Latest / Credit Matters Podcast / The real math behind how frugal people end up richer than higher earners

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The real math behind how frugal people end up richer than higher earners · Credit Matters Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: You could out-earn everyone you know and still be one
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the last to stop working. That sounds backwards until
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: you run the numbers. Save 10% of your pay, and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the math says it takes about 50 one years before
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your investments can carry you. Save half, and it drops
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to about 17. Your salary barely moves those numbers because
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the share you keep is what sets the clock. That's
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: how so many careful people end up with the slow,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: unhurried mornings everyone else is still working toward. Let me
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: show you how the math works. I'm going to show
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it to you through a story because numbers stay with
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: us longer when they belong to somebody. Wren and her
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: brother are characters I made up for this video, but
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: every figure I attach to them comes from real 2026 data.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And I'll run every calculation right here in front of you.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Wren is 28. She works as a lab technician at
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. running blood samples through
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: machines on the early shift, and she earns $ 62, 000 a year.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That puts her right around the middle of the country.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median full-time worker
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: earned about $ 1, 251 a week in the second quarter of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: this year, which works out to roughly $ 65, 000 a year.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Her older brother, Dalton, is 32. He runs a regional
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: sales team for a software company in a glass office
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: tower in downtown Dallas, and he earns $ 180, 000 a year.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: That's almost three times what his sister makes. At family dinners,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: he's usually the one who reaches for the check, and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: everyone at the table assumes he's the one who's going
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to be fine. So let's take both paychecks home. Texas
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: has no state income tax, which keeps the math clean,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: so we only need federal income tax and payroll tax.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: After the 2026 standard deduction of $ 16, 100, Wren owes about $ 5, 260
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in federal income tax, plus about $ 4, 700 in Social Security
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and Medicare. She takes home close to $ 52, 000 a year.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Dalton owes about $ 31, 900 in federal income tax, and roughly $ 13, 800
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: in payroll tax. He takes home about $ 134, 000. This is
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: where the story really starts. Wren lives on $ 3, 000 a month.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: She rents a one-bedroom apartment near the hospital, drives a
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: paid-off Toyota Corolla with a cracked cup holder, and plans
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: her groceries at the kitchen table every Sunday afternoon. She
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: grew up watching her mom stretch a nursing assistant's paycheck
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: across a family of four, so she never thinks of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a tight budget as a punishment. To her, it feels
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: like a seatbelt. $ 3, 000 a month is $ 36, 000 a year,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: which leaves her $ 16, 000 to invest. Dalton spends about $ 10, 000
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a month. There's a four-bedroom house in the suburbs north
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: of Dallas for his two kids, a leased SUV, a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: membership at a golf club, two streaming bundles he forgot
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: he had, and dinners out that nobody really decides on anymore.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Those add up to about $ 120, 000 a year, which leaves
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: him roughly $ 14, 300 to invest. Look at those two numbers
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: side by side. The man earning almost three times as
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: much is investing less than his sister in actual dollars.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: He isn't reckless either. He spends a lot like other
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: high-income households do. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Expenditure Survey for 2024, the top fifth of households by
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: income spent an average of $ 150, 342 in a single year.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: A bigger paycheck almost always arrives with a bigger life
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: attached to it, and the bigger life starts sending bills
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: right away. That's the first piece of the math. Wealth
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: comes from the gap between what you earn and what
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you spend, and income is only one side of that gap.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Wren's gap is about 31% of her take-home pay. Dalton's
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: is about 11%. The gap is only the beginning, though,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: because there's a second number hiding inside their spending, and
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: it decides how far each of them has to run.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Every working person is running toward the same finish line
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: even if they've never given it a name. It's the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: point where your investments can pay for your life without
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a paycheck. Planners usually estimate it with something called the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: 4% rule. You take what you spend in a year
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and multiply it by 25. Morningstar's latest research puts the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: safe starting withdrawal rate at 3.9% for retirees who want steady,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: inflation-adjusted income over 30 years. So 25 times your spending
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: is a fair round number to plan around. Let's run
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: it for Wren. $ 36, 000 times 25 is $ 900, 000. That's her
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: finish line. For Dalton, 120,000 times 25 is $ 3 million.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Sit with that for a second. Dalton's finish line is
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: more than three times farther away than his sister's and
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: every year he's putting less money toward reaching it. Here's
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: the part of frugality people almost always miss. Every dollar
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a year that Wren doesn't need to spend does two
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: jobs at the same time. It goes into her investments today,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: and it also removes $ 25 from the total she will
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: ever need. $ 100 a month you can live without becomes $ 1, 200
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a year you get to invest, and it lowers your
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: finish line by $ 30, 000. One small decision moves two levers.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So how long does each of them have to run?
