154: Our Biggest Financial Red Flags & Green Flags

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify, brought to you by public.com. By the end of this episode, you will know exactly which financial behaviors are going to predict wealth for you in 2026 and which ones are secretly sabotaging your success. My name is Austin Hank Witts and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croak. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur with lifetime revenues of over 300 million and I'm a multi-millionaire in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance and mindset. So Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? Today's episode is going to be a blast because we're playing financial fortune teller. We're bringing out the crystal ball. We're going to walk you through the green flags that define the habits and behaviors that almost guarantee you'll build wealth in 2026 as well as the red flags, those sneaky behaviors that look harmless but are actually poverty traps in disguise. So we've got three green flags you need to adopt immediately and three red flags you need to eliminate ASAP and this episode isn't going to be about the obvious little stuff like spend less than you make. We're specifically talking about subtle behaviors that over a long period of time will separate your well-building journey from everyone else's. So I want everyone listening right now to pretend they're talking to a friend about a significant other, right? You're over here, you're drinking the wine, you're out at lunch, you're doing the restaurant thing and you're like, oh my gosh, let me tell you about this new person I'm seeing and you start talking about the, oh that's a green flag or oh no, that's a red flag. I want y'all to have the exact same experience right now and I want you to audit yourself. Are you a walking green flag or are you a walking red flag and whatever that answer is we're going to get to the end there but whatever you end up choosing whatever happens to you make sure that if you are a red flag flip it over to green or if you are a green flag keep doing that stuff. So Robert let's kick everyone off with green flag at number one. Yeah I love this episode because it's tactical it's mindset but it's also in your face to get people to make meaningful changes and green flag number one you track your net worth monthly not just your income. 88% of millionaires track their net worth at least monthly according to the spectrum group. Meanwhile 67% of Americans don't even know their net worth. They know their salary down to the penny and they know how much they get paid every two weeks like it's clockwork but have no idea if they're actually building wealth. Income is vanity, net worth is sanity. You could make $200,000 a year but if you spend $210,000 your net worth is going backwards. Meanwhile someone making only $60,000 a year but saving 15,000 during the same period of time is getting richer every single year. So that first green flag is you track your net worth monthly. You're not just tracking your income. I love this. Now here's the challenge for you. First Saturday of every month I want all of you listening right now to start calculating your net worth all your accounts or checking account your savings account your Roth IRA your 401k your 403B your master works account your fund rise account your probably every account that has money in it put it on one column and then every debt that you have as well your mortgage your car your personal loan the heel like everything else goes on the other side assets minus liabilities equals your net worth. Track it monthly now in a spreadsheet and watch that number grow. When you focus on your net worth instead of solely focusing on oh how much money am I going to make this two week period or how much money that I make in the month of February whatever it was you make completely different decisions with your money. You stop buying those liabilities which look like success on the surface and you start instead buying assets that actually create wealth over a long period of time and you see that wealth trend higher now every single month. You stop buying liabilities that look like success and start buying assets that actually create it I think we need to get that in a tattoo or a sticker that is incredible. So let's go into green flag number two you invest before you pay any other bill you treat investing like your most important bill not what you do with left over money because the wealthy invest first and spend second everyone else does it backwards paycheck hits the account and by the very next day of fixed percentages already invested then they figure out how to live on the rest automatically no decision making required most people try to live first and invest the scraps but you're not going to do that in 2026. So here's the challenge that you need to make for yourself to make sure that you're investing first before you pay your other bills set up those automatic transfers the day after your paycheck is scheduled to hit your bank account and if you're a business owner and entrepreneur it's the exact same strategy get it automated start with 5% of your paycheck if you're intimidated by automating more but have that long term goal of getting 15% every single month saved and invested your future self gets paid before your landlord before Netflix and before anyone else pay yourself first that is a green flag in 2026 now our final green flag is you're always learning about money and financial literacy you've built the systems and now you're continually learning more it fits about money in general if it's about investing real estate or any other money