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- [00:00]
Austin Hankiewicz
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hankiewicz and I'm joined by my co host, Robert Croke. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with lifetime revenues of over $300 million. And I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven figure media business and actively advise some of the most well known fintech companies around the world. Now, as the show name might suggest, every episode we talk about Rich Habits. They relate to business, finance and mindset. However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives. One from an industry veteran, which is Robert, and the other, myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode?
- [00:46]
Robert Croke
In today's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're going to address an alarming statistic that we saw on CNBC just the other day. Austin, listen to this. 46% of 401k investors are unclear about the specific investments in their retirement plans. I mean, holy crap, that's nearly one in two investors who are participating in their company's 401k and do not understand or know what they're invested in.
- [01:15]
Austin Hankiewicz
This just boggles my mind. As someone who is so dedicated to meticulously selecting the right investments and optimizing my portfolio for every single move, every earnings call, everything in between. I just can't believe how, how many people don't know how their money is invested. It just, it's, it's wild. So in this episode, I'm excited because we're going to walk people through one, what their employer match means and why it might not be what you expect. Two, how to analyze your 401k investments, your weightings, your performance, and everything in between. And then three, how all of this translates to your Roth ira, which is another important retirement account everyone should have and be investing into. This statistic sort of inspired us to think if people don't know what they're investing in, they certainly don't know how to compare their portfolio's performance to benchmark indices. So this episode is really us walking people through how to go about conducting a retirement portfolio performance review, as well as how to compare your performance and what changes to consider making to ensure you're keeping up with the performance of the stock market and other markets as a whole.
- [02:31]
Robert Croke
Yeah, and I know that might Sound scary. Performance review indices and all of that. But we're going to break it down in a really simple manner because I just think it's so important for you guys to actually understand where your money's going. What is the performance and does it match your risk tolerance? I see it every day in my one on one call with folks and they tell me that they don't even know what their money is being invested in. I'll ask them what is the performance been over the last three to five years? And they don't know. And we're going to break all of that down today in this episode. So I promise it's not going to be scary. We're going to help you through it and really get you guys on track. Because, you know, we always say your money has to work as hard for you as you work to get it. And I just feel so many people, based on that, 46% of people not understanding, just are leaving it to the gods, leaving it to the hands of this person or these persons that are running the 401k for your company. And that is not how you should be functioning with your money. You need to understand it. You need to understand the performance, the weightings and all of that. And we're going to break that down today. So let's get into talking point number one, and that is deciphering your employer's 401k match. I see so many of you who are doing the right thing by investing toward the 401k, but you all aren't on the same page of how it actually works. One of the biggest misconceptions I see are people not understanding the language related to what the company match actually is.
- [04:03]
Austin Hankiewicz
Yeah. So there's actually two ways that you can kind of think about the company match. And again, these are just two of the most common ways that I see company matches. I am not speaking for everyone. There are so many different ways that companies compensate their employees. But we're just going to talk about what I think are the two most common ways. And remember, before we dive into these two common ways, I want to make sure we're on the same page as to what a company match is and how sort of you pick this election. So if you elect to contribute to your company's 401k, you are saying, assuming, let's just, you know, round numbers here, $100,000 salary is what you make. You're saying, I want to contribute 3% or 4% or 6% or 1% of my salary every year to my 401k. So if you make 100,000 and you choose 3%, then that 3% of $100,000 is $3,000 a year that you are contributing to your 401k. Retire this company now. If it's 6%, it's 6,000 a year. If it's 1%, it's 1,000 a year. And remember, this money comes straight out of your paycheck. So you can even look at the pay stub, right? Go to the human resources website, look at your last couple pay stubs to really nail in. Okay, how much per paycheck is coming out going to my 401k. So now that we know what this sort of, you know, election is as it relates to how we're presenting this and doing that, let's now figure out the match. So there's two ways to think about this match. There are what I got when I was working at my old company, when I was working full time, which was a hundred percent match. And then there is a partial match. So let's start with the 100% match. Some companies will say, hey, Austin, we will match dollar for dollar up to 3% of your annual salary in your 401k. So if you decide to contribute $3,000, right. 3% of that $100,000 salary to your 401k, we're going to 100% match it dollar for dollar. So we as the company will also contribute $3,000 to bringing the total to $6,000 contributed for the year. Now, what's cool about this, and I, you know, which is why Robert and I always say, match beats Roth beats taxable, is the match is free money. Who doesn't want a free $3,000, but in their retirement accounts? That's awesome. It's 100% return on your investment. Now that's the hundred percent. Now let's talk about the partial match. Some of these companies will might say, hey, Austin, we will match 50% of whatever you end up contributing yourself. Or maybe we'll match 100% up to 2% and then 50% beyond that up to 6% or whatever. It get kind of confusing. So let's really walk through what that means. Robert. If you are contributing that 3% and you get a 50% match on your dollars, that means that they are matching $0.50 on the dollar. So you contribute 3,000, the company contributes 1,500, right? Half or 50% of that 3,000. Now let's say maybe they contribute 100% match to 2%. So now you contribute 2,000, they contribute 2,000. But anything beyond that, up to, let's say 6%, for example, they match by, so you're contributing, right, a total of $6,000. Because 6% of your salary, they matched 100% of the first 2000, so that's 2000 from the company. But they're only going to match 50% of the next 4000. So another $2,000. So you contribute 6000, they'll all in have contributed about 4000. So you can kind of see how this math can get confusing.
