Here’s our latest interview with a millionaire as we seek to learn from those who have grown their wealth to high heights.
If you’d like to be considered for an interview, drop me a note and we can chat about specifics.
This interview took place in September.
My questions are in bold italics and their responses follow in black.
Let’s get started…
OVERVIEW
How old are you (and spouse if applicable, plus how long you’ve been married)?
I am 48 and my wife is 47.
We have been married for 23 years!
Do you have kids/family (if so, how old are they)?
We have one daughter, 20 years old, currently in a state university.
What area of the country do you live in (and urban or rural)?
We live in Columbus, GA, which is “urban-ish.”
The second largest city by population in Georgia; however, I would not compare it much to Atlanta or other large metropolitan areas. It has lots of amenities, but more of a small-town feel in my opinion.
What is your current net worth?
As of this morning, Monarch says $2.92 million.
What are the main assets that make up your net worth (stocks, real estate, business, home, retirement accounts, etc.) and any debt that offsets part of these?
It’s mostly investments. Mutual Funds/ETFs spread across pre/post-tax accounts = 88%, Real Estate = 12%.
We just purchased a home last year after renting for about a decade. I feel Monarch is overestimating the equity in our home based on the Zillow “expected sales price today” figure.
We purchased the home for about $355k, owe about $334k, Zillow thinks we can get $374k for it, I’m less optimistic these days. The mortgage is our only debt/liability.
EARN
What is your job?
I’m an O6/Colonel in the US Army.
My current role is Chief of Staff of a small organization.
What is your annual income?
$195,516.
This includes base pay, basic allowance for housing and subsistence.
Tell us about your income performance over time. What was the starting salary of your first job, how did it grow from there (and what you did to make it grow), and where are you now?
Prior to joining the Army, I graduated college with a degree in Business Administration and went to work for a Human Resources Consulting company that also did Benefits Administration. In 1999, my starting salary was $33,000, and that was decent money then!
I was able to rent a two-bedroom apartment by myself, make a car payment, pay my monthly student loan bill, commute 45 minutes to work, and still have some fun money! It’s unfortunate for our young folks how much this has changed and become less affordable.
I worked at this employer for three years before 9/11 and joined in mid-2002 to do my part in the Global War on Terror. I initially took a 60% pay cut to join the Army, but thankfully, my bride, who I met at work and earned a little more than me, understood my reasoning.
I was enlisted for a few months earning E4 and E5 pay until I was commissioned in early 2003, then O1. From SSA.gov, here’s my Taxed Social Security Earnings history since 1999.
- 2024 $153,960
- 2023 $129,547
- 2022 $119,235
- 2021 $114,670
- 2020 $109,672
- 2019 $105,015
- 2018 $97,184
- 2017 $89,622
- 2016 $86,261
- 2015 $83,887
- 2014 $80,922
- 2013 $78,332
- 2012 $74,352
- 2011 $70,495
- 2010 $62,817
- 2009 $59,385
- 2008 $55,743
- 2007 $52,704
- 2006 $48,675
- 2005 $39,462
- 2004 $31,036
- 2003 $25,206
- 2002 $32,847
- 2001 $41,772
- 2000 $39,281
- 1999 $23,606
Now some caveats as these numbers don’t reflect total compensation nor include my wife’s income. I was deployed for almost 4 years, and with that came many special pays that were not included in these earnings.
Additionally, our basic allowances for housing and subsistence are not included. And finally, my wife had sporadic earnings since I joined the Army.
She continued to work for a few years once I initially joined, then couldn’t work remotely when we moved to our first duty station. She made ~$45,000-50,000 in 2002-03.
She took lower-paying jobs, making ~$30,000 in 2003-2005 when our daughter was born. She did not work again until 2011, when she rejoined our first company for 3 years and made ~$55-60,000 until another move came.
She again took lower-paying jobs making ~$25-30,000k per year for two and a half years. Another move and back to minor part-time employment for several years, I think she never made more than $8,000 from 2018-2024.
In late 2024, she took a full-time remote position and has made $60-65,000 the last two years.
What tips do you have for others who want to grow their career-related income?
