Do You Need a Financial Advisor? #019

you think. We're gonna talk about how expensive a financial advisor can be, and the different types that there are out there, so what to look for if you are shopping for one, and ultimately whether or not we think that people should be paying money to someone every year to get financial advice. But before we get too far into this, we definitely want people to know that the two dudes drinking beer on a podcast are not financial professionals,

and we probably shouldn't be shouldn't be looked upon as such. Man, that's a nice little disclaimory to put out there, a little c O A U. In case that being said, Man, we've been doing this now for over four months. You know, we kind of hit the four month mark, so I feel like for professionals, oh totally, but ready to go full time yet? I mean, I think Anybody listening to

this knows those guys have raw talent. They're probably really impressed at this point that we've even made it four months together uh doing this, and I think, I think we're crushing it though. I'm having a blast. It's fun to get together and drink beers and talk about the stuff we care about, and I think it's really fun to interact with the people that are listening that care about the stuff we care about. That's that's been the best part to me. Yeah, it's definitely been a lot

of fun. I guess the reason I said four months too. That's how long I had considered starting my own business back when I had first started uh doing photography, So I kind of kicked it around a little bit on the side. But after four months is when I was like, Okay, now I'm doing this for real full time and went after it. So we're supposed to quit our day jobs now. I'm just saying, we did just sitting the bar kind

of high there. Back then when I had zero kids, zero responsibility basically except for the Kate, and you like, literally could he raman every night to cover for your lack of income? And we did, man, we did cool man. So before we get talking about financial advisors, let's let's talk about our beer. Yeah, al Gash was kind enough to send us a couple of different varieties of beer, one of which will be partaking in tonight Ala Gash Curio. Let me pop it Curio. Man, it has been years

since I've had his beer. Yeah, so ale Gash has apparently been around since. So they were one of the old school players in the craft beer world here in the United States throughout of Portland, Maine, which, by the way, we're just having a good discussion on our Facebook group this week about how amazing Portland Maine is. Uh. And Ala Gash is a must see, a must visit. They

make some really really amazing beers. Yeah. I feel like Alagash in general is kind of like world class like all around, like their beers, like they're sort of approach to the industry. The marketing is pretty awesome too. Um. But specifically what's awesome about this beer uh and again, thank you guys for sending this down is that these are twelve ounce bottles of Curio, which you can't get

that in Georgia yet, so that's pretty sweet. Were like maybe the first guys, I don't know, probably not the first guys in the entire state, but we'll say we're the first guys, first guys in the state to be drinking Curio out of twelve ounce bottles. Uh, Normally they're in a large format, So the seven fifty bottles, the Bombers and man being able to drink delicious beers like this out of its twelve ounce is just so much better.

You don't have to team up with the buddy you know to to go in together and drink one of these beers. You can just crack one open on a on a weekday night like we normally drink. I think the main reason I love the move from like larger formats to four packs is especially if it's a beer the age as well. I love to crack one like when I first get it, and then age one or two and see what it tastes like in a year

or two. So it's like, in particular fits a bourbon barrel aged stout or a sour beer or something that does just hang out well in my cellar. I love to to let those hang and see what they tastes like years down the road and just kind of look at them every now again and give a little smile and and just think about that beer again. You smiling at your beers. I know it's weird, but Sibody walks into the kitchen, You're just standing there in front of

the pantry just smiling. Hey, there are worse things I could be doing, that's for sure. But uh so, my only here's my only problem with that is do you remember, like exactly what it tastes like? Like, certainly you can have a general feel for the beer, like right when you cracked it versus how it is a year later. But I'm just so technically, I guess minded and oriented.

I would want another fresh one that's recently been bottled, and then one that's been aged, and then one that's been aged for a year and so on, you know, like the vertical, like having multiple years. I love verticals because then you can have all the different beers all at once that have been aged differently and having that side by side comparison. For me at least, I really

like that. Yeah. I don't think my memory is good enough to say, oh, man, that beer had exactly these notes or was better in this way or that way. But more than anything, it's it's like a nostalgia to bring that beer back and say I remember really enjoying this and then enjoying it again a year later or something. I find that really fun and in a great reason to package beers and four packs. And so I'm glad that a standout beer like Curio is now available in

