Mindy: Most people think financial independence is all about cutting expenses, but there’s really only so much you can cut. Today, we’re breaking down the real lovers that accelerate your path to FI. How to earn more, spend with intention, and decide if index funds will get you there fastest.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and today it will be just me while Scott is out gallivanting around traveling. I am so excited to have Haley Sacks on the show today. You probably know her as Mrs. Dow Jones, and we are going to talk about how you can fast track yourself to FI through increasing your income, budgeting, and investing in the stock market. These are topics that we have talked about before. They are topics that Haley covers in her new book called Future Rich Person. So Haley, thank you for joining me today. I am so excited to talk to you.
Guest: I’m so excited to be here. I am in your audience. I love your show and I just feel like you have the best listeners. We’re all serious about building wealth and talking about it. So I’m pumped.
Mindy: I have to agree with you, you’re absolutely right. We have the best listeners ever. Thank you so much, my listeners for listening to the show today. And before we jump into more pointed questions, I’d like to get a bit of a background on your financial situation. How did you become aware that you didn’t really know anything about money or did you already know about money like your whole life and you’re just perfect in every way?
Guest: I’m definitely not perfect in every way. I feel like there’s so many financial experts who were 10 years old and like hustling at a lemonade stand and putting the profits into the market or like Warren Buffett buying his first stock at 12. Could not have been me Mindy. Could not have been me. I was very financially clueless despite having a dad who worked on Wall Street. I always say I was like if LeBron James’s daughter couldn’t shoot a free throw.
Mindy: I’m right there with you. I am also not shooting any free throws when I was a kid.
Guest: Yes, okay good. So we both had financial glow ups. And I talked about this in my book, but it’s, you know, I had a financial aha moment, which I think happens to everyone and then they realize, oh, okay, I actually do have to take this seriously. This is my life. Life has started. What am I waiting for? And that was in my mid twenties when I got my first job which was for Lorne Michaels, who started SNL and I was asked all of those adult questions about 401ks and health insurance and was so clueless and then went home to try and learn about it and found that my options for education were either like men who look like they’ve never been through puberty teaching me about investing, using like so much unnecessary jargon, or it was content towards women that felt like it was going to make my life so small. Like the only way in to grow wealth was to like wash my paper towels so I could reuse them. And I was like, wait, but I want to live like a glamorous, fun life. And I feel like it needs to be aspirational to grow wealth in the same way that it seems online so aspirational to spend money. Like that’s what I was sort of craving and so I couldn’t find that. So then I started to build Mrs. Dow Jones. I became that.
Mindy: So you’re not telling people cut out everything and be super frugal and save, save, save.
Guest: No, I mean, I don’t think that works at all. Like as someone who’s tried diets and like every sort of like extreme anything, it only lasts for about two days ever. So I think that the real goal of being a future rich person is trying to build a lifestyle that you’re comfortable with now that also sets you up for the future.
Mindy: Okay, you just compared money and diets and I have to say, yes, yes, yes. I have said that multiple times. You know what you should be eating, but broccoli doesn’t taste nearly as good as chocolate cake. So you know you should be saving for the future, but it doesn’t feel as good as spending now. And I mean, I say that I’m terrible at spending. I’m really, really good at saving. And I have just recently started, well in the last couple of years, started trying to spend more intentionally and it’s all about like, what do you value? I value ease. I want my life to be easy and I can make it really, really hard if I want to. Being broke makes it really hard. So you save and you invest, but then you’re doing everything yourself. That makes everything hard. So I’m, I’m, I’m slowly trying to learn today. We’ll, we’ll have a conversation a little bit about spending and saving and spending with intention.
Mindy: As I said in the intro to the show, one of the biggest levers for achieving financial independence faster is to increase your income. In fact, I just saw a post on your Instagram called How to Actually Build Wealth in Your Thirties and this was the number one suggestion. Increase your income and aim for 15% every two years, three years max. What are some of the best ways to increase your income? Because it’s great to hear, oh, do it 15%. I would love a 15% raise every two years. But that’s not necessarily always available.
Guest: Mindy, I think that what you just said before this is really interesting that you value ease, but you could make your life really difficult. And I think that when it comes to finances, for some reason, and I think especially for women, we feel really comfortable cutting back. Like we are like great, like let’s just cut, cut, cut. This is what it means to be good with money is it means not to spend.
Mindy: Exactly.
Guest: Mhm. And I am here to flip that switch and really encourage you instead of thinking about what can I cut back on, think about what can I add because there is a floor to how much you can cut, but there is no ceiling to how much you can earn.
Mindy: What are some ways that people can add into their life, into their income? It’s, you know, it’s great to say, I just want to raise but like everybody wants a raise. Nobody’s like, oh, don’t pay me anymore. I wouldn’t want to get paid more. They all want to a raise, but not everybody is willing to do the work to get the raise.
