Ep 202: Fearless Finance: Turning Uncertainty Into Clarity

Ep 202: Fearless Finance: Turning Uncertainty Into Clarity

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever had a money or career question you
really wanted to ask, but didn't know who to go to,
or just felt uncomfortable even bringing it up. You're not alone.
Talking about money can feel intimidating, even scary, and that's
exactly what I'm trying to change. That's why I created
a free virtual coffee chat, a casual, no pressure, twenty

(00:21):
minute conversation where you can bring one thing you're wrestling
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from someone who gets it. If you've got something on
your mind, don't sit in the confusion. Book a spot
at limitfreelife dot com and let sip and sort it out.

(00:42):
Hey there, and welcome to Money in 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, coach,

(01:04):
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

(01:25):
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 another episode of The Money and You Show.
I'm your host Michelle Perkins, founder of limit FreeLife dot Com,
and I have a great guest today. We've been having

(01:46):
some great conversations around retirement and today we have a
guest who wrote a book called Fearless Finance, which I
love because that's exactly how people should approach it but
don't know how. So our guest Laura today is going
to really talk to us about the ups and downs
of life and retirement and how we can integrate real

(02:09):
life with retirement and do it fearlessly. So she's a
wealth of information and she is going to share some
really interesting things with us today. So you know, this
is really four people who are maybe even approaching retirement,
kind of the forty to fifty year olds who have actually,

(02:31):
you know, been they're successful in their lives, they've been
doing a lot of things toward this goal, but they're
still uncertain, and yet they feel that, you know, I
should know more. It's almost embarrassing to talk about it
at this point, and that goes for pretty much, you know,
the wide gamut of financial topics. People feel that way.
But you know, it's unnerving when you're doing the things

(02:55):
to plan for retirement and yet you kind of don't
know if it's going the way it should. Things come
up in life, you don't know how to handle them,
but you're also kind of afraid to talk about it
with experts. So today we're going to have a really
great conversation about this and hopefully answer some of your
own questions. So, without further ado, I'm going to introduce

(03:15):
today's guests, and Laura, I'm going to apologize in advance,
even though you just told me how to pronounce your name,
I may forget it's Laura ribit Rieban. We'll come back
and have Laura actually say it for us. But so
what if the biggest risk to your financial future wasn't
the market, but was uncertainty. Today's guest, Laura Robin is

(03:38):
the founder of Impavid Wealth Advisors, a franchise of American
Financial and with thirty plus years of experience, Laura helps
professionals and retirees turn financial confusion into clarity. She's also
the author of Fearless Finance, a practical guide to retiring
with confidence. If you've ever asked do I have enough?

(03:58):
This conversation will give you the tools and reassurance you
didn't know you needed. Laura welcome.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Sometimes I believe you are so welcome. And I'm sorry
about your name. You just told me how to pronounce it,
and like boom, out of my brain.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So tell us nobody nobody could if you if you
heard me pronounce it, you wouldn't know how to spell it.
If you see it in writing, you won't know how
to say it. It's Laura Rayvine Ravine.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
You know I said that to myself and then I
was like, no, I don't think that was right, because
then I was the Einstein thing and it wasn't coming
out right. So thank you. I'll never forget it now. Okay,
all right, well, Laura welcome. We had a great conversation.
On the phone a while ago, and yeah, why don't

(04:46):
we just start with some of the things as a
financial expert that you're seeing out there in the world
that you want to talk about.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Oh, that list could be so great. However, let's start
with this thought. Think about everything we get bombarded with
in the media, in mainstream media. Is the market up?
Is the market down? What's the hot thing to invest
in today? What should you you know? What should you
buy to make a big profit? My argument is, what

(05:16):
if the biggest risk to your financial future isn't the
market but uncertainty? And so people get afraid and unsure
about their own financial situation because they're just bombarded with
all this investment stuff. And don't get me wrong, investments
are really important, but it's like one lane of the highway.
You've got all these other lanes of the highway in

(05:38):
terms of your financial future to look at and know
what you're doing and having some clarity. And so my
book Fearless Finance and by the way, Impavid Wealth Advisors.
Impavid is a little known adjective in the English language
that means fearless and fearless finance. But what I like

(05:58):
to do is help clients get the clarity around their
particular situation, and that changes over our life. If you
think about it, Think back when you graduate a college
or started your first job, or just got married. A
big deal might have been buying your first home. Fast
forward fifteen or twenty years now you've got children to educate. Potentially,

