In the 100th episode of Boldin Your Money, host Steve Chen chats with community member Mark Eakle about his real-life money journey. Mark shares how he went from relying on pensions to taking charge with 401(k)s, paying off his house, and helping his daughters graduate debt-free. He talks about the lessons he learned along the way—like starting early, sticking with it, and letting compounding work its magic. Mark also explains how being part of a small group of Boldin users keeps him motivated, accountable, and confident about his financial future.
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Transcription
Introduction (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by the Boldin Financial Planning platform. Formerly New Retirement, create a financial plan for free Boldin.com.
Steve Chen (00:00):
So welcome everyone to a special episode of Boldin Your Money. I’m your host Steve Chen, and today we’re celebrating the 100th episode of our podcast. I think we’ve had approaching a million people listen to this, which is kind of amazing. It started out as a little project and it’s awesome to be building in public and working with our community. And so today we’re going to do the first of a few interviews with folks from our community. We’ve got Mark Eakle joining us. We’ve talked to Mark in the past. He’s a member of our community. He is also got a sub-community that we’re going to talk about or he is a part of that. And we want to learn with Mark why financial planning and literacy is important, key lessons that he’s taken and key lessons and learned and key lessons he has to share. So with that, mark, welcome to our show. Appreciate your time here.
Mark Eakle (01:08):
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Steve Chen (01:11):
Yeah. So we’re going to ask kind of a few core questions. I think the first one is why do you lean into financial planning and literacy? What is your goal for investing your time here?
Mark Eakle (01:28):
The importance of this I think has changed in my lifetime. My father came at a time when companies really took care of this for you and that transitioned and my employers have had multiple, but I lived through that transition. I came to a very professional level and a big company and two years after I got there, they stopped the pension. Right when they stopped the pension is when they really offered a very attractive matching. And that’s really when I recognized this. I was very fortunate to have some smart people advise me, leaders in my organization pull me aside and say, you really need to think about this. If you don’t start this now, you’re going to regret it later. And they were right. And so I think that’s kind of the norm now is that everyone needs to be more informed, more educated and more involved. It’s just grown for me. I had a mild interest in the beginning and every little bit of progress enticed more interest and more education and now it’s kind of fun.
Steve Chen (02:40):
That’s awesome. And how old were you when the transition from a pension to the 401k happened? And I think it’s great that you had folks that were looking out for you and kind of introduce you. Not everybody has that. I think that’s a big thing. Not everybody has that kind of mentor person that will say, Hey, this is important. You need to pay attention.
Mark Eakle (02:59):
I was 42, so kind of in the middle of a career really or almost later into a career. But I had made a transition from really not one field, but definitely into another type of employment opportunity, a large corporation. And that company had a long, it was DuPont. So DuPont had a long history of really good benefits, a really good pension and just happened to be at that time, soon after I joined that group that they made that big change. And we all got a lot of communication opportunities to go to training sessions. But really there were two people that I were able to talk to that were able to clue me in and get my attention.
Steve Chen (03:47):
Well that was pretty deep into your career. I mean, I’m a Gen Xer, right? I’ve only had 4 0 1 ks the whole way through and I didn’t have anyone in the beginning saying, Hey, this is important. If some fidelity person rolled in and said, Hey, you should do this, and we started contributing money, but the elections and how to invest, none of that, how much to invest very little was imparted. And also I think expectations around how fast it might grow or what it might look like weren’t offered. And so I think this happens with a lot of people. Early in your career you’ve been saving, but you don’t make necessarily a lot of money. And depending on your investing, you might not see a ton of compounding and that acceleration. And so you’re like, why am I doing this? It kind of happens later in your career after you’ve been doing it for a while. So it’s good that you had that kind of people looking out for you. You also, for your family, this was important and you wanted to provide education for your kids, have a low debt experience. Any big lessons from that?
