Millionaire Interview 367

Here’s our latest interview with a millionaire as we seek to learn from those who have grown their wealth to high heights.

If you’d like to be considered for an interview, drop me a note and we can chat about specifics.

This interview took place in April.

My questions are in bold italics and their responses follow in black.

Let’s get started…

OVERVIEW

How old are you (and spouse if applicable, plus how long you’ve been married)?

We turn 31 this year, and we’re celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary!

Do you have kids/family (if so, how old are they)?

Our firstborn is a brilliant and energetic 3-year-old, born right before the COVID pandemic began, who didn’t sleep through the night for the first 14 months.

We need a breather.

What area of the country do you live in (and urban or rural)?

My husband is Active Duty Navy, so we’re currently stationed at the biggest West Coast naval base, in the suburban bliss of an urban coastline.

What is your current net worth?

$1.45M, give or take the daily market conditions.

What are the main assets that make up your net worth (stocks, real estate, business, home, retirement accounts, etc.) and any debt that offsets part of these?

• $50K cash. This is twice our usual amount, but we’re looking forward to purchasing an Electric Vehicle (EV) later this year/early next year.
• $400K in Roth IRAs (includes my 2022 rollover from Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the government 401(k)).
• $170K in Roth TSP (husband) + Roth 401(k) (me) + traditional matches by our employers
• $725K in taxable investment accounts.
• $120K in toddler’s 529 (more on that later in this interview)

No business, no real estate, no property nor debt.

EARN

What is your job?

My husband is an active duty U.S. Navy officer and will mark a decade of service next year. He’s equivalent to mid-level management.

I’m a Navy veteran working part time as a paraplanner at a personal finance firm specializing in military and federal civil service careers. My firm is a flat-fee, fiduciary business, and all of us at the firm are some combination of military veteran and/or spouse, so we live(d) the lifestyle that our clients live(d). My job is 100% remote, which is perfect for our clients and us employees that frequently move with the military.

What is your annual income?

It’s astonishing that our household income is around $150,000 with only one of us working full time!

Granted, part of that is due to the Housing Allowance my husband received for being stationed in such a High Cost of Living (HCOL) area.

Tell us about your income performance over time. What was the starting salary of your first job, how did it grow from there (and what you did to make it grow), and where are you now?

I was raised in the financial independence community just as we figured out that it had a name. As young as age 5 I was doing odd jobs around the house and was paid my age in hourly wages (at 7 years old I got $7 per hour).

In my home state, 14-year-olds can legally work up to 4 hours a week, so I started working at age 14 in 2006. I had a wonderful job at an after-school tutoring center that I had attended as a student for nearly a decade prior, and earned a whopping $6.25 an hour minimum wage, totaling $100 a month before taxes. A few weeks later the state’s minimum wage increased to $6.75. By the time I left that job to attend college 4 years later, I was making more than $12 an hour, and earning around $500 a month before taxes.

In college from 2010-2014 I felt like I was flush with cash between the monthly $250-$400 stipend that comes with a ROTC scholarship, and I received a “bonus” of a few hundred each semester due to a unique scholarship at my alma mater. I loved attending Rice University so much that I became a tour guide so that I could make an additional $20 per hour-long brag tour session.

Throughout my teen and college years, I invested what I could into my Roth IRA. At some point in my 20s my Roth IRA reached six figures, but I was too busy working to notice.

My husband had a similar experience but with different jobs: he was a lifeguard and swim instructor in high school, and his obligations at the U.S. Naval Academy precluded side jobs, even in the summers. He wasn’t aware of a Roth IRA at the time, so he saved in a Savings Account.

By the time we started our naval careers in mid-2014, we were each earning around $60,000 a year; I was earning a little more because I got an extra allowance for being overseas, and an extra $15K bonus for a selective qualification program.

We were both working insane schedules on different ships, as much as 100 hours a week in port and round the clock (almost literally) when we were underway at sea. By the time I left Active Duty 5 years later, in 2019, I was earning more than $80,000 annually. He’s now earning closer to $140,000 annually about 9 years into his career. Except in 2014, we maxed out our TSPs and Roth IRAs annually.

By the time 2018 rolled around, the government added 5% matching to the TSP. We both opted in as soon as we could.

