Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome everyone to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith, joined by me are my two co-host, Curtis Worcester and Austin Minor, the lobster boat and Old Town canoe to my sailboat.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay, I like it.

Ben Smith:

Okay?

Curtis Worcester:

I like it.

Ben Smith:

All right?

Curtis Worcester:

Pause in the delivery. You got me. I didn't know what the third one was going to be.

Austin Minor:

"I got a canoe. Cool."

Ben Smith:

You got a canoe, right. So I have an Old Town canoe. [inaudible 00:00:54]. There you go. There you go. Well, we're in May, right? So you're starting to think about being outside a little bit and Maine summers and being on the Maine waters in spring and all that. So yeah, I thought we'd throw a little nautical theme to start off the show today. So we've been kind of going into of course a lot of, again, kind of purpose driven things and obviously we want to be tying money and purpose as part of our podcast theme that we have with The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast.

So it just requires us, I think, sometimes to lean back into the financial end. And that's what we want to do today was have the three of us go through and we've been meeting with a lot of our clients right now, and Austin is getting introduced to a lot of our client base and meeting new folks in our Portland market as well. Obviously, we've been giving our tips to our clients, but we wanted to share those with you today is, "Hey, what are things that we're saying to our clients in our client meetings and things that maybe you as a listener might be able to take advantage of as well?" So we're giving you today nine financial tips from our financial planning and financial advisory sessions that we do. So that's what we're going to do today as a little format. So each of us are going to do some back and forth in terms of things that we've been saying and doing.

So I'll kind of start off today. I think one thing that obviously with interest rates being higher, and I know that for those that have been with us in our show for a long time, we talk about the need of having an emergency savings account is having three to six months of expenses on hand. Something happens in your life, you obviously might have lost a job, something happens and now I need to have cash on hand, or maybe my pay is not... I'm on commission or my bonus didn't get there. Things like that can happen. So if you've been accumulating cash over the years, which I think we all did a lot of in the pandemic as we weren't spending money, a lot of us were net savers, so our tip is to really take a hard look at your cash accounts at your bank, at your credit union and really kind of reshuffle here. So look at this and say, "Hey, what's in my checking and savings?"

Ideally we think that should be zero to three months of your cash needs are in that short term, "Hey, I can walk physically into a branch today and I can withdraw money, I can pay my bills for the first three months." That sort of thing. So that's where obviously you're not going to get paid a lot of interest is checking and savings just typically you don't give a whole lot there. So that that's normal. But then looking forward and saying, "Hey, what about a money market fund?" So money markets have restrictions of six transactions a month, but because of those restrictions you can obviously get more interest from them. So that for us when we've been having these conversations is looking at three to 12 months of cash needs being in a money market and sometimes even longer.

But I think the added wrinkle right now that's happening, interest rates are higher, the Fed just raised rates again on May 3rd, so that happened to the five to five and a quarter range. So you're seeing a lot of savings accounts, especially if you look at... So I guess our point is shop, shop around, look at what's available. Again, check out internet only banks. And I know there's some fear out there with banks from the First Republic failure and the Silicone Valley Bank failure. Keep in mind FDIC insurance limits, so $250,000 per depositor. But thinking about that, staggering your money out so that three to 12 months in money market, again, that's a great way to get more interest. Problem with money markets though is that the interest rate's going to float up or down every month.

So a lot of what we're hearing and what we see in the Fed and what the Fed minutes are saying is look, they are trying to raise rates to break inflation and one of the ways that inflation might be broken is to force us into a recession. So if a recession happens then interest rates would come down. So then if you have your money in a money market where the interest rates are floating, that obviously long term that might not be a great solution.

So the next tier here are CDs. So again suggesting looking around seeing how long can you build basically a CD ladder. So can you go maybe up to five years out and lock in these rates today for as long as you possibly can and know that the penalty to break a CD... Again, the longer you go, the more the penalty is. But the penalty is really giving back interest. So your principal, the money I give the bank is still there, but if I have to break a CD because I need the money today, I'm typically giving back interest that I was paid. And that can vary by the length of the CD.

