Q&A: Our Favorite AI Stocks, Inheriting $850K, & Improving Credit Scores

Summary

RICH HABITS PODCAST — QUESTION & ANSWER EDITION
Episode: "Q&A: Our Favorite AI Stocks, Inheriting $850K, & Improving Credit Scores"
Date: February 12, 2026
Hosts: Austin Hankwitz & Robert Croak

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Overview

In this lively Q&A edition, Austin and Robert tackle listener-submitted questions ranging from investment account strategies, handling an inherited home, buying dream assets, and building credit, to navigating late-stage AI investments. The episode is pragmatic, empathetic, and jam-packed with personal stories and actionable frameworks. Both hosts emphasize the personalized nature of financial planning and repeatedly caution listeners to align their investing and spending with life goals and circumstances.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Retirement Account Strategies Without Employer Match (03:02–08:17)

Scenario:

Listener MC (48, wants to retire at 55) asks how to prioritize between a 403(b), Roth 403(b), 457(b), and Roth 457(b), considering no employer match and an early retirement goal.

Key Insights:

• Austin explains the “Match beats Roth beats taxable” investment hierarchy:
  • Match (always priority, as it's “free money”)
  • Roth (tax-free growth, "the undisputed champion...for building long term wealth")
  • Taxable brokerage (flexibility, no tax advantages)
• But, with no match and early retirement planned, Austin recommends heavily funding a “bridge account” (taxable brokerage) to cover the years before retirement account withdrawals without penalty (55–59½).
• Robert echoes this, cautioning against penalties from early IRA withdrawals, and stresses the importance of bridge funds for early retirees.

Memorable Quote:

“If you want to retire at 55, you need to have money invested elsewhere...the only way you’ll be able to achieve that is by having money in a non-retirement account that you can touch without penalty.”
— Austin (07:03)

Timestamp: Key breakdown at [03:02–08:17]

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2. Inheriting a Family Home: Keep for Sentiment or Sell? (08:17–16:41)

Scenario:

Deborah (64, husband 70) inherited her late father’s medium-value home and is torn between selling or keeping it as a rental/family gathering spot.

Host Perspectives:

• Robert: Acknowledges the emotional weight but advises that tying up significant funds could become a financial drain, especially with limited retirement reserves. Recommends either a creative buyout with her brother or selling the home and redirecting family memories to their already-owned dream home.
  • “Because I didn’t use [the home] that often… the carry cost and the expense was greater than the joy.” (12:37)
• Austin: Shares personal experience with losing a parent and the struggle with sentimental property, concluding it’s better to sell, honor the family legacy, and avoid risking retirement security.
  • “It’s a very emotional thing...honor your dad by selling it to hopefully a new budding family…allow someone else to live there, build their own family inside of it.” (15:12)

Collective Wisdom:

• Sentiment can cloud sound financial judgment.
• Renting the property means risking emotional distress if tenants disrespect it.

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3. Balancing Dream Purchases with Retirement Security (16:41–26:12)

Scenario:

Joe, a 42-year-old military retiree, wants to buy a hunting property, pickup truck, and RV, with $7k/mo post-tax income and existing savings, but has family responsibilities.

Guidance:

• Robert: Advises caution—focus first on ensuring sufficient retirement savings (“one and a half to two million set aside and growing”), then consider phased acquisitions, starting perhaps with property.
  • “He wants to go hunting…but the problem is I don’t think Joe has enough set aside for the future if something goes awry...” (18:15)
• Austin: Suggests life insurance (“$1 million policy for $40/mo”), confirms 15–20% of income should be invested before large discretionary purchases, and warns against over-investing in depreciating assets (RVs, trucks).
• Both recommend partnership on property, sharing cost and enjoyment with trustworthy friends.

Notable Quote:

“The mistake you don’t want to make, Joe, is having too much of your net worth tied up in things that go down in value.”
— Austin (20:14)

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4. Building Credit vs. Early Wealth Building for Young Listeners (28:21–32:16)

Scenario:

Vonna (23, $54k/yr, $10k student loans) asks whether to get a secured or unsecured credit card for credit building.

Hosts’ Advice:

• Robert: Get a secured credit card (use $500–$1000 as collateral), keep investing, avoid credit card debt.
  • “You should do both...You can’t out-invest high interest debt.” (28:21)
• Austin: Shares his own story of being denied for traditional credit cards, successfully using a secured card to build credit.
  • Use the card for small charges, pay off monthly; focus on <10% utilization; let bureaus register responsible use.
• Both stress: At 23, Vonna is paradoxically ahead of the “curve”.

Memorable Quote:

“You have your mindset already trained like an investor and not a consumer at 23 years old. That is the biggest hurdle most people have to go through.”
— Robert (29:16)

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5. Allocating Windfalls and Monthly Surplus for Young Couples (32:33–39:11)

Scenario:

Amanda (27, husband, state employees, $44k from home sale, $3,500 monthly surplus) asks how to best deploy the home sale proceeds and allocate new excess savings.

Key Steps:

1. Don’t rush to pay off student loans (3.5–4.5%, only $170/mo payment); let investments compound instead.
2. Max out Roth IRAs before taxable accounts.
3. Build traditional brokerage (“taxable”) accounts for autonomy and flexibility, especially if employer plans have limited or undesirable investment options.
4. Emergency Fund: Four months is sufficient unless job/income situation is unstable. Use extra for investments or future home down payment.

Notable Quote:

“Student loans...pay them off when you have an equivalent amount of money invested elsewhere.”
— Austin (35:46)

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6. Favorite AI Stocks & ETFs (“Late-Stage AI Bubble”) (39:11–43:11)

Scenario:

AJ asks about top AI stocks/ETFs in 2026, with bubble concerns.

