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Welcome to personal finance for long-term investors, where we believe Benjamin Franklin's advice that an
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investment in knowledge pays the best interest both in finances [music] and in your life. Every episode teaches you
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personal finance and long-term investing in simple terms. Now, here's your host,
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Jesse Kramer. Welcome to Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors, episode 125. I'm Jesse Kramer. By day, I work at
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a fiduciary wealth management firm helping clients nationwide. You can learn more at bestinterest.blog/work.
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blog back/work. The link is in the show notes. And by night, I write the best interest blog and I host this podcast. I
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also put out a weekly email newsletter. And all of those projects, all of them help busy professionals and retirees
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avoid mistakes and grow their wealth by simplifying their investing, their taxes, and their retirement planning.
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Today, in the spirit of Christmas and inspired by Charles Dickens, we're going
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to do a sort of past, present, and future episode. My hope is that you all listening will walk away from this
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episode with a few interesting ideas to implement in your financial life or maybe to stick in your stocking for a
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later time. First, as always, we'll start with a very quick review of the week. This is a five-star review from
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Apple Podcasts and a t-shirt will be going to Gig Harbor, Washington. The review says, "Insightful and
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entertaining, five stars. Quick note of appreciation from a longtime listener. Your recent episode summarizing the
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complexity of planning with a special needs child was right on target. For anyone on this journey, it's a maze of
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uncertainty and worry. Episodes like this help many of us in processing the total investment landscape. And for
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those of you hearing that and are curious, that was episode 119 was a deep dive into financial planning with a
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special needs child. And thank you very much for those comments, Gig Harbor Washington. Feel free to reach out to me
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to jesse at bestinterest.blog and I will get a super soft podcast t-shirt mailed
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your way. And as this is the last episode of the year, I first want to do a very quick brief yearin review. As of
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this recording, which I'm recording right now on the first day of December, about 110,000 people have tuned into
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personal finance for long-term investors this year. And that is simply amazing and awesome. And I'm so thankful to all
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of you listening. I' I'd wager I've received probably more than a thousand
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emails this year from you. Hundreds of listener questions that I've used for
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the AMA episodes and for blog posts over at bestinterest.blog. By year end, there will probably be 45
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new articles on the blog and 29 new podcast episodes this year. Many of you have reached out as well about working
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with me professionally as as your financial planner. Me being your financial planner, hiring my firm, to be
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your your full-time wealth management firm, and sometimes for you to be the client, but just as often as a referral
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for a loved one in your life or an aging parent or a spouse just in case you get
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hit by a bus, having that backup plan. And it's just a huge honor that many of
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you trust me in that way. And you might have noticed here on the podcast that I don't run mattress ads. I don't sell gut
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health supplements. I don't sell banking products even. I don't sell a course.
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What I do though is remind you that I work for a fiduciary wealth management firm and I help clients nationwide. And
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I absolutely love all this work that I do. And I can say for now, at least for the first half of 2026, I will be
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accepting new clients. So, if you're interested in starting that conversation
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again, you can go to the website bestinterest.blog/work and you can find out more there. And
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thank you once again for listening. Here's to a merry Christmas and a great start to 2026. But on this Christmas Eve
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episode, stealing idea, maybe from the guys over at Stacking Benjamins, who I know they've done a similar episode like
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this before, though I swear we independently came to this idea, both stealing it from Charles Dickens. I want
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to be visited by the ghosts of past, present, and future. Not necessarily Christmas past, present, and future, but
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financial past, present, and future. So, I'm going to share some fun stories,
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some some lessons along the way, some timelines from my uh financial upbringing, and then I'll share with you
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a quick deep dive on my financial present, specifically my systems, my habits, how I track things, how I
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invest, how we're insured, those sort of details. Now, for the financial future,
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I thought about a few different directions to take the future route of this Dickens episode. and and the two
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routes I settled on is one I'm going to share with you just a little bit about
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what I think the future of kind of the financial education and financial planning and what those future
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industries look like and then also I want to share with you maybe just a little bit I'm happy to share with you a
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little bit about my personal goals for the future financial goals for the future my family's financial goals for
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the future and and putting on my financial planner hat some thoughts on what they are and and how we're aiming
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to get there >> the ghost of financial past appears before Jesse carrying a dripping mop in
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one hand and a package of water bottles in the other. Wearing a super soft personal finance for long-term investors
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t-shirt, the ghost urged Jesse to tell of his earliest financial beginnings. So, the ghost of financial past, one of
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my money beginnings, one of the stories that I first think about kind of my my relationship with money was the summer
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of 2001. when I was 11 years old and I really wanted to play the game Age of Empires 2. If you're not familiar with
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Age of Empires 2, it's a computer game where you start out controlling this small village and you collect resources,
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you build new buildings, you grow the village, you research new technology, eventually you raise an army, and you go
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out into the the map, if you will, and conquer some enemies who are doing the same thing as you are. And and to this
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day, Age of Empires 2 is considered one of the best computer games of all time. Actually, people still play it.
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Seriously, you can go on to YouTube right now and watch people playing a 25-year-old computer game. But I don't
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think it's coincidental that this game appealed to me. It's strategic. It's
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about resource management. The same brain that loves those games also loves personal finance and investing and tax
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planning and economics. It all kind of makes sense. It's a game that expects
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and rewards your patience. you know, you plant the seeds early of technology choices and resource placement and early
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expansion and then and then later on you kind of harvest the bounty of planting those early seeds. And people who enjoy
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that rhythm, they often like real world planning, too. They're the people who
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don't mind playing the long game. It's also a game of systems. The real joy is
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kind of in the machinery underneath their supply lines and technology trees and trade routes and building different
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military units. It's a game where you want to understand why something works
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rather than just enjoying the flashy outcome of it. It's also a game of control, not necessarily
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micromanagement, though. The game gives you agency without demanding every little tiny detail. You know, it's about
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steering the ship and choosing priorities and and allocating resources, but not necessarily diving into every
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single bit of minutiae. And I see a similarity where I like deciding how to allocate my assets, but I don't
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necessarily want to vote in every single company's proxy. I'll let the mutual
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funds and the ETFs take care of that for me. It's a game about uh smart decisions
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compounding over time. It's a game about optimization, but not obsessively. So, I
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I think the same instinct that makes people enjoy budgeting and enjoy home projects or gardening or building a
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business is the same kind of thing that is the same reason why I enjoyed Age of Empires 2. But I had a major problem.
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And that's what I'm getting to. The game cost $50. And at 11 years old, I didn't
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have $50. And my parents, as great as they are, they weren't going to simply
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gift me the money for a computer game. I had to earn it. And I'm sure I could
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have done chores around the house. I could have collected soda cans for 5 cents a piece or something like that.