I am afraid my experience would fall on deaf ears, since in the military, it’s just time in service and grade/rank. But universally speaking, invest in yourself by learning a skill, getting more education, and then parlay that into some networking and relationship building to find someone or some entity who wants to pay you for that skill or knowledge.
This also does not have to be your full-time job; it can be a side gig, side hustle. I have cousins with full-time jobs who are also gear heads, and they make reasonably impressive money doing some side work for friends, family, and word of mouth.
I also think if you have a passion for something, you can make money from that if you’re willing to put yourself out there. Finally, look to merge interests with financial goals.
For instance, youth sports around the country are generally in desperate need of referees, and many leagues can pay $20-$100 per game (or more depending on competition level). If you’re a sports person, instead of watching them on TV, watch some and get paid while refereeing! You’ll be contributing to your community as well.
What’s your work-life balance look like?
Now it’s really good, but that has fluctuated greatly over my career from really bad to really good.
Do you have any sources of income besides your career? If so, can you list them, give us a feel for how much you earn with each, and offer some insight into how you developed them?
Really just dividends, but those are still being reinvested.
I am starting to monetize my professional and personal development coaching and financial coaching, but I’m up to a grand total of one paying customer so far!
SAVE
What is your annual spending?
This is tough to capture over time because we’ve fluctuated wildly over the years and I have not been the type of person who diligently tracks our spending. We predominantly put all our expenses on credit cards and for 2024, we spent $94,000.
I would add another $15-20,000 to that for things we couldn’t put on the credit card.
Much of that was new stuff for new house since this will be our first retirement home, we chose to ditch the furniture we’ve been carting around the country for the last 10-20.
I subscribed to Monarch in late 2024, so now I can better account and categorize our spending. For 2025, we’ve spent $106,000 so far but this includes a used vehicle I purchased for $20,000 plus a bit more travel and entertainment than is typical for us in a year.
What are the main categories (expenses) this spending breaks into?
For 2025, our main categories are housing, auto (overly inflated due to used car purchase), shopping, food and entertainment, travel, utilities, health and wellness.
Do you have a budget? If so, how do you implement it?
My wife and I have always been “budget-adjacent” for the entirety of our marriage. What I mean by that is that we take the time to discuss money, assign values to spending categories, and then try to stay within those boundaries.
It helps that we’re both frugal as well, so neither of us overly spends and our default is a little more towards not buying something.
Over the years, we’ve used a basic Excel spreadsheet to track our income and spending. We’ve also dabbled in the EveryDollar app in the past to track our spending as well as trying the all-cash envelope system.
In the past year, I started using Monarch, which is connected to all our accounts, I like the simplicity and convenience this brings. We have generally assigned spending limits to different categories, but we do not get overly emotional if we over or underspend in these categories on a month-to-month basis.
I think this is partly because of how much we earn these days and that we’re well-positioned for a comfortable retirement. I do not sweat the small stuff in finance now, like I used to ~10 years or more ago.
What percentage of your gross income do you save and how has that changed over time?
Rough swag, 35-50%. We max our TSP and IRAs, my wife gets the match in her 401K and we’ve been focused on building our taxable brokerage account balance as well as stockpiling cash over the past two years as I prepare to retire from the Army.
I suspect we have been in this percentage savings range for probably the last 15-20 years. With several deployments early in my career, we focused on saving a lot of that tax-free money and special pay.
I’ve always maxed my IRA since I graduated college, back when I think it was $2000/yr! I believe we have done the same for my wife since we got married, plus we put 10-15% into our 401ks/TSP.
We used to joke that when I was a Major, we were living like First Lieutenants, and that’s probably not far off since we saved a lot. There was a period of time when the Army wanted to retain officers as it was growing during the Global War on Terror.
They offered a litany of options for people to stay in another 3-5 years. I took the cash bonus, which I think was $35,000.
Instead of taking it cash, I deposited it into my TSP (I believe after taxes it was something around $26,000).
What’s your best tip for saving (accumulating) money?
This is nothing novel or proprietary by any means: 1. Live beneath your means, 2. Pay yourself first, 3. Invest in low-cost mutual funds and ETFs, and 4. Let it marinate like a crock pot!
