financial planning

YFP 263: The Intersection of Financial Literacy and The Energy Burden

Posted on July 7, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

The Intersection of Financial Literacy and The Energy Burden

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, Diamond Spratling, an impact-driven environmental health professional and non-profit leader, discusses her TEDx talk, The Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing The Root Causes of Energy Burden.

About Today’s Guest

Diamond Spratling is an impact-driven environmental health professional and non-profit leader motivated to mitigate health, racial, and environmental inequities in Black and Brown communities. She is the founder of Girl Plus Environment, a national non-profit organization designed to educate, engage, and empower Black and Brown girls, women, and non-binary individuals to stand up for environmental justice in their own neighborhoods.

The Detroit native and 2021 & 2022 TEDx speaker has spent more than six years at the forefront of environmental justice. Ms. Spratling has led many environmental and health initiatives for cities and organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bloomberg Associates, WaterAid International, and Greenlink Analytics.

Episode Summary

America is in an energy burden crisis. In today’s show, we will unpack what energy burden means, the root causes of energy and utility burden, and how financial literacy and education play a role in combating energy burden. Joining YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, is environmental health professional and nonprofit leader, Diamond Spratling. We discuss Diamond’s TED X Talk, “The Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing Root Causes of Energy Burden,” where she addresses this crisis. In that talk, Diamond shares the disparities of energy burden for low-income communities in the United States typically made up of people of color. After Diamond shares her professional background and how she ended up in environmental health, the conversation moves to the three aspects of environmental justice and her definition of energy burden. Listeners will learn about the correlation between income and energy burden, how and why America is failing in financial literacy education, some ideas on how to implement financial literacy education in America, and why all people should learn about financial literacy from an early age. Diamond provides background and insight into the why and how of her non-profit organization, Girl Plus Environment. Through Girl Plus Environment, Diamond engages black and brown girls, women, and nonbinary individuals in all forms of environmental justice.

Key Points From This Episode

A warm introduction to today’s guest, Diamond Spratling
Diamond’s educational and professional background.
How she got into doing the work that she’s involved in today.
Her definition of environmental justice.
Breaking down the three aspects of environmental justice: Earth, built, and social.
What energy burden is and why our guest decided to speak about it.
Why income is a big factor of energy burden.
What an acceptable energy burden percentage looks like.
Energy burden versus utility burden.
Taking a look at some of the root causes of energy burden.
Why America is failing in financial literacy education.
How to implement financial literacy education in America.
The importance of educating the youth as early as possible.
Diamond provides a link between improved financial literacy and the energy burden crisis.
What Girl + Environment is and why she brought it to fruition.

Highlights

“I can work at the intersection of both environments with justice and health equity. Understanding that both are very important and both highly impact each other.” – Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:05:21]

“In the clean energy sector, we often focus so much on the environmental side of things but neglect this whole other side of energy burden, which is income.” — Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:09:48]

“There’s a lot of disparities in income and race as well that we have to be able to first, understand and identify, but also try to mitigate and eliminate.” — Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:14:19]

“We need to think hard about why are we not putting financial literacy in the classrooms, especially in communities that have generational poverty.” — Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:17:15]

“I saw a gap in who understood what environmental justice was in comparison to who was at the forefront of the justice movement.” — Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:24:24]

“How do we know how to protect ourselves if we don’t even know that environmental racism exists?” — Diamond Spratling, MPH [0:25:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Diamond Spratling, an impact-driven, environmental health professional and nonprofit leader, to talk about her TED X talk: “The Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing the Root Causes of Energy Burden.” During the show, we discuss what environmental justice is, the root causes of energy burden, how financial literacy and education can play a role in combatting energy burden, and why Diamond started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that shares educational resources tools and information to get black and brown girls, women and nonbinary individuals excited and engaged in all forms of environmental justice.

Before we hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers free only, high-touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Diamond Spratling.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top-rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies, so pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and makes sure all of your questions get answered.

To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contract from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:23.9] TU: Well, I’m excited to welcome Diamond Spratling to the YFP Podcast. Diamond is an impact-driven environmental health professional and nonprofit leader, motivated to mitigate health, racial and environmental inequities in black and brown communities. She’s the founder of Girl + Environment, a national nonprofit organization, designed to educate, engage and empower black and brown girls, women, and nonbinary individuals to stand up for environmental justice in their own neighborhoods.

Diamond is a Detroit native and 2021 and 2022 TED X speaker that has spent more than six years at the forefront of environmental justice. Diamond has had many environmental and health initiatives for cities and organizations such as the CDC, Bloomberg Associates, Water Aid International and Green Link Analytics. Diamond, welcome to the show.

[0:03:09.9] DS: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

[0:03:12.4] TU: Well, this is a rare opportunity and we crossed paths somewhat unexpectedly at the TED X Bowling Green State University event. I had the opportunity to get to know you a little bit as a co-speaker but also to watch your talk on energy burden, with the focus on financial literacy as an opportunity, financial educational literacy as an opportunity to really get out some of the root causes around energy burden.

Which I thought would make for a great interview on the show, so I really appreciate you taking time to come on. We’re going to talk about, and I’ll link in the show notes to your TED X talk, “The Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing the Root Causes of Energy Burden,” for folks that want to go and watch that. Before we get into the topic, love to hear more about your background, where you went to school, what you studied and what drew you into the work that you’re doing today.

[0:03:57.9] DS: Yes, absolutely. So, I started my undergraduate career at Bowling Green. I started in 2014 and I studied environmental policy and analysis, with a specialization in international perspectives. So for me, I guess, growing up, I was always more that typical environmentalist and save the polar bears, save the trees type of work.

It wasn’t until I had an internship, my second year at Bowling Green, where I was working at the intersection of energy policy in health equity. I learned about all of the different disparities between different communities that we saw in our environment, how it impacted our health, and, for me, that was very triggering, especially being a black woman. I felt like, “Wow, all of these disparities and health implications that we’re seeing are in communities where I essentially grew up.”

So I was like, okay, all the more earth side of things and the trees and things like that, those are important but I need to center, recenter my work and what I want to do in the next couple of years. So basically, I decided that I would shift gears a little bit and get into the public health side of things when it came to the environment.

After I graduated from Bowling Green in 2018, I went directly to Emory University to get a master at public health at the Rowland School of Public Health, so that I can work at the intersection of both environments with justice and health equity. Understanding that both are very important and both highly impact each other. So that’s basically how I got into the sector and I’ve been in the sector for about six years since then.

[0:05:37.0] TU: So, you already mentioned one term that I think we’re going to visit often throughout the show, which is environmental justice. Another is energy burden. I want to take a moment to define these terms. Let’s start with environmental justice. How do you define environmental justice?

[0:05:49.8] DS: Yeah, absolutely. So often, we go back to this definition that I’ve seen on the department of energy and I think that they do a really good job in making sure that when we talk about environmental justice, we’re talking more so about the human impact and human implications from our environment.

So when we talk about safe drinking water, air pollution, how does that impact our environment, specifically people who are disproportionately impacted by our environment? So, a lot of times, those are low-income communities and those are also communities of color.

So, environmental justice, since there’s this aspect of making sure that those who are disproportionately impacted by our environment are at the forefront of those decisions, and being able to have access to environmental resources that helps improve their overall mental health, physical health, and just like wellbeing as a human rights.

[0:06:38.8] TU: You talk on your website, which we’ll link in the show notes, Girls + Environment, you talk about three different aspects of environmental justice around the earth environment, the built environment, and the social environment. Can you break those down a little bit further?

[0:06:51.1] DS: Yes, absolutely. And I’ll just flag, we’re very intentional in making sure that we are interdisciplinary with how we consider environmental justice. So, traditionally, in the past, people in this sector have usually looked at this earth environment side of things, and so do we have access to safe drinking water, clean air, landfills, waste, pollution, different things like that. So that’s more so our earth environment, but I think that those have huge implications on other parts of our environments too.

We also look at our built environment. Our built environment can be, for example, do I have access to a safe park near me? What is the walkability in my neighborhood, are there sidewalks for me to even run or ride my bike, are there bike lanes? So many things, all the way down to having access to a grocery store, can be considered a part of our built environment.

The last concept that we look at is our social environment. That gives it more the feeling of feeling welcomed in your environment, feeling like you have a place. So, is there a YMCA place in my neighborhood or boys and girls club or some type of community group of people who either have shared experiences as me, look like me, or somewhere that I have a support system that can help me through everyday life situations and things like that?

We look very interdisciplinary in our environments but also, understanding that all three of these pillars have everything to do with racial justice and health equity and even just thinking about our life expectancy and quality of life.

[0:08:20.3] TU: In your TED X talk at BG, the title again, “Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing the Root Causes of Energy Burden.” Define for us, what is energy burden? And, why did you decide that this was the topic that you wanted to share about?

[0:08:34.7] DS: Yeah, absolutely. So energy burden is basically this concept of, how much are you paying for your energy or utility bills every month and in comparison to how much money you are actually bringing in each month. So, it looks at two different things, the amount of your bills that you’re having to pay but also, your income. Your annual household income.

So basically, if you just do, I like a sample of formula, you basically just divide both of those numbers. You’re able to get what your percent of energy burden is and, for a lot of households, if you have an energy burden of over 10 percent, then you are considered severely energy burdened.

As back to the TED talk, what I would say is, my primary reason for censoring it around this concept of energy burden is that a lot of times, especially in the clean energy space, we focus so much on, “Let’s get this renewable energy out there. We need to invest in solar power. Why don’t you have solar panels on your roof or wind energy?”, and things like that.

It’s like wow, all of those things are great but look at the affordability. If I can barely pay my energy bills, how do you expect me to invest in all this really cool technology, as far as renewable energy? I felt like, in the clean energy sector, we often focus so much on the environmental side of things but neglect this whole other side of energy burden, which is income.

A lot of families are not making enough income to even pay their bills. So, having to pay an energy bill or utility bill, that’s a significant burden for people, even more than we think about, from the environmental side of things.

[0:10:10.8] TU: That was really what caught my attention actually, in the practice session we did the day before. When you talked about this heightened focus on some of the clean energy things, whether it’s windmills or solar panels or other things, which obviously have value and purpose, and the technology is being advanced but if we’re not addressing some of the core infrastructure and the core issues, are we out of order, right?

I often think about investing, when we talk about it on this show, there are steps to investing, like hey, if your employer offers a match with your retirement accounts that’s low hanging fruit, you take it, and then we progress that investing plan to more brokerage accounts and other things and often, we may do those things out of order, and that really struck me of, you know, great conversations.

I think often, those gather headlines and perhaps have some political motivations that are behind them, but are we really getting to the root cause of what is necessary around energy burden? Just put numbers to your definitions. So, if energy burden as percent of annual household income spent on energy bill.

So round numbers, if someone makes $100,000 a year and they’re spending $3,000 on energy bills, they would be looking at 3 percent and you mentioned greater than 10 percent is considered a substantial burden. Is there a normal or an average or an acceptable that we would look at as a percentage?

[0:11:21.8] DS: Yeah, so around 3 percent is around like the average energy burden across the US, three, 3.5 percent. If you are above five or 6 percent, then that means that you are highly energy burdened and then if you are above 10 percent, that means you are severely energy burdened.

[0:11:39.9] TU: Okay, that makes sense and it’s just like electricity in terms of gas and electric, is this also inclusive of water? How do you typically define this when we look at the utilities?

[0:11:50.5] DS: Yeah, so when we say energy burden, we are mostly looking at gas and electric but you can also say utility burden and that will then include your water bills as well.

[0:12:02.2] TU: So, as we just alluded to, some of these other solutions around clean energy may not be addressing the root cause. So, the natural question that is, what are the root causes as it relates to the energy burden? I really found this part of your TED X talk fascinating. So talk to us about some of the root causes related to the energy burden and then we’ll talk about the financial literacy piece as a potential solution.

[0:12:20.9] DS: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I talk about in my TED talk is this concept of housing and also, even just redlining, which I know we think like redlining happened tons of years ago but unfortunately, lots of communities in neighborhoods are still bearing that burden.

So, when we talk about housing, like for example, I can run my air-conditioning unit all day or even just an hour, but if I don’t have proper housing conditions, if the structure of my home is horribly put together or very old, if I don’t have tons of insulation in my home, then it’s really doing nothing.

I’m just running the air conditioning or the heat all day for it to not even cool down or heat up my home. That’s a huge issue right there thinking about housing, especially when we think about section eight housing. I mean, those homes are poorly structured, rarely ever updated or invested in and therefore, a lot of those homes have to constantly run electricity.

I mean, if you think about what happened in the Bronx about a couple of months ago, there was that huge section eight housing fire, which resulted in the fact that people were freezing cold in their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay for the electric, or they’re running the gas from their stove which we know is very unsafe, or just using space heaters which also can be unsafe as well.

So, housing is definitely an issue here, but the other thing that I often like to bring up is just this concept of income disparities and thinking about communities of color, especially black communities, how much we are getting paid in relation to our white counterparts. So, again, when you go back to this concept of energy burden, it’s not just how much you have to pay for utility bills, it’s how much annual income you’re bringing in, in the first place.

We’re already set back by whatever the difference is between white counterparts and black communities and how much we’re bringing in financially every year, that’s a huge impact in itself as well. I think there’s a lot of disparities in income and race as well that we have to be able to first, understand and identify, but also try to mitigate and eliminate these issues as well.

[0:14:30.7] TU: Yeah, and I think it’s so important to go back to the definition, two parts of the equation, right? The utilization and then the utilization relative to the income, and I think you just articulated so well some income gap and challenges, and I think on the utilization, we’re not talking here about, “Oh, I’d like to keep my home at 75 degrees when it could be 72. We’re talking about infrastructure problems that lead to unnecessary high burdens on energy use, and I think that concept, to me, was really something you articulated so well.

Let’s talk about some financial literacy piece as a potential solution. Obviously, this is a multipronged issue as well as an approach that’s needed to address it, and I just wanted for a moment talk about some statistics that were reported by the University of Chicago around financial education and literacy, and we’ll link to these in the show notes, and then I’ll get your thoughts, Diamond, a little bit on why is the financial literacy so inadequate in this country and what are some of the potential solution.

So, I’ll read a couple of these, nearly 50 percent of high school seniors say they wish they learned personal finance in school. That is according to discovery education in 2018. A recent study finds that differences in financial knowledge account for 30 to 40 percent of retirement wealth inequality and that’s from a 2017 study by Lucardi et al. A 2016 survey indicated at 31 percent of young Americans agreed that their high school education did a good job teaching them healthy financial habits. Bank of America, 2016, meaning that the majority did not think that.

A study from FINRA in 2015, students exposed to various financial educations at high school saw their credit scores increased by an average of 20 points and their probability of delinquency reduced. I mean, these go on and on but it impacts retirement savings, it impacts the ability to deal with energy bills in the moment, it deals with access to housing through credit and other issues.

As you hear those statistics, why has this been an area that we just have not done a good job, around financial education and literacy?

[0:16:26.2] DS: Yeah, that’s a big question. I mean, it’s hard to even find the why. A lot of those statistics were from students or from professionals who thought back to their education in high school and I mean, even thinking about my personal experiences, I’ve never taken a financial literacy class and I think that that’s true for a lot of us. As to why they don’t teach it to us, I have absolutely no idea.

I mean, a part of me is thinking, on the back of my head like of course, they don’t want all of us to know how to protect ourselves financially, you know? They want the rich to get richer and you know, whatever the case may be, but I think that it has had a continuous toll on us because I mean, it is not just the financial issue, it is a public health issue, a mental health and everything else.

I think that we need to think hard about why are we not putting financial literacy in the classrooms, especially in communities that have generational poverty, especially because how else do we get rid of that cycle if there isn’t really a generation that is being taught what to do as far as our finances.

[0:17:35.4] TU: Yeah and I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think we’re finally starting to see a little bit of traction on recognition to your comment about it’s not just about the dollars. It is a public health, it’s a mental health issue. We’re finally starting to see financial wellness as a key component of wellness and that is certainly a new development I think in the last several years, but it’s long overdue.

We’re starting to see more states, Ohio, finally coming onboard with requiring some personal finance education literacy through the K12 program. That really is baseline and we certainly know from our experiences in undergraduate and professional programs in pharmacy education, despite the awareness that we continue to bring to the topic, it’s slowly developing, but it’s slow, right?

I think there may be some baggage of, “Well, this is a pharmacy degree. We’re not here to talk about personal finance.” But to be an effective clinician, be an overall wellbeing, this is an important part of it, just like we address mental health with our students, right? Just like we talk about other public health issues. So, let me ask you in terms of where we go, sure, we could dwell on why this hasn’t been the case or where we go.

Are there programs or initiatives that you’ve seen to be successful in this area around financial literacy and education? If so, what do they look like? Who is offering? When are they starting them or if not, what do you perceive to be the ideal place of how we implement financial literacy and education?

[0:18:57.4] DS: Yeah, that’s a great question and I’ll probably have to get back to you on this, specific resources. What I would say as far as what I think is most ideal and most critical here, is definitely centering financial literacy in education as young as possible. It is never too young to learn about financial literacy, and I think also, when we use students to learn about financial literacy, then a lot of that gets reflected onto the parents because many other times it’s a generational cycle to instill.

The kids may even know how to protect themselves financially but parents may not. So I think that parenting programs are just as critical as well because you don’t know what you don’t know and so you lean on, “Oh, well my parents did this” or “My parents told me not to get a credit card” or anything like that. So we go based off of what people who we know have done or have not done.

I would say definitely centering conversations in literacy that are directly within the community, that are targeting both students and parents and even grandparents, and being able to provide those resources on a generational side of things, as opposed to just like, “Here is some resources. Good luck” those are, you know, it’s a small piece but I think also just drilling things into people like many, many times.

I think that that’s very, very critical. My boyfriend actually teaches a generational wealth class on Sundays to my family and he’s like, “Well, I thought I already covered this?” I was like, “Cover it again.” Cover it a million times because people need, you know, we want things to be drilled into us as many times as possible. I think doing that and making sure that it is very community centered and family centered is all the better, especially when building that trust with people.

Because traditionally, we’ve been told not to do this and not to do that but really, it’s not always the case, especially when it comes to different financial advice as well.

[0:20:49.3] TU: I love that. I love the focus on community-specific, community-centered. I love the aspect of the family-centered, you know, bringing in the education that includes the families at large. I think the other thing, I am linking those two, research has been done on drug abuse education and really the importance of starting that as early as the pre-k level and it’s longitudinal throughout.

I think something similar in the personal finance space, that it’s got to be early. As life goes on, we carry more baggage with us about finances. We start to hear more stories and scripts and it impacts us, and the longer we go, the harder it is to change. So I think the earlier we can start the conversation, the more longitudinal it can be in the repetition and, to your point, that can happen overtime is so important.

So what do you see, I mean perhaps obvious, perhaps not so obvious, but what do you see is the direct link between improved financial literacy and education and the energy burden crisis?

[0:21:43.5] DS: Definitely. So I think that there are a lot of components here, especially when it comes to education. I mean, a lot of the advocacy or the work that I talk about often goes back to education, because we know that education is linked to how much you know about a specific topic, down to how much you’re potentially going to get paid or your percentage of going to college and things like that.

I think that being able to one, educated ourselves or to be able to have access to education is a concept within itself because a lot of us don’t have access and don’t have good quality educational systems that can help us to earn higher amounts of income every year. A lot of that goes into what’s your education, what did you learn, are you going to go to college for example, which I know college has implications on the financial side of things.

But being able to understand whether or not we have access to an educational system that advocates for us to be able to earn more income, but I think also when we think about this education system, the side of education within the housing and knowing what to look for when buying homes or being able to be in a position where you can own a home, because the impacts that renters, people who rent a home versus people who own a home, there are tons of energy burden disparities with between that too.

So, if you are renting a home, you have less autonomy on even being able to make updates or changes to your home that helps to lower your energy bill, as opposed to someone who, “Oh, I own this home so I may be able to make updates to my house” because a lot of times landlords are like, “Oh, well I don’t care. You need to pay the bill on the first regardless.” So that’s a huge concept too when it comes down to being in a position where you can own a home or purchase a home as well.

[0:23:31.0] TU: Yeah and I think, you know, as I think about the financial literacy, I could see the connection, as you mentioned, to some of the education and the awareness around owning versus renting and updates that you can make to your home or what to look more in buying a home, but it still feels like there is a core issue. You know, I’m thinking about folks that had been in homes for 10, 20, 30 years.

Income gaps have already been established, not to say there can’t be movement or change, but there has to be some changes in advocacy for housing changes and infrastructure and things that may be dependent of the individual and their own financial education literacy and their own financial position as well. Talk to us Diamond about Girls + Environment, what is it? Why did you start it and what are you hoping to accomplish?

[0:24:12.0] DS: Yeah, of course. So Girls + Environment, we are a national organization, we’re a 501 (c) (3). I actually started it my first year at Emory, so back in 2019, and I created it because I essentially saw a gap in who understood what environmental justice was in comparison to who was at the forefront of the justice movement.

So for me, back in 2016 when I was doing my internship first learning about environmental justice, I remember being so fueled up because I learned there were asthma rates in Black and Latino communities that were skyrocketed, and I was just so mad about the air pollution and the asthma rates comparison, and so this was back when Facebook was really popping.

I would go on Facebook and type these long statuses about how mad I was and try to educate my family and friends and no one was really interacting with the posts. They’re like, “What are you talking about?” I realized that, okay, we are experiencing the greatest amount of environmental burdens but none of us even know what’s going on in our own backyards, that’s a huge issue.

How do we know how to protect ourselves if we don’t even know that environmental racism exists? So for me, that was a huge problem and I wanted to get more people who look like me at the forefront of the sector, so Girl + Environment was created specifically so that we can educate black and brown communities on what environmental justice is, engage them in the sector and empower them to be leaders in the sector.

So that they can stand up for themselves and their neighborhoods, but in a very fun and creative way too because I also acknowledge that there is tons of papers out there, literature, but no one wants to read that. Give it to me straight, give it to me in a fine creative way, that is why you’ll see on our page it’s very fun. It’s supposed to be very engaging so that people don’t even realize, “Oh, I’m learning about environmental justice right now.”

Yeah, you sure are, and you’re learning about how it impacts you, your health, your mental health and everything else. So, that is basically why Girl + Environment was created and in the pipeline, we have tons of just different programs that we are putting together. We actually just got funded by Al Gore’s organization for protecting our energy project, which helps to educate black and brown women in Atlanta about energy burden and to put them at the forefront at Georgia’s energy policy process that’s going on this summer.