Mark Eakle (04:53):
Yes, and thank you. That really was one of our priorities is to make the next generation set them up better, educate them better, but also make sure they get off to a good start. And so I mentioned the two people at work that helped me learn, get me started, and then kind of caution, like you said, don’t expect, be happy with 7%, be happy. And then I had a professional advisor that was independent that we went to that looked at our situation and really gave us some really powerful advice. He said, you’re on the right track. What are your important goals? And we said, one is we want to get our daughters through college without debt and we want to pay off our home before retirement. And he kind of modeled that out and you put a pin out there in the big calendar and he said, you’re going to do fine. And right at this point you’re going to be able to accelerate, stay the course, achieve your goals, and then be ready because your income is going to be significantly better and you’re going to have no debt. And when you do that, that’s the time to accelerate and start maxing out. It’s really catch up in the true sense along with the way the catchup rules work. But I never forgot that. And it was quite a few years later that that moment came and it has worked really well for us.
Steve Chen (06:20):
So I’m hearing from you, people have played first mentors in your company saying, Hey, this is important, what to expect. And I think that framing is super important and also this advisor was helpful and they helped you look forward in time and say that, hey, this is, so they said you’re going to see an acceleration, this is because of your career and also the effect of compounding or why did they think there was going to be this acceleration at that time?
Mark Eakle (06:50):
I really think it was the reduction of expense, paying off the mortgage cashflow in college and then positioning ourselves to get to that point of absolutely no debt. And then two incomes, you have that choice now you can say, I want to accelerate. So we were still saving aggressively. I mean we always do the match in our life. We’ve never not done the match. We started the Roths externally early in the recent years, the last five years, seven years is when we’ve had that opportunity and he kind of predicted it. He was really good at projections and modeling. He was really good with Excel is what he actually used, which 15 years ago that was as good a tool, but he just kind of predicted it and kind of painted a picture and we were able to embrace it when the time came.
Steve Chen (07:46):
Okay, awesome. And it sounds like you have paid off your house, then you’re paid off the mortgage.
Mark Eakle (07:51):
Yes.
Steve Chen (07:52):
Awesome. Congratulations. And the kids are through school.
Mark Eakle (07:56):
Yes, they are
Steve Chen (07:57):
Debt, they’re doing great. That’s awesome. Yeah, that is a great gift to give to your children. I mean, I think there’s a whole generation of people that a lot of millennials took on a lot of student debt and you come out and you have a hundred thousand dollars in student debt, it changes your life. You got to figure out, you got to have the right kind of job to pay for and then you have to worry about paying for that and it can delay and has delayed other goals like household formation, having kids and stuff like that.
Mark Eakle (08:24):
So both of ours worked very hard. They both worked during college. One was an RA one commuted for three years, so it was a family effort, but we shared that with them, this is our goal. And so many of their friends unfortunately didn’t understand how that really worked and I’ve always been concerned with that system. I sat across from the table and they said, you can get through everything. Sign here. It’s not financial aid, it’s a Stafford loan.
Steve Chen (08:54):
Right, right. Totally. Yeah, you’re signing up for a big obligation and the parents are usually, they’re the credit backstop for this as well. Yeah, I was an RA in college, so I appreciate, I had 60 kids memorize all their names, run a floor of kids. It’s a good experience. And also worked in college, which is good, but I still graduated with debt but not that much and paid it off pretty quickly, which was important. But yeah,
Mark Eakle (09:24):
I did too. I didn’t finish in the beginning, but even with the abbreviated attempt, I still had debt and I didn’t really understand it when I did it at 19 and 20, I didn’t understand it. And it was fortunate, I mean that we were able to address that early in our lives, but I never forgot it. And then I’ve seen so many stories now of the tragic impact that has on people.
Steve Chen (09:50):
I sat, I was playing poker for fun once at some casino and I sat across the table from this young person 25, and he was like, I was chatting with him. Why are you doing this? What are you doing? He is like, well, I’m playing trying to play and I’ve got $130,000 of debt, student debt and I’m doing this to try to make incremental money to pay it off. And I was like that. It seems like one a lift into a highly risky way to have your student loans. But yeah, no, those stories are out there and very real and not good for you. So any top tips that you would pass along to people, younger people getting started on their financial journey about what they should be thinking about?