(06:18):
what if you have parents that are aging that need help.
The numbers and the math changes, right, but we're still
getting bombarded in the media with investment staff and we
don't necessarily have the tools to look at the numbers
piece and how to evaluate that as we go through
stages in life.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, thank you for that. You know, there is a
big mix up with people thinking that the market is
kind of everything. We just watch the market and we
figure it out and we try to beat the market,
and we try to, you know, watch the market so
we can make smart moves before other things happen. And
it's so much more complex than that. And while if

(06:57):
you walk into your local you know, brokerage house, the
TVs are all on and you I mean, it's reinforced
out there that this is what matters. You know, if
you look at the financial you know, television shows, I
mean it's it makes you feel a intimidated by you know,
it's really hard to understand everything they're talking about so well,

(07:19):
but be it kind of like never mentions anything but that,
you know. I mean, so you're so right. And because
my real love is talking about the psychology and emotional
aspects of money and the behavioral aspects of money, that's
all pretty much ignored, you know. And so this uncertainty
you're talking about it it is huge, hugely important in

(07:44):
every area of finance, in my opinion. I mean I
even see it, you know, I see it everywhere. I
see it with business owners. I see it in the
job transition clients I have. And so uncertainty does a
lot of things to people. I mean I see it
paralyzing people. People don't want to make a move because
uncertainty has them kind of frozen. What do you see uncertainty?

(08:05):
How does it impact people?

Speaker 2 (08:07):
You see? I find that the uncertainty people have around
their situation is typically what draws them into my office.
And come into my office, you will not see TVs
running with the market and the tip or tape and
all none of that. I have books in my lobby
on dog photos and cat photos and stuff like that.
Why I don't need you stressed out when you're coming
in and then all of a sudden you come from

(08:28):
a position of stress and you're just all your nerves
are on heightened senses at that point. But I do
see people coming in and they are uncertain about their situation.
What I try to do working with clients is help
create some clarity around their situation and empower them around
their situation. So when I talk about fearless, I don't

(08:50):
necessarily mean somebody taking reckless choices and reckless decisions with
their behavior. I'm talking about knowledge and gaining the knowledge
of what you should do for your situation. Because I
tell you, if you're saving and I'm tortally making this up,
if you're saving fifty dollars into the hottest thing, ever,
how do you know that's going to create all the

(09:11):
money you need in retirement to support your lifestyle and
including all the things we forget about inflation and taxes
and healthcare and you don't know. So it's more about
getting the knowledge of what you need to have and
why and how that changes over life. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (09:31):
It makes sense? And I love that, you know. I
think it's more important than ever that people just acknowledge
that we can't really predict how your life is going
to go. We can't predict how long your parents are
going to live, or how healthy they'll be, or things
about your kids, you know, and all kinds of things happen.
I mean, I did the thing that finance people say

(09:51):
it is like bad to do, which was I saved
for my kids education instead of my own retirement for
a period where I had to make a choice, that
was my decision. I was very conscious of it. And
in the end, my you know, at least one child
didn't even go to college, so you know, you really
you make these decisions and you do things based on

(10:12):
you know, limited understanding of what the future is going
to bring.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And I have to say you are far from being
alone in terms of putting college education first before you
own retirement. I see that a lot. And what I
like to see people do is if you're going to
put college education first, great, but also know what does
that mean? How much ketchup will you need to do
for your own retirement when you get through that college gap?

(10:38):
Or can you do a little bit of both? And
sometimes clients completely inflect the retirement piece while they're working
on the education piece, and you really want to know,
how do you do all of it to some degree,
and you just might wait more to college and not
much to retirement until you know the kids becoming educated.
But you're not alone and doing that. Yeah, imagination, well.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
And it's interesting the hindsight, of course, I would have
done some things a little differently than that. And you're
right about you know what happens is so much of
you know, money is habit, and so when you are
in a habit, I never even noticed the college savings
go just automatically moved over and you forget about it
and all of that good stuff. I could have easily
been doing the same thing with some retirement money as well.

