August 15, 2025 • 25 mins
BA Fam, this week’s BAQA is personal, I brought in my friend and financial powerhouse, Sharon Epperson, CNBC’s Senior Personal Finance Correspondent, to unpack a buzzy headline that had my eyebrow raised: the president’s executive order that could open the door for private equity (and other alternative investments) in your 401k.
We break down what this actually means, why you probably won’t be adding a private equity fund to your plan tomorrow, and why you need to know exactly what’s in your portfolio before chasing shiny new investment options. Sharon drops gems on:
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The $12.2 trillion “nest egg” private firms have their eyes on — and what’s at stake.
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How to “stay on your mat” financially and focus on your own goals before getting distracted by market hype.
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The real risks of alternative investments: higher fees, less transparency, and lower liquidity.
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Why even she had an “oops” moment with her own 401k rollover (and how to avoid it).
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When it’s worth hiring a financial advisor — and how to find one that fits your needs and budget.
Whether you’re just starting your 401k journey or sitting on years of contributions, this convo is your reminder to slow down, check your allocations, and make sure your money is truly working toward your goals — not just Wall Street’s.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
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Subscribe to Sharon’s free CNBC Money 101 newsletter: CNBC.com/money101
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Follow Sharon on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok for more money tips.
Let’s Connect:
IG: @brownambitionpodcast | @mandimoney
Email: brownambitionpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What point do you think it makes sense for an
everyday investor or someone who's working for a while and
has a lot of assets for the first time to
look at getting a more seasoned pro to help, even
if it costs that a little bit of extra.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's so important to me to have someone who is
our accountability partner. I actually don't think there's a time
where it's too early necessarily to start talking to someone,
especially because the way that financial advisors work today, and
even doing something with an online a hybrid advisor or
something like that, you can do it on a fee
only based You can do it based on one task
(00:36):
you want to have help accomplish. You don't have to
have someone that has paid a percentage of your assets
necessarily to get advice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, hey, va fan, welcome to the VAQA where we
take your questions and we give you some answers. We
give you some answers with a side of salt. Because
I'm not your financial advisor, I'm not your financial planner.
My beautiful, illustrious guest on today's BAQA is your personal
financial advisor. Neither nor neither whatever. You know what I'm
(01:10):
trying to say, don't sue us, please and thank you,
But we are so excited to welcome Sharon Epperson to
the Brown Ambition Podcast today. I'm so happy to be here.
That's awesome. Welcome Sharon. Sharon's an og ba fam ba guest.
I think you your first episode. You came on the
show maybe in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and you're
(01:34):
just an icon. But for those who do not know,
Sharon is the senior personal finance correspondent for CNBC, so
you probably have seen her on your TV screens. You've
probably read her articles covering the latest financial news in
the US, and I am lucky enough to call her
a friend. Yes, thanks for being here, Sharon. Great to
(01:54):
be here. Great to be here. So what's it been
like being a personal finance correspondent at a time like
this lately?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Now, I really just stay in my lane. My lane
is to help people manage, grow, and protect their money
no matter what's happening in the world around us. And
there's so much happening trying to detract from us staying
focused on our own financial goals. So what I see
is my role right now is to help people just
(02:23):
stay focused on what they need to achieve for the
financial wellbeing for themselves and for their families.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's a real huge challenge. I mean, everything seems to
be pulling us in a different direction, and everything seems unprecedented,
and everything seems like stop what you're doing and look
and pay attention. And in a world where we have
such if can feel like we have so little control.
Sometimes you'd be thinking like, maybe I can do a
(02:50):
little something with my investments. Maybe I can do a
little something with you know, my money. Should I go
about and buy a vending machine? Should I get BTM?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Should I you investing in crypto? Is crypto done? I
don't know? And then you get these curveballs that get
thrown at us. Which is why I wanted to have
you on the show today because it was recently announced.
Now this is not official, right, this is just the
president give order from the president. Yes, an executive order.
Oh that's my first question. So an executive order to
(03:20):
allow private equity firms to put their little grubby fingers
in our four oh one k's. Now that's not exactly
the language that the White House has used, but that
is the cartoon figure that came into my eyes is
like big wealth management firms getting a piece of America's
nest egg, America's four one K, and it's a nest egg.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's a twelve point two trillion dollar nest eg for
defined contribution plans for your four oh one K, your
four h three B those plans. So there's a lot
of money at stake, and yes, firms are very interested
in getting some of that money.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So the Executive Order, what exactly does it say.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Actually says that the Department of Labor that oversees define
contribution workplace retirement plans needs to have a better look
in guidance about allowing people to have alternative investments in
their four one K plans, in their workplace plans. So
that is allowing for private equity, private credit, real estate, crypto,
(04:23):
all of those things to be considered to be included
in a four to one K plan. Now, the onus
is going to be on those plan providers to put
those products in their plans and then for plan participants,
for you and me to figure out do we want
to have them? Do we want to add those to
our portfolio?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah? And this is these are the types of investment
vehicles or investment products that like the average Joe has
never been able to invest in You need to be
what you need to be what do you call it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Where you get an accredited investor, And so you have
to have a significant amount of assets to be an
accredited investor, and so a lot of people don't have
access to private equity investments. And when we're talking about
these private assets, we're basically talking about private companies, not
companies that are traded on an exchange. Publicly traded companies
(05:14):
the big stores, big retailers, the big companies, and tech
companies that you think about. These are more smaller companies
and they're not necessarily mom and pop shops. Ere they're
the majority of businesses in this country that are privately owned.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, I mean, and privately owned is one thing, but
that means that, unlike public companies, we do not have
a line of sight into their management of the company
itself other than what we may read in the press
or if you're lucky enough to get some insider info
from someone who works there. You know, publicly traded companies
they have quarterly filings with regulatory bodies like the SEC.
