I've been doing it for about two or three weeks now and really, really been enjoying it thus far. And so it's worth testing out or looking into if that is something that you are interested as well. So if you do anything like that, let me know down below if you have any other health tips that you are working on, or if you want me to talk about any portion of my health that you feel as though you want to hear more about, please let me know and we'll be happy to talk about it on this health corner.

59:52But thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you want to submit your questions, please feel free to do so. Also, make sure you check the live call link down below and fill out the information and we will see if we can schedule for the live calls. Really, really excited about that. And really appreciate each and every single one of you. Again, if you want to dive deeper with me, you can join Master Money Academy. The link will be down below. Seven-day free trial. We do weekly coaching calls. We have all of our courses in there and a community of people who are all working to build wealth.

1:00:20So let me know if you join that. Would love to have you. We're doing a travel hacking masterclass this week, which is going to be fun. So a lot of great stuff going on inside Master Money Academy. Thank you so much for being here and we will see you on the next episode.