B (3:39)

Are you becoming more extroverted?

A (3:43)

Oh, Ginger, that's a funny one. I, I think I'm a ambivert, we'll say. I, I think like at my very nature, I am an introvert. I, I think I just like get energy from recharging alone basically. But yeah, I think I am becoming much more extroverted, certainly over these last handful of years. So yeah, I'm, I'm making moves. Not that that's better by any means. I'm not implying it to value judgment, but yeah, it feels pretty good.

B (4:09)

I'm remembering this time, it must be like a year and a half ago now where we were talking about like big moves, like big things that we wanted. What could be like the focus of your year. Do you remember this? Do you remember what you said?

A (4:22)

Oh, tell me.

B (4:23)

You said something about like, I want to be more engaged in community. Yeah.

A (4:27)

Oh, you're right.

B (4:28)

So look at you making it happen.

A (4:31)

I am trying. I really am trying. Yeah, just doing little things. Like friend Chris, who I've had on the podcast a couple times, we work out every now and again. Another guy, John, from the local group I've worked out with. So yeah, I really, I'm trying in little ways to just really, really connect more often. So I guess maybe it took me a year and a half, Ginger, but. But I'm getting there.

B (4:50)

Yeah, I asked the introvert extrovert question. Because it's something I have been thinking about for myself a little bit more lately, and I will share that. Okay. One of the fun things that's happening in my life is I recently booked a trip for my family to Panama. Ooh, that's gonna be so fun. That's in January. But as I've been going through, like, making the plans of, like, which cities we're gonna stay in and what we're gonna kind of what we're gonna do, I've had this odd thought that I've never had before, which is, like, who can I talk to there? You know, like, and I even looked up. I was like, ooh, is there a twose fi group in Panama? I didn't find one, but it was just this odd, like, unginder thing where I was like, oh, I really want to be able to, like, talk to some people I don't know about their experience of being here. So I don't know, maybe I'm more leaning that way as well.

A (5:48)

That's very cool. So what's funny is, now that you've mentioned that you're going to Panama, almost undoubtedly someone will send us an email saying, ginger, I live in Panama. I'd love to meet up. Or, oh, I spent years in Panama. Here are some tips. So, yeah, if you're out there and you're listening feedbackusify.com and give ginger some details, and she'd love to hang out, but, yeah, I mean, it's a cool thing. It really. I think that just adds to the spice of life is just kind of going outside your comfort zone a little bit.

B (6:17)

Yeah. Okay, I'll share another fun thing.

A (6:19)

Oh, I love this.

B (6:21)

Which is that I recently reached out to Frank Vasquez, friend of the show, and I heard him on the BiggerPockets Money podcast. It was a really great episode. And he said something that I thought was so funny and so Ginger, where he was saying that people ask him for advice sometimes, and he says, oh, you should go read these five books. And then he sees them months down the line. They say, oh, you know, I need help with this problem. The same problem. He said, did you read the books? Like, no, no. No one ever reads the books. Right. So I reached out to him and I was like, I will read the books.

A (6:57)

Nice.

B (6:57)

Let's read books together. So we're going to bring him on to do a book club episode. And so we want everyone out there to read the top five regrets of the dying. And so everyone go get that from your library? I just started it and it's a pretty easy kind of read, so I don't think you need a lot of time. But we want to talk about this in terms of how do you live a good life and take a step back from the money a little bit and to see where does that lifestyle design or those life decisions kind of overlap with kind of what we're doing here.

A (7:31)

I love that. I love that. Very cool. I know you love the book club idea. We did that a while back, me, you, and Clint Murphy did an episode. Right. And yeah, I'm glad you're bringing it back. And Frank, obviously, Frank Vasquez is a great friend of the show. Yeah, actually he was on. So I have a couple things is he was on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast two episodes recently. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be about maybe six weeks or two months ago. So just scroll back into their feed and Scott and Mindy are really killing it recently. They've been putting out a lot of incredible content. I think, as anyone knows who's listened to this podcast and Bigger Pockets Money recently. No, as we've had a lot of back and forth over this supposed middle class trap thing. And Ginger, I know you and I wanted to talk about that a little bit. You had some. Some thoughts and questions on it, but. And I, I very publicly did not, I guess we'll say, fall in line with the. Oh, the middle class trap is. Is a big problem, I thought. It's basically a fiction and a psychological issue. And something that we should be going the opposite way on is not leaning into the fear, but trying to educate and trying to show people that, okay, look, you might feel this way, but there's really nothing to be worried about. And to Scott and Mindy's great credit, and I mean, these are wonderful, wonderful people and they have just been putting out awesome content the last couple of months. And yeah, they've had a lot of different ways on how to access money early, which is super cool. I know they had Frank on, literally to walk through. They had an episode. I didn't think this would be a compelling podcast episode. I thought I'd have to watch it on YouTube, but it was setting up Frank's risk parity portfolio, which he believes can get you a higher save withdrawal rate, and then actually selling shares. Now, they did this in a very funny, small way, which is really great, but Ginger, kind of the whole point and Scott Trench's point was that he believed, and it was, in my estimation, based on some loose data of just like a couple of polls. And it just wasn't like statistically significant or scientific or anything. And obviously Scott knows that, but that, like, people weren't going to be able to sell assets when the time came. And like, that basically made my brain explode because, like, as you probably could tell Ginger, from listening to the episodes, like, because literally the whole point for most of our strategies is we're going to accumulate these assets with the point of we're going to sell them at some point, we're going to sell small portions of them to fund our life. That's literally what the FI calculation is all about. And basically to get to that point where you've won, you've won the game, and to just somehow throw your hands up and say, I cannot sell, seemed like the height of insanity to me. Like, almost mindboggling. And it's funny because Kim, who I mentioned earlier, when we were chatting in New York City, she was talking about this and she's like, look like, yeah, I think this is going to be uncomfortable, but it's going to be uncomfortable one time. It's literally five minutes of discomfort is you log in to whatever your brokerage is and you sell a couple thousand dollars of assets to cover your expenses that month. And that's it. I mean, Ginger, that's it. That's the discomfort. And then you know what, you're the type of person that now sells assets and the next month it's a little easier.

