How They Escaped $92,000 of Debt Before It Was Too Late

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Money Guy Show

Episode: How They Escaped $92,000 of Debt Before It Was Too Late

Hosts: Brian Preston & Bo Hanson
Guests: Tyler & Michaela
Release Date: June 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features Tyler and Michaela, a young couple who managed to pay off $92,000 in debt—including a burdensome car loan and unexpected renovation costs—before making a major lifestyle pivot: transitioning from dual high incomes to a one-income household so Michaela could stay at home with their infant daughter. Their story showcases honest reflections on financial missteps, powerful debt paydown strategies, and how drastic lifestyle adjustments can unlock wealth-building opportunities and family fulfillment.

The hosts, Brian and Bo, dig into the couple’s journey: the decisions that led to their debt, the practical steps they took to escape it, and the ongoing strategies they’re using to build a confident financial future. Listeners will find granular details on budgeting, savings prioritization, life insurance, emergency funds, and adjusting to income reductions—plus real talk about the family dynamic, setbacks, and hopes for the future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: Debt Accumulation and Lifestyle (01:04–02:41, 14:58–16:35)

• Lifestyle Creep: Tyler and Michaela openly discuss how frequent dining out, expensive trips, a pricey car loan ($975/mo for 84 months on a $67,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee), and home upgrades led to debt piling up.

  "We went out to eat all the time. We never really thought about spending. We had a very expensive car payment… We were making renovations and upgrades on our house. We were going on trips." — Michaela (01:04)

• Renovation Gone Wrong: Major basement renovations and unforeseen costs (flooding, sump pump) not only wiped out $110,000 in savings but also led to credit card and personal loan debt.
• Debt Total: At the low point, their combined non-mortgage debt reached $92,000.

2. Turning Point: Motivations & Actions for Debt Paydown (17:02–17:30, 31:28–32:46)

• Motivation: The trigger was affordability of daycare for their future child and desire for financial stability before starting a family.
• Actions:
  • Sold the underwater Jeep Grand Cherokee at a loss.

    "We were underwater on the car, so we sold it—but also had to pay on it. That was brutal." — Tyler (17:02)

  • Aggressively applied Michaela’s strong commission income and bonuses to debt.
  • Cash flowed some renovations, stopped putting expenses on credit cards.
• Results: Within about a year, cleared all non-mortgage debt and freed up cash flow.

3. Lifestyle and Career Changes: Transitioning to One Income (06:31–08:09, 08:36–11:47)

• Income Drop: Went from ~$250,000 household income to roughly half (~$130,000–$137,000), after Michaela left her successful recruiting role to be home with their daughter.

  "Started there, I think my salary was, you know, $40-something. Doubled the next year when I started recruiting. I think it doubled the year after that..." — Michaela (07:13)

• Budgeting Upheaval: Minimal dining out, no major trips, and major reduction in discretionary spending.
• Car Downsizing: Now have a single, paid-off 2013 Jeep Wrangler.

4. Current Financial Picture (07:44, 34:06–36:25)

• Age/Net Worth: Tyler (32), Michaela (31), $400,000 net worth.
• Assets: $24k cash, $208k liquid investments, $550k home.
• Liabilities: Only debt is a $381k mortgage.
• Savings: 6% to 401(k) w/ 5% match, HSA, ESPP participation, 529/UTMA for daughter, $2k/month former debt payments now redirected.

5. Tactics and Takeaways for Listeners

Budgeting and Emergency Funds (33:31–36:25)

• Build Emergency Fund: Goal is to increase from $20–24k to $35–40k for six months’ living expenses.
• Discipline: Spreadsheet updated daily by Tyler.

Prioritizing Savings and Investments (22:05–26:46, 44:21–50:33)

• Order of Operations: Stop 529/UTMA contributions temporarily, prioritize bolstering emergency fund and Roth IRAs before resuming child-focused accounts.
• Maximize Employer Benefits: Optimize ESPP for free money (15% discount, no mandatory hold), use RSUs strategically by selling upon vest and redeploying.

  "We're going to argue they should sell those shares immediately ... the proceeds from those transactions ... to fund their Roth IRAs." — Brian (69:01)

Long-Term Mindset and Flexibility (28:29–30:34, 43:43–46:40)

• Emphasize adaptability—plans will shift as life changes.

  "So often young people ... what's my financial plan gonna look like for the next 25 years? It’s gonna change a lot." — Brian (30:43)

• Michaela’s skillset (recruiting/sales) gives future income flexibility, should she wish to rejoin the workforce when kids are school-age.

Family & Estate Planning (37:03–42:41)

• Insurance: Both have significant term life coverage; child doesn’t need a policy.
• Estate Documents: Urged to create/update wills, guardianship for their daughter.
• Guardianship: Emotional difficulty deciding who would raise their child if needed.

6. Hosts’ Reflections and Calculated Projections (64:12–73:10)

• With their recommended plan, Tyler & Michaela should hit timeline targets for:
  • Six-month emergency fund by next February (65:55)
  • Target 24% savings (company match, ESPP, RSUs)
  • $5.5M portfolio by age 60; $8.7M by 65
• Plan leverages their generous employer benefits and disciplined habits for strong future growth, with bonuses becoming available for "living" (e.g., trips, renovations) once savings targets are met.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the bad car loan:

  "How expensive does a car have to be for 84 months to still have a $1,000 car payment?" — Brian (14:16)

• On learning from mistakes:

  "That's the nightmare. That's literally the car scenario. Nightmare." — Brian (17:27) "Lesson learned." — Michaela (17:30)

• On child-focused saving:

  "You're not even funding Roth IRAs, which—y'know, you've got to get that free, tax-free growth … To hear that you're funding a 529 when you’re not even maxing out the Roth is a full stop for me. … You need to be financially independent yourself so that down the road you're not putting your financial burdens on her." — Bo (23:44)

• On hope and family:

  "There's a will, there's a way. And not to get all sentimental about it, but that stuff gives me the tingles, because it is an amazing blessing when … things, you know, if it's what it's supposed to be, I think you can find a way in a lot of these hard decisions." — Bo (61:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Background & Debt Story: 01:04–02:41; 14:58–18:02
• How They Paid Off the Debt: 17:02–18:13
• Lifestyle Changes & Transition to One Income: 06:31–13:44
• Budget & Current Numbers: 07:44, 34:06–36:25
• Savings Rates & Order of Operations: 22:05–26:46, 44:21–49:28
• Family Planning, Insurance & Will: 37:03–42:41
• Hosts’ Analysis & Next Steps: 64:12–73:10

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Conclusion: What Listeners Can Learn

• Intentionality and teamwork matter: Tyler and Michaela got all debt paid off by actively working together, prioritizing goals, and being willing to make difficult sacrifices—even (painfully) selling a beloved vehicle at a loss.
• Financial priorities shift with life: The order of operations is essential. Emergency funds and retirement come before extras—even for the kids.
• Keep options open: A strong professional skillset and a conservative plan give flexibility for future life or income changes.
• Planning is a journey, not a one-off: Annual reviews, regular budgeting, and adaptation to new circumstances will keep you on course.
• Discipline pays off: Tracking spending daily and being honest about needs versus wants made it possible for this family to transform their finances and take on a new chapter confidently.

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For more:
Apply to be a guest or access free tools: moneyguy.com/resources
For in-depth analysis, check out their “Financial Order of Operations” resources.

Transcript

[Brian Preston]

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[Michaela]

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[Michaela]

We went out to eat all the time. We never really thought about spending. We had a very expensive car payment. We were making renovations and upgrades on our house. We were going on trips.

[Brian Preston]

Were you also saving money?

[Tyler]

Well, no.

[Brian Preston]

You remember what your payment was?

[Tyler]

975.

[Bo Han Hansen]

How many months?

[Tyler]

It was 84.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Holy cow.

[Brian Preston]

That's literally the car scenario.

[Tyler]

Nightmare. Our basement flood, having to take out a personal loan, put stuff on credit cards. I ended up doing a home loan. Probably looking at 92,000 in debt.

[Brian Preston]

But you got out of it.

[Tyler]

I'm originally from Hopkinsville, Kentucky which is a small town just across the border from Clarksville, Tennessee. So about an hour and a half from Nashville. So I've always grew up with Nashville as like the big city. And then so I went to school at Kentucky and then after I graduated from there I knew that I wanted to move to Nashville. So I've been in Nashville Nashville for coming up on nine years. Oh nice. So yeah I've been went from Nashville to Donaldson to Mount Joliet. So slowly moving outside of town as life progressed. But yeah yeah and then she we ended up meeting in high school. She moved to live with her grandmother senior of high school. We actually went to senior prom together.

[Bo Han Hansen]

So wow.

[Tyler]

Yeah so I like to we all

[Brian Preston]

an item in high school this like a high school.

[Michaela]

So it was just senior year I lived with my grandmother. I'm from Delaware originally. So senior year lived with her. We met, we got set up by mutual friends to go to prom together because neither of us had a date. And it worked out. So we kind of started, you know, talking. Then around that. I moved back to Delaware after we graduated. We lost touch for several years, and then I was back visiting for the holidays. We reconnected and the rest was history.

[Brian Preston]

What now? How do you reconnect? You're back visiting?