Picks:

• Austin:
  • Top pick: Amazon
    • “...buying Amazon for what the company is going to be in 2030...they’re investing $200 billion in data centers in 2026...but if you zoom out...I like Amazon.” (41:15)
• Robert:
  • ETF: AIQ (“still adding every month”)
  • Uranium exposure: URA, Cameco (CCJ)
  • Stocks: Palantir, Micron, AMD
  • Energy: Constellation Energy Group, and shout-out to XLE ETF for energy exposure

Approach:

• No “hot tips”—focus on robust, long-term positions tied to real growth trends.
• Both advocate for a patient, diversified approach to AI investing, using either leading single stocks or broad-based ETFs.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

| Time | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 07:03 | Austin | “...the only way you’ll be able to achieve [early retirement] is by having money in a non-retirement account that you can touch without penalty.” | | 12:37 | Robert | “...the carry cost and the expense was greater than the joy that I would get from the home because I didn’t use it that often.” | | 15:12 | Austin | “Honor your dad by selling it...to hopefully a new budding family...allow someone else to live there, build their own family inside of it.” | | 18:15 | Robert | “He wants to go hunting…but the problem is I don’t think Joe has enough set aside for the future if something goes awry...” | | 20:14 | Austin | “...having too much of your net worth tied up in things that go down in value.” | | 29:16 | Robert | “You have your mindset already trained like an investor and not a consumer at 23 years old...” | | 35:46 | Austin | “...pay [student loans] off when you have an equivalent amount of money invested elsewhere.” | | 41:15 | Austin | “...buying Amazon for what the company is going to be in 2030...but if you zoom out...I like Amazon.” |

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Episode Flow & Timestamps

• [03:02] — Prioritizing employer plans, Roth, taxable for early retirement
• [08:17] — Debating inherited home: sell or keep as rental
• [16:41] — How/when to buy big-ticket ‘dream’ items while supporting a family
• [28:21] — Credit building strategies for young savers
• [32:33] — Deploying a home sale windfall and monthly income surplus
• [39:11] — Favorite AI stocks and ETFs for 2026, “AI bubble” context

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Tone & Language

The hosts are empathetic, informally authoritative, and practical, often sharing from their own financial experiences and failures. Each answer combines sound financial theory with real-life application, always circling back to the importance of aligning financial moves with personal life situations and emotional realities.

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Takeaways

• Retirement planning must consider personal timelines (early retirement = you’ll need a bridge account).
• Sentimentality around inheritance is real, but shouldn’t derail long-term financial health.
• Credit building and early investment can be done together, but avoid high-interest debt at all costs.
• Investment choices (AI, ETFs, company stock) are best made with long-term, diversified mindsets—not based on hype or fear of missing out.
• Every situation is personal: there’s no “one size fits all”—advice should be tailored to each listener’s goals, timeline, and family situation.

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This summary covers all listener question responses, cuts out sponsor pitches and advertisements, and provides a scan-friendly cheat sheet for listeners seeking pragmatic strategies and motivational context for their own money journey.

Transcript

[Austin]

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast question and answer edition brought to you by public.com these are our Thursday episodes, Robert, that we sit down and we answer your questions. That's what we do. We answer questions as if we were in your shoes. If you have a question to ask us, you can ask us via email at rich habits podcastmail.com you can DM us on Instagram at Rich Habits Podcast. Or you can join the Rich Habits Network and join us on a Tuesday night two hour long live stream. Get your questions answered face to face with Robert and myself. But these Thursday episodes, we try and come at you guys with some really fun questions. You guys have a ton of questions all the time and to be honest with you, Robert, these episodes are becoming my favorite.

[Robert]

Yeah, definitely. These episodes have come a long way and it's just really cool to see so many people getting involved and getting entrenched in our ecosystem. Whether it's the newsletter, the Rich Habits Network or just watching the podcast. And getting these questions out to us is so important for everyone because we all have blind spots. Personal finance is personal. In these episodes we just really try to do our best to answer all these crazy random questions to help each and every one of you through your financial journey. And whether it's mindset or you're trying to figure out a side hustle, whatever it is, we're here for it and we appreciate all the questions.

[Austin]

Well, my favorite part about these episodes, Robert, is it really shows the diversity of our listenership, right, our audience base. We've got questions from people that are 23 and questions from people that are in their late 60s. Like it's, it's so cool to be able to answer questions across all these different backgrounds and you know, age demographics and everything like that. So let's get ready for it. But before we jump into the episode, gotta give a shout out to public.com, the title sponsor of all of our Thursday episodes. Public is the investing platform for those who take it seriously. Because on Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, cryptocurrency and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index using artificial intelligence.

[Robert]

And it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks and builds a one of a kind index and lets you even back test it against the S P500, all with just a few clicks.

[Austin]

Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities. They're completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. So go to go to public.com rich habits and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com rich habits to earn your uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio away from whatever stinky broker you use right now and put it on.

[Robert]

Public Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the podcast Description all.

