We Asked 20K Americans How They Manage Money. Here’s What They Said

We asked, and boy oh boy, did you guys answer. Brent, I am so excited about this because we asked you, our audience, to share the data of your financial lives with us. And over 20,000 of you were kind enough to do so and help us put this show together. Today, we're going to share the findings of that survey and see just what makes Financial Mutant so special. With that, let's jump right in. All right, Brian, our financial mutants, they are a rare breed. They look different than the world around them. So at a glance, let's talk about who they are and what they look like. And I think one of the things that a lot of our audience is curious about is, okay, how old are the people that are listening? I mean, I know how old I am. How old are the financial mutants? And we found that a vast majority of you are actually still in your accumulation phase between 20s, 30s, and 40s, that represents the vast majority of financial mutants out there. I've been traveling recently, and I got to tell you, it warms my heart at the airport, on escalators. It never ceases to amaze me where I'm going to see financial mutants, especially those of you who are in your early 20s. So that's why when I see 23, over 23% of you in your 20s, we're making a difference. And then I see that the largest group is actually in the 30s at 40.6. And then 40-somethings at 22.3. Man, oh man, I feel like we got not only the youth, the people who figured out, but also that dead in the middle, messy middle as well. If you look at on the median, the median age of a financial mutant for our survey respondents was 36 years old. So if you take a median age of 36 with 69% of you guys that are married, it is exactly that. A lot of you are... In the messy middle, things might be difficult, things might be stretched, but do you recognize in a median age of 36, you still have a wealth multiplier of 11.33. That means that every dollar you put to work has a chance to turn into $11 by the time that you retire. Our financial mutants still have a lot of running room ahead of them. So that's who you guys are, but let's talk about actually where are you guys at? And look at this map. This is so interesting to me. I mean, if you look at the most responses, Versus the least. Look how we filled up both California and Texas. I don't take that for granted. I think it's nice that at least Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, as well as Washington. I mean, that's what's so amazing. You look at where the population centers are. More than likely, we got financial mutants living there. And I think it's really interesting. For those of you out in podcast land that maybe aren't looking at the visual, every state... That is the color red, is a state where we do not have a survey respondent represented. You know what I noticed, Brian? But there's no states that are red. There's no states that are red. I was like, why would you say that? We actually have representation from all 50 states. So this is a wide swath. These are people in high cost of living areas and low cost of living areas, in the south, in the north, in the east, in the west. You guys are all over the place, and that is awesome to know. So I feel like the data that is represented here. Isn't just representative of one geography, of one place, of one section of the country. It is a wide swath of our entire United States of America. Well, it also confirms that the financial world of operations truly is all terrain or all country. And that's why we love that you guys, if you, by the way, if you're brand new to this content, you heard that we were just giving survey results, I'd encourage you to go to moneyguy.com slash resources. You too can download the nine-step process on what to do with your next dollar. Okay, so we walk through the median financial age of our financial mutants is 36. So you would assume, I bet that means that, okay, they're still young. They're still in the messy middle. Probably haven't built a ton of wealth up yet. But when we actually look at the numbers, it is a very different story. When we look at the median net worth for our financial mutants that respond to the survey. This one was a shocker. 725. 725. $1,000 total net worth when you factor in investments, homes, automobiles, all the stuff that comprise your net worth, everything that you own minus everything that you owe, $725,000. Well, I was kind of shocked that, you know, for young people, I mean, because you know that we typically say by the time you get to age 30, try to have one times your income. When I see that the typical financial mutant who did this survey is at $171,000 in their In the 20s, 650,000 in the 30s. 1.4 million in the 40s, 2.3 million in the 50s, and then 3.1 in the 60s. You guys are just a cut above. I mean, this is not stuff when we talk about the median for the United States. Obviously, we are attracting people who are curious about how money works, want to be better with their money, and that's showing up not only in net worth. But Bo, also with investable net worth, meaning take the house out of this number and tell us what it is that's actually working in those retirement accounts, those after-tax accounts, and those Roth accounts. