The Money Episode with Nathan Greene, CFP®️

Kat had a serious question she wanted answers to: Why is money so hard to talk about?? Much like the world of mental health- financial literacy is not regularly found on the to do lists of education systems. Therefore. we tend to find a lot of shame around not knowing bests the practices of financial success. We are here to let you know- it's not your fault that you're confused. So, this week, Kat (@kat.defatta) brought her friend, Nathan Greene, CFP®️, on the show to help us start to figure this all out. Nathan is Certified Financial Planner AND the owner of Cairn Financial Group. Together, Kat and Nathan develop a couple of ideas around why we are so afraid to talk about all things finances. Then, as a fun bonus, Nathan helps make some very confusing things much less confusing. We break down everything from 401ks to if student loans are a bad idea. Ever been in a conversation where someone says the word "mutual fund" and you just nod your head and pretend like you know what they are talking about? Well, after listening to this episode- you won't have to pretend anymore.

Follow Cairn Financial on Twitter: @cairnfinancial

Find Nathan here: Cairn Financial Group

OR here: Cairn Education Group

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi, and welcome back to another new episode of You
Need Therapy. My name is Kat and I am the host,
and I'm so glad you're here. As always if you're new,
I'm also especially really excited and happy and glad that
you're here. Before we get started and talk about the
episode today, I always like to start off by saying
that yes, I'm a therapist, and yes this podcast is

(00:30):
called You Need Therapy, and this is not therapy or substitute.
You just simply cannot do therapy over a podcast. So
this might lead you to getting some help in regards
to something that you might uncover by listening to this,
but it is not therapy in itself. So let's talk
about today's episode. I have a friend of mine on
to talk about something that might seem to be a

(00:52):
little bit like weird or odd as a topic for
this podcast, but actually it really isn't and we tell
you why that is in our conversation, so I'll save
that so you don't have to hear it twice. But
my guest name is Nathan Green, and along with me
one of my friends, he is a certified financial planner
and he's the principle of Karen Financial Group, which says company.

(01:13):
He has over ten years of experience in this industry
and working in financial planning and all of that stuff.
And one of the things I really really value about
him and appreciate about him is that his work and
what he does and how he runs his business is
kind of guided by the idea that he's helping people
meet their own goals, whatever those goals are, and not

(01:36):
the goals that he thinks are best for a generalized population.
And I think that's really cool. We actually talk about
that in our conversation, so you'll hear more about why
and how that works. So Nathan graduated from Auburn University
and now actually teaches at a couple universities along with
owning his own company, which I think is so cool,
and I've told him that so many times. I sometimes

(01:57):
like daydream about teaching a course at a university, maybe
even the one that I graduated from one day. I
don't know. I don't have the time to do it now,
but I love teaching, obviously, it's part of the reason
we have this podcast. So he does that, which I
think is awesome, and really I just like respect the
heck out of him, not just when it comes to
career and his knowledge about money and finances. He's just

(02:20):
like a really good human and one that I have
really come to value having in my life. So along
with the knowledge that he brings to us, he's also
just bringing like a good kind, caring energy that's like
nice to be around, you know. So if you want
to connect with Nathan and yourself after hearing him talk,
you can find him by heading to his website, which

(02:40):
is www dot Karen C A I R n f
G dot com and I will put all the links
that you need to find him in the show notes
that you can just click on. He also talks about
how you can follow him on Twitter at the end
of this even though I don't think his account is
very active, but you know, give him a follow and
uh maybe he'll start posting on there. So I just

(03:02):
want to say thank you Nathan for being yourself in
all of the ways, and thank you for coming and
having this conversation. I also want to just put in
this quick disclaimer on Nathan's behalf before I introduce our conversation,
and all investment advisory services are offered by the Karen
Financial Group, a state registered investment advisor. All information discussed

(03:26):
today is general in nature and does not represent a
recommendation or investment advice. So disclaimer from Nathan. My disclaimer
is this is not therapy. And now that we have
that out of the way, I would like to introduce
my conversation with my good friend Nathan. Okay, guys, welcome back.

(03:46):
I have I always say this, and I need to
think of something better to say. Maybe you can help me.
I always want to say I have another exciting I
always want to say, like, I have another exciting episode,
but then every week I say the same thing, so
I think it waters it down. But I have an
exciting episode with an exciting guest because I have my
friend Nathan Green here, Hello, Hello, and we are going

(04:07):
to talk about something that might seem a little bit
off or like, wait a second, I thought this was
a mental health podcast. Just a little bit, what is
it off the grid? Does that fit outside the box?
Outside the box? There we go. We're gonna talk about money.
And I wanted to do this because one, I'm just
interested in it, and because this is my podcast. Sometimes
I just get to do things that I'm interested in,
and also because I think that there is an essence

(04:32):
of psychology and just mental health and awareness around money
because historically it is something that we just don't speak about.
So you introduced this as an exciting episode, and then
you went on to disprove your claim. Hi, this is
going to be an episode about not exciting. I don't
think many people get excited about money unless it's like, Hi,

(04:52):
here's a big check. We're gonna yeah, but you might
learn something then maybe you'll make a bunch of money.
That's that's right. Those are the dots. Everybody up, because
here's the thing. We're going to talk about some things
that I bet a lot of you guys have asked
or wondered, but you actually haven't like asked or wondered
out loud. So I think that's exciting. I'm gonna I'm

(05:15):
gonna ask the questions that maybe somebody else is afraid
to ask, and you're gonna be like, thank god she
asked that, and thank god I kept listening. It so exciting.
I'm here for that. Okay. So I want to start
talking about like why we don't talk about money, and
I have my own feelings and I want you to
share your feelings if you have them, and if they
are different, because I think this is the issue that

(05:36):
we just don't speak about it, so we don't know
about it, and we don't know about something, then we
don't speak about it more. I think for me, it
stems from like the idea that talking about money is
like rude or impolite. I think impolite is the better word.
Like speaking about money and talking about having money or
not having money, or how much something cost, or any
of that just was talked about or put in this

(05:59):
box of like, oh, don't do that, that's impolite. Maybe
it's just talking about how much you make. Then we
put the whole category of money into that box. And
so I don't ask questions about anything because I just
I just put everything together. And I will say I
also think that I might be getting ahead of myself,
but I think that if we take this even a
step farther, I'm a female, and I think that culturally,

(06:22):
um women are supposed to be polite, like we're taught
to be polite. We also, I think we double don't
talk about it. And then I think when we get older,
when we're younger, we can get that's not that big
of a deal. We get older, I remember learning about like, okay,
when you get your first job, and they gave us
this talk about like negotiation and I was like, oh,
I'm not going to do that. Yeah, I'm not negotiating

(06:45):
my salary. Are you kidding? Mean? And it's like, yeah,
we can. There's a probably a couple of camps we
can sit out in. And of why that's tough, and
I think part of it is that I really do
think this. I think part of it is that if
I'm supposed to be, if I'm taught to be polite
and talking about money is impolite, and I'm trying to
ask for more money. One, it's rude to talk about money,

