5 Fast Ways to Turbocharge Your Retirement Savings

Published Apr 10, 2024, 9:00 AM

Here's one of our best podcasts from the archive that you may have missed.
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Let's start with a question: Do you have enough in your retirement account? According to a recent report from Vanguard, the average American has around $140,000 saved for retirement. For those 65 and older, that average balance is about twice that, or $280,000.

Sounds like a lot, right? But for many people, even with Social Security, it's not going to be enough.

If that's you, let's fix it. In this podcast, we help you create a plan to beef up those retirement savings.

As usual, host Stacy Johnson is joined by financial journalist Miranda Marquit. Listening in and sometimes contributing is producer Aaron Freeman. This week's guest is a friend of the show, Joe Saul-Sehy from Stacking Benjamins.

Disclaimer:
Remember, even though we sometimes talk about money and specific investments, never take them as recommendations. Before investing in anything or making any other money moves, do your own research and make your own decisions.

You can watch this episode below, or if you'd prefer to listen, you can do that with the player at the top of this article or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts:

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Don't forget to check out our podcast page for more episodes designed to help you make the most of your money and our YouTube page for more videos.

Are you ready for retirement?

The Employee Benefit Research Institute points out that 7 in 10 workers are confident they can retire comfortably. In this show, we talk about the potential disconnect between what you might think is enough and what's actually enough. Here are some articles that can help.

How Much People Have Saved for Retirement at Every Age
6 Big Obstacles to Having a Comfortable Retirement
Most People Say They've Reduced or Stopped Saving for Retirement Because of Inflation
4 Generations Share the Age They Started Saving for Retirement
Here's the New Magic Number for Living Comfortably in Retirement
6 Reasons Americans Are Fast-Tracking Their Retirement
9 Signs Your Retirement Is on Track
Even Millionaires Share These 4 Retirement Worries
7 Reasons Americans Seniors Stay Frugal in Retirement
10 Reasons Today's Older Workers Are Delaying Retirement

How to create a retirement plan that works for you

Stacy mentions his book "[amazon url="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Debt-2010-Financial-Freedom/dp/1439168601" text="Life or Debt"][/amazon]," as a good starting point to help you figure out what you want out of life—and how to prioritize it. Joe and Miranda also have some good ideas for creating a retirement plan you'll stick with. We also mention our podcast on paying off your mortgage aggressively so you have more money available in retirement.

Let's take a look at some great Money Talks News resources about planning for retirement.

15 Tips for Those Within 10 Years of Retirement
Pre-Retirement Checklist: What to Do Within 5 Years of Retiring
Financial Advisers Say These Are the Top 10 Retirement Planning Mistakes
Over 50? Here's How to Catch Up on Retirement Savings
Health Savings Accounts and Why They Are Great for Retirement (Miranda never gets tired talking about HSAs.)
Is a Bond Ladder Strategy Right for Your Retirement?
4 Things You Can Control in Retirement
13 Types of Retirement Income That Are Not Taxable
3 Things You Should Do – and Not Do – to Prepare for Your Retirement
6 Ways to Guarantee Yourself a Steady Retirement Income
Sequence of Returns Risk and How to Protect Your Retirement From It

Meet this week's guest, Joe Saul-Sehy

Joe is a former financial adviser (16 years) and represented American Express and Ameriprise Financial in the media. He was the "Money Man" at Detroit television station WXYZ-TV, appearing on air twice weekly. He's appeared in Bride, Best Life, and Child magazines, and in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit News and Baltimore Sun newspapers. He's also appeared online in more than 200 different places, including CNBC.com and WSJ.com.

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Stacking Benjamins Podcast
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About the hosts

Stacy Johnson founded Money Talks News in 1991. He's a CPA, and he has also earned licenses in stocks, commodities, options principal, mutual funds, life insurance, securities supervisor and real estate.

Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a financial expert, writer and speaker. She's been covering personal finance and investing topics for almost 20 years. When not writing and podcasting, she enjoys travel, reading and the outdoors.

Hi, I'm Stacy Johnson with Money Talks News. Here's one of our best podcasts from the archive that you may have missed. This week. We have a special guest, my personal hero and a legend in the personal finance world. Joe Saul Chi from Stacking Benjamin's. Hello, Joe. Stop, keep going,

stop, keep going. Stacy, stop, keep going. You are a giant in the personal finance world and we're so happy to have you. But let, let's go ahead and dive in. Let's talk, let's talk about how we can turbocharge our retirement savings. Miranda, would you lead us off? Because I know that you sound turbocharged today.

