Let's Talk Money

with me. I hope you'll get something valuable or at least interesting out of the conversation. My name is Harmony Wagner. I'm a wealth advisor at Bouchet Financial Group. I'm a certified financial planner and also a certified private wealth advisor, and I'm here filling in for Steve Bouchet today and joining you for the next hour for Let's Talk Money.

I wanted to share this past week, I actually celebrated my eight year work anniversary with Bouchet, and it is always an exciting milestone to celebrate a work anniversary, especially at a company I really love. Whenever people ask me if I like my job, it's always a quick and resounding Yes. The reason why I love it so much is in number one, the impact that we have is real.

It's easy to see to watch a client sit down across the table with maybe a concern or a fear about their financial future, or to be able to guide them through that and hopefully have them walk out of that meeting much more at ease. I've had the ability to walk with people through the loss of a parent or a serious health concern, kind of guiding them through

those really difficult times in life. And I've also been able to watch people that I've known for years as clients prepare for retirement for a long time, and then they get to actually step into that phase of life and to see them enjoying a life they work so hard for. It to be a small small part of that. It's really rewarding more than I ever thought it could be. So it's really blashed and grateful to be able to do this. And the other reason why I love my

job is the team I get to work with. We're a team of twenty and let me just tell you, my colleagues are so knowledgeable, so humble, so collaborative, and they're they're very invested in the work that we do no pun intended. So speaking of my you know, wonderful colleagues, I'm joined by one of them today for the show.

My colleague Ed Wilhelm on our trading team is going to be joining us today and he's one of the smartest guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, and so I think you'll get a lot out of talking with him today as well. So morning, Ed. How's it going.

If you do have a question. Let's kick off with a market recap and chat about you know, what happened in the last week and what we're thinking as we go forward. So and i'll let you let you start off.

and then also same for this week. The one thing that did kind of stand out to me was we saw materials up, you know, over three percent this week, just looking at the sector returns, and this was really driven by a soft inflation data print, which we'll get to a little bit later in the show. And then also some falling commodity prices, you know, some input costs lowering for the sector, which is always positive. And then

more on just the individual stock size. We had Micron post earnings this week, so they beat on their earnings and revenue the estimates and then issued a higher guidance for their next quarter. And this is really positive for the AI space as a whole. You know, there were some concerns earlier in the year if maybe the trend was starting to fade out. But it's always nice to

see some reassurance on the demand side. And you know, as we start to wrap up third quarter here, we're going to start getting more and more earnings, so that's kind of where the focus will start to shift.

as two point two percent. Uh, the core PCE was at two point seven percent, So you know, we're seeing inflation start to come down as we have, so that trend is really continuing. I'm sure the FED is really happy to see that the economy is slowing, but at a nice easy pace, right, So we're not seeing any indication that the economy's falling off a cliffs that were you know, barreling towards a recession. So this is probably

exactly what the Fed is wanting to see. We had a solid GDP reading of three percent last week as well, and so a lot of indicators are saying that that saft landing that's bent the goal for the last I guess over two years now is seeming to be more and more of a possibility. We knew that at some point, with such you know, a steep rate hike cycle starting back in twenty twenty two, that the economy would have

to slow a little bit at some point. The question wasn't whether it would, It was just whether we'd get pushed into a recession or be able to achieve that soft landing. And so we are seeing the economy slow and maybe you know, a slightly cooling jobs market, But we were in such a strong position to begin with that there's room for a little bit of cooling, a little bit of settling, without getting into a position where, you know, we're concerned that the economy is headed for

a bad place. So, you know, we're really seeing some great signs in the economy, and you know, I think generally maybe you know, as you can chime in as well, But it seems that the expectation right now is that the side, we'll cut probably by a quarter point for November and possibly December as well.

factors on markets. It's you know, kind of seeing how these expectations change based on you know, data prints we're getting. So you know, sometime I feel a little bag and I always come on the show and I say it every time, but I mean, just to echo the words of you know, Jerome Powell, our Federal Reserve chair, we really are in a very just data dependent place right now.

You know, the focus really is on inflation, and the FED is you know, maybe shifting to a little bit more of their focus to the labor markets, you know, as they do really want to avoid that recession and they are shooting for the soft landing. But as we're currently sitting, I think you nail the harmony. I think we are looking, you know, good if we're looking at odds for a soft landing versus like a recession.

is thinking about buying treasuries. You know, as you have a treasury that's coming due or are maturing, you're going to run into some of that reinvestment risk, meaning that whatever your treasury was paying, whether you had it for you know, three six months, a year, two years, as it's coming too mature, you're going to run to that reinvestment risk of you know, can I buy something else at conservative investment that it's going to pay me the

same And when rates are cutting, the odds are probably not. And that may push some people to start investing more in equities again if they find that hey, the conservative yields are not as attractive. When I was earning four and a half five percent, I was really happy with that. If it's going to go down it's going to be three at some point or even less, I may not be as happy. I may feel that I need to consider something else for my dollars to be working for me.

