Ep 50: Financial Lessons Learned
The X's & O's
It's the 50th episode of the podcast! In honor of this milestone, Brent, Matthew, and Joshua reflect on some of the financial knowledge and lessons they have gained along the way.
The Hosts:
Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk
Transcript:
Brent Pasqua: Here we go, episode 50 is on for today. Welcome to Retirement Plan Playbook. I am your host, Brent Pasqua, Founder of RPA Wealth Management. I’m here with Matthew Theal, Certified Financial Planner at RPA Wealth Management, and Joshua Winterswyk, Certified Financial Planner. The big 5-O, guys. How’s it feel to hit number 50?
Matthew Theal: I’m excited. We started this project, I think we agreed to try 12 episodes. It’s been a lot of ups and downs but here we are, episode 50. Excited for 50 more.
Joshua Winterswyk: I can’t believe it’s already 50. Time’s just flying by. It seemed like yesterday we were just getting this all started and now it’s already 50, so it’s been a lot of fun.
Brent Pasqua: It’s a lot more fun than the first ones, isn’t it?
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. I think just like anything, with practice you get a little bit more comfortable. I think leading up to the podcast, it’s a little nerve wracking when you’re first doing them, but now I think it’s turned into more excitement.
Brent Pasqua: What have you enjoyed most about doing the podcast, Matt?
Matthew Theal: I actually just like the banter with the three of us. It’s fun to get out, talk about your thoughts and hear your perspective as well as work and refine my own. And then I also like the feedback we get from clients and prospective clients like, “Oh, I heard your podcast. I liked it,” so that feels good.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, that does feel good. And yeah, I also just like the banter, actually having a little structured conversation with you guys and seeing your thoughts on things maybe I didn’t even know. So it’s just been a lot of fun and fun to share it with our listeners, family and friends.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. I think it’s a great forum to be able to fill people in on what’s going on.
Joshua Winterswyk: Absolutely.
Brent Pasqua: All right. Well, let’s go into the hot take headlines. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, will fly to space on Blue Origin’s inaugural space flight. The trip will take place next month. Blue Origin is planning on sending three people in its first man flight. Bezos, his brother, and one lucky bidder. What’s your thought on this? It seems a little crazy.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. So the richest man in the world is going to space. I guess he’s going to be the first citizen shot up the space, which is quite interesting. The headline you think, “Oh wow, that’s crazy. He’s going to be gone for two months or something like that.” But I think he’s just going up, like he’s going to get to peak at the earth and then he’s coming back down. To me it sounds risky, but the world’s richest guy who started Amazon doesn’t have a lot to lose at this point. Right?
Joshua Winterswyk: Well, I think that, especially just building his business, he took a lot of risks to achieve what he’s already accomplished. I’m sure he has a pretty big appetite for risk. And I think in the article it said that it was always his dream since he was like five to go to space. It’s pretty cool that he made that dream come true for himself, but I think it is pretty crazy to think that they’re only going to be up there for I think they said three minutes where they get to be out of their seats and then come back down to earth. And what did that last seat go for? It was like 28 million?
Matthew Theal: Oh, I don’t know has the bidding finished?
Joshua Winterswyk: I think the bidding finished and the last guy actually-
Matthew Theal: He won it, right?
Joshua Winterswyk: I could be wrong, but I want to say the seat actually was 28 million. I don’t know if I’d spend 28 million to go to space for three minutes.
Brent Pasqua: So how long is this whole trip?
Matthew Theal: I don’t know how long it takes to get up. I imagine maybe a couple of hours or less.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, you said he doesn’t have a lot to lose, but if you’re a multi, multi-billionaire, I guess you do have a lot to lose, right, because you could lose your life, a life of luxury that he probably lives.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it makes sense now that he stepped down as the CEO of Amazon. And now he’s just focusing on this Blue Origin. But in the beginning of one of the articles I read on this story, and it was funny because they pinned it as the battle of the billionaires, the travel to space. That was pretty funny.
Matthew Theal: This is probably what we’re going to hear about the next 10 years is all these billionaires Musk, Branson, and Bezos battle it out over who gets to control space tourism.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. It’s like space, the moon, Mars.