[Michaela]

How do you reconnect back visiting family. We had mutual friends that both invited us to the same get together. And then we saw each other. And isn't that awesome? We ignited the flame.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Cause look, there's this new phenomenon that I see with all my friends when their kids go to prom now is that it's like friend groups. It's not like, romantic. It's not like. It's like, hey, I don't have a date, you don't have a date. Let's get together.

[Michaela]

Yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Was the prom date romantic, or was it just kind of a friendly thing?

[Tyler]

It was.

[Michaela]

No, it was definitely romantic. We liked each other. It worked out that way because we didn't know each other before we were set up. Yeah. And then timing, like you said, didn't work out for a long term thing then. Yeah.

[Brian Preston]

But then imagine, like, being married and then, like, getting to show your kids one day, like, this is us at prom, but this wasn't us us.

[Michaela]

I know.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It's funny because I was still. You know, you could get the visual of the mathematics and everything going on in my head. What was the spread on time between five years.

[Michaela]

Yes. But in our living room to that point, we have our prom picture and then our wedding photo right next to each other. Yeah.

[Brian Preston]

That's so amazing.

[Michaela]

And I wore a white dress to

[Bo Han Hansen]

prom as the old guy. Let me go and tell you something I just figured out. Put museum glass on it because all my pictures are starting to fade.

[Michaela]

Oh, really?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Well, because they get old. They start because the sunlight bleaches everything out. So if you've. And I found out recently. Stripes. That if you put museum glass on it, it will. Which doesn't. It's something you can tell them, and it takes the glare and it also keeps them from fading out.

[Michaela]

Yeah. Good to know. We need to do that.

[Brian Preston]

So you guys.

[Tyler]

All right.

[Michaela]

Thank you.

[Brian Preston]

You get. So you get married, then what. What. What do you guys do professionally? What's the family situation? Get us from prom to today?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Sure.

[Michaela]

Yeah. So we. Tyler graduated, like he said, from the University of Kentucky. Started working, you know, obviously right after college. Big boy job.

[Tyler]

I worked for a tobacco leaf Dealer right out of school. But I kind of have an eclectic background. So I did the tobacco leaf dealer for almost two years. And then I had six months where I worked in a bank. And that really wasn't my, you know, that really wasn't my thing. And then from there I used my agricultural purchasing background. I joined a building materials company. And so in that I was in logs procurement and did that for about three years. I'm still with the same company now, but I had an interest in hr, so I transitioned to a compensation role and then expanded in that to where now I'm really a total rewards analyst, both in compensation and benefits and unrelated

[Brian Preston]

to agriculture at all. Yeah, it's strictly like hr, benefits, insurance.

[Michaela]

Well, his company, he works for such a great company. They gave him the opportunity. I mean, they had this position open up and he applied and got it with no background except for just proving himself within the company as a good employee. So it's really worked out for him.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Some people are just winners. I always say that when you were hunting for leadership, when I was on the school board and other stuff, I said, some people, you just put the right seed in the right ground and it just grows. So congratulations, Tyler, for you being maybe that ripe mustard seed that just grows no matter what the soil type is. Thank you.

[Michaela]

My mustard seed.

[Brian Preston]

What about you?

[Michaela]

Yes. So I graduated high school, started working when actually, I think it was senior year. I got my first job at Subway, and so I did not go to college. I've had pretty much every job you could think of under the sun. But when I moved to Nashville, I was a nanny and started thinking long term about, you know, career. I need to, you know, get my foot in the door somewhere. I just don't see this being my profession long term. So applied with a staffing agency based out of Chicago. They had an office in Nashville. Got the job as a receptionist and admin, and then worked my way up to recruiter and salesperson. So I was there for six and a half years before I made the decision to step away from that when we had our baby back in September.

[Brian Preston]

Oh, so you had like a brand new baby?

[Michaela]

Yes, she's eight months old now. So my leave was four months. I went back on Monday. It was just debilitating. And we both work from home, so it just was really hard for me, you know, balancing the two. And my boss and her boss are so understanding. They were just giving me the grace that I needed, so. But I just knew that long term it wasn't gonna work for me any longer. So Friday I ended up quitting.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Okay.

[Michaela]

Yeah. Went back on Monday. Friday was my last day. Yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Wow. So this is really fresh. And you're being somewhat modest based upon the notes I read, because you were a good recruiter. Because you're. Because what happened to Yalls compensation? What happened to Yalls household income?

[Michaela]

It just. I started there. I think my salary was, you know, 40 something. Doubled the next year when I started recruiting. I think it doubled the year after that and then kind of was up and down because at that point I was strictly commission based. So I was on a draw salary. But yeah, it was. It was a very good job to me and I learned so much from it and I'm just grateful that I was so good at it.

[Brian Preston]

So you guys are in a great financial spot. You gave us a net worth statement, which is awesome as it stands right now. And how old are you guys again?

[Michaela]

I'm 31.

[Tyler]

I'm 32.

[Brian Preston]

Okay. So early 30s, $400,000 net worth, which is wild. You've got about $24,000 in cash, a little over $208,000 in liquid investments. You have a home worth 550, and then your debt load is only the mortgage. You have about a $381,000 mortgage. So you guys are in a fantastic situation.

[Bo Han Hansen]

You already know that.

[Michaela]

Yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

When I see that, I'm like, boom shakalakala. That's pretty good.

[Michaela]

I know. I mean, I have to attest it all to him because I don't know a lot about finances and everything and how to go about it the right way. But him, just from listening to you guys in the Ramsey show, I mean, he's learned everything.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, we did that.

[Brian Preston]

It was awesome.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It was awesome.

[Michaela]

You did, you did. He steered us in the right direction so.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Well.

[Brian Preston]

Okay, so. But you guys, in the last eight months, you've this decision to go from what I imagine was a very high income when you're both working. What was the total household income?

[Tyler]

20, 25 W2 was around maybe 250.

[Brian Preston]

All right. And so now we've made the decision to go down to one income and we're somewhere in the 110 base, plus bonus plus, plus long term incentives. So like not maybe a little more than half, but roughly half. How has that adjustment gone? Or have you adjusted? Are you still living like you used to make fresh?

[Michaela]

No, we've definitely adjusted, but I'll let you speak to it.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brian Preston]

This Friday she went out. She was saying that she went out the Friday after the Monday she came back January.

[Michaela]

It was right after New Year's. January 5th, I think, was my first day back. January 10th was my last day, man.

[Brian Preston]

So you've had a few months of, like, have you adjusted? Like, I want to know, like, how'd the conversation go? How's the lifestyle gone? Has the budgeting gone?

[Tyler]

Yeah, well, it kind of started while she was out on maternity leave, because I remember I went back to work. I work from home. She came downstairs to my office one day and was just like, I don't think I want to go back to work. Like, is there any way we can make this work? And I'm sitting there, I'm just, like, looking at the spreadsheets. I'm like, there's no way that we could possibly do this. And then I'm very fortunate that I received a promotion at the end of the year in December, which was a pretty significant compensation raised. And so with that, plus, we kind of prioritized paying off debt and cash, flowing some renovations and stuff over those last year to where we cut down the expenses, increase my income, and then obviously, we're cutting back in lifestyle a lot.

[Brian Preston]

Tell us more about that, because there are so many people out there that listen that have a desire to do what you've done. Hey, we desire one of us to stay home and focus on that, but we both make good incomes and we're both earning, and we like our lifestyle. I mean, tactically, what are some of the things you cut out and how have you guys been on the same page about doing that?

[Michaela]

It's been a big lifestyle change. I mean, before, we were definitely dinks through and through. So we. I mean, we went out to eat all the time. We never really thought about spending. We had a very expensive car payment. We were making renovations and upgrades on our house. We were going on trips.

[Brian Preston]

So were you basically, were you also saving money?

[Tyler]

Well, no, not really.

[Michaela]

No.

[Tyler]

I don't think so.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I think as a percentage, what do you think you were saving when both of you were working?

[Tyler]

Probably, I would say somewhere, if you include the HSA and the ESPP and the match, I mean, we were probably around 15%. I'd say maybe. Probably a little less.

[Michaela]

But with my income, I mean, I could have a bonus check come in and make 20,000 that month. So it's like you could put that in the savings and be like, oh, we have a pretty decent savings now, you know, but, yeah, we really just. We very rarely go out to eat now. We got rid of the car, so we don't have the car payment, the insurance, all of that. Oh, no.

[Brian Preston]

So you had. So you had a nice car with a big payment and you guys said, hey, the best decision for us to just get rid of the car.

[Michaela]

Well, Tyler for a very long time was telling me we need to get rid of this car. And it was very hard. It was a hard decision for me because it was a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

[Tyler]

Okay. Yeah. Remember the year it was? Yeah. It was a 21 grand Cherokee. We bought it in 22. It was about as new as you could get. A used car, I think it had 7,000 miles on was so nice. 20, 22 used car prices were a little elevated anyways. I think there's something going on with Grand Cherokee specifically that they're kind of dropping in value. So it was so much like new. Even though it was used, the value on it dropped significantly even after we were throwing just occasional chunks of money at it. And so we were underwater in it.

[Brian Preston]

What was your payment?

[Tyler]

You remember your payment was 975. Wow. That was $1,000 payment.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It was ridiculous and gutted on the depreciation as well.

