It's a big day. We're going to be talking about real stories, real people, real strategies, real wealth. We're going to be introducing making a millionaire. Brian, that is right. I am so excited because they're finally letting us talk about it. We have been planning this for months and months and months and months. We have a brand new show coming out
for you guys that we want you to get so excited about, and it is coming out in the next few weeks. Well, let's go ahead and just tell them when it started. I know I set you up to tell them. Okay. You want me to tell them? The premiere, the premiere date is going to be Monday, oh no, February 3rd, 8 a.m. Monday, February 3rd, 8 a.m.
Now, the plan is we will release a new episode every two weeks. So if you aren't used to consuming our content on Mondays, get ready because every other Monday, day, day, and we're going to have a brand new making a millionaire show out there for you to see. We're going to do a deep dive sitting across the table from
individuals from couples from millionaires or millionaires in the making to show you what it looks like when we actually get to apply the abundance cycle. We talk all the time about the abundance cycle as you want to learn and then you want to apply and you want to grow. Well,
The money I show is where you learn is where we put all the education out there, but we also want you to see real life case studies of that information being applied to people's actual financial lives and how it can truthfully lead to a great big beautiful tomorrow.
What I love about this is that we really are getting to open up the curtain where we did an episode on Friday. This couple that came in, they were even sharing how their influence back in the 90s was a former financial advisor that became very popular and was just telling everybody no.
No, no, cut. You know, you can't do this. You can't do that. I love that we get to show people empowered in the fact that it's not always the cutting. It's also expanding and thinking about all the things you should be doing or can be doing or even do more to make more memories because you've got the numbers and everything's lined up. You just need to give yourself permission. So we're really kind of
going in depth to what a real financial planning relationship works and looks like with like fee-only financial advisors. You get to essentially flex the muscle of what we do in our day job. And I love that what you're going to see is you're going to see people that are at the beginning of their financial journey. Maybe they're just starting out, they're just trying to figure out what they're going to do in their finances all the way to people who are at the financial independence level. And some of the advanced strategies around what to do in retirement and how to think about your assets and how to think about decumulation.
So our hope is that there's going to be something for everyone. There's going to be a lesson to learn in every single episode. And we are so, so excited to get to unleash it to the world so that you guys can see it. But we can do better than just meeting you talking about this. I think we thought it would be really helpful. And the content team did this for us. If we gave you kind of a flash of what to expect with making a millionaire, everybody growing up wants to be a millionaire.
I wanna show all of you, is it, yeah, it is possible. So do you think you can beat the market right now? No, I have, but no. Let's get rid of this claim. My dad really educated me, again, like I said, on the value of money, and then it made it harder to just go and spend it. You're a unique situation, it's because we have to come to you where you are. We're triaging your personal situation right now in real time. Might you be at the stage of your financial journey where it's time to... Calm down. Well, I'm gonna say grow up, and then at that point,
If that's when you get to build your great big beautiful tomorrow. Welcome to Making a Millionaire!
Boom shakalaka. So there it is, making a millionaire. We are so excited for you to get to go on this journey with us. If you would like to be on making a millionaire, if you're someone who thinks you may want to apply that, you can go to moneyguy.com slash apply and maybe you want to tell your story. You want to have us do a deep dive with you. We would love to do that because we love answering questions. We love
answering your questions is why every Tuesday at 10 a.m. we do this live stream where we can load you up so right now we have the team out in the wings collecting your questions so that we can help you do money better so with that senior creative nope that's not it senior content writer not that's not it I thought when I saw you grab the sticky note that you didn't know but you didn't I don't know why I chose them sorry again
Hey, Megan, that's what I'm gonna say. Everybody, I want to cut everybody off. Everybody's like, where's Reebi? Did we never tell everybody? No, Reebi is on maternity leave. Yeah, but a lot of people who come here, they don't get to see everything. They're interacting. That's exactly where she's at. But I want to give them a pass. They might not have known that. Might not have known that she was out with the family. We mentioned it like once, I think, so. Well, you know, and by the way, Megan, everybody's crushing it. You're doing a great job, but I just also wanted to make sure I filled in the gaps for other things I see in the comment section.
Also, real quick, before we get started, if you want to learn a little bit more about making a millionaire, you can go to moneyguide.com slash making a millionaire. All of the information that we just talked about will be up there for you to look back and read through. All right. You ready to start with some financial questions? Yes, ma'am. All righty.
This first one is from Kyle C. He says, my wife's job offers a deferred comp plan through her job. What are y'all's thoughts on the pros and cons of that? We are already maxing out her 401k and doing each of our backdoor rots.
