Financial Mutants: Insights from the Money Guys Survey

Financial mutants prioritize mindset and discipline over income, enabling them to save significantly and build wealth effectively.

### Understanding Financial Mutants: Insights from Our Audience Survey
* 📊 The Money Guys show has launched a survey to explore the unique financial situations of its audience, which has received an **overwhelming response**, exceeding their initial goals by **4X**.
* 💡 The concept of a "**financial mutant**" is not defined by income or net worth but rather encompasses individuals from various backgrounds who display **specific financial behaviors**.
* 💰 A significant **85% of the audience** reported having a household net worth greater than **$100,000**, contrasting sharply with the general American population, where **60% struggle to save even $1,000 for emergencies**.
* 📈 The audience’s investable net worth is also impressive, with **78% indicating they possess investable assets exceeding $100,000**, reflecting a commitment to **disciplined wealth-building practices**.
* 💳 Interestingly, **96% of financial mutants use credit cards responsibly**, with **94% of them paying off their balances monthly**, showcasing their understanding of **managing credit effectively**.
* 🏦 Additionally, **68% of respondents maintain a fully funded emergency fund**, underscoring their **proactive approach to financial security** in contrast to the broader public.
* 🎓 When it comes to education, **60% of financial mutants attended public universities**, demonstrating that successful financial outcomes do not solely depend on prestigious institutions but rather on **strategic financial planning**.
* 🌟 Ultimately, the survey reveals that the mindset of financial mutants—characterized by **optimism and a commitment to saving**—sets them apart from the average American, with **80% identifying as optimists**, highlighting their **positive outlook on achieving financial independence**.

have you ever wondered what makes a financial [Music] mutant Brian? I am so excited about this because this is the show that we've been talking about. You know, we asked you guys, we said, Hey, we want to make content specific to you. We want to know about your financial life and what you look like. And so we asked you to fill out a survey to tell us about your unique financial situation. And boy, did you. Holy cow. Yeah, I I'm so, so pleased because this is years in the making. We've been doing millionaire kind of what makes our millionaires here at the Money Guys show. We, we, you know, we run a wealth management business as our full-time job. And we actually went and surveyed our clients. We've been doing this for years. And enough of you guys ask, Hey, that's, that's cool. And we love seeing what the millionaire behaviors are. But how about if you actually let us, the audience, kind of share who listens to the Money Guys show? And Bo, here's what blows my mind is

that we decided to ask the question or release the survey while I was hanging out with the mouse down in Florida. So, I'm on vacation, and we had a goal. You know what's funny is that we do the ABC plan for about everything we do, and we had this dream goal of how many results we were going to receive. I'll never forget, I called you the day after y'all did the live stream, and you're like, Brian, we've already blown past the number. So, give me the scoop. How did this thing play out? So, we set a goal. If we said if we could hit this number, then this would be success. This is all worth going to be great, and you guys answered in droves, and you actually went 4X our Dream plan number, and so you blew it out of the water. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for being so committed and willing to take a little part of your time to fill out the survey, and now we get to dive into it. We get to walk you

through what exactly is it that Mak a financial mutant now that is a very fine question and I think I already have a simple answer. If you want to cut the corner off on your journey to becoming a millionaire, go ahead and make sure you subscribe or like the video and ring that notification bell. So, BR, as we looked at this data, it was really, really interesting. There were some conclusions that we were able to draw as we started going through the DAT. And the first thing when it comes to being a financial mutant, one of the really interesting things is that it is not a number. When we think about financial mutants, it's not just people that make a certain income or just people that have a certain net worth. They're just people that fill in some specific number. What's amazing is financial mutants permeated all different ages, all different income ranges, and it was pretty spectacular to see. Yeah, I mean, if you think about this, one of the things I was pleased to see is that 25% of our audience makes

