How Can I Know If I'm Saving Enough?
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Military money minute has a question for you. IT says, super excited for the show. Dumb question even though, right doesn't I thought that's why i'm asking IT. Even though i'm maxing out my four one k at work, I don't feel like i'm saving enough. How do you deal with this feeling?

This is when we talk a lot about this. A lot of a lot of financial mutants have this. Um I it's insect insecurity or lack of confidence.

I'm not do IT enough. I'm not saved enough. Not is one of the very reasons why we came up with the financial .

Operations.

It's one of the reason we came up with this nine step tried true process of what to do with your your next dollar if you want your free copy got a money guy that com slash resources in download yours. One of the reasons that we did that is we want to free financial mutants from that thought, oh, am I do enough? Oh, am I putting my money in the right places? Oh, making the right decisions.

If you can follow the financial or evaporation, and you can arrive at the place where you're saving twenty five percent of your growth income for the future, for your future financially independent itself, what that allows you to then do is free yourself from the guilt and the and the lack of confidence. Am I doing enough? It's why we came up to the twenty five percent.

A lot of people think it's this restrictive thing. It's gonna make IT difficult and hard. And i've got to like strive to get there. It's actually the exact opposite for true financial mutes. IT is a liberating thing that once I get that, then I can spend a abundantly on all of the stuff that I want to spend on and all the areas that I want to spend, because I know that i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing in the places i'm supposed to be doing IT for my future self.

So one of the things I would ask military money minute is, are you maxing out your four one? K what's your growth income? And are you at twenty five percent? Have you been following the food? And do you have a fully funded emerged on? And have you done the roof and have one, the hr c, and have you done all of these things? And if you have, then you can. You can like and know that you're doing the stuff that you're supposed to be doing.

I think about all the content that out there in personal finance, you know, forever susie had tremendous success is that people would call in and say, hey, I wanted get my heart dog needs to have their leg, you know, fixed and should be like, no, can you put down you you know, I haven't taken the kids on vacation and six years, take the kids and no, you know, I think truthful.

Ly, this is what, as humans, we we sometimes I love the human condition, but there's other times do and sometimes we just like watching negative events occur in in, in place. And that's where those shows an even dave. I think a lot of times people is kind of like going to a nice car event.

There's more people listening to dave to hear winner go yell at somebody kind of like you go to watch and see if there's going to be or maybe key matter you hope in those are fight. I think I think it's the spectacle of those things that, that draws people in. And then there here we are you up with all this financial you knowledge, but there is a true risk that I deal with all the time.

Is that anybody who's good with money, you realize pretty quickly after you start learning the basics that you have a risk within yourself, is that you could very easily go from financial to financial minister. That's a disaster because is going to make your loved ones around you miserable. You're going miss out on a lot of life by thinking that this some of money that's waiting out there, some point in the future, is going to solve all your problems.

And that's why we've tried to. And people think, why did you come up with, why are you selling this? And like, because we give away so much. And I think you guys get used to everything being free.

But then every now, like we can answer this because finance really as personal, we need to give people like tools so they can figure out are they ahead. The curve behind the took the curve are right where they're supposed to be. So that's why we came up with the know your number course.

It's not only a course, is actually a tool. So you can actually type in all your data points. You can put play around with your savings rate, the inflation rate, your rate of return.

And it's go tell you, hey, are you on track to reach your goals? Are you behind? Because one of my favorite about being a financial ana, I think a lot of people get IT wrong, and they get this fault impression by the sues the daves of the world.

Everything is the gest train financial mutants to enjoy and maximize this one life that you have. I look, I don't mind being the baggar when I need to be the baggar, but most of time on the coach telling you, hey, it's A O okay, go with your best life because that's what that's what our secret sauces am, a numbers nerd. But I am the most sentimental person out there on the future.

And i've trying to help you get that perfect mix, that recipe that let you you get to be your older ourself and look back at your twenty years, thirties and four years. And a man, I did that right. And yet I still have reached all my financial goals, and that's what we're building here with the money I show. That's great.

awesome. Great question. Thank you. Military money minute. And we are always appreciative of everybody being here and continuing to ask great questions.

A jack w has another question for you guys. He says, i'm eighteen headed. I am .

already that is.

I look at our, you know, we do great from twenty five, about forty five. We are locked. No, and we never have to worry when all the kid's get brought in and they say, hey, is your content because we have to make sure, jack, you are an outlier and that you want to be the Better for IT. Because let me tell you, I don't even do have IT eighteen. Every dollar eighteen year old has is worth one hundred and eight dollars wiser.

So speaking of that, the question says, i'm headed to college. I'm wondering what's the best thing to do with my money investing wise school is paid for, which is awesome. congrats.

And I do have minimal expenses. So we've got a Young and true financial on our hands right here. What would you tell him about investing while in college and personal finance in general?

