Vanguard Predicts Market Collapse in 2026 (Are They Right?)

Oh no! Vanguard's predicting the market's going to collapse! What shall we do? Brian, I am so excited about this because it seems like inevitably this happens. We've been here before. There are some market predictors out there suggesting, man, okay, we've had a decent run-up. It must mean that now is the time to start worrying. No, it's much more than that, Beau. You're so polite. is that I actually think that if I was in another life, I want to be the vanguard economic predictor. The market predictor of vanguard. Because it's going to be just very much like the Maytag repairman that's in the commercials is because you just go, hey, it's time for you to come out and tell everybody your economic prediction. And he goes, it's scary out there. There's bad stuff coming. Below average returns coming your way. Below average returns, set it. And then we'll do this for the next 10 years. And guess what? Nobody ever gets ticked off at this guy or gal because when things are better, everybody's like, oh, it's okay. Things turn out better than he anticipated or she anticipated. That doesn't mean that we should give them awards or give them what the market pays attention to this report every year. You can set a clock to it. We'll be covering this probably next year at the same time, same bat place. and it will be just as negative as it is currently. Yeah, so they released this report. It's called the Economic and Market Outlook. And this year, this is what it said. It says, AI exuberance, economic upside, stock market downside. It doesn't sound very good. It sounds like, man, we've been through this thing. And they even have some data in there that taken out of context might be alarming. They said that we could even potentially right now be at a wealth tipping point that's worth recognizing. And this is how they quantified that. They said, wait a minute, wait a minute, because this is no different than when I watch football or sports. There'll be some, they even put graphs around it on whatever network's got the Super Bowl. And they'll say every year that Patrick Mahomes eats Taco Bell before he plays football, they typically win the Super Bowl. There'll be some crazy data mine stat that they will pull up on screen and even gloss it up, I feel like what we're about to see now is Vanguard, once again, will go cherry pick some data on why you should be petrified. So we're doing it. We're doing the same thing that the Super Bowl folks do. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. We're not doing it. The media, the financial media is doing this to the public. Well, this is what they said. They said, okay, if we look at five-year rolling periods, based on historical medians, how much does equity increase over a five-year period? Equity meaning like stock market, U.S. equities. And then how much is real estate? And over a five-year period, the historical median is about 23% rise in equity prices or stock prices and about a 22% rise in real estate value. So if you look at the increase in wealth across those two metrics over a five-year period, on average it should be around 46%. That's the historical median. Well, they said if we think about the last time we saw a lot of exuberance, a really frothy market. Here's the Taco Bell. We can go to the dot-com and we see that during the dot-com or right before the dot-com bubble crash, if we look at how much equities it increased over that five-year period, it was about 57%. If you look at real estate, it was about 26%. So there was an 82% increase in wealth across those two metrics in that five-year period. And so this was the question that Vanguard posed. If that's the historical median and this is what it looked like right before the dot-com crash, where are we today? And if we look at the last five years, you can see that based on stock market returns, equity wealth increase, it's about 44%, and real estate is about 28%. So the conclusion that Vanguard drew from this data was that, man, it looks like we're a lot closer right now to dot-com bubble territory than we are to historical mediums. Well, Brian, what do you say to that? How do you respond to that? They don't really know. And also they buried in some optimism within even their pessimistic report. And if you want proof on this, because look, we've started keeping score on this stuff. And if you look at the next slide is what they predict will be the weighted average annual performance over the next 10 years. They say it's going to be between 4% to 5% annually. So the reason that I tell you there's even a little bit of optimism in there is that we're going to show you what they predicted in 2024 and what they predicted last year in 2025. And here's what I think is interesting. The 10-year prediction in 2024 was 3.7 to 5.7. Well, now we're a little higher, so somehow we're a little higher. And then fast forward to 2025, what did they predict last year? 2.8 to 4.8. So even though they're about to show you, because we're going to show you what the headlines were the last two years, they've still now built themselves an out by going a little bit more optimistic optimistic on that 10-year annualized, what could that be? It's all the technology changes. They're hedging themselves just in case we're in a unique time from a technology perspective that pushes this up even higher. Yeah, we thought it'd be interesting to go back to some of their historical reports to see what they said. And if we just go back just a few years, 2024, the headline was U.S. equity valuations need to fall to return to fair value. Well, we have the benefit of history on our side, and we can say, okay, well, what did the market do in 2024, it actually made 23.3%. So that headline did not lead to an appropriate market reaction based on what headline was. What about 2025? It said digging deeper into U.S. equity overvaluation. And what do we see in 2025? The markets again made 16.5%. So obviously what Vanguard is espousing, What they are saying is not necessarily true to what we're actually seeing as investors in the real world. Now, look, the market could fall. Sure. Very well it could fall this year. But the thing is I'm always telling people it doesn't matter as long as you have a plan that's good before, during, or after. I'm just saying my big takeaway is don't fall prey to the sensational headline. That's the big thing. It doesn't matter if the market falls. No one knows. And I think I'd be very careful of anyone out there telling, hey, this is what's going to happen in the next six months, 12 months, 24 months, because nobody actually knows. And what ends up happening is you see these headlines all the time around this. Someone says so-and-so market predictor has predicted 50 of the last three recessions, right, because they keep saying it's going to be bad, it's going to be bad, it's going to be bad. Vanguard hasn't been a whole lot different because they've had a pretty negative market outlook for really the last decade. and realistically the last decade has been a pretty great time to be an investor in U.S. equities. Well, the reality is, and this is because I never know how long somebody's been an investor to understand what to anticipate or predict or even think is going to come your way. And I always remind everybody that investing is like walking up that hill with the yo-yo. Now, look, I age myself because I went through a yo-yo phase in my childhood. I don't even know if kids, young people even know what yo-yos are anymore, but it is. Yo-yo's still a thing? It is. I mean, any young people over there on the content team that yo-yo too? So maybe everybody knows what yo-yos are. But, you know, yo-yos, you throw them up, you throw them down. But if you're walking up the hill, even though every time you throw the yo-yo up or down, and that's what day-to-day volatility in the market feels like, if you're walking to higher and higher ground, that day-to-day volatility or throwing the yo-yo up and down just doesn't matter in the grand scheme of it. And that's what I always try to remind everybody is don't get caught up in the sensational headlines. Don't get caught up in the predictions because you are going to find yourself in a completely different place if you just know how