(11:25):
But then you get out of the habit, and then
for whatever reason, there's a big delay before you start
doing these things. You think about them for a while.
First that's the uncertainty, and then you're not quite sure
is now the time to get back into it, And
then a year goes by. And so money's very interesting
that way.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
It is when people come in to meet with me,
that their starting point is just their concerned and the
biggest question is do I have enough? When? How do
I know if I have enough? And what I find
is that people are looking at the bottom line number
and they're looking at their investments, but they're also not

(12:04):
looking at the hidden risks to their financial future that
we forget about. Shall we say healthcare. It's one thing
everyone's talking about now because we don't know what's going
to happen in their future with cost of health care.
But there's other things as well. Taxes, what tax bracket
might you be in a retirement compared to where you
are today? Inflation, all those types of things. Long term care.

(12:28):
People hate to talk about that, but that's a reality.
So when you're eighty eighty four whatever in your eighties
and you need to have some assistance with long term care,
how are you prepared for that? Preparing for that can
give you the financial freedom for retirement. Not preparing for
that could devastate you financially. So I bring up all
those hidden things that we really don't want to look at.

(12:51):
But ignoring them don't make them go away. It just
makes you more vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, thank you for that. That is the truth. It
would be fun to ignore them. I mean, long term
care is the one that I probably ignore the most
of any others. And I've seen it up close and personal,
and you know it's real. It's something you shouldn't ignore.
But I feel like part of the reason that it
gets ignored us who's the options feel limited? You know,

(13:18):
what do you do about it? You can get long
term care insurance possibly, or you know, I don't know.
What do you tell people who are in their forties
or fifties and haven't really thought about it yet.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I find that my clients that are having parents that
are dealing with long term care immediately, their thought process
is completely different, like how do I fix this for myself?
Is it affordable? Can I figure out something to do?
Depending on your age, there's different things we might I
don't want to get into any recommenation or anything, but
there's different things you can do with different ages to

(13:51):
solve the issue and make it affordable for yourself. But
people that are dealing with parents or other family members
that have needed long term care services, they get it.
People that haven't dealt with it, it's more of that maybe
it will happen someday, but you know, probably won't. It's

(14:11):
not a thing I need to deal with and it's
harder for them to wrap their brain around it because
it's a someday maybe someday maybe not type of thing,
and it's very much hard for them to wrap their
brain around.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah. Yeah, I know that to be true. And it's
tricky because you have no idea whether what you'll need,
how much, if at all. It's so you know, as
we talk, that's so much the challenge for financial advisors
and planners out there. And the more people I talk
to about these things, the more it seems like it's

(14:45):
such a challenge to me. When I when I you know,
I have new respect actually for financial advisors and planners
because it's very hard. Not I mean, obviously you have
the ability to create a plan, but dealing with the
person on a human level with all of this is crazy.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
You were just hit right the nail on the head
of what I was going to say, because as a
financial advisor, I do have the software that I can
run all the projections and look at what are the
risks to you, what are your assets need to grow at?
How much you need to say you know, what are
all the things that may happen, and I can map
it out financially or numerically, but you have to marry

(15:26):
that with the person. I've had individuals in the past
that are in retirement and taking way too much risk,
and they're staring at their investments every day I set
up as it down. I mean, it's just crazy. And
I've had other people that are so conservative where I'm like,
you're not going to have what you think you have,
And then I have people that have completely overlooked risks

(15:48):
associated that they may face. I had a gentleman a
few decades ago, a couple different time I think than
today in terms of long term care and people's mindset.
But I had a gentleman twenty years ago that was like,
I don't want any of that stuff on. Yeah, I'm
not going to do that, and refuse to address the
issue and just left the risk out. Fast forward. Later

(16:10):
in his life he became bedbound and so he was
back bound. His wife had dementia. They were both living
at home. Their adult children are up north, and so
they're trying to pay for around the clock care in
their home for both of them, and I'm working them
to figure out, you know, create that exit strategy and
the money to get to stretch the money as far

(16:32):
as possible. They actually had to hire a nurse to
fly him first class up north to get him closer
to them. And he's just passed, but his whole situation
could have been far different had they structured it differently.
And you don't know until you're into it, when you
want to put the blinders on, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, and when you're not in a great position to
be making these decisions actually correct, yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Correct. One of the risks that I do talk to
clients about is the whole estate planning issue. And that's
common for everyone to think about, right, like what do
I do if I pass away? Do I need a will?
Do I need a trust? You know? What attorney should
I go see? How do I find an attorney that
I like? Those types of things. However, for my single

(17:19):
clients and even couples, people don't think about who's in charge.
If you haven't passed but you're not competent.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's a risk.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
If you pick the wrong person, it could be a mess.
And people don't think about that either if they're on
that investment one lane highway, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, it's a great point, and it's so true. I mean,
that is and Yeah, there, you really do have to
think about these things in advance, and even when you do,
things come up. I mean, my parents were a great
example of people who I thought planned pretty well and
things all the time. Time the trust was updated and

