Ages 18–50: What Should You Do with Your Money?

Welcome to "The Informed Investor", where we break down the latest financial headlines, bringing in research and insights to help you separate the news from the noise. Welcome to "The Informed Investor." Today we are coming from our Charlotte, North Carolina office where we are hosting an educational bit for financial advisors. Now, we're very fortunate that we have two of those advisors attending the show here today. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna dive into sort of the major stages when it comes to our financial journeys. So, we're gonna break it up into different age groups. We're gonna look at 18 to 30 years old in the sense of what do I absolutely have to get right and what do I wanna make sure I avoid in terms of mistakes? We're gonna take that same approach to ages 30 to 50. And then, we're gonna look at 50 to 65 and 65 plus. So, we're gonna break the show up into two parts. Part 1, we're gonna get up to 50 years old. So with that, let's get started here. And gentlemen, I really appreciate you joining "The Informed Investor." Great to have you here. Great to be here. All right, so a couple introductions here. Mike, I'll start with you. Mike Mers coming from Boise, Idaho. Your firm is Aspen Capital Management. Tim Slattery coming from Tampa Florida Heritage Investment Group. So, great to have you here. And I just have to say, Mike. Boise, Idaho, that's where I grew up. So, two just ardent Boise State fans. Tim, you're just a loyal University of Florida fan. And this is probably the first time in your life you've been outnumbered by two Boise State fans. That's true. And it's been a rough few weeks to be a Gator fan, but we're hanging in there. Yeah, but still college football's here. Absolutely. Which is always great. Tim, let's start with you. A little bit of background about your career and a little bit about Heritage. So, I've been with Heritage since 19, I'm sorry, since 2002. I'm the Chief Investment Officer there. Firm's been in existence for 31 years actually with one exception. All the six partners are friends from high school. So, we go way back. It's very much a family business. It's a, we say it's, we've extended the family to include some people from outside, but it's a very comfortable working environment with a lot of people that have known and trusted each other for a long time. And I think we convey that kind of feeling to our clients as well, which is a big part of, I think a big contributor to the success we've had. And it's a super pleasant place to work. And very close knit. Absolutely. Wonderful people. Absolutely. Mike, let's hear a little bit about Aspen and your background. So, I started the firm 23 years ago in Boise. My background came outta school, went into the technology industry. From there, went into venture capital, but really always had a passion for serving families and individuals as opposed to institutional money. And started the firm 23 years ago. We built a firm of wonderful people that love serving clients. We work with families in about 32 states. About half of those are in Idaho. About half of those are outside of the state. And we love to work with people on sort of deep financial planning, as well as manage their portfolios. And we are blessed to work with great firms like both of yours. So, thanks for coming on the show here today. I think we've worked together, Tim, probably over 20 years. Dimensional have worked with your firm. And Mike, we're right about 20 years as well. Right out 20 years. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, it's been a great couple decades. A lot of fun. Let's get into it here. And what I like to do on the show here, we'd like to read a couple headlines. So, I'm gonna start with some headlines, but let's start with that first age group. Sort of that 18 to 30 as we think about kinda young adults, they're getting into their working careers, thinking about how do I save my money, budget, all that goes in that age group. So, let me start with a couple headlines here and then I'll get your thoughts. Tim, I'll start with you. Okay. Coming up these headlines here. The first one, "Why Starting Retirement Investments in Your 20s Could Change Your Life." Second one, "Gen Z's No. 1 Investing Choice is Crypto: There's a Lot of Risk in That." Reaction first. Okay. To the headlines. And then we'll get into the do's and don'ts in that life stage. Yeah, so with the headline, the first headline you read, I think is, it's good advice, right? I would lead with that for someone of that age group talking about getting started with investing early for your, say your first job out of college or you know, when you're in your young 20s. Sometimes when I talk to young people like that, they think it's, "Well, you know, money's tight. I don't have a lot of extra cash flow." But to whatever extent you can, you really should be thinking about making contributions to, if you are, if you have a 401 plan offering at your employer, there's two sources of free money there. You've got either a tax deduction if you're in a regular 401 plan, free money from the government, or you've got tax free growth if you're in a Roth 401 plan. That's free money on the table, take it. And then in most cases, you've got matching