Q&A: Opening a Franchise, Selling a New Product, and Income-Producing Assets

This episode dives into practical financial advice on opening a franchise, selling new products, and investing in income-producing assets, featuring listener questions.

1. Roth IRAs can be a flexible tool for both retirement savings and intermediate financial needs.
2. Preserving capital for future growth should be prioritized over immediate, albeit significant, financial demands.
3. Real estate investments should be evaluated on their ability to appreciate and generate sufficient cash flow.
4. Exploring new business ventures, like card games, can benefit from strategies like crowdfunding or presales, though with cautious market exposure.
5. Franchises offer structured business opportunities but require diligent analysis regarding control, fees, and real income potential.

1: Introduction and Announcements

Austin and Robert discuss upcoming webinars and promote their social media engagement. They also mention sponsorships and set the stage for the episode. Austin Hankwitz: "Welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast question and answer Edition."

2: Roth IRA Optimization

The hosts address questions about managing Roth IRAs effectively, emphasizing strategic investment choices and tax benefits. Austin Hankwitz: "Compound interest is your friend, and you want to reach your investment goals sooner rather than later."

3: Real Estate Decisions

Listeners' questions guide a discussion on whether to sell or hold real estate investments, particularly in challenging markets. Robert Croak: "Consider the opportunity cost of having equity tied up in a slowly appreciating property."

4: Launching New Products

The discussion shifts to starting a new card game business, with a focus on funding strategies and market entry. Robert Croak: "I like the presale method because you can gauge the response before investing heavily."

5: Considering Franchises

The potential of investing in franchises is explored, including the benefits and limitations of this business model. Robert Croak: "Franchises are great because they've figured out the processes and marketing, but make sure it's not just buying yourself a job."

1. Evaluate Investments Regularly: Regularly review your investment portfolio to ensure it aligns with your financial goals.
2. Diversify Income Sources: Consider different asset classes and investment opportunities to spread risk and increase potential returns.
3. Utilize Tax Advantages: Understand the tax implications of your investments and use them to your advantage, such as Roth IRA withdrawals for education.
4. Pre-plan Major Financial Decisions: Think long-term about the financial implications of significant expenses like college education.
5. Research Before Investing: Do thorough research or consult experts when considering new investment ventures like franchises or real estate.

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz answer your questions!

Should I sell my 401k holdings?
How do I avoid paying $300K for college?
My San Francisco condo seems to be depreciating in value, what do I do?
How should I produce income inside of my portfolio?
How do I launch a card game product with no money?
What should I know about franchising a business?

People

Austin Hankwitz, Robert Croak

Companies

Public.com

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Austin Hankwitz
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast question and answer Edition. If you have a question to ask us, you can send us an email@richhabitspodcastmail.com or you can ask us a question via Instagram, dm'sichhabitspodcast. And as a quick reminder, if you don't yet follow us on Instagram, we have over 15,000 followers on Instagram because we post awesome podcast clips. We post some of our favorite hot takes, some of our favorite question answers. We post some of our favorite tips and tricks strategies.

It's all shared on Instagram. And Robert and I do a pretty good job of staying connected, I think you can say via Instagram stories with you all a little behind the scenes here and there. So if you're not yet following our Instagram, what are you doing? Yes, we love our Instagram community and building it alongside Rich Habits podcast. And don't forget all of you listening.

Robert Croak
We have our next webinar coming up on May 8 at 04:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time. And we're going to be covering direct indexing, so look forward to that one. Get signed up now because you don't want to miss it. There's a link to that in the description below.

Austin Hankwitz
Save your seat. It's completely free. But again, we only have 1000 seats available, so be sure to do that because we're running out of seats quickly. Now, before we jump into the episode, I want our options traders to listen up because I want to tell you a little bit about public.com. But first, have you ever actually thought about all the fees you're paying to trade options?

I mean, aside from the regulatory fees, there's commissions. And most platforms charge per contract fees as well. That's what makes today's sponsor public so interesting. Public doesn't charge commissions or per contract fees. And in an industry, first they offer a rebate of up to option contract traded.