- [07:33]
Robert Croke
Robert yeah, and the biggest thing here, take away from me, is having everyone understand this language. Take the time to read through it, go through it with the person that's setting it up for you at the company, because you want to understand what are these rates, what are these percentages? Because at the end of the day, and you hear us talk about this all the time, is that people get lost in the numbers analysis. Paralysis sets in. They don't know what their returns are. They don't know what their actual matches. And then what happens is 10, 20, 30 years passes and you are praying and not understanding where you're at. And so you're praying to hopefully get enough money put together for the retirement that you desire. And that is why we want you to take the bull by the horns early on after you watch this episode and go dig into that paperwork to understand it. Because you might find that that glorious 6% rate is a blended 4% rate. You might find that the products they're putting you in in the 401k are underperforming some of the products we talk about, like Voo or Q, Qqq or Vgt by 30% or 10% or 15%. And all of that adds up to you leaving a lot of money on the table over the years. So it's very important for you to understand all of this and be able to just take notes and make the adjustments accordingly to put yourself in a good position. And another aspect of this point that I want to make sure we cover is vesting schedule. You see so many companies that will have a four year vesting schedule with a one year cliff. So I want to take a moment, Austin, and let's break that down everyone, so they understand it. And that is when you start working for the company and you hear this language for your vesting in one year cliff, it simply means that they are going to be participating in this 401k program with you, but you will not see the returns or the gains or these funds until you've worked for the company for one year. So once that is done and you've been with the company for one year, then it goes into years two, three and four. And with each month, I think it even is that they break it down, you get that percentage per month over that next three years. And after the four years then you would be considered fully vested. I think this is an important thing to understand because you are seeing the money over time. You will get the money over time, but you do need to work at the company for one year before you start to reap the benefit credits.
- [10:03]
Austin Hankiewicz
And just to break that down a little bit further, Robert, because this was my personal experience, my company did have a four year vesting schedule and they did have a one year cliff. So for example, if I was investing toward my 401k and I did that 3% and they were matching it dollar for dollar, so theoretically they themselves would have invested 3,000 during that first 12 months. But let's say I quit my job after 10 months, right? Well, mathematically that says, wait a second, I deserve, you know, whatever percent of the 3,000 that have been working there. But that's not what's in the fine print. The fin print says you have to be working here for at least one year to get that first $3,000. And then to the point of the four year vesting schedule. Cool. I now have my $3,000 with that first one year cliff. But how it was working at the company I worked at is it was a quarterly vesting schedule over that four year period there. So every quarter I would get just a little bit more of that match, right? Just a little bit more. And I remember when I quit my job, I had looked at the balance in my. I think we use like bank of America or whatever to look at this stuff. And I had like 18 or 20,000 dol in my 401k and I looked at the balance there and I was like, okay, great. And then after I ended up like rolling it and everything got, it was all like 14. It was like 15. It was, it was a lot less. It was materially less. And I was like, wait a second, what's going on? So I called the HR people. They said, yeah, so the way that the vesting works and the cliff and this, this, that and the other, you missed out on whatever quarters. I was like, all right, whatever, get me out of here. I just need to quit. But it just, you know, that just goes to show it's so important to understand this stuff. And even it could be confusing for people like me. I was 24, 25, I had my degree in finance and economics and it was still kind of confus. So I'm just really glad we're taking the time to walk people through how these matches work, what the vesting schedule is, and something else we hadn't talked about yet, Robert, that I want to chime in on before we move to our next point, which is what the match is. Depending on if you work for a publicly traded company or not, your match could be company stock. So I worked for a publicly traded company and because of that I got that 3% match or whatever, but they matched it with shares of company stock. So I had like 80 shares of their stock in my 401k, which, you know, was like 50% of the entire value of it. I was like, wait a second, maybe I shouldn't have 50% of the value of the portfolio in a single company. That seems pretty risky, right? So just make sure, right. If you're getting these matches, one, understand the 100%, the partial 50%, what that looks like. Two, how is it being vested? Is it on the one year cliff, a two year cliff? Is it a schedule? Is it quarterly? Understand the vesting. And then three, is it a company match with a cash value? Is it company match with company stock? How does that work? What are the taxes looking like? Just understand a little bit about how all this comes together because again, we're rounding off now in 2024, it's time to do the portfolio performance review and make sure you're setting yourself up for success here in 2025.
- [12:56]
Robert Croke
Yeah, and I want to touch on that even one more time. And that is, I did many deals over the years where I had what we would call a cliff or a waterfall in an equity schedule that I would get in shares in these companies. And that also I found was not a great strategy similar to what you just alluded to, because you're weighted into one company's stock with a major portion of your holdings. And if that stock doesn't do well, then you just don't have the returns or the gains that you'd hope for. So it's just very important. I think the moral of the story here is understanding what you're getting, understanding how it's performing against benchmarks like we talk about, so you can thrive in the end in retirement because you understood it all along. Because we always want to see active management so you can grow your money according to these benchmarks to be able to make sure you're performing well year in and year out.
