How Leslie & Thomas Used Boldin to Retire Early | Real Retirement Stories (ep. 103)

This episode is brought to you by the Bolden financial planning platform, formerly New Retirement Create a Financial Plan for free@bolden.com welcome back, everybody.

We are now joined by Leslie and Thomas Martin, who are both. Well, Thomas has recently retired, and Leslie has been out of the workforce for a few years. They have graciously agreed to share their story about kind of how they came to the decision to retire and what they're looking forward to over the next 10 or 15 years and kind of how they thought about this. So with that, Leslie and Thomas, welcome to the show. Appreciate your time.

Great, thanks. Happy to be here.

Yeah, I'd love to open up by kind of just getting a little bit of backstory in the preamble. We were talking about how you guys met in high school, and obviously you've had a long journey together. Congrats on making this far. And raised a couple kids, which is. Yeah, I'd love to kind of get your story and your words about your kind of life journey and, you know, why you decided to focus on reaching financial independence, you know, and why that's important to you.

I think we. We both had careers when we first got out of college, and the. The advice that we received back then was to save 10%, right? Just put away 10%. And then I remember distinctly, I was in. I was in public accounting, and a partner asked me why I was not contributing to the 401k plan. I think we were maybe newly married. We had just bought a house. We had no money. We had no extra money. And I thought, wow, I can't even fathom retirement. There's just no way. But after a while, we ended up contributing, and then you just don't miss it, right? It just automatically comes out. And I think fast forward, you know, through all of life's changes and everything, you know, you start to look and you're like, oh, we're like five years from retirement or closer. And you're like, wow. And you've just become this habitual saver, right? You just kind of put it away because that's what they told us to do, and that's what we did. And I think I got to a point where I was like, do we have enough? Like, you listen to the news. Social Security is going away. You know, the pension plans aren't there anymore that our parents, Generations had. So I very much felt like we need to take a more active role in this little, you know, put a socket away for a rainy day. But now we really need to figure it out so that's I think me that was the impetus to start looking around and figuring it out.

Did you guys discuss it as a couple or was one person driving it? I mean, clearly, Leslie, you were early or thinking about this early on, but curious.

I think as a couple, we always discussed it. You know, I've. I had many, many different parts of my career, whether it was starting off as a military officer, but. And then going into different things. But I did spend some time working at Merrill lynch as a. As an investment advisor. So we kind of. With her background as a. As a finance and CPA and my background and that we knew it was a thing. And so we always made sure we were doing it. And we would always talk about. We'd kind of have these walk conversations, like, I think we've got. I think we've got, you know, a lot of cash sitting around, or I think we need to look at our allocations. And so we'd have discussions around it and, and talk to it and make minor adjustments. But it wasn't until Leslie really got involved with thinking about it probably when I was 58. So what going back, you know, three or three years or so, because I always had the mind that I was going to work until I was 62. But I also realized at 58 that, you know, there are external forces in the job market. And I start. I really wanted to start thinking more and understanding more about it. Should we have to make a different decision? And so when Leslie started using some of the tools and Bolden being one of them, that really sparked, I think she started for a while there, we were having, like, weekly family meetings for her to go through what she saw, what she learned. And so it became. It did for a while. There was on a weekly basis, we would sit down and review whichever tool it was she was looking at to understand what she was seeing, what it was saying, what we might be missing so we can make any adjustments. So it kind of built up over time.

And I should say my first tool was an Excel spreadsheet because given my background, I was really comfortable with Excel and everything. I could do everything in Excel. And I remember sitting there one day and going, there has to be an easier way. There has to be an easier way. And at the time, Tom was like, well, why don't we just hire someone? Why don't we just turn it over to someone? And I thought, no, because I'm a DIYer and I wanted to have a little bit more. And I also have a lot of control issues. So I'd like to have some control over what this is. I don't want to have to keep running to someone to say, hey, can we do this? Hey, can we do this? What if we do that? And I really wanted to run the what ifs because we didn't really know what we wanted to do in retirement yet. We just were like, okay, do we have enough to retire? So that led me to watching a lot of YouTube. I think it was, I think it was Rob Berger, but I'm not gonna commit to that. Who talked about new retirement back then? And I was like, oh, there's software out there for the rest of us. I don't have to be a crazy financial investment advisor in order to access tools. So that's, that's where it led to. And we did have like weekly talks or daily for a while. Yeah.