(05:50):
They have to answer to shareholders. So there is a
lot more that we can see. So these private companies
there's a bit more of like a curtain over them. Okay,
so we've covered what the executive order says. It sounds
like this doesn't mean Okay, I can go to Fidelity
through my four to one K right now and ask
them to put me in that there private equity fund
(06:12):
right now, exactly right now.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
There are some plan administrators like in Power that are
encouraging people or that are offering people the opportunity to
have private assets in. Therefore, when K plans, but when
I say people, I guess I should be saying employers
to include that, and then the decision will have to
come from participants about whether they have to do it.
I think there has been in some of the financial
(06:35):
advisors that I've been talking to say that some clients
are calling them saying, okay, do I have to put
private assets in right now? Which one should I choose?
They're not even available right now for most people right
so this is an opportunity that I see.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Again.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
My whole thing is stay in your lane, whatever that is,
or I love yoga, so stay on your mat. Don't
worry about what other people are doing or what other
things are being offered at this moment, if you don't know,
what do you have on your mat? So a lot
of people have no idea what's in their four one
K right now. They don't know if they're invested in
a target date fund by default or whether they've chosen
(07:10):
maybe a actively managed large cap fund or an five
hundred ETF that's in there? What's in there? What are
you investing in right now? What could you be investing
in right now? Are you even investing the amount of
money that you should be to make sure that you're
going to be able to reach your goal? So you're
putting in fifteen to twenty percent of your gross pay,
(07:33):
or you're putting in enough to get the company's matching contribution.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
People don't about that. I know there used to be
a cute ten back in the day. No, but for real, though,
fifteen to twenty percent, y'all is rough out here. It's rough.
It's rough.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I mean, you know, I think it's the discipline of
saving that. And it may not be all in your
four to one K. Maybe some of it is in
an IRA that you have, Maybe it's some of it
is in a brokerage account that you have, but are
you putting enough money away for the long term? Are
you putting enough money away for the short term? Because
we know we're just talking about all these things, curveballs,
things happening, people losing jobs, people changing jobs, people, things
(08:11):
happening that we never expected. So I think this is
what this executive order has done. And there's so much
talk I get in like ten twenty emails a day
from people asking about or giving their opinion about private
assets in your four one K plan. But I just
have to say, take a step back and just think
(08:32):
about where you are right now and where you want
to be, and will private assets, will crypto? Will real estate?
Will the S and P five hundred fun that you're
in or large cap or tech stocks get you there?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Hey, bafam, we're going to take a quick break, pay
some bills, and we'll be right back. All right, bafam,
We're back.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I have to give baby Mandy so much credit because
my cute little ten percent that I was putting away
at like twenty four years old into a basic target
day fund. What a privilege I had. Well, I mean,
I think a lot of people you may grow up
or like someone you're lucky enough to have someone teach
you what that even is or how to open your
first four one K. I was lucky enough to trick
(09:13):
business Insider into hiring me and becoming a personal finance writer,
because then I got to do what you get to
do every day, which is like interview financial planners and
experts and learn about that. And I just remember them
telling me time after time as I was writing my stories,
the number one tip we have for you is to
start now, don't wait to be an expert. And I
took that advice. Now we cut to more than ten years.
(09:35):
More than ten years later, I'm a little bit more
seasoned now. And it's really funny that you mentioned a
lot of people don't know within their four one K.
I recently had a wealth like the head of wealth.
Do you know Rachel Odin or sorry, recall Odin from HSBC.
Sure she has some very fancy titles. She's a big
boss at HSBC. She was on the show and she
was saying what you were saying, and I was like, well,
(09:57):
I know what I have, and so I logged into
my van Guard account. I did not realize I was
still one hundred percent in stocks. Everything I have for
everything I've been investing. Now I've done very well.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yay me.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But now I have kids. Now I'm like, you know,
so many years older, and I was like, oh, I
really should have checked on this, because it is time
for me, I believe to you know, diversify a little bit,
not quite as risk as risk tolerant as I was,
you know, in my mid twenties. So what would you say.
Did you have a moment in your career as well
(10:31):
where you kind of like woke up and you're like,
oh crap, I'm an adult. I'm not so young anymore.
I've got to make some shifts. And what do you
do in that case?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Personally, Well, I'm smiling because it's so funny. I mean
the same similar situation. My first job at Time Magazine.
It was actually going to my colleaguess offices and watching
them watch CNBC. And I was not familiar with CNBC.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I'm like, what is this thing?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
All these numbers at the bottom of the screen and
the ticker and what does that mean in the stocks
and all that? And they were like, well, just look
for this one the time. Want to stop and see
how that's doing, and that'll let you know how our
company's doing. And make sure you're doing your four one K.
So it was someone in the New York Bureau of
Time magazine that encouraged me. Not someone in HR, not
you know, someone in my family, not even a friend,
(11:17):
you know. It was a colleague who was like, you know,
this is something that you need to do. You have
access to it, now, get in and just start putting
money away in this. And I did, and starting early
in that discipline of like not spending everything in my
check and living in Manhattan and all that, that was important.
That was really important discipline for me to start early.