adjacent topic it doesn't matter what matters is that you're constantly learning that for me is a big green flag for 2026 and this is one thing that the wealthy do really well they're constantly leveling up their understanding of earning more money of their taxes so they can keep more of what they earn and multiplying their net worth by owning equity and profitable businesses if that is with venture investing or just index fund investing or starting a business of their own they're doing it all right and they're consistently learning every single year I love this breakdown because I just did a video the other day about how so many people will spend all this time learning sports stats watching every football game but not learning about finances whether it's personal or business or whatever type of investing you're interested in and so this really spells it out so here's our challenge we want you to identify two specific subjects related to personal finance and investing you cannot explain to your mother or a friend at a barbecue then make it your goal over the next 30 days to learn those two items and repeat the process over time don't forget to use AI to help you and once you learn about these two new items act upon them once you've learned because we always say take notes and take action I think the most important call out here is something that you cannot explain to people because if you don't understand something enough to teach it to someone else you don't actually understand it right if you don't understand how a Roth IRA works if you don't understand what the S&P 500 is if you don't understand what a 401k matches right if you don't understand these things well enough to explain it to your 13 year old nephew then like chances are you don't understand it well enough for yourself so that's what Robert and I are trying to share here is that you need to be able to explain this to other people so identify those two subjects related to personal finance and investing that you're just not too fluent with go use the chat GPT's the rocks the Geminius to help you understand it tune in to old episodes of the rich habits podcast to help you understand it and then say okay cool I didn't exactly know what the S&P 500 was I kind of had a general idea had a little bit of a phrase I'd say when people ask me about it but now I really understand it now I can explain it and now I know as an educated investor I should own the S&P 500 right that's the point of this challenge so Robert we've talked about three green flags and again I just I just think back of you're sitting at happy hour with your friends and like oh that's a green flag oh that's another green flag right so if you are tracking your net worth on a monthly basis boom that's a green flag for you if you invest your money before you start paying off your other bills that's a green flag and if you understand and learn more about personal finance and investing that is a third and final green flag I could not be more excited for all of you who I'm sure checked those boxes I am so excited to get into the red flags now but before we do let's hear from our sponsor public yeah Robert public is the investing platform for those who take it seriously right because on public you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks bonds option contracts crypto currency and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index using AI and it all starts with your prompt for renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semi-conductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work it screens thousands of stocks builds a one-of-a-kind index and let you back test it against the S&P 500 all with just a few clicks generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities they're completely customizable and based on your thesis not someone else's so go to public.com/richhabits and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio that's public.com/richhabits paid for by public investing full disclosure in the podcast description all right let's get into our red flags for 2026 aka the things you should not be doing are you a walking red flag let's find out red flag number one you're addicted to spending money because you think you're saving money great examples of this are black friday sales prime day and random flash sales you buy things you don't need just because they're 50% off 74% of Americans say offers are a top factor when deciding where and what to buy online. The average person in this blue my mind spends $4,500 per year on impulse purchases for items they never use. That's not saving, that's just flat out spending with a discount. So when your late night doom scrolling stay off of TikTok shop. Wealthy people think in terms of ROI and not discounts. They don't care if something 70% off if it doesn't bring value to their lives. Meanwhile, broke people have closets full of deals and bank accounts full of nothing. - So here is your red flag fix. If you are someone that spends money to save money, which is just kind of so weird to think about. But people do it, here's the fix. Before you impulse purchase anything, always ask yourself, would I buy this at full price? If this was actually full price and it was not 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70% off, would I buy it? If the answer is no, then the sale doesn't matter. A deal is only a deal if you were gonna buy it anyway. Which is why, for example, when I think about Prime Day, you know what, I bought on Prime Day last year? I bought Ziploc bags, 'cause I always use Ziploc bags. I got so many of these gallon bags. I bought the, a couple of years ago, I bought the doggy bags