- [13:53]
Austin Hankiewicz
Well, you mentioned, you know, understanding the performance here. So let's dig into that point number two, which is comparing your holdings and your weightings to benchmark indices and their performance. So I would argue this is the hardest part of your performance review. But now it's time to really understand how is this money invested? How has it been performing? Do I need to make adjustments? Let's dig in. So there are countless 401k investment platforms. For me, when I was working at my old employer, it was like a Bank of America, global research, whatever. You also now have principal. You've got John Hancock, you've got Fidelity, you have E Trade. I mean, there are so many of these 401k platforms. All of these platforms are essentially doing the same thing. They show you how your 401k is invested as well as how it's performing. Now, some of them will allow you to change your investment strategy while still investing your money on your behalf, while others will allow you to pick your own individual investments. And we're going to talk about both here. You've probably heard Robert and I talk about having Autonomy over your 401k. That means being able to pick your own individual investments. But we're going to talk about, you know, both that and the people who don't have autonomy, which I didn't have autonomy when I worked at this old employer. So let's talk about that. Let's kick things off with, like, the general breakdown of strategy and how you should be thinking about picking your investments and what's going on here. So when I started working at this company and I started contributing to my 401k, they said, hey, Austin, we have conservative, we have medium, and we have aggressive. Which one are you? That's all I had. I couldn't pick the single stocks. I couldn't do anything. I had to say I was conservative, I was medium, or I was aggressive. So of course I was younger and I am still young, so I should be aggressive. I have a long time horizon in the markets. Now. Some people, depending on your age, age, they might want to be a little bit more medium. Maybe they want them to be even conservative. But we really just want to encourage you all to be thinking about your time horizon as it relates to your 401k investing. If you're in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you are not going to retire for at least 20 to 30 more years, right? You don't need this money for at least 20 more years. Therefore, this money should be working for you aggressively in the markets and growing over time. Okay, so if you're 42 years old, there's no reason to be conservative with your selection. And my humble opinion. Now let's say you have the opposite. You have the ability to pick your individual holdings. Well, when you go in there and you're able to pick your individual holdings, depending on the platform, you might see a lot of different names. I was just looking at someone's 401k the other day and they had like some crazy names that I'd never heard of. I mean it was like symbols, it was letters, it was numbers, it was very, very confusing to make all of this super, super simple. The most important thing, in my humble opinion that everyone listening could a investor is have as much exposure to American capitalism as possible. I think it's a mistake to have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60% of anyone's portfolio assuming you have at least a 10 to 15 year time horizon of investment ahead of you to be invested into international stocks or bonds or fixed income or, you know, sort of equities that haven't had a long track record of going up into the right over a long period of time. U.S. american capitalism, that is the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. These are indices that have gone up into the right over a long period of time. And I think that everyone, if you have the ability to choose your investments inside of your 401k, it might not be as simple as clicking Voo or QQQ. It might say Fidelity 500 or it might say, you know, John Hancock, NASDAQ. Right. There might be some like weird names in there. But what's important is, is that you are picking the exact same sort of strategies that align with the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other indices that Robert and I very much agree with.
- [17:57]
Robert Croke
Yeah, I think the most important factor of this point is understanding your risk tolerance. And a lot of this comes with age. It comes with, you know, your knowledge level to know what you're doing and be able to understand what your risk tolerance is is because if you were to look at a general portfolio that would be laid out by, you know, the average Joe for a beginner or mid level person, it's probably going to look something like 40% blue chip, 40% bond and 20% growth stocks. And this is tough because I just don't agree with that. Especially if you're younger. I don't see a world where you need 40% exposure to bonds. And so that's why we're always talking about active management. Knowing what your goals are, are knowing what your strategies are and then being able to build your portfolio weighted like we talked about, and understanding what that means. Because you want to make sure that you have the performance, but you also want to make sure that you're adjusting it to your risk tolerance and what the market conditions are right now. As you recall, just a few months ago, Austin and I started telling everyone, hey, rates are coming down. We're going to see some pullback out of the magnificent seven out of the big tech. People are going to start to be looking at some smaller cap things, things. So you're going to want to start to rebalance. That's what this waiting means, is understanding how much you have of weight, the weighting of each sector in your portfolio. And the sooner you learn this and you can learn how to rebalance it even with limited options, which you will have in your 401k, you will be able to weight it accordingly to your risk tolerance, your age and your goal. Because like Austin alluded to, we see portfolios every single day where people show us what they've got going on and there's crazy names, there's 35 different funds in a portfolio that is not necessary. And this is all so important to understand. And it's going to take you some time to learn, but it really will be helpful to you because you want to make sure you're covering those indices like the S P 500 than NASDAQ. And like Austin alluded to, you don't need a bunch of bonds, you don't need a bunch of international stocks right now. Because at the end of the day, you have to look at historical performance. If US Capitalism and US Stocks perform better than other countries, then why have that exposure? You don't need it. And we want you to be diversified, but not diversified so much that you're leaving a ton of returns on the table because someone in HR handling your 401k shows it all for you without your input. It's just very important to understand that so you can help position your portfolios in the best possible strategy for that time frame. Because there is no set it and forget it if you want to perform well.
- [20:53]
Austin Hankiewicz
I think what's cool too, Robert, and just reflecting back as to again, I didn't have autonomy over my investments when I worked at this company and I picked the aggressive strategy, but was kind of frustrating is like the aggressive strategy automatically put me into small Caps, mid caps, and a little bit of like, you know, large caps. So this strategy said, hey, you want to be aggressive, like, buy some, you know, penny stocks. It's like, that's not aggressive, that's silly. Just know what each one of these strategies are, assuming you don't have autonomy, and pick the one that aligns most with you. Looking back at it, maybe I should have picked a medium strategy. Heck, maybe that would have put me in the S&P 500. Like, I don't know. But just knowing how your money is invested into Robert's Point, these weightings, right? Think about it like a pt. If you have a pizza and it's half pepperoni and half pineapple, it's 50% pepperoni and 50% pineapple. If you have a portfolio and it's half bonds and half the S&P 500, it's essentially half cash that pays you 5% a year and half S&P 500, which is up 60% over the last two years. If you are under the age of like 58, 55, you probably don't need all this cash in your portfolio. Right? You should probably be a little bit more aggressive, knowing that you've got another 10 to 15 years before you really need to be tapping into this cash. And so that's what we're trying to just tell people, right? Understand the percent weightings. A lot of these platforms let you type in little numbers and percentages. You get to choose, and maybe you get a cool picture at the end. But just think about it like a pizza. And do you want all of your pizza to be in cash? Do you want half of it to be in cash, none of it to be in cash? Do you want it to all be invested aggressively? Do you want it to be invested a little bit? Just think about how this pizza begins to take shape. And that pizza, again, is your 401k.
- [22:32]
Robert Croke
Yeah. This always brings me back to a conversation Warren Buffett had recently telling his wife that when he passes, put all the money into a VOO type portfolio with the S, P500 and the rest in treasury bills. It's that simple. So when we see these portfolios with 30, 40, 25 different funds, it's just not necessary. Keep it simple, make sure you can understand it and reap the benefits of compound interest.