(07:06):
and too, I should just be grateful for what they
offer me, and that can lead us down a trail
of like what do you think you're working? And that
you're going to open up a can of self worth
conversation and I am poorly prepared for this, so so
we're not going to go down there. But I just
had to say that because I do think that's true,
because I can remember my experience of getting my first
job and having like a panic attack when I was like,

(07:26):
I have to ask for more money and It's like
people would say, what's the worst are going to happen there?
I don't say, no, please don't know, but that would
be devastating, though it would be devasating, but it would
be devastating. But also I think the worst that could
be happened is somebody thinking that I shouldn't have asked that.
I think that for me is more of like why
would you ask that? Like you're dumb for asking that,
or there's a lot of things I think I'm getting

(07:48):
out of right. Well, but I make a good point.
I necessarily want to say that you're getting ahead of yourself,
but I'm curious to see where you're gonna end. Oh,
I don't know that. I could just go in circles
around that whole idea, but I just wanted to say
that because that is a repercussion of the idea that
we're not talking about it. Yeah, yeah, I think there's
a lot of truth to that, And I think when

(08:09):
it comes to money, you've got a number of different
ways that it plays out. You've got uh sort of
informal and social settings. You've got money in a professional setting,
You've got money in your own self worth, You've got
money internally in your own household, that is, you know
your own net worth. Uh. And I think that you
play the conversation out about money in those different settings

(08:30):
and you end up with different um psychosis. If you will, Well,
you're right, and so we're not going to pick one
of those. We're going to talk about it over arching.
But I do think you have a point of like
it feels different to talk about in different settings. But
my experience is like it's we don't talk about it
at all. I think that's very true all across the board.

(08:52):
And I think that there's a general sense of avoidance
to most things finances in in societ idea today, or
at least United States society today, and that plays itself
out in a lot of different ways. We can recognize
the symptoms of it socially, and we can recognize the
symptoms of it professionally. Uh. And we may say, Okay,

(09:12):
we need to focus on and address and fix the symptoms.
But listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna pose it that if
we can fix the more core issue, then all the
symptoms sort of resolve itself in the long term. Now,
that's not necessarily what we were to talk about in
my opinion, it's education. I mean I've complained to you
a couple of times that listen, high school students graduate

(09:33):
today knowing what a mitochondria does, but have no idea
what taxes are. And there's a huge gag, right, Like, yeah,
one of these is the powerhouse of the cell, and
the other of these is maybe the thing that you're
going to go to prison over. No, you're actually not.
I'm gonna get arrested one day. I don't do them wrong.

(09:58):
But it's just like a hu fear I have. It's irrational,
and I'm working through it. Yeah, I think that you're
right that I I agree because along with the idea
that like it's impolite, well it just isn't talked about.
I think that's the other thing I said. If it's
if it's something that's just not talked about, then there
this this like fear that kind of like builds up

(10:19):
around it. Yeah. It's also the concept of impolite is
interesting to me because I think socially it is implite
to talk about money, or at least it's perceived as
such and a lot of settings. And that's often because
when people start talking about money, there's a sense of
showmanship or posturing about it, like whether it's intended or

(10:40):
just perceived. If ever you talk about this bottle of
wine and it was this, or I bought this car
and it was that, or m I made this on
my paycheck, there's a sense of like, oh, look at me,
I'm I'm this big old person who is successful and accomplished,
where realistically that is just one very very very small
component of one actual financial wealth. However you wanted to

(11:04):
define it, but I just stop you. Okay, do you
want to know something interesting? Usually? Okay, right now? Do you? Yeah? Okay.
So it's funny that you say that because a couple
months ago, I did this episode on fear of failure,
which during that episode, I've found out that it's very
hard to say fear of failure, to say a lot
of fear of failure. Okay, you don't have trouble saying that.

(11:24):
I had some trouble anyway. In that conversation, I wanted
to figure out, Okay, if I'm afraid of failure, what
a success? So how do I know if I failed
or not? So I was doing some research and I
found this article, and I forget where this research came
from but it came from somewhere and not me. And
they did a survey and asked people what they thought

(11:47):
success was and what they thought other people think it is,
and of people said they think other people think success
is measured by finance, this like monetary that makes sense?
Jobs like that. I guess how many people actually, I'm
sure very few. So I just thought that was wild

(12:11):
because we're all out here doing this dance to prove
success in a form that nobody actually well they don't
count right now, nobody actually thinks that, and so then
we're all just manufacturing this like weird success. And if
we could strip that down, then I think we could

(12:32):
say like, oh, I got this bottle of wine. It
was a hundred dollars, and people wouldn't be like people.
People would just be like, oh, that's crazy, is it is?
It must be good, period, and it wouldn't be this
like oh they're trying to be blah blah blah. Or
I could say like, I, you know, stayed up a
bunch of money and I was able to buy this
like dream card. Do you want to come see it?

(12:52):
And it wouldn't be this like I'm trying to show
this off to you. It's like, I'm trying to share
with you something exciting. But because we think that people
think success is that way, then we use it as
a way sometimes to show our success. And I didn't
have to be that way. It certainly doesn't. And the
solution is to start just talking about money. I think
there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, So I

(13:15):
cut you off, and I don't know where you were going.
I definitely don't either. You're not going to back, Okay.
So I think that just kind of as a whole
rounds out why. I think it's kind of hard because
there's no education, because it's impolite, and because we just
haven't done it. And if we don't do things, then

(13:35):
they become scary. Scary things are scary, and we don't
want to do them. Yeah, And I think that there's
another phenomena that I have a hard time capturing in words,
but I see evidence of it a lot. And this
is me speaking anecdotally, but there's this phenomena where the
best way I know how to translate, if you don't
know where you're going, you really struggle with where you

(13:57):
are and knowing whether you're in the right place. That's beautiful,
you can. I think that is true, yea. And when
that plays itself out in finances, when we don't think
about the way finances play out for ourselves, we don't
think about who we want to be when we grow up.
And that applies if you're twenty or if you're eighty. Um.
But if you don't really have a clear grasp of

(14:18):
that and you don't know how to directly translate that
into what that means for your money, then if you
think about where your money is today, then you just
struggle to grasp if it's in the right place, if
you're doing the right thing, because you don't have a
clear understanding of where it needs to be when you
grow up and what you need to be doing to
get you there that's right, and nobody's standing or rather,

(14:39):
without that clear vision of where you need to take
yourself and how your money is going to get you there,
you have no confidence on the ground that you're standing
on now financially. And so whenever you think about finances,
there's a degree of high degree of lack of confidence
that comes from them. Well, that's sure, I would say,
there's shame. And before we get into some of the

(15:01):
questions that I'm going to ask. I would like to
talk about that because I do and have felt personally,
and I did not think I'm alone in this a
lot of shame for not knowing some of the stuff
and not knowing what to do. And so when I
feel shame, and when a lot of us feel shame,
one thing we do is we try to avoid it