So if you do think you might break some, well don't put all of your money into one CD then break it all at once. You could stagger them out in smaller amounts and have them mature at different times. But having this zero to three month checking savings, three to 12 money market and then longer term savings and CDs, now's a really great time to think about interest rates, try to get as much as you can. Because we've experienced a lot of our client base looking at this and going, "Hey, I'm only getting 0.1% in my bank account and it has a ton of money in it. What should I do with it?" I think that's really a starting place for us is look at that three level savings tier program there. So I think that's our first tip we wanted to give you guys today. So I know, Austin, you've got one as well.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, but to your point, it's something that clients aren't used to just because we've been in such a low interest rate environment for so long over the last 10 years, for the majority of that it wasn't really something that even made sense to look at. And there's real money on the table by just having more of that bucketed approach where you take the short term money and keep that as, like you said, the zero to three months. And if you can put money away into CDs especially, but also money market right now, it can be a game changer for the money management part.

Ben Smith:

Absolutely.

Austin Minor:

On the other side of things, maybe not as encouraging, are taking a look at your current debts. So any debt that you have now, but also any upcoming ones. Like Ben said, interest rates are much higher now than we've been used to seeing them over the last 5-10 years. So just trying to plan accordingly. So whether that means making changes on a personal level with maybe putting a big purchase off that you would have to finance or just shopping around to see what you can find a little bit more when it comes to lower interest rates or using a larger portion of your cash in the short term. So there are options there, but I think it's definitely on the money flowing outside of things, it's very important to consider this because those same interest rates that are giving us good rates in our money market accounts are really hurting us on the debt side of things.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, and I'll add on that Austin too, because obviously one of the big purchases that many of us have been doing over the last three years are buying homes, is buying newer homes, buying into other locations because we all were relocating during the pandemic to places where we can enjoy our life a little bit more. And a lot of people came to the state of Maine for that reason. But obviously mortgages right now, interest rates are way up from what we're used to. Prices haven't quite changed yet, though. There's not a whole lot of sellers and there's still a whole lot of buyers and I think that's keeping the prices up a little bit, so patience might be warranted there from a buying side as maybe putting it off a little bit and wait and seeing if the economy softens, how that might impact either interest rates, as we said, or maybe prices or both.

Curtis Worcester:

Or both. Yeah, I think that's a great point and I'm glad both of you brought those up and I think a through thread there, Ben, to yours is shop around, see what's out there. And I think Austin, as you said, that relates exactly to the debt side of things too. I think we've all seen clients who have done really good job, whether it's saving or planning purchases, but we just get, I'm guilty of this myself, I get so comfortable where I do business that I don't even think to look elsewhere and there may be better things out there. So I think that's a really good through thread for you both.

And my point that I wanted to bring up here to kick off the first round for all three of us, Ben, you and I were kind of on the same page here, but I wanted to bring up emergency funds and I know you touched on it a little bit, but it's just so important, especially now, to be really padding those emergency funds. We just talked about it. Recession is probably on the way. If the Fed has their way, it is on the way. And that leads to layoffs, less organizational profitability. Again, Ben, you mentioned if you're working on a commission base, selling houses for example or whatever it is, bonuses may be down. Whatever your kind of situation is, I think it's smart to at least plan for a little bit of downturn here in some part of your income stream.

So again, just padding emergency funds really just socking away the money. And then again, to circle back to Ben's point here, once you have that emergency savings, make sure you're doing it in a place that's the most beneficial for you in your financial picture, right? Again, I think we all three of us have had conversations in the last month with clients who have done such a great job saving, but again, it's in a checking account or it's in a low interest savings account. So you're doing the hard work and we applaud that every single time we see it, but it's taking that next step to really shop those interest rates and get the money in the best place really for you in your individual situation.

Ben Smith:

So Curtis, what would you tell somebody? Because you're saying pad it more, right? And we kind of had this three-tier approach. So with the recession, thinking about the emergency savings and maybe that money market tier, how would you extend it would, because again, we're saying three months, maybe six months of emergency expenses or expenses. When you say pad, how would you pad that more?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I know I probably contradicted myself saying, "Hey, we're all going to have less money, but you need to save more." So no, I think that's a good point, and I think some of them we're going to get to later in this conversation. But I think off the top, the surface level, just kind of revisiting your budgeting. And again, I know we all have this list of our topics, so I don't want to step on anyone's future discussion point, but just it's always good to sit down and reassess your spending. Are you spending appropriately or are there things you can cut out? That's probably the easiest way to have extra money to go into your savings. I know that's tough in this, again, I feel like I'm teasing the whole sheet here, but we're in an inflationary market here and things are costing more every single day. So I know that may be tough, but I think really anything helps, I think. The more we can... Go ahead.

