Common Sense Financial Podcast

When I talk about my definition of retirement, I think it sometimes catches people off guard.   In my mind, retirement is not who you are or where you’re at in life, rather it is the transition of your time and money.    In other words, it is a process you go through … not your identity.   The transition for money is a transition from accumulating money to utilizing it.    For time, it is a transition of reallocating the 40-plus hours per week you spent working.   This distinction of what retirement means is an important one to make, because many people identify themselves with their work — but when someone is no longer working, they default to labeling themselves as “retired.”    Here is the problem: This default “I’m retired” mindset leaves people stuck, and they never really progress toward reinventing themselves.   In essence, they have made retirement their new identity, which just seems odd considering when you say something is “retired” it often infers that it has outlived its usefulness.   But I don’t think this is an accurate description for most successful people who have lived a life of purpose, who have gained valuable insight and wisdom from their life experiences and who have refined their talents and unique abilities over decades.   Therefore, retirement should not be a label used to describe who someone is — it’s not their identity — rather, retirement is a term used to describe the transition a person is going through from one phase of life to another.   This is important, because the success of your retirement transition is predicated on how well you grasp this distinction and your ability to shift your mindset in three specific areas.    And if done successfully, you can emerge on the other side of your retirement transition living a life of abundance.   Reframe Your Mindset of Time   In Dan Sullivan’s coaching program Strategic Coach®, he uses an exercise called The Lifetime Extender.®   It is a tool used to formulate a new paradigm around time with the goal of making our future more important than our past.   The idea is that you have the choice to imagine your own future, and when you change the time frame you are operating in, you change the way you think.   For example, Dan is planning on living to 156!   This exercise gives you the freedom to reframe your future and reprogram your thinking about how to live the second half of your life.   There is a lot of psychology around how this works that I won’t get into here, but when you expand the amount of time you think you have left here on this earth, your mind begins to follow that way of thinking.   Now I realize that this may be a little too “woo-woo” for some, but when you consider that none of us actually knows how much time we have left to live, what do you have to lose?    You have a choice: You can live as if you have been set out to pasture to retire or you can live as if you are just entering your second half of your life.   Your future reality is created in your mind, and whatever you focus on expands.   So, expand your time and pick a number, then begin working on your future self.   Reinvent Yourself   St. Augustine said that asking yourself the question of your own legacy — “What do I wish to be remembered for?” — is the beginning of adulthood.   In Bob Buford’s book Halftime, Bob quotes Matthew 13:5-9, which illustrates the eventual harvest of a farmer who sows his seed.   Bob uses this verse to point toward his own epitaph of 100x.   He says, “I want to be remembered as the seed that was planted in good soil and multiplied a hundred-fold.   It is how I wish to live…how I attempt to envision my own legacy…to be a symbol of higher yields, in life and in death.”   The theme of the book is what the title suggests: that wherever you are right now, you are at halftime in your life, and the second half should be the better half.   Every day up until your retirement transition, you dedicated eight or more of the 24 hours a day that you had to someone or something to earn a living.   That commitment of time and what you were responsible for during that time manifests into a sense of purpose.   When that time commitment goes away, so can that sense of purpose.   Your purpose while working may have been closely associated with your daily projects, leading a team, fulfilling a role or other responsibilities. It could have been a sense of belonging to a team, a brotherhood (or sisterhood), a company or group that gave you motivation each day to go to work.   This is all left behind once you retire, and what often happens after the “retirement party” is over is the onset of feeling lost, unfulfilled, bored or even depressed.   This underscores the importance of viewing retirement as a transition, not as your new reality.   When I consult with clients who are retiring, I often encourage them to begin thinking about how they will spend their time once they make the transition.   This conversation is not only important for cash flow planning, but it is the first step in helping them begin to think beyond the transition of retirement and about their purpose.   Playing golf, traveling and spending time with grandkids are all great things, but they are not anyone’s purpose.   When asked what someone does, unless they are a professional golfer, they aren’t going to say they golf. They may play golf, but it is not their purpose.   Author and futurist Buckminster Fuller has a question designed for finding your life’s mission: “What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?”   The transition of retirement is not the destination; it is the transition to what is next.    It is your opportunity to reinvent yourself and live out the second half of your life with purpose.   Reframe Your Mindset About Money   I dedicate this podcast — The Common Sense Financial Podcast — to helping people align their money with their purpose.   Now, you may think that money alignment is something fairly obvious to everyone, but so much of what people do with their money is not at all in alignment with their purpose.   Nearly 100% of the time, when someone hires my team to plan their retirement transition, I find that their money is either sitting in 401(k)s or IRAs invested for growth or they have large amounts of money sitting in cash.   So yes, I saw a need to dedicate an entire podcast on helping people align their money with their purpose, because I have found that there is a vacuum of common-sense financial information available to retirees.   The goal of the podcast is to bridge the gap between what people dream about in their thinking time and what they need to do with their money to make what they are dreaming about a reality.   More often than not, people tend to envision a life of abundance for themselves or being able to leave a financial legacy for their children and grandchildren. But without knowing how to go about this, people will inherently default to what they know and think they understand — which, when it comes to making financial decisions, is most often rates of return and account balances.   As a result of this misalignment, confusion and feelings of unsettledness creep in when they attempt to retire and then discover that there is a disconnect between what they see their purpose for their money is and what their money is actually doing for them.   It is like having a power cord that is too short to reach the outlet.    You know there is power in the outlet, and the machine you’re trying to power up can do the job you need it to do but you can’t get them to connect, so nothing happens.   This is why measuring your financial success based solely on rate of return or how much money is in your bank account is the wrong measurement.   The measurement for your success should be on how much income you can generate from your assets that is consistent and predictable.   It’s income from your assets that grants you freedom of money and time so you can dedicate your talents to pursue your purpose.   The key to a successful retirement transition is to reframe your mindset about money, focus on maximizing cash flow, expand your concept of time and reinvent your purpose in life, because there is likely more to your story that has yet to be written.   That concludes todays podcast, thank you for listening to the common sense financial podcast.