[Brian Preston]

But you loved the car.

[Michaela]

Well, this was going to be our family car. We purchased it before we even thought about kids, really. We knew obviously in the next few years that we wanted to start thinking about family, but, you know, that was going to be our long term term family car. The car that we have now, which Tyler has had since college. 2013 Jeep Wrangler. Yeah. So that's paid off.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Jeep Wrangler is y family's car. Yeah.

[Michaela]

Now. So the great Cherokee was. And now we have the Wrangler, which is a very rough rider. Yes. It's paid off.

[Brian Preston]

So y' all had two cars and you made the decision, hey, we want to, we want to stay home. It's going to. We can't have this thousand dollar car payment.

[Michaela]

Well, no, actually, before I even got pregnant, we knew regardless of if I was going to stay home, because that wasn't even a conversation yet. It was just, we need to get rid of this car. We can't have a baby, actually, because we were thinking about daycare prices is why we got rid of the car. We can't afford daycare.

[Bo Han Hansen]

We got rid of the car before. Before y' all even had pregnant.

[Michaela]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tyler]

We knew you were pregnant this year.

[Michaela]

It was around the same time we were taught we were having problems.

[Bo Han Hansen]

We were already foreshadowing that you weren't going back to work. Did you weren't going back?

[Michaela]

No, I in My wildest dreams, that would be amazing. But I never thought that it was possible, so I didn't even think that that was something that I could do. Like, the plan was to put her in daycare. We had a daycare lineup.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Okay, I need. I need context because this seems somewhat extreme to. To go ahead and get rid of a car while you're making great income. You don't plan to leave.

[Brian Preston]

There's still $1,000 a month car payment.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It is now. And. And I don't want to keep me on track on this. Was that. How many months was that? 975amonth. Was that for 48 months?

[Tyler]

It was 84.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Holy cow.

[Tyler]

It was. It was.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Good gracious.

[Tyler]

My biggest.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Do you know how many high fives when y' all walked out of the dealership that that salesman probably did?

[Brian Preston]

How expensive does a car have to be for 84 months to still have a thousand dollar car payment?

[Tyler]

It was 67.

[Brian Preston]

And you. Did you finance all of it like we put.

[Tyler]

I. I was putting down 10%, but I think with all the warranties and everything, that pretty much just. That down payment got done.

[Brian Preston]

So you just added a bunch of stuff onto it?

[Tyler]

Yeah, we went with all the bells and whistles.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Well done on getting rid of this. Wow.

[Michaela]

Like I said, it took a long time to convince me, but this still doesn't.

[Bo Han Hansen]

There's additional context that's missing here is because you get rid of that. Okay. That sets us level set. Was there something else that's going on? Did y' all have like other credit card debt or some other type of debts that made y' all do more extreme activities like this?

[Tyler]

Yeah, we did some pretty significant renovations coming up on two years ago. So summer of 24, we finished our basement. So it was a huge renovation at about a thousand square feet.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Was this thinking about four babies and kids?

[Tyler]

Yeah. Like, so foreshadowing. Definitely needed some more space. We were shipped. When did you buy the house? 20, 22.

[Brian Preston]

Okay. This is like relatively new into owning this home. You're like, hey, we gotta go ahead and renovate.

[Michaela]

Yeah, it's an older home, just need an upgrade.

[Tyler]

We had a pretty significant savings. We had about 110,000 in savings. So all of that went towards renovations in our mind. When we got the car, we were like, you know, we'll throw chunks at it. But then, of course, you spent all that money on renovations. We added a pretty large, like, pole barn accessory building on the back of our property too. So we had tons of renovations. Ran into some Things where our basement flooded halfway through the, like, we just got studs up. Basement completely flooded. So we had to stop renovations and waterproof. Waterproof. Put in a sump pump. That was an additional 21,000 to do all that. And so we ended up having to take. We ended up having to take out a personal loan. We weren't accounting for the material costs. We put stuff on credit cards. By the time we get done with the renovations, I ended up doing a home loan to try to consolidate some of that high interest stuff. So when we came out of that, plus the car payment in fall of 2024, we were probably looking at 92,000 in debt.

[Brian Preston]

So. Okay, so this is what I was getting at.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I knew something was going on in the background.

[Brian Preston]

That's with the car payment, which is like 60,000. So this renovation, even though you had saved $100,000 for it, not only did you burn through all hundred thousand dollars, but then you racked up an additional $30,000 more than you had saved up.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brian Preston]

And I. But you got out of it.

[Michaela]

Right.

[Brian Preston]

So how.

[Michaela]

Okay, so you were very intentional about paying it off and being debt free. You know, before we started a family.

[Tyler]

Yeah. That 2025, she obviously had a really good year. And that commission was just going to cash flowing. Some additional renovations to just make it more comfortable for the baby when she got here, but also paying off debt. We were underwater on the car, so we sold it, but also had to pay on it. That was brutal. Having to pay to sell a car

[Michaela]

to get rid of it.

[Brian Preston]

That's the nightmare. That's literally the car scenario. Nightmare.

[Michaela]

Lesson learned.

[Tyler]

Yeah. I think we, during that time we were around $2,000 in debt payments a month. So the whole reason that we were trying to get out of it was solely to just afford daycare. So that was our goal at the beginning of it. And then being able to make those choices all of last year while she was pregnant, kind of. And then the promotion and then just learning to cut back in lifestyle led us to this January. Being able to her being able to stay at home.

[Michaela]

And when we say daycare, not just any daycare. We wanted to have, you know, it was definitely going to be a more expensive daycare, first kid, all the things. So yeah, we knew it wasn't going to be cheap.

[Brian Preston]

So as you sit here today, I mean, you guys have done one that's just remarkable. Right. Like, I think there's a lot of people out there, but holy cow, I wouldn't even believe that's possible.

[Michaela]

It's crazy that it is possible if you just are very intentional about how you spend and don't spend.

[Brian Preston]

And so as you guys sit here today, you said we had this motivation to do this thing, to be able to pay for daycare. And that motivation was the thing that as you sit here today now, what are the things that you're planning forward towards? Right. So you've gone from sort of like negative, I say, from bad situation to now you're in a fine situation. Where do you go from here? What's the goal or what are the things moving forward that you guys want to be able to do?

[Tyler]

I think for me, it's maintaining our current lifestyle. I mean, this change. We're five months in and really it's just been great. Like, I love the family dynamic that we have right now. It's what I want to focus on. If we have to cut back in other areas so that we can prioritize this sort of lifestyle that we're living, then that's what we're willing to do.

[Brian Preston]

What do you mean by that? Like, we have to cut back on others to maintain the lifestyle? What do you mean?

[Tyler]

I guess just we knew going into this we wouldn't have her commission checks and things like that. So home renovations, there's still some things that we like to do that's going to be put on hold for several years. Obviously, big trips and stuff like that we're not going to be able to do. So those type of lifestyle changes, but also just being able to budget monthly on the one income.

[Brian Preston]

But what you're saying is the sacrifice to have her at home, to be able to be the family unit is worth not going on the trips. It's worth not. I think it's amazing. A lot of people don't recognize that when it comes to making financial decisions, there's always opportunity cost. If I do this thing, that means that I can't do this thing, or if I don't do this thing, it means that I get to do this thing. I think it's wonderful that you guys have recognized that. So maintain current lifestyle is one thing you want to do. What else?

[Michaela]

I think long term, you know, we say maintain our current lifestyle, not go on the trips. Eventually, you know, when Palmer is older, we want to be able to take her on family vacations. And, you know, we want to make sure that we're saving for her future so that she's set up in a way. You know, if she wants to go to college, she can afford to do that without Struggling to make it happen, you know, or have a reliable car when she gets to that age. You know, we'd like to eventually be able to make these updates and renovations to the house just to make it safer and more cohesive for us as a family. As, you know, hopefully we continue to grow. So really, it's like we know we're, we're okay and we're in a good spot today with how we're going about this big change. It's been working for us for the last few months and we're okay with all of the, you know, cutbacks that we're doing. But how do we get to a point where we can eventually start having that money to do these other things on? 1 income? Will that ever be an option again?

[Brian Preston]

Currently, present day current income. What's your savings behavior look like? Walk us through. Kind of like where your money goes.

[Tyler]

Today I contribute 6% to my 401k. We have a 5% match on that at my employer. I also contribute to my HSA and also family.

[Brian Preston]

Hsa?

[Tyler]

Yes.

[Brian Preston]

So are you maxing that out or how much do you put in your HSA?

[Tyler]

I think right now it's 4500 is what I'm putting in annually. I previously, I would like to say putting in the work previously, over the years before having a baby, like stockpiling my hsa, just having that money. When it comes to the out of pocket maximum that you're definitely going to hit when you have a baby. It was just so nice going through that, knowing that I'm not even thinking about the medical costs whatsoever because I know I got it covered.

[Brian Preston]

I love that. Yeah, I love that. All right, 6% of the 401, 45 to the HSA, Roth IRAs, savings account, cash, any of that kind of stuff.

[Tyler]

So we, well, we're contributing 200 to our daughter's 529, 100 to her UTMA account. And I'm also doing 2% for ESPP.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I had already written a note to myself for you guys. As y' all were. As Mikayla was describing, I was like, daughter. And I look over here and I see she already has $17,000 and she's

[Brian Preston]

a few months old, eight months old.

