Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Anne Lester.
A financial expert and former head of retirement solutions at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. The discussion focused on saving strategies, financial psychology, and overcoming behavioral biases to achieve long-term financial success.
🔑 Key Themes & Highlights
Overcoming Financial Mistakes
- Lester shared that despite managing billions in assets, she made every financial mistake possible early in her career.
- Her book, Your Best Financial Life, combines 30 years of asset management experience with lessons from her own financial missteps.
Saving Strategies & Behavioral Hacks
- She emphasized that saving is possible at any age, but requires commitment and planning.
- A key strategy: Save at least half of every raise to prevent lifestyle inflation.
Emergency Funds & Smart Spending
- Lester advised building an emergency fund of 3-6 months’ expenses before investing.
- She outlined three questions to ask before tapping into emergency savings:
- Is this truly an emergency?
- Do I absolutely need to spend this money?
- Do I need to spend it right now?
Subscription Detox & Hidden Expenses
- Many people unknowingly overspend on subscriptions, leading to financial waste.
- Lester recommended avoiding auto-renewals, using a credit card with an upcoming expiration date, and rotating streaming services to cut costs.
Investing vs. Traditional Savings
- She clarified that long-term savings should be invested, not kept in low-interest accounts.
- Retirement funds should be diversified across stocks and bonds for growth.
📘 About Anne Lester
Anne Lester is a financial strategist, speaker, and author, known for her expertise in retirement planning and behavioral finance. She spent over 30 years at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, leading retirement solutions and helping individuals build financial security.
Her book, Your Best Financial Life, provides practical strategies for saving, investing, and overcoming financial biases.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am Rashan McDonald, a host the weekly Money Making
Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show
provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading other
people's success stories and start living your own. If you
want to be a guest on my show, please visit
our website, Moneymakingconversations dot com and click to be a
guest button Chris submit and information will come directly to me.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Now let's get this show started.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
My next guest is one of the leading people in
the financial market. We're going to get into detail about her,
but her new book helps younger savers find long term
saving success by overcoming their behavioral biases. Please welcome to
the Money Making Conversation Masterclass. And Lester, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Ann?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I'm great? How about you well?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And you know I always tell people when they come
on the show, you know, talking all this financial knowledge,
I need a little background, need a little history.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
What makes and so financially smart?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Talk to us? Well, I don't know about smart, but
I I guess I managed billions of other people's money
for about twenty five years. Did it pretty well? According
to some folks who gave me some awards for it,
morning Star. But the reason I wrote the book Your
(01:19):
Best Financial Life is because I made every single mistake
you could make, and you know, it took me a
while to figure out how to not make all the
mistakes I was making. So for me, the book is
really kind of combining what I learned after you know,
I guess almost thirty your career in asset management with
you know, kind of fifteen years of just stupidity and
(01:43):
you know, trying to help people not make those same mistakes.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Right, And the book you're talking about is your Best
Financial Life? Say smart now for the future you want?
Because we're always talking about the future. Is that a
And I know you have to answer to this, but
I just want to hear our public because we always
get to a certain point we think we can't say anymore.
Is there a lockdown point that people need to just
stop talking like that? Because you can save at any
age as long as you have a plan.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I think it is for most people. But you know,
I think we have to be honest, like, at some
points in your life you just may not you know,
you may just be scraping by to make the rent,
and you know, I don't I don't want to say
that everybody can just dig a little deeper and squeeze
a little harder, because there are some folks, I'm sure
who are listening to this who can't do that. But
one of the things I talk about in my book
(02:30):
is you may not be able to do it this second,
but you certainly can do it in the future. And
the way you get there is to make a commitment.
You make a promise to yourself that the next time
your income goes up a little bit, the next time
you get a little bit of money, that's what you save,
because sometimes you cannot squeeze it out of where you
are right now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You know, It's really interesting because as you go through
as you as you gain financial success, we tend not
to you know, like, for instance, if I if I
operated on the lifestyle I had while I was going
to college, but then I got a job and upgraded
the car, then upgraded the apartment next to the arm
in the house.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We keep upgrading, We keep upgrading.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And when you talk about ways to hack your brain
to make saving easier, is that the hacking part to
stop the upgrades. And we tend to invite ourselves to
when we get certain levels of financial uplift or.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
How do we is that what we're talking about? What
you're hacking?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
The brand that is a big one. Right. Make sure
you you know the rule that I give people to
save at least half of every raise. And as you say, right,
nobody wants to live the life that they were living
in college, right or their first job. Right, it's just
not very much fun. But if you let yourself take
all of your raise and use that on the brand
new car, right, you were just talking about Tesla's right,
(03:48):
you just want to go by the fancy Tesla or
the fancy whatever, right, and your whole raise goes to
that new car payment. You're not getting ahead. And then
the next raise you get, you're like, well, I want
to remodel the kitchen, and there goes that raise again. Right.
So so what you need to do is get into
the habit of not letting yourself use all of that.
You know, I call it consumption creep. Right. Your lifestyle
just keeps getting better and better and better. And if
(04:10):
you don't increase your savings rate at the same time,
you're really creating a world of pain for yourself in
the future because you will need to have saved more
money to maintain that lifestyle when you retire, except that
you're not saving anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, you know the interesting thing, Like my daughter she
called me the other day, she said, Dad, I want
to come sit down with you, because I always talk
about you know, honey, if you start saving early and
your in twenties, it's going to be a fantastic life
in your fifties and sixties. It's something people told me,
and I kind of did it, and but I didn't
do it. You know, I saved, and I took some
(04:46):
money out, A saved, took some money out, and so
I kept beating up the plant.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I had the plan, but.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I kept beating it up, kept pulling that and diverting it.
