Ep 200: The Emotional Side of Wealth: Hilary Hendershot’s Financial Awakening"

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, and welcome to Money and You. I'm Michelle Perkins,
your host. My search for more fulfilling work led me
to career in business coaching, where I stumbled upon a
game changing discovery. Money issues often start with our mindset
and habits. You see, our relationship with money is the
key to overcoming those frustrating financial obstacles. As an entrepreneur,

(00:22):
coach and problem solver, I'm passionate about helping you create
a great relationship with money, because turns out that's the
foundation for a limit free life. Each week on Money
in You, I speak with amazing guests about all things money, mindset,
practical tips, and everything in between. We're here to give
you new insights, education and empowerment, so money can be

(00:44):
one of your favorite relationships. So join us for some
lively conversations and let's transform your financial life together. Hello, Hello,
and welcome to not just another episode of Money in You,
but the two episode of the Money and You Show.
I'm so proud of the show. Yes, Tony Sweet and

(01:10):
I and the ubn go team have had a wonderful
time really shifting from the Limit Free Life show, which
we did together for three or four years, to the
Money and You Show, and I can't believe we've made
it to two hundred and the shows keep getting better
and the guests are coming and requesting to be on
the show, which is thrilling, and I am just super

(01:33):
super grateful for all of you who listen, for all
of you who subscribe to the show on YouTube, and
I just I can't wait to keep it going. I
don't know, another two hundred maybe, how Tony. So today's
show is extra special because it's this anniversary show and
I have a guest coming on who is somebody that
I've admired and I've followed and I've subscribed to her

(01:56):
blogs and everything else for many, many many years, since
really the time I began my coaching business, I believe.
So I'm thrilled to have her today. And she is
an absolute wealth of knowledge and very very experienced in
the world of finance, but also very very much in
tune with money mindset work and how important your relationship

(02:19):
with money is. So she's a fantastic guess we're going
to get into some really great conversations and yeah, we're
going to start right now. So anyway, Hillary Hendershot MBA
CFP is the founder of Hendershot Wealth Management, a fee
only advisory firm helping high net worth women and couples

(02:40):
build wealth with a tax smart fiduciary approach. A technic speaker,
and creator of the Money Operating System, Hillary has been
named to Investipedia's Top one hundred Financial Advisors six years
in a row and featured in Forbes, NBC, and The
Law Street Journal. She's also the host of her own podcast,

(03:00):
Love Your Money, Wealth Money and financial advisor for Women. Hillary,
thank you for showing for being here and welcome.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here for two hundred.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
I know it's crazy, it's crazy, so but it's super fun.
And I mean, you have a podcast, you see how
they evolve and grow, and it's just a it's a
really great way to communicate financial information to women, especially
but just to people. I just think it's a great
It's hard to read all those finance books out there, and.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
So put is and you know, I mean, I'm an
audio person. I mean personally. You know, my shows evolved
so much. It's changed names three times, so so yes,
they evolved. But it's so cool to be living in
a time where we have all this information being provided
to us with different voices at different times and different methods.
And you know, if it required, if it was required,

(03:58):
If it was if I had to read books to
get everywhere that I've gotten in life, I don't know
how it would have gone. Because I love the audio format.
So here we go.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
I do too. I really love it, and now I've
taken to reading. Usually if it's a financial book, I'll
buy the book, but I'll also listen to it on
an audible or whatever because me too. Me usually full
of some graphs and other things that you want to
actually have the physical book. But you know, it brings
light to the fact that there's so much to learn,

(04:28):
and it's rather difficult to learn it. I mean, we
don't learn it at school really unless you're a finance major,
and then we don't have time to read and study.
And so this is a really nice extra layer of
financial education that people can get. So I love the
podcasting world for finance information.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, yeah, me too. What let's see, are you in
your era in video too?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Right?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
So you're on YouTube and podcasts. See, it's just making
it available to everyone.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, and with that said, I want to go back
a little bit I only read a little, very short
bio of yours. You have a much more extensive array
of credentials and everything else that I could talk about.
But I'd love for you to go back kind of
to the early days and how you started and you

(05:23):
know this basically.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah. So there's kind of two three narratives. One, I
was really math smart, right, I got my degree in economics.
I graduated magna kum loud. I used to tutor the
math portion of the SAT. I have graduate school admissions
scores that qualify me for MENSA, like I could do

(05:46):
the tests right. We were talking about books versus audio.
I think the reason I prefer audio now is because
I've read so many freaking books. So I thought I
kind of thought I was on my way. But if
I was honest, I had kind of a broken mindset
about money. So what had happened was in my childhood,
you know, I mean my mom had she was a