[Bo Han Hansen]

And then you just told me monthly, you have $200 a month going into her, what, 529?

[Tyler]

529, yeah.

[Brian Preston]

100 into the utmo.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Look, y' all have done a great job. I want, I'm gonna be very complimentary, but here's the big butt. Here's the big but right now, y' all have done such a good job of recalibrating your life, but you have put this child at the center of everything, which is, by the way, nothing wrong. Kids are great. We love our families. But I want to make sure that when she gets older, you guys are still financially independent too. And you've built a great foundation. A lot of this is going to do some incredible things. But y' all are not at step eight right now. You're just not. You've had to take a recalibration. You're not even funding Roth IRAs, which you got to get that free, tax free growth. I mean, that kind of makes me sad a little bit that you're not getting the tax free growth. To hear that you're funding a 529 when you're not even maxing out the Roth is a full stop for me. It's just a misallocation of priorities. Don't mishear me. You can still love the heck out of your daughter, but I promise you, you need to be financially independent yourself so that down the road you're not putting your financial burdens on her.

[Michaela]

Right?

[Bo Han Hansen]

And that happens a lot. And if you're not careful, because she will be able to get scholarships, she'll be able to get student loans and, and other things, you're not going be able to get a retirement loan. It just doesn't exist. So this is the time. While y' all are, y' all are young, 31 and 32, compounding growth is still way on your side. So we need to maximize and leverage that, not just assume. Because by the way, I think if we started doing, and that's part of one of the things we'll probably put on the homework list, we run some 529 analysis. Just the priming of the pump of what they've already done is going to be amazing. I have a daughter, my oldest daughter just graduated college and I don't mind sharing. I was only for the first few years putting $2,000 a year into her 529 after I'm in step eight. And then I think that my mother might have put $3,000, I think three or $4,000 when my daughter was born. One time, one time we paid for three years of college with just the $2,000 a year that we were putting in because that's what Georgia gave us a deduction back when we were Georgia boys. And then my mom's contribute, that one time contribution paid for an entire semester, which you only have two semesters a year. So a little bit goes a long way when she has so many years. You've already primed the pump in a pretty that I think y' all might be leaning heavily into something that you need to prioritize for yourself.

[Michaela]

Right. And that's why we're here. So, I mean, we need this advice, you know, we don't know what we don't know, and we've never met with financial advisors before, so this is exactly why we're here.

[Brian Preston]

And how much did you say that's going into your ESPP right now?

[Tyler]

2%.

[Brian Preston]

2%, roughly. Because I know, I imagine your comp varies a little bit, but what if we were gonna use a number? What's like a realistic number for total comp for you? 130,000. Somewhere in that ballpark.

[Tyler]

Yeah. I'd say 137 would be a target base for it. It's also based off of company and individual performance.

[Brian Preston]

So I'm just thinking through, like, current savings rate and we think about, like, stuff that you're saving for the future. You've got about 3% going into your HSA. You got 6% going into your 401k, so that's 9%. You have a 3.5% match. Now we're at 14%. Another 2% into the ESPP. That's 17%. Right? Did I do that math right? I think I did that math.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Oh, don't make me do public math. You got a calculator, right?

[Brian Preston]

It's somewhere in that. Somewhere in that ballpark. I noticed that a lot of what you guys were talking about. Hey, I asked, what are your goals? I want to maintain lifestyle today. We want to be able to do the renovations, be able to do the travel. A lot of the stuff you said was very much like short term to intermediate term goals. I didn't hear like a super, like long term goal out there. Hey, we want to be able to, to retire or reach financial independence. Is that even on your radar or are you just like, ah, we're so worried about today, we're not really thinking about tomorrow.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I'm just hoping that I'm able to just do enough now that it can compound to that point. But really, I know that I'm working for at least 30 more years, so

[Michaela]

I'm sure it puts a lot more pressure and stress on you now being, you know, the sole provider. It's like I can't even think about that. But yeah, that definitely would be, you know, a long term goal, I think, especially when we were both working, it's like, yeah, I would love to, you know, retire early or, you know, make that an option and spend more time with our kids when, you know, we get older and have more financial independence.

[Brian Preston]

So you said kids. So I don't want to be presumptuous

[Michaela]

here, but we'd like to have one more.

[Brian Preston]

Okay, so the idea is because do you think that likely you'll be a one income household forever or share a brain?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Because that's what I was gonna ask.

[Michaela]

Possible. I mean, so some background too. Tyler had a stay at home mom. He has a brother. I have three siblings. Single mom, she always worked until she actually ended up going out on disability. So stopped working when I think I was in middle school. But, you know, single mom, sole provider. We just had a working mom, we had a nanny, and, you know, that was our life. So him, him experiencing the stay at home mom route was amazing for him. And I feel like I obviously haven't done the working mom route, but my company would hire me back if I ever needed to. So I'm very grateful for that. No, I would like to be able to be a stay at home mom until Palmer starts school and then if we have another one, obviously until they start school. So those are the options. But if I needed to, I would go back to work tomorrow if we were in a bad spot. And that's what had to be done.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Here's the thing, because I'm a little older and I know a number of people, and one of my dear, dear friends, his spouse is a recruiter too. And she's kind of had the best of all worlds in the fact that she makes a great living and does all the home stuff, but she still works from home and does recruiting stuff too, in a very specialized way. Because, by the way, that's not something. You said it earlier, and I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. You get paid commission. So there's a skill set here. This is not something that you just plug in any piece or any person and they can go out there and recruit people. You've actually got a very specialized skill set to make and be able to do this. I could see a future and you could take it, be as patient as you want, meaning you could get your current daughter into school. You could even have the second child wait until they get into school. So maybe we're talking about tabling this, this superpower of yours for 10 years. You're still young. I mean, so getting back into it, 40, 41 years of age, there's potential. You could still work from home, use your skill set to fire back up the engine and, and probably still do a lot of these things and not feel like you had to sacrifice the kids. So. And I don't know how we build off a plan off of that, but I just want to tell you that I think you'll have some uniqueness here that could serve you well in the future because of that skill set and in the relationship. Because that's what I've experienced is that if they know you can do this, that's why they're like, yeah, they'll take you back anytime.

[Michaela]

Because it's like, you really didn't want me to leave.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Well, because a salesman, anybody who can sell, that's why when there's new modern world where we're talking about AI and everything else, the skill set that will never go away is the ability to sell. So it's kind of a universal, you know, just like you have people, different blood types, but then there's one blood type that can fit with everybody.

[Michaela]

Right.

[Bo Han Hansen]

You are, that sells is the skill that fits with all professions and all careers, technical, anything, if you can sell, you probably are employable. So you're going to be okay.

[Michaela]

Yeah. And that would be the ultimate dream, like you said, is to take X amount of years, however long it takes, and hopefully jump right back into the swing of things and be as good as I was at it.

[Brian Preston]

Well, and this is one of the reasons why there's so much life that it sounds like it's going to change for you guys between now and the time you turn 50. Right. And so often young people, they want to have like, like, okay, what's the plan? What's exactly, you know, what's my financial plan gonna look like for the next 25 years? And realistically, it's gonna change a lot. And there's a lot of variables. And so that's why I always say early on in your journey, what we really want you to focus on is your savings rate. And we're gonna see, okay, based on the savings rate that you currently have in place, what path or what trajectory does that put you guys on? But I do want to, like, do some triaging on the current moment. Right, because you said there are things that you wanna be able to do and you guys kind of shared a budget with us. This, if we look at your budget right now, you guys are spending about $6,200 a month. Does that sound, does that sound right?

[Tyler]

That's right.

[Brian Preston]

Is this a Real budget or is this like the, hey, I'm going on making a millionaire. So I did my best to like put what I like. Is this accurate for what you guys spend?

[Tyler]

No, I'm, I'm on a spreadsheet every day. So I.

[Michaela]

Every day he updates it.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I, that's the real budget.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Can I ask him questions then about some of the categories dogs? Is that like your black ops budget? Like, you know, like you hear the government spending $30,000 on toilets? You know, like they're not really spending $30,000 on toilets. That's why they hide all their black ops stuff. Is, is the, are the dogs black ops? Is that where you're hiding something else you don't want us to know about?

[Tyler]

So no dogs on this. I inflate it every month. But we, we have, do have a dog that has some medical issues and stuff like that. So he has medication. We, it factors in food.

[Michaela]

We have two dogs. The one he's talking about, he has epilepsy. He just beat cancer last year. Oh wow. He will you stock at any opportunity he gets and need to get his stomach pumped. So anything you can think of, the dog is going to the vet for. Our other one is a perfect angel. He never has any issues. So.

[Tyler]

I know. So it is inflated. We probably, we definitely don't spend that much a month. But I do like to have it a little more just in case I need to put some money away to. For the occasional thing that comes up.

[Brian Preston]

Well, being at one income, one of the first things that immediately jumps out to me is okay, $6,200, one income baby in the house. I immediately think about emergency fund. Right now I see that you guys have about. Was it $24,000 in cash right now what you're calling your emergency fund is really 20,000. If I think about $6200 a month burn rate and I think about six months, realistically I think your emergency fund should probably be somewhere closer to like 35 to $40,000 probably in that ballpark. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Right. Are you, are you currently making moves towards that? Like are you adding to your cash pile right now or is 6200 pretty much 0 based budgeting? There's not really anything left over at this point.

