017R - Roth Conversion Ladder

Please note



Time Speaker Text Tags
0 - 32 Jonathan Mendonsa All right guys we are back in the studio. It's Friday you made it you're almost there you got an awesome weekend coming up. But this past Monday we had Brandon from the mad Fientist. And this was a big one I mean this is one that Brad and I had wanted to do basically since day one since our first podcast when we launched on January 1st. I mean I know more as a result of doing this podcast than I did in December and September I mean these ideas are crystallizing for me due to just not only the guests that we have coming on but then the additional information we're getting from our community.
32 - 43 Brad Barrett Yeah it is fun and we're just like so in awe of the community. What we've come to learn is that people have been craving this and hopefully we're providing a home for this fire community.
43 - 52 Jonathan Mendonsa And by the way we hit a huge milestone. We just had our 50th written review. And Brad you know who wrote that 50th review.
52 - 54 Brad Barrett I might.
54 - 165 Jonathan Mendonsa Chad Carson man Chad Carson wrote our 50th review. So Chad thank you so much. And he basically said I am a guest and a regular listener and this is one that I recommend to other people. So thank you Chad I really appreciate you putting that on there and guys. But that was a big deal not just because of the comment but also because we told you from day one that when we get 50 written reviews that's where we implement the voice mail feature and that's cool because this is a community driven show and the Friday roundup is a community driven episode it's by the fire community for the fire community. So now that we have the voice mail feature we're adding it and it's live right now you can go do it if you leave us a voicemail feedback that adds value. It's going to get played and we're going to talk about it and we're going to get to actually use your input on the show. It's just going to add an incredible level of depth. Other people have voicemail features but they don't get used the same way that we are planning on using it. You guys are an integral part of our show and we have been wanting to use this feature since literally the first day. So I'm incredibly excited about the depth that that feature is going to add to this thing that we as a community are building together very very powerful stuff. OK so let's go ahead and dig into this week's episode we had Brandon from the mad Fientist. And it was kind of an origin story so it was a mentality it was a thought process. And in that episode for the first time we introduced the Roth conversion ladder. Now many of you are already familiar with this idea because maybe you found the mad Fientist a long time ago. But for those of you that heard about the Roth conversion ladder for the first time that is going to be the focus of this episode and so we're going to take some time to show you how that works. But before we do that I want to go and take a few minutes and just get some general insights from the episode because I know for Brad for you this was an episode you were very excited to do and you really wanted to go behind the scenes with Mad Fientist and find just kind of pull out some of those human elements.
401k, career, college, rothladder, scholarship, tax, testimonial
165 - 210 Brad Barrett Yeah no doubt about it. And the funny thing was when we finished recording that episode you're as soon as we turn clicked the off button you said wow that did not go at all how I thought it would go. And I think. Like I for it you know I think you went extraordinarily well but it was definitely different from from many of our other podcasts where we dive into content but what I really wanted to do was to kind of humanize him. He is just such a great guy. I mean he's super fun like just a real personable guy and I think that's kind of lost when you read his articles not because they're so technical I mean well they certainly are technical to it. You know he's diving into IRS documents as you put it you know I'm 8200 pages of the IRS. You know the tax code.
210 - 219 Jonathan Mendonsa But I actually wrote that up by the way I think that's a real no no. I think that yeah it's a real number I didn't know. So I googled it. That's what I got.
219 - 303 Brad Barrett Very very cool. I don't think people know the story of Brandon. And in the episode you know while he's had 30 plus podcasts of his own he just interviews people. And you don't really get to hear what's going on in his mind or his life really. So one topic that I thought was really interesting and we did make note of it in the podcast. But just to kind of quote slash paraphrase what he said early retirees are such a different breed where the standard advice doesn't apply. And he said I'm looking at this through the very focused lens of early retirement and that was kind of like the origin for for where a lot of his tax optimization and tax planning stuff came about which was there's so much advice out there that is applicable for the regular office worker who's saving nothing and who just wants to get started. There is a huge place for that. Obviously there's millions of people who listen to Dave Ramsey and who I don't know follow Suze Orman and people like that but once you get a little bit beyond that and you get into this world of fire you can start saying OK not only am I getting so far ahead and expediting my retirement or financial independence this is how we really like to term it but you're expediting that down to roughly 15 years. Right. Which in and of itself is amazing. But then you have all these built in benefits which Jonathan we've kind of unpacked in prior episodes. I know you want to talk about them. Yeah let's let's roll with that.
ramsey, savings, tax
303 - 445 Jonathan Mendonsa this Story that we're building is it frankly it blows my mind every single day because these are like the the secrets you know that one person that has something figured out and you're like you know if I just know what it is that they're doing you know in many cases people are dying to share their secrets. They're dying to share these things they figured out in fact they write blogs and that you know and the biggest problem is finding those different blogs that have those content and then figuring out how to put it into your life. And that's what Mad Fientist did so well. He had a specific scenario. He said you know what. I'm not going to work for 40 years. I'm not I'm not doing it. And then he created these essentially secrets because no one else knew about him right and figured out how to distill them and incorporate them into his own life. And then he simplified it down and he created a place for us to get access to that information and then we now don't have to go into the 8200 pages of the IRS documents. But now we get to pull those out and then figure out how to take what he's already simplified and then incorporate that into our specific scenario. But the amazing thing is he's not the only person creating content. He's doing it on these specific tax documents that's kind of the place that he's made his stand. But there are these thought leaders in all these different places that have done the same thing that has simplified it. And so Brad and I Well what we view as just helping point you to those resources that are already out there that have already been created. I am not as smart as Brandon and I am not as smart as most of the people that have done all this research and found all this stuff. My jam the place that I get is I want to figure out how to take what they've already simplified and incorporate it into an entry level middle class lifestyle and then how to how does that person. How does that person win by learning the simple techniques that really everybody has access to. That's what I love about what we're doing. These aren't things that you only have access to if you're a millionaire or a billionaire. These are the tax hacks for middle class America for entry level middle class America. And if you start with these you can start with these at any age. But like there's different levers we I love the word levers I don't know exactly where it came from but there's different levers that you can pull depending on where you are in life. And we're just trying to accumulate those and figure out how to turn it into a story that you just go pull the ones that work for you. And so for sure when it comes to tax optimization you need to go to the Mad Fientist web page sign up for email list. Go check out all the content that he has. I mean he just no one has done a better job at that than he has. It's absolutely fantastic.