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But I had a different idea. My older brother was playing in summer league baseball. 15 games over two months. Half
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of them being home games. And each game had a few dozen parents and grandparents
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up and down the first and the third baseline. Maybe those people could be customers, I thought. And my idea was to
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open up a small concession stand and sell to them, sell to those fans. So my dad lent me some money uh so I could go
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to Sam's Club and buy some inventory. And thankfully that bank, the Bank of Dad, happened to charge zero interest.
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And knowing what I know now, I can't believe I only borrowed $50 at zero interest, but it was what it was. I
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bought waters and soda and candy bars and chips and packs of gum, maybe some other things, too. And I'd load up a
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cooler of with ice before every game. I'd throw some drinks in there. I'd sit
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behind home plate with my little sign. And it worked. My summer revenue ended up being well over $100, more than
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enough to pay back my dad, the 50 that I borrowed and buy my very own copy of Age
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of Empires 2. I certainly learned the the pride of entrepreneurship and earning your own money and then using
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that money to do something that brings you joy. And yes, for what it's worth, I
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am definitely glad I bought that game. I spent hours and hours and hours playing
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it. It was so much fun. That said, I also think there are some wonderful and funny lessons, some real world lessons
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that we can all apply, some lessons to learn from from my experience. First, the products. So, gums and chips and
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candy are the things that maybe 11-year-old Jesse really enjoyed and would have wanted to buy at a baseball
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game, but not necessarily something that my customers, who are almost all adults,
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were really pining for. Now, by far, water was my bestselling item. It wasn't
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even close. So, if I had to do it all over again, again, it's not necessarily
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what you want, it's what your customers want. Okay, good lesson there. Now, second, a lesson about pricing. Being
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the little math nerd that I was, I decided to simply take my unit cost and double it to determine my unit price. In
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other words, since bulk water bottles ended up being, you know, 27 cents a bottle, I doubled that to 54 cents a
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bottle, I rounded up to 55 cents to make it a quote unquote round number. And that's what my price was,05 cents for a
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bottle of water. So there I am running my little cash register out of a plastic bag full of nickels and dimes. and
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people are giving me $1 and I'm giving them back4 cents and change. Of course,
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everyone's lives would have been so much easier and so much better if I'd simply
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charged a dollar for their bottle of water. And no adult in the right mind would have really boked at that. So, I'm
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not sure what I was thinking there. Third, and and this is perhaps the best lesson to learn, there's nothing wrong
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with a subtle, soft reminder. Now, I remember being too nervous and too shy, especially with the other team's fans,
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to simply walk down to their fans along whatever baseline they were, and say something like, "Hey, if you're thirsty
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or hungry, I've got some concessions behind home plate." Simple, just a
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simple message. Right now, I was too shy to go say that. Now, most of them probably didn't even know I was back
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there behind home plate, right? They had no idea I was there. I was just sitting
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there with my sign. I think I had watched too much Field of Dreams. Speaking of baseball references, if you
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build it, they will come. Well, here in the real world where you don't have dead
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baseball players walking out of cornfields, it's if you build it and tell them about it, they will come. At
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least most of the time. You've got to tell them about it at least a little bit. And I know some of you probably
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roll your eyes here on the podcast when I say every episode that I do financial planning work with clients at a
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fiduciary wealth management firm, blah blah blah blah blah. I get it. But guess what? If I never said it, most of you
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would never know. And I think there's nothing wrong with just that soft reminder. Anyway, on with that. Let's go
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to the next story. My first real job was at a place called Fair Haven Beach State
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Park, a beautiful state park with a wonderful beach in the village of Fair Haven, New York. And for my first summer
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there, I think I was 16 years old, I was a cleaner. I rode around in a little electric cart with my mop bucket and my
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Johnny brush. And mostly I cleaned bathrooms all day. I also cleaned cabins and and some other buildings there on on
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the Park campus. But mostly I was a bathroom cleaner. Minimum wage at the time was $7.25 25 an hour. I earned an
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impressive $7.60 per hour. And one of my memories from that summer cleaning bathrooms was doing the math where I
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earned a penny basically every 5 seconds. And the memory is sitting there in the bathroom cleaning toilets, you
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know, a Johnny brush in my hand, thinking to myself, another penny in the bank. 1 2 3 4 5 another penny in the
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bank. And so one of the lessons there is if you're thinking that if you were
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literally counting the pennies entering your bank account at work, you've probably got to find something else to
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do. I know many people work in jobs they aren't totally passionate about, but
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holy god, if you're visualizing pennies going into a bank with a Johnny brush in
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your hand, you got to find something else to do. It's so much better when your paycheck is actually just an
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ancillary component of the work you do. I know we might not all get there, but it is a better place to be, a better
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place to work. But I stuck with it for the full summer. I earned my checks and my first $450 check. That was two weeks
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pay after taxes were removed. It felt pretty amazing. Though, it was also my first foray into income taxes. You know,
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I'd earned $550 bucks, but the federal and and taxes in New York State withholding took away 20% or whatever it
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was. Now, for the record, I had not yet heard of a Roth IRA, and I certainly did
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not take advantage of a Roth IRA. And to think that one summer of missed Roth IRA
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contributions could have been $150 billion dollars for my great great grandchildren in the year 2200. I will
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never get that time back. So a a younger dad, probably in his late 30s at the time, he was taking pity on me as his
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little boys got sand and and lake water all over the bathroom floor that I had just mopped. And we spoke for a couple
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minutes and I could tell he was thinking, "Jesus Christ, this young guy is a career bathroom cleaner and he's
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16, you know, he's a teenager and he's just stuck cleaning bathrooms. I've got
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to try to impart some career advice to him." And he started with some line like, "It's got to be nice uh spending
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time here in the park. Pretty good career at the state. You know, a lot of opportunities for career growth. Do you
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have some some good opportunities in front of you?" And I smiled and I said,
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"Yeah, you know, I'll be a high school senior next year. I'm applying to
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colleges right now. And man, it was like a 2,000lb weight came off his shoulders.
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Anyway, just a little funny story there. But here here's another good lesson.
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Going into summer number two, they rehired me as a cleaner again. More toilets, more cabins, more emergency
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calls at the you got to come to this bathroom right now after Fourth of July weekend cuz it's a disaster. You do not
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want to get one of those calls. But unsurprisingly, my heart was not in it. In fact, I was actually kind of dreading
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the idea of spending another summer cleaning toilets. And in my first week of that second summer, I ran into one of
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the three big wigs at the park, one of the three main managers. And I remember the conversation. I said, "Hey, Tom,
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listen. I'm I'm glad. I'm grateful to be a cleaner, and I'll do it as long as you
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need me to do it. But if an opportunity opens up on the maintenance team, I'd
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like to be considered for that opportunity." And of course, he said, "You know, Jesse, there's nothing right
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now, but actually something might be in the works. We might have an opening by the end of the week. I'll let you know."