Ben Smith:

But you would probably go, so if we're saying three to six months is what people should save, would they go to six to nine months? Would they go to 12 months, would they go to 18 months? What would be a level of increased moat, I guess, that people should consider?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I think certainly trying to get at least to the 12 month I think would be a huge goal, right? Because I think the worst case scenario we play out with clients is if we lose a job, it could take you up to a year to find a job with an income level, salary level that you're accustomed to. So again, the key here is having that, as you said, Ben moat around you to be able to survive and live the life pretty close to how you're living now for those 12 months while you really work to replace that income. So I think probably the gate I would move is the first number, the three month. I would try to get that closer to six to 12 off of a basis.

Ben Smith:

Gotcha. I like that. So one thing that I think, Curtis, you were bringing up was this concept of fighting inflation. And I think that's something we've been talking about is again, inflation in some ways is our friend, in some ways it isn't, right? And I think where it is our friend, we got to work hard to have it work with us and then we got to fight against it in certain things and especially from our cost side. So I want to spend a few moments on fighting inflation because I think that's something for... Obviously, why do we invest? We invest so that we can keep our purchasing power. So if it costs more to do the same things we're doing today tomorrow, then that's one way investments can fight inflation long term for us is to retain purchasing power.

So with that said, one thing in terms of fighting inflation, so keeping track of how your monthly expenses right now are changing in price and rebudget for those costs. And this is, I think, when we see people make budgets, especially during inflationary time periods, is they go, "Oh yeah, I spend X number of dollars a week on groceries and I just lock that in." Well by the way, over the last 12 months you have inflation that's been double digits, right? You've had 10% inflation, by the way and some items are in the teens. So certain items have been going up a whole lot. So keep track of that is what we want to say. Obviously you might set your budget for the year. It's like, "Okay, here's my costs, here's my 401(k) contribution, here's my obviously income coming from the top and flowing down and here's all the fun money I'm going to have this year and I'm going to be able to do the vacation. Obviously I'm taking Curtis's advice, I'm padding my emergency savings, I'm doing all these things."

But all of a sudden our costs get bigger. And we didn't really account for it, but we're like, "Hey, our budget says we can do that vacation this year that we've been planning and our budget says we can go buy that car and all the things." And then we find out, "Geez, we were contributing all this money in the 401(k) account and we are now in deficit. Our emergency savings are going down, not up, I'm needing more money." So I think that happens a lot I think in inflationary environments is that you have to redo your budget more frequently and to keep track on things to make sure that that gap that you thought was there is there. And it's something where, again, it's just pretty easy to be on autopilot. It's like, "Yeah, I always spend X number of dollars on that and that's the way it's always been and now it isn't."

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, and I think Ben, if I could just jump in for a sec, I think that's something that the three of us see more frequently now too, just the way our... I'll give listeners an insight to us if they don't know. So the way we operate, it's all kind of around this financial plan that we do and we have a questionnaire and people fill in their budget. And in times like this from our last meeting to say a meeting that we're doing now with someone, to pick on the single line item that they put in for groceries, sometimes it's not even close anymore because of just the rising costs. So I just wanted to reiterate what we're actually seeing that happen in our meetings when we look at financial plans. Again, to your point, Ben, I think if it's a more frequent check-in on that budget, I think it's only going to help at this point.

Ben Smith:

So I think that's something where, again, that's one way to fight inflation is make sure you're budgeting appropriately for it. Because if all of a sudden, "Hey, we're worried about the next 12 to 24 months of what's happening in the global economy and maybe how that's going to impact us personally." I think that's something to keep in mind is just make sure that the savings part is continuing to happen and that other places that are competing for those dollars that you're just kind of keeping that in check a little bit.