I guess I should use the word diverting it. And now,
now when you sit down, when I sit down with
my daughter, and what advice should I initially start communicating
with her about the future and money.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So this is the same conversation I had with my
son when he graduated from college five years ago, which is,
you have to start saving, and if you can only
save a teeny tine little bit, that's fine. And he
started working for a startup that didn't offer a four
to one K plan, and I was like, all right,
then build up your emergency fund first. Make sure you
get three to six months of your living expenses saved
(05:29):
up in that way. If that startup fold, you know
you're not going to be freaking out and moving home
if you could have done. But you know he didn't
want to.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
We didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
You know, nobody would have liked that outcome. But right,
but you know, if you start, you know the building blocks, right,
So that first building block is an emergency savings fund.
And if you can only put in twenty five or
fifty blocks a week or a month, like just start right,
it builds the habit and then you change the way
you look at yourself and you're so suddenly a person
(06:00):
who is a saver, right, You're a saver, and you
suddenly are like, yeah, I can do this, even if
it's done a lot. And then the next time you
get that first raise, like he got a raise and
I was like, all right, you're saving half of that,
and then his emergency savings plon was built up, I
don't know, not that long because he got kind of
a nice raise, and so he threw all that news
emergency savings fund, and then his company got bought. The
(06:22):
company that bought him had a four to one K plan.
I'm like, all right, take half of that raise that
you just got and start throwing it in your four
one K plan. Right, that's how you get going. And
if you start in your twenties, you can start really small,
like one, two, three percent of your salary, and you know,
five years later, suddenly you're saving fifteen or twenty percent
of your salary, which is a huge number, but that's
(06:43):
really what most people should be targeting out of their paychecks.
And you can't do that all at once, like it's
just too painful.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So the word we keep using this word is savings,
and that yeah, I want to slow that down because
we're not talking about the traditional saving account that you
hear that has very little interest return. We're talking about
investing type savings or that's what we're referencing to one.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Hundred percent and I use that as a shorthand, but
it's a saving and investing. It's a two step process, right.
Number One, You've got to save the money, and for
something like your emergency savings, you could put it in
the traditional bank savings account right now, you don't get
paid any interest, so that's not great. You should find
a high yield savings account for that, but that should
be in a place you can access it quickly and
(07:31):
that I would not invest that emergency savings at three
to six months. I would not invest that in like
the stock market. But your retirement money, right, your long
term savings. If you think you might want to buy
a house in ten years, right, if it's if you're
saving money for something that's longer than five years away,
you should definitely be investing that in a mix of
stocks and bugs.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Now, your book or your best financial life. Save somept
now for the future you want now. What I want
to also look back on is that you know I'm older,
You know and look back on mistakes. You can't look
back on the spilled milk decisions that you may financially
because that can hurt your decision making in the future.
(08:12):
You have to really stay focused on the plan and
you put that plan in place.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Do you if you're married.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Do you put the plan in places as a couple
and you present it as an individual presented to your
your partner?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
How does that work?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I wouldn't do that. I don't think that'll go very well.
I think, you know, ideally, this is something you talk
about when you're dating, right, Ideally, you like you have
a conversation where you're creating some financial honesty with each
other about what debt you might have, right, what kind
(08:50):
of lifestyle you like living? You know, I talk about
in my book, like what kind of spender are you?
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Are you a saver? Are you a spender? Are you
the kind of person I call them ostriches? Iss is like,
I don't even want to know about it. Don't make
me look are you know? Like they're different kinds of behaviors, patterns, personalities,
whatever that we all have with money, and that's something
that you and your partner should hopefully have a handle on,
(09:16):
like before you tie the knot like before you get married.
But I don't think it's ever too late to start
having a conversation. The trick is right that money is
something that a lot of people feel some shame about,
some guilt about. Maybe it's something they never heard, you know,
anybody talk about at home without a lot of anger
or emotion. So it can get pretty uncomfortable. So, you know,
(09:38):
I think it's it's a good idea to to try
to talk about what you want to talk about and
kind of create a roadmap for the conversation and then
ideally sort of say here's what I think, Here's what
I feel, Here's what's important to me. And you know,
if one person thinks it's really really important to always
you know, have the newest whatever and make sure you're
(10:01):
you know, presenting well, like have new clothes, have you know,
if that's really important to you, and your partner is like,
you know what, I don't actually want to spend my
money on that if we're not doing ex or y like,
that's a negotiation, and you've got to figure out how
you're going to handle your finances together.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's a great Now, I'm now I'm going to tap
into your mind, your financial mind. I'm gonna have to
ask a series of questions that a lot that I
that I want to know about. Here's my first one.
Three questions to answer before you tap into your emergency
savings that you've been talking about. Three of those what what?
What are those questions we should we need to answer?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So question number one is do do I have to
spend this money? Is it really an emergency? Like like,
is there any way I can avoid dealing with this? Right?
And and one of the questions is, you know, is
this an unexpected emergency? Is this is this really an emergency? Right?
(10:59):
Do I have to spend the money? That's the second one,
and then do I have to spend the money now? Right,
because there could be an expanse that's not an emergency,
Like you can I don't know your phone battery is dying.
I talk about this a little bit in the book,
like you need to brand new phone.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
You can like limp along and like get a little
cheap battery pack and like make a last save up
a couple of months and then buy a new phone.
