Episode 7: Avoiding Rookie Financial Mistakes: Budgeting, Saving Early, and Managing Debt

In this episode of The Financial Huddle, Brian, Ed, and Ryan take a deep dive into the financial habits that can make or break your future. The conversation starts lighthearted with stories about kids heading off to college and parents still stepping in to guide their finances, but quickly shifts into the core theme: common financial fumbles and how to avoid them.

Ed shares a real-world story of helping his son pay off nearly maxed-out credit card debt, showing the dangers of high-interest balances and the long-term impact of only making minimum payments. Ryan brings in historical perspective, comparing the post-Great Depression generation’s savings habits with today’s consumer-driven culture, illustrating how our shift from saving-first to spending-first has created new financial challenges. The hosts unpack critical lessons around budgeting, cash flow tracking, and building disciplined savings habits, and back it up with stats that show how budgeting and early investing can lead to hundreds of thousands more in net worth over time.

The discussion also touches on the difference between “good debt” and “bad debt,” emphasizing that not all leverage is harmful. With examples like mortgage management and opportunity costs, the guys explain why aggressively paying off low-interest debt may not always be the smartest move, especially when liquidity and flexibility matter just as much as being debt-free. They explore how young adults can get on track with Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, and automated savings strategies, and why starting early—even with small amounts—pays huge dividends down the road.

Packed with relatable stories, data-driven insights, and practical strategies, this episode brings financial planning back to the basics: budget wisely, save early, understand debt, and always keep an eye on the bigger picture. Whether you’re navigating your own financial journey or guiding your kids through theirs, you’ll walk away with clear, actionable takeaways to strengthen your financial foundation.

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Disclosure: Information contained in this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as financial advice. Financial Planning and Advisory Services are offered through Prosperity Capital Advisors (“PCA”), an SEC registered investment adviser. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Keystone Financial Group and PCA are separate, non- affiliated entities. PCA does not provide tax or legal advice.

Transcript

Ryan Fleming: 0:00

The financial huddle does not provide tax, legal, financial, or other professional advice.

Ed Beemiller: 0:03

Listeners are encouraged to consult with their own advisors in these areas.

Brian Minier: 0:06

Alright, everybody, huddle up. Plate balls in. This is the Financial Huddle. Ready. Welcome back, Huddle Nation, to the Financial Huddle. This is Brian Manier, and as always, I am joined by my compadres, Ed B. Miller, Ryan Fleming. What's up, everybody?

Ed Beemiller: 0:24

Hello, hello, huddlers.

Brian Minier: 0:26

How you guys doing? Doing well. Good, good. Uh uh Ryan, I see you are uh repping the OU shirt today. Oh you oh yeah. Oh you oh yeah. And you are uh in the thick of uh your daughter now attending college. That is two out of the house for you. I got two in, man.

Ryan Fleming: 0:45

It's uh it's painful.

Brian Minier: 0:50

Financially or emotionally? Both of them, man.

Ryan Fleming: 0:53

Only above. I know it's uh it's a it's a good step and a needed step, but man, let me tell you. So your daughter's going to OU and she's loving it there and doing well, just you know, brand new, moved in in August, and my oldest is a senior, and it's kind of like one's coming in, one's going out, and trying to get them off my payroll as fast as possible, but not speed up time too much. Um I I understand and empathize with that position.

Brian Minier: 1:21

It's it's a different phase, and Ed, you know this very well, but it's a different phase of trying to parent when your kids are not in the home. Don't lose those responsibilities, but uh you're you're still trying to figure out what is the right cocktail for that.

Ryan Fleming: 1:36

It is uh it's a very difficult thing, but ongoing.

Brian Minier: 1:39

Ongoing, yes. Now now, Ed, you got two uh married, two married kids, and uh a little bit different phase of life. Ryan and I are trying to catch uh how's that working out for you?

Ed Beemiller: 1:52

It's just a little smile on my face. So, you know, I don't have to live vicariously through you guys because I actually experienced it. Yes, and um it it it's nice to have them through school uh and basically living living their own lives married, uh, but your children are always your children.

Brian Minier: 2:13

Yeah.

Ed Beemiller: 2:14

And and so from from that standpoint, that support and the need for parental guidance still exist.

Brian Minier: 2:23

You mean when they graduate, they don't turn into these supermature young adults that we all hope that they would.

Ed Beemiller: 2:30

No, no.