What was interesting is when I left Time and went
(11:39):
to my next job, I just figure, FIDELI had my
you know, time for a one k. I was going
to another company that had a fidelity for a one K,
and I would just roll it over. I didn't realize
when you roll over, you roll over to cash. So
for like a year, I think I was just in
cash in that first reason, I didn't know. I didn't know.
(12:01):
I just thought that it would roll over to the
same investments I'd had before because it was the same
financial services firm that was running the four O one K.
So again, if you're changing companies and we're doing that
a lot these days. Make sure that you understand where
that money's going. If you're rolling it over to the
four oh one k of the next company, or you're
rolling it over to an IRA, you definitely don't want
(12:23):
to take that money out, you know, want to be
hit with the penalty and taxes and all that. So,
but understand that when you roll over a four to
one K, it often rolls over right to cash.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I had such bad luck the one time in my career,
maybe twice, but the one time I had a substantial
amount of money, of course, when I had like three
thousand dollars to transfer between Business Insider and Yahoo Finance
and no problem at all, roll it over, reinvest it amazing.
But then ten years after that, when I was going
between Lending Tree to working at a big bank and
(12:53):
this is an online only bank that I will not
name because just read my book one day, Brian Ambition
coming to a bookstore near you. But anyway, when I
was going to this new bank, it was right. Do
you remember that game Stop? Of course you do the
game Stop craze. Yes, it was like the winter of
twenty twenty two, and it was nuts and I was
trying to try. I was trying to do a rollover
(13:13):
to an online only bank, and then they were struggling.
They were getting inundated by like calls from their investors,
and somehow my little four one k not my little
but my four when k rollover got lost in the sauce.
So it was supposed to be an electronic transfer, so
the money was just I was so terrified. I was like,
am I going is the money going to disappear? But
(13:35):
it was like in this weird purgatory, freak accident freak situation,
but I'll never forget it, and I'm like, oh gosh,
maybe now. I mean, luckily I haven't had to do
that again. But another word of caution. I think in
that case, my big lesson was sometimes it's okay to
just do the snail mail version where they have to.
Sometimes I'll mail you a check and then you mail
that check onto your bank. Like I was a little
(13:56):
very trusting of the internet and it bit me in
the butt. But moral of the story, look at your stuff,
talk about diversifying. One thing that I've also tried to
take to heart is to maybe not do so much
to the DIY approach anymore, and maybe actually for the
first time considering getting an investment advisor, which I had avoided,
(14:20):
you know, because they it costs a little bit money.
They may take a little bit off of your investments.
At what point do you think it makes sense for
an everyday investor, or someone who's working for a while
and has a lot of assets for the first time
to look at getting a more seasoned pro to help,
even if it costs that little bit of extra.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
When I got an advisor, I didn't have I was married,
but my husband, I didn't have kids yet, and it
was right before nine to eleven happened, and so it
was around two thousand and so I was, you know,
I was in my career and I was doing well.
We were both you know, trying to do well, but
we didn't have a lot the money. But I wanted to.
(15:02):
I wanted to be able to make sure that I
was making the most of what I got. I knew
that working for Time magazine, my husband and I were
both there at that moment, was offering a nice four
oh one K plan, and that we were, you know,
we were thinking about buying a home and all of
these different things that we were planning to do and
I wanted someone to help us think about all of
(15:22):
it at the same time, not doing it all at
the same time, but how to come up with a
plan for what we wanted to do first and make
it all happen. And so I've been working with that
same advisor now for over twenty five years and it's
really it's so important to me to have someone who
is our accountability partner, who is you know, I'm covering
(15:44):
this all the time. So when I was covering commodities
and I was on the floor of the commodities exchange
and gold prices were doing this and silver prices were
doing that, and you know, silver's more affordable than gold,
and I was like, Okay, I should add this. And
I was like, He's like, how's that going to fit
into your plan? Like why do you need that? And
just the noise, just the you know, again, staying on
(16:05):
your math, figuring out.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
What you need to do to achieve your goals.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Having an advisor has been very, very helpful for me
in doing that. Yes, you have to pay somebody to
do this, this is their full time job. It's not
your full time job. If you can do it as
a full time job, you don't need an advisor, but
most people can't. I actually don't think there's a time
where it's too early necessarily to start talking to someone,
especially because the way that financial advisors work today, and
(16:30):
even doing something with an online a hybrid advisor or
something like that, you can do it on a fee
only based You can do it based on one task
you want to have help accomplish. You don't have to
have someone that has paid a percentage of your assets
necessarily to get advice. So think about the way that
(16:52):
you want to have the help, and then you can
find the person that's the best for you. And I
think that websites like the Financial Planning Association or the
CFPB board, the Certified Financial Planning Board websites can help
you find advisors in your area for exactly what you want,
(17:13):
whether it's college planning for your kids, retirement planning for yourself,
trying to get out of debt. All of those things
are important, And if the debt issue is one of
the things, I think the National Foundation for Credit Counseling
is also a good one to go to to kind
of figure out plans for dealing with that. But I
love talking to real people. I know I'd like to.
I read a lot too, So there are a lot
(17:33):
of great websites and apps and things that you can use.