B (10:55)

And.

A (10:55)

And by the third or fourth month, you don't even think about it. You don't stress about it. This is just what you do. This is part of your life. This was your strategy for 10 to 20 years and you're there. So, like, to give up and not be able to sell assets seemed insane to me. So anyway, again, to Scott and Mindy's great credit, like, they understand that people might have a little bit of difficulty doing that. So they literally showed like, hey, here's how you sell assets at Fidelity. Like, it's not that hard mechanically, but again, it's like it's seeding this mentally for when the time comes, you are going to need to be the type of person that sells assets. So I thought that was really cool and a great, a great way to kind of round out this middle class trap thing that, that I hope people understand is, is not really a real thing.

B (11:38)

Yeah, I want to say one more thing about that episode, which is that Frank mentioned his episode on Risk Parity Radio about the fear of running out of money. It is so good.

A (11:50)

Nice.

B (11:51)

It's the kind of episode you're going to want to share with other people. And so maybe we could link to that as well.

A (11:56)

I love that. And yeah, Frank is, Frank loves when I, when I call him this. Frank is an absolute treasure. Like, Frank is one of the most important people in the entire Choose a VI community. And he's just an immense resource. And his podcast, Risk Parity Radio P A R I T Y is phenomenal. So, yeah, if you like podcasts, which obviously do, because you're listening to this one, it's a, it's a little bit funny, as Frank's sense of humor would, would suggest, but it's quite, quite good.

B (12:24)

Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about, hey, maybe this episode could be a kind of a question and answers episode where maybe I could ask you some questions that I have about money and we could bring in some questions that you've gotten via email and we could kind of take our best stab at them. Should we go for it?

A (12:45)

I love that, Ginger. Let's do it.

B (12:46)

I'm thinking of it because it was listening to those episodes recently that got me thinking about my own strategies a little bit. And so I wanted to kind of run some stuff by you. And I feel like, okay, here's the first one. I feel like I'm missing something.

A (13:00)

Okay.

B (13:01)

And if I have this question, I think other people have this question. Okay. So one of the helpful things about starting to listen to Choose Fi some years ago to, to me was, okay, I need a taxable brokerage account. And so I started that maybe four or five years ago. Okay. So I get that the advantage of a taxable brokerage account is that, well, the huge advantage is flexibility. I can pull that at any time. Right. And so once I was like, okay, I definitely want to retire early, so I need to start thinking about that bucket. Okay. And you pay your taxes, obviously the name taxable brokerage account, like you pay your taxes from your income coming in and then you put it in. And then the thing that I learned from Choose Fi that was so exciting, one of the most exciting things I've ever learned was how generous the tax code was around capital gains. Right. And so if I understand correctly, by the time I'm ready to pull, let's say I'm going to pull from that in whatever, 10 years, because I already paid taxes on the part that went in, I don't have to pay taxes on that. Right. And the part that grew, the long term capital gains is something like zero up to 95,000, right?

A (14:19)

Yeah, that's pretty good, Jen.

B (14:21)

Okay, so. Wow. That's incredible. Yay. Wonderful. So now let's go back to, like, current Ginger, who's trying to think about how to allocate her money. And what I was thinking recently is like, oh, so we're coast by. So I don't really put very much into our traditional accounts anymore. Okay. But I put a little. Because I want to feel something. I want to feel.

A (14:44)

I want to feel something. That's amazing. Wait, do you not put into. You're saying into your traditional 401k IRA type thing?

B (14:52)

Right. Like, we get my husband's match, which is very, very small.

A (14:56)

Okay.

B (14:56)

And then we put a little into our Roth, and that's the part that's just like, for me to feel whatever, like I'm doing something good for old Ginger. But I don't really think that's necessary because if we just sit on them until we're ready to retire, we're good.

A (15:11)

Okay. So you are truly coaxing. So hold on. I know you have a question there at the end, but just to interject, are you essentially trying to save $0 right now? Like, is that the.

B (15:23)

Absolutely not. So that's why I don't really think of my. I mean, I'm coast by in the sense that by the time we get to traditional retirement age.

A (15:32)

Yeah.

B (15:32)

My traditional retirement accounts will be high enough to do that. Right. So I don't need to put anything else into traditional retirement. Right. But I don't want to work until I'm 59 and a half. So right now my savings are going towards that early retirement bucket.

A (15:49)

Okay. Which in your mind is a taxable brokerage account, Is that what you're saying?

B (15:54)

Exactly.

A (15:55)

Okay. I would question the fundamental premise of the entire thing. So we're going to. We're going to have some fun here. Keep. Keep going.

B (16:02)

So I do want to talk about. I do want to talk about that. Okay. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about now. Right? Like, I'm putting our savings into that bucket. That's about, hey, the more we put in this, the earlier that we can retire. So what I was thinking is, hey, do I want to maybe put a little bit more in the Roth? Not so that I can do one of these strategies, although, maybe. Right. But just in terms of, like, hey, would it be smart for old Ginger? Right. Not about pulling it out early, but just to build that up a little. And then I started thinking about it, and I'm like, okay, what's the advantage of the Roth? The advantage is I pay my taxes now, but then I don't have to pay on the gains later. Well, if I'm not pulling more than 90,000, which I'm not going to, then aren't these accounts identical, except that one I have flexibility. Right. I can pull any time. And one I don't. Am I missing something there?

A (17:00)

Okay, there is a whole lot there. A whole lot. Okay, we're going to have to, we're going to have to slow down and do this piece by piece. So where do we start? So let's.