[0:26:33.9] TU: Wow, congratulations. That’s awesome.

[0:26:35.8] DS: Thank you.

[0:26:37.3] TU: Yeah, no offense to the Department of Energy or research papers but they’re boring, right? I think the platform you’ve created, I love the vision, I love the platform. It’s girl+environment.org. From there you could join the community, you can look at projects that are ongoing, you can read the blog, you can donate, and get involved. So I love the vision of what you’ve created and we’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

So for folks that Diamond want to follow the work that you’re doing and the journey that you’re on, where is the best place that they can go to do that?

[0:27:04.0] DS: Yeah, absolutely. So you can go on our website, girl+environment.org. We’re also on Twitter @girlenvironment and on Instagram @girl+environment and then you can also follow us on Facebook, Girl + Environment and my personal LinkedIn is just my name, Diamond Spratling and I am also on Twitter as @diamondsprat but I’ll be sure to send you all of those links and things like that in case it’s helpful.

[0:27:28.2] TU: Awesome. We’ll include those in the show notes to go along with the TED X talk again, The Secret to Clean Energy: Addressing the Root Causes of Energy Burden. Diamond, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

[0:27:38.0] DS: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:27:42.1] TU: Before we wrap up today’s show, let’s hear an important message from our sponsor, Insuring Income. If you are in the market to add own occupation disability insurance, term life insurance or both, Insuring Income would love to be your resource. Insuring Income has relationships with all of the high quality disability insurance and life insurance carriers you should be considering and can help you design coverage to best protect you and your family.

Head over to insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist or click on their link in the show notes to request quotes, ask a question or start down your own path of learning more about this necessary protection

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:28:18.9] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 261: YFP Planning Case Study #2: Planning for Retirement, Saving for Kids’ College, and Paying Off Debt

Posted on June 23, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

YFP Planning Case Study #2: Planning for Retirement, Saving for Kids’ College, and Paying Off Debt

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® is joined by YFP Planning Lead Planners, Kelly Reddy-Heffner, CFP®, CSLP®, CDFA®, and Robert Lopez, CFP® to walk you through a financial planning case study on planning for retirement, saving for kids’ college, and paying off debt.

About Today’s Guests

Kelly Reddy-Heffner, CFP®, CSLP®, CDFA®

Kelly Reddy-Heffner, CFP®, CSLP®, CDFA® is a Lead Planner at YFP Planning. She enjoys time with her husband and two sons, riding her bike, running, and keeping after her pup ‘Fred Rogers.’ Kelly loves to cheer on her favorite team, plan travel, and ironically loves great food but does not enjoy cooking at all. She volunteers in her community as part of the Chambersburg Rotary. Kelly believes that there are no quick fixes to financial confidence, and no guarantees on investment returns, but there is value in seeking trusted advice to get where you want to go. Kelly’s mission is to help clients go confidently toward their happy place.

Robert Lopez, CFP®

Robert Lopez, CFP®, is a Lead Planner at YFP Planning. Along with his team members, Kimberly Bolton, CFP®, and Savannah Nichols, he helps YFP Planning clients on their financial journey to live their best lives. To go along with his CFP® designation, Robert has a B.S. in Finance and an M.S. in Family Financial Planning. Prior to his career in financial planning, Robert worked as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician in the United States Air Force. Although no longer on active duty, he still participates as a member of the Air Force Reserves. When not working, Robert enjoys being outdoors, playing co-ed volleyball and kickball, catching a game of ultimate frisbee, or hiking with his wife Shirley, young son Spencer, and their dogs, Meeko and Willow.

Episode Summary

What are your retirement goals, and do your investments align with your vision of the future? Welcome to another episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® is joined by YFP Planning Lead Planners, Kelly Reddy-Heffner, CFP®, CSLP®, CDFA®, and Robert Lopez, CFP®, to walk you through a financial planning case study on planning for retirement, saving for kids’ college, and paying off debt. This is our second case study, and this time we hone in on the lives of a fictitious couple, Fiona and Rob Anderson. We examine their financial portfolios, from salaries and debt to their investment accounts and insurance policies. Listeners will learn about Rob and Fiona’s retirement goals and whether they have invested in the right ways to achieve them. The problem of conflicting goals rises to the surface, and Kelly and Robert share how you can manage to prioritize your children’s college education with your own retirement plan. Kelly and Robert touch on innovative ways to spend less on college while giving us invaluable advice on making your investments work for you. Delaying your retirement and waiting to claim your Social Security are helpful methods in ensuring cash flow during retirement. Finally, we get a glimpse at what paying a mortgage during retirement is like, and whether there is reason to panic.

Key Points From This Episode

Getting to know Fiona and Rob Anderson.
The home, work, and financial portfolios of our case study couple.
Fiona and Rob’s investment accounts and insurance policies.
Diving into tax concerns.
Your children’s education versus building your retirement fund – conflicting goals.
How to prioritize conflicting goals.
Some innovative ways to lower the costs of college/university.
How to use 401Ks, RSUs, and other investment accounts wisely, for investing in your goals.
Delaying retirement and waiting to claim Social Security.
A closer look at whether their particular investment accounts work for their specific goals.
Unpacking the target date fund and traditional IRA.
What to consider when paying a mortgage in retirement.
Your age concerning your debt, and if there is reason to panic.

Highlights

“You can take out loans for school, but you can’t take out loans for your own retirement. So make sure you take care of yourself first.” —Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:08:20]

“It’s really like golden handcuffs. It’s a way for a company to make sure that you’re not going to want to leave, ‘Hey, here’s this money, but you have to stay here to get it.’” — Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:18:25]

“Taking those dollars that you feel are being wasted and putting them towards something that you actually feel pain over, is huge.” — Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:21:00]

“Things happen unexpectedly. So, having your documents in place is important, and it makes it a lot simpler and less chaotic.” — Kelly Reddy-Heffner, CFP®, CSLP®, CDFA® [0:24:20]

“The emotional variable, I can’t calculate for.” —Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:32:12]

“‘Money is power.’ But money is not power. Options are power. Having the option to do different things, and having the ability to make different plans is powerful.” — Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:35:02]

“The best plan is one that works. As long as it works for them, then they made the right choice.” — Robert Lopez, CFP® [0:35:16]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TB: You’re listening to the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, a show all about inspiring you, the pharmacy professional, on your path towards achieving financial freedom. Hi, I’m Tim Baker, and we’re back with the Case Studies, this time with the Andersons. I sit down with YFP Planning’s Lead Planners, Kelly Reddy-Heffner and Robert Lopez, to walk through this fictitious family and their financial plan.

Although the Anderson’s are not an actual couple we work with, they are really a composite of clients that we do work with in reality. The first part of the discussion, we lay the groundwork of the Anderson’s jobs and salary situations, where they live. We walk through their net worth and point out important elements of their financial situation. We also talk about their goals and what they’re trying to achieve.

We then talk back and forth about their financial situation. One of the big focuses being on education versus retirement planning and how to best use their investments going forward. This is a bit of the behind the scenes look at what goes on at YFP Planning. I hope you enjoy this episode, but first, let’s hear from our sponsor and we’ll jump into the show.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[00:00:58] ANNOUNCER: This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term-life insurance and own-occupation disability Insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top rated term Life Insurance and Disability Insurance Company. So pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states and makes sure all of your questions get answered.

To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics. Visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

[EPISODE]

[00:01:50] TB: What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to YFP Planning, case study number two. The last time, if we remember our first case study, which I thought was smooth, looked at the Joneses. This time, we’re looking at YFP Planning case study number two, the Anderson’s. The Anderson’s that are a little bit different stage of life, but I’m excited to jump in with my colleagues Robert Lopez and Kelly Reddy-Heffner. Guys ,what’s going on? How are things going where you’re at?

[00:02:15] KRH: Good.

[00:02:16] RL: Yeah. It’s 105 today, so—

[00:02:19] TB: 105 in Phoenix. Kelly, you are, I’m sure, all in on this case study, not imagining sitting on the beach next week.

[00:02:26] KRH: That’s right. I am totally all in. Not distracted at all, but excited to talk through people in mid-stage.

[00:02:34] TB: Awesome. All good. So, Robert, same as last time. Why don’t you set up and, for those listening on the podcast, we are releasing these on video, so you should be able to see us talk through our one page overview of the Anderson’s. Robert is going to set us up in terms of salaries and things like that. Kelly is going to get into goals and debt, and then I’ll take us home, and then we’ll open it up for discussion and go from there. So, Robert, why don’t you take us away?

[00:02:58] RL: Yeah. So, today we’re working with Fiona and Roy Anderson. Fiona is Field Medical Director. She’s 46 years old, making $155,000 a year. Roy is a Pharmacy Manager, 48 years old, making 135. They’re married, filing jointly. They have two sons, Michael and Paul, aged 16 and 14 respectively. They live in Jersey City, New Jersey. Their gross income works out to about $290,000 a year, which breaks down to around $24,000 monthly. Their net, or what they actually receive in their bank accounts, is about $12,000 a month. Their fixed expenses are $6,300, variable expenses of $2,200, and then about $3,300 of monthly savings. They live and own a three bedroom, a single family house. They purchased in 2008, which they got for $420,000 using a conventional 20 percent down at a 6 percent interest rate. Then, in 2015, they’re able to refinance to a 4 percent, 30 year fixed mortgage.

[00:03:56] KRH: Then they have a few goals that they want to accomplish while we’re working together, hypothetically. They want to pay for the four years of undergrad for Michael and Paul. They are making 529 contributions, which they recently increased. They have a pretty robust amount in the account baseline. They want to know if they’ll have enough to accomplish that. Concurrently, they want to try to retire in the next ten to 15 years. One thing to consider is, with the home that they currently own, they want to downsize and move to Florida. Then they are concerned about some of the debt that they still have, as well. So, that debt is listed out as a home equity line of credit that has a 5 percent interest rate.

They remodeled their kitchen and are paying $1,000 a month on that. They still have car loans. They pay a total of 750 interest rates between 3.5 and 4.25 when the two car notes. They still have their own student loans, which is always an interesting intersection with paying your own children’s college tuition as well. They refinance to a ten year private loan, 4.25 percent five years ago. Then, of course, they have the mortgage. So it’s a 30 year fixed 4 percent interest rate after that refi. They’re seven years in and they’re paying 2,500 a month.

[00:05:21] TB: Then, from the wealth building side, they have some cash in the bank, $20 grand in checking, $50 grand in savings, but in terms of their investments they’re looking at 401K, so they both currently have 401K that they’re contributing 4 percent each, plus a 4 percent employer match, so basically 8 percent in total. They’re both invested in the 2035 target date funds. Fiona has an old 401K, a small one at $15,000 that she hasn’t really looked at. They do have a 529 account that they’re increased their contributions lately to $1,0LL, so $500 for each son, so $12,000 a year to get to that goal. Unfortunately, they don’t get an income tax deduction, because in New Jersey if you make more than $200,000 it’s off the table.

They do have a taxable account which is basically Fiona’s RSU, so stock units as part of her compensation, which we see in a lot of Industry Pharmacists. We’ll get that as part of their comp. She has $125,000 that it’s currently sitting in there, all in the company stock, and then they have a joint savings account that they’re putting a hundred bucks a month in, to consider the rainy day.

Michael graduation trip, when you graduate high school, and then a traditional IRA that they’re funding for Fiona in a balanced fund. That is basically their investment accounts. Roy also has a Roth IRA that has about $36,000 in it that he’s not contributing to. It’s sitting there presently.

From a wealth protection, so this is typically where we talk about insurance, in a state, they each have a 20 year term, $1 million policy that they purchased five years ago, plus a little bit of group life insurance that basically matches their salaries, $150,000, $135,000 respectively. They both have short term and long term disability which has a benefit of 60 percent. That’s going occupation for two years, then any act after that. Roy carries his own professional liability policy. Then, they have a will that was done when Michael was born, so basically 15, 16 years ago. A living will or trust, power of attorney that needs to be updated.

From a tax perspective, they currently use an accountant, but they’re not sure they’re maximizing their deductions. They recognize that New Jersey state income tax and property taxes are killing them, which is why a lot of people from New Jersey moved to Florida. It’s not as bad. They typically owe taxes every year, so they’re basically reached in their pocket for that. One of the big tax concerns they have is that with Fiona’s RSUs, they’re worried about capital gains on that and not really sure what to use that for.

Some other things are conflicted about how much to put towards college versus their own retirement. Can they retire in 15 years? In retirement, they’re really looking to up their travel game a little bit more. So I guess, I’ll pose the question to the group here when you guys look at the Anderson’s, Fiona and Roy, what are some major things that stick out to you when you’re approaching them in terms of their financial plan?

[00:08:08] RL: Yeah. The first two goals that they have are conflicting here. So they want to pay for education for the boys, but they also want to make sure they’re setting themselves up for retirement. One of the phrases that you’ll hear a lot through financial conversations is, “You can take out loans for school, but you can’t take out loans for your own retirement. So make sure you take care of yourself first.” I think they’ve done a really good job with that so far. They’ve saved a lot in their 401K. They’ve set aside money for the boys at the same time, but now it’s really deciding on how to be important about that and how to be decisive.

The 4 percent that they’re doing into their retirement accounts, plus 4 percent of a match is good, but not where we’d like to be. Ideally, we want to meet at least 10 percent, and I think there are going to be some ways that we can get them to that point. I think that their savings in their 529, right now, is aggressive at $1,000 a month. That’s a pretty big chunk of their cash flow. I think that that’s actually going to be enough, depending on some scenarios we may discuss. But really deciding is the order that they gave it to us, to correct order that they have. Is the boy’s education more important than their own retirement? Are they willing to accept the opportunity cost or the change that would require? They may need to work longer to send the boys to college, and really flushing that out.

[00:09:14] TB: I think one of the things that is interesting about this case, because we hear it for a lot of new practitioners, is the age old question of, should I pay down my debt, i.e., my student loans or should I get going on my retirement, my investments? There’s that push and pull that I don’t think really ever goes away, because there’s just different things that are always competing against that berm investment game. So when you look at this, how would you walk them through or walk them down the path of getting down to the granular bits and pieces of the retirement versus the education? Is that something that you would look to model out? Is it really asking more clarifying questions with regard to their goals? Walk me through your thought process there.

[00:10:03] KRH: Sure. I agree with Robert that those are conflicting. So, talking through what’s important when individuals have their own student loan debt, they really do tend to lean towards creating scenarios where that doesn’t exist for their own children. We do a high level nest egg that popping some numbers in, based on this case study, they probably wouldn’t be able to retire in ten years, based on these numbers. So, Robert is correct about that, too. More contribution would be better. As far as the education, we can model out and take a look. Certain schools are going to be more cost effective. There are other things that students can do. Good grades. Robert gives a great talk on collect exams, which I love. My own children have listened to some of the conversation.

There are ways to make college funding more affordable and have those conversations. The kids are at an age at, especially at 16, really to start the conversation about what’s affordable, what makes the most sense, and the parents, setting some boundaries on what they’re comfortable with to not sacrifice their own retirement goals. Yeah, a combination of modeling would definitely answer some of the questions about that expected cost in the future, how much they’re going to be able to cover. What the shortfall is. Then I think Robert’s right too, about finding a better balance with the goals and how to prioritize them.

[00:11:40] TB: Robert, can you give us the cliff notes on the CLEP thing? Because I think that’s actually pretty powerful, if you’re a pharmacist that’s listening and then you have kids that are high school age looking at colleges. This is something that I think [inaudible 00:11:50].

[00:11:54] RL: Yeah, Tim. One of the big things that we like to talk about with clients is not necessarily just saving for college, but also ways to save on college and education expenses. There are a ton of ways to do that, whether it’s planning to go to a community college for the first couple of years or it’s maybe just ignoring traditional education and going to our trade schools. But one of the ways I like to do it is just getting credits out of the way, and everyone understands dual enrollment credits and everyone talks about AP courses, where they can test out of college classes, but a CLEP, a C-L-E-P is run by the College Board. It’s the same people that create the SAT.

What it is? Is it’s a test where you can sit down. Take a one-time test where it costs about 90 bucks on a bunch of general education classes. If they pass that course, then they get to skip it in college, they get automatic credits that will be accepted at the majority of universities. Now, every university in college has their own rubric that they request, and they say, “Hey, you have to get at least 65 on this class for it to count. They only accept these five classes. 65 different CLEPs, that different college will accept.

If you’re a math major and you don’t want to take English classes, take these two tests while you’re in high school, when you just learn English and never have to take it in college. Or if you’re an English major who doesn’t want to take mathematics, when you take a mathematics and high school that’s practicing for the test, you take a CLEP, you pass it, you never have to take it in college again. It’s a great way to either get a head start on college or get through the classes that are going to slow you down, and allow you due to the coursework that actually excites you and makes you want to go to college, rather than slogging through the first two years of Gen Ed before you can get to the stuff that you care about.

[00:13:20] TB: Yeah, I think it’s now really important to highlight all the tools that are available for students and parents to make a good decision. I feel like, if I get in the time machine and go back to when I was looking at schools, I didn’t have any. And I think because—I would have done very foolish things back in the day. I think that if there are things that we can do, whether scholarships or things like Test NL, going to put the price tag a little bit more affordable. I think probably one of the things that I would want to model out and what’s interesting about the Anderson’s is that they have a goal in place.

A lot of people, especially, I think if they have young kids, will ask, “What’s the goal for sending your kids to college?” It’s like, “I don’t know.” That’s what we talk about the one third rule, which we’ve talked about at length, where you can pay—basically the idea is that what you’re putting in 529 is one source of the tuition, and then another source would be when your child is 17 or 18 going into college, you’re basically paying that out of your paychecks, you’re sending a check to the college. Then the last third would be the scholarships and the student loans. Last but not least. We use that as a default, that there’s no idea what they want to do. With Fiona and Roy, the idea is put them through four years of undergrad.

Kelly, we know that not all schools are created equal, right? Whether they go to somewhere like Rutgers, which is in the state in New Jersey or somewhere like The University of Miami, which is a private school out of state in Florida, how do you advise parents to talk to their kids or just approach this with their kids, in terms of sensible decisions with regard—I know it’s hard at 17, 18 year old to go about approaching that question.

[00:15:07] KRH: Well, definitely when we started that conversation, it was talking about what our budget was, what we were going to be able to contribute. Then, looking when we would look up schools, understanding what the tuition is. There’s a number that pops up a lot on schools or websites. That’s an average cost, unfortunately, depending on your income and for many of our clients. That income is not going to reflect what that average cost is. So the average cost assumes 100 percent paid for, in some scenarios, all the way up to paying the full price tag. It’s really good to understand what your cost is likely to be, and at this income level for Fiona and Roy, it’s probably not a whole lot of financial aid.

I would assume no financial aid based on need. I do recommend having an understanding of what your cost might be. What schools are going to give those scholarships? There are certain schools that only give financial based need aid. There are schools that give grants for being a tuba player, the football player, great academics. So knowing your skills, what your talents are in a range. I would agree, we mentioned, Rutgers, a state school is going to be different than Princeton. What does that look like between the two? But I think people also discount private schools, and just seeing some of those schools have pretty nice endowment and a little better package. I would say I’d look at a nice handful.

We sometimes see kids are applying to 30 schools. You’re busting your budget, just on application fees. So, pick a few that makes sense. Have a few you can compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges and be like—you’re really looking for the best package and the best fit that’s financially viable for you and the student borrower, who’s going to take on any debt that you all can’t pay for if the savings is at capacity.

[00:17:14] TB: Yeah, I agree. I think one of the wildcards in this whole situation is we look at the taxable account. So, I don’t think I broke down what they have in their 401K. But Fiona has a 425 plus another 15 in an old 401K, Roy has 459. Then they have 365 and a Roth IRA and 195 – Ira. I think the wild card Robert, in this whole scenario in terms of the planning is what to do with the RSUs. These are a weird, because it’s compensation that comes in the form of stock that can grow over time. I’m a big proponent of like, “Okay, let’s tie this to something.” So, is this something that is for retirement? Is this something that they could apply towards the debt, towards the education? What’s your thought with regard to—how would you approach it? How to utilize that for the goals that the Andersons have?

[00:18:08] RL: Yeah. So restricted stock units, for those who aren’t aware, are a form of compensation when a company gives you stock, but you have to invest into it, right? Generally it comes in with the grant where it says, “Hey, you’re going to get this many shares.” Then, you’ll get a portion of it every year or quarter or month depending on the policy. It’s really like golden handcuffs. It’s a way for a company to make sure that you’re not going to want to leave. “Hey, here’s this money, but you have to stay here to get it.” Yeah, you may want to leave, but you have some invested RSU grants that you’re not going to be able to get if you leave right now. So you should probably just stay with us.

One of the things that I like to make sure clients understand is that these RSUs are just income, right? It’s taxed as income when you get it and you need to treat it as such. Although it looks like this big shiny object that we have to save and grow forever, it is just income and we can use it as such. So when we look at them, their big goals are, “Hey, I want to pay for college. Hey, I want to make sure we retire. Hey, I want to have less debt.” We want to help them, again, rack and stack those goals where sure, if we need that money for college, then it’s there, right? But if we can find out a plan for college, “Okay, cool. Let’s check that off, the boys understand what we have for them. The boys are going to come up with their own plan and it’s going to be financially settled.”

Okay, retirement. How can we use this money toward retirement? We could reorganize our cash flow, when we’re actually cashing out. Some of these are issues which would allow us to put more away in our retirement buckets. That’s a great way to use it. Another way is to solve that fourth goal. These are issues again. It’s just a taxable investment account. We have an unknown what the capital gains are, so we’re not sure, in this scenario, exactly how much of that is the grant itself and how much that is gained.

There will be some tax complications of this plan, but the $125,000 could, in reality, pay off all of their debt other than the mortgage. We can pay off the HELOC, which is $43,000 at 5 percent. We could pay off the cars at 3.5 and 4.5 percent. We could pay off the student loans at 4.5 percent. Then all they would have left is the mortgage that would free up $2,300 in cash flow on a monthly basis—

[00:20:04] TB: It is huge.

[00:20:05] RL: That’s huge, that’s a huge amount of money, okay. That could then turn around and immediately go towards extra savings, extra travel budget for that graduation trip they want to take in two years, extra 401K contributions. Right now, they’re doing 4 percent plus a 4 percent match. We could easily get that to ten or 12 percent without changing their life at all, only by reallocating those RSU dollars that are just sitting in a holding to this thing. We also know that she’s getting more RSUs, so this isn’t the end of her getting company stock. She’s going to get those refreshed, which is what happens when you get a new grant all the time. So as long as she’s still working, those grants are going to keep coming. We just want to make sure we’re using them appropriately.

