← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
535-the-top-10-investing-mistakes-we-all-make-cody-garrett
00:57:41
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- [00:00]
Brad
Hey, it's Brad. Before we get started with the episode, I wanted to pass along some incredibly exciting news in the Choose a Buy world. As we talked about on a previous episode, Jonathan has spent the last couple of years building something incredible and we actually just rolled it out. This is our brand new Choose a five member site. It's obviously entirely free to sign up for. We're hoping this will take the place of our Facebook groups, both for the main Facebook group and especially for our local groups. So how this is going to work, you just go to our main homepage, choosefi.com and and you will see front and center, register, sign up for an account log in. It's really, really easy. We made it as simple as possible. So right now, Jonathan is building this in public. Every single day he posts an update with the 20 or 30 things that he updated from the last day that people reported that, hey, I want to see this. I'd love to see this new feature. How can we do this? This is the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance website and community. We finally built it. We've dreamed of this since 2017 and we finally have the technology. We are not beholden to Facebook anymore. We can actually send out events and you will get emailed notification of it. So it's not just the 1%. If you get lucky, that Facebook shows you the notification. Now, for your local groups, when you sign up, you tag, hey, I'm a member of this local group. And when your admin sets up an event, you will get email notified. So you can't possibly miss it.
- [01:22]
Jonathan
This.
- [01:22]
Brad
This is so exciting. We already have thousands upon thousands of people that signed up just in the first three days and I expect there to be tens of thousands before very long. So I wanted to jot this off before the episode started. Go to choose a fi.com, our main homepage and sign up for an account today. Hello and welcome to Choose a five. Today on the show we have our good friend Cody Garrett from Measured Twice Money. And Cody is a frequent guest and he recently had a social media post that garnered some significant attention and I thought it would be the perfect episode for Choose a High because frankly, this social media post was written for communities like ours and the Bogleheads and people who are really savvy DIY investors and also, not incidentally, for financial advisors. So we're talking people who are really savvy. And this Post was the 10 most common mistakes that even those savvy people make when it comes to investing. And I thought it would Just be absolutely perfect for our community. I think you're really going to enjoy this. And with that. Welcome to Choose Fi. Cody, love having you on. Thanks for coming back, buddy.
- [02:35]
Cody Garrett
Oh, thanks for inviting me back. Every time you invite me back, I'm like, really? You chose me? That's so awesome.
- [02:39]
Brad
I choose you, Cody. I, I mean legitimately, you know, I always choose you because I mentioned you in the, in my newsletter, probably more. More than any other human on earth. So, yeah, it's good stuff. I love your contribution to the community. So I never get tired of saying that and it's really greatly appreciated. Well, on that note, let's just bomb right into this. This is mostly going to be a you episode. I'm going to respond and summarize and do my thing. But we've got a list of 10, so let's just get right to it. Where do we start?
- [03:06]
Cody Garrett
Sure, sure. So I actually put these in order from 1 to 10. Now, not randomly, actually, I measured twice on this list and thought maybe I should put these in the list of kind of like when these show up, like along like your, your path on life. And I would say that number 10, it's like, you know, the big reveal at number 10 is probably something that involves everybody. So I hope you stick around for the all 10 because the last one involves everybody, even if you're not investing. So we'll, we'll definitely dig in. So let's get started. Number one is titled asset Location. So the post was, you know, even the savviest DIY investors, they're intentional about asset allocation, which is that basic mix between equity and fixed income, also known as stocks and bonds, within their total investment portfolio. But they don't consider what's called asset location, which is the way I think about this, I like analogies, is really think about your investment accounts as the vehicles. You have your traditional IRA, your Roth IRA, your taxable brokerage account, your checking savings accounts, 403BS. Those are vehicles. But you have to. If you put money into an account, we talked about this actually before the call a little bit. You put money into an account, you typically want to put it to work, right? You want to put your money to work as hard as you do. So whenever you put your money in an account, you have to figure out, okay, you know, I've put money into this vehicle, but now I need to turn this money into passengers, right? Like, how am I going to invest within this account? Am I going to buy stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, individual stocks, Crypto, whatever it is, you have to figure out, you know, what am I going to purchase within this account. And I would say on average, even the savviest DIY investors, they take this kind of mirrored approach where let's say one example here, let's say that somebody's retiring early retirement, let's say, and they're retiring with one and a half million in their total portfolio, which by the way, today that's not too unreasonable for somebody to retire with one and a half million. Especially within our community who are super.
- [04:52]
Brad
Certainly not in our community.
- [04:53]
Cody Garrett
Right, right. So let's say Somebody retires with $1.5 million in their total portfolio and they say, hey, I'm like kind of the average retiree, I'm just going to stick with a 6040 mix, that's 60% stock, 40% bonds. And by the way, that doesn't mean that every retiree should have that allocation, just as one example. But what they do is they have a taxable brokerage account with 500,000, they have a traditional IRA so pre tax money of 500,000 and they have a Roth IRA of tax free money of 500,000. So this is like the perfectly equal total portfolio, 500,000 in each vehicle. But what they do is they allocate each account type, so 60% stocks and 40% bonds. So their taxable brokerage, their pre tax and their tax free accounts are all 60, 40. And that sounds great, they have a 6040 total. When you squish them all together, it's 60, 40. But I want to test everybody in this idea of what would be the difference between that allocation and this allocation. So it's the same person, they still have 1.5 million total, 500,000 each of those three accounts. But they invest their taxable brokerage 80% stocks, 20% bonds. So that's 400 out of the 500,000 in stocks. Their pre tax traditional IRA, they put none of that money in stocks, 100% of that $500,000 in bonds. And lastly their tax free Roth IRA, which they want to grow as long term tax free as possible, they put that at 100% stocks. So all 500,000 in stocks and no bonds. What's funny is if you squish all three of those accounts together, all those vehicles together, you get a 60, 40 total portfolio. This investor is technically invested exactly the same as they were before. But there's one big difference. Their stocks and bonds are in different places and we have to back up simply and say what is the tax Favorability or the tax character of stocks and bonds. And this is specifically along the way. So keep in mind when you have realized capital gains, whenever you sell something at a capital gain or loss, it doesn't really matter if it's a bond or a stock when you sell it. But within a taxable brokerage account, which is that first vehicle we talked about, that's what I call taxable along the way. So you're receiving interest, dividends, capital gain distributions along the way. And simply down here, whenever you receive ordinary interest from a taxable bond, you're checking savings accounts. When you receive that interest income, that's all taxable at ordinary marginal tax rates, which again, you might have heard of the 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32% and so on. But the government, the IRS has set something up where we have favorable tax treatment for capital gains, specifically long term capital gains and also qualified dividends. And you can simply think of qualified dividends as dividends that are coming from US Stocks and also some international stocks that have some US Tax treatment. By the way, if you're wondering, Brad might be able to mention we actually had a deep dive on what's called tax gain harvesting in a prior episode, specifically about those lower favorable tax rates, including 0% on, on long term capital gains and qualified dividends.