Robert Croak
So check it out. If you trade 1000 option contracts on public, you'll get up to $180 in rebates. And if you trade 10,000 contracts, you could earn almost $2,000. And more importantly, the rebate means you can maximize your profits and minimize your losses. So to recap, there's no commissions, there's no per contract fees, and up to $0.18 on every contract traded in a rebate.

Austin Hankwitz
Cy Nerd Wallet recently awarded public five stars for their options trading. And to start earning up to contract traded. Do that@public.com. Dot that's what Robert and I do to trade our options, and we're having a blast doing it. As a reminder, this was paid for by public investing.

Options are not suitable for all investors because they carry significant risk. There is a full disclosure in the podcast description below. Definitely go check that out. And this is for us members only. Robert let's jump into our first question here coming from Rachel D.

Rachel says, good morning fellas. I want to first thank you for this podcast. It's broken down investing in a way that's digestible and not at all intimidating. Rachel, we appreciate the kind words my question is about correcting my Roth IRA. I've got 23,000 currently saved in my Roth IRa, which was just switched from a plan where the company chooses my investments for me.

I made this choice after reviewing the performance of all of the holdings and I found them pretty disappointing. I know I want to start with the five ETF's you guys always mentioned, but here's my question. Do I cash out the existing holdings or do I keep them and just use new money to buy the ETF's you recommend? Robert I'll let you answer this question first, but I definitely think we're going to be on the same page about it. But we always want to see you get to the better spot sooner and not try to wait it out and improve later on because compound interest is your friend.

Couldn't agree more, Robert. I think that Rachel should definitely sell the existing underperforming holdings in this Roth IRA. There will not be any tax implications from that as long as it stays in the Roth IRA and you don't take that money out or anything. Keep the trades going in the account, sell the underperforming investments and use the existing 23,000, even if you're in the red on those investments to buy the ETf's. We talk about voo, qqq, vgt, VTI, and moat.

That's all you need in your Roth IRA, in my humble opinion, and it's hopefully going to propel you much further toward our $100,000 goal that we encourage everyone to have for retirement investing. Really good question Rachel. Now our next question comes from Charles S. Charles says, I'm 46 years old, I'm married and I have three kids. My oldest is in college and was able to pay for his first year on his own.

He should have enough to pay for year two as well. But then my wife and I do plan to pay for his last two years, which will cost about $30,000. Here's the question we have over 250,000 in our Roth IRAs, and we're planning to take out some of the principal to help pay for his college. We have roughly 94,000 in principal. Should we do this?

And are there any tax hits if we do so, Robert, I'll kick this one off. So, of course, just as a quick reminder here, and I think people forget about this, not only is the Roth IRA a retirement investment vehicle, but people can also think about it a little bit, kind of like a piggy bank. And that's because the money you contribute. Right, the deposits, the principal that's invested through this account, can be withdrawn at any time with no penalties and no tax hits. So of this $250,000 that Charles has in his Roth IRa, 94,000 of that was principal?

Right. That's what he deposited into the account, and it's grown now to 250. So, Charles, if you wanted to, you could take out all 94,000 of that, even before 59 and a half, and you won't have to pay any taxes or penalties on the money. So here's the deal. If you want to take out $30,000 of your Roth IRa to pay for your kid's college, that's your choice.

If it were me, I would not do that. And here's why. I never want to be borrowing from my future to pay for today. And, Charles, just to put this $30,000 into perspective as to why we don't want to borrow from our future to pay for today, that $30,000 in 20 years, when you're 66 and ready to retire, is going to be worth $326,000.10 times what it's worth today. So do you want to give your child $326,000 to pay for their college?

Probably not, right? Probably not. And, you know, Robert, I want you to talk a little bit about how important this is to, one, not borrow from your future, but two, I think a lot of parents make the mistake of really setting themselves up for financial despair, trying to help the kids out when, in actuality, when they're retired and broke and they don't have any money, they're still a burden to their children. Yeah, this is a really great question in a very difficult situation. You know, I appreciate it that Charles and wife, I'm assuming, really want to take care of their kids, but let's look at the math.