(06:08):
single mom. My parents got divorced when I was about six,
and you know, she had a good job, but it
was a normal She had an average income and she
was a great saver. So what was left to spend
not very much, which is kind of how you probably
should be, but I didn't have insight to that. I
didn't see the balance of her for it and k growing.
All I knew is that I couldn't have the stuff

(06:29):
that I wanted. So the story I always tell is,
you know, I was the starting center on the high
school basketball team. I am five foot ten inches tall,
so they usually throw you in the middle of the key.
Everyone on the team had Nike high top shoes. I
wanted Nike high tops. My mom took me to pay
Less shoe source and I got pro wings. Okay, I
called them Lke's so but it was embarrassing for me,

(06:51):
you know, jokes aside, and so for me, what was
true about money was there was never enough money. So
fast forward into my twenties. My father had actually brought
me in his financial planning business. I grew up with
a father who was a financial planner, so he brought
me in. I'm studying for the CFP exam, so I'm
advising multimillionaires how to interact with their investment portfolios during

(07:13):
the day, and I'm going home at night to a
stack of bills that I would not open because I
could not pay them because I was a massive overspender.
If I earned one hundred dollars, I would spend one
hundred and twenty. I would have borrowed any dollar U
any bank or credit card company would have been willing
to loan me, and I never would have paid it back.
It's not entirely true. I paid a lot of it back,

(07:33):
but the situation really came to a crisis. One day,
I had a least beautiful BMW three series convertible. I
pulled it into the gas station, pulled it up to
the gas pump. I put in a credit card, and
it was at its limit. It was canceled, it was rejected.
What's the word I'm looking for the opposite of approved, denied?

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Decline? Right?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
I had one other credit card. I put that in,
also maxed out, it was declined. I had one debit card,
one checking account. I put that card in and my
checking account was empty. I had no money to put
in that forty thousand dollars vehicle to fill the gas
tank so I could get home. Okay, this really happened.
So I walked home from the gas station that day
in three and a half inch heels back in my

(08:17):
This was probably thirty one thirty thirty one something like
that I had the energy to wear heels to work,
and I mean, I just had this kind of forgive
the saying. But come to Jesus conversation with myself, I
said to myself, I can really see, first of all,
I'm devastated. I'm embarrassed. I feel like kind of the
scourge of the earth. Like my parents paid for me

(08:39):
to go to college, and I got all those good
grades and did that well on tests, and this is
what it's amounted to, like what is wrong with me?
And I can really see that if I continue to
interact with money the same way, that my life in
the future is going to be full of more different
versions of this very this very event. You know, my
parents would have to rescue me. I would have financial emergencies,
you know. I mean it was And so I just

(09:02):
decided on that walk home, like in this moment, I
have no idea how to do things differently. Like obviously,
if I had known how to produce good results, I
would have already been producing good results. But I'm going
to figure it out, right, I'm just gonna get really
willing to do anything differently. And so that's when I
started studying the emotional side of money. You know. Until then,
I had my big calculator, and I thought spreadsheets solved

(09:24):
every problem. And I started attending conferences and instead of
going to the technical track, I would go to the
psychological so, the investor behavior track. So because again I'm
a financial planner. So and I remember I was in
this room with this woman, Denise Hughes, who's a good friend.
Now I had never met her, and she said the
word overspender And at that time, on that day, I

(09:46):
had never heard that word. But when I heard it,
I knew I was one, okay, And I you know,
I figured out the whole in my financial bucket because
of my money experiences as a child. I was instead
of being engaged in the process of becoming financially healthy,
I was engaged in the project of proving to other

(10:06):
people that I was already there. Really, like you would
have loved to go out for drinks with me, because
I definitely would have showed up in my BMW and
paid the tab. Right, not in the case of you,
of course, but trying to prove to other people that
I'm worth something when I'm not even sure how much
I liked them, right, And I got to really do

(10:27):
things differently. I got to really turn around my behaviors.
I fixed my credit score, I negotiated with and paid
off the credit cards. I at this point, you know,
I mean, it's been eighteen years or something, but my
husband and I and I'm just going to share this
because your listeners should know that anything is possible. I'm
worth where a marital net worth is over ten million dollars.