- [07:50]
Brad
Yeah, and Cody, that was episode 5 17. That was definitely one of the best episodes we've ever recorded. And yeah, so episode 5 17, you can find that in your podcast player, of course, or always if you're looking for a particular episode@choose a vi.com just go choose a vi.com the episode number. So in this case, choose a vi.com 517.
- [08:09]
Cody Garrett
Awesome. And so since today is not a deep dive like we usually do, you know, me and Brad together, I'm going to just keep it simple and say which types of passengers, which types of investments within accounts receive this favorable tax treatment. Right. And I would say just generally, stocks, right. Are generally receiving the favorable tax rates on those qualified dividends. And also of course, if you sell them with long term capital gains. And now we have to say what's unfavorable. Right. So the unfavorable investments for taxable brokerage accounts would typically be REITs, real estate, those real estate investment trusts. Typically we buy those like ETFs, mutual funds. Go ahead, Brad.
- [08:46]
Brad
And is that unfavorable because of dividends or interest or capital gains distributions that it spins off?
- [08:53]
Cody Garrett
That's right. So yeah, in terms of favorable, we have our US Stock market, large cap, mid cap, small cap. Those companies are typically distributing those qualified dividends which are taxed at the favorable tax rates. But then we go kind of down the ladder. We have large cap, mid cap, small cap. Next is real estate. So some of us, on top of our, maybe our total stock market ETFs, we might own some real estate funds. So those distributions from real estate are taxed at ordinary tax rates with a quick caveat that they may receive a deduction of up to 20% of those dividends as part of the QBI or the section 199A deduction. But just keep in mind that on average US stocks are very favorable to have within taxable brokerage accounts because of those qualified dividends. REITs are less favorable even with the 20% deduction. It might not be favorable depending on how much in terms of REITs you own in your portfolio. And then lastly we think, okay, where do I put my international stocks? Right, so we have international total international, by the way, which is the developed and emerging put together that distributes about 60% of those dividends are qualified. Right? So depending on how much you tilt toward international versus US, you could consider putting international stocks and, and those REITs in those tax deferred, pre tax and tax free accounts. And then lastly here we have bonds. I mentioned earlier that taxable bonds really have the most unfavorable tax treatment. What I mean by that is treasury bonds are taxable, that interest is taxable at the federal level. Then we have taxable corporate bonds which are taxable at the federal and the state level. So just talking about the taxable bonds here, they are most favorably held within the pre tax accounts if possible. So just backing out a little bit. You know, ultimately if we have an opportunity and liquidity available within our total portfolio to put our stocks and bonds in different places, we typically at a high level want to put more of our stocks and our taxable and tax free accounts and put more of our bonds or fixed income in the pre tax accounts.
- [10:46]
Brad
Okay, Cody, so I want to try to summarize here because that was, that was amazing amount of information, but just at a super high level. So you talk about that the original version of this portfolio which is, hey, I want a 6040 split. So therefore every single piece of my portfolio should just be this 60 40. I'll just go along my merry way. Hey, I'm at 60 40. That's great. Obviously we both can understand that mentality, but what you're saying is with a tiny little tweak in essence, you can make this a little more favorable. So basically as I'm understanding it, so our taxable brokerage account, this is where the largest amount of opportunity exists for both getting favorable tax treatment on certain things, long term capital gains and qualified dividends. And also the opportunity exists to not have things that are unfavorably taxed in the current year. Because I think what, what a lot of people. So taxable brokerage, this is like our age old problem in the FI community is like we, we haven't come up with a better term than this. But this is just your regular brokerage account, okay. It's not under any umbrella of Roth IRA or traditional IRA or 401K or 403B. This is essentially your savings that you have at a brokerage account and you're investing in hopefully stocks, bonds, et cetera. But because it is this taxable account, and this is actually where it comes in, is the items of activity are taxable in the current year along the way.
- [12:16]
Cody Garrett
Correct.
- [12:16]
Brad
And along as you. I love that term along the way. So it really occurs every single year. And frankly this is, and we'll talk about this I think in number two, but this is regardless of whether you actually see this money or not in some cases, right, because you might get capital gains distributions or dividends that you automatically reinvest. Right now it's almost similar to like a business owner. Regardless of whether you take the money out of your business, if you've earned that money this year, it's taxable this year. So it's same with this. Like if you get dividends in a taxable brokerage account, those are taxable this year, they will come on whatever it is, the 1099 form, and you'll have to report that on your Form 1040 this year. Again, regardless of whether you actually like in a weird way saw the money. Like it didn't hit your bank account, it just went back in. But obviously you saw the money whether you knew it or not. So the long and the short of it, as far as I can see here, Cody, is we can make a little tweak to look at our portfolio holistically. And now there are some people who are listening to this and like, hey guys, I don't have any bonds. So this is actually mostly irrelevant, but it's still the conceptual framework of. All right, look, Cody's saying if you have a portfolio that has x percent of bonds and you do have pre tax vehicles like a traditional IRA or traditional 401k, probably the most favorable way to do that would be to put your bond allocation in there. Because the way that it works is, yeah, it might still spit off that interest income every year, but you're not taxed currently on it. That's the beautiful thing. So you've made this tiny little tweak, but that interest income is not getting taxed along the way, as Cody says. Right. So what happens with a traditional IRA is when it comes time to take distributions many years from now, 59 and a half or later, or you know, maybe earlier if we want to do some advanced strategies, but you are taxed on what you pull out. So it's the distribution that is taxed then as ordinary income. It didn't matter whatever happened along the way. That's the beautiful part about this. So, Cody, I'm pretty confident that was a pretty good summary, but I would love any further thoughts. And then we can move on to number two.
- [14:23]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, you nailed it. So it really comes down to we want to have as much control over our taxable income as possible in terms of we want to be able to control when and how much we're taxed, especially moving into retirement. And I'll also mention you might be wondering about like that pre tax, that traditional ira, in that example I shared, they have no stocks in there. It's all bonds. They're like, well, why would you slow down the growth, you know, if you had to slow down the growth of an account? Like why that one? And if you think about it, pre tax accounts are the ones. Again, when we look at a traditional IRA, if you see a $500,000 traditional IRA, it might not actually be quote unquote worth $500,000 after tax. We view a traditional IRA as an asset on the balance sheet, but the IRS merely sees a traditional IRA as income that hasn't been taxed yet. And what can we do to the income that hasn't been taxed yet? Reduce its future growth. So by putting the taxable bonds within the pre tax accounts, not only are we avoiding ordinary interest income along the way because it's not in a taxable brokerage account, but we're also reducing the future growth of the pre tax accounts which will become future, including forced taxable income. So not only are we avoiding the ordinary interest income, but we're also avoiding the future growth of that income that's going to come to us when we take withdrawals, including future required minimum distribution starting in your 70s, and also reducing the future need for Roth conversions, which are also tax at ordinary, you Know those highest tax rates for you.