The equation for building wealth is Savings Rate x Rate of Return x Time and the most powerful portion of that equation is TIME. The more you have, the higher likelihood of success you’ll have.
Maybe the one thing I’d add to this common approach is to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. For me, part of this was investing the bonus offered to junior officers to stay in.
I could’ve taken that money and blown it, put it towards debt, whatever, but instead I just put it in my TSP. This was 2007 and I believe I invested that money in the C fund since then.
I asked Gemini AI to give me a rough swag as to how much that investment is worth today, and it estimates $107,324 (my total TSP balance is ~$670k today), so that’s probably a fair estimate. Another example is when we sold our houses in 2020 and 2021, I put the proceeds of those houses into our brokerage accounts and they’ve been growing since then.
What’s your best tip for spending less money?
Figure out what your “large purchase amount” threshold is first, this is the amount that you start to have an emotional or physical reaction to when you spend at or above that amount, it gives you pause. Understand this amount will adjust over time as your earnings and lifestyle change.
Early on in my professional life, I think $100 was probably that amount, now I feel like it’s $500.
Any spending above that threshold, take the tactical pause before purchasing. Don’t be impulsive, sleep on it, wait a certain amount of time, do extra research into it (read online reviews, look for similar items better priced, etc.), talk it over with a spouse or friend, and then keep asking yourself if this is something you really want. If after all that you still want it, go for it.
What is your favorite thing to spend money on/your secret splurge?
Favorite thing is easy, travel is always fun and a great return on investment.
Secret (but not really) splurge? The weird thing I’ve gotten into in the past year, which quite frankly I wish I hadn’t, is shopping for clothes on Poshmark.com.
The “it’s a steal of a deal” guy in me can’t resist. I like UnTuckit shirts, which usually retail for $65-100, but I can generally get them for less than $30 with shipping….it’s crazy!
Now the algorithms have me dialed in with recommendations! The drawbacks are the items are typically used, you can’t try anything on, you can’t return them, and I’m not going to invest the time to try and re-sell.
So for the few things I ended up not liking or didn’t fit properly, they go to the donation places. I’ve probably made 10-15 purchases this year, but my collection has grown at a ~70% discount!
INVEST
What is your investment philosophy/plan?
Buy low-cost mutual funds and ETFs and treat it like a crock pot – low and slow and rarely stir. The hardest part is drowning out the noise of markets at the macro level and wanting to pull back.
I’m in this phase right now given that I’m
Everything we have is in equity-based funds and ETFs, both in pre- and taxable accounts. Our holdings are VBR, VOO, VTI, VTSAX, VFIAX, VMFXX, C and S funds, LAZR and CCL.
I recognize we have redundancy and that VOO/VTI are very similar. One day I’ll take a harder look at it and maybe rebalance some things in the retirement accounts.
The big caveat here and the reason I’m so aggressive with my investments is because I will receive an inflation-protected pension for life when I retire from the military. I realize this is an immensely powerful safety net and I can treat it like a guaranteed annuity.
What has been your best investment?
This may seem like a weird or unorthodox answer to this question, but joining the military is probably my best lifelong investment.
I won’t highlight the non-financial aspects, but the two HUGE financial ones are (1) Lifetime inflation-protected pension starting at age 50 for me and (2) Low-cost healthcare access for life for me and my spouse.
There is certainly fiscal or governmental risk to this, and I’m a big fan of voting for national leadership who will address our burgeoning national debt.
A little more on the pension, if I collect for 30 years and assuming the pension receives a 2% annual increase, I’m likely to collect ~$3.7M in my lifetime. That sounds like a tremendous investment to me.
Outside of the money, what it really brings me is peace of mind, such that if the markets fluctuate wildly, more to the downside, I know I have a floor amount of income that I can live off without withdrawing any from my retirement investment accounts.
If you want the traditional answer, it’s S&P 500 all the way!
What has been your worst investment?
Another easy one. Very rarely do I ever invest in single stocks, and my track record in doing so is abysmal.
Before the dot.com bubble burst, I started to dabble through my ScottTrade account, and one of the stocks I invested not an insignificant (at the time) amount of money went bankrupt.
Lesson learned, don’t do that again.
Now fast forward to 2022. The market is down but the tech stocks are still on a tear coming out of COVID.