445 - 556 Brad Barrett Yeah agreed. And the Roth IRA conversion ladder which we talked about during the Monday podcast is really the essential piece and we've talked about this with Justin from root of good certainly. And we're going to have Jeremy from Go curry cracker on talking about very similar stuff which is putting as many dollars as possible into your tax deferred 401Ks 403Bs 457 So those kind of vehicles and really getting to access those funds before 59 1/2 which is the typical age that you can access them without incurring a penalty. So that's what Brandon has figured out is there is this way to convert your typical IRA funds into a Roth IRA. And not only avoid the penalty when you actually pull the funds out of the Roth 5 years later but essentially get to it's almost tax free or pretty pretty darn close. So this is kind of outside the scope of just like a Friday Roundup but the three main areas where I see that not only do early retirees and people pursuing financial independence have structural advantages just in life I would say but the three main areas that we've seen over the last you know 23 podcasts are college for sure. We talked about this with Justin on that episode where and this is something that is yet to come. So I know Sun Woo and as we've mentioned and Edmond Tee are producing a ton of content around this and we plan to really unpack this over the coming months. There's a very legitimate chance that early retirees who don't have a huge income right you have assets but you don't have a huge income. There are ways to potentially get college for free or close to free because you look like someone without income. Right. So that's a huge structural advantage. We talked about obviously tax planning which is potentially getting all of your money that you've tax deferred out add a zero percent effective tax rate or pretty close.
401k, 403b, 457, college, ira, roth, tax
556 - 571 Jonathan Mendonsa And actually just a plug that not to interrupt Brad but next week next Monday we're going to be going through exactly he's talking about never pay taxes again capital gains and losses which are some advanced techniques. But that's when he would go Curry cracker. So just keep that in mind as he's continuing with us.
571 - 615 Brad Barrett Yes. So that's you know three days away. Be sure to grab that episode on Monday. Right. I mean tax planning to essentially get all of your money out and never pay taxes on it. Talk about a structural advantage if it doesn't get bigger than that. And then this is way outside the scope of this particular podcast. Since we haven't talked about it much but many people in the fire community have talked about health care and certainly under the current health care law there are these huge subsidies for people who are not making a lot of money. Right. So if those are the rules then it's up to you really to use them to your benefit. Now we're not getting into politics here. That is not the intent of Choose FI in any way shape or form. But but again if those are the rules and you qualify for huge subsidies then you can get health care essentially for free as well.
healthcare, tax
615 - 695 Jonathan Mendonsa And I have one additional thought on that even if it changes with the new setup. I suspect that there is going to be a huge focus on probably high deductible sure that's probably going to happen but also HSAs and probably increasing the limits on HSA. And you know who has a huge advantage and who's already incredibly focused on using HSA is to get to 5 faster it's the Fi community. So I promise whatever ends up happening whether ends up being essentially the same as it is now or if it ends up pivoting I strongly suspect just by the nature of the way we organize our finances fi and fire is going to be positioned to win if they go with HSA we win if they go with subsidies we win because we have already organized our finances to be optimized for those different scenarios. We have large emergency funds to prepare for some sort of thing. We talk about insurance policies and how we like catastrophic type insurance policies where we can handle the small stuff. We want something for the catastrophe. And if we get HSA is with $11000 limits that we can put in there we have tools to crush that. So we're going to get into insurance and either way whichever way ends up going we're going to take the time to explore how that might work. But it doesn't really matter what happens because of the way that the fire community organizers their finances their positioned to win and that's what we want to do. We want to win yeah.
emergencyfunds, hsa, insurance
695 - 861 Brad Barrett No that's that's a great great way to put it Jonathan and no doubt about it. And just to kind of pivot back now to Brandon himself. I thought it was really cool that he was just so honest on the podcast. I mean he talked about some pretty dark periods that he had where he thought like he was actually depressed. And he talked about that quarter life crisis that he had on his 30th birthday and he was living this life of deprivation where he thought just getting to this number would make him happy. And you hit it and it's an empty feeling. Right. And that's really important to remember for everyone out there is this is about in our opinion it's like a secret to life which is what Jonathan kind of mentioned earlier which is I believe that living this way and saving all this money and and taking control back of your life is is really the secret to life. Like I think we figured something out and you all out there in this community are really on the cusp of something huge. And I think it is essential to remember that this is not about money it's not about the dollar figure that you see on the screen when you log into Vanguard. That does not make you happy. It really doesn't. It's about figuring out what you enjoy in life and to take that time to really think about it. And I just spent this past weekend up in Massachusetts at a retreat actually. There were about 19 men up at this retreat that my friend Dominic Cortuccio ran. And I had mentioned him on an earlier podcast and I'll link to his site in the show notes. One of the things that in speaking to someone who's this guy Keith who I met and became friends with over the weekend you know I realized he's in a very similar place to me which is life is good. We have wonderful families healthy in-shape have businesses that are doing well and helping people in the world and everything's wonderful. And yet we were still at this retreat for the real stated goal of it was designing the life you want to live into. And I mean that's just such a cool concept and I probably always thought this was the life that I wanted to live into. And yet while by no means is it empty I don't mean that in any way shape or form as I have a wonderful life. It's similar to what Brandon has talked about and what Carl from 1500 days it's finding that more finding whatever it is. And this quote from Keith was I never dreamed I'd pass here so here that I never dreamed past here that hit me just so hard because I can say like I never dreamed I would get here where everything is wonderful. I'm on the cusp of financial independence I have this podcast that we started three months ago that is now reaching tens of thousands of people and we legitimately think this can reach hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people and that's a quote that I'm just going to keep with me for the rest of my life is dream bigger and fine. What makes you happy in life and what brings you joy. And there was just such a huge takeaway for me from this weekend and just incredibly valuable. So I'm glad I got a chance to talk about it here. It feels feels nice to kind of kind of shout about it.
families, health, savings
861 - 964 Jonathan Mendonsa Wow Brad. That's that's awesome man. Thanks so much for sharing. Maybe in a future episode maybe we can get Dominic to come on the show and share some of his insights with us. I really like that idea of designing the future you want to live into. That's a really really cool concept. One of the things that struck me is when he basically said you know I finally hit my FI number and I didn't I didn't feel any different and he said of course it didn't feel any different. There's no big difference between nine hundred ninety nine thousand and you know and. $1 million is just it's just a number on paper but when you re-oriented himself and focused more on not it's not the number it's never the number. Track your net worth but you're using it as a tool. Track your progress toward your goals find out what your goals are as it is spend more time with family as a pursue your passions and when you're setting your goals you want to set smart goals which is an acronym that maybe I can explain in a future episode. I do it now but I'm pretty sure I've forgotten some of them. But you know figure out what your goals are and then the money can be a useful metric to see whether or not you're getting close to it but it is not the end goal. $1 million is not going to make you happy if it's in a vacuum or you have no friends and no life and no relationships. But if money is a tool that allows you to then maybe move yourself down away from a job that's requiring you to work 80 hours a week and down to something that allows you to spend more time with family allows you to spend more time in these relationships. It allows you to claw your weekends back and spend more time with your kids you know figure out what that actually looks like what those goals are and that's you know that's where you have to make your focus but obviously money is an extremely important tool and it's a metric you can use to evaluate how close you are to getting to your goals.