They’re just sitting there, maybe they’re growing, they’re doing phenomenally, maybe they’re going down. We got to check the company trajectory, but using that to solve an immediate goal, like get out of debt and save for retirement would be a huge lift on somebody’s spirit. Having done that with clients in the past, taking those dollars that you feel are being wasted and putting them to something that you actually feel pain over, is huge.

[00:21:05] TB: Yeah. I think one of the things that I would want to unpack. I love all of the different avenues to go, potential pot of money, the RSUs, which is, like you said, another form of compensation. I think the other thing that I would really want to impact with the two of them is to retire in the next ten, 15 years. Is it closer to ten? Is it closer to 15? One of the things that’s going through my RICP coursework that I just thought was astounding was delaying retirement by three to six months is the equivalent of saving 1 percent more for the course of your 30 year career.

Another way to look at is delaying retirement by one month is the equivalent of saving 1 percent more for the final ten years before retirement. One of the big things that I think people get wrong in retirement is when to claim Social Security. Obviously, if you can delay that, you have an income stream for life that follows inflation that’s super valuable. So, are there ways to potentially increase that retirement paycheck? Now, they could look us and we know that this is true, guys. In pharmacies, I only got ten more years left. I’m burning out, I’m not good. Maybe there is the ability to work part time or things like that.

I think to Robert, to your point, being able to model out and move those pieces around to say, “We could use this pot of money and clear all that debt that frees up that cash” is a beautiful thing. But they could also say, “We feel bullish on the company that we want to let it ride and we won’t have the certainty there of cashing out and retiring those debts. Maybe we’ll let it ride for greater upside, but we know that there’s risk there as well.” Super fascinating. The nice thing about this is there are pieces to move here and there’s different scenarios to run. I guess, one question I would have with regard to the protection of the plan. Kelly, what are some things where their insurance related or a state plan and related that you see has some areas of exposure for them?

[00:22:59] KRH: I mean, in general, the insurance looks pretty good. The term 20 years, they just purchased it five years ago. So they’re going to get the kids through college. I know we had talked about this the last time. What amounts make sense of the disability policies? The amount looks reasonable with the 60 percent of income replaced. I would say the own-occupation for two years is a little bit of a question mark or sometimes we see the policies follow an income amount. So is it the income amount? Or is it that owning your own or any occupation? That’s probably something, I’d look at a little further, because we know just with the actuarial data that that can be a bigger problem than [inaudible 00:23:42]. But things look reasonable.

I would say, I would get the estate planning documents updated. So I would get the will double checked and updated, some other things probably have changed, as well over the last six years. I am a fan of having advanced medical directives in place, in terms of retirement. I think one of the statistics in our slide deck is that things happen sooner than we think they might happen at times. On the positive side, if you have an opportunity to retire, great. But sometimes health events, issues, things happen unexpectedly. So having your documents in place is important, and it makes it a lot simpler and less chaotic, especially at this phase. The kids aren’t really old enough to be making decisions, so you do still need to have things in place for sure.

[00:24:38] TB: Yeah. I think obviously that’s one of the often overlooked parts of the financial plan. Unless you’re military, where they force you to do wills and things like that, that’s where you typically see it more frequently. But just making sure that that’s buttoned up and there’s a plan in place for that. I think the other thing that I would probably circle back on. Robert, I would love to hear your thoughts on, is just the overall allocation. Do you think l balance funds—I see that we’re funding the traditional IRA, which see— were in 2035 target date funds, which are in that time frame. Ten to 15 years is still a pretty long time to go, so I’d want to dig deeper into that in terms of what they’re actually invested in.

We know, as we talked over at length in the past, that the allocation console of a lot of things, because if you’re looking at ten years, 20 years-time, typically the stock market, will take care of you. So, how would you look at their investments, particularly with the traditional IRA and maybe some of the allocations that you’re seeing?

[00:25:35] KRH: Yeah. One of the things on the traditional IRA that we need to double check on is, how are these dollars even going in there? Based on the fact that she has a 401K and they make so much money, shouldn’t be qualified for deductible contributions. So we want to make sure that these contributions have been going in undeductable, that they’re not trying to take a deduction on it. Beyond that, having them in a balanced fund doesn’t sound bad.

Most people in the world will believe that balanced means 50/50, but in the finance world it means 60/40, because why would we make sense? So a 60/40 fund on that account isn’t terrible for their age range, but it’s probably a little conservative. To go along with that, the target date 2035 funds, which are just mutual funds aged for a use at 2035, so they decrease in risk over time. Those are probably about the same right now, so about 60/40 at this point in time. I think that that should be probably extended. If they’re going to stay at a target date fund which is not necessarily a bad thing, I’d probably want to extend it closer to that 2045 timeframe to line up more with a normalized retirement.

You don’t actually aim for the year you’re planning to retire. It’s more so you aim for 65 and then that stretches out over your lifetime. It’ll never go to 0 percent investments. It’ll always have something in the market, because if we’re going to live to 100, we can’t just put it all into cash the day we retire. We need to have some risk in there. I think they still need to have a little bit more risk going on. So we want to look at what options they have, what the fees are, what the expenses are, how complex we can make it, but at the very minimum, I’d to maybe take that up to about 80/20 from a risk perspective. We obviously talk to them and make sure that they’re comfortable with that amount, but with their current time horizon, I think that that would still work.

[00:27:10] TB: Yeah, I think it’s asking a clarifying question and maybe digging into – because I think, even all target date funds in this, they aren’t created the same. There’s different allocations that are associated, depending on the year. I think the other thing that I would probably want to look at, just to make sure, is that you could have a balanced fund for the 529, which might be good for Michael’s accounts, but maybe not for Paul’s. Maybe it is Paul’s 14, so he has a couple more years, maybe just looking at that.

As Michael is going to college, we’re not overexposed in equities and we see a crash and then not as much dollars are there. One question, and then we wrap this up, guys. I think one question that I would ask related to the mortgage. They’re 46 and 48, respectively. Based on their refi that happened after what was that? That was in 2015, so we’ll say seven years ago, they had 23 years left on the mortgage.

Kelly, you recently relocated, so maybe get your take on this. Your thoughts on you—whenever says like, we have too much debt. I think Robert did an excellent job of outlining the path, or basically, we can redeploy some of the assets to basically wipe all the debt out, except for the mortgage. My question is this. If I’m mid to late 40s, or 50s, and I have a mortgage that’s going to take me well beyond retirement age, should I be freaking out about that, or what’s your thought? How do you talk clients off the bar to that part?

Because of debt, obviously, this is something that can be a detriment to your retirement paycheck in the future. Walk me through what you guys think in terms of that. It’s like, now I’m 46, I’m 48, we have 23 years left in the mortgage, or that [inaudible 00:28:54].

[00:28:56] KRH: Oh, my gosh. I love this question, because I think it really could be all over the place. I think, well, I feel like, there could be a point-counterpoint, point-counterpoint about this. It is interesting. Off the top of my head, when we do the nest egg, we’re like, okay, the wage replacement ratio, 70 percent of what you’re living on now, because you’re debt-free, you’re not paying into retirement. They’ve said that they want to move. It will be interesting to see if you are downsizing and you’re going to sell the house. Anyhow, that current mortgage debt is not going to be as big of an issue.

I would say, if they’re not moving, ideally, you’d probably like to see it paid off, but it really does come down to cash flow. When we run modeling and looking at retirement and potential for success to reach a very pleasant age of 95, or a 100 and still have resources, it really always comes down to cash flow and budget. What you’re living on per year has a big impact on that. Is the mortgage affordable to make the plan work? It really does depend. It would go in the modeling and scenarios and again, comfort.

I guess, I would lean towards wanting the debt paid off if I wasn’t moving before retirement. Then, we just have that conversation in my house and my spouse is like, “I could live with pain for a couple years, and then we sell it, and we become expats on a Caribbean island.”

It depends, but I do think it does a little bit. Wherever they go with it, Robert, I will love to hear what you add in, too. Before I turn it over to Robert, I would say, too, the other thing about wealth protection, at this stage, this is often when our parents are having stuff going on, too, if their parents are still alive and they have a relationship with some understanding about that. That relationship, hope and expectation is definitely a key part of protection. I’m often surprised at what an overwhelming time that can be. The kids are in college, but the parents have some type of health issue, and that can be stressful as well.

[00:31:20] TB: Which is important to bring up, because it’s not necessarily that Fiona or Roy’s parents would be our clients, but their parents situation can affect the financial plan of our clients. It’s good to get in front of that before—have those hard conversations about who is doing what or providing care, or if they have policies that not left the—cover down on that. Yeah, that’s a huge important point. How about you, Robert, in terms of the debt? 23 years left. I’m in my mid to late 40s. Should I be freaking out about that, or is it depends?

[00:31:51] RL: Specifically for the mortgage, I think, to Kelly’s point there, that two of them in our own household have different vibes on that. That’s one of the key things when we’re talking about this with clients is, mathematically, I can tell you the right answer. Mathematically, it’s interest rate arbitrage. We’re paying 4 percent of the mortgage. We can get 8.50 percent, 80-20 portfolio. We should just put it in the retirement accounts. The emotional variable, I can’t calculate for.

If someone has a money script that tells them that they have to have no mortgage when they retire, because they saw their parents or their grandparents have issues in their life because they had a mortgage tying them down, then that’s something we have to attack. If they’re going to downsize, doesn’t necessarily mean that their mortgage is going to go down. In Florida, are they going to leave a single-family home in New Jersey and move to a very swanky condo, 50s plus condo in Florida where they’re playing shuffleboard with movie stars? Maybe they’re going to be paying more even with less space. Those are some things to work out.

Having that conversation of 4 percent interest rate, although it may have sounded extremely large a year and a half ago, or even six months ago, is really a good rate historically. It’s not going to be the end of the world. It’s a securitized debt, so it’s tied to their house. I would be more worried about the other loans.

[00:33:05] TB: I was going to say the same thing. Probably, even the student loans that have probably just been kicked down the road a bit, I would almost—and this is probably an emotional thing, because I’m sure the—well, we said that the student loans are four and a quarter. Then not much more. I think, and this is more an emotional thing, this is a bias of mine, I’m like, “Let’s retire those loans before we start sending Michael to school,” would be my thought.

It’s a great point is, what is the plan in the future? It’s that arbitrage. Do we emotionally make that extra payment on a 4 percent mortgage, which historically over a 30-year mortgage reduces that by seven years, if you pay that extra payment, or do you put that extra payment more towards the retirement, get a better rate of return over the long-term and secure that?

I don’t know. That’s also another thing that, as Kelly mentioned, in her household, it’s different. It’s different in our household, too. I don’t think it really even registers with, where I’m I in my mind want to have the mortgage paid off as I retire, which in my mind is 70, but I could lose my marbles before that and have to retire sooner. That could be a thing. That’s another thing that people sometimes discount, is that you’re not always in control of when you actually retire, either because of career stuff, or health stuff.

Yeah. I think these are fascinating questions that we’re talking about this on a vacuum, but really go back and ask Fiona, ask Roy, the fake clients that we’re talking about, some clarifying questions about the debt, about the investments, the education and with the retirement picture, I think would be really important to then proceed with the plan.

Again, as we always say, it’s not about necessarily the plan. It’s about planning, because we know the next time we talk, there’s going to be a wrench in the system that’s going to potentially have a zig and zag as we get further along the plan. Guys, anything else to add?

[00:34:52] KRH: No.

[00:34:51] RL: No. I think they’re in a great spot. I think that Fiona and Roy have done a really good job of setting themselves up for success. People always like to say, and I use this phrase all the time, “Money is power.” But money is not power. Options are power. Having the option to do different things, and having the ability to make different plans is powerful. They have put themselves in a place where they have a lot of options going forward, and they can choose what they believe is the best path. The best plan is one that works. As long as it works for them, then they made the right choice.

[00:35:19] TB: Totally agree.

[00:35:20] KRH: If they use the RSUs to buy an RV, we’ll see.

[00:35:24] TB: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I was talking to the team last night, on our happy hour, that I said $800 RV. It’s actually $1,100. Yeah, they’re a money pit All right. Robert, Kelly, thanks again for talking about the Andersons on our case study here. Looking forward to doing the next one here, in the next couple of months. Yeah, we’ll do it again soon.

[00:35:45] RL: Toodles.

[MESSAGE]

[00:35:47] ANNOUNCER: Before we wrap up today’s show, let’s hear an important message from our sponsor, Insuring Income. If you are in the market to add own-occupation disability insurance, term-life insurance or both, Insuring Income would love to be a resource. Insuring Income has relationships with all of the high-quality disability insurance and life insurance carriers you should be considering, and can help you design coverage to best protect you and your family.

Head over to insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist, or click on their link in the show notes to request quotes, ask a question, or start down your own path of learning more about this necessary protection.

[DISCLAIMER]

[00:36:23] ANNOUNCER: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment, or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation, or offer to buy or sell any investment, or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists, unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the date publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements that are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 250: 10 Takeaways from 50 Financial Conversations with Pharmacists

Posted on April 7, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

10 Takeaways from 50 Financial Conversations with Pharmacists

On today’s episode, sponsored by Splash Financial, YFP Director of Business Development, Justin Woods, PharmD talks about 10 takeaways from more than 50 discovery calls he’s conducted, where he has had a close look at the financial goals and concerns of pharmacists across the country.

About Today’s Guest

Justin Woods, PharmD received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, completed two years of postgraduate residency training at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, and is currently in his final semester at the University of Nebraska at Omaha pursuing a Masters in Business Administration degree.

Justin has spent nearly 10 years as a practicing pharmacist in community and specialty pharmacy settings. Originally from Upstate New York, Justin met his wife, Sara, also a pharmacist, during residency in Columbus, OH. They lived in Omaha, NE for four years and currently reside in Richmond, VA.

Justin is looking forward to connecting with our community and communicating the value of YFP to help pharmacists on a similar path as himself toward achieving financial freedom.

Episode Summary

Knowing the steps to reach your financial goals can be overwhelming and confusing, particularly at the start. YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with Justin Woods, PharmD, a fellow pharmacist and YFP Director of Business Development. Currently, Justin leads the discovery call process designed to help individuals determine whether or not the comprehensive financial planning services at YFP Planning comprehensive are a good fit for them. Since joining the YFP team in November 2021, Justin has conducted more than 50 of these discovery calls. Justin talks about ten takeaways he has had from these conversations. Justin shares his unique experience working at YFP and how he has gone from a fan of the podcast to the Director of Business Development. Justin explains how his prior experience as a YFP Planning client helps him conduct discovery calls, the benefits of discovery calls, what makes the YFP approach to financial planning different, and the best time to start your financial planning journey. Finally, Justin details why financial planning requires a substantial investment of time and money, why the transparency of the fees involved is so important, and addresses the most common question he hears, “What’s the return on investment?”

Key Points From This Episode

What YFP Planning has to offer clients and what discovery calls are.
Why people feel guilty about their financial situation when seeking advice.
The concerns clients have regarding saving up for retirement.
The prevalence of questions and interest that Justin experiences regarding real estate.
A brief outline of the concerns around repayment of student debt and the PSLF program.
Why YFP Planning services are suited for non-pharmacists as well.
The importance of involving both partners in the planning process.
When is the best time to begin the financial planning process.
Justin outlines some of the fees associated with the planning process.
An explanation of the “fee-only” model that YFP Planning uses.
Challenges around estimating the return on investment for clients.
The benefits of coupling your financial plan with a tax plan.

Highlights

“Generally speaking, if you have the motivation to book a discovery call, to find time in your busy schedule to prioritize your financial wellness, you’re making a big step and that should be acknowledged.” — Justin Woods, PharmD [0:11:24]

“In most models of financial planning, the more that you put money into an IRA, brokerage accounts, the more the advisor gets paid.” — Justin Woods, PharmD [0:16:34]

“We’re called Your Financial Pharmacist, but our planning services are technically for people of all income levels, all career backgrounds.” — Justin Woods, PharmD [0:21:47]

“Over time, investments are a tool to actually combat inflation and, with proper allocation, keeping expenses in your investment accounts low, your investments will grow with the market.” — Justin Woods, PharmD [0:30:13]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to The YFP Podcast where, each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to welcome fellow pharmacist and YFP director of business development, Justin Woods on to the show. Justin leads our discovery call process designed to help individuals determine whether or not YFP Planning and its comprehensive financial planning services are a good fit for them. Since joining the YFP team in November 2021, Justin has conducted more than 50 of this discovery calls.

And on today’s show, we talk about 10 takeaways he has had from these conversations where he’s had a close look at the financial goals and concerns of pharmacists across the country. Some of my favorite moments from the show include hearing Justin talk about the various guilt individuals have when reaching out to a financial planner, whether that be about a previous mistake, join the club, feeling like they could be doing more or even as you’ll hear Justin say, having too much cash on hand.

Also, hearing Justin talk about determining when the timing is right to work with a planner and why there is a cost to not starting with the financial planner. Why planning requires a substantial investment of time and money and why the transparency of the fees involved is so important and how he answers the most common questions he gets, which is, “What’s the return on investment of the planning services?” Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor and then jump into my interview with Justin.

This episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast is sponsored by Splash Financial. With interest rates on the rise, it’s a good time to evaluate the refinancing of your student loans. If you’ve ever considered refinancing your loans, check your rate now through Splash Financial.

Refinancing could help you get a lower monthly payment on your student loans or get a lower interest rate. Splash helps you shop and compare loan refinancing offers across lenders nationwide. Browsing rates through Splash Financial is fast, free and won’t impact your credit and now, when you successfully refinanced $50,000 or more, Splash Financial will give you an extra $500 in cash bonus, using our link at splashfinancial.com/yfp. Check your rate today and see what you might be able to save at splashfinancial.com/yfp.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:16.8] TU: Justin, welcome to the show.

[0:02:18.4] JW: Hey, Tim. Pleasure to join you. A bit surreal, actually, since I’ve been a long-time listener of the podcast since 2017 now, and now feature as a guest in addition to being part of the YFP team.

[0:02:29.0] TU: We are so glad, Justin, to have you as a part of the team. You and I have known each other for sometime on the pharmacy world, we completed residencies a few years apart of your house at University College of Pharmacy, had some great shared mentors there and are really excited to have you as a part of the YFP team.

[0:02:45.2] JW: Definitely. One quick point before we get started, I don’t want our listeners to think this podcast is having an issue buffering when I’m speaking. I do have a stutter or as I like to say, I speak with a remix. That is my one disclaimer for folks who might not know me since I’m human and you may hear a stutter periodically throughout this episode.

[0:03:06.1] TU: Appreciate that, Justin. So, here we are, episode 250, we just crossed a million downloads. Thank you so much to the YFP community, the support that you’ve provided us since launching the podcast in July of 2017. Really, a surreal moment for us and for folks that had been listening for a while, if you haven’t yet done so, if you could please do us a favor and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast, wherever you’re listening to the show, we’d really appreciate that and be a great way to help others find the show as well. Thank you so much for the ongoing support that everyone has provided.

Today, we’re going to be talking, Justin and I, about 10 takeaways that he has had in 50 plus conversations with pharmacist about t heir financial goals, about their financial plan, since he joined the YFP team in mid-November of 2021. These conversations come through the discovery call that we offer folks and Justin leads these efforts, these discovery calls are an opportunity to learn more about YFP Planning and comprehensive planning services and folks can learn more at yfpplanning.com.

Justin, before we jump into your story, before we talk more about the takeaways that you have had through these 50 plus conversations, give our listeners who may not be familiar with the planning services offered by YFP Planning, more insights into what the discovery call is, why it’s important and what they could expect?

[0:04:31.5] JW: To be honest, hiring a financial planner, it’s a big investment in time and dollars. With that said, our model is worth it for the right people and it’s wrong for some and that’s certainly okay. And through a discovery call, I seek to understand your specific financial needs and concerns. I meet with people who vary, in terms of their season of life.

Some folks are new practitioners building their careers while simultaneously tackling student loan debt, learning how to be efficient with their income, others are growing personally by starting a family or purchasing a home, some are mid-career, seeking to optimize their income, given more cashflow through being debt free here just no longer paying for daycare.

Then we have pharmacists who are near retirement and want to protect the assets that they worked so hard for. Typically, people share, they feel overwhelmed or concerned about their debt. Maybe even frustrated that they’re making a good income but are not progressing financially. I also hear some folks are unsure if they’re optimizing the income they’re making or even afraid that they won’t be financially secure in retirement.

And it is only through a discovery call process that we can uncover your financial why and understand if YFP has solutions that fit your needs. In terms of what to expect when you take that initial step to book a discovery call, you first book the call through our scheduling application that shows you my availability to help find the best time that works with your schedule, we conduct these calls via zoom conference and in fact, when you become a YFP Planning client, you work in a virtual space with your lead planner as well.

The meeting will last 30 to 60 minutes, depending on where their conversation goes. I do take notes throughout the process to capture information in the moment and also because, if you take the next step to become a client of YFP Planning, anything we discuss goes directly to your lead planner to review before your first meeting with them.

[0:06:48.9] TU: Great stuff, Justin, and for folks that are listening, maybe had been following the community for some time and they’re ready to take that step, they can do so. By going to yfpplanning.com, they’ll see that option to schedule a discovery call, they’ll see your face and they can pick a date and time that works for your calendar and works for their schedule as well.

Let’s jump into 10 takeaways that you’ve had. Now that we framed what the discovery call is, we’re going to talk about 10 takeaways you’ve had through over 50 of these discovery call, financial conversations with pharmacists over the last few months.

I think the first one is a good segue from what you just shared that this is really about discovering more about an individual’s financial plan and their goals, it’s hence called the discovery call and number one, I think the thing that we first see is that individuals might be seeking financial advice in these calls and my question is, what’s the problem here, isn’t that the team at YFP Planning has expertise in? Tell us more about this one.

[0:07:44.7] JW: Yes, right, exactly. Trust me, I’m not an expert in personal finance. You can certainly ask my own YFP financial planner, Kelly Reddy-Heffner. In fact, I’ve made many mistakes that you, Tim, outlined in episode 247 of 10 common financial mistakes pharmacists make.

