Why the Right Time to Build Wealth is Now

I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand.

It's time for some Money Rehab.

Today's episode of Money Rehab is sponsored by Bank of America.

So I have some good news.

According to a recent Bank of America survey, Gen Z and millennials are actually feeling good about their financial futures.

And while we love a good confidence boost, what I love even more is action because feeling good about your financial future doesn't mean much unless you're going to do something to actually make that future happen.

So today I'm bringing on a money rehabber who you may recognize.

She has had some big life changes lately and is now wondering when the right time is to start building wealth.

And spoiler alert, it is now.

I'm teaming up with Bank of America for this episode to show you ways to start investing for your future with Meryl.

But don't just take my word for it.

Let's break it down.

Morgan Lavoy, welcome to Many Rehab.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

Not the first time.

Not the first time.

No, I've been here before.

How many times?

All the times in one way, but how many times as

a caller, a listener?

Maybe three.

This is maybe my fourth time.

Does that sound right?

Well, yeah, we need to get you a jacket.

So I guess let's step back.

How do we know each other?

I'm your producer.

I work on this show with you.

We've been doing that together since 2021.

So that's how we know each other.

But also, I am a listener to Money Rehab.

I follow, I do whatever you tell money rehabbers to do.

I'm an OG money.

I'm maybe the first money rehabber, I should say.

You are.

I think you were even a money rehabber before that's what the name of the show was called.

Yeah, you originally wanted to call it the money show.

Oh, I did.

I forgot about that.

I do love a literal naming convention.

It's a good name.

And you have a question today.

So exciting.

I do.

So I,

like you said, have had some changes in my life recently.

I got married.

That's the big, that's the big one.

And I'm also turning 30 this year.

And so it's a time where I'm thinking about financial planning a little bit more than I have.

It feels like time to get a little bit more serious.

It feels a little bit more serious now that my husband and I have a joint checking account.

So there does just feel like an extra level of, you know, responsibility there.

And so my question really is: is now the right time for me to start thinking about building wealth?

Yeah.

Yeah,

great.

The end.

Welcome to the family, Jack, by the way.

Congratulations to you two.

You guys have a joint checking account.

And as a Money Rehab OG disciple, a yours, mine, and ours situation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have my account and then

which is just my account from before we got married.

So like before a month ago, the same.

And then Jack has his separate account.

And then we just opened a joint account a couple of weeks ago.

And we put what's in there right now is just what we've been given as wedding gifts from friends and family.

And what are you guys doing with that joint account?

We have been dollar cost averaging into the stock market.

We also opened up a joint brokerage account.

And so we've maybe invested half of it in the market so far.

And then the rest of it, I don't really know what we're going to do with it.

Because we both have enough money in our separate accounts to like cover half of rent and things like that.

We could potentially invest kind of all of the stuff that's in the joint account.

These are just the questions that we need to figure out.

And why I'm here?

What should we be doing with it?

Okay, well, how much money is in there?

How much money do you guys get?

We've been very fortunate, I should say.

Each of our parents gave us a wedding gift that they said we could use on either during a wedding or just for whatever we wanted.

And so we decided to do a really small wedding ceremony with just our immediate family.

So there's eight people total.

And so we pretty much got to keep all of the gifts that we've gotten from them and from extended family and things like that.

So we had $40,000 in the account.

And so we have $20,000 invested, $20,000 in the checking account now.

and we haven't decided what we're going to do now.

Well, let's figure it out.

So before we get into it, let's talk about your current financial situation, shall we?

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Do you feel like you are living within your means or below your means or above your means?

According to Bank of America, 95% of Gen Z,

which you are, and millennials, which I am, say that they are living within their means.

Where do you land?

I think that I am.

I should have a better budget, and I don't.

So that would be how I would really be able to tell if I'm living below my means, which would be my goal.

But I'm able to save every month, save and invest every month, which makes me feel like I am.

So I feel like I'm living below my means and feeling good about the way that I spend.

Now, with the 40,000, this is your fund for

what primarily?

A house, a baby.

I know.

I just, just the future.

I really, I, I really don't, I don't know.

I think the way that I'm thinking about it is it is money that I want to turn into more money more than anything else.

Like it's not, it's not money that I'm saving for anything in particular.

We're renting in New York.

I don't think we would buy a place here.

I

am

really happy to rent here.

I like being a renter.

I like having a landlord.