B (17:10)

Start with my question of, like, is there an advantage to the ROTH that I'm not thinking about? If you're kind of in. You're not someone who's going to spend $150,000. Right. Am I missing an advantage because they both. You're paying your taxes up front, and when you pull out, it's zero on the gains, right?

A (17:30)

Yes. So the thing that we need to confirm. So when you have long term capital gains, those do go on your tax return. So when you're talking about your taxable brokerage account. Now, the part that I don't know off the top of my head, and I'm sure Sean Mulaney and Cody Garrett are going to chime in almost instantly after this episode comes out, but there's an interplay with, like, the ACA subsidies for health insurance on healthcare.gov. so.

B (17:59)

Okay, so I'm going to interrupt you just to clarify because I think I'm reading your mind in a way that might not be obvious to other people, which is that, okay, the Roth, when you pull the roth, that is not showing up as income anywhere, right? Correct. And when you pull from your taxable brokerage account, even though you're under this 90,000, it still counts, right? Still reads as income. And so that's one important distinction.

A (18:25)

Yes. And I just, I did just Google this. Hopefully, hopefully this is accurate. But it says, yes, capital gains are included in the calculation of your income when determining eligibility for ACA subsidies. Specifically, the ACA uses your modified adjusted gross income to determine subsidy eligibility, and capital gains are part of the income considered in that calculation. So it's interesting because I think there's, there's this, what you were talking about ultimately, like, at the heart of your question is flexibility. And again, I still do want to go back and question the premise of your, you know, these are my retirement funds versus my early retirement funds. But I think what we've been trying to Paint the picture over the last couple months and really the last couple of years, frankly. But is that in an ideal world you want to have flexibility when it comes to your asset types. So I still think for the vast majority of people, the vast majority of our money is going to be in traditional IRAs and specifically 401ks and those type of accounts, the 403bs, 457bs, et cetera, the pre tax retirement accounts. So even though I'm going to go on about flexibility here, I want to say that I still think that's the right strategy. But we do know that having this additional flexibility by having money in taxable brokerage accounts, by having money in Roth accounts, it enables you to massage some of these things. And frankly, laws and rules are always changing. Subsidies are always changing. The Medicaid requirements in some states are changing depending on income limitations. So we have people who are trying to thread needles of not having too much income so as to not qualify for ACA health insurance subsidies, but they also want to have enough income that they aren't on Medicaid necessarily. And that's a personal preference. I'm not saying that as a, as a definitive thing from Choose a vi. Don't be on that. I'm not saying that at all. It's just we have people who have considered that in their states and they, they want to find this line. So they're constantly trying to have enough income to get over, but then not enough income to be under that ACA subsidy. And basically how that boils down to is just having this flexibility to do all sorts of different things. I know, like there are different tax credits, right? Like if you're at a low enough income rate, you can potentially get their earned income tax credit. And that can be thousands of dollars of just free money. So there's lots of different things to consider. And the more flexibility you have in a perfect world, the better, I would argue. So that is why to me, I think having all sorts of different types of accounts is in your best interest. But Ginger, what I fear is sometimes when, when people hear that, they then say, oh, Brad said or oh, choose a Vi said or oh, this podcast I listened to said that I need to change my strategy. I'm not saying that I don't know your strategy. I can't possibly know. There's so much nuance. But I guess that's what I'm saying. In a perfect world, some flexibility is better. But I genuinely believe at my core, if it was up to me, and I only had A very finite amount of savings and I had the ability to put it all in pre tax retirement accounts, 401ks and et cetera. Yeah, that's what I would do. So that's my own personal thing. That's unquestionably what I would do, Ginger. And I know that that is different from where you're going with, with your whole questioning.

B (21:49)

And so what you're saying is you think it's a better move to employ strategies to pull that out early, right?

A (22:01)

Yes, exactly.

B (22:03)

What if, I'll add a complication in there. What if you weren't retiring at 40, you were retiring at say 55? To me, why this makes it different is the main one I hear people talking about is the Roth conversion line. Right. Where you have to have it sitting for five years. That does not make sense for someone who is retiring five years early.

A (22:26)

Yeah. So for me, I think the most important aspect of why I put money into pre tax retirement accounts is I like to control what I can control. So I know that today when I put that money in, I'm getting a deduction at my top marginal tax bracket. Now, for many people in our community that could be 24% or even 32 if they're making a decent bit of money up from there. But it could be as low as, I guess, what is it, 10%, 12%, 22, 24, 32. It's from my recollection. So. But you're going to have a lot of people who are going to get 24% of a tax break today, a tax deduction, the value of that 24% of every dollar they put in is going to be a reduction in tax liability today. And what I believe is when you pull this money out, I think there is a really high likelihood that, that you're going to pay very little tax on it. Especially if you've been following the tenants of financial independence, which is, hey, most likely your living expenses are pretty low. Most likely you, let's say if you don't have car payments, you don't have house payments and you're at 5, you're in your scenario 55, whatever, 55 on up. And your life just doesn't cost that much. I know in episode 5:53, where Cody Garrett and I talked about the putting the middle class chop to bed, he actually ran through some significant scenarios of almost like worst case scenarios where you're taking out a boatload of money and you only have it in pre tax vehicles and still the effective tax rate was minuscule. I don't remember offhand, but it was like right around 10% or sub 10%. So if I can deploy really simple common sense strategies which mostly frankly Ginger, are just like, hey, my life doesn't cost that much, so I'm not pulling that much out and I get this big standard deduction on my tax return, then I'm going to pay a tiny little bit of, of effective tax rate. It's known as. So the total tax divided by my total income that the amount that I've taken out. I mean we have a lot of people paying between 0 and 10% effective tax rate on something that they got a 22 or 24% deduction on. I think to me it's like an absolute no brainer slam dunk to take advantage of those pre tax vehicles. Does that make sense?