[Tyler]

It's pretty close to zero based budgeting after everything. So I mean I have, when coming into this, based off your recommendations, I'm going to be adjusting contributions and budgeting and things like that. So if I knew, I watched the show enough. I knew you were gonna say to stop with the 529s and the Utmas and then also increase the emergency fund. That's definitely the two things that I knew that were gonna happen. So maybe some of those funds could be routed into beefing that up over the next several months.

[Brian Preston]

Cause what I love about you guys is obviously you have some discipline. You could not have gone the path.

[Tyler]

No.

[Brian Preston]

Albeit not the most efficient path. The path that you went without being discovered, disciplined. And so one of the beautiful things we like about the financial order of operations or following sort of this guideline is all right, once I have my emergency fund in place, once I've done, I can kind of check that box and then I can move on to the next thing. And then once I get my savings rate to where it needs to be and I can check that well then with any additional capital or anything I've left over, that's where I get to start doing the fun stuff. That's where I can. If we want to save for 5 through 9s or if we want to start building a sinking fund for the home improvements or we want to start building the sinking fund for the vacations, you can do all that guilt free and not have to wonder, oh, am I going to be in a great place? Because you said, well, I know I'm going to work for 30 more years and I hope it works out. I think you can go into it with a lot more confidence than I hope it works out. Hey, if I know I'm doing this, I'm going to be in a great spot.

[Michaela]

Yeah, I'm going to make sure it works out.

[Bo Han Hansen]

What's the timing on that bonus? When does that come into play?

[Tyler]

In February. So it came in this last year.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Are you having to use that bonus when it pops as to catch you back up or are you able to since you're living zero based budgeting, could you apply that to long term goals? Maybe that because that's something we explain to people all the time who are commission based or they have odd, you know, income structures is that it's okay if you can't do your 20% savings throughout the year. Maybe you're one that has to wait for the bonus to show up. And then obviously with Yalls income on one income, the long term incentives also will count towards your savings rate. If we can put that in the long term retirement goal, which I imagine it is. So I'm trying to back into the math to see if there's something that's actually going to bridge. You're basically living paycheck to paycheck every month. But then you get this windfall that kind of fills up the savings buckets.

[Tyler]

Yeah, no, we definitely can going forward because this most recent annual bonus, we literally paid off off our last debt in January. So the bonus that came out in February was to beef up the emergency fund. So that was.

[Brian Preston]

So it was even leaner than 20,000 before January.

[Tyler]

Yeah, yeah, it was.

[Michaela]

That would be the goal, right, is to when it comes in again next February, like you said, put that, get that the emergency fund where it needs to be. So we might not be able to put as much towards it throughout the year. But, you know, when these bonuses and things do pay out, we would ideally get it to where it needs to be at, you know, the 36 or whatever the recommendation is. And then maybe after that start thinking about, okay, let's start other savings accounts for, you know, a fun account or whatever it may be.

[Brian Preston]

And the bonus in February is around $15,000 somewhere in that ballpark target.

[Tyler]

But it was a little more gross this year because of performance.

[Brian Preston]

Now, another thing that you guys, obviously you have a young baby in the house now. And whenever our family circumstances change, there are other things we want to talk about that change as well. I saw on your budget you do have a little chunk there for life insurance. So you guys, who's that life insurance for? How much is it? How long have you had that?

[Tyler]

It's for both of us. For me, I think mine is around I have 800 and a separate market insurance through my company. I have times 2 income basic and then times 4 income additional optional insurance.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Term insurance.

[Tyler]

Yeah, it's term insurance that. But then I have 800. So this is the market right there. I get payroll deductions for the other one with the company, but. And then we also have one on her that is I think, right at a million. And then I have optional spouse through the company as well for 200. So she's 1.2. I'm total probably around 1.4.

[Brian Preston]

I love that.

[Michaela]

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[Tyler]

So good, so good, so good.

[Michaela]

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[Bo Han Hansen]

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[Michaela]

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[Brian Preston]

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[Michaela]

Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack to get that for Palmer. How does that work?

[Brian Preston]

No, no, you go.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, I want to answer.

[Brian Preston]

No, she was asking you, not us. Hey, go ahead.

[Bo Han Hansen]

This is a good exercise.

[Michaela]

I haven't even thought about this.

[Tyler]

Yeah, so we wouldn't need it for Palmer because life insurance is for, I guess, to make up income. So she isn't having any income right now.

[Michaela]

Makes sense. Duh.

[Tyler]

I guess replace income.

[Brian Preston]

Let's give him a microphone. That's great.

[Michaela]

You have to hire him.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, come on. Yeah. So generally the reason we get life insurance is if someone depends on us and our income were to go away, we weren't to be here, then that person would be in a bad spot. Well, obviously our children, they put provide tons of value to us, but none of it's economic. And so there's no insurable need on her. Whereas for you guys, it's very, very different. If something were to happen to you, well, then he's going to have to figure out, okay, well who's going to watch her and how are we going to. And if something happened to him, it's got to be income replacement. And I love hearing that you guys have life insurance and it's all term insurance. It's all nice, good, low cost, young, healthy people term insurance, which is wonderful. And then what about estate documents? That's kind of the second piece. Whenever a new baby comes on the scene.

[Michaela]

Yeah, we keep saying we need to do that, we need to do that,

[Tyler]

we need to do it. And I have brought it up several times, but it's kind of just a doom and gloom conversation that we just haven't had yet. But we need to right now.

[Bo Han Hansen]

If something happened to both of you, who's gonna raise your daughter?

[Michaela]

It's conversations that we have. We're not 100% sure yet.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Okay, so now play this through. True y', all, can't you. You're not on the same page, right? Is that what I'm hearing? What do you think the state's gonna do? I know this is gonna be a mess.

[Michaela]

I know.

[Bo Han Hansen]

This is why we have these conversations with Young parents is that please, please, please. Because if you can't figure it out, the state's gonna be even worse.

[Michaela]

I know, it's just such a hard ask of someone. I mean, the people that we have in mind, both options have children of their own. And you know, one side is here locally in Tennessee, the other side is all the way in Delaware. Obviously it's my family, his family. We would be. I know she would be so well taken care of either way. So it's just like, which hard do you want to pick?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Do one of the hards. That's what I would tell you. And then because it's so. It's not that expensive to go get estate documents, but I would rather y' all be in the driver's seat on that decision than to leave behind just a. Oh, wow, this is going to be a mess.

[Michaela]

It's so hard to think about.

[Brian Preston]

And as a reminder, it is difficult. Absolutely, absolutely. In terms of like bringing another child and having to raise another child, it's an awful event when that happens. But you guys have done the hard work of having life insurance in place that at least from the economic standpoint, whoever that person is, it's not like they're now going to be responsible for the financial well being of your daughter because you guys have already provided that in the scenario that something happened to you guys, there is $2.6 million. It's going to be chiseled, plus whatever you guys have saved up for her, that's going to be chiseled away for her. So it's really okay. Who do I think can create the environment that I want my child to be in, provide the love and support that I want my child to be? Like, if you do the life insurance portion, you have to worry about the financial piece as much. But it is a conversation you guys ought to have. Because just like you said, if it's hard for you to decide while you're here, it's going to be way harder for people to decide on your behalf when you're not here to speak for yourself.

[Michaela]

Definitely.

[Brian Preston]

And the good news, it doesn't have to be that complicated. Right. It's not like you have this like big, crazy, nasty, gnarly estate. Who's going to take care of our kid if something happens and who do we want to be in charge of the money? Like if you can answer those two questions, that's about as complicated as it'll be at this stage for you guys

[Bo Han Hansen]

and because the money will be behind, should make the conversation a little Easier, because I know you're probably thinking about what a burden it will be economically. It will not be a burden because y' all have done the right planning. Let's just go ahead and finish the drill and make sure now you have the right person to raise your children, who will love into her and do all the things that y' all would want to do.

[Michaela]

Definitely. Yes. I know what we're talking about on the way home.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brian Preston]

What other questions do you guys have for us? What are some things that we could speak to that might be helpful or valuable for you?

[Tyler]

Yeah, I have a lot of.

[Brian Preston]

He picks up, let me go.

[Michaela]

He's prepared.

[Tyler]

I have a lot of just, like, tactical questions. They could be kind of maybe some quick hitters and stuff like that. So I know y' all came out with the how much did I save? New resource. So I obviously started contributing 11%. I've been with the company for coming up on seven years, so I was 25 at the time. With that 11%, including my contribution plus the match, is that something that you can contribute from at 25? Just keep contributing 11% and you know you're taken care of for the rest. Or should I always be increasing, increasing it?

[Brian Preston]

That's the way the deliverable is built, right? The deliverable is built to give you an idea of if I were to lock in today. And by the way, if you want to copy the deliverable, you can go to moneyguy.com resources and download your free copy. Right now. The way it's built is that if I locked in at that percentage right now, this is the outcome I would have. What we tell people, again, is that's just. It's supposed to be motivational to you directionally, but just like you guys, if you would have projected at 25, hey, we make. Or let's say at 28, we make this much money, we're saving this.