four packs where we live. So it is a Belgian style golden nail aged in bourbon barrels, and that's not typically what you see. Most bourbon barrel aged beers are like stouts and porters. And so it's been forever, forever since I've had this beer. I'm really excited to have it again. Yeah, I just don't have just Belgian beers all that often. It pours a nice golden color. You can see through it got a nice little white bubbly head. You can smell those bourbon vanilla notes. Man oh man,

something else I remember too. I think this is the barrel aged beer I think I ever had, really, Yeah, like I'm gonna gets six years ago, six seven years ago. And because of that, I fell in love with it, because I had never had a beer that had been aged in bourbon barrels before, and for the longest time. This was real high up on my list of of

favorite beer. So I'm really excited to go back to it. Man, that is not a style that anybody else makes that I know of, like golden ale aged and bourbon barrels, and it's not a style that in my mind I'm like, yes, please give me one of those. But holy mackerel, that is absolutely delicious. That is really good. I feel like the bourbon only kind of accentuates some of those flavors going on in the base beer. It's refreshing, It's got a lightmouth feel, but with that bourbon undertone that just

kind of ties it all together. And this reminds me too, man, how many great old school beers there are, Like this is one of the sort of first craft beers that made us way around the country. You know. I think it was al Ash's first barrel aged beer as well, and since then there have been ton is amazing not only beers, but just entire genres like styles of beer.

And so to kind of go back to this, it's kind of refreshing to take something that you haven't had forever and not just sort of embarred yourself with sort of these new styles that guys are you know, throwing milk, sugars and fruit and all this other stuff into their beers, you know, trying to push the envelope. It's kind of good to go back to something that's tried and trude. That's just really I mean world class is like the best way to describe it, you know. Yeah, kind of

more of a staple. Yeah. I was talking talking to Emily, telling her that we were going to drink you know, an ale Gash beer on the on the podcast tonight, and she said, Man, I think ale Gash White was literally the first craft beer. I oh, yeah, And I think that's probably the case for a lot of people. They were drinking you know, crumby beers like Blue Moon or what it's something else made by you know, we have blue Moon at our wedding. I think I had maybe high life at my wedding. So it was all

about each other place. Yeah, it was all about the low expense ratio on that one. But yeah, al Gash White was probably for a lot of people that first real craft beer that they got into because they were drinking some of those like lighter hef style easier to drink beers where you put an orange on top and then al gash whites is perfect transition. But it's like, but it's such a better version of it, Yeah, so

much better. It's like this is what you were drinking, but like done right, exactly exactly, and people, oh, okay, all right, I get that people in it. Yeah, that's

so funny. Man. One of the earliest experiences I have at a local bar, at a local brew pub indicator at brick Store was going in there with Kate and I think her parents, my in laws, and specifically I remember somebody ordering and al ash white because it's sort of kind of high on the list, you know, it's something that they always have, so it's like, all right, this is gonna be something good. And yeah, it's just, like you said, one of those originals, kind of like

one of those gateway craft beers, if you will. So, yeah, if you were to make a list of like five Gateway craft beers that would easily be on there, it would be like that here and about pale Ale. It'd be fun to kind of come up with a list at some point of those, but like, those are the two that immediately come to my mind. Those would be two of the of the top five on my list that that's how people broke into craft beer. All right, Matt, onto the topic of the day. Do you need a

financial advisor? So generally speaking, no, I mean there's certain situations like a divorce or a complicated inheritance sort of situation that might call for it, um, But for the vast majority of folks, and definitely for the most folks that are listening to this, I would say absolutely not. Yeah,

what a financial advisors purport to help you with? I mean, I think there are a wide range of things that many financial advisors would say they offer, and that can be from financial goal setting to managing your cash flow, to think through what happens if someone dies or someone in your family becomes disabled. They can help you think about, you know, life insurance, creating a will. Most of those

topics are important to think about. Think the question comes down to should you be paying a profession nal to help you plan those areas of your life out? Yeah, Juell, I mean I think that's the absolute question that you need to be asking yourself. Most of the time, some of these scenes can be figured out just by thinking about it, right. I think about the the episode we did like the why behind money, like talk about goal setting as far as like what to do with your money.

