11 Money Rules You NEED to Become a Millionaire

If you've ever caught one of our live streams, you know, we absolutely love answering your financial questions. And what we love more than answering your questions is answering them with a rule of thumb that makes your finances simple, easy, and clear. Brent, I am so excited because over the years we've come up with a lot of these rules of thumb or these guardrails that address questions that we get all the time. And today we want to put them all in one place for you. Decades of wisdom wrapped up into one show just for our financial mutants. That's right. This show has everything you'll need to know how to tackle debt, invest well, and make your way to millionaire status. If you're wanting to level up your finances quickly and simply, this is the one for you. All right, Brian. So we said the way we've put together these rules is by common questions that we get asked. We thought it'd be great to lay out what those actual questions are and then walk you through the rules that can help you figure out how to navigate that. And the first one is a big one. And this is one that a lot of Americans are faced with right now. And the question generally goes something like this. How much is too much student loan debt? Oh man, this is one. If you want to know the inception story for this one, begin with the end in mind is that if you're going to go and take on debt, supposedly to better yourself for more income, let's actually set up a rule and here it is. It's called the first year financing rule, meaning that we don't want you to take on more student loan debt than what your first year of anticipated income will be. We already know that getting out into the workforce, starting in our careers is difficult, but it becomes exponentially more difficult. We have this huge burden of debt that we're dragging along beside us. And we've already said a lot of Americans are facing this right now. 44% of Gen Z has an outstanding student loan balance. 14% of student loan borrowers say that they owe more than $50,000 right now. And 24% of adults responsible for student loan debt say that I don't think I'll ever actually be able to pay this off. I don't think it's ever going away. So it's become something that folks have just resigned themselves to always having on their balance sheet. Yeah, this is one of those things where I get sad because so much of education that we're asking people who are 17, 18 years old to make these lifelong decisions. And when you see a stat like 24%, essentially one out of four people think they'll never pay off their student loans. This is why it's so important if you have a young person in your household, once again, begin with the end in mind so that you don't find yourself in a trap on something that should be so valuable like education. All right. So student loans is obviously a big thing, a big purchase that a lot of people make. Well, let's talk about another big purchase. And I would say this even hits more people maybe than the student loan. And here's how the question usually goes for us. Hey guys, how much car can I afford and what's the best way to pay for it? Let's have some real talk here for all the ad campaigns in this consumption society we live in. The reality is is cars are napalm for your personal finances. So, you know, it's not the latte effect. It's these big decisions like cars, houses, and this is a big one because I think it's the gateway to bad decision making for a lot of people. When you get out in the workforce and you first start getting your, your real wages, you know, when you, that first job is instead of letting that money start work, too many people let a high percentage of that income go right into high car payments. And so what can you do? What's the rule that can protect you? We want you to follow 23 eight. What that means is we want you to put down 20% on the purchase of a car, whether you're buying new or used, we want you to finance it for no more than three years or 36 months. And your total car payments, all of your car payments cannot exceed 8% of your gross income. If you can do this, you'll make sure that you keep yourself inside of an affordable automobile. But there are two caveats you ought to be aware of. Number one, luxury cars are a no go. If you're buying a luxury brand, you don't get to do 23 eight. You have to pay for it in cash or have it paid off inside of 12 months. And you never want the amount of your car payment to be greater than what you're saving in your investments on a monthly basis. If you're doing it the other way, you're doing it the wrong way. So you might be asking yourself, why do we have these rules? Well, let's go ahead and get some facts on what's going on in the current state of this consumption society. We live in the median single income in America right now is $45,140. But guess what? The average new car $50,080. Do you see how these things, they are completely, they're not supposed to be the same. And I don't want you going out there and running up car debt that exceeds what your annual income is. That is just a recipe. Like I said, napalm for your personal finance. What's wild is that right now, did you know that one in six, one in six car payments is over a thousand dollars a month. And yet most Americans aren't even saving and investing a thousand dollars a month. They are getting it wrong. And while it seems like Americans are driving their cars for longer, it seems like that