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Sure enough, someone quit. and he quit in a pretty unique role actually at the park. You know, most of the people they
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they mowed lawns and split wood and they did so from 8:00 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday. But the guy who quit had
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a hybrid role from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. including on weekends. And there was some physical labor and maintenance
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in the afternoons, but then there was also a lot of after hours customer service. You know, when a camper calls
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to complain that the previous uh campers left a mess at the campsite, I would get
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the call, I would drive up to the site, I would apologize, I would calm them down, and I would clean up the mess. And
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once the rest of the the maintenance team left at 4 pm, I was one of the only people left in the park. So I had
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autonomy to work on whatever needed it to chat with parkgoers uh who needed to speak somewhere. And I absolutely loved
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that job. It was perfect for me. I spent time on my feet. I was outside. I was driving around the park. I did some
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manual labor, but I was always talking to people, solving their problems, having a little chat, a little bit of
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everything. And I certainly was never counting the pennies as they dribbled into my imaginary piggy bank. Now, if I
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hadn't gone out of my way to ask Tom for other opportunities at the park, I probably would have cleaned toilets
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until the day I quit in frustration. So, I think there's a pretty nice career
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lesson in there to be on the lookout for opportunities. Don't be afraid to ask
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that question. You, you know, ask your boss the question. It can't hurt. You
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know, maybe you can help the people in charge to actually solve their problems while you're also solving your problem
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at the same time. It's time to fast forward a little bit further into the future to about 2014 or so. I'm 24 years
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old. my real career is underway. And I like this story because it's how I stumbled exactly into what I'm doing
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right now. And if you've heard me talk enough on the podcast, you might be somewhat familiar with this some of this
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story. I'm a huge believer that having some skin in the game will naturally steer you down the path to learning more
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about the game that you happen to be playing. And for me, it was a couple years into my career logging into my
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401k and seeing, you know, the cost of a new car sitting there in my account balance. I don't remember the exact
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number if I'm being honest with you. probably somewhere in that 20 to $30,000
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range. All of it at the time was invested into a 2050 target date fund for when I'd be 60 years old. I was
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happy enough with all those facts, you know, I I was happy enough putting money away and seeing it grow, but I wanted to
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learn more. I wanted to just understand truly the nuts and bolts of what was going on. And I liked learning about
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personal finance. I'd never learned it really growing up. My parents instilled
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some pretty good lessons and and and principles, but I didn't know the specifics. So, I started learning more
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little self-study. Then I discovered the fire movement. Then I discovered uh the
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Bogleheads book on investing. Then I discovered uh the world of blogs and podcasts and all this stuff. Fast
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forward to late 2018, I decided to start my own blog, The Best Interest was born.
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And then early 2021, this podcast was born. In mid 2021, losing some of my passion for being an aerospace engineer,
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I started the conversations that eventually led to me switching careers and now working in wealth management.
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And you know, the idea at the time was simple. I thought to myself, I know a good amount about financial planning and
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investing. I'd love to learn more from smart people. Some of my audience members already want to pay me for
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advice. It would be good to work for an established and reputable firm if I were
00:17:04
to do that. And then I had this kind of interesting way of finding clients. Here's a little bit of inside baseball
00:17:10
for those of you who are curious. In the world of wealth management, financial planning, investment management,
00:17:15
referrals are still the king. Friends tell friends. Accountants and attorneys point people your way. If you do good
00:17:21
work at a as a financial planner, your referrals will compound like sleepy dollar cost average index funds, right?
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It's great. So, referrals are still king. The problem is when you're just
00:17:30
starting out, no one's really going to want to refer to you, right? There's no
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time for the compounding to have actually started. Some financial advisors, they buy leads through a
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service like Smart Asset, which maybe you've heard of. Some advisers provide
00:17:42
seminars in the community, you know, learning opportunities at libraries and community centers, and they want to
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pitch you whatever they're selling at the end of the seminar. Some advisers really dive down into a niche or they
00:17:53
become the go-to person at the country club or on the social scene or something like that. But here I am with this blog
00:17:58
and podcast doing something that was certainly relatively unique four years ago. Nowadays, I think there, you know,
00:18:05
a few dozen financial planners like me who I know of who are successfully building their practice solely through
00:18:10
the free education they provide in content, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, whatever it may be. Some
00:18:16
advisers dabble in content creation, but in my experience, few stick with it long
00:18:20
enough to reap the iceberg effect where you know most of your audience is quietly watching but not really saying a
00:18:25
word. Now, most of you listening, you've probably never reached out to me and
00:18:28
that's totally okay. Most of the podcasts I listen to, right, they the person producing the podcast, they have
00:18:33
no idea who I am. Although until one day, one of my listeners will email or connect on LinkedIn or fill out the work
00:18:40
with Jesse form and they'll say, "Hey, I've been listening for years. Can we
00:18:43
talk?" So, it's just interesting how 11ish years ago was the time when I
00:18:48
first felt like I had enough skin in the game in my own personal finances to say,
00:18:52
you know what, I should really sit down and learn what's going on here. and then, you know, just reading book after
00:18:57
book and consuming expert blog post after expert blog post and just diving into the details as much as I possibly
00:19:04
could. Here I am 11 years later. Here's a quick ad and then we'll get back to
00:19:08
the show. I send a free weekly email to thousands of readers that shares two simple things, just two. The first are
00:19:14
my new articles and podcasts so you'll never miss when I publish new content.
00:19:18
And the second is my favorite financial content from other corners of the internet so you can see what's been
00:19:22
helping me the most. But Jesse, I don't want another email. >> I hear you. I make this newsletter
00:19:28
short, sweet, and full of essential information, and readers enjoy that. About 85% of newsletter subscribers are
00:19:34
engaging with the newsletter more than once a month. They're enjoying it, and
00:19:37
you will, too. You can subscribe for free on the homepage at bestinterest.blog. And you'll get a free
00:19:42
PDF of my white paper titled The Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Retirement Paycheck. That's right, a
00:19:48
free weekly email that thousands of people like you are already reading. A free white paper to help you plan for
00:19:53
retirement. And you can sign up for free at bestinterest.blog. A net worth spreadsheet unfurls itself
00:20:00
before Jesse, upheld by what must be the second ghost, the ghost of financial present. The ghost opens his mouth and
00:20:09
countless receipts start falling out. Amazon, Wegman's, diapers, applesauce pouches, more diapers. How much
00:20:16
applesauce can one small child eat? >> And now we are in the financial present.