[Michaela]

Well, you.

[Brian Preston]

If, like, look how different your life is right now, it would have not been accurate to use that as a placeholder for what reality looked like for you guys. But because you did that early and you got your savings rate up early and you built the assets early, it allowed you now to make this shift. So what we're going to do for you, not like spoiling too much of it, is rather than showing you, like, oh, okay, here's like a loose save we're going to show. Hey, here's what. In your specific situation, based on the way that you're saving, based on your. Your income, this is the trajectory that you would actually be on. The answer is yes. It's supposed to tell you where you should be. But I don't want you to stop there because we don't know what life holds. That's why we want. Even if you start at 11, we still want you to work towards 25% and that's going to give you more flexibility. More flexibility, More freedom. More options as different life circumstances happen in the future.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, I mean I think your situation. Because remember you still have the long term incentives because seven years you're probably fully vested in those. Those things. Is that correct?

[Tyler]

This was recent. I got my first grant last year and then got another grant this year. So this is the LTIs are RSUs

[Bo Han Hansen]

is what I think I saw on there. So we're going to be able to look at that and as long as you have a long term mindset with it, that should help. But that doesn't take the pressure completely off of. After we get your emergency reserves we're going to want to at least get that Roth going. I mean because that would be some really powerful stuff for the long term. And we'll put our heads together and look into that. But we can definitely create some type of plan.

[Tyler]

Okay. So with that obviously I'm like thinking I'm in between step four and five. So should all additionally in four.

[Bo Han Hansen]

You're not in four and five.

[Brian Preston]

No. If you want to talk about in betweens you're like you got some in four but then you're kind of like dabbling.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Dabbling in eight. You're all over the place.

[Brian Preston]

You gotta like crumple.

[Michaela]

Okay.

[Tyler]

So that kind of answers my question.

[Bo Han Hansen]

The bullish side of FU is you're all over the place. We're going to bring it all in and get focus.

[Tyler]

Yeah. So I guess that kind of answers my question is additional funds that we start budgeting out from Yalls recommendations. It should just be solely going to the emergency fund to beef that up. Or should I simultaneously contribute to Roth at the same time?

[Bo Han Hansen]

We need to get it a little closer. I mean potentially they could. You could get into the gray zone later. But right now you're kind of in a danger zone with only having $24,000 and then. And you also have another pool. You're driving around Jeep Wrangler for one child. We're going to have two children at some point. Sounds like not in the too distant future. We probably need to be boosting that cash reserve so we can also have some flexibility in the household decisions with transportation. Just being honest with you. So more is better going into step four because it gives you options and you need options. With all the life changes that are

[Tyler]

going that that makes sense.

[Brian Preston]

But the good news is even with dropping it back, there are some things that we're probably still going to recommend you continue doing like getting the full employer match on your 401k and then we're going to get some details on the ESPP and likely still get some piece of that as well. So it's not like you're going to have to go full stop, but in the short term you probably are going to have to redirect where your resources are going.

[Tyler]

That makes sense. And so with the, with the lti, because it is, is a newer development that I'm in when those vests, it's vest over a three year period, one third every year. And then with that as they're vesting, should I take those and just treat them as income and cash those out and then contribute those where they need to go? Should I leave them in the single stock? Should I view my single stock both in ESPP and RSU as a percentage of my investment or how should I be handling those? Really?

[Bo Han Hansen]

This is our favorite part of being financial planners is that this is where the it depends. Okay is because the answer is exactly what Bo said. It's going to be yes to about every one of those. But you have to just like with the financial order of operations where we tell you what to do with your next dollar when that three year mark comes, we have to kind of put on the lens of okay, what's the best use of these resources over to fund goals, to fund the planning and we lean into that moment and then we take into account the outside indicators also of hey, this is my human capital and I don't want to have all my investment capital tied into the same company that I'm also my wages are coming from. So we want to make sure it doesn't get too loaded up with all employer all the time so that all your eggs are in one basket. So what we do for clients is this is when having a financial planner really pays off is that we dashboard it for our clients as the money comes in, allocate it and then we reset the process next year and do the exact same thing. So that way you're always kind of going through triage and figuring out what's the best thing to do for this moment in time to make sure long term and short term we're getting the best results.

[Brian Preston]

So in your situation, not Knowing exactly when those RSUs vested, let's assume that they vest vested recently, and they're relatively close. One of the things we might end up recommending is on the day that they vested, you pay tax on them. That's when RSUs become taxable. So the least impactful time to liquidate those, from a tax standpoint would be immediately. So RSUS vests you immediately. So all of a sudden, you take $26,000 of RSUs and you turn it into $26,000 of cash. Well, now you have $26,000 of cash to figure out, okay, where do I deploy that? I go back to the financial order of operations. That in and of itself may satisfy the emergency fund issue. So that then. Okay, that's a single RSU vest allows me to do that. Okay, once I've checked that box, okay, where do the next dollars go? And then I go to step five, and then I go to step six. So your ESPPs are a little more nuanced because the plan is a little more nuanced. But RSUs, I would be asking myself that question at every single vest. Do I keep? Do I sell? If I sell, how do I deploy?

[Tyler]

Deploy, okay. Just follow the foo.

[Brian Preston]

Just follow the food.

[Bo Han Hansen]

That's it.

[Tyler]

Simple enough.

[Brian Preston]

That's it.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It gets. After we get some of the basic stuff, then you can get more nuanced with the tax strategies and other things. But in the beginning, we're trying to just keep you out of the ditch. I mean, because that's one of the things y'. All. Y' all have done a great job. But there's some.

[Tyler]

There's some.

[Bo Han Hansen]

You know, you have some warning lights. If you think about the dashboard of your car. You know, sometimes the light goes off and you go, oh, man, is this. I need to go look at this code to immediately pull over. Over. Or do I need to do it? Can I drive around like this for a month or two? Y' all are. Y' all are more of the. The lights gone off, that you got a slow leak in the tire or something. But it's not catastrophic, but it's something that's going to need attention in. In the long term to get this. So you get to where you want to be.

[Tyler]

Yeah. And then I think my last question I'll do is about HSAs. So is it okay if I'm using that as a sinking fund? I do have. I have. Probably looking at that. I probably have about 8,000 invested, and then the rest is just in the cash account. Is it okay to just Keep using that as a sinking fund. If I'm in step four, do I need to stop my contribution so I can continue to beef up the emergency fund? Kind of. How do I handle hsa?

[Brian Preston]

Yeah. So this was a little bit of a unique one. We see all the time that step five we say want you funding your health savings account because it's a beautiful thing where you can get a tax deferral on the contributions. You can invest the money, you can grow tax deferred and if you use it for medical expenses, it's tax free. It's a great savings vehicle. But most Americans don't do it that way. It's up to what, 13% now of Americans actually use the triple tax advantage.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I like to think we did that too because it was only 4%.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, so it's all us. But so the other swath of Americans that are doing that, I would argue that's not really part of your savings. That's part of how you're budgeting right now. So if you know you're going to have health care expenses currently in your budget, one of the things you might budget is, okay, I'm going to put money in my hsa, but I know I'm using that as an entry year slush fund. I know that that's paying for this year's medical expenses. I don't get to really count that in my savings rate. It's more how I'm budgeting for medical. If I am going to invest those dollars, I am going to use those dollars. Well then it gets to count into my savings rate.

[Bo Han Hansen]

That's more of a step five activity.

[Brian Preston]

A lot of people start with exactly where, hey, it's just entry year slush fund. And that's totally okay. If that's where you are in your financial life so cycle, that's great. And what you hope is that you graduate to the point where, okay, now I can begin deploying those dollars.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It's also part of the family planning and I was going to ask you the question is because we see a lot of people strategic wise when they know the year that they're going to have a baby. You go with the Cadillac plan at the office. I mean we love health savings accounts but remember what drives the health savings account is you have to go choose that high deductible insurance plan which has really high deductible and kind of load you up with your out of pocket years that you have babies. If y' all have a plan that's like a PPO or something, that's much more benefit rich. Be strategic. I mean, that's why we have open enrollment. And you're not. You're not as employers that offer both options to our employees. You're not hurting us. When you go and you be strategic and you choose the Cadillac plan in the year that you have in the baby, and then you flip the switch back to the house deductible after the baby's here. Be proactive, you know, be an active participant. So do y' all have another insurance option at the office that's more benefit rich?

[Tyler]

Yeah, we do. We do have that. And I mean, the open enrollment before she got pregnant was. I'm.

[Brian Preston]

I'm.

[Tyler]

We didn't know we were having a baby before then. But definitely.

[Michaela]

So open enrollments in October.

[Tyler]

So definitely looking at that as an option. But yeah, we definitely have that.

[Bo Han Hansen]

But just in case there's another, you know. Oh, wow, okay, this happened. We have no problem with you using as a clearing account because that's what. It's.

[Brian Preston]

What it's there for.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I'm just trying to give you additional strategy. Things to think about is that you can be proactive even when you go through open enrollment. Use family planning as a. As a baseline as you're going through your matrix of decisions every year when you go through open enrollment.

[Michaela]

Yeah, that's a good idea. Do you see a lot of people doing that? I mean, I'm sure they're not like, hey, I'm doing this.