Mark Eakle (10:39):
I’m happy that today there’s a lot of advice out there and then it’s a rich environment. There’s a lot of resources, a lot of experts that you can listen to. I was thinking with your earlier question, that was one thing that I remember, just be happy with 7%, always get the match. I mean it’s the long view that I think’s really important. And then I think you mentioned a moment ago there, the power of compounding. I think that’s really important to gain an understanding the weight of debt and the power of compounding and getting started early and just the power of time, but a lot of common sense, a lot of basics. And then I guess I’ve already alluded to multiple times, but don’t go alone. Listen to people get help and when you get to the right place, having a solid plan and understanding, it’s really important. Even if it’s simple, just have a plan.
Steve Chen (11:43):
Yeah, I think the compounding time in the market versus timing the market is key. Definitely. It’s interesting in our community we meet people like you, they hit escape velocity, they start to generate more in returns than they contribute for instance or whatever, or at a certain point than they’re conceivably spending or planning to spend at a certain point. It’s like then they’re really able to essentially be completely financially independent. This thing takes on life, on a life of its own, but it takes a while. Can take 15 to 20 years of solid saving and contributing to get there. But then once you get there, yeah, there’s no looking back. Alright, well this is great. And then I think the last thing I would like to love to cover is just you’re part of a community. This is something really interesting that we’re seeing, right? There’s a community of people that use Bolden and then there’s folks that are in the Facebook group. There’s like 21,000 something people there. There’s people on Reddit. And then we’re also seeing these folks spin up their own micro groups, eight to 10 people and work together. And I would love to get you to give you perspective on how that came together and what the value is.
Mark Eakle (13:09):
Thank you. That is a really wonderful development and for me, I joined the Facebook group, I signed up for Bolden and got myself up to speed, really invested and got comfortable and valued the tool and started looking to the advisors and then joined that Facebook group and I think it was Al Champagne that put up the first post that Joe Coon had done a video about have a group of friends that you can meet once a month and you trust and everybody raises their right hand. I won’t tell anybody else your numbers, but I’ll put something out there. And I got there late. So I was really the last person to ask to join the group that I’ve been part of for the last year and a half. And we formed this virtual group and really followed the basic template that I think Joe proposed.
(14:07):
The first thing we did was we each pulled up our bolding plan or that plus sort of a presentation and we talked about our situation, our plan, what our goals are. My personal most valuable thing was I pulled up the plan and just shared it and I had two or three folks that pointed out improvements immediately and then we’ve continued that. So we meet once a month, we have a chat that runs all day, all week, every week there’s a topic there and that kind of assembles the agenda. Mark Felton manages all this for as you’ve met Mark. And so he just keeps that next agenda and we build that and then it’s a really group of really smart people. Mark, I think when you and I talked to him, he talked, we won the lottery of this, I’ve just got lucky. But that ability to talk to somebody else doing the same effort with the similar goals with different strengths and different experiences has just been incredible, very valuable.
(15:14):
And then I’ve extended that into my local personal life. I’ve got some, one person in particular I worked with years of Go that’s really talented. He’s a CPA and he’s in the finance for a major corporation. So I go to lunch with him as often as I can and we compare notes, but that community that you can talk to, that strength in numbers and we’ve got some really talented folks in our groups. We’ve got an economist, we’ve got CPA, we’ve got some pretty high level people in corporate America. I’ve got a couple of people that are retired and telling us I’m in year two, here’s what I learned. We celebrated one of our friends that made the decision and pick the day. So we got to meet with him. He got to have the first 10 minutes of the next meeting to let us applaud the success and then watch the relief. That’s another thing that’s really interesting is the change that comes over people, peace people when they get there. But it’s been very powerful and a lot of fun. I’ve made new friends,
Steve Chen (16:23):
I think that I just had coffee yesterday with someone locally and he was talking about like, oh, I think there’s an opportunity to have these groups and community around this moment in time. And I was like, yeah, we’re seeing this in our community that people are doing this and forming it up. It’s very real and it does feel like the community is a big part of it. You’re a year and a half into this still going strong. So it sounds like it’s not going away. There’s ongoing value for you.