less than $100,000. That's household income, by the way, so that's both spouses. Um, now it is interesting when you look at this. Yeah, there are a lot of people in the 100 to 200,000, but I always remind myself, yep, there's two people working there likely. But I love seeing how the incomes are spread across our financial mutants. So, our financial mutants, it's not like they are celebrities or executives, or they are really everyday folks. Now, everyday folks that have done well in their careers, but these aren't people that are making millions and millions of dollars a year. These are people who have a good job and make a great income and are able to provide for their financial goals. And when we actually dove into it, when we talk, when we think about financial goals and building wealth, you guys were amazing. We asked, okay, what does your household net worth look like? I thought this one was a little bit mind-blowing. Well, I love that it's not all

concentrated. It shows that this really is the visual of what a community looks like. It's because we have people from at the beginning of their journey. We have people who have built up a substantial sum of money, and then we've got people all the way in between. And I imagine there's a lot of messy middle out there as well. But I loved seeing that this is a community of people who really do just want to maximize their money. But you can see the biggest group of people was that net worth that was somewhere between $100,000 to $400,000. But Bo, you made a great observation when we were kind of talking about this, is that a lot of Americans can't seem to come up with $100,000. They can't come up with $11,000. A lot of Americans can't come up with $1,000 for an emergency. And yet when we asked you guys, 85% of you said that we have a household net worth of greater than $100,000. So 85% of our folks have a net

worth in excess of $100,000, whereas 60% of Americans could come up with a thousand for an emergency. You guys do not look like your peers; you're not making the same decisions as the average American, and it's showing on your net worth statements, which is awesome. Yeah, and I think this probably has to do with a lot of the behaviors, and because that's what I want to do, show one more stat and then talk about those behaviors. Investable net worth, because we know a lot of people out there, if you owned a house at the right time, you have a big bump in your net worth naturally. But let's talk about investable net worth. Once again, it's kind of amazing, because it shows to me once again Americans, even Americans that are 60 and greater, have a hard time coming up with $100,000. But somehow with the Money Guy audience, 78% of you have investable assets greater than $100,000. That's absolutely amazing, and I think it has a

lot to do with always be buying, maximizing your journey, automating your wealth-building process, and all these things that are just setting up the guardrails, but also the great behaviors that let those small decisions turn into your Great Big Beautiful tomorrow. And so, as we thought about this, you know, obviously, we ask these questions, we're hoping that you are tracking your net worth and you're tracking your liquid assets so that you can see through time, Am I ultimately moving towards my goals? If you're not doing that, we have a great tool. You can go to learn.money.com, check out our net worth tool. We actually provide you a dashboard of the information that we think you should be looking at every single year. And if you start doing this today, whether you're someone at the very beginning of your journey or maybe you're already in financial independence, I believe that you will be amazed once you start putting these practices into place at how much your financial circumstances change just by keeping a view on it year over year over year over year. So, let's

go in a little deeper. Let's talk about it's all about optimizing your wealth-building tools. That's exactly right, and I think that we... What's funny is that you see a lot of people when we talk about wealth-building tools. Financial mutants are willing to work with the full toolbox. It's not just these kind of guides to say, Hey, we don't trust you, so we're going to shut this tool down, or This doesn't work. Because for the average American, and I've realized US Financial mutants, we are a unique group. It's a disciplined group of people that we do, and it's the discipline that allows us to make full use of all things. And one of the first things that's going to surprise people is let's talk about the tool of credit cards. Yeah, a lot of financial people in the finance space will discourage all credit card use. They'll say, Hey, no, you can't use that. You have to cut them up. You have to freeze them. You can't use them. Well, that's not the case. That's not our

view when it comes to how we think about credit cards. We think that there's a right way to do it, and there is a not right way to do it. And we look at our folks; it seems like they align with that view. Well, we even have a saying, and I don't mind, you know, we'll start this off because this lets us jump right into the data. We like to say credit card use is okay, okay? And as you can see, 96% of our financial mutants are using credit cards. And I think that that probably is going to blow up a lot of other content out there where they're saying, Hey, you can't do anything with credit cards. And that's just as I've had. We have this wealth build, this wealth management firm with all these successful people that we've been doing content on, and it's the same way with them as well, is that for a lot of people who don't struggle with basic discipline, where you can live on less than you make and you can use all the