(18:02):
the you know, I would get a copy and I
knew their attorney and I had the basics of a
lot of information on them. But when you're in it,
a lot of things that you just overlook. You know,
you didn't think it'd be important to be on their
bank accounts, for example, or you know, there's a lot
of things that happened, and so it's very important to

(18:24):
think these things through.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
I feel like it could also be very important to
have the conversation with your kids at some point. Yeah,
I've seen the really good part of kids when when
the parents' time of need comes. I've seen the really
bad part too. The gentlemen that I was talking about
that was bed bound and was moved north, those adult

(18:48):
children did everything that they could for the parents, and
they really were there. They didn't understand everything they've led
on me, but they were there to get them through
through the rest of their life, so to speak. But
I've had other times where I had another couple where
their son was the one that was going to step

(19:09):
in and take control, who's also up north. And this
happens often where they say, oh, yeah, my son can
do it, my daughter can do it, Oh they'll be
fine whatever, until the sun takes over and says I
know best, unwinds the entire retirement plan, cashes everything in,
takes penalties, moves it, does whatever they want because they
know better and just decimated them financially and they're not

(19:32):
competent to understand what's going on at that point. So
I think having conversations with who you've put in charge
is important.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, it's very important. I can't agree with you more.
I've seen a lot of family devastation around this as well,
and it's really it's really hard to watch. And yeah,
so it's a great point, these conversations, And you know,
I really realize in doing this that all these conversations

(20:02):
that felt like, oh I don't want to have those,
you know, make my mom sad. I'll get sad. I mean,
it was all this stuff, and when you're in the
thick of it, you're not sad anymore. You're like in
go mode, and you really regret not having these conversations,
the emotion of it literally goes away when you have
to deal with all the financial issues that are coming out.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
You don't have time for emotion. No, all, Okay, you're
running one hundred and fifty miles now, or trying to
take care of your life and trying to take care
of your parents' life. So it is a big deal,
and having those conversations I think are very important and
I really do discuss that a lot with my single clients.
If you're still here but you are not competent, yeah,

(20:45):
who do you trust and who's going to step in?
And that's a big deal because you don't want to
pass away and have your assets not really go the
way you want or things get messed up a little bit.
But if you're still here and you're relying on somebody
to care for you and pay your bills and make
sure you're in the right spot, it could be a mess.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean every time I have this
conversation with somebody, I think there's so much a business
opportunity out there because there's a massive amount of people
that are going to fall into these categories and really
need help. And I always go back to like Golden Girls.
I don't know if you even know what that show is,
but I do like a really good idea we should

(21:26):
have like formal Golden Girls homes out there or something.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
That's hilarious because I've talked to several of my friends
over the last ten or fifteen years and I'm like,
I'm going to create a Golden Girls scenario. Are you
in with it? Because they don't have children either, and
they're like, oh, that's the coolest idea. Yes, I'm in
because you can do it. You set up the business
structure and you have call it a den mother or
whoever's in charge to take care of you and get

(21:51):
you to your doctor's appointment. You have a chef, whatever
things might be. But you can create your Golden Girls
scenario where a group of you can live together.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
And yeah, and honestly, there's I mean, this is so
off topic, but there's a little protection there because if
you're there with your friends and you bring caregivers or
whoever in, you're not alone and people you know are
watching what's happening. So that's a huge thing.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
And I feel that there's so many people aging and
there's going to be a stress on the system. Oh yeah,
at some point there will be there will be a
need for all types of scenarios, scenarios and set I agree.
So back when you said, like where do we start,

(22:36):
it's it's not the market that's always the uncertainty. It's
the clients coming in saying how do I know if
I have enough? And so by having a lot of
these conversations about measuring your money against a job that
needs to do, looking at the risks, they're all the
things that I wrote about in the book that can
give you the concept so you can keep going back

(22:56):
and saying, Okay, what do my numbers look like? Now?
How has it changed? What's changed with the sneaky risks,
the inflation and taxes and long term like do I
need to alter my plans or do I need to
update anything? And so I really wrote the book to
give the basic concepts to people that they can continue