B (24:49)

Yeah, but I think what a lot of people are thinking right now is, okay, well if the Roth conversion ladder doesn't make sense for you and you're wanting to pull this out early and you don't want to have that penalty, is this because you're thinking, oh, the easy solution is like the 72T.

A (25:05)

72T is a great option for sure. There's that in your case. The rule of 55 is another one.

B (25:11)

The.

A (25:11)

Yeah, I mean you can do, like you said, Roth conversions. Now naturally, if you did not have a taxable brokerage account and you had no other income coming in. Yeah, you would have to wait to do Roth conversions would be a little, a little bit tougher because right there's that seasoning, that five year seasoning period. But yeah, I mean there are at this point there are multiple ways to take that money out early. It's too hard to go into all of them right now. Ginger, obviously on a, on a roundup episode, but Sean MALINI in episode 475, we called it how to access your retirement accounts before 59 and a half. And then again, Cody Garrett in that 553 where we talked about different case studies of people accessing their money before 59 and a half, I think to me like these were just like slam dunk cases for your money is not trapped. It's just simply not. And that was what was so great about Cody's scenarios in 5:53 was even in the worst case scenario, quote unquote. Worst case, they were pulling out like eighty or a hundred thousand dollars. Something crazy like, or maybe even more than that. I think it was in one scenario and they had all their money in pre tax vehicles and it was still A minuscule tax rate, and there were still ways for them to do it. So I think we all just need to take a deep breath and say, like, okay, you might not understand this, I might not understand this. The person listening to this might not understand all of their options right now, but rest assured that they exist. And as you get closer, you start learning more. And what are my options? What's my scenario? Like that. That again, is the hard part about you and I talking to hundreds of thousands of people right now is like, we can't give everyone scenario. Like, I can't know. Do you have one year of money saved up in a taxable brokerage? Do you have $0? Do you have expenses? Do you, like, what are your expenses? I can't possibly know that. What I'm telling you is there are a ton of different ways to get this money out early. Nobody should consider money in retirement accounts as locked up until 59 and a half. I think we have conclusively proved that in the FI community at large. The really the brilliant people who are doing the research on this, and I think we all just need to take a deep breath and understand, like, we're not stuck. I promise we're not.

B (27:21)

Okay. All right, well, I want to get your take on another thing that.

A (27:27)

Wait, I'm not letting it slide too quick, Ginger. Hold on.

B (27:29)

Oh, okay.

A (27:30)

And, and hold that. Hold that thought exactly right there. But yeah, with your saying, like, my real retirement accounts are my traditional, but now I'm really focusing just about everything on my taxable brokerage account. Yeah, I think that's an artificial distinction to me. And depending on, of course, I can't, I don't know your exact scenario. Of course, I don't know how much money you make, I don't know what kind of tax bracket you're in, et cetera. I'm not telling you that you should be putting it in pre tax vehicles. And I'm just saying, like, there still might be a very strong case to put a lot more money into those pre tax vehicles again, because what we just talked about for the last five minutes is you're probably going to be able to pull that out before 59 and a half, almost certainly. And to purposely and willingly give up that tax deduction. Now, when you're at your highest earning years, I don't know that it's necessarily a good bet. Of course, you know, it's always going to depend on facts and circumstances in your life, and I can't possibly know that, but I just wouldn't I wouldn't set that up as like the only money. So. Right. If anybody's listening to this, like, don't think the only money that can get me to 59 and a half is what I have in a taxable brokerage account. Because honestly, Ginger, people's brains are going to explode if they, if they think that, like, because that's gonna, like, that is not the case, I promise. Like, I personally think of my net worth as one big pot. So I for myself take this for what it's worth. I do not consider them, oh, I have this much in retirement accounts. I have this much in taxable brokerage. I have this much in real estate. Like, I just consider it and real estate. We'll get some real sticklers railing on me for the middle class trap. Obviously I don't count that in my investable assets, but it is net worth. But I just kind of lump it all together, basically. The, the retirement and then the taxable stuff. And I don't know, like, to me it's all going to work out because I know there are all these strategies. So that's kind of conceptually how I think about it. So I don't think you need to set that up as that kind of like line in the sand.

B (29:27)

Yeah. And I will say your point earlier on about being able to be kind of flexible with, hey, I could pull this much from this account and this much from this account. That was really persuasive to me years ago in terms of like, oh, if you have kind of a couple different legs to this stool, then when the time comes, depending on what the tax code is or depending on what the subsidies are. Right. Then you have some power there. And so, I mean, I feel like that is a good takeaway for people in terms of regardless of how you do that, having those different buckets to pull from gives you some power, right?

A (30:05)

It definitely does. So yeah, if your 5 scenario has worked out, then you have a little bit of all three, then that's wonderful. Absolutely great. And if it didn't, if, you know, again, there are lots of people who've written in like, hey, Brad, I'm the one exception to your rule. Like, there are a lot of people who've been yelling me, yelling at me, ginger for. I've had multiple people say, like, I have never disagreed with you so vehemently on something as to, like, I guess I like kind of monolithically said, like, I don't think there's anybody out there who only has pre tax retirement accounts. And you know, what people don't understand is like I'm talking to a lot of people. Like I kind of like I round up from like 95% if 95% kind of rounds up. So I think the vast majority of people are going to have some money in a taxable brokerage. They're going to have some in their 401ks, IRAs, et cetera, but there are going to be 5% of people who just have money in pre tax retirement accounts. And I don't think you're in trouble. I think you're doing great. I think we have a lot of strategies to get that money out early and to get it out with very, very little tax. I suspect you're going to be cartwheeling down the hall when you realize like just how great of a situation you're in.

B (31:12)

Yeah, I loved that reframing that I think it, that you did on the bigger pockets money where you were talking about like not only are you not trapped, you're killing it.