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, I think that net worth is a wonderful metric, but it's not the most useful metric. When I think about people that are building wealth and building towards financial independence, we love looking at investable net worth. And what we've found is that in liquid investments, you guys on the median have about $481,000 But what's wild is when we break this out by the age strata, 20-year-olds have a median net worth liquid of about $118,000. That's insane. For those in your 30s, $425,040, right at a million dollars, which is almost a full decade before the average millionaire hits millionaire status. In your 50s, $1.7 million. And then in the 60s, a median investable net worth. Of $2.3 million, you financial mutants know how to build and accumulate wealth. Now, I do want to share, because in a second, we're about to share incomes and so forth. But if you're somebody watching this, you're 21, 22 years of age, and you see an investable net worth of $118,000, don't get discouraged. A lot of this data points are from people who are in that 28, soon to passing up to 30 in the next few years. They've had a little bit of time to build some traction. You too will have that opportunity. So I always say in the 20s, I consider that the decade of being aspirational. It's just awesome that you found it. You've got the world by its tail, but it's still so heartwarming to see such big numbers. And Bo, if others want to get in on doing this, we think it's such a valuable exercise and something that will definitely pay off in the longterm. Go to learn.moneyguy.com and I encourage you to download our net worth tool. Because this thing lets you actually track and not only track your net worth by year, but to have a dashboard view of how that changes, how you're paying off of debt, how your three-account structure between after-tax, tax-free, tax-deferred, as well as your journey to abundance is all right there waiting for you to take advantage of. And this is the actual tool that Brian and I use personally every single year. And it's so wonderful to see how things change through time. We're actually able to turn our income, turn our shovel, turn our financial decisions into wealth. So obviously, you financial mutants have done a great job of building wealth, of being able to build up net worth. Let's talk about now, what does your life look like on sort of a day-to-day basis? So we asked you guys, hey, where do you fall on an income range? And as no surprise, again, financial mutants look a little bit different than the rest of the world. Across all of the financial mutants that we surveyed, the median income across all those ages, $172,000. Yeah, and it didn't surprise me that the key earning years is in those late 40s, early 50s, because you can see for the 40-somethings, it was income around $218,000 for 50s, $205,000. But I will tell you, the shocker, once again, because I knew these were going to be big shovels The 20-somethings making... 114,000, that's way above what I would have anticipated, but it shows, once again, we're attracting. If you want to say, look, I don't want comparison to be that thief of joy that you hear so many people talking about, but it is one of those things you should know that if you're hanging out at the Money Guy show, you're hanging out with a group of peers that take this stuff seriously and are creating something that's going to have a legacy to it. And it's worth noting, these income figures that we're throwing out are household income figures. So you mutants... have the ability, whether you are a single-income household or double-income household, to build up and have a big shovel. And so one of the questions becomes, well, how did you get there? What were the things that you do? So we wanted to ask some questions specifically centered around education. Now, if you've been listening to our content for any amount of time, Brian, you've said over and over that you are such a high proponent of education. You think it was the very ladder that allows people to climb maybe out of the system or the station in life they're born into, into the opportunity that presents itself. And education is a means and a mechanism to do that, but it's gotten expensive and it's gotten hard and it's gotten very, very different to go out there and get a higher education than perhaps it was 30 or 40 years ago. And so we wanted to ask some questions around. How did our financial mutants fund? Now, what decisions did they make as it was related to secondary education? Well, it's one of those things where, like I said, I think education is such a noble cause because it really can lift anyone up. But unfortunately, the system has been... Let's just say when it's grown at such a pace well above inflation, education's got its own level of greed to some level. So you have to go into this transaction with your eyes wide open, whether that's considering how you structure it. Do you go to community college? Do you go to in-state? Choose the major. Ultimately, it comes back to our first-year financing rule. I don't want you to leave college with more student loan debt than what you can anticipate making in your first year. out of college. This way you will stay grounded in how easily you can pay the money back and also hopefully anticipate a rate of return on that degree in the long-term future. Now, remember, our financial mutants are higher income earning individuals. And so we're trying to answer the question, how did they get there? Well, 49% of respondents, almost half of our financial mutants who went to college never took out student loans. So they didn't have to Borrow money to do that. They either work their way through or there's some other means or mechanism. Scholarships. Scholarships or grants. But. Of those that did take student loans, 72% of our financial mutants who borrowed money to go to college followed the first year financing rule. They began with the end in mind. They said, okay, I know if I'm going to go into this particular vocation, if I'm going to pursue this particular