Q&A: $30K Tax Refund, Real Estate vs. Stock Market & Rebuilding Credit

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify brought to you by public.com. This is our Thursday question and answer edition episode, which means we sit here for half an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it turns into Robert, and we answer your questions as if we were going through whatever you're going through. You can ask us questions on Instagram at rich habits podcast or email us your questions at richhabitspodcast at gmail.com. Yes, we love these episodes and they have been getting better and better because you guys are just really laying it all out to us. Personal finances, personal, giving us all those heartfelt questions about your own situation. So we love filming these episodes. So our first question comes from Khalil. Khalil says, I got a question for you guys. And of course, this was on Instagram again. Send us a DM there on Instagram. Khalil says, first, here's some context. I'm 31 years old with 13 years of credit history behind me. All but one of my cards, I've had at least 10 years. I worked hard this past year to pay off all of my credit card debt, which was about $12,000. And at 13 years with no missed payments and 0% utilization, my credit score was 812 and rising. Here's my predicament though. I was unaware that one of my cards implemented a monthly service charge at some point over the years. So once I paid the card off, I forgot about it only to find out a couple months later that I had missed a payment. My score dropped 99 points according to Credit Karma. This was back in January. I hate that I got that big of a hit over a $20 bill, essentially. So here's my question. Should I try to get that hit taken off my record with a goodwill letter? Should I close the card? It's not my oldest card, but it is a 10-year-old plus account and it has the lowest limit of all of them. I listened to the episode today about credit cards and it really got me thinking. Thanks, y'all, so much for your insight. Robert, if you're going through this with Khalil right now, you just got your credit score hit by, what was it here, 99 points. You went from 812 to 713, and you were really upset about it. What would you do? Well, I did go through this about three years ago, different, not with a credit card, but with a car trade-in. I traded in a car for a new car, same dealership, and flipped out of the lease into the new lease, and somehow they forgot to pay off the car. So like three months later, I get a notice that I missed two payments and my credit score was down like 100 and some points. And so in this instance, similar to the car, the first thing I would do is two things. Do not get rid of the credit card. Don't close it out. Keep the card. And first and foremost, before you write the Goodwill letter, just call them up. Get on the customer service. Say, hey, here's what happened. I didn't know about this. How can I get this off my credit? I am sure for such a low amount, they will definitely take it off. It might take a month or two to get off and get your credit score back up, but don't get rid of the credit card because you've taken so long to build it up. And that 10-year window is really great. So I would keep the card, do the call first, and if that doesn't work, then do the Goodwill letter and I'm sure you'll be just fine. Yeah, I really think the Goodwill letter is a good idea, no pun intended. Definitely use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, things of that nature to make sure that you're actually including all the appropriate information. So when the company you send this letter to looks at it, they know who you are. They know about the mispayment. They understand all the background information so they can take action on your behalf. Pro tip, I would also send this Goodwill letter via certified mail, which means you can confirm that the company actually received the letter. And it's not just a stamp and it goes off to who knows where it goes, right? So certified mail, use AI. AI is going to help you write this and make sure you include the right necessary things. And I agree with Robert. I don't think you should close this card. I think this card with over a decade of credit history is only good for you. I wonder if you can just call them and be like, hey, can we stop this monthly service charge? Because 20 bucks, I mean, don't get me wrong, like 20 bucks is like not that crazy. But you also have to think, what does $20 turn into over one, two, three, four, five years, especially if it was invested in the stock market, right? That could be thousands of dollars of compounding that you could be missing out on if that money was diverted elsewhere. So it's a Tricky situation. Definitely write the letter. Definitely do it certified mail. Definitely use AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whatever you have to do there. And maybe whenever you call them as well, as Robert suggested, maybe there's a way that you could negotiate this monthly service charge to be waived for a year or I don't know. No, I think that's a great takeaway. Just do the call, do the letter, figure it out. You know what to do. You're a smart person, but definitely