But I think talking to someone who can really get
an understanding of who you are and what you want
to accomplish is really important in figuring out the financial
plan that's going to help you be able to do that.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Hey, bafam, we're going to take a quick break, pay
some bills, and we'll be right back. All right, bafam,
We're back. I really like the idea of just having
one big meeting and one big recalibration of my investments,
but just saving that for like once a year. It's
otherwise for me, it becomes something to stress about and
(18:11):
I don't want to have, Like if you have someone
who's fiddling with your stuff like every month or every quart,
I don't know how it can work when it's now
or actively managed. I definitely want to avoid that. But
one step above the financial planning that I've done before,
where it's like, you know, you have your retirement plan
and it's put your deciding how much to put here
and what your goal should be for that. You know,
having a real set of like professional eyeballs on my
(18:35):
broker and my husband's by the way, because I didn't
know what he was invested in either. I thought I did,
but he'd been doing stuff. I don't want to talk
about it, but yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's really it's important, and you know it's it's you know,
you're going to be the CEO of your financial life, right,
but you need to build a team around you to
make sure that you're able to accomplish the goals that
you want to do. And so whether that's having a
financial advisor, having a tax professional, having a state planning
attorney because you have children, you want to make sure
that you have the right estate planning documents. All of
(19:06):
those people are important to help you reach your goal
and to help you stay on track when you start
thinking about things like I just heard this news about
I could put private company assets into my four one
K How do I do that? They say, I can
make a lot more money, it might be more expensive.
I can't really, I don't really get to see what
those financials are, Like I do you know the companies
(19:26):
that are in the mutual funds or the exchange trader
funds that I have, But I still am interested. What
should I do someone to talk through it with.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, and also just slow your role, Just slow down,
all right. So just to wrap up and thank you
so much again Sharon for joining us. But the private
equity funds being available in your four to one K
cute interesting novel, But don't just go scooping them up
as soon as you get access to it, whatever that
may be. We didn't mention this, but they're also there
tend to be higher fees with these alternative investments as
(19:56):
well to it'd say they do.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And a lot of people are very concerned about their
four one key already. So now you add assets that
have even higher fees, definitely something to consider and how
that could impact the returns that you're going to get.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
And the second thing is the liquidity. Can you talk
a little bit about how what that even means?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
And then well, it just kind of means the money's
tied up, you know, you're not able to access it
as easily. What's interesting that that plays a bigger role
for people who are investing in private assets in their
own brokerage accounts and things like that. In your four
one K, you're not really supposed to be trying to
get money out of that four one K until after
fifty nine and a half anyway, So you know, but
(20:36):
it is just the idea that you're you want to
make sure if you're adding, if you eventually decide that
you're going to add an asset like this, it's not
liquid hard to get to that. You might want to
have some cash alternative or some type of more liquid
investment that you could get access to. And this is
particularly important for people who have money in their retirement
(20:57):
accounts and are closer to retirement. And I think that
that's something we also didn't mention. This is I think
a product that or the idea that allowing alternative investments
to be included in a four to one K or
in a workplace plan is something for people who have
significant assets in their plans already and they're close, which
(21:17):
means they're likely closer to retirement, closer to figuring out,
you know how they're going to then have to use
the money and withdraw that money. So I think that
that's not just the thing to think about.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Its money you have to play with, or does something
about having a shorter time frame.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I think I think it's because you have more money
that you can yes, that you think that you can risk,
that you can risk because it's higher risk as well.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, that's just so interesting because it also feels like
the older you get, the more conservative in a way,
you may feel like you can become I'm watching my parents.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
That's exactly right, and that's why, you know, one financial
advisor I spoke to say, this is just asking for
trouble for a lot of people because they're not understanding
what's in the plan to begin with, what they they're
going to need as they get closer to retirement to
be able to have access to that money and have
some stability there. And then you dangle this idea that
(22:10):
you can get much higher returns, much higher returns, and
people are like, Okay, I'm far away from where I
thought I was going to be and I want to
retire soon, so maybe I'll put even more into this.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's just yeah, slow your role, slower role, all right,
slow your role. My Sharon et person, thank you so
much for joining me for the BAQA. Can you please
tell a Brown Ambition fam where they can find you
and other than at CNBC to say hello, support your work.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, I think everyone should sign up for the CNBC
dot com slash Money one oh one newsletter that's my
newsletter or It's Money one on one newsletters, an eight
part series going through things that we've talked about today,
from budgeting to retirement savings, emergency savings, estate planning. Every
week for eight weeks, you'll get just a little prompt
to make you think about have I thought about this yet?
(22:56):
Who do I should I talk to about dealing with this?
As I'm coming up with my own financial plan, I'm
going on my own financial journey, So I'd urge you
all to sign up for that free newsletter, and every
month you get another little prompt about things that are
happening in the news right now, like private assets in
four one K plans and what you need to know
about that. The other thing is follow me on Instagram,
(23:17):
on LinkedIn, TikTok. I'm on all the platforms, and again,
my goal is to give you just something to think about.
Manny said it. We're not financial advisors. I'm not a
certified financial planner, though I think people should access them
as much as possible. But I am someone who can
give you some names, give you some resources, and help
(23:39):
you figure out who you should talk to and what
information you should be looking into to help you reach
your financial dreams.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Such a trusted source of knowledge and such a wide
range of experience in this field, y'all. Don't sleep on
sharing at person and don't use chat GPT when you
have Sharon right here at your fingerstips like go follow
her everywhere. Like she said, I'm definitely signing up for
that newsletter. Great timing too, because ba Fan, we were
just talking about doing a bit of a personal finance
(24:06):
and savings refresh through the end of the year, so
it sounds like all we got to do is sign
up for that newsletter. Thank you, the perfect time for
a check out. Amazing. All right, Sharon, thank you so
much for joining me. Take care, Thank you, okay va fam,
thank you so much for listening to this week's show.
