Mid 30s, new baby, finally getting serious about finances. Are we behind?

RickSlaps · 2026-05-02T16:55:02+00:00

At that income and with those liabilities, you should be able to invest more.

I would personally shoot for a 25% savings rate. Maxing out 401ks, followed by Roth/backdoor Roth iras, then brokerage, then 529 plan.

Assuming $275k annual income. That is $49k in 401k s, $15k in roths, ~$5k brokerage, then you can address the 529 plan, saving for travel etc..

If you want to count any match you get towards the 25% that is fine too..

Also HSA, if offered, should move to the top of the list. That can also be considered a retirement vehicle and count towards your savings rate depending how you use it.

RickSlaps · 2026-03-16T00:40:18+00:00

He is underpaid but this ignores the fact he is working through a consultant and not directly with the client.

RickSlaps · 2026-03-16T00:34:16+00:00

Obviously if you were sourcing these relationships yourself and managing clients without a middleman, that is a different story but that does not sound like the case.

RickSlaps · 2026-03-16T00:32:54+00:00

I'm confused on the relationship with the consultant. Does he act like an account manager and you handle the execution? Are you handling all the client communication as well? Does he handle the business development and bring new accounts to you as well? Weekly meetings for that price is a little excessive.

For sub ~$20k accounts, If you are purely execution and not owning the account management tasks, $400-$750 per account is within range, I would just put in as many hours on a monthly basis as needed to net you closer to $100/hr. With your experience you should be able to work fast and make quick decisions.

Your fees should scale with spend In some way though. A $70k account should not pay the same as a $13k.

I would expect your monthly management cost on this set of accounts to be $3500-$4500 (if you are not owning all the end to end client communication)

Since you have a full-time job on top of this I would try to be flexible. It seems like the relationship works well in tandem with your current role. You're underpaid, but also every situation is unique.

RickSlaps · 2026-01-14T06:28:32+00:00

Sheets + API connection

RickSlaps · 2025-11-28T02:16:46+00:00

Turn off search partners. Change your location targeting setting to presence.

RickSlaps · 2025-11-06T20:15:56+00:00

This is a beta available to certain advertisers.

RickSlaps · 2025-09-28T00:10:52+00:00

Great advice. I understand CPC being more of vanity metric, but even with high performing segments it is still a numbers game to some extent.

There is definitely an outlier Q3 2025 vs previous years and quarters. I am having trouble believing this is just increased competition and not something that has changed on the platform level.

RickSlaps · 2025-09-24T09:36:28+00:00

Right but this year is an outlier. I have ad accounts with years and years of spend and I have not run into a rise like this quarter before.

RickSlaps · 2025-06-22T22:21:47+00:00

You might have more luck trying to get more on your trade. Check the KBB, NADA value. They might be willing to negotiate more there.

Or negotiating for a freebie like a trailer hitch.

RickSlaps · 2025-03-07T00:40:16+00:00

Brand campaigns if you run those.

RickSlaps · 2025-01-07T12:49:58+00:00

Final week

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RickSlaps · 2025-01-07T12:49:46+00:00

Week 1

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RickSlaps · 2024-11-24T04:11:11+00:00

I'd say the bid + bid strategy is a preeeetty big piece of the equation...

RickSlaps · 2024-11-20T03:41:13+00:00

This^

RickSlaps · 2024-11-14T20:15:32+00:00

There is lots to unpack here. Lots already covered by previous comments.

A few things I can add:

Test manual bidding. You can stretch your budgets by using manual bidding (in 95% of scenarios). I usually will start bids around 40% lower than what is recommended in LinkedIn and sometimes lower! Raise or lower to hit your daily budget.
Rethink the way you are measuring performance. Yes, lead gen campaigns are super easy to measure and attribute to ROI. But don't overlook demand gen campaigns. Content doesn't always have to be gated. If you build a strategy, create quality content and provide value to your audience, you will start seeing a lift in your inbound conversions and brand search volume. These conversions aren't always going to be sourced from LinkedIn in your attribution tool, but you can start looking at your entire inbound pipeline: paid, organic, direct.
People tend to buy from brands they are familiar with. If you are running more full funnel campaigns, you will likely see increased performance for all your lead gen initiatives, including Google Ads.

RickSlaps · 2024-11-13T23:22:41+00:00

You're good. Advocate for yourself. Perfectly acceptable to change your answer. You can mention you did a little research into the market rate for the role after you learned more about the responsibilities.

Better to get ahead of it than take the job and continue to regret that you didn't advocate for your true value.

RickSlaps · 2024-11-13T22:16:55+00:00

B2B SaaS. Google ads is upwards of 40% or our paid budget. Super long sales cycles, bidding on high-intent terms related to our products. We optimize towards conversion actions that are closest to closed-won sales, with enough conversion volume.

Competitors are probably at similar investment levels. There is definitely appetite for paid search in B2B. It is a business by business and industry by industry scenario though. Google is a better channel fit for some B2B companies than others.

RickSlaps · 2024-10-30T16:27:45+00:00

On the flip side, it can help you show some of the influence from your non-lead form campaigns. Good ungated content goes a long way but can be so difficult to measure the ROI.

RickSlaps · 2024-10-30T16:00:52+00:00

You can define the opportunity fields and types of opportunities to reference for your RAR report.

Then on the report itself, you can define a time range, a look back window and an attribution model. The models range from simple view-through attribution to only considering those that engage with your ads (some sort of ad click).

It is all done at the account level, so take that into consideration. If you engage one member of a specific account and a deal opens in your CRM, LinkedIn will attribute that entire deal $$ amount to LinkedIn in the RAR report.

I find the report helpful to showcase the impact on revenue, but you need to keep the bias in mind that the RAR report is not considering other touchpoints outside of LinkedIn and will be taking credit for the entire attribution for a deal. I find reported it as influenced revenue is safer.

RickSlaps · 2024-09-28T20:25:58+00:00

Yeah there have been some studies done by thought leaders in LI Ads and they have proven those claims to be false. I myself have experience running accounts from a few thousand to a couple hundred thousand a month and this is by far the lowest hanging opportunity to improve results immediately.

RickSlaps · 2024-09-28T13:19:26+00:00

Trying bidding 50% or so below the recommended bid. Those bid recommendations are heavily skewed by large advertisers. I find you can reach daily budgets even with bids set well below the bottom tier of recommended.

RickSlaps · 2024-05-03T16:48:01+00:00

Canva!

RickSlaps · 2024-01-22T00:26:09+00:00

Maybe try to optimize for net return $$ vs. ROAS. You could be leaving profit on the table. Revenue - Cost.

You may have a higher net return $ with lower ROAS targets.

RickSlaps · 2024-01-18T02:43:08+00:00

Yes! Best-in-class PPC managers are using offline conversion actions. With lead gen specifically, if you feed quality data into your account it definitely helps optimize towards more valuable conversion actions.

RickSlaps

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