(10:48):
So I really have done it different, right. There's nothing
linear or expected about the results that we've produced together
that I that I've produced with my husband, Right, I
run a business that makes almost two million dollars a year,
and so so you know, I'm proof of this statement

(11:08):
that no matter how things have gone for you in
the area of money, you can have an abundance of
it in your future. And in this moment, on this day,
the things I used to think and feel about money
feel like a distant memory to me. And I'm so
grateful for you. Know, you talk about your your network.
Your podcast was called the Limitless Life, Limit free Life. Yeah,

(11:29):
limit free life, right, And it's just like, of course,
I mean, really life is limit free, right. We human
beings put constraints on ourselves through our beliefs, through our thinking,
through our broken relationships to ourselves, because our mothers and
fathers voices keep coming out of our own mouths, right,
And so in that way I really produced a limit

(11:52):
free financial life for myself. Financial freedom. So so, and
then the third theme to that was really my relationship
to working with and for women as an economist. I
really truly was an economist, and I thought the best
person always gets the job.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Like I just was.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Very pragmatic about gender and the whole thing. And so
as I'm being mentored into the financial planning world, of
course I'm being sort of in some cases, you know, dismissed,
not seen by, talked down to by my older white
male counterparts. And then I got the experience of being

(12:29):
in networks that support women, groups that support women, masterminds
of women, and I was like, oh my goodness, this
is where I belong, right, this, this is what I'm
born to do and be. And so when I founded
my firm, I founded it to be by women for women.
Now at this point, forty percent of my clients are men,
because of course most women want to be married to
a man, which is great. We call them enlightened men.

(12:52):
But that really is kind of the threefold path that
brought me to where I am today.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Well, it's also better, I think for your clients that
you've been through both experiences, because you know, sometimes we
look at financial planners and we think, well, they've never
experienced these hardships, and so, you know, it turns out
the reality is that many of them have, and that
many that's why you know they're even doing doing But
people don't know that, and so they're intimidated or they

(13:19):
feel uncomfortable talking to you because there's so much shame
and concealments and just like you were talking about with
risks money. So if you're pretending to be you know,
unworried and better off than you are, talking to a
financial planner is tough because you do have to, you know,
get honest at some point.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, I mean, I really think this is an egg
that's cracking open. More and more people are talking about money.
I sort of roll into cocktail parties with I mean,
I talk like this at cocktail parties. You know, I
don't know any other way to be.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, I think that's one of that you're bringing up
one of the most important points about money. Part of
part of the problem has been women not talking about it.
You know, men talk about it a little bit more
than we have, but I think that is just huge
and we learn so much from other people just having
conversations with us. And that's the other thing about podcasts.
These are just conversations that people can listen in on.

(14:17):
But if you're talking about money and I do the
same thing. I just talk about money like they're talking
about a recipe and you know, it's a cooking recipe,
and it just people open up and share things, and
it's like there's a big need to talk about it
and we don't do it is enough.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
So you know, let me circle back to something you said,
which is you said men talk about it more, you know,
having been a fly on the wall. And of course
because I'm female, men will talk in front of me
because they assume I don't know anything. I mean, it's
for the most part, it's true. I can tell you
that they do talk and for the most part they
share their wins and not their losses, and that a

(14:59):
lot of the things they say aren't good advice. So
just because they're talking more, it may be more egoic
or maybe to prove something right. But having been a
fly on the wall from many of those conversations, I
can tell you if you hear men talking about money,
don't assume it's good advice.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
I'm with you, and I don't think we should assume
any advice is necessarily good advice. We should get enough
foundational financial information so we can at least ask the
right questions or at least, you know, be able to
when people say something to us, process it a little
bit and evaluate whether it does sound valid or not.

(15:39):
I think that's the other piece of it, you know.
I mean, we go into it and if somebody seems
like an authority in the area, we're not really questioning it.
We do that doctors. We do that with a lot
of people who really shouldn't do that with any of
the professionals, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
But oh man, people question their doctors so much they
want to compare the doctors to doctor Google. Yeah, you know,
and I think part of the reason, part of the
way that gets alleviated or that gets created in someone's
individual life is sort of in the trenches. Right as
long as you're in the stands about money, not talking
about it, not dealing with it. Not not engaged in

(16:13):
the project of raising your net worth on a daily basis,
then the questions are going to be elusive because where
are you thinking from? Right, what are you even thinking about?
But your if your thought process is how can I
raise my income by fifteen percent in twenty twenty six, Well,
now that's a question that has an answer, right right,
Or for example, how can I maximize the returns my

(16:37):
investment portfolio is giving me without taking excess risk. That's
a question that has an answer. Uh and so and so.
I think as long as you as long as you're
on your path, you can sort through the voices that come,
you know, whether that's at a cocktail party. I mean,
I did a whole podcast episode one time about the
armchair armchair financial advisor because my experience and says, almost

(17:00):
every woman and probably in ninety nine percent of cases,
every single widow, every woman who has lost her husband,
has some well meaning man, whether it be a friend,
former real estate agent, uncle, brother, something, telling her what
to do with her money. It's so frequent I did
a podcast episode about it. Right, So, just because he

(17:22):
cares about you and means well does not give him
the ability to give you great financial advice. It could
be great. I don't know, but it could be really bad.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
That's such a great point. I will have to search
out that podcast. I'll have to put in the show notes.
But that sounds great and again an amazing point because
for one thing, how does that piece of advice factor
into the big puzzle of your whole financial picture? And
I think that's one thing that when I was reading
through your website, you know, you address the bigger picture.