Um I want to go I want to go like theoretical and behavioral and you can go specifics if you want. Here's what I think is the best thing you can do at eighteen. One, the entire world is your order. You have entire life ahead of you, which means you have so much opportunity to unleash the eighth one of the world, which is compounding interest. And so it's great at the age of eighteen is you kind of can't screw IT up unless you don't do anything.

And so what I would encourage to do is if you have minimal expenses and you have some sort of income coming in, maybe it's part time work, maybe it's even access scholarship or grant money because you said schools paid for. One of the things I would encourage you do is figure out how can I set up an automated investing plan? Maybe it's twenty box a months, 4 box a month， fifty, one hundred.

And whatever the number is for you, start with something. And I don't mean like take a thousand dollars and go pick a stock and buy that stock today and hope that, that does well because that's like a fifty fifty gamble. Maybe you pick a good stock.

Maybe you don't pick a good stock. What I want you to do is I want you to put some money to work every single months. You can buy a low cost target retirement at index fn or a low cost S M P five hundred index fn and every single month had the same dollar mount.

Just go to work and invest fifty box a month, fifty box a month, fifty x ams, fifty box a because what I hope happened is as you go to college eighteen and you go through this, you're gonna at school for four years and you get to age twenty two and you come out of school, I want you to look at that account that you have dollar cost average into, and I want your be blown. And what's happened just over a short four year time, and how much those dollars have grown in, what I hope happens is that you get addicted to saving that. So when you start your very first job now, it's not OK.

I'm always going to do one hundred box a month. I'm going to do five percent of pay, ten percent pay, all the twenty five percent of my pain. If you can do that as early as possible, you are going to set your future self up to have tons of lex ibo and tons of choices on what your life is going to look like in the future.

Jack, I especially, I love when a Young person catches our content because I I want to go even outside of money here um because you getting close to go on to college, be very serious about being delivered on not just using a job but a career that you want to do for the the rest of your life. They actually can be rewarding. I think so many students, when I talk to him and I say what they're major going to be and I find out they don't really know.

They choose something sounds interesting, but they haven't thought about what am I actually do with that major, don't go because of class will be just interesting to you. I remember when I was at georgia had an extra class because i'd exempted out some math class, so let me just choose anything. And was into ology is state bugs? okay? Yeah, I was like, this is the most interesting class that i've ever taken. And I loved every day that I was in that class. And well, i'm sure that some very successful bug doctors or bug studies, but if I would have chosen my choice of career off of what I found exciting on classroom ad bell, a hacked of a lot more fun to go to that class.

And IT was accounting. You mean governments accounting and studying bugs are not the same.

But that's why, jack, you have to be purpose with every second that you have, especially on a college campus, because it's not cheap. I mean, I will thought you need to be deliberate with your time on campus, so find a job that can be rewarding, but also has a market value.

Percent of the general population .

is up going to school, and even it's come up in our last two surveys of our clients. Seventy four percent of people with college degrees do not work in their fill of study. That is an absolute dump to far of decision making.

Meanwhile, you look at our millionaire lights. We survey them is somewhere but IT comes between seventy two and seventy four percent to pm. On what year you look at our survey results do work in their feed of studies.

Do you see how you allocate part of being successful as allocating your time and your resources much more efficiently than the rest of your peers? So get a good job. Second thing, you are a billionaire of time.

That's right. You might not have much money, but you have so much time, you're literally a billion. If you count how many seconds you still have left to be on this planet, don't waste that huge opportunity.

People, you are looking ahead of you I you in the third is even fifties in your man. I hope I have that. You could have that, but they will never build to have what you have, which is millions of seconds of time. Be very deliberate with that.

I want you everything that you come in to resort in the contact, whether whether IT comes with money or time, I want you to think about, just like I tell you, a dollar has a potential become one hundred and eight dollars as if you can understand in that concept, you'll spend differently, you'll save differently. You'll give differently because you understand what it's worth. And then I will give you the other side, which is a little softer once you put some of these things in the motion. And that's why we give you the financial Operations. Make sure you enjoy your choice, make sure will enjoy you and enjoy and then enjoy thirties because nobody likes a mizer, but you've got ta get the work in first so then you can live your best life without regrets.

Favorite date, night or favorite activity to do in college on a budget like not having tons of money. What was the thing that Young Brown person said, not good time. I would go to this when I was in college.

I would use different, like date nights of man sharing. Here was the game plan for a financial mute. I would actually spend money on the first two dates because you had to set the hook, and then and but then after that was cook at the house, go hanging out with friends, do trivia nights and things like that. You ve got to set the hook for o actually .

take on somebody nice, but with bodies.

I mean, you could. I use some of my favorite memories. I even go back to high school is sometimes driving two things, like a go to a concert or something.