[Austin]

Right, Robert, so our first question comes from MC and this was an email again rich habits podcastmail.com MC says hi Austin and Rob Robert, I have learned so much from your podcast. It has genuinely changed my life. I was not financially literate even though I was well into my late 40s when I discovered your show. I had a lot of catching up to do. Your advice has completely shifted my trajectory and I can now see the decisions I make today will impact the rest of my life. Thank you so much. Mc, we're so glad you like the show. MC says you always say match beats Roth, beats taxable. However, I have a situation I'd love to know your thoughts on. My employer offers a few different levers. No match, but a 403B, a Roth 403B, a 457B and a Roth 457B. How did these fit into the framework you usually talk about when considering a traditional Roth or taxable brokerage account with low cost ETFs like the ones you guys always say. A little bit of background on me. I'm 48, I'm aiming to retire at 55, and most of my current assets are heavily in traditional IRAs. Thank you so much for any guidance you can offer. What a great question from mc. And again, thanks so much for listening into the show. Let's set the table Robert. When we say match beats Roth beats taxable, this is a sort of prioritization strategy when it comes to income that you are earning. So if you have the ability to earn a match on your 401k contributions, no matter what your 401k is invested into, even if it's target date funds, something that we aren't big fans of, getting a match on that contribution is essentially free money, a free 100% return. And those don't come around very often. So that's why we say if you have the ability to contribute to any retirement account with your employer and they offer any sort of match against that contribution, take it. Match comes first. So Match beats Roth. What is a Roth? We're talking about the Roth ira. The Roth IRA is the undisputed champion when it comes to building long term wealth, no matter what your income is. This allows you to invest $7,500 a year into index funds and ETFs and all the things we talk about and be tax free in retirement again. Free in retirement. Very, very cool. And finally, you've got taxable, right? So Match beats Roth, beats taxable. What is taxable? Taxable is your normal brokerage on public.com that you just open and put money into. There's no withdrawal penalties, but there's also no tax advantage strategy that comes with that like you would get with a Roth ira. So it's just like you put money in, you make money, you pay your taxes on the profits you make and you use the money any which way you want. No penalties, no restrictions, like go have some fun in the markets. So Match beats Roth, beats taxable. But MC says, hey, listen, I don't get a match, but I do have the opportunity to contribute to a 4.3B and a 457B, both traditional or Roth. Which one should I do? So, mc, a couple call outs for you here. You said you're 48 and you want to retire around 55. If you want to retire around 55 years old, that means you need to really be beefing up your taxable brokerage account. Because as you likely know, your traditional ir, which you've said, most of my current assets are heavily invested in my traditional ira that has a penalty attached to it if you take money out of your traditional IRA before the age of 59 and a half, which means for that four and a half year period of time between 55 and 59 and a half years old, you shouldn't touch your traditional IRA. That's a bad idea. And so if you want to retire at 55, you need to have money invested elsewhere. A little bit of a nest egg. We like to call this the bridge account. Bridge account is another term for taxable brokerage account on public, where you can have some index funds and ETFs and things like that building for you over the next, let's call it 7, 8, 9 years from 48 to 55, depending on if you actually retire at 55. And that then is what you live off of for that four year period of time before you can start tapping in to your traditional IRAs. So if I were in your situation, I would not worry about the 403B the 457B, like that stuff's just going to be there. I would continue to heavily max out those traditional IRAs and then any money I had leftover over that goes into this normal taxable brokerage account so that I can retire early.

[Robert]

I think that's a great breakdown. And so many people get this wrong. We see it all the time here with the questions and you know, in the rich habits network where people forget that the Roth component is fantastic, but if you don't have a match from your employer on some of these other variants, I just don't think it makes sense. But also in this instance for MC wanting to retire early, you're going to be broke and have all these penalties if you start taking away from the Roth component early because as Austin alluded to, you can't touch that money till 59 and a half. So I like the idea. Keep doing what you're doing with the Roth, get this traditional, this bridge account that we talk about, build up, make sure it's very hefty. That way you have control of when you retire and you don't have to worry about taking money from your retirement account to be able to do so. That's the only thing I would add here.

[Austin]

So Austin, are you saying that I should not be contributing to my retirement accounts? That sounds irresponsible. No. Like you could totally contribute to your retirement accounts if you can afford that and you can contribute to your taxable brokerage account. If you didn't have this desire to retire early, then yeah, go beef up all your retirement accounts because you're going to be able to touch them by the time you want to retire at 65 years old. So of course it's a great idea to have massive nest eggs. No matter the type of tax advantages or non tax advantages. You might different accounts. But if you are exclusively locked in on this idea of having an early retirement at 55, the only way you will be able to achieve that is by having money in a non retirement account that you can touch without penalty because you cannot pull money out of your traditional IRA at a 10% penalty at a 25% effective tax rate. Like all these things. No, you talk about 40% depending on the state you live in. That sounds like a terrible idea. Don't do that. So just, just be strategic with this. Mc. We love your enthusiasm and your ambition to want to retire early and we hope that this perspective was able to help a little bit. So our next question comes from Deborah S. Deborah says dear Austin and Robert I'm a recent listener of your amazing podcast. I accidentally found your show on my way to work and I'm currently playing catch up by listening to two to three episodes a day. Oh my gosh. Thanks Deborah. Deborah says, As a high school advanced Personal Finance teacher, I have shared many insights from your show with my students and we've even watched snippets of your YouTube podcast in class. What's up Deborah's class? If you're watching this episode, that's so cool. Listen to her. Deborah's a smart woman. Deborah says, I am riding to seek your perspective on a significant decision my brother and I are facing regarding our late father's home. Last October we inherited our childhood home in a medium income neighborhood. The house is approximately 2100 square feet with an in ground pool and is located just half a mile from the beach. It's currently valued at $550,000. While it could use some cosmetic updates, it require no major repairs. We're torn between selling the property or keeping it as a short term rental. As a realtor myself, I'm leaning toward keeping it as a revenue stream and a family gathering place. However, there are several factors to consider. The first one is financial impact. I have considered buying out my brother's share, but I'm hesitant to tie up my retirement funds as I plan to retire within the next two years. My brother is not in a position to buy my share. The next is our current housing situation. My husband and I currently live three and a half hours away in our dream home that we custom built three years ago. It carries a $4,000 monthly mortgage. Moving to this property is an option, but it would mean leaving the home we just settled into. The next is our family sentiment. Our children and grandchildren view this home as their home base, making the emotional attachment quite strong and finally the holding costs. The monthly cost to maintain the house, insurance, utilities, lawn service and pool cleaning is $2,000 a month month and my sister in law is currently living there to keep the property secure until we settle the estate. I'm 64, my husband is 70 and he's already retired. My father left my brother and I $150,000 each which we have invested into annuities. I also have an IRA with 62,000, a 401k with 44,000. My husband has an IRA with 80,000. We have approximately 15,000 in checking, 20,000 in a high yield money market account and a total net worth of one and a half million and we do not have any other loans or outstanding credit Card payments. Given your expertise, I would love to hear your thoughts on whether settling or converting the home into a rental property makes more sense in this market. Robert, I will let you kick this one off.