(17:56):
So you address the you know, the pact of taxes
on your you know, whatever your investment portfolio is.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Is yeah, on your net worth over time.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, So if you want to speak to that a
little bit. Because the other thing is finding after you've
heard all the advice and you've done your research and
you've asked some critical questions, finding somebody that you trust,
who you can go to and speak with, or a
team of people is crucial. I mean, I don't know
what I would do without some of the people my
my tax account and you know, a financial advisor, people

(18:30):
who I can go to and I know they've got
my back. I've been with them long enough and I
know you know, and it's it's invaluable. So yeah, and
this is what we want people. So I'd love for
you to speak to that a little.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
I see. So of course everyone listening knows I have
a dog in this race, right, I work and make
money as a financial advisor, So of course I'm going
to say you need a financial advisor. And it's so
interesting because the messaging about you don't need a financial advisor.
Just come do my little coaching program, or just learn
how to invest. Just buy an S and P five
hundred index fund and hold on to it. You don't
need a financial advisor. And I just laugh to myself

(19:06):
because it's like, we have a skills assessment that we
give candidates for advisory roles in my firm, and I think, okay,
come take my skills assessment. Take just get a fifty
percent on it, right, just work for my team for
thirty days. If you last thirty days, I'll eat my words.
But until then, I promise you. There's so much complexity

(19:27):
in this world that we help people navigate, you know,
and we put on We meet with our clients and
we have a slide deck, and on that slide deck
we have their goals and it always surprises them because
we put don't do not run out of money. And
they say it's kind of like simple, right, Like, of course,
I say, yeah. We can use all kinds of fancy
technical language. We can talk about the risk adjustede returns

(19:48):
of your investments, or we can talk about tax drag,
or we can talk we can talk about IRMA adjustments.
But ultimately that is all in service of and you said,
the word, Michelle, is the big picture, the comprehensive goal,
which is your money has to outlive you, otherwise you're
dead in the water, you know, And you know for
those of you listening who are in your saving and

(20:09):
investing years, of course, your goal is to save and
grow enough money so that you can pay yourself and
replace your earned income if and when you want to
stop working.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
So so.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's your saving investing years, and then in your retirement years,
it's make my money live longer than me. So again
people are like, that's shockingly simple, But yes, Hillary, that's
what I want. Make my money lasts longer than me,
and so and everything we do is in service of that.
And I will tell you I started in this business
in nineteen ninety nine, so twenty six years ago. Okay,

(20:42):
and at that time you kind of the message from
my mentors, the people who mentored me up was the
tax return is the tax return, and the tax return
is God. And so I never spent much time thinking
about what was on the tax return. But of course
you have in life, you have the amount of money
that you earn, and you can do three things with it.

(21:02):
You can spend it, save it, or pay it in taxes.
That's it. You got three choices, right, except the taxes
piece isn't a choice. And so obviously the spending and
the saving that's you directed, those are your goals. That's
what's important to you. That's your time with family, that's
your house that you want to live in, that's your
new swimming pool, right, those are the things that you love.

(21:25):
And so obviously making the tax piece a little smaller
would benefit you by definition. And we started to see
massive mistakes on these tax returns. So we would in
some cases if you have let's say you have a
million dollar portfolio and there's a twenty five percent market decline, well,
now maybe if we've done the right thing for you,
which is tax loss harvesting, now you have a quarter

(21:47):
potentially quarter million dollars in what are called tax loss
carry forwards. Now what has to happen is your tax
preparer has to remember to put those on your tax
return every year. If he or she forgot in any year,
they're gone. Now you can amend the tax return, but
someone has to know that those were forgotten. And we
started seeing huge portions of tax loss carry forward, which

(22:11):
functions as a tax it's not really a tax credit.
So think of a quarter million dollars into tax losses
being worth something like eighty thousand dollars to you. So
if your tax preparer forgets a two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars carry forward, they just took eighty thousand dollars
out of your savings account. That's a big fricking deal, right.
And this was happening more often than I'd like to