So that's something I think people are going to be thinking about as well as you know, money markets. People who have money in money markets, they're really liquid. So that's been an attractive thing for people who had, you know, cash to put to work, wanted to stay conservative, but they maybe didn't want to lock in for a certain maturity, saying, hey, I might need this money in the near term. It's

more of an emergency reserve for me. I'm not comfortable with it being locked up into something like a CD or even a treasury where I'm taking on potentially some interest rate risk if I have to, you know, sell it in the secondary market. And so, you know, you're seeing people who chose money markets a lot that could earn over five percent. It was really nice have you liquid, but you know, now we're going to start to see those rates drop in step really as the as the

Fed starts to cut the Fed funds rate. So you know, we're seeing that already a little bit with some of the shrab money market funds that we use, and it's going to create kind of a decision point for people, especially people who maybe are more conservative innately and really liked this time where we had high yields in the conservative space, there was less risk could be evaluating. If you can get five percent on a money market that's a pretty good day. But we're going to start to

see that environment change a little bit. Edou, Do you have any guidance for people who are starting to reevaluate the conservatives out of their portfolio now that we're in a rate cut cycle.

what's driving that return. It's essentially just a continuous stream of you know, the shortest duration treasury is possible, and they're just going to keep rolling those so as we you know, get these Fed fund rate cuts, that is where we see rates drop the fastest. It's in these sort of vehicles like money market funds are on the shorter end of the curve. So i'd encourage investors to start, you know, considering that and looking to park funds elsewhere.

You know, there are conservative parts of the equity markets you can look at, and then as well consider potentially trying to lock some of that in a longer duration you know, treasury or c D especially as those rates may not be as attractive as they once were, but we'll lock in that yield for you versus is a money market fund.

for a moment about mortgage rates. A lot of you know, maybe hopeful want want to be home buyers are weighted with waiting with baited breath for rate cuts to hopefully make home buying more affordable, at least on the financing side of things. But one thing to remember is that mortgage rates aren't tied to the Fed funds rate directly. They actually move more closely with the bond market. And typically the benchmark that you would consider when you're thinking

about mortgages is a ten year treasury. You know, obviously mortgages are long term debt. So as we are looking at how the mortgage rates are going to be affected by this, you know, next step in the you know, the Fed's policy as they start to cut rates, but we're kind of looking more to that ten year as an indicator for what they're going to do. And you know, sometimes mortgage rates are affected by what the Fed does,

but not not always. And you've actually seen mortgage rates fluctuate by more than a percentage point in the last you know, six to twelve months, even when the Fed wasn't making any policy changes or any rate cuts, So it's not based solely on the Fed funds rate. However, it is likely that we would see mortgage rates continue to go down. However, you know, if they're at six point two five today, and the Fed cuts they're not going to drop, you know, immediately by the exact amount

that the rate cut was for. So as people are kind of weighing that and you're maybe deciding, hey, should I buy something now, should I wait a year? You know,

that's something to kind of be aware of. It's likely that they would continue to decrease, but it's not a given and it's not a given that they will do so in lockstep with the rate cuts that the Fed Federal Reserve makes, So something to be aware of, especially as you're making these, you know, relatively short term timing decisions for saying do I do it now versus you know, six months from now might seem like a long time when you're waiting to buy a home, but it's actually

not a very long time and in the long run in terms of you know, how market rates can perform. So something to be aware of. We're going to take a quick thirty second break here, but we'll be right back with more Let's Talk money on WGY. Good morning, everybody, Thanks for staying with me through that break. This is Harmony Wagner. I'm joining you for Let's Talk Money today.

I am a wealth Advisor at Buchet Financial Group CFP and a CPWA, and it's my pleasure to join you along with my colleague Ed Wilhelm on our portfolio team today. And as you just heard the friendly voice say, you can call in with your questions. The phone lines are open. That number is one eight hundred Talk WGY one eight

hundred eight two five five nine four nine. If you have a question about the markets, the economy, financial planning, maybe something about your own financial situation that you'd like to ask me your Ed, feel free to take advantage of that as we're talking about some of these bigger themes. You know, we talk a lot about the markets and the economy and what our outlook is. You know, I always like to bring it back to what that means

for all of us. We're just the you know, average American households trying to make sense of this big economic machine. We're trying to do the right things for ourselves financially on a more personal level, on a more individual or