(23:17):
to go back and look at their situation and it
doesn't matter if they've saved half a million dollars or
if they've saved five million dollars. The concepts are the same.
The numbers just keep changing.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, thank you, and you know, let's let's talk about
those numbers. So we talked a little bit about bad
math when we talked before, which I love to that term.
So can you talk a little about how that can
get in the way of things.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
I don't know where I came up with bad math
over the years, but it just bad math, bad math,
and someone will say something else is go bad math.
Stop saying that. I don't mean that people can't do math.
Work with our highly intelligent people, they can do math.
Sometimes they just want to avoid the math because they

(24:07):
don't want to think about it. Maybe they did put
the college education first, and maybe retirement took such a backseat.
Maybe during that time period they got downsized from their job,
so they're not in the same job. I have friends
of mine that my age. They have become downsized from
their jobs. They're still looking. So your trajectory changes over time,

(24:32):
and then all of a sudden, your situation has changing.
You're like, wow, I'm not making what I was. I
don't want to look at it. I see. I don't
want to look because I feel like it's overwhelming. Sometimes
people do want to look, but they just they don't
have the tools to run the projections. So they feel like, well,
maybe I have enough, but I'm just not sure. I

(24:54):
don't know how to run the numbers. I'm not the
mathematical brain. I don't have the software that I have,
and so I can run the numbers for them.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, and you know what do you see? I love that,
and you know it's so important this. I don't want
to look at my numbers. This comes up a lot
for me. I have a program that helps people build
their relationship with money, understanding all of the underlying decision
making that's going on, and then also just sort of

(25:24):
basic personal finance so that they can get to a
solid point where they can invest with somebody like you.
But a lot of people are in debt, or they're
not saving, or they don't have an emergency fund, or
they don't not a budget, you know, and things are
just really wonky, so it's sort of premature for them
to even get on this path. But what I see
so often is I would look at my numbers more.

(25:47):
But it depresses me when I look at my numbers,
or you know, just all kinds of comments, and it's
to your point, not wanting to look at your numbers.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
It can be depressing for people that are not in
the position that they would like to be in.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
However, to me, if you don't avoid the math and
you look at the math, you can make kind of
like big changes over time by making small shifts, okay,
And so you don't know what those small shifts could
be unless you do the math. Right, So, if you're

(26:24):
thinking specifically about retirement, if you do the math and
you're like, oh, you don't have enough to retire, well
take more risk, work a little longer, get a part
time job in retirement, spend a little less, do a combination.
But unless you know what your options are, how do
you make a decision. You just continue to go along
and avoid looking at the math just because you get depressed.

(26:47):
And so I understand that it can be challenging, but
I feel that when clients have the information and the numbers,
and even if they're small changes they can make, they
can feel more empowered and maybe not so depressed.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
I agree with you, and I think when it comes
to money, you know, we're big on learning the practical stuff.
We're not so big on building our own confidence, feeling empowered,
taking steps so that we can actually see what happens.
It's one thing to you know, read the textbook. It's
another thing to test it out, especially with things like investments,
you know. People my dad loved to He didn't have

(27:28):
a huge amount of money to play with, but he
was a good investor and he loved studying it. So
then he would do a lot of like practice investing,
you know, and put real money in just pretend, which
I think is a great way to learn actually, and I.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Find that when clients work with me, and same thing
with other advisors. Clients are advisors that do financial planning.
They do true financial planning. You may be depressed when
you first come in thinking I'm not I'm never going
to retire, I don't have enough money, whatever. But part
of what I do is they have your finance peace
with people. So I'm trying to understand where they're coming from.

(28:04):
Why are they feeling the way they do. Why do
they feel it's overwhelming and they're never going to accomplish
their goal. And then sometimes people can do the math,
but they can't do the math as detailed as I do,
and I can help reassure them of where they can
be in the future with some of the small changes
that they could make.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
I love that you bring up small changes I had
a money mindset coach years and years ago who would
always say small hinges swing big doors, And I mean,
it's so true, and I love the idea because we
can take small steps, we can do small things. That's
you know, we really can't argue against that. We can
go ahead and try things. And that's huge because, especially

(28:48):
in the financial world, things and small things make a difference,
and we don't see it because we think the numbers
need to be big and they don't always need to
be big. They need to be whatever they can be, basically,
but they need to be they need to be in
existence versus just waiting until we're making more, waiting until whatever.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Think about it, if you did the math yourself, or
had somebody like me do the math, a half a
percentage point different in the rate of return you might
earn on your longer term stuff a little bit, but
over the course of twenty years, that's a lot. A
little bit of tax savings every year, maybe it's a