(22:31):
think about, and other mistakes were being made on the
tax return. So I said to my team, we've got
to get excellent at tax return review. So we started learning.
We started learning, We started learning what people are doing,
and we have accumulated a suite of services that we
call Ultra tax Efficient Wealth Management. And I won't go
into all of the services because of course, how you
are tax is a function of how you earn money

(22:53):
and how you grow your investments. But if it's a
tool and it's out there and it's evidence based and
the IRS approves of it, my team and I are
doing it, and it doesn't involve weird, fringy, complex and
expensive trusts. It doesn't involve taking money out of your
control for a decade or more in some cases to
get any tax benefit. I'm talking about how some other

(23:15):
tax deferral tools work, right. I consider those to be bad.
I want your experience as an investor to be good.
I want you to have access to your money. I
want you to have a known set of returns that
you're working from, Like, what can we expect from this, Hillary,
I want to have an answer to that question, right,
And so we've gotten really good at that. At the
same time as I don't know what your experience is.

(23:35):
You said you do have a CPA. But the tax
prep world has kind of dried up. It is really
hard to find good tax prep now, right, and so
it's just a time for where American taxpayers are kind
of suffering. You know, H and R. Block used to
charge I mean, I think it was five hundred bucks,
and now my clients are paying two to three thousand
dollars for a tax return. But the ones who don't

(23:57):
know to expect that price are like, what the the
heck is this, I'll just do it myself on turbo tax.
So we're helping them through that, and then kind of
the final piece to that is you should know about
some things that are new to market. There's some exciting
new tools that are coming out of what's called family offices.
So if you have a family office as your financial advisor,

(24:18):
you probably have a net worth of about two hundred
and fifty million dollars or more. Okay, so at that time,
you have a whole team of people working for you,
and they have these sophisticated tools that they often start
in family offices because of this scale. Right, it's easier
to get two hundred and fifty million dollars from one
family than it is to find two hundred and fifty
millionaires to say yes to you. It just is right.

(24:41):
But now there's there's specific tools that are coming out
of these offices that are really helping people in some
cases live what I'm calling a tax free life. Now
the taxes are in there, but specifically with capital gains
for you or your clients or listeners who've had, for example,
sold real estate that was highly appreciated, or sold a
business for capital gains. Or if you happen to have

(25:05):
bought apple stock in nineteen ninety eight and held onto
it until now, you've got a huge purse of money
but probably don't want to sell it because you're afraid
of the capital gains. And I'll just say a few
words about it, because you're going to have to do
more internet research about it. It's called tax excuse me,
tax aware long short, tax aware long short, and it

(25:27):
is literally making it possible for you to keep access
to your money, have market returns, not add meaningful risk,
and be able to spend as long as that spending
is controlled tax free. So it can mean thirty to
fifty percent more wealth over your lifetime. It's really like,
after decades of watching what I consider to be very

(25:48):
insufficient tax deferral strategies, so things like ten thirty one exchanges,
qualified opportunity zones, these kinds of things, it's all sound good,
except the reality of your experience is so in some
cases so very bad that I never wanted to interact
with those and this is like light years better. How
is that? I just talked for like five minutes? Was
that too much?

Speaker 1 (26:09):
No? No, it's fascinating. And you're really, I think, highlighting
the intriguing things that nobody knows about that you know,
we could be taking advantage of, but we're not, and
maybe our people aren't telling us about them either. So
I feel like you've gone not only are you looking
at a more comprehensive picture, but you've gone really deep

(26:30):
into ways to help people defer taxes, which most financial planners,
you're correct, do not do. And I know what you
said about the tax prep world too, is very interesting
to me because I love my tax accountant. But he's
going to retire any minute.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
I mean, you know, that's what everyone says. Yeah, he's
probably not taking new clients and he's retiring soon.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
That's exactly right, and it's been on my mind. I
know a few people he's trained, but you know, but
it brings up a great point because I don't even
think most people know that. You don't want to tax prepare.
You want a tax strategist in your life, basically, and
that's what I have. I you know, both in one person,
but I really myself have not even though again I'm

(27:21):
with you on this, and I made the same weird
mistakes where I was a CPA with so much work
experience in my MBA and all this stuff, and I
did some really dumb things financially, I have to say,
And that's come to the party.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
You've earned your stripes. I'll give you a little metal
for your uniform.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, and that's really when it in trying to find
answers to what the heck am I doing. I found,
you know, this whole piece about my relationship with money,
and that really was what was driving everything. And you know,
the reasons I was making certain decisions were absolutely not
sound financial reasons.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
They seemed right in the moment, right.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
You could certainly justify them in your your rationalization of things. Yes,
and it was, but it was much more reactionary. You know,
things are going on, and my reaction, in my case
it was to protect other people, was to throw money
at it. And I'd figure that out later, you know,
And it's very interesting how we operate. So I've been