That's when you're gonna come up with your plan. You just have to give it some time and some intention, some thought, and also do some Google searching. There's a lot of information out there that a lot of folks have already put out there and have given real life examples, and a ton of that is very very easy to

implement in your own life. Yeah, I think probably a couple of the main reasons that's that people decide to go see a quote unquote financial advisor is because either one, they're a little bit lazy, they haven't done the research, and they don't really know what to do with their money, and they just they decide, you know, maybe they're thirty five and something happens in their family, or maybe they're

fifty and something happened with their job. But some sort of life event usually comes upon somebody and they decide, you know what, now is the time for me to take action and get involved in my finances and and start saving for the future. I guess the right thing to do is to go see a financial advisor. And so it's usually out of a life event that people launched into this and decided to pick somebody out of the Yellow Pages and go sit down and talk to

somebody yellow Pages. Man, you're like taking it back to the nineties or yellow pages dot com. I don't know. Yeah, I think the reason people feel that way too is that it can be overwhelming. You know, if you haven't given any thoughts to your money basically at all, and then all of a sudden you're sort of faced with with these decisions that need to be made and you start thinking through it. Well, yeah, it can kind of be crippling, but you know if you start thinking through it.

I mean again, like almost all the things you already mentioned, like these are things that we've even already talked about. We've only been doing this podcast for like a few months, but we've already covered cash flow, Right, what is that you know, managing your You're you're spending and you're saving. Well, that's a budget, like the goal seting. Well, that's the why behind money, you know, Like, yeah, we haven't done one yet on disability insurance or life insurance things like that.

That might be a sad episode, right, if you died, is your family gonna be Okay, but it's an important thing to Yeah, it's definitely true. And maybe because it is kind of a bummer, we we've kind of avoided it. Maybe that's one that will end up on the short list and we'll get to that sooner than later. But these are things that can be done incrementally and that shouldn't be overwhelming because they're complicated. They're fairly simple things that if you just tackle it one step at a time.

So we just talked through some of the things right that a financial advisor can help you sort of think through and plan and navigate the waters of personal finance. A lot of the questions that we see out there have mainly to do with investing, and so that's what we're gonna spend the rest of the podcast talking about. Specifically, is a financial advisor necessary when it comes to retirement investing? Yeah? Man,

So the financial services industry tries to overcomplicate things. There are a billion products that are offered with a variety of different claims and ulto only most of those things are crap. You don't need to know about them, and so learning how to invest your money so that it's working for you and not making someone else rich is

really an empowering thing, Jill. Another reason to consider not having a financial advisor is if you have just you know, a lower income and if your assets are simpler when you make less, these fees really cut into your income. Even though a lot of these different companies work off of a percentage, there's still sort of a minimum, right, like sort of a threshold, a bar to entry that you need to have before they'll even kind of take you in, before they'll even consider you. So, yeah, it's

definitely something else to consider. Most people in America make less than a hundred and most people in America make less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so let's say you're getting that four oh one k match and you're trying to figure out where to go next to put a little bit of extra retirement money. There's a lot of people like that that are trying to

go see a financial advisor. There's a lot of people that have just a small amount of assets that are trying to invest and they want to pay a premium to talk to somebody to make sure they're doing the right thing. I think, more than anything, that's what I

want to warn people against in this episode. If you're in that category of normal American income, you don't want to be paying a huge portion of your investable assets to someone to tell you how to invest that money, or just to like maybe tell you to just get

out of debt. You know, like that money could bet, you know, be better spent towards paying off debt or paying off credit cards or something like that that maybe should be obvious, but you know, this is just not something that you you might be thinking of at the time. You think there's something more complicated or fancy that needs to take place, when in reality it's like, well, maybe you should just put that towards paying off debt. So

here was the way I thought about it. Let's say give a normal sized American lawn that needs to be mowed every week and a half, and you go out and you hire the guy that is the groundskeeper for your local major league ballpark, say, can you come mode my lawn and make it look pristine? He says, sure, But I normal work on these these major ballparks. You know, my time's worth a lot. Okay, I like where you're going.

I can make your lawn look pretty amazing, but it's gonna cost a lot of money because I'm a baller, and so obviously you wouldn't jump into that relationship. You wouldn't pay a guy a premium that is well above what anybody else would charge the layer law. Instead of doing that, the much better decision would be to buy your own lawnmower and start cutting your own grass and maybe buy an edge or on top and right and a blower and you can make it look semi professional.