fight for what's right. I did. It took me probably three months to get my credit fixed after the dealership screwed up. So you'll be fine and figure this out. So our next question comes from Blake on Instagram. Blake says, hey, guys, I love the podcast. I listen to it every day when I'm at work. I do have one question for you. I'm 19 going into the second year of my three years expected in college. Right now I have $3,500 in government subsidized student loans. I have just enough in my 529 investment account to pay for my last two years of college here. my second year, and my third year. My question is, should I use that money that I have in this 529 account to pay for the tuition? Or should I use the cash I make over the summer to pay for my tuition? If I don't use my 529 account, should I keep it parked in there? Or should I move it somewhere else like a Roth IRA? Or should I take the $3,500 of subsidies for the next two years at an interest rate just under 7%? Let the money compound in my 529? Also, should I open up a brokerage account with my extra cash and invest some things over there with maybe some S&P or NASDAQ or just keep putting money in my 529. I don't know what to do, guys, and I need your help. Blake, what a cool situation to be in, right? Your parents said, hey, we're going to look after our son Blake here. We're going to put some money in his 529 account, which as a reminder, everybody, if you have or maybe you don't even have children yet or you plan to have children, right? I don't have children at the moment, but I'm already saving for that 529 for my child that I hope to have in the future by making myself the beneficiary. And then once they're around, you can actually change the beneficiary very flexible when it comes to beneficiaries getting changed inside of families there. So open up a 529 account if you plan to have kids or if you already have kids, put it in one kid's name. You can always split it up to other kids later. Vanguard is what I use. It's so simple here in Tennessee, 10 out of 10 experience on Vanguard doing this 529 stuff. But let's talk through this, Blake. So your parents got the 529 rocking and rolling. You've got enough money and your 529 to pay for the tuition for the next two years of college. And you're earning extra money over the summer. If I were in your shoes, I would use the money that your parents had saved and invested for you in this 529 to pay for your college as originally intended. If there's anything left over, feel free to roll that money over into a Roth IRA upon graduation. I would use the money that you earn over the summertime and invest that into a Roth IRA. So you're getting kind of the best of both worlds there. And yes, if you want to open up a public.com brokerage account and go over and open up a Roth IRA on public and deposit some of this money on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis, whatever you can afford, or however often you want to do it, and then max it out at $7,500 a year and invest that into the S&P, the NASDAQ, the Dow Jones, things like that. I love that strategy. What I don't think you need to do is borrow $3,500 more of subsidy student loan action going on here at 7%. If you already have the money in this 529 and say, I don't think you need to go into debt in any situation here. I think you've got everything under control. I think you just need to stick to the plan and continue to realize that you have your whole life ahead of you when it comes to earning and investing. And yes, if you want to invest a couple hundred, couple thousand into that Roth IRA here while you're still in college, that's great. But on the same token, I don't want you to feel some sort of FOMO that, oh, my 529 can go compound for me and I can do this over here and I can have this there. You're going to be just fine. You're very, very young and you're obviously thinking about these things sooner than a lot of your peers. That's a great breakdown, Austin. I think the key for me here is Blake is on the right track. He's thinking about his future. He's thinking about his finances. But Blake, keep it simple, stupid. I think you're getting a little ahead of your, the horse is here and you're overcomplicating what you need to do. Follow what Austin said, keep it simple and you'll be doing just fine. Invest the extra money, keep the 529 for the tuition and rock and roll and just keep building on the plan. Well, something else, we can talk about 529 accounts, but what just happened the other week where everyone's Invest America Trump accounts, call them whatever you want, Republican, Democrat, you like the guy, you hate the guy, go open up one of these Invest America Trump accounts and make sure that if you have a child that you're contributing to this account, it essentially turns into a traditional IRA. But if you have a newborn, which I think is most exciting here, my friend Jonathan just had a baby, you are entitled to $1,000 from the US government. The US government is going to give your child $1,000 to invest in the low cost index funds like the S&P 500. That's awesome. And you can add a little bit of money to that every single month and have it grow from essentially newborn to age 18. And when they