So what do you guys think about those deferred comp plans? Yes, so why don't you, Brian, you let me define what a deferred comp plan is, how it operates, and then maybe you can talk about some of the pros or cons or how someone decides if they're going to use it. So a lot of companies, when you work for them, say, hey, we're going to pay you x salary per year, and this is going to be your income.
But you might be at the place saying, hey, I actually have a standard of living where I don't need all of that income coming in to be able to pay my bills. I would actually be willing to push some of the income that I earned this year into future year. So that way that it's not taxable to me. So I'm going to defer that income to some point in the future. Maybe it's five, 10, 15.
20 years out. And then at that point in time, I'm going to elect how I want to receive that income. Maybe I want to receive it all as a lump sum when I retire. Maybe I want to receive equal payments over my first five years of retirement or 10 years of retirement.
So deferred comp plans allow you to do that. They allow you to push off current year income into the future. Oftentimes you can then invest those dollars so that they grow and you get to control the income stream that you receive later on often building yourself like a mini pension through your deferred comp plan.
but it's not all rainbows and unicorns that are. Some things you need to think about, and there are some things you should measure before you decide if you take advantage of it. Yeah, let me first tell you, how is this even possible? If you're asking yourself, how in the world can you take some of your income, not pay income taxes on it until some future date? How does the government even allow this? Well, the way they allow it is, is that you're essentially saying, hey employer, instead of taking this income now, you keep it,
put it on your balance sheet as a liability to me so that I don't actually receive the income. So that's why it's not taxable to me now. But now you're going to keep it on your liability side as an obligation and pay me at some point in the future. Well, that problem with that is this is the big risk.
Everybody who does defer comp look at your company maybe even go pull the balance sheet for your company to see how in good financial situation they are is because if they went broke before your obligation or promises fulfilled and they paid you back or started paying the income streams.
you get in line with every other creditor out there so that's why you do need to lease make sure that your employer is on good stable ground financially. I do like these especially for many of my clients that are thinking that they're going to retire pre sixty five or you know before social sixty six or sixty seven pimp on with their full retirement age for social security is because.
This allows you to essentially, as Bo said, create a pension. Now there's a caveat there. You need to go read the rules for your deferred comp because for some of them, if you say you change your mind or you either get laid off,
or you just decide to leave this company. Some deferred comps do allow you then to start getting paid that money over time, like over a five-year period, but some others, their document is written in a way that it just unloads on you all at once and creates a huge tax bomb right as you change employment. So I always tell people, make sure you read all the rules. This is a very personalized decision, but it is great. I've had quite a few executives
Who and here's the cool thing like you choose that five year creating a five year bridge what if you decide you want to keep working five years in the future. Typically these plans allow you to kick the ladder out an additional year. So you get to keep kicking it out though and make the decision and build up your your essentially your ladder of deferred calm.
gets bigger and bigger and creates a bigger compensation bridge for yourself. But you've got to make sure that you measure twice on this because there's a lot of rules and usually you have to make these decisions really far in advance too. So that's why it typically requires a lot of planning. This is definitely something that when you're
You're like, man, I've never done this. Wouldn't it be nice if I've dealt with somebody who's done this hundreds, if not thousands of times? This is definitely one of those things where you might want to take the relationship to the next level. This is one of those areas where life gets very complex very quickly and you want to make sure you get it right on the first shot at this.
just kind of ping just one of the thing on one of the little question. Kyle, he said, we're already maxing out a 401k and we're each maxing out our backdoor Roth. Where in the financial order of operations do you often see deferred comp happen? Like, is it something that someone who's right at the very beginning of their journey should take
advantage of or how do you know what it makes sense? If you're trying to figure out where in the financial order of operations, this is definitely a step seven hyper accumulation because this means you're beyond the basic plans. We're way beyond Roth arrays. We're way beyond just maxing out your 401k. This is for people in very high income situations. And now you're thinking about when you get to step seven of the financial order of operations is
What's the three bucket strategy? What am I going to have access to? When do I actually plan on leaving the workforce? How am I going to integrate that into my financial plan? That's why this is a great tool to take into account and use as you do that high level planning. Love it.
Great. Sounds like you're giving Kyle a lot to think about. Thanks, Kyle, for your question. Next up is a fun one. This is from GBB Tomorrow. He says, oh, you know, I like that. He says, our 11-year-old son who has invested his earnings over the last few years is passionate about math and finance and is enjoying millionaire mission. Oh, nice.