The second point I wanted to make on fighting inflation, this might be a little bit late, but one thing that we've been saying to our clients over the last year or so is to check out these Series I bonds from the US Treasury. These are direct, so you have to go to the US Treasury themselves, and we'll put a link in our show notes to that page to check out. But are, if you think about growing up, from your mom, dad, grandparent, you get a savings bond, right? "Ah, we got you a savings bond, Ben and 30 years and it's going to be worth a lot of money." Those things. This is kind of what that is except the I stands for inflation. And this goes back to it was in the late '90s, vice president at time, Al Gore proposed this as a way coming out of the '80s to fight inflation and was obviously not well-used in the 2000s because we didn't really have inflation. So that was something where it hasn't been used very much, but now over the last couple of years this program is really taken off.

So how does it work? So you can buy electronically or paper these bonds, they're 30-year bonds, so you are buying 30 years of them, but you can break the bond after one year. So you can buy lots of different increments. Electronically has more increments than paper does. But essentially, if I buy $1,000 bond for example, I'll get a kind of nominal interest rate zero or 1% and then I get inflation on top of that. So I get the consumer price index number, whatever that is, and every six months that I bond is going to reset to what's happening in CPI. Right? So that's something where last year these I bonds were paying 9% and 10% interest. So all of a sudden, "Hey, I got $1,000 and I'm getting $100 in interest for a year." So that that's one way to, "Hey, if inflation's up on one end, maybe if I can keep track on my savings along the way, then I've kind of neutralized the impact of inflation."

So that's one way to do it. But again, we talked about interest rates might be coming down. Obviously the Fed is trying to fight inflation right now and bring that number down. So I think right now, if you look in May of '23, it just reset. So it's a May/November reset cycle. So I think that it's in the 4-

Curtis Worcester:

4.3.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, 4.3% level right now. So again, that's probably close to what you can probably get on a banking end, but it's different because what if, hey, next we have another disruption of supply chain and inflation goes crazy again? Here's something that will react with it. And I think that's the benefit of it is hey, doesn't mean that today it's great and tomorrow it might be better, a year from now it might not be good and two years from now it might be even better again. So if you have it, that might be something that's a way to diversify some of your savings and to counteract any possible inflation that might come up. So I just would say check those out. See if that kind of fits. But again, it has to go directly through the US Treasury, so you can't go through us as an advisor or a bank. You really have to transact through the US Treasury directly. So that was our kind of second point of fighting inflation.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, that's a good one, Ben. And like you said, we'll have a link to the Treasury direct website in the show notes for this so people can go check that out. So another point I wanted to bring up about fighting inflation. Anyone listening, feel free to use me as your advocate on what I'm about to say. Most of us are working, probably, one of the easiest ways to fight inflation is to get a raise. So go ask for a raise. And I know that's easier said than done, so feel free to say that Curtis, on The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast said that you deserve a raise and you're going to fight inflation.

Ben Smith:

When you walk into that manager's office, you drop that as the first line, "Curtis says..."

Curtis Worcester:

That's right. I'll put my email in the show notes so I'll be a reference for anyone who wants to know. No, but seriously, increasing our income is one of the easiest ways to cope with inflation. It's more money coming into us that's helping fight the more money we're spending on the backend. And if a raise isn't in the works, similar to we were talking about with the savings account, shop around a little bit, switching jobs might help get into a higher income pay scale or it may even put pressure on your current employer. There's a line I think that you can tiptoe, and I'm no HR professional here, but I think being aware of your pay scale and appropriateness and making your current employer aware of that, and I think it would only help.

But again, even switching jobs also might help re-energize you. We've all maybe been doing the same thing for so long and a change might help morale and your bank accounts. So I know I started kind of jokingly with it, but really it is important to look at where you lie personally on pay scales. And if it's appropriate, then that's great. If it's not, I think we got to be our own advocates and make sure we're making what we deserve.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. One, don't discount your position of power today. Obviously a lot of employees right now, there's a lot of open positions, there's not enough people to fill them. So that gives you a lot more position of power to ask for something, especially when you've been somewhere for a long time and you've really not gotten a whole lot of increase along the way in your career. I think that's something to keep in mind. And again, if that employer's not willing to do this, again, keep an open mind to looking around. I would say too is we've had a career coach on our podcast before and sometimes we got to work through things, as we have a lot of emotional baggage and loyalty and all that that goes with our current... Again, who we view ourselves as.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

