Lazy Man and Money

Fact Check: Money Magazine’s “I Saved $100,000 in 3.5 Years on a $54K salary”

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A couple of days ago, I was reading the September issue of Money Magazine and found an interesting article: “I Saved $100,000 in 3.5 Years on a $54,000 Salary.”

The article in the magazine is a substantially different from the online version. It was the print version that pushed me to write this… I only looked at the online version as a means of conveying the print version. That (print) version leaves out a critical phrase of “from 2004 to 2008 before she was married” at the beginning of the article, which is extremely important context. I’ll dig more into this at the end of the article.

My mind immediately starting doing the math on saving $100,000 with a $54K salary. That seems like a huge amount especially on that salary. With the aid of a calculator, it looks like Bola Sokunbi salary was $189K over 3.5 years. If I presume a 20% tax rate, it is around $150K in take home salary. That’s an exciting savings rate of around 66%. Wow! Great job!

It would seem that she lived on the remaining 40K for 3.5 years. I really need to know more about this! Everyone’s life circumstances are different, but maybe I can learn some new frugal tips.

As I started to read the article, Money Magazine’s narrative unraveled.

Sokunbi works in New York City and commutes from Hunterdon County, N.J. BestPlaces.net has the cost of living at 134. That’s 34% more than the national average. Translation: It’s not a cheap place to live.

She has twin 4 year olds. As a father of a 4 and a 5 year old, I can say that childcare is expensive. I think it could eat up the 40K alone in 18 months, especially when considering two children… especially in a place that a high cost of living. It’s not the kind of thing that you can be frugal with… it’s almost directly paying someone else’s salary. It’s not the kind of think you’ll get a discount on… and even if you could, would you want a discount on childcare?

So the expenses seem to be high. How could Sokunbi make it work? The article mentions in passing that her husband is a doctor. I’m sure having a spouse who is a doctor doesn’t factor into the finances much… or at least that seems to be what Money Magazine thinks.

What else could be a factor? She launched a website 3 years ago that made $25,000 in the first year. That’s not in the salary number. We don’t know what it made in the next few years. According to the article, “She developed it on the side for a year…” We’ll get back to this in a bit.

Does she have more income that’s not salary? Yep, her wedding photography business brings in between $3,000 and $5,000 per wedding.

This is where I stop and stress that I’m not criticizing Sokunbi. She’s obviously working extremely hard and making a number of great financial moves.

I’m criticizing Money Magazine’s title and premise, because the $54K annual salary is extremely misleading. There’s probably another $65,000 between websites and wedding photography. I’m conservatively estimating just 10 weddings a year ($40,000) and the $25,000 from her website (presuming the income didn’t grow from the first year). So that’s around $120K before we factor in what her doctor-husband makes. If he makes $200K (probably not unusual for a doctor in that area), that’s a household income of $300K a year.

If my assumption of a household income of 300K a year is wrong, I apologize. However, the article doesn’t seem to give us a better household number to do a real income/expense analysis.

At least the article does mention that Sokunbi’s mother paid for her college so there’s no student loan debt to worry about. I didn’t see any information about student loan debt for husband, which could significant considering that he’s a doctor.

Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

“None of Sokunbi’s friends were saving as aggressively as she was right out of college. Some were making twice what she earned and saving nothing at all… Another tailwind was the fact that she didn’t have much time to spend money. She travelled a lot for work during the week and began a side gig as a wedding photographer on the weekends.”

I find this confusing. The article title sets a focus on the timeline of the last 3.5 years. However, this anecdote seems to go back to the time after graduating college, which the article states was 2004. In the context of the article’s title (“saved $100,000 in 3.5 years”) I thought that travelling for work and being a wedding photographer was part of the “saving $100,000” equation. It wasn’t until I thought, “Hey she had two twin 1 year olds 3.5 years ago, how does ‘traveled a lot for work during the week’ logistically work?

(That’s not to say that it couldn’t work if someone else caring for the twins, but that’s information that I would have liked to know.)

Let’s get back to the Clever Girl Finance website and her “salary.” The Money article also states:

“Two years ago, Sokunbi quit her consulting job to focus on the business full time.”