- [15:46]
Brad
Yeah, I love that. So, and this actually gets to the heart of maybe why some people don't put a huge allocation of bonds. Is you really most likely lowering your overall net worth. But there are reasons why people do this. So what you're saying in essence is, all right, look, in the taxable brokerage account I get these super favorable long term capital gains rates. So let me go for my growth there. Because also as we discussed in episode 5 17, there was significant room, especially for smart five people who are savvy, to potentially get long term capital gains at 0%. So hey, hey, government, please tax me. But no, it's 0% as long as I'm under whatever the threshold would be. I know when we recorded it was $94,050. But that changes every year obviously. So that it's a double positive whammy in the sense that okay, I put my bonds in the pre tax, I don't get hit with that interest income along the way every single year. And also my potential future ordinary income from taking money out is actually less because the overall account balance is less than it would have been had it been 100% stocks. Again, in all likelihood, nobody can know the future. Yada, yada yada, all that stuff. Okay, Cody, I think we nailed that.
- [16:56]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. One last thing. And that example of the 60:40 in all the accounts versus the 60:40 spread between 80, 20, 0, 100 and 100 0. Those are actually growing in tandem. Right. So keep in mind, like you're not losing an opportunity in terms of you're not losing out on investment gains along the way. You're actually tax optimizing those gains along the way. So ultimately after tax you should have, you know, again, over long periods actually more money by having that tax location strategy in place.
- [17:23]
Brad
Right, Yep, That's a brilliant point. I love that.
- [17:26]
Cody Garrett
Okay, number two, so moving to number two, we talked about making sure that you have your vehicle set up. When you put money into your vehicle, you actually put a passenger in the vehicle. Right. So making sure you actually invest what you contribute to retirement accounts or you know, any type of account really. So one of the mistakes I see especially is that people retire, they move their 401k into a traditional IRA and they do the rollover and they might have like not really looked at the account for a while because they're like, oh, it's going to take maybe a few days to a week for this blackout period while it's moving from a 401k to an IRA, but they forget to log back into the IRA that's now sitting in cash for potentially six months, a year, et cetera. So even the savviest DIY investors sometimes forget to invest their contributions. This often happens within the FI community when on January 2, we max out our IRAs and HSAs and, you know, try to max out some things early is we get really excited about contributing really early, but then we forget to invest. We got so excited about contributing that we forgot to actually put the money to work for us alongside that idea of accidental cash by forgetting to invest. The most common mistake I see, even with the smartest DIY investors, is they forget to click the button to auto reinvest their dividends and capital gains distributions from both individual securities and also their mutual funds ETFs. So one quick trick for everybody is please open up your custodian of choice, whether it's Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, et cetera, and see if there's any tickers within your account that end with two X's. So for example, at Fidelity you might see spaxx. At Vanguard you might see vmfxx. At Schwab you might see swvxx. But if you see anything ending in two X's, that's actually a cash equivalent. So that's actually a money market fund that's equivalent to kind of. You can think of it kind of like a high yield savings account. But a lot of people would prefer for that money to be invested in equity or other securities rather than sitting in this cash equivalent. So I see this often where somebody might do a rollover of the 401k to an IRA and they might fully invest it in VTSAX or VTI, which is, you know, my preference is for the ETFs there. But they might forget to click that button to auto reinvest their dividends and capital gains distributions. And they log into their account a year later and, you know, 3 to 4% of their account's now sitting in that money market fund. So again, that's just something. It's a, it's an optimization play. It's not like you're, you know, not necessarily losing out entirely because some of those money market funds do pay, you know, 3 to 4% interest. But I do want to mention that if you have your money at Schwab, I really want to kind of warn you a little bit here that Schwab's default cash sweep called that, you know, the Charles Schwab Bank. You'll see on your statement is the worst place to have your cash. It's currently paying 0.05% APY on uninvested cash within your brokerage account. And I would always say that Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab would be my priority. For custodians Fidelity and Vanguard, the default sweep is a money market fund that's going to be paying between 4 and 5% interest right now, which whereas Schwab, their default sweep is into their bank into their cash sweep. So just be very careful first of all choosing which sweep money market fund you're using but also ensuring that if you want your money in stocks or bonds more intentionally make sure to turn on auto reinvestment of dividends and capital gains. Just last thought on that. If you're at Fidelity it's account features dividends and capital gains and then you'll click on reinvest and Security. At Vanguard you'll, you'll go to your profile and account settings, dividend and capital gains distributions. And at Schwab you'll go into the accounts positions and then click yes in the reinvest column with each security that you want to turn on. Auto reinvestment.
- [21:00]
Brad
Cody, that's awesome. I love this. So yeah, just super quick summary is there are two different mistakes that people often make here. But they're essentially the same mistake is letting cash pile up in your investment accounts. There's no reason to do that unless it's very intentional, in which case you know you have a different strategy than I do. But it often happens when people make contributions to an account thinking they're done. Hey, I've contributed to my ira. Well yeah you have but you haven't invested the money. So make sure you buy something and then yeah the more the easier one to make is not clicking that Reinvest dividends and capital gains distribution. So as Cody just said, at the major brokerages it's really easy to do. Just make sure just your action item for today among probably many because they'll be the there'll be some more here. Eight more we've got is just log in and make sure those are clicked and you will know by default if there's just random cache piling up. And it'll be oh hey, what's going on here? I probably have to click that button because it's not intuitive. When you set up your account you might not know what that meant and that's perfectly rational. And now, now you do and now you can fix it in one minute. So Cody, awesome stuff. Let's move on to number three.