(15:23):
by avoiding it, which doesn't help because then it is
just there and then it causes bigger issues. And there's
nothing shameful about not knowing about something that nobody taught you,
and there's nothing shameful about not knowing about something that
people told you not to talk about. But we care
that and that I think is one of the reasons
that I have recently asked my dad for the name

(15:45):
of one of his financial advisor people, like four or
five times, and he's getting it to me, and I've
never reached out to him because I feel there's a
sense of like, it's too late for me. I should
have done this when I was twenty two. I tried
to do it two that's a story for a different podcast,
and and that story ended in shame, and so I

(16:06):
avoided it, and so then I get into my thirties
and I'm like, oh, ship, one day I'm going to
retire and I work for myself, what do I just
keep a bunch of money in a bank account that no,
I'm sorry, I cannot. I'm sorry, I cannot give advice
that just came out because but like, yeah, and it's
all because there's a sense of like I'm dumb, and

(16:28):
I'm gonna go to this person's office and they're gonna
be like, why are you just now getting here? Or
you're too far gone, or they're gonna say something like
I can't believe you did this, or they're going to
say we're in trouble, like we have a lot of
work to do, and like I don't want to be
in trouble, and I also have this irrational fear of
going to jailing that I probably didn't do. Um. So
all that to say, I want to invite anybody who's

(16:50):
listening to this into the idea that like, shame does
not belong in a place where this topic is living
because you didn't do anything to not know this stuff
that wasn't essentially like pushed upon you. That's very real,
and I think you've unfortunately not had a incredibly unique
experience with financial planners in that I mean, I hear

(17:14):
you talk about therapists this way, and that financial planners
are humans too, and some of them are more empathetic
than others, and some of them are trained a little
bit differently. I mean, interestingly, financial planners don't have the
degree of uniform training that even you, as a therapist would,
And so if I'm sitting across the table from a
therapist and more or less know the training you've been through,

(17:35):
I know more or less know the education you've been through,
the licensing that you've been through. That's not the case
for financial advisors. You don't have like a licensing board.
And we have many licenses that allow us to do
numerous different things, and not everybody has the same licenses,
nor is there one uniform way to get any of
those licenses. So I have the CFP designation that stands

(17:59):
for Certified Financial Planner. That's colloquially held as sort of
the chief diagnostic certification in the finance industry. It's sort
of the highest in one realm of the financial planning world.
There are other licenses. I actually have other licenses, a
series seven, A Series sixties six. All these things that
in previous careers actually allowed me to do certain things. Frankly,

(18:22):
they actually allowed me to sell and broker different investments
to you, But in and of themselves, that doesn't inherently
train me to be empathetic and train me to understand
the challenges that you're going through. And so, like I say,
somebody who is a financial planner is not the same
as another person who is a financial planner. Is that
frustrating for you? It's very frustrating for me. It's very, very,

(18:45):
very frustrating for me. And I hate to say this
on recording, but I think that the industry broadly has
has done a pretty bad job of that in reference
to the consumers, and that they've put a lot of
burden on the consumer to figured out yourself. And oh,
in the process while you're figuring it out yourself, like
be aware that you might mess it up because somebody

(19:07):
gives you bad advice, or because somebody's not empathetic and
doesn't really understand where you are, what you're going through,
or doesn't really understand who you want to be when
you grow up and says you need to go a
different direction. And it could be because of malice. I
don't think there's that many bad actors, but I do
think that there's a lot of opportunity for just misunderstanding,
and those misunderstandings to translate into advice that you then

(19:29):
act on that wasn't actually in line with what you
wanted to get out of your finances. That are you
saying to I think I'm sorry, I'm pointing at him.
I think that is a good point. I think you
said this the other day when we were talking, because
as you were saying that, I was like, Oh, there's
a good amount of not great therapist too. And I
even got an email today from somebody who shared an

(19:51):
experience of something that therapist said to them, And in
my head, I was like, how in the hell would
anybody ever think that that's a good idea to say.
I was just like, what I say that because we
can get very discouraged and people go to therapy and
they hear something like that and they're like, I'm not
going back to therapy. Those people are mean, they're judgmental

(20:12):
to this, they're that, And I think that's it can
be an any any industry that we can't judge one person.
We can't just the whole thing on one person. But
I think what you just said about like that might
not be that person's goal. And as a therapist, I
have to check myself all of the time because I'm
a human who thinks certain things about what is right

(20:33):
for my life, and I think, apparently what's right for
I don't even know how to say this, but I
don't think that the vast majority of people sit in
the seat of what's right for me is not right
for everybody. They sit in the seat of what's right
for me is the best, and everybody should want the best,
and so everybody should want what I want. And I've
I've only learned how to take on this idea through experiencing, like,

(20:57):
oh my gosh, there's so many different lines of humans
who have different goals and different beliefs work for them,
and so I have to be very aware of that
because if somebody comes in here and I'm like trying
to help them, but I'm help trying to help them
believe what I believe and get what I want out
of life, they might not want that, and then they're

(21:18):
going to be either lost or piste off or hurt
or confused or whatever, and I think that can be
the same with money, is not everybody has to have
the same goals with their money. So when we were
talking abother night, I asked a question about like paying

(21:39):
off loans, and I was like, I just want to
pay my loans off. And you were like, why what
loans are we talking about and why and I was like, well,
because I need to be debt free. Of course, that's
what everybody. Everybody should be debt free. That's what like, right,
But we kept talking and you ask me some follow
up questions. I'm not going to share the details of it,
but the point I'm trying to make is it might

(22:01):
not lead me to my goals to try to be
debt free first, and I think that that is even something.
It's like, debt is bad and you shouldn't have it
and get rid of it as soon as you can
and spend all your money to not have it. But
like that might not align with what I wanted of life,
and that's okay, that's that's that is okay. And I'm
not saying like, go like get a bunch of credit
card debt, but like you gotta you gotta think about

(22:22):
the voices that are preaching that message the loudest are
the ones that are preaching to the broadest portion of
the population. We're talking millions of people at a time,
and when you're talking to millions of people at a time,
you've got to think about, how can I give advice
that is going to be messed up less frequently than

(22:43):
any other advice. And if I tell people don't pay
off your debt, go make the life that you want,
people mess that up and people end up in too
much debt and don't ever get there, that's right, absolutely.
But if you say the opposite, pay off your debt,
worry about getting your balance sheet clean and free and
clear of all that debt, then you know, what are

(23:05):
we talking about messing up here? Really, what we're talking
about here is asterisk. We're talking about a economics term here,
but opportunity cost It's okay, Was that the best place
for your dollar? Maybe? Maybe not, But that's not a
big mistake. If you do go and pay off all
your debt, and if you are that group of people
who are talking to millions of people at a time
behind the microphone or writing books or whatever, then that's

(23:26):
a that's a pretty safe way to give black and
white advice. Yeah, And if I'm afraid to talk about money,
I'm going to read a book or listen to a
podcast or or follow something big like that, so I
don't have to have that personal experience. The same thing
with therapy. Wow, this is a very mental health focused