maybe something is going on. Would you believe right now that 22% of new car loans have a term, have a financing term of over seven years. So there's a lot of folks who only drive their cars for three, four or five years, and yet they're borrowing an amount for seven years. They're never getting out from being underwater on their automobile. It makes sense. Cause this is, this is more of a sales tactic than I think it's people choosing to have car loans for seven years and beyond. Because a lot of times when you roll into the car dealership, they'll say, Hey, what do you want your car payment? What can you afford? And that's the thing. I don't care what your income is. If you can spread out the amortization long enough, pretty much anything's becomes affordable at some point. And that's just, that's a disaster. So we want to protect you. That's why 23.8 will make sure that the car you buy reflects what you can afford and also leaves you enough margin. So you actually have money left over to start investing for the future as well. And if you are in the place where you're thinking about buying a new car, we actually have a great calculator for you and go to moneyguy.com slash resources, and you can play with our car buying calculator and you can adjust the variables accordingly. And it will tell you, okay, if I want to follow 23.8, how much car can I actually afford? Again, you can go to moneyguy.com slash resources. So Brian, we've talked about student loans, which is a huge purchase. People make, we've talked about cars, which is a huge purchase. People make, let's talk about another one that is a huge purchase. And for a lot of people, this might be the single most expensive thing that you ever spend money on. And this again is how the question goes. Hey guys, how much house can I afford? And when I do it, how much should I make as a down payment? Yeah, this is, this is one that we look, we, I think we get a lot of credit for being flexible on the first purchase, but man, oh man, do we probably take some flack on affordability on the ongoing side of this. So here's, let's share with you the rule of three, five 25. And when we say three, five 25, what we mean is we want you on your first house, your very first house. We give a lot of grace in that is that we say, look, we asked around all of our financial advisors. We looked at ourself and we had a no hypocrite policy and we realized nobody's putting down 20% on the first house. We're typically putting down three to 5% so you can on your first down payment on your first house, you can put down 3% make sure before you even buy a house that you're going to be in this house longer than five years. There's just too many friction and costs that you're going to pay out of pocket when you close on a house that you don't want to think of this as a short term decision. And then we want to keep, and this is the one I know it's going to squeeze you, but this is why we give you grace in so many other places. We want you to keep your monthly costs below 25% of your gross income. And the reason we want you to do this is because we don't want you to be house rich life poor with the inability to build wealth outside of your house. Too many Americans, that's the only place they have wealth is in their house. We're trying to help you build and create your army of dollar bills. So many people view buying a house as a no brainer. Guys, guys, guys know it's an asset. It only goes up in value. If I buy a more expensive house, then I will be able to get more appreciation. It can't go wrong. And that unfortunately is just not true. So if you can follow the three, five 25 rule again, we'll make sure that you don't justify yourself into making a decision that will derail your future financial wealth building ability. And again, if you are someone who's thinking about buying a house, thinking about moving, thinking about going into the home ownership side of the equation, we have a great tool for you. Go to moneyguide.com slash resources, and you can check out our home buying calculator. Again, you get to adjust the variables. We're going to make sure that you fall inside of the three, five 25 rules so that you make a decision that still allows you to build towards your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. So Bo, the next one that we look, this one makes us divide from the other content creator that lives in town with us is credit cards. Yep. This is a big one. Here's how the question normally goes. Hey guys, I've heard that credit cards are something I should not do. They are evil. They are bad. They are dangerous. Is it okay if I want to use credit cards? So here's our stance on this. Credit card use is a okay. However, don't mishear us. Credit card debt. No way. And those two are not the same. Credit card use is not the same thing as credit card debt. There are tons of benefits from using credit cards. You may get rewards, miles, cash back, consumer protections. It may be convenience. It may be a number of reasons why you might want to use them, but there is almost never, and I mean never a justification for carrying a balance month over month over month. If you're doing that, you are allowing compound interest to work against you instead of working for you. I mean, think about credit cards had predatory interest rates on them. That's why this is such a very big line in the sand is because if you are paying them off monthly, we have all kinds of history out there