- [22:10]
Cody Garrett
Cool. So Talk about doing a lot of things right? So make sure you reinvest your cash and put stuff to work. But really you also have to think of this idea of what we call return on hassle roh, right? So the return on hassle is like the time and energy it takes to implement some financial decisions. So number three is they don't consider the return on hassle the ROH when chasing high yield savings accounts and other account bonuses. So I ask you, how much time and energy are you spending setting up something that possibly save potentially just a few hundred dollars? You know, what is your time worth? I think about Vicki Robbins, Book youk Money or your Life. Really, like, if you were to calculate how much your time is worth, is it worth the hassle of chasing down some of these high yield savings accounts? So I just mentioned here that every $10,000 of cash that you move to get a 1% higher interest rate is equal to $100 per year of savings. Again, I'm just assuming the interest here, not necessarily a big bonus you might get by moving to a certain custodian. But I have just two quick examples here. Number three will be super quick this time. So the example here is if you move $50,000 of cash from a 0.02% bank of America checking account to a 4% money market fund, you're looking at really adding interest income of almost $2,000 a year, right? So like, that might be worth the hassle, right? To move from like a super low interest checking account to a money market fund. You know, that's about 4% increase in interest each year. But moving $50,000 from a 3 1/2% high yield savings to a 4% high yield savings is going to give you about $250 a year in additional interest income. And you have to ask yourself again, think about, you know, simplicity is something that we value. Again, like, you know, be more passive with your investments and more active with your life is something we do within the FI community. So I want to encourage you that if you're looking at, hey, my money is only making 4% and I see I can make 4.25% over here by moving all my money and transferring it over. Just, you know, consider that return on hassle kind of just step back a little bit and say, is it actually worth my time and effort to not only implement this thing, but also one of my friends, Shane, we talk about this idea of the headspace premium, right? Is like, how much headspace is this requiring to not only implement the thing but now I'm having to think about, okay, where's my money? I have my money at here, here, here. I have 50 credit cards. Right. So consider the return on hassle when chasing some of these optimization place.
- [24:28]
Brad
Yeah, that is great advice. I know Nick Maguli came on the podcast a couple years ago and talked about precisely this. And yeah, it's just, it's important for us to be mindful of. It's easy to over optimize, Cody. And sometimes you're chasing pennies and nickels and not, not thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I know in my life I am craving and chasing simplicity. So do I really want to move everything? I think about this with credit cards. Like, do I really want to move all my auto pays around to get a new credit card? Like that's a big hassle. And sometimes, sometimes the return's worth it, sometimes it's not. And I guess really our call to action here is just be mindful of what you're doing and is the juice really worth the squeeze? And that's all we can do. And everyone's threshold is their own and it's personal. And we're not telling you what the threshold is or isn't, but you just need to be aware of it.
- [25:20]
Cody Garrett
And by the way, like, I'm not a grinch on this. I will say that I just paid my property taxes, including paying the additional credit card transaction fee, you know, to hit the bonus on a new credit card. Right. So I would say like sometimes it is worth it. Just keep in mind, kind of measure how much hassle it's worth along the way.
- [25:35]
Brad
Yep, wholeheartedly. Agreed. All right, my friend number four.
- [25:39]
Cody Garrett
Sure. So we're on this, we're talking about cash a lot today. So the next is actually on charitable giving. So a big mistake people make is they own appreciated securities within taxable brokerage accounts, those taxable along the way accounts that we talked about, but they're still giving cash to qualified charitable organizations. Right. So what I mean by that kind of, I guess more traditionally you might think of somebody who maybe gives to church. You know, whether they put money in the plate, you know, during the church service, or they might have an ongoing ach a withdrawal from their bank account to their charity of choice, whether religious charity or otherwise. But what I find is pretty much everybody in the FI community starts building up these appreciated securities within taxable brokerage accounts. And a lot of them are thinking, okay, I'm one of the 90% of households, tax households, that's claiming the Standard deduction. Right. So when I give money to charity, I'm actually not receiving any additional tax benefit. You know, I'm not able to itemize my charitable gifts. So, like, what's the point of thinking about taxes at all? But I would say that, you know, first of all, that standard deduction that went up with tax cuts, jobs act in 2018, you know, married, filing jointly in 2025, you're receiving a $30,000 standard deduction, which effectively the government's saying your first $30,000 of AGI is tax free. Right. So if you're not able to itemize or you're taking the standard over the itemized, you don't receive any additional itemized deduction on your tax return for giving charitable gifts. But keep in mind that even if you're not itemizing, you can give appreciated securities directly to charity rather than selling those securities and giving that cash to charity. And by doing that, when you give it directly to charity, whether directly to the charity itself or through maybe transferring those funds to what it's called a donor advised fund, which is a way to potentially stack and give the gifts on a secondary transaction, you can actually effectively reset the cost basis of those securities that you're giving. One simple example here is a lot of people own a lot of Apple stock right now. They bought Apple when the first iPhone came out. Lucky them. Right? Let's say they bought. Just keep it simple. They bought $100 worth of Apple. It's now worth 1,000. So if they sell that 1,000, they're going to be taxed on the $900 of capital gain. Right. Rather than that, they're saying, hey, I give $1,000 to charity rather than giving $1,000 in cash to charity, let me get the thousand dollars of Apple stock. And now I've just removed that future capital gain that I would be realizing onto my income taxes by selling that security and then giving the cash.
- [28:03]
Brad
Yep. And that is a permanent elimination of that unrealized capital gain. So that's critical. And it's funny, because when we've talked about this in the past before on the podcast, I've actually had a couple people email me, like, grumble, grumble, grumble. Like, as if, like, we're sticking the charity with this tax liability. It's like, yes, we are horrible, horrible human beings, and that was our intention. No, come on, let's be clear. Like, the charity is not paying the tax liability on. On that sale. They get it, they sell it. They get the fair market value. They're not paying the tax on it. So hopefully, hopefully when you're listening to this, you know that we always have the best intentions in mind and we would never do that to a charity certainly that we care enough about to donate a significant amount of money to. So yeah, Cody, this is just one of those things. And, and the other caveat that I hear sometimes, and I'd love your thoughts on this is maybe for very small charities.
- [28:55]
Cody Garrett
Right, right.
- [28:56]
Brad
This might be more of a hassle than it's worth for them. If this is like an uber local charity, then we might be getting into scenarios where like, they've never done this before and they have to figure it out. And it's hours on the phone for you to save $150 on a hassle.
- [29:12]
Cody Garrett
For the church and you.
- [29:13]
Brad
Right, exactly, exactly. Or, or whatever your local charity of choice is. Right. It's like, okay, let, let's be reasonable there. But for any major nationwide or international charity, they have done this millions and millions of times. You are not hassling them. Okay? So it's just very simple. Like, think about it like this. Let's say you, you sold $1,000 of stock. You had long term capital gains, unrealized capital gains on $1,000 of stock that you happen to have like $0 of basis in. Right. So we're saying it's, it's all capital gains. You would pay 15% federal, most likely. On that, we'll go with 90 plus percent of people. So what would actually happen is you would net income $850. Now that's probably what you should give to the charity at that point. So it's $850 versus if you just sent them the stock, the thousand bucks in stock, they get the full thousand.
- [30:04]
Cody Garrett
Right.
- [30:05]
Brad
So that's really the summary of this. Like it is as simple as that from a conceptual standpoint. And you're not, you're not screwing them. I promise. They've done this millions of times.