00:20:22
So, I thought I'd do two things here. First, I want to tell you exactly what I
00:20:26
do in my own family's finances. My goal is to really leave no stone unturned
00:20:29
here. And second, I want to tell you some stories of my favorite wins from the world of financial planning, my
00:20:35
financial planning practice, where we looked at a situation, a person, the numbers, we gave some advice, and we had
00:20:39
a terrific outcome. First, let's do the family finances. Like I said before, I
00:20:43
won't share my precise numbers here because that feels a little bit exposing
00:20:46
or just a little bit weird in the eye of the beholder. I suppose who knows how you'll interpret my numbers. So instead,
00:20:52
I just want to describe to you again without the numbers but in pretty precise detail how we save and and
00:20:57
contribute to various accounts, our cash management system and emergency funds and credit card usage. Our view on debt,
00:21:04
how we use debt, and the steps we take to burn down our debt. I'll talk about
00:21:08
our asset allocation, you know, how we're invested across various accounts and why. I'll talk about insurance, how
00:21:14
and why we're insured, taxes, how we use our HSA account, our home, and the thoughts that went into buying it. And
00:21:20
then last, how we budget and how we spend. So, first things first, savings. This year will be the first year in a
00:21:25
while where both my wife and I are maxing out our 401k retirement plans. In recent years, with other priorities that
00:21:32
I'll get into, we just didn't have the cash flow to max out both those accounts. My wife maxes out her Roth IRA
00:21:37
month by month. For me though, simply again due to cash flow conservatism. I'll wait until filing taxes before I
00:21:44
make my year prior Roth IRA contribution. For many years, we've both maxed out our Roth IAS. Now, just in
00:21:51
case you aren't familiar with that, if you didn't know, for, you know, here in
00:21:55
2025, you can make your IRA contribution not until December 31st of this year. you actually have until you file taxes
00:22:02
in in 2026 to make your IRA contribution for the 2025 year. Moving on to the HSA
00:22:08
account. We max out our family HSA account throughout the year. And as I alluded to in a in a couple minutes,
00:22:14
I'll share how we actually use our HSA account. We're putting away a couple
00:22:18
hundred a month into a 529 account right now, assuming it'll eventually go toward
00:22:22
our children's educational spending. And beyond those qualified investment vehicles, we don't have too much extra
00:22:28
cash flow to save into to save into, for example, a taxable account. But that's
00:22:32
okay. We're in a reasonably expensive season of life right now. We have one baby. We have a second baby on the way.
00:22:38
We have a newish house to us that we've been renovating bit by bit, not only
00:22:42
paying the mortgage, but actually putting money into to to make the house nicer. Both of us had cars that kicked
00:22:46
the bucket recently. My wife's was 17 years old. Mine was 13 years old. So, we've been using our excess cash flow to
00:22:53
spend or to replenish rather than to save. And I think that's okay because despite that spending, we're still using
00:23:00
our retirement accounts pretty well to save pretty large dollar amounts each year. Now, on to the next topic for cash
00:23:06
management. And at least here's the way I think of the word cash management.
00:23:10
It's really, you know, how you're using your banks and your bank accounts and
00:23:13
your savings and thinking about that. So, I still have my legacy bank accounts from when I was single and so does my
00:23:18
wife. My checking and her checking are the two accounts that we separately use as our kind of base of operations for
00:23:23
earning and for spending. But importantly, we do have a joint savings and a joint checking account through one
00:23:29
of the online high yield banks. And those shared accounts serve a couple important purposes, at least in my mind.
00:23:35
First, it makes it pretty easy and seamless for us to move money back and forth to one another when needed. And
00:23:40
second, we use the shared account to pay certain large shared bills like the mortgage. So, if I had to start from
00:23:44
scratch right now, I genuinely think we would do the following. We would establish a relationship with a local
00:23:50
bank to us here in Rochester where we could both have a joint savings and a joint checking account. We would keep
00:23:56
our joint accounts with a high yield bank online. And that's pretty much it,
00:23:59
right? Our cash management in practice is very much a shared experience. We don't do too much solo. It's just that
00:24:06
due to the inertia of our old accounts and our old econnections and all of those old things we had went single, it
00:24:12
made sense for us to keep all those legacy accounts to just layer on a couple joint accounts on top of that.
00:24:17
And it works really, really well for us. The next topic I wanted to cover is our
00:24:21
debt, how I view it, and the extra steps we take to burn it down. So, right now,
00:24:25
the only debt we have on our balance sheet is our house, but it's a bigger mortgage than I'd like, and it's a
00:24:30
mortgage we got in the summer of 2023. So, the interest rate is 6.5% which is not my favorite. Now, it doesn't keep me
00:24:36
up at night. We're making our payments every month in a pretty comfortable way,
00:24:40
but still, I've had a goal for the past couple years to make one extra principal
00:24:45
only payment each year. So, on top of the 12 regular monthly payments, one more extra payment all to principal. And
00:24:52
based on the admittedly depressing math of a 30-year mortgage, this principleonly payment gets us just as
00:24:59
much equity in the house as the other 12 payments combined. So, yikes. But to be
00:25:04
clear, yes, I'm using a few thousand that could go into a taxable brokerage investing account, could be invested in
00:25:11
the stock market for the next 30 years, and instead I am choosing to pay down a 6.5% mortgage. Some of you might be
00:25:18
thinking, why oh why are you doing that? You can call it risk mitigation. You can
00:25:21
call it schmuck insurance. You can call it diversification. You can take your pick. Through our 401k, our Roth IAS,
00:25:28
and our HSA, we're already committing a lot of money each year for our long-term
00:25:32
retirement goals. We're committing a lot of money into the stock market. We're
00:25:35
taking on plenty of risk in that way. This extra mortgage payment is a way for me to feel like we're also locking in
00:25:41
some smaller gains. We're preventing future 6.5% interest payments guaranteed. The thing I'll I'll sit down
00:25:48
and talk to clients all the time is saying, "Would you rather have a risky 9
00:25:52
or 10% or a guaranteed 6.5%." Now, to each their own, but what I'm essentially telling you right now
00:25:59
listening is that I'm taking a bit of both, right? We have plenty of money going into our qualified retirement
00:26:04
accounts, going into the stock market where we are taking our chances for a risky 8 or 9 or 10% per year, and then
00:26:11