- [22:59]
Austin Hankiewicz
Well, I think what's important too, before we move on to our next point, is to talk about, let's say someone does have, have 7, 8, 9, 10 funds in their 401k, how do they now compare that fund's performance to benchmarks. How do they one, figure out what that benchmark is? Two, compare its total performance over like periods of time. So they know, hey, I should keep this fund, it is doing well, or two, maybe I should get out of this fund, I'm in international stocks, they're not doing anything. So walk our listeners through that.
- [23:27]
Robert Croke
Yeah, it's just important and I think it just all comes to opportunity cost cost. And I know we talk about VOO and QQQ and VGT and funds like that all the time, but we talk about them all the time because it's just simple. If I look at a fund, let's say for the last five years performance, and it's averaging 6% a year, and I can simply look at Voo or QQQ and it's averaging 12, 13, 14% a year, well, guess what, the opportunity cost says I should move that money over to this other fund so those gains go to my portfolio, not somewhere else. So I think it just really speaks to opportunity cost and not just leaving your money sit because you don't understand what to do with it and having that difference because I always want the positive arbitrage of the money going to me, not somewhere else, or worse, leaving it on the table because I either didn't understand what to do with the money or that this underperforming asset can be sold and move on and go to the next item item, which could be a VOO or a VGT that has outperformed most of these other funds for the past 10 years. So to answer your question, the easiest way to find these benchmarks and find this performance is to go to the platforms like Seeking Alpha that we use and you can really then research on your own and look at that 1 year, 5 year, 10 year performance and be able to then compare that to what you have in your portfolio so you can see the difference over time of what you're investing in now versus what you might be looking to invest in in the future in place of that underperforming asset.
- [25:06]
Austin Hankiewicz
And the platform website Morningstar does a really good job too. It's free to my understanding. And you just type in the ticker, you click on performance. And what's different there is it shows you the total performance, which includes the dividends that get reinvested. Right. So you always want to be looking at total performance, not just price performance, because some of these funds are very dividend heavy, I'm sure. And if you're paying dividends and REINVEST, I mean 75% of the S&P's total returns over the last, I think it's like 80 years came from dividends, right. Not just price performance. So make sure when you're doing your comparative analysis between the funds you're in here in the 401k and you're trying to figure out, do I keep it, do I sell it, do I move it? Like, what's going on here. Just make sure you're looking at the total performance of that fund over the last 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, and compare it to the total performance of the S&P 500, maybe the total performance of the Nasdaq, maybe the total performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, whatever that fund is like a benchmarked against.
- [26:01]
Robert Croke
Yeah, I love that because it's just a really good way again, going back to the opportunity cost of understanding how is your money doing as far as performance in your portfolio versus these benchmarks. And that's so important to understand because you just don't want to leave money on the table because you didn't know any better. So let's go into our talking point number three, the Roth IRA holdings and weightings. And I know we've touched on waiting a little bit, but let's talk about the importance of the Roth ira, how it plays into your overall portfolio and retirement strategy and what we feel the importance of having this Roth ira, because so many people, we talk about it, Austin, all the time in the public lives and in the community that everyone, we believe after 18 years old, the minute they turn 18, should have a Roth IRA. But still countless, countless people do not have a Roth ira. So let's break it down for our listeners, listeners of why we believe it is one of the most important investment vehicles out there and why it's so important for people now and leading into retirement. So for me, the Roth is the most important vehicle. I feel everyone should front load that, get it maxed out every single year. Because at the end of the day, that is money that is going to be tax free in retirement. And we always tell you guys that we believe the Roth is a great vehicle, critical. And that by having this basket of index funds that we talk about the VOOS, the QQQs, the VGTs. I just think it is a great strategy to have in the Roth IRA as you're building it over time. And right now as we record this, you can put $7,000 a year into the Roth IRA retirement account. It's your account, it's personal and it's after tax. So I think it's just a great strategy that everyone should use and you should be aggressive with it earlier on on. So many of you listening are in your 30s and 40s, maybe your early 50s. You have plenty of time to keep investing and you should be using the Roth to be aggressive in that aspect until you start to get maybe into your later 50s and early 60s, where then you could take some of the foot off the gas for this. But the Roth IRA is something people should not overlook. It's just too important.
- [28:19]
Austin Hankiewicz
Totally agree. Right. I think if you are someone who is is Investing toward your 401k every single year, you should also be someone who's investing to your Roth ira. We've said it a hundred times, the match beats Roth beats taxable. And what that means is invest up to the match, get the free money, and then if you have money left over, max out the Roth ira. Because chances are just to what we alluded to before, you might not have Autonomy over your 401k investments. You might not be able to pick the right funds, but you can pick any fund you want in your Roth IRA. You can pick the Voo, the VGT, the VTI, the QQQ, and all the other fun ETFs, and invest next funds we talk about which perform well over a long period of time. Now, something I want to encourage people to consider when it comes to the Roth IRA is don't treat this like a gambling account. Don't treat this like, ooh, I've got $20,000 in here, I need to go put it all on Nvidia and see if it goes up after earnings or I need to go, you know, do these crazy things personally here. I want to make sure that I retire with millions of dollars when I'm 59, 60, 65, 70 years old. And the easiest way that I believe anyone listening to this podcast who lives in the United States can do that alongside of me, is by maxing out your Roth IRA every year by contributing that, you know, call it 500, $600 a month and making sure every time you contribute that money, it gets properly invested into the right ETFs and index funds. If you do that over the next 20, 30, 40 years of your life, you will retire a multimillionaire because that happens with compound interest. For me, I don't want to be contributing this 500, $600 a month into this account and then putting it into a penny stock or putting it into, you know, a crazy new IPO that just came out, right. I want to make sure that this money is my guaranteed freedom in retirement. And so I just want to really encourage everyone else listening right now to treat the Roth IRAs in the same way you want to guarantee wealth in retirement via the Roth ira. Now, if you want to roll the dice on earnings things or you want to roll the dice on a new IPO or something cool that happened that you're really excited about, do that in a public.com account. Do that in your normal brokerage account with money that is on top of the money that's got the free match and that's maxed out. The Roth. Right. You want to cover your bases first. Make sure you retire a multimillionaire before you start rolling the dice on these crazy ideas that you might have, which we hope pan out well for you. So when it comes to my personal Roth IRA, I've got 90% of it in the S&P 500, and I've got 10% of it in bitcoin. That's how it's broken down, because I think bitcoin is going to do well over my lifetime. So I want to have some exposure. So again, 90% Voo, 10% Ibit, and that's how it's broken down for me. It might be different for you. You might have more NASDAQ than me. You might have some spy, you might have some moat, you might have some single stocks in there. And that's all good and dandy. I'm just sharing that. Like, I want to make sure I'm good. I'm not taking much risk here. I want to make sure I grow over time. And I'm up like $7,000 this year on those two investments. So I'm optimistic as to how that's going to continue to compound over the length of my life.