So you've always been kind of self directed. Yeah. You've never used an advisor? Although just my husband Thomas was an advisor for a while.

Yep. Short lived couple years.

We, we, we would talk about it every once in a while and then we would realize that the, the questions that would need to be answered were things that we had to answer. Not like they're the same questions an advisor would put to us that we would still have to answer on our own. So we, that's when we started really working through things. Because to Leslie's point, like, I'm a, it's good enough person and she wants, you know, an order of magnitude difference in understanding of things. And so for her the tools helped that. And then for me, the tools just gave me a higher level of confidence around, yeah, I'm pretty sure we have enough and I think the allocation is good enough. So I was, I didn't really think we needed anybody else to help us figure that out. It's not rocket science to figure some of that stuff out.

I agree. It's, it's interesting though. It's. We, you know, someone let me talk about it. It's like, it's simple but not easy, like what to do. It's like save money, invest it. You know, diversify. Manage your own behavior and do it for a long, long period of time and then, and then come back to manage your own behavior. Because I think I've seen people that also hurt themselves when they, they get deeper into this process.

And that last manage your own behavior I think was where the tool start. Like Leslie, I think the tools really helped Leslie understand it all. But for me, that second manager things when you get to retirement and now you, you have to think about how am I spending this money, how am I being taxed on this money. It's allowed me to feel better about spending money in retirement because I, I see and understand how that's going to play out, worst case, best case, and don't feel paralyzed about not having a direct income anymore. So for me that was the unlock using some of the tools that Leslie's used.

Right. The license to spend. I think that's a big thing because people that are savers, we have a lot of this in our community. People, that sounds like you did a good job. You're kind of learning, saving money for a couple decades, right? Probably building a decent amount of money and doing generally the right things. And then you get close, you're like, okay, now I might have, might be living another 20, 30 years. Yay. Right? And, but then, you know, a lot of folks, they optimize for having tons of money when they're in their 90s and they're just like, well, go talk, hang out with some 90 year olds, you know, just see how it's going.

Yeah, well, we, we talk about that. We, we go, we talk about our go go slow go and no go years. And so I'm like, how do we optimize? Like right now we're in go go. So I don't want to, I don't want to blow the nest egg, but I also don't want to not do something just because I'm worried about having money when I'm, you know, in the no go here.

It's almost like you are a kid in a candy shop. You know, if I look back at my 10 year old self and I had back then, 50 cents would go a long way and you would have all these options and it's a little bit daunting to go from a fairly structured way of life while the, while there's an outside income coming in to all of a sudden the income not coming in in the same way. And it's somewhat out of your control also. So you have to be way more strategic. And I really, one of the questions I had that led me to bolden was well, which account do you tap first? What's the, what happens to your taxes? And then as I dug deeper into this because I was not a tax cpa, but I, I realized it's managing your taxable income in retirement and your expenses, you just, those are kind of the two level levers that you have control over, I feel. Or maybe it's just one. But what happens in the Market you don't have control over. So we can make assumptions, but you know, we also are very conservative and we plan for worst case. You know, what happens if we're in a slump for 10 years? What are we going to do?

Yeah, so yeah, it's super interesting. I mean a lot of our users, they are, they do get to this insight of generally the market kind of goes up into the right, but there's volatility on the way. If you look historically right, like duration, like, you know, they're, you know, you had the Great Depression, but that, that's like a one time thing. Otherwise, like things tend to recover and they, it seems like to me that recoveries are happening faster now. You know, slumps can be steeper, but then recovery can be quicker. But yeah, you know, what are the odds that you'll have more than a three year sustained slump, you know, and the worst case is like it happens, you know, because the sequence returns right as you retire and then like, you know, but if you plan ahead and a lot of folks do like the bucket strategy where they're like, okay, I'm going to just set aside cash, so I'm, I'm fine, I'll draw that down. They keep, replenish, they keep kind of like a running three year Runway ahead of themselves. If the market's going up, they're just refilling that bucket continuously. So it creates a shock absorber, we hope.