If you drop it down the sewer, like you need
a new phone. Like it blows up, you need a
new phone. Right, So so it's kind of like how
do you how do you decide what's a real emergency?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And that kind of happened to me recently at you know,
because it's called that splurging factor because my phone, you know,
and I'm just gonna be honest with everybody, I got
one of those fold phones, right, and I in it
in this screen cracked, right, and my insurance because they
said I dropped it. They said, hey, we're not going
(12:01):
to cover that, Okay, so I had to. So this
was that emergency talk that you was talking about. So
they said, it's going to cost you five hundred and
thirty dollars to repair it or two thousand dollars to
buy a new phone. That's that decision, Okay, repair new,
repair new, And that's the decision that a lot of
(12:22):
people come to, going is there a guarantee this repair
is going to fix the problem. Well, I decided I'm
going with the repair, save me roughly fifteen hundred dollars.
And that's what you're talking about when you're talking about
that emergency savings tapping into Is it really an emergency?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Is an emergency that you can.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Look at and kind of like look at options until
you don't tap into it? Is that an example a
good example there?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Maybe? I mean another way to think about it is
is it unexpected?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Is it unexpected? Right? And you know, is dropping your
phone on a expected Yeah? I guess right, So yeah,
is it unexpected? You know the second question? And I'm
just going to quote from my book right now, right
am I I don't spend the money m hm. You
know maybe like you need a phone, right, like you
(13:16):
actually need a phone to function in the world. And
then the third question is am I screwed if I
don't spend the money now?
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And that's that's like back to that example of the
phone with the dying battery, like still works right.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Well, I do.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
My phone with des Green was completely going and I'm
telling you I couldn't even see numbers no more.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
It was pretty ugly there. I was pretty ugly that
I think.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I think that counted. I think that counted. And then
and then you had a decision, right right, and you know,
do I how much of this emergency funder like my
immediate cash do I want to do I want to
spend on this thing? Right? And is it is it
going for the whole brand new phone or is it
trying to limp along? And then maybe knowing all right,
I know I'm going to have to replace his phone
sooner or later. I better start saving up.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
No, wow, it's awesome, and we're going to go to
a break here. I'm talking to and Lester, the author
of Your Best Financial Life, Save Smart Now for the Future.
You want Money Making Conversation Masterclass with Rashawn McDonald.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversations Masterclass
continues online at Moneymakingconversations dot com and follow money Making
(14:34):
Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You're listening to an interview with Ann Lester more than
thirty years JP Morgan, Asset Management of Retirement Solutions and
former head of Retirement Solutions, JP Morgan, Asset Management Management,
incredible award winning speaker business person on my Shoulder Data
just talk about breaking down money, money that you're spending,
(15:00):
money you need to save, and how you deal with that. Recently,
you send us a couple of questions and one of
the questions that popped out of my head I really
needed you to explain was called subscription detox. That's seven
ways to take back your finances from online subscriptions. You
may not even know you are paying for it. Please
explain to me what that is.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So I talk in my book and you can actually
take a quiz about this on my website about spending types. Right, So,
one of the first ones I talk about. I think
the first one in fact, is called the over subscriber.
So you might not know that, you may not be,
you know, feeling like you're spending a lot of money,
you know, wasting it. But you also may not have
(15:43):
any idea how many subscriptions do you have right? How
many streaming service business do you have? How many apps?
Did you sign up for something without even knowing it?
So I have a whole checklist of things you can
think about to start getting your arms around this. So
number one, avoid auto renew it. Don't do it. If
you can. If you can sign up for a service
(16:03):
you think you need, if you're allowed to not have
it automatically renew, don't do it. That's the easiest one.
Another one that I like a lot, and I use
it myself. If you happen to have more than one
credit card, and please do not go get a second
credit card if you do not already have one. But
if you have more than one, when you sign up
(16:24):
for a new subscription service, use the credit card that's
going to expire sooner, because that way you'll get prompted
to update your credit card information. And that's just an
automatic break. Right, it's a point where you can ask yourself,
do I really need this anymore? How many times that
I watch a show like what am I? You know,
(16:44):
you may find that you're subscribing to all kinds of
stuff like I just went into my feor if you
have an Apple phone, you can go in there and
you know, really quickly look at all the things that
are that you subscribe to on apps. And sometimes you
look at these things and go, I don't even remember
signing up with this. I don't use this app. I
deleted it from my phone. What you know? What the
heck is this bill doing? You can go through your
(17:06):
monthly credit card statements and just see what's popping up
there and just go really, like why am I getting
charged this? Think about a subscription in terms of its
annual cost when you sign up, right, A lot of
times they'll say it's only whatever, nine to ninety nine
a month. Add a zero, like multiplying by twelve is
a little tricky. If it's nine to ninety nine, it's
(17:28):
over ninety nine bucks a year, Like do you really
need to spend that money? It's one hundred and twenty bucks?
Like do you really need to spend that money. I
think a great one for streaming is rotating your streaming services,
so you know, subscribe to one, watch all the shows,
cancel it, go on to another one, right anymore, you
do not need all of them at the same time.
If you really feel like this is the place a
(17:50):
lot of your money is going, just try, you know,
unsubscribing from one thing a month and see what happens.
Like you may not know that you really did it,
you may not miss miss having it, and then you know,
last but not least, there's some free subscription services out
there that can help you get you know, you can
link up your credit card statement to it, and they'll
show you what you're doing and maybe make it more
(18:13):
easy for you to cancel those things automatically. It's a
way to track your spending and see what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I like that that's you have the names of those
you know, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Off the top of my head, and be really honest,
I'm trying not to recommend.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, when you pique my curiosity, I got to
go because I would tell you honestly, I'm dealing with that.