- [31:24]
Robert Croke
I love how you broke it down, and I think it lends to a mindset of what the Roth IRA is. I look at it as kind of that untouchable account. You don't want to put that money in. You don't want to be crazy with it. You don't want to think about, I'm going to build it up and I'm going to take money out. Because when you do that, you're always going to have this lifestyle creep scenario where you're never just going to set it and manage it and work on it. And the way I look at it from a mindset perspective is so many people, when they think about investing, they think, oh, I've got to get $20,000 together to make an investment, or I need 50,000 or whatever it is. The cool thing about the Roth, you could put in a hundred dollars a month. You can put in, I think the max is 583amonth to come up to $7,000 a year. So I love that part of the mindset aspect of the Roth IRA IRA where you're just plugging away month after month, year after year, and that is that comfortable retirement account. So let's say you have your bridge account, maybe you've got your crypto account, maybe you've got your high flyer account. All of that is great because you're going to be in and out and taking money back and forth out of those, maybe in investing in something else, maybe building it up and then buying some real estate. But the Roth IRA shouldn't be that type of vehicle. And that's why I love it because. Because we want everyone to build comfort in retirement. And that's where I think the Roth IRA comes into play.
- [32:47]
Austin Hankiewicz
I'm right there with you, Robert. You know, this episode, gosh, is so important because again, I just really want to emphasize 46% of people don't know what their 401k is invested into. That is one in two people, like, go to work today, today's Monday, go to work today, look around and count one person, person. They know they don't, they know they don't, they know they don't, Right? And so, like, that's how common it is. And so if you know someone at your job that does not know what their 401k is invested into, how to decipher it, how to conduct this annual portfolio performance review. Send them this episode. I feel like this could really help a lot, a lot of people, because the last thing that we want is to live in a society where people just blindly invest their money. And then, you know, after 20, 30 years, like you said, Robert, they say, oh, fingers crossed that my money is up to where it needs to be. And I really hope that I was doing this right this whole time. And they put too much trust in people who put fees and underperformance and AUM fees and these expense ratios over their own fiduciary sort of responsibility. So this episode, just really, really important. Send it to someone, you know, that needs a little bit of extra guidance as it relates to their 401k or someone, maybe you have a cousin that just started a job, or maybe someone who's excited now to invest in their 401k. For the first time, this episode is going to be that playbook that's going to lay it out for them to say, okay, how do I think about the weightings and the match and the vesting and everything in between? Really, really great episode here, Robert. I had a blast.
- [34:19]
Robert Croke
Yeah, me too. It just really excites me when we get to do this and break down these hard topics and make it understandable in these bite sized chunks because it really does all come down to making your money work as hard for you as you work to get it. I should have a tattoo of that. It's so important for people to follow that and understand that. So what a great episode and I'm super stoked.
- [34:42]
Austin Hankiewicz
Now, before we move on to our question and answer portion of the episode, let's take a moment to hear from one of this episode sponsors, Titan. Titan is an award winning wealth management firm reimagining how ambitious high earning professionals manage and experience their wealth. From their New York headquarters, they aim to build the Wall street firm of the future.
- [35:02]
Robert Croke
That's right, Austin. A super interesting company here. Titan is like having a personal investment advisor in your pocket. They've opened up the institutional investment playbook to individual investors offering everything from active management and private markets to classic indexes and alternatives.
- [35:21]
Austin Hankiewicz
Their flagship alpha strategy is especially interesting to me because it's a concentrated portfolio of like 15 to 20 of these different high quality single stocks. They focus on stocks with durable competitive advantages and high returns on invested capital. They're essentially investing in the best of breed names on your behalf.
- [35:40]
Robert Croke
What really sets Titan apart is their advisory approach. You get direct access to a team of investment professionals who proactively share market views and can actually walk you through any questions you may have around your money. So think of it as having a private wealth manager in your pocket, but without the traditional wealth manager fees or bureaucracy. There's too many features and perks for us to break it down right now. Which is why we highly recommend you try Titan. Fear yourself. Especially if you're a high earner. So click the link in the show notes for one month of free membership.
- [36:14]
Austin Hankiewicz
And if you've not yet watched the interview we had with Titan CEO that went live last Monday, highly recommend you check that out. He does such a great job of breaking down all the cool products, features and everything in between. So definitely go check out Titan using the link in the show notes below. And you know what Robert? We don't just love Titan, we also love Blossom. Investing is a lot more fun when you're doing it alongside like minded people like you can on Blossom. Especially if you're into dividend growth stocks like myself itself. There's a community for everyone on their app. But remember, Blossom is not an online broker. They're a social investing app built around transparency.
- [36:49]
Robert Croke
That's right, transparency is key when it comes to investing. You all know just how important it is because you listen to our podcast. I've already connected my personal accounts to Blossom and I enjoy seeing how everything is divided up and performing on a daily basis. You can view it as well at any given time time. Additionally, they offer duolingo style educational video content for those of you still learning.