- [30:15]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. And just a last thing on that is. Yeah, just like you said, give more to the charities that you love and less of the irs. Unless you love the irs. You can always donate more to them if you'd like. You can always tip the irs. And the last thing then, even if you're working with a smaller charity, keep in mind that you might be able to open a donor advice fund at your custodian of choice, Fidelity Schwab. Otherwise, just keep in mind that the administrative fees for donor advised funds are typically 0.6% of the assets within the Fund. So if I were to donate the thousand dollars of Apple to a donor advised fund, they're going to charge administrative fees on that along the way. But one good thing about a donor advised fund, as you know, is not only can you kind of choose after the fact, like, who do I want to give this money to? You can actually have the donor advised fund send a check to your charities of choice, but you can also say, hey, what if I have a lot of appreciated securities and I plan to give to charity over the next five, ten years? You can actually stack those gifts. So you could stack the transfer of securities into a donor advised fund. Now you can itemize your deductions. And I've seen families actually save over 50%, effectively make their given securities go 50% further by itemizing their deductions and eliminating the future realized capital gain.
- [31:21]
Brad
Right, okay.
- [31:22]
Cody Garrett
At the federal and state level.
- [31:23]
Brad
Yeah. Okay, that is super interesting. Right? And this goes back to what Cody said a couple minutes ago. That might really have gone over a lot of our heads is in this day and age of the new, significantly larger standard deduction. And this happened a handful of years ago. At this point, almost Nobody, well under 10% of people are itemizing their deductions. Okay? So on your tax return, you are getting this significant standard deduction. And in order for all of these other smaller deductions, state taxes and charitable contributions and things of that like to mean anything for you in terms of a tax deduction, they have to add to more than that standard. And then, Cody, you're only getting the benefit on that tiny little difference in most cases. So for most people, the tax benefit of contributing to charity has been reduced to very little, if not zero. Hopefully most people are not contributing to charity for the tax deduction. But I know that's always been that extra little carrot. But what we're saying here, and this is another deep dive, and we've done this on donor advice funds, and I know we talked about the effective Giving on episode 483 of the podcast, and that was a phenomenal episode for anybody who hasn't heard that one. But what you can do is you can take multiple years worth of future contributions to charity, dump it all in a donor advised fund, and you can do that. So you do that in one calendar year and the fair market value, like the total of that contribution is what you get and get to put on your tax return this year. So picture somebody who donates $10,000 a year to charity. Well, if they put five years worth in, they've got a $50,000 deduction that certainly is going to exceed your standard deduction. So if you knew that if you are a five person who has the money put aside and this is not like a cash flow issue for you, you can make a very strong case, especially at a high marginal tax bracket. Like Cody just said, he's seen clients who get between foregoing that long term capital gain forever, the permanent reduction of that plus the increase in the tax deduction you get in the current year at a high marginal rate, this can mean massive savings, 30, 40, 50% with both fed and State. So this is not insignificant at all. So you really need to think through this. And we're not advocating that you put five or 10 years worth of child deductions in a donor advised fund if the cash flow is an issue. But darn Cody, if this is plausible for people, they can save a boatload of money.
- [33:55]
Cody Garrett
Right? And also go onto the IRS website. There's also thresholds for what percentage of AGI you can include in your charitable donations. So just keep that in mind.
- [34:02]
Brad
Agreed. Agreed. Yep. Always things to look into. But this is just seeding you with the idea. So you always have to do your own research obviously. Thanks for listening to Choose a Phy and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support Choose a Phy is is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at choose a vi.com cards I keep this page constantly updated so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. All right, Cody, number five.
- [34:33]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. And by the way, Brad, I'm going to go faster on the rest of these so you can.
- [34:36]
Brad
No, this is great, Michael.
- [34:37]
Cody Garrett
That's awesome. So number five, we talked about the idea of giving to charity or giving to the irs. But I want to remind everybody listening that there's only four different parties who will spend your money. You, the people you love. Right. Family, friends, charitable organizations or the government. Right. So I know that sounds kind of crazy, but like start to think to yourself, hey, if I look at my total portfolio, I look at my real estate, right? I look at like what I own. You know, there are only four different possible parties that will spend that money. Right? So be very intentional moving forward on like how you are going to intentionally set that up to give to those places. And again, not to get political here, but most of the people I talk to, they'd rather spend most of their money including investing in experiences and Memories with their family, maybe giving that money to their family or friends, give money to qualified charities, usually as a last resort, they'd like to give more. Tip the irs, as we said before. So number five is actually related to family giving. I work with a lot of retirees, including early retirees with adult children, and they're on track to die with multiples of what they retired with. By the way, you might be thinking, this is crazy. Like, why would people die with multiples of what they retired with? Like, why don't they spend that money? This is actually one of the biggest issues within the FI community is we've had decades of frugality, saving and investing, saving and investing, but we never learned how to intentionally spend and give. So Frank Vasquez is a great reminder of this very bluntly, in a beautiful way, in the Choose a FI Facebook group, he reminds people all the time that like, like, if you're frugal along, if you're saving half of your income for decades and then you retire behaviorally, emotionally, you're not going to be able to flip that switch and suddenly feel comfortable spending at a higher level than you were when you were working. So these people, they're on track to die with multiples of what they were tired with, but they aren't willing to give that money or spend that money with those they care about family and charity. And what ends up happening is they end up giving money to their kids through inheritance when their kids are also in their highest earning years and when they no longer actually need the help, when they no longer actually need money to support them. So ultimately, I encourage you to start having these thoughtful conversations about what I call the financial family tree. And just a quick example of this is, you know, if you have adult children and you're listening here, you might be considering this idea of oops money versus ooh money. Oops money means if your child got in a car accident, you know, they wrecked their car, they might have medical expenses. If they come to you and say, hey, mom and dad, like, I need help financially, like, my car broke down and, you know, I have these high medical bills. Could you help me out? That's kind of like that. Oops money. In emergency situations, most parents will be willing to help financially with their adult children in those circumstances. But beyond that, I also encourage you to start thinking about this idea of ooh money, you know, ooh money, which is, you know, would you be willing to help your adult child with a financial opportunity? Let's say that your child is an actor and they said, hey, I really want to move to LA or Chicago or New York, a place where I can be closer to doing real Broadway musicals. But it's really expensive to live in those places. But with your help with the parents. Help who? Again, I've worked with families who could technically give each of their kids a million dollars and still be okay. But you might not be at that level. But you might be thinking a little bit more in depth about, hey, what are some opportunities where I could actually kind of give my adult child a push, not necessarily because they need it, but because it would actually set them up for a healthier financial situation in the future, including with potentially their spouse and their family. So, so many people that I work with, they've inherited money from their parents, and they were like, I just inherited $2 million from my mom. And had I received that 2 million along the way, my life wouldn't have been so hard, and I could have retired maybe five to 10 years earlier had my family just had this deeper conversation with me about potentially helping me along the way, not just when I inherited their money in my 60s.