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I'll keep the assumptions simple and say them out loud.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Their investments grow at 5% a year after inflation. That's
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: an assumption for illustration. since real markets never promise any
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: particular return. I'm leaving Social Security out completely, so the
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: real outcome is a little kinder than what you're about
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to hear. Both of them start from zero in the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: same January. At a 31% savings rate, Wren reaches $ 900, 000
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in about 28 years. She started at 28, so she's
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: free around 56. At an 11% savings rate, Dalton needs
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: about 51 years. He started at 32, so you can
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: do that math yourself, and it's a little uncomfortable. He'd
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: be working until about 83. Nobody sees a timeline printed
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: on an offer letter, which is why this comparison almost
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: never comes up at family dinners. Dalton's timeline is about
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to get even longer, because something good is about to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: happen to him. At the end of that first year,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: both of them get a raise. WTW's salary survey found
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: American employers budgeted an average raise of 3.5% for 2026.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So let's give each of them exactly that. Dalton's 3.5%
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: comes to $ 6, 300. After his 24% federal bracket and payroll taxes,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: about $ 4, 400 of it actually lands in his checking account.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: That works out to roughly $ 370 a month. Now watch
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: where it goes. His SUV lease is ending and the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: raise makes an upgrade feel earned. Kelly Blue Book says
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the average new vehicle in America sold for $ 50, 562 in September.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Edmonds reports the average monthly payment on a financed new
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: vehicle reached $ 787 in the third quarter at an average
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: rate of 7%. $ 787 a month is $ 9, 444 a year.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: His raise brought home about $ 4, 400. The new car costs
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: more than twice the raise that was supposed to pay
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: for it. Then, remember the finish line. If a payment
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: like that becomes a permanent part of his life, and
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: for plenty of people, it does. Because one loan ends
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: just as the next one begins, It adds $ 9, 444 times
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: 25 to his number. That's about $ 236, 000 of extra finish
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: line created in a single Saturday afternoon at a dealership.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I want to be fair to Dalton here. Nobody ever
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: sat him down and explained any of this. The whole
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: system around him, from the monthly payment calculator on the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: dealership website to the pre-approved offer waiting in his inbox...
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: is built to turn every raise into a payment. He
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: did exactly what that system is designed to make people do.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Wren's raise is $ 2, 170. and about $ 1, 744 of it reaches
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: her account. Years ago, she picked up one rule. Half
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: of every raise goes to her future, and the other
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: half goes to her life. So she invests an extra
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: $ 872 a year, then spends the other $ 872 on something
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: that makes her happy. That year, it paid for a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: long weekend at a lake cabin with her best friend
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: from college. Her lifestyle grows just more slowly than her income.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: That single rule keeps her gap getting a little wider
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: every year instead of narrower. It also opens up the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: next piece of the math, which is about what a
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: dollar really costs, depending on whose dollar it is. When
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Dalton spends a dollar, the real cost is the salary
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: he had to earn before taxes to end up holding
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that dollar. At his pay level, in the 24% bracket
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: with payroll tax on top, he keeps about 68 cents
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: of each extra dollar he earns. Flip that around. and
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to spend $ 1 he has to earn about $ 1. 46. So
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that $ 50, 562 car really costs him about $ 74, 000 of salary.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Then there's the loan. On the average amount financed, $ 44, 664
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: at 7% over 6 years, he'd pay a little over $ 10, 000
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in interest alone, And every dollar of that interest has
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to be earned at $ 1. 46 too. Wren sits in the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: 12% bracket. For her, a dollar of spending costs about $ 1. 25
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: of salary. Either way, every time someone decides against a purchase,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: they're saving more than the price tag. They're saving the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: hours it would have taken to earn it. That's the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable truth hiding inside a high income. The more you earn...