have 70, 80, $100,000 at 18 years old now, they can use that to go buy a house, to go start a business, to go to college, whatever they want to use it for, right? So like there are a ton of different ways right now that I think people specifically talking about 529s and these Invest America accounts. And I even saw some other stuff. There's a ton of different ways that anyone right now can start taking advantage, assuming you have children, you want to have children, children are in the picture, they're going to be in the picture to ensure that generational wealth comes from you and your family. A 529 account is how I plan to do that. I'm sure we'll, if Invest America accounts are around whenever I have kids, whenever that will be I sure I do that too But 529s are awesome because what cool is you can roll over up to into the child Roth IRA upon age 18 And so let call it now is in their Roth IRA at 22 years old because you've still got to do that max of $7,500 a year. $35,000 at 22 years old, you add nothing to it. That compounds at 7% or 8% from 22 to 65. Your child adjusted for inflation has over a million dollars now in their Roth IRA. And they didn't add a dime to it. So imagine how many tens of millions of dollars that could turn into if they max it out throughout their lifetimes every single year there. So 529 accounts are very flexible and they're not just used for education in college. They can be used for a ton of different things, trade schools, like all types of education for all types of people. And if you have it for your child and you still have a ton of money left in there at the age of 18, you can roll it over to the Roth IRA and have a really, really cool jumpstart on building generational wealth. And again, I use Vanguard for that. I think I had to seed my 529 account with $3,000. I think Vanguard lowered that to 2000 recently. So if you have $2,000 and you want to seed the account, rock and roll that way. I do an 80-20 split. I do 80% of that into the S&P 500, so VOO. And I do 20% of it into VUG, which is Vanguard's like growth equity ETF. So that's how my 529s split up. It's got like $15,000 in it now. I add 200 bucks a month. And I've been doing it for three years and now it's already 15 grand and it's awesome. So like, go check it out, go do your own thing. Learn more about 529 accounts. They can really help you build generational wealth for you and your family. I just want to add that I love this question in this situation for Blake because we have so many amazing tools like the 529. And just imagine, I don't know about you, Austin, but I wouldn't have been able to fathom turning 18 and having $20,000, $30,000 just sitting there waiting for me. So I love this. And for anyone listening out there that's getting ready to have kids or you already have kids, really think about some of these products that are out there to really jumpstart your children for future financial freedom. Because I love these questions and seeing parents that actually take the time to do the right things to set their children up for the future. And just to round this off, you don't need to have $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to start. Yeah, I guess on Vanguard, they make you seed it with $2,000. I'm sure other platforms allow you to seed it with zero or nothing. But I just contribute $100, $200 a month to this stuff. Like the Invest America accounts, you just open it and contribute $50 or $100. It just gets started. That's what we're trying to say. Get started. It doesn't matter with how much. Just get started and build a habit around contributing. So our next question comes from an anonymous listener. Our anonymous listener says, hey, I love your podcast. I listen to it while I'm working out. Hope you're getting that good pumping right now. Here we go. They say I'm a 48 year young lady making $128,000. I recently received a tax refund of $29,400. I want to be smart and strategic with this near $30,000 refund. So let me walk you through my situation. I have a personal loan at 9% with a monthly payment of $550 worth $24,781. I took this out to pay for my son's college. I have a 401k loan of $10,000. That is a monthly payment of about 450 bucks. I had to take this out for some bills because my spouse lost their job. We have no credit card debt and I have $340,000 invested in my 401k. I contribute 4% of my salary. Really appreciate any guidance you can provide. Robert, one, Cool that our friend here just got a essentially $30,000 refund. That's awesome. I went into that. But two, what's your take on this? It just seems like fighting against a strong current because in one hand, she has $340,000 in this 401k balance. But in the other hand, she has all these loans out there. And first and foremost, the personal loan is the tough one. And I know it was for college, but still at 9%, we always say you can't out-invest high interest debt. 9% falls into the high interest debt. Now, it's not credit card debt at 30%, but 9% is tough. So I would really consider either paying that off or chunking it way down to get that amount due, cut in half at least. But I'm leaning towards just paying it off altogether because 9%, especially in a volatile market, is hard to