Realistically, five months ago, I was a practicing pharmacist. I’ve spent 10 years in community and especially pharmacy settings including two years of residency at Ohio State, go Buckeyes. If you’re listening right now and afraid I’m going to test your financial literacy on a discovery call, I promise, you have nothing to worry about when I’m on that other side of the screen but even though, I’m not a financial planner, I do understand our comprehensive financial planning service better than most folks since I see it from the inside as part of the YFP team.

But my wife, Sara, also a pharmacist and I are YFP Planning clients as well. For a bit of background about the industry, a survey of financial advisors show that advisors spend 15 to 20% of their time on business development activities as in meeting with perspective clients and in our model, our financial planners focus solely on financial planning and I lead those discovery calls.

[0:09:10.1] TU: That’s a great call, Justin. I don’t think that’s something we’ve talked about before on the show that the model we’ve chosen is to really let the planners be really good lead planners so they can focus on the needs and the issues that the client is bringing forth and then obviously, your role, and Tim and I have shared some of this as well, to really focus on some more of those business development activities and I would even further contend, Justin, that I often said this.

Hey, I’m not a financial planner as well, I love the topic, I love to learn but I think there’s often value and not getting in the tactical weeds, right? In that first call, when you’re really just trying to understand, what are the goals, what are the hopes, what are the dreams, what are the pain points, what are the problems so that we don’t get sucked into very detailed student loan repayment or investing strategy but rather, we can just really learn about what is of greatest need and significance to the client. It’s so important early on in that relationship.

Number two, Justin, I often felt like you know, I still joke with folks as that I feel like sometimes when I do a talk or people come and talk to me, it’s almost like financial confession, you know, sometimes. Number two is I think that folks may feel like, “Hey, I’m coming with some guilt about the financial situation.” This one resonates with me, I felt a lot of financial guilt and pressure early on in my journey. Tell us more about what you’re seeing here?

[0:10:25.2] JW: Yeah, this was an element I honestly did not anticipate early on when I started taking discovery calls, particularly knowing my own financial mistakes. It has been fairly common for people to acknowledge they feel guilty or feel ashamed of how sharing or admitting a piece of their financial lifestyle that they’re not proud of, it could be related to a number of things, like their lack of a budget or consistently sticking to a budget, maybe the amount of student loan debt they have, not being able to clearly define their financial goals and more recently, many people have shared, they feel guilty about having a large amount of money sitting in their checking or savings account since their expenses were minimized during the pandemic and they just don’t know what the best strategy is but also know, it’s losing value sitting in a checking or savings account.

Generally speaking, if you have the motivation to book a discovery call to find time in your busy schedule to prioritize your financial wellness, you’re making a big step and that should be acknowledged. That should be celebrated. It’s okay to be human, you’re obviously aware that a change needs to happen on your financial path and whether financial planning can achieve what you need, it’s something we’ll talk thorough together. It’s similar to working with patients, right? When you have an engaged patient, ready to make a change, there are certainly a greater likelihood for success.

[0:12:00.8] TU: Absolutely, and then, number three on our list here of common things you’re hearing through these 50 plus conversations is, you know, folks coming in with questions, perhaps some concern about saving for retirement, why is this such a common concern?

[0:12:16.0] JW: Yeah, this is the second biggest concern from potential clients is saving for retirement. They share that they feel behind for retirement but they’re not sure why they feel that way. They say, “I just know I don’t want to work forever” or “I’m not confident, I’m on the right track for retirement because I don’t know what the finish line is or how to track my progress.”

The typical question is, “Is retirement and age, is retirement a dollar amount?” People often admit that because it is a goal that’s decades away, it’s hard to relate to and objectify. Honestly, that’s just human psychology. The further away something is, the harder it is to relate to. Typically, when people bring up retirement, I ask them, “You know, of the steps you’ve taken so far, do you think you’re on the right track?” and inevitably, the answer is a clear “No” or they refer to the chart on the dashboard of your 401(k) account, right?

Through the planning process, our planners help clients conduct what’s called a “nest egg calculation” or the amount of money that you would need to retire comfortably. The last time I did this calculation for my wife and I, it was about 3.3 million dollars and this is generally where people, look at me, I haver three million heads, right? Since it’s a big number, way in the future.

Whether retirement’s 20 years away, 10 years away, 40 years away, the big question is, what does that actually mean in today’s dollars and what do I do with that number? I think a good financial plan will really take that information, distill it down to, “Okay, let’s discount that information back to today’s numbers, what does that mean for how much we need to be saving each and every month?” and then, let’s begin to put a plan in place based on the tools we have.

Like a 401(k), a 403(b), and IRA. Automate that plan so we’re contributing in a tax efficient manner or keeping the fees low and we’re allowing compound interest to do its magic and time, value, money to kind of take its course.

[0:14:34.8] TU: Great stuff, Justin. I think we often think about retirement as a hope, a wish, a dream or a big scary data off in the future or we do get a little bit more granular, maybe punch some numbers in a calculator and then the number that’s spit out were like, that feels impossible, right?

[0:14:49.5] JW: Right.

[0:14:50.5] TU: I feel behind or I’m worried about that becoming a reality and I think, what I really hear there is that value in coaching of bringing that to life and then, let’s make sure we put that into numbers that mean something today and let’s also make sure we’re prioritizing that along with other goals that we’re working on with the financial planning, that’s great stuff.

Number four, the prevalence of questions and interest that you’re seeing in real estate. Both purchase of a primary home as well as in investment properties. I think this – I will say, this doesn’t surprise me, right? We’ve seen a lot of growing interest in real estate investing.

Part of the reason we launched the Real Estate Investing Podcast, we certainly have felt the interesting home buying, could be a first home, second home, obviously we know that that market is pretty wild right now. Tell us more about what you’re seeing here?

[0:15:35.2] JW: Yeah, I mentioned a bit ago that retirement was the second top concern of people I meet with, another top five concern is home purchase. What I found is that this is not limited to people who are buying their first home. I also hear this concern from people who have outgrown their current home or maybe looking for a second home, a vacation home.

Followed closely behind that topic of home purchase is interest in real estate investing. The prevalence of this topic as you said could be due to the nature of our podcast content, particular when they and David on the Real Estate Investing Podcast.

But for most people, it seems like real estate is an outlet for their entrepreneurial spirit and helps also create passive income but I also think it’s due to the nature of our fee only financial planning model. As Tim Baker shared in episode one of the Real Estate Investing Podcast, in most models of financial planning, the more that you put money into an IRA, brokerage accounts, the more the advisor gets paid.

They’re not incentivized to say, “Hey, maybe you should dump $50,000 into this property?” Because again, it takes away from that traditional investment vehicle. But our team does view real estate investing as a method to build wealth and we have the resources to help people through that process if that is the path you want to take.

[0:17:10.4] TU: Great stuff, this is another example, just like we often talked about with, “Hey, when you work with a planner, if you’ve got student loans and they don’t understand student loans, that’s a problem” right? If you’re working with a planner that maybe doesn’t prioritize or value real estate investing as an option, right?

We’re not saying this for everyone but it’s an option to consider, has experienced either themselves or advising other folks. Such an important distinction in that relationship. Number five, to no surprise, we’ve just talked about this in episode 248 of the podcast as I mentioned is, folks coming with questions, confusion, angst, excitement, any other emotion I think, surrounding PSLF. Tell us more ab out what you’re seeing here?

[0:17:49.6] JW: Yeah, as you said, if you’re listening and new to the term PSLF, definitely queue up episode 248 to learn more about the program and hear some of the pharmacist success stories there.

Since I did not practice as a pharmacist for a nonprofit or a 503(c) organization, I wasn’t eligible for PSLF but through my role here at YFP, I quickly learned how overwhelming and confusing the process can be for some people and personally, I would want an expert to help me through that process, to help me get thousands of dollars wiped away after a hundred twenty payments. That is what I hear on discovery calls as well.

People are confused about the nuances of the program, confused about how to optimize the repayment strategy in a tax efficient way and need a partner to help get them across the finish line. Obviously, I have a biased opinion but I’ve heard the success stories and I see the joy our team shares on Slack when they help a particular planning client get those loans forgiven. If you’re a pharmacist listening and need the support of a team to give you that peace of mind that we can get you to the finish line, YFP Planning is your best option.

[0:19:13.7] TU: Awesome stuff. Number six, Justin, is spouses or significant others where maybe one is a pharmacist and one is not and you know, maybe wondering, “Is YFP Planning even for us? Do we both have to be pharmacists or do you guys work with non-pharmacist?” Tell us more about what you’re seeing here.

[0:19:29.7] JW: Yeah, I wanted to include this observation since it was brought up during one discovery meeting and generally, if one person has a question many other folks do too. In this example, we were nearing the end of this particular discovery call and the pharmacist shared, “Even though I’m a pharmacist, my husband is not and I want to make sure that he’s represented throughout the planning process” and I could have not been more thrilled that she brought that up.

Because one, it taught me that I need to acknowledge upfront at our planning process is not just suited for pharmacists. Obviously, we’re called Your Financial Pharmacist but technically only 80 to 85% of our clients are pharmacists and the majority of those households we work with, only one person is a pharmacist. The active involvement of both partners regardless of their background we feel is critical to the planning process.

In fact, when you book a discovery call, we ask you to find a time that both you and your partner are available. If you’re married, engaged, maybe not married but living with your partner for many years, you generally have shared assets, maybe not combined finances, which is a step we walk clients through during the planning process if that makes sense but you generally own things together like a home.

In these cases, it is impossible to optimize the financial planning process if we don’t have all the decision makers at the table and I’ve learned this the hard way that generally speaking, if we conduct a discovery call with only one partner, we get to the end and they say, “Oh this sounds great but let me check with my spouse” and then what we end up doing is going through the discovery call process all over again because that partner may have a different perception of money, its impact and also their own financial goals.

It is critically important that both partners are involved in the discovery call and in that initial planning phase should you become a client of YFP Planning. So long story longer, yes, we’re called Your Financial Pharmacist but our planning services are technically for people of all income levels, all career backgrounds. It just has to fit what you’re looking for.

[0:21:57.2] TU: Yeah, so important, Justin. I’m a firm believer – I wrote an article way back when about 10 financial discussion every couple should have whether they decide to merge accounts or not and how assets are joined or not, whether they’re married or they’re not married, just healthy discussion for folks to have about getting on the same page financially even having an understanding where they agree to disagree in certain areas just to have those conversations.

We believe as you mentioned that outcome of the planning process is so much stronger, so much richer when both folks have a voice because what we often see and I’ve experienced this first hand with my wife, Jess, and I and Tim Baker, being our planner, is that you have that hour with Tim is great but the two hours afterwards and the conversation later that night and that weekend throughout that week where we are then discussing among ourselves, it’s so helpful to have that third party and to make sure both folks are present, to start that all the way at the beginning as they are evaluation that service to begin with.

Number seven, Justin, you shared with me kind of this chicken and the egg of timing of when to work with a planner, meaning that, “Hey, Justin, I’ve got a lot going on and the need is there for help but also just wondering of like maybe I should just wait to a certain point” right? Maybe I am in a busy phase of life and I should just wait until we get through things in the next six or 12 years but the other side of that coin is, right now I am looking ahead. I am in the middle of a lot of things where I could use the value, the help and a planner. So, talk to us through this one.

[0:23:18.0] JW: Yeah, so I heard Tim Baker share a phrase during a discovery call when I first started and it’s that, “Transition points bring lots of financial decisions.” The emphasis is that there is a cost to not starting with a financial planner. If you see the value that it can bring to you or your family, it will continue to cost you to not get started. It could be a tangible thing like paying more in interest on student loans, right?

Or money sitting in your savings account that’s being eroded by inflation or possibly more time lost toward your short-term goals like a home, vacation, car purchase, starting a family or even just stress around balancing multiple priorities. I hear people say, “Let me get rid of credit card debt and let me streamline my budget before I hire a financial planner” and I try to challenge those people that, “Isn’t that the reason you book this call because you need help with some of these aspects of your financial life?”

I also hear other people say, “Let’s wait until student loan repayments start” or “Maybe after our wedding” or “After I started my new job” and I totally understand that these transition points are stressful and that it’s difficult to think about adding one more task to your plate but that’s the beauty of financial planning. It is more about the process than the plan itself and through that process, these points of transition become easier to manage personally and maybe even enjoyable with less financial stress.

[0:25:00.4] TU: Great stuff. Number eight has to do with the fees and I think the unawareness of the fees and this is really insightful for you to come into the YFP Planning our fee-only, our pricing model, which I think is a little bit non-traditional to the industry and to get some experience but generally here, what you are seeing is an unawareness of the fees associated with the planning. Folks realizing maybe there is a lot of variation in the industry but not knowing really what to expect here in terms of that investment of money. Tell us more.

[0:25:27.7] JW: Yeah, as I mentioned before, hiring a financial planner is an investment of both time and dollars so we obviously talk about pricing during the discovery call but what I’ve noticed is that generally people have no idea how much a financial planner costs or even how a financial planner gets paid. Tim Baker tells the story of when he decided to become a financial planner.

He went to his mother and said, “I am changing career paths to become a financial planner” and his mother told him it was the stupidest idea he’s ever had since she doesn’t pay her financial planner anything and that lack of awareness around fees is not unique in the financial service industry. I actually started working with an advisor back in 2014 with another company and when I went through the discovery call process myself out of curiosity if YFP Planning was a good fit for me and my family, Tim Baker really educated me on all the hidden fees.

Since that point, I’ve learned that payment models for financial planning come in more varieties than Skittles and Jolly Ranchers combined. The most common fee though is called “assets under management” where your planner will charge you a percentage of the money you invest with them. This percentage can range based on the services they provide but it is generally at least one percent.

What I didn’t know is that there are also expense ratios assigned to those investments or funds based on where they are invested and since you need to pay a small fee for the company of the fund to handle those day-to-day operations but if you are not careful, those expense ratios can really impact the overall performance of your portfolio in the long run and that is where our model is different, right?

We’re fee only, we’re fully transparent about the fees that we charge. We believe that fee only is the best way to operate as a financial planner because it reduces conflict of interest. Similar to the real estate example that I just shared, in reality most folks don’t wake up one day and decide to hire a financial planner. You typically hire a financial planner to solve a problem and generally it’s not a math problem.

It’s because you want to live a richer life than you currently have and achieve your version of financial freedom and we believe a fee only model is the best way to keep your financial goals a top priority.

[0:28:12.8] TU: Justin, you’ve mentioned now twice that it’s a significant investment of time and money and you and I are both analytical pharmacists and I suspect you talk with many folks that are like, “Okay, it’s an investment of money, I get that” maybe they have even talked with someone before where it’s quote “free financial planning” and then they realize otherwise that there is either hidden fees or perhaps sale of products in their best interest.

That is really where the revenue might be coming from and truly not providing confidence of planning, so I value the transparency. I understand there is a fee involved with that but naturally the next question here is, what’s the ROI, right? What is the ROI? Tell me more about what you’re hearing from folks as they’re trying to make this decision of, “This is an investment of time and money, then what’s the potential return?”

[0:28:58.4] JW: Yeah, this has to be the number one question and I’m mastering a discovery call and it is very difficult to answer since as a comprehensive financial planning firm, we prioritize your complete financial life. When some people think of a pharmacist, they think of counting pills and I say some people because I like to think and believe that that narrative is changing.

The point I’m trying to make is that when most people think of financial advisers, they think of investments and in our model, investments is only a small piece of the financial plan. A few people have recently asked me, “What is your investment philosophy for combating inflation?” and one, I’m not a financial planner so I probably don’t have the best technical answer and two, if that’s your primary concern that’s fine but we’re probably not your people and that’s okay because in general, the market is efficient, right?

93% of active management advisors, so those who attempt to beat the market, 93% of them fail, right? There are pockets of inefficiencies like we’ve noticed recently but overtime, investments are a tool to actually combat inflation and with proper allocation, keeping expenses in your investment accounts low, your investments will grow with the market.

[0:30:24.9] TU: Yeah, great stuff. Definitely as Tim always say, which I wholeheartedly agree with his investments as you mentioned it is one part of the plan among many others, an important part but it is one part of the plan and in traditional planning and part because of how the industry was born and how fees are assessed, often you know that maybe with some insurance might be the bulk of the plan and there might be things like, “Hey, those student loans will just take care of themselves” or “That home buying like nah, not so much us” or “Investing in real estate, not so much.”

I think when you look at really good comprehensive planning, which I am bias of the work that Robert and Kelly’s team does and under Tim’s leadership with YFP Planning, a really good comprehensive planning will again, get us out of the silo and be really looking at how do we make sure we’re taking care of our future self. We need to be thinking about that – how do we also make sure we’re living a rich life along the way, right?

Yeah, we need to be saving and investing and in doing so efficiently and saving on fees and taking advantage of the tax benefits but we also need to be thinking about many, many other parts of the financial plan including the protection parts as we think about things on the insurance side, on the estate planning side, obviously the debt management piece and then all the other things that come throughout life and throughout the financial plan.

That takes time, an investment of time, an investment of money and obviously there’s benefit in that being transparent as you mentioned. Number ten is what you’ve I think seen often, which I will hear often as well is, “You do taxes?” and I think a lot of individuals may not be thinking about the synergies between the tax and the financial plan or the power of the synergies between the tax and the financial plan.

What are you hearing here and what perceived value are you getting that folks see of, “Okay, well, what could be possible if we really have the tax plan rowing in the same direction as the financial plan?”

[0:32:10.9] JW: Yeah, as you said, the synergies between taxes and the financial plan, that’s something that I’m still personally learning about since I too did not understand that for a long time how interconnected they are and in this time of year, a lot of people share with me how their tax returns went. I hear from people who own quite a bit of money and then excitement from other people expecting a big refund.

Previous Justin would have also been excited about a big refund but my perception is changing through my own comprehensive financial planning process. If you’re listening right now and are expecting a big refund, let me ask you how would you have spent those dollars better throughout the year? Could you have put up a bigger down payment on your home? Could you have added more to your 401(k) or investment contributions?

Could you finally leave your state and go on vacation, right? When you get a tax refund, you’ve basically given the government money interest free and through our planning process in quarter one, we file your taxes for you but the real magic happens during the year through our tax planning service where we ask you for a couple of documents and by understanding your situation, we can estimate either how much money you will owe or how much money you will get back and neither of those are great options.

We want to get as close to zero as possible, so we outline strategies that we can proactively put in place during the remainder of that year to again, get that number as close to zero as possible because that shows us that we’re being as efficient with our income as we possibly can.

[0:34:05.7] TU: Well, there you have it, 10 takeaways from 50 plus financial conversations that Justin Woods has had with pharmacists over the last few months and Justin, I can tell you firsthand when you came up with this list of ten, I’ve done a handful of discovery calls prior to your arrival. Tim Baker has done ten times as much as I have but these are themes that we’ve seen for years.

I think some of the takeaways that you brought here I suspect will resonate with many folks that are listening to this episode. As I listen or hear to this, I’m a pharmacist thinking, “Hey, maybe I am interested in taking this next step to get on a discovery call with Justin and learn more about the planning services” you know, see whether or not it’s a good fit, tell us more about what next step they can take and where can they go to schedule that.

[0:34:46.8] JW: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim, and I hope that by sharing these observations of mine, it will encourage or maybe even motivate more people listening to consider a discovery call and we can work together to really understand if it’s a good fit for you specifically.

[0:35:03.9] TU: Great stuff and, again, folks can go to yfpplanning.com. You can see an option there to schedule a call and that will allow you to get some time on Justin’s calendar. Justin, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[0:35:13.8] JW: Thanks, Tim.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:35:14.9] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, I want to again thank our sponsor, Splash Financial. If you’ve ever considered refinancing your loans, check your rate now through Splash Financial. Refinancing could help you get a lower monthly payment on your student loans or get a lower interest rate.

Splash helps you shop and compare loan refinancing offers across lenders nationwide. Browsing rates through Splash Financial is fast, free and won’t impact your credit and now, when you successfully refinanced $50,000 or more, Splash Financial will give you an extra $500 in cash bonus, using our link at splashfinancial.com/yfp. So, check your rate today and see what you might be able to save at splashfinancial.com/yfp.

[DISCLAIMER]

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analysis expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 249: 3 Silent Killers to Your Investments

Posted on March 31, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

3 Silent Killers to Your Investments

On this episode, sponsored by Insuring Income, YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker CFP®, RLP®, talks about the three silent killers of your investment pie and how to keep your investment portfolio fit.

Episode Summary

In this episode, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, sits down with YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP®, to discuss the three silent killers of your investment pie: taxes, inflation, and fees. After a brief discussion about the most recent success of YFP Speaking Engagements, Tim Baker gets into the weeds on strategies to ensure financial security and freedom by protecting your investments. Tim and Tim discuss, in detail, how to keep your financial portfolio fit through evaluating your fees, investment choices, and the utilization of tax planning. Tim Baker explains some of the most common fees associated with investment plans and that often, investors do not know what exactly they are paying in fees. He shares the impacts of inflation on your portfolio over time and how to ensure financial security after retirement. You will also hear Tim Baker speak on his personal experiences as a CFP® and how tax planning permeates all parts of the financial plan, despite many planning firms not offering tax planning as a service. Tim Baker shares his answers to frequently asked questions like: why is inflation overlooked concerning the financial plan? What is the solution to inflation? How can market stability and fees negatively impact your retirement investments?

Key Points From This Episode

An introduction to today’s topic.
The importance of including tax in your financial plan.
How tax permeates all parts of your financial plan.
Tim Baker shares some of his experiences regarding tax, working as a financial planner.
Some examples of simple tax reduction strategies.
How to ensure the withdrawal of investments after retirement in terms of tax.
A discussion on inflation trends.
Why it is important to consider inflation in your financial plan and investments.
We learn how investments can help you get ahead of inflation.
A detailed discussion on the issues and impact of fees on your investment.

Highlights

“I think what you can’t do is just not participate. I don’t think you can stuff your mattress and hope one day you wake up, and you’re going to have enough to retire.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:21:32]

“I think it’s really important that we understand those dynamics and know that we’re not always going to be in a low inflation environment.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:30]

“It’s really important to understand how inflation can play a role in your ability to sustain yourself in the future.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:34]

“I think a lot of people are unaware of what they’re actually paying, and the transparency is a real thing that needs to be overcome.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:24:09]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody, Tim Ulbrich here. Thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

This week, I had a chance to sit down with YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning Tim Baker, to talk about the three silent killers of your investment by taxes, inflation and fees or easier way to remember as Tim, mentioned on the show, is how to keep your investment portfolio fit by evaluating your fees, investments and tax planning. A few of my favorite moments from the show include hearing Tim, talk about common tax mistakes he sees pharmacists making, and why he decided early on to bring a tax practice in house with the financial planning services. Why inflation is often overlooked? But an important part of the financial planning consider. What the antidote to inflation is? Why those nearing retirement should be looking closely at inflation and the volatility of the market? Finally, the common types of fees associated with the financial plan. Why these fees can have such a large impact on your investment portfolio?