Guest: That’s such a good point. I’m like, yeah, record scratch, freeze frame. I’m a personal finance expert telling you to make more money. Like, you must be all rolling your eyes at me. And maybe some of your listeners are too. But it is possible, but it does start with having what I call a win folder. So making sure at your job that you are tracking all of your successes so that when you actually go in and ask for more money, you have a paper trail of all of the things that you have added and done correctly and really exceeded at so that your boss realizes that they can’t lose you and they value you enough to actually increase your salary versus getting someone to fill your role for maybe less money who wouldn’t be as good. Because it is really expensive to do a hiring switch. Like people don’t realize that they have leverage on their side too with their employers because once you’re good at your job, you are very hard to replace.
Mindy: Yes. And your boss might not only be your boss. They might be everybody else’s boss too. And they might not be able to keep track of all the wins that you’ve done. Oh, Haley, you were great on the Johnson proposal last month. You’re like, yeah, but I was also great on the McCarthy proposal and the Smith proposal and, and, and. And they’re like, oh, yeah, I forgot. Also, as the employee, I’m doing a lot of other stuff. It’s hard to remember all the things that you did really well. And maybe something that you did, you, you remember as like, oh, that was, that was okay. Maybe I won’t. But, you know, somebody Bob from accounting sent me a note that said, hey, you really did a great job. Thanks. So I put that in my win folder because when it’s time to ask for a raise, you don’t want to just go in and be like, hey, can I have more money?
Guest: There’s also so much out there about quiet quitting. And I think it’s, you know, there’s a lot of truth to how hard things are right now. You know, we’re in a completely different world that our parents grew up in. The American dream is certainly dusty. You know, housing prices are out of control, student debt is out of control. Since 2020, inflation, prices have increased 67%, incomes have increased 7%. So, you know, the cost of living is not keeping up with our paychecks. Like this all feels really terrifying. And then when you read about it, it feels even worse. Like you’re feeling it in your pocket, but then you also like have the media telling you all the time. And it does make you feel a little nihilistic. And I talk about that in the book, I call it learned financial helplessness, because there’s a lot that makes you feel like, okay, well, you know, the cards are so stacked against me, Mindy, why don’t I just give up? Like, you know, we’re just on a floating rock and, you know, the earth is burning and, you know, I’m not even going to like be able to retire. So like, why don’t I just like throw in the towel? And I think you see that in the workplace too, where people do a form of quiet quitting where they’re like, okay, well, I’m just gonna not give this my all because, you know, I’m not really going to get anywhere anyways and what worse is it to me? But it’s so important to overcome that mindset if you want to like be a future rich person. Can’t let that nihilism and that learned financial helplessness impact how you’re acting, you know, in the workplace and with your money because you’ll never get anywhere. You really have to override it.
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Mindy: So, I’m going to say something that I don’t think is controversial at all, but the people who are doing the quiet quitting, they’re just not giving their all, they’re not even giving their sum, they’re like showing up and drinking coffee and taking a lot of breaks and those people aren’t future rich people. So I’m not talking to those people, I’m talking to the people who work with the quiet quitters. You can use that to your advantage because you know that Bob is phoning it in, you automatically look better when you’re not just phoning it in. You’re actually doing the things that you say you’re going to do or that have been assigned to you. You’re asking your boss for, you know, ways to shine. Hey boss, what can I do? One of my favorite stories comes from episode 12 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. David Greene came on the show, he was talking about, he was a waiter and he worked at a restaurant that they started at 4 and they went to like midnight, but sometimes he’d be scheduled from like 4 to 10. He would always offer to take somebody else’s shift. All of the people that are working till closing are like, oh this is awesome, now I don’t have to close. He’s like, I’m already there. What’s the point of going home at 10 when I could just stay for a couple more hours and, you know, make more tips? But he said, I walked up to my boss one day and I was like, hey, you know, is there anything that bothers you about, you know, what’s going on? She’s like, I hate that the wine glasses are always spotty. He was like, okay. So he would come in at 4 because that’s when he was scheduled, and then he would just clean the wine glasses because who’s eating dinner at 4 o’clock, right? So he’d clean the wine glasses while he didn’t have very many tables, and the boss would see him doing this, and that doesn’t translate to the workforce except it absolutely translates to the workforce. Hey boss, what can, what can I do to, you know, is there anything that bothers you? I hate that your reports always come in on Friday at 4 o’clock. Well, I’ve got him done on Thursday. I was just proofreading them. I’ll send them to you on Thursday. Like you don’t know what somebody’s thinking unless you ask the question. So ask the question. Hey, Haley, what can I do for you? How can I make your life easier?