- [37:14]
Austin Hankiewicz
And if you've not yet joined Blossom, we really encourage you to do so. It's an easy way to both find your own community of like minded investors, but also manage and analyze your portfolio in a really clean way. They also have new features for custom stock charts and sharing daily performance with your friends. So click the link in the show notes below to sign up for Blossom today or simply type in Blossom in the app store. It should pop right up. And when you sign up, go look at Robert's portfolio. You can literally really see all the holdings. It's pretty cool.
- [37:41]
Robert Croke
Yes, definitely. As you will see, Palantir is on the rise and I love, I love seeing our tech stocks just keep rumbling along with these huge returns. So yes, definitely, go check it out.
- [37:52]
Austin Hankiewicz
All right Robert, let's jump into our first question from Reenan B. Coming from Instagram Reed and says hello Austin and Robert. First of all, I'd like to thank you for your contribution to the world through this amazing podcast. My name is Reenan b and I'm 34 years old. Currently my net worth is negative $36,000. This includes an auto loan with a BAL of 22,000 at an interest rate of 5 1/2 percent. I'm working on paying off my credit card debt and expect to be finished by next summer. I'm a performer for a full time band making approximately 67,000 a year. I have a business idea for opening a Latin bar and grill which would include live entertainment like bands and DJs. My question is whether I should pursue this idea by building up some business credit and then obtaining a large loan to buy and start a business like this. Or is it better to take the route you guys would suggest, focus on paying off the debt, building my base, things like that. Any suggestions would provide clarity on whether this is a good idea or not. Thanks Robert. You want to start this one off?
- [38:50]
Robert Croke
Yes, I love this question. And from coming from the entertainment and bar and restaurant background, I'm probably not the best person to ask because I always bet on myself. And when I was in my early 20s, I started opening bars and restaurants. I made millions of dollars over the years in doing so. But then you read conventional news and articles, it'll say that owning a bar and restaurant is one of the worst investments because the failure rate is so high. So what would I do in your instance? If you love entertainment and you love the entertainment and restaurant business, then I would say take a look at going for it. Should you go for it right now? Probably not. You should probably get a little bit more of your base built, get yourself a little more stable so you're not putting yourself in financial harm's way. You could look at SBA loans. You could look at doing a friends and family round. Maybe you. You find a good chef that could be a financial and operating partner. There's a lot of different ways to do this, and it doesn't cost as much as people think. Everywhere in every city, there are bars and restaurants that are failing, that you can go in and take over for pennies on the dollars. So just consider your current financial situation. Maybe wait a little longer. Maybe get an extra job right now to put cash money in the bank and get that base built up, and then consider opening this dream Latin restaurant that you want to do and go from there. But for me, I was all in on restaurants and bars when I was very young. But I've learned a lot since then, and I hope that some of this wisdom will help you make the right decision.
- [40:25]
Austin Hankiewicz
Yeah, I'm down to go roll the dice and start a restaurant. I think that could be cool, but I think I'd do it after I had built my base. I mean, shoot you straight here. You're 34 years old and broke. I'm not trying to say that condescending way, but, like, you're 34 and broke, right? You have a negative net worth. You have $22,000 on an auto loan. You've got $14,000 in credit card debt. Like, you're not doing great. So if it were me, I would probably spend the next two years of my life buckling down, getting a budget, figuring out, you know, how do I go from negative net worth to positive net worth? And then how do I now grow my investments from zero to where you are today, I'm assuming to maybe 50 to $100,000 over the next, call it three or four years after that. So let's call it a five year plan. And then maybe give yourself the goal of saying, hey, I'm 40 years old now, I've, you know, built my base, I now have all these investments, I've paid off my debt, I'm doing all these things. Right. I'm ready to go take the leap of faith of starting my own business, which is this bar and grill. In your experience, when people go out and they take on these $500,000 loans to go start a bar and grill or something else, I mean, this is debt that is tied to them as individuals. Right. The company can go bankrupt, but they still owe on this debt.
- [41:40]
Robert Croke
Yeah. Nobody's going to give you a loan based on a new LLC and no experience. It's going to be tied to either you or someone that co signs for you, their collateral. So that's why you have to be careful. Now, the interesting thing about the restaurant and bar business, and in this situation, you could literally, and this is probably what I would do in your situation, since you're in a full time band, I'm assuming you're mostly playing Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday night, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday night. You have the other four or five nights of the week. Why not go find a local restaurant and bar, go work for them. I don't care if it's a busboy, I don't care if it's a server, a bartender. Learn the business top to bottom for two or three years before you just dive in headfirst. Because then you're going to be getting paid to build your base and learn the business that you want to eventually grow into all in one. That's what I would do. That is the best play. Because then that way you're getting the growth, you're getting the money and you're getting the education on that business without risking it all on yourself. That's what I would do in this situation.
- [42:44]
Austin Hankiewicz
That's exactly what I would do. I love that idea because it gives you the opportunity to get your reps in. To your point, Robert, you now get to have some extra cash to hopefully get out of this high interest credit card debt, maybe pay off the auto loan. You know, do these things that are going to move you in the right direction financially and then also set you up for long term success when you start this, this business. What are some places or ideas that Reenan here can find for, you know, a small business loan? Is it just the SBA website?
- [43:10]
Robert Croke
Yes, definitely. The SBA loan is a good one to look at. You can also look at opportunity zones near you, maybe in an area you'd want to build in. But then also a lot of times you're going to be put in a situation to do a friends and family round. Go online, put together a business plan, you can do it for free. Put together as much as you can to give them a basis for how to figure out how to invest in this product project. Because I think in your situation, if you have the experience, you're in the band so you understand the entertainment. Maybe you go work, like I said, for a couple years in the industry. I think you'd be able to do a friends and family round to get you up and running as well. But you can also look at a bank like Chase. If you go in and you open an LLC and you have all your ducks in a row, your ein number, your operating agreement, Chase bank will do no DOC loans or credit cards for up to $50,000 to get you some money to get started as well. But like we said, I'd get the experience first. Build up that understanding and knowledge in the business while getting yourself out of high interest debt before you move ahead and open your own place.