I think, just with kind of weighing the benefits and costs of owning real estate in New York, it makes more sense for me to be a renter right now.

And then

we plan on having kids, not within the next three years, but like

I

saving is

probably a good idea because it

seems expensive to have a baby.

I don't know.

You tell me.

It sure is.

Okay, so

I'm assuming you've played with a compound interest calculator on this money.

Or do you not like do the things that you do for work for yourself?

I don't really.

That's so interesting.

I know.

And I, and I should.

Because like, how often do you play with a compound interest calculator just for this show?

For this show, all the time.

But I think that

because

I guess like Jack and I talk, Jack and I talk about money a lot,

but we don't

sound so we don't have goals.

What?

What's even happening right now?

Like, I, like, I don't be clear, like, you're the most organized

producer,

employee human like there's a spreadsheet for everything there's i love spreadsheets calculator for everything i mean we have our own proprietary calculators even i'm so surprised by this i know jared and i play with compound interest calculators all the time i'm sorry that you guys are cooler than us you guys have better feldmans

We all have the same last name.

Okay, so you guys haven't yet played with a compound interest calculator.

No, we haven't.

On your free time.

We haven't.

And I think part of it is because we haven't talked very seriously about like

where we want to live in five years.

And we have talked about kids.

So that's not a question mark so much.

I think we would maybe take it a little bit more seriously if we had a certain goal in mind by a certain date.

And we don't, we don't have that.

So we should.

When you hear the idea or the phrase wealth building, what comes to mind for you?

A whole mess of things.

I think a little bit of imposter syndrome because I don't come from wealth.

A little bit of guilt because I don't come from wealth too.

But also, those are two kind of bad things that immediately jump to mind.

But also, there's good stuff too.

Like, I feel very lucky and grateful and empowered.

So, all of those good things, too.

But there's also a little bit of,

yeah, like guilt and imposter syndrome mixed in.

What are you guilty for?

I can do.

When my mom was my age, she was making $35,000 a year and she had me.

And so it just feels like I,

I don't know, like my, my mom

worked so hard to

provide for me and she helped me pay for college and I don't have debt and it just I just feel a little guilty about it.

You know, I work hard.

Guilt means you made a mistake.

Shame means you are a mistake, which you are definitely not.

But I understand that sometimes it feels that way.

But you didn't do anything wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's that's true.

That's true.

I guess it's like almost

It feels a little bit more like survivor's guilt where it's like I didn't do anything wrong but I am luckier than she was or like have had more opportunities than she did despite her working you know just as hard

so how does that affect

what wealth building looks like for you you want to do

more you want to save more or you

feel

stymied and like sort of struck with

inertia around it yeah i i think maybe that's why i'm a little why i'm playing with compound

interest calculators less for myself i i think maybe it's creating a little bit of like avoidant behavior around talking about long-term planning to be clear like i don't think everyone you know i'm not surprised that everyone is not playing with a compound interest calculator on their free time just to be clear it's only for you because i know how much time you spend on it normally yeah so no it's a really good point i think everybody should but like i'm i'm never surprised when somebody's like no as a matter of fact i have not used a compound interest calculator lately so it's not something that like you need to be doing but it's interesting that there's this like block for you from what you do

at work and how into this you are

around investing compound interest.

And then for yourself, there's like a little bit of a block.

It is, yeah, it is weird, isn't it?

I've never really thought about it.

We're getting deep here.

So, should we unblock?

I would love to unblock.

Okay, so

for you,

is there a number that feels wealthy for you?

Or

is that, do you have like a magical number that you think

I'm wealthy?

I mean, it's going to be different than what the stats are because the stuff is super personal.

Yeah.

I think something that I would like to do that I haven't done yet is

think about

how I can

build

wealth where my kids can go to whatever college that they want to and not have to worry about financial aid being a big factor.

And so I haven't really taken a a look at, you know, when I went to Skidmore, what tuition was $60,000 a year, it's probably more now, and so I think something that would be useful to me would be to like think, okay, so that's like $240,000

for one kid.

We will maybe have, I don't know, one or two.

And so having

that

saved,

I I think, would be a good goal.

Okay.

Saved and have it not be our life savings, like saved in a way where it's like we can spend that on education and we won't have to, you know, sell our house or like, like we can still have the life that we want, but also spend that money on college for kids.

Okay, so for you, it's being able to pay 100% of college.

Let's just assume

if it's around today's dollars, we're talking about $500,000.