beat. So, man, that's a tough one for me. Without knowing the interest rate on the 401k loan, I don't know what that situation is. So it's tough to say what to do there. But I would say my first take would be get rid of the personal loan, knock that $550 off the monthly overhead and start investing that $550 every single month, doing the same thing into the VOOs and the QQQs we talk about. Because, man, 9% is just tough to overcome. I agree 9% is tough, but I actually don't think I'd start there. Something that jumped out to me is she said the 401k loan of $10,000 happened because they had to take out to help with some bills after their spouse lost their job. That tells me that they did not have an emergency fund in place. So I think first and foremost, I'd love to see our friend here take $15,000 of that $29,400 and set it aside in a high yield savings account for an emergency fund. Go to public, go open up a high yield cash account, you'll earn 4% on that $15,000. So now you've got $15,000 of a buffer where if your spouse has job insecurity or whatever's going on here, you've got some wiggle room in your budget. So you don't have to go take out another 401k loan or swipe your credit cards, whatever's going on there. Now we have $14,400 left. I'm actually going to take all $14,400 of this and throw it at that 401k loan, so $10,000 of that $14,400, to open up $451 a month of that monthly payment. So now I've got an extra $450 a month plus $4,400 more than I could use to do whatever with. So I'm taking this other $4,400, throwing that at the personal loan. Now the personal loan goes from $24,700 to essentially just $20,000. And you've unlocked $450 a month in your budget. So now that you've got this extra $450 a month in the budget, what I'm going to do is instead of spending that money or investing that money or doing whatever to it, I'm throwing that $450 on top of that $550 you're already paying for that personal loan. And now you've got $1,000 a month thrown at this personal loan for your son's college, which tells me that this, you know, depending on the interest rate and amortization schedule, stuff like that, you are going to have this personal loan paid off within about 18 months. So now 18 months into the future, it's the end of next year. Christmas of 2027, our anonymous listener is going to have no 401k loan, no personal loan. Their 401k balance will have continued to climb because they stayed invested. They're not borrowing against it. They're not cashing it out because emergencies happen. They got the emergency fund. So the fully fund emergency fund, personal loans gone, 401k loans gone, investments continue to trend up into the right. That's how I think I would approach this. And I think the key here is to ensure that you don't find yourself with a 401k loan again. You don't find yourself with a personal loan again. And like, I appreciate you wanting to pay $25,000 for your son's college. I think that's awesome. And we've talked about this a lot in the past. You know, whenever an airplane is crashing, they always say, put your mask on first before you put on and help your neighbor. And you're 48. You're not old, but you're also not young, right? You're getting close to 50. You've got a good, healthy 401k balance of $340,000, but I would really encourage you to focus on your nest egg, your retirement investing, your future, because you've only got a good 15 more years ahead of you here of investing before you really need to start thinking about, okay, I'm in my 60s, I'm 65, I'm 67, I'm 68, right? I'm ready to retire. What is my nest egg looking like? Is my $340,000 now worth $2 million? Is it worth $1.1 million? And the way that you're going to get there is by aggressively contributing, by maxing out that Roth IRA, by ensuring that you're not going into, you know, $550 a month payments for your son's college, things of that nature, that $550 a month could be used toward your nest egg, toward your retirement, toward your investing. And that to me is a mistake because what ends up happening here is let's say that you're unable to grow your wealth into something super meaningful. now you're in your mid 70s your nest egg is depleted or it's not what you want it to be and you're now leaning on your family and asking for money asking for housing asking for hey can you spot me this vacation i don't have you know but i really want to go with you guys like and so now you're sort of i don't want to use the word burden but like you don't have autonomy over your financial life at that older age which could be a hindrance on your children who now find themselves not only taking care of their own children, but they're also not taking care of their parent. And that's the sandwich generation a lot of people talk about. So in this situation, I'd follow the steps I just said. I'd do the $15,000 emergency fund. I'd wipe out the 401k loan. I'd take that $450 a month of the 401k loan, throw it at the personal loan. You're out of personal loan debt here in about 18, 20-ish months, end of 2027. Don't go into more debt on behalf of your children. I know you love them, but you really got to get your nest egg locked and growing and trending in the right direction so you can retire with