(28:26):
fascinated by this ever since because I too thought you
just need to know a lot. And then you're fine,
and it doesn't actually work that.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
It doesn't always carry the day.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
No, so the day. I think it's so fascinating, the
whole psychology and emotional part of money. But you also
have to be super smart about what you're what you're
the things you're actually taking action on, and that's where
I think the people who are more technical like you
in terms of investments and things are crucial. And I

(29:00):
agree with you. I'm in the camp that a financial
advisor is the way to go. I do know a
lot of people who are like I'm doing better on
my own with investments. But unless you want to spend
that time actually learning how to do that, which I
do not really I want to know enough, but I
want somebody who's really smart, not only giving me advice,
but also taking care of things. You know, I mean,

(29:22):
doing the work of all of this and not putting
it off because you know, I mean I would put
it off. I would have other things that come up.
But you don't do that with your clients. That's your job.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
So yeah, I'm actually not so sure, especially in the
publicly traded marketplaces, that it's possible to produce higher than
market returns anymore. I mean, if you think about it,
the potential returns from the stock market are literally infinite.
So if you knew which stock was going to go
up tomorrow, you would just double down, and you would

(29:53):
double and compound and compound, and your growth would be exponential,
and pretty soon you would own an island and that
would be it. That would be the end of it.
And so they've thrown everything. They have the smartest finance
people in the world, the smartest computers in the world
at the stock market, and no one can figure out
a pattern. And that's been decades of research. Since the
nineteen sixties, they've been doing that, right, And so when

(30:14):
someone says to me, I'm doing better than my financial advisor,
it's kind of like, I doubt it, But you could
show me your returns, but they.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Never do well. And you really have to look at
it over a long period of time. I mean, in
a you know, for a.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Year, you have to provide for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Right right, you know, I would really love for you
to speak to investing in women, because I do think
you know, I mean, everything's fairly new to women. I mean,
it's not that long ago that we couldn't even have
our own bank accounts, so it's not shocking that we're
a little behind on this. But yeah, I really I

(30:54):
feel like this is one of those areas that it's
important for women to be comfortable on board for one thing.
So how do you make women feel like, you know,
let's start investing in some particular ways?

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, well, gosh, where to start. I'm looking for the
thread to pull to get into that conversation. It's going
to be a good one. So of course we want
to talk about why are you even investing, What is
the point of investing? What are we doing with this right?
Why would we put our money in any risk? Well,
the fact of the matter is we're kind of the first,

(31:30):
maybe the second, but really like the first generation to
have to pay for our own retirements. So, you know,
four generations ago, people just didn't live long enough, right,
They worked until they died, and then there were companies
that had pensions, So there was this cradle to grave
financial aspect for people who outlived the life expectation of

(31:51):
fifty seven years or whatever it was. I'm going to
get the years a little bit wrong, but I believe
they implemented social security in nineteen sixty three, the Social
Security claiming age was sixty five and the average life
expectancy was sixty seven. Maybe the sixty five and the
safety seven are swapped, but the point is, you know,
this social Security is supposed to be this, this retirement

(32:15):
replacement tool, but really I wasn't. You weren't even allowed
to claim it until after you were dead. So that's
just another case of you know, we weren't living long enough.
And now medical science and the study of longevity is
all wonderful and everyone wants to live to one hundred
and twenty, except it's a financial problem. So the reason
we invest money is because you need your money to grow.
You save it, you earn it, you save it, and

(32:35):
then you need it to grow. But you need it
to grow while you're not paying attention to it, so
you can do stuff that you do well. Spend time
with your family, sleep, exercise, work, make money. You know
these things, and so that really is why you invest.
And then you get to choose what you invest in
and what are the features of what you invest in.
And so in my book, I want to have some

(32:57):
sense that there is an expected return somebody's measured what
I'm investing in and there's some degree of confidence that
if I invest in it for ten twenty thirty years,
I'm going to have a known return number that I
can plan for. And the only the only well you
can do that with CDs, Okay, except CDs have interest

(33:19):
rate risk. You can do that with bonds. Bonds earn
about a percent more than CDs, or you can do
that in the stock market, and the stock market earns
four to six percent more than bonds. Now over your lifetime,
that four to six percent compounds to like seven figures
or more. Right, So it's a big deal. However, you
say stock market, and I do this when I speak,
what's the first word you think of when I say