Well, I mean, one of the things that's most interesting to me as we talk about retirement savings is the employee benefit research institute. Uh every year does a does kind of a summary uh report on the state of retirement savings and how people feel about retirement confidence. And it found that seven in 10 workers are confident they will have enough for retirement.

But then you look at the average savings that you know, that, that vanguard says that, you know, the average is about 100 and $40,000 for those 65 and older, that average balance is about $280,000. And so it feels like there's something of a disconnect here where people feel like they're confident about retirement, but maybe that confidence is misplaced. And so I kind of wanted to talk to Joe about that a little bit. So, so Joe, like, do you see a kind of disconnect here between

people's actual habits and what they think the future is gonna look like?

I think one thing many of us do really, really well is we are phenomenally confident in this country while we do nothing right. We go down the wrong way. I am very confident and I will end up being nowhere. But, but, but seriously, it's not and even for money nerds, you know, my, but the things that frustrated me when I was a financial planner and I haven't been one for a long time

but were these broke professors, people that knew everything and did nothing with it, right? They, they, they know all the rules, they know all the right things to do. Like I saw people that had the wrong investments, had the wrong approach and were 85 to 90% there just because they had a bias toward actually doing something. So not what, you know, it's about what you do,

you know what they say too, Joe, the those who can do and those who can't podcast,

I mean, but I like to think that all of us do have more than 100 and $40,000 in our retirement accounts. Right. We all do. Right.

I have 100 and $40 million in, well, if no one can check, you can say anything you want. He has 100 and $40 million in a ski mask. That's it. You know what?

My wife and I spent $4 on, uh, two powerball tickets last night. So, but we didn't win. So now I actually have to save for retirement. That is bad if your financial planner comes to the table after doing all their analysis and research with a couple of powerball tickets, Stacy and this is the key to your retirement. This is your only hope might be in your eyes. I'm telling you right now are not good

and that's the thing too, right? Uh Going back to what Joe is saying right about. Maybe we know what we should be doing, but we're not. And one of the things that this E pr I report says is that 60% of workers say that saving and investing for retirement is a major long term goal, but only 30% of workers have developed a retirement income strategy. So people know it's important, but going back to what Joe says,

uh maybe they're not doing it. It's hard to get motivated to do it, I guess. Or maybe people just don't know where to start. So

this is, well, this is the reason why Miranda number one on my list was to automate stuff. Don't trust yourself to do something, don't you just automate? I mean, this sounds like the dumbest advice ever, but it is the one thing that you can fix right now. Set up an automatic savings plan. Set it for a little more than you think you can do because I'll tell you what, when I was

financial planner, I would say, oh, let's do it for $25 more. And they go, oh, what if I need that money? And I'd say, well, guess what, we can lower it at any time. You know, how many times people called me to lower it. Never, never. Once you set it up, we are lazy. We are so lazy. So set it up automated and don't trust yourself to make the move and it, it happens automatically.

That was number three on my list. I've got, I've got 11 things here now. I've got 10. Right.

But no, I think that's a really good point because, and it's great the earlier you start. And honestly I did that with my son recently because I had, I had started a Roth. I, you're right.

Yes. But I helped him open an account, uh, on his own, uh, because I did set up, uh,

I did set up a custodial Roth Ira for him when he was younger. But now that he's older, he's 20 all of the things, making his own money, he's putting his own money into things into investments. And so I helped him. I said, let's set this up and he's like, well, I don't have a lot of money for my paycheck. I'm going to school, I'm working part time. There's not a lot of money there. I said, but let's just go ahead and we went through his budget and, and he's like, I can do $5 a week. And I kind of do what you did,

Joe. I said, what if we did 10? And so, so he has been, he's been doing it and he came to me the other day and he was just like, hey, I just checked out my Roth Ira. It's grown faster than I expected. Even in this, even in this crazy market, it's still growing faster than he expected. He said I didn't miss the money. I'm ready, I'm ready to up it to $15 a week. And so he's upped it a little bit more and he, like I said, he's got more than that. I started saving for him

in uh in a custodial Roth when he was like seven. So he's got that chunk. Yeah. So he's got that chunk there. But now he's doing it himself, which I think is also an important part. So that automation piece I think is just pure gold, pure

gold. OK? But we, we've beaten that dead horse. Ok.