But I think a lot of people in America are in that situation where they have a normal lawn that's easily maintained on their own, and they decided to do something crazy like hire somebody to give them input on their small amount of assets and their small amount of money that they have to invest every month, and ultimately it eats into their growth and it does great damage to their ability to retire early. Yeah, man, I like

that analogy. So another reason why you should consider are not having a financial advisor is like you said, I mean, they can be expensive. And when you have a small a smaller portfolio you know of assets or you know, like you're saying, a smaller lawn, you go to an advisor and they're going to take a decent percentage of what you're gonna earn is going to go towards paying them.

And there's different ways that they can be paid. Um, you've got fee only or feed based, and then you've got commission based, and they are not all created equal. Best case scenario, you found somebody that is fee only where they either have a flat rate or they build hourly. Yeah, and if you are going to hire a financial advisor, that's the best way to go because that's the best case scenario. There are a lot of hidden fees with

most of the other ways that an advisor can be compensated. So, for instance, there are also fee based planners, and so they charge a fee, but then they also might make commissions off of products that they sell you on top

of that. So at least you know if you visit a fee only advisor, you've worked out hopefully an hourly rate that they're getting paid, and you know exactly what they're getting compensated for, and that whatever they recommend to you they believe is in your best interest as a fiduciary. They're not trying to sell you things, they are going to make them additional money. Edel you mentioned fiduciaries, So

you want to define exactly what that is. Yeah, Man, a fiduciary has a legal standard and a moral standard to do what is in your best interest with your money. So, for instance, they wouldn't recommend to you an annuity that earns them high commissions or isn't best for your scenario just because it made them more dollars higher percentI rate that they're making commission on. Right. Ultimately, if you're considering hiring somebody to help you with their investments, that is

the first question you want to ask them. Are you a fiduciary? If they're not a fiduciary, you want to walk out the door right then and there, because that fiduciary standard is crucial to knowing that you're going to get the unbiased advice that you need. Yeah, not all financial planners are fiduciaries. And I mean, like, how much sense does it make to go to somebody and like ask them for advice on something that you should do with your money that is going to make them money?

You know, it's just like, well, of course you're gonna probably mentioned the products that make them twice as much in commission than the basic sort of product that's just gonna be great for you, but certainly not the best for them. It's kind of surprising that there's not a more sort of rigorous standard. I guess, like, I know this exists, but it's just crazy that not everyone is

required to go by that. You know, Like, anybody can call themselves a financial advisor and that doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't speak to their knowledge and what they're capable of. It just means that that's just sort of what they do. Yeah, I mean, I think there are a couple of problems in the industry as a whole. Right, there's first off, Yeah, there there isn't really a standard in in the Department of Labor tried to kind of come up with a standard,

and that's kind of been walked back. And so for a minute it looked like anybody giving investment advice was going to have to be a foduciary. Well that's kind of been backtracked, and so that's not really the case anymore. So you really have to watch your own back. No one else is watching it for you. Yeah, let's talk about the fact that financial planner is kind of a vague term as well. It Yeah, I'm a financial planner, Joel. Right, almost anybody can calmselve that. But but what does it

mean in actuality? And what is their obligation to you? And so those are the questions that you have to ask yourself and ask the person that you're potentially going to work with. And ultimately it can be kind of a shady area because of the fact that there aren't many rules regulations in place, and a lot of people are billing themselves. Is something that they're not or at least overselling themselves, making you think that they have an

obligation to you that they don't actually have. Yeah. Man, another reason to you, a lot of people want to go to the financial advisors is they think, uh, and that they're told by financial advisors to that their money will just do that much better being managed by somebody, right, like somebody that does this for a living, that's a professional, that's an official financial planner, that they can beat the market. You go with me, we're gonna crush the markets. Well,

guess what if it makes you rich? If you could do that, you wouldn't be coming to me as a client trying to get my dollars. But yeah, I mean, the fact is is that. I mean, it's not impossible to beat the market, right, but dang close. It's yeah, it's it's virtually impossible. It's it's really really hard. And it makes me think of Warm Buffett, the Warm Buffett bet or whatever. Yes, that's exactly what it makes me think of too. Yeah, so it's been ten years now.