dignity. Yeah. What a great breakdown. And the biggest takeaway for me, and I see this every day in the Rich Habits Network and through the one-on-one calls I do, so many people, and I love this for people, but they want to help others before they've helped themselves. In your analogy of the mask first on yourself I think people obviously this person is setting themselves up but they not fully out of the woods yet They not at a place where they can be just willy helping everybody else in the family out And that happens a lot where I see people that don even have a million dollar net worth but they giving loans out to other people, helping them buy cars, doing all these things. And I just really agree with you here, Austin. You need to make sure you are solid forever before you start giving your money away and helping everyone else. Because as we live longer with modern medicine and AI and everything else, we're going to see a lot more people run out of money in retirement. And that's just not something I want to see happen on our watch. So I really love the breakdown there. And I want to linger on this longer because, and I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, I really want to encourage everyone listening right now to audit their monthly slash annual spending as a household, and then add a two and a half percent inflation rate against that. And then fast forward to when they think they're going to retire. So the reason I say that is, I think, I don't remember the exact numbers, I guess I could look it up and calculate them. But $75,000 a year of spending in 2026, fast forward 20, 25 years is equivalent to $150,000 of spending. So in 20 to 25 years, Robert, you will have to spend $150,000 a year, which is a lot of people listening right now is retirement range, right? Our friend here is going to retire in 20 years. So if she's spending $75,000 a year right now, she'll have to spend $150,000 a year to maintain the same lifestyle she has now at $75,000 a year of spending. And you think like, oh, $75,000, okay. But the $75,000 you spend right now is after taxes, which again is effective tax rate for a lot of people's 18% to 22%. So that means you have to earn much more than $150 per year to have that same spending power of $75,000 a year as you have today, but in retirement. And yes, you've got long-term capital gains and different things of that nature. I totally get that. I'm not saying that taxes are going to be like this big burden. But inflation, I feel like, is something people forget about when they're doing some of this retirement planning. They look and they say, whoa, I'm going to have $5 million in retirement. Sounds good to me. I'll be just dandy. And then you say, okay, $5 million in retirement at your 4% rule tells you that you're going to have about $200,000 a year pre-tax to spend. $200,000 a year pre-tax, let's call it, I don't know, $160,000, $170,000 after tax that you can spend. $170,000 is really close to $150,000. And if $150,000 equals $75,000, holy smokes, can I really live off of $6,000 a month? Yeah, that's an entire episode right there. I feel like we should do an episode on that exact topic of people adjusting what they believe their retirement savings needs to be to even continue the lifestyle they're leading now. Not a desired lifestyle that they would want 15, 20, 25 years down the road when they're ready to retire after working hard for 40 years of their lives. Yeah, no, there's a ton to unpack there. And yes, you can retire off $4,000 a month if you don't have a mortgage and all you have to care about is food and utilities. And, you know, you don't have this lavish lifestyle. Like there's a lot of great, easy ways to retire. Like it's just a math equation. But, you know, I want people to think about that. And we talked about this on an episode. I think it was titled how to calculate your freedom number, things of that nature. Like there's a lot of really cool tools that you all can use out there. But it's just important to think about. Now, before we jump to our next question, got to give a shout out to public.com, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. 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 AI. And it all starts with your prompt. 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December, I did a whole breakdown alongside you and the team walking everyone through, I think it was 13 different generated assets strategies, free cash flow, inflection point companies, earnings, turnaround value names, efficient growth, SaaS leaders, margin expansion, masters, quality value leaders, high operating leverage leaders, debt reduction stock, share buyback champions, R&D heavy investors. Long story short, if you want some built for you generated asset strategies, join the Rich Habits Network. There's going to be a link in the show notes below to do that. Seven day free trial means you can unlock all this stuff completely for free. Steal it, go use it, go type it into whatever you want. No sweat off our back. We published it a ago. Go check it out. And if you like the Rich Habits Network, you can stick around that for $77 a month. So there's gonna be a link in the show notes below to go check that out as well. So