Tesla is the darling stock, and “had you invested $10,000 in 2016, you’d be a millionaire today!” kind of comparisons are running rampant.
Well, I was smart enough not to jump on that bandwagon because it’s on the up. There was lots of talk about fully autonomous vehicles “in the next 2-5 years.” Tesla, Waymo, rumors of an Apple car coming, lots of buzz out there.
One of the key components of fully autonomous vehicles is the sensors, Tesla uses cameras, Waymo and others were using or exploring LiDAR.
I first learned of LiDAR in a military application and was really impressed. I did about 30 minutes of online research and came to the conclusion that if full autonomy is going to take off, LiDAR is a necessity.
I found a company called Luminar Technologies (ticker: LAZR) that seemed most promising of the 3-5 companies in the space. They had a boy genius running the company who pledged not to take a salary until the stock price hit $50/share (it was trading around $20 at the time).
They planned for vertical integration, they had working demos, they were inking deals with Volvo and others, and there were hints at commercial shipping and military customers.
So I say to myself, “Self, is this my Microsoft/Netflix/Google/Amazon/Tesla moment where if I invest $10,000 now, I’ll be a multi-millionaire in 10 years?” Of course, I answered an emphatic YES to that, but why stop at $10k?
I bought $50k in my Roth IRA account, converting the trusty S&P Admiral shares (bye-bye S&P, love you, but I’m moving onto something sexier!). It was about $20/share at the time.
Well, 2022 was a down year, and after a few months, LAZR was down too but started to crawl back up. And by now, I’m following the company on LinkedIn, getting their investor mailings, following the CEO, all that “positive news” coming my way!
So I say to myself, “Self, LAZR is down to $16, why not buy another $50k?” Great idea!
Execute trade in Roth IRA because I’m so smart, and when it does go gangbusters, I won’t have to pay capital gains on any of it….I’M SO SAVVY!!!
Well, after another year of some ups and downs and lots of promising news, I went ahead and purchased some more. All in all, I was in for $139,626.
Fast forward to today. My shares are worth $1,311 as of 9/7/2025.
Sometime earlier this year, they executed a 15-1 reverse stock split and fired their CEO. I should’ve known something was fishy when boy-wonder CEO tried to buy Forbes.
Dude….focus on your company and stop trying to be Elon!
So here’s the real kick in the wedding tackle, way back in 2022, about a month after I first invested in LAZR, I logged into our Vanguard accounts and saw that my wife and I had almost the exact same balance in our IRA accounts, $373k, and we were invested in substantially the same funds.
At the time, I said this is going to be awesome to see in 10 years when I have millions and she has maybe a million. Well, today my IRA is $435k, and hers is $682k.
Had I stayed the course, our investments would be over $3M combined.
If you take one thing away from all of my post, please learn from my mistake and stay out of the single stock investing buzz!
What’s been your overall return?
I have no clue how to calculate this over my lifetime, but given that I’ve been in the S&P or Total Market most of my life, go with that return minus a couple of percent for a few dumb decisions along the way.
How often do you monitor/review your portfolio?
Every. Day.
It’s a bit of a curse, but I’m one of those guys who logs into my accounts every day. I think it’s more about comfort and security vice seeing how my investments changed over that day.
I must say, though, when the market goes up a percent or more in a day, it’s amazing to log in and watch my net worth go up by $25-30,000. It’s always fun to look at a good month’s worth of returns and see how the market made as much as some people’s annual salary.
It really helps drive home the power of compounding growth.
NET WORTH
How did you accumulate your net worth?
The predominance of my net worth is through investing with some help from real estate and gifts along the way. I’ve been investing in an IRA roughly since I was 16 with the help of my grandfather.
If I made earned income, he gifted me money into my IRA, so really, since 16 I was maxing out my IRA contribution ($2000 in the beginning). Because I was in the habit of putting money into my IRA, this continued when I started to work full time and he no longer contributed.
I would say he likely gifted me $12,000 over 6 years of contributions.
In 2006, at the near height of the real estate boom (and before the crash that brought on the Great Recession), we bought our first home for $152,900 with a 6.5% interest rate. It was a 50-year-old 3/2 ranch home in the not-so-great area of town.