It comes from our identity of a job. So going to a career coach is also helpful too of, well, here's all the skills you have, where can they translate and where can I not only, as you said Curtis, re-energize, but also where maybe I can make a bigger impact, maybe I can do things that are funner. Maybe it's a funner culture at another place. There's lots of things I think to consider in addition to the raise part. But I think kind of opening yourself up, and sometimes it's really difficult when we're in the later stages of our career to go, "Well, it's too late." And again, if there's one thing, our mantra here, a guidance point in our podcast is it's not too late. So I just want to make that point too, is that I think it's something to look around on.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, and as someone who just recently changed jobs and moved here, I can actually attest that it helped with a lot of things, especially quality of life. So it's really something I think that should be taken seriously and just think about it, it's something you don't want to act on rashly. But it's definitely something that can be a big game changer.

Last part here for fighting inflation is keeping your investments on track. So what I mean by this is not going to cash or staying in cash, it's not a good long-term strategy. That sounds very straightforward, right? But it's something that can easily happen if you're not looking at your time horizons for the different buckets that you have. So just like Ben talked about at the beginning with different buckets for cash, so the money market CDs and checking, we want to keep buckets for our investments as well as our shorter to term cash needs.

So we go through this process with clients during our planning where we make sure and look at what you need in cash given your expenses and then what you can invest for long term. And once you've identified what you can invest for that longer term time horizon, really being disciplined even during tough times when it can be a little scary, just trying to be as disciplined with that as possible because making moves into cash and then back into investments and back and forth isn't going to help your long-term returns and it can actually very seriously hurt them. So being invested is a great way to fight inflation over the long term. It's historically going to be one of our highest means of returns. So it's just something to always keep in mind even though it seems pretty basic.

Then the next item outside of fighting inflation is kind of in line with what I was just talking about as well, which is rethink your stock to bond mix. So it's all about managing your portfolio in a way that you can get the returns needed to achieve your goals, to meet your expenses. So if we can do that with as little risk as possible, we're only going to be helping ourselves. So one thing we've seen with the rise in rates over the last year or so is that bonds are paying quite a bit more. So corporate bonds are paying nearly 5% as of May this year, 2023.

So rethinking your stock to bond mix, if nothing else, just making sure that it's within an acceptable range given the much higher rates that we're getting from bonds. But that might actually mean shifting more heavily into bonds where you can potentially lock in a rate of say that closer to 5% for the next 5-10 years and you're taking off some risk from the table by getting out of as heavy a concentration in socks. So it's a good problem to have if you can make that change. But this just happens to be a very beneficial time to do something like that.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I think you nailed it there, Austin. And I think the key piece, like you said, is depending on where you are in your investment lifetime, if you will, and we have people who if that number, say it's 5%, will kind of make their plan work, why do we need to take all the risk to get that 5%, right? So I think that's a really important piece you brought up. But now just for the fun of it, I'm going to say the complete opposite and look at it from a different angle of someone who maybe wants to take a lot of risk or say a younger investor or something like that.

So be greedy is my tip. Be greedy when others are fearful. So when times are kind of fearful and people are scared and say there's steep market losses coming. Right now, I know there's a lot of talk about the debt ceiling, which we could all probably talk about for another hour after this if we wanted to. But times like that, I guess now, can really present opportunities for higher upside. The whole point of the last few bullet points have been stay with your plan. Double down on it if you're okay with risk, if you're invested appropriately, again, keyword is appropriate, if it's appropriate for you and your plan and your time horizon, now is a great time to just dive in.

If the market goes down, buy some more. We like to tell people on a surface level when the market goes down, stocks are on sale. Say it goes down 20%, you can buy a stock for 20% less. I know it doesn't feel good to see our balances go down when that happens, but again, understanding the way it works, understanding the impact of it staying invested throughout your entire investible timeline, it's a great time to really double down on the risk, again, assuming it's very appropriate for you and you individually.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, because again, even looking backwards, there's been quite a few scenarios where I know elections was something that people were kind of fearful of or obviously our political environment is so divisive and people are so loyal to one party or the other that, "The other party's going to win, I know it, and then all of a sudden things are going to be bad." And that didn't really happen. So I think that's something where there's a lot of these time periods where people get really nervous, really fearful, and it's always, "This time is different." Right? "We've never seen this one before and this is why it's going to be all different this time." And I get it. I can agree with that. It does feel very different.