Back in oh seven, Warm Buffet basically made a like a one million dollar wager, which is awesome, one million dollar bet with some hedge fund guys. And the whole thing was that like, all right, in the next ten years, whose money is going to do better? Money that's putting these hedge funds that's able to be reallocated and shifted around, and these fancy dudes with expensive educations and fancy suits, the Wall Street guys things around versus Warm Buffets approach,

which is low cost SMP index funds. Nothing changes, it's just the same thing, no movement at all, which pretty much the exact fun that you and I talked about in episode nine on our episode, which is which is the one that you and I are invested in. Yeah, that's what we do. And so we're gonna be just like warm Buffett. Man, if we can be just like warm Buffett. That's a good thing, right, I mean, I

think he's a wise example to follow. He's one of those few people that over over time, over the long haul, has been able to beat the actual stock market returns, which is crazy, it is. And even still he still recommends to not do that. That's what's awesome. It's like he's like, he can do it, but he's just like, no, no, no no, don't do that. You just need to focus on low fees and sticking with the actual market. Yeah,

being highly diversified in that. Yeah, I think anybody out there who says, you know what, well, you just said Warren Buffet can do it, so why can't I do it? Well, I think that's like saying I'm gonna play basketball like Lebron James. Uh. There are certain people that have been given like a genius level of talent and he is one of those. And so to hold yourself up to

that standard. To think that you're gonna invest like Warrm Buffett or play basketball like Lebron James, they're just both crazy things to think, or to think like your friend who knows a guy could do that? Yeah, that's not gonna pan out either, right, Yeah not man. My sister's college roommate, her husband, he he knows what's up, and he's gonna it's not gonna happen. It's gonna make me good money in the market, right, It's not gonna pan out. So it's cool about that story though, is that it's

been ten years now. That started in oh seven and it wrapped up in seventeen and just earlier this year, Warm Buffet basically, you know, release the results of that, and the range for the hedge fund guys was between point three percent to six and a half percent, so all throughout there, I don't know what the actual average was. I guess around three some three something right there in the middle versus Warm Buffet's rate of return which was eight and a half percent over the past ten years.

Man keeping it simple, not doing anything, setting it, and forgetting it amazing literally zero costs. And he totally smoked him, you know, like I just love that. It's so awesome and so on that note, Uh, your financial advisor, your friends, dude that knows the dude, they're not going to beat the market and they're not going to be able to give you the returns that they say they can they talk a big game, but go warm buffet style. And

what is warm Buffett emphasized over everything else? Well, it's really two things. It's high diversification and low fees. And morning Star came out with the survey just a few years back, and ultimately they said that fees were the most reliable predictor of being in a good fund or not. And so you're going to have more money over time if you're invested in a low fee fund then if you're invested in a fund with high fees. What's funny

about that? Though? I feel like a lot of times, like immediately when I heard that, I started thinking, oh, you want to get like the fancy funds that are kind of expensive, because that's where you're gonna see the return. But like, no, like that's the difference is that the return is basically going to be the same, assuming they're invested in the same thing. Uh, the difference is on the sort of the bottom end the expenses associated with

those funds. You want to get a fund with very little expenses and it's gonna perform better than an equivalent fund because of the expense ratio. And so even that

one person in which is gonna be typical. That's when you look up the stats for how much financial advisors charge for their no how it's gonna be one just overright percent, right around one percent annually on the assets that they're managing, exactly, And so that one percent it doesn't really sound like that much because in most areas of our lives, one percent is almost nothing, right, uh, one percent? Tip? What's wrong with you? Man? Get out

of here, right? One percent means very little nothing. But but when it comes to the magic of compound interest and how that money stacks up over time, that one percent is actually this amazingly huge number that you have

to be super concerned about. And so one of the main reasons to forego seeing a financial advisor and figuring out how to do it yourself is that your returns over time are actually crushed by paying that one percent to a person, as opposed to taking on this initiative yourself and figuring out how to invest your own money.

All right, Matt, but I guess we have to say, if you really really feel like you need a hand holding, if you really need some help with your investments and you don't feel comfortable going it alone, well, now more than ever, we've got access to software, software technology, and basically, yeah, they can make a huge difference and help you out avoid some of those high fees like we're just talking about,

but still help you feel comfortable with your choices. Yea man, there's a lot of robo advisors now, is what kind of what basically what they're called. They're just kind of newer companies that have the algorithms and all the formulas worked out for you, and they still take a percentage. It's just not nearly as high as what you would see with a human traditional financial advisor. So, like we were saying earlier, typically you're looking at a one per

cent fee with a traditional human financial advisor. With a lot of these robo advisors, you're looking at like around point to five, right, Yeah, And so like better Mint and wealth Front, So better Mint dot com and wealth Front dot com they're kind of two of the major players in that space, and they both take that quarter of a percentage fee and Betterment has a premium model that's point four percent, and that involves getting to talk to a human about some of these financial questions that