[Robert]

Yeah, this is a toughie because I get the sentiment part. You want to have that family home. You've got all the memories. You guys have been going there forever and all of that. But here's the problem that I have. I don't understand where the 1.5 total net worth is coming from based on the numbers provided. But let's skip over that for now and dig into the home. I think it's a tough situation because on one side, I'd love to see you buy out your brother, get him flush, you own the property, you can do your renovation right off into the sunset, and you have this beautiful home for the family. But the other side of this tells me you don't have enough in retirement to be able to tie up that much capital in this home, to be able to keep the family heritage. I kind of went through this myself a few years back. I had a home that I thought I would never, ever give up. But then I realized that the carry cost and the expense was greater than the joy that I would get from the home because I didn't use it that often. And I feel like that's what would happen here with you. So in my opinion, I think you have two options. You buy your brother out, maybe you can work it out where it's a smaller monthly payment over time, and then if you ever sell the home, he gets a bigger cash out. Or you just sell the home and you, you both take your money, you do your thing, you already have your dream home, and you host all of the events at the dream home that you just built. Because it sounds like to me, you're basing this decision on sentiment more than financial prowess and understanding what's best for you long term. And what I don't want to see happen is you keep this home, you buy your brother out, you've exhausted a lot of your retirement funds, and then it becomes a drain for you. Because, let's be honest, how many times a year are you. You actually going to enjoy the home like you once did when your parents were there? So that's my take on it. I would probably sell the home, move on. Because you can build new memories in the dream house you already have.

[Austin]

Yeah, and I want to caveat all that with. I could only imagine how hard it might be right now to weigh this option of keeping the home and not keeping in the home. My dad died in July. So again, I'm sorry, I'm just really sorry to hear about your father's passing. And I still have, have my late father's home and I'm going through the same situation where I can keep it as a rental property if I wanted to. The mortgage is very cheap. I got it at a 3% interest rate. I mean, it's, it's a very low cost thing to keep around. But for me, I think it's more of a closing the chapter of my life and not having to deal with tenants ruining a place that my, you know, I see as sacred because my dad used to live there. It's just, it's a very emotional thing. So only you know the answer to this, Deborah. But my answer, my advice to you is a lot. What Robert said, you have a dream home. Invite people to the dream home. You're three and a half hours from this home base. If your family doesn't want to drive three and a half hours to be in your dream home, like that says more about them than it does about you. Also, we're talking about short term rental. So you're going to put your, your, your family's home base on Airbnb or VRBO or one of these different short term rental websites to have literal, probably dozens, if not hundreds of strangers come in and out and disrespected on an annualized basis. Like just doesn't sound fun to me. I would rather say, listen, I'm going to honor my dad by making this home and fixing it up and doing what I can to ensure that I'm getting top dollar for it. And then I'm going to honor him by selling it to hopefully a new budding family that is going to, maybe they just had a child or maybe they've got a couple kids and they're looking to finally expand their family. And you feel good about who is now taking over this house and living where your late father used to live. I would sell the house, I would allow someone else to live there, build their own family inside of it, have that someone else's home base and their life and, and just honor your father that way. This also allows you to not have to tap into retirement. This allows you to stay in your dream home three and a half hours away. You don't have to be a long, a long distance landlord like this allows you to close this chapter of your life in a respectful manner. And it's something I'm working on doing myself. Yeah, that's my advice.

[Robert]

Yeah, I think that's a great takeaway because the grieving process, I think, sometimes prevents people from selling these assets. I went through it when my mother passed. I renovated her house. Then I turned it into a rental for two years. It was a mistake on my part because she too was right on the water, all of these things. And I wasn't ready to let it go. But then after the tenant kind of disrespected it, like you alluded to, Austin, I was like, you know what? I'm going to clean it up. I'm going to sell it and let another family make their own memories in it. And that worked out really well. So love your takeaway, Austin. And I think I agree. 100.

[Austin]

Deborah, we're rooting for you. We are heartbroken to hear about your father's past passing. But we hope that Robert and I's advice is, is helpful as you navigate a very difficult time in your life. So our next question comes from Joseph M. Oh, this is a good one, Robert. Joseph says, good morning, fellas. My name is Joe and I'm from South Texas. I've got a question for your Q and a episodes. I'm 42. I've retired from military service. Thank you for your service, Joe. And after taxes, I make $7,000 a month. I have $14,000 in a high yield savings account, which equates to three months of emergency fund. I've got two loans, one for my mortgage at 2,000amonth and panels at 700amonth. Both of these loans are under 3% interest. Wow, that's awesome, Joe. Joe says my wife works and her money is used for groceries and birthday and Christmas and stuff for the kids. Each kid has a nearly fully funded college fund. And after all the bills are paid and fund monies allocated for, we still have 2,200amonth left over. I do not need to buy these things, but I want to buy these things in the next few years. And so my question is, what is the best way to buy a hunting property? A used pickup truck and an RV that we can travel in. Thank you so much, Joe. Robert, what a cool place to be in, right? Retired from the military, put in his years, and now Joe just wants to go hunt in his truck and hang out in his in his travel rv. I love it. The American dream right here. Robert so what's, what's your advice for Joe?