Well, that undermines the whole 3.5 years of a $54,000 salary, right? It seems like we are looking at 1.5 years of the $54,000 salary, plus whatever the undisclosed amount Clever Girl Finances has made in the last couple of years.

I feel like Money Magazine put me on a roller coaster of mystery income and expenses.

Finally a Lesson!

Yes, “Finally a lesson” is borrowing from one of my favorite cartoons Finally a Lesson about investing in real estate to earn passive income.

After writing all this up, I decided it might be best to go to the source rather than Money Magazine. Fortunately, Sokunbi has explains how she saved $100K on her website.

It seems that most of my confusion here is caused by the context of the prit article. From the source, Sokunbi, it seems the article is cover two different times. The saving of $100K in 3.5 years seems to be about 2004, after college. The stuff about today, well… that’s not relevant. Please forget about the doctor-husband, kids, and the website. Perhaps she didn’t live in NJ at the time either.

Given the true source of the information, we get new, important information (besides that Sokunbi can completely rock a white dress):

She “got a raise and a bonus every year and got promoted raising my salary by the end of the 3.5 years to ~$74,000 (which was really ~$52,000 after taxes).” It seems to be completely false that she “Saved $100,000 in 3.5 Years on a $54K salary.” Even aside from all the misleading stuff I mentioned above, the salary was not $54K for 3.5 years. In addition, the author of the Money Magazine article seems to omit the mention of a bonus. It’s not a big bonus ($1500 after taxes), but it’s “still something” in Sokunbi’s words. It buys a lot of Ramen which seems to have been her food of choice.

The next critical thing missing from Money Magazine’s article is that the money is 401K, which includes her employer’s match. That’s pre-tax money, and free money, which is important context.

Next we have:

“This was also before the last major US recession and so the money I contributed had grown because the stock market had been performing pretty well.”

That 401K had really grown due to the timing the stock market as well. It’s not “saving” in the context of “contributions”, but more of a net worth thing. I’ve been fairly sarcastic here, but if invested $15K in Facebook around $25 (a target=”new” href=”https://www.lazymanandmoney.com/ask-the-readers-is-this-trading-or-investing/”>I did buy Facebook stock at this price) and it grew to $100K, is that really “saving $100K?” I don’t think so.

There’s more:

“I lived at home for six months after graduating from college before moving into my first place which helped me really kickstart my savings because I was able to save most of my pay for those six months.”

Well this didn’t make the Money Magazine article at all, but even Sokunbi acknowledges how much it helped. This could have been part of “her mother paid for her college education” that was mentioned in the article.

And then there’s this:

“The first year of my [photography] business I earned around $10,000. The second year I earned around $30,000. Subsequent years I earned more.”

This appears to have started in her 2nd year of saving. I’ll ignore the subsequent years, because that might be outside of the 3.5 years timeline. Still, we have another $40K of income aside from salary.

Final Thoughts

There’s so much here that my head is spinning.

If we amoritize the photography business ($40K over 3.5 years) we get around $11K a year. If we take a guess about the average salary (starting at $52K) that “grew every year, plus promotions and the bonus” (my quote not hers), I’d say it’s around 62K (it topped at $72K aside from the bonus).

I think we are looking at around $70K+ income (maybe $75K) and a living-at-home situation which helped her save most of her income. Those savings could be mostly pre-tax in a 401K account that benefited greatly from a bull market.

I need to stress once again that I’m not criticizing Sokunbi. We actually have a lot in common (living at home for 6 months, saving largely in a 401K plan, side hustles including a personal finance website). I’m criticizing Money Magazine for their marketing and confusion about recent stuff (doctor husband, twins, etc.) when they should have covered the story literally a decade ago.

I want to give credit to Sokunbi for working extremely hard and making great financial decisions. At the end of the day, that’s what this article should have been about.

To Follow Your Finances or Not? That is the Question.

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The new Money Magazine arrived the other day and I quickly found two surprises in it. Well, this is embarrassing… I was actually reading an old Money Magazine that my kids shuffled around. Still, most of this article holds.