What is the best place to hold his investments? We know he can open a youth investment account at 13, but until then, we're holding his investments in a separate account in our brokerage. Do you have any tips for getting these? Well, I mean, there's so many cool things in this question. Yeah. First, 11-year-old, and I couldn't hear if you read this part, who's invested his mowing earnings.
Oh, yeah. This is earned income. It's making money. Look, for people who just open up an account for a child and you want to take advantage of their lower tax rate than yours, custodial accounts are great. You know, the UGMA or UTMA. And then before that, even you have 529s. But as soon as your children actually learn the value of hard work,
and they start making money through their labor, their time. I love custodial Roth IRAs because if he's wired this way, why not? By the way, you could prime the pump and do some type of matching formula, whether it's 50 cents in the dollar, dollar for dollar. Remember, you can't exceed what they met. Your contribution can exceed what your earned income limit is when you're making Roth contributions.
But that way you could at least allow him to enjoy some of the fruit of his labor as well if you did some type of matching formula. But I love priming that pump to really encourage that good behavior of discipline and letting your money work for you.
I love, this is a great example, even starting at 11 years old, you can use a tool like Millionaire Mission. Brian, do you have a Millionaire Mission thing up? You can even use a tool like this to teach your children financial concepts. It's not so complicated, not so difficult that they cannot grasp it and they cannot get excited about it so that you can have them beginning to form those habits at a very early age, at the ultimately take on later in life.
accounts that might be available for isn't i love that you mention the custodial wrath whenever comes to like kids accounts i always say think about what the ultimate goal for these dollars is and generally falls into three distinct buckets of the goal is for college or for higher education five twenty nine for a great solution if the goal
is for like retirement or financial independence, custodial Ross are a great solution. Then if the goal is for something more intermediate in term, and maybe it's for the first car or a down payment on the first house or some other goal they want to save for, well, that's where Enoch Murugma might be a fantastic solution. So you ought to have that conversation with your kid and say, hey,
Which one of these goals do you want to fund? Which one of these gets you excited? And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can actually have a child who hasn't must set up and also has a custodial Roth set up. There's nothing wrong with doing that, especially if your child is taking an active role in the process. By the way, everybody ought to go to moneygo.com slash resources, play around with our wealth multiplier. I went and pulled it with my handy dandy little
cheat sheet here. For an 11 year old, every dollar has the potential to become $216.51. That's amazing. Wowzer. You know, I get excited about every dollar for a 20 year old becomes 88. That's way more exciting. A 11 year old, $216.51. That's mind blowing. Wonderful. Thank you, great, big, beautiful tomorrow for your question. That's some really exciting stuff. All right, next up, we have a question from the head cat.
He says, I feel like I'm not being paid enough for the amount of work that I do at my job. But my boss is great and has helped everyone so much outside of work that it makes me feel selfish to ask for a raise. Is this wrong of me?
Well, I think it doesn't have to be a win or lose discussion. But you're sitting here and I'm going to let Beau fill in some color on this because he's the master of creating the win-win scenario. And I like to think that I did this with my first boss at the CPA firm. I know he used to probably dread every client rod
that we'd have because we'd be stuck in the car for 30 minutes and I'd use this time to pepper him about career path and where we see the firm going and opportunities that I can make his job easier. And that's what I want to give you credit for with me. You're so good at it. You actually own part of the business now. So man, kudos to you for being so good at this is that.
I always felt like you presented when you wanted more. You didn't do it in the obligation of saying, Hey, I'm a good employee. Just give me more money. You always presented. Hey, what if we do this, this, this, I think it's going to create more revenue here, here, here. And then you made it a win, win.
That's right. Yeah, I always tried to structure it in any sort of like, I don't want to call it a negotiation because it should not be a negotiation. I think that's a bad term for it. What it should be is a mutually beneficial conversation. That's what you ought to have with your employers because it's one thing if you meet with your boss or meet with your supervisor, say, Hey, I want to raise. That means I want more money. And if it's the owner of the company, you make less money that automatically puts you a conflict and misaligned your interests.
If instead you can say, hey, I was trying to figure out, I was thinking, hey, if we decided to do this, we moved in this area, we tried this strategy, we used this sales tactic, or whatever that thing was, and ultimately it's gonna drive more revenue by increasing sales or increasing your revenue growth, or maybe we're gonna cut expenses by figuring out some better way to do something. Hey, I would love to spearhead the initiative to go on this path. Is that something that would be valuable to the company?