tools credit card use is okay; however, I'll flip the script and let you know one of the things we always say. If you're one of these people that can't pay off your balance every month, then credit card debt? No way. That's right, and that's the part once again our audience echoes that. If you look at 94% of our financial mutants, they are not carrying a balance on their credit cards. You completely get it. Yeah, if you are part of that 6% that does carry a balance, maybe you're brand new. We're so happy you're here, and hopefully, you recognize that that's not the way that you ought to manage your financial life. 'Cuz compounding interest can be absolutely your greatest ally when it comes to wealth building, but if you let it work against you, it can be absolutely devastating. It's why, Brian, you have the, you know, the thing. Oh yeah, you know I got it. It's why we have the financial order of operations, which is a nine-step tried-and-true process, and high interest

debt, which is what credit cards is, falls right there at the very beginning at step three. Well, I love, and this is probably a great segue, you can't get ahead if you're paying a bank 20%. So, that's why credit card debt really is a no way. If you're not, the only way you can use a credit card is if you're paying it off every month. And that's why this is step three of the financial order of operations. Now, moving on to the next step, step four is emergency reserves. Let's see what our financial mutants do with their emergency reserves. Yeah, so basically, we ask you guys this question when it comes to emergency reserves, when it comes to how much cash you keep on hand. What does that look like? 68% of our financial mutants have a fully funded emergency fund, somewhere between 3 to 6 months of living expenses in liquid cash. So, you guys understand that this is the very thing that can keep your financial life out of the ditch. We said already at the beginning.

of the show. 60% of Americans can't come up with $1,000 for an emergency, and yet here we are. Almost 70% of our folks have a fully funded emergency fund. You guys look different than the world around you. Well, and keeping on this trend of following the financial order of operations, step five of the financial order of operations is obviously to take advantage of that tax-free growth. We like health savings accounts, but there's an unfortunate trend when we talk about health savings accounts. Remember, even to fund a health savings account, you have to have a high-deductible health plan. And we always talk about what makes HSAs so great is their triple tax advantage. You get a tax deduction on the front end, they get to grow completely tax-deferred, and if you use it for qualified expenses, it's completely tax-free withdrawals. That's an amazing opportunity, but unfortunately, only 133% of Americans are using and maximizing those HSAs because they're putting the money in, taking the tax deduction, but they're immediately clearing it out to

pay medical expenses for the year. They're using it as a kind of a clearing account. Financial mutants understand that you actually want to invest that money to let it grow and potentially get the tax-free withdrawals. So, that's why I love to show Bo. 82% of financial mutants are actually investing their health savings account, meaning they're maximizing that triple tax advantage versus only 13% of Americans. It's almost the exact opposite. It's almost like a totally contrary in view of how to use these accounts, and they can be amazing wealth-building tools into the future for you. And you guys recognize that, you understand that, and you're taking advantage of it. Can I be so bold as that when we started covering this content that HSA investment number for Americans was 4%? Then it went to 6%. It was a super low number. It's even in the millionaire Mission. I quote that. So, this is kind of a new thing that it's trending up to this 133%. Can I

single-handedly say I think that our money guy audience is skewing the data up. When you see 82%, that's not a rounding error. You guys are actually making a difference, and I think it's showing up in a lot of this data as it rolls through. All right, so we talk about being a financial mutant. We've already said it's not a specific number, and we said it is about optimizing the financial tools that are available to you. Let's talk about another thing that it's not that I think the public gets wrong. It's not status symbols. It's not about showing the world around you how wealthy you are and how well you're doing. Oftentimes, the folks that are doing that are not actually walking the walk. They're putting up a false facade of what their financial life actually looks like. But when it comes to you guys, that's not the case. Yeah, I will say we do a lot of content talking about people who are driving their wealth around instead of actually saving and building assets and having a reliable piece of transportation. They're