families, myfinumber, networth, relationships
964 - 1049 Brad Barrett Yeah and that ties in perfectly to Brandon's story about how him and his wife Jill quote went crazy spending right which was really kind of cool you know where he went from this deprivation mindset to just kind of as he put it testing the upper limits on what the spending could be. And again as he put it like they're not going out and buying a Mercedes or buying some huge McMansion like because that's not what he values it's going out and spending time with friends. It's traveling it's going to that brewery and not worrying about buying a $17 entree as opposed to a $9 entree. Right. And it only amounted to a couple of thousand dollars in difference at the end of the year which in all honesty to Brannen is completely immaterial. But there are a couple of thousand bucks but that value of just being able to live and buy what he wanted and what he valued was is real you can't put a measure in that. It's really amazing and he said also to kind of paraphrase a couple of quotes it felt like I could have and do everything I wanted and over the years I've figured out what that is. That's a really deep quote. If you think about it like he spent year trying to figure out what he values and what he gets enjoyment out of and he's there and he's now allocating his money and his time and resources to further those goals that's huge. It's not about sitting in the woods in Vermont in your house and spitting a hamburger from McDonald's. And this ultimate deprivation mindset and obviously he didn't do that but.
mindset, travel
1049 - 1050 Jonathan Mendonsa Hey don't put that curse on me Ricky Bobby.
1050 - 1058 Brad Barrett Yeah. You know what I mean it's about just finding where and what you value in life. So yeah I mean I thought that was huge.
1058 - 1176 Jonathan Mendonsa Well here's the here's here's like the life hack component to that. So we always talk about getting people to just love this entry level middle class lifestyle which I think gives you that sweet spot medium of comfort but without all the waste that comes along with maybe the next level which is even the upper middle class lifestyle where you have to have your kids in the private school and you have to have new car and you know all the payments that come with all that stuff. Six bedrooms five bedrooms whatever it is. Entry level middle class lifestyle gives you all of that. All of that comfort without all the waste. And then what we do over and over again and I think this is what you're saying is that what we're doing in my life every single year we get a little better at this. And what I think our audience is doing probably especially if they're listening to us and using some of these things that we talked about each year they're looking at Waste they're getting rid of it. They're going down to essentially down to the baseline. This is what Brandon did too you go down all the way to the end and then you say OK I've gotten rid of it and I enjoy my life now at baseline. What do I need to add back. And then you can make the value choice on what is actually bringing value to your life is your $150 a month cell phone bill. Is that bringing you $150 a month worth of joy on a month after month basis. What if you got it down to $30 a month. Would that bring you 90 percent of the same joy as your $150 month's cell phone. So it's kind of you're looking at things. Why am I spending the money on this. Is there a better choice. What is the worst that could happen if I tried to make this a better choice. You go do that and then now you're there now your baseline of your expenses is somewhere between 30 and 40 grand where when you weren't looking at it at all you're spending 60 to 80. And so now you're there now you can figure what do I need to add back. And you can that's what he did. Now he's testing the perimeters. That's what we talked about testing the parameters. And he said you know what. Wow I could actually do all that. Once you've gotten used to this entry level middle class lifestyle and then you add a few things back in you know maybe you feel like you're living this luxurious lifestyle but I guarantee you you're living it for a fraction of the cost as your peers that weren't thinking about it at any point in time.
1176 - 1231 Brad Barrett Yeah and you know this this entire concept is something I've been thinking about very specifically over the last week and kind of ties into this. This retreat that I went to which is trying to figure out what do I want my life to look like. And you know for me a lot of that is having a support system of friends who who we see often and you know we hang out with and unfortunately when everybody's busy it's difficult to get together with people. And I don't know what it is sometimes you know if it's in people's minds it's just too much of a hassle or you have to go and get a babysitter or something that holds people back from getting together as often as they'd like. Well by no means am I looking to give my friends financial assistance or like saying that they're not doing something because because of money. But like I was just thinking like what's one of the main resistance points to like getting together with your friends and going out to dinner or they have like we've been thinking about we go into one of those like Escape rooms. Jonathan you probably.
1231 - 1234 Jonathan Mendonsa Ah I Want to do that they have two in Richmond I really want to do that.
1234 - 1276 Brad Barrett Yeah let's let's do that I mean I've been meaning to get a group of people together to do that so. Like what if we hire a babysitter. We have a couple of girls in the neighborhood who who can babysit and you know what if we do like a fun thing you know where we have like a party essentially for the kids with a couple of babysitters and a nice safe spot and then the parents go out for an hour and go to this escape room again. I don't know if that's even plausible or if people would think that's ridiculous but like it at least causes me to think in a slightly different way of like how can I spend a little bit of money to potentially bring more joy to my life which is seeing my friends more off. You know so like that might be slightly unconventional. And that just might not work. I like it at least made me think differently and like that was a very cool thing. I thought.
1276 - 1358 Jonathan Mendonsa This is the power of financial independence. This is the power of achieving freedom before you're 65. You can make these decisions. I tell you know what you're competing against when you ask your friends to go do something like that honestly. They've just gotten through a five day work day stretch. They have to go mow their lawn and they have to do laundry and they have to make food for their kids and their weekend's gone right. And if they make that decision to go hang out with you then they're not going to get to spend time with each other now probably frankly in many cases that time that they spent with each other is just being spent in front of the TV. But that's what the middle class family's lifestyle that has to work 40 to 60 hours a week and both spouses are working. That's what it looks like that's what they're trapped in. Now to me totally understandable. All of us are going to have to do that at some point. But in the fire community we're doing that to pursue this alternate path and we're trying to get on this aggressive race away to the other side where you know what that is optional now or it's dialed back or maybe one spouse can stay home because you're halfway to FI or you know something along those lines and it doesn't get is stressful you can be more flexible with your time because you have so much more of it. You can be more generous with it. You can actually go and do that sort of thing because you've got time in your week for these other mundane tasks that inevitably with middle class America is just being stacked on that two sacred days that they have every weekend. You know when you're FI every day is a weekend every day.