Now before we hear from today’s sponsor, and then jump into the show. I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 240 households in 40 plus states. YFP Planning offers, fee-only high touch financial planning that is customized for the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner, may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning financial planning services are a good fit for you, we know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Okay, let’s hear from today’s sponsor Insuring Income and then we’ll jump into my interview with Tim.

This week’s podcast episode is brought to you by Insuring Income. Insuring Income is your source for all things term life insurance and own occupation-disability insurance. Insuring Income has a relationship with America’s top-rated term life insurance and disability insurance companies so that pharmacists like you can easily find the best solutions for your personal situation. To better serve you, Insuring Income reviews all applicable carriers in the marketplace for your desired coverage, supports clients in all 50 states, and make sure all of your questions get answered along the way. To get quotes and apply for term life or disability insurance, see sample contracts from disability carriers or learn more about these topics, visit insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist. Again, that’s insuringincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:41] TU: Tim, excited to have you back on the show.

[00:02:43] TB: Yeah, Tim. Glad to be back. What’s going on?

[00:02:45] TU: It’s been an exciting start to the year.

[00:02:47] TB: Yes.

[00:02:47] TU: Lots of exciting things going on at YFP. We’re heating up the season of some of the speaking engagements that we’re doing for the year. Grateful for those opportunities, I think the team is humming and moving forward. It’s been a good, good first quarter of the year. You’ve got an exciting trip coming up tomorrow. I think you’re leaving, right, International.

[00:03:05] TB: Yeah, going international. My wife Shay, shout out to her. If she listens to the show, sometimes, sometimes not is running the Paris marathon. A couple of weeks ago she actually had fractured her foot in a misstep. She’s been doing a lot of cycling and pool work and things like that. She got the news a couple of weeks ago that she could run again. So she’s, yeah, she’s raring to go, heading out and excited to visit Paris again. It’ll be her first time and yeah, just enjoy some one-on-one time without the kids. It’ll be nice. I’m excited. I feel we’ve been so cooped up, because of the pandemic, haven’t really been traveling as much. Yeah, I’m pumped up.

To go back to that thing Tim, I was shocked. I think when we actually sat down, and you tallied up the reach that YFP has had or the last couple years with, I think it was 72 different schools and associations that we’ve been speaking with and doing presentations and things like that. I think that was a little bit shocking to me but awesome to see that number and see it continue to grow.

[00:04:12] TU: Yeah. We’re so grateful for that opportunity. We’ve partnered with just over 70 different organizations. It’s been Colleges of Pharmacy, State Associations, National Associations, Fellowship Programs, Residency Programs, some of the businesses that are out there and entrepreneurs, so super grateful for that opportunity. I think the reach to that has allowed us to have as we as we look to help more and more pharmacists on their mission towards achieving financial freedom. We’re looking to grow in that list here. If anyone is listening that, is looking to have a session on personal finance, financial education, we’d love to engage the YFP team, the YFP Planning team, so you can reach out to us at info at yourfinancialpharmacist.com.

Tim. Today we’re talking about silent killers to your investment pie. We’re talking about things like tax inflation fees. We’ve talked about these separately on the show, but I want to keep coming back to these, we’re going to bring these together. We talked so often about the hard work of building your investment pie, right? Ultimately, we’re going to be paying ourselves out of retirement paycheck, we’ve got to do the hard work to save early, save often, take advantage of that time value of money. We might be underestimating the impact the silent killers like tax, inflation, fees that may not be as obvious or as front and center, but certainly can have an impact on our financial plan.

We’re going to go through these one-by-one in three parts. We’ll start with the taxes, we’ll then talk about inflation, we’ll talk about fees, we’ll reference previous episodes, we talked about these for folks that want to dig deeper in any one of these topics. Again if you’re going to do the hard work, and you’re going to build that investment pie, we want to do as much as we can to maintain the integrity. Tim, let’s start with tax season. Could it be better timing, were about half a month now, away from the IRS tax deadline, the YFP tax team is knee-deep and making sure we get the tax filing and returns, and a shout out to that team if they’re listening to this episode. Here we are, it’s front and center for lots of folks, maybe they’re looking at the returns that they filed, and maybe they got it spot on, maybe they saw opportunities to improve, maybe they got a big refund, or were surprised by a bill that was due. So just talk to us about why this topic of tax is so important.

[00:06:25] TB: Yeah. I’m actually looking at the title of this, I see, Tax Inflation and Fees. I think if we were to go in reverse order FIT, this is I think, really about keeping your investment portfolio fit. We’ll go tax inflation fees as we talk here, but I think the reason we kick off with taxes because it just permeates everything, Tim. Every conversation that we have related to the financial plan, there’s a tax conversation close by, unfortunately. One of the numbers that always sticks with me is that we mentioned speaking over the course of a pharmacist career they’re going to make about $9 million. The actual dollars that flow into the bank account is closer to six. That’s alarming, because you’re like, all right, where’s 30 – where’s a good chunk of that go?

That 3 million, that delta, a lot of that is being soaked up by Uncle Sam, the taxman. What we see related to tax is that there’s typically a lot of dollars left on the table in terms of what you can do to mitigate the amount that the government is taken from you. Again, I think everyone wants to pay their fair share, but no one wants to overpay if they don’t need to. Yeah, and I think for us, as a group I harken back to the day when we were starting, I have launched Script Financial now, YFP Planning, and even before that in my first job and financial planning, financial services. A lot of traditional financial planning firms do not do taxes. I found that to be very problematic, Tim, because, again, I think they’re just so closely aligned with what you’re doing on the planning side, that there needs to be some coordination on the tax side.

Shortly after I launched Script Financial, we started to do taxes for our clients. It’s not a fun thing to do, the tax work, Tim, as we know, right now, it’s it can be hectic, you’re trying to cram so much work in a small window of time. It’s like trying to manage a lot of projects on a tight deadline that you have inputs and outputs from a variety of people. However, the reason that we do it is, because I think the value that it brings to the overall plan. I’ll give you some examples. When I would do planning for pharmacists, one of the biggest thing a lot of the pharmacists that we are working, with the tail that wag s the dog are the student loans, right?

The student loans one of the major strategies there is the forgiveness strategy, particularly PSLF, or even non-PSLF, because in that strategy, one of the main techniques you could do if you’re married is to file separately to disallow the income of the spouse that doesn’t have loans and really just work off of the AGI and the student loan payment is off of one the spouse versus two. The problem is this, Tim. I say this like I would build out these dope, that’s the official term, dope, financial planning strategy related to the student loans. Then the client would say, “Hey, Tim, do you guys do taxes?” We’re like, “Nah, we don’t, but go work with his accountant across the street. They’ll hook you up.” We like what they do. But the problem is that, because most financial planners don’t understand student loans, so I think the stat out there that I saw is that 33% of financial planners will work with clients on their student loans.

That doesn’t mean they necessarily understand them, but they’ll at least address them. That means the overwhelming majority don’t even really look at it. The problem is that because advisors don’t understand student loans, typically the accountant that they work with don’t understand it, and in 99 out of 100 times, for most people file in anything, but filing jointly for a married couple is wrong, but we just happen to work with a lot of pharmacists that it does make sense because of the huge benefit you get from maximize the forgiveness. I just got fatigued by building out this great debt plan, and then it being messed up by the lack of technical expertise on the tax side of things to see that through.

Then I think the other piece of this is we’re planners, right? I want a plan. I remember, again, back in the early days, I would hire a tax person to do my own personal taxes, and I’m a business owner. So when I got a good referral from someone, I met with them, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we’ll be able help diagnose some things with your business and all this.” I’m like, “Great, that sounds awesome.” Then a couple months rolls around, I’m like man, it’s April 14th, where are my taxes? I sent out an email, and I get an email back, and it’s a PDF of the tax return some DocuSigns to sign, and then an invoice. I equate, it seems like a paper route, right? It’s like, here you go. Chuck the paper out the window, you figure it out. I just didn’t like that, because again, I was looking for things that and I’m a nerd like that.

Again, as a business owner, I want to make sure like, am I doing everything to mitigate my tax exposure. I just got zero guidance, zero planning based on – planning advice based on last year’s activities. I really wanted that. To me, I think there’s a lot of people that want that and are trying to figure out ways to get in front of the taxman. Then finally, I think just the reason that we did it is like I said before, is I think it’s just the coordination of your financial plan. It’s not just the debt piece. We would work with clients in my last firm where there probably needs to be a healthy conversation regarding the investment portfolio, just that this wasn’t had. I understand. I get it, during tax season it’s really hectic.

You’re just trying to move the return through, but at the end of the day, the reason that we make sure that everything goes through the lead plan of the CFP, it’s a check to say, “Okay, does this jive with everything else that we’re trying to do.” Not this debt, but the investments and whatever else is on the client’s plate just to make sure that there is a clear intention of, hey this reporting period and Q1 all the way up to April 15. This is really a reaction to what happened last year. But then what are the things that we can do or what are the things that we learned from this year that we can apply to the present year in this case, 2022?

I think if you stack just the financial plan, I think if you stack years of doing that, you really shrink that delta, that 9 million to six. I think you really start to shrink that in terms of what you’re keeping in your pocket. I think for most people out there that’s worth the conversation and with the planning.

[00:13:11] TU: Yeah. Tim, just to that point that the delta significant and of itself 9 million to 6 million, and you and I both agree, like taxes have value, right? They provide services we all appreciate. We want to pay our fair share. It’s not just the delta, but also how can that delta be put to use, and what is the effect to that?

[00:13:26] TB: Yeah, exactly. I think that there’s just a lot of – from things that we see with clients, there’s just a lot of meat on the bone. There’s a lot of opportunity to, hey, have you thought about this? Or as an example, HSAs those are our every week, we talk about them a lot, but a lot of people don’t necessarily fund them. Even things related to children FSAs, particularly for dependent care, making sure money goes through their, education planning. Sometimes there’s this singular focus on things like Roth IRA and conversions, and backdoor and all that kind of stuff. It’s like, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation yet. I think some of it is overconfidence for the taxpayer of what’s important and what’s not.

We see a lot of things with taxable accounts, Robin Hood, things like that, where there are, there’s a focus there that really shouldn’t be or disallow losses due to wash sale rolls or things like that. We’ve seen lack of record-keeping for side hustles as we’re talking about Schedule C, income expenses, lack of coordination for charitable giving with a larger deduction these days. There’s a bunch strategy where you should be bunching your charitable giving versus doing a consistent year over year. Cryptocurrency, we could have a whole thing on that, Tim. Cryptocurrency and then just the overlay of, hey, there’s a huge refund or a huge tax bill, that I think sometimes it’s due to either a lack of planning or a lack of follow-through on the planning or just an understanding of how withholding or the W4 works.

This is a sample of things of what we see and I think again if you can start to work through some those issues, Tim. I think you start to see. Again, it’s hard to quantify year over year, but these are just little tweaks here that I think we talked about the investment portfolio being a rocket ship, sometimes like fees and things like that is drag on that. I think the same thing could be the case with taxes and your net worth, your financial plan.

[00:15:20] TU: Yeah. It’s great stuff. The compound effect of those changes I think about someone who unlocks things like the HSA or is able to really look at some of the bunching strategies or other things that you mentioned dependent care FSA, etc. or priority of investment and making sure you got that, right. It’s not only getting that advice, recommendation strategy put in place today, but what does that mean going forward in the compound effect of that. We talked about lots of that. We had our director of tax, Paul Eikenberg, on Episode 233, we’ll link to that in the show notes. We talked about some of the common tax strategies, tax mistakes that pharmacists should be thinking about.

I’m glad you brought up the student loans to kick off that conversation. Just last week, we had three PSLF success stories, and through those stories, we heard about some of the optimization strategies and of course, one of that would be the filing status, which folks may mess up if they’re not getting good advice there. Tim, one of the things I’m really excited about and shout out again, to the tax team that’s been hustling this season, is you and I think are really behind this vision and approach of, yeah, “We got to file the IRS as we have to do it, or else they’re going to come knocking on our door, that’s great, we’re going to keep doing that, but we’re going to do that, really, if it’s a part of the planning and the strategy.”

So you gave that story of April 14th, here’s the DocuSign, sign it, here’s your bill, that’s great. I mean, that’s stuff that’s been done, it’s in our rearview mirror. Let’s talk about what we can do going forward to really optimize the plan and perhaps avoid some of the mistakes that were made throughout the year. So we’re excited about really shifting away from just that filing to more that year-round planning, that strategy, that mid-year projection, that pivot, how do we really optimize this with the financial plan? Well, this tax season, we’ve closed the doors in terms of new folks that we’re going to be doing tax returns. Again, we’ve only got about 15 days, couple of weeks left in the season. We are going to start to build out a list of folks that are interested in more that year-round planning optimization and you can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax and get more information there.

[00:17:19] TB: Yeah. I think the other thing that can take into consideration here is right now, we talk a lot about the accumulation of the portfolio and how tax is related to that. I think the other thing is really looking at the withdrawal. When you’re a pre-retiree, and again, simple if you have a million dollars in your traditional 401K, a million dollars, saying a Roth IRA, and a million dollars in a taxable account. Unfortunately, all of those dollars are not yours, particularly the traditional Uncle Sam so has to take the bite of the apple. But one of the main things that we look at when we’re trying to structure a paycheck that is going to be able to sustain that retiree for the course of their lives is the tax and minimizing the tax burden and how we draw on each type of account and the best strategy for it. A lot of that is a tax conversation.

To me, it’s something that, it’s again, permeates every part of the financial plan, but it’s also every stage of life. There’s even conversations of okay, how do we structure, how much in this bucket or this bucket, as we are accumulating to get in front of that when we are starting to say, “Okay, I’m 65, I’m retired. We’re going to use 30 years as I’m going to live to 95, just to model this out. How do I draw from each bucket? Overlay things like social security and everything else, to make sure that I – the biggest I think stressor for a retiree is, “Am I going to have enough money? Is the money going to run out? I don’t want to be destitute or have to rely on family.” It’s really trying to, and again, if we can hold on to more of those dollars, that still have to be tax or take those moneys when you’re in a lower tax bracket, or whatever that is. It’s really important to have that coordination. It’s a frequent conversation. It’s not just, hey April 15th, come and gone, and it’s something that we continually look at and make sure we’re on top of.

[00:19:15] TU: Well, thanks for being a wet blanket, Tim. If I’ve saved a million dollars, I might actually not have a million dollars.

[00:19:20] TB: Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that.

[00:19:20] TU: Good plan. That’s a good summary of taxes. We’re going to keep coming back to this topic. So important for all the reasons we mentioned. Moving on to the second one is you mentioned in this concept of making sure and investment portfolios fit. The IB inflation. I think, normally we talk about inflation, and it’s like, nah, yeah, whatever. Especially for folks that are in the first half of their career, we have not seen inflation at the rate that we are seeing it right now.

[00:19:46] TB: Yeah.

[00:19:46] TU: Certainly it has been higher than that historically, but it’s well above what we had expected be on an annual rate. So we’ve got as of January if you look at the yearly rate we’re hovering around 7%. We talked about this in episode 239: Two Financial I’s You Might be Overlooking: Inflation, I-Bounds, will link to that in the show notes. Since that episode, I would say this has been exacerbated by the unfortunate situation in Ukraine. We see oil prices going up. We see the market volatility that’s happening. Tim, we know inflation is real, we’re feeling it in the moment. Jess and I were just talking about this and in terms of month to month with this is playing out to be in terms of expenses, but still, hard, I think sometimes put our finger on it, and the impact it can have on the plan. Why is that? Why is it so important as we think about the integrity of our investment pie?

[00:20:34] TB: Yeah. I think inflation is really one of the main reasons why we need to invest. I say that if you’re looking at the markets, and right now, the markets are very volatile, up and down, negative in some cases. What you feel is that you want to take your investment ball and go home and be like, “I just can’t take the swings, Tim.” –

[00:20:54] TU: I’m feeling right now. I’m not going to lie, Tim.

[00:20:55] TB: Yeah. I don’t looking at my accounts and seeing X and then the next day and seeing X minus 10%, 20%, 30% if we have a major correction. I get it. I think, if you’re 20, 30 years from your retirement date, and that’s the purpose of your portfolio. I think you really have to train your heart and your mind to be like, “Okay, it’s going to come back. Let’s not worry about it now.” I mean, if you’re in retirement now, and you’re relying on that, and we don’t have a good bucketing strategy, or what have you to sustain those losses, then I think it’s more problematic. But yeah, you can’t – I think what you can’t do is, is just not participate. I don’t think you can stuff your mattress and hope one day you wake up, and you’re going to have enough to retire.

I think the inflation piece is one of the main reasons why we need to invest. One of the examples I gave is that $4 latte that you buy at your local coffee shop in 2020. If you use historical rates of inflation over the next 30 years 2050, that same latte will cost $10. But I don’t know, that’s a great, good enough example, Tim. Let’s put it another way. If you make $120,000 as a pharmacist today, and we fast forward 30 years and we’re using historical rates on inflation, which is typically most planners are using about 3%, which we know this year is high. It’s low because we’re seeing seven-plus.

$120,000 today as a pharmacist in 30 years, that would be equivalent to $291,000. Think about that, $120,000 today would be equivalent to $291,000 in 30 years. From a planning perspective, if we’re trying to build out a portfolio that can generate a paycheck that is some discount at that 291 because we know that social security is going to be there. It’s going to be limited than what it is today, so we can take a little bit off for that. Then you’re probably not saving some of that 291 would go to retirement savings, but if you’re going into retirement, you’re not going to be saving for retirement.

There’s some discount to that, but the idea is that, let’s say it’s $200,000, or let’s say it’s $180,000, whatever the case is. We have to be able to build a sustainable portfolio so then, Tim, if you’re my client at 65, 30 years from now, or whatever the number is. You’re going to say, “Hey, where’s my $200,000? At 66. “Hey, where’s my $200,000.” All the way up until 95 or whatever we’re planning as nobody knows when they’re going to pass away.

That is really important, because the investments particularly an equity portfolio, in your accumulation phase is going to be really important for you to stay in front of inflation, and the taxman, quite frankly. So yeah, and just a backup, we talked about this in the “Two I’s”, when we talk inflation, it’s really, inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. What it basically means is that a basket of selected goods and services in the economy will increase over a period of time. Sometimes that is due because the government is printing money, which is certainly true. In our case, we talked about quantitative easing and things that. It could also be supply and demand. So one of the things that you didn’t mention outside of the Ukraine crisis is all of the boats that are at the Port of LA or that are still need to be unloaded because of pandemic or whatever, that’s causing a lack of the supply demands, making prices go up.

I think it’s really important that we understand those dynamics and know that we’re not always going to be in a low inflation environment. It can’t go up it has this year because of X, Y, or Z. Even back, if you look back in the 80s, in the early 80s, inflation was 13 and a half percent, and mortgage rates, as a result, were close to 17%. If you think about we know rates are going up now, there’s been a steep decline, and I think the government is trying to do what they can, but the fact is, we have printed a lot of money in the past that could rear its ugly head. I think the way that we can mitigate the impact of inflation is really to invest in equity stocks, and hold it over a long period of time, Tim.

We know that we’re talking about 20 plus years, we know that the stock market is fairly predictable. Typically, over a 20 year period, the stock market will return about 10% on average, and if we have just that down for inflation that’s seven. So this year, that might not do a whole lot for you, because that’s the rate of inflation, so you’re breaking even at that point, but to me, it’s really important to understand that how inflation can play a role in your ability to sustain yourself in the future. Again, we’re feeling the pinch now, because inflation has gone up so high, and so much in a shorter period of time, where we’re starting to really notice.

Tim, I’m sure with four boys, you’re noticing it with your food bill, or even we’re seeing in at the pump. Those are things that you were seeing it with housing prices, right? Those are things that get our attention, but we’re probably not thinking about how this affects us in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, depending on your timeline for retirement.

[00:26:15] TU: Yeah. As a shout-out to your 76 years, you got to trust the process.

[00:26:18] TB: Trust the process. Yeah.

[00:26:19] TU: When you say investing is the antidote to inflation, a lot of people hear that in the moment and they see the volatility, and they’re like, “Ah, it’s the opposite of what I’m thinking.”

[00:26:30] TB: Right.

[00:26:30] TU: We’ve got to zoom out. I think this is where the power of accountability and a coach and having that long view is so valuable. Tim, I’m also thinking about the folks that are listening that are, “Hey, I’m nearing retirement.” Or I thought I was going to make that decision here and the next year or so and here we are when I’m going to be going into retirement in a high inflation period. I’m going into retirement, while there’s also a lot of volatility in the market. Just talk to us for a moment and another episode for another day about the timing of that decision of retirement when we start to draw from our portfolios, and how in high inflation period, and a high volatility period could have an impact on that.

[00:27:07] TB: Yeah. It’s probably – so what we’re talking about here is sequence risk. Sequence risk is essentially where what you’ve accumulated over the course of your career takes a hit. We’re talking 20, 30% which could be very well beyond the horizon for us in terms of a correction of the market. So now you’re will use a million dollars, let’s say your portfolio was a million, and then it bottoms out to $700,000, but then you’re also taken $80,000 a year, or whatever the number is.

So in two years, and three years, you could see where your portfolio is almost half of what it was when you actually went to retire. You’re like, “Well, I had a million and now I have $560,000.” Or whatever the number is, that’s where you really see a higher rate of failure to the portfolio failure meaning that the money runs out, that balance goes to zero before you reach your end of plan year, which a lot of people use 30 years, so if you retire at 65, 95. It’s the combination of the portfolio being down, and then drawing down the portfolio at the same time, you almost can’t make it up.

I have a little bit experience, it’s just a proxy. I remember, my first job out of the military was with Sears Kmart. It actually took over – I was a trainee for my first year. Then I took over for a lady that retired. This was right around ‘08, ‘09, and that’s when the market just completely got, the market was completely down, because of that subprime mortgage crisis. I think she actually had to go back to work because her portfolio took a beating and then she was actually drawing on it. She quickly realized that she needed to not draw on that portfolio. So really, in these periods of time right leading up, you could probably say about five to 10 years before retirement, maybe in five to 10 years after retirement, that’s where you need to be the most conservative. It’s the eye of the storm.