We all have blinders about various things in our life that leave us blind to things we do not know or understand. What is a blinder?  Well, it could be a bias about something, it could be a protection mechanism to ignore something, it could be immaturity about something or it could simply be ignorance of not knowing any better.  In fact, what I have found is that for most people who are experiencing investing immaturity is that once they are provided more education about how to invest, they often move past this stage into more advanced wealth strategies. The best way to look at this is that like anything: We only know what we know.  In other words, the root cause of investing immaturity for most people is simply not knowing any different. To make the most of your investments, you need to think about them in the right way because investing immaturity can hold you back from reaching the next level with your finances.

00:00 – Opening 1:03 – Joe's Story 11:10 – How The Dominos Fall 12:28 – Brian's Final Thoughts On this episode, Brian shares a story about Joe and his mental tug of war about how to best utilize his cash assets… Pay off a mortgage? Keep the cash in the bank? Build Wealth? Listen to the podcast to hear the full story and Brian’s thoughts about the situation. “Every financial decision you make – big or small - is like the first domino, each decision has a domino effect and it is best to see how those dominos fall before acting on that decision.”

The truth is that we all, as human beings, carry around this proverbial backpack of beliefs and emotions, and we carry it everywhere we go. And when we show up somewhere that's in a relationship and a conversation having to make a decision, we unpack the backpack. There's no hiding the backpack. It's with us all the time. It is full of of a lot of good things, but mixed in with it our limited beliefs that can wreak havoc with our decision making. These beliefs are just an accumulation of information that you either hear you read, you experience that can have you instantly forming an opinion that then drives your behavior and decision making. It's what drives your thoughts, your opinions, your attitudes and your propensity. Think about it. You eat bad sushi and then you get sick. That belief forms that sushi is bad and you throw that belief into the backpack. You go into a store and have a bad experience. You belief into the backpack. You meet someone for the first time and within ten seconds a belief is cemented in your head and into the backpack it goes. You hear a financial opinion into the backpack. You do it constantly. And at times you may find your beliefs challenged the way you think, your relationships, your attitude, your finances, and begin to question why you believe what you believe. But this isn't always a bad thing. Cleaning out the backpack of beliefs occasionally can prove to be a good thing when you can get rid of beliefs that are preventing you from making important decisions in your life. The psychology of why we do what we do is the topic of today's show. And here to discuss this with us is Chez Barbosa. Chez is going to help break all this down for us and offers some strategies and techniques that could possibly help you make some life altering improvements. I've known Chez and his wife charity for many years and at one time even had him consulting with my company before he made the jump to where he is now. He's been married for 16 years and has three children. He's the CEO and co-founder of True Vine Christian Services, which is a final one C three organization that offers professional mental health, mediation and coaching services. He's a licensed counselor specializing in marriage and family dynamics, along with communication and conflict resolution training. He's also very active in his community, serving as a board member and has leadership roles and other nonprofit organizations. And he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Southwest Baptist University and his master's in counseling from Missouri Baptist University.

