Now, the multimedia company, based in Alexandria, Va., and operating from www.fool.com, has 80 U.S. employees, 20 in the United Kingdom and 2.2 million subscribers to its paid and free services.

Tom Gardner was in Dallas recently to promote “The Motley Fool’s Money After 40,” the new book he and his brother have co-written.

He sat down with reporters and editors from The Dallas Morning News personal finance team to talk about issues facing people after 40 and other topics.

Q. What is it about 40 that makes it the chronological threshold for people?

A. It’s kind of a halfway point for people in their lives.

In a lot of ways, our work is probably geared to somebody who’s closer to 50, but the idea of really targeting somebody right at age 40 and after 40 – it’s let’s make sure these people get started now (planning their financial lives) and really get started thinking about it.

The first step for so many people is just to get all of your documents and statements in one place.

So many people have moved to different jobs or have not rolled over 401(k)s and are kind of clueless about where they are.

They’re not keeping score of their finances, so the earlier we can get to them, the better.

You’re in the sandwich. You’ve got parents and you’ve got kids, so you’re looking at two dependents now whom you’ve got to think about, and there are still a lot of people in their 40s who are carrying credit card debt.

They may be making smart decisions about their 401(k), they may actually have worked intelligently to save money and put it in a money market, but they’re still carrying $2,000 in credit card debt at 16 percent interest because they just haven’t sat and thought about the mathematics about what they’re doing.

So a good amount of this work is mathematical. For a lot of people, this is not really enjoyable work. But it’s a critical step. Forty is the time to grow up.

Q. After getting your documents together, what’s the next step?

A. A lot of people have almost the instinctual reaction to go meet with a financial adviser. But we should really think about the financial advisers whom we’re working with.

I think that there is such a conflict of interest in the standard relationship between financial adviser and client that there’s going to be a lot of light shed by the baby boomers on problems in this aspect of the industry.

Just as we’ve seen the conflicts of interest of the analyst on Wall Street, who’s trying to serve multiple masters, we’re going to start to learn a little bit more about brokers and financial advisers over the next 10 to 15 years because you’re going to have more and more people who need the advice, who are going to scratch their heads and say, “Wait, are you telling me that the adviser whom I’m meeting with is selling me these funds because he or she is going to get a bigger commission for having sold me those funds?”

I’m hopeful, I’m optimistic, particularly with the Internet and more education and a huge body of 75 million people who are going to have very critical financial decisions coming down the pike, that there’s going to be a real move in the industry toward a flat fee, so that you’re going to pay $200 for an hour to sit down with somebody who has nothing to sell you, who has no incentive to push an annuity on you or to push a whole life insurance plan on you.

Q. Do you feel that boomers and people over 40 have a good sense of how much wealth they need for a better life, or are they grossly underestimating?

A. They’re pretty substantially underestimating right now.

You’ve really got to think about health care.

Organizations and companies are pulling back from covering it.

A natural – hopefully a positive that comes out of that – is that we’re encouraging a lot of people to really think about their health and try and pre-empt and prevent illness as much as possible.

Overall, in just looking at the household income, the size of mortgages, the amount of credit card debt, for a lot of people over the age of 40, one of the bigger mistakes that they’ve made right now is to continue living in too large a house.

The average home size in the last 30 years is up 50 percent, but the average family size is pretty much the same, so we’ve demanded 50 percent more living space for our smaller families.

That in some ways is representing a higher quality of life and a lot of success in a free-market economy, but also it’s representing some people who are taking out mortgages that are too big, taking on too much risk financially.

Q. Are there other lifestyle changes that people can make to build that nest egg?

A. We’re advocates of really making sure that you have prepared for your retirement plan before funding your childrens’ college plans.

I know for a lot of people that sounds like I’m suggesting that people shouldn’t sacrifice for their kids, but to make a sacrifice to ensure that your child gets four years of college at the best college from age 18 to 21 is already and will be an increasingly expensive approach, particularly given the fact that they’ve got a couple decades of earnings power ahead of them. I don’t like to see somebody who’s putting themselves at financial risk around the halfway mark of their life to ensure an incredible four years, when an enterprising look at the college experience could liberate some cash that’s going to be very important to the whole family when somebody’s 72 years old and wished they allocated some money for some long-term care insurance.