EP #34 - Major Money Milestones in Your 20s, 30s & 40s

In this episode, we explore the intentional steps needed to achieve financial freedom by your forties, focusing on key milestones in your twenties, thirties, and forties. Learn why setting financial goals is crucial, how to build a strong financial foundation, and the importance of increasing income, investing wisely, and creating passive income streams. We also discuss setting net worth targets for each decade and highlight the significance of lifestyle design in your forties. Tune in to get practical advice and motivational insights to take control of your financial future.

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Transcript

jacob: 0:00

It is more than possible to achieve financial freedom in your forties. It is more than possible, but it's gonna require intentional steps taken in your twenties, continued in your thirties to achieve financial freedom by the time your 40 are in the decade of your forties. But it is more than possible if you do what we outlined. This episode.

Nancy: 0:19

This is the Financial Freedom Fighters Podcast

jacob: 0:33

Welcome everybody to the Financial Freedom Fighters Podcast. Back with the another episode. Today. I'm your host, Jacob Sandoval, AKA cashflow saga. I have with me my co-host, realtor, Michael Magno. Mike, how are you doing on this beautiful Friday?

mike: 0:50

Jacob, I am doing, uh, very excellent, uh, with the exception of my Cleveland Cavaliers of course. Um, having fallen down zero, uh, two games to none to Indiana, I. But I'm calling my shot tonight, so it's recorded and out there in the interwebs, but, uh, calves win tonight and we come back and win the series. I got, I gotta stay, I gotta stay, uh, stay hyped for my guys, so, uh, and if we lose, then I live an infamy on the internet. So.

jacob: 1:16

It's always admirable. Your, uh, your loyalty to, to, to all your Cleveland sports team. So, um, you know, hoping for a bounce back of the Cavs. So we'll kind of dive into the episode that we have for today, Mike. And the episode for today is Money, milestones to hit in your twenties, thirties, and forties. Right. So. Why is this episode important? I think a lot of people kind of go through life, um, with respect to their finances and don't have the appropriate goals, don't have the appropriate visibility. Um, and that's demotivating Mike. I think that if you don't have the right milestones, if you don't know what to track, if you don't know what to measure, then you're just never going to get there. And so we're gonna go through each decade, whether you're in your twenties, your thirties, in your forties, um, of things that you should be thinking about, targets you should be setting, important milestones that you should be crossing in each decade to hopefully give you guys a little bit of clarity in terms of the most important things you should be thinking about with respect to how old you are and res with respect to your finances. So. Mike, what do you kind of think about this topic, the topic of kind of milestones and, and the decade that you're in, et cetera?

mike: 2:34

Yeah. No, I think this is a, a really nice topic for us to touch on. Following up our previous episode that we talked about with the mistakes. I think this helps. Maybe drive home the point a little bit more and why it's important to, to goal, you know, set some goals. Um,'cause you know, let's be honest, uh, we're here to try to help you become more educated and figure this stuff out from the mistakes that, you know, I know I've personally made, uh, many of the mistakes that we've talked about. And, uh, yeah, just wanna help people get, you know, get themselves going and also too, to feel like they're not behind as well. Right. Um,'cause oftentimes, and I know I was like this. Where I thought, oh man, I just, I just never will catch up. Right? I'll just never catch up. And, um, yeah. So if you, you know, get, get yourself, uh, a little bit more motivated and, and make some changes, you can definitely, you can definitely get this figured out. So.

jacob: 3:28

Absolutely, and, and, and look folks, the purpose of this is not to, you know, put anyone down if you're not at these milestones or if you feel like you're behind, that is not a signal to give up or a signal to not get started. It is never too late. To turn your financial future around, right? Regardless of your age. If you're in your fifties, for example, listening to this episode, you're like, oh, well I guess I'm shit outta luck. No, that's not the case. Um, we want to give you these guardrails and these milestones, you know, to provide a little bit more clarity, but it's never too late to get started. Right? So, without further ado, we'll kind of hop into the decade of your twenties, Mike. We're calling this decade, the decade of building your foundation. Okay. The point here is to start messy. You know, there's never such thing as the perfect moment to start caring about your finances. The perfect moment to start caring about investing, but you have to start early. The earlier you start. The more powerful this all becomes, you know, the, the ninth wonder of the world is compound interest and you gotta start getting that working in your favor. And in your twenties you don't have a lot of money likely, but you have a lot of time and you need to use that time to your advantage. So you gotta start building the habits early that are going to set you up for financial success. So Mike. Let's talk about the decade of, of, of our twenties. Um, I know that you have some thoughts on, you know, how you weren't the most productive in your twenties with respect to your finances. So let's talk a little bit about the, the, the decade of your twenties and what people should be thinking about.