I want to shout out to our production team, Courtney,
(24:26):
our editor, Carla, our fearless leader for idea to launch productions.
I want to shout out my assistant Lauda Escalante and
Cameron McNair for helping me put the show together. It
is not a one person project, as much as I
have tried to make it so these past ten years.
I need help, y'all, and thank goodness I've been able
(24:48):
to put this team around me to support me on
this journey and to y'all bea fam I love you
so so so so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, Make
sure you're signed up to the newsletter to get all
the latest updates on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary
celebrations to come, and until next time, talk to you
soon via bye.
What point do you think it makes sense for an
everyday investor or someone who's working for a while and
has a lot of assets for the first time to
look at getting a more seasoned pro to help, even
if it costs that a little bit of extra.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's so important to me to have someone who is
our accountability partner. I actually don't think there's a time
where it's too early necessarily to start talking to someone,
especially because the way that financial advisors work today, and
even doing something with an online a hybrid advisor or
something like that, you can do it on a fee
only based You can do it based on one task
(00:36):
you want to have help accomplish. You don't have to
have someone that has paid a percentage of your assets
necessarily to get advice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, hey, va fan, welcome to the VAQA where we
take your questions and we give you some answers. We
give you some answers with a side of salt. Because
I'm not your financial advisor, I'm not your financial planner.
My beautiful, illustrious guest on today's BAQA is your personal
financial advisor. Neither nor neither whatever. You know what I'm
(01:10):
trying to say, don't sue us, please and thank you,
But we are so excited to welcome Sharon Epperson to
the Brown Ambition Podcast today. I'm so happy to be here.
That's awesome. Welcome Sharon. Sharon's an og ba fam ba guest.
I think you your first episode. You came on the
show maybe in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and you're
(01:34):
just an icon. But for those who do not know,
Sharon is the senior personal finance correspondent for CNBC, so
you probably have seen her on your TV screens. You've
probably read her articles covering the latest financial news in
the US, and I am lucky enough to call her
a friend. Yes, thanks for being here, Sharon. Great to
(01:54):
be here. Great to be here. So what's it been
like being a personal finance correspondent at a time like
this lately?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Now, I really just stay in my lane. My lane
is to help people manage, grow, and protect their money
no matter what's happening in the world around us. And
there's so much happening trying to detract from us staying
focused on our own financial goals. So what I see
is my role right now is to help people just
(02:23):
stay focused on what they need to achieve for the
financial wellbeing for themselves and for their families.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's a real huge challenge. I mean, everything seems to
be pulling us in a different direction, and everything seems unprecedented,
and everything seems like stop what you're doing and look
and pay attention. And in a world where we have
such if can feel like we have so little control.
Sometimes you'd be thinking like, maybe I can do a
(02:50):
little something with my investments. Maybe I can do a
little something with you know, my money. Should I go
about and buy a vending machine? Should I get BTM?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Should I you investing in crypto? Is crypto done? I
don't know? And then you get these curveballs that get
thrown at us. Which is why I wanted to have
you on the show today because it was recently announced.
Now this is not official, right, this is just the
president give order from the president. Yes, an executive order.
Oh that's my first question. So an executive order to
(03:20):
allow private equity firms to put their little grubby fingers
in our four oh one k's. Now that's not exactly
the language that the White House has used, but that
is the cartoon figure that came into my eyes is
like big wealth management firms getting a piece of America's
nest egg, America's four one K, and it's a nest egg.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's a twelve point two trillion dollar nest eg for
defined contribution plans for your four oh one K, your
four h three B those plans. So there's a lot
of money at stake, and yes, firms are very interested
in getting some of that money.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So the Executive Order, what exactly does it say.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Actually says that the Department of Labor that oversees define
contribution workplace retirement plans needs to have a better look
in guidance about allowing people to have alternative investments in
their four one K plans, in their workplace plans. So
that is allowing for private equity, private credit, real estate, crypto,
(04:23):
all of those things to be considered to be included
in a four to one K plan. Now, the onus
is going to be on those plan providers to put
those products in their plans and then for plan participants,
for you and me to figure out do we want
to have them? Do we want to add those to
our portfolio?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah? And this is these are the types of investment
vehicles or investment products that like the average Joe has
never been able to invest in You need to be
what you need to be what do you call it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Where you get an accredited investor, And so you have
to have a significant amount of assets to be an
accredited investor, and so a lot of people don't have
access to private equity investments. And when we're talking about
these private assets, we're basically talking about private companies, not
companies that are traded on an exchange. Publicly traded companies
(05:14):
the big stores, big retailers, the big companies, and tech
companies that you think about. These are more smaller companies
and they're not necessarily mom and pop shops. Ere they're
the majority of businesses in this country that are privately owned.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, I mean, and privately owned is one thing, but
that means that, unlike public companies, we do not have
a line of sight into their management of the company
itself other than what we may read in the press
or if you're lucky enough to get some insider info
from someone who works there. You know, publicly traded companies
they have quarterly filings with regulatory bodies like the SEC.
(05:50):
They have to answer to shareholders. So there is a
lot more that we can see. So these private companies
there's a bit more of like a curtain over them. Okay,
so we've covered what the executive order says. It sounds
like this doesn't mean Okay, I can go to Fidelity
through my four to one K right now and ask
them to put me in that there private equity fund
(06:12):
right now, exactly right now.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
There are some plan administrators like in Power that are
encouraging people or that are offering people the opportunity to
have private assets in. Therefore, when K plans, but when
I say people, I guess I should be saying employers
to include that, and then the decision will have to
come from participants about whether they have to do it.