(23:47):
because I think that's why I get so and a
lot of the listeners are probably okay, can't we get it?
It annoys you because I talk about all the time,
but I get so frustrated with like TikTok and instagram
mental health coaches therapists people on there because they're generalizing
a lot of things and then people are grabbing onto
it and I'm like, but that doesn't have to apply

(24:09):
to you that way, and so it's dangerous. Could be right,
and there oftentimes a lot of truth in what's being said,
but is it the best for you? So what I
would like to do, since I have you here, is
just ask you some questions and give us as much
of an answer that you can. And sometimes the answer

(24:30):
might be I don't know, it sounds like you might
need a more tailored answer to you. But I joked
about this when I put a question box on Instagram
and said, like, what are some questions that you're afraid
to ask about money? And the most common one was
it just makes me laugh because it's the one that
I think I asked you first. Now, I was like,
what is a four oh one K? Why don't I

(24:51):
know what it is? Should I know what it is?
Should I have one? And where do I get one?
So can we start with that? I think that's a
perfectly fine place to start. A four win K is
what will refer to as an employer sponsored retirement savings plan.
Those are all words, and you know what each of
those words mean, but when you actually play it out
into an investment account, you think, what in the world

(25:13):
does all those words mean. Um, we'll break it down.
Employer sponsored means that it can only be offered by
your employer. So you can't go to your bank and say, Hi,
can I get a four one K today? Please open
one up at the bank. You can't unless you have
your own job. So I can rather not your own job,
but your own company. Right, you can open up in
the name of the company, and the company opens one

(25:33):
up and then allows different participants within the plan, and
I can participate in the plan. That's right. Okay, that's right.
Or if you are employed by h c A, a
large hospital in Nashville, then well, I guess all across
the country. Then h c A has a four win
K and allows any and all of their full time
employees to participate in differ part of their salary into

(25:56):
that four win K plan. So again, that's the employer
sponsored So why would I want to defer my money
into that? So that brings us to the retirement savings vehicle. Well,
actually I should give another asterisks. It's an employer sponsored
tax deferred retirement savings vehicle. Let me come back to
the tax deferred part for a second and talk about

(26:17):
the retirement savings. Retirement savings means that once you put
the dollar into the account, it is not meant to
be spent until you are retired as defined by an
age meaning fifty nine and a half. So put it
all are into your four wind came I. R S
is saying, please don't touch this until you're fifty nine
and a half, or if you do, we're going to

(26:39):
tax you and we're gonna penalize you. Now, it's not
the end of the world to be taxed nobody ever
went broke paying taxes. I should check with my compliance
officer or whether I can say that. So Jason, good
on to me if I if I can't actually say that.
But and the penalty is ten percent. So again this
is not, you know, a prisonable offense if you mess
that up. However, the whole point of the four win

(26:59):
K is set it aside for retirement and because that's
a good idea, or at least the I R S
thinks it's a good idea because that helps them. By
the way, if you say for your own retirement, that
means that you are less of a burden on the state.
When you're later in age, you're putting less burden on
the social security administration system. And as you're self ensuring

(27:21):
your own retirement, then they have to rely less on
taxes and social infrastructure to actually support you in retirement.
So they think, oh, please and thank you. Will you
please say for your own that's right, and in exchange
for that to kind of back their word up, that
allow us some tax breaks on that. So that brings
me to the last comment being that it is a
tax deferred account. Now, technically the four win K can

(27:46):
be set up as one of two different types of
four win ks. It can either be a traditional four
win K or it can be a WROTH for win K.
We'll get back to the ROTH in a second, but
roth is just we just need to treat that as
an adjective to describe the type of four one K
and it changes. The term roth means that the taxation
changes flip flops where the taxes are going to be paid.

(28:07):
So the tax deferred account means that when you put
the dollar into the four wind K, you don't have
to pay taxes on that dollar. But when you set
the money in the account and it grows, it still
grows with no tax burden until you get to retirement
and you remove dollars from the account. Then when you
remove the dollars, all those dollars would be taxable to

(28:28):
you as income whenever you do remove them. You're looking
at me confused. Let me give you a very simple
case study. If I've got a hundred bucks in a
week and I decided to defer ten of those dollars
to my four wind K, that means I get to
turn to the I R S and say, hey, guys,
I only made ninety dollars this week. That's good because taxes,
this is very simple but powerful. Taxes zode on ninety

(28:50):
dollars is less than taxes zode on a hundred dollars. Okay,
that's good because all of a sudden, you're cash flow
was much less burdened by put those ten dollars into
the four wind K because you got that tax deduction
for it. So that extra cash flow that you get
from the tax deduction you could use to you know,
pay your student loans off, or put in more money

(29:11):
into your four wind K or whatever you needed to do.
But up front, you get a little bonus from that
tax deduction, and that shows itself in the form of
your tax with holdings. If you look at your paycheck,
you see taxes being withheld from your paycheck, it will
be less. It will be less. So you may put
a dollar into your four wind K and your tax

(29:31):
withholdings might go down by twenty cents. I might be
getting ahead of myself. I'm pretty sure you can invest
money that's in your four oh one K. You can,
absolutely So if you make money inside the four oh
one K, do you have to pay taxes on the
money that is made inside of it. It was a

(29:52):
perfect transition into the next phase of my case study.
So day one, you make a hundred bucks, you put
ten into the four wind K. Don't pay taxes on
those tin you pay taxes on the remaining ninety, so
we save some money. That's great. Meanwhile, the ten dollar
sits in your four win K, and all four wind
k's are given a list of mutual funds that they

(30:13):
can invest in. There's usually a pretty broad range of them,
but they're fairly systematized. There's there's fairly repeatable and predictable
what kind of funds would be in there most of
the time. These days, there's even such thing as what
they call a target retirement date fund. That's kind of
put the money in there and it does it for you,
assuming that you're going to retire by whatever date. We

(30:36):
don't have to get too complicated about that. What is
a mutual fund? No, it's not at all. I think investing.
I think I'm going to buy stock and target or something. Yeah,
certainly that's a mutual fund. Okay, let's bookmark where we
just left with our money in the case study, where
the money is in the four wind K and it's growing,
and as it grows, it grows totally tax free. Um

(30:59):
let's bookmark this point and talk about the mutual funds
and the stocks and the bonds. Will come right back
to it. But I want to finish my point about
the case study that as the ten dollars is in
the four one k growing, you pay no taxes on
its growth. But then when you get to retirement, if
you remove a hundred dollars in a week from that account,
you have to turn to the I R S and

(31:19):
say I made So however much you withdrawal is going
to define whatever your tax bill is going to be
to conceptually make some sense. Okay, so it is a
tax deferred retirement savings vehicle. Hey, the taxes when you
pull it out right, we're just deferring the tax The
people who are in charge of the Financial Naming Institute