Brent Pasqua: Does NASA have their hand in any of this or do they assist in any of this?
Matthew Theal: Yeah, I think NASA hands out some contracts to launch satellites on the SpaceX side. I don’t know if Blue Origin is doing that, but for the most part, a lot of these Musk, Bezos, and then I believe Branson are doing a lot of the funding of this with their own pockets.
Brent Pasqua: So they have to be pretty confident, or at least Bezos has to be pretty confident that this thing can get up and get back. Right?
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. I think you’re not going as far into space. I think like Matt said, you’re going to the edge of our atmosphere, just so it has that feeling that you’re really deep into space and then you come back down.
Matthew Theal: He’s not traveling to the moon or anything, or to the space station or to Mars.
Brent Pasqua: Well, I guess it’s interesting too, because if he goes up and he comes back safe, it’ll be curious to see what happens from there.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. It’s showing that he believes in his company and the mission and making other people feel confident because I think their goal is to send tons of civilians into space that want to go.
Brent Pasqua: Would you go up?
Joshua Winterswyk: I would just not for $28 million.
Brent Pasqua: Would you go up?
Matthew Theal: No, I’m cool here. There’s nothing in space for me.
Joshua Winterswyk: I’ll take your position. I have kids.
Brent Pasqua: That’s the thrill, huh? It’d be pretty cool to say you went to space and to see space. That’s what’s a learn to me.
Matthew Theal: I don’t like flying over the ocean, so I’m cool.
Brent Pasqua: So El Salvador, one of the poorest countries in the world has become the first country to approve Bitcoin as their legal tender. El Salvadorian government has said it hopes the move to Bitcoin would help the 70% of its population that doesn’t have access to traditional financial services. What’s happening here with this? It’s been in the news. It’s been reported a lot. What are they planning on doing with Bitcoin there?
Matthew Theal: Yeah, so it’s kind of a confusing story. So El Salvador, like many South American countries, uses the dollar as their currency. They are going to start accepting Bitcoin, essentially merchants and the governments, which interesting, and we’ll see how Bitcoin does in this. I for one, I don’t know about you guys, I’m just getting sick of hearing about Bitcoin.
And the problem is that people who like Bitcoin so much are just really annoying about it, either online or on TV. It’s like, “Dude, we get it. You’re into Bitcoin. That’s cool.”
Joshua Winterswyk: Changing their profile pics with laser eyes.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, exactly. But for the most part, to me, this is a much smaller story than being talked about in the news. El Salvador is a very small country. Every state in the United States is larger than El Salvador. We’ll see.
Brent Pasqua: So how would they exchange it? I mean, you go to the market and you’re going to use a Bitcoin debit card of some sort? How are you exchanging? You’re paying it … how are you transferring money?
Matthew Theal: Well, that’s a good question, Brent. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet. I just think they’re going for the headline here. And then the other thing too, is it’s one of the poorest countries, not only in … is South or Central America?
Brent Pasqua: Central America. They’re one of the poorest countries in Central America.
Matthew Theal: So they’re one of the poorest countries in Central America. One Bitcoin is what, 30, $40,000. So I don’t know.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. What’s confusing to me about it is if Bitcoin’s value is constantly moving, you have stability here with the dollar. So if something costs a dollar, you exchange it for a dollar, it costs a dollar. You know what your profit and losses are on that product. But if you’re exchanging something there and Bitcoin’s value is constantly moving, are you adjusting prices in the supermarket every second based on a pound of meat costs different now than it does 10 minutes ago because Bitcoin’s constantly moving?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. So Bitcoin drops 10% like it does on a regular basis, are they going to drop the price of the beef they’re selling? It’s interesting. I don’t know.
Brent Pasqua: I don’t know how they’re going to all work that out. I think that’s all still being managed, but it is risk. There’s a lot of risk involved in this too. I know that just reading through the story and in researching this a little bit, using the U.S. dollar can be a little bit more stable and a disadvantage to these poorer countries, because there’s just not as much room for growth using the U.S. dollar as their legal tender. So I think one of the reasons why also is El Salvador is saying, “We’re really a poor country. Using Bitcoin for our legal tender could also have some upside with the growth.”