Ryan Fleming: 2:31

I try to tell my son, listen, man, it if I'm paying for stuff, I gotta say. I I can speak into your life still. I think that's fair.

Ed Beemiller: 2:40

There are ongoing life lessons. Every once in a while, my 85-year-old mother will remind me of some things too. So we're always learning. You're never you're never too old to uh to learn or to be told uh by a parental figure what what you're doing wrong.

Brian Minier: 2:56

So and and uh if your kids are listening, they're you're gonna be like, I can't believe he's talking about which one of your two would you feel like uh from a financial standpoint, this being a financial podcast, what would which one would you say is more with it mature when it comes to financial matters?

Ed Beemiller: 3:13

Well, you you always, you know, having my my daughter um is a couple years older than my son, so my daughter's 30, my son's 28. I think girls and and Ryan, you you can both of you two can speak to this, you know, mature a little bit quicker than than the males. In certain areas, for sure. Obviously, you know, which I've talked about before, my my daughter is you know an a family doctor, she's uh an MD. And and with that comes great responsibility, but then also some uh financial flexibility. And and both of my children are doing great, you know, but you know, part of this when they initially got out of school, you think, all right, I I told I told both the kids, listen, you got four years to get your degree. Anything above and beyond, I I don't believe in the five to six year plan. Now both of my children got their undergraduate degree in four years. Well, then my daughter went to four years of med school, you know all that stuff. But that's that's a little bit different.

Ryan Fleming: 4:14

Yeah.

Ed Beemiller: 4:15

Um but yeah, the kids often will move move home or or not, you know. One of mine moved back home soon after college. The other one went right into med school, my daughter did, but my you know, my son moved back and I said, Listen, you gotta take advantage of this. You got someone basically doing your laundry, because my wife continued to do his laundry, pretty much, feeding you food, you got meals prepped, you got none of these additional utilities, but everything's paid for, but then it only lasts so long, right? They're like, I gotta get out of here, you know. I gotta I gotta live my life, man. I gotta enjoy stuff. So, you know, my my son moved out, and with that, you know, he he moved out in the ta Italian village area with with with a with another uh a friend from school, and but his mail kept coming to us. Yeah, and so there'd always be no, we'd see him on a regular basis, and half the time I would just, you know, basically say, Hey, here here you go, you know, here's your mail. But uh I like to be a little inquisitive. So the parental part of me kind of kicked in. And you're saying you may or may have not opened a few pieces of mail. Yeah, it's possible. It's possible. But you know, once again, if there was financial assistance being provided, I I I I felt I uh I earned that.

Brian Minier: 5:35

When you when you when you pay the bills, you have some rights. Yeah, exactly.

Ed Beemiller: 5:38

So this is a situation, you know, we talk about obviously this is a financial podcast, right? We we we have to remind ourselves sometimes when we're we're just sitting here, you know, chewing the fat. Is you know, I decided to open up his credit card. And and I remember this because my my daughter, who was in med school at that time, got approved for a credit card. My son got approved for a credit card, and his credit limit was over double my daughter's. And she's like, What the heck? How can this be? You know, I said, Well, he's got a job, he's out of you know, school, this kind of stuff. You're still in school. But um he he I opened it up and I was I was a little bit in shock because the the credit card had been utilized and it was near the maximum amount. And if if you haven't looked at a credit card statement recently, and it and you you're looking at what are the actual interest rates on them, we're talking interest rates, you know, 22, 24, 26% plus. So in this case, I actually read you know the language attached to it. It said, listen, if you make the minimum payment, which was like, I don't know, I think it was like $300 and some dollars a month or high twos, it will take you 22 and a half years to pay off that credit card. So I took the opportunity as a parent and as a financial professional to sit him down and say, all right, listen, bud, here's what we're gonna do. Dad's gonna pay off your credit card. Okay? Now, he happened to have his bank account, which I helped him set up at the same bank that I did. So I had the ability to transfer funds, set up different things. Little double credit opportunity there. And and I used access to one of the strategies that we talk to our clients a lot about, um which is a high cash value um insurance base plan, which Ryan, what do you call that? Bank on yourself. Bank on yourself. What's the other term you always use?

Ryan Fleming: 7:46

LERP LERP LERP Life Insurance Retirement Plan. There we go. There you go. LERP.