degree, I want to make sure that I'm going to be able to secure a job after I get out of college that will allow me to pay off this loan quickly. And three out of four of our financial mutants We're able to do that and follow that line of thinking. Now, look, we still consider education very noble, but just go in, begin with the end in mind, and follow the path that mutants have already laid out for you. If you can try to use scholarships, if you can try to make sure that if you are going to finance, do what 72% of mutants do, and they try to make sure that they keep those costs low so that they can pay it back. very quickly. Well, and not only can they pay it back quickly, it also creates margin in their life in other places. If you don't have a ton of money going towards student loan debt, it's going to allow you to begin saving earlier and have a better savings rate. And so we want to ask some questions around, okay, financial mutants, when it comes to how you build and how you save and how you deploy your margin, what does that look like? And again, Brian, I don't think this is incredibly surprising for us because we get to Read the comments out on YouTube. We get to interact on Reddit. We get to see you guys in the moneyverse. We know that one in three of our financial mutants save more than 25% of their gross income for financial independence. That is a very different statistic than the average American. Well, and if you take into account that if you go, if you include the 20 to 25%, That's close to another 25% of our financial mutants. So we are close to 60% of financial mutants are saving at least 20%. And I think we just had a stat that came out recently is that somehow typical Americans are a little over 3%. Guys, you guys are smoking it. And that's why it's really important because this is going to give you so much flexibility in the future. And that's why I love that when you are doing this, we use savings and investing kind of interchangeably. So if you're looking at this and go, Man, is that all going to cash? More to come on that. We'll talk about emergency reserves in a second. This is primarily savings and investments, but it's making sure that you are taking a little bit today. And Bo's already used the word margin in your life so that you actually have money in the future for financial independence. This is something to definitely be celebrated. Now, maybe you're looking and it's like, oh man, I'm in that. 12, I'm in that 10 to 14% savings, or I'm in that five to nine, that's okay. 25% is supposed to be aspirational. Even if you're not there today, our charge and challenge to you would be, okay, how do I get closer to it next year? As I get a pay raise, as I get a bonus, as I have things in my life change, how do I continue to increase my savings rate? If you wanna know just how powerful that can be for you, we have a great resource. If you go to moneyguy.com slash resources and download our How Much Should You Save Deliverable? Because this shows at different ages, What savings rate would be required to replace 80% of your pre-retirement incomes? If you're someone who's starting out very early, in your early 20s, in your mid-20s, a lower savings rate will get you to that 80% income replacement by full retirement. But if you're someone who wants to retire earlier, you want to check out at 55 or 50 years old, or maybe you're someone who didn't start saving until later, we think that if you can get to a a 25% savings rate. It's going to give you... The highest probability of successfully reaching financial independence and being able to control time on your own terms. So I love how you kind of brought these things and coupled them together is because you said, if you pay attention to your student loan debt, it creates margin in your life. Another way you can create margin is paying attention to those lifestyle choices. So let's talk about cars and home buying because there's probably a lot of things. This is something I definitely would encourage you to try to emulate in your life. If I want to be good with money, if I don't come from money, what are people who are making good decisions with their money, what are they doing? This is pretty impressive stuff. Now, Brian, you and I talk about it all the time. When it comes to buying an automobile, our preference is to pay cash. Yeah, for sure. We catch some flack as though we suggest something other than that. That's not the case. We think if you are at the place in life, in the station of life, where you can pay cash for a car, that's wonderful. You should likely do that. But a lot of people. Aren't there or maybe if they're early on you didn't start there that was me that was me as I have and that's part of where this rule came from is we have a no hypocrite policy so it's one thing for me to say hey just go pay cash for all your cars but then I think back to my 20 something self where I just graduated college had a great degree was going into a great profession but I was broke as a joke but I needed to have reliable transportation so as a financial mutant I was like hey. Don't shame me because I'm at the beginning of my journey. Tell me some rules that can help me get into reliable transportation so I still have margin to create wealth in the long term. And what's interesting is, Brian, you're not incredibly dissimilar than our financial mutants. We've found that 55%, over half of our financial mutants, when they bought their first car, they had to finance it. That's okay. That's fine if you have to borrow money to buy a car. When it comes to how our financial mutants consume and use their automobiles, 81%, eight out of 10 mutants say that they drive