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Mark Eakle (16:59):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s become a little bit social. I mean, I’m not able to travel as much as others in the club, but if one member happens to be in the city where another lives, they meet for lunch and we get a really cool picture.
Steve Chen (17:12):
No, that’s awesome.
Mark Eakle (17:13):
There’s a small number that are meeting around the Bogle head conference in Texas this year, which I wish I could go, but that’s a win-win win. You get to go and learn something and get to spend time with friends. But, and then one of the things I think is really important, which we’ve had a few examples and I anticipate more, but Joe called it the gut buster. If you’ve got a big decision coming up, you can bring together that group or ask time on the agenda and say, here’s what I’m dealing with. Here’s what I’m facing. What would you do? Am I thinking of everything I should? That’s really valuable. I mean, in my work we used to call those peer reviews or delivery assurance reviews, but it’s an independent set of eyes to look at what you’re doing to help you think it through and then it’s a thumbs up, I think you got this. And that’s another level of confidence whenever you got to make those big decisions.
Steve Chen (18:13):
Yeah, it’s amazing. We’re thinking about ways to, should we try to facilitate this or is it just, I mean it’s happening organically. There’s a few different groups now we’ve met that have formed up here, so we don’t have a way to track of this stuff. I mean these groups are independent and all that stuff, but it does feel like there’s a there that there’s a lot of value for people and it could help many more people as they think about this. And I think it’s SO’S also trusted because you’re learning from your peers. They have no incentive except to help other people.
Mark Eakle (18:55):
I think that Facebook group is a wonderful large scale, broad example of that and then maybe a little pocket some. Our group, I’ve always felt like we’ve been very fortunate in that the majority of our group, I would call super users, very advanced, very knowledgeable. I’m learning from them. I’m not that person. I’m competent. I feel good about our plan and I feel good about understanding the golden tool and all of that. But that is finding a group that share almost like a common level of effort or attention. I think it’s a lot like optimizing right there. There’s a lot of folks that need help assembling it to begin with, and the coaching, you can help with that and then getting it to what they want and then you get into optimizing and that’s where I feel like we are, which is next level.
Steve Chen (19:54):
Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Yeah, we’re thinking a lot about this. It’s like the people come to financial literacy and independence from all different places like tributaries and then we want to find a way to kind of get people, it’s like I have used martial arts belts or something, right? You’re kind start as a white belt and where are you? Okay. Everyone in our group is like brown belts or black belts. You guys are all black belts, but it’s like getting folks aligned and then learning in a consistent way on that journey and supporting them and then, hey, you’re doing different things at different levels and there’s different rewards at different levels. But it’s great to hear you kind of describe it and thanks for sharing that. Alright, well Mark, this is super helpful. Anything else? Anything else you want to share with our group before we wrap this up?
Mark Eakle (20:46):
Thank, I’ve really enjoyed getting to talk and appreciate everything you do as I was preparing for today. And there were some really good thought provoking questions there. The one thing that kind of surfaced to the top of importance for me is that confidence to embrace the do it yourself. I think that was another turning point for us was when we left from the assets under management model and really went to fee only and then invested in the Bolden planner and got to where you, now we really know everything. We feel like we’re solid and that I think is the next level step there too. So that’s what I would encourage is don’t go to loan, but also don’t go in the dark. Don’t blindly trust an advisor to just tell you everything to do. Make sure you understand what you’re doing
Steve Chen (21:44):
Right. I think, yeah, don’t have a single point of failure. Have some redundancy in your education and perspectives and yeah, different, understand the incentives of the people that you’re talking to and that’s where I think the community and large and small and what’s available on the internet is really helpful for people. They can now get smart on their own and kind of back test and test different points of view. Does this plan align with what my advisor says or my spreadsheet says? Alright. Well Mark, really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing your story and some of the lessons you’ve learned here. We’re going to pack this up with a couple other folks and share it out as our podcast, but it’s awesome to see you again and appreciate your being part of our community and helping other people as you go through this yourself.
Mark Eakle (22:32):
Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here to help celebrate this and thanks for what you all do. This is really important. It’s making a difference is for us.
Steve Chen (22:41):
Yeah. Thanks Mark. I appreciate it.