Let's talk. I mean, you know, a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are probably like Joe there on the cusp of retirement. So, so they really,

now, in case for, for those of you who didn't know that that was me insulting Joe. Um, but, but you're on the cuss of retirement, Joe, I've got 1 ft in the grave and the other one on a banana peel. Ok. So, but let's talk about some specifics. Ok? For those folks out there, first of all, catch up provisions for retirement accounts. If you're, if you're not in a retirement account, obviously you're an idiot getting a retirement account if you are in one, put as much as you possibly can in, especially if you're getting up there in years. Um, and you have to be over 50 to do the ketchup provisions. Um Anybody have the numbers.

Yes, there's some new ones. I'm trying to see if there are new ones. 2020

three, I got to 2023. It's a number

I was gonna say catch

up 7500 and the maximum contribution is 22 5.

Yeah, so, so that's really good. So if you have enough that you can put, you know, 20 22,500 into a 401k, then you can make that catch up contribution

of an extra 7500 if you're 50 or above. So that really does help um catch you up really quick. The IRA also has um a catch up

contribution. I've only got 1000 for that and I don't know if it's the same in 20 23,000 this

year,

but it's still better than nothing. So, but yeah. So in uh so with the, with your, with your catch up contribution for the IRA for the IRA. So if you wanted to, I think it's still,

I wanna say it is still going to be

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking up right now so it's still 1000. So you can still do a catch up contribution of an extra $1000. So if you can't quite get that extra in for your 401k, uh you do have that option to do an extra for your Ira. I mean, and if you have both, I mean, go ahead and do both. My goodness.

And you know, I actually, this is something that I'll say before you do Miranda and that is the HS A too, is another way to save for retirement, right? And they have catch up contributions as well.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. You have to be 55 to do the catch up contribution for the uh for the HS A and, but it is great because you can build that up and use that for your healthcare expenses during retirement. That's what I'm doing with mine. Actually, I was looking in preparation for this, about a third of my retirement account is actually in my HSA, a retirement savings. Like I,

yeah, yeah, because I've been putting money in my HS A for, gosh, like almost 10 years now. It's been almost a decade. And so I've just been consistently maxing that out and investing it because you can invest your HS A money and investing it. So I was looking and I was like, wow, my HS A accounts for about a third of my retirement savings right now. That's amazing. And that

is amazing. How long have you been putting money in it forever? Almost

10 years I think is when I was looking back. So,

so it's, it's a really great way to be able to set aside money as long as you're using it for healthcare expenses, it'll never be taxed. And so I am using that as, you know, my,

my account for healthcare in retirement because I know healthcare is going to

be expensive. I have an HS A which I can't contribute to anymore because I'm on Medicare, but I could, I could pay my Medicare premiums with my HS A if I wanted to. Um but I have not done that. But oh, by the way though, Miranda and remind people what is an HS A, how do you get one?

So it's a health savings account in order to qualify, you do need to have a high deductible health plan

and it's really what counts as a high deductible health plans. Not so bad. It's pretty easy.

Now, you remember the $6000?

No less than that. Yeah. So you're high, so high, a high deductible health plan

is one where, uh, the IRS says that it's a deductible of at least 1400 for an individual or 2800 for a yes. So, so it's pretty, I mean, in the grand scheme of things it's not,

I mean, you know, not too bad and,

yeah, I assume you've got one Joe,

uh, uh, in HS A, in fact I don't because I'm eligible for, well, I'm eligible for a fantastic, my wife works in healthcare

and so I'm eligible for a fantastic, uh, plan, which by the way is also a point. We, we had a listener bring this to us Stacy, which is a good point that we go on and on about H SAS and how wonderful they are and they are. But if you are not eligible for an HS A there are, you can still be ok without it. Like you can be like some of the money nerds out there. Kind of, um,

uh, one got very frustrated going. I feel like I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be not ok because I don't have one. But no, I, I have never put money in an HS A. Uh, I love them but I have, I'm one of the few people in America with an excellent healthcare plan. I feel. What did your wife do? My wife was also in healthcare. Yeah, she's a pediatrician.