this game works. But volatility is a thing that exists in investing. It's not uncommon for the market to go down. If you invest for a long enough time, you're going to experience that. And so what you want to make sure of is as an investor, you make sure that your plan is built for both the good and the bad times relative to where you are. Obviously, your portfolio, the way that you invest, what your allocation looks like should look very different if you are a 25-year-old at the very beginning of your journey or if you are a 55-year-old getting close to the end of your accumulation journey. You want to make sure that your plan appropriately accounts for the fact that, yes, downturns could happen. what's the best way for me to take advantage of those? And that leads to, First Trust does a great job if you want perspective on what's going on in the markets. If you compare, we as investors and just this whole relationship with fear and greed and us as humans, the creatures of humans, we feel the pain of loss much more than we enjoy the wins of making money. And that's why you see so much content, you see headlines and everything. It's preparing you for the losses because they know that's the sensational stuff that's going to capture you and keep your eyes and your ears focused on it. But when you actually, when in doubt, zoom out and look at the history of the financial markets, bull markets are so much more part of what you can expect than the bear. And then if you look at what First Trust put together, and this is as of the end of 2024, bull market periods typically around 4.3 years, cumulative returns of around 150%. 50%. Bear market is the thing we're all scared to death of. Typically lasts right around 11 months. Less than one year. With an average cumulative loss of close to 32%. One-fifth of the upside. So it's back to the point that it's always better to be an investor. You essentially are part of the house, meaning things are in your favor to actually be a long-term investor if you just understand this, and I subscribe to this law of accelerating returns. Realize wealth creation is not a zero-sum game. Nobody has to lose for you to make money. If you actually go look at what the earnings of the financial markets were back in the 60s and 70s, they are exponentially bigger now. Now, look, inflation is definitely a portion of that, but a lot of that is also the innovation and that the pizza pie actually got bigger. And I think as long as we're growing this thing, now look, I don't know if we make the AI, the robots, and they eventually just, it turns into the matrix. But, you know, so there is that risk. But you know what? There's not a financial product that's going to actually help you survive that part of it. So it leads me back to what can we do, assuming that this actually, this law of accelerating returns is going to make innovation and earnings and everything keep growing, is that we can remember, always be buying. Always be buying. That's what you can do. And then promise yourself, because all of you new investors who find our content, that first 10 years is going to be an education for you. You have to promise that you're going to hold on, even if 2026 is the year that the stock market gets punched in the mouth. You're going to be okay if you will just always be buying, stay consistent, and realize you're throwing that yo-yo up and down as you walk higher and higher up the hill. It seems like there's always going to be voices out there that are trying to frighten you, scare you, tell you how scary and how uncertain things are. I hope that we get to be the counter to that. I hope we can be the ones that tell you, hey, if you have a plan in place and you stick to that plan, the markets are resilient. If you can be resilient as an investor, you'll likely be rewarded over the long term. I love that we get to sit in this seat sharing that kind of information. I love that we get to sit here, Brian, every single Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central, and we get to load you guys up. We get to answer questions about the things that you care about. So if you have a question for us, you want to get our take, you want us to weigh in on something in your life, right now we have the team out in the wings collecting your questions. So if you have a question, make sure you get it into the chat right now because we really do believe that there is a better way to do money. So with that, Crave to Direct A Revy, I'm going to throw it over to you. William H's question. It says, hi, Money Guy team. What do you guys think of saving for kids college in a brokerage account instead of a 529? The tax benefits of 529 are great, but I love the flexibility of a brokerage account. Thanks. I know you guys really appreciate 529s too. So what do you think? Okay, so here's, I'm going to give you an analogy. My wife and I recently went to Montana. And you may be wondering what in the world does this have to do with this question, but I'm going to get there. And one of the things we did when we were in Montana is there were some frontier skills thing. And one of the frontier skills that I got to learn was how to take a stick and another stick and a rope. Oh, you get to make fire. I got to make fire, right? And I was able to like, if you really get that thing going, you can make a friction fire and they can teach how to do that. And that's a fine way to make fire. If you're out somewhere, that's a great way to make fire. You will accomplish the goal of creating fire. But where we sit today, there are much more efficient ways to do that, right? Like I can just go get a lighter. I can get a match. And perhaps that's going to be a better way, a less painful, more efficient way to accomplish the same goal. That's how I would still answer your question about saving for college. Can you save for it in an after-tax brokerage account? Absolutely. You can do that. You can build the money. You'll have a little bit of tax drag there, and you can pull those dollars out, and you can pay for higher education. But if you know that your goal is going to be for college and you know that's what those dollars are going to go towards, in my opinion, there is no better, no more efficient vehicle to be able to do that than a 529 plan. So William's counterpoints could probably be. But, yeah, I like the thought, though, with all the student loan debt and people questioning what's going on at colleges. Sure. What if my kid doesn't actually, we need more flexibility. That's what I would think somebody like William would be asking. Hey, let's do the brokerage account because now it has some separation. There's no penalties, and I could have access to the money. Let me play even that angle because I'll make a case that 529s have actually gotten better. I think when these things first came on the scene, they were specifically set up for college funding. But everything that I've seen coming down the pipe for the last two decades on 529s is they're actually opening up and providing even more access to these turbocharged savings vehicles. Because here's why we love them, and then I want to continue on with my line of thought there, is that you put in contributions to a 529. And many states out there, if you're funding in your state-funded plan and you have an income tax in that state, a lot of them are giving you tax incentives. You need to go and do your research, do your due diligence to figure out. Like we live in the state of Tennessee. There's nothing like that. But in the state of Georgia, there was a very large one. So go and do your research because there might be some incentives even from a tax perspective to help you fund this thing. But here's where they've made 529s even better. So you get the tax deduction in the current. If you use these for qualified education expenses in the future, all the growth is completely tax-free. That's right. And here's the other thing. If your kids get a scholarship or some other way you can even get access to the growth of these 529 assets and still pay income taxes but you can waive the penalties if you get scholarships There's even a get-out-of-jail-free if one of your kids is a gifted athlete or a gifted scholar. There's even ways to get access to the money that's going to be just like a