from your employer. Yeah. Which is another source of free money. You really should be grabbing that. And even if you can just put in up to the maximum of the match that your employer's gonna give you, we really strongly encourage anyone to do that to the greatest extent possible. The power of compounding from that, when you look at the numbers, if you start when you're 22 or you're 23 and you're looking at retirement at 65 or older, the, if you look at the real returns of compounding over, let's say, a 40-year or 45-year working life, the numbers are staggering. And I've never seen anyone, if you ask the question, "What does $10,000 save today at an 8% return? What's that worth in 40 years in or a 5% real return?" I've never seen anyone overestimate that number, right? Yeah. For sure. The number is always staggering. Yeah. And the power of those years is really indescribable. So yes, the earlier you start, the better. Now, with the second headline with crypto. That's the shiny new object, right? And look, it's hard to argue against that because it's done well, and as humans we like to chase the shiny object. And I'm not gonna tell anyone absolutely don't do it, but understand the risks involved. I think very few people actually understand it. I think when people jump into something like crypto, they're thinking of returns and not risk. And I would just say be educated on it. And if you are gonna own anything in crypto, make sure it's a small, manageable portion of your portfolio and don't invest anything you can't afford to lose. I'll go back to your comment. It's done well, I'll say it's done well recently. Yes. It's done well a lot of times and it's done really poorly a lot of times. Yeah. Specifically around Bitcoin. Right. So, just know those massive swings you get in any kind of a cryptocurrency. Right. Now, what would you add or what are your reactions to some of the comments there? Well, my first reaction is, I just couldn't agree more with the comments on compounding. You know, in that 18 to to 30-year-old age group, if you don't really understand the power of compounding and the power of starting early, do yourself one favor out of this. You know, push pause on this and go do some work and really understand compounding because if you can start and be disciplined in that 18 to 25-year-old age group, it'll change your life. I mean, it will really change your life going forward. The only other thing I'd add to that is just the power of the Roth IRA for these young people, right? Their ability to get money in that's gonna grow tax-free for decades. Not tax-deferred, but tax-free. The combination of starting early, being disciplined, and leveraging whether it be a Roth IRA or a Roth 401 if they've got an employer plan that offers the Roth option, which almost all of them do now, it's an absolute life-changing decision if you can get people to start right out of high school or college. Yeah, I'm gonna come back to some of the Roth and the 401 stuff, but I wanna go back to compounding. For me, I think there's a theme out there that it's been called, compounding has been called the "Eighth Wonder of the World", right? It's like magic. And so, you mentioned some numbers. I actually have some numbers here. And this is stuff I used to go over with my kids and I still got the original notes on here from when I used to meet with our kids and all their friends. And then their parents started coming to some of these conversations. But here's just a couple numbers I ran on just the power of compounding just to get it out there. And I remember my dad had something he showed me when I was in high school following this framework, and it just stuck with me the years. And I think it's pretty a common way to look at this. But Tim, you've used a couple different numbers here. I'm using here, let's just say, you saved a thousand dollars a year starting your career and I'm using a 10% annualized return. Just a historical return of the market over that time period. So, if you saved a thousand dollars for your first 10 years and then didn't save again after that, at the end of 40 years, that would've turned into $305,000. So, it would've turned into $306,000. If you say, "You know what? I haven't gotten my savings habit yet." I don't save my first 10 years, but I started saving a thousand dollars from every year from age 11 to 40, that would've turned into only $181,000. And so, it just shows how incredibly important it's like, that that magic getting the money in right outta the gate. Yeah. Like, you guys were just talking about there. Now, let's do another one here. And this is where I think it really struck home, at least with my kids and their friends. If you saved a thousand dollars every year, but you increased it by 10% every year. So, first year was a thousand bucks, next year was 1,100 and then 1,200, it just grows over time. It would be worth 1.8 million at the end of that 40 years. So, I mean, that's the impact here we're talking about compounding. Yeah. You just gotta start early and you're getting money in there, letting the market do its thing. All right, now, let's go back to the ways you do that and go back to the 401. So you, Tim, you're talking about how important it is to just get money in there. Start at least get the match too on what