The first was the Cialis postcard. I think Kiplinger’s has a few cards that fall out of the magazine, but they are typically renewals and stuff like that. I don’t remember the cards being advertisements. I understand that the print media business isn’t doing well, but this seems a lot like when cinemas started to show advertisements before the movies. I’ve got enough advertising in my life*… when I pay you money, please don’t give me any more. And the advertisement should probably be a financial services company. Without getting too personal this is poorly targeted and I have to wonder how Cialis has the money to throw in the trash like this**. One last thing about advertisements…

Okay, with that out of the way, we can move on to the second surprise. It’s a little less interesting than the first, but it might matter a lot more to you. I was reading the Editor’s Note by Diane Harris and stopped at this:

“The cardinal rule of long-term investing is not to get caught up in the daily, weekly, or even monthly vagaries of the market.”

This was in the context of Ms. Harris saying that she checked her 401(k) balance during the summer slide in stocks.

That cardinal rule certainly makes sense. I love to let the stock market do it’s thing and I’m a long-term investor. However, the other side of it is that tracking our net worth has made a (positive) world of change in our finances. Maybe it didn’t do it directly, but there’s a clear correlation. What’s the old saying, “What gets measured gets improved?”

I realize that investing and net worth are two different things, but I think for many Money readers they are likely to be the same. These are people (like you and me!) who have been maxing out their 401ks and Roth IRAs to the best of their ability.

I recommend that people check their net worth monthly (side plug: the FREE software at Personal Capital is great at this!***). This means being exposed to the monthly vagaries of the market.

If you were looking for a definitive answer here, I don’t have one. I’d like to hear your thoughts below. Do you track your net worth? If so, do the vagaries of the stock market influence you?

* I realize the irony here of course, but at least you are paying any money.

** Well, I won’t wonder because healthcare is well… healthcare.

*** I may receive a few dollars if you sign up for Personal Capital.

Let’s Fix Money Magazine!

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I love Money… the magazine and the concept. Today, I want to focus on the magazine. I’ve been reading Money (along with Kiplingers) since I was in high school. That’s around 25 years now.

When each issue hits my mailbox, I’m so excited to see what’s inside. It’s little bit of Christmas that comes every month. Except this last month’s issue was… different.

The cover almost made me throw-up in my mouth. Money has already sold me so the cover isn’t important to me.

Then I started to read it. It didn’t get better. If possible, it got worse.

I gave it to my wife and asked, “Do you see anything wrong with this?” I feel like this is a good litmus test. She’s not a personal finance junkie like myself. So if she says, no, that’s great. I might be crazy, but maybe it would be differently crazy.

My wife pointed to an article that I hadn’t noticed.

This issue of Money magazine was such a dumpster fire that we couldn’t even agree on which trash is getting burned the most.

I am going to point out why the magazine was so bad. This might make me Grumpy McGrumpface I deliver this criticism with love. Tough love, but love nonetheless. Perhaps my stinging criticism will get their attention.

I’m going to offer some solutions to their issue (pun completely intended). I sympathize with Money. The issue before this one announced an editorial change. I imagine it is difficult to sell magazines in a world where newspapers are a dying breed.

(Note to Money: If any of the “fixes” below make sense, then reach out to me. I’m happy to write for you. This article isn’t a soliticiation. Some companies would pay tens of thousands of dollars for this kind of feedback. I offer it freely.)

What Wrong with Money Magazine?

It starts with the cover. The sub-heading on the magazine is “Tony Robbins Wants to Make You Rich.” It reminded me of when Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki published a book in 2006 titled “Why We Want You to Be Rich.”

I covered Kiyosaki’s scam here. I cover that other guy here. The book was terrible according to The Wall Street Journal and Kiplinger’s. Here’s a quote from that Kiplinger’s article:

“The Donald needs no introduction. Kiyosaki’s success with Rich Dad Poor Dad has spawned a franchise of books, games and speaking engagements… Impressive resumes. Alas, unimpressive book. Why We Want You to Be Rich is a thinly veiled infomercial for more financial-advice products from Kiyosaki, Trump and their minions. They sell positive thinking and can-do haziness — specific details cost extra.”

I’m not being political, I’m quoting a review from 2006. If Pee-Wee Herman runs for office, it’s fair for me to quote Pee-Wee Herman reviews (and Chair), right? This isn’t partisan.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.