[Brian Preston]

Oh, yeah, he's the HR benefits specialist guy. That's right.

[Tyler]

We do see that. I could have done it at the time in October, but I just. And we were family planning. We knew we were going to try, but, you know, it lucked out that it worked out so quickly. But yeah, it's definitely be an option once we decide. More strategic to have the next one.

[Brian Preston]

Awesome. Was that all your questions?

[Tyler]

Yeah, the other one's really just espp. Should I stop contributing that to as well to focus on the film?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Give us a layout.

[Brian Preston]

What are the details on it?

[Tyler]

So espp, we have two offering periods. January through June, July through December. We do have the Look Back feature.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Got a discount. Okay.

[Tyler]

And then the 15% discount.

[Brian Preston]

Look back and 15%.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah. Okay. That's great money.

[Tyler]

I manage our ESPP, so I'm a big advocate for it.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, we're going.

[Brian Preston]

Any, any, Any holding period required before you can sell the shares?

[Tyler]

No, no mandatory holding period. It's just short and long term.

[Brian Preston]

Gains free money immediately. Day one.

[Tyler]

That's.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, that's Exciting.

[Tyler]

That's awesome. Yeah. So just recommended percentage on that. What I should be doing.

[Michaela]

This company really is a amazing. Can't say enough good things about that.

[Brian Preston]

How'd you come up with two? Right now you're doing 2%. How'd you come up with that?

[Tyler]

I really just wanted to be contributing something to it to make sure that I'm getting that free money. But, yeah, that's just that I could still budget for everything else was.

[Bo Han Hansen]

And maybe in the beginning, that's all you can do, but maybe after we get through, like, next year's bonus drop, we give you a little more slack, you know, trying to maximize that.

[Brian Preston]

Oh, my wheels are already turning. I'm excited.

[Bo Han Hansen]

That's the stuff that gets me. I'm excited. You have to work with what you got right now. But then you need to create a plan so we can expand that benefit as much as possible.

[Tyler]

Well, that's all I had, man.

[Brian Preston]

You guys, what a wonderful. I just. You're. You're going to be super inspiring to a lot of folks out there. Like, hey, I want to be. I kind of feel like I am where they were. The $90,000 in debt.

[Michaela]

The.

[Brian Preston]

You said 84 months on the car loan, right? I didn't know was. He did. He said 84. Okay. 84 months on the car. I think there's a lot of people. But recognize, hey, sometimes we gotta make hard decisions, and those hard decisions aren't comfortable and they're not fun. But if we can make them and we can do it and be disciplined and power through it, you get to end up in a great spot. You get to be right where you want.

[Bo Han Hansen]

We might need to bust you up a little bit before you go buy this second car we need to have.

[Michaela]

And I'm like, absolutely not.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Medial class on how not to get taken by the car.

[Tyler]

I know it's hard.

[Michaela]

You walk in, everything's so shiny and rainy. I know.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I'm sure they were like, what do you think you can afford? What's your monthly payment? Payment you're looking for.

[Tyler]

I know. Because it was. We were looking at two. One of them was half the price of the one that we bought. And then, of course, the one was just so much nicer.

[Michaela]

Treat yourself.

[Bo Han Hansen]

You gave me some other indicators because you said. Then we got into the part when we got all the warranties.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

And I'm right there like, oh, man, we already got this. Good. Let's head to this.

[Tyler]

I had no idea what I was doing. I definitely have a better understanding of it now and definitely will not not be ever doing.

[Michaela]

I'm gonna buy a brand new car.

[Bo Han Hansen]

No, you can't. We're not against new cars. Yeah, but in this time in your life, there's nothing wrong with a really good, reliable used car.

[Michaela]

Yes.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Just to kind of get you through this season and then maybe that's something once, you know, you're in your 40s, you got all the family planning done and you get back to, you know, popping the knuckles and placing people and using some sales skills, you can reward yourself with the new car.

[Brian Preston]

What do you think recruiters do? They pop their knuckles.

[Michaela]

I'm just gonna.

[Bo Han Hansen]

What is it? What is that? You know that, that marvel suit, you know, he's like, pops his, you know.

[Tyler]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

When he pops it, you know, you know, it's James Calvin Henry cowboy. You know, he does. So that's why I was just giving you that same skill set. You're just gearing up to go.

[Michaela]

Yeah, I know.

[Tyler]

And she's really kind of un undersold herself because she's, she's been 100, supporting herself since she was 17 years old. You know, she, she comes from less than ideal circumstances. Everything that she ever has is because of her. And she like outworks everybody. That's why she's an amazing recruiter. So if you give her a commission based job, she's gonna make more money than anybody else. So yeah, yeah, she definitely works.

[Michaela]

I worked my tail off, that's for sure, to get where I was.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Kudos, I mean. Cause also being a mom is not an easy task. But I love and I, and I see my family because I remember my wife, actually back when we had our first daughter, she was making a lot of money. I mean, she was probably because I was just starting a company. So without a doubt, my wife was the primary breadwinner. And then I felt what y' all were saying is because I remember when she went on maternity leave because she was with a great company, great benefits, went on maternity leave. And I think in the first place, first month and a half, she's like,

[Brian Preston]

I'm not going back.

[Michaela]

I know.

[Bo Han Hansen]

And I'm like, oh, no shakes your core. I mean, I mean, because this child is so valuable, that's why it's very noble that y' all want to take care of her and save. But you're already loving this child well enough. The money will take care of itself. But I, I, but I can see the, the love that y' all had where you have to make those hard decisions. But kudos for you guys for doing it. And it sounds like, you know, just y' all are in that awesome part. Yes, it's the messy middle, but it's also probably at night after you get her down for bed, you know, like,

[Brian Preston]

this is pretty daggum cool.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I mean, it's. It's pretty awesome.

[Michaela]

It's been a really fun season, for sure. And thank you for all the kind words that you said. But, you know, going back to a point from earlier when we just thought this was completely unobtainable, he manages all the finances. He's looking at the spreadsheet every day. And. And a few months into my maternity leave, I took four months off. I think maybe we were halfway through. And I'm just thinking about going back to work. How am I gonna do this? What is that gonna be like? And I went down in the basement while Palmer was napping. That's where his office is. And I said, is there any world where we can make this happen? And he was like, babe, I have the numbers right here. There's just no way we would be in the hole, you know, like a few hundred dollars at the end of the month. So we couldn't afford it. And then he got the promotion and everything just lined up perfectly. But it was just kind of a decision like that. And we're just so lucky it worked out well.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I will tell you, that's what we don't. We don't do a lot of faith based stuff. But I will say that when I went through the same thing, I can remember just having some quiet moments and being like, how am I going to get out of this? And I call it Providence all the time is because I landed. I mean, you have to know, when I started my company, business was the hardest thing in the world to get because I didn't have a podcast, I didn't have all this education platform. And I'll never forget, just out of the blue, I landed three big prospects. I was like, holy cow, where did you get it?

[Tyler]

Right when you needed it?

[Bo Han Hansen]

Right when I needed it. And that's why when you tell the story of all of a sudden this promotion shows up. I have predicted at least two children here in this office. Because I start seeing an advisor who starts. All of a sudden, a few more clients start going their way, way out of the ordinary. And I'm like, something weird's going on here. And it's usually family planning and other things, things. So there's a will, there's a way. And not to get all sentimental about it, but that stuff gives me the tingles because it is an amazing blessing when things, you know, if you. If it's what it's supposed to be, I think you can find a way in a lot of these hard decisions.

[Brian Preston]

Well, I'm excited that we're going to put together a plan for you guys. I think we have all of the ingredients that we need. And what I love is we're going to put together a plan based on where you are today. And I think it's going to be pretty conservative because I think what's really going to happen for you guys. Guys is you're going to have these kids. These kids are going to get of age, you're going to go back to work, and it's going to look even better. But we want to show you that even with the decisions, the hard decisions that you've made, the life that you want to live is still attainable. And I'm super excited to be able to put it together for you.

[Michaela]

Excited, too. Thank you so much.

[Brian Preston]

Awesome. Thank you, guys. Brian, what a great conversation with Tyler and Michaela.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, I think everybody could probably tell because I'm pretty transparent. I love this couple.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I mean, look, how could you. If you think about just the journey they've been on, they made horrible mistake with this car. $92,000 worth of debt that they were able to climb out of.

[Brian Preston]

Yep.

[Bo Han Hansen]

And now here they are in this brand new transition or threshold where they're living off of just one income.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah. They haven't always done things right, but they got on the same page and now they're doing a lot of stuff. Really, really. Right. So now it's a question of, okay, how do we optimize, how do we structure it going forward? And there's two things that they've done really, really well as a couple. Number one, one, they communicate. They're on the same page. They talk, they're open about their finances. And number two, they obviously have discipline. They could not have crawled out of that $92,000 hole without recognizing, okay, we, if we put our minds to this financial thing, there's nothing we can't accomplish together.