with other money, I am taking the guaranteed to 6.5%. To me, that feels good. We're burning down the debt on our
00:26:17
family shelter. That feels really good, too. So, that's my take on debt and and
00:26:22
mortgage payments. The next topic in our current financial plan is our asset allocation. How we're invested across
00:26:27
various accounts and why. So, our retirement accounts are all 80% plus invested into lowcost stock index fund
00:26:34
with roughly a 60/40 exposure to US stock market versus international stock markets. Our health savings account has
00:26:42
a few thousand dollars of cash in it just in case I do want to use that cash to start reimbursing medical expenses
00:26:48
sooner than later, but the rest of the HSA account is invested into stock index funds for the long run. Our 529
00:26:54
education savings account is invested in well, first off, it's custodied with the
00:26:58
the New York State 529 plan, which is all allocated and managed by Vanguard, and it's invested in one of their target
00:27:05
enrollment date funds. very very similar to a target retirement date fund except
00:27:09
it's an enrollment date. It's a year-by-year date based on when your children are going to enter college. So,
00:27:14
that one's pretty straightforward and easy and low cost. Our taxable monies,
00:27:18
we we do have a small taxable account or about 50% in cash. And really, I I count
00:27:23
all of our bank accounts and our emergency fund in there. To me, it's all the same taxable bucket. So, if I look
00:27:29
at our bank accounts, our emergency fund, and our taxable investment account, you would see that our taxable
00:27:34
monies are about 50% cash and then the 50% invested into stock index funds. We do have a couple funny uh niche
00:27:41
allocations. I own some shares of Bergkshire Hathway, not because I did all the investment research that ought
00:27:47
to go into a decision like that, but instead because I just wanted to own it. You know, go Warren Buffett. It's just
00:27:52
like owning a Michael Jordan jersey to me. I own a couple B shares of Berkshire Hathway and I also own a little bit of a
00:27:58
Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF mainly for Schmuck Insurance and partially too because I wanted to feel motivated to
00:28:06
learn more about it. Speaking of insurance, let's talk about insurance, how and why we're insured. So, we have
00:28:12
six types of insurance in my house. We have homeowners. Homeowners insurance is basic and straightforward part of having
00:28:17
a mortgage. There's nothing flashy, at least that I know of, about our homeowners insurance policy. Same goes
00:28:22
for our auto insurance. We have liability as everyone needs to have by law. We also have collision. So
00:28:27
liability protects other people from your mistakes. You know, the injuries you cause, the property you damage, but
00:28:32
it doesn't fix your car. Now, collision though protects your car when you hit
00:28:36
something, another car, a tree, a mailbox, something like that. If your vehicle is damaged from an impact,
00:28:41
collision is the bucket that pays for that. We do not have comprehensive insurance which covers any other type of
00:28:48
damage or breakin or something like that that isn't covered by collision. We do
00:28:52
not have comprehensive insurance. We also have an umbrella insurance policy. And to me, umbrella insurance prevents
00:28:58
that rare awful accident from turning into some sort of financial crater. It protects your wealth. It protects your
00:29:04
future earnings. It protects some of your peace of mind. And umbrella, kind of like the name implies, it it sits on
00:29:09
top of your other insurance policies and says if there comes a point where my homeowners insurance or my auto
00:29:15
insurance doesn't cover whatever cost is going on, whatever liability is going on
00:29:20
because there's some sort of really big liability overflow. Well, umbrella insurance can kick in then. And and the
00:29:27
reason why people buy it is because, you know, they drive, they own a home with guests coming and going, they have
00:29:31
teenage drivers in the house, they have assets to protect, they want some sleep at night insurance. So, not everybody
00:29:38
always needs umbrella insurance. But I think it's a question from a financial
00:29:41
planning point of view. It's a question worth looking into just seeing if if
00:29:44
your family situation would benefit from an umbrella policy. I have disability insurance through work. Now, if you
00:29:50
believe the insurance industry, which see this seems like a reasonable stat, I suppose, they say that about three in 10
00:29:56
working age Americans will become disabled and unable to work for at least 3 months or more at some point during
00:30:01
their career. So, 30% of Americans will have a disability that lasts more than 3
00:30:06
months at some point in their career. So, that's the concern that that is probably worth insuring against. On
00:30:12
health insurance, we're using my employer's plan, but there is an interesting twist here. And I think for
00:30:16
anybody, especially with children, if you have health insurance, it's worth hearing this. In my situation, we use an
00:30:22
employee plus spouse plan that covers me and my wife, but it does not cover our daughter and it likely will not cover
00:30:28
any of our future children because instead with them, we're going through a New York State plan called Child Health
00:30:33
Plus, which is New York's version of the federal CHIP program. CHIP stands for
00:30:38
Children's Health Insurance Program. What a unique name, I know. So, if you're a parent, I would recommend
00:30:44
looking up if your state offers a version of the CHIP program. And the reason why, quite simply, is that our
00:30:50
New York State Child Health Plus is significantly cheaper for our daughter than me going through work. And it has
00:30:57
much better coverage. It sounds too good to be true, but it's but I suppose it's
00:31:00
not. It's really, really good. And it is true. It's cheaper and has better
00:31:04
coverage. So, if your state offers some version of a CHIP style program and you're a parent, highly recommend you
00:31:10
look into it. Last, a big one because the world of financial planning, for better or worse, overlaps a lot with
00:31:15
life insurance. There are a lot of people out there calling themselves financial planners who are really just
00:31:20
life insurance salespeople. Kind of gives life insurance a bad name, but life insurance has a terrific place
00:31:25
inside a financial plan. For 99% of us, that would be term life insurance. It's
00:31:30
all we need is term life insurance. It literally will pay you if you die, and eventually the insurance policy will
00:31:36
end. And if you haven't died by the time the policy ends, then you don't get any
00:31:40
payment. It's life insurance. My wife and I both have term life policies. But
00:31:44
I think our strategy behind them is is kind of worth understanding. We started with a question of course, if one of us
00:31:49
died, would it fundamentally alter our family's ability to maintain our lifestyle until our children got out of
00:31:54
college. And if you look at that question and you say, well, could we pay off the mortgage if one of us died?