I think there has been in some of the financial
(06:35):
advisors that I've been talking to say that some clients
are calling them saying, okay, do I have to put
private assets in right now? Which one should I choose?
They're not even available right now for most people right
so this is an opportunity that I see.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Again.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
My whole thing is stay in your lane, whatever that is,
or I love yoga, so stay on your mat. Don't
worry about what other people are doing or what other
things are being offered at this moment, if you don't know,
what do you have on your mat? So a lot
of people have no idea what's in their four one
K right now. They don't know if they're invested in
a target date fund by default or whether they've chosen
(07:10):
maybe a actively managed large cap fund or an five
hundred ETF that's in there? What's in there? What are
you investing in right now? What could you be investing
in right now? Are you even investing the amount of
money that you should be to make sure that you're
going to be able to reach your goal? So you're
putting in fifteen to twenty percent of your gross pay,
(07:33):
or you're putting in enough to get the company's matching contribution.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
People don't about that. I know there used to be
a cute ten back in the day. No, but for real, though,
fifteen to twenty percent, y'all is rough out here. It's rough.
It's rough.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I mean, you know, I think it's the discipline of
saving that. And it may not be all in your
four to one K. Maybe some of it is in
an IRA that you have, Maybe it's some of it
is in a brokerage account that you have, but are
you putting enough money away for the long term? Are
you putting enough money away for the short term? Because
we know we're just talking about all these things, curveballs,
things happening, people losing jobs, people changing jobs, people, things
(08:11):
happening that we never expected. So I think this is
what this executive order has done. And there's so much
talk I get in like ten twenty emails a day
from people asking about or giving their opinion about private
assets in your four one K plan. But I just
have to say, take a step back and just think
(08:32):
about where you are right now and where you want
to be, and will private assets, will crypto? Will real estate?
Will the S and P five hundred fun that you're
in or large cap or tech stocks get you there?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Hey, bafam, we're going to take a quick break, pay
some bills, and we'll be right back. All right, bafam,
We're back.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I have to give baby Mandy so much credit because
my cute little ten percent that I was putting away
at like twenty four years old into a basic target
day fund. What a privilege I had. Well, I mean,
I think a lot of people you may grow up
or like someone you're lucky enough to have someone teach
you what that even is or how to open your
first four one K. I was lucky enough to trick
(09:13):
business Insider into hiring me and becoming a personal finance writer,
because then I got to do what you get to
do every day, which is like interview financial planners and
experts and learn about that. And I just remember them
telling me time after time as I was writing my stories,
the number one tip we have for you is to
start now, don't wait to be an expert. And I
took that advice. Now we cut to more than ten years.
(09:35):
More than ten years later, I'm a little bit more
seasoned now. And it's really funny that you mentioned a
lot of people don't know within their four one K.
I recently had a wealth like the head of wealth.
Do you know Rachel Odin or sorry, recall Odin from HSBC.
Sure she has some very fancy titles. She's a big
boss at HSBC. She was on the show and she
was saying what you were saying, and I was like, well,
(09:57):
I know what I have, and so I logged into
my van Guard account. I did not realize I was
still one hundred percent in stocks. Everything I have for
everything I've been investing. Now I've done very well.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yay me.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But now I have kids. Now I'm like, you know,
so many years older, and I was like, oh, I
really should have checked on this, because it is time
for me, I believe to you know, diversify a little bit,
not quite as risk as risk tolerant as I was,
you know, in my mid twenties. So what would you say.
Did you have a moment in your career as well
(10:31):
where you kind of like woke up and you're like,
oh crap, I'm an adult. I'm not so young anymore.
I've got to make some shifts. And what do you
do in that case?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Personally, Well, I'm smiling because it's so funny. I mean
the same similar situation. My first job at Time Magazine.
It was actually going to my colleaguess offices and watching
them watch CNBC. And I was not familiar with CNBC.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I'm like, what is this thing?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
All these numbers at the bottom of the screen and
the ticker and what does that mean in the stocks
and all that? And they were like, well, just look
for this one the time. Want to stop and see
how that's doing, and that'll let you know how our
company's doing. And make sure you're doing your four one K.
So it was someone in the New York Bureau of
Time magazine that encouraged me. Not someone in HR, not
you know, someone in my family, not even a friend,
(11:17):
you know. It was a colleague who was like, you know,
this is something that you need to do. You have
access to it, now, get in and just start putting
money away in this. And I did, and starting early
in that discipline of like not spending everything in my
check and living in Manhattan and all that, that was important.
That was really important discipline for me to start early.
What was interesting is when I left Time and went
(11:39):
to my next job, I just figure, FIDELI had my
you know, time for a one k. I was going
to another company that had a fidelity for a one K,
and I would just roll it over. I didn't realize
when you roll over, you roll over to cash. So
for like a year, I think I was just in
cash in that first reason, I didn't know. I didn't know.
(12:01):
I just thought that it would roll over to the
same investments I'd had before because it was the same
financial services firm that was running the four O one K.