What I found in my experience and what I see with a lot of our clients is if you can find ways to make yourself incredibly valuable where either you increase the top line, you decrease expenses and ultimately increase the bottom line, you generally, especially if you own that, will have a much stronger footing to say, hey, this would be something great if I could also participate in the growth. Hey, if you make more money, I make more money. We're on the same side of the table. That's a much better way to approach this conversation than, hey,
I think I'm valued up here and you're valuing me down here and I need you to come to me. I just think that you set yourself up for confrontation that way. So if you can find some way so that it's good for all parties involved, even if it's a supervisor, hey, how can I take on more responsibility
Hey, are there things I could do that would make your job, your life, your day easier, better, more valuable? Hey, I'd love to take those on. And if you can create a consistent habit of doing that, you become so valuable to the organization that they can't ignore you. They can't possibly not create a path for you to move along in the organization.
And then I'll sound like the old man on the front porch yelling at the sky is, know where you are in the time frame too, because I am shocked, because I'll see in the comments section. We even have some loved ones. You find out people haven't gotten pay raises in eight years, and I'm like, and that exists. And that's a different thing. Because in an organization, we give pay raises. We look at things every year, but I've had situations, and this person, I would talk about this, because I think they would even say, what was I thinking?
Somebody had been here for five months and we had a year end and they asked if they have a meeting and they kind of said they wanted to pay raise. And I had to remind them, I was like, where do you think you are in this career journey? Because in the first five months, you barely know how our processes work. Yes, you have a strong aptitude.
But you have to have enough time to kind of absorb into the system because there is a balance in the beginning of an employer relationship. Your employer is giving you a lot more than you're probably giving them. Most people don't start day one and start adding tremendous value to a company. It takes a while to kind of absorb practices, to get good at it, become proficient at something. So don't if you've only been there for a few months.
go in and then demand a pay raise, when you might be at the beginning part of the learning cycle, just be careful. I know there's a lot of content out there saying that you can't get ahead unless you do this, that and there. It's just, but be very self aware of where you actually are and that value add. Because what we always say is value what you receive, price is what you pay. A lot of times that's what happens with wages as well, is that you have to make sure that you understand what is the value
of the whole relationship as well. I love it. Great. Thank you, the headcat, for your question. All right. Next up, we have one from D&J. They say, can Brian and Bo share what helps them switch over from saver to a spender? Some background for context. I'm 36, married with a three-year-old son, and have about $2 million invested in mostly index funds. All right. Hold on. 36?
36 with $2 million invested, you're crushing it. I mean, objectively not knowing where you live, anything else you have going on. If you have $2 million saved up at the ripe old age of 36, you are crushing it. So let's pause there for a moment.
But also, you got a three-year-old. So you're kinda like messy middle-in-it also, right? Like you bet you have a lot of different stuff going on every day, and you probably feel this tension. Okay, I've made these decisions thus far in life to get me to where I am, but I also have these other priorities. As my kids get older, I wanna create memories and create experiences. I wanna be able to spend some of the money. How do I balance that? Well, I'll tell you one of the things that I figured out early on,
was I was able to free myself of the spending guilt once I hit my 25% number. Once I knew that whatever my gross income is, if I'm saving 25% of that gross, if I can start doing that early enough, I'm gonna set myself up to be able to write my ticket for my financial future. If you don't believe us,
We have a delivery. We can go to moneyguide.com slash resources and download the deliverable. What can 25% do for you? That's not the name, but that's what we call it. What can 25% do for you and show you if you can start that behavior early on by the time that you do get to retirement, by the time that you do get to financial independence, you get to pick and choose the lifestyle that you leave. Well, if you are here at 36 years old and you've already got to the $2 million mark,
I would begin asking the question, where am I going? What's the ultimate finish line that I'm working towards? And do I need to keep running at the same pace that I have been running? Or is it okay if I slow myself down? Well, I always get nervous when sometimes when we do content, I'll have somebody in the comments or even the live streams just say, I'm 27. We make half a million dollars a year. We've already built up. And I'm like, well, that's great. But you haven't turned that big shovel into enough assets or army of dollars working for you.