- [38:25]
Brad
Yeah. And this goes along with what Bill Perkins talked about in the book Die With Zero, where precisely what you're saying, hopefully we're all going to live into our 90s and beyond. And at that point, if you have kids, they're probably in their 60s, 70s, or potentially later. Do they really need the money at that point? Now, we're not telling you. Certainly, this is a Put your oxygen mask on first. I think we'll always say that. Right. Like, I see people who have credit card debt and are putting money into a 529. Like, that was a recent question I saw on the Facebook group. And you know, my brain is exploding because it's. You have to take care of yourself first. So nobody is saying, start giving money away before you're financially secure.
- [39:06]
Cody Garrett
Right.
- [39:07]
Brad
What Cody's saying is there's a high probability that many of us are going to eventually die with millions of dollars just based on our savings and spending habits. Now, that might mean, hey, guys, change your spending habits a little bit. Right. Live life.
- [39:20]
Cody Garrett
Spend time with your family now.
- [39:21]
Brad
Yes, yes. And then it's right. Okay, you can start spending time, as Cody just said, or you can start giving. Instead of giving them $1 million when they're 70 and they don't need it, give them $100,000 when they're 35, and it could make a massive difference. Right.
- [39:38]
Cody Garrett
The down payment, the car, the student loan repayment.
- [39:41]
Brad
Exactly. So Again, not advice. Nobody's telling you you have to do something, et cetera. But these are just things that we often miss. And just giving you that framework is going to really help. So Cody, number six.
- [39:54]
Cody Garrett
So number six has to do with HSA contributions. We're huge fans of health savings accounts. I'm sure we had lots of conversations about this in the Choose a five community. But the mistake is they're not maximizing their HSA contributions, although they think they are. So this is a really funny thing I see all the time when I look at, I review pay statements a lot with, you know, clients who are still working. And what I find is a lot of time, you know, rolling into the new year. This is perfect. This is coming out in the new year because I would guess majority of our listeners are maxing out their HSA contributions based on last year's limits. Now moving into 2025, they haven't necessarily updated their HSA contributions. When you elect your HSA contribution through work, you do it as a dollar amount, not as a percentage. And I find that people don't change that dollar amount moving from 2024 to, to 2025. So a quick example there. In 2024, for self only coverage, HSA contribution limit was 4150. And for a family it was 8300, which is, you know, exactly double by family. By the way, that means you plus at least one other person. So it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, parents with kids. It just means, you know, you and at least one other person on your coverage. But good news, by the way, if you didn't max out in 2024, you have until April 15th of 2025 to maximize that contribution for 2024. You can't contribute that through your employer anymore, but you can contribute directly through your brokerage, your bank account until April 15th of 2025. Moving into 2025, those limits have increased a little bit. They increased by 150 bucks for self only, up to 4300 and up by $250 per family coverage of $8550. So that's for people under age 50. First of all, that includes employee and employer contributions. So I've also seen the mistake for people put too much in because they forgot their employer also contributes to their HSA through a workplace plan. But here's one of the biggest mistakes. I see pretty much everybody 55 or older when both spouses covered are 55 and older, they can each contribute $1,000 to their HSA. And the specific of this is you have to contribute that $1,000 catch up to two separate HSAs. So one example is, let's say you have a family HSA. One spouse contributes 85.50 in 2025 to the family HSA and then they add $1,000 to it, which makes it 95.50 in 2025. The other spouse that's over age 55 has to have a separate HSA and contribute their own thousand dollars to that. So what I find is that usually only one of those spouses over age 55 is actually contributing the catch up. So the catch up is per person, not per hsa.
- [42:27]
Brad
Okay, that is very good to know. And yeah, we clearly focused on HSA contributions here. But this is just good information for all types of accounts is I do this every year because there's nothing, there's nothing inherent about what the limits are that I could somehow intuit it in my brain. It's just not possible. Just simply Google, hey, it's the new year. HSA contributions 2025, 401k contributions 2025. You just have to have a sense of what this is.
- [42:54]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. And by the way, we'll put all those limits on a one page PDF in the show notes for you.
- [42:58]
Brad
Beautiful. And I know you always send people to measure twice money.com choose fi.
- [43:04]
Cody Garrett
Correct.
- [43:04]
Brad
That's kind of where you keep all of our resources, which is absolutely awesome. So that almost certainly will be where we, where we have it. Or we'll have a link in the show notes if you have a page specifically. But I suspect it'll be at measure twice Monday.com choose a fine.
- [43:17]
Cody Garrett
That's right, Cody.
- [43:19]
Brad
We're up to number seven.
- [43:20]
Cody Garrett
Awesome. So number seven. So this is more for like the, you know, later retirement IRMAA you might have heard of. By the way, Irma is not a lady. It stands for something related to Medicare premiums, which only apply typically if you're 65 or older. But what I found is a lot of people, not just in the Choose A5 community, but also other Facebook groups like the retirement education Facebook group, Andy Panko's amazing group. What happens is when people get into their 60s, 70s and beyond, they start getting really stressed out about these increases in their Medicare premiums related to household income. That modified adjusted gross income gets to a higher level, that hits them into those higher amounts that they're paying for Medicare premiums, Part B, part D along the way. So just keep in mind, like I don't want to go into the details of all the numbers here. But I will say that your total Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, if you are 65 and up, they will never exceed, based on today's limits, they do not exceed the 3% of household income in any of the IRMAA brackets. So just keep in mind that paying IRMAA, paying higher Medicare premiums will never make or break a retirement plan. Right? It's not like if you pay more for Medicare, you suddenly won't be able to retire. It's just going to be up to 3% of household income. With that said, keep in mind that the income thresholds for Medicare premiums are cliffs. So literally if you go $1 over and modified adjusted gross income, you, you could potentially be paying 1000 plus more a year for Medicare. So again, do pay attention to the cliffs along the way, but please do not fear retirement based on the cost of Medicare premiums.
- [44:49]
Brad
Love it. Nothing further to add on that one. I'll do it Charlie Munger and we'll move on to number eight.