(31:43):
of America. It's not a real thing, for the record,
but they are some of the least creative people in
the world. Like, what happens to the taxes in this thing?
Do they get deferred? Cool? I guess it's a text
deferred thing. And that's I like that if you actually
think through some of the way these things are named
and break it down, there's some intentionality behind it. Unfortunately,
the intentionality and the overtness of it, overt simplicity in

(32:04):
a lot of times, actually makes it convoluted in a
little bit complicated. But that's neither here nor there. You
were to talk about mutual funds. In order to understand
what a mutual fund is, you probably need to have
a functional understanding what a stock is, as well as
what a bond is. But we're going to use those
terms to get to the point of what is a
mutual fund. So a stock you may have heard that

(32:26):
referenced to as equity before. A stock is literally just
ownership in a certain company, a little small proportional ownership
in a company. Um, And it's really no more complicated
than that. It's akin to you starting your own company
like you do, and being able to profit from that

(32:46):
company the exact same way as if you own stock
in the company. So I mean think about it with me.
If you own a company again you do, then you
can make money from your company one of two different ways.
Way one is, by oversimplified here, generating revenue. It's not
actually that you're making money just by generating revenue but
as owner in a company, this is separate from an

(33:09):
employee of the company. So maybe a good case study
would be, like, I come from a family where I'm
the runt that is not a pharmacist, so I'm going
to give the equation to pharmacists. If I own a pharmacy,
I employ myself as pharmacist in the pharmacy, then I'm
paying myself a salary. I, as owner in the pharmacy,
can also make money totally separate from that, if the

(33:32):
company makes more money than I budgeted for. In other words,
if we run a profit. Right, if we run a profit,
I as owner have a choice. Say I've made a
budget for a million dollars one year and it turns
out i made one point two million dollars, so I've
got two hundred thousand dollars to do something with. I
can either take that money and reinvest it within the company,
which could be good, could allow me to buy a

(33:54):
pharmacist or some technology, or facelift the building or whatever
it is that may actually generate more money in the future.
Or I could pay myself extra. If I pay myself
extra as a owner, that comes out to me in
the form of a what we call it dividend. That's
a I R S accounting term for non salary owner income.

(34:14):
So when you own a pharmacy and have profit, you
can pay yourself a dividend. It's just extra money that
comes to you. Pretty cool. CVS, a publicly traded stock
that is a pharmacy, is making the exact same decisions
every single year. But they're not making it with a
million and one point two million. They're making with a
billion and one point two billion. And when they've got that,

(34:34):
actually don't know the numbers. We could publicly available numbers,
We could get them. But the point is, if they've
got two hundred million dollars, they're doing at a much
larger scale. And the people who are making the decision
of whether to reinvest that money or pay it out
as a dividend is the board of directors. And everybody
on that board of directors owns a lot of shares
in CVS, and so when they decide I'm gonna pay

(34:56):
out a dollar per share, they own a million shares,
they get a million dollars. If you own a hundred shares,
you get a hundred dollars. Just like that makes sense.
Say that last again, if they pay out one dollar
per share in the form of a dividend, then it
comes out proportionally. So if the person sitting on the
board of directors owns a million shares of CBS, then

(35:18):
that dividend at a dollar per share means they get
a one million dollar check. But if you own one
hundred shares, since you're getting give dividend of one dollar
per share, then you get a check for one hundred dollars.
That is what stocks are. So this is an example
of if you own stocks, how you can make money. Yes,

(35:39):
this is this is I'm still making my point about stocks.
So when you say board of directors, you mean people
that own stock. No, no, no, no no, I'm saying
they're the decision makers who decide whether or not to
pay out a dividend or not. And a dividend is
what gives you money when we have stock. That's right,
That's right. When it comes to a stock, if you
own stock, that is let's simplify and say, if the

(36:01):
stock is profitable, the company is profitable, then the company
might pay you a dividend. Got it all right, So
then what's the stock have to do with the mutual fund? Well,
we're still building our point. That's only one way that
you can make money with the stock. The other way
is that again going back to our pharmacy as an example,
if you own a pharmacy, you can make money from

(36:21):
that pharmacy when you decide to sell the pharmacy. Now,
that is a long and laborious and customized processors. You're
gonna find a buyer and hire an attorney and hire
a c p A to kind of value the business
and negotiate over what you're gonna sell it for, and
then you're gonna have to hire me to figure out
how money is going to change hands. And it's just
very involved and engage in a lot to it. Because

(36:42):
there is no defined market for pharmacies, you have to
go through a very customized process. But there is, however,
a defined market for stocks. It's called the stock market,
and because of that, there is a defined procedural way
to value stocks and how they are raided every single moment,
and it's all systematized. Because of that. If you own CVS,

(37:05):
there are millions of shares of CVS that are traded
every single day, and as a result of that, you
get to see if you own a hundred shares in
CVS to the second what somebody else just paid for
the same hundred shares that you actually own. And because
this is not antique furniture that we're talking about where

(37:27):
you might see on antique road show. Hey, this person's
got that same Chester drawers that I've got in my
living room and they just paid a million dollars for it. Well,
may not be worth a million dollars the one that
you own, because you might have a scratch, but your
CVS stock is worth the exact same as what somebody
else just paid there for that other lot of a
hundred shares of CVS stock, because it's all literally the

(37:48):
exact same. It's all systematized. Anyways, when you own stock,
you own company. And when you own a company, you
can share in its profits and you can make money
by selling it on the market. More us makes sense cool.
The other thing to be aware of is what's called

(38:09):
a bond. Most people don't know much about bonds, or rather,
so there you go. Maybe I shouldn't say most people
don't know. I don't know what it means. More people
are familiar with stocks than are with bonds. However, the
bond market is huge, and um, the stock market pails
in comparison. But really, what a bond is is an

(38:30):
instrument of debt, uh. And what that means is that,
you know, let's make the analogy to when you bought
your house. You looked at the house and you said, hmm,
I'd like this house, but I don't have the money.
So I'm gonna go to a bank and you're gonna say, hey, bank,
I'd like to buy this house, but I don't have
the money, and I need you to give it to me.
And the bank looks you up and down and they say, okay,
we agree. We're gonna give you the money, but we

(38:51):
need a couple of things from you. We need you
to promise number one, they're gonna pay us back, and
we need to promise number two they're gonna pay us
back in a set amount of time. And then number three,
we need you to promise it You're to pay U
back in a set amount of time with interest on top.
Those are the three components that make up debt. And
when you talk about CBS again, sorry if anybody from

(39:11):
CBS is listening here, this is just the thing that
I've latched onto. This is a hypothetical example, I should
say ABC Stock, uh instead. But when we talk about
ABC stock, who's needing to open up a whole bunch
of new pharmacies or convenience stores. They're not going to
the bank and asking for three hundred thousand dollars like

(39:32):
you or I did. They're going to the bank and
asking for a three hundred million dollars. And since no
bank has three hundred million dollars is laying around in
the floor, what the bank does is break that three
hundred million dollars loan up into tiny little pieces and
sell those pieces to people like you and me and
anybody who wants to buy them. And when they sell
them to you and you buy that bond for let's