you're doing there. How do you guys think about the priority of saving 'em? By that I mean, let's just say somebody's got a budget, they've dedicated a certain amount to saving. Where do you start first? Do you start with a 401? Then, do you do a Roth IRA? Or do you try to build the Roth into the 401? I think that's where you're going, Mike. So, maybe just expand on that a little bit. Well. Which one do you start with? I'll just echo what Tim said at the beginning. You've gotta start with the free money, right? That matches that free money. So, if you've got an employer retirement plan that's gonna give you any type of a match, that's where you absolutely have to start because you're getting that matching, that free money. So, you've gotta absolutely start there. And certainly our advice would be to the extent that you can afford it. And even even if you've gotta tighten the belt a little bit to afford it, you wanna start by completing that match, right? Contributing whatever you've gotta contribute to get that full match. Because for a lot of employers now today, you might be doubling your money right out of the chute with your contribution plus the employer match. So, now your $1,000 contribution gets doubled or maybe at least a 50% with a, you know, with an employer match and you're off and running. So, that's certainly where I would start. Right? Just get that match. With the tax benefits, it's free money on top of free money. It's sitting there on the table. You do whatever you can to grab it. Yeah. And so, you're talking about a Roth. The value of the Roth is you're funding that with after tax dollars. Well, but it works with a pre-tax 401 as well. It's gonna depend on what tax bracket you're in. And if so, you know, there's not a lot of 24-year-olds that are in the highest tax bracket. But you know, if you are in a higher tax bracket, you wanna consider taking that tax deduction from a regular 401 contribution right from the start. And the answer to that is with most financial questions, you know, it depends. Depends on your individual situation. But whether it's a Roth 401 or a regular 401, you wanna put as much as you absolutely prioritize that above all else. You know, one of the questions we got from our kids as they graduated and got their jobs is, and we talked to 'em about, okay, you gotta have some emergency- Yeah. Yeah. Savings as well. And they're like, "Well, how much and how long?" So, Tim, how do you think about that part? That is maybe the most difficult question that I get, not just from people in that age group, but across all age groups. How much cash should I have on hand? And you know, the simple flippant answer is up to the point where you can sleep at night, and then no more than that, right? But it's hard to say from person to person what that comfort level is. I would say for someone that's a recent graduate, college graduate that doesn't have a lot of safety assets aside? Three to six months minimum is what we typically say you should have. Because if you do lose your job, if circumstances change, if you get a better job and you have to move, but there's cost to that, you wanna have that emergency fund ready and I would say three to six months as a minimum. And make that your top first priority. Right? You gotta build that out. Yeah. Like, right outta the gate. That's right. Great. Okay. That's right. Yeah. Anything you'd add to that? No. That part of it? No. Uh-huh. All right. So, those are some of the must dos, right? Save early, get it into your 401, make sure you're getting the maximum amount of match on that 'cause you talk about free money, like, people say, "Well, it's free, but there's always a cost to something." But this truly is free. It's free. It's free. It's truly free. It is free. And then, the growth of that tax. Yeah, I wasn't sure you where you were going with that, but no, there isn't a cost to it. It's free. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's talk about some of the don't dos. Like, just don't do these things when you're a young adult. What comes to mind? What have you seen where you just like, no go. Credit card debt. Yeah. So, do not run up your credit cards. Read the fine print, the interest rates are egregious. And it's, you know, it's, you're young, you got your first credit card and you have a job. And your stereo. You just, right. And so, that can get you, so the power of compounding on your 401 is magic. And the power of compounding on your credit card debt is also magic. It's magic at a higher rate and it's working against you and it's magical for a credit card company. You absolutely do not wanna put yourself in that situation. And higher rate. I mean, it's often 17, 18% or more. Absolutely. Right. That's what you're talking about. And that used to be illegal. But it's not anymore. And yeah. That can really get you in a lot of trouble really fast. Then, you end up with credit issues and that will follow you around for a while. All right. Yeah, Mark, that's the logical one for sure, is just any consumer debt, avoiding that at all costs. Another one that actually some of the young members of my team told me that are not far out of college said, "Man, you gotta avoid the college classmate." They got a job working for an insurance company, right? And they're out