when you take your dog and you gotta go pick up the poop. I bought those. Those were on sale, right? I used those. Those are the things that you should be buying on discount. Money you're gonna spend anyway. Now jumping to our second financial red flag, you have financial emergencies that just happen every single month. Car repairs, medical bills, home fixes, unexpected insurance premiums, right? If emergencies are happening every single month they're not emergencies. They're just poor planning disguised as bad luck. Emergencies are defined as unforeseen and necessary. Your car needing an oil change is not unforeseen. Your child's field trip money is not unforeseen. Your grocery bill going up because the month of May has five weekends in it is not an emergency. You just didn't look at the calendar when you were planning your grocery budget. An emergency means it's actually unforeseen. Not, oh, I just didn't plan well for this. Actually, a Federal Reserve study found that 37% of Americans could not even cover a $400 emergency and the median emergency savings is just $600. And that's not because people are reckless. It's because most budgets only account for the obvious bills, not the irregular but inevitable ones. The thing is you know cars need maintenance, bodies need healthcare, houses need repairs. These aren't surprises and shouldn't be surprises. But when you don't budget for regular expenses they become emergencies and emergencies become credit card debt and so on and so on and credit card debt becomes perpetual poverty. - So here is the fix for this specific red flag. And I've actually done this myself highly recommend everyone do it as well. Go through your bank account statements and transactions, your credit card statements and transactions. Do it for the last three, six, nine, 12 months if you have the time to do it. Go through and specifically understand when all of these emergencies have happened and then try and figure out well was that really an emergency or did I just not plan accordingly? Was this $1200 insurance premium that I thought was an emergency at the time? No that was just your annual house insurance or your renters insurance or no that oil change. No it happens every 5,000 miles. That was just the October when it happened last and you should have actually put money aside every month to make sure that you have money when you need it or no your car is actually only have 50,000 miles on the tires. You go 50,000 miles every three years or so so you should put some money aside every month. So you have, it's like you just gotta go back and look at these emergencies and then ask yourself was this a true emergency or do things just pop up every month that surprised me and are they surprising me because their emergencies or am I just not planning well? Am I just poor planning? Remember broke people react wealthy people forecast. You need to be forecasting your expenses far more than just that single month, right? The grocery joke about the month of May, like that's a joke but it's actually kind of real. But like you should be thinking about wait, my car needs maintenance and that happens every nine months or every 13 months. I need to have a sinking fund for that. My insurance premium is likely gonna go up by 15%. So I need to add that to a sinking fund so I can afford it and I'm ready for that. My water heater is eight years old. Chances are in the next two years I'm gonna need a new one. I need to put money aside for that, right? These are not emergencies. This is just common sense and planning, knowing common sense so you are not having to swipe a credit card at 29% interest and then carry that for the next four months while you try and pay it off. - Yeah, this reminds me of an episode we did a while back where we talked about people not preparing for wedding season for summer vacations, for kids going back to school and that's where that stat of 37% of people cannot handle a $400 emergency. That blows my mind. So everyone, please start planning ahead, get prepared, get aside also if you have to, but you can't be in the situation where every time you have these little emergencies that are popping up because you weren't prepared, you throw it on the credit card and stay perpetually broke and in credit card debt. And that gets us to our final red flag of 2026 waiting, waiting for the raise to start investing, waiting for the market to drop before you start investing, waiting for low interest debt to be gone, waiting for the perfect moment that never comes, make it exist then make it perfect, you have to get started because you can't keep waiting. - Yeah, there's actually a fidelity study that shows investors who tried to time the market over a 40 year period of time and the best performing investors weren't the ones who waited, right? The ones who started immediately and stayed consistent, they were the ones that outperformed over a long period of time. Time in the market beats timing the market. We've said this a hundred times. And every month you wait costs you thousands of dollars in compound interest. A 25 year old listening right now could start investing $500 a month and at age 65, they'd have $2.3 million. That same 25 year old, zoom forward 10 years, now they're 35. They waited 10 years to start because I got a pay off for a student loans a little bit. Oh, I want to make sure I get the new job. Oh, I want to make sure I'm married first. Whatever the excuse is, that same $500 a month is only $740,000 in retirement, which is a $1.5 million difference because they delayed, they waited 10 years before they got started with their investing. - So your red flag fixed today is start with whatever