our next question comes from Saw on Instagram. Saw says, Hey, Robert Nauston. First of all, thank you so much for the podcast. You guys are truly amazing. I just discovered it and I've been listening ever since. Thank you, Saw. Saw says, My name's Saw. I'm 36 years old and I live in New Hampshire and I don't have any kids. I know I'm a little late to the investing game, but this year I finally maxed out my Roth IRA. Let's go, dude. Sauce says my investments are VOO, QQQ, VGT, VTI, and I've got $15,000 in a high yield savings. My take-home income is about $5,000 per month after taxes. I bought a single family home in 2022. Monthly mortgage is $28.52 at a 4.3% interest rate, and my remaining loan balance is $360,000. The home is currently estimated to be worth $575,000. I have two friends that live with me. They each pay me $1,000 per month in rent, which helps offset my housing cost. I'm essentially living for $850 a month. Other than my mortgage, I don't have any debt. So my question is, would it make sense to sell my house, move into a small condo or an apartment, and then invest the difference? This is a really good question, Robert. I normally say like, yeah, go take your several hundred thousand dollars of equity and throw it in the stock market instead, if that's what you want to do, like whatever. But I think saw is in a really good situation here. Yeah, I would not sell this house. No chance. Saw already has over $200,000 in equity living for $800 a month, basically for his part of the mortgage. I would keep this thing, keep letting it appreciate. And as long as you can have those roommates to make your cost of living that low, I would take all the difference. Maybe if you have it, the $2,000 and invest away and build up. And in your situation, you probably don't have the $2,000 considering you're only taking home $5,000 a month, which is still great. I would take whatever I could and invest away because you have a very unique situation being able to have your cost of living so low because of the roommates. I love this house hack strategy and I think you're doing great and I would definitely keep the house. Well, I think what's so cool about the situation too, Robert, is if our friend saw here, just took the 600 ish dollars a month and use that to max out their Roth IRA, they will have adjusted for inflation. We just talked a lot about inflation and retirement is adjusted for inflation. So back in today's dollars, a million in this Roth IRA at 66 years old. So 30 years of about $625 at 8% turns into this million, which is really, really exciting. Now, of course, Saw is going to earn more money in their career. Saw is going to come into, you know, really cool business opportunities and Saw is going to do awesome stuff. But to answer your question, Saw, I would I would really be surprised if there's a better living situation for you than this, because at eight hundred fifty bucks a month and you get to live in a house that is obviously appreciating very, very well in a really cool area. So like That's your net worth compounding now. And you're not living there at the expense of your investments. You are investing already. You've got $15,000 in this high-yield savings account. Yeah, your take-home pay of $5,000 per month after taxes might seem low, but you've got so much margin in your budget that if you wanted to invest $625 a month to max out that Roth IRA and another $600, $700, $1,000 on top of that into a bridge account so you can retire early, I think it's possible. I really do. You've got great margin in this budget. You're doing incredible sauce. So we're rooting for you here. I need to go visit New Hampshire. I don't think I've ever really been, but it sounds like a cool place if all the houses go up in value so quickly like that. Yeah, I definitely feel like with that kind of appreciation, just in a four-year period, I feel like it's kind of like Toledo, Ohio, where I'm seeing some of these appreciation rates at 15% a year, which is just nuts. So it's a good thing for people to realize this. When you're looking at investing in real estate, is find those markets where there's high capital appreciation to help compound to your wealth. So our next question comes from Jordan on Instagram. Jordan says, I bought 160 shares of the Nios high income BTCI ETF at $54 a share in November of 2025. Since then, the ETF is down 45% to $27 a share. And now I'm sitting at a $3,400 loss in my portfolio. At what point should I say enough is enough and cut my losses? Or should I keep waiting for a turnaround? Even with the dividend yield of 28%, I'm not sure it's worth the wait. Thank you all so much for all you do to spread your rich habits wisdom. It is very much appreciated. Oh man, our friend here literally bought the top of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin peaked in like late October early November of 2025 at 125 130 you know a share or 125 130 like per Bitcoin is what I meant to say which means BTCI and all the other Bitcoin ETFs also peaked at that same time because they follow the price of Bitcoin. You know, I think a lot of people online were saying this time is different. The four year cycle isn't real. We're just going to go to 200, 250, 500, a