1358 - 1389 Brad Barrett Yeah and I know I'm trying to really maximize that and not just kind of waste days anymore which even when you do have the flexibility it's easy to get into that rut. And I'm trying to just be more intentional about my days and that might mean like literally having a list of things that I like to do that my daughters and I like to do together. And like actually physically printing this thing out just saying like one time a week I'm going to take my older daughter Anna and we're going to do a daddy daughter alone time for a couple of hours and pick one of these 10 things that you feel like doing.
1389 - 1397 Jonathan Mendonsa I'm submitting you for like Dad of the year award every single week. I'm more convinced that if there's a prize out there I'm going to submit Brad's name for Dad of the year. That is freaking awesome I love it.
1397 - 1431 Brad Barrett Thanks man I appreciate it. And you have to work at this because you do get into those ruts. And again I'm just really just trying to just get better in like every aspect of my life over a long period of time and just make little changes that I can make to just have a better happier more joyful life and I think that's something that the kids will look back on 20 years from now and just say like wow like we got to spend that time with dad that was just like just so important and so precious and like most people don't have that option. And I realize how fortunate I am and I don't want to squander it. And that's something that really came up to me over the last couple of days and certainly.
1431 - 1517 Jonathan Mendonsa Alright Brad so one of my favorite things to do when we get a new tool or technique is make sure we can give a sample scenario and actually visualize what that would actually look like. I think that's really powerful. It's not necessarily that everybody is going to have that same story but if they can visualize how it worked for one person and what their scenario was they can figure out what they can do to get closer to it or what part of that they can use in their own and their own life. So for the sake of unpacking the Roth conversion ladder let's just take the scenario where we have this 20 year old guy. Now imagine that he basically figured out the college hacking thing. Now how did he do all that or part of it did you get scholarship doesn't really matter. But he graduated at the age of 20 and he's married and has a kid at this point and he's working in a career that that makes $60000 a year say engineering something or something like that. Now this guy is on a 20 year plan and he's making 60000 each year he maxes out his 401k which is $18000. They have a entry level middle class lifestyle they're able to do it for about $30000 a year. They do pay some taxes on that there's a little bit of difference left in there and he's on this track for 20 years. And so for each year he's that 401k $18000 a year it's making an 8 percent rate of return. So at the end of 20 years he's at the age of 40 he's going to have eight hundred eighty nine thousand dollars in his 401k. So Brad My question to you is with this guy what does using the Roth conversion ladder What does that actually look like given that specific scenario.
401k, career, college, rothladder, scholarship, tax
1517 - 1737 Brad Barrett Ok cool. I think this will be interesting and hopefully we can convey this a lot of numbers here just on a podcast so I'm going to try to make this as interesting as much of a story as possible so I guess let's just look look at each year right. And what that year looks like so 60000 gross income they're immediately putting the 18000 into the 401 K. All right. So they've got 42000 leftover. Now let's just talk about like the taxes aspect as we heard from Millionaire educator. When you're married and you have one kid you have about $34000 of free money space. OK. So what that means is that your standard deduction your three personal exemptions and that adds up to about $25000 in total. OK. These are deductions on your tax return. And then you have a child tax credit of $1000. So when you back that all out into into deductions it amounts to $34000. So this guy started 60 K. He already put 18000 into his 401K. So his taxable income is down to forty two thousand and now we're taking out 34000 of deductions. Right. So it's an $8000 taxable income to be applied against the tax rates and at that rate he's in the 10 percent bracket. So he's literally paying eight hundred dollars in federal tax each year on a $60000 income. So this is just back of the envelope. So please if we're getting the numbers a couple of hundred dollars off. Just bear with us here. But he's spending very very little and federal tax show Jonathan said. This family has $30000 worth of expenses each year. So he's got the 42000 bucks that they're actually seeing. After the 401K contribution less let's say about $1000 in taxes. So they're down to forty one thousand dollars of income and they're spending 30000 on their expenses each year. So not only are they putting away 18 K into the 4 K every year but they're saving $11000 into their just regular taxable savings accounts. So Jonathan did the calculation on the 401K of what that would look like after 20 years which would be about almost $900000. And if you save this 11000 a year into the taxable savings which would amount to $916 a month at an 8 percent return. That's $540000 in your taxable savings. All right. And the reason why I bring that up is that's essential for this Roth IRA conversion ladder. So you know he gets to 20 years down the road and stops working. OK. He's got 900000 in a 401K. He's got 500000 change in his taxable savings and now wants to start converting that money in the 401K and essentially get it out tax free or pretty darn close. So what I would suggest doing is maximizing that free money. So you know in today's amount it's 34000. As I mentioned a couple of minutes ago. So he can convert $34000 every single year and it essentially be tax free. Because as we discussed that $34000 conversion is a taxable event. So the 34000 will go on his tax return as income. But as we discussed with the standard deduction the personal exemptions and the child tax credit which may or may not have 20 years down the road but will say he does. Hypothetically you'd have $34000 in free money deductions tax of $0. So that's the amazing part about this Roth IRA conversion ladder is this guy was only paying $800 in taxes a year on the earnings side. He's paying zero in taxes each year on the converting side and can do that indefinitely. Now Jonathan do you want to jump in with any question.
401k, ira, roth, rothladder, savings, tax
1737 - 1803 Jonathan Mendonsa Yeah I see it as such I always slow down and hit on certain things so keep in mind he's now 40 years old and he's done working right. So he's a he has zero income right now. So when are we talking about. Now he has that 34000 dollar space that he can convert this. You know this million dollar nest egg that he has this $900000 nest egg from his investments from his 401k he is not making anything. So he's now living off of. I think what Brad what you're saying is he's able to pull out the 401k money 34000 of that per year and roll it into a Roth IRA. And that's called a conversion right. Correct. And he will pay zero tax on that. So remember the cool thing about the Roth is you don't pay any taxes on it. And when you pull it out. So follow me here if I got put in the 401k pretax and then it got rolled over to the Roth IRA using a conversion without incurring any tax and then it stays in that Roth for the five year period of time at which point the conversion is now considered a contribution and then you can pull contributions out of the Roth Tax-Free then that's what you call winning.
401k, ira, roth, tax
1803 - 1808 Brad Barrett Yeah. Biggest one you can ever get you know zero dollars in tax on that money.
1808 - 1810 Jonathan Mendonsa All right so what does he get to live off. Talk us through that.