you have. Stop waiting. I don't care if it's $20, $50, $100, it does not matter. Do not listen to the fake gurus telling you if you don't have $10,000 don't bother. Motion beats meditation. Imperfect action beats perfect procrastination every single time. So the best time to plan a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now today, so get started. - All right, Robert, let's score ourselves. Every green flag plus one, every red flag minus one. Ask yourself, how did I score? If you're in the negative, bad news bears, you're headed for financial trouble this year and beyond. Let's fix that. If you're at zero, okay, you're treading water a little bit. If you're positive, chances are you're gonna start building wealth and if you hit all three of those green flags with no red flags, you are virtually guaranteed to grow wealth in 2026 and beyond. - But here's the key. Focusing on fixing red flags before adding green ones is like having a boat with holes. Doesn't matter how fast you row, you're still going to sink, plug the leaks first, then you can accelerate. Tracking your net worth while spending hundreds every month on unnecessary emergencies is not gonna move the needle for you. - That's so funny to think about. Oh, I'm just gonna track me going down and having bad habits, right? Oh, come on, let's figure that one out. If we think about it here, let's get positive. 2026, it can be your wealthiest year ever. Or it could just be another year of treading water. The difference is not gonna be the economy, the stock market, your income, the whatever. It's those daily habits, those green flags, or the red flags that are gonna help you trend in the right direction. You don't need to be perfect. I love what Robert said. Imperfect action beats perfect procrastination. Make it exist, then make it perfect, right? Just start doing something. 2026, just start doing something. You don't need to fix everything today. You just need to start. Pick up a red flag and say, I'm gonna get rid of this this month of February. I'm getting out of it. We're not doing this red flag anymore. Those small changes that are constantly applied over a long period of time, create extraordinary results. And don't forget, be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace along the way. This is my favorite advice to give people because a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, I thought I could do this in fast forward eight months. I've made no progress. I don't know what's going on. Give yourself grace. You've had a rough eight months or maybe you had a rough 2025, like new year, new me, rock and roll. Every single person has the opportunity to change their lives in 2026. The wealthy aren't doing anything you can't do. They're just doing the boring simple things that work over and over while everyone else is looking for shortcuts that don't exist. We are big believers if on a long enough time horizon, you keep doing the green flags. You will be extraordinarily wealthy. - So, so good. So, the takeaway for me is, even if you stumble a little bit, even if you skip a few weeks, even if something's wrong. happens to set you back. The goal here is to get you on the right track. And even with setbacks, you stay consistent and you keep moving forward because you have to get out of this red flag, green flag situation and get on the right track. All right, Robert. So we've got the Q&A section here of our show as a quick reminder. If you have a question to ask us, you want to be on the podcast. You can email us at rich habits podcast at gmail.com or you can send us a DM on Instagram at rich habits podcast. We've got three awesome questions. I think all of them are coming from Instagram or Instagram DMs are just absolutely flooded with your questions, which we love. We're so grateful that so many of you have so many questions to ask us. But Robert, before we jump into that, on paper, the markets are looking pretty healthy. Indices are near all time highs. But when you zoom out, a few warning signs are starting to stack up a little bit. Yeah, starting with concentration. A handful of stocks made up roughly 40% of the S&P 500 by the end of 2025. Then you've got returns hinging on AI spending, continuing without interruption. If that slows, a lot of investors portfolios might be more exposed to the specific risk than people realize bonds. They've been a conventionally stable investment, but they're becoming less helpful for true diversification. I would argue, starting to move in the same direction as stocks, which is the opposite you'd want to happen if you were looking for a hedge in your portfolio, not to mention the US dollar dropped around 10% against major currencies last year. And even the usual safe places are starting to feel crowded. Goals at all time highs, real estate is still very rate sensitive. So the question becomes, if you want more diversification, what else is there? So for us, we started looking and seeing what the ultra high net worth investors have done for generations. The answer there is scarce, globally priced assets that aren't completely tied to the stock market's performance, specifically blue chip artwork. We've personally been invested with master works for years. You can fractionally invest in museum quality artwork, the kind that used to be reserved for billionaires and institutions only, featuring artists like Basquiat, Banksy, and Picasso. Like any market, it carries its own risks, but most importantly, it's a global asset class with low correlation and attractive appreciation since 1995, according to masterworks data. Masterworks handle sourcing, storage, insurance, and eventual sales. And since 