Knock on wood.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So yeah, no, it's, it's a great insight. And so it sounds like you did all these good things and then you kind of got deeper into this kind of as you approached retirement, you were like, okay, I'm going to go deep and like really think through this, how it's exactly, it's going to work. And that gave you confidence to spend more money and enjoy your life, which is a huge part of this.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that we spend more money. I think that what we do is we, we, we analyze a lot and we look at pros and cons and we decide, is this the best time to do this? Is it okay to do it? You know, you know, we have this van that we bought back in just before the pandemic hit, I think. Is that right, Tom? Just before, just early part of the pandemic. And our plan was to always travel around the country in our retirement. We want to go see the national parks. We love camping, he's a fisherman. And we just love a road trip. Like, I'm happiest when I'm sitting in the van. So that was a fairly expensive retirement home for us, you know, and it wasn't. It's not lavish. It's just. It's great though. But that was a big kind of like, will this last for the go go years? Right. Is this worth the money? And then over time you need to put in things like a new suspension, some modifications, and so you have to consider those expenses. And if they will help in your lifestyle in retirement, then it's almost a non issue. If they're just kind of like, well, maybe we'll use it or maybe it'll be better. We start to really get into analysis paralysis.

You've been. But you've been using the van.

We've been using it, yeah.

We're going on a trip next or in two weeks for 14 days.

What kind of van is it?

It's called a Winnebago. A Winnebago Revel.

Oh, the Revel. Yeah, I know those. So I'm like, I've gotten into wing foiling and people. If you have lots of money, people show up. Like the ultimate accessory is like the Sprinter Revel thing that like has all your gear and you can sleep in it and hang out at the wing foiling spots or wherever you're going.

Yeah, you can go boondocking and everything. And we were lucky. We found it used locally. Really good shape. So, you know, that's the other thing we did. We want to go buy a brand new van that was going to cost a small mortgage. No. So, you know, we were patient. We kind of looked around, we considered a lot of options and Tom was really the driving force because I was, at the time I was like, I don't think I can live in a van. I don't know.

What does boondocking mean? I don't know. I'm not, I'm not that into the van culture, the van life.

Camping. Camping. And none like Bureau of Land Management land, like where there's not really a campsite, but it's public space where you can camp. I don't want to. The thing I don't want to gloss over because we kind of, we kind of speed bumped it is for while it's allowed the, like the license to spend. For me, it was when there was a decision point about do I retire now. The work that Leslie did with Bolden and some of the other tools. Like I've had a job since I was 10 and I have worked, you know, continuously. I worked in construction and blacktop and everything. Just to pay for college and beer in college. And then I said, like, I said, like, I was in the military. And then I always just through. Through ups and downs. Like, it's like, oh, you know, the. When the bubble hit in 2000 and I was in technology, right, I was back to work in two weeks. I don't know how I did it, but I was back to work in two, like. And all of a sudden we're at a decision point, you know, and I still have a kid who's in college that I'm paying for because of what he's done and how that was set up. You know, we were at a decision point. And if, If I couldn't look at some of the modeling that Leslie had done with the tools, and if I couldn't have really seen the forest for the trees, you know, I wouldn't have just said, I think I'm ready. I would have said, no, I'm going to go find something different to do or change what I'm doing, because I don't like to do this anymore. To me, that was a big. That was the first one. And then the next one was, you know, like, about 90 days later, I felt the license to spend. To come back based upon what we were saying.