mike: 4:58

Yeah, I mean, uh, setting yourself up for future success is what I like to tell people. Um, I pissed my twenties away. I had negative net worth. I had debt up to my eyeballs. Um, I. You know, mortgage, car payment, student loans, credit cards, you name it. I had it with the exception of maybe the payday loans. I never, well, they, and no, I don't think they were as a po I don't think they were really around, you know, back then that I, I say back then, we're talking, you know, 2020, I'm old. You know, 20 years ago, I don't remember seeing payday places around. Maybe they existed. I don't know. Um, I just didn't, I ended up not, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, these are, um, you know, I wish, I wish, you know, something like this existed 20 years ago when I was getting started, the thing I like to tell people is. My parents not financially literate. Right. Um, grew up lower to middle income class. They did the best they could with what they had. Right. I. Setting me up for, you know, today. And, you know, as, as we've progressed as a society, you know, technology and, and just everything has gotten smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. Like they did the best they could. And, and then I didn't, you know, I didn't educate myself, you know, I just thought I got that college education and got the job and I, you know, the rest of my life would be simple. And, uh, I wish I had these, I wish I had these guardrails back then, but like I said, that, that's why it's a great example of why it's not too late,

jacob: 6:37

Absolutely. So folks, what, let's get down to brass tacks. What are we really talking about and how can you build a good financial foundation? We'll kind of do these ones, rapid fire, Mike, and we'll just kind of talk about why each of these are important. So the first one is you gotta set up an emergency fund. Okay? If you do not have an emergency fund, and that num number might be different from most people, but you know. A good target is, hey, like can you have$5,000 saved up?$10,000 saved up? Because that is going to give you some level of security that most people don't have. We said this in the last episode, 50 57% of people can't handle an expense of greater than a thousand dollars. Okay? So build up that emergency fund that is the first leg of your financial fortress. Mike, what is number two? The number two most important thing that they should do in

mike: 7:23

Yeah, I mean, you gotta, you gotta pay off the, in the high interest debts, right? The credit cards, the payday loans, the, you know, the Best Buy cards, whatever, right? You know, you finance that, that flat screen TV for a hundred bucks a month for three years, right. Trust me, I made that mistake 20 years ago. Um, so yeah, you just, you definitely just don't want to have any of that, right? If you got, if you can't, you know, if you can't afford to make, make that decision on it. And I know you like to throw out like a 24 hour rule for like large purchases, right? Sit on it for 24 hours and then if you really want it, then buy it. But don't use a credit card.

jacob: 8:01

Absolutely, and, and, and certainly do not finance your pad Tai via DoorDash and Klarna. Do not do that. If you're doing that, you, you need a little bit more, you need a little bit more help. You need a little bit more vision, but keep listening, keep listening to this episode. So pay off the high interest debt folks. You cannot get ahead if you have credit card debt, if you have student loan debt, if you have. All of that stuff, because you're never going to be able to escape it. So pay it off, make that your priority after you have the emergency fund. Cool. Moving on to number three. You gotta start investing. You cannot save your way to financial freedom. You have to start investing, and you have the most time in your twenties to start to compound those returns and start to have those numbers really, really working in your favor. So the first kind of most important account that I talk to you with people is, look. If you have an employer that offers a 401k match, do that a hundred percent. That's free money. That's an absolute no brainer. Aside from that, you gotta be thinking about a Roth IRA, right, which is an individual retirement account. The maximum you can put in that Roth IRA right now is$7,000. But it's beautiful because it grows. Over time, and when you start to pull it out from early for when you retire, you can pull that out tax free. Right. The Roth IRA is so powerful that it's only limited to people that make a certain level of income. If you make more than$135,000, you cannot actually have a Roth IRA. You have to have a traditional IRA, but that's important. Okay. And so this is where you start getting into, or. Start educating yourself on index funds, right? When people say index funds or ETFs, that's the, that's what we're talking about, the s and p 500. Okay. So start educating yourself. Start investing. Likely you'll start with your retirement accounts, but if you have some money after you're funding your retirement accounts, that's when you open up that Robinhood, that fidelity, that taxable brokerage account, and that's where you start doing that index fund investing. We have a goal for you. Have 10,000 to 25,000 invested by the time you are 30. Okay? So start investing because you cannot save your way to retirement. Mike, let's move on to the next foundational pillar here.