Guest: 100%. Yeah, I call that in the book first one in is the hottest, where it’s like when I had that first job, I meet sure that I was the first one in every day. And like, you know, I had that time to like really set myself up for success and like trying hard really does and increasing also your skills is huge that I talk about a lot and increasing your income is that you have to invest in your human capital because that’s really your biggest asset, especially when you’re in your 20s and your 30s. Like, invest in that aggressively and you will see it really pay off. And then, you know, I also talk about how you need to be wary of sunk cost fallacy, you know, where if you’re at a job and you’re first one is a hot, you’re first one in, you know, you’re cleaning the wine glasses, you have your wins folder, and you’re still not able to make what you want, even though you are doing a fantastic job, you need to switch jobs. And that’s going to get you a salary bomb much more than staying loyal ever will because you don’t own the company. You don’t owe them anything and, you know, I think Gen Z maybe took it a little bit too far where they were job hopping like every two years, but, you know, whatever you have to do to get the bigger paycheck, I think you really have to prioritize your own finances over loyalty to a corporation, especially if you don’t have ownership in it.
Mindy: Exactly. I had a job where I was not in with the in crowd. I don’t know what they did before I got there, but I was absolutely an outsider and it was very apparent like six months in. They’re never going to accept me. So I could stay here forever. I’m not going to get the best raises. I’m not going to get the job promotions. I’m going to be stuck. I was there for a year. I left and I went someplace else because this was never going to be a good fit. There’s all sorts of companies that are just never going to be a good fit. There are companies that will always not give raises. It’s not their mantra to give raises. They don’t tell you that in the interview. Recognize that and move on.
Guest: And realize that like you are in control of your own earning power. Like I thought’s something that I put so much effort into in Future Rich Person is like, if you want to be a future rich person, which like your audience, you’re right, like your listeners are not the people who are quiet quitting. Like these are people who are like, I know your audience, they have millions of dollars. Like the average listener is like on track for early retirement. Like you have a really impressive community of financially sophisticated people. So I know that that’s not this group, but I will say that like increasing your income is an amazing lever to pull in terms of being able to really fast track your financial life and goals. And so just making sure that you are doing everything that you can and not staying stuck somewhere that is not going to ever provide for you in the way that you need to be.
Mindy: So, one of the things that I’m hearing from a lot of people in my community is that AI is having an impact on
Guest: It’s always AI.
Mindy: It’s always AI, but there are some jobs that are going to have a higher impact from AI than other jobs. Like a nurse, an in person, I am treating your body because you’re sick, nurse is not going to be as impacted by AI as a entry level computer programmer who just graduated from college. So how are we handling AI when it comes to changing jobs?
Guest: Well, Mindy, I’m going to be honest with you. AI is really making the job market pretty brutal for like entry level positions. I mean, there was a 2025 New York Times piece that pointed out that it was like not uncommon for young people to apply for hundreds of jobs and get rejected by all of them. So it’s really difficult, but I will say that, you know, AI makes these generalist roles way more vulnerable, but it also makes specialist skills way more valuable. I will say that the people who are going to thrive in this new AI workplace are the ones who can use AI as a tool versus sort of like competing with it as its replacement. And then I also think it’s important to recognize that AI is also creating new income streams. There’s always been throughout history, technological advances that have taken jobs. Like think about, you know, it used to be that there would be when you went in an elevator, someone would actually manually control the elevator thing and, you know, push you up and then technology advanced and now we have buttons. So what happened to that person? Well, you know, hopefully with that technological advance, that person’s able to find a different job. I think that the people who are building businesses and skills around AI tools right now who are the ones who are going to succeed the most. Like you have to lean into it and really learn how to utilize it and that’s where the opportunity is versus like, you know, being scared of it or having an attitude towards it where you are, you know, resentful. Like I understand that it’s a big shift for all of us, but I do think that we have to think about our pockets bottom line. And if we want to keep having bigger and bigger pockets, AI is a part of that and we need to really learn how to use that in the workplace.
Mindy: That’s really clever to say that it’s not just something that’s going to take your job, learn to use these products and, you know, the elevator guy, he did go find something else. He adapted. So figure out how to adapt. You are not owed anything. Nobody’s just going to hand you something on a silver platter. So go and make yourself better. Learn and adjust and adapt. And that’s, you know, super easy for me to say right here, but I mean, I somebody could take AI and there’s thousands of hours of my voice out there. I’m sure somebody could clone me in a second. No, don’t do that. If you’re thinking of that, do somebody else.
Guest: No, but I think that there’s also like, you know, with AI human capital becomes more important than ever because there’s so many things that it can’t do that we can do. So like, you know, something like you, where you have your unique perspective and wisdom and like personality, like even if it can clone your voice, there’ll always be something missing.