Well, I think it's. It's so important, right? The. You know what? I think a lot of people, they realize as they, as they get 50 plus, it's like, oh, they can see. It's. Especially if they're strategic about their time, too. Like, hey, after 75, it might not be the same game, you know, definitely 80. Like, I just, you know, even, like, you guys look pretty healthy. You're obviously active doing stuff, but you just never know what's going to happen. And then you don't get that time back. So every year becomes super important. But then I also, all the time we talk to people, they have the one more year syndrome where it's like, oh, I'm working, or I'm. I'm, you know, they're deep in their careers, they're making a lot of money. They're like, well, I could work another year and make a lot of money, but then I don't get that year back and then what happens? And so, and they kind of. They keep doing, and then they wake up when they're like, okay, Now I'm, whatever, 65.

And like, we had the unfortunate experience of watching my parents who were both very active, very healthy. My dad was in New York State. They have this thing called the Empire State Games, and He was a, a senior swimmer. And we watched them go from that to being in, in a, in a home in six months with one with dementia and one with als. And, and so to me, I look at that and that was when they were in their mid-70s and they went from very active to not active. And so that was a kind of a wake up call to, to realize, like, yeah, I'm 61 and I'm not taking any, you know, anything, anything prescription wise, and I'm somewhat healthy, but that could all change tomorrow. So let's enjoy retirement while we can.

Right? I think Jeff Bezos has the regret minimization framework. If you project forward and be like, okay, well, imagine I worked TILL I was 68 and then, and then something happened, you know, like in the next couple of years, which I've seen in this, you know, because we see so many stories. Would I rather do that or I'd rather be like, okay, it's 61. I, like, I had seven great years of trekking around the country with my partner and it was like, fantastic. So many experiences.

So I think I saw that data because they were like, by the time at 65, 80%, I think it was, there was. Folks like, 80% of American men will be dealing with their first real medical crisis at 65. So, like, if you work till 65, there's an 80% chance that you will step into retirement with a chronic medical condition that you have to deal with. So starting early is a good thing.

Okay, we're gonna have to put that on our plan, our forecast, like, I can't remember.

I remember I watched the data and was going through all the YouTubers. They were looking at this data that talked about when most people have their first, like, kind of chronic medical condition that really starts to affect their health in retirement. And for 65, I think was the age for most men. So you start to think about that even if you retire at 62, that's only three good years before you have an 80% chance of, you know.

So what do you think are the big. What are the biggest things that you've learned in this process outside of Bolden, but just like in general, as you've gone through this.

Well, for me, I think I learned that, well, one, it's possible to do it yourself. You do not need to have a financial advisor. You do not need to have. And for me, it's about, it's, you know, I have this thing about paying for parking. I also don't want to pay for advice. Like, you know, But I will pay for a tool and I will pay for things that will make me more self efficient or self sufficient about making decisions that affect my life. And I think I've known this for a while, but I really like to have control over how things unfold if I can, you know, I want to have control over the inputs. So that, and the fact that you can't just be a passive retiree, you know, you need to have, you need to have some ownership and some skin in the game and you have to know, you have to educate yourself in order to kind of make sure that. I mean, I put in assumptions like what happens if we live till 95? And Tom will say, well, we're not going to live to 95. But really the, the risk is that we live to 95.

And so we, I hope you live to 95. We'll see.

We don't live. Yeah, I don't know, you know, it's a, it's a double edged sword. So for me that those were kind of the bigger aha type of things.

The fear of retirement goes away. One, Once I had the understanding, I comfortably decided to retire because I had the information I needed and understanding that I wasn't going to implode and that the world wasn't going to end and I probably would be able to buy more camera lenses for my cameras. And that was the big one for me because like I said, I always felt like I knew what we had, I knew how it was allocated. It all seemed right. But it wasn't to the level of confidence to be like, yeah, I don't, I don't need to do this anymore.

Right. I think that we're talking to more folks that are, you know, they, there's a lot of thinking that goes in, especially in accumulation and kind of getting this decision. But then there's also like now ongoing work where people are like, okay, you know, like Joe Kuhn, he talks about, he goes into a year, he has a plan for like, I'm going to spend this much money, here's my asset allocation, this is what I expect to happen. Then he tracks it over the course of the year and at the end of the year rebalances his portfolio, sees how he did versus spending versus not spending, and then recasts the plan again. And that's. So there's a regular cadence to the work and he likes having that visibility and also understanding the scenarios. Okay, if the market does go through a big downturn, how am I going to react? Or the market goes through a Big upturn. How am I going to react? He's thought it through in advance. Sounds like you're in the same place.