mike: 10:10

Yeah. Next, next one we talk about, uh, is the cred, the all infamous credit score, right? Uh, and there's lots of ways to track this nowadays. Um, there's apps on your phones like Credit Karma. I know all, like all the credit card companies now allow you to have access to like their tool and. It's not a perfect system as well. Like I wanna warn people,'cause I have to have this hard conversation with a lot of people. The one, the number that you get on Credit Karma or from your credit card is not when it comes to buying houses. It's not the credit score that they, the mortgage companies use. And I, I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole, but do a little bit of research and you, and you'll kind of figure it out. Um, but that being said, the goal that we put in here for your twenties is being above 700. You wanna be under a 30% credit utilization, what does that mean? You just want to have, if you have a$3,000 limit, you want to keep, you know, you wanna keep your spending to, you know, a thousand dollars or less. Um, if you have a$10,000 limit, you want to keep it under 3000 monthly. And a lot of the point, point hackers out there, or like cringing that, we're not talking about that, but, um, you know, improving your credit score. Um. Because what's that gonna do when you want to get into investing in real estate? For example, maybe you wanna buy that first house hack, the credit score's gonna make your interest rate go up or down, right? And it could, it could vary between a half a point to 1% of interest. You know, if you have a six 20 credit score where you have a seven 40 credit score, those are vastly different numbers when it comes to, you know, buying that house. So that's why it's important.

jacob: 11:48

Yeah, absolutely. Credit score is important. Um, it is unfortunately a, a piece of the financial system here. Um, so just do what you need to do to get that credit score up. Moving on to the next one. You got to increase your income. Okay. I cannot underscore how powerful this is and how much of a focus area this should be for you in your twenties. When I graduated from college, I was making$60,000 a year, and I kind of steadily worked my way up. But when I transitioned from, you know, accounting and then I went to a retail company, gap, Inc. And then I, I made the jump to tech. That's when I jumped from a salary of 95,000 up to 165,000, and then later on to 200,000, 250,000. And so. Then when I started to get to those high six figures, that is when I was able to really start to invest and really start to buy rental properties. And so, you know, unfortunately, it's gonna take money to make money in this game, and that's why you need to focus on increasing your income because that is gonna be your highest leverage at the time. Um, and pretty soon. You'll get to a point where your money's making more money, and then that's your leverage there. But you gotta focus on increasing your income. Okay. And so that might be through adding high value skills. Like for me it was learning how to code and doing analytics. Um, but that might be other skills, high value skills, especially in this day and age, AI tech and things like that. But also can mean adding a side hustle, right? You know, Mike. You, you're, you're a flipper, but you're also a real estate agent. You have a real estate agent business, and so there are different things you could do, but you gotta focus on increasing income. I know we talk a lot about passive income, we talk a lot about investing, but you cannot get to that point until you increase your income. So that is the next most important thing you can do in the debt. The decade of your twenties is focused on increasing that income. Mike, you wanna take us to the next one here?

mike: 13:44

Yeah. So the next one we, that we'd like to talk about is, you know, um, buying the first in, uh, first, first property, whether it's house hacking, right? And you can do this a couple different ways, right? You can house hack by buying a multifamily property where you live in one unit and run out the others, um, you know, you can do as little as three point a half percent down, uh, with FHA financing. You could also, if you're not into, you know, I, I have a lot of people tell me, ah, Mike, I don't want to be a landlord. I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna live in a duplex or, or whatever. That's fine. You can house hack in a single family. You just, you gotta bring some roommates in. You know, it's something that I actually did. Um. Many years ago, right? Uh, during the great financial crisis, um, I had a guy, uh, there was a friend, uh, he, I worked with him. He had a house, you know, he sold his house. Um, and then we worked together and then he actually moved into my house and, you know, we kind of just divvied up everything, you know, half. Right down the middle. So I mean, there's, there's ways to do, you know, things to increase, like you said on the previous step, increasing your income and reducing your expenses, right? That's one way to do it. So I think it's very important to consider that. So.