Jessie Naeger, an expert in estate planning, discusses the importance of estate planning for everyone, debunking the misconception that it's only for the wealthy. She emphasizes the need to plan ahead and have the proper legal documents in place, highlighting the risks and complexities involved. The podcast also explores the difference between trusts and wills, the challenges of generational planning, and strategies for managing generational trusts to create more wealth for future generations.

Traditional public markets have been historically viewed as normal when it comes to investing but over the last decade we have seen a shift in this attitude toward finding alternatives to the stock market. Though we have been seeing a shift in investor behavior and attitude about markets for quite some time, COVID has brought a sense of urgency to the conversation for finding an alternative to traditional markets. And it is not difficult to understand why. The abrupt volatility that investors have experienced lately has them going from peak to valley in the matter of days. And any rational investor at one point or another has questioned if there is a better way. Now to be clear, there is risk in any type if investment. There is no unicorn that can deliver all things good but I do believe that a new normal is taking shape that offers investors an updated paradigm of what diversification really is. Whether you realized that this was happening or not, this path is already being paved by forward thinking investors and money managers who recognized this shift several years ago and are now operating under a new normal. I believe what we are discussing here is the answer to what many investors are asking for and its why I decided to spend time today sharing this information with you. Today I have on with us portfolio manager Daniel Wildermuth to discuss the growing interest in private markets and how they differ from public markets.

I am sure you would agree that if you talk with ten people regarding any subject, you're liable to get ten differing opinions from those people. Opinions are everywhere and I believe they are the #1 reason most people live their entire lives thinking a lot of things are true when they are actually false. I became a Christian in November of 1998, I was operating my financial business and raising kids while learning as much as I could about my new faith as a Christian. What I learned fairly quickly is that Christians have some pretty strong opinions about a lot of things and money is definitely on that list. I know this because as people would find out that I was in finance they would approach me and freely share their views and opinions about what they thought a Christian should think about and do with money. So with that, today’s podcast is going to be a little different. I had the opportunity to sit down with my pastor Kenny Qualls recently and had a real life conversation about wealth and the bible. He has served as President and Associate Executive Director for the Missouri Baptist Convention, Executive Committee member for The Southern Baptist Convention, President of the National Large Church Roundtable and Ambassador to Missouri for The North American Mission Board. He is heavily involved in global missions, is a mentor to young pastors and is a well-respected leader within our community here in St Louis. For the last 15 years, he has served as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Arnold where my family has attended for the last 20+ years.

CSFP 033 | The #1 Thing That Successful Investors Are Doing That Average Investors Aren't by Brian Skrobonja: Author, Financial Advisor, Entrepreneur

One thing I have learned over the last six months during a time of growing markets and economy to a sudden shift of social distancing and virtual workplaces due to the covid-19 pandemic, is that people are motivated by two emotions, Fear and Greed. I know reading this can almost seem insensitive or downright offensive but it’s the truth. Think about it... As a parent, business owner, friend, employee, spouse or neighbor, our emotions can lead us into making decisions that we can reflect back on after the emotion passes to realize maybe we could have done better. I see this all the time with people when it comes to investment decisions. When markets are good, people believe markets will go higher and they become eager to ride the markets higher. And when markets are bad, people believe markets will go lower and can experience an onset of panic that if not managed can lead to bad decisions.

“The Truth Will Set You Free!” This is a phrase we have all heard and it originated in the New Testament in John 8:32, when Jesus said to the new believers, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Whether you are trying to figure out the destination of your soul and the meaning of life or simply trying to figure out how to be smart with money and build real wealth, you have to know the truth. You have to know what is real and not just theory, what is fact and not fiction, what is truth and not just opinion. Opinions are like a beating heart, everyone has one and they flow from each of us like breath but you have to protect yourself from being a collector of opinions and be a seeker of truth. People often speak with confidence when sharing their theories, ideas, and opinions explaining them as facts. People also tend to show only what they want you to see. Social media is a huge part of our society these days and if you spend anytime on it at all you quickly discover that everyone is more successful than you are, they have nicer cars, take nicer vacations and their family is better than yours. That is all of course a lie but it can still leave you having these feelings and the feelings can drive behavior. It doesn’t have to be social media, it can be anything that influences your way of thinking. All can lead to irrational decision making and living in this gap between fact and fiction. The Gap is the space between what you think you should be doing and what you actually should be doing.…It is this space between what you think you know and what you don’t know. The biggest mistakes are made in this gap. In this podcast I will discuss The 6 Biggest Mistakes of 2019 and how to avoid them in 2020.