So again, if you're changing companies and we're doing that
a lot these days. Make sure that you understand where
that money's going. If you're rolling it over to the
four oh one k of the next company, or you're
rolling it over to an IRA, you definitely don't want
(12:23):
to take that money out, you know, want to be
hit with the penalty and taxes and all that. So,
but understand that when you roll over a four to
one K, it often rolls over right to cash.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I had such bad luck the one time in my career,
maybe twice, but the one time I had a substantial
amount of money, of course, when I had like three
thousand dollars to transfer between Business Insider and Yahoo Finance
and no problem at all, roll it over, reinvest it amazing.
But then ten years after that, when I was going
between Lending Tree to working at a big bank and
(12:53):
this is an online only bank that I will not
name because just read my book one day, Brian Ambition
coming to a bookstore near you. But anyway, when I
was going to this new bank, it was right. Do
you remember that game Stop? Of course you do the
game Stop craze. Yes, it was like the winter of
twenty twenty two, and it was nuts and I was
trying to try. I was trying to do a rollover
(13:13):
to an online only bank, and then they were struggling.
They were getting inundated by like calls from their investors,
and somehow my little four one k not my little
but my four when k rollover got lost in the sauce.
So it was supposed to be an electronic transfer, so
the money was just I was so terrified. I was like,
am I going is the money going to disappear? But
(13:35):
it was like in this weird purgatory, freak accident freak situation,
but I'll never forget it, and I'm like, oh gosh,
maybe now. I mean, luckily I haven't had to do
that again. But another word of caution. I think in
that case, my big lesson was sometimes it's okay to
just do the snail mail version where they have to.
Sometimes I'll mail you a check and then you mail
that check onto your bank. Like I was a little
(13:56):
very trusting of the internet and it bit me in
the butt. But moral of the story, look at your stuff,
talk about diversifying. One thing that I've also tried to
take to heart is to maybe not do so much
to the DIY approach anymore, and maybe actually for the
first time considering getting an investment advisor, which I had avoided,
(14:20):
you know, because they it costs a little bit money.
They may take a little bit off of your investments.
At what point do you think it makes sense for
an everyday investor, or someone who's working for a while
and has a lot of assets for the first time
to look at getting a more seasoned pro to help,
even if it costs that little bit of extra.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
When I got an advisor, I didn't have I was married,
but my husband, I didn't have kids yet, and it
was right before nine to eleven happened, and so it
was around two thousand and so I was, you know,
I was in my career and I was doing well.
We were both you know, trying to do well, but
we didn't have a lot the money. But I wanted to.
(15:02):
I wanted to be able to make sure that I
was making the most of what I got. I knew
that working for Time magazine, my husband and I were
both there at that moment, was offering a nice four
oh one K plan, and that we were, you know,
we were thinking about buying a home and all of
these different things that we were planning to do and
I wanted someone to help us think about all of
(15:22):
it at the same time, not doing it all at
the same time, but how to come up with a
plan for what we wanted to do first and make
it all happen. And so I've been working with that
same advisor now for over twenty five years and it's
really it's so important to me to have someone who
is our accountability partner, who is you know, I'm covering
(15:44):
this all the time. So when I was covering commodities
and I was on the floor of the commodities exchange
and gold prices were doing this and silver prices were
doing that, and you know, silver's more affordable than gold,
and I was like, Okay, I should add this. And
I was like, He's like, how's that going to fit
into your plan? Like why do you need that? And
just the noise, just the you know, again, staying on
(16:05):
your math, figuring out.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
What you need to do to achieve your goals.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Having an advisor has been very, very helpful for me
in doing that. Yes, you have to pay somebody to
do this, this is their full time job. It's not
your full time job. If you can do it as
a full time job, you don't need an advisor, but
most people can't. I actually don't think there's a time
where it's too early necessarily to start talking to someone,
especially because the way that financial advisors work today, and
(16:30):
even doing something with an online a hybrid advisor or
something like that, you can do it on a fee
only based You can do it based on one task
you want to have help accomplish. You don't have to
have someone that has paid a percentage of your assets
necessarily to get advice. So think about the way that
(16:52):
you want to have the help, and then you can
find the person that's the best for you. And I
think that websites like the Financial Planning Association or the
CFPB board, the Certified Financial Planning Board websites can help
you find advisors in your area for exactly what you want,
(17:13):
whether it's college planning for your kids, retirement planning for yourself,
trying to get out of debt. All of those things
are important, And if the debt issue is one of
the things, I think the National Foundation for Credit Counseling
is also a good one to go to to kind
of figure out plans for dealing with that. But I
love talking to real people. I know I'd like to.
I read a lot too, So there are a lot
(17:33):
of great websites and apps and things that you can use.
But I think talking to someone who can really get
an understanding of who you are and what you want
to accomplish is really important in figuring out the financial
plan that's going to help you be able to do that.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Hey, bafam, we're going to take a quick break, pay
some bills, and we'll be right back. All right, bafam,
We're back. I really like the idea of just having
one big meeting and one big recalibration of my investments,
but just saving that for like once a year. It's
otherwise for me, it becomes something to stress about and
(18:11):
I don't want to have, Like if you have someone
who's fiddling with your stuff like every month or every quart,
I don't know how it can work when it's now
or actively managed. I definitely want to avoid that. But
one step above the financial planning that I've done before,
where it's like, you know, you have your retirement plan
and it's put your deciding how much to put here
and what your goal should be for that. You know,
having a real set of like professional eyeballs on my
(18:35):
broker and my husband's by the way, because I didn't
know what he was invested in either. I thought I did,
but he'd been doing stuff. I don't want to talk
about it, but yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's really it's important, and you know it's it's you know,
you're going to be the CEO of your financial life, right,
but you need to build a team around you to
make sure that you're able to accomplish the goals that
you want to do. And so whether that's having a
financial advisor, having a tax professional, having a state planning
attorney because you have children, you want to make sure
that you have the right estate planning documents. All of
(19:06):
those people are important to help you reach your goal
and to help you stay on track when you start
thinking about things like I just heard this news about
I could put private company assets into my four one
K How do I do that? They say, I can
make a lot more money, it might be more expensive.