Yes. It's all the great work Leslie gets to do.

I like doing it, though, so it's not work.

Yeah, it's good. I mean, it's great. I can see why you guys are good partners in terms of balanced way of thinking about things. Are you open to sharing? I mean, I know you use Bolden, and you've had your own spreadsheets. Any other tools or communities that you find valuable?

Well, like I said, I. I've watched a lot of YouTube content providers, so I've learned a lot through that.

Who are your big ones, Leslie?

There's like, Robber, Diamond, Nest Egg, Joe Kuhn, you know, they're all out there and. But I do find, you know, early on, I think it was maybe after a few months of using Bolden, I wasn't sure if I was using the software correctly, and Tom didn't have the confidence yet that I was hoping he would have. So we did a call with Nancy. We did one of those coaching sessions, which was invaluable. Highly, highly recommend. And then your classroom, both the live and the taped, you guys just have a wealth of information. It's also not just about using the software, although that's most of it, but also just talking about issues in retirement. You know, I've looked at. I've looked at Empower. We're Fidelity folks. So Fidelity has some stuff on their site. There's just a lot of, oh, and chat. GPT. I cannot leave out my new bff. So, yeah, things like that. And it's very much. And then I talk to other retirees. You know, I've got a group of friends, and every once in a while, we'll. We'll get down into that hole and be like, okay, what do we do about this? You know, when the tax law changed recently, people are like, okay, what does that mean for us? You know, trying to figure it out.

It's interesting. Chatgpt, do you. Do you feel like it's getting better, like, over time?

Well, she's just started with it.

I just started with it. But I can tell you that even being newer to actually using it, I can tell that if I ask it too much, it kind of goes off the rails a little bit and doesn't really give me the information. So then I'm back to like, okay, let's back up the bus here and parse it out into something way more simplistic. And then I typically get fairly good advice, but I triple check it, you.

Know, So I left a career in technology strategy where I've been playing with ChatGPT for the last four years. And what it's doing now is significantly better than what it was doing. And I'm very like, even now, as I use it and play with it, I'm sometimes very surprised about how good. And to Leslie's point, like, if you, if you can specifically prompt it in an appropriate way, you get a very. Because I've gone and I'll do the, I'll do the research to double check what it's saying. And it's, it's getting pretty good to get you to that 80%. If you think about. We were doing some, we were looking at some timeshare activity and Leslie was able to do some work in about an hour that would have taken her two weeks in spreadsheets to at least get us to that next decision point or that like, what's the next question we need to figure out for ourselves or whatever. So it's becoming very interesting to use it in some of these scenarios.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's pretty interesting. I think it's mostly right. But yeah, to what Leslie's saying too. It can sometimes do crazy things.

Yeah, it's trust and verify.

Trust and verify. I think the community thing is really cool too. We're seeing, I think this happens with your friends. People talk about it especially as they go through life stages. It could be raising kids, whatever college is, but then, yeah, retirement. We're also seeing folks form up through our Facebook group where they're just creating these 8 to 10 person kind of accountability teams essentially, or whatever, support groups, and they talk about their plans. Some people are fully open, some people, you know, keep it confidential, but they kind of talk through the, some of the issues they're running into. And that seems to be pretty, Pretty valuable.

Yeah, I put my name on the list.

Well, yeah, let me know if you, if you do one. Where we're trying to. We're thinking about, like, should we facilitate this? Because we're definitely seeing this is like a thing.

It's. It's a leap of faith, I think, and trust. You know, I would personally like to find people locally where you can.

Yeah. In person. I think a lot of. It's also just, you know, your, your world changes. Right. Like a lot of us have friends or associates from work, and then if you stop working, that's gone and you're in a different phase of life. Your kids are, you know, out of the house or whatever. There's a lot of data around that, too.