million and all that, all that fun stuff. But I don't know. You know, we talked about this inside the Rich Habits Network back in January. I made a post about how I believe that that Bitcoin was in a bear market. I sold about 90% of my cryptocurrency. I owned like two or three Bitcoin. I sold it for like mid 90,000s or so. I sold Chainlink. I sold Ethereum. I sold out and now everything's down 50% since I sold it. So like that was cool. And if you're inside the Rich Habits Network, you were part of those live streams and part of those transparent, you know, portfolio trades and transactions. Another reason to join us over there. But here's the thing. I don't think now with Bitcoin down to 60, 65,000, Ethereum down to 1,500, 1,700, you know, things of that nature. I don't think now is the time to throw in the towel. If you want to throw in the towel, the time to do that was in January or February when it was starting to come down. Now you're at the bottom. Now, if you sell, you're literally going to be the person that buys the top and sells the bottom. Don't do that, right? Give yourself some patience here. Here's my strategy. I firmly believe a wonderful strategy for anyone that wants to own 5% to 15% of their portfolio and have it allocated to cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin here. I'm talking about Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, is to dollar cost average into Bitcoin in the back half of this year. So July through December, just dollar cost average every week, every month, whatever you want to do. Buy some BTCI if you want, because that 28% yield is really going to help boost that dollar cost average because you're able to then reinvest that distribution back into buying more shares of BTCI. That's what I plan to do. I sold my Bitcoin in January and I'll be dollar cost averaging back in here now in the back half of the year. I don't know what the bottom is. Anyone on the internet that's going to tell you where the Bitcoin bottom is, is lying to you because they also don't know exactly where it might be. That said, we are trading below the 200 week moving average, which is something that we talk about a lot inside of the Rich Habits Network for Bitcoin. Bitcoin traded at or below the 200 week moving average every time a bottom was in in past like cycles. So, you know, could Bitcoin bottom here at 60,000 or 58 or 45? I don't know. But I planned a dollar cost average back into Bitcoin in the back half of 2000 and 26. And I got a funny feeling my average will be somewhere in the 50s or 60s. And then fast forward to three years in the future, Bitcoin will be back above 100, maybe 200,000. and I'll be patting myself on the back for having some discipline and being patient. I love this breakdown. I can't think of a way to change anything you just said. I definitely agree 100%. Don't sell now. Bitcoin has a lot of upside potential still. And yes, I do think this time is different. Everyone has been involved in the AI trade, but we even saw a big run in gold and silver. So I wouldn't give up on Bitcoin, especially being where it is right now, because long-term, I still believe we see a world where Bitcoin gets to $200,000 a piece in the coming years. So I would stay the course, stick with the plan, and hold it because I agree with Austin 100%. Yeah, I'm sorry, Jordan, that you bought the literal top in Bitcoin. That can be frustrating. But the good news is you're only down $3,400. I say only because in the grand scheme of things, I feel like your whole portfolio, if you follow a 5% to 15% portfolio waiting there for cryptocurrency, that's not too big of a hit to your net worth, especially if you've been in AIQ and copper and emerging markets and the Russell 2000 and SMH and all these other ETFs and index funds that we've talked about for several months as being these big winners in 2026. I got a feeling your portfolio is still in the green. And if it's not, then like you got to audit stuff and figure out maybe I went in too much on Bitcoin. Maybe I shouldn't have put 50% of my portfolio on this, like whatever it might have been. Also, I hope you're building your base, right? You should only diversify into cryptocurrency after you've built your base into the index funds and ETFs. So there's a lot to unpack here that we don't have details on, Jordan. But please consider joining the Rich Habits Network because we're giving week to week, month to month updates with our own portfolios. So people like you hopefully can get ahead of this type of stuff. We say it every week in the Rich Habits Network live streams. If the stock market is surprising you, we are not doing our jobs correctly. Speaking of live streams, Robert, quick reminder, we hosted an awesome webinar slash workshop with Stephen Sykes on July 10. The recording is live and ready. So there's a link in the show notes if you want to go watch that recording. So many people, hundreds of people joined us for that. It was so much fun. Definitely go check out that recording. Yeah, we had a blast and it was just so cool to see so many people show up wanting to learn how to actually use these AI agents from public and be able to integrate it into their investing strategies. So make sure