jacob: 14:54

Absolutely. It's my biggest regret In my twenties. I did not, you know, jump on, um, a house hack because you gotta think about it too. You, the house hack likely is going to, you know, mitigate or eliminate entirely your biggest expense, which is housing. And if you eliminate your biggest expense, that's more money to invest in the first place so we can really start to accelerate your growth. Um, if you are able to pull off a house hack, so we'll round out the decade of your twenties, we've talked about a lot, but we wanna round out the decade of your twenties with a net worth target. Your net worth is everything you own. Your assets minus everything you owe. Your liabilities and what's left over is going to be your net worth. And so definitely one measure that, and two, we want to challenge you, right? Very conservatively, you should be exiting your twenties with a net worth of a minimum of$50,000. And if you can. Stretch that to a goal of a hundred thousand dollars net worth entering the decade of your thirties. I don't know if that feels heavy to you, if that feels light to you, if that scares you for it excites you. But we're just throwing out a milestone here, hopefully to motivate you to step into the decade of your thirties with a little bit more, you know, exuberance.

mike: 16:03

Right. Can I throw in one more thing here? Just, just to, just, just, to break it down numerically for people.'cause I think that's, that's what kind of speaks to people and I'm gonna show you how easy, I just said that. How easy it is to have a$50,000 net worth by the time you are 30. Start with$500, right? Everybody get, you know, you know, 20, you're 20 years old, you should have 500 bucks. If you invested$250 a month for the decade of your twenties, starting with only$500, you would have an ending balance of$53,000 in an investment account. Just in, you know, invested in an index fund. I know it's not a ton of money, right? Because you know, people are gonna say, oh, Mike, that's not that much money. you you contributed$30,000 and you, and you got$23,000 in returns. So by investing$30,000, you almost doubled your money in 10 years. So that's the best thing I'll throw out there for you. Just to, just to show how easy it is to get to a, you know, a net worth. And that's, I mean, I know we were just talking net worth. That doesn't include if you own a home, you buy a home at 25 and it's gone up in value, you know, whatever. That's literally just taking a very small amount of money, you know, two 50 bucks a month. I mean, that's not much money at all in investing it so.

jacob: 17:29

Absolutely. So we'll move on to the decade of your thirties. Um, I'm 33 right now, so I'm very much going through this, but. The decade of your twenties was setting up that foundation. The decade of your thirties is really doubling down on the things that are working and starting to scale and to really start to grow. This is when you know a lot of the work that you did in your twenties is gonna start to pick up steam, and you're gonna have a lot of moves that you can potentially make in your thirties. So let's kind of roll through that, Mike, everything that you did in your twenties. If you listen to everything that we just said you're gonna continue to do and you're gonna continue to double down on, you still have to fo focus on increasing your income, right? Like I said, when I was in my early, my late twenties, early thirties, that's when I started to make, you know, 200,000,$250,000 a year, and just, just three years of making more than$200,000 and having the savings rate and the investing rate that I did. Was very, very pivotal in terms of allowing me to make the moves that I chose to make later on, right? With, you know, taking a different job and having enough invested to feel secure, et cetera. You gotta focus on increasing your income, so continue to do that. And we have the target of making at least a hundred thousand dollars by your mid thirties. I think that's a very reasonable target to have, whether that's through your W2 job or a combination of your W2 job and side hustles as well. You will also continue to max out your retirement contributions, and so your Roth IRA or traditional, if you make too much money. Your 401k up to the match, right? But also start to invest in that taxable brokerage account. If you did not do that in your twenties, you wanna start to do that in your thirties. And the reason why that's important, Mike, is because at a certain point, you're gonna have enough saved in your retirement accounts that you need to start thinking about investing outside your retirement accounts because. Many of you listening to this podcast are gonna wanna retire before traditional retirement age, before 59 and a half, and you can't touch your IRA. You can't touch your 401k before 59 and a half, so you need to have some money invested that sits outside the retirement accounts. Mike, anything to add to, you know, investing in in your thirties?