In the military, I’d heard plenty of people talk about buying a house at every duty station and then rent it when you leave, which sounded easy!
We purposely bought a home that an E6 or above should be able to afford, so we were still living beneath our means. I believe our first mortgage payments, including taxes and insurance, were around $880/month.
When we came on orders to move in 2009, the housing bubble had burst, and we were underwater in the home, so we became landlords by default. I started by self-managing, and this lasted about 4 years.
The hassle of turning over and finding renters from afar was too much, so I went with an underwhelming property manager in 2012 and continued that until we sold in 2021.
When I say this house was underwater, it stayed drowning all the way up until COVID. I think the lowest I saw a Zillow estimate was for low $90s.
In January of 2020, during a turnover in renters, I tried putting the house on the market for 3 months, and the best offer I could get was $128,000. Because of the craziness of COVID and the housing market increases, we were able to sell the house in mid-2021 for $155,000 – just $2,100 more than we paid for it 15 years prior!
Yes, house values can go down and stay down! After closing costs, I believe we walked away with a check around $142,000.
The other side of this story is that we refinanced that house in 2012 to a 10-year mortgage, which upped our monthly payment to just about $1200, by that time, the market rental rate was close to that and eventually grew over that for a bit. Over 12 years of renting, we collected rent on all but 7 months.
I never ran all the numbers to see what our internal rate of return was on it.
In 2016, I cashed out a whole life policy we purchased before I entered the Army, and this policy had ~$50,000 in cash value. I used that money to pay off the house, and we were down to one other mortgage in terms of debt, but nothing else.
There was a real sense of relief every month when that rent check came in and wasn’t immediately taken out the next day by the mortgage company. It was a nice psychological boost!
The other real estate bump was from a home we purchased in 2016 and sold in 2022. After closing and paying off the mortgage, I believe we got a check for around $55-60,000.
The proceeds from both sales went into our brokerage accounts, invested in S&P and Small Cap ETFs.
What would you say is your greatest strength in the ESI wealth-building model (Earn, Save or Invest) and why would you say it’s tops?
I think Save is my greatest strength. Without the save, I would not be able to invest and reap the rewards of compounding interest.
My favorite investing quote is from Albert Einstein, and it’s popular in the FIRE community. He said compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world, those who know it, earn it and those who don’t, pay it.
What road bumps did you face along the way to becoming a millionaire and how did you handle them?
I cannot think of any one thing. The consistency sounds easy, but in practice is hard.
While my wife and I are frugal by nature, we’ve also spent a lot of money, and I’d wager we could have a net worth in the $4-5M range today had we gone “full plaid” frugal. Over the years, we’ve bought some decently nice cars, a couple new, most used.
We had a travel trailer ($28k) that we used for a move to Alaska and back. While that wasn’t a frugal purchase, it was definitely worth it for the memories it created and the ease of two moves since we ended up living in it for a total of 6 months in different locations waiting on housing.
We’ve taken nice vacations, and we’ve never deprived ourselves of much. We purchased our daughter an $18k car when she turned 15 (so she’d have a year to learn to drive a manual transmission!).
Some of the frugality helped along the way, too. I sold my diesel pickup truck before moving overseas during COVID and thought I’d be able to buy one for a similar price when I returned….wrong!
Since I couldn’t get back into a truck, I’ve been driving a 2011 Kia Soul that I purchased in cash for $6500! I can tell you as a senior officer on an Army base, I get lots of jokes thrown my way for that car!
My wife will shop at lower-cost stores like Walmart, Dollar Tree, etc.
What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your net worth?
I’m not really changing anything. I will maintain about 98% in equities as I move into retirement.
The hardest thing right now is ignoring the market pundits and transferring our money out of equities and fleeing to safer investments (it’s late 2025). Currently, I’m focused on stockpiling cash.
My goal is ~$200k by retirement so we can reduce sequence of return risks if the market has a few bad years in the early part of my retirement. Other than that, I don’t plan to work (initially) once I retire, my wife and I want to do a lot of slow traveling around the world.
Do you have a target net worth you are trying to attain?
No.