their cars for seven years or more. They're not the folks that are constantly trading them out every three years in a new car, getting there. If you can emulate these financial decisions, you will begin to look more like a financial mutant. So if you are someone who does have to buy money, if you are like Brian was, if you are like I was, and you couldn't pay cash for a car, We think there's a better way to buy a car, and that's following our 23-8 rule. And very simply, we want you to put 20% down. We want you to pay off the car in no more than 36 months or three years. And we want all of your auto payments to not exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. If you can get your car purchased inside those confines, you will prevent yourself from driving around your wealth. And there are two little caveats. Look, this doesn't count for luxury cars. Remember, just like we prefer for you to pay cash, This is to get you to. reliable transportation. And then I also want you to always have this mindset that your car payment should not exceed what your monthly investments are. You've got it backwards if you've got this showy car, but you're not even fully funding your Roth IRA. All right. So we talked about cars, which is a large purchase that a lot of people make, but probably the single biggest financial purchase, the largest transaction most people have is their home. And we've already walked through our financial mutants. have higher net worth and have higher incomes. So surely they're likely living in mansions and huge homes and incredibly expensive domiciles. Well, when we actually look at it, we look at the median value across all of our financial mutants, the median home value for our financial mutants, $480,000. And by the way, something that I thought was interesting, it's not a hundred percent, meaning there's only 72% of our financial mutants actually own a home. But it is, when it comes in, it looks more like the national median. I mean, median house in America now is well over 400,000. And that's where our financial mutants came in at 480. But it is interesting also that these are still people, they're just like me and you and the fact that, well. You and them. Did you just take yourself out of it? I'm old enough that I've got to pull myself out of this equation. But it is, I guess I'm part of the 19%. But 81% of financial mutants are homeowners with a mortgage. Because I think a lot of us, we want to say, oh, financial mutants. Yeah, well, the reason is, is because those are a bunch of retired folks. Those are a bunch of older folks. That's not necessarily the case. Remember, the median age of our financial mutants is 36 years old. So a lot of these folks are... Still building, still accumulating, still in that phase where they have a reasonable home that they can afford, but they still have a mortgage on it. Some of them are going to be lower interest, earlier mortgage, but some of them are going to be higher interest mortgages like what we've seen present day. And that's okay. We recognize that buying a home is difficult. We know that home prices have increased, interest rates are not incredibly favorable. So when it comes to buying a home, just like with cars, we think there's a better way to buy a home. Yeah, and this is to kind of protect you. We break the mold just naturally. We didn't have to amend these rules just because housing is in this weird place. We've always been this because it goes once again back to the no hypocrite policy. My first home, I put down 3%. Bo's first home, I think he put down 3% or 5%. We ask all of our financial advisors, hey, how much you put down on your first home? Most of them were well below 20%. It was 3, 5, or 10%. So we were like, what are we doing telling people 20%? That just seems disconnected from reality. So that's why we came up with 3-5-25 is that we want you to, on your first home, now, updated homes, we want you to put down the full 20%, but on that first home, to get you on the homeownership train, 3%. We want you to live in that home for at least five years. Look, there's a lot of transaction costs that go into houses. Take into account now in this current economy, we got high interest rates and high purchase prices. You need time in this house to moderate all those fluctuations and fees that might be coming your way. And then we do want to keep your monthly housing expenses below 25% of your gross income. That's going to protect you from being house rich, life poor, and not having that needed margin that we've talked about with all these other sections. If you don't want to do the math yourself, or maybe you just want to extra help figuring out where affordability is for you, we have a great tool out on the website. It's totally free, moneyguide.com slash resources. You can go check out our home buying calculator Well, you can put in... Your income, what your down payment is, what your assumed interest rate is, how long you're going to borrow for, and we will help you figure out how much house can you actually afford and stay inside the 3-5-25 rule. If you can do that, if you can make that decision wisely, just like we want you to follow 23-8 on your car so you're not driving around your wealth, this will prevent you from being, just like Brian said, house rich, but life poor. Oh, I see you have a prop. What's down there? Look at that. It's a map of the United States. All the states that Abound Wealth has clients. We help all these families optimize their army of dollar bills. And we've got clients in every state. Except for this one, Vermont, the Green Mountain State. Beautiful fall leaves, world-class maple syrup, and zero abound wealth