Oh, you're kidding. My, my wife's a nurse practitioner but I bet she could beat up your wife.

Is that the first time anyone's ever said that to you on a podcast?

Gosh, that's the, why do I have you two on together again? Somebody reminds me, why do I do this?

I like saying weird things about my wife because she never listens to my podcast. Her mother does but she doesn't

so I could do anything. I want funny. Cheryl never says, never listens to anything that I do. I was on TV in Detroit Stacy for nine years as the money man. Twice a week. Yeah, three times, three times in nine years. She saw me three times. Yeah. My wife loves taking pictures, look at herself. But when I'm on TV, she doesn't look at me either. I mean, what the hell anyway, enough bitching about our wives. This is not helping people catch up with their retired.

Ok. So what else can we do, Joe? You're, you're the hero here. What, what else you got on your list? Well, I gotta say that, you know, for all the people out there that are hearing us talk also about these numbers about the catch up contributions like, ok, I'm nowhere near that, right? Because we got this disconnect. We talked about earlier people barely saving and then on the high end, we got these Uber achievers that are doing a lot. But if you're one of those people in the middle, I think an easy way to turbocharge your retirement is just look up a little bit more closely at your asset allocation.

Like, look more closely about how you're positioned and I'll give you an example. The biggest question I'm getting right now and I'm sure you guys are too, is, should I slow down or take less risk with my investments? Well, hell no. If you're somebody that needs this money more than 10 years from now, this recession has given you a gift and, and by the way, if you're somebody suffering right now, it clearly is not a gift. But if you're lucky enough to have him

employment, you're gonna be able to continue through it. You can shovel money in. I would get more aggressive. Now, let's, let's make sure that and, and by the way, I see people in their twenties all the time that are using like a Robo avior. That's really, well, if you're in your twenties with your Roth Ira don't use a Robo avior. That's way diversified. Use stocks with a bias towards smaller companies and get the

stuff going because volatility is gonna be your friend. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Miranda's always, you know, oh, you put money in an S and P 500 index fund. I, I say, let's, let's roll some dice, small cap. And actually the truth is the truth is we should be doing both. Um, we're gonna take a really quick break here, but after we get back, I'm gonna tell you specifically how you can get free money for your retirement. We'll be right back.

Ok? You know, I said I was gonna tell you how to get free money for your retirement. I just said that to keep people here through the break. No, I actually, I think, I think what you were gonna, I think what you're gonna tell people Stacy was sell the shirt you were wearing and just go black screen, right? And that's free money for your retirement. You know, I, I feel so free being naked on this podcast. It's really, it's really fun. Um No, what I was gonna say was get matching money from your employer. If you can get matching money from your employer and you don't get it,

then you're crazy. I mean, always put in enough to get the maximum, uh match from your employer if you possibly obviously can afford to do so. And, and I read something Miranda, which I wasn't familiar with that. Uh Some employers even match HS A contributions. Did you know

that? Yeah. Yeah. Some of them do. I actually had an employer who did that uh when I was working for a start up the uh two years that I

had a WTO once. Uh but yeah, uh they, some of them do that and that's another great way to get some free money, extra free money, all the free money,

there's very little free money available in the world. And so when you have the opportunity to grab some, grab it always.

Oh What, what else you guys

got? Well, I was actually thinking it would be good because so many people don't have a plan and don't know how to get started. If we go ahead and ask Joe since he's a former financial planner step by step, how do you create this plan? Right. We've talked about like, OK, well, here's some numbers, here are some catch up contributions,

some things you can do with your asset allocation. But how do you get started? How do you make that plan? How do you figure out how you're going to reach your goal? Right. We, we all talk about like, oh yeah, we got to save for retirement. Well, how do we get that plan going? How to reach the goal? So Joe uh take us through it. How do you, how do you help somebody make a plan?