[Robert]

Yeah, Joe's not gonna like this advice because here's the problem. If Joe were a single man, 42 years old, out there ready to rock and roll with the hunting property and the truck and the RV and all of that, that'd be great. But Joe's got to remember a few things. He's got kids to take care of, so there's that legacy. He has the wife to take care of and it's just one of those things. I think Joe needs to hold that dream a little bit longer, maybe 5, 6, 7, 8 years and get more money saved for retirement to really set himself up to where, God forbid, if something were to happen to Joe, the kids and are going to be okay. That's my take because right now, yes, it's a dream. He's ready to rock and roll. He wants to go hunting on the weekends, have this hunting property. All of that is great. But the problem is I don't think Joe has enough reserves in retirement and set aside for the future if something goes awry to be able to do that just yet. I'd maybe start looking for the property because you could get ahead of it because properties do appreciate date. So we could start looking there then maybe two, three years down the road. Okay, I've got the property secured now I'm going to get the truck and so on and so on. But I wouldn't only be saving and working towards that goal without at least having one and a half to $2 million set aside and growing for retirement already. So that's my take.

[Austin]

Joe is definitely not going to like that answer. Don't worry Joe, I'll cut you some slack. So first thing I'm going to do for you, Joe, is I'm going to encourage you to get a term life insurance policy. See, they might have something similar like that in the military just already, I genuinely don't know. But go to the link in the show notes shan.com rich habits. That's how I got my term life insurance policy. I've got a $2 million policy through Prudential, but Shiance is going to go shop you all the different types of term life insurance policies and they're going to get you a good rate. For me, I mean it's literally like 30 bucks a month. 40 bucks a month. It's very cheap. And Joe, it's going to allow you to what Robert said if anything does happen to you, go get a million dollar policy for, for 40 bucks a month. And like if anything happens, like your income is going to get replaced, you're going to be just fine. So do that. First you mentioned you've got 2,200 bucks a month left over after the fun money after, you know, some other things you had mentioned here. My question is, is that $2,200 left over after you max out the Roth IRA for you and your wife and after you guys are investing, let's call it, 15 to 20% of your take home pay every month? Because if you guys are genuinely investing 20% of your take home pay every single month by, you know, out the Roth IRAs, it goes to the public, you know, taxable bridge account. Maybe you've got some other cool stuff with your wife and how she's working, maybe she's got some 401k stuff there. Who knows? But if you guys are genuinely investing 20%, 15, 20% of your take home pay every single month, and you've got 2200 left over, I would be like, okay, cool, I'm gonna, I'm gonna set aside maybe a thousand a month or 1500amonth for the next 12 months to go buy a used pickup truck. That's $18,000, $20,000, boom. Now you got to use pickup truck, truck, RV. I mean, here's, here's the thing. The mistake you don't want to make, Joe, is by having too much of your net worth tied up in things that go down in value, right? Used pickup trucks go down in value. RVs go down in value. Hunting property that should go up in value. But I'm specifically talking about the RV and the pickup truck. If you're over here telling me that you want to go buy a 40,000 $20, 23 GMC Sierra pickup truck, like, that's a lot of money for you, Joe. Talking about, you know, 7ish thousand dollars a month here or, hey, I want to go buy a $80,000 RV that the family and I can go take cross country. Maybe you should rent it, Joe. Maybe you shouldn't put all that money in an RV that's going to lose 20% in value in the first three years. So that's kind of like the framework I would use is, is if 20% already get invested, like, yeah, go pay cash for a cool pickup truck, go pay cash for an rv. But just make sure that you have a fraction of your investment account, a fraction of your net worth in the used pickup truck in the RV compared to your total net worth. Because you want more things to be invested into things that go up in value than things that go down, right? So more money there than things that go down in value. Now, when it comes to the hunting property, Robert, what's, what's your take on, like, do you have any tips and tricks as it relates to buying land?

[Robert]

Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't know that I do. You know, it's just I always look at land when people are selling corn, horses, or trying to charge people all this money to teach them how to buy land. If no one has bought the land prior or it's been sitting forever and ever and never been developed, you know, that can be a good thing if you can buy it, right? But it can also be a bad thing because it generally means there's not a lot of capital appreciation. And a lot of times when people are thinking about buying this hunting property, they're going to put a cabin on there, they're going to be able to use it when they want to go hunting, they're going to put a couple deer stands in all of that. But they forget the fact that they have to insure the property. Now that people are going to be on it, they have to pay property taxes on the property. So that's another expense. So I don't really have any hacks. I just want people to understand we are here to help you create and build your dreams. So I don't want Joe to think I'm coming at him, but I also want to make sure Joe doesn't at. He's 42 now. At 62, go, oh, no, we ran out of money. We have this cool hunting property and all this stuff. Tough. But we don't have enough money for the kids and down the road and, you know, because people are going to live longer. Austin, we talk about this all the time. With modern medicine and technology, people are going to live longer. And I want people to better prepare for the future of living longer, but also have fun along the way. So I don't really have a hack. I don't know if that helped much, but I'm trying to just get Joe in the right mindset to live the dreams. But prepare for the future, I guess, is my take.