So paying off debt. We have Bitcoin at 30,000 and it grew to 60,000. We could use some of that growth to pay off our country’s debt or use it for infrastructure and stuff like that. But then it’s not talked about what if it goes the opposite way and loses? What happens then? So you’re adding more risks to this country that’s already extremely poor. I’m not very confident in that.
Matthew Theal: We’ll see how it plays out. It’ll be interesting over the next couple of months and years to where it goes from here, I guess.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s get in the retirement planning corner. For our 50th episode, we have a great topic today. We’re going to talk about the three things for each of us that we’ve really thought about, learned since we’ve been not only financial advisors, but since we’ve started this podcast in areas of just great knowledge of topics and headlines of stuff financially that we can do. And we’re going to go through our lessons of what we’ve learned. Matt, why don’t we just kick off retirement planning corner about some of the planning lessons that you’ve learned since over the last couple of years?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. So the first one that I’ve changed my mind on or learned was active versus passive investing. So active investing, right, you’re actively going out there and trying to pick winning stocks, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, what have you. You’re trying to beat the stock market. Passive is you’re buying all the stocks on the market using a fund and ETF, a mutual fund. And when I started my career or when I started getting into investing, I was a big active stock manager, as you know, doing the call options, picking stocks, doing put options. I thought I was going to be like a Jim Cramer type.
Brent Pasqua: How’d that work out for you?
Matthew Theal: Not great. And so I actually stopped investing for a year because I was so beaten down after the financial crisis.
Brent Pasqua: Were you in cash or you just held your positions?
Matthew Theal: Cash and then I held a few positions. And then I started working in the investment industry as a financial advisor specifically. I really got big about becoming a passive investor and doing your retirement funds and Vanguard and DFA and any kind of index fund. And for a long time, I was like, “That’s the only way to go.” But I’ve recently changed my mind. I believe that a really good strategy for a lot of people, if you are into the stock market and you want to follow it,, is doing your retirement accounts passive, because that’s the best way to get predictable growth.
And then creating yourself a trading account or a speculation account and buying good stocks or good businesses and holding them for forever. I basically buy a stock and I don’t really ever sell it.
Brent Pasqua: That’s assuming you want to put the time into it.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. Assuming you want to put the time into it, yes.
Brent Pasqua: And you enjoy it?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. I mean, you have to. It’s got to be a semi hobby for yours.
Brent Pasqua: Is that your recommendation for a lot of everyday people or is it just your thought on where the market is moved and how you can manage portfolios?
Matthew Theal: I think is my recommendation certainly for people who are interested in the stock market and want to invest some of their savings to go that route, build a portfolio of 10 to 20 stocks, but don’t turn it over too frequently. You need to hold them for five to 10 years. And then on the retirement side, definitely do the Vanguard, DFA, passive funds.
Brent Pasqua: I think it’s a really good lesson, especially as active stock picking and active in speculation, investing has gotten more popular it seems like over the last year and a half. If you don’t have that foundation and that passive building block and all of your money is in that active or speculation. That’s a very dangerous strategy. And it seems like a lot of especially young people are leaning towards that side recently. Josh, what are some of your lessons?
Joshua Winterswyk: My first lesson, I went more recently just with some lessons, especially since we started the podcast. But my first lesson I got married. I just had my second year wedding anniversary. I dated my wife for a long time before we got married. But one thing, a lesson that I learned, is just starting the financial conversation with your partner a lot sooner than later. So it’s just very valuable. Getting married and picking a partner is also a financial decision, right? I mean, you’re combining incomes, you’re combining your household, and you’re going to be on this financial journey together.