1810 - 1962 Brad Barrett Yeah. So so now you know the key point is that you can take once you do that conversion now. You cannot pull that money out on day one. You have to wait five years. OK. And then those conversions essentially take the character of a Roth IRA contribution which means you can pull it out tax and penalty free at any time once you've reached that five year period. Now with a regular Roth IRA contribution as we discussed previously you can pull that out any time on day one day whenever you want but with the Roth IRA conversion the rule is you can pull it out after five years so you need to get from retirement day to that fifth year essentially. That's the whole key here. Now this guy has 500 plus thousand dollars sitting in his taxable savings and he's literally just going to pull out $30000 a year. However frequent basis he's just using the money to for his living expenses. And you know that is the key is having in least five years of living expenses in your regular taxable savings accounts. OK. Now obviously he has many many more than five years here. You know he's got probably close to 20 years without any investment returns. So this guy is an amazing shape and this hypothetical is done on a $60000 income which is not astronomical for a family and on $30000 a year in living expenses which is that entry middle class lifestyle that we've talked about over and over and over again. So this is not some crazy hypothetical where this guy was set up with a silver spoon. I mean this is someone making 60 K a year and just living a fairly frugal lifestyle. So he's done everything right and he can draw down his regular taxable savings and then once he gets to year five He's got that 30 K to pull out of his Roth IRA. Now every single year from year zero he's doing Year Zero after retirement I should say he's doing that conversion up to the maximum amount of free money. You know the 34000 or whatever it is indexed for 20 years from now but we'll say the thirty four thousand and every single year he's doing that. So that's what's creating this ladder. So in year 6 he's pulling out the 34000 that he converted five years prior to that. Year 7 he's pulling out from prior five years prior to that. So it's it's this ladder that you keep going and then once you get past year 5 you just keep laddering and you don't have to pull out of your taxable accounts anymore or you can pull out of wherever you want.
ira, roth, rothladder, savings, tax
1962 - 1976 Jonathan Mendonsa I hope somebody tweets over the weekend keep on laddering baby keep on. But this is super cool and also did think about it. You know he has all this money in this taxable account is he limited to just that. I mean he can pull out any amount he wants right.
1976 - 2007 Brad Barrett Yeah they certainly could. I mean any and any savings in your quote unquote taxable accounts. That's just savings. It could be sitting in your Wells Fargo bank account. It's the exact same thing it's your money it's savings in all likelihood it happens to be in Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab because you want to grow it. But that 540000 that he saved could be just sitting in his checking account. It's the exact same money it's money that you've already paid taxes on and have saved or use that kind of farcically because this guy didn't really pay taxes on it because he's figured out the secret to life.
savings, tax
2007 - 2009 Jonathan Mendonsa That's right. Right.
2009 - 2029 Brad Barrett But for most you know normal schlubs they've paid taxes on it and it's the amount of money that they've saved after and so much on. Yeah. I mean it's what we just unpacked in the last 10 minutes or thereabouts is really amazing. I mean if someone could do that which it's not that difficult what we just described is like I said before is it's not earth shattering what we do.
457, firefighter, police, teacher
2056 - 2057 Brad Barrett that's powerful. That's a good call.
2057 - 2069 Jonathan Mendonsa And just real quick for those of you that are wondering what the heck is he talking about. Go check out our episode 13 the unfair FI advantage of being a teacher that featured millionaire educator and they'll show you how to unlock the power of the 457.
457, teacher
2069 - 2093 Brad Barrett So yeah hopefully that was useful to you guys out there I think. I think you know this when you read it on paper it can be kind of confusing. But but it's really pretty straightforward once you get into it. So yeah. As always let us know your comments don't hold us you know sticklers to every dollar we use in this scenario. Like I obviously rounded with some of the tax stuff but keep it coming with feedback or questions. As always it's feedback at . ChooseFI dot com.
2093 - 2150 Jonathan Mendonsa Very very cool and if you want to subscribe and get on our email list just text choose FI to 4 4 222. So this is a question and that's from Heather and she says Hi Jonathan. Brad your podcast has certainly made it to the top of my list. I've already got my friends listening. I have a question about my 401k and my pension. I recently left my job due to health issues and I'm waiting to see if my application for my company's long term disability insurance will be approved. In the meantime what do I do with my 401k and my pension. I'm fully vested. This is a company I've worked for for over 16 years now and I know you highly recommend Vanguard and I'm thinking of heading in their direction. Do you know what kind of fund I can put this money into. Or do you have any suggestions. Should I move some of it or all of it by H.R. department told me that I could leave it for now as a rate of return is doing pretty well. My performance year to date is 6 percent and I don't. But I don't really want to rely on the advice from my H.R. department. And I also don't want to pay fees to an investment adviser so Brad What are your thoughts.
401k, health, pensions
2150 - 2407 Brad Barrett Alright Heather that's really great. Great questions and definitely a lot there. All right the pension that I don't know anything about I assume. I'm not sure if you're using those synonymously here you know 401k and pension or if they're separate. Let's just talk about the 401K. I think one of the things that jumped out to me when I was reading this was when you said my H.R. department told me that I could leave it for now as the rate of return is doing pretty well. My performance year to date is six point nine percent. Now I don't want you to get caught up in this because it really doesn't matter like what the return is. It matters what the funds that they offer are and what the expense ratios are. So let's just say hypothetically right like the market is up. This is hypothetical the market is up 20 percent year to date but your performance is six point nine. Well that's not so great right but six point nine sounds wonderful in a vacuum. But you know with no point of comparison like that number in and of itself doesn't mean anything. So hopefully that makes sense. What I would look at is the range of funds that are offered. And what's interesting here is that with when I left my company and I've never mentioned this on the podcast actually but I actually left my 401K with my old company and this is kind of unusual. I think most people and what everyone out there who has done this before is probably waiting for me to say is you should roll your 401K out of your old employer and get control over it. You roll it into an IRA with Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab and then you invest it in. As we discussed you know again and again and we'll have Jim Collins on in a couple of weeks you know talking about you know VTSAX and ultra low cost index funds you know specifically from Vanguard. So that's the standard advice. But what I want to tell you is the standard advice doesn't always hold true and that's why I say like the point nine doesn't mean anything in and of itself in a vacuum but it could mean that you do have great access to funds there and with my particular company they actually had the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund but they had the institutional class and this offered the lowest expense ratio I've ever seen as opposed to point five percent or point five point four that you see for the Major. VTSAX and those type of funds from Vanguard Schwaben Fidelity this one hundred point zero or three. So while that's only one one hundredth of a percent difference it's still pretty darn good. And I'm not going to pass that up because I simply can never get that rate on my own. So there was no real incentive honestly to roll the 401 K out for me because I was literally going to put it in that same fund with a higher expense ratio. OK. So that's probably unusual for most people. Most companies probably aren't offering that the exact Vanguard index fund that you want. At the lowest possible rate. But that's why I say Look into your options. So what I would say is look at your funds look at whatever kind of total stock market index fund or S&P 500 which is a pretty good proxy and see what the expense ratios are. If they're less than point 0 5 then maybe you contemplate leaving it there. If you have a you know bad options of your funds I would definitely start the process of rolling that out to Vanguard and get all your money and VTSAX and or you know however you allocate it you know that that's how I go about it. I know as you'll learn from Jim Collins in a week and a half. That you know he puts I think 75 percent of his funds in the VTSAX and you know because of his age he puts the rest in bonds so you know some people like international funds you know people have good faith and can disagree slightly on that kind of stuff. But but the real key is getting it into low cost funds so hopefully that's a bit of a long winded answer but hopefully that gives you like a flavor for for how I would think through this. And you know again I don't know the specific details of long term disability and you know it sounds like you left your company so you would be eligible to roll that 401k out. And again we don't have enough detail about the pension so I can't speak intelligently on that. But but yeah hopefully that gives you a good flavor about the 401K. So yeah Jonathan you have anything to add.