Well, they say that if you don't know where you're going, any map will get you there, right? So if we begin with the end of mind, like Steven Covey said, I think we're much more likely to make sure our money's in the right place. So I always like goal based investing period, knowing the goals are gonna change, it's not gonna be right? Which means we're gonna continually re evaluate the goals. But I would take out just a simple sheet of paper,

landscape escape style. Put yourself as like a stick figure on one side, the grave on the other with Stacy. Those are gonna be very close together. Getting it back for earlier. See how I did that. Yes. Uh The, I'm an elephant, Stacey. I don't forget but we put those. I wasn't gonna say it, Joe. But yeah, you are on your

grave. When you die,

you're gonna come back and trample your, your dead body like that elephant did to that woman pouring

salt on all that grass over top. So anyway, yeah, but then take a, make a bunch of circles about all the things that you want and begin with those and ask yourself what do these things cost and then work that back to your budget today. How much do I need to save to get those things and let them

fight it out? Because I think that this is not about money. The conversation we're really having is about what do I value and do I value X more than Y. And so I think that by starting off with putting your goals out in order the big things you want, finding out what they cost in this case, retirement. What do I want for myself in retirement? Oh, it's the same standard of living. What do I want? And then seeing what that cost, I think that's where you begin.

I think that's excellent advice. And you know what the first thing on my list, by the way, if you want to put more money in toward retirement, see where your money's going. Now examine your budget, make a budget, you know, and then like you said, if you have a goal, then you're going to reach that goal, you're gonna take certain steps. And one of those is obviously putting money aside. And so in order to find out if you have more money that's hiding in your budget, have a budget, see where your money's going. Look at it, see if it was allocated elsewhere. Yeah. And to your point, Stacy, people hate budgeting.

But what you're saying makes the budget easier because now you have a reason that you're budgeting like people hear the budget and they're like, oh, it's confiding, it's restricting. No, this is gonna help me get this stuff that I really want in my life. Then it works. And without a goal, you're gonna just wander around. You're absolutely right.

I call it a spending plan because that makes me feel happy inside like I'm doing something fun, but it's basically the same principle where I say, hey, these are the things that matter, these are the things I want to accomplish. And like Joe said,

uh ages ago I did, I sat down and I said, ok, how, what do I want my retirement to look like? Or retirement? Whatever that comes to for an online content creator. But um but like

I said, OK, what do I want that to look like? What things do I want to accomplish? How do I want my life to look and how much money am I going to need to do that? And then like Joe said, I said, OK, now how much do I need to set aside each month to make that happen later?

And then I automatically back to automation automatically put that money aside every month into investment accounts to say, ok, these are the things and so that's part of my spending plan is to start with those top priorities and say I am making sure I am fueling my top priorities.

And once I'm feeling those top priorities, the stuff that doesn't matter as much if I have to cut that out, it doesn't hurt as much. And having those circles like Joe said, makes you look at that and say, wait a second. Ok, I don't need like another subscription to,

you know, a beauty box or whatever. I don't need that, especially, you know, that money each month, especially if I'm looking at the beach, this picture of the beach that I've put out there for my retirement. So I'm like, do I want the beauty box now or the beach later? I want the beach later and having something to look at I think really helps you uh feel that you

have an eye on your, you have to have an eye on your future self. You know, and one of the, one of the things that I, that I have on my list too is, um,

if you get a windfall, you, you get a tax refund, you get an inheritance, blah, blah, blah, get a raise. Um, give half to yourself, give half to your now self and give half to your future self. And one thing we have trouble doing is imagining ourselves in the future.

Um II I don't because I'm already in the future. I mean, I'm here now, I'm already old. So all I have to do to remind myself of my future self is look in the damn mirror. OK. There I am.

Every study shows what you're saying. Stacy is true that people when they save for retirement like in our brain, it feels like we're saving for a different person. So the more that you can make that future um uh uh tangible by, by saying I wanna do this, I wanna do this. I wanna do this. Then you can envision yourself there and you're much more likely to save for it than doing something today that you can see.

Yeah, because you know all these rules we're throwing out here, catch up provisions. H SAS blah, blah, blah. None of it matters if you don't, if you can't focus on a goal because it just, it just sounds like blah, blah blah, you know, but if you focus on a goal, then you're gonna start looking for ways, you know, I, I wrote a book uh 2020 years ago, you guys were in middle school at the time called uh Life or Debt. And in that and, and I talked about spending plan versus budget, you know, use a spending plan. But you know what? People hear the word budget, they think diet.

Uh but there is, but there's a huge difference because when it comes to diets there, you know, cottage cheese does not taste like steak.