So even before you get married, having that open conversation about finances, about income, about debt, coming up with a plan, and then also going into your wedding, actually sitting down and creating a budget. Weddings can be very expensive, no matter what the age or how much help you have. So it’s very easy to go over that budget. I experienced that. And now I want to share that experience of making sure that you do have a plan, making sure that open conversation and that open dialogue between you and your partner and families is always there, and coming up with a budget before you get married so you can really just focus on the happiness of it all. It’s not so much of a financial stress that you go through that time, because it is just such a very beautiful time getting married. That’s my first lesson.
Brent Pasqua: I guess one of the things that strikes me about that too, as you’re saying that, is that as a young person is a transition to a new chapter in life. I would think that even for retirement that pertains, that as you go into that new chapter, you should be having that conversation with your spouse, no matter how long you’ve been married. Let’s have that financial discussion about what this transition is going to look like, what it’s going to cost us, what debts do we need to pay off, how do we successfully go into retirement and transition from work? Same kind of concept, it’s just a different stage of life.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, absolutely. And even for people who are getting married in life, right, and might even be successful already, it still needs to be a conversation to be had, because you just don’t want finances to lead to negative conversations. They should be positive and they should feel like you accomplish something as you have them. So like you said, you can relate that to a lot of different aspects, especially even retirement. And it relates to anybody going through marriage young or old.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. If your marriage is struggling financially, it’s so important to either bring on an advisor or really sit down and spend time going through the finances and going through it with great detail.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, absolutely.
Brent Pasqua: My first lesson that I want to go over is one that I’ve had a lot of conversations with, not only with clients, but a lot of people and that is dollar cost averaging. One thing that I’ve noticed in my career time and time again is that when a person is putting into their 401(k) plan, you tend to see higher rates of return because they’re constantly putting new money in, into positions that they’re purchasing at all different market prices. That’s number one. The second part of that is that I’ve had a lot of conversations right now about people who have money sitting in cash. They don’t know when to get it in or how to get it in.
Another great way to do that is you don’t have to go in all at once. We talked about getting your money invested, get in when you have it, but you don’t always have to go in all at once. If you’re a little bit concerned about where the market is, you can step tiptoe your way in. You place trades now. You set another date, let’s say you set a target date two months from now. The first of the month, you get those next trades in, but you stick to that plan. You create yourself a plan, you dollar cost in. And the other thing to do I think in investing that’s so critical is you should be putting in monthly. If you’re saving, it doesn’t just have to be your 401(k) plan.
It should be in an after-tax brokerage account to individual stocks like you were talking about, Matt, but do it consistently, place your trades consistently, or get it automated so that your trades go in. But dollar cost averaging at different prices will help your rate of return, and it’s going to help you constantly be buying shares at different prices that will help you with your long-term goal.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. Well said, Brent. Such a great strategy to build wealth. You want to know how you end up with a million, $2 million in your 401(k) by the time you go to retire. It’s by setting up that constant savings strategy and investing periodically every time you get a paycheck. You could do it outside in an after-tax brokerage account as well and it’ll have the same compounding effect.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, it seems like over time, it grows so much faster than if you just put a lump sum of money in there and you just think it’s going to grow faster over time. It doesn’t work like that. You got to be dollar cost averaging buying in. If you’re sitting on the sidelines, you don’t know when to get in, put a schedule together when you’re going to place your trades, get it in slowly, get the money consistently getting in the market. Matt, what’s your second lesson?
Matthew Theal: All right. So this is one that for the longest time I was anti home buying. I just never thought the numbers made sense for a lot of people and they still don’t. I still don’t think the majority of people should be rushing into home ownership. I think it’s a big mistake. But what I’ve realized is there becomes a certain time in your life where you’re going to most likely need to purchase a home. And it happens with a life change. Most likely it will be with the child. And when that happens, you need to buy a home. And regardless of if it’s a good financial investment, which it most likely is not the best use of your money, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to suck it up and you’ve got to buy the home and make it yours. It’s your nest to raise your family. So I’ve definitely changed my mind on home buying.
Brent Pasqua: The big rent guy is coming into the lessons learned on now purchasing, huh?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. You know, things change.
Brent Pasqua: Things do change, Matt. This wasn’t always your stance. So definitely a lesson into the other way.