Robert Croak
We don't know what's in the 401k, but let's assume it's a decent amount. But even if you were to have 220,000 leftover in the IRA, the Roth, and then let's say the 401k is 300,000 and you have 500k all in right now at 46. You have to look that in 20 years, when you're ready to retire, maybe you want to retire sooner. 15 years, you're going to need $3 million more than likely to be living the lifestyle you're living now at the rate that it's going to cost 20 years down the road. And by giving this thirty k and maybe other loans to the kids, you're setting yourself up for duress and retirement because you might not actually get to the $3 million yourself.

So that's just something to consider, is try to project out 20 years what your lifestyle cost is going to be per month. Try to project out with your current money, income, savings and investing. Are you going to get to the number you need to be able to live off that 4% rule? And that, to me, is the important thing, because so many people are worried about taking care of everyone else. But then who's there to take care of you when you're in retirement?

Austin Hankwitz
And just so we're on the same page, Robert, I graduated college with about $20,000 of student loan debt. That student loan debt taught me how to budget, how to set money aside, how to think about paying off debt. Right? Like it's okay to graduate college with student loan debt. It's okay, Charles, for your oldest to graduate college with student loan debt because it's probably going to teach them some financial discipline at an earlier age than their peers, which is a really, really good thing.

So I'm not mad at having student loan debt. This is what Robert and I classify as good debt. Right? Especially if your oldest is studying something that is going to earn them a lot of money out of college. So really good question.

I hope we cleared some things up here. But no, don't spend $326,000 on college. Our next question comes from mercy. Mercy says, hello, Robert and Austin, first and foremost, thank you so much for such a wonderful podcast. I absolutely love it and I listen to it all the time.

It's taught me so much. And I've slowly been getting my finances order and feeling very empowered because of the two of you. Well, thank you so much, mercy. So Mercy says this. I bought a condo in San Francisco in 2010 as my primary residence.

It was above my means at the time, and I was mostly house poor for many of the first years of the mortgage without much left to invest. Today, I'm 47 years old and I only started to financially educate myself seriously, over the last five years, and I'm playing catch up. I don't have any other debt besides my mortgage, and I have a three month emergency fund in place. 10% of my income goes to a mandatory pension through my employer, and 20% to a mixture of a maxed out Roth IRA in unmatched 401K, an HSA, a robo advisor account, a fundrise account, and some cryptocurrency. All of this amounts to $560,000 in investments when you do not include my property.

The condo I own, however, has dropped significantly in value during the pandemic, and the recovery of the condo market in San Francisco is really slow. I have about $500,000 in equity inside of this condo, and my mortgage is $250,000 at a 4% interest rate. Would I be better off selling the condo and investing the equity, or should I stay in the condo and keep on doing what I've been doing? Robert, this is a hard one, but I'm gonna let you kick us off. Yes, I love the question.

Robert Croak
Thanks for all of the details. Because the more details everyone provides us in the question, the better off we can answer it. So here's my take. It might not be the best news or what you're looking for, but here, let me give it a go. You've got a good interest rate on the mortgage.

You've got great equity. But unfortunately, you probably have really slow capital appreciation in the condo based on what you've stated and the market that you're in. In my opinion, I'd rather see you sell it right now or in the next year, depending on what is better in that market. If we see interest rates come down in a year or so, you might be able to get a little more money for it. But you have to look at the opportunity cost of having that much equity tied up in a property that's growing slowly.

So I would look at selling it, taking that money, getting it invested, and then renting for a couple years until we see the interest rates come down and the market cool off a little bit, and then maybe look to either house hack or buy another property. But I think having that money, that 500k in the market, would just be a better long term financial decision for you than having it tied up in an underperforming condo. I like that answer, Robert. And I did some quick math. $500,000 invested for 20 years because she's 47.

Austin Hankwitz
So from 47 to 67 out of 10% return is about 3.7 million in retirement. So that's really what we're talking about here, right. Do you think your condo is going to be worth 3.7 million in 20 years that you would have obviously paid off, or would you rather rent and have that $500,000 invested in the markets? I really like your answer, Robert. You know, it's.

It's a tough one, right. Because I think everyone deserves to own a piece of property. Right. Everyone deserves to own real estate if it's a condo, if it's a townhouse, if it's a single family home, if it's a duplex. Right.