actually buying stuff that way more than their wallet can afford. Um, when we ask people, Are you using 238 and having to finance cars, or how do you pay for car purchases? You can see that 36% of financial mutants are paying cash, but the majority, 45%, or I'd say a good portion, 45% of you're buying a car, are using loans. And that's, that resembles us, and that's okay. Having to borrow money to pay for a car is not in and of itself a bad thing. Obviously, we would love for you to pay cash. We'd love for you to be in that position, but most of us in our financial journey, especially early on, we're just not in that position. So, we've tried to put a system in place that will help you do that. Well, if you're going to borrow money, how do it well? And that's why we came up with 238. When it comes to buying a car, whether you're buying new or used, we want you to put 20% down. We don't want

you to finance it for any more than 3 years or 36 months, and the payments for all of your auto loans, not just one loan but all of your auto loans, cannot exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. Now, Brian, that's for an affordable car. Sometimes people try to use this in stretch, and that's why we have two little caveats to make that not the case. Yeah, that's why it's luxury car, same as cash. You know, I don't know if you got a bonus or something coming up, but you got to be able to pay this off within the year. And then also, your car payments should not and cannot exceed what your monthly investment amount are. And this is why this is one of those stats I wouldn't be a good coach if we didn't squeeze you a little bit. We know you guys came in at 36% of you are paying cash. I do think it's worth noting that when you look at our millionaire survey of our clients, the number comes in at 65% are paying cash. So, this is an area

where I know is people have more success. They will be paying more cash because that's the ideal thing, but I think this does show it's okay to be a financial mutant who uses financing, especially with 238, to keep yourself honest with yourself on what you can truly afford so you can make sure you're Building Wealth through your job. And the other thing that you guys do incredibly well is your behavior, not just in terms of how you buy the automobile, but how you utilize and use the automobile. We asked you basically, Hey, when you buy a car, how long do you use it? How long does it last? And 68% of our respondents, 68% of you guys, say, I drive a car for more than eight years. That is far from the norm. We see everyday Americans that want to trade in their car every two years, every three years. That's not the case for you guys. You recognize that it is a depreciable asset that can get you from point A to point B, so you were driving it for a

long time and allowing your dollars to work for you instead of driving around your wealth. So, this is why this is probably, let's say, if you're this good and you understand. We had a great short that kind of went quasi-viral, and this is the key thing that we were saying, is that to have success, you need to drive your cars longer. You know, if you're flipping them every two to three years, you're probably doing it wrong. So, that's why you probably need a tool. Let's keep you on the straight and narrow with this. If you go to money.com/resources, we actually have a great calculator where you can fill in all of your data and see actually how much money or how much car you can actually afford. Another thing when we think about consumption decisions, obviously, we talk about automobiles, but one of the largest purchases that most of us will ever make is when we go to buy our homes. And a lot of folks have fallen into the trap of buying way more home than they can.

afford now. Don't miss here. We understand housing prices have risen rapidly over the past couple of years, and interest rates have moved up as well. So, it's allowed for houses to become more expensive. But we thought it would be interesting. Okay, we look at our financial muts. We think about you guys that live in all different parts of the country, from high-cost-of-living areas to low-cost-of-living areas. Where does your home stack up? Are you guys living in mansions? Are you flaunting your wealth? Are you showing just how well off you're doing? And the numbers are really interesting. I think the one that really caught me the most off guard is, as you guys responded, 29% of you said you don't own a home. So, basically, one in three said either I'm choosing to own a home, where I'm not at that place yet, I'm going to make sure before I make that consumption decision, I've done the things I'm supposed to do, and I'm in the place to buy the house that I should be buying instead of

stretching it and allowing myself to get way out ahead of my skis. And then the other thing I think is 40% of you actually own homes that are less than a half a million dollars. You can see it falls off very quickly, like it's barely. I couldn't even see on the greater than 5 million. You don't even see the number hardly. So, it does show that there is a band. But you guys, I, I, it shows that you're good resource allocators. You're not all of your wealth is not all in the house CU. I don't want you to be as Houser life poor. You're making sure you're following our 25% housing rules and other things so that you actually can have margin in your life to not only live your best life but also so you can save and invest for the future. If you are someone who is in that 29% that does not own a home or maybe you own a home and you're thinking about transitioning now that interest rates