A (31:21)

Yes, you are winning. You are winning and you need to understand that. You need to understand that. 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@chooseay.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. Okay, so I had cut you off two minutes ago. What were you going to say?

B (31:51)

Well, I was going to say, well, let me get you riled up about this other idea I had then. And again I'm maybe I'm missing something here, but the hsa. Okay, okay. Everyone knows HSA so great because no taxes going in, the growth isn't taxed, no taxes going out if you use it for your health expenses. Well, I have this realization. So I really have gotten my husband on board with like, let's just pay out of pocket because we don't really have a lot of big medical stuff, right? So like we have a few prescriptions. Let's just pay for them and let's just let our HSA grow, right? Let's think of it as another retirement account essentially. So that has worked for us. Well then my husband got a different job and it pays less. And originally we were like, okay, well let's not max out our HSA just right now. Let's just hold still for a minute. Right? But then I started thinking about It I was like, okay, it does not make sense, I think, to not max out your HSA and to save your HSA as a retirement. Right. So I think you have to choose, because what you're doing if you do that is you're just paying out of pocket at a higher tax rate. Right. Because you have room in that HSA where you could have. So you get what I'm saying?

A (33:13)

Yes, yes, yes.

B (33:14)

And so I think you have to choose. It doesn't make sense to put some in your HSA and pay out of pocket. You either need to be maxing it out and then paying out of pocket because you're able to do that, or if you're not maxing it out but you're still paying out of pocket, you're paying extra.

A (33:33)

Like, it doesn't make sense, needlessly paying extra. Yeah, so, right. I agree. So, yes, the way that I would frame that, which is almost identical to you, is saying if you're not maxing out your hsa, and just like many of us, we of course have health care expenses throughout the year, you're paying for that with cash. What you're saying is basically at that point, okay, if you've made the strategic decision to not max out your HSA for, down the road, for decades from now, but you still have space and you're paying out of pocket for health insurance costs this year, you should just have put that, like, let's say you have $100 doctor's bill. You should put that $100 into the HSA and then pay for it directly from the HSA in the current year, because that's this. I know, Ginger, because I can see the skeptical look on your face. This is like a slightly different version of what, what you were saying is, like, because you still have room to max this thing out, you really, you can just put all of that extra money into the hsa, get the tax deduction this year, and then just pay for it out of the hsa. So it seems to be the height of silliness, which you accurately said to not max it out and then pay out of pocket. You're absolutely right. I mean, I, I, I never thought about it in that kind of overt term, but yeah, it would make no sense in essence. Like, it would just be additional mechanical thing of putting a little bit more money into your HSA and then paying for expenses in the current year. If, again, if that was your strategy.

B (35:04)

Yeah, I wanted to bring it up because even though, like, you understood exactly what I was saying, but you kind of have to think about it for a second to get.

A (35:13)

I did.

B (35:14)

And like, let's say you're someone like me who's not a CPA or not like professionally, whatever, in finance, and you just like, know a little. Right. And so you're like, okay, I've learned how great the HSA is, and so I want to hold on to that. I, I, I could really see people doing this. Right. I'm going to hold on to that and I'm going to pay out of pocket, but I'm not maxing it out. And so unless you take that next step, you're, you're just hurting yourself. And so I think that framing is helpful just to say, okay, yep, you got one of two strategies and you can't do them both. Or just you're wiping out kind of your benefit.

A (35:50)

Yeah. Or you're just needlessly giving up on benefit in the current year. I think that's how I would argue it. But yeah, we're both saying the same thing, of course. And, and the HSA is an interesting one. I think a lot of us are if we have the ability to max it out. And I know Sean Mulaney actually talked about this on episode five, 557, where we talk about that one big beautiful bill and the different benefits for the 5 community. And I guess it looks like the bronze plans on the ACA going forward are all going to be HSA eligible is what Sean said. So I'm not 100% sure if that takes place in 2026 or 2025 offhand, but we'll look into that for sure. But yeah, I mean, if you have the ability to put money in hsa, and that's just another really nice way to get pre tax, essentially retirement accounts maxing out. And I think it's wonderful. So, yeah, Ginger, I've been taking advantage of an HSA over the last five or so years, and I love it. I've been maxing that thing out and similar. Like you said, you have a couple different choices. You can pay for expenses, current year expenses through your hsa, and you're still getting the tax deduction, which is great, but, but then that money doesn't grow and compound over years and decades. Because what's great about a lot of HSAs, or most HSAs, is you can invest that money in mutual funds or ETFs and have it grow as an investment account. And then when the time comes, there are, I guess, multiple different ways to take the money out. But the easiest is to just pay for healthcare expenses out of that hsa. And the interesting thing is you can save your receipts all of these years. So we're recording this in 2025. Let's say I let my HSA grow for another 30 years to 2055. As long as I've saved all my, my receipts for this intervening 30 year period, I can then pull the money out. I can basically say, hey, I had this eligible health expense and here's the receipt for it and you can withdraw the money tax free at that point, which is really pretty. Pretty awesome though I will advise. Someone from our community wrote me an email a couple days ago saying like, they've had some issue with pulling money out of their HSA based on using invoices versus receipts and things like that. So I think you want to just make sure that you have real documentation of your healthcare expenses. I've always taken the kind of tactic of okay, with my credit card bill showing that I paid it and the invoice, I don't necessarily need the receipt, but I think it's just in your best interest. Like usually the provider will send you a receipt. I would just save all of it together. I think it's really important.

B (38:35)

What I have read is that you want to make sure it's an itemized okay.

A (38:39)

That's good to know. Yeah, I think this is kind of like as events for the warrant, but I think just like always in life, and especially when it comes to personal finance, like or doing your tax returns or doing business income or something like that, like if you try to do it after the fact, and in this case 30 years after the fact, like there's no world where you're going to be able to recreate that from 2025 in 2055. So it's always just easier to do a better job now up front. So just save as much as you can. If it, if it means the credit card bill, you save a PDF of it, you save the invoice, you save a receipt.