(33:39):
stock market? And the word the first word is always risky,
something to do with I might lose my money, right,
And we've all been taught to think that way, Unfortunately,
because Wall Street messed with people back in the sixties
and seventies. They really were stock jockeys, churning and burning clients,
getting people to trade stocks, and then of course doing

(34:00):
things that didn't weren't in the interest of the investor.
So everyone you and me included knows someone who lost
it all, quote unquote lost it all in the stock market, right,
So everyone lives like losing it all as a possibility,
but if you invest the right way, that's not really
the case anymore. And people don't understand what the stock
market is. Right. There's fifteen thousand publicly traded companies out there,

(34:24):
and so every one of those companies is headed by
an executive and a team of executives and a board
of directors who have really good intentions. And these people
are independent of politics, of the economy, of trade, wars
of blah blah blah. Right, they want to make money
for themselves their customers. Well, they produce value for their

(34:45):
customers and money for their shareholders. So you've got lots
of really competitive, really entrepreneurial, really creative, really smart people
out there trying to produce customer value shareholder value, and
all the stock market is is a scoreboard for hum
an ingenuity, right, I mean if the yeah, I mean,
people aren't going to stop being competitive. People aren't going

(35:07):
to stop having a profit motive. And the profit motive
is really wonderful when it comes to the things that
surround us. That I mean, just look at the computer
and audio equipment I have in my room right now,
my own my home office where I'm making a movie
that's going to be on YouTube soon.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
This was unconceivable ten fifteen years ago. Right, And that's
all because of these smart, competitive people producing technology that
gets better and better. And then investing in the stock
market is your opportunity to take your pro rod a
share of those profits. Simply said, that's it. That's the
full explanation of the stock market. I'm going to give you, Michelle.

(35:44):
If you're running a company, here's one hundred dollars, you
go produce ten percent profits with it. Now, if you
pursue produce ten percent profits, I want my ten bucks.
That's it. That's the stock market. Right. And so what
we know is over the over the last one hundred years,
the stock market has produced and I mean large cap
US stocks. And do not go buy anything because I'm

(36:07):
saying this it is not customized investment advice. But the
stock market has produced about eight and a half to
nine and a half percent returns depending on how you measure. Okay,
that and that includes the Great Depression, stagflation of the
nineteen seventies, the dot bomb of nineteen ninety nine and
two thousand, that was centered in Silicon Valley, where I
come from. And then of course the great recession of

(36:29):
six oh seven, well it bottomed out in eight. No, sorry,
the S and P bottomed in nine. It was the
real estate liquidity crisis. And then the stock market recession,
so you know, and the ten percent eight and a
half to nine and a half percent returns that is
inclusive of all those horrific events. So the stock market
is extremely resilient, and if I had my way, all
women would be excited about it, want to invest in

(36:52):
it in smart ways, right, because other types of investments
that people do, I think in some case they are
not aware of the true risks that they are taking.
And I have seen other types of investments go horrifically
wrong in ways that people didn't even know to think about, right,
Like it was like a major surprise, Like I didn't

(37:13):
even know this was a possible outcome. And with the
stock market, we kind of do know the outcomes. I mean,
we don't know. It's like needing a new roof, right,
You're going to need a new roof. The stock market's
going to go down. We don't know when, but we
kind of have an idea of how much it's going
to cost. It sucks. It sucks to have to pay
for a new roof or to suffer through a stock
market downturn. But so far the roof stays on and

(37:35):
the stock market goes back up.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, So I've always been very passionate about women really
building ice. I call it an intimate relationship with the
stock market, deeply trusting and positive and optimistic.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
I love that. I really love that. And how much
it should you know? I mean, how much would you
tell somebody to learn about this before taking it on?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
M Well, gosh, I gosh, that would be that would
be a question for you, the individual investor, right, because
you have to ask yourself what is it going to
take for me to trust? Trust is necessary, and that's
the qualitative factor we often don't say out loud, is

(38:24):
you have to trust both me, your financial advisor, and
the stock market investments I'm going to put you in.
And sometimes I will stop a conversation where there clearly
isn't trust, and I'll say, let's just stop and let's
just say what needs to be said, which is right now,
you don't trust and trust is required, So have you
thought about what it would take to get you to

(38:44):
the line. Do you want to get there? Right? Because
I mean I can you can lean a horse to water,
but because you can't make them drink, right. I mean,
I deserve your trust. I and I'm you know, I
mean twenty six years in the business and my own
heart lessons hard one. But of course that doesn't mean
anybody's going to trust me. So I think for a

(39:06):
lot of people it requires some book knowledge and some
as lived experience. And that's why it's so much better
to start with smaller amounts. Let's say you put money
in your in your four one k, let's say a
raw ira. Because I can't manage your four to one k.
You put money in a roth ira for the first time,
it's five thousand dollars. Well, now it's five thousand dollars.