mike: 19:38

Yeah. I think the other thing, um, that's important too is to. Also look at other ways to maximize those returns. And one, one other vehicle that I'll, I'll bring up,'cause I utilize it, is because I'm self-employed, um, I am in a high deductible insurance plan, right? And with a high deductible insurance plan, I contribute to what's called an HSA or a health savings account. And the reason I wanna bring this up, once again, I'm not a financial planner. Uh, but that being said. They are what is kind of, it's called uh, being triple tax advantaged, so you can contribute. I think for us this year we can contribute up to like$8,400. Okay. Now that money can then in an, in an HSA, which is the, um, health savings account for. Um, you can then invest that money in the stock market, um, depending on your HSA provider, they all have different vehicles. Mine, I can invest it directly in a, in a Schwab account, a Charles Schwab account. Okay. So then I've got all that, that money accumulating in there. It gives me a tax break when I make the contribution. It grows tax deferred. Okay. And then what's really, really powerful, and hopefully the government doesn't smarten up and take it away, but there's no time limit on reimbursement. So where I find it to be very powerful for us in the future is I save all the receipts for anything that's medical and we pay cash out of pocket because then I can reimburse myself down the road. Tax free. So just a, uh, you know, it's a, it's a very unique situation, you know, you have to be in a high deductible, uh, plan, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but something else I wanted to throw in there when it came, when it comes to retirement, so.

jacob: 21:33

No. Absolutely. And, and, and look folks, that, that's just an example of if you're not thinking about this stuff, right? If, if you're not strategizing. Your finances in this way, then you're not gonna be aware of these advantages that you could take that other people are aware of. So just keep your eyes open. That's, that's kind of the point of this episode here, is to be intentional about how you're planning each of these different decades. And so, Mike, I'll talk about the next one for me. You know, I really, really in earnest started to feel that it was absolutely necessary to build passive income. As I stepped into my thirties, I started to realize, hey, okay, so in my thirties, you know, I started working at 21. So I, you know, almost a decade into my corporate career at that point when I started to get a little bit of burnout. And I liked my jobs, right? I liked my jobs, I liked working, um, in tech. I liked doing what I was doing in San Francisco. And, but pretty soon that glimmer. Of that corporate America, nine to five rat race grind starts to wear off. Okay. And that's when I really started to feel in earnest that I needed to build an income source that was separate from my job. That's when I dove into the real estate black hole. That is when I figured out rental properties, Airbnbs passive income. That's when I really started to, you know, really buy into the, the, the kind of thesis there that look at the end of the day. You got to build an income source that is separate from your job. And in your thirties, I think that is the decade you have your finances kind of set up in order, you're making a little bit more money. Now, this is where I think you really need to start to dive into the world of real estate, right? Start with one rental property, but how powerful Mike would it be if you bought one rental property, one Airbnb, every single year in your thirties, right? And you start, you stepped into the decade of your forties with this very healthy. Rental property portfolio that was generating a significant amount of income not tied to your job. So I think that this is a very, very important time to start making those moves when you have more money, when you have maybe set a little, set up, a little bit of a foundation in the stock market and you can start to plan and start to see that, hey, I'm getting a little bit burnt out here. So maybe I need to start thinking about how to build the secondary income source. And real estate is just one of the most proven vehicles to kind of build that passive income. Now, it's not passive entirely, but it is more passive than your W2 job, Mike. So that is the, the decade of your thirties, right? Continuing to double down on everything that's working in your twenties, but starting to make some bigger moves with respect to creating that passive income source. Right? And we want to, again, like we did for the decade of your twenties, throw out a little bit of a net worth target. And maybe Mike, you can kind of illuminate how it is possible to get through this as well. But we want you. Conservatively to have a net worth of 250,000 by your late thirties, right? Entering your forties and potentially 500,000. So take a look at this, right? We said a hundred thousand by the end of your twenties, and now we're saying 500,000 by the end of your thirties. But as Mike is probably gonna illuminate here, that's not as difficult as it sounds if you are invested in the right things.