- [44:17]
Austin Hankiewicz
And also too just want to be super clear, if you do a friends and family round and you lose this money that your friends and family gave you as an investment, they're likely going to hate you. Right? So like if you ask your friends and family to invest in a business idea and it's fails, that's going to be really awkward at Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever, you're going to see him again. So just be super cognizant that, you know, friends and family rounds are very tricky when it comes to relationships and keeping. I mean, if you lose Uncle Jim's $20,000 thinking he was going to flip it to 40, Uncle Jim's going to be really mad at you. Okay, our next question comes from Lindsay. Lindsay says hi, Austin and Robert. First of all, I want to express my appreciation for your podcast. You convinced me to take on a side hustle which turned into a full time job and raised my salary by over $100,000 a year. I wouldn't have taken that first step if it wasn't for your advice. So thank you so much, Robert. How cool is that? Let's go, Lindsay. Okay.
- [45:10]
Robert Croke
I love, I love this. I love hearing about people's wins because of all the work we put in. It makes me so happy.
- [45:17]
Austin Hankiewicz
That is insane. All right. Lindsay says, secondly, because of the significant bump in income, I am in need of some advice on how to properly allocate it. Thanks to both of you, I now make just shy of $200,000 with a $50,000 bonus coming next month. I'm 30, 31. I have $140,000 in student loan debt, a good chunk of which is at 6 to 7% interest, and a $215,000 mortgage for which we pay $2,000 a month at 6% annual interest. I only have 40,000 in retirement through a maxed out Roth in my general brokerage account. Because I don't have access to a 401k and 15,000 in a high Yield Savings emergency fund. I have no other high interest debt. It may also be worth noting that my husband and I are planning to start a family next year. Where should these excess funds go each month? Okay, I'll take a stab at this one first. Lindsay, congratulations. So cool to hear this. You mentioned that you don't have a 401k. I'm assuming it's because you're self employed. You're talking about how you've got this like extra salary making like $200,000 now with a $50,000 bonus if you are self employed. Don't forget about the Solo 401K and the SEP IRA. These are two accounts that we talked about. I think it was two weeks ago in an episode about our favorite tax saving strategies. You can contribute up to $69,000 in these retirement account accounts, so you can really max them out every year. Maybe you straight up are employed by someone else and they just don't offer a 401k. That's cool too. You have the Roth IRA and you have your general bridge account, that brokerage account on public.com. that's awesome. And you've got this 15,000 in high yield Savings. So what would I do with all this extra money? First thing I'm doing is I'm building my base. Keep the student loans, let them ride, keep the mortgage, let it ride. Like keep everything the same until you have a hundred thousand dollars invested across all of your investment investment accounts, your general brokerage bridge account on public, your Roth ira, you know, all these accounts that you've got, that you have investments in, make sure that they add up to a sum of $100,000 and that money is invested into Voo, QQQ, VGT, VTI, all the ETFs and index funds we talk about. Now once you have this base built, maybe now it's time to perhaps beef up that emergency fund just a little bit as you expect to, you know, Start a family. I think it's a great idea to set aside another 10, 15, maybe $20,000 and anticipation for a baby. Who knows if there's complications? We pray there are not. But, you know, who knows what's going on with a baby? You should definitely have, you know, little beefed up emergency funds saved up for that. Assuming you've done that as well. You're completely out of all this high interest debt. Now it's time to start, in my opinion, cracking out those student loans. You've got your 100,000 rocking and rolling. You've got the high yields. Now it's time to figure out how do I get this $140,000 of student loan debt down to zero, which should free up about $2,000 a month in payments every single month that you're making to these student loans. That's going to take years. Right? We're not going to pretend that that's going to be a flip of the switch. So be sure that you've got your base built before that. Don't worry about the mortgage rates will come down. You can just refinance that, in my humble opinion, and focus on the student loan debt first.
- [48:19]
Robert Croke
Yeah, I love this. And it's definitely all about making sure you have that emergency fund and you beef up, you know, this space because at the end of the day, you have the payments in the debt, you want them to go away and you want to make sure that you only have good debt. But until they can go away, you don't want to be living where all your money is just going to these debts and you have no emergency fund and no money investing and growing for you. So I agree with Austin's take. I think it's great. The only thing I would do a little different is I would get a little portion of the money I'm making into a crypto portfolio. Open a public account, or I think you already have one. You could do it through that, or you could use Coinbase. Get a little bit of money going into crypto for the next few years as well, because I think that's going to be a good place to make a lot of growth in the coming years. But otherwise keep crushing it. Keep working on, you know, getting more money put away, like Austin said, into the base. And I think you'll be fine.
- [49:13]
Austin Hankiewicz
I'm right there with you, Robert. Yeah, 5, maybe 10% of that base could be in bitcoin. Like that's a great idea. So our final question comes from Kate. Now, Robert, before we jump into Kate's question, here's something interesting I want to share. Bank of America just released an new report that over 80% of multimillionaire respondents aged 43 and younger invest in or are looking to invest in fine artwork for a portion of their portfolio.
- [49:37]
Robert Croke
And that kind of makes sense to us because we've been diversifying with art ourselves. We've both been using Masterworks art investing platform to diversify for like five years now.
- [49:47]
Austin Hankiewicz
Yeah, we definitely have. Both Robert and I invest with Masterworks and even interviewed their founder and CEO Scott Lynn on the show a couple months ago. Now They've hit over 950,000 users and a billion dollars in capital raised because with Masterworks, you don't need to be an art expert or spend millions to start investing.