We should own things that appreciate in value for sure. But having $500,000 tied up in what Mercy's described as a slow recovery investment in San Francisco, which I don't even know if that's a great place to have a real estate investment right now. I think I've heard a lot of bad things about the area. I could be wrong, though, from the real estate perspective. But what I'm saying is having that 500,000 invested to what you sort of alluded to here, mercy, at a 10% sort of gain over the next 20 years, doesn't sound like a bad idea.

3.7 million. The only thing I would encourage you to do is take another look at that 401k. You mentioned that it's unmatched. Not sure why you're investing toward an unmatched 401K, especially if, I don't know if it is, but if it's underperforming the benchmarks, right. The S and P and the Nasdaq, that's the only big piece of advice I have from you, from your current situation.

But as it relates to this 500,000 in equity in a condo that you're not really happy about in San Francisco, I'm not mad. If you want to sell it and take that 500 grand and invest it, then maybe, you know, you move somewhere that you like a little bit more. Maybe you move somewhere that is a little bit lower cost of living, right. Maybe somewhere where the rent is. Call it fifteen hundred to two thousand, two hundred dollars a month.

Heck, Nashville, Tennessee, down, you can get a pretty decent spot here for about two grand. So whatever you do, make sure it makes you happy. But don't forget that you should want to own some real estate as we head into retirement, right. Because the biggest, I think, unpredictable expense that hits people that they forget about is rising rents, right. Rents go up and rents go up.

That's just our sad reality sometimes. And if your rents going up every single year and you're, you know, trying to retire off of a fixed income, that's a problem. So maybe house hack hang out for a couple of years. But I definitely agree with Robert. Sell the condo, take the equity and deploy it.

Robert Croak
And one other point that I want to make, and you and I actually touched on this this weekend at the money mindset mastermind, is that the average 401K performance over the last ten years is 4.9%. So everyone listening, keep that in mind. You don't want to max out your 401 ks and sound proud of it. You just want to get the match because at the end of the day you want to maximize your gains in any way you can. And it doesn't necessarily have to come from a 401K because they simply underperform the Voos and the QQqs that we talk about all the time.

Austin Hankwitz
Really good question, mercy. Our next question comes from Nicholas M. Nicholas says, I love the podcast. I listen to every episode and I've learned a lot from just tuning in. Thanks for all you two do.

I'm almost 40 years old and I'm ready to really start investing into income producing assets. I own two condos with $450,000 in combined equity and they cash flow $1,600 a month. I'm getting the 4% match through my four hundred one K at work and I started maxing out my Roth IRa this year. You all mention getting $100,000 invested and I have $90,000 so far. I also have $36,000 invested into fundrise.

I have no debt except for my mortgages on the condos, but I don't pay for those, my renters do. Haha. I am renting an apartment because it's cheaper to rent and I have both condos cash flowing. I'm trying to build out a ten k safety net that I should have set up later this year. Are all these baseline assets, however solid enough to start investing into other things?

Things when I hear this question, Robert, I think maybe he's alluding to cryptocurrency. Maybe maybe he's alluding to some other more maybe aggressive investments. What do you think about his situation? I think it's great. And even at almost 40 years old, I think you're ahead of the curve in most instances.

Robert Croak
And being at that hundred K marker almost there is a great start. So I think what you're asking us is, is it time to start diversifying? And I think the answer is yes. You're right on the doorstep of that hundred K saved and invested. You've got these cash flowing properties.

So now I think it's time to look at maybe doing some angel investing, investing in small businesses, getting a crypto portfolio up and running, building out a traditional portfolio of some individual stocks that we talk about to be able to have a little more high risk there. So I think you're definitely there. You're definitely ready, and that will help accelerate your growth somewhat by having more diversification. Now, the only perspective I have to add here, Robert, is I don't know how I feel about having $450,000 in equity, only cash flowing, $1,600 a month for you. You know, this $450,000.