with our millionaire clients, even with our financial mutants that watch our content, you guys use credit cards, but here's how you're using a different than the people that are using them as a trap is you're paying them off every month. If you find that you are actually carrying an interest, you're paying interest every month because you're carrying a balance. Then I would tell you, you're just not a credit card type person and you should cut them up, freeze them, do whatever you can to keep you restricted from using these dangerous but effective tools. Okay guys, I hear you. I hear you saying that, okay, credit card use is okay, but debt is bad. So that must mean I need to get rid of all debt. If I am actually paying interest on anything, that means it must be bad. And so oftentimes the next question we get that rolls in is, all right, well, should I pay off this debt? I heard you guys say this bad or should I invest? Yeah, this is one, even internally, because look, it's a balance there. We're always trying to walk this tightrope of, we know that sometimes I know for me, when I first got out of college, got my first job in public accounting, I needed a car to get to work, but I also needed to get to work reliably so that I could actually have that job that would actually let me start saving and building margin living on less than I make. So some, you're going to find out that sometimes you get in situations where debt can be an effective tool, but we got to have this ability to start investing. So you don't always have to work for your money. We need your money working for you. So we figure let's go ahead and share some, give some guidance on how you might have to balance this delicate, delicate thing. So you can have debt as a tool, but also be building investments in the background. So one day you have financial independence. Well, I think one of the things we have to discern is not all debt is created equal. That's why probably hold the thing up for me. That's why we have the financial order of operations that will walk you through the nine steps of what to do with your dollar. And there are two different steps for debt. There is step three, which is high interest debt. And then there's step nine, which is low interest debt. So one of the questions that you have to answer is, okay, what counts as high interest debt and what counts as low interest debt? And that is where our rule comes in. If you are someone who currently has student loans and you are in your twenties and your student loans are above seven or 6%, you may want to start prioritizing that in your thirties. That number goes to 5% in your forties. That number goes to 4%. If you're someone who has used 23.8 and you were inside the confines and you have auto loan debt and you're in your twenties and your interest rate is above 10%, you may want to begin prioritizing that car payment. If you're in your thirties and the interest rate on your loan is above 9%, you may want to prioritize. And in your forties, if you have a car loan and it's above 8%, you may want to begin to prioritize that. And then of course, if you are someone who is using credit cards, it is okay to use them, but it is never, never, never okay to carry a balance. So if you have any balance on your credit cards, you should pay them off right now today and not carry those for you. I think a point of clarification on this is I think like when I look at the car loans, people are going to be like, wow, I'm surprised by that. But realize I think of myself, I was broke as a joke, had no money. So this was a reasonable thing to get me out of the gates. We still, we always say it all the time. We'd rather people to pay cash for cars and take any car debt whatsoever. But this is also the beauty of 23, eight is that three years, not financing longer than three years is going to keep it in such a limited time window that is not going to eat you alive with the depreciation, with the interest and all the other things. Cause it will keep your car payment and keep the amount of car very much in check. Okay guys, I hear you. You're saying I don't need to be paying debt. I need to balance. Okay. Paying off my debts, but also building for the future. Well, when I think about building for the future, the next question that naturally comes up is all right, well, how much, how much should I be investing for my future self? Yeah, this is one. Look, there's all kinds of rules out there that say, you know, if you read like I did the wealthy barber, it talks about 10%, another, you know, person that wrote a book in the nineties might have 15% here. We are saying 25% you're like, Whoa, why is there so much spread out there? We understand that timing matters. And we know in America right now, typical person doesn't start saving and investing until they're 33 years old. And we also give a lot of grace in our rules. When we talk about savings, if you make less than $200,000 of income, you get to count your employer contribution as well. So when it comes to saving 25%, that's our goal. I want you saving and investing. What this includes, this includes contributions to your employer sponsored plan, your 401ks, your 403bs, your 457s, your simple IRAs. It includes IRA contributions or HSA contributions. If you're investing those, if you have mandatory pension contributions, you have to make out of your pay that can be included. Your employer match can be included. Assuming you meet the income thresholds that Brian