When it comes to investing your money, there are a lot of opinions on the best way to do it,

especially if you're hoping to achieve financial independence and retire early. So today,

Scott and I will help you take the guesswork out of how and when you should be investing your money.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my investing in the right order co-hosts Scott Trench.

Thanks, Mindy.

In today's episode, we're going to take some steps to teach you what the right steps are in terms of what you should do with your money.

Today's episode is an attempt to answer the question, what should I do with my money as I accumulated? And there are two orders of operations we're going to present to you here today.

One is going to be for a traditional early retiree or traditional retiree, someone who's going to

go down the ladder of these tax

advantaged accounts in the order that we think is best in terms of maximizing the advantages

that these accounts offer for the typical listener of Bigger Pockets Money.

The second order of operations we're going to discuss is one that's geared towards

somebody who is thinking about investing in real estate or starting

a business, somebody who needs after tax, cash, and liquidity because they got better alternatives

than the very powerful benefits offered by these tax-advantaged accounts.

With that, let's get to it.

The first order of operations for fire, and the first step here is to build a $1,000 emergency fund.

The second is to attack bad debt, which we define as debt with an interest rate of 8% to 10%

or higher. The third step is to take the 401k match, the free money offered by your employer.

The fourth is to take advantage of an employee stock purchase plan, purchasing the stock at your

company at a major discount. The fifth step is to fully fund your emergency fund, which we're

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