I'm dealing with you know. I'm a guy several credit cards.
I'm gonna just tell you, not saying I'm bragging, but
you know, you get these credit cards for business, you
get the credit cards for personal. I have a daughter,
my wife and so, and the another mistake I've made
(18:52):
is I may have a subscription on this credit card.
I may have a superscription on that credit card, and
so I can't track them.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I can't everything.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like I might have my my utility bills on this card.
I might have my business utility bills on that card.
So and hearing your advice is absolutely correct when I
look at it. If I had to do it all
over again, I would make sure that if I had
any subscriptions, I would only put it on one card.
I would make sure I only put it on one call.
(19:21):
That way I can track it and understand it. But
bad habits you. You're trying to get Apple, or you're
trying to get Prime, and you just are Amazon or
Web any of these companies that require subscriptions. You just
give them a card, and that can be a problem
because in the end you have to eventually track them down,
and sometimes you're paying for stuff that you really don't
(19:43):
need a use.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Absolutely, I think I think we all are right. It's
really hard to stay on top of that stuff. And
you know, sometimes I sign up for the monthly subscription
just to make it easier to cancel, even though it's
more expensive, because I'm like, I don't know if I
really want this, let me try it. And they're like,
you know, it's cheaper, and I'm like, yeah, but I don't.
I'm going to sign up for the thing and then
I'm gonna totally forget about it, and then the bill's
going to happen. Then I will have paid it, and
then you know, some of the good ones like remind
(20:05):
you that it's coming up, but not all of it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And you know, then the big number one trick move
is you know and is like, you know, these subscriptions
say free sign up, but they want your credit card information,
so it's not really a free sign up because if
you forget, then the charge is going to hit your
credit card.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I tell you, what I've just started doing is putting
a note in my calendar, like calendar entry. Canceled this right, Like,
I just signed up for one right after the New Year,
and I was just like, it's I checked the date
that the subscription was going to kick it, and I
actually put a calendar note three days before that's saying
you got to cancel this because I wasn't sure I
needed it and I didn't need it, so I ended
up doing it. But you know, if I hadn't put
(20:42):
the calendar entry, and I totally would have forgotten to
do it right.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
It was another note that really popped my endo. How
student loan payments boost your credit score. I never would
have thought that. Please help me out.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, you know, credit scores are based on how you
how we're responsibly you pay your bills. So if you've
got a lease and you're paying rent, that can show
up on your credit cards. If you are, you know,
you have student loans that can show up and actually
boost your you know, your credit credit rating. So it
(21:16):
actually makes a lot of sense to think about all
of the things that you're paying routinely that can be
reported and that absolutely gets tracked. So, you know, especially
if you're in a financial pinch, you know, it doesn't
make sense to start skipping some payments like that because
it can really damage everything.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Well, here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I know I've mentioned your book Your Best Financial Life,
Safe Smart Now for the future, you want.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Do you have a website?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I certainly do, thank you for asking. It's my
name and Leicester dot com. So it's a N N
E L E S T E R.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Now when you go to your website, what's available on there?
Is it financial advice or is it like newsletter information?
What's on that web?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You can sign up for a news I've actually got
a quiz that helps you understand your spending type, and
I share some of those hacks. Like you take a
little quiz you see. Are you an oversubscriber? Are you
like a crypto bro? Are you a firefly? Are you
an ostrich? Right? I want to give you a couple
of hacks to figure out how to get your arms
around your saving and spending behavior. And then you can
(22:21):
also sign up for my newsletter. And then I'll be
building out some more resources and I will in fact
be adding some you know, again with no personal recommendation,
but just you know, these are some resources out there
that you may be able to check out and find useful.
So I will be building that in so wow there today, but.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It will be yeah, and so bottom line writing this book,
why why did you write the book?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I wrote it honestly, for like, it's the book I
wish I had had when I was in my twenties.
I grew up like my dad was a college professor,
but you know, there was always enough money. I don't
I don't think they had a lot of money. But
my parents were born in the early thirties, right, and
(23:05):
they just like the thought of like budgeting and talking
about like financial habits never occurred to them because you
just didn't spend money on stuff, like you just didn't.
And so I never grew up with any like allowance
or like sense of fixed monies. I just grew up
with like, if my parents thought it was a good
thing to spend money on, they spent some money, and
if they didn't, they didn't. And I was like, there
was never knowing any conversation about you have one hundred dollars,
(23:27):
you have to figure out how to spend it on X,
Y and Z, like you have to make choices. So
and then I got a credit card and it was
just terrible. So I made all these mistakes, and I
it took me years and years and years to stop
beating myself up and feeling shame and blaming myself for
making these decisions and I just don't it's so unnecessary,
(23:49):
Like people should not feel ashamed of the decisions they made.
You said it really well earlier. You know, you just
have to accept what happened and move on. So, for me,
the key is, our brains are wired to grab stuff
in front of us. Our brains are not wired to
help us make rational long term financial decisions, right right
(24:10):
If they're wired to help us run away from the
saber tooth tiger. So and you know we're hunting, we're
supposed to grab what's in front of us and ron,
we're not supposed to say what's the rational choice here?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So just knowing that to me help me understand why
I kept fighting myself.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right, I know I.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Shouldn't do this, but wow, so and then hack yourself. Right.
So I wrote it for me, I wrote it for
my kids. I wrote it for my kids friends, Like,
I really want to help people not make these mistakes
and they don't have to make them.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Love it and thank you for coming on my show.