The time the car you have five gas piled into a car and you just go fn off on the way to a concert, the the driving to the concert in the car was more fun than actually the concert and that's what. So just make sure get around people you love spending time with and then just enjoy that one because alta is an older ga. I looked back on my life.

You don't realize those lightning in a bottle moments that you take for granted in the moment. Then you get, you know, twenty, thirty years beyond that. And those people are in around, maybe they live geographically in different places. And you make sure you met, you find people you care about and try to get as much time with them as possible.

I love that. Love that. jack. You're gonna so good. Oh.

oh yeah, jack up. You really glad you here. Thanks for submitting the question. All right. We ve got a question from David l.

He says, how should you save for a home using a higher saving savings account or a broken account with index funds? I'm curious what time horizon would make IT safe enough to expect the higher returns from index investing? What do you think?

So this is a one we get asked this question all the time as well. And I think a lot of people are curious. Now I can tell the day which has been listening to our content because we kind of already set the table a little bit when IT comes time to save for home.

First question, you have the answers. How much do I need to be saving, right? A lot of financial personnel l is out there. We will tell you the when you buy a home, you must put down twenty percent. That is not something that we subscribe to nor is that something that we have practiced ourselves in our own financial journey.

For first time home buyers, we give you a little flexibility rather than haven't to put down twenty percent, we think it's perfectly as acceptable if you only are able to put down three and a half ten percent on your first home person to have an entire whole buying checklist. Ingo, check out and got a money guy. Dot comes last resources and check that out. But you have to fine. okay?

Number one, how much money do I need to save? And then the second thing, you have to determine this, all right, what's the time line on which I need to acquire these funds and I buying a home in the next two, three, four years? Or do I not know what don't obama home? I just have like this idea that one day I want to interact home ownership. Because depending on those two answers will dictate how you should begin thinking .

about accumulating this. Well, always, cash versus access to cash. Mean, if you really want to know how I think about this guys, I literally gave you I A up story in millionaire sion on how I think because the biggest thing I run into with financial mutants is you guys think cashes trash and you do everything in your power to try to put IT to work to actually your detriment.

When the music stops of bad things. Remember when IT rains IT pores when bad things happen. So learn for me. Read the section on a millionaire sion. It's really when we talk about doing rainy day on right with cash reserve, you're going to hear what a nuckles head I was because I thought I was so smart. And you can learn from my experience.

I'd also give you a visual if something is a solid vision, meaning that IT is in the future and you know in the next three years that you're going to do something that's liquid cash. I mean, because there there's just nothing because you know it's coming up, there's always a chance that there's going to be a volatile moment. If you have equity investment, specially as some people have on, you could lose forty percent in about a five months period and you buy what tag just happened and you couldn't even react fast enough, even you wouldn't want to react because nobody tries to catch a following knife.

It's a disaster. So that's what can happen if you know somethings happen. And in three years, however, maybe you're just in this stage of life, and this is something you now at this point, like we have this commercial building and you enjoyed this commercial building and we decided and we might one do you to know the commercial building, but we don't know.

We're really waiting for the right time, the right opportunity, the right thing to come our way. So that's not a clear picture. That's a fuzzy pitch.

And there is no time frame. IT might be three years. IT might be four years. IT might be seven years in the future because there might need to be a big economic thing to happen for this to be good for us because that's so fuzzy i'm going to treat that is more of an opportunity to where maybe i'm going to have a baLance of a hey, I know I have enough coming up plus and any emergency reserves.

So this part here is going to stay in a high field savings account because it's locked in, but maybe this part over here because it's so fuzzy, i'm going to allocate a portion this into investments so that money can actually grow and not just be sitting out their staging. p. So I would say take a picture of what you're looking at and how clear is IT. If it's within three years, lock IT down. If it's out there more in the future, it's going to be more of a baLanced of probably a mix of cash plus investments.

Agree fully.

I was great. I'll dave IT out. I hope that helps you think through that great question. We really appreciate you being here. We love hearing what's going on in your financial lives so that we can speak to IT and hopefully just help you think through IT and discuss IT and bring a little bit more um helping you bring a little bit more piece of mind to your financial situation .

why I said clear, I was trying to stay .

on the whole time you finish each other thing.

which is you say that love IT hey, we do really love answering these questions were here every tuesday ten am central um but in the meantime or over the holidays, if you ever need to keep these questions uh going keep these conversations going. Head the money guide out com money guide com slash resources in particular, is just choker of free resources that are meant to be there for you when you need that.

You can do a little bit of a deeper dive on some of these things were talking about or does have IT documented. So you can be reminded of that more often than just on our tuesday lifestream or podcast and all of that. So be sure to head the money guy that come really grateful you're here.

guys. We love doing this and a big thank you to you guys. I know I even missed a key part earlier when i'll talking about jordy to the studio tour SHE made my day when he said he was looking more forward to meeting me then going to the post moon concert.

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