2019, investors on the platform have allocated over a billion dollars across hundreds of works. And across 26 sales to date, they've delivered annualized net returns like 14.6, 17.6, and 17.8% while moving independently to popular markets. So if you're feeling cornered by currency or concentration risk right now, this is one of the few genuinely different opportunities we've found and you can get priority access by going to masterworks.art/richhabits. That's masterworks.art/richhabits. As always, investing involves risk and past performances that guarantee future results, see important regulation aidous closures at masterworks.com/CD. Robert, I just logged into my masterworks account and I am pretty impressed. I haven't honestly, I don't check a lot of my alternative investment asset in counts like on a weekly or monthly basis, more quarterly and annual because these things aren't as liquid as you would think. But I just logged in. I'm looking at my masterworks account. I've got two investments. I've got dark milk, which is a Boschiat painting. And I've got Mrs. Cippy, which is another Boschiat painting. My Mississippi investment is up 62.2% and my dark milk investment is up 45.3% and that is from March of 2022. So you can figure out there, I guess the annualized returns, benchmark them against the S&P or whatever you want there. But that's the whole point of this, right? It's like having things that go up in value that aren't correlated to the stock market. So like that's, I think that's important. But yeah, again, I use masterworks, love to just share my own experience there. If you're someone who wants to get started with a little bit of diversification and your own portfolio, we hope that this quick breakdown of what masterworks does was helpful. And again, we are only talking about things that Robert and I use ourselves, right? I've been in both masterworks for five, six years now. I firmly believe in diversification and blue chip artwork. And that's just just really grateful they support the show as well. Yeah, I appreciate it. Austin, because you turned me on to masterworks. I wasn't an investor till about three years ago. So I appreciate that as well. My investments have done very well over time. So it's just really all about diversification. And we love masterworks to allow us to be able to do this. And you can do the same. So our first question comes from our Instagram DMs again, Rich Habits podcast on Instagram. This question is from Kiko. Kiko says, I love the podcast and would really appreciate your advice. My husband took over a profitable plant nursery two years ago. The land is fully paid off and he's grown the business steadily. But we're not quite sure what the next stage looks like or who could best guide that growth for us. Most of the businesses value is in the land. The business also has about $500,000 of cash and he hopes to buy more land in the next couple of years. He also holds a long term state lease with 15 years left that he's considering selling similar leases have recently gone for around $1 million. With all that in mind, do you guys have any advice as to who we should lean on as our trusted source of information? Should we talk to a CPA accountant, a financial advisor or maybe industry veterans to get some insight as to where we should take this business? Robert, I'll let you kick this one off. Yeah, I love this question. And I think you nailed it as far as I would speak to industry veterans. Pay them a fee if they consult, find someone regionally that knows the land and knows the area and knows that specific style of business. Pay them the money, spend an hour, two hours with them and say, here's where we're at. Lay it all out for them and get their advice on this. I think that is your quickest route to learning what your next steps are. I can help you along the way. I think a CPA could help you as well. I don't know if a financial advisor would give you as much insight as you desire to be able to figure out what's next because it looks like you guys are doing pretty well and you just want to keep growing. So you need somebody that really knows this specific niche of business. So you can get the most value out of them. That's what I would do. I like that advice. The advice I'd give you is every business is the same at its core. You have revenue, you have operating expenses and you have operating profit, right? Operating income. Then of that operating income, you pay taxes and you're on to the next year, right? Every business essentially is the same. You can make more money in two ways. One, grow revenue or two cut expenses, right? If you are at a million dollars a year right now and you have half a million dollars of operating expenses, that means you're revenue minus those operating expenses equals that 50% margin on that million. So you have half a million dollars. So if you grow that revenue to 1.2 million and your operating expenses don't grow as quickly as your revenue grew. So maybe from 1 million to 1.2 million, but your operating expenses grew from 500,000 to 600,000. So you grew revenue by 200,000 while your expenses only grew by 100,000. That $100,000 difference goes to your bottom line. So you made more money. So again, you make money as a business owner in two ways. Growing revenue faster than you grow your expenses or cutting your expenses dramatically. So maybe instead of 500,000 of operating expenses, you cut it down to 400,000 while keeping the same amount of revenue. You made just as much money as you did if you grew your revenue that next example I gave. So I would just really encourage you to think about and make sure you 100% which it sounds like you do