have come down, and you want to move into another home. I would encourage you to go to MoneyGuide Resource. We have a great home-buying checklist. Basically, it walks you through the things you ought to think about before you make this giant life purchase, so it will help you with some of the qualitative decisions around buying a home. Well, then I would encourage you, while you're at MoneyGuy.com, we also have a home-buying calculator to help you figure out how much can I afford based on where I'm at in my financial journey, based on my household income, how much house is too much, and how much house is affordable. And if you can make that decision on such a large purchase, there's a really good chance you're going to set your future financial self up for success. Yeah, so make sure you're taking advantage of that tool because it will answer a lot of your questions. Now, let's move on to something I'm pretty passionate about. PO is um, I really think if you ask me what's one of the secrets

to what has allowed us to be successful. For me, I always talk about that somebody holding the ladder of education allowed me to kind of climb that ladder and become a better version of myself and create success. But unfortunately, education in a lot of ways is coming up empty for the younger generation. It's because what used to cost like three grand a year for me to go to college now seems like it's 20 grand. That's right. And you're like, Things are getting more expensive. And because things have gotten so expensive, we've got to pay attention to what are we actually getting out of college for something that's very noble. And it's written into kind of our society is that education is good. You still need to be on guard to make sure you're making education decisions well. So, what did we find out when we looked at our financial mutants when it comes to college and education expenses? Yeah, it's really interesting. There was this thought or I think it was when you were growing up. It was certainly the way

that I was great. Well, the way that you go about having success is you need to go to the most prestigious university, and you need to have the most prestigious degree. You need to have the top-of-the-line ladder. That's the thing that you work towards. And perhaps we were sold a bill of goods that maybe was not as accurate as we thought that it was. And so we asked our folks, Okay, based on income level, based on where you've made it in your financial life thus far, what type of institution did you attend? Did you go to a public college? Did you go to a private college? Did you go to a trade school? Or did you not go to college at all? And we found that 60% of financial mutants across all income ranges, from under $25,000 a year in income all the way up to over a million dollars of income, attended public universities. So these are not people that had to go to an Ivy League, that had to go to a private school, that had to go

to a specific and unique institution in order to achieve some sort of level of financial wherewithal, have a high income later in life. What I also liked about this data, now we did, I think it's very interesting for those of you who are listening to the podcast. I would encourage you to go to check it out on YouTube so you can see the stratification by income, because we did stratify this chart by income, and you can see that that college really does kind of, yes, it's got some slight fluctuation, but it is amazing. It stays, you know, above right around 50% up to 60%. Our College, our public College. The thing that doesn't say maybe we can improve next year, because I think that this is a college hack, is that I know a lot of people that go to community schools for the first two years, and then they can transition into public, especially, but even private potentially, and it will CH just cut the corner off of what college has to cost, like even in

Tennessee. The F. If you go to Community College, the state of Tennessee just pays those C for students for those first two years. So, get creative because we have a rule about education. 'Cause when in this period of time where we're in right now where student loan debt just seems to be crushing an entire generation, we have a rule to try to keep your head above water. And that is you don't want your first year's, you don't want your student loan exceeding your first-year income. So, if you can keep that rule in check, and that's why maybe it's Community College for the first two years, maybe it's looking at where do I go to school. It's also making sure that whatever degree you're choosing is going to have the earning potential to actually extinguish the debt. Make sure you're not skipping out on that planning step. And we wanted to say, okay, let's put some practicality to this rule. Like, if are people actually following this rule? Is this something realistic? Can you do tools and tricks like going to community

college for the first few years and then getting your degree from the bigger school or the more prestigious school or the more specialized school. And what's really, really interesting is over 75% of our financial mutants followed this rule. About 11% of you said, Hey, that what I graduated student loans was about equal to my salary. And 65% of you said that my first-year pay was greater than my loan balance. So, you guys intuitively are doing this. So, if you're someone who has children that are going to go off to college, or maybe you're influencing someone going off to college, or maybe you yourself are about to go off to college, make sure you think through this because when it comes to building future financial independence, it's going to make it a lot easier if you are not starting deep, deep, deep in the hole of student loans. And I don't mind adding the extra layer because we do, like I said, we survey our clients as well, our millionaire clients, and what we found there, and we didn't ask it on this.