[Austin]

No, I think it helps a lot because Joe, whenever you're sort of weighing your options here with the hunting property, you have to understand the totality of ownership. Right. I think that was Robert's takeaway, which is like, it's not just about financing this. This hunting property and being able to enjoy it, but it's also the extra 30 $900 a year of expenses that you weren't accounting for or, I don't know, 9,000 year, like, whatever it turns into. I genuinely don't know. I would treat this hunting property as the same. Like we actually had a question. I think it was recently, recently, maybe it's on Monday's episode, but someone had a question about like how do I think about a vacation or a second home? Right? How do I think about one of those like vacation properties, a beachfront condo, whatever. And Robert and I's answer to that was if you can afford the monthly mortgage payment while Also simultaneously investing 15 to 20% of your take home pay, then like go get it. You're rich. Congrats. Right? So Joe, it's the same thing for you if you can afford to finance a hunting property while it not negatively impacting your retirement investing over the long term because you're still investing 15 to 20% of your take home pay. Congrats, you're rich. You saved enough money for a big down payment or you got your income up or your wife is just doing like whatever. That's the framework I would use is I would, I would make sure that I could do it not at the expense of my retirement investing.

[Robert]

I want to click back one more time for Joe and anyone else thinking about something like this, this. You could also consider going in on a property with two other couples. I'm sure you have hunting buddies. Maybe you go to them. Maybe the property's $80,000 for 15 acres and some woods on a creek somewhere. That sounds amazing. Maybe you go in on the property and then you split up the total fees and the total cost of building out the property and the infrastructure you need. That's another option you can do. You know, obviously have a lawyer with a good contract of states of who owns what and, and how it works. But you could almost time share where it lowers your overall cost down to have the property while still enjoying it with friends. So that's another, another option that I would look at.

[Austin]

That's great. I didn't even think about that. There we go. Now before we jump to our next question, quick reminder. Generated assets, really cool new product feature on public.com you can type in just like go to chat GPT or Gemini or Grok or whatever. Type in, I want to invest in companies that had super bowl commercials in 2026. Boom. It would go and find all the companies that ran super bowl commercials this year and it would put money into a portfolio that you can invest in them. Like that's how cool it is, how easily it works. Any idea you have, you can type it in. It'll figure out how to invest in that and you're off to the races. So please go to public.com rich habits, transfer your portfolio over, get that uncapped 1% bonus. But while you're in there, go create a generated asset strategy where you can use AI to build an investing strategy that is completely customizable and is entirely based on your thesis, not someone else's. Public.com rich habits or use the link in the show notes below. Our next question comes from Vonna A Vonna says Good afternoon gentlemen. I'm writing this after listening to episode 143. I make about $54,000 a year in upstate New York at 23 years old. I started this year by saving 15 of my income along with additional leftover income because I have a goal of saving $20,000. I'm a little late to the wealth building game, but I'm ready to go all in. Vonna, you are not late. You are 23. You are very early. Actually, Vonna says, I've already read and finished a couple books that have helped me overcome certain bad money mindsets and habits. I don't have any recurring payments besides rent and student loan payments and groceries of course. So here's my question. I have a decent credit score, but it was hit because of my first student loan payments. I've got about $10,000 of student loans. I don't have any credit builders besides a mattress payment that's almost fully paid off because I've been working on that for a while now. Would it be worth getting a secured credit card to build my credit or should I get an unsecured credit card? How do I go about building credit in a responsible manner or should I just focus on building wealth and investing instead? Robert, you want to kick this one off?

[Robert]

Yes, I love this question and I think you should do both because we want to make sure you're always investing, especially because you don't have a lot of outstanding consumers debt. For those of you that have credit card debt, you can't out invest high interest debt. So don't try to invest alongside paying 2532% on credit cards. Pay them off first. But in this instance I would go get the secured credit card, go take them 500 or $1,000. Get the secured credit card. That way you're up and running and you can use that credit card for some some smaller things and pay it off every month to build the credit score. But back up. But I would also keep investing. So you're building towards your future and I want to really click back on this. You feel behind at 23 years old. You are so ahead of the curve, it's incredible. We talk to people every day that are 30, 35, 40, 45 years old, that aren't even where you're at, because you've got your mindset already trained like an investor and not a consumer at 23 years old. Old. And that is the biggest hurdle most people have to go through. So if you're out there listening to this episode or watching this episode right now and you're 21 to 35 years old, please follow this, because you have to start setting aside the money and building your portfolios early so you can let compound interest work its magic over time.

[Austin]

I think it's a great synopsis. Yeah, you're doing a great job. At 23 years old, the first credit card I ever got was a secured credit card. All my friends, friends, when they were 18, 19, 20, 21 in college, they all went and got, like, the Amazon student card. They got the Discover it 5% cash back card. And I applied for all of them just like everyone else, but I was always denied for some reason. And it made me so upset because all my friends had credit cards and I didn't. And I felt like I was left out of the cool club. So I had to go to my local bank of Tennessee branch in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the time. And I walked in, I said, hey, can I please have a secured credit card? It's just so we're on the same page. What that means is, is you are securing the credit card by giving them cash, and then you're borrowing against that cash. So they said, sure, give us $300 Austin in cash, and then we will let you have a $300 limit on this credit card. So what I did is I gave him $300 cash. They opened it up, and I put one tank of gas on it every single month, and then I paid it off every single month. And I did that for about 18 months. After that period of time, I had a credit score somewhere in maybe the mid to high 600s, maybe low 700s. I don't genuinely don't remember, but it was enough where I can go to Discover, and I got that 5% cash back card, and then I still have that Discover card today. And then I kept, you know, doing the Discover. Just a tank of gas, a Netflix subscription here, like, whatever. Y' all have to know that there's, like, a specific sort of. And we have a whole episode on this. So please go find the episode in our catalog. It's slipping my brain at the moment. But what we do in the episode is we break down for you the difference between the balance due date, the statement date, the, you know, when the cycle ends. There's a lot of kind of confusing jargon as it relates to credit cards. Go listen to that episode. The long story short, what you have to do here, Vonna A is just make sure that when you have the secured credit card, you put something very small, less than 10% of total utilization on the card. Call it a Netflix subscription of 27 bucks a month. Let the cycle end, let that $27 borrowing get posted to the credit bureaus and then pay it off before the due date by doing. You're showing the credit bureaus that you can borrow money during the cycle. The credit bureaus now know, because it was posted to them that you borrowed this money and then you paid it off before it was due. Do that for two years and I'll be very surprised if your credit doesn't grow by 50 points, 100 points, 150 points, whatever. But that's, that's my playbook. For you to grow credit at a young age. I think it's exactly what I did.