there and they're calling all their friends that they went to school with trying to sell 'em insurance-related products that they really don't need, that tend to be really expensive littered with lots of fees and expenses and whatnot. So, I would say be wary of your friend that went to work for a financial services company or an insurance company that needs to hit a quota and sell some products. Yeah, and there's certainly a role for insurance and we'll come to where that- Absolutely. Comes into play in the right stages. Yeah. Absolutely. My definitely don't do is do not go buy a fancy car. Yes. Right. Coming right outta university. And you see these kids, they go, "I finally got some money. I've got an income. I go get a fancy car." And then, like they need a new tire. Yeah. And they're like, "Well, I can't afford. The tire's way too expensive." Ditto. Yeah. You gotta think about that. Do you know how much brakes cost? Actually, you know what, Mark? I would actually extend that to just any depreciating asset. Right? Could be a car, could be, it could be a boat, it could be anything that depreciates in value in that time window that we're talking about. Outside of covering your living expenses, right? Building your safety bucket. And then getting, going on long-term savings. You know, most people aren't gonna have much left over, but the worst thing you can do is buy a depreciating asset like a fancy car. Yeah. Yep. Well, I like the order there. Pay your basic needs and then your prioritized saving. Pay your future self. Pay your future self. I've heard you said that before. Yep, yep. Yep. All right. The other thing here we talk a lot about is like, the daily trip to Starbucks. You know, I'm just gonna go drop five bucks on a coffee or something like that. So, I've got some numbers here as well. All right, so here's the assumption I made is, let's just say that you start going to Starbucks once a week. And I used four bucks in my example. It's probably a little low. But let's just say, once a week you go buy a Starbucks. And that comes outta your savings, right? So, you're saving less. Yeah. So four, one time a week, four bucks. And I mentioned earlier, if you save a thousand dollars a year for 40 years and you increase it 10%, that's 1.8 million. If you go buy that Starbucks drink for four bucks. I shouldn't just call it Starbucks. It could be anything. Yeah. Yeah. Right? You know, whatever. There's a lot of 'em. Yogurt, coffee. I haven't found any coffee shop that discriminates on price. Yeah. Yeah, so... All right, so let's just say we do that once a week and it's four bucks. That 1.8 million goes down to 1.4 million. I mean, it's just math. That's over a 40 year compound. Yeah. You go back to the compounding, right? Yeah. Wow. And that's once a week. It's massive. That's once a week. I was gonna say, who do you know that buys coffee one time a week? It's 4, 5 times a week. Yeah. Yeah. And that much worse, right? That it's... Yeah, so yeah, that was one of the things I had thought of, is that daily habit of Starbucks. And don't play the lottery. I mean, that's just... that's tax on people that are bad at math, right? Don't play the lottery tickets. Right. I remember, I was just going through this with my daughter and her friends and I mentioned the four bucks and they started laughing. Like, what's so funny? "Like, Mr. Gochnour, we could buy yogurt but it's $9." Yeah. I'm like, "Oh geez." Okay. I go, "Who's paying for that?" But they were like, "You are." All right, so that's the 18 to 30 age group. All right, any last thoughts on that one as we ramp it up here a little bit? I think we covered it. Yeah. Okay. Let's get into, and we're using these, so broad bucket of ages, you know? Like, 30 to 50. There's nothing magic about those ages, it's more of a life stage, but yeah. Hey, let's go back. Let's go back to 18 to 30. The one thing we didn't talk about is, okay, so how are you gonna invest your money in that time? That's a good point, yeah. In that season of life, right? Yeah. So, the only thing I would add to that early stage of life is you want to be pretty aggressive, right? With your investments. Now, you wanna be really broadly diversified. You wanna be really low cost. So, do this in an intelligent way, but we wanna make sure that we're really, you know, trying to maximize our long-term returns. So, when we get that money into our 401 or our Roth IRA, we wanna make sure we're really intelligent about getting access to the global equity markets in a really broadly diversified low-cost way. Because the only way that compounding works in our favor over the long term is if we're getting really good very long term multi-decade returns. Well, when you say you wanna get aggressive. What do you mean by the aggressive part? Well, what I mean by aggressive is you know, for me, for my kids in that, you know, 18 to 30-year-old window for retirement funds that they can't touch for multiple decades? I don't really want 'em owning bonds, right? I want 'em owning higher risk, higher expected return assets, like global equities. So, you know, for me with my kids, it's, hey, let's go buy a really broadly diversified low-cost global equity fund. We're not worried about volatility. This is money that's in retirement accounts that we can't touch for decades. So, let's not worry about volatility. Let's just try to maximize our long-term returns. So, 100% equity? 