brokerage account, by the way, which is pretty cool in those aspects, but I love the opportunity, and I used it. Remember, my daughter is graduating this May from college, 529. Man, oh, man, it's a high five moment because it was just so powerful to watch my little $2,000 a year contributions because that was the majority of the time that my daughter was a – that I lived in Georgia. That was the most you could put in. Now they beefed that up even more. I think you can put up $8,000 per beneficiary, but it was $2,000 for a lot of the time, and that's what I was putting in. It was $500 a quarter. And to watch these accounts pay for literally three years of my daughter's college because compounding growth was really spectacular. And here's where these things have gotten even better. And I'm sorry to totally filibust this thing. No, no, you're doing great. Is that if you think about now you can use it for trade schools. You can use it K through 12. They've also used to be if you did it K through 12 for like private school and other things, it was capped at $10,000 a year. They just boosted it to $20,000 a year. So these things, and now even you can fund Roth IRAs when they first come out into the workforce with 529s. They've really created a lot of avenues that even if your kid's not traditionally college-bound, you're going to be able to find use for this money. And then here's a catch-all that even catches it for later. If you think there's a chance you might have grandbabies, meaning your children will have kids, even if they don't go to college, there might be an opportunity to roll those assets over to even their own children or another family member. Pretty powerful stuff. There's a lot more escape hatches than there used to be. And if you're thinking about this one, did William say how old his children were? Did he mention that? He did not. If you've got a really young kid, you're like, man, I just don't know how this is changing. There's nothing that says you have to do all of your savings in that vehicle. You can do both. It's an and instead of an or. Maybe figure out, okay, what's the lowest level I can fund to get the tax benefits? or maybe I just want to shoot for a 50% of college or 75% of college to come from the 529 and we'll make up the rest in the brokerage account. There's nothing wrong with doing that. You have to determine, okay, what's the best way? But it's an incredibly efficient vehicle to save for that goal. I'm going to say something. This is probably not a great show, but we ought to do an and versus an or show. It's because there's so many concepts in the financial world. It's just like when we hear people talk about Roth IRA or your 401K. It's usually an and. But a lot of people ask questions. They're looking for either or, and we're like, no, it's and. That's probably not a great show. Let's put that on the title list of really clickable titles. And or or. The and or show. The Money Guy and or show this week. Would you click on that show? I'm really good at kind of doing some of this stuff. Maybe I'm not the greatest for coming up with the next show idea. No, I think you've got to get all the ideas out there, right? And then one of them is going to stick. Hey, there's no bad idea in content creation. They just don't all make it all the way out to the public. Oh, no. With YouTube, you quickly find out if it's a bad idea. Well, William H., thank you so much for your question. We're going to do a few more questions. But in the meantime, let's prep for our rapid-fire segment. This is our it-does-not-depend rapid-fire segment. So if you would like to submit a question that Brian and Bo have to answer in under 60 seconds together. My least favorite section of the show. No. Oh, you don't mean that. Just drop your question in the chat. Make sure you put RF for rapid fire in front of it so we know that you want to be part of that segment. And then remember at the end of the segment, we will have a maybe it does depend segment where you guys get to hash out anything that was left unsaid by your rapid fire answers. I love that. All right. So we'll be watching the chat. I was trying to think of something that Bo doesn't like to do that we can make him. The low lying fruit is swimming. Don't say it. No, but we're not going to go there because I do that too much. I pulled that one too much. I'm trying to think of what else we could pull that Bo's not good at. The problem is he's good at everything, so it just doesn't hold water. But I'm like it's so unfair that part of why I think this appeals to everybody is they like seeing me squirm because I'm not good at it. Literally, before you even got it out, Jake said, RF, that was Kimbo Swim. Like he literally got that. You have planted this seed in the minds of our folks that I can. It's not. It's more like a fact sharing. I can swim. Fact sharing. I can swim. We should ask that and just hear you both in tandem. Brian goes, no. Bo says, yes. Next question. All right. Speaking of next question. If we ever do, you know how I always say, hey, if we hit like a million subscribers, we're going to do this. If we ever find the content team in the ocean together, we can test this. Probably, okay. Here's a sidebar. Here's a sidebar. On that scenario. Back when, this is pre anybody. I think Bo's the only one other in the room. Bo and I, when we abound wealth, kind of started taking roots here in Tennessee. We went to the team and we said, hey, when we reach this asset under management level goal, I'm going to take everybody on a cruise. We're going a big firm cruise. You were a plus one on a cruise. And we quickly hit this goal. And I remember I was so excited. We're going to go on a firm cruise. And then I started. And there was only like five employees, six employees. It was not many of us. And so this wasn't even going to break the bank. So I went around, and I quickly saw that the only people that wanted to go on a cruise together was me and Buck. It was just us, too. And our spouses, because everybody else was like, oh, we actually hit that number. Oh, okay. Let me see if my calendar is open. So I actually had to amend the giveaway, and I was like, okay, would you rather – I went and did a poll with our five or six employees at that time, and I was like, okay, it's an all-expense for you and your spouse to go on this cruise, or I can give you an extra – A cash bonus. A cash bonus. it was me you and carol and everyone else it must have been more than five or six because it was me you and carol wanted to go on the cruise everybody else took the cash option it's a shame and i've realized you never joke about that i was going to so i don't want to know if the content team would want to go to the beach or not with us he just doesn't want to know because it would break my heart because i would like to go to the beach so we could not only in addition to spend time with the content team, we could do the exercise of throwing Bo out in the ocean. And I would be on ready. Don't worry. I would be able to get up behind him and save him and pull him in. But that's probably never going to happen. I think Reby would probably want to go to the beach with us. Go to the beach, yeah. That's fine. Cruise. Money guy cruise. I don't want to – nobody else volunteer. I don't want to know. I do not want to know if you want to go to the beach with us because it might break my heart. Oh, man. All right. Let's dive into Jacob's question next. It says, hey, my wife, who's 35, and I, 30, will make over $200,000 for household income for the first time this year. That's awesome. Which is, you know, a big milestone. At a young age, too. Go on, player. Go on, player? Isn't it play on, player? Isn't that the way they're supposed to be? I make up my own stuff, Bo. I don't know. How did you figure this out? My brain, it creates its own universe. Go on, player. The next part of the question says. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. Okay, keep going. I'm sorry. So Jacob continues. Step all over your question. We both work for a private giving – for a private company, I believe, giving us ESOP shares, ESOP shares. Can we still include the shares in the 25% we can't buy in? Well, this is – okay, so what is your 25% savings? For us, it's the behavioral number that you're putting away, right? So why do we want you to save 25%? Hey, if I make $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, I'm saving 25% of that gross for the future. Now, you're in this situation where it sounds like your employer is gifting you ESOP shares. Now, not all ESOPs are created the same. And for those of you who don't know, this is a unique entity structure where all of the employees, or at least all the participants in the ESOP, are actually owners of the company. So it's an employee-owned company, and ESOP stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Well, if you're just being gifted those shares, it's nothing behavioral that you're doing. And so can that be included on your net worth statement? Is that part of your overall net worth? Absolutely. But at a high income, at a $200,000 income, should that replace or take part in your 25% savings rate? Brian as I'm thinking through this I think it's a lot Like an employer match at that level And what do we say about employer match I'm willing to go hard in the paint on that this is a twofer Is it because by the way Jacob you guys you just shared You're across 200,000 And y'all are young 35 and 30 You have too big risk For you in the long term future First of all because I saw this in the comments section Over the weekend Somebody goes where is this Why is it 200,000 for married couples And 100,000 for a single individual on this 25% where we get to count the employer versus not count. It's because of that social safety net. And realize the more success you have, the more responsibility falls on your shoulders. If you're a person, if you never make more than $80,000 a year as a household, as an individual, Social Security is going to probably pay you $20,000, $25,000, $30,000, depending upon how much, where cost of living is at the time and inflation and so forth. that's going to cover a big chunk of your retirement, especially if you're only living on 60% or 70% of what you made. But for somebody who's making two, three, four, because you're assuming at y'all's age, y'all's income keeps going up, and if you spend based upon what your income is, it's going to require a big pot of money to replace that. So that's one risk you have there is that you're far away from the social safety net, so you better be saving accordingly because you probably have bigger taste, bigger consumption, so you need to plan accordingly. The second thing I worry about with an ESOP is the viability of the company. Now, this could be huge for you, no different than Bo and I are small business owners. On our net worth statements, that potentially could look big, but the reality is we don't get to use that. It's not liquid. It's kind of just something that's sitting out there. It's a cherry on top of your sundae. It's not necessarily promise to you. So I would worry because what happens, and we've seen this, by the way, where you have this every year you get an annual valuation or whatever, and it tells you how much this thing's worth, that might turn into something that creates even more financial success for you, but it might not. We've seen businesses that have collapsed and then you don't get that valuation. And what if you were now counting that with your high income? You didn't save what you could have because you're like, ah, I got that ESOP just sitting over there. What if that didn't come out? You might have an, uh-oh, what do we do now? So that's why I consider this a twofer. You should definitely be trying to build up your 25% of your gross income savings habit because you have two risks. You have that you're building up well beyond the social safety net. Number two is you're not promised that ESOP will turn into big money for you down the road necessarily if the company ever runs into any financial issues. And if it does turn into big money and you have been saving, what that means for you is you have flexibility and options earlier in life. If you guys can begin saving that 25% at 30 and 35, life's going to look really, really good in the 40s and 50s where you're going to be able to do what you want because you want to do it, not because you have to do it. And that's a fantastic place to be in. The big thing is it's okay. If you under-expect and you plan accordingly, then you get – because that's what I did. When I planned on retiring at 50 and now here I am beyond 50, I don't want to – it's not really a bragging as you get older beyond 50. But I love the additional flexibility. It's not hard for me to process. I get more flexibility and options. What I don't want you to do is start off poor. You build up some success. But then because of unfortunate things and not good planning, you go back to being poor. That hurts. I can tell you that that doesn't feel good whatsoever. So that's more of a risk than it is if you are over optimistic on your assumption planning and then you you find or you underestimate your assumptions and then you pleasantly get surprised that that's a better case study. Love it. Better planning objective. Well, Jacob, thank you so much for the question. We appreciate it. We're going to do one more before our rapid fire. So, gosh, so. You know, this is a show. He's putting on a show. You love this. You love the rapid fire. I know you do. I can see it. I can see your face. I love Tuesdays. I love show days. I woke up excited to come in here. This may be the end of the rapid fire segment. I kind of blacked out on that this rapid fire is now becoming a weekly thing. Oh, man. We actually have a fun addition to the rapid fire segment today, too. So if you're watching, stay tuned. Yeah, that's what we need. All right. Let's just do a normal Q&A question, though. Here we go. It's from HRJ7656. It says, hi, MoneyGuy team. I'm 33 and work in the trades and will get a pension at retirement. This is my first year maxing out a Roth IRA as well. I've heard I should keep my age in bonds in the account. Should I follow this or go harder with stocks since my pension is very stable and well-funded in our union? That's what it means. Yeah, there's two things. Since you brought up the big one, I'll leave that one for you. you have to be careful with these rule of thumbs. Hey, when it comes to investing, my allocation should be X. And you can hear, hey, I want to hold my age in fixed income, or I want 100 minus my age in equities, or fill in the blank on whatever metric you're using. You need to be really, really careful about that. Because if I were reviewing your portfolio, now, not knowing your unique risk tolerance, your unique risk horizon, risk capacity, having an idea of your time horizon but not knowing your other wealth, I don't know that I'm going to recommend a 33-year-old have 33% of their assets in fixed income. That seems like way, way, way overly conservative to me, most likely. So I worry that if you keep 33% of your assets in fixed income or in conservative investments, your wealth multiplier is not going to be what it could be. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to moneyguide.com and slash resources. is you can play with our wealth multiplier tool. And you can actually put in there your age and how much you're saving. Just think about that Roth IRA, that $7,500 that you're going to max out for the first time this year. And look at what that can turn into by the time that you get to age 65. Now, the wealth multiplier is precipitated upon the fact that that's going to be a growth-type investment, a growth-type asset. If you have 33% of that in bonds or fixed income or CDs or cash or whatever, However, there's a really good chance that you're not going to recognize that, and that's probably going to be overly conservative for where you're at. But, Brian, you bring up another point. Just based on the type of account, that has to factor in also. Yeah, I mean there's two things that hit me hard on this. I think about a lot of my early career when I started my first financial company was I had a lot of educators that were clients And now I worked with these people for 20 years and I gotten to experience what it like to work with all these educators in their retirement years And what's amazing to me is that for a lot of these educators, they don't spend a lot of money. I mean, they have very low expenses, and then a lot