That's all. So that's, that's interesting because that's a bigger for. That's actually a really big part of retirement that, you know, the financial plan like that gets you comfortable and ready. Maybe if you get comfortable and ready earlier, you can start focusing on some of that other stuff before you retire so that you're more ready for it. It's interesting because while I'm older, none of my friends are retired, but Leslie has some friends that are a little older than her, and some of them are retired. So she talks to them a lot more than I talk to any of my friends, because most of my friends aren't even think like they're 55, 58. They're not thinking about retirement yet.

It's hard, I think, for most people, they think they're going to work. Back Tom, to your earlier statement. Many people think they're going to work till early 60s, mid-60s. And then if you look at the data, many people are out of the workforce, either voluntary, many unvoluntary in their late 50s or right around 60. And depending where you live, that can be challenging. This all comes back to hike. Managing expenses is a huge part of this thing. And, and, but there are huge levers you can pull. We have friends that are, they live here in Northern California, but they're thinking about moving to Idaho where it's just way cheaper and doing some stuff there. And they love nature and it's just the cost of living is lower and so forth and so forth. Or you can be, some people go to Mexico for five years. You know, you can live in or wherever, Southeast Asia, you know, going around the world.

We had all of these and we continue to have these conversations like, oh, Mazatlan might be nice, you know, who know.

Totally. That's awesome. Okay, well, I think my last question would be like, any last piece of advice. Actually, I have two questions. So one is for your kids. So, Leslie, right. You're into this and Thomas has gotten into it, or he's pretty well educated. Are your kids this way? Because one thing we see is in families very often there's like a banker person, they know all about it and they're bringing other people along, and then they're concerned with their partner or other people in their families. Like, hey, if you guys are wildly, you'll probably, here's my not knowing your numbers. My prediction would be like, you're probably going to give your kids a lot of Money. They may or may not know this.

And, well, I'm going to die with zero.

Oh, you're going to die with zero percent.

Who knows if I'm. If I live to 95?

So we've actually, that was just recently something that we've been starting to talk about because we have two very different. One doesn't spend a dime and the other one can't hold a dime. Like, how do you impart some of this on them? Yeah, it's been part of our morning walks lately is thinking about what that's going to mean to them as we. As we think about this.

I think it's very interesting as they. The two boys are very different. One of them, I think, understands that money is there to work for you. Right. You're not there to work for it, you have to work for it, but it's really there to work for you. And he will work hard and make money to spend the money. Whereas the other one thinks that he'll go to the grocery store and come back and say, mom, I saved a buck on this. Isn't that great? And I'm like, that's terrific. He's also the one that thinks that he can live off of a hundred dollars a week, you know, for everything. You know, like food, clothing, shelter. I'm like, okay, here in Seattle. Let's go. Let's. Let's see how you do that. Yeah, so it's very different. But I think that they understand at a very early age, we tried to impart upon them what money was and what it can do. My mom's husband has always, whenever he sees them now as young adults, he'll. He'll talk about the money machine and it's compounding and. And he tries to let them know, just put it in and let it grow. You know, that's part of it. That's part of their basic understanding. And I have been sorely. We talk about this too, the lack of financial education at an early age, even in high school, as kids are leaving school, they're 18, some of them are not going to college. And they need to know how to manage money. They need to know what to do, because I don't know what their future is going to be like. You know, I'll be gone. When they're confronting this stage of life.

I think this generational stuff is super important. And like, the literacy part of it's super important. It does happen in families, you know, especially families that have. Well, if they're financially literate, they make good choices. They Want to teach the next generation and surround them with the support to make, continue to make good choices. Because easy to blow money. It's very easy to get rid of money.

And I think Tom and I, we, we grew up with what we needed, not always what we wanted. And so we learned early on and we both worked. I mean, I babysat at 12 and he started working and we've always just worked and we always just kind of said, all right, if we want to buy that pair of jeans, you're going to have to save up to go do that. And otherwise our parents would provide us with a pair of jeans, but it may not be the ones that we wanted. So, you know, we tell our kids, and I think we raise them pretty much along the same lines. They probably had a little bit more, but we were very conscious that they needed to understand the value of money and what it could do for you.