My point was: If you want to make me rich, then simply give me your money. I’m here and I have a a contact form. If there’s a way I can make it easier for you, let’s talk. Don’t try to sell me a book.

It’s strange to hear that Tony Robbins wants to me rich. For decades he’s been known as an inspirational speaker. He didn’t seem to be interested in helping people with money until a couple of years ago.

In fact, Tony Robbins talked about his connections with “financial people” in this video in 2010. This “economic warning” gives a recommendation of taking money out of the stock market.

With the benefit of 7 years of hindsight, it doesn’t seem that it was good advice.

So it is very strange to have Money trumpeting Tony Robbins on the cover. He seems to admit that he doesn’t know jack-poop about finance in the video. I can find 2000 people at FinCon, who care about personal finance deeply. They live and breathe it. Why aren’t they on the cover of the magazine? (To avoid an aesthetics argument, there are attractive people at FinCon… myself not being one of them).

But even if you throw away Robbins’ failure at personal finance, there’s the time he was directly responsible for dozens of injuries according to the Washington Post. That article is from June of last year… it’s not old news.

Money magazine couldn’t wait 5 or 6 years to promote someone with almost no personal finance knowledge (that he seems to admit to)… and what he seemed to say was proven wrong.

I don’t have the space to express the number of people who might be more appropriate for the cover. Instead, I’ll jump to animals. Yep my dog is a personal finance guru. And yes my dog is much, much more handsome than Tony Robbins. He has the paper to prove it.

Phew… that is a lot of writing that seems to attack Tony Robbins. I love second chances. Let’s give him one. That’s fair, right?

Do you think this Money Magazine feature of Tony Robbins is about saving money, investing appropriately, or something that is actionable by readers. As my 4 year old would say: Nahhhh!

Instead the Tony Robbins feature seems to openly disclose that he’s promoting for a 401k company. The point he’s trying to make was essentially “401k fees are bad.”

It’s a valid point, but I covered the problem of excessive 401k fees a decade ago. And I wasn’t paid to promote a company. I was simply explaining something I read.

Oh and I didn’t include a picture of myself on my private jet like Robbins did.

I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille Mr. Money Magazine.

Not everything wrong with this issue of Money is about Mr. Robbins… though I wonder if he’d like it to be. I threw him under the bus (and drove over him a few times), but this isn’t about one feature. I didn’t jump to that article.

Let’s take Tony out of the picture and pretend that “scandal” didn’t happen.

One person does not a dumpster fire make.

The Rest of Money Magazine

On page 12 there was a 2-page spread (“First”) on a $250 million dollar home. It appears to be a rewrite of this January article. CNN used to be CNN Money, I think.

I hope there isn’t a picture of a candy wall… Nope, there is. It looks like your standard candy store, but it’s important journalism to note that this is in my “typical” $250 million house. Why is a personal finance magazine wasting precious publishing space with this?

Can the average person relate to a $250 million home?

The next page has an article of “She Became a Billionaire at Age 82.” It is about an entrepreneur in Japan who started her company in 1973. It appears there were unique gender challenges in Japan at the time. Kudos for her overcoming huge odds.

Can you relate to an 82 year-old Japanese billionaire? Can you use that to improve your financial situation.

The next article is about “Streaming on a Shoestring Budget.” Good idea, but it isn’t about streaming services… where the real cost is. Instead it is about streaming devices. Fine… but if you have a “shoestring budget”, why pitch the Amazon Fire TV at $90 instead of the Fire Stick at around $40?

Page 18 has the article that caught my wife’s attention, “Which Would You Rather: a Million Dollars or True Love?” It starts out with “Love or Money? It looks like money has the edge.” It turns out that the poll is about a million dollars annually. The title is clearly misleading, right? Using the 4% rule a million dollars is worth around $40,000 annually, right? If you stack the deck with dozens of millions of dollars, is it really surprising that money wins?

I’m not even at page 20 and there are 3 articles that have a focus around people having tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Oh and there’s that Tony Robbins stuff.

Let’s Fix this!