just said. If you have an employee stock ownership plan or an employee stock purchase plan, or if you're just saving in a plain Jane, regular old taxable brokerage account, but those dollars are earmarked and pegged for the future of financial independence of you and your loved ones, then that gets to count towards the 25%. And if you can save 25% earlier, you do this, the more freedom and flexibility you're going to give yourself later on down the road. Well, also I think it ties into, you know, don't skip out on the financial order of operations. There's a reason when we structured this thing, we pigeonholed right in the middle of the employer match. Cause that's the free money. That's even more valuable than sometimes the high interest you're paying on the credit card debts and so forth. But then we get you past the emergency reserves and then we're off to the races. Let's load up on those tax free accounts. Let's hit those retirement accounts. Don't skip just because we say 25% retirement. There's also nuances of when, and that makes sure you don't skip out on the financial order of operations. Okay, Brian, I hear you. I need to be saving 25%, but when is the right time? What if the market is going to go, what if the market's going to go down? What if we're at all time highs or what if the market has been kind of scary? And I just don't know if we're at the bottom. When is the right time to be investing? Look, this is one, I love this rule because it serves you when things are rocking and roll and it serves you when things are scary and you're like, there's no way I'm putting any money out there right now. Here's what will save you a B, B baby always be buying. And I think if you can have this mindset, it will truly turn you into a financial mutant because it will protect you from letting the emotions of, Hey, the market's overvalued. Hey, the market's kind of scary right now because it just lost 25%. This will allow you, you know what? I have the mindset that I know what I need to be doing to reach retirement here. So I'm always going to be buying into it so that I can live my best life. What I love about it is it removes emotion from the equation. Okay. Do I want to max out my Roth IRA do 7,000? Great. I'm going to do $583 every single month. Okay. I want to put $12,000 into my 401k this year. Okay, great. I'm going to do $1,000 every single month and I don't have to think about it again. If the market goes up contributions I put in last month, they're making money. If the market goes down, the contributions I'm putting in this month are getting in at lower and lower levels. It is a win, win, win. If you can do it this way. So then, okay, guys, I hear you and I'm following the financial order of operations and I love this. I'm going to start doing my 401k and I go to the website and I log in and I go to check it out and immediately I'm here with a question I don't know the answer to. It says, should I, when it comes to my 401k be investing in the pre-tax portion or should I be investing in the Roth? Well, this is one and look, we're going to give you the mindset, but then we're actually going to be crazy enough that we actually try to put some rules around this because a lot of people, I hate it when I go talk to see a talking head and they kind of tell me what I should consider, but then they don't actually give me a rule. So we've actually said, okay, let's try to choose. And I'll tell you why this is hard. Why nobody likes to try to choose it. Nobody knows what tax policy is going to be 10, 15, 20 years in the future. But the goal is, is look, while you're young and the government offers you Roth, which are tax free, meaning that's, that's the really the key thing is tax free growth is massive is because if you can build up these small decisions with compounding growth that can turn into seven figure accounts down the road, what's even more magical is turning those into tax free seven figure accounts. So we've tried to figure out because there is this tax arbitrage thing because some of you are in your peak earning years. You might be in your forties and you're paying 37% to the federal government. You might be paying up to 10 to 12% to the state government plus other taxes that they kind of build up with local governments and so forth in the background. You're like, Holy cow, I'm paying 50% in taxes. But I think I probably need to take the tax deduction now. And that's why we've come up with this rule that this depends on how much income you have coming in and what's your tax rate on your marginal tax rates. And Bo will explain what that means. That's where we put the personal and personal finance. Your marginal tax rate is the rate of tax that you pay on the next dollar that you earn. We in this country live in a progressive tax system. The more money you earn, you kind of work up through the tax brackets. And so what we care about when we're making the pre-tax versus Roth decision is what will my next dollar be taxed at? Well, if I look at my marginal federal rate and I add to it my marginal state rate and those, the combination of those two is below 25%, that is a pretty low tax bracket. That would suggest that maybe I should consider doing Roth contributions into my 401k. If I add up my marginal federal rate and my marginal state rate and it's above 30%, that's a pretty high tax rate. Every dollar that I put in pre-tax could save me 30 cents in taxes. You can think about that like a 30% imputed