In for some people, it makes a heck of a lot of sense not to retire than – and try to push it off, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes 40% of people retire sooner than they think either because of illness for themselves or for a family member or, or it could even be being pushed out of the workforce. Sometimes it’s out of your control, but when you overlay these decisions with things security, when to claim that and all that, it’s super important. You could do everything correct for 30 years leading up to retirement and then that those first couple of years in retirement be blow up your playing completely. That sequence for us at its finest.

[00:29:59] TU: We’re going to come back to some more episodes, we have planned out on building that retirement paycheck in consideration as you’re making that transition from all the hard work you’ve done, and now making sure we’re able to sustain that. We’ve talked about taxes, we’ve talked about inflation, certainly not least, but last on our list is fees. We know that fees can have a major impact on how much wealth one is able to build and something that many folks may not realize of how big that implication can be. We went into detail about fees on Episode 208, Why Minimizing Fees On Your Investments is so Important, we’ll link to that in the show notes.

Tim, summary here of fee something that we harp on over and over again, that folks may not be aware of those fees often are not as transparent as perhaps we’d like them to be. So as we continue this theme of some of the silent killers of the investment pie. Talk to us about fees.

[00:30:52] TB: Yeah. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right, Tim? When you’re investing or if you’re working with an advisor, there’s typically a costs associated with that. I think the thing that I think bothers me as an advisor, but then also as a consumer is the lack of transparency, right? We know even in healthcare, there’s people get upset about what is the actual price or even we talk about PBMs, and things like that. I think a lot of it comes down to transparency, and what’s going on behind closed doors. To me, and we see this a lot and actually, we recently, we have clients that are prospective clients booked time with us to see if they would be a good fit.

We’ve added a button that they can upload a statement so we can talk at a high level, if they’re working with advisor what they’re actually paying, because most people either have the notion of, I’m not paying anything, which that’s actually a common belief or they know that they’re paying something, they just have no idea and often is the case that they’re paying a lot more than what they think. I always go back to this story. I remember, so my first job out of the military with Sears then I had another job with a construction company. I was like, “You know what, I want to do something completely different, go into a new industry.” I was like, “Hey, Mom, I think I’m going to become a financial planner.” I think verbatim, she said to me, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” I’m like, “Why?” She’s like, “Well, we work with this as advisor and we don’t pay them anything.” I’m like, “That can’t actually be true.” Years later, when I understood the landscape a little bit, actually peeled back the onion, and they were paying over $8,000 in fees, unbeknownst to them so.

To me, I think, it’s fees are aren’t necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s the transparency around that I think needs a lot of work. Really, the fees that we’re talking about here, Tim, that are most common are things advisor compensation. These are things that you would, these are fees that you would pay or commissions that you would pay to an advisor to either provide financial planning or investment advice to you. One of the more common things that we see is an assets under management fee. This is like, “Hey, Tim you have $500,000, and I’ll manage for you, I’ll charge you 1% in the fees. 5000 I’ll bill that right out of your investment accounts.” That’s very common.

To be honest, that’s one of the reasons that pricing structure is one of the reasons why when we do find younger pharmacists that are working with advisors, so they’ll either be shut out, meaning the advisory would say, “Hey, young pharmacists, I’d love to be able to help you, but I can’t.” It’s not really because they can’t, because they don’t have those assets for you to manage that – in term of that that 1%. They’re either shut out of the market, or they’re sold, I would say less than suitable products, so they can make a commission and do some work with them. They kind of wait for the assets to build over time.

This is where, if you’re out there, and you’re in pharmacy school, or shortly thereafter, someone tried to sell you a life insurance policy, a disability policy, those are the next best thing for a lot of advisors that can earn a commission, “help the client” and then stay in touch with them until they have some assets for them to manage. It can be the same things like, “Oh, well invest your Roth IRA, and we’ll sell you in A-share mutual.” I was looking at a statement where there’s both an AUM fee but then A-share. Any share mutual fund is a front loaded commission. You pay five and a quarter percent on that and the advisor gets the commission and goes from there.

There’s lots of other fees there, Tim, related to advisors, hourly flat fee, there’s could be a hybrid unrelated to the investment portfolio, but still in mix, there are things like Life Insurance Commissions, Disability, Annuities, we recently saw a non-traded REIT, which is really sweet for the advisor, because that’s sometimes 6, 7, 8% terms of commission. So that’s a big piece. I think a lot of people are unaware of what they’re actually paying and the transparency is a real thing that needs to be overcome.

[00:35:08] TU: Great summary. We’ll get rolling back to Episode 208. Why Minimizing Fees in your Investments is so important. I think the transparency is one piece, Tim as you mentioned also just the tendency, we have to underestimate the impact of something like 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 right? As we look into individual investments.

[00:35:24]TB: Yeah, absolutely. I think if you’re not working with an advisor, there are other things that are present probably the biggest one is expense ratio, Tim. Justin probably – Justin was our director of business development, working with another advisor for years, before he came on to YFP. His portfolio, his all in expense ratio was about – it was almost 1%. 0.91 to be exact. What the expense ratio, it’s what the fund takes. If you have ABC mutual fund that’s managing billions of dollars, they might take 0.91% to pay for the mutual fund manager, the analyst, the fancy office on Wall Street, pay for information. They do that to keep the lights on. You basically buy that to get exposure to lots of different stocks and bonds, because that’s what a mutual fund is, or an ETF.

0.91% on a $100,000 portfolio is $910 per year, whereas if you do something YFP portfolios, .05, so why would I pay 1000 bucks if that guy pay 50 bucks and have similar results and things like that, but so that the expense ratio is a huge one. Platform fee, some, when I was in the broker deal where we would charge $50 or whatever, just to have an IRA open. There’s things like annual account fees, closing account fees, retirement, especially in a low interest rate environment like you’re just trying to eke out fees, because you can’t make money on the float, but things trading costs, all of these things add up.

Again, this can just be drag on a portfolio. Those are the four big ones I would say is advisor, compensation, trading costs, platform fees, and then internal to the funds that you’re in expense ratio. What we try to say to clients is like we try to minimize those as best we can, because at the end of the day, we want that portfolio to grow uninhibited as best we can. So there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

[00:37:25] TU: Yeah. That folks are going to pay for advising fee, and we’re not shy about the fees that we charge and the value they bring. The point being is you want the value to bring, right? So as you look at the coaching, the accountability, the holistic nature of comprehensive financial planning. There’s a fee there, and it’s transparent, you want to understand it, you want to feel good, that’s the return on the investment. We’re talking I think about in terms of minimizing other fees or fees that maybe don’t add value, or that are not transparent, so really evaluating closely the impact that those can have on your overall investment pie.

I’m going to link to a blog post from way back when, that I wrote, we looked at two different individuals that were saving about $1,000 per month between the ages of 30 and 65, because of some of the difference in fees and things expense ratios, or other hidden fees, they ended up with a nest egg that was about a million dollars difference. Again, the impact that we can see over the long run and what those fees can have.

For folks that want to learn more about the financial planning services that are offered by the team at YFP Planning, perhaps you’re working with a planner and interested in a second opinion. Want to have an analysis of that statement just to get some different thoughts as well or if you haven’t worked with the planner, we’d love to have a conversation as well. Folks can book a discovery call to learn and see if that’s a good fit with our Director of Business Development Justin Woods, also pharmacist and you can do that by visiting yfpplanning.com. Tim Baker as always great stuff and wishing you and Shay the best as you get ready for your trip to Paris.

[00:38:54] TB: Yeah. Thank you my friend. Good to be on the episode here. I think some good stuff to be – to chat about and probably even expand on in future episodes. So yeah, I appreciate you having me back on.

[OUTRO]

[00:39:05] TU: Before we wrap up today’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacists Podcast, I would like to again thank this week’s sponsor, Insuring Income. If you are in the market to add own occupation, disability insurance, term life insurance or both, Insuring Income would love to be your resource. Insuring Income has relationships with all of the high-quality disability insurance and life insurance carriers that you should be considering and can help you design coverage to best protect you and your family. So head on over to insuranceincome.com/yourfinancialpharmacist or click on their logo or link in the show notes to request quotes, ask a question or start down your own path of learning more about this necessary protection.

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information to the podcasts and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements that are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacists.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 242: Social Security 101: History, How it Works, and Why it Matters for Your Financial Plan

Posted on February 10, 2022November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Social Security 101: History, How it Works, and Why it Matters for Your Financial Plan

YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® talks about social security retirement benefits, how they are funded, how to determine eligibility and considerations for receiving benefits.

Episode Summary

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room that most people ignore for as long as possible: social security retirement benefits. Whether retirement is decades or just years away, it is something you should be talking about sooner rather than later. This week Tim Ulbrich sits down with YFP Co-Founder & Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® to do a deep dive into the history of social security, how it came to be, and what it was and was not intended to do. Tim Baker covers how social security benefits are funded, the credit concept, what number of credits are needed to be eligible for benefits, and how those credits are determined. You’ll also hear some golden nuggets from Tim on the power of being protected against inflation, as well as reminders on striking a balance in the financial plan around happiness and physical and mental health. Finally, Tim and Tim touch on how the amount of benefit paid out is determined and considerations for when someone elects to receive their benefits in early, full, or delayed retirement. This episode helps establish a great foundational understanding of social security benefits and how they fit into a broader financial plan.

Key Points From This Episode

An introduction to today’s topic and a reminder that we can help you with your tax.
Addressing why people aren’t having enough conversations about social security retirement benefits.
Hear some intense statistics about retirement and working longer that will blow your mind.
Talking about the history of social security and the difference between that and a 401(k).
Being protected against inflation by being inflation-adjusted.
Tim talks us through some annuities and numbers in a basic scenario.
Discussing our huge year next year from an inflation perspective.
How retirement is not just a money decision, it’s an emotional decision.
Tim digs a little into the different ways scarcity fear can arise during retirement.
Looking at your pay stub: explaining credit and payroll taxes.
The outcomes of the three ages of retirement: early, full, and delayed.
Touching on some of the nuances around health and spousal benefits.

Highlights

“How you approach social security is one of the most important retirement income decisions you’ll make.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:05:33]

“We’re just not great savers, we don’t think that far ahead. Social security forces that issue and, by law, makes you kind of set that money aside for that future benefit.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:10:00]

“This is not just a ones and zeroes decision. It’s not just a money decision, it’s very much emotional.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:15:44]

“At the end of the day, you’re really trying to manage and plan for the unknown and that makes it really difficult. I think it goes back to, you just want to be intentional.” — Tim Baker, CFP®, RLP® [0:31:44]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

This week, I had a chance to sit down with YFP co-founder, co-owner and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker, to talk through social security retirement benefits. During the interview, Tim and I discuss the history of social security, how it came to be and what it was and was not intended to do, how the benefits are funded. We also discuss what number of credit is needed to be eligible for benefits and how those credits are determined and finally, how the amount of benefit paid out is determined and considerations for when one elects to receive their benefits.

Now, before we jump in to today’s show, let’s pause to acknowledge that we are in the midst of tax season. Those tax forms are piling up and it’s time to have your tax filing and planning top of mind. Now, tax strategy and planning is an undervalued but very important part of the financial plan and YFP Tax is working hard to help pharmacy professionals optimize their tax situation. YFP tax is opening up its services to file 2021 taxes for 125 pharmacist households this year.

The team at YFP tax isn’t focused on just completing your tax return, instead, they provide value, care and attention to you and your taxes. Because YFP tax works specifically with pharmacists, they’re familiar with aspects of your financial plan to have an impact on your taxes. The 125 slots are filling up quickly so don’t wait too long. I5f you’re interested in working with a team of highly trained tax professionals, head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax to sign up. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:47.9] TU: Tim, welcome back to the show.

[0:01:49.1] TB: Yeah, good to be back, love these deep dives, these full episodes.

[0:01:52.9] TU: Good stuff, looking forward to doing more of that in 2022. And we’re now 240 plus episodes into the podcast, I think we’ve laid a really good foundation on so many topics that are front of mind for pharmacists and those in the YFP community. I think we’re itching to really take it to the next level and today, we’re going to do that by providing a primer on social security benefits and what pharmacists should be thinking about in terms of how social security benefits fit into the broader financial plan. And on future episodes, we’re going to discuss some common social security mistakes and strategies. So today, we’ll make sure to establish a good foundation that we can build upon going forward.

Whether you’re listening and you’re approaching retirement in the middle of your career, just getting started, you know our hope is that you’ll walk away with a social security nugget or two that you can consider and evaluate as a part of your own plan. Today, as we talk about social security benefits, we’re going to use that term interchangeably with social security retirement benefits. We’re not going to be including and discussing this social security disability benefits.

Tim, I was looking at a recent Wall Street Journal article and I know you’ve got some other stats as well that we’ll draw out throughout the episode but that article, which we’ll link to in the show notes references some work that was done by Boston Colleges Center for Retirement Research. They say that for the typical American household aged 55 to 64, the present value of social security’s represent about 60% of their retirement assets. And with that in mind, even if that number is half, let’s say, 30% for those that are listening to the podcast because they’ve been diligent in setting up their own savings plan, why aren’t we talking more about such a big part of one’s retirement assets?

[0:03:39.4] TB: Yeah and it is crazy Tim, because there is the tenure out there that, “Social security won’t be there for me in the future, I can’t trust it. I have to go do this all myself.” I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think that social security will be a program that will endure and it might take tweaks and pushing for retirement age out and payroll taxes and things like that. I think there could be things that happen along the way that make it more enduring.

I think that for that sense of the fold, it would be catastrophic because, to your point and your stat, so many people rely on this for their ability to survive in later stages of life. I read a stat that a third of retirees, 90% of their income comes from social security, think about that. I think it goes to show, it’s like, we’re not great at kind of transporting ourselves into the future and saying like, “Hey, I really could use this nest egg of dollars” because we just disassociate ourselves from things that are 20, 30, 40 years out and it’s such an important thing to kind of breakdown and look at because it’s one of those things that you wake up and you’re like, “All right, I’m 50, I’m 60, I’m looking at retirement and what do I have?” And it’s not enough.

Social security, we’re going to go into the some of the background and everything but it is a major piece of this Rubik’s Cube that is, “Okay, once I stop working, how can I convert or how can I build this retirement paycheck that I’ve been really working my whole life for?” Social security is going to be a big part of that, with the stats support that. How you approach social security is one of the most important retirement income decisions you’ll make. I would say, most of the retirement, one of your most important retirement decisions, not even income decisions.

To me, yeah, we haven’t talked about this enough. I think it’s really important because it is going to be a major piece of the pie when we’re breaking down, “Okay, we need X amount of dollars per year, this percent is going to come from social security, this percent’s going to come from your 401(k) IRA, this percent is going to come from here.” That’s really important to break it down and I read a stat Tim, this will blow your mind, we’re talking about – with some clients, the power of working longer.

[0:06:14.5] TU: Yeah.

[0:06:14.8] TB: The stat is that, delay in retirement by three to six months is equivalent to saving 1% more for 30 years.

[0:06:22.2] TU: Wow.

[0:06:23.2] TB: That’s insane. Then, to break it down a little bit more, defer retirement by one month is equivalent to 1% more savings for the 10 final years before retirement. What’s going on here, there’s lots of different variables. When you work longer, you are earning and typically, you earn at the top end and we’ll talk about that with social security, you’re making the most in your career towards the latter part of your career.

You’re also not – that’s one last month or year that you’re digging into your 401(k), 403(b). It’s one less year that if you live to age 90 that you’re drawing on that. Social security is a big part of that in terms of delay and deference, so there’s just a lot going on that really is important to understand. And again, social security is going to be a big part of that and that’s why I’m eager to kind of dive in with you and kind of crack the nut, so to speak, in a very important topic.

[0:07:19.9] TU: Well, thanks Tim, for dashing my hopes of early retirement. No, I’m just kidding. Let’s start with the history of social security. I think it’s important, your comment earlier was a good one, right? I think for many of us, myself included that it’s easy to disassociate with something that’s 20 to 30 years out. I think even more so, there’s been such negative talking points around social security that I think especially for us that maybe are on the early or mid-part of our careers where it’s kind of been not a big thing that we’re thinking about. Which on one hand, you could argue as a blessing because that means hopefully we’re building our own retirement paycheck and social security might be a bonus. But on the other hand, I think as we’re going to expose today, that probably means we’re not thinking enough about it.

[0:08:03.1] TB: Right.

[0:08:04.1] TU: You mentioned, it’s an important part of the Rubik’s Cube. Understanding the history and what it was intended to do and not intended to not do, I think, is a good segue into understanding some of the benefits and credits in how we determine how we’re going to approach the strategies for withdrawal. Talk to us about the history of social security starting with the social security act of 1935?

[0:08:24.0] TB: Yeah, this was an act that was signed in the law by FDR, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in August of 1935 and really, what it was the main effort here was, it created a social security administration and thus, the social insurance program designed to pay retired workers at retirement, age 65 or older and to continue throughout retirement until death.

It was really meant to kind of look at the problem of economic security for those in old age by setting up this system, which you contribute as a worker throughout the course of your career into this huge fund and it’s not – it’s different. We just had a question about, “I’m maxing out my 401(k), what should I do from here?”

In that case, when you put money into a 401(k), that is your own individual account. Every dollar that you put in, again, dependent on your investment selections like you’re going to get that back. Social security is not the same, it’s a big pool that then pays benefits as you kind of hit those retirement ages.

You’re funded. And when you look at your pay stub, Tim, you’re going to see a big line for social security and you’re going to see that money’s coming out each paycheck and how much you contributed for the year, but it’s really meant to kind of be based on the fund and based on the payroll tax contributions that you make during the course of your working life.

I think around this time, you got to think. I think there are lots of measures that kind of protect the worker, not just in this in terms of economic security but I think even safety and things like that and I think the data shows that even today. And maybe it’s because of this, but we’re just not great savers. We don’t think that far ahead and social security kind of forces that issue and, by law, makes you kind of set that money aside for that future benefit.

But social security, from the outset Tim, was never ever meant to be, to meet 100% of the needs of retirees. Although, like we said in some of these stats, for some people, it comes pretty darn close. Again, to me, depending on where you’re at in the income scale, if you’re lower income, it could be 100%.

If you’re a higher income, it could be a very much smaller percentage of the overall need but it is one of those incomes for life that is inflation protected which you just can’t find anywhere. Even if you were to say, “Hey, I have a three million dollar portfolio and I’m going to drop $500,000 or a million dollars into an annuity that I’m going to buy,” it’s not going to be as good or as beneficial to you as what social security is going to provide.

Like you said Tim, the history – I think this just comes with different amendments but it was really also meant to protect disabled workers and also, families where the working spouse or parent died. It is a monumental piece of legislation and I think really paved the way for people to have a benefit that they can lean on in older age and not really work for the entirety of their life.

[0:11:26.5] TU: Tim, when you say it’s inflation protected, just to clarify there for folks that are diving into some of this, perhaps the first or second time, that’s because the benefit itself is inflation adjusted, right? I remember talking with folks this year that our drawing social security benefits because we’re inflation and they saw a significant bump in that benefit heading into 2022 and to your point, that’s just really hard to find that type of benefit and we think about traditional kind of retirement planning, 401(k), Roth IRAs and other types of things, you’re having to account for that yourself, right? As you’re building that portfolio.

[0:12:01.4] TB: Yeah, exactly. That’s why when we talk about, “Hey, you can’t just stuff the mattress full of dollar bills and hope that in 30 years, your purchasing power is going to be there.” In social security, that’s built in for you. I think it’s by law so every year, they set the COL, the cost of living and then they adjust the benefit accordingly. I think recently, it’s been lower, I think I saw a number, it was like 1.7 but next year, it will be a lot higher because we’re seeing rates start to tick up. But that benefit alone, Tim, is not to be underestimated.

Because again, if you go on to the marketplace, either an annuity – when I say annuity, essentially, what I’m saying here is – that’s all really social security is, in the sense that – an annuity is, you put money in either in like a lump sum over time and then sometime in the future, you annuitize it so you basically start to draw on that benefit and they say, “Okay, based on the amount of money that you put in and our ability to invest on your behalf, we think that we can pay you a benefit of $2,000 per month.”

What a lot of people do is, they’ll take some of that nest egg, some of that defined contribution like a 401(k) and they’ll peel that off so they’ll say, “Okay, if I need a paycheck…” Kind of tangent here but I think worth going down.

[0:13:21.9] TU: Yup.

[0:13:22.5] TB: “If I need a paycheck of $5,000 per month and $2,000 is going to come from social security and I know that for me to keep the lights on, housing, food, kind of the basic necessities, I need $3,000.” Basically, what I would do is, I have $2,000 from social security, I’m going to purchase an annuity that’s going to give me an additional thousand dollars per month so I’m going to take, I’m going to make up a number, I’m going to take from my portfolio of half a million dollars and basically buy that annuity that it will give me a thousand dollars per month.

There’s lots of different ways to go, you can have a joint rider where you can have a term certain, there’s lots of different ways to do this on how it’s invested and things like that. Essentially, what you’re doing is you’re creating a floor. You’re saying, for me to keep the lights on, it’s $3,000 per month, social security is going to cover two, I’m going to purchase the one.

[0:14:15.4] TU: The one, yup.

[0:14:16.9] TB: Then the other two is more like discretionary where I might be traveling and spoiling grandkids or that type of thing. That’s all this is and again, that’s one of the beautiful things about – to go back to the annuity thing, for you to find that same type of inflation protection, it either doesn’t exist or it’s capped.

If we have a huge year next year from inflation perspective and it’s 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, the annuity might say, “You’re capped at whatever, 3%, three and a half percent.” Then, what happens and really in that year is that your purchasing power is diminished. That’s one of the things is like, the social security – and it’s backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, the tax payer, which you can argue, “Okay, that’s good.” But from an investment perspective, it’s about as safe as you can get in the world.

Yeah, that’s important. It is really important to understand that, in terms of the context of where those dollars – we can get into this a little bit more but just like everything we talk about this with different parts of the financial plan, Tim, this is such an emotional thing. And you see, we’ll get into the decision to claim, to claim or not to claim when you do that and what age.

It’s really important and people stress out about, “Oh if I wait the claim and then I die and I don’t get all those dollars, what a waste.” The other thing Tim, to really consider in this whole conversation is, it’s really so true for the rest of the financial planning is that, this is not just a ones and zeroes decision. It’s not just a money decision, it’s very much emotional.