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the more work hours each dollar of spending costs you,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: which makes every dollar you decide to keep even more valuable.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: The tax code does hand both of them one helpful tool.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: In 2026, you can put up to $ 24, 500 into a
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: 401k and up to $ 7, 500 into an IRA. Money that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: goes into a traditional 401k skips federal income tax this year.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: For Dalton, every dollar he moves there only shrinks his
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: spending money by about 76 cents because the tax he
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: would have paid stays invested for now. It's one of
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the rare places where earning a lot actually makes saving easier.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Fidelity reported that the average total 401k savings rate hit
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a record 14.4% in the second quarter of this year,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: counting employee and employer money together. Fidelity's own benchmark is 15%.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Lots of people are inching toward that number. The ones
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: who blow right past it are usually the ones with
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a wide gap to work with. There's one more force
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in this story, bigger than taxes or car payments, and
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: neither of them can see it on a statement for years.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: That force is timed. And there's a real man whose
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: life shows it better than any spreadsheet I could build.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reed lived in Brattleboro, Vermont. He pumped gas at
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: a service station for years. then worked as a janitor
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: at a J.C. Penney store. He drove a secondhand Toyota Yaris,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: held his coat together with safety pins, and cut his
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: own firewood into his 90s. When he died in June
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of 2014 at the age of 92, the people around
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: him discovered an estate worth about $ 8 million. He left $ 4. 8
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: million to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. and $ 1. 2 million to the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Brooks Memorial Library. According to CNBC, he owned at least
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: 95 stocks when he died, and he held many of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: them for years or even decades. Familiar blue chip names
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: like Procter & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase. A friend said
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: he saved most of what he earned. What Reed had
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: was a gap, and he gave it an extraordinarily long
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: time to grow. So here's what time does to Wren's
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: very first year. The $ 16, 000 she invests at 28 growing
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: at 5% after inflation, is worth about $ 59, 700 in today's
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: money by the time she reaches 55. That single year
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of saving nearly quadruples on its own. Each year after
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: it does the same kind of work, just with a
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: little less runway. This is why a steady saver who
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: starts early has such a real advantage. Her money is
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: already working, while Dalton's money is still walking out the door.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It also lines up with what Ramsey Solutions found when
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: it surveyed more than 10,000 American millionaires in late 2017
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: and early 2018. One-third of them never earned six figures
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: in any single year of their working lives. 79% received
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: no inheritance at all. 8 out of 10 invested through
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a company 401k. The careers that showed up most often
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: were engineer, accountant, teacher, management, and attorney. Those are good jobs,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: but they're ordinary ones. What those people shared was a
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: habit of investing the difference year after year. If this
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: is the kind of math you wish somebody had walked
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: you through at 25, subscribe to the channel. I sit
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: down with numbers like these every week and I always
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: show my work so you can check it against your
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: own life. Eight years pass. Dalton turns 40 and his
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: sister throws him a small party in her backyard with
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: string lights and and a grocery store cake. Somewhere between
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the cake and the cleanup, she pulls up her investment
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: account on her phone to show him, half proud and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: half nervous about how he'll take it. At 36, earning
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: about a third of his salary, Wren has roughly $ 153, 000 invested. Dalton,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: after eight years at a big salary, has about $ 137, 000.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: He laughs at first, like it has to be a mistake,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: then goes quiet for a long time. For years, he
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: was the one who paid for dinner, the one their
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: parents bragged about. Somewhere in the back of his mind,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: he had always assumed he was ahead of his little sister,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: and the number on her phone says otherwise. Rin takes
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: no joy in the moment. She's worried she hurt him,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: because she knows how hard he works. That night, he
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: can't sleep, so he goes looking for answers. In The
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Millionaire Next Door, researchers Thomas Stanley and William Danko offered
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a simple rule of thumb for what someone should be worth.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Multiply your age by your pre-tax household income, then divide