100% stocks is what you're- 100% stocks. Yep. Completely agree. And for some people it's really easy. They've, in a retirement plan especially, they've got a target dated fund, right? That's gonna kinda get 'em that diversification and whatnot for 'em. And I would say just pick that furthest target date, that furthest date out into the future. That's gonna kinda maximize the risk/return of that portfolio and have you in something that's a hundred percent global equities. Yeah, I like your comment. Globally diversified, very cost effective. And I would just say disciplined on that too. Don't worry about the headlines. Yeah. Don't worry about, like you said, the volatility. Yeah. Prices going up and down. Just block it outta your mind and just let markets work, get your compounding. And don't gamify your investments. I'm seeing friends of my daughter, high school kids on their phones trading options and futures. And you know, perhaps that's a topic for another episode. We can get into that. But that's exciting but probably not a great idea from an investment standpoint. So, we try to stay away- Boy, you guys are advanced From that. In Florida. We don't do those things in Idaho. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be surprised. "Look Mr. Slattery, I'm trading options." Like, wow. Yeah, wow, that's- Yeah. Get that off your phone. Yeah. Delete that out. Yes. All right. Going into the next phase of life here. The next stage is sort of this eight. So, the next stage of 30 to 50. You know, you start thinking about things like having a family, maybe getting married, having a family, home, stuff like that. So, what are the things we have to get right in that bucket? So, I would say learn about home buying when you're in that stage of life. I think that that's when you are, you're probably getting to the point where you're gonna settle down, you're gonna have a family. I think you need to learn about what it means to own a home. It's not just throwing the money in and wind it up and let it go. You've gotta learn about taxes, you've gotta learn about insurance, you gotta learn about mortgages and all the responsibilities that come along with that. So, I mean, that's at top of mind, I think, for a lot of folks in that stage. And also let's learn about saving for college. Again, in that stage of life, a lot of, some use, a lot of folks might have kids prior to that. I think our generation waited a little bit longer. I think of post 30 is when most of my cohort became parents. And again, the power of compounding and starting early. And I tell my clients, whether it's, they're new parents or whether they're new grandparents, look into prepaid college, or more frequently a 529 Plan. And then, we start to talk about the power of compounding again. It's probably not a 40-year window, but let's talk about an 18-year window and open up a 529 account as soon as you've got a Social Security Number, and start putting away as much as you can. And again, pretty aggressive. We don't wanna be 100% equity the during that entire ride. We wanna scale back the risk as the kids get older. But the sooner the better. And look at the tax advantages on the back end of those 529s for paying for college. Tax advantage being? It grows tax deferred. Absolutely. Right, and then you can pull the money out if it's for qualified expenses. If it's qualified college, for qualified education expenses, it comes out tax free. And the definition. So, as an owner of a 529, it's usually the person that funds the account is the account owner and the student to be is the beneficiary. You can change those beneficiaries as the owner of the account. And the definition of who counts as a family member beneficiary is extremely liberal and very wide. And you can change the beneficiary of an account over to a sibling or other family members pretty widely defined. And it can go down several generations. If you don't need it for your own kids, it could be for the grandkids or even longer. And then, the compounding story starts to get even better. It's an incredible program. You can- To grow in tax deferred and the flexibility that comes with that and changing names. It starts things like that to look like a perpetual family education trust. Yeah. That's tax free. All right, let me go back to that. The home. Yeah. Comment for a minute. You know, because I think people, like you said, okay, you gotta get a mortgage, you gotta get insurance, things like that. But what about when the dryer breaks or you need a refrigerator or you gotta get the hose? One of our colleagues, Jake DeKinder, who you guys know in fact is oftentimes on the show here. He just, he got a text from his wife this morning. There's a leak coming outta the ceiling. Oh no. He's like, well- Oh no, the dreaded leak. Yes. Turn it off, you know? And I'll deal with it when I get home. That was not on the calendar today. Yeah, like, where's the main water line? That's all part of home ownership. And I think there's a view out there where people think, "Well, my home that's, I'm gonna make a bunch of money 'cause over time the value of my home increases." How do you guys think about that? Home ownership versus perhaps