That's awesome. All right, well, any last big lessons that you would want to share?

For me, the only lesson I would share is whatever day you think you're going to retire, have your plan figured out four or five years before that so that you can then focus on a lot of the other, like, non financial aspects of retirement prior to getting there. Building the different friends network, building the different, you know, activity network over those four or five years. Because having it done a little early, if something, if something good happens and it gives you the opportunity to retire or something bad happens and it causes you to have to retire, you're not scrambling, you've got the confidence that you're not going to implode. So I think to me that was. Fortunately, Leslie started it like she said three years ago because I ignored it for probably two of those three years. But I think it really helped. And I wish I had even thought, thought about it earlier.

Yeah, I would say, you know, saving is great. Saving with a plan is probably even better though. You know, have a plan. Even if, you know the plan is going to change, our plan is still changing, but we have a structure around it. So we have just, we have a better understanding of what we can do and what we want to do. And we're trying to bring those two together. And having, having a plan is a great place to start.

Yeah. Because you can see if you hit your plan. Yeah. I think it's so important to learn the invest, the lesson of investing too, that you have to invest. I think a lot of folks, they're like, first you have to save, but if you don't invest, it's it's next to impossible to reach escape velocity. You got to capture the market, get that money to work for you, and that makes a giant difference. And if you reach this escape velocity, then everything changes because suddenly you're, like, spinning cash and you. Surprising.

And I think, too, for us, we've lived through a couple pretty major downturns in the market. And there was one time I thought I was. I got scared. This is in the early 2000s. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to pull everything out and put in cash. And Tom was like, no, don't do that.

Great decision. Good job, Tom.

I'm thankful for that because, you know, you get scared and you just don't know what's going to happen. And over time, though, things write themselves, they get better. I think the trick is having a good allocation that you feel comfortable with. You have to have a little dry powder, you know, in reserve. It's. You got. You do have to be invested these days. I just don't understand how you could do it without it.

So I think I was. I was just listening. It really hit me, like, having a plan allows you to have a different conversation. Like, with the plan, if I come in and say, that new Honda gold wing, the 50th anniversary edition, $33,000, I really want that. That's like, that can then go and, like, well, let's go look at, like, let's go see what that means. Which is a very different discussion than an emotional reaction to, like, well, no, we don't have the money. Like, Like. But I think having the, like, having the plan allows us to have a different type of conversation around things like that. Right now, I'm delaying the purchase of a new Honda Goldwing, but it was a different conversation about what that would mean than just my emotional need or desire and a reaction around it. So.

And what I really love is that if he comes to me with these ideas, I can go wait. I have to go put it into Bolden first and see if we can do that.

All right. Well, look, this is awesome. Leslie and Thomas, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story and journey here. There's a lot of, like, super gems in here. Hopefully it'll be helpful to other folks in our community. They're going through the same journey and thinking about it, and I'm. I'm super glad to that. I mean, it's amazing for me personally to meet folks in our community and kind of what they're doing, hear their stories and, you know, their people are so thoughtful and smart about it. I'm just trying to pump you up or gas you up, glaze you up, as our kids would say.

I really am amazed by the community they are. There are some very knowledgeable people. I've learned a lot, and I'm really grateful that Bolden exists. I just. I can't tell you how grateful we are. It's really changed everything.

Well, it goes both ways. I mean, it definitely. I feel like our work is really working with the community to capture. I mean, like, you know, you've got this accounting background, and Thomas has a different experience, you know, going through kind of work and being an advisor and stuff like that. It's just, you know, we want it to work for everybody and be kind of a bottoms up thing that, like, people believe in, because there's a lot of other smart people that are, you know, have put real time into it and. And take those lessons and bring them to other people. But that's. That's the work. So, anyway, well, with that, look, I appreciate it, and hopefully you had a great Labor Day weekend, and hopefully your trip is awesome. I. I might want to hit you up on the. The sprinter van zone is like Tom's gold wing. I'd like to have it, but I don't know if we're quite ready to put the money down.

Thank you very much.

All right, thanks, guys.