But when it comes to budgeting, you can go out to dinner and split an entree. Have an appetizer at home, split an entree, you still went out to dinner. So you don't have to sacrifice your quality of life in order to find money in your budget to put towards your goals including retirement. I always feel better. I always feel better. Stacy when Cheryl and I do that too, when we split an entree, it's never a mistake. It's never a mistake.

Yeah, I agree with you. And we do, I do that with my wife too because you know, because the portions are big anyway. And you know what I found too. If you, if you wanna take, say you want alcohol at the restaurant, just wait till the table next to you, goes to the bathroom, we just take their drinks. I mean, there, there are lots of ways that you can, that you can stretch that budget

for, for a lot of, for a lot of incomes though. These things seem insurmountable. I mean, but uh if you, I helped a tenant put in the price, we had our very first tenants and uh they were a nice little family and low income. And I said, you know what, we have this trick we want to do to kind of incentivize you guys to keep our house nice is we're gonna hold back 50 bucks a month and then we're gonna give it to you at the end of the year. So it's kind of like this Christmas thing. And, uh, so they ended up getting 600 bucks, you know, at the end of every year

and at the end of that, they're always like, man, this is so cool. We love that you do this for us, you know, because, you know, we kind of blow money and everything and, and, and in the end when they finally moved out, like, you know what, we learned so much from that, you know, and we started saving a lot more and then they end up buying a house. That is really cool. That's a great story. Yeah. Um I also want to show people, um, if you go to episode 146 we interviewed Andy Hill and, uh,

he sacrificed a little bit harder than most. I mean, he sacrificed a lot to pay off. A house in five years. Um, so that's a pretty good episode that shows you how, you know, if you buckle down and do things, you can, you can make things happen whether, you know, by the way, that's, that's excellent stuff. And one of the points on my list was amp up your earnings, you know, make more money, you know, because you were just saying some people can't put money aside because they don't have enough money, they have more money than money, you know. So sometimes you might have to increase your income.

You do an outside gig, ask for a raise unless, and I want to be really clear unless you work for money talks, news do not ask for a raise then. But all you other people out

there, man, I'm thinking, I'm thinking that maybe it's time for a raise.

You work for stacking Benjamin's demand a raise, look at the time.

So what else do you guys have? We and speaking of time, we don't have a whole bunch left. What, what other ideas do you guys have to help people turbocharge their retirement

savings? Well, I think like Aaron said, sometimes we get so caught up in these big things and like I have never ever maxed out like a 401k year contribution. Uh I realized I didn't need to, if you start early enough, saving a smaller amount, then you don't actually need to

max that out. And some people can't max it out yet or they can't work up to it. So being able to build in these milestones where you say, ok, I'm gonna start, the important thing is to start and be consistent. So I'm gonna start, I'm gonna be consistent when I see that I can free up a little bit more money. I will add that to my automatic investment and consistently grow that each year. And I started out

way it was a long time ago, but I started out 50 bucks a month is what I started out with my first Roth Ira. I started out with 50 bucks a month. And if I just stuck with 50 bucks a month from there, I would not

enough to retire on. But what I did was after watching that, after making sure I reinvested dividends, that's another thing you can do is make sure that when you get those dividends from your, uh, investments, you're reinvesting them. A dividend is a little payout that you get just for having a, uh, share of some stocks or some funds. And we just reinvest those dividends. And then every year

I said, I'm gonna increase what I'm putting in there, uh, each month by 10%. And pretty soon I was increasing it by even more, uh, as my income grew as I rejiggered my values and said, wait a second, what am I giving up, uh, slash, you know, what am I giving up in the future for whatever it is I'm buying today. And does it really matter to me today? And once I started doing that, it's kind of a slow, gradual process.

But you can start, like I said, my son is starting, started with, you know, 10 bucks a week and now he's up to 15 bucks a week and he's slowly building that and slowly seeing how he can do that and the sooner you can start the better off, you're going to be

excellent advice. And, you know, another thing I have on my list too, um, when you pay off debts, keep making payments, just make them to your retirement account and stuff.

I like that. I like that. Even just with people have a car payment. If you get your car paid off, keep making that car payment into a, uh, fund. That is your car payment fund for the next vehicle and then switch that around where you finally get to the point that you're paying cash for your cars.