401k, indexfunds, ira, pensions, stocks
2407 - 2574 Jonathan Mendonsa Yeah you stole a little bit of my thunder there with the allocation models. I was just going to say Heather you know check in when we do episode 19 where we interview Jim Collins but certainly age and risk tolerance and whether or not you are going to have any additional forms of income coming in will help you determine your particular risk tolerance and your ratio of stocks to bonds and vanguard does offer both those. If you do decide to move it over. Always start by looking at your expense ratios and see how high that is compared to maybe some of the things that we've been talking about. If your company offers a bunch of funds if you just by default set up something or H.R. just set up something for you and you didn't have any input. I suspect that you're probably either in a target date or you may be you probably are not in an index fund so you could also see whether or not they have an index and this is just general advice to people that have a company that have just kind of let things go on autopilot and haven't really had an input. My company did have index funds but you kind of had to dig through the weeds to find it. And certainly if you if you have an option in most cases it's ideal to get an index fund. If you only have certain options inside of your company's portfolio just because those will always be lower and fees so it would be nice if everybody had access to Vanguard inside their 401k but that I do not have. I wish I did. So those are my general thoughts. So Brian had a question for us and he said hey guys once again really enjoying the Friday round he says my wife and I are just starting out on our FI journey. We just paid off all debt Congratulations so they don't have any car payment. They don't have a sofa payment nice no mortgage nothing. That is incredible. And I would love to know what your baseline of expenses are. So that being said we're just being as frugal as possible or pushing any extra money and or savings right now Mike. His question though is how the whole 4 percent rule works. Now he's read a bunch of articles about it but he's a little green on the specifics of how you feel for how you pull the 4 percent to live off of when the time comes and what accounts this would come from the 401k the the IRA the Roth IRA and he just wants to get it right. I'm with you man you want to win. So you know honestly I think a lot of that we really just answered for you and what that hypothetical might look like if you are trying to do the Roth conversion ladder but maybe we can address some of the finer details there just for that for the general public. This would probably be related to your age and how old you are when you actually do retire. It sounds like you're going to be early retirement I'm guessing he said in his mid-30s. So if you've done that you've pulled the levers that we talked about earlier and you have five years of living expenses set aside. Then you could pretty easily work on doing your 401k to Roth IRA convergence or just reference the first half where we really unpack that if you didn't have that if you didn't have the five years of living expenses what would be the next best bet. Brad do we have another option for that.
401k, debt, indexfunds, ira, roth, savings, stocks
2574 - 2752 Brad Barrett Yes. If you didn't have the five years of living expenses I mean I think you can still like the play here is to manage manage your tax and manage your taxable income and how much of that free money you have. So you know you don't have to be perfect. Right. So you can still pay a little bit of tax if that's what it boils down to you're right. Like I'm sure you're going to have some savings built up and you are going to have if you have some money in your Roth IRA. You know as we've discussed you can pull out your contributions at any time tax and penalty free. So that's probably you know another if you've been putting in the 5500 or whatever per year over a 10 year period you probably got you know plus investment gains. You know I don't know what you have 80000 bucks let's say. So you know that will help. So you have your fifty five hundred each year which you know that say you've been on this path for for 10 years you have $55000 sitting in there that are contributions that you can pull out a tax and penalty free you've got whatever savings that might not be five years worth of of living expenses. But it's but it's some. And you know in conjunction with the Roth contributions you know you're getting closer. And then if you know if there is some leftover. Well I mean then you get into a scenario where you have to pull some money out from your 401K and OK maybe you do get hit with the 10 percent penalty but because you're in such a low tax bracket you might and depending on what your living expenses are if you have all that you have paid off you might have like additional free money quote unquote that you don't need for the Roth IRA conversion. Five years down the line and you take some of that free money and pay zero tax on the living expenses in the current year. But just incur the penalty. So that's probably sounds a little bit confusing but you know I'm just trying to paint a picture of like how you can come up with these living expenses for the first five years and and still pay very minimal amounts of of tax or penalty which you know we'll call tax in this case. So I think that's doable. I mean the short answer is if you're a couple maybe you work an extra year you know and save a little bit of extra money and in after tax income. You know I don't love that as an answer or maybe you have a part time job and make a couple of thousand bucks or whatever it is you're doing in early retirement anyway. As we've discussed with Carl from 15:00 days like most people are earning some type of money in their financial independence. Retired early years it's not that we're looking to sit on a couch somewhere and watch Dateline or you know Grey's Anatomy like like Jonathan said where we're looking to live lives of value and that might mean making a little bit of money. Right so like that could get you there. Hopefully this is all again just painting this picture of like of how this is doable even if you don't have the perfectly optimized scenario where you have that five years of living expenses. So Jonathan you got anything to add.