And also I like to believe that I can bring
you back because I try to help you. Know, you
know your advice is dead on and I have a
lot more questions I could have asked, but time, well
you know time is what time is. But I want
to thank you for coming on my show and the
good luck with your book, and thank you for promoting
your website and allowing us to be able to reach
out to you in the future.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I appreciate that You're fantastic, and thank you everybody for
listening to the show money Making Conversation Masterclass as usual.
I'll be back next week and you can listen to
my show on Moneymaking Conversation dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversation Masterclass
hosted by me Rashaun McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today, and thank you listening to audience now.
If you want to listen to any episode I want
to be a guest on the show, visit Moneymakingconversations dot com.
Our social media handle is money Making Conversation. Join us
next week and remember to always leave with your gifts.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Keep winning.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am Rashan McDonald, a host the weekly Money Making
Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show
provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading other
people's success stories and start living your own. If you
want to be a guest on my show, please visit
our website, Moneymakingconversations dot com and click to be a
guest button Chris submit and information will come directly to me.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Now let's get this show started.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
My next guest is one of the leading people in
the financial market. We're going to get into detail about her,
but her new book helps younger savers find long term
saving success by overcoming their behavioral biases. Please welcome to
the Money Making Conversation Masterclass. And Lester, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Ann?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I'm great? How about you well?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And you know I always tell people when they come
on the show, you know, talking all this financial knowledge,
I need a little background, need a little history.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
What makes and so financially smart?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Talk to us? Well, I don't know about smart, but
I I guess I managed billions of other people's money
for about twenty five years. Did it pretty well? According
to some folks who gave me some awards for it,
morning Star. But the reason I wrote the book Your
(01:19):
Best Financial Life is because I made every single mistake
you could make, and you know, it took me a
while to figure out how to not make all the
mistakes I was making. So for me, the book is
really kind of combining what I learned after you know,
I guess almost thirty your career in asset management with
you know, kind of fifteen years of just stupidity and
(01:43):
you know, trying to help people not make those same mistakes.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Right, And the book you're talking about is your Best
Financial Life? Say smart now for the future you want?
Because we're always talking about the future. Is that a
And I know you have to answer to this, but
I just want to hear our public because we always
get to a certain point we think we can't say anymore.
Is there a lockdown point that people need to just
stop talking like that? Because you can save at any
age as long as you have a plan.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I think it is for most people. But you know,
I think we have to be honest, like, at some
points in your life you just may not you know,
you may just be scraping by to make the rent,
and you know, I don't I don't want to say
that everybody can just dig a little deeper and squeeze
a little harder, because there are some folks, I'm sure
who are listening to this who can't do that. But
one of the things I talk about in my book
(02:30):
is you may not be able to do it this second,
but you certainly can do it in the future. And
the way you get there is to make a commitment.
You make a promise to yourself that the next time
your income goes up a little bit, the next time
you get a little bit of money, that's what you save,
because sometimes you cannot squeeze it out of where you
are right now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You know, It's really interesting because as you go through
as you as you gain financial success, we tend not
to you know, like, for instance, if I if I
operated on the lifestyle I had while I was going
to college, but then I got a job and upgraded
the car, then upgraded the apartment next to the arm
in the house.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We keep upgrading, We keep upgrading.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And when you talk about ways to hack your brain
to make saving easier, is that the hacking part to
stop the upgrades. And we tend to invite ourselves to
when we get certain levels of financial uplift or.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
How do we is that what we're talking about? What
you're hacking?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
The brand that is a big one. Right. Make sure
you you know the rule that I give people to
save at least half of every raise. And as you say, right,
nobody wants to live the life that they were living
in college, right or their first job. Right, it's just
not very much fun. But if you let yourself take
all of your raise and use that on the brand
new car, right, you were just talking about Tesla's right,
(03:48):
you just want to go by the fancy Tesla or
the fancy whatever, right, and your whole raise goes to
that new car payment. You're not getting ahead. And then
the next raise you get, you're like, well, I want
to remodel the kitchen, and there goes that raise again. Right.
So so what you need to do is get into
the habit of not letting yourself use all of that.
You know, I call it consumption creep. Right. Your lifestyle
just keeps getting better and better and better. And if
(04:10):
you don't increase your savings rate at the same time,
you're really creating a world of pain for yourself in
the future because you will need to have saved more
money to maintain that lifestyle when you retire, except that
you're not saving anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, you know the interesting thing, Like my daughter she
called me the other day, she said, Dad, I want
to come sit down with you, because I always talk
about you know, honey, if you start saving early and
your in twenties, it's going to be a fantastic life
in your fifties and sixties. It's something people told me,
and I kind of did it, and but I didn't
do it. You know, I saved, and I took some
(04:46):
money out, A saved, took some money out, and so
I kept beating up the plant.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I had the plan, but.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I kept beating it up, kept pulling that and diverting it.
I guess I should use the word diverting it. And now,
now when you sit down, when I sit down with
my daughter, and what advice should I initially start communicating
with her about the future and money.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So this is the same conversation I had with my
son when he graduated from college five years ago, which is,
you have to start saving, and if you can only
save a teeny tine little bit, that's fine. And he
started working for a startup that didn't offer a four
to one K plan, and I was like, all right,
then build up your emergency fund first. Make sure you
get three to six months of your living expenses saved
(05:29):
up in that way. If that startup fold, you know
you're not going to be freaking out and moving home
if you could have done. But you know he didn't
want to.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
We didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
You know, nobody would have liked that outcome. But right,
but you know, if you start, you know the building blocks, right,
So that first building block is an emergency savings fund.