My part time work nowadays is about $15K annually, and isn’t enough to max out a 401(k) in 2023, but I still contribute to my 401(k) anyway. My husband and I continue to max our Roth IRAs and he maxes his TSP. I get a 4% match and he gets a 5% match; both our employers match via traditional.

What tips do you have for others who want to grow their career-related income?

You can significantly increase your military pay by taking on extra skills and overseas assignments that come with extra Allowances and sometimes Special Pays and Bonuses, but such assignments are huge time and lifestyle commitments. Because of this, my parents advised me to go overseas first in my career, and I’m so glad I did!

The other major leverage in the military is geographical tax advantages. Military paychecks are generally split into taxable “pays” and tax-free “allowances.” Had we been in a designated combat zone, we would’ve had our pay entirely tax-free and could’ve done an equivalent to a Mega Backdoor Roth with our TSP, as well as invested tax refunds into our taxable accounts. That said, we weren’t ready to volunteer for combat zones for the sake of a Mega Backdoor Roth TSP.

We were incredibly frugal during our dual-miliary years because we didn’t have time at home, and we hardly had space on our ships. We had to prioritize storing uniforms, personal safety gear, underclothes and socks, hygiene products (soap and foot powder and the like for months at a time), office supplies and a range of weather-related clothing in a square footage around the size of most folks’ home office desks. Some folks on ships found room to store a gaming laptop, but much larger than that was hard to “stow for sea.”

What’s your work-life balance look like?

Long workweeks on a ship are insane. My husband will have a better answer about his work-life balance once he’s off his current shipboard assignment.

Nowadays, I work for 20 hours at the most in a week, or about 4 hours each weekday, all remotely. This gives me time to manage household errands like groceries, and unexpected events like toddler sick days at home.

Do you have any sources of income besides your career? If so, can you list them, give us a feel for how much you earn with each, and offer some insight into how you developed them?

I co-authored a book with my dad that yields around $50-$200 a month in royalties. As I jokingly explain to friends “it’s not J.K. Rowling money!”

As a U.S. veteran who was honorably discharged, I also receive tax-free VA disability compensation monthly for the rest of my life. In 2023 with two dependents (spouse + child under 18) on a 60% disability rating, I receive a little over $1500 a month. The compensation is indexed to inflation, so it changes annually with the rate of inflation.

SAVE

What is your annual spending?

We usually spend around $40-60,000.

In 2023, we’re at our highest annual spending ever at $100,000, thanks to our current very high cost of living duty station. Almost $47,000 of that is just rent.

What are the main categories (expenses) this spending breaks into?

• Rent is our largest bill at $3900 monthly, which is a bargain for our 3-bed, 2-bath suburban rental in our area.
• Daycare for one child is our second largest expense at around $1100 a month.
• Food and drinks (especially coffee) are between $800-$1000 a month, and we usually order take out once a week. My husband prefers home brew coffee and his favorite coffee pot (retail $70) comes with an insulated carafe that keeps the coffee warm ALL day.
• Utilities run around $500-$700 a month, depending on how often we have to heat (gas) or cool (electric) the house. This includes cell phone and internet service.
• Car gasoline runs around $150 a month. My husband’s normal base commute is only 20 minutes/15 miles one way, but one of the other bases he has to liaison with at least monthly is a 3 hour round trip.
• Streaming services and subscriptions we value, like Disney+ and the Wall Street Journal, are around $75 a month.
• We spend maybe $1000 jointly on clothes and shoes in a year. Our relatives love dressing our toddler and send outfits and shoes, so we spend very little on her clothes and shoes, perhaps around $250 a year if that.
• We spend maybe $2000 a year on toiletries and household items. Toilet paper ply count matters to us after living with one-ply on ships!
• We carry umbrella liability, renters, and car insurance for about $1000 a year. We only have one car at present, and because the majority of our furniture is second hand (more on that later), we don’t need a lot of renters insurance to replace possessions.

Do you have a budget? If so, how do you implement it?

We’re big fans of anti-budgeting:

• First we max out retirement accounts (IRAs and 4-oh-somethings),
• Then we pay the bills (typically via credit card and/or autopay—and we pay the credit cards in full),
• Then we auto-deposit to the taxable investment accounts,
• Then we have some fun,
• And finally we shovel any leftover money into taxable investment accounts again.

We’re also fans of tracking expenses for the first 1-4 months in each duty station. We need at least four months because some utility companies bill once every two months vice monthly. By the time we’re four months into a new duty station, we know what we’re spending and we have the cadence down for billing cycles.