- [44:54]
Cody Garrett
Sounds good. So a lot of you listening are not 65 and up. You're still on the path to and through retirement. So health insurance before Medicare. The biggest mistake people make, I see this so many times is they wait until age 65 to retire because they're worried about the cost of health insurance premiums. They say, oh, there's no way I could afford healthcare before Medicare starts. So I would say if you have a combination of what we talked about earlier, the taxable, the pre tax and tax free investments, you may actually be able to pay little to nothing for health insurance and early retirement even if you are a millionaire. So some people talk about kind of the ethics of these things. I just play within the rules we've been provided by the IRS. I've helped people who have 2 to 3 million dollars net worth pay nothing for health insurance because we can control their sources of taxable income, specifically their household income, which is modified adjusted gross income. Very technical stuff. But just a simple example I want to share before we move on is I just looked up in my own area in Houston, Texas. A husband and wife age 55 retire early with no kids and they want to be covered by an HSA eligible eligible high deductible health plan. And by no kids I just mean no dependents. They might have adult children but not on their tax return. What's really interesting is if they choose the lowest cost HSA eligible high deductible health plan, they'll pay $6,000 a year for that plan, just the premiums, if they have adjusted GROSS Income of $110,000 and that's not how much they spend, that's how much income they have coming their way, right? In terms of, you know, withdrawals from the pre tax accounts, the capital gains that they're harvesting and things like that. Next is they'll pay $3,000 a year if their modified adjusted gross income, if they can bring that down to $79,000. So they just split, they just cut it from 6,000 a year to 3,000 a year by just cutting their income by about their taxable income by about 30,000 for the year. What's wild is if they bring it from 79,000 down to 60,000, they'll pay nothing for their health insurance premiums in 2025. So just keep in mind that this is a family that could potentially be spending 100,000 a year. But because they have cost basis, you know, what they bought the investment for within taxable brokerage accounts, they might be taking some money out of Roth, which is tax free. They're able to control their income sources, where they take their money from. And as long as they're able to keep their modified adjusted gross income at $60,000. By the way, that number changes depending on where you live, your household size and things always go to healthcare.govc-plans. We'll put that in the show notes as a link. But this family in this example, they have taxable income of $60,000 and they'll pay nothing for their health insurance premiums. So again, some people actually end up working multiple years longer just because of the fear that health insurance is going to be a lot of money in retirement.
- [47:33]
Brad
Yeah, this is a myth that needs to die at this point, Cody, because I just, I don't understand. We're so many years into the aca. I don't know if it's some weird political opposition to it or just like willful ignorance or just plain, plain old just not knowing, but this exists, people, okay? This is not like it exists. And I don't mean that in a patronizing way. Like it exists. This is great, right? Like we listen the health insurance and healthcare in America, it's a freaking mess. We all know that. Nobody's trying to say otherwise. But for people in the FI community who are worried about how am I going to get health insurance when I leave my job. Guys, the ACA exists. It has existed for quite some time now. Unless something crazy happens is not going anywhere. So not only does it exist and you can Buy health insurance for basically what you would have been paying, but you can also get these massive premiums, as Cody's saying. So it's modified adjusted gross income. This is just a line on your tax return. It's easy to find. And if you can manipulate that, as he's saying, like, hey, this would have cost maybe closer to full freight, like $6,000 a year for this husband and wife. But if you can lower your modified adjusted gross income, in this case 31,000, to still a pretty hefty number in his example of 79,000, it cuts your premiums. So the amount you monthly have to pay down in half in this case. And if you could lower it $19,000 further still, it lowers it to zero. That means you get health insurance premiums for $0. Okay, so let's be clear. This exists and with a little bit of planning, like we are great at in the fight community, we are great at this, you could maybe pay little to nothing in terms of premiums. So we'll move on here, Cody, but, but this is really important and I don't mean to be, like I said.
- [49:22]
Cody Garrett
Patronizing as we say.
- [49:22]
Brad
Yeah, that is worth the hassle. That's for darn sure. All right, we got two left. What's number nine?
- [49:27]
Cody Garrett
Well, cool. So number nine sounds a little biased because I'm a financial advisor, financial planner. But you know, I'm going to just kind of tell you in advance that even though I'm a financial planner, I'm not accepting any new financial planning client relationships. So keep in mind, this is not, you know, I'm not telling you to hire me in this number nine, but number nine is the retirement order of operations. So a lot of people going into early retirement, they feel confident enough to retire, but don't consider a tax optimized distribution order of operations. Effectively what's happening is they end up retiring and then just kind of taking money out of their accounts all willy nilly. All right. But I would say that again, it's worth the hassle to consider. Hey, you know, just like I had an order of operations for contributing to accounts, a lot of you see those kind of the buckets filling up the other buckets of the water of, you know, first, you know, get the employer match, then max out your HSA, then max out your 401k Roth IRA, those things. You should also have a retirement order of operations. So which accounts are you taking money out of in which order? And I go, there's a lot of general information out there about kind of what's the most tax optimized way in general. But I would recommend to anybody here, you know, I kind of say here, like if you're like you know, within a few years of retirement or you know, kind of two and through retirement on three years on either side, I do recommend that you hire somebody, a financial planner, whether hourly, literally even just maybe one hour at a time, project based or even ongoing on a monthly basis. Please consider hiring a financial planner to help you create an intentional personalized system, not just for, you know, your retirement order of operations, but they'll also help you consider, hey, what's worth consolidating, simplifying, helping you measure that return on hassle. So even though I'm not accepting new clients, the two places with no conflict of interest, the two places I recommend the FI community to look at is adviceonlynetwork.com, which is a list of probably a few dozen financial planners who don't manage investments. So they're not going to try to convince you to move your money over or charge you a percent of your investments under aum. They also don't sell any insurance products. You just pay for your advice in a general word, advice. And that's it. The other place I recommend is nectarine. Hello, nectarine.com this is an amazing place. It was actually started by Jeremy Schneider and Shane Sedaris who have the Personal Finance Club Instagram account. And they started an RIA, a registered investment advisory firm. They have 26 advisors and you only pay for one hour at a time. So you can pay as little as $150 for, for personalized advice, including on your investments. So I do recommend again, it's worth spending, you know, 150 bucks again, measure twice before making this big decision moving into retirement. And again I would say that I wish I knew this existed like back when I was even in my 20s, 30s, like even before I knew what an IRA was. It would have been really nice. I would even say that if you're a parent with, you know, young kids and they might not be able to afford financial planning. One of the best stocking stuffers, you know, we just ended the holiday season, but one of the best stalking stuffers, saying, hey, like I would love to pay for an hour of financial advice for you where I won't be in the room, like, you don't have to share your information with me. You get to share your information with a third party who's working in your best interest. Just as one more reminder, like I have no conflict of interest or I'm not paid by any of these firms.
- [52:31]
Brad
Yeah. And Cody, that's one of the best things about you and why I have you on so often is, yeah, you're not making any money from anybody who's listening to this. There's no possibility you have more clients than you know what to do with. They're, you know, coming out of your ears, essentially. So you're not taking new clients. Like you said, advice only. Network.com. and hello, nectarine.com. i know I have mentioned both of those in my newsletter. Hello, Nectarine. So the company is Nectarine. I guess they couldn't get the. Couldn't get the website, but Jeremy Schneider has been on the podcast before. Really great guy. I know a lot of people who've used that where, yeah, you just pay this really simple flat fee for an hour of just chatting with a cfp. So then you can pepper them with as many questions as you have. You can buy as many increments of an hour as you want. They're not trying to sign you up for anything. You're certainly not an assets under management. Like, that's the thing we're trying to avoid here is, as Cody's saying, sometimes you just need financial advice and it's worth paying a professional. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay, you might be a member of choose a Buy. You might be think yourself a DIY investor. But look, that's all well and good, but sometimes when it really, when the rubber hits the road, like, you just need some advice, and there's nothing wrong with that. And to pay a nominal fee, like $150 an hour or something like that, I mean, that is worth its weight in gold. So, Cody, I love this. Number nine. And we are on to the final one. Number ten.
