All of Our Money Rules (And When to Break Them)
Money Guy Show
Brian Preston, CPA, CFP®, PFS and Bo Hanson, CFA, CFP® | Fee-Only Fiduciary Advisors
4.7 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Here's the thing. The Money Guy rules exist for a reason. We want to give you financial guardrails |
| 0:04.7 | to help you succeed. But what happens when life doesn't fit neatly into those guardrails? |
| 0:10.7 | Brian, I am so excited because today we're going to cover all of our Money Guy rules, |
| 0:15.3 | why they matter and when it's okay to break them, because as you guys know, personal finance is personal. |
| 0:21.4 | I'm Brian. He's Bo, and we're financial advisors here to help you build wealth and break the |
| 0:26.4 | rules. And with that, let's jump right in. |
| 0:34.6 | All right, Brian, so the very first rule we're going to look at is one that I think a lot of people are familiar with, at least when they think about sort of the money guy ecosystem. |
| 0:42.5 | And it's our rule around buying a car, the 238 car buying rule. |
| 0:47.9 | We say, when you buy a car, whether it's new or used, we want you to put 20% down. |
| 0:52.2 | We want you to not finance it for any more than 36 months |
| 0:55.1 | or three years. And we want your total payments to not exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. |
| 0:59.9 | The reason we came up with this is way too many Americans are literally driving around in their |
| 1:06.3 | wealth. Cars are the biggest wealth killer. If you don't believe me, I want you to take into |
| 1:10.5 | consideration that if you look at what the median income is, it's around the Cars are the biggest wealth killer. If you don't believe me, I want you to take into consideration |
| 1:11.1 | that if you look at what the median income is, it's around $45,000 for individuals. That sounds fine. |
| 1:18.2 | Nothing crazy there. Okay, that sounds fine until you take into consideration that the average new |
| 1:23.3 | car is now $50,000. There's a lot of people out there that are driving around cars that cost |
| 1:29.6 | more than they make in a year. And look, we know that a lot of financial influencers out there say |
| 1:33.6 | only pay cash, only pay cash, only pay cash, and that sounds wonderful and it's great. And we actually |
| 1:38.8 | agree and subscribe to that idea when you can. But if you're early in your journey or you're just starting out or maybe |
| 1:45.2 | you're in that messy middle, a lot of times paying cash is not an option. And you have to have |
| 1:49.8 | an automobile so that you can actually get to your J.O.B. So let's talk about when do you break our rules. |
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