Cash flow-wise, we didn’t get to combine our households until almost a year after marrying because we were still in two different duty stations. Of course, we each have permission to access and manage each other’s accounts (we call this “jointing”), and we’re each other’s beneficiaries, but we didn’t consolidate to one set of accounts. It’s truly “our” money, not “his and hers.”

For bills, when we were earning the same amount, we did a rough split of everything. For example, I’d pay the rent from my checking, my husband would pay the utilities and groceries (typically with a credit card paid off via his checking), we’d each take care of the maintenance and gas on our respective cars, and we’d tease each other about who picks up the check when we’re spending the night out. (It’s all our money, after all!) If one of us has lower account balances than the other, we freely move money back and forth to “even out.”

We competitively invest against each other. When we were earning equivalent paychecks, we both maxed our Roth IRAs and TSPs, so the competition came down to who could put more money into their taxable investment account after paying a fair share of the household expenses. Now that my income is significantly less, we still max both Roth IRAs via his paycheck and split our leftover cash between our two investment accounts, and see whose allocation yields higher returns.

When we reduced our spending in categories like housing and transportation, we had more to spend on fun, and to invest. Before the COVID pandemic and starting our family, we rented apartments or lived in base housing to reduce our housing costs. After living on a ship, a two-bedroom 1200 square foot apartment was spacious! We lived within bikeable distance of our offices when we could to reduce commuting expenses and get in an extra workout. Naval bases are notorious for not having enough parking, and lots are up to a mile’s walk away from the (afloat) office, but most bicycle racks are less than 100 feet from the (afloat) office.

We figured out early in our marriage that neither one of us is comfortable making a non-emergent purchase over $500 without talking to the other. If a necessary car repair cost $800, we’d do it and tell the other at first opportunity. If a new item costs $600, we’d have a 45-second conversation about it. That conversation is usually two parts: what are we doing to purge what the new item replaces/upgrades, and how are we buying the item so that we don’t tap the emergency fund. The purge aspect is an incredibly useful habit when you have no time to clean and organize your home life and want to live in cheaper and smaller spaces to save money on housing. The military pays for our moves, but we do have a “weight allowance” for household goods; the purge method keeps us from going over our allowance.

When my husband pitched buying an Xbox One, the games, the accessories, and the annual subscription were nearly $700 in 2017. He mentioned that it also functioned as a DVD player (electronics purge!), and that he would trade in his old Xbox 360 (and old games) so that he could buy extra controllers and headsets for group play. I was sold!

What percentage of your gross income do you save and how has that changed over time?

All of the following was in our 20s.

At the beginning of our careers in mid-2014 through our first few years of marriage in lower cost of living duty stations, our savings rate was about 60-90% (because sea duty and getting qualified at our jobs.) We had no time to spend money, and we had our savings on auto-deposit/invest, so it was easier to save than it was to spend.

During the pandemic our savings rate was about 40-60%. Before the pandemic, we’d made some major life changes such as me switching to the Navy Reserve (aka working “a weekend a month and two weeks a year”) and moving across the country to base housing in a higher cost of living duty station. We had reduced to a one-car household (no daily commute for me! And we lived less than two miles from my husband’s work building) and welcomed a baby to the world. That perfect storm worked in our favor during the pandemic because I became the stay-at-home parent, my husband became the work at home parent, and our baby couldn’t attend daycare. During the pandemic, the stroller got more mileage than the car.

Our savings rate has dropped to about 10%-30% at our current high cost of living duty station with a toddler in daycare. We went back to two cars and moved off base post-pandemic (a long story for another time). Our savings rate was the worst when our rent + utilities were $700 more per month than my husband’s initial military Housing Allowance. After a year of complaints from the military community, the region’s Housing Allowance increased by nearly $1000/month, and we were then able to pocket $300/month of the Housing Allowance.

What’s your best tip for saving (accumulating) money?

Max out your retirement accounts first, preferably via autopilot.

By putting away the max in IRAs and 4-oh-somethings, we were saving around $25,000 per person per year without thinking about it.

We then got competitive about saving even more in our taxable investment accounts. We started with an auto contribution of $1000 per taxable investment account per month, and if we had leftover cash at the next payday then we shoveled that into the taxable accounts too. Sometimes the “shoveling” was only $90, other times, especially when underway, it was closer to $500.