mike: 24:45

Yep. Yeah, so we, you know, that, that early example I used, um, you know, obviously, you know, it was 50,000. Now if you don't, if you don't change anything that I mentioned earlier, in that same example, if you just continue to make$250 right? A$250 contribution every month to your investment account, and you do it for 20 years. So from age 20 to age 40, you'll actually have almost 200, just under$200,000 just in that investment account. And that's by not even touching it. Any increase, you know,'cause you're increasing your income, maybe you're buying properties at this point. So like, it's easy. And then the other thing too that I'll throw out here, just as a, as a real quick example to, to, to show you how easy it is. So you've been, you've been investing that$250 a month, you're now sitting on a$200,000. Um, investment account. And let's say you've taken our advice and you bought that house hack at the age of 25, right? Let's say it's 20, it's 2020. Uh, you bought that house hack at 25. You paid$300,000 for that house hack. You bought it with a 30 year mortgage at an interest rate of 7%, right? And this doesn't include, this does not account for any refinancing in the future, just. That straight scenario after 15 years at the age of 40, if that property doesn't go up in value at all, which we all know it will, but if it doesn't go up at all, you'll have$83,000 in equity in that property, plus whatever it would've gone up in value. It's a pretty safe assumption that over 15 years, a$300,000 property will be, some will be worth somewhere between four.$500,000, 15 years into the future. So right there, you've got, you've, you've pretty much blown by that half a million dollar net worth number.

jacob: 26:59

Absolutely. And so like what, what I hope you're taking away from what Mike is saying here is that there are gonna be these different buckets, right? And you started doing this in your twenties if you listen to us, and then you started to continue to do it in your thirties, right? You set up the stock market investing, right? The index funds, the retirement accounts. You bought the house hack the rental properties. Each of those investments is another vehicle that is increasing your net worth. Okay, so I know it sounds like, oh, how am I gonna go from zero to 100? That's actually gonna be the hardest. But once you get to the a hundred, you know, then the compounding really starts to kick in. And then you're like, oh, getting to 500 is not as hard. And then once you get to 500, you're like, okay, getting to a million and beyond is not that hard because your money is starting to do the heavy lifting for you, but you have to do the hard work. Of starting, right, of buying that first rental property, of making that first investment in the stock market. So you get the money working as quickly as possible so that the compounding can start. You know, I remember when I kind of was setting these goals for myself. I was earlier on in my journey, I was like, okay, I'm gonna have the goal of increasing my net worth a hundred thousand every single year. Okay. And I was like, okay, that's my goal. And then I started to realize, hey, this is happening a lot easier than I thought, because again, the stock market investments are co compounding the rental properties I'm building up equity in. And so you gotta get these assets working in your favor, and you'll see that these net worth targets that we're throwing out are not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. So Mike, we will close out the chapter of our thirties and we will roll into the decade of our 40, our forties. If the thirties was scaling and growing. Right. I want to call your forties as the time to optimize and to really start to achieve that end game. You know, start to achieve that harvesting phase because you did the hard work in your twenties, in your thirties, and now the finish line. Hopefully I. Is in sight, you know, and, and Mike, I know you're in your forties right now. And for me, I'm in being in my mid thirties, I see the decade of my forties as that end game, as hoping to get to that point. And look, we all define this very differently. Um, for me, I don't view my end game necessarily as I'm gonna sit on, sit on the beach and drink my ties for the rest of my life. But what I'm, what I'm hoping to achieve is that complete work optionality. So that I am doing the work that I want to do because I'm choosing to do it and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. Right? And I'm hoping to achieve that in totality by the age that I'm 40. And so what does that look like for you potentially? Here again, we're throwing out a net worth target that might feel scary, but exiting your forties, we want you to be a millionaire. We want you to be a millionaire. And as Mike showed many examples over. This is not gonna be as difficult as it may seem, but you should have any. You should have a million dollar net worth ending the decade of your forties, absolutely likely higher. You should know what your FU number is, right? The 4% rule. Take your desired annual income, multiply that by 25. Get your FU number, figure out, map it out. Try to figure out, okay, how close am I getting to that? And maybe hit that target in your forties. Okay. So Mike, let's talk a little bit more about the decade of your forties, because I think that this should be the decade where people really start to see that, hey, we are getting close to the finish line in terms of all the hard work that we've done.