[Robert]

Love it, love it, love it. Yeah, I think we both had the Discover it covered card. I know I had it a long, long time ago, but I had to go the route early on as well of the guaranteed credit card. And it was a godsend in helping me build credit early on. So don't sleep on that strategy.

[Austin]

So our next question comes from Amanda S. Amanda says good morning Austin and Robert. I'm a long time listener to the podcast and would love to get your take on my situation. My husband and I are 27 and we're about to receive $44,000 in proceeds proceeds from a house sale and will now have $3,500 excess per month to put into savings and investments. We are both state employees with true pension plans and have a combined $160,000 in pre tax income and 75,000 between current and prior employer retirement accounts. We paid off the last of our high interest debt recently, which means the debt we have now is our mortgage with the VA at 5.6%, a $10,000 loan at 0% interest from my father in law and $13,000 of student loans with variable interest rates. From the proceeds of this home sale we're planning to pay back. My father in law put 15,000 in our high yield savings. So we have four months of an emergency fund and then put the other $19,000 to work somehow some way we're looking for advice on where to put the remaining funds from our home sale and how to allocate that 19,000. I'm hesitant to pay off the student loans as oldest lines of credit and have such low interest rates here at only 3 and a half to 4 and a half percent depending on the loan. And the monthly payment at only 170is very manageable. Four months of emergency funds is a comfortable number for us, though I do wonder if we should increase it to six months. Beyond that, we genuinely don't know what to do. How would you recommend allocating both the $19,000 from the home sale and this additional 3,500amonth that we're about to come into? Robert, you want to kick this, this one off?

[Robert]

Yes, this one is quite complex, but I think we can break it down and give them some real insight. First and foremost, I agree I would not pay off the student loans. You're in a really good position as far as the interest rates go. So I would look more towards getting those Roth IRAs maxed out for the year first and foremost to get that up and running. Because you want to make sure every year, especially your age of 27 years old old, that you're maxing out those Roth IRAs. So that's where I would start first and foremost. Then on top of that, I would really consider, because I think if I remember your 401k is no match. So I would really consider building up the traditional brokerage account. That way you have autonomy and you can really do all the right things with that money. So that's where I would start to go with the $3,500 additional income you have per month, month to get that traditional brokerage account really moving in the right direction. But keep in mind, get the Roth done first. That's going to be the important long term strategy towards retirement. But then I would really focus on the traditional brokerage account as well and keep, in my opinion, keep the student loans, keep paying that small payment because with that interest rates, those blended rates being so low, you're going to make more money in the market pockets and getting these ETFs and index funds we talk about because we always say you want the positive arbitrage of your money going into your pocket, not elsewhere. And with those being low interest loans for your student loans, I would stick with investing and pay the minimums on those.

[Austin]

I think it's great advice. And when it comes to the student loans, I'm just going to give the same advice I always Give, which is pay them off when you have an equivalent amount of money invested elsewhere. Right. So like don't just go pay off your student loans aggressively without already having having the same amount or more invested in the markets. You've only got $13,000 of student loans. So like, yeah, if you want to keep them around because it's only 170 bucks a month, not mad at that at all. If you want to pay it off, like, cool, you're going to have that much invested anyway. Like, you're going to be fine regardless. Like you paying off your student loans, you're keeping them around is not going to change your wealth building trajectory by any stretch of the imagination. If I were in your shoes, I would not increase the emergency fund. I think four months is fine. I would definitely max out the Roth ira. Right. I would just do what we were talking about before. Match be Roth beats taxable. So if you get a match, rock and roll. If you don't get a match, skip to the Roth IRA. You can literally max out both your Roth IRA at 7500 for 2026 and your husband's at 7500 and about four and a half months worth of excess money here at $3500 a month. So rock and roll on that. Super easy. And now you've got all this extra money. Now you've got 3,500amonth to play with. Yeah, I probably would start beefing up that taxable brokerage account. I would probably start really considering beefing up some of these retirement accounts like the 4,457B plan that you mentioned before. But I do it in that manner. Match beats Roth beats taxable. So if you don't get a match, max out that Roth. And then if you have autonomy, that's the thing that's so important here. If you have Autonomy over your 457B retirement account, you're able to go in there and invest into the S&P 500, invest into the NASDAQ, invest into the Dow Jones or whatever index funds and ETFs tickle your fancy as it relates to the S and P and the NASDAQ and American capitalism, then that, that's important. Yeah. I mean tax advantage, we love that. So go in there and invest, get aggressive, get excited. You're so young, you've got literal four decades of investing ahead of you before you have to think about retirement. So I would do those things. But if you do not have autonomy and you're like, listen, they put us in these Weird small cap funds or these weird bonds, and they put us in a bunch of, you know, target date funds that have me allocated to some random stuff I've never heard of. Then maybe to your point, it would be a better idea to really beef up your taxable brokerage account on public.com because you have autonomy over how that money is invested. You can get it invested into the S and P, the NASDAQ and things we just mentioned. That's what I would do. And then the last thing here, I didn't see anything about, like you mentioned, you. You're getting 44,000 in proceeds from a house sale. Does that mean you guys are renting right now? And if you are, that's great. You know, it's cheaper right now to rent in the United States than it is to own, and we love that. That. But if you are renting and you plan to own a home one day, maybe some of this, you know, 3500amonth could be used for a down payment in the future, right? Maybe you set aside 1200 bucks or 1500 bucks a month from this, and you've got 18,000 a year now. That's kind of snowballing on top of itself. Four or five years in the future, you've got 100 grand of a down payment. You guys are in your early 30s, and you're ready to go buy that by then, probably $600,000 house or $700,000 house, wherever you guys live there, there, and, you know, kind of play that one by year. But those are just kind of where my head goes.