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: by 10. For Dalton, that's 40 times 180,000 divided by 10,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: which comes to $ 720, 000. Stanley and Danko called people worth
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: at least double that figure prodigious accumulators of wealth. People
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: worth half of it or less, they called under accumulators.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Half of Dalton's number equals is $ 360, 000, and he has
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: about 137. The formula is old and rough, and plenty
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of people get a late start for very good reasons. Still,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: it stings, and it pushes him to look much harder
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: at where his money goes. Dalton is far from the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: only one feeling that sting. Goldman Sachs Asset Management surveyed
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: more than 5,000 Americans between 45 and 75 For its
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: 2026 retirement report, among households earning over $ 500, 000 a year, 36.6%
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: said they primarily live paycheck to paycheck. 46% of that
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: same group said they pay only the minimum on their
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: credit cards or less. The Federal Reserve puts the average
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: rate on credit card accounts that get charged interest at 22.36%
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: as of August. Half a million dollars a year. And
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: more than a third of those households are still waiting
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: on the next paycheck. A bigger income gives no protection
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: against a spending level that keeps rising to meet it.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I'm critical of the system here. Never the person. Dalton
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: was raised the way most of us were raised. Get
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the degree, get the promotion, get the bigger house, and
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you'll be fined. Nobody ever mentioned that the finish line
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: moves farther away every time the house gets bigger. So
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: what does Dalton actually do? This is the part of
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the story I love most because the same math that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: hurt him is about to work for him faster than
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it ever worked for his sister. He doesn't sell everything
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: and move into a tent. On a Sunday afternoon, he
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: drives over to Wren's apartment and where the two of
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: them sit at her kitchen table, going through his bank
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: statements line by line. The house stays because his kids
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: are settled in their school. The golf membership goes. When
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the SUV lease ends, he buys a three-year-old sedan with
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: cash from his year-end bonus. They cancel the streaming bundles
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: he forgot he had, and dinners out go from a
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: habit to an occasion. His spending falls from $ 120, 000 a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: year to $ 90, 000. That's $ 30, 000, and it moves both levers
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: at once. His yearly investing jumps from about $ 14, 300 to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: about $ 44, 300. His savings at once. His yearly investing jumps
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: from about $ 14, 300 to about $ 44, 300. His savings rate climbs
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: from roughly 11% to about 33%, which is actually higher
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: than his sister's. Meanwhile, his finish line falls from $ 3
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: million to $ 2, 250, 000. $ 750, 000 of finish line disappears simply because
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: he decided he could live without it. Run the numbers
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: forward from his $ 137, 000 at 40, and Dalton reaches his
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: new finish line in about 23 years, around 63. On
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: his old path, he would still be working at 83.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That one afternoon at a kitchen table moved his finish
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: date about 20 years closer. The first few months are
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: harder than the spreadsheet makes them look. Dalton feels a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: little embarrassed parking the sedan next to his neighbor's new trucks,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and one of his golf friends asks, half joking, whether
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the company is struggling. For a high earner, The hardest
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: part of frugality is often getting comfortable with what other
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: people might think. By the end of that first year, though,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: he notices something nobody warned him about. His kids never
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: mentioned the golf club once. They did notice that their
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: dad was home more on Saturday mornings. You might be
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: thinking of the obvious objection right now. Wouldn't it be
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: easier to just earn more? Earning more is wonderful. And
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I'd never tell you to turn down a raise or
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: skip a promotion. The math actually rewards a higher income
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: as long as the extra money stays inside the gap.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: The trouble is that a raise usually arrives with a
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: new standard of living already attached, so the gap stays
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: flat while the finish line drifts farther away. A raise
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: is an opportunity, and whether it ever becomes wealth depends
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: on where that next dollar goes. Another fair question is
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: whether Ren is missing out on life. At 36, she
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: still eats out with friends, still travels a couple of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: times a year, and still buys the good coffee beans.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: What she skips are the things she wouldn't remember a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: month later.