come up that you have. Um when it comes to planning for the future, or how to structure your investments and create an optimal tax strategy. So if you have questions like that, you can join betterment premium, But ultimately those kind of options are going to be far less damaging to your returns. Over time, you'll have a lot more wealth in retirement and you feel a little more

confident about the investing choices that you're making. Going with a robo advisor as opposed to paying one percent or more of your assets to Joe blow down the block to walk you through it. Yeah, and there are actually some new lower cost options if you want to have somebody h like an actual human being looking over your investments. Yeah, and we said that ultimately the best way if you're going to have a financial advisor to go about it is to pay an hourly rate or an annual fee,

not a percentage of your assets. It's a much more straightforward arrangement, and you know that the advice that you're getting is unbiased, as opposed to going into a model where that advisor takes a commission or a bounty for selling you certain products. And my favorite service that I've seen working on this model is a service called Grove and you can check it out at the website, Hello Grove dot com. It's six hundred dollars for a year. Because Grove is actually more of a tech company than

they are just a financial service company. But they've really figured out a way to make this model gel perfectly, and so they put all of your information kind of into a back end computer, but there's a financial advisor that works with you to lay out a financial plan and help you figure out where best to allocate your money for only six dollars a year. It's really incredible.

I love what they're doing, and I think anybody that feels pretty uncertain and really wants the advice of a of a professional, something like Grove is this perfect happy medium for folks that wants some of that personal interaction but don't want to pay the price tag that normally comes associated with that. And you also avoid some of the pitfalls that come with meeting with a financial advisor that's recommended to you by a friend of a friend

who might not be looking out for your best interest. Yeah, and I also saw too that Vanguard now has this thing called Vanguard Personal Advisors, and they actually take point three percent annually of assets manage. And again that kind of goes back to the percentage of your total portfolio, which it kind of doesn't feel great because it's like, I don't want to pay more more money if I actually have more money. But even still when you're looking at it, that's still way way more affordable than a

traditional financial advisor. Yea. And so if you have questions, if you want to talk to a human, if you're nervous about the state of your portfolio or where your what your money is invested in, you know, a service like Grove or Vanguard's personal advisors might be worth it to you because they're far lower cost than what the industry averages. But you're still talking to a fiduciary, which means that the person that you're speaking to has your

best interest in mind. Yeah, man, And I think another approach to this, uh, you know, like if you think that you need that sort of extract boost of confidence, like you you're going to agree to go ahead and pay h do go with some of the lower cost services, but go into it too with the mindset of knowing that you're gonna learn, Like, don't go into this thinking, Okay, I'm gonna go in now, and this is just something

I'm now going to pay every single year forever. Go into it, maybe just for a year or even less than that. Man, just like for a couple of months, even if you can get in a FaceTime with somebody to where you can learn, to where you can figure out why it is that they're doing what they're doing and learn sort of the reason and the why behind what it is that that they're doing. Then you gain all that knowledge yourself, and then you can basically do

that forever without having to pay that fee. I mean, the goal is to learn, and regardless of where your money is being invested, you want to be able to have an understanding of where your money is. And if you can't explain where your money is and how it's being invested, that's just not a great position to be in. Yeah, I agree, if you're going to visit a financial advisor, you need to go into it with a mindset like that, because ultimately, a financial advisor is not going to magically

find more money in your budget every month. They don't have a magic pill to help fund your kids college and also ensure that you're able to retire exactly when you want to. A lot of these things come down to saving more, spending less, allocating more of your money every month towards your retirement accounts, and continuing to do that year after year. And these are the kind of

things that you can learn yourself. And like we said earlier, the financial services industry wants to make it sound like it's this really difficult thing that only people with fancy educations and suits know how to do, right, But it's just not. But that's just not the case. It's not that complicated, and especially in this day and age, there's so many great people teaching these things for free on

the internet or podcasts. That's us. When it comes down to it, managing your finances is not as difficult as the financial services industry wants you to think it is. Do these three things, invest more of your money, invest your money in low cost mutual funds, and be well diversified. If you do those three things, you've empowered yourself to take control of your own money, and you can skip

hiring a financial advisor. You'll be golden right, You'll be able to save more, and in fact, you'll do better than you would have had you hired an expensive financial advisor because you'll be saving that money and sticking that money into the investments as well. You'll be set and ultimately that's one of the two greatest pitfalls that you