Mindy: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay, so there you go. It would be a worthless proposition to clone my voice. The next thing you said in your video was that lifestyle creep is, like avoid lifestyle creep and I cannot agree with this enough. It is such a hit to your FI journey when you’re going along, you’re investing, investing, oh I got more money, now I can spend more money. I’m just gonna invest the same amount. Oh, you could spend the same and invest more too. How do you think people should budget to stay on track for their goals?
Guest: Yeah, so I think that lifestyle creep is really sneaky and really hard because obviously like we get a raise and you start to identify with that new number on your paycheck and you think that that person who makes that much money should live in a nicer apartment, should have an upgraded car, should go on better vacations, should eat out more, and each individual decision sort of feels reasonable, but collectively when you add them all up, they could mean that your expenses just grew with your income and you didn’t actually move the needle on your fire goal at all. And so the reframe that I use is something called action money. I coined this phrase and it’s basically the money left over after your essentials. And this is not your fun money, it is your most powerful wealth building tool. So the question is whether you’re treating it that way or are you letting it like quietly leak into lifestyle upgrades, you know? You got to ask yourself that. And I think that the secret to really maximizing your action money is automation. That is the best tool that we have, like when your income goes up, automate a portion of that income directly into your investments or whatever your financial goal is right now, paying off debt, saving your emergency fund, before you even see it. So and definitely enjoy some of the raise, you earned it, but protect a meaningful percent from yourself before lifestyle creep even has a chance to absorb it.
Mindy: I love that. Automating it means you have made the decision one time. I’m going to do this and now I don’t have to think about it anymore. But if you don’t automate it, every period, you have to make that decision again. So if you get paid once a week, every week you have to make the decision to put money into your investments. It’s so easy to not put money into your investments. I did it for years before I finally figured out it’s also so easy to put them into investments. And I loved when a company would, you know, you started a new company and they’re like, oh, okay, how much do you want to put in your 401k? I’m like, that’s easy. Now I never have to make this decision again.
Guest: Yeah, automation is the biggest, I always say like, I wake up in the morning and I think that I’m going to like run a marathon, start a nonprofit, only drink green juice, like get 14,000 things done, and then by 3pm, I’m like, you know, where’s a cocktail? I need a cookie and like, can I take a nap? And so, you know, as humans, like we, and I call this in the book, your financial energy. So we have a finite amount of financial energy and I’m sure that we’ve all felt some version of this before where you go into a financial task with all the willingness and energy towards it in the world, and then, you know, you’re 20 minutes in, 30 minutes in, you start scrolling on Instagram, you start texting your friend, you get up, you walk your dog, like you’re not as focused on it. And so if you have 30 minutes of really focused financial energy, for example, how can you use it in the most productive way? And the most productive way is to use it to set up those automations because then it makes you infallible towards human fallacy.
Mindy: So what are some tips for automating while you’ve got your financial energy ready to go?
Guest: Yeah, so I walk you through all of this in the book, Future Rich Person, but, you know, you should have a system and I talk really about how the core of financial life that will get you to become a future rich person that feels really manageable is having these monthly money dates and I professes by saying that you might never want to have them because it is sort of annoying. On the same way that going to the gym is annoying. The same way it’s like people think that every financial expert maybe was investing their lemonade stand. I feel like there’s this idea too that’s positioned by the media by like James Clear and Atomic Habits that if you do something for 21 days, then you’re going to be a completely different person at the end of it. And it’s like, I’m sorry, like I am a type B person who is a millionaire and the reason that I’ve got there is by forcing myself to do things I didn’t want to do. You know, it’s not because after 21 days of doing it, I suddenly like switch gears and was like, wow, I would love to sit down for like 30 minutes or 40 minutes and go through my spending. So you really have to have a money date where you review all your finances, even if you don’t want to, and that is how you’re going to create a system that will really last. And in that date, you can set up those automations towards your credit card statements, towards your bank accounts, towards your investments, most importantly, or like I said, wherever you’re at on your financial journey, maybe it’s for your debt payoffs, maybe it’s your emergency fund contributions, but, you know, money’s a relationship and if you’re in a relationship, like I’m dating someone new right now, we’re going on a date tonight, you know, because we’re trying to get to know each other. Like, yeah, awesome. But it’s like, you know, if I’m seeing this guy and I never see him, Mindy, like we’re not really gonna get much far are we? Like, you know, so it’s the same thing with money. If you never go on a date with your money, what’s gonna happen? You’re never gonna get anywhere.
Mindy: Oh my God, that’s so brilliant. If you never see your money, you’re never going to get anywhere. In other way to say that is, what gets tracked gets, oh, man,
Guest: What’s a trap grows. But you don’t trap will never grow.