of them went and worked in the central office, and a lot of those formulas is the last three, your highest three years. So their pensions cover 85% to 100% of their retirement and living expenses. So we found out we never even really touched their financial assets. You're crazy if you don't take into these type of things exactly what you brought up with the question, your cash levels or your pension levels, because those might be able to offset and act as the essential – The conservative arm. The conservative side of your investment portfolio. So that's the first thing that I would because I can I will confirm that you're right to even think about that. The second thing is what Bo is alluding to that ties into Roth accounts. The superpower of them is they grow completely tax free. So if you think about the decades that you're going to have compounding growth working for you, the fact that they're growing completely tax free is something that you ought to maximize. That's why I always, you know, when I talk about in Millionaire Mission, you want growth assets in your Roth IRA because you want to stick it to the man legally as much as possible to grow that. Now, you don't want to be so aggressive that you potentially could lose the money because it's not a place for speculative investing, but it is definitely a place that you want to maximize growth opportunities. So I don't know that I would recommend putting such a high level of conservative assets in the Roth. When we talk about the three-bucket strategy, you're going to have after-tax assets, tax-deferred assets, and then you're going to have tax-free assets. When you put together your own personal jigsaw puzzle of your allocations by different account structures, you're probably going to put your aggressive stuff in those Roth accounts. And you're going to put your conservative stuff in that tax-deferred account because you're going to already pay ordinary income taxes when you pull that money out anyway. So let's go ahead and put conservative stuff in there. There's going to be taxes, ordinary income. So that way they work together. As you can quickly see, even if we give you all the detailed pieces, this gets complex really quick. That's why I always tell clients your hardest years are typically those retirement years as you're trying to figure out how we use the money in the three bucket strategy. When you get to that level of complexity, that's where we leave the porch light on so you can consider taking the relationship to the next level. And then just one last thing I'll throw in there is you're thinking about your allocation. This is your first year maxing out your Roth IRA and you're kind of like caught up on how do I allocate? What do I do? Where should I put it? This is one of the reasons why we love target retirement index funds, because at your age, if you pick a long dated target funds, you know, 2060, 2065, you know, you kind of figure out which one makes sense. The vast majority of that target retirement index fund is going to be on the equity side anyways, and it's going to do the natural allocating for you so you don't have to overcomplicate it. You just got to answer two questions. When do I think I might need this money? When am I going to retire? Or when am I going to turn 59 and a half for a Roth? And then how much can I save? You focus on those things and let the market do its job of allowing compound interest to be the wind at your sails. Wind at your back. The wind in your sails at your back. He's like warming up physically like getting ready for the intense sprint of the rapid fire segment. And he's right to be doing that because it is time for our It Does Not Depend Rapid Fire segment where Brian and Bo will answer your questions in 60 seconds or less. Combined. 30 seconds each. And they cannot say it depends or they're disqualified from answering. By the way, before you start, I'm not trying. I am delaying it on purpose a little bit. Guys, I've been saying we need a buzzer or something. You ought to have seen that weak sauce that came into the content meeting this morning. And Rebe was even embarrassed. Like, no, we can't use that. We're trying to figure out if we're going to do this, if we're going to do it. Just you wait. We need to find a way to really almost not the shot caller. I think that might have been not a great suggestion. That was your idea. But we should probably have something that at least wakes you up a little bit if you break any rules. All right. We are going to dive into the segment. But remember, at the very end, we will have our. You sure you want to start this? Maybe it does depend segment where you can say all the things that you didn't have time to say and expound upon if you wish. So with that, let's dive straight into question number one. Was there something unique? You said there's a different thing about this one? Yes. Now everyone watching is going to be able to see the timer counting down. Oh, so they're going to know. Oh, great. Look at us. Making an investment in the timers. How well you're doing or not well. All right. All right. It says, the first question. I know you love Roth, but with two incomes, we have Roth 401k, Roth 403b, Roth 457, and MBD Roth. How much is too much of a good thing? There's no such thing as too much Roth, but I want to make sure based on your income, you're not missing out on current day tax benefits. If you're in a higher tax bracket, 30% or above, when you make your contributions through retirement accounts, you'll likely want to think through, man, if every dollar I save could save me 30 cents in taxes. So you can't have too much Roth unless you're sacrificing current year big tax savings to build those Roth assets. I disagree. There is too much Roth if you find that you're miserable in life because you're a miser. I have clients that have they so want to just stick it to the government as much as possible that they're not going on vacations. vacations they're not enjoying the moment family members are uncomfortable around them because they're completely so so tightwattish that it's not even fun to to be in their presence that that's the bounce look i love roth going up there and maximize it but do not lose your life to where you look back with regret and wow stuck the landing well i see a timer i see a timer now Y'all have wise it up And now last week I was like There's a timer? I love the disagreement I audibly gasped That was fun Alright next question says Well I mean Get as much as you want Be a pig in stock No no no He was asking a tactical question He was asking a tactical question 60 seconds are up Oh we're coming back to this one Next question says Focus on HSA, Roth, or emergency First at 25 I mean Come on This isn't even a question Follow the financial order of operations. There's no guesswork in this. That's why we tell you step one, you've got to get your highest deductibles covered. You ask us, then we've got to get off the debt. We've got to get the free money from the employer. That's actually number two. And then you get into the HSA and the Roth. I guess if you're trying to figure out, do you do HSA or Roth? We like the HSA because it's a triple tax advantage a touch more. But one of the ones was emergency funding there, right? Yes. So emergency fund has to happen before this, right? So it's got to be step four. If you follow the food, you will not be led astray. Love it. Next question. Can I take his 20 seconds? What's the best way to get over not wanting to spend money? It's a hard one because some people do not get as much utility from spending as they do from saving. So the first thing I'd figure out is, is there another party involved? Are there, is there a spouse? Are there kids? Are there other people? who might get utility from spending. And you don't love the spending, but you love the memories and you love the things that you can create. You love what the money allows you to do. So I would focus on those things and it might help you loosen the purse strings a touch. Money is only a tool. So go out there and do an audit of happiness. What actually makes you happy? What do you spend? Is it getting coffee? Is it going on trips? Is it buying gifts for people you love? Is it being charitable with organizations that you feel like are making