As we switch from the save/invest phase to spend phase of our lives, my primary concern is the sequence of return risk and ensuring we have a comfortable pot of investments to draw upon as needed.
How old were you when you made your first million and have you had any significant behavior shifts since then?
Around 42-43. I don’t recall any significant behavior shifts.
As I mentioned earlier, over time since then my threshold for analyzing purchases increased over time to where today, if something is under $500, I generally don’t sweat it.
I will say I’ve become more generous in donating to people who have had some hard times or traumatic experiences in their lives. I’ve had several friends or acquaintances who had serious accidents or their kids were seriously hurt, and we’ve donated money to them, most were shocked and very thankful.
We also give more money to our friends’ kids’ fundraisers. Seems like most people still want to give $20 for these things, we usually give $50-100. We’re also generous in gifting to our nieces and nephews.
What personal habits and/or traits have you developed that have made you successful at growing your net worth?
Live beneath our means (mostly), pay ourselves first (investing), and don’t focus on keeping up with the Joneses!
What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from?
See the story above about trying to pick the next stock home run instead of maintaining my low and slow crock pot cooker of S&P 500 or Total Market mutual funds!
We definitely could have optimized more throughout our lives. I mentioned earlier, we cashed out a $50k cash value life insurance policy to pay off our first house.
I never did the math, but this was 2016, and had I put that money into the market, the rate of return is guaranteed to be much higher. In this instance, my aversion to debt overrode the “right thing to do” investing-wise.
I failed to mention earlier, too, that I listened to the doomsday pundits when President Trump was elected the first time. I transferred most of our retirement account investments into safer fixed-income investments and lost out on probably about 10-15% in gains before I got back in.
What advice do you have for ESI Money readers on how to become wealthy?
Marry someone with similar money values as you, live beneath your means (or spend less than you make), invest in low-cost mutual funds or ETFs, and let it cook.
A popular quote is “Time in the market is better than timing the market.”
FUTURE
What are your plans for the future regarding lifestyle?
I will retire from the Army three days before my 50th birthday. Initially, I was adamant about not working ever again, but I’ve since re-evaluated and decided not to slam shut any doors.
I don’t think I’ll jump back into a W-2 job anytime soon, if ever. I’m working on becoming a Financial Coach, and I would like to help others achieve their financial goals; maybe that will bring in some side money.
I may start refereeing in my local community as a means to give back. I wouldn’t mind earning enough to continue to fund our Roth IRAs for the year!
What are your retirement plans?
Financially, keep it in the market and not get spooked by market fluctuations. We’re starting to plan some overseas slow travel for the summer I retire.
I plan to travel more, connect more with friends and family, and be active in my local community. In our daily non-traveling lives, I want to work on my physical, mental, and social health along with my wife by establishing good routines.
Are there any issues in retirement that concern you? If so, how are you planning to address them?
Sequence of return risks is my primary investing concern. I am addressing that by stockpiling cash now before I retire, at least 2 years of generous spending on top of my pension.
Our pension will generously cover all our monthly expenses with some left over for fun money, but not much. Most of our investment withdrawals will be to fund travel and fun, so I know we can always dial that back if needed.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about the website Early Retirement Now and “Big ERN’s” safe withdrawal rate series. I will deep dive into that as I get closer to retiring.
My second concern is physical and social deterioration. My wife and I are introverts, she greater than me.
I don’t want us to become socially isolated, staying up late, watching TV all day, and generally doing nothing. I plan to address this by developing routines when we’re not traveling.
Wake up, work out, exercise the mind, do something social (call, email, in-person, etc.), eat healthily, and go to bed at a reasonable hour.
MISCELLANEOUS
How did you learn about finances and at what age did it “click”?
Informally, I learned from my grandfather, and I’ll go into that more in the next question. I think it clicked in my early 20s.
Formally, I obtained my masters in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University. This helped me put some academic rigor behind much of the things I learned from my grandfather.
Who inspired you to excel in life? Who are your heroes?
Hands down, my grandfather. He was born in the early ‘20s, had his formative years during the Great Depression, went off and fought in WWII, then came back and worked hard in a factory, increased his education in night school, bought a business, bought a house with income-generating property attached (2 small apartments above his house), and raised three girls.