So I would say that I would go ahead and if you can lean into it just to think about 2020, geez, we had a pandemic, we had a virus that we didn't know how deadly it was going to be. We had to stay home, shut the economy down, and that market recovered. It was what, six or eight weeks it went down 30% and within another eight to 12 weeks it had almost fully recovered. So I think that's from a perspective size, if they're going to shake out of an environment, that's probably one of them that would've done that. But just again, the market is forward-looking and I think that's something where we're in the moment looking now, the market's looking ahead to 12 to 18 months and that's why I think 2020 was so poor. Well, it was pricing in a recession. It was pricing in a lot of what we think is going to happen here at the end of 2023. So I think that's something where we might be a little late in reacting. And I think that can obviously cause more harm is what Austin was saying there too.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, And to that point with Curtis's be greedy and others are fearful, I think what to me that says is look for opportunity instead of reacting with fear.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Austin Minor:

So something that comes to mind for me and something that we talk to clients about is when the markets are rough, like after a 2022 where the markets were way down on most areas, consider doing a Roth conversion. This isn't going to be something that's right for everyone, but with balances in IRAs and 401(k)s depressed from those market declines, it could be especially beneficial for folks who haven't started drawing social security and aren't subject to required minimum distributions. So you have to pay income taxes on the amount you convert, but from a long-term perspective, the pros of a Roth conversion in 2023 tilt the scales towards moving forward with this strategic move. So that's just an area that I think, again, if we're always trying to think about moves that can be beneficial for us rather than just dwelling on the fear of different situations, we can actually uncover some things that could potentially have huge impacts on our portfolio and our financial wellbeing long term.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, it is the proverbial lemons to lemonade, right? It's like we don't experiencing losses, we don't having things not work out. But again, I think that's what folks are hiring us to do is go, "Hey, what can we do now to take a step that's beneficial long term?" And while things are subdued and suppressed, Austin, I think you're exactly right is that Roth conversion is a really big deal. So I think that's a really awesome tip there.

I want to maybe go to the softer side, maybe back to the budgeting as maybe our eighth tip here is, and I'm guilty of this too, check your pandemic subscriptions. You guys both know I've been on Peacock here like crazy streaming Yellowstone. So I'm all cut up on the Duttons, I know what's happening now and Rip and Beth and I don't want spoil it too much for everybody.

Curtis Worcester:

Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. So I'm all caught up, but it's like I look at Peacock and I go, "Well, what else do I really want to watch?" And I look through, "No, I'll just flip to another streaming service." Why are we paying for that if I'm all set and all caught up on what Kevin Costner's doing this episode, right? I'm good. So you can cut out the Peacock, you have our permission. So if you're not using the streaming service, don't let those keep accumulating, the 15 bucks a month or whatever they are per streaming service. Again, look at that, see what you're using and then if you're not using it, cut it out. And again, they're going to always have deals to bring you back, right?

So I think that's the time to right now figure out what you're watching, where you watch it or hey, maybe you were doing more cooking at home, right? Maybe you were doing the Hello Freshes and the subscription boxes like that where they're sending you groceries and now the price is way up on those, or you're not liking those anymore and, "Why do we keep buying this?" All those things add up quite a bit. And I think there can be, back to our fight inflation piece, that's something that I kind of look at too.

So I'll also kind of point out, actually, Curtis, you brought this up to me, review things like your cell phone, by the way. Look at your cell phone service and sometimes your cell phone service is going to offer free bundling of these pandemic subscriptions that you were doing. So maybe why are we buying it out of our credit card? You can put it into our cell phone service and we can get three of these as part of what we're already paying already anyway. So I think that's something where, look at Amazon Prime, look at all these free access to other services and see what you can maybe get for free somewhere too. So again, I think that's what I'd say is pandemic subscriptions, take that magnifying glass out, look at it really closely. Ask your housemates. "Hey, wife. Hey, husband. Hey, kid, have you been watching Paramount+? No? Okay, good to know." So that sort of thing is I think a really important thing to go through.