rate of return on every one of those contributions. So you should probably think about looking at the pre-tax portion. If your marginal tax rate federally and your marginal tax rate state combined end up somewhere between 25 and 30%, it gets a little more nuanced. You have to make a decision based on your age, your assumptions for the future, your account structure, the way that you've been saving. But if you can use these guardrails, it'll help you figure out, okay, should I be doing pre-tax or should I be doing Roth? And this is a personal decision. It's one of the things that puts personal in personal finance. And also, I don't mind for all my high income people. You're like, man, I hate it. I'm missing out on all this Roth opportunity. Don't worry. Remember we said tax arbitrage. You're in your peak earning years. There might be a potential if you retire, especially you're part of the fire slash fine movement and you're going to a next endeavor and your income tax rates dropped to the basement because all of a sudden your earning potential went way down. There might be an opportunity down the road that your tax rates will go down and then you can do Roth conversions with some of these traditional pre-tax assets. So not all loss is once again, it's personal finance is definitely personal is a time and a place we're trying to help you optimize the tax planning and the growth. All right, Brian, we're talking about rules that you can use that can keep you on the straight and narrow. And these rules have come up from years and years of experience of us being asked questions and coming up with rules to help you do money better. And this is one, Brian, we've seen this one a lot. And I think when people know that we're in the finance space and they have a life event happen, they kind of begin asking this, this question to go. Something like this. Hey, I just got some money. Maybe I sold a business. I retired and cashed out my pension. I received an inheritance. I fill in the blank. I got a big bonus. I just got a large lump sum of assets come my way. What do I do now? I'm going to frame this because look out there in personal finance, when you guys become financial nerds, you're not quite a mutant because a mutant will kind of understand this, the nuance of where I'm about to go with this. But it cracks me up when I see in the theology of personal finance, it's dollar cost averaging versus lump sum investing. And everybody's like, Oh my gosh, well, markets go up 80% of the time I'm a lump sum investor. And then like other people are like, well, dollar cost averaging because of all the behavioral and all these other things it does for you. I'm telling you guys, it's like everything else in personal finance. It depends. And I'm telling you, instead of this being a binary decision of either your dollar cost averaging or your lump sum investing, how about that? Somebody put together a rule called the Goldilocks rule that actually takes into account. What is this money mean to you in relationship to what you already have? Because look, if you're trying to figure out, do all your fun, your Roth IRA all at once, or if you put it in monthly, there's some behavioral things there, but if it's a small percentage of your total net worth and you have the cash, let's go ahead and get that money in. If you inherited $10,000, that is, you know, do you lump sum invest that or do you dollar cost? It depends on how much it is because $10,000 might just be a lump sum. But what if you inherited $500,000? What if you inherited a million dollars? Those things don't seem to be the same. So that's how we came up with the Goldilocks rule. And what the Goldilocks rule suggests is you want to look at the amount of cash that you're talking about investing and you want to compare it relative to the rest of your liquid portfolio. If it's less than 10% of your total liquid portfolio, you should consider lump sum investing. If it's between 10 and 20% of your liquid investments, perhaps you consider a DCA over four months, between 20 and 30% six months, 30 and 40% eight months, 40 and 50% 10 months. And if the total amount you're receiving is greater than 50% of your total liquid net worth, it likely could make sense for you to dollar cost average over the next 12 months so that you can remove emotion from the equation. If you can use the Goldilocks rule, what you're going to likely do is protect yourself from yourself. You protect yourself from investing those dollars right at the beginning of 2022 or right before the COVID downturn or right at the end of 2007. Because the last thing you want to do is put that money to work, get to a rough market, make a knee jerk reaction decision, and then come up with a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So if we can solve the behavior, you're much more likely to set yourself up for success. Don't you feel so much smarter for knowing that now? Now when every time you see a debate between dollar cost averaging and lump sum, hopefully now you're going to think of the Goldilocks rule. All right, Brian. So then we get this question. This is maybe one of the questions we receive the most because we actually came up with a thing to solve this one. But so often someone would say, Hey, I just don't know what, I mean, I know all these things and I get all this content and I hear all these amazing things, but in what order do I do them? Like, how do I, is a 401k good or should I pay off my credit