This decision on social security and when to claim, when not to claim, and there’s lots of different approaches out there in terms of total benefit of social security versus the break even analysis. And the idea is like, “If I wait to claim,” there’s so many retirees that say, “If I wait to claim at 70 and then I die at 75, I left a lot of money on the table.”

[0:16:12.9] TU: Yup.

[0:16:12.6] TB: There’s a lot of different pieces of that to consider but I think the other – so there’s lots of stress and uncertainty there but I think the other thing to kind of mention in this discussion is that if I kind of invoked the example that I’ve said, “Okay, if we’re looking at $5,000 paycheck, two is going to come from social security, we bought another one.” In that $3,000 total, out of the five is just what we need to keep the lights on. It’s for living, food and all that kind of stuff.

The emotional part of that is palpable, it’s really important to understand that because, you know, just like there’s stress and emotion around when to claim, there’s also this feeling of, you know, if you don’t create that floor and you’re dipping into your three million dollar portfolio as an example and your every month or every quarter or whatever it is, you’re deducting from that, there’s this feeling of scarcity too.

Sometimes, you know, you want a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Sometimes, people don’t create that floor because they want that investment to really thrive and the idea of taking a big chunk out of that to create income is scary. But from a scarcity abundance mindset, a lot more people either by delaying social security or creating that floor through social security and annuity, really allow that abundance to thrive.

I always joke, like I joked when we bought the motorhome. I look at their red shade and I was like, “Well, you know we can completely crash and burn, lose our jobs, lose our house and we can always rely on the motorhome to have a place to live.” I think that’s just a micro-chasm of what we’re talking about here, because a lot of people – the questions for retirement is, “Am I going to have enough? Will the money run out?”

That is really important when we’re talking about things like social security and where that plays in the grand scheme of things.

[0:18:11.5] TU: Tim, I want to come back to this decision on when somebody takes money out and what it means to defer, we’ll come back to that later episodes and more on the strategy side. But taking a step back into the how it works, thinking about the funding of it and the credits, you mentioned before, this is something that folks likely have already noticed on their pay stub. Tell us more about how this comes out to payroll taxes and what they can be expecting there?

[0:18:35.3] TB: Yeah, so the two main payroll taxes out there is Medicare and Social Security. Social Security is basically tax at a rate of 6.2% and sometimes you see it together at 7.65%, which is Delta, it’s the Medicare tax rate. Every year this changes, so the maximum social security contribution in 2022 is $9,114 and that’s based on what’s called the wage base or the taxable wage base.

For 2022, the taxable social security wage base is $147,000. If you multiply that by 6.2% that’s where you get the $9,114. What essentially that means in layman’s terms is, if I am a pharmacist out there and I am making $147,000 or I am Elon Musk and I am making billions, from Social Security you’re still treated as the same. Any dollar above that is not necessarily taxed from a social security perspective.

The wage basis and the maximum amount of earned income that employees must pay social security taxes on. Now, I think Medicare is uncapped, so you’ll pay a percent throughout the higher earnings so to speak. With the funding in mind and again, you’re setting aside that – those dollars, not necessarily directly for you but for the pool that you will one day dip into. Basically you are trade in those dollars for credits.

As you work, you build credits and for you to become eligible for Social Security, you need 10 years or 40 quarters, 40 credits that makes you eligible for retirement benefits. In 2022, you earn one Social Security or Medicare credit for every $1,510 in covered earnings each year and you must earn just over $6,000, $6,040 to get the maximum four credits for the year. The idea is that you’re building credits, building credits and then depending on when you actually start to draw on your benefit, you kind of convert those credits to what that benefit is and then there is also some things called like delayed credit.

For me and you Tim, and it is different depending on when you’re born but for anyone born after 1960, full retirement age for you and I, anybody born after 1960 is going to be 67 years old. For my dad who was born in the 1940s, he’s the old man in the group here so his for-retirement age is 66. But if you or I or really anybody decide to delay your retirement, so delayed retirement, the maximum you can delay it to would be 70 years old, you would receive delayed retirement credits, which are used to increase the amount of your kind of older age benefit credit.

You would earn additional dollars and it’s about 8% per year that you delay. If my for-retirement age is 67 and I decide to retire at 68, my benefit would increase by 8%, which if you think about that is very powerful. Not everybody gets 8% raises every year and then the other thing that’s important to just remind everyone out there is that it’s inflation protected. Again, this goes back, we’re going to talk about this more on a strategy perspective but it’s just very powerful in terms of how you approach this decision.

[0:21:53.4] TU: Tim, you mentioned that the delayed component, so you know, you mentioned 67 and essentially up to 70 depending on when somebody is born, but there is also the other side of it, right? If somebody decided to take it sooner than that, talk to us about that.

[0:22:06.7] TB: Yeah, great question or great point. Yeah, you’re looking at, you’re really looking at and what we’re really kind of breaking down here is how you determine your benefit. To back up on the credits, which we should have mentioned is that the credits are based on your highest 35 years of earning. You know, it looks at the top 35 and it goes back to that question of if you delay you’re later years, you’re probably going to be substituting like a year.

A year where you are making six figures from where you made tens of thousands because you’re a resident or something like that so yeah, that’s huge. Really, the three I guess phases or ages are going to be kind of the early retirement for everyone at 62. But what happens is that your benefit is based on for-retirement age. You have your early retirement, you have full retirement age, FRA, and then you have delayed retirement and that’s to 70.

For you and I Tim, our early retirement is 62 years old, our full retirement is 67 and then our delayed retirement is 70. Now, depending on where you’re at from a birthdate perspective, if you were born between 1934 or 1943 and 1954, then 66 is your for-retirement age not 67. If you are born in 1955, it’s 66 and two months, 1956, 56 and four months, I don’t know why they complicate these things like this but yeah, so that’s the big change.

Again, there could be legislation in the future that they’re going to say, “Hey Tim, just kidding. People are living longer, your full retirement age is not 67. It’s 68” that could happen or the earliest that you could retire from an early retirement is 63 not 62. It’s you’re early for us, it’s 62. It’s for your full retirement for us is 67 and for delayed retirement it’s 70 and again, those could change in the future but dependent on how you choose to then claim, so the example is if you begin taking your social security at 62 you reduce your benefit by essentially half a percent each month to your full retirement age.

If you take it 24 months, two years, every month you’re reducing it by half a percent, which can definitely add up. A lot of people they’ll say, “Hey, my job is not great.” Or sometimes I’m forced out of retirement, for a lot of people there’s just this misnomer that, “I am going to control when I retire.” That’s not necessarily the case. It’s something like 40% of people are either forced out of their job or because of a health issue of themselves or a loved one.

That’s also something to kind of take into consideration but it’s all based on this credit. And again, when I was prepping for this podcast, I went to my socialsecurity.gov and I put out my own social security statement and it outlines eligibility and earnings. It says, “You have the 40 work credits” so to receive benefits, it kind of told me what I earned last year but then you can click in and review your full earnings record now.

It goes back really from 2021 back to, I think for me, 1998 I earned in social security’s eyes like $351 but eventually that number will fall off in the calculation because I’m going to have, you know, I have 24 or 25 years of work and those lower numbers will knock off and then I’ll get a bit of benefit but the cool thing to see is, you know I can see the dollar amount of my benefit for early, full and delayed.

Right now and I can share it, so this is at for me it’s saying if I retire at 62, I wouldn’t be on track to earn a benefit of $1,603 per month. If I wait for 67, which is my full retirement age it’s $2,341 per month and then if I delay it to 70, it jumps to $2,902. And again, these are inflation protected, that’s really important to understand. That is basically the way that the credits work and how that kind of translates to a benefit.

Again, it’s something that I think and we could probably have a full episode of like how people kind of mismanage these decision of it’s, “Hey, my brother did it at this age” or my spouse or these are what people are doing in the workplace and X, Y and Z. And it’s really just like different parts of the financial plan, it’s really important that you take a look at this very intentionally because it can have major consequences in terms of your overall outlook for your retirement picture.

[0:26:39.6] TU: Yeah and I like what you said earlier is that, how you approach social security is the most important retirement income decision you’re going to make, right? Again, one of the reasons we want to do this episode followed up with other content, if folks haven’t yet checked out their social security account, I would encourage you to do so. It is really neat to kind of see and log in and start to dig into this deeper, you can go to ssa.gov/myaccount.

Tim, I was looking back too at my earnings record, it was fun going back like starting when I used to work for the family business, Ulbrich’s Tree Farm, back in my cashier days working at a top grocery store in Western New York, so fun just to see some of those earnings history and see where things are at in terms of that really full and delayed phases. Tim, the other thought that comes to mind and we’re not going to go down the Medicare pathway right now but if you think about that early benefit and you mentioned someone begins taking it at the age of 62, they reduce their benefit by 0.5% each month.

They’re also then is that potential gap of age eligibility for Medicare benefits, so you’ve got some other considerations also with just the intersection of this and the healthcare cost as well.

[0:27:45.5] TB: Yeah, I mean it’s so much. It’s so true like when we’re talking about the financial plan, it’s kind of like you can’t just treat one system of the body like you’re looking at the entire picture and it is so true in this kind of question as well as that there is so many – I mean, just even the overlay of the taxes and like, “Okay, what’s the best way to build that retirement paycheck from a tax perspective?” And then also you invoke things like Medicare and even like gifting strategies, if you are trying to minimize tax there.

There is just an array of questions that you have to answer and a lot of them are really less about the numbers and more about, “Okay, what does this look like for you?” And so many retirees go into retirement thinking like, “Hey, I’m just so done with work and I just want you to know” but then they all often return to work sometimes because of the money but sometimes because of like the – they don’t have the social infrastructure to kind of carry on in terms of like having a passion or a meaningful life.

It’s so funny because some of the similarities with the different phases of life in terms of like, “Okay, what’s a wealthy life for you?” And answering that question in your 30s and 40s and saying, “Okay, we can’t just stock away money and not live today.” But there is a balance to that but also when you reach the end of your work in life, what’s a wealthy life to you? That question still stands and a lot of people either don’t ask themselves that question or they struggle to answer it because for a lot of us unfortunately, a lot of us we really define ourselves by our career, our role, our professional roles.

It’s important to slow down and ask the question of, “Okay, what do I actually want to do? What do I want to get out of my 60, 70, 80s and beyond?” And then execute to that. It’s a common thread no matter where you’re at in the financial journey.

[0:29:51.1] TU: Yeah, I think this too is another good reminder as you are talking about this range from, I’ll just use 62 to 70, right? The early to then the full to the delayed benefits, obviously we can see the negative impact of financially just numerically speaking, if we pull the benefit early whereas if we’re able to delay that, that number goes up. And just another reminder that for folks that are able, to build up those savings outside of social security throughout their career, you take some of that pressure off, of getting into those early retirement years.

Tim, I know we’re going to come and do a lot more detail on some of the breakeven analysis and factors that go into, that but I know that a lot of pharmacists are listening to this and I know there’s a lot of math nerds that are just looking at some of the numbers of like, “Man, it seems so obvious that if you wait, you’re going to have more.” If you defer, you’re going to see that benefit go up but there’s really more behind that.

You know, you start to think about what is someone’s health situation look like, what are other savings that they have in place and I think that that is one of those areas. And you gave and commented on this just a moment ago, this is not one of those areas you say like, “My friend Gerald John is doing this and so therefore I’m going to do that as well” right?

[0:31:02.9] TB: Yeah, no and even with the health stuff there are again, we’ll get into this later but when you look at that and you’re like, all right, there is a history in your family where people will pass away in their 70s or 80s or whatever, so that might press the decision. But also sometimes depending on what the spousal benefit is, you might even decide to delay that because if that person has a greater benefit, the spouse takes over that benefit in the surviving, you know, the surviving spouse takes it.

There’s just a lot of nuance there that you know again, there’s breakeven, there’s the total benefit, all that analysis that goes into play here but you know at the end of the day, you’re really trying to manage and plan for the unknown and that makes it really difficult. I think it goes back to, you just want to be intentional. Like you said, it’s like don’t necessarily go with the herd mentality and have this question answered way in advance.

Sometimes there are pressures like the employment and like your outlook on employment, your overall happiness factor that really presses the issue. But at the end of the day, what we’re really trying to do is come up with a plan where again, you’re living a wealthy life and the money doesn’t run out. That’s paramount.

[0:32:25.3] TU: Great stuff Tim. Again, the hope for this episode is we’re going to lay a foundation around social security to talk about some of the history of social security, the funding of the benefits, the credit concept, how the benefit is determined, what are the different points of beginning to draw on that benefit. We’re going to come back in later episodes talk in more depth on the strategy side as well as common mistakes that folks might make in social security.

As we wrap up, I want to remind folks that we’re now approaching mid-February, which means we’re in the midst of tax season. Those tax forms are likely piling up on your desk, it’s time to have that tax filing and planning for the year top of mind and we’re excited at YFP tax that we’re opening up our tax planning services to an additional 125 pharmacists households. We do taxes as a part of the comprehensive financial planning for those that our clients of YFP Planning.

We are opening the doors to an additional 125 pharmacists households. Really proud of the team at YFP tax and what they have been building. I really believe that that team is not just focused on getting the return done, rather providing value care and attention that you and your taxes currently deserve. Those 125 spots are filling up quickly so don’t wait too long. If you’re interested in working with YFP Tax, head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax to sign up. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/tax.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:33:48.1] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information of the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 088: Introducing YFP Planning!

Posted on February 21, 2019November 2, 2022 by yfpadmin

Introducing YFP Planning!

On this episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, YFP Co-founders Tim Ulbrich and Tim Baker announce some exciting news as it relates to the launch of YFP Planning, talk through the benefits of financial planning for pharmacists and reminisce on the origins of Your Financial Pharmacist.

Summary

On this episode, Tim and Tim dive right into an exciting announcement regarding the launch of YFP Planning. YFP Planning provides comprehensive fee only financial planning services now as part of Your Financial Pharmacist. Formerly Script Financial, YFP Planning covers anything that has to do with your financial situation including cash flow, budgeting, insurance, retirement, tax preparation, and estate planning.

Tim Baker, CFP and head of YFP Planning, shares that financial success and wealth were based off of an old equation that is now a myth. The old method of thinking focused on being income statement affluent where a high income is made, however you have no savings to show for it. Conversely, balance sheet affluence is where money flows in and actually sticks so you can save for a purpose.

Comprehensive financial planning forces you to look at your current financial state and make moves to better it. This can be especially helpful for pharmacists who typically have higher incomes and a lot of student loan and credit card debt. YFP Planning doesn’t just provide you with information on how to pay off your loans, save money, or create a budget, but instead also offers accountability and coaching. Having someone offering an objective approach to your financial situation helps you to see the whole picture and pushes you to take the steps you need to reach your goals.

The YFP Planning process starts of with a free discovery meeting where the YFP Planning team learns more about you. If you decide to move ahead with YFP Planning, the first meeting focuses on getting organized. Then, another meeting is scheduled to discuss your goals and dig deeper into some questions you may have not asked yourself about your financial situation or goals.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to Episode 088 of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Excited to be here with Tim Baker after we’ve had a series of side hustles represented by the one and only Tim Church. He’s doing a great job with that series, the side hustle series, so if you haven’t listened to those, check those out. Tim Baker, welcome back to the show. It’s been awhile since we recorded. I think — what? The New Year Game Plan back in Episode 081.

Tim Baker: I know. It’s actually crazy, like I think — not to be a broken record, but it’s actually nice to be like a listener and to hear all of these inspiring people come on and just the work that you’re doing and Church is doing on the podcast, like it’s really cool to see. Yeah, things have been good, been super, super busy, lots of things going on. But yeah, excited to be back on the podcast today.

Tim Ulbrich: I’m with you on that one. I kind of like the surprise of like an episode going online and get to see it as a listener and hearing the past couple weeks and being inspired by some of the pharmacists out there doing some awesome side hustle stuff. So we’ve got more of that coming also in the new year. So lots going on in your world and the tax prep, right? So we just did a webinar recently. And tell us more about what’s going on in that arena.

Tim Baker: Yeah, so one of the things that I really was thinking about in terms of like Script Financial and really providing great service to our clients is what are some things that really, we have to work through and really deal with every year? And it’s really tax. So before, you know, obviously, I’m a CFP, and a major component of that is tax, but I really wanted to learn more and look at ways to almost start a tax business as part of this Script Financial. And when the things with the Tims all kind of took off, I kind of set that aside. But I was lucky enough to have Paul Eichenberg, who’s a member of my team, who has experience with tax, become part of the team and really offer that as a service to our clients. So last night, we did our first webinar, our first YFP webinar. And it was great. We had great attendance and just kind of a learning experience for us on the webinar side. But yeah, we’re super excited to roll that out for clients. So when clients work with me, comprehensive is just kind of included in their fees, so every year, we’re doing a little bit of tax prep, which is kind of what we’re going through right now, this time of year. And really, kind of the planning that I’m a big believer in that, hey, halfway through the year, let’s take a look and do a projection and make sure that we’re not paying Uncle Sam too much or getting a refund back or whatever that looks like. So yeah, big changes, but very exciting. And just excited to roll that out.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Yeah, you guys have been doing great work there. Shoutout to Paul, I think he’s doing an awesome job leading that. And for those that are listening that aren’t yet clients, if you want to learn more about that service, YourFinancialPharmacist.com/tax. And as Tim mentioned, that’s both inclusive of the filing part but also the strategy part of looking ahead to say, what can we be doing to maximize the tax situation heading into 2019? So Tim, we’ve got some exciting news to share on today’s episode alongside a discussion we’re going to have on the decision to hire a financial planner. One of the most common questions that we get — and we’re also going to be reminiscing along the way about our journey as we both individually reflect back on all of the things that have happened really leading up to this moment. And I think it’s — to be frank, I’ve been kind of giddy about this because, you know, when you and I met just a few years ago, I feel like really, the culmination of that vision is coming together. And it’s been a really, really fun ride. So before we start getting too sentimental, Tim Baker, let’s cut to the chase. Give us the good news. What’s the announcement?

Tim Baker: Yeah. So the big change is that Script Financial, which I just talked about, which I launched way back when in 2016 is now YFP Planning. So this has kind of been kind of in the works, so Script Financial is now part of the Your Financial Pharmacist brand. It’s just super exciting. I know Tim, like when I think back when we met, you know, via Twitter way back when, I never imagined that it would kind of lead our paths to this, but it just made sense in terms of kind of our beliefs and I think what we’re really trying to do in terms of empowering pharmacists and pharmacy students to really take control of their finances. So whether it is the blog or the podcast or a course or doing your taxes or comprehensive financial planning, which is kind of my bread and butter, you know, we felt like basically having that under one brand and one mantle made the most sense, so I’m giddy as well. I’m super excited about I think where we can really take this and I think with good feedback from our listenership and readers and all that basically YFP subscribers to kind of listen to what is needed and adapt. And I think one of the things that really was a catalyst for me to leave kind of the traditional financial planning firm was, you know, there wasn’t really a lot of planning out there for young professionals or individuals that were dealing with student debt or just cash flow and budgeting. So I think in that same breath, we always want to make sure that we’re adapting to the needs of the community and what’s out there and what pharmacists are dealing with. So I’m just super excited to really get going on this and kind of do this relaunch of the brand.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m with you on that. And one of the most common questions we get is, hey, do you guys offer comprehensive financial planning? And for our listeners, here’s the answer. Yes, yes we do. So YFPPlanning.com is the launch of the site. So if you’ve been hearing us talk about Script Financial, Tim’s brand and company, we all are now one entity. So YourFinancialPharmacist.com, you can get there as well or directly at YFPPlanning.com. And I think this really, for me, as I mentioned before, is a culmination of the vision that we had when we sat down at Bob Edmund’s on I-71 in Mansfield, Ohio, and I was actually there with Jess and the boys recently, and I was kind of — I mean, she probably was looking at me like, why are you staring off into the distance?

Tim Baker: Get a little teary-eyed.

Tim Ulbrich: Got a little teary-eyed, I was looking at the booth where we sat and had my boys there, and it was just kind of a cool moment. But just sharing that vision of like, you know, we are so passionate about helping pharmacists in this area, and I think our vision at the time was, hey, everything A to Z. Everything from debt to budgeting to investing to estate planning in all forms and fashions, we want to be involved with pharmacy and helping people along that journey toward financial freedom, which for everyone means something different. And we had this vision that whether you want to come to YourFinancialPharmacist.com and check out our free resources and calculators, which we have a ton out there, or you feel like financial planning’s a great fit for you, we’ve got that all now in one place. So let me ask you the obvious question because I think it’s worth digging in a little bit deeper is, what does comprehensive financial planning mean? Because I think we throw that out there, and the industry, as we’ve talked about before in Episodes 015, 016 and 017, you know, is very different in terms of what you’ll get for that service. So for you and for us, what does that term mean?

Tim Baker: Yeah, I think I look at it as if it has a dollar sign, we’ll work through it. To me, if I’m hiring a professional to help me with my finances, I want someone — I want there to be someone in my corner that has my back, that has my best interests in mind, which unfortunately, the way the industry is set up, that’s not always the case. So I think we’re touching on all of the things that are related to the financial plan, more specifically, things like debt management and kind of your fundamentals and cash flow and insurance and retirement and estate. But there are going to be things that are beyond that, those life events that come up, and I think it’s just really important to have someone that understands what your goals are and kind of understands really the technical piece of the financial plan and point you in the right direction. You know, so much of kind of the old equation or the old guard of financial planning was to push product. Hey, you’re a pharmacist or a doctor, here’s a life insurance policy that, you know, is probably going to pay me a lot of commission or a disability policy or an investment. And I’ll talk to you once a year. That’s not necessarily, you know, the model that we employ. So I think that the idea that a lot of things in life, even in the financial services, is becoming more and more of a commodity. So you know, really what we’re focused on is kind of bringing that life plan that fits the view of what your view of a wealthy life is and have the finances really support that. Typically, most people don’t — they don’t accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth. It’s for, you know, the fact that they want to retire at age 50 or they want to have this vacation home in the woods somewhere. So that’s really the idea is to connect the dots with, OK, what is a wealthy life? And then how do we get there? And that’s, to me, that’s what fires me up.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Love it. You know, Tim, one of the things that stands out to me is over the Facebook YFP Book Club right now, we’re working through the book, “The Next Millionaire Next Door,” by — we’ve talked about it on this podcast — Dr. Tom Stanley, Dr. Sarah Fallaw, which reminds me of our journey and our beliefs to buck the status quo and complacency that’s out there when it comes to achieving financial freedom and building wealth. And the one takeaway that I remember from this book and the first one that was published back in the ‘90s is that this old equation of high income=success is a myth. It’s a false reality. But so many pharmacists, myself included at one point, really subscribe to this false reality. So tell us more about this old equation and how you see pharmacists kind of falling into this trap.