And if you can only put in twenty five or
fifty blocks a week or a month, like just start right,
it builds the habit and then you change the way
you look at yourself and you're so suddenly a person
(06:00):
who is a saver, right, You're a saver, and you
suddenly are like, yeah, I can do this, even if
it's done a lot. And then the next time you
get that first raise, like he got a raise and
I was like, all right, you're saving half of that,
and then his emergency savings plon was built up, I
don't know, not that long because he got kind of
a nice raise, and so he threw all that news
emergency savings fund, and then his company got bought. The
(06:22):
company that bought him had a four to one K plan.
I'm like, all right, take half of that raise that
you just got and start throwing it in your four
one K plan. Right, that's how you get going. And
if you start in your twenties, you can start really small,
like one, two, three percent of your salary, and you know,
five years later, suddenly you're saving fifteen or twenty percent
of your salary, which is a huge number, but that's
(06:43):
really what most people should be targeting out of their paychecks.
And you can't do that all at once, like it's
just too painful.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So the word we keep using this word is savings,
and that yeah, I want to slow that down because
we're not talking about the traditional saving account that you
hear that has very little interest return. We're talking about
investing type savings or that's what we're referencing to one.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Hundred percent and I use that as a shorthand, but
it's a saving and investing. It's a two step process, right.
Number One, You've got to save the money, and for
something like your emergency savings, you could put it in
the traditional bank savings account right now, you don't get
paid any interest, so that's not great. You should find
a high yield savings account for that, but that should
be in a place you can access it quickly and
(07:31):
that I would not invest that emergency savings at three
to six months. I would not invest that in like
the stock market. But your retirement money, right, your long
term savings. If you think you might want to buy
a house in ten years, right, if it's if you're
saving money for something that's longer than five years away,
you should definitely be investing that in a mix of
stocks and bugs.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Now, your book or your best financial life. Save somept
now for the future you want now. What I want
to also look back on is that you know I'm older,
You know and look back on mistakes. You can't look
back on the spilled milk decisions that you may financially
because that can hurt your decision making in the future.
(08:12):
You have to really stay focused on the plan and
you put that plan in place.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Do you if you're married.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Do you put the plan in places as a couple
and you present it as an individual presented to your
your partner?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
How does that work?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I wouldn't do that. I don't think that'll go very well.
I think, you know, ideally, this is something you talk
about when you're dating, right, Ideally, you like you have
a conversation where you're creating some financial honesty with each
other about what debt you might have, right, what kind
(08:50):
of lifestyle you like living? You know, I talk about
in my book, like what kind of spender are you?
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Are you a saver? Are you a spender? Are you
the kind of person I call them ostriches? Iss is like,
I don't even want to know about it. Don't make
me look are you know? Like they're different kinds of behaviors, patterns, personalities,
whatever that we all have with money, and that's something
that you and your partner should hopefully have a handle on,
(09:16):
like before you tie the knot like before you get married.
But I don't think it's ever too late to start
having a conversation. The trick is right that money is
something that a lot of people feel some shame about,
some guilt about. Maybe it's something they never heard, you know,
anybody talk about at home without a lot of anger
or emotion. So it can get pretty uncomfortable. So, you know,
(09:38):
I think it's it's a good idea to to try
to talk about what you want to talk about and
kind of create a roadmap for the conversation and then
ideally sort of say here's what I think, Here's what
I feel, Here's what's important to me. And you know,
if one person thinks it's really really important to always
you know, have the newest whatever and make sure you're
(10:01):
you know, presenting well, like have new clothes, have you know,
if that's really important to you, and your partner is like,
you know what, I don't actually want to spend my
money on that if we're not doing ex or y like,
that's a negotiation, and you've got to figure out how
you're going to handle your finances together.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's a great Now, I'm now I'm going to tap
into your mind, your financial mind. I'm gonna have to
ask a series of questions that a lot that I
that I want to know about. Here's my first one.
Three questions to answer before you tap into your emergency
savings that you've been talking about. Three of those what what?
What are those questions we should we need to answer?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So question number one is do do I have to
spend this money? Is it really an emergency? Like like,
is there any way I can avoid dealing with this? Right?
And and one of the questions is, you know, is
this an unexpected emergency? Is this is this really an emergency? Right?
(10:59):
Do I have to spend the money? That's the second one,
and then do I have to spend the money now? Right,
because there could be an expanse that's not an emergency,
Like you can I don't know your phone battery is dying.
I talk about this a little bit in the book,
like you need to brand new phone.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
You can like limp along and like get a little
cheap battery pack and like make a last save up
a couple of months and then buy a new phone.
If you drop it down the sewer, like you need
a new phone. Like it blows up, you need a
new phone. Right, So so it's kind of like how
do you how do you decide what's a real emergency?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And that kind of happened to me recently at you know,
because it's called that splurging factor because my phone, you know,
and I'm just gonna be honest with everybody, I got
one of those fold phones, right, and I in it
in this screen cracked, right, and my insurance because they
said I dropped it. They said, hey, we're not going
(12:01):
to cover that, Okay, so I had to. So this
was that emergency talk that you was talking about. So
they said, it's going to cost you five hundred and
thirty dollars to repair it or two thousand dollars to
buy a new phone. That's that decision, Okay, repair new,
repair new, And that's the decision that a lot of
(12:22):
people come to, going is there a guarantee this repair
is going to fix the problem. Well, I decided I'm
going with the repair, save me roughly fifteen hundred dollars.