Ed Beemiller: 7:50

And what I was able to do for him is lend him that money, we paid off, and I said, All right, that just put that credit card to the side. I I actually wanted him to cut it up, but I didn't want him to not have any credit card. But he paid me back just slightly more, maybe about 50 bucks more a month. We had his credit card balance paid off in two and a half years, and he would basically just make that payment into my account. I set up basically a loan repayment to automate, he came out of my account, everything just washed, and I probably saved him, you know, thousands of dollars in interest expense. But you know, that's the importance of what we talk about and why we're here, the whole financial literacy and understanding. Hey, listen, just because you got a plastic card that gives you the ability to purchase, it doesn't mean just go all out and and and buy up to the limit because you gotta be able to pay it back or you pay the consequences, right? There's consequences to everything we do in life. And a 24 to 26% interest consequence is is something that's gonna stay with you. I got a feeling that I got a feeling it happens a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, more more often than not, you know, we we we become a a culture that basically buys and spends, and then if we have anything left over, maybe we'll put it into something, right? Put it into a money market account or uh you know, some other type of investment or savings vehicle.

Brian Minier: 9:22

Yeah, yeah. In our household, we're we're trying to have conversations with our adult kids about habits, um, about when you spend, what does that mean? Because it's very easy when you do have the credit card just to spend and and not even realize what you're doing. And so creating those habits, and and that lends into what we're gonna talk about today is common financial fumbles, how to avoid them. And and there's a number of different things we can talk about, but I know Ryan, you love stats. You know, yeah, you're you're our stat friend. I'm a stat man. Yeah, bring it in, stat man. Bring it home for us. So you're gonna talk about you have some of the habits, some of the savings that we've seen over decades.

Ryan Fleming: 10:03

I was thinking about this, what would be interesting for our listeners um and people watching. Um, and so what I did is I actually went back to the uh the post-uh Great Depression era, and I wanted to identify and and know some stats about their savings, their debt habits, um, their lifestyle numbers uh in comparison to today. So let me just rattle off some things. So back in the 40s, um, the savings rate um on average was around 20 to 25 percent of their income. This is during the World War II era. That's that's it's incredible. Today, the savings rate is uh four to six percent of income. Uh I mean uh a lot of you know cautious spending, a lot of frugalness uh back then with those people, uh those people that survived the Great Depression. Our culture is all about consumption. Um, like Ed said, low cash savings. Um debt, just minimal, minuscule consumer debt in the 40s, no credit cards. Uh their mortgages were shorter term, like 10, 15 year mortgages. And um, you know, even today, uh, if you look at today, the average home is around 2,300 square feet. Um, we mostly have 30-year mortgages, credit cards, long-term loans, common like that, like we talked about. We have 17 plus trillion dollars of household debt. Now, an interesting stat about that is uh we actually have more college loan debt than all the credit card debt in our culture right now, which is which is crazy too.

Ed Beemiller: 11:33

That that's a whole nother topic for a full uh podcast, also, right? Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Fleming: 11:38

It's a big deal, it's sets people back years. People in the 40s, their lifestyle, their average home was right around a thousand square feet. So just basic amenities, um, one car or no cars, um home cooked meals all the time, simple entertainment. Uh and you know, now today, the uh you know, today, like I said, the the houses are 2,300 square feet, multiple cars, multiple households, frequent dining out, streaming, smart devices, chipotle all the time. And then this was kind of the kill kicker um in in the in the world of taxation. So in the 40s, the highest tax rate that's ever been in our country ever during World War II at the peak was 94 percent. I don't know if a lot of people knew that.

Ed Beemiller: 12:21

Highest bracket.

Ryan Fleming: 12:22

Yeah, highest highest tax rate. Yeah, crazy. Uh the highest tax rate right now in 25 is uh 37 percent. Um there's uh you know some rumblings that you know those could maybe go up higher in the future. That's a different podcast for a different day. Uh a lot of Americans, they just didn't even file taxes pre-World War II. You know, very few Americans filed taxes pre-World War II. Most all Americans file federal income taxes, low payroll taxes, and our we have significant payroll taxes now, 7.65% employees um uh payroll taxes. So, you know, as I'm thinking about this and talking about like rookie mistakes that that a lot of us make is it's just this idea of not tracking our cash flows, not tracking our inflows and our outflow outflows, which can go into budgeting, but it's also they're they're a little subtly different, right? You know, budgeting and tracking your in inflows and outflows are are really important. A couple more stats I thought would be very helpful for people to understand. Um, US Bank back in 2023 found that 74% of people who budget regularly, they just feel in more control of their finances. Um, people who have written budgets, I don't know if you know, back in the day, I remember my mom and dad doing this, like budgeting or like balancing their checkbook by with a pencil and then writing down their expenses like with a pencil. But it says people who have written budgets save an average of $300 more per month. So that's $3,600 a year. That's you know, over a 30-year time frame, that's that's $180,000 before any rate of return. Um, and we all will know tracking over you know prevents overspending. Um, gosh, the average American spends over $7,400 per year on impulse purchases. I'm dealing this with this right now uh with some loved ones in my family.