00:32:00
Could we live a comfortable life if one of us died? The answer for both of us was that we needed some life insurance
00:32:05
to protect us against that risk. But we also realized, and I think this is the the important part, we also realize that
00:32:11
every year that goes by, our need for life insurance kind of diminishes bit by bit by bit. Mainly, it's it's
00:32:18
diminishing because the timeline until our children leave the house is growing shorter and shorter and shorter and
00:32:23
shorter. So, for that reason, I have a relatively small 30-year policy that will provide a benefit over their entire
00:32:30
childhood. So, you can think, you know, right around the time when we're empty
00:32:33
nesters, that smaller 30-year policy will still be in force, but then I have a much bigger 15-year policy that is
00:32:40
meant to cover our kind of much bigger risk during these early near-term years of our children's younger childhood. So,
00:32:47
I think, you know, I'd be interested to hear if any of you are a true life insurance expert out there, what you
00:32:51
think about that. I'm a big believer in the math underlying layering some life
00:32:56
insurance policies on top of each other in that way. The next topic is taxes. And the main thing I wanted to share
00:33:01
here is that I use a tax preparer. I use an accountant. I do not prepare my own taxes. Even though I'm probably better
00:33:08
than the average American at looking at a 1040 tax return and understanding what
00:33:11
all the numbers are that go into them, part of the problem is that the way I get paid and running this business and
00:33:17
and doing business deductions and what percentage of the square footage of my house counts as a deduction because
00:33:22
sometimes I sit in my wife's office and record this podcast, right? All those
00:33:25
questions like that. I want an actual CPA involved in case I ever get audited. So, that's why I use a tax preper. I
00:33:32
just think it's worth understanding that there's nothing wrong with using a tax
00:33:35
repairer and you don't have to do your own taxes. And I would wager that for,
00:33:39
you know, maybe not everybody out there, but a surprising number of people are probably missing out on little
00:33:45
deductions and little credits that they don't know about simply because they're
00:33:48
doing their taxes themselves and they've they just don't know what they don't
00:33:51
know. Anyway, outside of that, uh there aren't too many complications at this
00:33:55
point in life because we're not that close to retirement. You know, we use our 401k and our HSA contributions to
00:34:00
reduce our taxable income. We get a child tax credit. On the state level, our 529 contributions are a deduction.
00:34:06
And we have enough mortgage interest, you know, gh we have enough mortgage interest and other charitable deductions
00:34:12
to actually itemize our taxes rather than claim the standard deduction. That's not exactly a great thing. It
00:34:17
means you're paying a ton of mortgage interest, but it is what it is. The next
00:34:21
topic, how we use our HSA. So, we use the HSA strategy that you might often hear people talking about in financial
00:34:26
planning circles. We max out the contributions every year. We keep a large portion of those dollars invested
00:34:32
for the long run in stocks. Like I mentioned earlier, we keep a small portion in cash in case we ever decide
00:34:37
to use it in some sort of emergency need or to reimburse ourselves for cash flow
00:34:41
reasons. But for the most part, we intentionally do not spend any of our HSA dollars on an annual basis. But we
00:34:47
do keep all the receipts. And in case you've never heard of someone's process
00:34:50
here, it's not too complex. We keep all the receipts so that we can, you know,
00:34:54
reimburse ourselves decades down the line. That's the whole point. In the process of kind of keeping track of all
00:34:59
this stuff, we keep a spreadsheet, a shared Google sheet of all of our medical visits. And we have a a column
00:35:05
that has the date, the patient, you know, me, my wife, my daughter, what occurred, you know, what the service
00:35:10
was, and the cost. And then we make sure we have a PDF of the receipt. We keep the spreadsheet and all the receipts. We
00:35:17
keep all the receipts, the scans if you will, in the same Google Drive folder. And then we'll paste a link to the
00:35:24
receipt file right there in the spreadsheet. So the last column in the spreadsheet is a link to that that row's
00:35:30
receipt. So any given row of the spreadsheet, you could see Jesse went to the dentist on November 1st, 2025. It
00:35:36
was a normal checkup. It was $150 out of pocket. And click here's this link to
00:35:41
the receipt itself. So that someday in the future, we'll be able to reimburse
00:35:45
ourselves for all that. I think the process can be quite as simple as that. That's all that you need to do. The
00:35:50
second to last topic, some thoughts on our home and and really the thoughts that went into buying our home. Our
00:35:54
current home I hope is our forever home. The first home I bought I knew would be
00:35:58
a starter home and this is the second home that I was involved in purchasing. We purchased it jointly and we both hope
00:36:04
it's our forever home. We purchased it in a pretty normal way. We put 20% down.
00:36:07
We got a 6.5% mortgage like I mentioned earlier. And at the time when we bought it though, our monthly payment was about
00:36:14
40% of our net monthly income. Now, no matter which rule of thumb you ascribe to, that 40% of net income number,
00:36:22
that's pretty high, and it certainly meant that we had to make cuts in other
00:36:25
places in our budget to make this work. But our thought process was twofold. First, we didn't mind stretching for
00:36:31
what could truly be our forever home. you know, this seems like such an important fundamental part of your
00:36:36
family's life that maybe it is the kind of thing that if if you want to spend
00:36:40
some extra money there, go ahead and spend some extra money there. Second, of course, we expected our household income
00:36:46
to grow and and even I think it was reasonable for us to expect our income to grow beyond simple inflation. Now,
00:36:52
that was an important assumption. You could argue a risky assumption that went into our housing purchase. But again,
00:36:57
the idea there is that we knew that on day one we would be spending 40% of our net income. Now, here we are less than
00:37:03
three years later and we're spending about 29% of our net income each month.
00:37:08
Our payment's the same, but our income has gone up enough. And I certainly hope
00:37:13
that percentage continues to trend downward over the coming years. And usually with mortgages, assuming that
00:37:18
your career grows a little bit, that your income is simply going up at least by the rate of inflation, you will see
00:37:23
that happen for your mortgage payments, too. And the last topic about my personal finances right now is how we
00:37:29
budget and how we spend. And now I'm excited for this one because it's evolved quite a bit over the last 10
00:37:34
years. If you would ask me five plus years ago, I was all in on using WAB. You need a budget if you're not familiar
00:37:40
with that app. We wab to budget ahead of time and then to monitor every single penny that I spent. And I have zero
00:37:46
regrets about running my budget like that for probably four or five years. I ran my budget that way because I think
00:37:51
that level of clarity is a wonderful thing to have in your financial life at the very least for some period of time
00:37:57
to really get a grasp on what kind of money you're spending. But then when my
00:38:01
wife and I joined finances, we needed to adopt a system that we both could use, something that we both felt comfortable
00:38:06
with. So here's what we do now. At the end of every month, I update our balance
00:38:10
sheet, our net worth statement with account values for all of our cash accounts, for all of our credit cards,
00:38:15
and all of our investment accounts. It's a simple spreadsheet. Each column represents a different month. Each row
00:38:21
represents a different account. And every month, I update that net worth statement. And also in the spreadsheet,
00:38:26
I write down each month's most significant expenditures. We need data to do that. So in order to get that
00:38:32
data, we link our bank accounts and we link our credit cards to the e-money software package, something I I get
00:38:39
through work. So I can pull on any from and to date range, any date range. I can
00:38:44
see all the money that we've earned and spent. I can sort it. I can look at the
00:38:47
biggest expenditures and the kind of the the random outliers each month. I tend to write those down so I can say, "Oh,
00:38:53
right. Back in April 2025, we spent $1,700 on a new washer and dryer because our washer and dryer kicked the bucket."