[Bo Han Hansen]

One of the biggest decisions you'll make in life. And I think that hopefully watching Making a Millionaire highlights this is be very careful who you marry, because that decision just changes so much of your direction. Because if you're not on the same page, if you don't have the good communication, if you don't have the discipline, what are we doing here? The good news is I got the feeling from watching how Tyler and Mikayla interacted as well as also how they were receiving our feedback. They're actually going to lean into whatever we share with you.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, I think they're going to be able to stick to it. So let's dive into the numbers. One of the very first things we sort of earth is that they are a little lean in terms of their emergency fund. They have about $20,000 currently in their emergency fund. And we said, well, if their monthly burn rate is around $6,200 a month, their emergency fund should probably be closer to like $40,000 somewhere in that like $37,000 range. So, okay, how do we get there? We're at $20,000 now. We need to get to 37. What? We thought there was going to be some potential for us to just sell RSUs immediately and be able to use that to fund the emergency fund. But when we dove a little deeper, the long term incentive program for Tyler was relatively new. A lot of those RSUs aren't vested yet, so that's not a solution we can use now. So we said, okay, that's great, let's look at what we have going on. And we said, okay, well, what if we redirect the dollars that are going into the 529, the dollars that are going into the HSA and the dollars are going into the UTMA. And we started pointing those towards the emergency fund. Well, if we did that, that would free up about $700 a month. So starting today we have $20,000 in there, which is we're going to do 700amonth. And we know that in August those RSU's are going to vest. And once they vest, we're estimating that the net amount is going to be about $4,400. We want to dump that right into the emergency fund as well. Then again to the end of the year, September, October, November, keep having that $700 a month go. And then in February he's going to get a bonus. Well, he's going to be about $7,000 short of his emergency fund at that point, but that bonus is going to be about $7,000. So once that bonus bonus hits, we should apply those dollars and I believe they can have a fully funded six month emergency fund by the time they get to February of next year.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Yeah, that bonus is going to kind of close in the last gap and then hopefully if there's anything left over, they can use it for even more savings goals. But I think what's Interesting to me is now that we got the emergency fund handled, let's talk about savings and investment rate. And this was, I got to tell you, first of all, Tyler should go to work, okay? And whoever, his boss or HR person, whoever's in charge of benefits should go give him a big be.

[Brian Preston]

You know who's in charge of benefits? Tyler.

[Bo Han Hansen]

He's the guy, he works in the benefits department. But I'm sure that somebody above Tyler is coming up with this structure because it is generous and that's going to help out a lot with this family that's gone from two great incomes down to one.

[Brian Preston]

So when we thought about, okay, well how do we look at taking advantage? Obviously there's a 401k piece and there's an employer match. But he mentioned that his employer also has an employee stock purchase plan that he's taking advantage of a little bit. But we believe that that should be like a step two, that's like a free money type thing. And rather than just doing the 2% that he's doing, we think it might make sense for him to shoot for something like 5%, get a little bit higher. And so one of the questions becomes, okay, well they're doing zero based budgeting. How do they begin to close that gap? Well, we've already said they're going to fully fund this emergency fund. They're going to have money that's redirected from the HSA, from the ESPP, from the OR, from the HSA, from the UTMA, and from the 529. Well, once that's funded, that's going to free up additional capital that can go to the ESPP. So we said, all right, let's think about putting 6% into the 401k, that's going to be about $6,600 a year. When he does that, he's going to get a 5% match. That's another $5,500. And then we said, let's do a 5% ESPP contribution and he gets to buy the company stock at a 15% discount. And there's no mandatory withholding period. There's no requirement to continue to hold those shares. So that'll be about $6,300. And we know that he's going to have RSU's vesting and the RSUs are about 10% of his pay. But there's going to be some tax withholding. So we're estimate about 7% net amount coming to him. So if we have 6600, 401K 5500 employer match, 6300 into the ESPP and another $7700 from RSU's. There's about $26,000 that they're going to have available to begin plowing into their army of dollar bills every year.

[Bo Han Hansen]

I do want to pause and kind of, you know, talk about what we've realigned here because seeing it on paper or on the screen, what's been changed, really all that Tyler and Michaela having to come up with is the 11%, the 6% for the 401, 1K, 5% for the, the ESPP plan. But also we've changed their mindset because they were, if you think about 529 custodial count, you know, for, for their child, they were thinking only about how do we make sure our child has the money. And here we are, we've now changed the mindset where they're also going to fund the spousal Roth ira. A lot of changes have happened here, but I think when we actually project this out for the future, future is going to create something that's pretty extraordinary.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, one of the notes that we just wanted to make sure because again, we want them to follow the financial order of operations. So as they participate in the espp, we're going to argue they should sell those shares immediately. And as the RSU's vest, we're going to argue they should sell those immediately. And what they will likely do is the proceeds from those transactions. We want them to use those dollars to fund their Roth IRAs, to do Roth for Tyler and then a spousal Roth for Michaela. And that's going to allow them to start building those tax free dollars moving forward.

[Bo Han Hansen]

It's also important because look, there is, down the road there might be even more, more complexity we could add to it for tax optimization. But there is a risk right now Tyler already is going to have his human capital, meaning his time and his wages. We have to be careful that we don't have too much of our investment capital tied into the employer as well. So that's why we are going to recommend, while they have all these funding shortfalls for emergency reserves and other things, we're going to liquidate this stuff immediately.

[Michaela]

Sure.

[Brian Preston]

So right now, number one goal is we want to get them a fully funded emergency fund. We've laid out a path where they can do that by February of next year. And then it's off to the races to continue building wealth. And we've laid out where they could be saving about $26,000 a year. Well, if you think about where they are today, about $200,000 of investments currently, and if they can save a little under 24% of their, of Tyler's gross income for the future, $26,000 a year. And we just assumed, based on their age, that they could earn on average an 8.8% annualized rate of earnings return by the time that they get to 60. Even just doing that, they're going to have a portfolio of almost a little over five and a half million dollars. By full retirement age 65, it's over $8.7 million. And remember, their goal for like living expenses of where they want to be was probably somewhere around $7,000 a month. Well, obviously if their portfolio grows at that pace over that long, long, they're going to more than be able to replace that lifestyle with a portfolio that size.

[Bo Han Hansen]

This is what, you know, a lot of people watching this, you're also going to probably recognize yourself in the messy middle where you're short on time, you're short on money. But this is why it's really valuable to pay attention to first your employer benefits, but also how just a little bit of your money and when you're even in this period where everything is stretched, can do a lot of work for you in the future. Because this is amazing is they're putting at 11%, but because of the generous employer, it's close to 24. But what I love they're only their burn rate right now is around 6,300 to $7,000 a month. But we're going to give them a retirement at 60, so that's even an early retirement to where they're going to be able to have in purchasing dollars today, $8,000 a month. That's, that's truly incredible.

[Brian Preston]

And what I think is awesome too is what they also want to be able to enjoy the here and now and enjoy the present and, and we've put together some fairly aggressive saving goals for them, but it's saving out of their base level cash flow that's coming in. So one of the things that that means is when those bonuses happen, not this current year, but in the future years, those bonuses are going to be available to be spent how they would like. So if they want to use that for maybe doing some of the home renovations or some of the family fun experiences, they're going to have additional capital, additional cash flow flow to even be able to fund the here and now.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Well, it's also because, remember, their family car right now is a Jeep Wrangler. So there might be, in addition to vacations and other things, it could be shoring up, you know, what the. The family mobile is. And then also, I don't want it to be un. You know, left un unsaid. Michaela had tremendous earning potential. She was obviously a great recruiter, and that's a skill set. So after they get through with having babies and getting the kids off to school, there's still another lever they're going to be able to pull in the future. But I just love that we've created a plan of success, but give them full flexibility to live life on their terms.

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, we like to think about this as what we call the minimally viable plan. Odds are things are going to look even better than this. There's going to be more opportunity, more ability to save, more ability to grow. But even if all they do is implement this plan today, this plan we've laid out today could still lead them without anything else change. Changing to a great big beautiful tomorrow.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Tyler, Michaela, thank you for coming on the show. This was. This was. I mean, like I said, we don't hide or hold our emotions. Y' all are one of our favorites. It was just so fun. We all left the room going, man, that couple, they really. You could tell they enjoyed each other. You could tell that they really were on the same page. And that's just. That's fun. That's fun to be around that energy, and it's fun to see that we can actually kind of get a our hands in the dough and see how we help them shape the future of their great big beautiful tomorrow. Bo, if others want to apply to come on Making a Millionaire, what do they need to do?

[Brian Preston]

Yeah, if you'd like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you go to moneyguy.com apply. Or if you want to check out any of our tools or free resources, you can go to moneyguy.com resources.

[Bo Han Hansen]

Guys, this was a blast. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo Money Guy team out.

[Michaela]

The Money Guy show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Han Hansen. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the securities and Exchange Commission. In accordance and compliance with the securities laws and regulations, Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through Making a Millionaire. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss. The guests featured on Making a Millionaire are not clients of Abound Wealth Management at the time of recording. Their participation should not be considered a testimonial or endorsement of Abound Wealth Management. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.

[Brian Preston]

Edu Sci Are you one of those

[Michaela]

media strategy people clicking through slides scrolling spreadsheets?

[Tyler]

Yes.

[Brian Preston]

Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different.

[Michaela]

Locked in, loyal, invested. They're called fans.

[Brian Preston]

Fans don't just listen to music, they feel seen by it like it belongs to them.

[Michaela]

So when your brand shows up on

[Brian Preston]

Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me. Lizzo so are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising.

[Michaela]

You're among fans.