you check out the recording link in the show notes below. It was incredible. So our last question, Robert, comes from Scott. Scott says, I only started listening to your podcast recently, so I'm playing a little bit of catch up on older episodes. But here's my question. I'm maxing out my and my wife's Roth 401ks. I'm putting $4,000 a month into a high yield savings account. I'm putting $3,000 a month into a brokerage account. And I've used that $3,000 a month to buy single stocks. My question is, should I sell my single stocks, which are worth roughly $110,000 with a $23,000 gain, and then roll that $110,000 into the index funds and ETFs you talk about, and then continue to dollar cost average into these index funds and ETFs over time. I'm a buy and hold type person anyway. I just thought single stocks were fun and sexy, but now I kind of feel overwhelmed. It's a good question. What's your take, Robert? I love this question from Scott, and I agree. I think he's realizing that he's a little over his skis. He's got all these individual stocks, but he doesn't have his base built in the tried and true ETFs we talk about. I would just make sure, Scott, you determine if you're in long-term or short-term capital gains, because if you are in long-term capital gain situation and you want to sell off some of the stocks and take some profits and migrate that over to the VOO, the VTIs and the VGTs of the world, I love that for you because that's your rock and roll forever money, your buy and hold, your dollar cost averaging into that. You can still have a portion of your portfolio in stocks, but I wouldn't make the major portion of your portfolio in these single stocks because I think that's just asking for trouble along the way. We always want to follow that core satellite strategy and try to have a major portion of your equities in these tried and true ETFs over the years. And so that would be my take of what I would do. I think it's a great breakdown. And it's a good reminder to think about like prioritizing one over another. Like, you know, we just heard from our friend about how their spouse lost their job. And so they had to go borrow 10,000 from their 401k. You're putting $4,000 a month into the high yield savings and $3,000 a month into a brokerage. Maybe you just pause the brokerage and just go all in on the high yield savings, beefing that up. $7,000 a month turns into $21, $28, $35 very, very quickly. High yield savings slash emergency fund should be three to six months of living expenses. I lean more toward the six months because I have a volatile income. Other people lean toward the three months because they have very predictable income. If you're in sales and you have a volatile income or you do real estate, you're a real estate agent, volatile income, right? Unpredictable. Six months. If you are super salary and everything's cool and kosher, three months. So that's what I would do here, Scott. I'd first make sure I've got my emergency fund fixed and rocking and rolling. Then you can take that same $4,000 a month that you're putting in the high yield savings and start putting that into your taxable brokerage account. Do the things Robert just talked about. Get that base built. Get your index funds and ETFs rocking and rolling. And then after you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into the NASDAQ, the S&P, the Dow Jones, VGT, maybe VXUS, some international stuff, then you can begin to diversify your portfolio into some precious metals, some real estate, some energy, some cryptocurrency, maybe some masterworks, artwork, maybe some wine and whiskeys on VinoVest. There's a ton of cool ways that you can diversify your portfolio so that when the stock market goes up, down, left, right, and in circles. You've got a calm, cool, up and to the right, month after month, quarter after quarter type portfolio here. Listen to more episodes and you'll certainly learn how to do that. Everybody, thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast question and answer edition. Please go check out the seven-day free trial in the Rich Habits Network. If we provided you value, do us a favor and just check it out. It's seven day free trial. There's no money charged. There's no nothing. You can join. You can watch eight hours of video live streams. You can watch a live stream. You can watch a replay. You can comment. You can DM. You can do all this stuff. Just check it out. It mean a lot to us. We're really trying to get the Rich Habits Network something massive and help thousands of people inside of there. We're really close to a thousand people. And our goal is to get that to thousands of people in the back half of 26 and early 27. Yeah, and don't forget, Austin, inside the Rich Habits Network, you guys also get to invest alongside of us in all these cool companies that are hitting the headlines, these pre-IPO companies, and it's just such a cool network. So if you're trying to level up your finances and your business knowledge, your tax knowledge, all of these things, but also have these investment opportunities, you definitely need to check out the seven-day free trial. Thanks, everyone, and we'll see you tomorrow for our Rich Habits Radar. We'll see you next time.