I can't really, I don't really get to see what
those financials are, Like I do you know the companies
(19:26):
that are in the mutual funds or the exchange trader
funds that I have, But I still am interested. What
should I do someone to talk through it with.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, and also just slow your role, Just slow down,
all right. So just to wrap up and thank you
so much again Sharon for joining us. But the private
equity funds being available in your four to one K
cute interesting novel, But don't just go scooping them up
as soon as you get access to it, whatever that
may be. We didn't mention this, but they're also there
tend to be higher fees with these alternative investments as
(19:56):
well to it'd say they do.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And a lot of people are very concerned about their
four one key already. So now you add assets that
have even higher fees, definitely something to consider and how
that could impact the returns that you're going to get.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
And the second thing is the liquidity. Can you talk
a little bit about how what that even means?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
And then well, it just kind of means the money's
tied up, you know, you're not able to access it
as easily. What's interesting that that plays a bigger role
for people who are investing in private assets in their
own brokerage accounts and things like that. In your four
one K, you're not really supposed to be trying to
get money out of that four one K until after
fifty nine and a half anyway, So you know, but
(20:36):
it is just the idea that you're you want to
make sure if you're adding, if you eventually decide that
you're going to add an asset like this, it's not
liquid hard to get to that. You might want to
have some cash alternative or some type of more liquid
investment that you could get access to. And this is
particularly important for people who have money in their retirement
(20:57):
accounts and are closer to retirement. And I think that
that's something we also didn't mention. This is I think
a product that or the idea that allowing alternative investments
to be included in a four to one K or
in a workplace plan is something for people who have
significant assets in their plans already and they're close, which
(21:17):
means they're likely closer to retirement, closer to figuring out,
you know how they're going to then have to use
the money and withdraw that money. So I think that
that's not just the thing to think about.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Its money you have to play with, or does something
about having a shorter time frame.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I think I think it's because you have more money
that you can yes, that you think that you can risk,
that you can risk because it's higher risk as well.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, that's just so interesting because it also feels like
the older you get, the more conservative in a way,
you may feel like you can become I'm watching my parents.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
That's exactly right, and that's why, you know, one financial
advisor I spoke to say, this is just asking for
trouble for a lot of people because they're not understanding
what's in the plan to begin with, what they they're
going to need as they get closer to retirement to
be able to have access to that money and have
some stability there. And then you dangle this idea that
(22:10):
you can get much higher returns, much higher returns, and
people are like, Okay, I'm far away from where I
thought I was going to be and I want to
retire soon, so maybe I'll put even more into this.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's just yeah, slow your role, slower role, all right,
slow your role. My Sharon et person, thank you so
much for joining me for the BAQA. Can you please
tell a Brown Ambition fam where they can find you
and other than at CNBC to say hello, support your work.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, I think everyone should sign up for the CNBC
dot com slash Money one oh one newsletter that's my
newsletter or It's Money one on one newsletters, an eight
part series going through things that we've talked about today,
from budgeting to retirement savings, emergency savings, estate planning. Every
week for eight weeks, you'll get just a little prompt
to make you think about have I thought about this yet?
(22:56):
Who do I should I talk to about dealing with this?
As I'm coming up with my own financial plan, I'm
going on my own financial journey, So I'd urge you
all to sign up for that free newsletter, and every
month you get another little prompt about things that are
happening in the news right now, like private assets in
four one K plans and what you need to know
about that. The other thing is follow me on Instagram,
(23:17):
on LinkedIn, TikTok. I'm on all the platforms, and again,
my goal is to give you just something to think about.
Manny said it. We're not financial advisors. I'm not a
certified financial planner, though I think people should access them
as much as possible. But I am someone who can
give you some names, give you some resources, and help
(23:39):
you figure out who you should talk to and what
information you should be looking into to help you reach
your financial dreams.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Such a trusted source of knowledge and such a wide
range of experience in this field, y'all. Don't sleep on
sharing at person and don't use chat GPT when you
have Sharon right here at your fingerstips like go follow
her everywhere. Like she said, I'm definitely signing up for
that newsletter. Great timing too, because ba Fan, we were
just talking about doing a bit of a personal finance
(24:06):
and savings refresh through the end of the year, so
it sounds like all we got to do is sign
up for that newsletter. Thank you, the perfect time for
a check out. Amazing. All right, Sharon, thank you so
much for joining me. Take care, Thank you, okay va fam,
thank you so much for listening to this week's show.
I want to shout out to our production team, Courtney,
(24:26):
our editor, Carla, our fearless leader for idea to launch productions.
I want to shout out my assistant Lauda Escalante and
Cameron McNair for helping me put the show together. It
is not a one person project, as much as I
have tried to make it so these past ten years.
I need help, y'all, and thank goodness I've been able
(24:48):
to put this team around me to support me on
this journey and to y'all bea fam I love you
so so so so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, Make
sure you're signed up to the newsletter to get all
the latest updates on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary
celebrations to come, and until next time, talk to you
soon via bye.
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