Mindy: Yeah. So one of the things that I used to do is kind of leave a lot of it up to my husband. I mean, we talk about money all day, every day. We both work from home. I’m in the space, he’s in the space. We talk about money all the time, money and investing, but I didn’t go in and log in to every single account because my husband’s a little nuts and we’ve got money in Fidelity and money in Vanguard and money here and money there and money everywhere. And I don’t want to log into 57 different places because since it’s money related, you have to have a super secret passcode and then a two factor authentication and like, I don’t have time for this. Then I heard about Monarch, and I was like, okay, I’m just going to put everything in one place. Let’s see how long this lasts. I go in there all the time. It’s so easy because everything is all in one place. I can just pop in. I’m like, oh, doing good this month, or you know, it’s got your spending, and I’m doing okay for spending this month. Well, not really because I’m building a house. So that part, you know, this month I’ve only spent 4,000 and it’s halfway through the month, but last month I spent $140,000. Well, that’s because I had to write a big check to my builder for like $110,000 because they did a ton of work. So, you know, that part is maybe not so great right now, but I can go in and see, oh, my net worth is up. I don’t have to go and log into all the different investment accounts. We’re having a great day today. We’re having a great week this week. Here’s with recurring charges. Oh, I don’t recognize that one. I can go in. I never did this before. I talked to Carl about it. We had conversations, but I didn’t put my eyeballs on it. And now money’s exciting again. I mean, money’s always exciting, but you know what I mean, I’m now I’m looking at it because it’s easy. So, remember how I said I want to make my life easy? Make your life easy. However it works for you to make your life and your finances easy so you can look at it, you’re going to look at it more.
Guest: I love that. And I in future rich person, I put really practical tips like literally at the end of each chapter, there’s a whole action checklist for people, so it’s super easy, but one of the action steps that I include is set up a freaking password manager. For exactly that reason because it is so annoying. You want to reduce friction when it comes to becoming a future rich person. Add so much friction, all of these logins and this and that, but like, you know, make a folder in your browser that has all of the websites that you need to go to. And then just go one by one and have everything saved. It should be easy. But it’s so important to do too because you always find something nefarious. Like even though I have a great system in place, I still have to do my money date because I’m always finding a subscription that I forgot to cancel, a package that I was charged for that I forgot to return, or maybe they did the return incorrectly. Like, you know, all these little things. And if you don’t keep an eye on your bottom line, someone else will.
Mindy: Absolutely. I’ve been using Monarch for probably six months now. I am still finding recurring charge. I’m like, what is this? I don’t even know what it is. I’m actually trying to track one down right now that uh, I should have paid more attention to. But when you don’t pay attention to it, money just gets spent.
Guest: And everyone would always love to spend your money Mindy.
Mindy: Absolutely.
Guest: And now especially with like digital payments and stuff, it’s never been easier. So we have to fight really hard to keep what we make and be able to invest it. And so it’s important to have these systems in place. But also like you’re like me, you’re type B, it sounds like.
Mindy: Oh, absolutely.
Guest: Yeah, I feel like we’re both like showing up to the bar with our passports instead of our licenses. We don’t know where those are. Like it’s like, you know, we’re more fun. You’re we’re the people that you want to have over, but it also, you know, all of this makes it a, I always thought that I had to be a specific way in order to be good with money. And what I’ve realized is I don’t need to be any different than I am. I just need to create systems around me that make it impossible for me not to succeed. And that’s really what the book is about.
Mindy: That is perfect. The automation thing, like it’s so easy to not automate things and then not do them. But once you automate them, like I’ve known about Monarch for years. I finally sat down and filled like you have to attach all of your accounts to it, which is fine. I did that. And then all of a sudden, oh my goodness, I’m excited to go in and look and see where my money is. I only had to do it once. I don’t have to go in. I log into this one thing. I actually have a password manager that I just, I log in. It’s like sign into your password manager. So I do that and it’s like, here you go, I’m already logged in. I don’t want friction, but I do want friction. I want friction over my money accounts. I don’t, yeah, I mean, my passwords are not password123 and, you know, I want people to make it difficult to log in. But then once I log in and figure it all out, like I want to be able to see everything all at once.
Guest: Totally. I love that you have a system around that. That’s very future rich person coded.
Mindy: So let’s talk about investing because that’s kind of what we’re all about.
Guest: What kind of investing do you recommend? Well, I love that you’re all about that. I feel like again, I’m like obsessed with your audience. I keep saying like your audience, but your audience knows that you cannot save your way to wealth. You have to get your money in the market. That was such a huge part of like my financial awakening was I read this whole book about compound interest from Warren Buffett and I was like, oh, okay, I get it. I’ve got to get my money in the market as soon as possible or I’m going to have to work forever. So we’re all about that life, but the Mrs. Dow Jones investing framework is really simple. Like and I think that’s what’s really important about understanding how to become a future rich person is that none of it is complicated. The most complicated it becomes is about seventh grade math. It’s not that you have to be some sort of wizard to do this or stock picker. It really is just, you have to again, set up these systems and make sure that you are also looking at your age and your timeline and your risk tolerance.