And that's what you're talking about when you're talking about
that emergency savings tapping into Is it really an emergency?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Is an emergency that you can.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Look at and kind of like look at options until
you don't tap into it? Is that an example a
good example there?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Maybe? I mean another way to think about it is
is it unexpected?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Is it unexpected? Right? And you know, is dropping your
phone on a expected Yeah? I guess right, So yeah,
is it unexpected? You know the second question? And I'm
just going to quote from my book right now, right
am I I don't spend the money m hm. You
know maybe like you need a phone, right, like you
(13:16):
actually need a phone to function in the world. And
then the third question is am I screwed if I
don't spend the money now?
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And that's that's like back to that example of the
phone with the dying battery, like still works right.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Well, I do.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
My phone with des Green was completely going and I'm
telling you I couldn't even see numbers no more.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
It was pretty ugly there. I was pretty ugly that
I think.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I think that counted. I think that counted. And then
and then you had a decision, right right, and you know,
do I how much of this emergency funder like my
immediate cash do I want to do I want to
spend on this thing? Right? And is it is it
going for the whole brand new phone or is it
trying to limp along? And then maybe knowing all right,
I know I'm going to have to replace his phone
sooner or later. I better start saving up.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
No, wow, it's awesome, and we're going to go to
a break here. I'm talking to and Lester, the author
of Your Best Financial Life, Save Smart Now for the Future.
You want Money Making Conversation Masterclass with Rashawn McDonald.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversations Masterclass
continues online at Moneymakingconversations dot com and follow money Making
(14:34):
Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You're listening to an interview with Ann Lester more than
thirty years JP Morgan, Asset Management of Retirement Solutions and
former head of Retirement Solutions, JP Morgan, Asset Management Management,
incredible award winning speaker business person on my Shoulder Data
just talk about breaking down money, money that you're spending,
(15:00):
money you need to save, and how you deal with that. Recently,
you send us a couple of questions and one of
the questions that popped out of my head I really
needed you to explain was called subscription detox. That's seven
ways to take back your finances from online subscriptions. You
may not even know you are paying for it. Please
explain to me what that is.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So I talk in my book and you can actually
take a quiz about this on my website about spending types. Right, So,
one of the first ones I talk about. I think
the first one in fact, is called the over subscriber.
So you might not know that, you may not be,
you know, feeling like you're spending a lot of money,
you know, wasting it. But you also may not have
(15:43):
any idea how many subscriptions do you have right? How
many streaming service business do you have? How many apps?
Did you sign up for something without even knowing it?
So I have a whole checklist of things you can
think about to start getting your arms around this. So
number one, avoid auto renew it. Don't do it. If
you can. If you can sign up for a service
(16:03):
you think you need, if you're allowed to not have
it automatically renew, don't do it. That's the easiest one.
Another one that I like a lot, and I use
it myself. If you happen to have more than one
credit card, and please do not go get a second
credit card if you do not already have one. But
if you have more than one, when you sign up
(16:24):
for a new subscription service, use the credit card that's
going to expire sooner, because that way you'll get prompted
to update your credit card information. And that's just an
automatic break. Right, it's a point where you can ask yourself,
do I really need this anymore? How many times that
I watch a show like what am I? You know,
(16:44):
you may find that you're subscribing to all kinds of
stuff like I just went into my feor if you
have an Apple phone, you can go in there and
you know, really quickly look at all the things that
are that you subscribe to on apps. And sometimes you
look at these things and go, I don't even remember
signing up with this. I don't use this app. I
deleted it from my phone. What you know? What the
heck is this bill doing? You can go through your
(17:06):
monthly credit card statements and just see what's popping up
there and just go really, like why am I getting
charged this? Think about a subscription in terms of its
annual cost when you sign up, right, A lot of
times they'll say it's only whatever, nine to ninety nine
a month. Add a zero, like multiplying by twelve is
a little tricky. If it's nine to ninety nine, it's
(17:28):
over ninety nine bucks a year, Like do you really
need to spend that money? It's one hundred and twenty bucks?
Like do you really need to spend that money. I
think a great one for streaming is rotating your streaming services,
so you know, subscribe to one, watch all the shows,
cancel it, go on to another one, right anymore, you
do not need all of them at the same time.
If you really feel like this is the place a
(17:50):
lot of your money is going, just try, you know,
unsubscribing from one thing a month and see what happens.
Like you may not know that you really did it,
you may not miss miss having it, and then you know,
last but not least, there's some free subscription services out
there that can help you get you know, you can
link up your credit card statement to it, and they'll
show you what you're doing and maybe make it more
(18:13):
easy for you to cancel those things automatically. It's a
way to track your spending and see what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I like that that's you have the names of those
you know, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Off the top of my head, and be really honest,
I'm trying not to recommend.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, when you pique my curiosity, I got to
go because I would tell you honestly, I'm dealing with that.
I'm dealing with you know. I'm a guy several credit cards.
I'm gonna just tell you, not saying I'm bragging, but
you know, you get these credit cards for business, you
get the credit cards for personal. I have a daughter,
my wife and so, and the another mistake I've made
(18:52):
is I may have a subscription on this credit card.
I may have a superscription on that credit card, and
so I can't track them.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I can't everything.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like I might have my my utility bills on this card.
I might have my business utility bills on that card.
So and hearing your advice is absolutely correct when I
look at it. If I had to do it all
over again, I would make sure that if I had
any subscriptions, I would only put it on one card.
I would make sure I only put it on one call.