(29:31):
little bit, but over the course of years it adds
up to a lot. Yeah, you know, if you manage
risk in your investments and have less volatility, it adds
up to a lot. So a lot of small things
can end up over the course of a few decades
adding up to be huge.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, and you bring up a great point, which is
talking to you early on and learning these things early
is of course going to buy you more opportunity for
the small things to make a big difference. The later
people come to you clearly things you know that complicates it.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
It's both. I've had people that come to me that
have millions of month dollars accumulated for their retirement and
you know what, They've worked, and they've worked, and they've worked,
and they've worked either as employee for a corporation or
they've built their own business, and they're so busy working
in building and working in building that they never had
a time to sit and look at where am I.

(30:29):
I recently had an executive that retired and that person
didn't fully understand the concept of taking a distribution from
the retirement plan on taxation, and I thought, wow, he's
very successful. It's because he never heed did a look
at it. It wasn't his thing. It was that he
was working and working and working and building and taking
care of the family, and it was never something he

(30:51):
had to learn. So why would he know and so
I find that younger individuals can actually use the topics
in my book to get started, because I can't work
with everybody. And part of the reason I wrote the
book is just to put the information out there in
the universe, so hopefully it can help some people that
need it and can't get to me. But also for

(31:12):
everyone to go back and continue to look at the
concepts compared to where they are right now.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, yeah, thank you. It's so so important to pay
attention and to stop your busy life now and then
I think have a regular routine about it. But yeah,
to learn and to know what they actually I until
I was taking care of my parents, I really didn't
understand the RMD thing either, So maybe it can just

(31:40):
I don't even know you ever talked about it on
the show. Just a real quick little what is it?

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah? Why would you if you're not there yet? It
may not be a topic you've ever read about or ever.
I mean, you may have heard the concept, but why
would you look into it because you're not there. An
RMD required minimum distribution is what it's called when you
have money in a retire plan and an IRA when
you reach age seventy three, the government requires you to

(32:06):
take a minimum out. So you might be in retirement
and you don't need any of that money to spend
because you have other sources of income, but the government
makes you take a certain dollar mount why they want
their tax money. You've had tax defer all these years.
They now come calling and they want their tax money,
so you have to take a distribution. Same thing with

(32:27):
inherited iras. The rules are a little bit different. They're
a little more complicated. We won't get into that, but
if you inherit an IRA from your spouse, or if
you inherit an IRA from a parent or a sibling
or somebody else, a non spouse, the rules are a
little bit different and you have to understand those and
have somebody to talk to know what to do.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, yeah, and that was that was pretty It was
pretty surprising to me, the tax part of it all.
I you know.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, So things become so complicated because if you if
you think about your situation, or pick anybody, things can
be so complicated between having enough money to cover your
current lifestyle saving for the future following tax law changes.
What did inflation do? Is inflation up? Is inflation down?

(33:20):
What are my health. There, like, there's so much changing
all the time. There is no.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Way for the average person to keep track of all
of this, right, right, there's not It's like many things.
I mean, we're okay with not being experts and you know,
how to repair our car, we just take it to
the mechanic and we don't think about it.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
But for some reason, yeah, yep, for some reason, it
is put in our brains that we should be experts
in our finances and that's not true. It's just way
too complicated.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, yeah, And so what we do need is a
good team though. I mean, you know, if you have
nobody to talk to about these things, you tend to
pick up information from odd places, and that's not so great.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
You need a very good team. You need a good
financial advisor, you need a good CPA, and you need
a good estate planning attorney.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And it's ideal if they can all
be talking to one another, which I don't see very
often either. You have to kind of force that one.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
And for my clients, I typically try to play quarterback
between the CPA and the attorney, because you're right, they
don't normally interact that much. But I can kind of
reach out because your CPA should not be giving investment advice,
I should not be giving tax advice or legal advice.
And the attorney can't give investment or tax advice everybody.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, and you can see already the crossover with the
tax and the taxes and the investments. And so you know,
planning strategically that you know your tax accountant is all
about saving taxes, but that may not work with your
plan for their investments. What he's suggesting or she.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Or there might be something I want to do and
I need to talk to the CPA to say, hey,
can I do X y Z? How will it impact
their taxes? Do you say yay or nay?