Austin Hankwitz
When we think about cash flow and income producing assets, like what Nicholas is alluding to here, if you park that instead into an spyi or a QQQI, you'd receive much closer to $5,000 per month in cash flow on that, on those monthly distributions that are paid out. And that's very tax efficient. Right. I'm pretty sure that your $1,600 in cash flow is actually taxed as ordinary income. So I would be even weary, Nicholas, to think a little bit about that.

I mean, $450,000 is a lot. You already have sort of your base built here of this, call it $90,000 in investments, but you have a lot of money tied up in these condos that aren't really cash flowing that much. So I would just be really, really cognizant of that. Run some numbers. Maybe you sell one condo and you take, call it 225,000 or 200,000, and you put it into Spyi and go make 2000 or $2,200 a month from that.

But I'm just so weary about having 450 tied up into sort of this, like, dead money idea when you're really focused on income producing assets. Yeah. And another way to look at this, you do have a w two job, I assume, based on having the work. So you might have some tax implications that are in your benefit with having these properties. But I would also really consider in this math equation that Austin laid out of looking at what your capital appreciation is each year on these properties.

Robert Croak
Because depending on what that is, it might be okay to keep both of them if the capital appreciation in that market is high enough to offset the fact that you have this money kind of parked in these properties. But there's a lot of variables here to look at, and I think we've covered them all just so you can understand what is the best move for you, because it's just going to be owner dependent. Everyone has a different opinion on the best strategy. I think we've laid it all out and then it's just up to you to decide what works best for you. Really good question, Nicholas.

Earlier in the show you heard us talk about the investing platform public.com and that's where you can trade options with no commissions or per contract fees and you get a rebate of up to contract traded. NerdWallet recently gave public five out of five stars for options trading. If you want to see why, go to public.com and start getting a rebate of up to contract traded paid for by public investing options not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Full disclosure and podcast description and this is for us members only. Our next question comes from Ildi.

Austin Hankwitz
Ild says, hey everyone, I'm 18 years old and I'm a huge fan of the podcast and have learned so much. My question is, what would you do in my scenario? I have a business partner and we are ready to start our own card game business. We've created the original blueprint for our first game and have a graphic designer creating the cards and the packaging. We're not yet in a spot to bulk buy, but we were wondering how you would go about possibly pre saling or crowdfunding the idea.

We're trying to market this organically on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Do you think that we should have a month period of pre sales and then after we collect all the money, go out and buy the inventory and ship it out to our customers? Or do you have something else in mind? Thank you all so much for your time. I've learned so much and I can't wait to get started on my entrepreneurial journey.

Keep up the great work. Robert. This is all you, my friend. Ild, great question in my wheelhouse. I've been doing this for 30 years.

Robert Croak
I'm going to tell you quite a few different things, so please take notes. And anyone that's building a brand right now getting ready to launch a product, take notes as well. First and foremost, I would not crowdfund it because if the idea is really good and everyone sees it, it does well. My fear is always it's someone else that has deeper pockets is going to see the idea and beat you to the market. I like to have first mover advantage by having my idea in the market with full marketing and everything before others can start the process of knocking me off.

So that's number one. It's okay not to bulk buy in the beginning. You can bootstrap this. Go do a friends and family round borrow 510 $20,000, whatever you need. I'm sure you have people that believe in you and will help you get this started.

Or go to a bank, get a credit card that you can get to use for some of the inventory. Get a personal loan if you have to. You're just much better to bootstrap this. And that's why I like the presale method as well. We've done that in the past.

Because the other good thing about the presale method is you can gauge the response. You might put it up, crush the advertising, but see a very low response rate in which then you know that either a, the product isn't suitable, it doesn't have a product market fit, or b, you need to rework your marketing before you go buy thousands of units. And then just always remember, when you're doing bulk buying and you're ready for that, talk to the factory and use this line. Dear factory, we would like to do a small run to test the product first for product market fit. Is there any way we can do a smaller run than your moqs to help us get started?

And a lot of times, factories will find a way to do a smaller run for you so you're not investing in a ton of product. So keep that in mind as well. And then I think you'll be up and running, because if you nail the marketing, you nail the branding, and I would avoid sharing it with the public before you're ready to go live. I think you'll be in great shape. I like the presale idea too, Robert.