the world a better place, there is something that moves the needle for you emotionally as well as reaches you from a happiness as well as fulfillment standpoint. Go out there and lean into that so that you can walk away from the regret. Because I don't want you to be a miser. I want you to be a financial mute. Wow. When Ryan can see the countdown, he nails it. I think this might be like Rocky IV. Now that I have the tool, I feel like maybe week three of doing this, It's starting to feel like I'm getting into a groove. Look at him. He's getting a little confidence back. I'm getting a little draining. I feel like, you know, by the way, you're Dolph Lundgren. Well, it's just because you see it's the workout. Oh, because Dolph had all the tools. You see Rocky Balboa dragging railroad ties in his gray sweatsuit. That's me right now. So I'm Drago. Of course you're Drago. Of course I'm Drago. Okay, there you go. I mean, you told us you eat cereal with no shirt on. I wear a shirt everywhere. All right. Moving on. The next question says, assuming Roth conversions make sense in your situation, where do they fit in the Foo? Assuming Roth conversions. If it's backdoor Roth conversions, step five. Backdoor Roth conversions in step five. If it's Roth conversions, like I'm converting my pre-tax assets to Roth, meaning I'm incurring a larger tax liability than I would otherwise, I'm going to argue that's a later stage like a step 7-ish in there I said step 7-ish like once you get to saving 25% Roth conversions I'll give you that you just want to disagree I do like to disagree but actually I think Bo to bring it back on his face I think Bo stuck the landing on that because I do think backdoor Roth contributions are step 5 I think when you get into doing conversions that's more of a step 7 and 8 of the financial order of operations. What I'm noticing is when you can see the timer, you're so much more efficient. He's so efficient. You're good at this. If they did 40 seconds, could you still get it in, you think, now that you see the timer? The timer helps. The timer definitely helps. Imagine what it's going to be like when I have the shot collar on. Wild time. Next question is, favorite Olympic event? I have watched so much figure skating and ice dancing. It's a good one. So, I mean, that's – I even – personal disclosure, I actually set my DVR, my YouTube TV to record all those events. And I've watched a lot of them. This is the first year I've – Bo's like the Olympics are on? Oh, like the Olympics. Yeah, I've not been watching a ton. But a lot of people here have been watching a ton. So when I walk past their desks, I can see it. First year I knew that two-person luge was a thing. Oh. Oh, you've seen all the stuff on social media. That's what I've seen. I've seen all the stuff. And I was like, I want to know more about this. There's a lot of sports like that. I'm like, things that make you go, hmm. It's a wild thing. So two-person luge. And by the way, the question didn't specify Winter Olympics, so I bet you could have chosen a summer thing. No, but we're all thinking about the Winter Olympics, right? By the way, the other one that just blows my mind because it's like shuffleboard is the one where all the brooms out. What's that? It's fishing. Not fishing. Fishing? What's it called? What? Is it curling? Curling. Yeah. Curling. I was like, fishing? No, I wasn't. Okay. That was the ones I've seen everybody have. We're out of time. We're on to the next question. The next question is, is having six figures in cash overkill in a high-yield savings account? Oh, that's mean. That was so close. That is such a mean question. If you are not at financial independence and you've not built up your asset base to where now your circumstance justifies that much cash, you could be missing out on a lot of opportunity by having that cash sitting in a high yield. I would bring it back to what is your income and what are your living expenses is in paying respect to the three to six months. And then are there additional factors that need to be taken into consideration? If you're, if you own a business and you have a lot of employees, that's naturally going to push your cash up. Or if you're in step eight of the financial order of operations, you might decide to use cash as more of a wealth builder, an opportunity thing to go out there and grab it because you have cash when nobody else does. But otherwise, let the financial order of operations be your guide. Beautiful. Next question says, you often talk about the three bucket tax strategy. Since Roth is so good and I'm not trying to lower my taxable income, why would I contribute to the other two buckets? Go. I don't mind sharing that Bo and I had a whole conversation at the coffee machine this morning where he's trying to convince me that I ought to quit doing pre-tax contributions. I'm not supposed to tell them that. And just do Roth only. Well, because, I mean, for legacy planning, because I'm never going to be in a low-tax situation based upon where the size of my retirement assets are. I think a lot of people at lower incomes that don't justify doing pre-tax will likely build the majority of their assets in Roth. So they're going to do Roth IRAs, they're going to do Roth 401k, they're going to have an emergency reserve that kind of serves in that after-tax bucket, even though it's cash. And so the only way their pre-tax bucket would possibly get built is if their employer contributions are going in pre-tax. So it's not uncommon for someone to get to financial independence at that level with all Roth assets, emergency reserve, cash on the side, and a little bit of pre-tax because of the employer match. Great. Very efficient. Next question says, getting married next month, How does the Money Guy team recommend on bank account structure? We both work and have the same income. All Joe. Oh, is it your turn? My turn. If you're young and there's not any complications like kids from a previous marriage, I would prefer everybody just be joint. I prefer joint accounts because it takes the power out of the money. And by the way, even if y'all make the same income now, you're not promised that in 10 years from now or even five years from now when you start having children and other things that one of you might decide to stay home with the children and you want to take the power out of the money. My opinion is that joint accounts and joint assets is the best structure, although we have a number of clients that do keep things separate. And that's okay. There are just different things you have to think through there. But if you're asking for a newly married couple, the best way to navigate it, my advice would be to join everything. Great answer. See, I keep wanting to take his extra time because I think we'll come back to that one. We'll come back. We'll come back. Two more for our rapid fire segment. This next one says 27 male and 32 female. Should I put more than 5% on the first home if we have 100K saved for a down payment on a 350 to 400K home? I would want to know, are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you're supposed to be? So go to learn.moneyguy.com to see if you're ahead of the curve, behind the curve, right where you're supposed to be. Because, look, there's nothing that says I love if you can put down 20% on a house. What I'm trying to do is give you options so that you can get into a house, but also not stray too far away from the financial order of operations. I don't want you to be house rich, life poor. I want you to have the perfect balance of financial assets, housing assets, and so forth. 