renting? Any thoughts on? Yeah, I think it's a great question, and especially at the beginning of this age bracket we're talking about, right? Somebody in their early 30s, I do think it's an important thing for people to recognize. You mentioned a number of the costs, and then you added maintenance to it, right? So, home ownership. Let's not forget the cost of selling a home, right? Usually in different parts of the country, it's gonna be about a 6% real estate transaction fee if you're gonna sell it. So, if you're getting into a place as a first time home buyer with like 5% down and you need to sell that home a year or two later and the transaction costs 6%, you've just wiped out your entire down payment, right? In needing to sell the place. So, I would just be really conscious of making sure that you're really ready to buy a home. So, you're, from a career standpoint, you're in a place where you feel comfortable, that you're not gonna need to sell this home and move in a real short term period and eat up a whole bunch of your down payment with transaction costs. And then, also you're financially in a place where you can't just afford the down payment, but you also have some backstop money so that when you do get the leak or the appliances go out, or all of the fun maintenance things that we have with homes over time, you can actually afford it. Home ownership's great. Hopefully everybody listened to this at some point will be able to afford to do it. But it's no panacea early in your life. Is there guidelines out there? Say, hey, if my, let's, I'll make up a number. My mortgage is a thousand dollars monthly. Is there a number that says here's kind of what your overall maintenance cost will be for a home? Like, is it 10% of your mortgage, annual mortgage payment or 5%, any? I don't know of a benchmark for that 'cause it depends how much of your, how much did you put down, right? I mean, did you put 10% down on your home or did you put 50, right? So, but- Yeah, maybe I should have said the value of your home. The value of the home. Yeah, that's probably a better way. Yeah. Yeah. I should've said that. So, you know, I've heard 3% of the value of the home is what you should kind of bank on for maintenance on a yearly basis. I've never really dug down to see if that's accurate. I can tell you anecdotally those come, it's not 3% every year. Yeah, that's right. It's yeah. It's zero for a couple years and then, you know, then it's 10. Yeah. But it's, I don't think owning versus renting is clearly superior in every case. Renting might be a better choice and to your point in a lot of situations. It's hard to, being in Florida, it's hard to convince people in Florida at this point that real estate isn't always a home run investment, right? And we've had a really, really nice run. I'm sure in other parts of the country. It's a much- Yeah. Boise. That concept is a much easier yourself. Absolutely. Yeah, we're right there with you. Yeah. Yeah. Anything you wanna add? I would just say. A couple of other things that I might think about. Tim's touched on two of the three, like tax-free vehicles that we have. He's touched on Roth IRA, he's touched on the 529 Plan. The third one, which isn't used nearly as frequently that can be really helpful in this timeframe of life, is to start thinking about that HSA account. That health savings account, which is another in the third of the three tax-free vehicles for people that wanna start accumulating some tax-free growth in an account to pay for future medical expenses later in life. Someone that's doing a great job of saving for retirement, doing a great job of maybe funding kids' 529 plans. If they've got a little leftover, an HSA account can be a great way to continue to get tax-free compounded growth over time. So, something like that you can fund it. And so, if I do have a medical cost, I just pay for it with my normal? Yeah, that's right. Earnings? Don't use the HSA 'cause that grows tax free over time. And that's pretty flexible too, right? Just save your receipts. Yep, that's right. Way down the road. It's actually, functions very similar to a 529 Plan. You save your receipts. It's kind of an on your honor system. And you're right, you use it as an account that would continue to grow and invest over time, and you'd be paying for some of those medical expenses outta your pocket. The only other one I was gonna bring up, Mark, in this phase, 30 to 50 is when we start having families, having kids. And that's certainly when we need to start thinking about life insurance. And I think this is a point where for us, certainly, Term Life we think is the way to go. It's very low cost. You can buy it, you know, quite easily, get plenty of coverage for a really affordable amount. So, someone that's in that position in life, I think Term Life is a great way for them to start making sure that they've got their family protected. Any guidance on dollar amounts you wanna think through on something like that? That's another, it depends- It depends? Question. Yeah. But you know, it's... To your point, start young \because it's much less expensive as you know. I think in our age cohort, if you all have checked out the Term Life market for yourselves recently, it's a much higher dollar amount. Yeah. Than you were paying when