clients. Vermont, what's the deal? Is it our Southern accents? Because our clients in New Hampshire, they think it makes us more approachable. Yeah, and we work virtually with people all over the country. So you never even have to come to Tennessee and bring us any of your delicious maple syrup. But if you happen to be in the area, we do love pancakes. Vermont. If you're ready to take this relationship to the next level, we'd love to connect and be a part of your financial journey. Just head over to AboundWealth.com or click the link below. And for the other 49 states, don't worry, the porch light's still on for you too. For sure, I love sopping my biscuits with that maple syrup. I love this next section. We're going to talk about the mutant mindset. If you want to know what makes my financial mutant different, this is why we even came up with the name is because look, we live in a consumption society. There is so many things around us trying to convince you to spend more money, go live a life to impress people that just don't care. But that's the world we live in that you have to kind of be different. You have to look at life differently. Look at how you use this tool of money differently. And that is the mutant mindset. So We asked all the people who did the survey, when did you start taking money serious? And this is very interesting to me. Now, look, I was surprised because we don't have that big of an audience that's under 20 years of age. But if you look at the results, it was 12% were under 20 years of age. They started taking it seriously even before they really got into adulthood. But I am happy to report that the median age was 25 for the results. And you can see that in the actual, when we broke out the results, 58% of our respondents started in their 20s. But a lot of you are like, wait a minute, I'm like the typical American. I didn't figure this out until I was 30 and beyond. That's a-okay too, because look at this. 24% of our financial mutants were greater than 30, 5% were greater than 40, and then 1% when they were beyond 50 still got serious about saving for the future. And what all these people have in common, whether it happened before they were 20 or even in their 40s, is they had a mental shift. And let me show you just how valuable that mental shift can be and why you want to have that shift as early as possible. The majority of our financial mutants, over 70% of our financial mutants, Got serious about money before they hit the age of 30. So we know that a lot of Americans don't start saving and investing until they get in their 30s. Our financial mutants are a little bit earlier. But the earlier you figure this out, the earlier the mental shift happens, the earlier you begin taking money seriously, there is a correlation. There is a reality that you have a higher probability of having a higher net worth because you have longer for your dollars to work. Maybe that's not you. Maybe that's not where you were. What we found when we asked our financial mutants is, even for those who got serious about money after the age of 35, meaning that they didn't really figure it out in their 20s and even in their early 30s, they were still trying to figure, they didn't have that mental shift until they were already well into the messy middle. Even those folks. By the time that they got into their 60s, they were able to have a median net worth of $2.3 million. So if you didn't figure it out at 20 years old, when your wealth multiplier is 88 times over, that does not mean that it's too late. The absolute best time to get serious about money was yesterday. That means by default, the second best time to get serious about money is right now today. Yeah, that's what, just do something, and I promise you your future self will be thankful for it. Now, look. A few years ago, we added a new question on and I'm so happy we did because this is one of those things I hear all over social media that credit card debt is just eating everybody raw. And so I'm like, well, gosh, I kind of feel weird. It's because we allow these crazy rules where we say credit card use is okay, but credit card debt, no way. So are we wrong for leading people into saying, hey, we, because we have no hypocrite policy, we use credit cards. I know there's another popular content creator in town that's telling everybody, man, if you use credit cards, you're going to catch on fire or something. So what do our financial mutants who listen to our content say? And you can see, here's what's interesting. Over 97% of our respondents Say that they use credit cards. So almost all of them, right? That's like, that rounds up to 100 if you're rounding to the nearest five, right? And then 95% said that they pay them off every month. So this is one of those things where, look. Credit cards are horrible if you are carrying a balance, and that's why we say if you can't pay them off every month, you're just not a credit card person, and the data reflects this. It's interesting to me that it shows that the lion's share of the people, because remember, these are financial means they have higher than average income, higher than average net worth. These are people making really good decisions, and their use with credit card debt also reflects that responsible behavior. Do you know why our financial mutants are not having to- Rack up credit card debt and are not having to carry those balances is because they recognize the appropriate use of risk management through an emergency fund. We asked our financial mutants, how much cash do you keep on hand? And we found that 85% of our financial mutants have a fully funded emergency fund of greater than three months. So that means they don't