Matthew Theal: I feel there’s some pretty heated conversations in the podcast about renting and how important it is to rent. And now that houses are at all-time highs you’re saying to go purchase.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah.
Matthew Theal: Well, no, I’m not saying that I’m saying you’re going to hit a certain point where you need to. And then as your family expands, you probably are going to hit a certain point where you need to upgrade your home and expand maybe the bedrooms or space. And then as you go into retirement, you probably actually need to downgrade your home because you might not need as much space.
Brent Pasqua: But I think a little bit of what you’re saying too is you’re in like a more stable place so it makes more sense. It’s providing you more than just an investment. It’s not just a financial decision of the ownership of the home. It’s for your family. And it’s a place for you to live and enjoy when you take all of the numbers out of it.
Matthew Theal: I still believe though, if you want to be rich, having big bank account, big brokerage account, big retirement account, them buying a home is probably not a good idea first.
Brent Pasqua: And I agree with you. I mean, I don’t think renting and saving is a bad strategy. It’s a very good strategy if you’re disciplined. You don’t have all of those extra costs. Good lesson though. I’m excited you changed your mind on something. I’ll go into my next lesson. I’m going to stay on the real estate topic. I just feel like especially studying finance and being a financial advisor, a lot of the conversations I have revolve around real estate and it being the best way to create passive income, or the only way a lot of times that people think that they can create passive income.
And the lesson that I’ve learned is that especially now there’s so many other ways that you can create passive income. And really passive income is the idea of making your money work for you, right? You take some of your capital and you invest it and it’s going to give you a rate of return. So you’re not laboring for that rate of return or that earned income. So real estate does do that in the form of you buy a house, you can rent it out and it creates that passive income. But a lot of people also that I meet with don’t understand that your investments can create passive income, right?
So just take, for example, Matt talked about brokerage accounts. You save money and you invest it and actually creates interest in dividends and it has growth within it that can actually create passive income. And that’s just another way. So really my lesson is, is that real estate isn’t the only option. It can be an option. And it can be a good option if you have a good plan, but there are also other ways like investment portfolios, you can also invest in starting your own business that can create passive income as well or investing in other businesses, so privately held. So I just think that although real estate, very popular, is an option, it just isn’t the only option to be creating that passive income.
Matthew Theal: Such a great point. You look at what real estate investment compound’s at, and it compounds it nothing close to what a good business or essentially a stock would compound that. So I just pulled up Google, right? Google has been public now for over 15 years. It’s 15 year average compound rate is 18.3% per year. It’s all time compound rate is almost 26%. Since it’s been public every year, it’s gone up at least on average 26%. That’s insane. No home is doing that.
Brent Pasqua: Thanks for supporting in my lesson. No, that is amazing. And you can see that. There’s another option. Why aren’t we exploring it? I think another part of that too, is the real estate, before you even go into that conversation, is making sure you understand what is the actual internal rate of return of the property going to potentially be? What is that rate of return on your capital or your money? We can pull up Google’s appreciation and growth and find that out through a Google search. We need to be doing that as well, looking at the history and projecting it forward with real estate. So again, just not the only option.
Matthew Theal: I think that’s one of the most critical points is what is your real rate of return? Because a lot of people will come in and say, “Well, I want to buy this rental property and I’m going to get passive income,” but typically they’re not buying it all cash they’re financing part of it, or a lot of it. And there’s actually no rate of return. Is it really even considered passive income if you don’t have any income from it?
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. Absolutely. After you’re factoring in taxes, maintenance costs.
Matthew Theal: Insurance.
Brent Pasqua: Just your loan, all of that stuff, what is actually your net rate of return? If you can answer that and it’s great. Awesome. That’s a good investment, but if you can’t or it’s not great, it’s not the only other option that you have.
Matthew Theal: Passive income for the bank is lending you the money.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, exactly.
Matthew Theal: And there’s a lot of risk to that as well.
Joshua Winterswyk: They don’t need to make any more money in those banks.