(19:21):
That way I can track it and understand it. But
bad habits you. You're trying to get Apple, or you're
trying to get Prime, and you just are Amazon or
Web any of these companies that require subscriptions. You just
give them a card, and that can be a problem
because in the end you have to eventually track them down,
and sometimes you're paying for stuff that you really don't
(19:43):
need a use.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Absolutely, I think I think we all are right. It's
really hard to stay on top of that stuff. And
you know, sometimes I sign up for the monthly subscription
just to make it easier to cancel, even though it's
more expensive, because I'm like, I don't know if I
really want this, let me try it. And they're like,
you know, it's cheaper, and I'm like, yeah, but I don't.
I'm going to sign up for the thing and then
I'm gonna totally forget about it, and then the bill's
going to happen. Then I will have paid it, and
then you know, some of the good ones like remind
(20:05):
you that it's coming up, but not all of it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And you know, then the big number one trick move
is you know and is like, you know, these subscriptions
say free sign up, but they want your credit card information,
so it's not really a free sign up because if
you forget, then the charge is going to hit your
credit card.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I tell you, what I've just started doing is putting
a note in my calendar, like calendar entry. Canceled this right, Like,
I just signed up for one right after the New Year,
and I was just like, it's I checked the date
that the subscription was going to kick it, and I
actually put a calendar note three days before that's saying
you got to cancel this because I wasn't sure I
needed it and I didn't need it, so I ended
up doing it. But you know, if I hadn't put
(20:42):
the calendar entry, and I totally would have forgotten to
do it right.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
It was another note that really popped my endo. How
student loan payments boost your credit score. I never would
have thought that. Please help me out.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, you know, credit scores are based on how you
how we're responsibly you pay your bills. So if you've
got a lease and you're paying rent, that can show
up on your credit cards. If you are, you know,
you have student loans that can show up and actually
boost your you know, your credit credit rating. So it
(21:16):
actually makes a lot of sense to think about all
of the things that you're paying routinely that can be
reported and that absolutely gets tracked. So, you know, especially
if you're in a financial pinch, you know, it doesn't
make sense to start skipping some payments like that because
it can really damage everything.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Well, here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I know I've mentioned your book Your Best Financial Life,
Safe Smart Now for the future, you want.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Do you have a website?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I certainly do, thank you for asking. It's my
name and Leicester dot com. So it's a N N
E L E S T E R.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Now when you go to your website, what's available on there?
Is it financial advice or is it like newsletter information?
What's on that web?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You can sign up for a news I've actually got
a quiz that helps you understand your spending type, and
I share some of those hacks. Like you take a
little quiz you see. Are you an oversubscriber? Are you
like a crypto bro? Are you a firefly? Are you
an ostrich? Right? I want to give you a couple
of hacks to figure out how to get your arms
around your saving and spending behavior. And then you can
(22:21):
also sign up for my newsletter. And then I'll be
building out some more resources and I will in fact
be adding some you know, again with no personal recommendation,
but just you know, these are some resources out there
that you may be able to check out and find useful.
So I will be building that in so wow there today, but.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It will be yeah, and so bottom line writing this book,
why why did you write the book?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I wrote it honestly, for like, it's the book I
wish I had had when I was in my twenties.
I grew up like my dad was a college professor,
but you know, there was always enough money. I don't
I don't think they had a lot of money. But
my parents were born in the early thirties, right, and
(23:05):
they just like the thought of like budgeting and talking
about like financial habits never occurred to them because you
just didn't spend money on stuff, like you just didn't.
And so I never grew up with any like allowance
or like sense of fixed monies. I just grew up
with like, if my parents thought it was a good
thing to spend money on, they spent some money, and
if they didn't, they didn't. And I was like, there
was never knowing any conversation about you have one hundred dollars,
(23:27):
you have to figure out how to spend it on X,
Y and Z, like you have to make choices. So
and then I got a credit card and it was
just terrible. So I made all these mistakes, and I
it took me years and years and years to stop
beating myself up and feeling shame and blaming myself for
making these decisions and I just don't it's so unnecessary,
(23:49):
Like people should not feel ashamed of the decisions they made.
You said it really well earlier. You know, you just
have to accept what happened and move on. So, for me,
the key is, our brains are wired to grab stuff
in front of us. Our brains are not wired to
help us make rational long term financial decisions, right right
(24:10):
If they're wired to help us run away from the
saber tooth tiger. So and you know we're hunting, we're
supposed to grab what's in front of us and ron,
we're not supposed to say what's the rational choice here?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So just knowing that to me help me understand why
I kept fighting myself.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right, I know I.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Shouldn't do this, but wow, so and then hack yourself. Right.
So I wrote it for me, I wrote it for
my kids. I wrote it for my kids friends, Like,
I really want to help people not make these mistakes
and they don't have to make them.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Love it and thank you for coming on my show.
And also I like to believe that I can bring
you back because I try to help you. Know, you
know your advice is dead on and I have a
lot more questions I could have asked, but time, well
you know time is what time is. But I want
to thank you for coming on my show and the
good luck with your book, and thank you for promoting
your website and allowing us to be able to reach
out to you in the future.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I appreciate that You're fantastic, and thank you everybody for
listening to the show money Making Conversation Masterclass as usual.
I'll be back next week and you can listen to
my show on Moneymaking Conversation dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversation Masterclass
hosted by me Rashaun McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today, and thank you listening to audience now.
If you want to listen to any episode I want
to be a guest on the show, visit Moneymakingconversations dot com.
Our social media handle is money Making Conversation. Join us
next week and remember to always leave with your gifts.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Keep winning.
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