Mindy: So, here in the financial independence community, we talk a lot about index funds and index funds are great. Set it and forget it. Put them in there. You don’t have to know about the companies. You don’t have to really do any research. You just decide how much you’re going to put in there and put it in there. And automated. You’ve already automated that. So how do you balance wanting the higher returns of picking a winning stock with wanting the relative safety of index fund investing?
Guest: So I look at it almost like a stir fry, like cooking, like where it’s like you have to have your base, which is boring. Like it’s going to be chicken or tofu or whatever and vegetables and like that’s going to be the majority of what you have in the stir fry, but then you’re able to add some spices in, maybe you’re adding sauces or garlic or ginger or whatever to make it more interesting and like keep your attention. And so like your base of your stir fry should be your index funds. Like I always say, I don’t want my life to be boring. I don’t want my outfits to be boring, I don’t want my relationships or travels to be boring, but I want boring investments because that’s what really makes you rich. So I would say like 90% of your portfolio should just be index funds and that will genuinely be the best investment that you ever make. And then if you have things that you think are worth going beyond that for, like maybe you have that financial foundation and you want to take some calculated risks, that’s where you could play with crypto or you could play with REITs or you could play with, maybe you get access to a company that you want to put money into because the higher the return possibility, the higher the risk as well. They go hand in hand and so you really want to make sure that you’re balancing that and you’re hedging your bets. And so I really look at index funds as the base and then everything else is the upside, but you should never touch the base. And I know this also like I talked about how my dad works on Wall Street earlier and like he manages like billionaire’s wealth for a living and so I talk a lot to his team and to him about what they’re putting these super rich people’s money into and you guys, it’s index funds too. Like even the super wealthy are doing this. Like it’s like don’t mess with what’s, what’s already working, you know? Like unless you really are that expert stock, like I always look about Warren Buffett, right? He’s my boyfriend, of course, love him forever, but he reads 500 pages a day, right, about the markets. So if he wants to tell me to pick an individual stock, I’m going to trust him because he knows all about the fundamentals, he has spent so much time sitting in his chair, learning about the CEO’s horoscope and, you know, all of their past jobs and what their plan is for the company’s fundamentals, and he’s done all of that work. But for most of us, we are busy and we don’t have that time and while it feels really exciting to skip ahead and just get those big returns and get to financial independence earlier, I think that I would rather get there on track in a way where I know I’m guaranteed to get there than risk not getting there at all.
Mindy: Oh, that’s really good. Risk not getting there at all. I think people don’t see that as the two options. I think people see it as, oh, I can get there faster.
Guest: Yeah, no, it’s like you don’t want an average life, but you do want average investments. And you just have to like that is something that I find actually so relaxing to think about. Like I’m like, wow, everywhere else in my life I’m like chasing something really fun and different and like thrilling, but like here’s a part of my life where like it’s actually like really good to just be normal. And, you know, that’s how you get ahead. And of course like if you see an amazing opportunity, you should take it. Like I was talking to my friend yesterday who’s made a lot of money in real estate. She just bought a new condo that was like on the market for 300k but she was able to get it for 150k. And it’s like, yeah, absolutely, you should take like when you have those crazy opportunities to, you know, get in early or whatever, but I think we also get confused because the media pushes these stories of like crazy financial success, like, you know, people talk so much about equity. You hear so many stories about like open AI. I was early in open AI and I made a big paycheck or you know I was an early employee of Uber or Apple or something and now I’m making so much money and it’s like in order to take equity as part of your paycheck, you also have to be willing to have a lower paycheck in the meantime. So a lot of these like fun financial stories, you also have to realize the risk that you’re taking too because what if the, what if you’re not at the next Apple or Uber and you just have taken a lower paycheck and worked really hard for all that time and the company doesn’t work out. Will you be okay?
Mindy: Yeah, not every internet startup is actually going to do anything. There’s, there’s actually a lot more internet startups that you work at for a while and then flops. I don’t know if you’ve heard of pets.com from the early 2000s. How does pets.com go out of business? They sell pet stuff to Americans who love their pets. It’s just shocking to me that they went out of business, but also like you can’t put all of your eggs in one basket. I looked up Enron to see what’s going on there because they were so great. You couldn’t lose if you invested in Enron. The stock is no longer traded and is currently worth $0. So for every stock that you pick, you are like, you can only spend that dollar once. So you put it in Enron in 1999 and you’re going great and then in 2001, now you’ve got nothing. I think it’s portrayed as either you invest in index funds or you pick individual stocks. It doesn’t have to be an either or, and I like that you said 90% in index funds. Have your base be really, really high. I talked to people all the time and asked them what is your portfolio, where’s your portfolio at? Oh, well I’ve got $50,000 in index funds and $25,000 in crypto. I’m like that is way too much crypto. I am not a crypto fan. But that’s way too much crypto if you’ve only got a $75,000 net worth. You can’t have a third of it in crypto. I mean, you can, you can do whatever you want. You have 100% crypto, but that’s not going to get you financial independence and if you are wanting to email me to tell me all about crypto, you can email, I don’t care at tellsomebodyelse.com.