What’s your best tip for spending less money?

Own less stuff. There’s less to organize, less to clean, less to maintain, less to keep track of, and less to insure. You don’t feel like you have to validate your couch’s worth by spending all of your time on it.

A hilarious side note: my husband and I would bet on chores. Which team was going to win the World Series? The loser gets to clean the bathrooms for a month. Who will win the investing competition this month? The loser has to do the laundry for two weeks. It’s a fantastic way to enjoy the fun of betting without dealing in money.

Choose digital over physical. We have physical copies of birth certificates and legal documents, but we digitized everything else. We borrow books from the library and purchase digital books vice printed copies. We stream or download media instead of buying discs.

Don’t buy it unless you know you’re going to use it a lot and it provides value. We spend $3000 on mattresses because we know we’ll spend eight hours a night on them, but we have cheap mis-matched lamps in our bedroom because we hardly ever use them. After years of wearing uniforms, we realized we valued quality underwear and socks more than the latest fashion trends. Our family bonds over surfing and video games, so we’ll buy quality longboards and gaming devices.

As my college graduation gift, my parents offered me whatever furniture I wanted from their house, shipped to my new duty station at the military’s expense. My husband and I still have about 80% of that furniture, all but mattresses and couches that were worn out from a handful of moves. We probably saved around $20,000 in furnishing costs, and my parents got rid of their old furniture (that went through multiple moves in their military careers) for free.

My husband and I have been through two hurricane evacuations, and a wildfire once came within 3 miles of our base housing. Multiple times we’ve packed suitcases of clothes and identity documents in the car and figuratively kissed the rest of our stuff goodbye. We never actually lost anything due to a natural disaster, but it was a liberating relief to know we could leave most of it behind. As tenants, it was also liberating to know that if the house was destroyed in a natural disaster, it was the landlord’s problem.

What is your favorite thing to spend money on/your secret splurge?

For my husband, quality electronics and Green World Coffee from Wahiawa, Hawaii are worth it. (You can order Green World Coffee online, of course!) He values electronics with quality graphics and high computing power and enjoys sipping his Kona-grown coffee black.

For me, quality, zero-drop, comfy shoes and merino wool socks are worth it. Today, my favorite brands are Xero shoes and Smartwool socks. After nearly a decade of sweaty feet in steel toe combat boots, awful oxford uniform shoes (google the term “Bates blowout” if you’re really curious), and military socks, I refuse to wear any uncomfortable footwear.

INVEST

What is your investment philosophy/plan?

Maximize your contributions, let them compound, shovel in more if you can.

We are invested in broad market ETFs and mutual funds. We’re 100% equities because we’re young and we’ll both have at least tax-free VA disability compensation for the rest of our lives.

What has been your best investment?

Our marriage and our family!

The big-little things matter, like a weekend resort retreat for my husband and I while our toddler stays with the grandparents! We buy the annual pass to the city’s AWESOME zoo because our toddler loves riding the cable cars (sadly, the animals are not her main attraction).

What has been your worst investment?

Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh cards as a kid.

It took me two rounds to learn that lesson.

What’s been your overall return?

About 8%.

Thank you, Fidelity, for the historical data!

How often do you monitor/review your portfolio?

Around once a month, mainly to invest excess cash and see who “won” the investment competition that month.

NET WORTH

How did you accumulate your net worth?

We had several advantages.

First, we both developed the right money mindsets on slightly different timelines. I was raised in the FI community and fully embraced it. The first half of my husband’s childhood was spent just above the poverty line with financially stressed-out and overworked parents, so he was adamant about having some money to his name. Pursuing financial independence was a no-brainer for him on multiple levels.

Second, we both graduated with no student debt. In fact, my husband had both his undergraduate and graduate degrees completely paid for by the military. My undergraduate experience was 80% funded by my ROTC scholarship, and 20% by the education fund my parents built.

Third, we were naval officers in our 20s with no time to spend our money. We were too tired to Keep Up with the Kardashians.

Fourth, I somehow convinced my parents that I was actually good at managing money. (You’d have to read ESI Money’s Millionaire Interview 248 to get the other half of the story.) This resulted in “profit sharing” throughout my childhood, and the largest sum was $100K from my education fund. Since I graduated college and started working full-time nine years ago, my parents have also gifted myself and my family annually, up to the annual gift tax exclusion limit. We invest those gifts in our taxable accounts so that we’d reach Financial Independence even sooner than on our earnings alone. Our toddler also gets annual gifts from multiple family members, which is why her 529 balance is so high.