Austin Hankwitz
Just thinking, like, you know, you can go get a Shopify website for like $30 a month. You can design it. You can have the whole description there. Maybe you can have a prototype you figured out. You can have some cool designs that are, you know, figured out, and you can just have as much information there as possible published for the public.

And then what you can also do is go to the public and say, hey, you know, if we get 500 people to purchase this card game, we're gonna bring it to life and we're gonna ship the product by this specific date. So coming up with this idea of presale is really smart. I think the only feedback I would have if you go through that method is to be as transparent as possible that this is a pre sale, there is no inventory. And what that's gonna do is make sure that you don't have any disgruntled customers. Right?

Oh, I bought this and I thought it was real. And I thought I was gonna get it four days later, but in actuality I'm getting it two months, right? Just be super transparent. Say, hey, listen, this is a great idea we've got. Here's all the packaging, here's all the designs, the product, everything you're going to get.

And if we get 400 people or 200 people, whatever that number is that you need to sell to, pre sell before we can go to the factory and get it made and then actually shipped out and delivered to your customers. Hey, if we can get these things, you're going to get your product. And if we can't get these things, then we're all Sol. And this just didn't turn out to be what we thought it was going to be. Or you can take Robert's advice too, and go to the bank at a loan.

Maybe you raise a little round from some friends and family knows. But Ildi, I love the idea and we're wishing you the best of luck. Our last question comes from Courtney H. Courtney says hello. Thank you all so much for the information.

It has helped me tremendously change allocating my money habits. I've listened to all the episodes thus far and I don't remember you all mentioning anything about buying a franchise. I'm a nurse and they have home care franchises and other franchises for only $30,000 to get started. That's a lot of money with potentially extreme growth. But how is that versus starting your own business?

Courtney, what a great question. I know Robert actually has done a bunch of franchises over his career, so I'm going to let him answer this one. Courtney, great question. And I'm going to give you a kind of the good, the bad and the ugly. I love franchises because they've done all the work upfront, so they've figured out the processes, figured out the marketing, and it's really a solid model.

Robert Croak
But you have to understand one thing. You own the franchise, but you don't necessarily control how it's run in a lot of ways. And remember, you have to check the franchise fees. Are they average or are they high? What is the success rate of these franchisees that open this franchise?

Because you have to look. A lot of franchises out there tell you all the great numbers, but they don't tell you how many people actually succeed with their franchise and what the profits are because you don't want to buy yourself a job and end up working 60 hours a week and not being able to make really any money. So that's important. And then number three, just really really do your research or work with a franchise consultant. Franchises can be great, but just remember these things and also look at it that it's not going to be passive, it's not going to be hands off.

Everyone thinks if you buy a franchise and hire a manager, you can just collect the mailbox money and walk away. You're still going to have to keep your eyes on it, and you should. And it could be a great financial situation for you as long as you do your homework. What a good question, Courtney. Everyone, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Rich Habits podcast.

Austin Hankwitz
And thanks again for coming through and attending the money mindset wealth building summit. We got to meet a lot of you in person, which was really, really exciting. And a ton of you virtually tuned in, which is also really cool. And don't forget, we have our direct indexing webinar May 8 at 04:00 p.m. Eastern time.

You're not going to want to miss it. It is the thing no one's talking about right now as it relates to saving a lot on tax loss harvesting. So whenever you're ready, ready to cash in your profits, you've got some tax lost harvesting strategies to help you do that. I love it and I can't wait to talk more about it tonight on my TikTok Live. Austin will be there with me and we're going to break it down and give you guys some little hints of what you're going to learn on this direct indexing webinar.

Robert Croak
So we'll see you there. And again, I thank all of you each and every week for following along at the Rich Habits podcast. And we are so excited for so many things we have coming up in the next few months. For all of you that have been going along on this journey with us now for over a year, we can't. Wait to continue to lay out the blueprint to build wealth, give you the step by step playbook, what to buy, what not to buy, how to do it, what platforms to use.

Austin Hankwitz
I mean, we are going to just open up everything consistently, give you as much access as you all deserve. It's going to be so much fun. So stay tuned for that and have a great rest of your week.