Guest: I will also say you have a lot of people in your audience who are going for fire. And like, as you approach that mark with your portfolio, just make sure that you start shifting towards more stability because at that point, the goal sort of changes from accumulation to protection. So like right now we’re in this really volatile market and you wouldn’t want a market crash to wipe out decades of progress right before you were going to cross the finish line.
Mindy: So if you were in our audience pursuing financial independence, at what point do you start morphing to protection from growth?
Guest: I think that it’s something that you do gradually and you do it like with your age. You can figure out as you get, in your 20s and 30s, you should be aggressive because you have a lot of time on your side and compound interest will reward aggression, but then as you get older, you should be shifting more into stability.
Mindy: Can I ask you a personal question? What does your portfolio look like?
Guest: Okay, well, I will say that like I am the worst individual stock picker. And so during my worst investment ever was during COVID, I became obsessed with this powdered coconut water because like you couldn’t get coconut water where I was at and I was working out a lot during COVID and so I need electrolytes. So I found this brand and I was like, damn, this is amazing idea. Like this could really go to the moon. And then I realized that it was public, which is so crazy. Why is a powdered coconut line public? And I was like, okay, yeah, I’m just going to do vibes based investing. I have no idea like who runs the company, what their PNL is, you know, what their earnings are, nothing. And I put a thousand dollars like on a whim into it and now that a thousand dollars, I mean I’ve since sold it, but it got down to about $90. I don’t have time to do the research. Like my time is spent researching the economy. Like I spend all my time reading articles and reading books about, you know, what’s happening in the markets and really like nurturing myself as Mrs. Dow Jones. And that does not mean picking stocks. And so I’m really am just so low cost index fund coded. I will say that I have diversified in the last year a bit more into international funds, like VXUS and, you know, funds like that that give me a bit more exposure outside of the United States. But I really do walk the walk of index funds because like I’m busy, right? Like I don’t have the time to be beating the markets and I am just looking for consistent compound growth, especially when I use a compound interest calculator, like I’m like, great, I’m on track. This rocks.
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Mindy: I think that if you are going to be investing in individual stocks with any sort of significant amount of your portfolio, you need to be doing research. So my husband and I had never heard of index funds. We were able to invest in individual stocks and we did quite well. We invested in tech stocks in the 90s. Wow, how did we do it? That when tech was growing, we were just investing in growing stocks, but my husband’s also a huge nerd and he reads tech news all day every day. That’s like his jam. He and Warren are like this, your boyfriend who recommends index funds, my husband’s like, oh, index funds, let me look into that. So we started moving, you know, as we decided, okay, we don’t want to own this particular tech stock anymore, we’re gonna sell it and move it into an index fund. But my fear for people who are listening to the show is that they’re gonna hear from their best friends, sister’s, boyfriend’s, brother’s, girlfriend about this stock that’s going to the moon, it’s called GameStop and it’s in in the middle of COVID that like went up, I don’t know, five cents or something. And all these people made a lot of money, but they didn’t do any sort of research on this. They’re just like, oh, I heard, so I’m gonna do it. And it was it Joe Kennedy? He’s like, I knew it was time to get out of the market when the shoe shine boy was giving me stock tips. First of all, shoe shine boys can can give stock tips, but also like do your own research and if you are not willing to do research, even a nominal amount of research, I don’t think you should be in individual stocks. I think you should go with what our collective best friend, Warren Buffett has said, put your money in index funds and Haley’s putting her money in index funds. Carl and I are moving to index funds and we’re probably like 50/50 right now index funds and individual stocks. But if you can’t do the research, what makes you think that you’re picking a winner?
Guest: Yeah. And I, you know, I have another, that 10% of like that you play with in your portfolio, like I do have some crypto. I’ve done really depending on where you when you ask me in the year, I will tell you if I’ve done well or not well, but like sometimes I look at that and I’m like, damn, like I should have put it all in crypto, like this freaking rocks. I’ve also invested in assets like the painting behind me was $30,000 and now like I could probably sell it for, I don’t know, like 70,000 or $80,000. And so I have some art investments. I’ve bought luxury handbags, luxury watches. So I’ve diversified in those places too. But again, like I’m not such an expert that it’s that’s more like lifestyle investments than it is things that are actually going to make me money.