Out of our current $1.45M net worth, about half of our wealth is from my husband and I competing investing our own earnings. About a third of our wealth is from my parents’ gifting, and the rest is investment compounding.

What would you say is your greatest strength in the ESI wealth-building model (Earn, Save or Invest) and why would you say it’s tops?

Saving, and by extension, spending optimization, has been our greatest strength.

What road bumps did you face along the way to becoming a millionaire and how did you handle them?

The military is not the place to get rich.

Between government shutdowns stopping pay for months on end, bureaucratic errors resulting in months-long pay delays, uniform changes that result in paying thousands out of pocket on unnecessary new professional wear, the fundamental costs of moving that are not reimbursed, and the problems you throw money at because you have no time left, we could’ve had way more money working in the civilian world. We don’t regret serving in the military, but I left the military when I’d had enough.

What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your net worth?

We’re maintaining a lot of the habits we’ve had since our 20s, even though we have more time and space than we used to. We still:

• Don’t buy a lot of stuff
• Purge before we replace/upgrade
• Don’t buy for every occasion. No one has caught on to the fact that my husband has two suits and I have three floor-length dresses. We’ve worn these same outfits to over a dozen weddings and other formal events over the past seven years.
• Continue to anti-budget, complete with the “shovel” step.

Do you have a target net worth you are trying to attain?

$5M, or about $200,000 annually on a 4% withdrawal rate.

How old were you when you made your first million and have you had any significant behavior shifts since then?

We were around 28 years old when we reached $1M, but I don’t remember the exact date. It happened during the pandemic when our baby wasn’t sleeping through the night, so we were too sleep deprived to notice.

We relaxed once we crossed the $1M mark. We stopped putting up with work BS knowing we could walk away whenever we really wanted. We stopped sweating the small things like our number of streaming subscriptions. We hired housecleaners because I was struggling to clean the house on top of caring for a toddler and all the other chores and errands when my husband was underway.

What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from?

It takes a minute to explain, but my worst money mistake is buying hearing aids out of pocket when the VA would’ve paid for them. In 2020 my hearing aids retailed for $6000.

As an honorably discharged military veteran, I knew I was entitled to VA healthcare, but I’d also been “denied disability for service-related hearing loss” because my hearing loss pre-dating my military service (I really have no idea where my hearing loss came from.) Based on that quote, I made the terrible assumption that the VA wouldn’t give me hearing aids.

Because I am a military spouse covered by Tricare, I assumed that Tricare and the VA healthcare system paid for the same things. By extension, I assumed that Tricare and the VA refused to pay for the same things. I also assumed that I wasn’t allowed to have both Tricare and VA healthcare. Since Tricare refused to pay for my hearing aids, I assumed a second way why VA would refuse to pay for my hearing aids. I’d assumed that VA healthcare wasn’t enough coverage as required by the Affordable Care Act, and that maybe at least one of us should be in the military to continue receiving health care coverage. All of these assumptions are wrong.

It wasn’t until a Tricare-covered doctor suggested I see a chiropractor for one of my disability-related issues. It wasn’t until that chiropractor mentioned that VA healthcare (specifically “community care”) pays for chiropractor care when Tricare doesn’t. To get the $1600 a month in chiropractic expenses covered, I earnestly looked into signing up for VA healthcare and found out how *cuss word* wrong I’d been.

If you’re an honorably discharged U.S. veteran of any age, rank, service, or service history reading this and are not registered for VA healthcare, there’s a good chance that you’re making this epic money mistake too. The VA provides many rehabilitations and prosthetic (assistive) services for free to veterans. So that means that everything from physical therapy and chiropractor care to glasses and hearing aids, *even when not service connected*, are free to veterans registered for VA healthcare. Tricare usually doesn’t pay for glasses, hearing aids, or chiropractor care in most cases, but the VA does, and you can have both VA Healthcare and Tricare.

As soon as I figured out my mistake, I signed up for VA healthcare. I also found out that my 60% disability rating is high enough for my prescriptions with VA to also be free and mailed to my front door. I stopped buying seasonal allergy meds from Costco and got a prescription through my VA doc instead. I just click a button in my online VA portal once every 90 days to get a new round of meds mailed to my front door.