Curtis Worcester:

I agree. And I'm going to add one too, Ben, because I, in real time, like three days ago learned that I was double paying for something and you brought it up when you were talking about paying for things with your credit card. One of my credit cards pays for my DoorDash subscription and I did not know that. So American Express offers DoorDash DashPass. Did not know that. So guilty, we doubled up. So check your credit cards too, folks, because, again, the theme of just reviewing everything. I feel like that's just been a through thread here. It's just revisit everything. There's deals out there on the table that you may or may not be aware of.

But I want to kind of move into our last tip here. And this is one that I know, Ben, you and I talk about it a lot, and Austin, we've had conversations as well. Just be careful. I feel like this is a statement for anything, not just what we're talking about today with financial tips. But just be careful of what we hear and see and watch on apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or any other kind of short form video platform. Again, specifically in our realm here in the finance world, there's a lot of information out there. And I think for the starter, it can just be kind of an information overload as they're 30-second videos at a time and every video is telling you something different, but they all seem to sound the same. And that itself can be overwhelming, I think.

But there's just a lot of not professionally trained advisors, planners in the finance world on apps like that. And I think we've all seen the videos of the, "Quick tip, you'll be a millionaire by 40." And all this stuff. And I think the underlying messages, some of them may be good intentioned, may not, there's so much of it's just so tough to take it all at heart. And I think the second piece is you really want someone that has life experience, is an actual advisor, has a practice. I know you may be hearing me saying, "Curtis, you're telling us not to listen to this stuff. You're doing a podcast." But I think we do a good job of incorporating our practice with the podcast. You can find us, we have an office, you can come meet with us versus someone you may find on TikTok that's just a video that went viral. So just be careful with those things.

Again, if you see something that interests you, reach out to us, ask us. That's what we're here for. But again, there's stuff a lot of times the advice there at the surface may be good advice, but sometimes the context is off in these videos. And I think that's what we see a lot. And one I think that we pick on a lot, and we talk about this a lot with clients, they say, "Max out your 401(k) or max out your IRA every year and you'll be super rich by age 60." And while on the surface the math works, but what they don't talk about is maybe that person struggling to max out their 401(k) every year is now racking up thousands of dollars in credit card debt in the background because they're taking so much money out of a paycheck. So again, maxing out your retirement is great, but it's not necessarily on an island by itself. So I think it's important to get full picture, which I think is tough to get with some of the short form advice content.

Ben Smith:

So what I hear you saying is just because Kim Kardashian says it's a good idea does not mean it's probably a good idea, is what I hear you saying?

Curtis Worcester:

Hey, you said it, not me. I don't need the Kardashian clan coming after me on social media.

Ben Smith:

Yes. Yeah, I probably just alienated the entire Kardashians against us today. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. I know we wanted to cover these nine tips and where things were. And again, these are the kind of things that we've been talking about. Obviously in addition to, hey, we obviously get into a lot of the strategy on investment theory and kind of where we should position what's right for people in their plan. And Curtis and Austin really driving the planning process for our clients, and that obviously brings all these conversations to light for what we do.

So we thought there's enough here that kind of warranted an episode and warranted something that maybe you as listeners could gain some insight from as well. So we really appreciate you tuning in. So you can go to, again, we referenced a few different resources, so you can go to visit it at blog.guidancepointllc.com/83 for episode 83. Again, to get some of the links to some things we referenced here today and kind of check that out. But we're working hard on producing some more episodes for you. If you need anything in the meantime, please reach out. All three of us would love to hear from you. Even just feedback of, "Hey, love the episode or high five, keep it going."

Curtis Worcester:

"Curtis, you got me fired because I asked for a raise."

Ben Smith:

Yeah, "I asked for a raise and I shouldn't have. That was not a great decision." Whatever. We'd love to just hear some feedback from you and you can reach out to us if you go to our webpage, guidancepointllc.com and you can find us and our team there. We really appreciate you tuning in today and hope you are safe and be well. Take care.