(39:54):
say a thousand dollars, what you're doing is giving ABC
Corporation a thousand dollars in exchange for their promise to
pay you back plus interest in a set amount of time.
Where do you get a bond? Where can I find
any number of places you mentioned savings bonds? You can't
actually buy bonds from the United States government, and I

(40:16):
think it's Treasury Direct dot Gov. I don't remember. Basically,
then giving the government money and then they're gonna pay
me back plus money in a time. That's right. So
you can do that directly through the treasury, you can
do that through any financial advisor. Anywhere that you would
be able to buy a stock, you would also be

(40:37):
able to buy a bond to an extent at least. However,
a lot of complexities that go into individual securities like that.
So a lot of people rely on and here's the
answer to your question, mutual funds. So what we're talking
about here is mutual funds are in and of themselves,
will call them tools of aggregation. Bear with me. So

(40:57):
what I mean by that is, if you have a
thousand dollar dollars, then you can buy one bond, or
you can buy six shares of I can't give the
specific name of the company, but you can buy six
shares of a very popular computer and phone manufacturer who
happens to be a very large company on the stock
exchange today. So that in and of itself doesn't give

(41:19):
you much, doesn't give you much diversification. You may or
may not know what you're doing. But if you also
or rather if you have those choices, you could instead
give your money to a mutual fund, go buy a
mutual fund, and what's going to happen is that the
managers of that mutual fund are going to take your
thousand dollars and along with a hundred and fifty million
dollars they already manage, They're going to go buy some stuff,

(41:42):
and you're then going to own a proportional share of
all the stuff that they buy. And they might buy stocks,
or they might buy bonds, or they might buy real estate,
or they might buy other mutual funds. This is kind
of proving your point of how this is a very
overwhelming conversation. There are thirty three thousand and five mutual
funds in the universe last time I checked, and trying

(42:03):
to pick one gets to be a little bit of
a lot. But the reality is all of those funds
have slightly different prospectuses and buy laws basically laws that
govern the rules self imposed, that govern what they can
and cannot do and what they can and cannot invest in.
And some of them are very broad, some of them
are very narrow. Some of them say we're going to

(42:25):
only invest in the companies that invest or that comprise
the SMP five. Others are more niche and say we're
only going to invest in small European auto manufacturers hypothetical example.
But they range in their purpose and in their investment
strategy and all sorts of different things. But at the
end of the day, a mutual fund is a way

(42:45):
to just say, rather than buying a stock because I
don't know what to do, I'm going to find a
good mutual fund and just trust to them to sort
of out. That sounds nice. It does sound nice. There
are certainly some advantages and disadvantages to that. We we
have to also answer the question of what's the difference
between a roth, you know, a wroth for oh one
k k and then and yes, so hopefully people were

(43:10):
listening enough to know that we left off our case
study about the four one k saying that if we
make a hundred bucks we put tin into the four
win k, then that allows us to tell the I
R s we only made nine d If the tin
sits in the account and it grows and it grows
and it grows, and we never pay taxes on that
in the four one k um until we remove the
money from the four one k, and assuming we do

(43:32):
it after age fifty nine and a half, then that
money is just going to be taxed to us as
if it's income. So take out a hundred bucks, tell
the I R S you made a hundred bucks. That's
a four one K. A Wroth for a win K
so named for Senator William Roth, who I don't remember
the year, but came up with this idea to tax
assets in this specific manner, and everybody thought it was

(43:53):
such a good idea that they literally slapped his name
as an adjective to describe how the money is going
to be taxed. And what's going to happen is the
flip flop of the tax deferred format such that it's
preferred nailed it. And in our case study, if you
are making a hundred dollars in a week and you
put ten dollars into your tax preferred RATH for a

(44:16):
win K, then you don't get any tax break for
having done so. So you have to turn to the
I R S and say I made one dollars this week,
so your tax deductions don't drop. There's literally no benefit.
It's just ten dollars out of your paycheck. But once
it's in that account, you never pay taxes again as

(44:37):
long as you remove it after age a half. Even
if it grows correct, it sits in the account and
it grows totally tax free until you get to retirement
and you remove it. And if you remove a hundred
dollars from the account, then you turn to the I
R S and say zero dollars. So it's the exact
opposite of the text saying that sounds like a better option.

(44:58):
But I know that's probably more nuanced than that it
really is. I'm glad that you say so. Simply put, mathematically,
if all things are equal, it makes no difference. Neither
of those inherently makes you more wealthy than the other ones.
The simple question is, well, hey, would you rather pay
taxes on the small amount up front or the large
amount of the back end? And mathematically it just doesn't

(45:20):
matter if all things are equal. But the reality is
never are all things equal? And the right answer to
that question, which one of those is better, the raw
or the traditional four win ke boils down to where
is the tax bill going to be higher? Are you
going to be in a higher tax bracket today than
you will in retirement, or will you be in a
higher tax bracket in retirement than you will today? Well,

(45:40):
the goal is pay taxes when you're in the lower
tax bracket. So then I RA A is and i
r A is an individual retirement accounts, so the same thing,
but you can anybody can have one. I can't say
anybody can have one, but it is independent of your
employer for one case, employer sponsored retirement account and an

(46:01):
IRA is individual. So what would be the benefit of
picking one over the other if I do have an employer. Yeah,
so your employer sponsors your four win K, which means
that they govern the rules of that four win K. Now,
there's some limits to how creative or not creative they
can be thanks to ARISSA and some other governing laws

(46:22):
that they have to operate within, thanks to the unique
way that the United States is governed. But the I
r A is not going to be governed by that.
You're going to have the autonomy to do whatever is
appropriate for you. That applies to things like investments most notably,
so four win K is going to have a pre
selected list of funds available to you, which could be nice.

(46:44):
It kind of gives you some some lines within to draw,
and it's up to you to pick which of those
you know five to twenty or are most appropriate for you.
But an IRA oftentimes will give you open architecture, which
means you can buy any stock, or any bond or
any of the thirty three mutual funds you want. It
gets to be a lot. And if you know what

(47:05):
you're doing, then that opportunity is fantastic. If you don't
know what you're doing, then that's that opportunity is really intimidating. Paralyzing,
that's probably a good word for it. Yes, I actually
had a conversation with somebody today like there's even facets
of this industry that I don't want to say are
paralyzing to me, but I felt overwhelmed just listening to like, Wow,

(47:26):
how do you come up with these contracts structures people?
I don't why? And how how do we pick between?
This is just all that to say I empathize. Thank you. Okay,
So for those of you who are wondering what a
four oh one k is, believe we've hope that minutes.