question. Maybe this is something we can add in the future, but we do ask of our millionaire clients is that how many of you work in your field of study. And it was the exact inverse of where the public is because it was close to 3/4 of our clients actually do work in their field of study, which unfortunately, greater than 70% of students coming out and getting in the workforce do not actually work in their field of study. So it's once again showing and confirming be very deliberate with your choices when it comes to education. I still stand by the fact I think education is Noble. It is good for you, but you got to go in with your eyes fully open and make sure you're actually getting the value out of it. Don't let somebody take advantage of you and sell you a degree that's just not going to be able to generate yield where you can even pay it back. So when we think about being a financial mutant, we've said okay, it's not the consumption decisions that we're making, that's not

the way that we become a financial mutant. And it's not a specific number, and it's about optimizing our tools. When we really synthesized this and said, Okay, when it comes to financial mutants, what is the unique thing? Like, what's the thing that sets them apart? And what we found is that it's really a mindset. Whether you're at the very beginning of your journey or for the very end of your journey, or whether you have $100 or $100,000, it is about your mindset. It's about the way that you look at finances. It's about the way that you think about making financial decisions. And I think some of the data surrounding mindset was fascinating to me. This one, I love the fact if anybody's hung around financial planning firms. You know the typical demographic for financial planning firms is you. It's kind of gray. I mean, and 'cause people think about this stuff. What I love about The Money Guy Show is that we get to really bring this down to the masses to where we let

people as soon as possible because even when we do our millionaire study and we ask our clients, What's your biggest regrets? Very successful people still say, I wish I'd have started sooner. So, you can imagine my joy, I mean literally joy, when we figured out that the actual age that most of you guys who filled out where you discovered you had an interest in personal finance, and I like to think we had something to do with this bow, was 26 years of age. That blows my mind. I think about someone in their mid-20s, specifically 26 years old, figuring out how powerful making sound financial decisions can be and figuring out how much you can do with very, very little is mind-blowing. If you think about the wealth multiplier for a 26-year-old, it is 38.5. For that means every dollar that a 26-year-old puts to work today can turn into $38 by the time that they get to retirement. You can go out to money guide resources and see this. That means that if you just start thinking about it at

age 26. That's when you first discover, and you say, Man, I want to be a millionaire. That's a goal that I have. In order for you to do that starting at 26, you've only got to save about $200 a month. If you want to be a multi-millionaire, it's only a little more than $400 a month, which I think is unbelievably reasonable. Less than $5,000 a year for someone who figures it out at that age can be on their way to multi-million dollar status. Well, I love. I was at a party this weekend. It was a birthday, a kid's birthday party, and I was introduced by the host to this 23-year-old. And he was like, Hey, you should meet Brian. He has this money guy show. And this guy had a huge interest in aptitude. He was not familiar with our content, so I loved it. It was blue-sky opportunity kind of share. And I said, Hey, here's something I want you to

know because he's 23 years of age. I said you ought to go to our M. I know this is ridiculous to say, but I did say it is. You ought to go to money.com resources. You ought to play around with our wealth multiplier because when you understand for a 20-year-old a dollar can be 88, for a 30-year-old it can be 23, for the 40-year-old it's seven, and for the 50-year-old it's three. You'll know that what your time is your most valuable resource, and you will think about spending differently. You'll think about saving and investing differently. It just changes your entire mindset toward how you look at money, and I, it blew my mind to kind of watch his transformation as I was at this party because he came up to me at least two other times with additional questions, and I could see his mind started churning. That's what we hope we get to do for every one of you. Instead of me meeting you at a party, you're