Neither I nor my husband feel pressure to “gut it out” to a 20-year military career, whether via Active Duty or Guard/Reserves, merely for the healthcare benefits. VA has my husband and I covered post-military. We may have to purchase health insurance for our child…but that’s easier than paying for the whole family!

What advice do you have for ESI Money readers on how to become wealthy?

After you max out your retirement accounts, figure out what brings value to you and concentrate your spending there.

We could care less about fancy cars but really enjoyed vacations to places like Spain and New York City.

FUTURE

What are your plans for the future regarding lifestyle?

We’re planning some big changes that’ll accelerate our net worth.

As part of “no longer putting up with work BS,” my husband is in a position to request our dream location. The dream location happens to be where the family trust has three houses, one of which my husband, toddler, and I can move into. “The third house,” as it’s called, is paid for, which eliminates our rental expense.

The house generates a ridiculous amount of solar energy from panels installed on the roof. Once we move in and buy Electric Vehicles (EVs), we’ll eliminate the majority of our utilities and our gasoline expense. By that point, our biggest monthly expenses will be daycare and food.

Our dream location also happens to have the biggest concentration of future job opportunities for my husband. If he ever decides he’s done with Active Duty, he can easily switch to one of the hundreds of government or commercial positions in the same 40 square mile area. His master’s degree makes him worth upwards of $175K annually in the commercial world for fewer hours than his current military work, and the remote work opportunities are very strong in his career field.

I love my current paraplanner job so much that I can’t imagine leaving it anytime soon. It’s also 100% remote, so I’m taking it with me!

I’m our family’s designated estate steward. Once we settle in the dream location, I’ll take over the finances and estate management for my parents, including managing at least two (and someday all three) houses in the trust.

What are your retirement plans?

Raising our child, surfing, playing more sports and music, and traveling wherever whenever.

Are there any issues in retirement that concern you? If so, how are you planning to address them?

Inflation is our biggest concern.

Part of the reason we invested so heavily in the stock market in our 20s was to start the compounding interest timeline very early to combat any future inflation. Part of the reason we want a $5M net worth is because spending $200,000 is twice the amount we’ve spent at our highest cost of living, so it feels like a conservative future spending estimate.

MISCELLANEOUS

How did you learn about finances and at what age did it “click”?

For me, it was more like a sunrise than a “click.” The dawn occurred sometime around the same time as the Great Recession, when I was in high school. While teachers, classmates, neighbors, and their families worried about their financial futures, my FIRE’d parents were relaxed and unworried and didn’t change anything in our lifestyle.

For my husband, the pieces were all there after a tougher childhood. They clicked when we started dating and he heard all about this FI stuff from me, and eventually from my parents.

Who inspired you to excel in life? Who are your heroes?

We’re both fortunate to have grown up in families and communities that provided many positive role models!

Thank you all!

Do you have any favorite money books you like/recommend? If so, can you share with us your top three and why you like them?

I’m also biased about the book Raising Your Money-Savvy Family for Next Generation Financial Independence.

I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi is such a spammy title, but it’s a great “automate finances and enjoy life” guidebook. His Netflix series “How to Get Rich” just premiered as of this writing.

The Millionaire Next Door was like the universe granting us permission to practice “stealth wealth” rather than “status wealth.” It was a relief to learn that other millionaires also spent money on things like vacations and professional guidance instead of cars and clothes.

Do you give to charity? Why or why not? If you do, what percent of time/money do you give?

Yes but not by plan. Because we move every other year, we keep a tight inventory on our household items and donate to thrift shops. Our toddler enjoys dropping change into the tithing basket at church. My husband routinely donates to his alma mater because they gave him an education for free, and he feels it’s a way to pay it forward.

We also routinely donate to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society because they’ve provided relief to dozens of our Sailors and shipmates over the course of our careers, and thus eased our stress as officers in charge of financially stressed Sailors.

Do you plan to leave an inheritance for your heirs (how do you plan to distribute your wealth at your death)? What are your reasons behind this plan?

We like the idea of annual gifting vice leaving an inheritance after we die.

We also like the idea of the concept Die With Zero, particularly the “go-go,” “slow-go” and “no-go” years.

That said, if inflation isn’t a burden, then we’ll likely suck at spending money. We may wind up leaving an inheritance after all.