(47:46):
But I also think that makes sense, and I think
people may read that on the internet if they like
google it, and that is still confusing. So that what
made sense, and so thank you for answering that. And
if you still don't understand that you can probably just
email Nathan. He can tell you. Yeah, we can do
this again. Um, okay, So I want to make sure
we ask a couple more questions. You won't get to

(48:08):
all of them that you guys asked, So I'm very sorry.
But again, you can always call Nathan and I'm just
you know, sap time and ask him yourself. Okay, let's
talk about student lets. That seems to be a particularly
traumatizing conversation. Yes, it is. So the basis of the
questions that were asked were basically like, is it okay
to take out student loans if I can't afford school?

(48:30):
Is it okay to take out student loans? What do
I do with them? How do I pay them back?
What does it mean to consolidate that? I've got to
be very careful in answering. Yeah, really all of those,
but particularly the first one, like is it okay to
take out student loans? We said this a second ago,
not five minutes ago, when we were talking about you know,

(48:51):
the perception of debts, and when we're giving what may
be perceived as advice around uh, some financial topics, we
have to think about how it could be messed up. Right,
So I have to be really cautious to say, yeah,
take out student loans, They're great. I don't think I
can say that. I can say that student loans can

(49:14):
and do open up opportunities. And if student loans are
the only way to open up the opportunity for yourself
that you are pursuing, then I think that's the answer,
plain and simple. Morally. Are student loans wrong? No, Mathematically
our student loans bad. You know, it's taking out a
student loan is less good than being given a check

(49:36):
just for free, right because you gotta pay that back
in You're gonna have to pay back plus interest. However,
one of the things that we're gonna talk about, I
assume are some of the student loan forgiveness programs that
are available today. And I'm gonna make a quick note
of social commentary to prove my point, not to come
back to my point here. There's a whole lot of

(49:56):
conversation today politically socially around kind of a movement to
make education free. Don't want to say that's right or
wrong by any means, but what I do want to
say is that there's already a lot of infrastructure in
place to make education expenses not disproportionately burdensome. That's kind

(50:18):
of empty verbiage. I feel like, however, it's it's really
important because all the different forgiveness programs that exist today,
I'm going to oversimplify two of them. One is the
public service loan forgiveness program that says you're going to
pay back ten percent of your discretionary income each year
for the next ten years while you work for a

(50:40):
nonprofit organization or any number of them, and then at
the end of that program, what's left on your balance
is going to be forgiven. That's fantastic. Well, here's some
quick math here. Ten percent of your discretionary income. I
won't go into the definition of what is discretionary income,
but it's less than your total income. But if we
forget about that and just say ten percent of your income,
then to in percent of your income for ten years

(51:02):
equals your income. Right. So, when we're talking about student
loans and stepping into a question of boy, I might
take on some student loans, and I'm taking might take
on a ton of student loans, and I would really
love it if education is free. Well, the infrastructure that's
in place right now for those working for nonprofit organizations
at least says you're not going to pay back more
than one time's your income. Roughly oversimplified calculation, But hopefully

(51:28):
that puts in context for people. And that means that
somebody who goes to school and spends a lot of
money to become a therapist has different student loan expectations
for somebody who goes to school and spends a lot
of money to become a neurosurgeon, because your incomes are different. Right,
But this is if you work for a nonprofit. Correct,

(51:49):
But the same concept applies even if you don't work
for a nonprofit. There are other forgiveness programs available through
the pay as you earn plan and the revised pays
you earn plan that the pay as you are in
plan will forgive what's left on your debt after twenty
years of those discretionary income ten percent of discretionary income payments.
So again I oversimplify, but twenty years of ten percent

(52:12):
of your of your income equates to roughly again oversimplified,
two times your income. And so if you're earning thirty
thou government says, boy, we don't want to disproportionately burden
you with more than sixty dollars of debt repayment. If
you're earning four thousand, then we're going to say, well,
we don't want to disproportionately burden you in quotations with

(52:34):
more than eight hundred thousand dollars of payments. Reality is,
if you're in that situation, then you're probably not doing
it off right. That's right. The point that I'm making
is there is a lot of social movement and political
movement to make education free and independent of the validity
of that idea, there is infrastructure in place right now
to ensure that student loan debt that you take on
doesn't become an undo burden for you. But this is

(52:58):
the thing about that. My blood is a little bit
boiling right now because no nobody explains that to mebody,
And when you read about it, it doesn't make sense
like I had to take out student loans to go
to school because I did not have any money when
I graduate college and I wanted to go to grad school.
I have tried to understand this stuff, and it is

(53:19):
so confusing. Why do people let this is not a
question for you, this is a question for the universe.
A lot of people let people do this without being like, hey,
you can take out these loans, let me explain to
you how they work in how could I know? There's
probably universe, would say, because I'm not responsible for your
own okay here, sure, sure, I think it's just like

(53:41):
I think there should be more education, especially in higher
education where a lot of people are Wow, a lot
of people are taking out loans to be there, but
nobody's talking about it, and people are just being like, oh,
my student loans. Have somebody student loans didn't loans? It
like the student word student alone to me comes with

(54:01):
this like heavy, icky, like burdensome, like aftertaste when from
that conversation and there's more to it. It doesn't have
to be that way, And it's like, well, why why
is nobody having this conversation? It really is shocking to
me on a lot of different levels that it's not
happening and we're not here to talk about this, but
I'm going to quickly make an unashamed plug here and

(54:24):
that this is a thing that is sort of a
passion piece for me, just the sense of lack of
financial preparedness, or at least lack of financial education and
preparedness coming out of at least the healthcare education systems.
To your point, like, if we're going to strap all

(54:45):
these students with tons of debt, then why aren't we
educating them on this? And there's some very real reasons
as to why they're not and why they can't. And
they've got curricular bodies and curricular structures that they have
to meet and standard and I mean all those things
that just get in the way. Right, But this is
a thing that my sister and I actually started a

(55:06):
separate side project business to hopefully addressed and raise the
culture of financial preparedness in at least healthcare education settings,
to actually open the door to have those conversations. And
our vision right now is mostly mostly revolving around just
print material as well as asynchronous web based virtual courses

(55:29):
that we're hoping to be available in as many healthcare
education colleges as we can come up with over the
course of time. But at the end of the day,
I think I think you're right. It is kind of
a shame that people are going to school without any
real preparation and any real context or education around it.
So I also separate comment also teaching at University of

(55:51):
Tennessee in the Health Sciences Center, and yesterday ended. It
was the last class of this semester for me and
I always have a open discussion around like, hey, this
is an elective course, why did you take it? I
wrote down some notes on what you said class number one,
and so I want to test this. Did we actually
accomplished some of these things? And what did we learn,

(56:11):
what did we not learn, etcetera. And I'm still genuinely
surprised that so many people, even halfway through their training,
are surprised to learn about all the different options for
student loan repayments. And one of them, who was may
have been the smartest kid in the class, sat down

(56:31):
just like you know, I just thought there was ten years,
twenty years, or thirty years to pay my loans off,
and I was just gonna have to buckle down and
get it done and that was it. But the reality
is is there's a lot to consider, and I'm really
excited to now know it. Yeah, that is That is
a lasting takeaway from me. Anytime I'm around people with
student loans, it's like, boy, I wish we could just
tell you sooner, teach you sooner. Well, because one I