going to stumble across the podcast. You're going to stumble across the YouTube channel, and we are going to open up your mind to a completely different opportunity than you ever thought was possible. And when that happens, it changes your behavior because we asked you guys, you Financial mutants, about your savings rates, and it was mind-blowing that one in three of you save more than 25% of your gross income. One in three, more than 25%, meaning you have figured out how powerful your army of dollar bills can be and how if you can trade a little bit of today and get it working for you, you really can have that great big beautiful tomorrow. And the faster you get to a 25% savings rate, the more opportunity and flexibility you're going to give your future self. If you don't believe us, go to moneyguy.com/resource. We have a deliverable called How Much Should I Save? and it will show you at different ages what does saving 25% actually do for me, how much of my pre-retirement income will I be able to replace when I

get to retirement, and you'll be amazed that the sooner you figure it out, the sooner you can start deferring into the future your future gratification. Your mind will be blown how powerful your dollars can be. So, we decided, hey, this is such an important piece of data to know: savings rate. Because savings rate means you get into investments. Investments actually is building your army of dollar bills, and that's what's going to work harder than you can with your back, your brain, or your hands, is because your money will work harder for you. So, we want to stratify this by several different things because we want to make sure people didn't think, hey, this makes sense that either people with high incomes, this is influencing this, or maybe it's the age that's influencing this. So, we broke it down first by savings rate by age. This one was so encouraging because we hear so many, I don't want to say negative things, but there's so much vitriol out there against the younger generations. Well, that's not the case.

with you guys. Would you believe it if we told you that for folks in our 20s, I'm leaving the under 20s for you. For folks in the 20s, 32% of you, one in three of you in your 20s, saves greater than 25%. When the rest of the world is telling you you don't have enough money, you can't save, YOLO, wait till the future, life is too expensive, inflation, yada yada yada, you guys have figured out how to save 25% of your gross income, and that is amazing. And that gets me crazy excited for the future. I mean, think because I want to make sure we give them the numbers for in case my podcast people 20s, 32% of you saving 25%. That was 20s, 30s, 30%, 40s, 30%, 50s, 36%. You're like, uh-oh, I'm retiring, I better kick it up a notch. And even people 60

plus it was 22%. Um, I will say Bo left the under 20. This is something that warms my heart because I know my own daughter. Um, and I give you parents a lot of credit on this too, is we prime the pump. I always say if you want to get your children to appreciate the value of work, but also they appreciate the value of saving and investing, give them some matching funds. Me, when they start their first job, start that custodial Roth IRA. Let's do a dollar for dollar, even 50 cents on the dollar. You figure out what the formula is, but it's amazing to see that these children that are still in the house or young adults who are still potentially in the house under 20, the savings rate, it's 44% or saving 25% or greater. That's incredible. But we didn't just stop it stratifying it by age. We said, okay, what about income? And maybe this is something that's just skewed towards higher income individuals and

again, our minds are blown that over one-third of financial mutants save more than 25% across all income. So, when you look at folks that make $25,000 to $50,000 a year, 24% of those are saving greater than 25%. And that is incredibly consistent. What I think is so interesting about financial mutants is, as income went up, so too did savings rate. What is happening with you guys is you're not letting lifestyle creep happen in the negative way. You don't start at a lower income saving 10%, and then your income goes up, and your savings rate does not follow suit. As you guys make more money, you actually save more money, which again is setting your future self up for success. That is financial mutant behavior. I want to close out with my favorite stat, and I love that this is what we get to close with. I tell you guys all the time that I feel like we're surrounded in negativity. If you think about when you watch the news, when you look on

social media. If you're not careful how you've structured what you look at, you'll think everything is negative. Sadly, sadly when Pew research, you know, kind of surveyed the American psyche to see what are people do you classify yourselves as pessimists or optimists. The majority of Americans, unfortunately, classify themselves as pessimists and not looking forward towards the future. I, I, I consider this one of those things that you are my folks for sure is because when we actually surveyed our audience and said, Hey, do you consider yourself a pessimist or an optimist? You blew the stats out of the water because you, it didn't matter what age group or income we kind of stratified it in all kind of different ways, but it was a 5 to 1 that you guys are optimists, aign in share of you, 80% of you classify yourself as Optimist. And what if you look at the chart here, even those that make 25 to 50,000, the number is high.