[Robert]

Yeah, I think that's a great breakdown and, you know, a good addition to what I put out there. So I hope this helps because they're in a great spot and we want to see them thrive in the future.

[Austin]

So our last question comes from ajj.ajj on Instagram. What's up, AJ? AJ says hi. Austin. Robert. I've been a listener of your podcast for a year now. You guys are awesome, and I'm truly grateful for all you guys do. I've got one question. Which AI ETFs or stocks would you recommend to buy at this point, so late stage in what a lot of people are calling an AI bubble? That's a really good question. Well, first off, aj, if you are locked in on this type of stuff, tune into our Friday episodes. I know we've been kind of all over the place with the travel, and we had an interview with Peter Tuckman and stuff, but we'll be back on those Friday episodes. So come back tomorrow for the Rich Habits Radar. We'll be talking about headlines and I'll things related to the markets and stuff or join the Rich Habits Network. We have these two hour weekly live streams where we do the deep dive market analysis every single week. And we've been talking about this stuff for gosh, 6, 9, 12 months now. I'm looking at my own portfolio right now. Robert, what would I be buying right now? Oh, no brainer. I'm buying Amazon. Actually I just bought 100 shares of Amazon, so about $20,000 worth after their earnings. I thought they just got brutally pulled down here at 200 bucks a share. I'm buying Amazon for what the company is going to be in 2030. Between the, the types of margin expansion they can get on their international E comm business, the margin expansion they can get on their domestic E com business, the re acceleration of AWS, the 20% growth of their advertising business. Like I have a deep understanding of this business. Plus think about what's going on with Anthropic's IPO. Think about the remaining performance obligation that increased by 40%. Their backlog is nearly $300 billion. Now Andy Jassy is saying that as soon as they build their AWS datase centers, like they sell the capacity out immediately. They're investing 200 billion in data centers in 2026, which is why the stock went down. Investors are like, oh, give us that money. They're like, nah, psych. We're actually going to go use it to invest in data centers, which I think's a fine use of the money. So I think Amazon, at these prices, could it go down? Sure. It's a speculative bet on a single stock, who knows where it's going to go. But if you Zoom out in five years from now and their operating cash flow is 300, 300 and 50, $400 billion a year by 2030 and you slap a 18, 20, 22x multiple on that. Like they historically trade at from operating cash flow. We're talking about a 600, $700 per share Amazon that I bought at 200 a share. So long term outlook, I like Amazon. That's my buy, that's my, it's my AI stock play for the next three, four, five years here. Robert, what about you? What is a, an AI ETF or stock that you're excited, excited about this late stage in the sort of AI bubble?

[Robert]

Yeah, I love the framework of the question and I think Amazon is a big, big winner. So I'm going to Go a little wider and I'm going to cover a little bit more here. But I still like at this stage. AIQ I think is still a buy for me. I'm still adding every month to aiq. There's a lot of coverage there. I still like URA for the uranium plate play because of where we're going with nuclear and small nuclear reactors. I'm still a buyer of Palantir and Micron. I think those are good long term plays along with amd. But also I have to put a little call out in there for Constellation Energy Group. I think that's a really good one. Cameco Corporation, which is ccj is also another energy player that I think long term is a good one. Those are some of my favorite favorites just because I think they cover a lot of ground moving forward. But also Austin, I think you mentioned and I really like it last week on an episode or maybe it was the live xle and I think that's another good play that you called out in that energy part of this question. So those would be my plays. Nothing new, nothing crazy, nothing fancy. I don't have any big call outs. I'm just adding money to the things that I believe in like Austin does with Amazon for five, ten years down the road.

[Austin]

There we go everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, Question and Answer Edition. We Robert, I mean literally I'm going to plug the Rich Habits Network again. We have over 920 people now inside the Rich Habits Network. We started this community in August of 2024 and now 18 months later we have nearly 1,000 people that come and they, they hang out, they ask us questions in the DMs. We've got that that are live with us on these zoom calls every Tuesday night. They're saying hey, what do you think about this? Or hey I just bought this or you know, whatever's going on. And you get to invest alongside Robert and I into venture deals and real estate deals and pre IPO. I mean we offered SpaceX three separate times inside of the Rich Habits Network as low as a 200 something billion dollars valuation. Long story short, if you are someone who's ready to take their, their investing and their personal finance finances seriously in 2026, consider joining the Rich Habits Network. There's gonna be a link in the show notes below or just Google Rich Habits Network. It's, it's awesome. We really, really like it. Yeah, over 920 people are now inside of it. It's really humbling to see it grow so much. And we can't wait until there's thousands more over the next several years. Like we're, we're not going anywhere, Robert. We're playing this game and we're having some fun. And so everyone, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, Question and Answer Edition. If you learned something in this episode, please consider leaving us a five star review review, sharing the episode with a friend, voting in the poll below here on Spotify, or leaving us a comment on Spotify, because we always get back to your comments. And of course, we will see you tomorrow in our new Friday episode, the Rich Habits Radar.

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