But that's not necessarily the case for somebody who's 36 years old and 2 million. So I always, I don't want people to shut off the savings or feel too comfortable too soon. So I'm usually trying to get people, especially early in their career, make sure you focus on the make wealth before you do your de-risk and start doing the maintain wealth behaviors. But somebody who's 36, 2 million, I want to encourage you, I think you ought to go ahead and run the numbers. You know, one of the things we have
If you go to learn.money.com, we have the Know Your Number course. And I think it would be a great illustration and exercise for you is because when you put your numbers in, you put in your assumptions on when you want to retire, put in your rates of return, be conservative with it so that you just don't get this thing to run crazy on you because you have so much money at such a really early age. But then you need to kind of know the stats. After you see the numbers,
I want to remind you, this is something that kind of, because you did specifically ask the question, how did me and Bo get from this? And I don't mind sharing part of my journey was, is that I realized that I was doing so good at being disciplined and saving, and I'm proud of those decisions, because I couldn't tell you what dollar or what specific decision I made, which is the one that has led me to this great situation. Yeah, some big decisions had big results, but
But there was a lot of little things that led to big results, too. So I'm very happy with every one of them. But when I started seeing how big the number was going to be, I realized, you see that stat, the 80% of millionaires, whether it's millionaire next door, whether it's Ramsey solutions, or even our own millionaire survey that we do every year, and even the surveys we did on all of our financial mutants out there,
The stats are incredibly clear that somewhere between 75 to 80 percent of millionaires are first generation. Well, that stat only works if you understand how fleeting wealth is, or building resources in the fact that second generation, meaning your kids,
and your grandkids. It's going to go away very quickly, and that's why the stats show 70% for your kids, 90% for your grandkids, the wealth evaporates, it goes away. So if you have that knowledge of where your money's going, you do the homework, you actually know your number course, you know the data and stats that I just shared with you.
I think you'll have a different perspective. You'll say, look, I have now a balancing act just like it was discipline that got me to this point by making these small decisions or saving this money. Now I need to be disciplined with knowing, Hey, if I can't take this with me, what can I maximize to make sure that I don't have regrets at any decade that I live? And that's why I like memories over stuff.
especially with kids because I still want to encourage you because if you're doing this at 36 and you have a young child, make sure you're building scarcity in their life. I always like that with like first cars. Don't go get them a new super nice car. And I like that I got my daughter to pay half for the first one. Make sure you're building some type of scarcity. You're giving them the understanding of how money works that you're, you know, doing matching funds when they start working their first job. Make them go work fast food in high school.
Um, all those type of elements, but then also make sure you're loving on them with memories, great trips, invest in their education, all those type of things. And I think if you go through those exercises, you'll come out and be in a better place and you'll also have a better understanding. That's why, you know, when I, when I talk about millionaire mission.
All of you financial mutants like i knew everything in the book except for the final two chapters and i'm like yeah because we've been doing this content since 2006 i pretty much have shared everything i possibly can know and it starts probably sounding over and over but the last two chapters i did spend a lot of time thinking about.
What does wealth, what does it mean to me? What have I done to change my mindset so I can understand these things? And D&J, hopefully that helps. So my experience can help you navigate these waters as well. And then sometimes it's helpful to have a coach. I mean, obviously where you are, you've done a great job of accumulating and building. Sometimes it's nice to have someone in your corner saying, hey, it's okay if you spend money. Hey, it's okay if you back down the savings. I mean, Brian, you and I both in 2024 had some large.
capital outlays for some things that we were each doing individually. And we would have conversations around it. Hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing. I'm thinking about buying this thing. Yeah. Okay. No, it makes sense. If you can have that sounding board, if you can have someone on your side telling you, Hey, it's okay.
If you upgrade this, if you spend the money here, if you back down the savings here, because it still aligns with your long-term financial plan, sometimes having that person in your corner can be incredibly valuable. As financial advisors, it's one of our very favorite things to do. I mean, we love telling people, yes, save, save, save, save, invest, vest, grow, grow, grow. Yeah, that's wonderful.
But man, it's so fun when we get to say, hey, you know what, now let's spend some money, let's create those memories, let's have those experiences, do those things that you've saved up for for all of these years. So having a voice of reason in your corner, communicating that to you can be incredibly valuable. So maybe now would be a great time to consider taking the relationship to a next level. Yeah, I mean, well, we all have blind spots. I did make a big purchase last year and I was just gonna go make a sale and create a ton of capital gains.
And Bo was like, because I was paying cash. And Bo was like, isn't that transaction three months in the future or four months in the future? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, it's kind of like a quarterback. Why don't you lead the ball where it's actually going to be? Do you really need to create all those capital gains at once? Or could you be saving in the background, still take on some of those capital gains? And I was like, you know what? You're right. And you saved me a decent chunk in taxes because if I would have sold everything,
when I put the contract down, I'd have probably been pretty ticked off when I paid that tax bill and those extra dollars when that was just a blind spot that I had. Because in my mind, it was the better decision just to do it all at once, but in hindsight. And I like to think with your improvements that you kind of had some really good discussions on that stuff as well. Absolutely.
The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Beau Hanson. Brian and Beau are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with securities laws and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment or legal advice.
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