have to go swipe the card when the HVAC goes out. When they have The transmission trouble, when they have to replace the fill in the blank, they don't have to use debt because they have an emergency fund in place to keep their life out of the ditch. They recognize that there are going to be unknown unknowns that come their way and they are prepared for them. And I'm glad that you saved this point here. It's not the last point, but it's an important one for me. is that I've always known from a young age, because every decade of my life so far, there's been something that just scares you to your bone. I mean, and we live in a world right now where we got high interest rates, we got crazy geopolitical stuff going on, we got artificial intelligence that's supposedly going to replace all of us in the future. It can feel scary. And I'm here to tell you, as the oldest person in the room, is that that has been every decade of my life. I could go through every decade since the 70s, that there is scary stuff. And what I've known early on is that somehow, even with all this scariness of the world, I just had this feeling that it was going to be okay. I've always had this optimistic feeling that it's all going to work out. And I don't know if that's trust in me. I don't know if that's trust in spiritual stuff, but it's just always been a thing I've held and just known about myself. And then when we ask our audience, I'm in good company because this is the other thing that is just shocking to me. Look at this from a three to one standpoint of optimist to pessimist. And you would think, well, this is, this has got to be just the people who are in those peak earning years in their forties and fifties. Look at this craziness is that even our younger listeners are our lower income listeners. They're probably the most optimistic. So it's just, it's so cool to see across the board that we are an audience of optimistic people. Now, I like to think that maybe in some way, we're the good news that keeps that, you know, that fire lit inside of you because I love hanging out with fellow people that feel like even in all this crazy world we live in, We're going to make it through this and we're going to be better for it. I love that. Having an outlook that things are likely going to get better or not worse can literally supercharge your wealth building journey. Now, there were some interesting findings that I just think are somewhat appropriate given the context of the time in which we live. We asked some new questions on this year's survey, and I don't think that the answers were incredibly surprising, but we found that when it comes to sports betting, Only 17%, so less than one in five of our financial mutants, participate in sports betting of any kind. You know what? That kind of holds. If I think about our content team, if I were to count five of us, I know one of them that does sports betting. But the rest don't do it. When it comes to buy now, pay later, only 5% of financial mutants have ever even used buy now, pay later. They don't believe in that. If they don't have cash to pay for the thing right now, they're not going to buy it. Now, when it comes to... Expensive luxury items, only about one in four, 25% of financial mutants use expensive services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and those sort of things. They understand how powerful their dollar of dollar, how powerful their dollars of bills, their dollar of bills. Their bill dollars can be to build wealth for the future. Well, look, here's what, because I am, I think that this is a sign of mutant status, is that sports betting, we see this is a growing, growing issue that's impacting. And we have such a small number for our financial mutants. That means, once again, you're contrarians. Buy now, pay later. Every time I now log into my credit card statement, it shows me some of my biggest transactions and says, Why don't you spread this out? We'll gladly let you spread this out. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I see what you're trying to do here. So you guys, and it shows me we're in good company is because 95% of you, you get it. He's like, no, that is a loser's game. We're not getting into that. And then food delivery services. Look, there's a time and a place. That's why I think the 25%, we think about when you have people that are sick or you've got struggles or some other things. It probably makes sense to use a food delivery service versus you getting into it for yourself. But for the lion's share of transactions out there, it's just got too much of a premium to make this a viable thing that you're using. And that's why I want to tell you guys, thank you, thank you, thank you. Like I said, 20,000 plus of you took the time to do this questionnaire. And I'm hoping that... A lot of you, because like I said, your income's through the roof. Your net worth is showing up because you're actually taking that great income, that shovel, creating margin, turning that into net worth. I hope one day that a lot of you will reach that level of complexity. Don't worry, if you're not there, it's okay, because I want you to absorb as much of our free content. Go to moneyguy.com slash resources. Hang out in the free stuff. We love it, but one day, complexity. We'll show up and it might be for some people, it's going to be over 500,000. Some people, it's going to be a 2 million. When that complexity monster shows up, I want you to remember, we're going to leave the porch light on for you. We work with clients all across the country. We love to be the sorter and create order to your financial chaos. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team, out.