Tim Baker: Yeah, it’s kind of what they talk about when we talk about income statement affluent versus balance sheet affluent. So essentially, income statement affluent — and I see this a lot where, you know, you have a household that makes $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 or whatever that looks like and have nothing to show for it: have no savings, have credit card debt, and essentially, the money, the household’s like a siv, the money comes right in and goes right out. Balance sheet affluent — and I’ve seen this even with residents who make $40,000 or $50,000 or incomes of less than $100,000 — balance sheet affluent are those people that when the money flows in, it actually sticks. And you’re saving for the purpose of retirement or a kid’s education or whatever it is. So the reality is that you’re spending, you know, for a lot of people, a lot of people will say, “Hey, I wish I could make a little bit more. I wish I could get a 10% raise, and then all of my concerns could be put at ease.” But the reality is and the psychology shows us that most people, their spending rises with really their income. So you know, if I double your salary tomorrow, a lot of people will double their spending. So the old equation is, you know, basically is when you follow traditional advice, you should really enjoy your income and really live for today, and we see that in society as being — we very much live on credit and we spend, spend, spend, you know, car payments, a big mortgage, that type of thing where what we really want to do — and it often leads to things that give us stress, so I’m thinking back to Jessica Louie about clutter and things like that. A lot of it is very near-term, like satisfaction of like, oh, this is awesome. But then we just surround ourselves — and I’ve been this way in my life in the past where I’m like, I just have all this stuff that I really don’t like or want that just causes more stress. So I think, you know, the idea is we want to make sure that we are being intentional. We talk about being intentional with our spending. And develop a savings plan that allows you to allocate dollars for the things that mean the most, whether that is a vacation to the Pacific Northwest, whether that is a vacation home in the woods or a trip to Paris, France. Those are really the things that I think are what I talk about life plan that are more important.

Tim Ulbrich: Amen. Preach it, Tim Baker.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: Preach. You know, it’s interesting because we just finished up “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” in the book club, and now we’re reading “The Next Millionaire Next Door,” and that wasn’t intentional, but two very — I don’t know if different is the right word — but just very philosophically — you know, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” to me is all about growing the asset line and thinking about real estate and those types of things.

Tim Baker: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think that “The Millionaire Next Door” focuses much more on frugality and cutting expenses, both of which are very important. And Jess and I were having a conversation the other night is you put the two of those concepts together, and boom. It’s like, game on, right?

Tim Baker: Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: And I was even thinking back to this old equation, thinking back to 2009, you know, Jess and I had over $200,000 of student loan debt, we had a house with almost no equity, we soon had a growing family to support with the loss of one of our incomes because she was going to be staying home. And we realized that despite all of the amazing opportunities that have been afforded to us, there’s really little discussed truth among practitioners, ourselves included, in this field about how to manage this. And I think many pharmacists listening find themselves in exactly the same boat. And so as you meet with pharmacists or residents or fellows or students, what are some of the most common frustrations and things that you’re hearing from them?
Tim Baker: Yeah, it’s a great question. And typically, when I meet with a prospective client, I’ll lay out essentially three things. And I’ll say, “Hey, Tim,” — you know, typically, when a pharmacist such as yourself comes to speak with me about their finances, they share one of a few things. It could be “I’m overwhelmed with student debt,” or even credit card debt, I’m seeing that more and more, this credit card debt. “I am confused how to properly budget, save and invest in my future.” And that’s kind of a broad, that’s a broader one. But it typically hits for most people. And the last one is, you know, “I’m frustrated by the fact that I make a good income, but I’m not progressing financially.” And kind of this idea of living paycheck-to-paycheck and maybe not enjoying kind of their work because they could be stuck in that work because they need that income, that type of thing. So there’s a lot — and typically, when I kind of go through those pain points, a lot of pharmacists look at me and then they say, “You just described me. Like you’re three-for-three.” So I think it hits on a point a lot of kind of what we’re talking about with empowering pharmacists to really get going on this because you can meander in life and wake up when you’re 45, 55, and really have nothing to show for it. It’s really that easy to do. So I think like part of what we do at YFP Planning now is really, we kind of force you to look at it. We meet quite often, so we almost like force you to really look at that, look at the kind of your current state and make moves to better it. And really examine — we often don’t do enough self-reflection, not just about finances but about life in general. You know, so when I say, “Hey, Tim, what does success look like in five years?” what I often see is, “Wow, that’s a really good question. I never really thought about that.” And then the other things I see, particularly between spouses is kind of like that rubberneck, like I can’t believe that these are the things that you want in five years or that type of thing. And again, it’s hard for us to imagine our five-year-older self, and essentially what I do with clients that if you’re 30 right now, you’re 35, I’m like, imagine when you’re 35 or 40, and put yourself in that place. So I think like the pain points are definitely real, and it’s easy to put your head in the sand and kind of not look at it and just live with it, but I think the sooner that we can kind of get a plan in place, the better. And hopefully, we can do that for you.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think just to build on that, Tim, one of the things I see, I’m sure you see it more often that people often come up to me after a talk or ask a question, and they’ll describe that “I really want to pay off my $200,000 student loans,” or “I really want to save $4 million for retirement.” But when I ask that next-level question of why or what’s motivating you or what’s going to keep you going, there really isn’t much thought there, right? And I think that goes to the point of visualization and thinking about not only your why but where you see yourself in five or 10 or 15 years. And what would be the negative impact if you didn’t do this? Or what are you hoping to achieve by doing this? And I think that gets to the point of accountability and coaching. And one of the things that excites me as we think about YFP Planning is that for the past few years on YFP at YourFinancialPharmacist.com, we’ve been providing a ton of information — and a shoutout here to Tim Church, who has done an unbelievable job.

Tim Baker: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: The guides, the checklists, the calculators, the blogs, the podcasts. But what I’m getting to here is it’s not just about information. I’ve seen this firsthand with Jess and I working with you that I read on this topic all the time, but at the end of the day, if I don’t have an accountability partner or a coach, things may not get done. And you know, there’s a quote out there. It says, “If information was the answer, then we’d all be millionaires with perfect abs,” right? So you know, talk to me about accountability and coaching. And I think often, there’s this misperception that hey, my financial planner’s going to help me get x return on my investments when really, maybe the accountability and the coaching is the more important piece.

Tim Baker: Yeah, I think like when I look at it, you know, I kind of go through like when I more or less explain to a client what we do, a lot of it is kind of touching on the different parts of the financial plan, but I almost say like at the end of it, like crumble all that up and throw it away because really, I think the value that we provide is kind of the ongoing coaching and accountability. The technical side of it is important, but you think about even like in pharmacy, like it’s important that you know your stuff, but a lot of it is adherence, right? You want to make sure that your patients are taking their medication and all that kind of stuff. So like it’s the same thing as like I could give — what I tell clients often is just because life is so busy, I could give you the most well thought out, awesome financial plan. Most people will read it, say, “Hey, that’s nice.” And they’ll throw it on the shelf, and nothing ever gets done. So I think what we try to do is provide some, you know, where we have a client portal and we try to put those tasks back into the client portal, that pings them and reminds them. And really, again, the fact that we meet frequently, we’re trying to always push the ball forward and cross those things off the list, whether it’s getting your will done or insurance in place or setting up this Ally account for the purposes of Paris, France, which I want them to label it as “Paris, France,” even if it sits empty for two years. I don’t care. I want that there, ready to receive money when that happens. So I think that — I think that the accountability is important. But I also put a heavy premium on the objectivity. So you know, if we take you and Jess as an example, you guys view money differently. So sometimes, it’s good to have someone that has an objective opinion that says, “Hey, these are what my thoughts are, and this is my advice.” So I think if you couple the objectivity and kind of the objective approach to the financial plan with the kind of the ongoing coaching and accountability, it’s a deadly combination. And that’s what I think that often falls short with a lot of other advisors, so sometimes I’ll ask a prospective client, “Hey, who ultimately is going to make the decision? Is it you? Is it you and your spouse? Is it you and a Yoda in your life? What does that look like?” And a lot of times, you know, people will say, “Well, I really respect my dad’s opinion.” They have an advisor, and that’s an objection I kind of have to overcome because most of the time, dad’s advisor is not going to understand or really value what we do because dad’s advisor will typically — you’ll pay based on the assets that are invested and then maybe — and if they don’t have minimums like $250,000 or $100,000 minimums, and they will work with a younger professional, then they talk to you once or twice a year. That’s not our model. We’re very different. So it’s not an apples-to-apples approach. So again, I think the coaching and the accountability part is such a big part of that that I think it’s a differentiating factor between us and other financial planners.

Tim Ulbrich: So Tim, hopefully this is a feel-good for you, but as you were talking right then, I just started making a list of all of the things that Jess and I accomplished in the last three months that I’m confident we either would not have done or would not have done as quickly without your accountability and coaching. So I’m sure I’m missing some, but we’re back on track with our zero-based budget, using YNAB, we got the estate planning documents wrapped up, emergency fund is back to full fund after we moved recently, we worked through plussing up our disability and life insurance policies, umbrella insurance policies, we worked through lowering fees on investments, asset allocation of accounts, and setting up our savings sheet with our sinking funds. And even to your point earlier, some of those have a $0 but are a reminder of the goals that we have, right? So we have some real estate goals at $0 right now. That’s not the point. The point is it’s a reminder of the goal that we’re trying to get to and because of that, even at $0, it’s something that Jess and I are talking about. So that’s the power of accountability right there. Would I have done those things did I have the knowledge to do them? Yes. Would I have executed? Maybe yes, maybe no. And that matters.

Tim Baker: Well, it makes my heart happy. And you guys are great clients, so I think that, yeah, I think that it’s good feedback. Now, the 403b that we have in transit, that’s a work in progress. I’ll talk to you about that today. But you know, there’s always things that, you know — and again, it’s kind of like an ebb and flow. So it’s never going to be clean-cut in terms of like, hey, we knocked this out. Things are going to change in life. And imagine like in your life alone, what has changed over this past year, and you’ve accomplished all that, and you’ve been really intentional about that. And I think almost working together has kind of forced us into that. And I think that’s great. And yeah, I think that it’s hard to — so a lot of — it’s hard to quantify that, though. Like how do you quantify? Because at the end of the day, pharmacists are scientists. They’re very analytical, so they want to say, OK, if I’m paying this amount of fee, am I going to get this return? And I put that back on how do you value x or how do you value y? But I understand, like you have to get value from that. But yeah, it’s great feedback. And I think the things that really fire me up are those types of, that type of feedback but also seeing a client — and I have a few clients in mind that come to me with $40,000 in credit card debt, and they pay it off like aggressively, very quickly, so we can move onto the next thing. And we can see the movement in their overall net worth, so where before they were -$200,000, maybe they’re now they’re only -$140,000, which sounds like people laugh at that, but those are real dollars that we’re making moves towards. So I love those cases, and it inspires me to kind of keep going and really be the advisor, be the planner there that is there to back them up and really encourage them and really give them tough love when they need it as well.

Tim Ulbrich: Alright, so Tim, we’ve talked before on this podcast many times about the value of fee-only financial planning. Episodes 015-017, which I referenced earlier, and lots of variability that’s out there in the financial planning industry. So just real brief, fee-only, what is it? And why does it matter?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so I guess in my profession — and I guess I struggle to call it a profession for a lot of reasons, but really, the way that advisors are really identified, so if we have any John Oliver fans out there who does Last Week Tonight, he does a segment on financial advisors and kind of what they are and how they work, and I always reference that because I think it’s actually pretty funny and pretty accurate. You know, essentially, a financial advisor or financial planner, that name really doesn’t mean anything. Unlike a PharmD, an MD, a JD that actually carries weight to it, the CFP has, that’s kind of like an accreditation that you want, a Certified Financial Planner, but essentially, financial advisors, financial planners, are typically categorized in three buckets. You have a commission agent, which in the very extreme example, think of like Wolf of Wall Street. “Hey, Tim, I’m walking in the parking lot, I had this great idea on a stock that I want to sell you or this life insurance plan or this disability policy.” It’s very transactional, and it’s the sale of product. So I’m trying to get my commission and then go. The fee-based world, which this is where I started in the industry before I launched Script Financial was fee-based. Fee-based is basically where you have advice and the sale of product, basically they’re merged together. And anytime that happens, you have a conflict of interest. So in my last firm, I would say, “Hey, client, I could sell you this mutual fund that pays me a 1% commission and a 1% trail or this one that pays me a 5% commission. Or if we talked about term and whole-life, this particular term policy pays me a commission of x and whole-life pays me a lot more,” so anytime that you have — and we see this, Tim, we see this with physicians. So physicians are not supposed to get kickbacks on the medication they’re prescribing because, you know, there’s a conflict there. So it’s the same in our industry, except right now, most of the advisors out there operate in that fee-based world. What fee-only does, and it’s a very, very small subset of financial advisors out there. I’ve heard estimates it’s less than 5%. What fee-only is is basically you separate the advice, the dispensing of advice, from the product. So my compensation comes directly from the client, there’s no kickback or referrals. It’s not through a mutual fund or insurance company. It comes directly from the clients. So I don’t really — I’m not influenced to put a client in Product X or Y. I want to basically — I’m giving them the advice, they’re paying me for the advice, and I’ll put them in products that I think are in their best interest. So the big thing with fee-only is that it follows that fiduciary standard of care, which means that I’m legally bound to act in my client’s best interest versus a suitability care, which the majority of advisors out there where they can actually put their own interests ahead of their clients’. Which is crazy to me that that is actually a thing.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think just to drive that home one step further, if we think about the traditional financial advising model, typically, there’s a compensation based on Assets Under Management, so how much you’ve invested with them or commission from product scales, which often are hidden from view or hourly fees. So in other words, that advisor is incentivized to focus on investing over other options. And sometimes, this means that your goals as the client and their goals as the advisor are not fully aligned. And that is so important for pharmacists to hear that message because as we launch YFP Planning, we talk about fee-only financial planning services, which is what you’ve been doing with Script Financial, that it really bucks that model entirely. And that’s really important for those of you that are looking comprehensively, that I need help with student loans, I need help with credit card debt, I need help with my budget, I need help with home buying, I need help with estate planning and all these other things with investments being one piece of that. But we’re not going to only focus on investments, ignoring the rest of the financial plan. And so I think that holistic model and that pricing incentivizes that comprehensive nature is incredibly important for our clients to be considering, whether it’s us or somebody else, to make sure that they’re looking at a model that’s fee-only, that there’s a right educational credential and that pricing is done so in a way that really incentivizes that advisor to work with you on a comprehensive nature.

Tim Baker: Yeah, and one of the things that frustrates me a bit is, you know, when I’m talking to a prospective client and they’re like, “Well, maybe I’ll go with my parents’ advisor that doesn’t charge them anything,” which is utterly false. It’s so, like, nothing comes free. So you know, typically, what happens there is that they don’t know what they’re being charged, which is a problem. Transparency is a problem in our industry. So that’s a problem. But I think also is the — I think when you work with a professional, there’s almost like a sense that they know what they’re talking about. And I would say by and large, most advisors have no idea what to do with student loans or how to help clients with a budget because it’s just not something, you know, most advisors want minimums of $250,000 in investable assets, so there’s almost this assumption of wealth. So it’s like, “Hey, kid straight out of pharmacy school, good on you. But you don’t need financial planning help,” which is utterly false. It’s just that their model is set in a way that they’re incentivized to go after those that have investable assets. And then really with the student loan piece in particular, I’ve had clients that say, “Hey, I’ve been working with this other advisor, and their advice on the student loans was like, oh, they’ll just take care of themselves. They’ll just amortize over time,” which is like ugh, I just want to scream to the heavens and say, “No, that is terrible advice.” But then they’re also in a whole-life policy or whatever. So it’s just crazy talk.

Tim Ulbrich: Follow the dollar. Follow the dollar.

Tim Baker: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ulbrich: So talk us through the process at YFP Planning. Where do people begin? And then once they go through that process of trying to figure out is it a good fit for them or not? What does that look like from there?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so it’s a great question, Tim. So I think the best, you know, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, man, I think this works for me, probably the best thing would be to go YFPPlanning.com, and you can actually schedule like a free discovery meeting with myself. And really, this allows me to kind of learn a little bit about you and potentially your spouse, what are the big issues that we’re dealing with and kind of talk through the process and what we do and kind of get a sense of each other to see if we would be a good fit. So you know, if we decide that, we kind of go through a step to kind of get you onboarded. So it could be really the first meeting that we have is get organized. So in the get organized meeting, we essentially look at your client portal. So once you become a client, you get a welcome email that says, “Hey, start linking all of your things to the client portal: your checking, your savings, your student loans, all that.” And what I’m doing is I’m building the first lens in which I’m going to look through to give you advice. So I’m looking at a snapshot of your income and your net worth, and then we also do kind of a 90-day retroactive budget exercise just to see how money is flowing through the household. So that’s really the first meeting. And then from there, we essentially schedule the second meeting, which is the second lens in which I’m looking through is it’s all about the goals and kind of hearkens back to the three questions that we went through with you and Jess. And really, it’s where I learn the most about my clients and really how the client views what a wealthy life is. So we’re going to ask you thought-provoking questions that you probably have not asked yourself. But the idea is to really, based on those two meetings, build a plan in a way that I am helping you grow and protect income and grow and protect your net worth while keeping your goals in mind. To me, that’s the name of the game.

Tim Ulbrich: So Tim, I’m guessing some are thinking, can I just do all of this myself? So what is your answer to that? Because I know for you, fit is very important in terms of the right fit for you, the right fit for the client. So what is your response to that?

Tim Baker: Yeah, I think, you know, I think the answer is that you can. You absolutely can. And there are a lot of people that kind of more of a DIY approach. And Tim, I would probably put you as a more DIY, especially before we first met, but I think once you start working with someone and you can kind of see the power of kind of the ongoing coaching and accountability, it almost kicks that into second gear. So I think you can. I think my view on that is, you know, I’m a financial planner, and I need a financial planner because, again, I need someone to objectively look at Shea and I’s situation and say, hey, we come from very different places in terms of money. These are our goals, how do we get there? So I get it. Pharmacists are very smart. They’re very analytical. But you know, even if you’re going to play a sport, you’re going to workout, typically, you have a trainer or you have a coach that kind of looks at your situation and looks at it from that third-party viewpoint and say, “Hey, brass tax, these are things that I think you’re doing well at. These are things that I think we need to improve upon.” So I think that you can. I would argue that what we do across the board with tax — so the slide that I put up last night was the average pharmacist will make $9 million, and $6 million will flow through your accounts. What’s at stake is really the $3 million that typically is eaten up by tax. How do we be as efficient with that as possible? You know, I’m analyzing an individual’s 401k now, and their expense ratios are like 2.67%, which is crazy. Like it’s crazy. So with a little bit of adjustment, we can really lower that substantially. And over the course of their lifetime, we’ll save probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, not an exaggeration.

Tim Ulbrich: Maybe more.

Tim Baker: Maybe more. And again, that’s not a guarantee or anything, so nothing like that. But like, it’s those types of things that either you — the audience, you guys are trained as pharmacists, you’re not really trained to look at some of these things that I do every day with clients. So it’s just that other, maybe more technical piece of it to really look at. And again, I think kind of the high-touch that we are with offering the tax and the cash flow and budgeting piece is I think a really differentiator between us and maybe the other guy.

Tim Ulbrich: So to our listeners, regardless of whether you choose to explore YFP Planning, I want to offer up a challenge to you that is two questions. No. 1, what are you going to do in the next 30 days to change your financial situation? And No. 2, what’s the first step that you’re going to take towards your wealthy life? Because everyone we’ve talked to, myself included, constantly says, “I wish I would have started earlier,” right? And when I go talk with students and residents and I talk with faculty and pharmacists and preceptors, the one thing they say is, “I wish I would have started earlier,” or “I wish I would have learned this information sooner.” So Tim, let’s wrap up here. Just give us a little bit of background on the YFP Planning team — I know it’s a team that’s growing — and what our listeners can expect as they engage with us as a group.

Tim Baker: Yeah, so I’m super fortunate enough to have a good team that surrounds me. Like I mentioned, Paul who was on our webinar last night, he is essentially my go-to. He’s basically Director of Operations and Tax. So he handles all of the tax returns internally. Frankie, who’s my assistant, she does all the behind-the-scenes work that sets me up for meetings and follow-up and all the things that are crucial to kind of push the financial plan forward and helps me with that. And Tom, who’s my assistant advisor. And all Tom does is work on cash flow and budget. He’s a super nerd, he likes that stuff.

Tim Ulbrich: Super nerd.

Tim Baker: Super nerd, yeah. So I’m so happy to have them as part of my team. And of course, you guys in terms of helping the firm grow and Caitlyn, who does an excellent job with the podcast, all integral parts of the team. But I think like as we — and Tim, I was thinking about this, like you know, the other day, I’m like maybe we should have like a career section on our website. Because I think that we are growing, and I would love to be able to have maybe jobs out there that maybe would be interesting to the YFP community. But I’m excited. We’re looking at bringing on a paraplanner in the coming weeks and just to add additional backup. And I think as we grow, one of the things that we’re really — and we talk about this a lot, kind of the three Tims — is making sure that our brand is — we want to make sure that what we represent and what we believe in is kind of is shown amongst all of our team members. So I’m just excited about, you know, really the rebrand and I think where we’re going to take this going into 2019 and beyond.

Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And to the point you made about the careers piece, we’ve got some exciting announcements coming out, looking for some writers that are passionate about this topic.

Tim Baker: Yes.

Tim Ulbrich: We welcome and value other perspectives. And then also, we’ve been floating around the idea of a student internship. So if there’s any students out there listening that are nerds on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. [email protected]. And we’re hoping to make that a reality here in 2019. So to the YFP community, as always, we appreciate you joining us each and every week. And we’re excited to be on this journey alongside of you. And if you’re not yet a part of the community over at the Your Financial Pharmacist Facebook group, check it out. That group every day inspires me as they’re challenging, helping one another, motivating one another, sharing success stories, looking for encouragement. So again, that’s the Your Financial Pharmacist Facebook group. Tim, it’s been a lot of fun, as always, with this episode and the journey, and looking forward to an awesome 2019.

Tim Baker: Same here.

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