There you go. I've never financed the car, but I've never bought a new car either. Actually, that's not true. I bought

a new car. We have disagreements about this, but we'll move on

just about everything. Miranda, except for that. I'm super talented and look like Brad Pitt on that. We agree. Well, wait a minute, you said your wife could beat up my wife. Could your wife beat up Miranda? I haven't beat up Miranda. Back and forth there.

Yes. Oh my gosh. Scares the hell

out of me. I think listeners want to see that way more you two fight Cage match than you know what? I think that is absolutely

true. I would just knee Stacy in the junk and move on with my day. That's how I would handle that.

We're really digressing a lot on that.

This is what I, like I said, why did I ask Joe to come on? Not sure. But here we are.

I think I've listened to this show, I've listened to the show many times and I think Miranda verbally knees you in the junk a lot. Stacy. She really does. She really does. And I get no sympathy whatsoever. In fact, Joe, we have had somebody write in and say, I'm glad Miranda put you in your place.

Like I already have one wife. I don't need another one. Ok. So another idea I have because we are going to run out of time, but I'd like to give somebody some kind of specific advice of having an emergency fund is really important too. Why? Because God forbid you should have to tap your retirement account before you, before you reach 59.5. So, you know, make sure that you've got plenty of money set aside. Uh, so that if emergency does arrive, you're not gonna have to break those accounts. Right. Yeah. Agreed.

And mine, while we're talking about values and another one that was on my list guys was, uh, don't forget the little things. Well, you know, changing out the latte is not gonna make the huge world of difference if you don't value it and you add that to your automated savings. I'll tell you what my cousin does. Instead of getting all of the different channels, you know, we all cut the cord and now we have all these different channels, Disney plus Apple TV. We got them all.

He now once every four months texts me and everybody else. He knows and says, what are you guys watching on Netflix? And he gets the whole list and that's the only one he signs up for and he binges all those like the top shows there. Then he does the next one. Well, that saves him maybe, let's say $50 a month doesn't seem like much money. And for a lot of people like, yeah, I'm out but listen to this at the end of the year, that's six

$100 a year still doesn't sound like a lot. But for him, he really likes to travel. And so that ends up being $6000 every 10 years, which is two more trips every 10 year. If he takes a, I mean, $3000 trip is a hell of a nice trip and he's gonna do two more every 10 years, which is materially different in his life. So don't forget the small things if you don't value it, cut it and automate it and add that.

You know, Joe, I get a library card and go even further. Well, there's a million ways to save money and, and one of my last thing as a matter of fact is be financially literate.

Um, listen to podcasts like this, read things and you're gonna get ideas. I mean, money talks news, we have 12,000 articles, many of which are about how to save on this, that or the other uh without sacrificing your quality of life. So be literate and you will find extra money in, in your budget

and that, that's probably the most important thing you can do. You won't, you know, you gotta learn how to invest. Uh So you're not afraid when you put money in, in your 401k and, and do a stock market fund. So you gotta understand what you're doing and it's not that hard obviously because look at the four people here, we know how to do it. So you can too. I mean, I guess we know how to do it like trap.

So and speaking of which it is time to drop the mic, anybody have anything compelling that they need to add to this excellent podcast.

Nothing.

I, I can always find something else to say. You guys can't. OK. That's fine. I can, Stacey, you're looking better than I've ever seen you today. There you go. That's how we'll close it out. Oh

my gosh. Roll credits. Roll credits.

Ok, guys, we are out of time but we are never out of topic. Dig a little deeper. You're gonna find links to lots more info on our show notes. And remember if your goal is to make more, to spend less to retire rich. Your online home is money talks news.com. And don't forget to check out Miranda's online home as well. That is Miranda Marquet Ma rquit.com. And of course, you want to see Joe at his website stacking

dot com and don't forget to check out his podcast as well because it's hilarious and it's very, very well done. If you've got a question comment or topic that you'd like to suggest we would love to hear from you. Just email us at, hello at Money Talks news.com. That's hello at Money Talks news.com. And one final thing if you like what we do do something for us, subscribe to this podcast, takes you two seconds. Really helps us. So if you like us, show us and subscribe and tell your friends too, I'm Stacy

Johnson. I'm Miranda Marquet.

I'm Aaron Freeman. I'm sorry, Joe. I meant to tell you that at the beginning to tell your name at the end. Ok. Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. We're gonna see you right here next time.