This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you hear weekday afternoons on the Drive. Paco de Leon is an author and illustrator, a musician, and founder of the Hale Yeah Group, a financial firm dedicated to inspiring creative and personal and business finances. She's also the host of Weird Finance, exploring the often intimidating terrain of money and finance and economics. And Paco de Leon, you sound like a creative type person. It's not
off on a creative type person gets into finance. What got you into it? Honestly, I was running at a time in college and I didn't think it was very practical to study art, so I picked finance. It was around two thousand and six, so if you remember that time, it is right before the big housing meltdown, and from my perspective, there was a bunch of people making a bunch of money and they didn't have to work that
heart. My mentality was, Okay, if I do this job, I can work in the daytime, make a decent living, and then I can go and play in my band and I and still focus on my art. Well, there's certainly a lot of weird things going on right now in the finance world. When it comes to gold and bitcoin and inflation, where do we start? Oh my gosh, I mean, there's a lot to impact you. Even forgot to mention the fact that we just had that little bank run. Ye. I mean, I think the best thing to do is
really focus on what you can control and everything else. You kind of have to let it go and recognize that these kinds of economic shocks, these bumps in the road, they're normal there. We should expect them to happen with regularity. And that's why it's so important to save for a rainy day, to have an emergency fund, and when times are good, don't forget that
ultimately there will be some bad times just around the corner. Well, one of the things that I've experienced before and just experienced this week is my employer is cutting back on contributions to the four oh one K. So that made me think, huh, well, since I'm not getting any matching money for what I'm putting in, maybe I need to back off on what I'm putting
in and put it somewhere else. Well, I want to say that I legally cannot give you any investment advice, certainly, but I even if you're not getting the free money from the employer, you know, it might make sense to continue to contribute to your four oh one K. But if maybe you have an IRA and you like those options a little bit more than I
can understand why you want to explore that. Well, and that's that's what I'm getting at, is that you know, right now there are some savings accounts and some other accounts that are paying interest rates that are almost comparable to the matching funds depending on how much you put in right Absolutely, Yeah, Paco. The lay on Weird Finance is the podcasts. What are these some
of the things you cover on Weird Finance. Yeah, I'm really the goal with the podcast is to just explore all of the nooks and crannies, all of the things that I think are fascinating about the financial world. It is definitely not limited to just investing conversations, and it's definitely not limited to just
experts like an a state planner or a CPA or a financial planner. I also want to have just real conversations with people who have either maybe they're working for themselves, there's some kind of creative freelancer or a small business owner. But I'm even spoke to people in kind of the fringe. So I've spoken with a financial astrologer and a financial dominatrix. I spoke to a woman who
lived in her car for a thousand days. It really runs a gamut well, and that's what makes us entertaining, and the podcast is weird finance. Paco de layons with us. You also go over five essential financial habits to practice. What are some of those? Definitely, weekly finance time is the top of my list. A weekly finance time is exactly what it sounds like.
You set aside I would say at least twenty minutes every week, and you focus on your finances right, you are trying to have a better relationship with your money, and by showing up and by dedicating time to do that, it is a way for you to really explore what you've got going on, understand your financial situation, to look back and to look forward, and
it shows yourself that you are really dedicating time to your own growth. Lovely wife and I do that bi weekly, usually about the time we reconcile the checkbook. Now, at early in the marriage, I let her handle everything, and then little by little I started helping her reconcile the checkbook and started seeing what it was. She's a brilliant financially by the way, so and
I always take her advice on everything financial. But but you know, now that we're working on it together, it's a lot easier for us to see the goal and to reach that goal. Absolutely. Yeah, when I mean gold star A plus. I love what you're doing. I love that your your partner's got you on board there. Yeah, when it comes to finances, I mean everybody knows this. It's like number one or number two things
that couples fight about. The best thing you could do is really get on the same team and understand that even if you have different opinions or maybe your values are off by one degree when it comes to certain things. That's part of being in a relationship is navigating that dynamic. Ultimately, you just got to be on the same team and work towards the same goal. Believe me, I check with her on any purchase over fifty dollars? Is this all
right? But yeah? Yeah, why are you even bothering me with it? Because you also say that go ahead. I just said, I love it okay. And the stock market, I mean, it's been a little up and a little down this week. It seems a little more positive than it did last week when everybody was still reeling from the from the bank failure. But is now the time to start looking into that? So my opinion
on investing is that you shouldn't really care if it's up burths down. There's a strategy called dollar cost averaging, and what that means is, no matter what the stock market is doing, you just put in a little bit of money over time. So both four own K is like a really great example
of that. Every time you get paid, a portion of your paycheck goes into your four owne K and that way you're investing whether the market is up or whether the market is down, and over time, what you're hoping is that you've bought in, you know, across an average that kind of balances out. We're talking Apoco de lay On. She is the author of the book Finance for the People, Getting a grip on your finances and host of
the podcast Weird Finance heard on the iHeartRadio Appen anywhere you get podcasts. Also very creative person likes to play in a band, and and so for you, it's it's it's not all boring numbers and percentage rates. Definitely not. I mean when you think about music, music is actually quite metical. You think about the basin between tones and timing and meter. It's all math. It's just explored in a much more fun way than say, I don't know
algebra. Yeah, yeah, oh that's I always go back to that and say, Okay, if you're going to teach math, don't teach it like it's a recipe out of a cookbook. Teach it like it's music, or teach it like it's the practical application of trying to solve a problem. I don't know how you were taught about I was taught very cookbook like and it always frustrated me. And so Paco de Leon's with us, and her book is Finance for the people getting a grip on finances, Weird finance, hurt
on the iHeartRadio podcast, and getting ready for tax season now. Right now a lot of people have already filed, But is there anything last minute to keep in mind? I would say definitely for those of you that haven't filed, please don't wait till the last minute and stress your accountants out, try to get everything together as soon as you can, and recognize that. The IRS put out a press release statement in November talking about how a lot of
these COVID era tax credits are expiring. So if you are banking on a big refund and you're banking on being able to use that refund, that's recognize that refunds are probably going to be smaller this year because of these tax credits that are expiring. Paco delay On looks at finance in a very musical and creative way. Founder of the Hell Yeah Group and host of Weird Finance with Paco de lay On on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts. Thank
you for the conversation. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts Media presentation