This article is getting long, so I want to make this quick. Fortunately this isn’t complicated. Here are a few recommendations:

  1. Don’t get carried away in thinking that the title of the magazine (“Money”) means you should write about everything that fits. This isn’t the Robb Report.
  2. Think about your readership and ask, “Can my readers relate to this article?”
  3. Then ask, “Does this article give actionable information?” How can a reasonable of percentage of people use the article (How does a house with a candy wall help my personal finance situation?)
  4. Please say no to informercial stuff. You have Tony Robbins promoting a 401k company. He’s talking with Bogle, who happens to be featured in his new book. If you want me to listen to your message get the special interests out of the room. Why not have Elizabeth Warren talk with Bogle about 401k fees? I am confident she’d jump on the opportunity. Maybe you could disclose the financial relationship you had in promoting it?
  5. In for a penny, in for a pound… I’m going to go all Brick Heck on you. I’m the last person to talk about fonts, but they were all over the place. It’s like San Serif and Serif are fighting it out. I’m not sure who the winner was, but it certainly wasn’t the reader. And I didn’t mention the capitalization in the “Which Would You Rather: a Million Dollars or True Love?”, but I think a 9 year old knows that you need to capitalize that “a”. Oops, I did mention it. I’m obviously not the grammar or proofreading police, but I think there’s a difference between paying subscribers and my blog.

I suppose I’m now Grumpy McGrumpface. In nearly 300 issues, I haven’t seen something so bad in so many ways.

Odds and Ends – 12/4/2014

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I thought I’d try something new today. It’s an article of a few things I’ve been thinking lately. Each of these are a little too long for Twitter, but not long enough to be their own article. So let’s dig in:

Money Magazine’s December 2014

I love Money magazine and it is often inspires my articles. The latest issue almost seemed to have our roles reversed.

I couldn’t help, but notice that their X-Ray stock was Yahoo. It makes the point that Yahoo’s ownership of Alibaba accounts for 90% of its value… meaning that Yahoo’s core business is worth very little. They make the point that it is 2% of Google’s value. If this sounds familiar, it may be because I wrote pretty much the same thing back in September. Since I wrote that article the company is up 27%. Not a bad gain for a few months, right?

On page 76, Money Magazine says that cheap home solar is going to be a big trend because the cost of panels have fallen 7% per year since 2000. With the Yahoo mention above, I feel so far ahead of the curve with my own move to solar. Of particular interest to me was the mention that homes with solar could sell for almost $25,000 than comparable non-solar homes.

(I won’t mention the page where they say you should trim down on Russian stocks. I clearly got that wrong when I wrote “Invest in Russian ETFs Now?” On the positive side, the Russian ETFs are even cheaper now.)

Getting Back to the Topic of Solar…

I got a letter from my energy company stating that customers will see a significant increase in electric bills due to higher power supply costs. Specifically they say that the bill this January will be 23.6% higher than last January for the same amount of electricity. I ran some numbers throught the excellent calculator on Mr. Electricity’s website and found that the time to break even will be cut by 1.5 years, going from 7.9 years to 6.4 years. I’ll be paying roughly 6 cents for a kWh instead of 21 cents (my estimate of what the costs will be with this notice).

“Never Got to be a Banker”

The other day, I was watching this bit on Seinfeld about Kramer wanting to be a banker:

It always seemed to me like Kramer had plenty of time on his hands since always transforming his apartment. If he devoted some of that time to education he’d been able to get some these sweet banking jobs. If they weren’t mostly in New York, I’d consider them myself. It certainly beats dealing with the bottom rung of the social ladder that promote MLM scams.

Finding the Best Reward Cards on Your Mobile Phone

I’ve been toying with a new app for finding credit cards from Silver Money Services called, well Silver (Google Play | Apple Store). I was curious how comparing credit cards would work on a mobile device. One suggestion I’d make to the company (and I’ll send them this feedback) is that it would be useful to have details on the rewards before you click into a card. For example, if it is a 5% reward on gas, I care. If it’s 1% rewards on everything you buy, which are a dime a dozen, I don’t particularly care.

Personally, I can’t understand the need to apply for a credit card while on a cell phone, but I guess someone had to do it.

Got Gift Guide Suggestions?