00:38:59
So, at the very least, I can go back and see what the major expenditures were in
00:39:03
every month and maybe at some times change our ways because of what we see. And the goal of that exercise again is
00:39:09
to both monitor the money that we spend and to remind ourselves of past expenses. maybe to realize sometimes we
00:39:15
didn't spend money very wisely. But the powerful thing in terms of budgeting
00:39:18
here is the fact that we monitor our cash accounts on a monthly basis, right? All of our bank accounts, all of our
00:39:24
credit cards. So, what I can do is on every single month, I can get a sum of our cash accounts. How much cash do we
00:39:30
have in the bank minus how much debt do we have on a credit card? Not that we're
00:39:34
running a month- over-month balance, but at any given snapshot, there's going to
00:39:37
be some negative balance on the card most likely, unless it's the day that you paid the card off. So the point
00:39:42
being at any given time I'm running this spreadsheet we get a snapshot in time of
00:39:47
our cash account and then I can say well how does that compare to last month or the month before or the month before
00:39:52
have we been saving money have we been spending more than we earn and then by graphing those values those monthly
00:39:58
values over time we can see if we're trending in a good direction or not you
00:40:02
know do we have some negative systemic spending habits or is this just one bad month in an otherwise great year. So,
00:40:09
one of my go-tos when it comes to budgeting is, you know, you you can choose to budget ahead of time. You can
00:40:15
choose to monitor some data after the fact if you want to. You can get in the weeds and get really really nitty-gritty
00:40:20
on it. But the one thing that I think you cannot do is choose to do nothing. Everybody who I know who has some
00:40:26
semblance of, you know, financial planning success, they do something, some even simple system to monitor or to
00:40:32
track what they spend. Next, while we're here in the present, I just wanted to
00:40:35
share three simple stories, three helpful stories from this year from my practice as a financial planner. I just
00:40:41
think it's so helpful to hear about the problems that people face and the way
00:40:44
that financial planning helps them find solutions. So, the first one, one of my clients had a hard death in his family
00:40:50
this past summer, and that caused him to have this, I don't know if come to Jesus
00:40:53
moment is quite right, but for lack of a better term, a a come to Jesus moment. And the death made him realize that life
00:40:59
is too short and if he could retire tomorrow, you know what? He would. He was sick of getting on the planes and
00:41:04
traveling across the country. And even though you could tell he was a driven guy who I think enjoyed his work, there
00:41:09
came a point where he said life is short and and his he wanted to spend more time
00:41:13
with his family. And so that begged a question in his life and the question was could he retire? Is he ready to
00:41:19
retire? And good financial planning answers that question for him. And thankfully in his case, we were able to
00:41:25
give him a really good answer that he should feel really comfortable and confident in retiring. So even though
00:41:29
obviously it was a very sad death, there was a a silver lining that came out of it and and he made a important life
00:41:35
decision for himself that so far so good and and I think he has no regrets that he made that decision. The second story
00:41:41
comes from a client who works for a you know relatively well-known Fortune 500 company. They earn a great living from
00:41:47
this company. They also have a huge amount of company stock from years and years and years of restricted stock
00:41:53
units and stock options being gifted to them, which is a terrific thing, right? All else being equal, we're more than
00:41:58
happy to get those gifts in our life. If you've got a job that's paying you in
00:42:02
RSUs or stock options, that's great, right? It's money. It's free money to
00:42:05
some extent, but it's also risk, risk, risk. There's the portfolio risk that
00:42:10
this person now has because about 25% of their net worth is tied up in one stock.
00:42:15
And then there's the added income risk of having all your future human capital
00:42:20
tied up into the same company that already presents a portfolio risk to you. And then there's the challenging
00:42:26
tax planning that comes with having millions of dollars in this case of appreciated stock while also earning
00:42:32
lots of money from the company itself while you're in the the highest federal
00:42:35
tax brackets. Not exactly an easy solution. Again, it's a solution that all us being equal is a quote unquote
00:42:41
good problem to have. Right? If any of us said, "Oh, my biggest problem in the
00:42:45
world is that I'm paying relatively high taxes on millions and millions of dollars." Listen, you're doing well.
00:42:51
That's a great problem to have. But the point is that good financial planning
00:42:54
finds solutions to these types of problems. There are also just some more mundane stories, some helpful mundane
00:43:00
stories that happen in the world of financial planning. And that's what this
00:43:02
third story is. One of my former engineering colleagues has, you know, he's doing everything right. He's got
00:43:07
everything going well in his finances, but he had an interesting question, which is, hey, if my new employer laid
00:43:13
me off, how screwed would my retirement plan be? That keeps me up at night. I lose sleep over the thought of getting
00:43:19
laid off. And one of the things I love about the story is that our financial planning work for this person, it didn't
00:43:26
influence any direct decision he's making, right? He didn't quit. He didn't
00:43:31
start spending more. He didn't start saving more. He didn't change his asset
00:43:34
allocation. Instead, our answer to his question, which was, you know what, if you got fired tomorrow, you'd still be
00:43:40
totally okay. Our answer just helped him feel better. It helped him sleep better.