32 years old, 27 years old? Yes. down payment house Yes I want to look at your other accounts to see do you have a solid financial foundation in place where those dollars are going to grow towards financial independence Because if you're behind the curve, it might not make sense to put 20% down. It might not make sense to put $100,000 down. You should go to moneyguy.com slash resources. You should go check the wealth multiplier, see what those dollars can turn into. If you put them to work, it might be more efficient than putting them inside the mortgage. Right up to the end. All right. Last but certainly not least, South Dakota resident here. What does it look like to be a client of you all? You mentioned last week that you don't have any from South Dakota. I think that's the only state we're missing. First of all, you hear harp music. And then it's like a dream sequence. And you're like, holy cow, I didn't know it could be this good. And then we might even have some extra swag we throw your way for being the 50th state that we have clients in. We need to go audit that to make sure we haven't made some audacious claim without knowing it's true. But we definitely can make it a celebratory moment if we had all 50 states covered. People ask all the time, what is it you do for clients? And the most simple way we can say that is our goal is to serve as your personal CFO, meaning any financial question you have, anything that comes up in your financial life. We want you to feel like you have a team in place that can help you navigate that, that can help you answer that. Yes, we talk about tax strategy. We talk about investments. We talk about portfolio. We also want to talk about the other stuff. How does your long-term goals align with the short-term decisions you're making? How do you make sure your family is protected? How are you making sure that your legacy lives on the way you want to? We want to serve as your personal CFO. Woo! The timer goes faster at the end. I do have a sidebar. You just want to give me a little grace. Well, it's lucky because we have now reached the end of the It Depends Rapid Fire segment, And we are moving into the maybe it does depend segment where you can say all the things. Well, I chuckled. I was entertaining myself because I was like, harp music. That's such an interesting thing to say. And then it hit me. It's probably influenced. I don't want to break anybody's confidence. But we do have a content member that has a child that's taking harp, right? A harpist. Oh, see? So this stuff actually could happen. We might be able to. You come in from South Dakota, I might get them to pull out of school to come in here and play the harp. Oh, I love that. Okay, one thing that you did not get to say for our South Dakota financial mutant, if you go to moneyguy.com and click on become a client, that's how you actually start the process. You kind of left out a key piece, but I added it back in. You're welcome. Yeah, that will let you see how to get the conversation started. It will give you a form to fill out and connect with one of our advisors. Here's the thing. I know on question five and six I put asterisks next to them because I had additional stuff to say, but I dumped so much data out of my brain to make this 30-second segment. I have no idea. Six figures in cash. Number five was what if I have six figures in emergency cash? Is that too much? Well, I mean, that one is for sure it depends. Right. What does it depend on? Yeah, what does it depend on? I tried to. The way I tried to do that one was actually go through the variables because most people, look, most financial mutants actually go to the side of not having enough cash because you feel like cash is trash. So this is – you're already in – it's unique if you're building up extra cash in the background. So I was trying to give you all the ways in the financial order of operations that it could potentially work. I don't remember what my other point was besides that. There are people out there, and we have clients of this. $100,000 represents their emergency fund. No, they have to. We have quite a few clients. I mean I'm guilty of – I carry so much cash because of all the businesses and other things. and I've been rewarded for having that cash when things are bad. I mean, because I'm telling you, when you have cash and nobody else does, when markets go really ugly and you think every time, every two years out of every decade when we go into these dark periods where the economy goes into a recession, you think, hey, I ought to have a little extra cash if you're in step eight of the financial order operations. But so few people do it. It's like me and Warren Buffett. Well, I like to think I'm in that category too. because there might be things like a... Me, Bo, and Warren Buffett. There we go, the three of us. There you go. Big Island. It's a club. Or there might be opportunities. There might be a building that you were looking at comes available, and now you can move on that. Or there might be an opportunity to renovate or whatever that thing may be. But don't mishear us. Don't be loading up the cash if you haven't even funded your Roth IRA. Yeah, no, that's cash built up after the 25%. That's step eight behavior. It's really a step eight thing. this one was getting married joint finances was number six if you had anything to say on that yeah that one is look because i do prefer joint accounts because i've seen it the success i have in my own marriage you know and i've been married my wife and i were trying to figure it we did figure it out but now i'm getting confused because of the math we were doing with i think i'm on my 28 i'm in my 28th year or my 29th year close to 30 years of marriage and a joint and i like the fact that since we both came into the marriage, it's worked out well. But as a financial planner, I have very unique things. I have knowledge of seeing clients come in where maybe they met in their 30s or 40s and had children from other marriages. Or there's different account structures where maybe the parents of one of the spouses set up accounts when they were kids. And there's weird dynamics with that that you have to keep some assets separated. That's why a financial planner, These are complications that it's hard for me to say one size fits all. But I know in generality, if you come into the marriage with no assets or you're just starting out, I always try to take the money as a power source out of the equation so it doesn't create weird dynamics later. Even in that situation, because I've got some clients right now getting married later in life, successful assets are not evenly distributed. And one of the things we've talked about is, hey, let's make sure we keep all this stuff separate. Let's make sure we have the appropriate protections in place. But, hey, once you guys come together, everything here on Ford is joint. And I think that's great. All the earnings are jumping into a joint account. That's right. And it takes the power. Yeah, it's still on the same. So in my mind, I still call that joint finances. And even if you have separate finances, it's really, really important. You want to operate on joint goals. I have not seen this happen with clients yet where they said, hey, my money is my money and my spouse's money is my spouse's money. Buddy, I hope that they're okay to retire when I get to retirement. They have to have cohesive goals that, hey, even though we might be doing things separately and we have separate structures and the allocations might be a little unique, we're working towards a common goal. And those common goals are goals that we have as an enterprise and a household. If you can structure it that way, the separate account thing works. But if it's all like, hey, what I do with mine is mine and what they do with theirs is theirs and there's no conversation around that, it's just likely going to be a very inefficient structure when it comes to goals, when it comes to saving, when it comes to taxes. There has to be some sort of like at least integration around the purpose behind the dollars. My most uncomfortable client meetings are clients that are running these separate accounts because, man, oh, man, it's just so weird, especially when you have success. And by the way, you can't even – I know everybody immediately jumps to stereotypes in their head. No. I see it on both sides on the power structure play. And, you know, and then when you start talking about paying off the house and they're like, well, who's paying? You're not taking out my account. You pay. I covered this. I put the deck on last year. And you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm not. Guys, chill out. We're in this together. Remember? It's so funny. But it highlights to me. That's why I get a front row seat to seeing success is I see the possession of the assets when people is mine, mine, mine. And that's so to become one. And maybe that's traditional, but I just think about