you were in your 30s. So, you know, I think it's, that's a somewhat, you know, the how much should the benefit amount be on the insurance? I think that's more intuitive. What makes you feel comfortable. But you know, $10,000 isn't gonna do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're a high earner, a million dollars is probably a starting point. Yeah, well, maybe some. You go ahead. What you think about that? I was gonna say, you know, certainly at the back end of this age group, someone that's around 50, a great thing at that point is to have a financial plan. And if you've got a well done financial plan, it's gonna tell you exactly how much you should have. If you're at the beginning of that, you're young in life, you've just had your first kid and whatnot, I think you're right. It's kind of intuitive of thinking about, okay, what situation would you wanna leave your spouse in? Okay, well, maybe I want to make sure that the mortgage is paid off if something happened to me. Maybe I wanna make sure that there's money for education for the kids, right? You're leaving your spouse in a position where if something dramatic happened to you, right? The spouse is in a good situation. So, those are some things that I think people often think through as, okay, what if any mortgage do I have? How many kids do I have? What type of maybe education funding would I like to make sure is taken care of? And I think that's a great place to start. I've also heard too about having extra money available because it's such a difficult time for the surviving spouse that it just gives you a little extra flexibility if you need to take some time away from work or something to be able to afford that one. Yeah, yeah. One other thing I wanna get your thoughts on. And I'm not sure what, if you have any advice or guidance on this. But go back to perhaps what's the most important decision you make in your life? And we've been talking a lot about families and kids and homes. But if you go a little bit before that, it's who you marry. And I'll speak for myself. I don't know if I have guidance to say, "Hey, here's how to make sure it's a solid marriage or not. But it is probably the most important decision you'll ever make 'cause there's so many things that come from that." I would say if you look at the data, right? I believe that the number one cause for divorce is usually financial. Okay. That's a good answer. Right? It is. Yeah. It is usually financially linked. That's right. So, if we work backwards from there, right? We know that finances and financial matters create a tremendous amount of friction in a lot of relationships, right? So, I think just knowing upfront and being on the same page with your partner as to what your financial goals are gonna be and how you're gonna fund and work to meet those goals. I think it's probably pretty rare that two people come together in a marriage that think about money exactly the same. That's probably a fairly rare occurrence. but I think just spending the time and energy upfront, communicating well, making sure that you have priorities, making sure that you have goals that you're both bought into. Doesn't mean you can't approach things differently. But as long as you're both on the same page with respect to some of the goals that you're trying to achieve, I think it increases the likelihood of success long term much better and reduces a lot of friction in a marriage 'cause we know that money issues is the leading cause of divorce. What are the, some of the things, don't do this in that 30 to 50 age group? I'll take that one. I think in, we talked earlier about buying depreciating assets as a younger recent college graduate. but that carries through all stages of life. And I think in towards the later part of this stage of life, we're starting to think about some new toys, expensive cars, yes, that we spoke about before. But also boats, airplanes, second homes. You know, there's a place for all those things. But we typically recommend that you rent boats, you rent airplanes, you rent second homes. And yes, buy your primary residence if that's right for you if you're gonna be in a particular place on a more permanent basis. But from a financial standpoint, buying large, expensive depreciating assets is usually not a good play. And Mike, it goes back to, you said earlier about if you have a financial plan, that helps guide your decision-making and that probably clarifies some of these things you, the wants versus the impact it has on my future. Yeah. My future state. And that's when you know if you can really afford it or not. Right. All right guys, that wraps up part one. A couple things that jump out to me from that is just absolutely make sure you're taking advantage of tax-deferred investments, 401s, the Roths, HSAs, 529s, things like that. Be incredibly disciplined with your investing. Make sure it's globally diversified and just let it grow over time. I mean, those are the big ones there, right? Let your money work for you and be very careful how you're thinking about your spending. So, we'll come back here in a moment on part two where we look at life after 50 years old. So, thanks everybody for joining "The Informed Investor" and be sure to hit subscribe and get to part two of your investments after 50. Thanks.