- [50:06]
Robert Croke
Exactly. And the fact that Masterworks has successfully exited 23 paintings to date, with each returning a profit doesn't hurt either. Listeners can learn more at Masterworks Art Rich Habits, which is also in the show notes of this episode.
- [50:21]
Austin Hankiewicz
Again, that's Masterworks Art Forward slash Rich Habits and it will be in the show notes of this episode. And as with any investment, past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investing involves risk. There are important Regulation A disclosures and they can be found@masterworks.com forward/cd. All right, let's jump into Kate's question. Kate says hi, Austin and Robert. I've been listening to every episode for the past year and it's been so cool to watch the success of your show here. Here's my question for some background. I'm 24 years old and I have a net worth of $450,000. I have two accounts that I opened and I feel overwhelmed on the best way to manage this amount of money without a lot of knowledge. I manage one account with around $200,000 in it that's invested in the mutual funds that you guys always talk about. However, the other account is managed by a wealth advisor and they charge two and a half percent. I have about $160,000 invested with them currently and they actually lost me money this year, which I thought was weird. The rest is in a High Yield Savings account and my Roth ira. My question is, what is my best strategy on what to do with all of my money to maximize potential gains? Do I fire my advisor? I know you've mentioned in the past that it's bad to pay a fee, but I don't know what I'm doing investing wise, so maybe I keep the fee. Please give me a game plan. Okay, here's your Game plan. You have your $200,000 in the mutual funds that we talk about. Awesome. Keep doing that. You're doing great. You might have green days, you might have red days, you might have green months. Red months, green years, red years. That's cool. You're 24. You're going to invest for the next 40 years. Keep rocking and rolling. Ride the wave. You're going to do just fine. Kate. For the other, let's call it $160,000. That's with this financial advisor. You have, I guess, two options. One, you can have a real stern conversation saying, I don't understand why I'm investing into things that are going down in value when the s and P500 is up 50% over the last two years. Fix this. Also, I'm not paying a 2 1/2% fee. I'll pay a 1% fee and that's all I'm paying you. You could do that. Or two, you can move your money to. I mean, we just talked about Titan. We talked with our CEO last week. Tune into that episode, learn a little bit more about what they're about and maybe move your money over there. I mean, they are a ton of ways that you can still have your money sort of managed by a professional without paying a two and a half percent fee. There's, there's Titan, there's Betterment, there's Wealthfront, there's all these robo advisors that are going to allow you to have sort of this strategy around your age and risk tolerance that's going to really align you with a long term, you know, positive trajectory with your portfolio without charging you two and a half percent. And if you lose money, it's because the entire markets are going down, not because of some bad judgment calls.
- [53:04]
Robert Croke
Yeah, I would definitely fire your wealth advisor. I'm not going to sugarcoat it that he's more, he's, he's more of a criminal than anything at 2 1/2 percent. If you want, I'll gladly set you up with a free call with Croak Capital. We certainly don't charge two and a half percent. I think it's around a point like Austin stated, but yeah, you need to get in good hands because there's no reason in the last two and a half years you should be losing money in your account. It has been an absolute incredible bull run for the last couple years. So definitely I would consider firing them immediately. And if you want, reach out to me in the community or through, through email and I will gladly set you up. With a free call and get you in the right hands.
- [53:43]
Austin Hankiewicz
And Kate, I think something else I want to remind you of is when you're doing great, right? You have so much money at such a young age. Congratulations, you know, well deserved there. But two, keep it simple. You know, Robert talked about how in these 401ks, sometimes there's like 13 different funds and there are all of these crazy things. Just keep it simple, right? Think about a pizza. Put the majority of your pizza, call it 60, 70, 80% in the S&P 500, and then put the rest of your pizza in stuff like the NASDAQ or a little bit of Bitcoin or maybe a little bit of the Dow Jones or like whatever floats your boat, right? So, like, keep it simple. And as long as you keep it simple and you ride the wave and you zoom out, you don't have these knee jerk reactions. You could manage this money on your own as long as you know what you're doing and you have a cool mentality about it. Now, I will say, to Robert's point, wealth advisors are a great idea. When you have those knee jerk reactions and you need someone to like, massage your shoulders and say, hey, you're down $13,000 this week. But it's okay, right? This happens. It's all good. That's good too. And we really, really appreciate that. So, yeah, that's my just hot take there. Robert, I loved your answer. And Kate, we're rooting for you. We wish you the best of luck, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. On this week's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we dove into so much. The 401k, the match, the vesting, the weightings, the holdings, the Roth. We talked about some really cool stuff in the Q and A. I mean, these episodes are just so much fun. Robert and I kind of like the longer ones a little bit too, right? I mean, this one's probably going to be over an hour. And it's because we like to give you all the details and dig in and really, you know, explain things in such a way that everyone listening can understand and feel like they have the tools and resources to inch toward financial independence and financial freedom with their own portfolios and their own strategies.
- [55:23]
Robert Croke
I love it because we never call it in. And I know people see that in these episodes. They feel it in our passion for what we do. And for me, you know, our age gap, One of the cool parts about it is when I was coming up and I was in my 20s, there wasn't this. We didn't have podcasts and we didn't have communities and all these ways to learn and make the right decisions with our money, you had to learn the hard way and that was by trial and error. So I love that we get to wake up every single day, do the research, do the work and provide this value for our audience week in, week out, year in and year out. Just really is the thrill of my life and I just really enjoy it so much.
- [56:05]
Austin Hankiewicz
With that being said, everyone, we can't wait to see you on Thursday's episode. We have a question and answer episode every single week that come out every Thursday. If you want to ask us a question, email us@richhabitspodcast gmail.com or join the Rich Habits Network. Ask us a question in there. There's going to be a link in the show notes below and we'll be sure to answer it either in there or on the episode. Thanks everyone and have a great start to your week.