(39:27):
Then it goes up to seven, and then it goes
down to six, and then it goes up to ten,
and it goes down to nine, and then it goes
up to twenty. Right, And it's like those are digestible amounts.
But let's say you inherit a million dollars. Well, now
if a million dollars goes up to one point six
and then it goes down to one point four and
you sit down at the computer after a hard day's

(39:47):
work and you go, I lost two hundred thousand dollars today.
Forget it, sell it. I don't trust you for I'm out.
In fact, the heck with you. You gave me bad
advice Hillary, right, when in fact that money is on
the same path that our thousand dollars was in the
previous conversation. It's just that you have earning money and

(40:12):
saving money. Well, earning money is a skill. Saving money
is a skill, and then preserving wealth is a very
separate skill, and it's so much easier learned with smaller numbers.
So that's what I wish for you is to start
wherever you're at by putting that money in the stock
market in ways that are recommended, and to attain that

(40:32):
skill set. It is like riding a bike. Right. If
you make it through two market cycles, I think you're good,
probably for the rest of your life, because you know
it's coming back.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah. Wow, I love that so much. And you know,
the whole time you were talking, I'm thinking trust is
such an enigma in a way. I mean, that's a
big part of what I talk to people about in
their discussions about their relationship with money. Just like any
other relationship, you have to have some trust. You have
to trust in yourself to an extent and in the

(41:02):
you know, structures around the financial world. But I was
also thinking, wow, we trust every day when we get
in our car to go somewhere. I mean, I just
trust that. I don't think about it. Is there a risk? Sure,
So there's nothing without some element of risks. So it's
how you perceive that and what you tell yourself about that.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
You know, well, and what's the opportunity cross? Right, what
if you had a life where you refuse to get
in a car, what would that cost you?

Speaker 1 (41:31):
And then financially with a lot of right yeah right?

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Oh yeah. Unfortunately I don't often get to meet those people.
They don't come to my office.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah. Well, speaking of coming to your office, this has
been so great. I could easily talk to you for
the rest of the day, but unfortunately I cannot, And
so I would love for you to tell people. I mean,
you are the real deal. Like I said, I've been
following you for a very long time. You're very impressive
and you really cater to the individual and if anybody

(42:04):
goes to your website, they will feel that in the
in the copy on your site, it's like.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
It, oh, thank you, we put you so much into that.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Well I felt it, you know when you read a
website and you feel something. And I really felt like,
this is a woman who not only understands the all
the technical everything, but understands me, you know, and what
I'm thinking and what I'm feeling about money and my needs.
So I would really recommend people to go You have
some great videos on there as well, and so anyway,

(42:36):
go ahead, and if you would tell people how to
find you and work.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
With you, yeah, thank you. So we offer comprehensive wealth management.
We are one hundred percent virtual, which is a really
great way to work with a financial advisor. We meet
you in the comfort of your own home, and we
have clients in four different time zones. So and of
course you know, I've set up the entire company so
that we are super responsive to clients, typically respond within

(43:00):
fifteen minutes. To be totally honest with you, and what
you should do is go to hendershot wealth dot com
and just schedule yourself for a no commitment, no cost
conversation where we'll see if we might be a good
fit to work you on.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
That's great. Thank you so much. And you have your
podcast and you have your blog and other ways for
people to get to know you as well and to
learn from you as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
The podcast is called Love Your Money.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Which I love. Yeah. Okay, Well, Hillary, I can't thank
you enough for being the guest star of my two
hundredth money and you show thank you, you know, onor
bottom of my heart. I really appreciate it. I am
very interested in your work and what you do for people,
and you know, you're really really helping people. I know

(43:47):
that you know you may however financial planners think of themselves.
I think for the most part, it's about helping people.
It's about helping women live their best lives and men
as well. But I think there's a little bit of
an emphasis us on women with what.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
I read it is. Our mission is people are thriving,
So that's what we're up to. And like it or not,
you can't thrive without a healthy financial life. So it's
a key. It's a critical aspect.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
You said it, that's exactly right. So all right, well,
thank you and thank you audience for listening and joining us. Today.
We so so appreciate you enjoying the money and you
show so that we could get to our two hundredth show,
and we look forward to bringing you many more and
many more wonderful guests and topics. So again, thank you.

(44:34):
You can find us on all the podcast platforms and
on the YouTube, the Limit Free Life YouTube channel, and
you can reach out to me anytime at limit FreeLife
dot com or Michelle at limitfreelife dot com. Thank you
so much. We will see you next week

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