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah? Yeah, And you know, as the client, you think
that everybody's seeing the same picture. They're not. I mean,
your tax person is really focused on that aspect of
your financial life, and you're really focused on the investments
that that person has, and you're neither one. It was
really getting a complete picture of somebody's finances correct.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
And then throw the legal end in there, throw the
attorney and end in there.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, but I see so many people that just don't
always have the clarity about their situation and we haven't
even talked about business owners. I mean, I see so
many business owners that are wildly successful and have great
teams around them. And then I see business owners that
really started a business because they didn't want to work
for somebody else, so they just created a job. They

(35:58):
didn't create a business, and so they don't know the
math that they need to do in their business to
be successful, let alone what the business need to do
to cover the business and cover the personal. So it
gets even more complicated. So it just the whole scenario
is just complicated for people to understand and get help.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Get help. Yeah, and once you get help, that's when
it uncomplicates, you know, that's when you start to again.
You know, education in this area is empowerment you once
you understand things. I mean I see both. I see
people who really understand what's going on. I see people
who have no clue. And it's much more stressful for

(36:40):
the second group.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
And if you have a trusted advisor. I have a
client that just reached out to my office recently. In
one of her parents past unfortunately, and the surviving parent
is nervous, doesn't know quite what to do. And my
client said, I'm sending you all the financial statements help us.
And so the first step for me would be to

(37:02):
talk to my client and the parent to find out
what are they trying to do, why are they nervous,
what are they scared about, and then figure out where
to go from here. But the fact that my client
has me where she's watching her surviving parent be stressed out,
she instantly knew to pick up the phone and call
me and say I'm giving over the help us. We
don't know, we need to know.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, that's great, I mean, and you know, I also
see a lot of advisors and you're more than a
finance person. I mean, you really do become, you know,
a mentor for people, and on the on many fronts,
the human side, the emotional side that I mean, the

(37:47):
understanding of the bigger picture for financial advisors, and then
you know, the knowing the person as well and being
able to deal with them on a personal level is
really invaluable. I don't think people understand how how much
it changes things.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
And I don't necessarily know all advisors necessarily work the
way I necessarily grue. However, when I work with clients,
it's more of sitting down and listening to the numbers
and looking at the numbers, but listening to them so
I can hear what they're saying to me and kind
of ferret out what their concerns are, because if you

(38:25):
have a married couple, it doesn't mean they agree on everything, right,
So you might have one that wants to save as
much as they can save, and you might have the
other one out shopping every weekend or doing something else
that defeats the financial goals. Right about a year ago,
I was meeting with a client and reviewing their financial plan.

(38:47):
We were looking at their estate documents to see should
they go talk to their attorney and ask if it
needs to be updated, if there were any changes, And
so we started talking about everything, and I looked at
the couple and I said, you do know, if something
happened to both of you, how much money your children
are going to inherit? And they're like, yeah, it's good

(39:08):
to be a lot. Is so it's so still married
to their spouse. Yeah, yeah, you know, if that child
inherits all that money, that spouse is a major spender.
So that spouse is going to put undue pressure on
your child to buy the fancy car, buy the new house,

(39:31):
go on vacations, and that child is going to struggle
financially because the spouse is going to go put pressure.
Let alone, if they're divorced and they've commingled money, or
they go through divorce and they commingled money, that couple
of mine ran straight to the attorney within a week.
They had updated. They hadn't thought about my children are

(39:53):
good with money, but there's a spouse that's terrible, and
that spouse will create that undo influence and you can
put some guardrails in the estate documents that puts less
pressure on that child.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, people don't think about those things. So those are
the things I'm looking for and or talking to clients
of like what are we not seeing or looking at here?

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah? And you bring up a great point, which is
if you are looking regularly at your money and meeting
with your planner regularly, it's like peeling the layers of
the onion, because first it's about you know, and you know,
it could be just about some very basic things. But

(40:37):
as you get those down, then you can start looking
at other aspects of this. And that's what I find
with people who do spend, you know, they take the
time to pay attention to their money. You know, they
get to a point where they're redoing their budgets, they
get to a point where they're relooking at their insurances.
But if you're just sort of an emergency mode where
paying bills is like your main money interaction, you don't

(41:00):
get there. So yeah, yeah, it's a process. It's like
the other things that we do in our life, but
for some reason we don't do it with money. You know,
we pay attention to how each etc.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
And sometimes, like the changes that happened in our lives,
we choose it. I've had clients where, you know, they've
lost their their husband, their wife, and one person ended
up got it and got remarried to a spouse that
was ten years younger. Well, the numbers just changed in
terms of your plan because you're now your spouse is
ten years younger. I've had people that were completely set