understand the fundamentals of running a business, understand what it means to delegate, understand what it means to hire where you can make more money if it's different services, different plans, different whatever. Like that to me is more of an industry expert type vibe. But even before you do that, like you have to understand the core fundamentals of operating a business, especially if this is something that you want to sell and hand off to someone else or maybe have some sort of a succession plan for your own family. Like this business, if it's going to live beyond you, it has to be a flywheel effect that you can just give to someone else and they give you a lump sum of money for it. And the last piece of advice for you, Kiko, is to ensure that you're not forgetting your own retirement investing. A lot of entrepreneurs, they'll say, oh, I owe my own business. I don't have a 401k. No, I don't work for a corporation. I don't get access to these retirement accounts. Absolutely. You do. Make sure you've got that Roth IRA set up and you're investing every single year. Make sure you have your solo 401k or a set IRA set up and you're investing every single year. This is how you turned a, oh my gosh, this business is taking so much from me. I can't operate this to wait a second. I have $400,000 in this retirement account now. How awesome is this? And you can do something called a mega backdoor Roth solo 401k and turbo charge your retirement investing. That's something you're interested in as well. Just, you know, Google that one and check that one out. But long story short, there's a ton of different ways to invest toward retirement. Do not forget that as an option as a business owner. Now, our next question comes from Christian H. Christian says, Hey, Austin and Robert, I hope this message finds you well. As I'm sure you guys receive multiple questions every day. Well, Christian, we receive like thousands a week. So congrats. You're lucky. Go buy a lottery ticket. My name is Christian. I'm 18 years old and I'm a freshman in college. I currently work as a retailer making $12 an hour and I work about three days a week. On top of that, I door dash when I'm not working and I make an extra $100 a week. I have 15,849 dollars in a 401k, 812. dollars in a Roth IRA, $1,303 in a brokerage account. All of them are in the S&P 500. I live with my parents, me, my dad share a car because I don't have a car. Although I feel like I'm making the right financial decisions, I still feel behind. And I would like to hear thoughts on what I'm doing and if I should change anything. Thank you in advance. Robert. Christian Christian Christian, you are absolutely crushing it, knocking the cover off the ball. You are doing all the right things. Never, ever, ever in this instance. Think you're behind. I know 40-year-olds, a lot of them, 50-year-olds that have negative net worths. And you have all the right things happening. I am so proud of you and you have to give yourself a little bit of grace here. And just keep doing what you're doing. Keep multiplying your income. Keep investing like you're investing because you're absolutely crushing it. And if you can keep living with your parents a little longer and get more and more money put away, I would do that. And I really love the fact that you're sharing a car right now as long as it doesn't hinder you from making money. Because if it does, then I would go out and find a used car that you could buy, get some payments on it. Maybe your father would co-sign for you if you need it to get a really cheap payment so you can get up and running and make more money. But if it's not hindering your income earning, then I would say, keep doing exactly what you're doing because you are so far ahead of most people at 18 years old. I couldn't agree more. There are so many people out there that are not even at your situation in their 40s. You are doing the right thing. So here's my advice. It feels like you're not doing the right thing because you go on Instagram and you see your friends that are in college or that old teammate who is on the football team with you that's now 20 years old, so two years older than you, and they've got their own apartment and they're working some job. Or you compare yourself to others. Comparison especially at your age is the thief of joy. You are running your own race. You're in your own lane. And that just goes for everybody right now, just 18 year olds. But it is really easy to get down on yourself when you're in your teens in early 20s because you look around and you see these influencers or these business moguls or these fake gurus even that are buying Lamborghini's at 26 years old. And you're like, oh my gosh, or 19 years old. And you're like, why I'm talking about what's going on with me? I need to do it. Like it's the worst. I fell for it. Everyone falls for it. Don't fall for it. The quicker you realize that you are running your own race and that nothing in this world matters, but you were happiness on a daily basis. And the goals you've set for yourself over the next two, four, six, eight, ten years time. That's all that matters, man. Definitely 100% Christian. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't fall victim to comparison. And we'll see when you're a multi-millionaire in a few years. Our last question comes from Amanda on Instagram. Amanda says, I've been listening to your podcast for a few months now and I truly enjoy your perspectives and the friendly tone of your podcast. So first, thank you both for all you do. Amanda says your podcast has inspired me to open up a Roth IRA. So I've been researching various ETFs. By researching ETFs, I've ended up with two questions. My first question is VOO has a fee of 0.03% and I've made it a habit now of checking the fees on every ETF I look into. Sometimes, I hear you guys recommend ETFs like QQQ or even SPYI, but when I look them up, their fees are much higher than VOOs 0.3%. Can you please explain why some ETFs with higher fees might still be worth it? Is an unrealistic to expect to find more ETFs with a 0.03% fee? And then her final question is, can you explain how to read a prospectus? And yeah, no problem at all. Robert, let's talk about this first question. I kind of like the ending of it. Something to start there is an unrealistic to expect to find more ETFs with a 0.03% fee. Yes, that is unrealistic. Yes. Most ETFs are 0.1 to 0. Maybe 2 or 3% depending on if they're thematic, if they just track an index, if they're actively managed, if they're passively managed, right? All these different things go into the pricing of an ETF. With VOO, it's a passively managed index fund tracking ETF, right? So like literally, all they do is they passively track the S&P 500. There's no decision making, there's no hiring of analysts, there's no trading that takes place on a daily monthly basis. Like it's very easy for Vanguard to passively track the S&P, which is why it is so cheap to do so. Let's put the other extreme now on the table, SPYI. SPYI is the NEO's S&P 500 high income ETF. That is an actively managed ETF that trades, I would imagine, on a weekly, if not monthly basis. They're doing and using a data-driven strategy to buy and sell option contracts and then ensure that you get paid a percentage with these distributions. A lot of research, I mean, they've got tons of employees that are doing this with them. Like that's a whole operation and that operation, they've got more expenses, I'd argue, than just a passively managed index fund. So when now is it worth it to invest in those? When you can compare their performance to their competitors, right? So here's a really great example. SPYI is the NEO's S&P 500 high income covered call ETF. JEPI is the JPMorgan equivalent of that. These ETFs are claiming to do the exact same thing. Deliver monthly income and track the S&P 500, right? They are both trying to do the same thing. JEPI's total performance in 2025 was 8%. SPYI's total performance in 2025 was 16 and a half percent, twice as high of a total return as JEPI was. JEPI has a lower expense ratio than SPYI. Despite that lower expense ratio, they dramatically underperformed the markets. And so what I'm trying to say here is just because something has a lower expense ratio than something else doesn't mean it's better or than that other thing. You have to look at total performance. I think that's a great breakdown Austin. And the only thing I'm going to add is because people ask all the time, why do we choose VOO versus SPY? And for me, it's about expense ratio. It is important, but it shouldn't be the only thing you're considering unless you're investing millions and millions of dollars. But in this reference, VOO has a much lower expense ratio than SPYI. So it leaves more money in the investor's pocket. And that's why we choose that because we want to guide you as best as we can through the process. But when it comes to overall expense ratios, I wouldn't be as concerned with it as much as I would be concerned with performance over a long period of time to make sure you're choosing really good products. That's why for any of you that have been listening for a long time, Austin and I generally talk about the same ETFs and funds over and over every year because we own them and we believe they're the best strategy for all of you to have diversification but also long-term growth. You're totally right, Robert. When you compare the funds we talk about all the time, SPYI, which is the NEO's high income S&P 500 covered college TF 18% return in 2023, 19% return in 2024, and 16.5% in 2025. You now compare that to funds with lower expense ratios. It doesn't matter if the expense ratio is materially lower if you're underperforming the benchmarks. You get, again, JEPI, 9% in 2023. 12% in 2024 and 8% in 2025. I don't care if the expense ratio is zero. That's terrible performance relative to its peers. As a prudent, educated investor, you're doing this research yourself, which is shout out to Amanda for looking at these expense ratios and trying to figure out how this comes together. Now, I'll quickly answer your question on how to read a prospectus. At the end of the day, what matters most is understanding the investment objective of that prospectus when looking at these ETFs, like that's very important. Another thing, of course, is to understand the fees and then also look for tax stuff. Not all ETFs that create income are creating that income tax efficiently. JEPI, for example, uses equity-linked notes. SPYI uses section 1256 contracts. Other companies use swaps and other derivatives. It's all very convoluted, which is why we just try and steer you guys in the best direction because we've done the research. You just got to trust us on this one. What a great episode, tactical mindset, getting everyone on the right track. So please take notes and take action after this episode and share with a friend. We all have family members and friends that have red flags, green flags, and all of the above. So just share the episode because everyone needs a little help and a little guidance as we get into 2026. And if you've got just five seconds, please consider leaving us a five star review, voting in the poll below here on Spotify, leaving a comments on Spotify or wherever you're listening to this episode. And we are so, so grateful. (upbeat music)