(56:53):
think that if the education could help make it not
so scary. So maybe people who have always wanted to
go back to school for something or like, oh, I
actually can do this, it won't ruin my life. And
then the people who have done that aren't like, oh
I can't believe I did this, and now I'm going
to be like suffering forever and it's just this like
dark rain cloud that's going to follow me everywhere, and

(57:16):
it neither of those has to be true. And we
don't have to ignore it either, because I think the
dark rain cloud, it's like, well, it's not raining yet,
so we're just gonna let it be back there. We're
also going to just never turn around, so we just
don't see it. And if I don't see it, then
it's not really That was I think in the first
two sentences of a book that I wrote with my

(57:37):
sister last year to this material in our forward was
alluding to that exact concept. Well, you could bury your
head in the sand about this stuff, but that might
work out or probably won't. Don't be afraid of student loans.
I think it's the takeaway. And uh know that help
is available, though it will not be fed to you. Well,

(57:58):
who do you go to Yeah, that's a really really,
really great, great question. Hopefully the school that you're going
to has some resources available. I mean maybe they have,
you know, a financial planning course in the curriculum. Obviously
I teach at University of Tennessee and the College of
Pharmacy and they do. Obviously not everywhere does, right, So yeah,

(58:18):
hopefully it's integrated in there. There are professionals. I mean,
this is something that I know a ton about, is
kind of an unfortunate specialization in my career, and there
is actually what is that phase for? Okay, I think
this is a fair point. I think it's confusing for
people because one of the questions I'm gonna I'm gonna
circle what you're saying into the last question that will answer.
Because when somebody said our financial advisors slash planners worth it,

(58:42):
what do they even do? And I think that leads
into the question of like, well, I have loans, so
I have negative money, So I don't want to pay
somebody to ask questions about my negative money. What are
they going to do? And so I think that concept
is confusing for people who are like maybe they'll have loans,
maybe they just like maybe trug whatever and so it's like, well,

(59:03):
what do they even do? Is it's worth it for
me to pay somebody to help me with money? I
don't feel like I have. Yeah, I'm going to oversimplify
what should be the job of all financial planners, no
matter who they're talking to, no matter how old the
client is, or how wealthy the client is, rich the
client is, or poor the clients, the job of a
financial planner should be to be committed to making sure

(59:25):
that the client does everything they can to make sure
they're wealthy when they grow up. Hopefully is that simple. Historically,
what that has meant is that, you know, we've had
a really good canvas uh to make an impact on
people's investments. And so that's really the core deliverable for
financial planners and advisors is to advise on invested dollars

(59:46):
or dollars that could be invested, whether they're already invested
or not. A lot of people that already have dollars invested.
I mean, listen, if you've got a million dollars to invest,
then you think about the cost of a bad decision
with the million dollars is potentially huge, and so it's
very easy to think a ha yes, a financial planner

(01:00:07):
will help me avoid some very costly mistakes. If you're
talking about investing a thousand dollars, the cost of your
mistake is really not that much unless you consider the
fact that most people that we're talking about who have
a thousand dollars to invest are very early in their career.
And I'm a very firm believer that people's long term
wealth is less defined by their income, their assets, and

(01:00:31):
their liabilities and more defined by their habits, Especially if
I'm talking to somebody who's I don't know, let's just
say under age forty. Whatever your habits are can be
messed up and have a huge negative impact on you
or a hugely positive impact on you. I think some
of the wealthiest clients that I work with relative to
their age, have always made fine money, but have never

(01:00:54):
been much above the average income of people that I
work with. But they've just they've just got good habits.
They've done it right from the onset, they've had their
head screwed on straight, and it's just been easy for him.
They have done nothing magic, they've done nothing fancy. They've
just executed, and they've executed the right way. And we

(01:01:16):
did it from an early age and now they're too late.
It's never too late, is never too late. The earlier
you can do it, the better. I mean, this is
one client that I started working with when they were
twenty four and yeah, now they're well, they're just trugging
along doing great. Yeah. I would say that the longer
you wait, the less opportunity you've got. And you never
have more time in front of you than you do today,

(01:01:38):
So capitalize on it. Our financial planners worth it, and
what do they actually do? Hopefully we're getting the concept
at the end of the day that plays out in
a number of different ways though. I mean, investments is
just the natural playground for a financial planner, but it
is the industry is beginning to acknowledge much more so
nowadays that wealth is much more comprehensive than investments. And

(01:02:02):
I don't necessarily want to say it's a new generation idea,
but it's certainly not a This is not a comment
on age or actual generation. But it's not an old
generation idea. It's just conceptually this is on the newer
end of the spectrum, and so there are a number
of It's a very significant portion of the industry is
committed to working with people on a holistic approach like

(01:02:23):
that and really affect their habits, and uh spend more
time there than let's say, just focusing on well do
you buy this stock or that stock? And so, like
I say, I've got an unfortunate specialization in student loans.
That's because twelve years and ago, when I started in
this career, the people who were interested in listening to
me needed to answer the question what did they need

(01:02:45):
to do with their student loans? And they look to
me to be a resource for that. And I figured
out how to be a resource for that, and I've
just kind of grown in that competency and now have
I mean, I spend a whole lot of time talking
to people about how to handle their student loans as
a part of pursuing long term wealth success. There's a

(01:03:05):
lot more questions, and I think that means that if
you still want answers, hopefully this conversation has made it
less scary or shameful and you can find somebody to
help answer those questions. Can you work with anybody, no
matter where they live. I'm not governed the way that
you are. No, So theoretically yes, there's some challenge working

(01:03:27):
with ex pats, people living outside of the country, but
within the United States. I have clients in Alaska and
in Florida for Contay, so majority of people that are
listening to the right pretty much the extremes of it um.
So if you actually do want to contact Nathan, you can.
We'll put your website in the show notes. You just

(01:03:48):
click a nice little link and it takes you right there.
And if they want to follow you on social media,
even though you're new at being present, you're not present
on social media. Where can they follow you? They can
follow me at Karen Financial Instagram. Oh that's on Twitter. Twitter.
You don't have an Instagram. I have a personal Instagram. Okay,

(01:04:09):
so do you want check me out at w Nathan
Green with the extra check them out. We'll put all
of that in the show notes. You can just click
all of that stuff. And this is going to be
a little motivator for you. Maybe get that Twitter up
and going. If you get some followers, and you'll yeah,
I gotta start somewhere now. Okay, Well, thank you for

(01:04:30):
this conversation and thank you guys for listening. If you
guys have more questions, don't ask them to me, you
can ask them to Nathan, but if you do have
questions in general, remember you can always email Katherine at
you Need Therapy Podcast dot com and those might show
up on a Couch Talks episode, so you can do that,
and then you can always follow me at at cat
dot defata and at you Need Therpy Podcast and that'll

(01:04:53):
do it. Bye, guys,