From as early as I can remember, he harped on me to live beneath my means, spend less than I make, and invest. All the common advice today, said in different words.
We have a saying in the Army: you learn by repetition and trauma. For building wealth, he was my repetition.
He talked about it constantly when we were together, he would cut out newspaper and magazine clippings on saving and investing, and send them to me from high school through college.
It seemed a little corny at the time, but as I look back on it, he was gifting me the means to have a $2.9M net worth today!
One of his main messages was don’t be wealthy just to be able to say you’re rich. The most powerful thing is having money provides you with options.
You can buy this car or that car, live on this side of town or the other, send your kid to your school of choice, take this job, or tell them to shove it! It gives you access to better health care options.
You can work or retire early. Money gives you options.
Do you have any favorite money books you like/recommend? If so, can you share with us your top three and why you like them?
Not really. The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins is great in its simplicity and shows everyone you don’t need high-cost financial planners and advisors who charge an assets under management fee.
You really can do it yourself!
I’m more of a podcast guy these days, and ChooseFI is one of the best.
Do you give to charity? Why or why not? If you do, what percent of time/money do you give?
I do, but not much. I donate $25/month to the Army’s Emergency Relief Fund. We give to people in their time of need and to animal shelters, but those are more sporadic.
In the future, I will look to donate more money, but I haven’t set that net worth threshold where we’ll be more deliberate and more generous.
It’s important to me that our money has a measurable positive impact on someone’s life. I’m less inclined to give to a national charity with high overhead, or if they pay for someone to solicit on their behalf who keeps most of the donation.
When the time comes, we will focus on more local charities or avenues if they seem worthwhile. For example, I’d rather give to a local school sports team that needs new uniforms.
These days, it blows my mind how much it costs for kids to even participate in their school sports programs. I would love to help sponsor kids so their families do not have to tell them they can’t play because they cannot afford it.
I see a future where maybe we start a scholarship, but I want it to be impactful. There are too many $500-$1000 scholarships these days, that buys maybe 2-4 books, not much else.
I want a kid to get a check and not have to worry about room and board or something significant like that.
Do you plan to leave an inheritance for your heirs (how do you plan to distribute your wealth at your death)? What are your reasons behind this plan?
We’ve started passing our child’s inheritance now in a weird way. Throughout our daughter’s life, whenever she got money for birthdays, stimulus checks, or anything else, we took most (sometimes all) of it from her and invested it.
If it was birthday money, she got a bit to buy something fun. If it was a stimulus check, she got none of it because why does a 12-year-old need a stimulus check!
Since she started working, I would match her earned income and put money into a Roth IRA for her, same as my grandfather did for me (except a heck of a lot more money!).
She received more scholarship money her first three years of university than school cost, so we have invested that money as well. She has a 529 she won’t need to touch until she pursues a PhD, as my GI Bill will cover her 5th year undergrad (double major) and her Masters.
I’m hoping with the Secure 2.0 act passage, she’ll have at least $35k left in the 529 to convert into an IRA when she’s done with school.
Funny timing given this forum’s questions, but she just surpassed $100,000 in her Vanguard account (about $20k IRA, $80k in taxable brokerage). I told her there’s not too many college kids with a $100k net worth these days!
Our daughter wants to be a music education teacher and band director. I recognize this may change, but that’s the path she is on now.
I joke that I admire her dedication to a life of poverty, but quite frankly, there’s some truth to that joke, especially if she stays in the high school arena. My wife and I have started discussing how we can help her grow long-term wealth.
I haven’t put much mental energy into “running the numbers” on this yet, but right now we are planning to be her “company match” for what she contributes to her retirement accounts. Meaning, if she makes $40,000/year salary, contributes $20,000 to a 401k-like account and $7,000 to an IRA, we will reimburse her $27,000/year.
We will do this on a monthly basis so her contributions are covered. We feel this doesn’t allow her to inflate her standard of living; to get the money from us, she has to invest in her future.
My wife and I are not focused on leaving her a large inheritance; if it happens, so be it. If she gets nothing from us upon our deaths, my hope is that we’ve given her a solid financial start and the education to live beneath her means, invest, and let it cook!
