#33 How to Turn This Financial Crisis into a Financial Win

Eric Brotman, CFP, gives his strategies for turning this financial crisis and recession into a financial win for your family. Resources mentioned in this episode: Free Budget Spreadsheet: https://leads.budgetsmadeeasy.com/budget-sheet Full transcript: Welcome to the money mindset podcast, where you will find the inspiration and motivation. You need to manage your money better. So you can stress less and live the life you want. This is Ashley with budgets made easy and the money mindset podcast. Today, we are talking to Eric Brotman, who is a CFP and the CEO of BFG financial advisors. And he is the host of don't retire, graduate podcasts. So don't retire, graduate.com, check out his podcast is well. And he's going to give us some great advice for families on how to take advantage of certain things during this financial crisis. You know, if you can, if you're still working, he's got some really great tips on lowering your tax burden and some things that you can do to take advantage of certain things happening right now in the financial world. So you can take this crisis and turn it into a financial win. And so he's got some really great ideas on how to do that. Now, before we jump into his episode, be sure to go and check out my free spreadsheet. I put together a spreadsheet after years of people asking me to, and you can get a free one month sheet of that, or you can get the whole year, you get a special offer for the whole year. Once you sign up for the free sheet, go to www.leads.budgetsmadeeasy.com/budget-sheet. So go get your free paycheck budget spreadsheet. So this is the same spreadsheet that I use when we were paying off debt. It's broken down by Paychex. Plus you got a monthly view. Now, keep in mind the free sheet isn't as detailed as the yearly sheet. So if you want the yearly sheet, look for that. Once you sign up for the free sheet as well. Now, here is my interview with Eric. Hi Eric. Thank you so much for being with us today. Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me. I am. So I'm excited to talk to you today. Um, it's my understanding that you've got some good advice for families in different stages, what to do with their finances right now during this whole crisis. And, um, I really want to talk to you about that today, but can you just kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself? Absolutely. I'm a certified financial planner practitioner started a company, in 2003 in suburban, Maryland actually started my practice in 1994. So I'm dating myself. I realized at this moment we have 20 employees, each of us working from 20 different homes, which is a new experience, but, uh, eight financial advisors, 20 employees, we manage about $450 million for families in 31 and a few foreign countries. And we do financial planning and wealth management for multigenerational families. So in my spare time, I'm a husband and a father and a podcaster and author and a volunteer. Yes, as I was just hearing about your book coming out soon. So I'm excited to hear about that as well. So, um, you know, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on right now and I know people are scared and, you know, we don't know what the economy and everything is going to look like on the other side of this thing. Um, so, you know, what kind of advice would you give to families right now? Like, is there anything that they should be doing differently? Well, I think in each case, it depends upon the family situation somewhat. Um, right now there are a lot of families who are experiencing sudden job loss and for those families, um, the things to do differently are, are really based on almost triaged. You just have to get through this period of time, however long it lasts. And that's easier said than done sometimes. So for, for families, who've had sudden job loss. Uh, the first thing to do is to sort of take, uh, take inventory of resources, figure out what you're going to live on for the next couple of months, in addition to unemployment, uh, and, and really make a plan for getting back to work at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. So, um, there's not as much opportunity quite candidly for folks who are out of work. And that's obviously a sad situation, um, for folks who are still able to work through this. I think we'll look back on this five years from now, not only as being memorable and remarkable on so many social levels, but also as being one of the great opportunities of a generation. Um, you know, we've seen some of this before in the Y2K epidemic, uh, in 99 and 2000, we certainly saw it in the great recession in Oh eight Oh nine and every decade or so there's some new crisis, some new wrinkle that causes economic turmoil and there are always winners and losers in those deals. And usually it's based on behavior, not circumstance. So, yeah, so that said, um, for young families, Ashley, this is an opportunity for young families who are working to continue to dollar cost, average, continue to add to yo