mike: 30:28

Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, you know, this is where you wanna, you know, people are probably focusing on bringing in more passive income, like you talked about, um, whether it's cash flow, uh, I know we mentioned dividends and the, and before, um, investing in syndications because by the time you, you know, I. Now that you have this net worth and you've got this income, you know, you're, you're able to, you know, the whole world of investing has opened up to you a little bit. If they wanted to get into a syndication fund, uh, that has certain requirements or maybe even investing passively in, you know, uh, real estate deals in your local market. Maybe you, you know, maybe you know somebody who flips houses and you wanna loan'em money at 10, 12, 13% interest. And, you know, it keeps you in the game, but also keeps you. Protected. Um, so there, there's lots of ways to, to continue to, to grow that while also being a little bit, you know, less, less volatile. Um, you know, so there there's ways to do it.

jacob: 31:22

Absolutely. And. This is also the decade, Mike, in my opinion, where you start to really do some pruning. You know, you really start to, you know yourself a little bit more, um, both as an individual but also as an investor. You know, maybe you, you figured out the strategy that you really like, that you really wanna double down on. Maybe you figured out a strategy that you don't like as much, and you want to kind of prune those investments and figure, Hey, I don't need to do this anymore. Um, and so that is also a piece of this. Another piece of this, Mike, that we haven't talked about a lot is this is the time where you should be designing your life. Okay. Lifestyle design is an often overlooked aspect of being financially free. A lot of people sprint towards financial freedom, and then they get to that number. Let's say their goal was to get to, you know,$2 million net worth, and they get there and then they don't know what to do with themselves, right? They don't know what to do with themselves because they didn't design a life around their freedom. They, they, they just made it all about achieving that number. But they didn't understand how they were gonna spend their days. They didn't understand what was gonna be important to them when money was not an issue anymore. And so this is also where you really need to be intentional about the lifestyle that you want to design. What is the life that you wanna have? Uh, and think about this. Think about this early. Think about it often. What would you be doing if money was not an issue? And that's something that you should really be thinking about in. Earnest in the decade of your forties. Um, because, you know, financial freedom doesn't necessarily have, it's gonna look different for everyone. Okay? So this is where you should be thinking about that, um, because, you know, I think I, I just think it's overlooked.

mike: 32:57

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, there's, there's just, you know. It's a, it's a topic that this is not taught in schools, right? Like we don't teach this in the public education system. I mean, they don't really even teach us in college, right? Like, I, I, I have a business degree for crying out loud, right? Like I. They didn't, they didn't tell us, they didn't tell us this. They just taught us about, they just taught us about all the companies that they're partnered with that we can get jobs at. Right. That was what they were sell. They were, remember, college is just, colleges are just a sale. They're just sales. Right. They're just selling you on them. Yeah. And, uh, they don't teach this stuff. I wish they did because I'd be in a much different position than I am today. Now, don't get me wrong, I, I've done very well for myself in the last, you know, eight years, but. I would be in a much different position had I had, I started this much earlier. Um, you know,

jacob: 33:52

we will. We'll bottom line it. It is more than possible to achieve financial freedom in your in your forties. It is more than possible, but it's gonna require intentional steps taken in your twenties, continued in your thirties to achieve financial freedom by the time your 40 are in the decade of your forties. But it is more than possible if you do what we outlined. This episode. So that's all the time we have today, folks. I hope you found this episode helpful. Um, Mike and I are passionate about helping people achieve financial freedom as soon as possible. We do not want people to work until they're 65, you know, because we think that a much different life could be had. People were, if people got more intentional about their finances and just set these goals for themselves and pursued these strategies like rental property investing, um, like investing in the stock market, investing in crypto, like building up passive income and side hustles and things like that. So that's all the things that we talked about in the show. We're very passionate about it. If you wanna reach out to us. We're more than happy to help you on your journey to financial freedom. You can find me on all socials at Cashflow Saga. You can find Mike on all socials at realtor Michael Magno. We hope you found this episode helpful. We will see you guys in the next episode. Peace.

mike: 35:13

See ya.

Nancy: 35:14

Goodbye