Ed Beemiller: 14:15

Yeah, I hit that grocery store and I'm I'm waiting to check out and all those goodies up there by the checkout stand. I I have a tendency to grab a few of them now.

Ryan Fleming: 14:26

And this might this be the last one I'll share, but you know, uh, if you budget, it's gonna boost your net worth. And and Schwab, uh Charles Schwab put out a study in 2022 that says that households who maintain a budget um are two and a half times more likely to report a net worth over $500,000. So I think one of the biggest rookie mistakes that we see is just this lack of tracking your inflows and outflows. And there's some there's some statistics that put some meat uh you know on that statement there that it's real tangible dollars. And that's where we always say is like we want to avoid wealth for uh wealth transfers, uh money that we unknowingly or unnecessarily uh spend that just go away from us.

Brian Minier: 15:13

Right, and it's so easy to do because there's a there's a million different apps you can put on your phone. Some of them do it automatically. I have one that I actually do manually, and my wife makes fun of me because you guys know I'm a little bit OCD at times, and a little bit, a little bit. And uh so, like if I'm pumping gas or going out to eat, she'll see me pull up the app and just track it. And and I tell the classes that I teach, you know, when they're asking, well, how do I know what to plan for retirement? Well, you got to know what you spend, and the only way that you can do that is to track it. Yeah, and so I I know is even for as much as we go out to eat, and it's nauseating when you look at that number, but at least it's something that that we can plan for.

Ed Beemiller: 15:53

We we've become a consumer society that spends, and then if there's anything left, yeah, maybe we'll save. Or or maybe we'll find some impulse by, as opposed to what you're talking about back in the 40s. And even I would say, you know, our our grandparents and parents basically they saved first. They put that into their budget, they put that into their cash flows, which is kind of like I equate it to like 401ks nowadays where it comes out automatically. Yeah, and then people just get used to it. It's almost this forced savings, but you know, taking it a step further, but it's actually doing budgeting.

Ryan Fleming: 16:30

So, but there's power in that, right? So if we start saving early, even if it's just a little bit, uh I think another thing we can really educate our listeners on is like, you know, what quantify the power of saving early.

Brian Minier: 16:41

Oh, there's no doubt. And I know we we have young adult children. We do like working with young clients because if you can get them in that habit of saving early, it makes a big difference. I did a quick exercise where Ed, you said it, most people save into their 401k. They get a job, they're forced to do it. Hopefully, you're getting a match, and which is why you're doing it. So I I ran some numbers, and it's not obviously in life, it's not going to work this clean. But let's say you get an income, whether it's your own or whether it's combined, and it's it's $100,000 out of college. Maybe 25, you graduate, you get a job. So I ran these numbers starting at age 25, where you invest in a 401k, and let's say you get a match, and together between what you invest and what your employer is contributing as well, it's it's $9,000 that's added to that account every single year. And if you did that from 25, you did that to age 60, and you use the market. And what I did with this is I used the market returns of the SP 500 over the last 25 years and then just repeated it. It came out to about $814,000 between the ages of $25 and the age of 60. Now, as you get raises and you can contribute more, that's obviously going to change.

Ed Beemiller: 17:54

Right.

Brian Minier: 17:55

Now, what if you were in the same age and you and your spouse, you were married, and you were disciplined, and you each contributed five thousand dollars to a Roth IRA every single year. That's an additional over $900,000 with those same market returns.

Ryan Fleming: 18:11

Over the same time?

Brian Minier: 18:12

Over the same time period.

Ryan Fleming: 18:13

So basically, the 401k.

Brian Minier: 18:16

So basically, you're looking at instead of $814,000, it's almost a million dollars more by being disciplined and contributing to that Roth IRA every single year.

Ryan Fleming: 18:27

And you said $5,000 a year to the Roth?

Brian Minier: 18:30

Each of you did $5,000. I mean even if you did half of that. Even if you did half of that. It's profound. It is because of it's it's market compounding, it's saving, and by starting earlier, it just makes that much more of a difference.