Brent Pasqua: So my next lesson is a health over wealth. It’s something that I’ve learned a lot about over the last couple of years. I think it’s a message that a lot of people need to hear is, and that is everybody’s been through a tough last year and a half, and if you’re retired and you haven’t taken a trip in a while, but you’re worried about spending the extra money or finances, let me tell you, if you’re healthy and you know that you can afford it in a sense, go out and do it, do it now. Don’t wait till you’re older. Enjoy life while you’re healthy and strong, because no matter how much money you have saved, that can’t replace your health. We all know that, but sometimes we just need to hear it.
That take that enjoyment and go do it, take that next step, spend the extra money and do it while you’re happy because once your health goes, that enjoyment won’t be the same going and doing those same trips. And whether that’s with purchasing a house or whatever it is that you think about that’s going to make you happy, finances are a major part, but while you’re healthy, spend a little bit of that extra money.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, I think optimizing for health is one of those industries that we’re going to see just continue to explode over the next 20 years. Kind of like how optimizing your finances is exploding right now. You bring up a great point that being healthy is probably more important than being wealthy. And I think people are starting to realize that.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, I think I also just agree what a great lesson without the health, it doesn’t mean anything. I think a good point that you made is also enjoying it while you are healthy. And just to compound even Matt’s point, if you can stay healthy longer, meaning focusing on your health, you’re going to be just happy even longer. So great point, Brent.
Brent Pasqua: One of the things that we’re always encouraging, and we do it in our meetings is, if a client’s thinking about a trip and they don’t know if they want to take the money out, we always encourage them to go. It’s like, “Go do it, enjoy it, and spend a little bit more even than what you’re planning on spending, because we’ll make it work. We can make adjustments. We’re meeting on a regular basis. Not like one day you have money the next day you’re not. We’ll make it work. We’ll figure it out and go enjoy life because those are the things that you’re going to remember. And if your health goes, you’re not going to have any options to do those things.”
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. Good point.
Matthew Theal: All right. So my next lesson is really about being an entrepreneur, starting a business and owning pieces of businesses. What I’ve really started to find throughout the last five years of my career is that is the true way you make wealth in this country. Typically for us, the most wealthiest people that we sit across are business owners. As a parent, I want to instill that value into my kids, or my kid right now. And I, for a long time, I always thought that you’d go work for somebody else and that’s how you’d become rich. You’d work your way up and you’d get paid a high salary. That’s what being rich is, but that’s not it at all. It’s entrepreneurship. That’s the true way to the American dream. We need to start instilling that more into kids’ values and stop telling them to essentially be worker bees.
Brent Pasqua: We’ve seen it so many times with clients that they’re first generation coming to this country. They start a business right away when they get there, they have a tremendous amount of success starting a business. They know how to do it. They work hard and they provide a really good lifestyle for their kids. It feels like in this country, we push kids to go to college and work for corporate Americans instead of instilling that other way of doing things.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. There’s another option, right? Starting your own business. And I think, Matt, again, just another really, really great lesson of seeing how wealth accumulates by working with clients. And that’s the common theme, business owners. It really is. I think that if we could teach that to our children, that college and working for corporate America isn’t the only option, these business owners is another way and being your own boss, I think it’s just going to relate into positive effects to the youth and even ourselves. There is always the other option. If you have a great idea, if you have a great service idea or a product, America is great for entrepreneurship. So take advantage of that and that’s really going to help you compound wealth.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. And for kids, if you’re in your 40s, 50s, and you’re sitting and listening to this podcast and you hate your job and you’re thinking, “I can’t wait till I retire,” you’re counting the days, maybe look at entrepreneurship. Go find a business to start and build that business like you have your career.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. And I think one of the challenges I see too, is if we don’t even teach the youth about how to manage their own expenses, how do you even begin to explain to them how to manage your business expenses? It’s just another layer of complexity. So it starts at a young age, but you’re right. You’re sitting there and you have a skillset and you’ve been working in a job and you’re not happy, by all means look at starting a business, whether it’s purchasing a business, look to see what’s out there, or that’s already existing or starting your own. I mean, there is risk involved, but sometimes you got to take those.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. No risk, no reward.