I think that that's a good start.

We have,

you know, a rough number of what will make you feel wealthy.

How does Jack feel about it?

Is there a thing that makes him feel wealthy?

Or he came for money, so it's different.

I think it's different for him.

I think he would probably have a higher number than I would.

And not to do anything differently necessarily, but just to like have it in the bank.

Like

it's not that he wants to buy a fancy house or go on a crazy vacation or anything specific like that.

I think for him, it's more about being like, I know my net worth is X and that feels like wealth to me.

What's interesting is that you

have some blocks around this between like what you know

for

money rehab and what you're doing doing for your own money rehab, but you're putting your money into the places we talk about on the show, you're putting your money, you're doing the dollar cost averaging, which is you know, taking the full amount that you have and trying not to time the market and put it in at different increments, um, so that you're getting the average of what the price is worth over time.

Because we want to buy low and sell high, not the opposite, but we don't know where the low is and we don't know where the high is because this is the first time you're really investing, right?

Yeah, I started, I started investing when I started working with you.

I had 401k at my old job, but I didn't know what was, what it was doing or what it meant.

So I wouldn't, even though that like was technically an investment, I wouldn't really count that because I didn't set up the account or like know what it was doing or anything like that.

And so I think that It is interesting because while I am doing some of the like quote unquote right things,

I am not thinking about it as strategically as I think that I should and could.

And now is probably the time to start doing that, especially since it's like, I do feel like a bigger sense of responsibility and accountability now that I have a joint account.

And it's like, this is, you know, financial planning for like two people and a family.

And so I need to be more thoughtful because even though I'm not doing nothing,

I

should probably have my goals a little bit more defined and play with compound interest calculators more.

So here's the deal: wealth building is not about one magical fix, it's about consistency.

And it sounds like you

and your now husband are committed to being really consistent about saving and investing.

So I think we've covered a lot today,

dear Morgan.

I would say

step one is to come up with some really clear goals together.

Goals have price tags.

And so first, you know, figure out the life you want and then reverse engineer it to figure out how to get the money to live that life.

I know that some people have magic numbers that just feel good to them for no other reason than feeling good.

And maybe that's part of it too.

There's probably like some number that feels really good.

Take that into account.

Figure out where your destination is so that we can reverse engineer how to get you there.

And is that enough?

And then maybe

you put numbers on what feels like enough.

So it's not as emotional because it sounds like there's like an emotional, I didn't have enough component to this.

Yeah.

I think that that all feels very doable.

And

it does feel,

I don't know, it just, it just feels like it makes sense.

I feel like I didn't even realize because i felt like i was doing the right things i didn't realize that i was also kind of doing it in a bit of a blind way so i think those steps don't feel scary they feel very reasonable and i

i i do feel like they can be motivating like you said like

get myself more excited about wealth building and that it's not a dirty word it's definitely not it's very exciting you're starting early you're doing so many of the things that we talk about on the show all the time.

There's some like block around it, but I think it's pretty normal for people to,

you know, not take their own advice.

And so it's a good reminder to

get your financial hygiene on yourself.

Put your oxygen mask on first, even before helping our listeners.

Yeah, it's a good point.

Okay, so how do you feel about getting started?

I feel good.

I feel good.

Jack and I are going to dinner with his mom tonight.

Otherwise, I would say tonight we'll talk about it.

So maybe we'll talk about it over the weekend.

Over the weekend, we are thinking about going out to dinner because it's our like almost one month anniversary of being married.

Listen, I mean, I haven't been married a year.

So

who am I to talk?

Sounds like perfect dinner to me.

For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank.

If you're waiting for the perfect moment to start building wealth, please don't.

The earlier you start, the better off you'll be.

And if you're looking for the right tools to help you save or just get a plan together, check out Bank of America.

Bank of America is the one-stop shop where you can get guidance, tools, solutions, and view your Bank of America banking and manager investing accounts all in one place.

To learn more, go to bfa.com/slash financial next steps, which I have linked in the show notes.

Brokerage services are provided by Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith Incorporated, a registered broker dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPIC, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation, member FDIC.

The views and advice expressed by Money News Network are independent and not endorsed by Bank of America Corp.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.

I'm your host, Nicole Lapin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie.

Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab?

And let's be honest, we all do.

So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com, moneynewsnetwork.com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.

And follow us on Instagram at MoneyNews and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content.

And lastly, thank you.

No, seriously, thank you.

Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.