ira, roth, savings, tax
2752 - 3099 Jonathan Mendonsa Totally. I get so excited we're just figuring out what this picture looks like for this couple in their mid 30s. And obviously the key that we're coming back is maximize that 401k. Are you all hearing that get as much in that 401k as possible just do it right. That's number one. Number two is we want to get some extra in some other accounts maybe a Roth maybe a taxable account. We want to get something else because once we get this Roth conversion ladder that we're talking about rolling we're going to need about five years of living expenses in a perfect world. That's what we have. But then the other half of that this FI wins we all win. Right. It's because a lot of times what we're doing we're buying freedom and flexibility and we're not this isn't the early retirement podcast right we're not saying do nothing do nothing. The Internet retirement police you know stay away from us. That's not what we're saying. We'll probably be doing this podcast long after I'm financially independent. Yeah. You know why because I love it. Right. Why be doing real estate and financially independent. Absolutely because I love it. And so what we're encouraging you all to do is focus on FI. Let's get to FI. But along the way why not do a side hustle and again a side hustle is not working and hating. What you're doing it's finding what you love and then finding a way to monetize it. Right. So I mean just some people say it doesn't happen much you don't need to make a hundred thousand two hundred thousand five hundred thousand a year because of the lifestyle that we've created and the investment vehicles that we're channeling that's going to take care of financial independence. But if we create $20000 of income on the side forty thousand dollars of income on the side and it's doing something that we would legitimately love so while our neighbors are watching Grey's Anatomy you're putting a little bit of time and your side hustle that it is your hobby you enjoy that you figured out how to monetize that and it's bringing an income for you and your family and it's mostly passive. But when it's not passive you're loving it right. That's the power of the flexibility of the vision and the story that Brad and I are trying to tell you have so many options. But the baseline is max out their freaking 401k go do it now. Figure out how you're going to cover those five years of living expenses and you can be creative with that and it doesn't have to be perfect but that's what it looks like. That's the conversation. All right so next let's just talk real quick about where Chooose FI is going so college hacking just got real guys. Edmund Tee who is our first contributor at Choose F-I dropped the article on dual enrollment. These things are going to drop in a somewhat structured order for you guys. We're finding like thought leaders and contributors that want to put their ideas in a place this compository where you can just get all this great stuff and you can figure out how to apply it. And so Edmund dropped this one dual enrollment is as is what the article is about and it's something that most people have known about or known somebody that did it at some point but in the FI community we focus on winning right. And so with dual enrollment What if you actually apply that to your entire college experience not as just something you accidentally fell into and did at one time and happened to get credit. But as a way to cut the time that you have to spend and the money that you have to spend in college in half That's the power of dual enrollment and he just dropped that article it's on choose F-I it's a feature article. You can also go to college hacking on our Web site and you can go read that and it is super powerful and it is what I will be is one of the main tools I'll be looking at for my child as they pursue college. The FI community is going to look at college differently. We have plans for this and our plan is not that you don't do college I want to specify that you don't have to I think you can still earn money other ways. But what we've been saying from day one is that it's bloated it's inefficient and to come out of school with $80000 in student loan debt to make $40000 a year is ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. So we're going to crush the system and Edmund Tee is has stepped up to show us how. Check out that article on dual enrollment. Next here's my plan right now Sun Woo has just written his first draft on how to hack college through the FAFSA. His idea is you can have a million dollars in assets and get an zero percent expected family contribution on the FAFSA. This is huge. This is the next key because we're all about arranging our finances in a way that optimizes optimizes us to succeed in life. Now let me tell you just a short story. I am the oldest of five kids. My dad was my mom was a stay at home mom my dad was the only one that worked. He worked as a college professor and probably when we were growing up he made you know 30 40 50 thousand a year with five kids. And when it was time for us to go to college we got a zero percent help on the EFC zero. Like they just thought we made too much money I guess. I don't know how that's possible I really don't. But that's what came back. But you know what. My dad didn't know the rules and we didn't know what calculations they looked at when determining what your EFC does. Sun Woo just went and figured all that out and wrote it up in a post and we're going to be unpacking that for you all in the very near future here. But that's the power of being in this community. You learn the rules so you can win and you win at things that actually affect your life. These are these are things that every single person listening to this either it will affect your life directly it will affect your child's life or affect someone that you know. And that's the information that we want to get to see that's coming soon. So right now here's what you do. You go to choose FI dot com you go check out that latest article on dual enrollment. Get that idea that concept locked down if you don't need it right now you put it away and you know that it's going to be there when you need it. And then the next piece of that is let's look at how you can arrange your finances you don't end up in a situation that my dad ended up with five kids and zero percent aid on the EFC formula. Let's learn how to optimize your finances so you can have a million dollars in assets and get 100 percent aid on the EFC formula. That's what that's where I want you all to be. Right Brad you've got two kids one of them is nine years old. They're going to this is going to be a reality for you in the near future. Does dual enrollment in how to hack the FAFSA sound like something that you could use your kids over the next five years.
401k, college, dual-enrollment, fafsa, hustle, passiveincome, roth, tax
3099 - 3143 Brad Barrett Yeah yeah no doubt about it. I mean geez that's if you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially just by being a long term thinker. And at the heart of what we're doing here with this whole community and with Choose FI is we're thinking we're not looking for instant gratification right. We're looking for being smart over an intermediate period. Right. Most people think of long term as 40 50 years. And it's hard to conceptualize that but most people 10 years they realize how quick 10 years goes right. Like if I can start today planning for college nine years from now yeah. I mean I can conceptualize having to cut that check for college and how painful that will be. So I'm ready to get rolling as soon as I can see that article by. Sun Woo So I can't wait.
3143 - 3313 Jonathan Mendonsa All right. Very cool. I have a nother little bonus for you all today. Now it's tax season. It's probably too late for you all to take advantage of that for this year. But this is literally going to blow your mind in the future. It's something that a lot of you are going to take advantage of. So this is from Kay Siri and he sent it to me and honestly had to read it three or four times but it finally clicked and I understood what he was saying and it totally changed the way I look at itemizing so I'm going to read the whole e-mail. But basically he sent it my way and he said he learned this from his dad who learned it from a 90 year old farmer and this guy had figured something out. And basically the situation the guy was falling into was that because he didn't have a mortgage when you don't have a mortgage you essentially lose one of the largest line items that allows you to itemize. So let's say you have a mortgage each year you pay $5000 of interest on your mortgage. Then from there that that that gets you started. And then all the other deductions you have or all the other things you can itemize like your state taxes and your personal property taxes and your charitable donations or if you go to church your ties all those sorts of things those stack up from there. But for a married couple the standard deduction is $12000. So if you don't have a mortgage without that in place you just kind of end up getting just up to the standard deduction and then it kind of just nets out at nothing or maybe you get like an extra thousand dollars of credit. And if you pay off your mortgage that is a reality that you will face every April. Am I right Brad. I'm for sure. OK. So this is just talk about just a different way of looking at things and it's specifically for people that have paid off their mortgage because they're Dave Ramsey people and they do a significant amount of charitable donations maybe they go to church and they tie the certain amount on a regular basis what he started doing. He started doubling down on his donations so instead of just sending his let's just talk about a charitable donation right now instead of sending that regular charitable donation every single month to his you know church or you know organization that he sends it to what he's started doing is he would do the regular payment and then at the end of December he would send them all of his payments for the next year which is a big lump sum I get that. But follow me on this. So let's say that now 2017 you send your charitable organization everything for 2017. You know over that month at a time and then in December you gave them everything for the following year. So now you've doubled down on it. Then the following year you don't send them anything and you just do the standard deduction and then you just alternate year after year and it's every two years. This will allow you to get the best of both worlds you'll get the best the best of itemizing and 2017 and the best of the standard deduction at 2018 and you don't have to do this do it with anything that gives you some flexibility when you pay it. So anything that you can pay ahead do it in one year and then next year don't do it and just do the standard deduction and then alternate. I had never thought of it that way before. And it's the simplest thing in the world and it will literally save me a thousand to $2000 a year in taxes.