Mindy: But that also, I would assume that you have done some research into luxury handbags and watches and artwork. I could not tell you, I’m sorry, I could not tell you the name of the person who did the painting behind you. I can’t list a luxury bag or luxury watch, like Rolex, that’s it. And, that’s okay. That’s not where I’m putting my money.
Guest: Exactly. You need to have your own lane or don’t have your own lane and then just do index funds. Like you do not have to overcomplicate it. You can get to fire literally just by doing that. The only thing though is that with fire, you do cut down your time frame in a big way and like so much of growth, like Warren Buffett became a billionaire after he was 50. Like it’s like once your money really starts rolling and compounding, it’s so exponential. There’s so much data around how there’re like, you know, the upper middle class is bigger than it’s ever been before and like the K-shaped economy and all of these, you know, financial trends. And I think so much of it is just because like boomers really did put so much money in the market and now they’re aging into the point where things are compounding so aggressively for them that they feel so rich.
Mindy: Yeah, hockey stick growth. It starts off kind of nothing and then all of a sudden like you’re an overnight success in just 30 short years.
Guest: And that’s what being a future rich person is though is really understanding that getting rich is not overnight. It’s about building long term security. It’s about finding that confidence and like choice in a financial world that looks so different than previous generations were taught to navigate and what like most of the financial advice out there how it tells you to do things, you know, and it’s all about building and understanding money without shame in a world where the old financial rules really don’t apply. You know, so this is not a, if you want a book about getting rich quick, future rich person is not it. But if you want a book about understanding money in a world that really changed faster than the advice did, this is your girl with a lot of pop culture references, so many actionable steps and a lot of my own stories too. And also, you know, we got to focus less about looking rich and more about being rich so we can secure tomorrow, which can be hard in the social media age.
Mindy: Absolutely. Don’t who cares what you look like on Instagram. Don’t worry about showing off all your rich, just put all your money into your investments. So this book, Future Rich Person, is being promoted not as a stop buying the latte or the avocado toast book. It’s being promoted as why are you working this hard and you’re still not rich book. So why are people working this hard and they’re still not rich?
Guest: Well, you know, in order to grow wealth, you need to own assets. Like the key to wealth is ownership. And so I think that one reason is they were never taught. So like the financial system profits off of our confusion. So financial education is not optional. And even if you were never taught, the way it sounds like you were not taught, Mindy, I was not taught, but the people who understand how money works are playing a completely different game than everyone else, which is why like your listeners, it might not be that they have jobs in finance or something like that, but they might have more wealth than someone who is in finance just because they understand their personal finances, they’re in control of that and they’re building towards something versus someone who’s just getting a big paycheck on Wall Street who has no control over their lifestyle creep. Like, you know, it’s really that simple. There’s a story in my book about a janitor who died with $8 million.
Mindy: I love that story.
Guest: Yeah, like he had like, you know, so much action money that he was putting to work, put it in index funds and was able to then when he died, like make a big donation to his local hospital and library, you know, and so it’s not really even about how much you make, it’s about how much you keep and then what you do with it.
Mindy: Dave Ramsey has a quote, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. And I think that’s so perfect for the FI community. Live like no one else now. Right now, you’re saving, you’re investing, all of your coworkers are like, wow, why don’t you spend more money? And you’re like, well, I’m saving for the future. And then in 10 years, when you’re retired, all of your coworkers are going to be like, wow, how do you do it?
Guest: Well, 100%.
Mindy: All right. Haley, where can people find out more about you?
Guest: So the best thing to do is to go to mrsdowjones.com/book. So it’s Mrs. like Mrs. I’m married to the Dow. And you’ll find everything for the book there and there’s about like $700 worth of freebies that come when you pre-order it. So I would definitely say if you’re thinking about getting it, buy it now because you get hooked up with so many awesome extras. And then, you know, I’m on social media everywhere on Mrs. Dow Jones. I’m also the host of the financial tea podcast, which is every Thursday. Mindy, we got to have you on. And yeah, I’m out here just trying to help people to get rich the same way that you are. So I’m so excited to be able to talk to you and I love your show.
Mindy: Haley, thank you so much for your time today. This was so much fun. I really, really appreciate it. And I will talk to you soon.
Guest: Okay, great. Thank you.
Mindy: All right, that was Haley Sacks, aka Mrs. Dow Jones. I had such a good time talking to her today. Go ahead and check out her content on her website, mrsdowjones.com. If you would like more financial independence information, you can head over to my website, biggerpocketsmoney.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter and you will also find free resources that Scott is crazy about building. He’s also doing calculators and templates to help you accelerate your FI journey. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, and I will see you next time. Line.
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