Ed Beemiller: 18:42

Does that analysis take into um taxation?

Brian Minier: 18:47

Well, that's the thing. If you did the Roth, there was no taxation on that.

Ed Beemiller: 18:50

Right, but versus that 401k.

Brian Minier: 18:52

Depending on what kind of 401k. Right, yeah. So so doing that early is so profound. And if you can get young people in the habit of doing that, automate it. Let it come out of your checking account so that you don't see it. It's so powerful.

Ryan Fleming: 19:07

And one of the cool things in our practice we've seen over the past several years are people sending us their kids and saying, hey, you guys have done a great job educating us. This means a lot. We want will you talk to our son or daughter who just got that job? They're 24, like you said, 23, 24, and get them on a path early. And that's that's been a super fruitful thing in my practice. But again, the reason why we're doing that is exactly why you just said it it's tangible. It and I mean it just shows up. It shows up. And and let me tell you, with pensions not being around and the onus on uh people's financial future being on their habits of saving, more so than ever. It's you know, for our listeners out there, like get going, like get your kids going early. Um have to be disciplined. Even yeah, even starting custodial Roth IRAs if they're not 18 yet, you know, and helping feed that and perpetuate that, it doesn't take a lot to create some compounding over time. For sure.

Brian Minier: 19:58

Yeah. And you you talked about debt earlier, yeah, and you were talking about the the story of your your son. Is all debt bad?

Ed Beemiller: 20:07

Great, great question, B. You know, and and when we look at that, it it goes to the previous two things we talked about. Budgeting, saving, early, you know, the earlier the better, everything else. Well, the biggest one of the biggest hindrances to being able to do that is the spending in debt. And unlike the federal government, you as an individual somewhat have to balance, meaning what you what you spend has to be or should be no more than what's what's got it.

Brian Minier: 20:43

I gotta put some reins on it.

Ed Beemiller: 20:45

Yeah. And so from that standpoint, well, how do we how do we spend more than what we earn? Well, that's that's debt. And there's there's good debt and bad debt. And a saying that I always use to my clients is as long as you're in control of the debt and the debt does not control you, then it can be a good thing. We we we hear a lot of the financial talking heads out there that really just have this laser-like focus on you gotta reuse your debt. You can't, no debt. You don't want any debt. You know, debt's bad. Well, no, it's it's not bad. Now, racking up twenty thousand dollars of credit card debt that you then carry over and you can't pay the balance on, is that bad debt? Yes.

Brian Minier: 21:26

Yeah, 20% interest rate.

Ed Beemiller: 21:28

At 24%, you know, 26%, yeah, that's bad debt. But there's a lot of good debt. Leverage is not necessarily a bad thing, and and we talk about it with some of the financial strategies that that we use, but something here more relevant and current, when we're meeting with clients and we're looking at, you know, one of the biggest debts most clients have is their mortgage, you know, or uh as Ryan has referred to before, their their total outstanding college loan debt.

Ryan Fleming: 21:56

Yeah.

Ed Beemiller: 21:57

Which is a whole other issue. But remember, not too long ago, several years ago, what were mortgage rates? Two and a half, three. People were getting two and a half to three percent fixed. Thirty years fixed. So now they come to us and say, well, listen, I I I listened to Dave Ramsey or Susie Orman or some other talking head, and they're just telling me I'm making double payments on my mortgage, I gotta get that debt paid off. I'm like, okay. Your loan's at 2.75% fixed for 30 years. You're making, you know, instead of 1,500 a month, you're paying $3,000 on that mortgage. Well, what if you redirected that second overage that you're paying? Basically, the second payment you're making, in this environment, can you get more than 2.75%?

Ryan Fleming: 22:51

Yeah, in a lot of different areas.

Ed Beemiller: 22:53

I mean, there's high yield money markets, even you know, now that are over four percent. And other investments, even more building wealth, we talked about building wealth earlier. Take that and invest, maybe that's a longer-term bucket where you can take some more risk to gain that long-term upside. And at the end of the day, you're comparing, all right, should I be aggressively paying down a debt that's at 2.75% interest when I have the option or opportunity, this gets into the opportunity cost of going out and doubling or tripling that without taking a significant level of risk.