B (39:13)

It.

A (39:14)

It might take you an extra 30 seconds or minute per one, but it's probably worth your effort, I would say, rather than maybe getting this stuff denied when it comes time to pull it out.

B (39:24)

Yeah. Okay, that's all of Ginger's questions for the day. Should we pull one of the questions that you've gotten?

A (39:33)

Sure, that sounds great. So, Ginger, we actually got a couple of questions about getting your spouse on board and, or what to do with fi. If one spouse is on board and one isn't. And I'm very curious your opinion on these. So I'm going to read these couple that came through. These were two of three or four that I received. So Anonymous wrote, I am on board with FI and it agrees to my values in life. My wife and I have been married for 10 years and introducing the FI concept does not sit well with her. She wants to live life now to the fullest. Going out, spending money, consuming must be part of every activity. It adds value to her well being and emotional state. I'm a tempting FI now causes a lot of conflict even starting small. How do you handle this? It feels like I must choose between FI and staying married. So yeah, that's a pretty big one. And I'll just read this other one that came in. Sarah said, I'm a saver and my husband is a spender. I consider ourselves Henry, which I had to look up is high earners. Not, not rich yet. So that's an interesting one. He's an avid competitive golfer but just amateur. So a lot of our income goes to that significant five figures a year. We also have different goals around fi. I want to reach FI asap. I'm in a stressful tech career. But he would much rather continue his current lifestyle than save more as a result. It's slowing down my progress as the high earner. How can couples with different goals and values find common ground when it comes to phi? So yeah, these are two pretty significant ones. Ginger. Yeah, I know, I'm just throwing them on you now.

B (41:13)

They're really hard. You can just hear the resentment too in the second one or if it isn't isn't there, it would be there for me. And then just sort of the desperation in that first one of like I feel like I have to choose between these two things. But I guess the work around couples is always, hey, how can we get on the same team? So I think about that first listener who was saying, my wife wants to live life to the fullest and I want to do this other thing and this idea that these are in conflict and maybe they don't have to be right. Like maybe that's some all or nothing thinking, like we either have to live life to the fullest or we can retire early. And so instead looking at like how can we both kind of get these things we want, which is we both want to have a nice life. And I wonder if having a conversation around what about this is important to you? What about this is important to me? You know, I know that other couples have made it work too, where they can kind of disconnect this idea of that we have to retire at the same time. What do you think about that?

A (42:21)

Yeah, I mean this, that's always on the face of it at first that always seemed a little, a little odd to me. But I, I think I actually have a couple of friends in real life who have done precisely that where the family's at Fi. But one spouse continues working.

B (42:38)

Yeah.

A (42:38)

The other has stopped and basically said, I'm at fi. I'm, I'm done. And it is working out in their cases. Of course there's always details to work around. But yeah, it always, it always struck me as a little bit strange. But I think, and this was going back years. But I think what's important is, is that everybody has their own thing. Ginger. I think this is something I've become. It sounds so obvious, but like I've become so much more open minded to, is like if somebody likes to work and they want to keep working, then that's great, they can keep working. Like I think like you said, like, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. That's an important part. There's so many, there's so many different flavors of fi these days that you just have to figure out what works for you. So I think that's something that I've come around on, which is I would have always thought one person working while the other wasn't would lead to just a ton of animosity and hostility. But if the person who's working is doing it on their own volition and because they really enjoy their job or whatever it is, like it would be pretty hard for them to then have animosity after they've made that decision willingly and openly. So there's that. But yeah, I mean, obviously in both of these scenarios, the, this is not that. Right. So the scenario where one person is the much higher income earner with a stressful job and it sounds like the other spouse would quote, much rather continue his current lifestyle than save more. Like, that doesn't sound like a great team to me. You know, that doesn't like at all. So I think, I think ultimately like a lot of this, just like anything in life comes down to communication, which is, hey, we need to, we need to talk about this. We need to get on the same page. We need to like, if that conversation is had by the stressed out spouse who's working so long and is, is frankly annoyed by the frivolous spending because that means they have to work more and the other spouse isn't Willing to give at all and just wants his or her lifestyle to continue. Well, I mean, of course they want to. They want their lifestyle to continue. But that's not a very good spouse in that scenario. Right. Like, that's not a very good human in that scenario where they're not willing to give and they're not willing to work as a team. So, I mean, I would question again, I hate to use the phrase again, but, like, the fundamental premise here of, like, what we're. What we're talking about, like, are we aligned? Yeah, we're married. But, like, are we aligned here? Like, is this. Can you not. Not even see where I'm coming from? Like, that. That portends greater issues, I suspect, than just, hey, we're not on the same page of Phi.

B (45:14)

And maybe there's some assumptions on their end, right. About, like, my partner isn't willing to do this or doesn't see it this way. And so often it's like, hey, having these conversations can help to bring some of that out.

A (45:27)

Yeah, that's a great point, Ginger. Right. Just the unspoken assumptions. I think a lot of us, most of us go through life with unspoken assumptions or expectations. And, yeah, it's easy to assume negativity sometimes when it might not be there and you're just fabricating it.

B (45:44)

Yeah. But the bigger thing is Brad and I don't know. And we want to just acknowledge how painful and hard it is. Right. Like, you're reaching out because you want a solution and we don't have one. But we can say, gosh, we get how hard it is because money issues are value issues. Right. And I am thinking of when we had this huge car repair not that long ago, and it really frustrated my husband. Well, me too. I didn't want to spend that much on a stupid car, but he had said something like, oh, like, next time we should get a new car. And I started crying.

A (46:25)

Wow.