ramsey, tax
3313 - 3381 Brad Barrett Yeah this is really cool when I heard this and I have to say I asked my wife who's a CPA and you know she actually does taxes and to see if this would work. And she said that it absolutely would. Now obviously you know as Jonathan talked about this is plunking down a lot of money in one calendar year or earlier than you expected. But that's the beauty of of saving money right it's is you don't have to think in terms of of deprivation and cash flow. Like everybody else does. Right. Like people are worried when is their check going to come in so they can hopefully the electric bill doesn't come out beforehand or something like that. You know Jonathan is talking about potentially doubling up your state tax payments in one county a year if you do you know tie than double up the tie in one calendar year and use it to maximize. I mean that's that's really really cool. And it's just like it's again it's looking at a problem and thinking about it a little bit differently. So you know there definitely we can unpack this in much greater detail but but it's really the concept and that we wanted to pass along today. And so it's just thinking about a problem differently.
savings, tax
3381 - 3384 Jonathan Mendonsa All right. Brad frugal win of the week. I have one do you have one.
3384 - 3388 Brad Barrett I don't know that I have one right now. I'll give it a thought while you're telling me.
3388 - 3498 Jonathan Mendonsa All right this is goes back to frugal. So if you all remember she talked about putting stuff on that list and then finding a frugal analog that was in our epos. I think it was episode 12 which was how to save 75 percent of your take home pay. It's actually one of our most downloaded episodes. And on that particular episode she said what she does whenever she wants to buy something new she puts it on a list and lets it hang out and I'll be honest with you. I am an impulse buyer. I've always been an impulse buyer. But the more I do the show the more I believe in the ideas I'm presenting the more I don't want to be an impulse buyer any more so here's my situation. I have a treadmill. I've been hearing for a while that people are saying standing desk are the way to go because if you're going to passively work on something on your computer you might as well get a few steps in there while you're doing it and if you're living the laptop lifestyle or you're putting you know creating a Web site or podcast like I do I spend a lot of time in front of the computer so I was thinking OK maybe I need to figure out a way to get my computer on my treadmill so I can walk at one mile an hour while I'm doing this so I can just you know get a little bit exercise while burying myself in here. So they had something that I was looking at that can convert your treadmill into a essentially a standing desk. And it was probably you know like an $80 edition sort of thing. And so I put it on the list and I was thinking about it. And then the other day I said you know what. I had this collapsible folding table. Let me just see if I can just put that on top of the treadmill I honestly I think it works better I think I think it works way better and you know what she was saying. Like when you buy something you always find the fault with it. I can't find any fault with this because it was totally free and I will I hacked it. Right. So I've actually been using it. I love it. I'm calling it the techno drome because I have my laptop up there. Got my little Bluetooth speaker and I've got you know all sorts of arrays of technology on top of it which are completely un-frugal. But for this one example that the standing desk it is it's just working man. It's just working perfectly so frugal analog. That's my frugal win of the week technodrome.
FWOTW, passiveincome
3498 - 3578 Brad Barrett I like that a lot. And you know I feel like a slug sitting here on my bed in the spare bedroom here. Well I'm looking I'm actually looking at the standing desk that I have in my room. I don't think I've used that in quite some time unfortunately but maybe that will spur me on and we can talk about that in a future win of the week if anybody is actually looking for a standing desk. I actually found a really cool one. It is. So you will have this linked up in the show notes but it's Or stand dot CO. So o r i s t a n d dot C O. And this thing is only $29 plus shipping. It's actually like an it unfolds so it's basically just like a piece of like heavy duty cardboard. But it's done in this like really neat fashion so you can unfold the thing and just stand up you know move your laptop up to it and you're good to go and when you feel like sitting which most people invariably like I tried this for a while and part of why I gave up was I just couldn't stand all day like I had this like pressing need to sit down. So I just got out of it but like because this enables you to just quickly pack it up or quickly unpack it if you feel like standing up it's it's a really cool thing. So if you're not looking to spend a lot of money on like an actual standing desk. Yeah. Check this out.
3578 - 3591 Jonathan Mendonsa Very very cool. All right guys that basically will wrap up our show today. Gosh we Brad we covered so much information and I honestly every time I go into these I don't always know what we're going to say.
3591 - 3644 Brad Barrett It's crazy right. I mean we when we when we kind of sketch this out in our heads we probably planned for 10 minutes you know at most and we're well over an hour into this. And yeah it is amazing when we just sit down and just talk about it and write like this is the ultimate conversation and that's what's so cool and I think that's what people are liking about this like one we received one comment basically saying like it feels like I'm in a room having a conversation with you except I'm the quiet guy in the corner. You know which I just thought was so so cool. like how awesome is that. Because that's what this is. You and I are just having a conversation like I didn't even remember that. ORIstand standing desk until you literally started talking about that and I quickly googled it in the background to see if I can remember the name of it like it was. You know that's that's what we'd do if you were sitting here and you and I were just just chatting. So yeah it's fun.
3644 - 3691 Jonathan Mendonsa Yeah. No that's really cool man. And just as a reminder the voicemail features live so leave us a voicemail. We loved your feedback. We want to include you as part of the show. So definitely hop on that. Just go to ChooseFI dot com leave a voicemail on the side bar there. We're excited to answer your questions. We're excited that now you don't have to be the quiet guy in the corner you can actually say something to us and we can incorporate it. That's what we're about. That's what we're going to do. So this show just got real the fire's spreading. And thank you for telling everybody you know about it. You know we can see it and it's it's it's super cool. Please leave us the iTunes review. Let us know if you've got value from the show you know to choose F-I Dotcom's slash iTunes. And also just you know now when you search on iTunes for choose FI you can search for us as one word or two words will show up either way.
3691 - 3692 Brad Barrett We're moving up in the world.
3692 - 3711 Jonathan Mendonsa We're moving on up baby we're moving on up so yeah you all have a great weekend and we'll see you next week. We're going to be interviewing Jeremy from go Curry cracker specifically unpacking how you can never pay federal taxes again. Legally it's going to be fantastic. So thanks again. And we'll see you next time as we continue to go down the road less traveled.
Jonathan_Catchphrases, tax

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