Ryan Fleming: 23:34

Yeah, I think you're talking about just the concept of liquidity use and control of your dollar. I mean, don't get us wrong, we want our clients to have their house paid off too. There's diff there's a couple different ways to do that. That the the way you're talking about, the traditional way, where you know, you go from a 30-year fix, 30-year fix down to a 15-year fixed, and you put a few extra payments on that. And, you know, it's it's not inherently wrong to do it that way. Um, and it accomplishes the goal of getting it paid off. Um, but many times it's it's good to think about the other way, like you said, you know, to have more liquidity, use, and control throughout your life, to have a big 30-year fixed mortgage, give the bank as little as your hard-earned money as possible, and save the rest in an account that is liquid, that's usable, that's controlled. I mean, you know, life rears its head. So you, you know, having access to capital makes you a very powerful person. And so therefore, I wouldn't view that as a horrible debt. I would, you know, I mean, and really at the end of the day, you know, for our listeners out there, a lot of people are thinking, you know, well, your house is an asset or it's a liability. You know, what which one is it? Right. And I would say, and you guys, I think, would agree, is that your house is a tool. And probably one of the most mismanaged debt instruments, if that's what you want to call it in our culture, is home equity management. A lot of people just don't understand how to manage home equity. They don't understand leverage, they don't understand. I mean, some of the wealthiest people that we know of have massive amounts of leverage that creates massive amounts of cash flows. So if I've got a if I've got a mortgage over here of $100,000, but I have a side fund that I have liquidity use and control of of $150,000, one could argue I'm not really in debt. I mean, if I if I really, really wanted to, I could snap my fingers, not get one person involved at the bank and get rid of my mortgage in a in a minute. But I could never, if I got sick or lost my job, I could never go back and say, oh, can I go back out from my 15-year mortgage to a 30-year mortgage? Because I really need to lower my payment. And um, you know, can I get some home equity out now? Uh can I do a HELOC or a HELOC or can I do a cash-out refinance? Because I really uh have some medical medical issues and things of this nature. They're they're laugh in your face, right? It's it's ill liquid, it's locked up in jail.

Ed Beemiller: 25:53

So because you no longer have an earned income. Correct. The scenario that you you pose is maximum utilization of an asset.

Ryan Fleming: 26:01

Correct. And and and the home is a really, really uh inflammatory topic amongst amongst a lot of people. And I think that the the house is a tool, um, it's not necessarily a liability all the time, and it's not necessarily an asset all the time. It can be a phenomenal tool as you think about how to build wealth and maintain liquidity, use, and control.

Ed Beemiller: 26:22

But it it it goes back to planning. It's customized for each individual. You can't just say one debt is bad and the other debt is good at all times. It just depends on the financial situation of each individual that we're working with.

Brian Minier: 26:36

Yeah, and I'm sure you guys have gotten this question as it pertains to the home. Someone is talking to you and they ask, well, well, should I use this to pay off my house? Well, if you don't have a lot of assets saved up, and the little bit that you do is to pay for that house, and now you don't have anything left over, is that really a good use of that money just for the sake of paying off the house? It's a understanding not just about the house, it's the overall picture.

Ed Beemiller: 27:02

That that's the the concept I like to call asset rich cash poor.

Ryan Fleming: 27:06

That's right. Hey, isn't interest deductible on your mortgage still?

Ed Beemiller: 27:10

Well, the last I heard, you know, but who knows?

Ryan Fleming: 27:13

So that you're if you're itemizing, yeah. That 2.75 interest rate's actually less than that after deductions. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Brian Minier: 27:19

So that's right. Yeah, this was this was a great conversation, and and a lot of times people when they think about financial planning, it's well, I gotta figure out these tax management strategies and what is my rate of return on my investments. And and sometimes it's just good to get back into the basics. If if you can do simple things like you can budget because you know what you're spending, you can save your discipline, you've started that early, especially if you're young. Understanding the difference between good and bad debt, and you understand that and and you incorporate those concepts into your own financial outlay. Sometimes simpler is better.

Ed Beemiller: 27:55

Yeah, and and it's a focus on the outcome and objective you're looking to accomplish. So often, you know, well, what's my rate of return? How much am I gonna earn on this? It's like, okay, if you want to get to point A to point B, and point B is retirement.

Brian Minier: 28:11

Got to have a process, right? You gotta talk about that.

Ed Beemiller: 28:13

And you gotta have a what? A plan. That's what it all comes down to.

Brian Minier: 28:17

That's right. There we go. Yeah, well, good stuff. I mean, guys, I appreciate the conversation today. And and uh Huddlers, thank you so much for spending time with us. We look forward to talking to you during our next podcast. Everybody, take care.

Ed Beemiller: 28:31

See ya, everybody.