B (46:25)

And I, you know, it's so stupid. It's just like, a car and it doesn't matter. And then when I had a little distance, you know, a day later, I could get to a place of like, okay, if this is actually important to him, then it's something that we could make work. Right. But my initial response, because it really was like, a value thing, like, I don't do that. I'm not a person who buys new cars, and I don't. Right. And so someone's saying, like, we should. We should do that. It was somehow, like, really emotional for me. And so I guess I give that example just to say, yeah, we get that it's not just about numbers. It's about, like, who you are as a person and what feels safe and what feels good to you. And so those can be, those can be tricky to figure out.

A (47:11)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is all tricky. And I love that you took a step back there and said, of course, of course we don't have an answer. I mean, there's no possibility that we have an answer. But I think at the heart of most relationships is communication. And, and I know that can break down very, very easily and we can assume negative intent and we can jump to conclusions. And like you said, we can just, yeah, assume negativity generally. Right. And that can happen. But a way to head that off is to have conversations. Right. And, and in this scenario, like, with both of these reluctant or, or outright hostile spouses, like, maybe find what lights them up. Like, I think that that goes back all the way to the beginning of choose if I remember conversation about this exactly, which was like, hey, go talk to your significant other and find out, like, hey, why do they, like, in your estimation, frivolously spending money? Like, why. Why are they doing that? Like, maybe it's something you're going to learn something about them. Maybe something about their childhood or their money story really impacted them. And maybe it's something about security or not ever wanting to look poor or they were embarrassed sometimes. Like, you just don't know. But this could be a real wonderful learning lesson about, about your significant other. And to take that time and be vulnerable yourself and hopefully get vulnerability back, it could really bring you closer together. This could wind up being a wonderful thing. And maybe you come out of it with each of you having a shared North Star for your financial life and your married life and your life just generally of, hey, this is what we actually want to do. This is why we're saving money. If you look at saving money as deprivation or putting off to another day, like, a lot of people aren't going to be on board with that. But then to talk about some. Somebody like J.L. collins, our great friend who talks about saving 50% of his income, wasn't about deprivation. It was. He was buying his freedom. He was buying the only thing that mattered, which is his time. So if, if you reframe saving money, quote, unquote, saving money to spending on the most important thing in life, which is your freedom and your time, well, that sure beats spending money on whatever, a new set of golf clubs or a new, a new purse. Right? Like almost anybody with Some common sense would come to that conclusion. You would hope, but again, you don't. And, and I'm making judgment there, of course, but like, you can't know these things until you have the conversation.

B (49:41)

Yeah. Maybe it's good to say too, that the conflict isn't a problem. Right. And that the emotions around it aren't a problem. That those are essential to sort of getting to the other side of those issues.

A (49:54)

Yeah. And thank you. Obviously you have a professional background in this. I decidedly do not. But it's. Yeah, this is important stuff and yeah, I'm glad we slowed down on this a little bit. So, Ginger, it's hard to segue from something so, so serious, obviously. But we were talking about some fun things earlier. You asked me and yeah, I'm curious. So are there any other fun things I was thinking, like things I've been playing around with or games I'm playing and sometimes, yeah, people just want to know, like, what we're up to in our own lives. And I've been playing around a lot with, with different AI tools. I think a lot of us have been. I trying to use ChatGPT much more often. I found this really cool voice dictation called whisper Flow. I think it's whisper without the vowels and it's really wonderful. Like, I use it now for virtually everything that I quote, unquote, type. I just voice dictate. And because it, it has this really significant AI behind it, it auto styles everything that I write so I don't have to sit there and retype it or put paragraph spacing in or when I say thanks, Brad, or you know, a closing on an email, like, it just formats it properly. And it's really, it's been saving me a ton of time, really a ton of time. So that's been kind of a cool thing. Like I said, I've been using ChatGPT a little bit more. I've had just a couple minor little health things, like everything's fine, but just more, more attuned to it. So I was able to throw in some, some of my blood testing in there, plus some of my DNA. And I know some people have privacy issues with this. So, you know, again, if you're yelling at me, just understand that I, that I did this with eyes wide open. But it was really cool, like just to be able to have it analyze all this stuff together and give me some plans and risk factors. And it was especially interesting in that it was, was both the genetic background, but then the actual, like, how is this manifesting? Itself in real life in my blood tests and such, because it's all well and good to have. Oh, man, I've got a ton of terrible, terribly negative genes. But if I'm living a good life and good lifestyle and they're not manifesting well, okay, that gives me some solace, which is nice. So anyway, it was just like a fun little thought exercise that I wanted to undertake. And it's. It's just like these things are astonishing. Like, I use another one called Notebook lm, which is a really cool one that Google has. And I basically just am consistently like throwing documents in there or YouTube videos and even books and just having it. Having it summarize them. If you were researching something, you could put in like multiple papers in there and have it compare and contrast and summarize and, and give you feedback. Like, to me, if you have documents or any type of source, that Notebook LM by Google is like the absolute best thing. It has saved me so much time, I can't even tell you.

B (52:55)

Can I ask you some questions about the health tracker?

A (52:58)

Okay, sure. I'm scared. But yes.

B (53:01)

First of all, was it inside tracker or what was the. Are you comfortable sharing?

A (53:06)

Oh, yeah. So for my blood test, I use Function Health. Uh, this was Dr. Mark Hyman. He's a famous functional health doctor. And yeah, he came up with this blood testing company a couple years back, and I, I jumped on it and I think it's like 500 a year. And you get like. I think it's like a hundred or 125 blood markers, like twice a year for 500 bucks. Which, you know, obviously I'm in a fortunate position where I'm okay to spend that money. I understand that's a lot for people, but I just really am focusing on my health significantly. So, yeah, for basically 500 bucks. And actually I might have like a. A personal referral thing. I'm not even sure actually, at this point. I think you might get a hundred dollars off. If I have that, I'll throw it in the show notes for this. So take a look. Obviously, Ginger, you and I did not talk about this beforehand, needless to say. But yeah, I'll take a look at that. But yeah, I've been doing that for three years now. And it's nice to have trends and follow along and yeah, I mean, I have some things that are a little, little out of whack, especially with. With heart and a little bit of blood sugar stuff. So some stuff that runs in the family that I just need to stay Aware of? Basically, yeah.