I’m working on my annual gift guide. It is very sparse right now. Are there any hot gifts this year that you are looking for. After watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas the other day, I’m thinking of Lucy’s had it right:

Unfortunately it’s hard to put that in gift guide, right? So I’m looking for ideas that are more “wrappable”

Are Roth 401(k)s and Roth TSPs Better? (Part 2)

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[Editor’s Note: I’ll do my best to catch you up, but today’s article depends on the foundation I laid in yesterday’s article. If you find yourself a little lost, my best advice is to catch up with that one first.]

Yesterday, I wrote about Money magazine article which is slightly different than the version that is now online. The article made a case that Roth 401(s) are better. I found the explanation of pointing to T. Rowe Price’s research lacking.

I broke down my thinking that (for the most part) the biggest difference between Roth and Traditional 401(k)s is when you pay your taxes. I even gave a detailed example showing that the math came out to be exactly the same. (I did, however, gloss over a major advantage for Roth 401(k) in that it helps tax diversification. It can be valuable tax-management to be able to withdraw money tax-free. So there are ancillary benefits that I don’t debate.)

I ended the article on a cliff-hanger. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Stuart Ritter of T. Rowe Price who was able to help me understand the explanation better. I quickly learned that the devil was in the details.

Here’s what I missed: Behavioral Finance.

The research showed that most people put a percentage of their salary in their retirement accounts. For example, if you make $50,000 and put 10% of your salary into a 401(k) you’ll be putting away $5,000. If you then choose a traditional 401(k) your money comes out pre-tax and you’ll have to pay taxes on that sometime in the future. If instead you choose a Roth 401(k) you’ll be taxed first, but never have to pay taxes on the money again. Would you rather $5,000 grow and have to pay taxes on it or not?

This glosses over the fact that in this scenario traditional 401(k)s will leave you with more money in your paycheck. While some people will use that money productively others may spend it frivolously. In this sense, I see the Roth option as a way to force savings and curb a little lifestyle inflation.

However, Ritter pointed out that T. Rowe Price didn’t want to assume this would be wasted. He pointed out that if someone bought an iPad it could be seen as good thing or a bad thing depending on how it was used. Thus a comparison to such a material object isn’t very useful. They took the extra step of figuring out how it would work if people took that extra money in their paycheck and invested it. This makes it closer to being an apples-to-apples comparison. The result? Investing in the Roth 401(k) still proved better.

At the end of the day, personal finance is well, personal. We can study behavioral finance until the cows come home and create some generalizations that might be best for most people. However, your individual case may very well be the exception. Many experts say it is best not to use credit cards. However, there’s a minority percentage of people who pay them off in full each month and collect significant rewards in the process. I’ve saved thousands of dollars doing just that.

Breaking Down the Best Option for Us

So to make it personal, I figured I’d offer some analysis of how switching to a Roth 401(k), or, more accurately, a similar vehicle, will be useful for us.

You may had noticed that over the last two days I included Roth TSPs in the title. A TSP short for Thrift Savings Plan and is a version of a 401(k) for government workers that seems to work exactly the same. For the most part, Roth TSPs can be thought of as Roth 401ks. My wife has a Roth TSP option, but until now we’ve avoided it. Why? It was hard to know if we’ll be in a better tax bracket in “retirement.” We earn a nice income now, and most people earn less in retirement. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it could be much higher. We plan to have my business income, wife’s pension, rental property income, Social Security, and a nest egg of retirement account savings. All these income sources could add up to be extremely significant. It would be nice to be able to withdraw from that nest egg of retirement account savings tax-free.

I had a causal chat email chat with Mike Piper of Oblivious Investor who was mentioned in the Money magazine article. He brought up the point that government workers with a taxable pension could find that the Roth TSP is a better choice. It makes sense… they are less likely to drop to a lower tax bracket in retirement, because they have this significant income source (a pension) propping it up.

In general, I still don’t know if I’d say that a Roth 401(k) is better than a traditional 401(k). I would say that it is different and could be better based on your circumstances. It’s best to do research to understand the pros and cons of each and do what’s right for you. For our circumstances it looks like it (specifically its twin sister, the Roth TSP) is better. We’ll start putting money there immediately. At a minimum, this gives us some tax diversification which was one great point the article made.