Matthew Theal: What’s that football coach say? No biscuit, no risk it or something? What’s he say?
Brent Pasqua: Yeah.
Joshua Winterswyk: No risk it, no biscuit? Is that it?
Matthew Theal: Yeah.
Brent Pasqua: My last lesson I got, it’s two parts, one, and just really easy, avoid bad debt. And especially we’re going into a period where the country’s opening back up, we’re going to be spending more money as Americans as that happens. Avoid the credit card debt, living within your means, setting up auto save and paying yourself first. Bad debt is just going to ruin your financial plan and it’s going to cause frustration and stress. So avoiding bad debt is just so, so important. And as you’re growing your wealth, avoiding bad debt, just making sure that you also protect that wealth in your family and insurance can do that or you can self-protect your family with your own assets. But those two things maybe that’s three and four, but I’m just going to call it three, avoiding the bad debt and protecting your family as you accumulate wealth and grow your family is just so important in the lesson that I’ve continued to learn. Not only since college, but even now.
Matthew Theal: Bad debt would be using a credit card debt.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. Bad debt using for things that you can’t afford. Let’s just put it that way. There’s different definitions. We can go with a bunch of different examples, but just not financing things you can’t afford and then never really getting out of the hole or never being able to pay them off. A car that you can’t afford, credit cards for trips and stuff that you can’t afford and using them. It’s just really important that if want to stay on a positive, successful financial journey, avoiding that bad debt is the way to go.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. And it’s such an important foundation. I mean, the thought should always be in a person’s mind is I’m not wanting to make the big corporations rich. I want to make myself wealthy. So avoiding bad debt will help make yourself wealthy, not making everybody else wealthy. My last lesson is no matter how wealthy you are, you’re still worrying about not running out of money when you get into retirement. So whether you have a million, 20 million, 50 million, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all relative to where that person is at. And everybody at different stages of their finances still worry about the same thing when we retire.
We have conversations with people on all different spectrums of wealth. Everybody really says the same thing. How do I live the rest of my life without running out of money? And that’s understanding your expenses, your spending, your income, your financial plan. I think it’s an absolutely critical path. Everyone thinks that when you have enough money, you don’t worry about money. Let me tell you something, no matter how much money you have, you’re worrying about not having money.
Brent Pasqua: Josh, what’s that rap song, More Money, More Problems?
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, absolutely. Mase and P Diddy, and puff daddy. I don’t know his name today.
Brent Pasqua: That was what 20, 25 years ago that song came out?
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah.
Joshua Winterswyk: I liked that song.
Matthew Theal: The more I’ve grown in the industry, the more I’ve seen that. The more money people have that come into our office, the more problems they have and the more complex [inaudible 00:31:09]. It’s absolutely true.
Joshua Winterswyk: It’s so true. So don’t feel like you don’t have enough money to not be too worried about your spending or you’re in a different ballpark because the money you have and you’re more worried about your spending or your expenses. That is true for everybody. Everybody across all boards are worried about making sure they have enough for the rest of your life, but it takes careful planning. That’s really what it comes down to. Once you understand it, what your money has and what you can afford, then that’s when things begin to change.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. Don’t think Jeff Bezos doesn’t stress about spending billions of dollars on his rocket ships. He certainly is, and that’s a billionaire.
Joshua Winterswyk: And look, he stepped down from Amazon to focus more on this business. Why? Because he’s worried about it being successful and making money.
Matthew Theal: Yep.
Joshua Winterswyk: I think they’re great points, great lessons. If anybody has thoughts or feedbacks or want to reach out to us about these lessons, give us a call. So we hit episode 50. Where we go from here? We’ve got more shows, videos, sponsorship?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. I think it’d be cool if we added more shows and then maybe we would mess around with video. I know we’ve always talked about the three of us, but I just think it’s amazing what we’ve been able to grow and thank you to our clients and loyal listeners for listening for the past 50 episodes. We really appreciate you supporting us.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. We had some bad audio through the COVID, but we didn’t really have an option at that time.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. That was a scary time. You don’t want to stop the pod because you want to keep it going. You want to be consistent and you want to put out content for listeners at that point. So, yeah. Sorry about the audio.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. We love feedback and I just can’t believe again that we’ve already had 50 shows, but thank you to all the listeners and everyone who’s supported the podcast and us. It’s been so fun and looking forward to continuing to do the podcast.