- [53:49]
Cody Garrett
Awesome. And one little thing for that, I always say that they call them blind spots because we can't see them. So I would say even if I hired a financial planner, which I probably should kind of eat my own cooking, if I hired a financial planner, I'm sure they'd find blind spots that I've missed even as a, you know, DIY financial planner. So moving into number 10, we have holistic wellness. If you hung out with us all along the way, I'm so glad you're here because this applies to everybody listening.
- [54:11]
Brad
They did, Cody. Don't you worry. They're here.
- [54:13]
Cody Garrett
They're definitely here if they hear it today. Right? So holistic wellness is that so many of us, we focus on financial wellness Again, we're Talking about, literally 1 through 9 was all about optimizing your finances. But we ignore our physical health, our mental health, which, by the way, mental health is physical health, something we all need to learn, spiritual practices and relationships. So we're so focused on the numbers. And what I find that happens is people, they focus on the numbers so much, optimizing every dollar and cent. They have enough money to retire, but by the time they're able to retire, they turn around. Their physical health and mental health are a wreck. Like, they're not able to actually go on those big trips in the go go years. They're not able to walk the Great Wall of China or walk the steps to in their dream travel and retirement. Their spiritual practices. Like, again, not just spiritual practices in terms of individually, but also religious communities. Like, community is a huge part, which actually kind of translates into this next part, which is relationships. I met a lot of people who have enough money to retire, but when they retire, they turn around and they've put their relationships on the back burner for so long because every time their friend said, hey, let's go out to eat or let's go on a trip together, like, no, no, no, no, I can't afford that. I can't afford that. So they put. They dump a lot of their money and time and energy into optimizing their finances. And then by the time they have enough money to enjoy with the people they love, they turn around. And the people they love is a very small number. So the quote I love to kind of test everybody with here is, don't let the number of your friends who've died exceed the number of your current friends, regardless of your age. And I've met people, including. I'm thinking about myself here, right? You know, how many close friends do I have, even now in my 30s, versus my friends who have passed away that I knew in high school, college, along the way. You know, now the people that I've known who have passed away, like, it's more than a handful. And I think about how many close friends do I have? Like, what is my community? You know, what is the scope of my community look like? But I've also met people. This is amazing. I've met people in their early 90s who have more friends today in their 90s than they've known who have passed away because they surround themselves with not just individual friends, but communities within their church, within their, you know, nonprofit communities. So just keep in mind that they call it the wheel of life. So financial, physical, Mental, spiritual, relational. Just keep an eye on those things along the way so you don't lose track of what actually matters.
- [56:24]
Brad
Yeah, yeah, this is really important. And yeah, you wouldn't normally think of this as a common mistake of a DIY investor, but I think this is the common mistake of many humans. So therefore, of course, it would appear on a list like this. Right.
- [56:38]
Cody Garrett
Including me, by the way.
- [56:39]
Brad
Yeah, including me. I mean, this is something I'm trying to rectify and I think I've done a reasonably good job with it. And frankly, like, this is why I go to five events. This is why I'm going to Economy in March. And I'm meeting up with people who. Cody's wearing the economy shirt. He just, just puffs it out there. Why I'm meeting up with people who I met in Bali beforehand in Louisville, Kentucky. And it's why we go to Choose a via local events. Right. So always choose a vi.com local. You can find your local group. We now have those local groups on our website. So you can sign up for an account just at the main homepage of Choose a vet. Com. And there are events all the time. It's how can I get together with people? How can I play board games? How can I have great conversation? This is the spice of life. It's not getting to some number on a screen. Listen, that's really important. And nobody. You're certainly never going to hear me say it's not important. But don't be pennywise pound foolish in terms of, hey, like Cody said, sometimes, you know, you go out to that dinner with your best friends, even if it costs you 75 bucks or 100 bucks, who cares in the cosmic scheme of things, Are you going to do that every night? No, you're not, because you're not going to be able to save any money. But if your friends ask, like, just say yes. It's just. It's easy to say no to things. And I think this is something I'm working on. Cody is. Yeah, it's just saying yes to more serendipity and spontaneity in my life. So I'm glad you included this.
- [58:01]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. And lastly on that, you hear about the regrets of the people who are about to die. Like the number one regret that I hear from people who are about to die but are going to and through early retirement. I wish I had less stuff and more memories. Even in their 50s. I'm not talking about people in their 80s, 90s. I'm talking about people who are retiring early 40s 50s, 60s, who already wish they already have that regret of like, man, I could have slowed down a little bit.
- [58:26]
Brad
Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. All right, Cody, this has been a wonderful list. I think people are going to take a ton away from this. So thank you, as always, for your time, your care, your expertise, and just what you give to this community, really, frankly, on a daily basis in the Facebook group. And now hopefully. Yeah, no, I know. And soon enough on our. On our new Choose a Body website that Jonathan is lovingly built. And we're going to have a lot of. A lot of things going on there. And I think because of how giving you are, I know you're going to be a big part of what we're doing there. And, yeah, I just, as always, want to say thank you.
- [59:01]
Cody Garrett
I appreciate you. I'm trying to get more control over my schedule so I don't just get addicted, get into the social media. But again, I have an addiction to helping, giving. You're helping, right? Yeah. Yes, it's the addiction to helping. And I always say that kindness is defined by giving to others without expecting something in return. So my goal ultimately is like, how can I give more to others than I've been given? And I appreciate you inviting me to give that to the community.
- [59:23]
Brad
Yeah, no, I greatly appreciate it. As we said, measure twice, money.com. choose fi. Cody, is there anywhere else you want to send people, or is that pretty much the place?
- [59:33]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, that's pretty much the place. Nothing to sell. You just go have some fun. Keep learning.
- [59:36]
Brad
Beautiful. All right, my friends, until next time, thank you for being part of the Choose a Vibe community and thank you for being here.
- [59:43]
Jonathan
Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Choose a Vibe community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first, subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player. Just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on the the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox.
- [60:19]
Brad
So that's the way that I keep.
- [60:21]
Jonathan
A pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community. We have choose a vi local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a Fi episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the Fi community and even though.
- [60:55]
Brad
It'S a couple years old at this.
- [60:56]
Jonathan
Point it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then choose if I created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.comfi101 and again, thanks for listening.