face in hiring a financial planner. It's either putting money towards the service and therefore not towards your investments, which will compound over time, or there's danger in putting money with someone who has their own best interests in mind. Is putting your money in things that are high fee, high commission, and terrible for you. All right, Maddie, back to the beer buddy. I mean, I'm just reminded of how delicious this beer is and why I liked it

so much the very first time I had it. You know, it's just so so solid, that clear golden ale. This is like the kind of beer I want to have when I'm like eating pizza, like a good pizza, you know, like I would say, it's it's simple and elegant, like your mom. I had to go there. Oh, I think my mom is a lot more complicated than you realize. Man, you need to get to know the real mama. Poor not poor, but yeah, thanks again to al Gash for

sending this beer over. Absolutely delicious, really fun to revisit something you haven't we haven't had in a really long time. Yeah. And now that they're yeah, getting released in these and twelve ounce bottles, this is something I'm gonna be way more prone to just pick up sort of casually versus going in and getting a huge bottle feeling like you gotta go for it. So let's go ahead and do

a quickly recapsule. Do you need a financial advisor the quick cancer No, Yeah, because ultimately retirement investing is simpler than you think. And check out episode nine of our podcast where we go through the basics of how to intelligently invest your money and you another reason you want to avoid going with the financial visor is because they

can be crazy expensive. They can take a huge chunk out of your potential earnings and what could be going back into your portfolio to reinvest where you would see that compound growth year after year. Yeah, and that makes such a huge difference over time. Like we mentioned briefly, short term not that big of a deal. Long term huge deal, one percent seems like nothing, but in reality when when it plays out over the long term, one

percent is massive. And then ultimately financial advisors don't always point you in the right direction, so it can be even more costly than that percentage fee that you think

you're paying to them. They might be steering you into funds that aren't right for you, or selling you financial services that ultimately pad their own pockets and don't serve you well, which is why if you are going to go with a financial advisor, you need to make sure to find out that they are a fiduciary, which means that they have to and they are obligated to put your financial interests ahead of their own. They have to do what's best for you, Okay, Joe, So then you

know what's next. Like we've basically gone through all the different reasons why you shouldn't have a financial advisor, we just listed them. So instead a few things on what you do need to do now, the first being invest more. At the very least, you need to be getting a match if you're offered a match three or four O one k at work, but it's definitely worth looking at to see how much you're investing, and what we're talking about is basically your savings rate. How much of your

actual paycheck are you putting towards investments. Yea. So consider opening a rath I array on top of that, or at minimum up your savings rate in your four oh one K through work one per cent every six months. That will ensure that you're investing more. So, instead of paying money to a financial advisor, just up the rate

at which you are investing your money, Yeah, Joel. The other aspect of that is to invest make sure you're investing in low cost, well diversified funds, and the best way to get there is to consider opening a retirement account with a company like Vanguard, which is our personal favorite, or a company like Schwab or Fidelity, who also have

awesome low cost index funds. Yeah. Mat So, Ultimately, the financial services industry wants to make you think that this is rocket science and it's way more difficult than it is, and that if you even want to retire someday, you have to have a financial advisor on your side. And we're here to say, no, that's crazy. You're smart, you

can figure out this investing thing. And certainly there are a lot more things that financial advisors offer, and we'll get into more of those in upcoming episodes, but specifically in regards to investing, which is the main reason that people seek out a financial advisor because they don't think they know how to handle their investments. And so we're

saying no, no, no, no, scrap the financial advisor. You don't need them, because investing for your retirement, which is the main reason that people go seek a financial advisor in the first place, is actually really simple. Yeah. Man, gosh, there's just so much fear and that that every financial planner kind of takes this approach right where they're like, oh, you know, you need to be fearful of your future and what the future is going to hold for you

and how that's going to affect your family. But it seems like that's sort of that can be an underlying sort of tone. Yeah, that's a tactic that gets used to cause worry in your life, and we're here to say no, no, no no, no, be confident. But I hope at the end of this episode you feel empowered to take on this responsibility yourself and hopefully you've realized that it's actually a lot easier than you thought it was. Thanks everyone for listening. Our home on the web is

how to Money dot Com. We'll have shown us up there for this episode, and be sure to review and subscribe to us if you could, on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. So until next time, thanks for listening. Guys, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,