00:43:44
And I bet if we looked, it probably helped him lower his blood pressure a bit, too. You know, not everything in
00:43:49
the financial planning world has to be about saving hundreds of thousands of dollars or this huge decision, a death
00:43:54
in my family. Do I pull the trigger and retire or not? Sometimes it's just, hey,
00:43:59
give me some answers to the questions so I can sleep a little bit better at night. Here's a quick ad and then we'll
00:44:04
get back to the show. You probably know that I love listener inspired content, but this is my first listener inspired
00:44:10
advertisement. Frank asked me in short, Jesse, is there a best time to start working with you as a client? And the
00:44:16
short answer is yes. There are two ideal times. One is at the beginning of a new
00:44:20
year for probably some pretty obvious reasons, but the second one is right about now, September and October. It's
00:44:25
the perfect time for year-end tax planning to ensure you find the correct balance of Roth conversions, tax gain or
00:44:31
tax loss harvesting, making charitable gifts, spreading out any portfolio changes over multiple tax years, or
00:44:36
whatever other tax dials we can turn for you. working backward from the December
00:44:41
31st tax deadline. The time to start those initial conversations is right now, August, September, maybe into early
00:44:47
October, you want to give yourself and us enough runway to make sure we get this right for you. So, if you're
00:44:53
interested in starting a conversation with me and my colleagues, you can go to bestinterest.blog/work
00:44:58
and fill out the form there. Again, that's on my blog on the workwithjesse page. The address is
00:45:04
bestinterest.blog/work and fill out the form. The final ghost appears. Shrouded in a cloak, the
00:45:11
phantom holds only a clock. It doesn't seem dangerous or scary, but peering through the translucent ghost, some
00:45:18
foggy but fleeting shapes quickly materialize and then disappear. Well, as I'm sitting here now facing the the
00:45:26
ghost of financial future, I have to start with one of my favorite sayings, which is that my crystal ball is as
00:45:31
foggy as yours. Now, professionally, I'm 4 years into my career change with absolutely zero regrets. The podcast
00:45:37
continues to grow and grow and grow, and I'm looking for more ways to help more
00:45:41
and more listeners like you find helpful answers to their personal financial planning questions. And some of you
00:45:46
might know that the local firm I work for was actually recently purchased by a larger national firm, still an
00:45:51
independent fiduciary firm, but we went from a small local firm now to a a big national firm. And you know, changes
00:45:57
like this, they they're going to come with some positives and some negatives,
00:46:00
and I'm sure we'll see some of that as time goes on. But the thing that I'm
00:46:03
happy about is that I'm still working with my clients in the way that I want
00:46:06
to. I'm still able to write and podcast here and and that seems to be something
00:46:10
that leaves everybody involved pretty happy about the way things are going. So, that's good. I think this industry
00:46:15
though, this wealth management industry will have some interesting changes in the future. Now, perhaps some of them
00:46:20
are going to be driven by AI. We're already starting to see some very interesting tools enter the world uh the
00:46:25
wealth management world that are AI powered tools and we're even starting to
00:46:29
see some startups that are largely it's like you know a subscription AI bot to
00:46:33
be your financial planner. Kind of interesting. There's definitely some use cases and and some people will also
00:46:38
never want to use them. That's fine. And we're also probably going to see fee
00:46:42
models shifting. We're already seeing more and more advisers become kind of true financial planning quarterbacks
00:46:47
instead of that hands-off mutual fund picker. And I think that's great too. I
00:46:52
think more and more planners actually doing real financial planning work is what's going to help people out there
00:46:57
like you listening right now, right? We this industry needs to be better at providing like holistic financial
00:47:03
planning, holistic wealth management to our clients. I think we'll also start to
00:47:07
see a tighter merger of wealth and well-being. Clients in in my experience already I'm seeing people want more than
00:47:13
just performance, right? They definitely want that underlying financial planning.
00:47:17
help me answer the questions about all the other parts of my personal finances. They want confidence and clarity and
00:47:23
better lives. And advisers and planners are are leaning into that more valuebased planning, decision coaching,
00:47:30
behavioral accountability, life design, major transition planning. And it's not
00:47:35
this isn't, you know, kind of woo woo. This is recognizing that money is the
00:47:38
tool, sure, but it's not the goal. The goal is having that better life, whatever that means for you. And so
00:47:45
money is one of the tools to get there, but there have to be other tools to get there, too. And that's where the the
00:47:51
valuebased planning or the the life design, the major transition planning, that's where those things come into
00:47:55
play. On the personal side, we're viewing our our current financial plan with a pretty clear first priority, and
00:48:01
that's to live a a comfortable, not extravagant, but also not ultrarugal lifestyle right now, with a focus on our
00:48:08
family, both present and future. And of course, there are secondary goals that involve long-term savings for
00:48:14
retirement, for other lofty goals, kind of like the lakehouse you might have heard me mention on this podcast before,
00:48:19
but retirement or that lakehouse or whatever, they don't have precise timelines in my mind. Not at all. Truth
00:48:25
be told, I enjoy work too much to be sitting here go telling you guys that I'm going to retire at 47, I'm going to
00:48:31
retire at 53, I'm going to retire at 60. I just don't know. So anyway, there's
00:48:35
not a precise timeline to that. Whereas the family life though, our children's
00:48:39
time at home, there are some pretty precise timelines there. Our daughter is now one and a half years old. It's kind
00:48:45
of crazy to think that going a little less than 10% of her time at home is already done. I don't like that, but at
00:48:52
the end of the day, it's the way it is. And uh I'm going to be happy for her
00:48:55
when she leaves the nest in 16 17 years. But the point is there's a defined timeline there and that's something I
00:49:01
want to focus on right now. And I will say we're also in a lucky position that
00:49:05
independently both I and my wife saved at a pretty high rate early in our careers. We benefited from those those
00:49:12
years of asset prices going up and up and up during those times. So here we are at age 35 and our long-term
00:49:18
retirement accounts are in a pretty healthy place and that affords us some flexibility to say if we want to take
00:49:23
our foot off the pedal a little bit right now and focus on some of the other parts of enjoying life right now, we can
00:49:28
do that. So, it's kind of funny that we do not have a hard defined financial
00:49:33
plan ourselves, but we are saving a comfortable amount. Not necessarily a crazy amount, but a comfortable amount.
00:49:38
Our spending looks the same. We're spending a comfortable amount, not a crazy amount. And we're living life
00:49:44
right now and also saving a little bit for the future. We're maintaining our
00:49:47
ability to be flexible at some future date without sacrificing our ability to enjoy life right now. And I'm pretty
00:49:53
happy about that. That's all I got for you today. That's what the ghosts of
00:49:57
financial past, present, and future had to say about my life and my career and what's going on here at the podcast and
00:50:02
the blog. Listeners, I can't thank you enough for an amazing a truly just a podcast now that I think about it. I
00:50:08
mean, a banner year, a a life-changing year for the podcast, crossing 100,000 downloads in just this year alone. And
00:50:16
we're hoping for bigger and better and more exciting things coming in 2026. So,
00:50:20
merry Christmas to you all. Happy holidays and a happy new year. and I'll talk to you in 2026. Bye-bye for now.
00:50:27
>> Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. If you have a question for
00:50:32
Jesse to answer on a future episode, send him an email over at his blog, The Bestinest. His email address is
00:50:39
[email protected]. Again, that's jessevestinterest.blog. Did you enjoy the show? Subscribe, rate,
00:50:47
and review the podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find the show and invest in knowledge themselves, and
00:50:54
we really appreciate it. We'll catch you on the next episode of Personal Finance
00:50:58
for Long-Term Investors. Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors is a personal podcast meant for education and
00:51:05
entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice and it's not prescriptive of your financial
00:51:10
situation.