Matthew Theal: I think we should bring on guests too. Maybe we’ll start getting some guests on the show as we go to for those next 50 episodes. That might be a cool and a nice little twist.
Joshua Winterswyk: I like that idea. Yeah. Definitely brings some expert in some other fields that are related.
Brent Pasqua: I completely. Matthew, why don’t you to hit us off? Do you have an RPA to recommended today?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. So it’s summertime right now. The weather is pretty nice in the evening to nighttime. Maybe checking out some kind of movie night in your lawn with a projector, a screen. I did that this last weekend. It was really nice. So yeah. Prime day’s coming up. I think you get some nice projectors on sale and a screen. The screens aren’t actually that expensive. I think they’re $100.
Joshua Winterswyk: So, so for the listeners, how hard is that to set up?
Matthew Theal: It’s pretty easy. You get the screen. You get the projector. You put the projector probably 10 feet behind the screen or no, excuse me, in front of the screen. And then I plugged an Apple TV into mind, but you could plug a Roku. You could plug one of the Google sticks or a Fire Stick and you just need an internet connection and you’re good to go.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. That’s really cool.
Brent Pasqua: Sounds like a great backyard event.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, it is. It’s fun. It’s good for kids. They like it.
Joshua Winterswyk: I’m going to go from my recommends today as people start to spend more money on travel, right, we’ve seen that with bookings and everything else, do a review of your credit card points and taking a look at really seeing what your credit card points are getting you, what is that calculation of the points for your spending? And especially if you’re going to be planning a big trip, right? They even have some travel insurance options through the cards or car rental insurance options. So I think now it’s just a good time as everyone starts to get ramped up for summer, spending starts to increase. You’re going to be traveling more. Do a review of your credit cards. There is a site that I like. I mean, there’s a few sites out there that are good.
I say, do your research. But one that we’ve been using a little bit more recently, the pointsguide.com. He has good reviews on all of the newest credit cards that are going to maximize your reward points for spending. But remember, stay disciplined. Don’t be using those credit cards more than you can afford.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah you got to pay them off for those rewards to come through.
Joshua Winterswyk: Exactly.
Brent Pasqua: Great recommend. My recommend is J Hilburn. J Hilburn is a designer clothing company. What they do is they have stylists that will fit you and then tailor-make the clothes so that they’ve actually fit you well. So if you have something nice coming up or you want not off-the-rack clothes that you have to take to get tailored, it’s not that much more expensive to go with the company where they have a stylist. They can make you look really nice. If you’re like me, for the longest time I didn’t know how to put outfits together. It’s a great way if you’ve got really some things coming up. Check them out, they’re online. You can get a stylist. They can put outfits together. They come out to you and really design your outfit.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. And I think it’s more affordable than people think once you … When you go buy a suit and then you have to go get it tailored and you calculate all that cost, I think it’s more affordable than people think, because you’re not going to have to probably go get it custom tailored.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. I don’t think people really realize that. When you buy something off the rack and then you got to take it in and you’ve got all these other costs, it’s just easier and you’re going to look much nicer and you get better quality of clothes will last you longer by using some kind of designer like J Hilburn.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. Your outfits look good, man.
Brent Pasqua: I try, man. I have a pretty wife, so I got to try and look pretty … nice for her.
Joshua Winterswyk: All right. So as advisors, we love helping people. That’s why we do it. If you’d like to schedule an appointment with any of us, please go to RPAwealth.com and schedule a complimentary consultation. You could also download our e-book from our website. If you’d like the show notes, please go to retirement plan playbook. And thanks for listening. Boys, how about another 50 shows?
Brent Pasqua: Let’s do it. Happy 50. Thank you, guys.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. Looking forward to it. Thank you to all the listeners.
Brent Pasqua: Thank you. Goodbye.
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