card? Or should I think about a Roth? How do I know in what order I should begin deploying my army of dollars? It's almost like, it'd be nice if somebody gave you an instruction manual on what to do with your next dollar. And that's exactly what we've tried to create. Just like math has PEMDAS, please excuse my dear aunt Sally with, you know, how to try to figure out when do you do multiplication? When do you do addition? Math and money is the exact same way. It's just, nobody's gone out there and said, Hey, there's an optimized way on your decision matrix that you ought to do it. And we did it. That's why we had the financial order of operations, the FOO and to not do it is foolish. So make sure you understand how FOO works for you and it will let you know what to do with your next hour. And if you want to get in on this, go to money got.com slash resources. We have tons of free resources on FOO on wealth multipliers on car buying on house buying. We load you up because we just know if we do this right, it's going to create fruit and success for you so that you can be the best version of yourself financially. Okay, Brian, I heard it. I've got all of these rules that you've laid out and you just said, all right, if we do this right, it's going to create fruit and it's going to create success and it's going to grow to a place that I have this one final question and it usually goes something like this. Hey, how do I know when I'm at the point that perhaps I should ask for some help? Yeah, this is one I'll let you actually share. It's kind of the key matrix that we found, but I love what we get to do Bo is because we really do. We get to plant the seeds of opportunity because building wealth is surprisingly simple, but it's not easy. If it was everybody who do it, we've actually give you the rules and we tell you how to do it. Unlike anybody else. I know when my 22 year old self who had good intentions, I had a good starting job, but I just didn't know how money works. Nobody had ever modeled it and shown me in my own life. We're giving that away to you on purpose. And what I love is that you're like, wow, these guys are noble. How do they do this? How can they give away so much? What are they expecting or where are they getting? Well, this is why we call it the abundance cycle. If we do this right, we know if we plant and invest in you, the complexity naturally is a side effect that happens from success. So if we do this, you're more than likely at one point or another going to graduate, take the relationship to the next level and consider hiring a financial advisor. But when do we think, what are the key points or decision points that people might even consider hiring a financial advisor? Yeah. We have recognized that there are generally three times when people say, man, this is how I know I'm at the spot where I should consider the next level. Number one is when complexity finds you. You recognize I used to have a grasp on my financial life, but now my tax return has gotten bigger. My compensation has gotten more complicated. My estate documents need more in there. I just have so many things that I don't know what I don't know. And I want to make sure an expert looks at this to make sure that I have dotted all my I's and crossed all my T's. That's the first one. The second one is when you frankly just don't have enough time, or maybe you don't want to spend the time to make sure that all of your financial affairs stay in order. There's that you knew you were supposed to review your life insurance, but you never got to it. You push it off and you push it off or you pushed off or you thought rebalancing probably made a lot of sense for you, but you kept trying to get to it, trying to get to it and trying to just recognize I don't have enough hours in the day to take care of my financial life in the way that I need to. That's the second time. And the third time is when you recognize the gravity of your financial decisions, the, the $10 oopsies, you used to think about now could possibly be a hundred thousand dollar oopsies. You recognize, I don't want to go at this alone. So if you're at one of those or a combination of those three places, that might suggest that it's time for you to consider taking the relationship to the next level. Look, I've written a book of all the mistakes that I've made. So you don't have to make them. It's the same thing with your personal finances. Is that you, you, when you start managing a million dollars for yourself, you're like, Holy, how did I get to two commas? I don't even know how this happened. I just listened to these two guys talking heads. I planted all the, and they did what these guys told me. Now I just don't know what I don't know. And I, but I know I only get one opportunity not to screw this up. That's where we leave the porch light on for you. We'd love for you. If we've invested in you and you've gotten something out of it and you're like, Hey, I like how these guys look at money. I love the way their mind thinks to the way they even created a system. Maybe there's something that they could help me protect me from the blind spots, maximize my opportunities, live my best life because my army of dollar bills will be speaking and doing for me. So I don't have to work so hard with my back, my brain and my hands. Go check us out. Money got.com become a client. We're going to be here waiting on you. I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hanson, money got team.