I mean, it's close to 75 to 80%. So, this is not just because people are fat and happy with lots of money coming in. It's just a mutant mindset thing where you kind of see the opportunity, you see the potential to make a bunch of small decisions and turn them into your great big beautiful tomorrow. And, Bo, we don't take that for granted, not at all. We cannot thank you enough for doing the survey, for participating in this with us, because what you have substantiated to us is that you guys are different. You look at the world differently, you make financial decisions differently. You are Financial mutants. And so, the encouragement we would give you is keep doing it, don't stop. Let this be fuel for the fire that keeps you moving towards Financial Independence, because we genuinely, genuinely believe that there is a better way to do money. And you guys, money guy audience, you Financial mutants, you are doing money better. So, get out there, take advantage of all the free stuff we've got.

money.com resources this survey but blew my mind. I even told the team we ought to go and see. When you hear Ramsay and them talk about how many thousands of people they did their survey on, I think we're probably the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people that responded to this. Blew my expectations. And so, this might turn into an annual tradition, but it also confirmed to me that abundance is more about mindset than it is just about money. Because you guys, you show that you are cut differently. You're doing things differently. And we don't take for granted that we get to be on this journey with you. So, I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hansen, Money Got Team Out.

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Financial mutants are not defined by a specific income or net worth, but rather by their diverse backgrounds and commitment to financial goals.

The survey revealed that 25% of the audience makes less than $100,000, while 85% have a household net worth greater than $100,000.

The community is made up of everyday people who have done well in their careers, aiming to maximize their money and build wealth.

The Financial Success of the Money Guy Audience

The Money Guy audience shows a remarkable financial success, with 78% having investable assets greater than $100,000, in contrast to the struggle of many Americans.

The audience's unique behaviors, such as tracking net worth and liquid assets, contribute to their financial growth.

The use of credit cards is common among the audience, with 96% using them responsibly and 94% not carrying a balance, highlighting their disciplined approach to wealth-building.

Credit card debt is detrimental, and the only way to use a credit card effectively is by paying it off every month.

Almost 70% of financial mutants have a fully funded emergency fund, contrasting with the 60% of Americans who struggle to come up with $1,000 for emergencies.

The importance of maximizing health savings accounts (HSAs) for tax-free growth is highlighted, with 82% of financial mutants investing their HSAs, in contrast to only 13% of Americans.

Smart Financial Decisions: Auto Loans and Homeownership

Auto loan payments should not exceed 8% of monthly gross income, and financing should be for no more than 36 months.

Paying cash for a car is ideal, with 65% of successful clients doing so, while 68% of respondents drive their cars for over eight years.

In terms of homeownership, 29% of respondents do not own a home, and 40% own homes valued at less than half a million dollars, indicating a cautious approach to housing expenses.

Navigating Home Buying and Education Costs

A home-buying checklist and calculator are available at MoneyGuide Resource to help with the decision-making process.

Education costs have risen dramatically, with public universities attending to 60% of financial mutants across all income levels.

Community colleges and strategic planning for student loans can help manage education expenses and debt.

The Importance of Strategic College Choices

Starting college at a smaller or less prestigious school and then transferring can help avoid excessive student loan debt, a strategy followed by over 75% of financial mutants.

The majority of these individuals also reported that their first-year salary was greater than their loan balance, highlighting the effectiveness of this approach.

Additionally, a strong mindset and early interest in personal finance, particularly around the age of 26, can significantly impact future financial success, with minimal savings needed to achieve millionaire status.

The Importance of Saving and Investing Early

Saving and investing at a young age can significantly impact future wealth, with a dollar's value decreasing as one gets older.

The podcast aims to change people's mindsets about money and highlight the power of saving, with one in three listeners saving more than 25% of their gross income.

The savings rate is encouraging across all age groups, with 32% of people in their 20s saving over 25%, and even higher rates for those under 20.

Over one-third of financial mutants save more than 25% of their income, with 24% of those making $25,000 to $50,000 a year achieving the same.

As income increases, so does the savings rate, demonstrating a positive response to financial growth.

The audience surveyed shows a 5 to 1 ratio of optimists to pessimists, with 80% identifying as optimists, highlighting a unique mindset focused on financial success and independence.