(41:38):
and had all the bases covered in building their financial future,
and then something happened aka Hurricane Helene last year wiped
a lot of our homes out down here.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
And you know, there are a lot of people that
didn't have enough insurance, and it wasn't that they didn't
have enough. There's a cap on how much you can
get when it comes to flood. So there were a
lot of people with expensive homes that their financial situation
is totally different today and it wasn't anything that they
could plan for, but now they have to live through

(42:07):
it and change their numbers and change what they're doing.
So it could be changes in our life, could be
things that we pick, and could be things to just
get thrown at us.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Absolutely, absolutely, and that's really what the uncertainty that you
were talking about at the very beginning. So regardless of
what the markets are doing, your own life is, you know,
having its own ups and downs regardless of market changes.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
And that's really why I wrote the book, Yeah, because
it's just to give somebody a roadmap of what do
I keep going back and relooking at as my life changes.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, and that's great. So I'd really love for people
to buy your book. Actually, so Fearless Finance, And obviously
you can get it at bookstores and things, but.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Now let me tell you that, so you actually cannot
buy the book. I didn't to sell it because I'm
in the financial industry, so we have wonky rules sometimes
because I use it in my business. It's not for sale.
I will give it to anybody who requests a copy.
Oh wow, so in order to and that's just my thing,

(43:14):
Karma out, karma back. So if I give the book
to enough people, hopefully it will help a lot of
people get clarity around their situation. And then there will
be those people that reach out to me that need
help beyond reading the book. But if you send an
email to our office email and Pavid Wealth Advisors at

(43:35):
AMPF dot com, which I know you'll put on your
information after this, yes, and just say hey, I would
like a copy of the book. Give me your name,
name an address, and we'll send you a copy. But yes,
it is not for sale because I never intended it
to be that way.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Well I love that. So people can just reach out
and get the book, which is great.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Okay, the book.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Okay, that's wonderful. Thank you. And yeah, you just reconfirmed
to me how the guests that come on are just
so lovely and most of you are really wanting to
sincerely help people. In this financial world.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
People get enough bombardment about investment stuff. I think they
need a little bombardment on financial planning and how to
figure out your math, So you have smart math, yeah,
rather than bad math.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
That's great. And yeah, that's wonderful. So thank you so much.
And yeah, the whole investment world is available to you,
but there are a lot of things to know before
you know, you tackle that one. I think, so thank
you so much. Thank you so much for your time,
thank you for coming on the show, thank you for
sharing all your wisdom, and for that wonderful book offer.

(44:54):
So that's great.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
We're quite welcome. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah. Can you tell people as well how to reach
out to you? If I mean, can you work with
people everywhere? What's your situation?

Speaker 2 (45:04):
I can work with people in most of the United States,
just depends on where I'm license, and I can always
get a license, so domestically the United States. And to
reach me, you can also send an email to them
Pavid Wealth Advisors at AMPF dot com, or you just
simply call my office which is eight one three three
one nine zero zero one one, or if you'd like

(45:27):
to fly to Tampa, Florida, you can see me in
person a non hurricane season.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Well, Laura, thank you so so much. I think this
was great, a lot of information and I just I
hope through shows like this that people are just getting
more comfortable, just feeling like they can talk to people
about these things they shouldn't be ashamed of wherever they
are in life or whatever they have set up already.
I mean, that whole thing is ridiculous at this point,
and I hope people are feeling that. And I'm sure

(45:58):
if they come to you, you're not going to make
them feel anything about that.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Just only hoped.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
So yeah, okay, well, thank you, thank you for coming on,
Thank you for everything, and yes I will be putting
all the information in the show notes so people can
find you and find the book perfect.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Okay, all right, have a great day an audience. Thank
you so much for watching and listening to the Money
and You show. You can find us on all the
podcast platforms. You can find us on the Limit for
you Life YouTube channel, and I would love it if
you would share the show. So when you listen to
a show like this one and you think, ooh, I
know somebody who could use this information, please share the show.

(46:37):
Please get people to subscribe, but give us a rate
and a review if you want to. If you enjoyed
the show, we would love that that just helps us
to bring on more great guests like Laura. So thank
you and pod Experience the new name, Thank you for
producing the show. Tony and your new Pod Experience, thank
you so much, and yeah, we will see you next week.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Tott to expect people