it. One of the things my wife and I have rules, we never throw in a fight. You don't say we're going to get divorced or you bring that up. That's no-go land. And then another one, nobody talks about who makes the money. Because if that ever comes up, I know it's probably a fight that's going to take weeks to heal from. it's not one that we come back to two hours from now and we say hey wasn't that ridiculous that we're no don't talk about who makes the money yeah no that's good stuff another thing that you mentioned brian i remember you said if you want to know your ahead of the curve behind the curve right on the curve go to moneyguy.com i wanted to call out a few specific resources and maybe you had one in mind but i know we have the prodigious accumulator of wealth calculator so you can literally go plug in some of your like oh my age and how much i have saved and it will kind of give you a sliding scale of like oh yeah you're where you need to be or oh wow you're a prodigious accumulator of wealth like you're a financial mutant or hey you're a little behind here's some stuff you can look at to catch up so be sure to go to moneyguy.com slash resources and maybe check that one out did you have anything else in mind brian that was the one that came to my mind no i mean there was the the know your number know your number at learn about money Just the spreadsheet to know so you can go out there. I'm excited whenever we get to share some of the updates that we're doing on some of these things, too, in the future as well. I'm not going to say any more. I know. I love it. We have, like, a built-in, like, teaser strategy in everything we do. It's a built-in teaser strategy. It's called Brian. The strategy is named Brian Preston. Brian can't keep a secret. Oh, that's hilarious. Oh, I love it. But by the way, for someone who poo-pooed the entire rapid-fire segment, I felt like you crushed it. I mean, self-rating myself, I felt like I was a Vanguard analyst. You stuck so many. I underpredicted what I was going to do, and then I came in much harder. Yeah, I mean, that's what me and Vanguard. Like an Olympic gymnast, you stuck the landing over and over and over again. So maybe I like this. Oh, I love it. All right. Want to do one more long-form question for good measure? Yes, ma'am. Travis W. says, hey, guys, congrats on the Clips channel. Thanks. That's very nice of you. Oh, hey, tell them about the Clips channel. We bring it up one time last week. 57 minutes in. What are we doing? We should have brought this up at the front end. Guys, we're going to keep having the Clips channel. We can talk about it as much as we want anytime. I did too. I forgot. Tell the people. Tell them about the thing. Tell them about it. You can now go to subscribe to the Money Guy Clips channel because we heard you, and we are now at a point where we were able to make this happen. all highlights of our episodes that we were posting on our main channel are now posted exclusively to the Money Guy Clips channel so if you like that kind of content and want the bite size you can go there and now on the Money Guy Show channel where you are used to coming that you know and love that is posting only all original long form content there and we hope you like it so far very positive feedback thanks for your support on both channels and we're excited about the future people keep asking why we did it. It's because you guys asked for it. We heard feedback. Man, it'd be great if you guys could bifurcate, if you could separate those two. And so we did it. We did it for you guys. But call to action, because I mean, please go subscribe and then tell your friends and family about it. Here's the thing. We know that the machine's going to be ticked off at us for probably a few months. Anytime you change anything of the data, the way you're feeding it to the algorithm, you have to wait for the monster to kind of give you, it's like the Wizard of Oz telling you yay or nay if this was a good idea. So we need you guys organically. We don't ask for a ton, but I'd love for you to tell friends and family about us so we can hopefully make it through the doldrums of upsetting the machine. I think we're going to be just fine. Was there a question there? We do need your help, so I love that. There was a question. There was a question that started. There's a question in there somewhere. And Travis was just being nice and said congrats on the Clips channel, which is so nice. But his actual question said, my wife and I are saving for a down payment. Should we also be bolstering our emergency fund to our predicted monthly burn rate? Or does that come later? Well, I think a lot of people, when they think about acquiring a home, they immediately think about down payment. Down payment, down payment, down payment. They don't recognize. There are other costs that come with home ownership. Yeah, there are. Immediately after closing. Ladders. Lawnmowers. Buns. Let's just name a bunch of things. Trash cans. Toilet paper holders. Keep going, dude. You're crushing it. I mean, no, I could think of all the things that we have to buy. You're not wrong. I mean, all these things that you don't think about. Cleaning supplies. And so one of the things you want to do is you don't want to just save just enough for the down payment. It's nice if you get a little bit of cushion in there because, one, there are likely to be closing costs associated with your mortgage that you either have to roll into the mortgage or you have to pay outside of the mortgage. but then you are going to have those getting in the home costs, moving costs, toilet paper holders, all the things that he just mentioned. So whenever someone's saving for a house, we always tell them, hey, save a little bit beyond that. Yes, I do think it makes a ton of sense to bolster your emergency fund, to get a little bit more cash in there so that it's more of a smooth and seamless transition even on the other side of homeownership. Well, begin with the end in mind. Plus also I think about like a good quarterback. He doesn't throw where the receiver is currently. He throws to where the receiver is going to be when the ball intersects with him. And that's exactly – I like what you're doing there is that – because I do think, especially on that first house, that 3% to 5% house down payment, it does – because it takes a period of time to build it up. It does become kind of an extension of step four, the financial order of operations and your emergency reserves. So I like you kind of bolstering your emergency reserves not only for the 3% to 5% down payment, but also what the new updated burn rate is on your household because there will definitely be an impact with having the new house and the carry cost. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Travis, for the question. We will be back here Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central taking your questions live on YouTube. And until then, make sure you go to moneyguy.com and check out all of the free resources that we've made for you. And also subscribe to both channels, The Money Guy Show and Money Guy Clips, if you haven't yet, because then it lets us know you're out there and really helps us just spread the word about these powerful financial principles that we all know and love and have really made a difference in all of our lives. So thanks for your support. Earlier, there was somebody who said, hey, how do I get to feel better about spending more money? I said, go do a happiness audit, figure out which makes you happy. I hope you guys know. Because Bo, even at the coffee, we talk about big life things. He's like, you're ever retiring? And you guys make me so happy. I think the answer is probably no. Because y'all are part of my happiness factor. I'll come in to sit down every Tuesday and recording these shows, knowing that our content's intersecting, seeing the reviews even of Millionaire Mission on Amazon and Goodreads. It means the world to us. It really puts me in a happy place knowing we are changing the world for the better to help personal finance become that much easier. So thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. Reby and the rest of the content team, Money Guy, out. The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Thank you.