B (54:19)

So was this also the same thing that you did, like, the DNA?

A (54:22)

I did that through ancestry.com oh. I did that a bunch of years ago. You can actually export your DNA file. So it has, like, I think, like, 700,000 lines of, like, different DNA. And the cool thing, again is ChatGPT just eats that for breakfast. So it's. That was, you know, while you and I could never go through 700,000 lines of data, the AI can really easily.

B (54:43)

Yeah. Okay. And so then my other question is, when you got that information, did it change anything about what you're doing now?

A (54:52)

Well, yeah, so. And that was the cool thing was, again, always looking for trends, like. And I didn't have insight into this just from the data that I had, but chatgpt figured it out. It's like, I. I kept asking it a bunch of questions, and almost everything came back as saying, like, in totally disparate areas, like, your omega 3 index is low, you need to be eating more fatty fish, or supplementing with omega 3. So that was like, an instant I went out. I actually listened to. There's a great episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast that just came out, and in July with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and she's absolutely brilliant, and she talked about a bunch of different supplements and such, and she had a recommendation for her favorite fish oil. So I just kind of piggybacked on that. So, yeah, I did. I did take action. I think that's one thing that hopefully I can see that increase. And then I'll test my blood markers again and we'll see what happens.

B (55:48)

Yeah. All right, on with fun things. Are there any other fun things that you've been up to or wanted to share?

A (55:55)

Yeah, good question. I. I've been playing more games recently, which is fun. Every morning I have the New York Times games app, so I do. I. I do old school wordle. I actually got back into that I love their Connections game. Have you ever played that, by any chance?

B (56:10)

Huh?

A (56:10)

Oh, Ginger, come on. It's fun. It's just, like, a good job, Brad. Oh, come on. It takes three minutes. So, yeah, that and the mini and Sudoku, and so, yeah, trying to do that much more often. And I've been playing a bunch of, like, card games and board games with my girls. Actually, when we had. I had Tim Ferriss on the podcast in early August, which was absolutely crazy, and he just came out with a game called Coyote, which is really, really good. So we played that a bunch of times. We have another card game that's like a trick taking game called Skull King. So yeah, just trying to play more games when I can. I really, I feel like I went like a year there without playing all that much. So it's just. Yeah, it's kind of good to be back.

B (56:53)

K. Should we wrap this up?

A (56:55)

Yeah. Ginger, this is fun. As always. I love recording with you these episodes. We never know where they're going to go or what we're going to talk about, which is, which is fun. We always have a very, very long list of things. But yeah, for everybody out there, you know, like we talked about a lot through this episode, it's try to look for areas of fun I think that really matters. I think connection really matters. And like Ginger said, the book club is really something she's excited about coming up. So it's the top five regrets of the dying book. She's going to do that with Frank Vasquez. When you read the book, send your feedback in feedbackooseify.com or actually that really the best way is on our website. So choose.com feedback ginger, I don't know that I really even told you about this, but I just launched this and this I'm so excited about. I have long envisioned. I get all these amazing questions that come in from the community and it's always limited by me. It's limited by me having the time to answer or the knowledge and expertise. And unfortunately a lot of those questions I read and they just get stuck there. And now that Jonathan has helped overhaul the new website, choose. Com and we have this amazing member portal that's there. So if you, if you haven't signed up, just please go to the website. Sign up for that free portal. Jonathan is building something extraordinary for the FI community and he did that on this feedback page too. So choose a vi.com feedback and basically what I've done is I've asked a bunch of my friends of the show of the community, who are really world class experts in a whole assortment of topics to help us answer these questions that again have always gotten stuck with me. And now the questions come in and I can then kind of zip them over. A sign is really the wrong word but I can zip them over to these friends of ours and they then come back with these incredible answers. They record a little voicemail, write some notes up and then we turn it into a really great piece of content that lives on the choose of a website. So we're going to have all of these questions and answers. So far I have Dean Turner and Dr. Bobby Dubois on health. I have Fritz from the Retirement Manifesto on drawdown strategies, Karsten Big Earn on safe Withdrawal rates, I have Jess from the Pioneers, and Jillian Johnsrud on all sorts of different aspects of fi, Mini retirements, Coast fi, all those really important aspects of fi. Chad Carson on real estate, Sean Mulaney on taxes, Cody Garrett on all things general, CFP and all assortment, and Alan and Katie Donegan on entrepreneurship and international fi. So these are just the people that I've asked so far at the very outset of this, and every single person I've asked has said yes, which is awesome. And Ginger, we have these amazing people answering questions. So if you're listening to this and you have a question on any range of topics, you literally have the people that you hear on the podcast at your fingertips. If you ask a really interesting question that we think is valuable, I'm going to send it to them and they're going to respond to it. It's going to enrich you and the community. So I'm super excited about this and I'm really, really proud of it.

B (60:05)

Okay, so if someone goes to the website, is it going to be very obvious how to leave a comment about the book or to leave a voicemail about the book for the book club episode?

A (60:18)

Yeah, Ginger. So just go to choose a comm slash feedback and it should be really easy. Like, worst case scenario, there is an other category and you can just send it in there, put the subject as the book club or I mean, frankly, just send an email to feedbackhoosevide.com and it comes to the same place. So, yeah, really, really easy for people to get their questions in generally and on the book club very specifically. All right, well, thank you as always for being part of the choose of I community. Thanks for listening to the podcasts and until next time, thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose to Buy 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 choose a vi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on 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. So that's the way that I keep 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 five 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 a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a VI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. And even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up. And it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what 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 a VI created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com fi101 and again, thanks for listening. It.