household level. So, you know, as we're talking about this, I think there's a question that is probably in a lot of people's minds at any given time, and that's about the timing of retirement right now, starting in twenty twenty four, so you know, the year we're in now and going through twenty twenty seven, there's a phenomenon called peak sixty five, which means there is a the highest number in history actually of people reaching age sixty five

every year, starting you know, this year through the next you know, three years after this as well. So there's a lot of people and I know that sixty five isn't you know, the time that everyone retires. Some folks are you know, much earlier. Some people like to keep working or or feel they need to keep working even

later than that. But it is just an important milestone for people who are you know, reaching that age where even if you're not retiring, you're thinking about it, and maybe people are starting to ask themselves, how do I know to retire at the right time? And am I retiring at the wrong time? I actually wrote a blog about this last week, so if you'd like to read more of the details on it, you can visit our

website www dot buche dot com. We put out articles every week, webinars, lots of content on there under the Insights and Perspectives page, So feel free to navigate to that if you do have interest in seeing some more content from our advisors and our team. But the article that I wrote was just kind of addressing this question. And there's this phenomenon called sequence of return risk, and that's really what you're considering when you're saying from a

financial or a portfolio and they're retiring at the right time. Obviously, you know, in your own personal life there's other non financial things that would affect it. You know, your health or your spouse's health might be part of it. You know, what you want to do where your family is at, whether you know, maybe you have a son or daughter who's moving and you're thinking, maybe I want to you know, leave this area as well and stay in your family.

Maybe there's you know, other things going on that that would affect you personally. But from a financial portfolio perspective, there's also something to be said about timing. Now, bear markets are a normal part of market cycles. If you are retiring at sixty five and you're planning on having a twenty to thirty year retirement, it is all I mean,

I'm a financial advisor. I'm not going to say I guarantee, but it's all but guaranteed that you will experience probably not just one, but multiple bear markets throughout your retirement timeframe. That would just be part for the course. When we look at historical market behavior, the issue it becomes not whether you have a bear market in your retirement, that's

a foregone conclusion. It's whether you have a bear market in the first one to two years of retirement that potentially, without the right preparation, can be crushing to your long

term portfolio outlook. That creates an issue where you're starting to pull from your portfolio at a time where it is potentially significantly down right fifteen twenty twenty five percent off of a ties, and that can create an issue to try to draw from that because maybe you were going to draw five percent of your balance on the day you retired every year, and that's generally a pretty sustainable amount to withdraw, so you would have been safe

doing so. However, if your portfolio tanks, you know twenty twenty five percent, that chunk that you thought was going to be five percent in your portfolio is now a much bigger proportion of it, and it starts to draw your portfolio down more significantly. In the early years and then it becomes much more difficult for it to recover and be able to support you over the long term.

So you know, it depends a lot on the individual situation, but there is definitely a risk there for some people, especially those who are planning to rely very heavily on their portfolio for their income. So it's something that you need to consider and you need to prepare for, and I believe that with the right preparation you can set yourself up so that you don't have to worry as

much about that. There's nothing anyone can do to really control it, right, we can't guarantee a smooth market trajectory for any year, month, or even week, so it's impossible to totally avoid this risk. What we can do is try to reduce its impact. So here are some things that you can do. The first is to prepare a cash management strategy. Now, typically bear markets and even recessions in the last seventy five years have recovered within twenty

four months. So if you prepare two years worth of cash setting in aside and something conservative like money markets or short duration bond funds, that way you know that you're not actually pulling for the invested side of your portfolio regardless of what the market is doing. So you have your money set aside. Hopefully you're able to do so, you know, at our near all time highs and you know, capture those gains and set it aside in one to two years worth of cash. Doesn't mean it has to

be pure cash. You can have it doing something for you getting some yield, but you want it to be really conservative in nature that way, And this is something that we do for all of our clients. They have their money that they're going to need for their distributions, they can lead the rest of the portfolio fully invested, able to weather any downturn and ride the recovery back up as well, instead of pulling out of things that are at a loss. So that's rule number one for

us is gain that cash management strategy in place. A second thing is to model what would happen to your portfolio during an early retirement bear market. If you're working with an advisor, he or she should be able to do this for you as well. If you're doing planning for you and saying, okay, let's look at what's called a bear market test, and we'll say these first two years let's say they're as bad as two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, how does that affect your portfolio?

So what do you need to think about? And that way you kind of have a real sense of this is what it would be like for me if this would occur, and then you can move on to step number three, which is maintain a flexibility mindset. Ideally, you'd want to have two to three areas of your financial life where you are both able and willing to be flexible.

So some examples might be, are there elements of your spending that are totally discretionary that you'd be willing to cut back for a year or two if you had to, right, maybe part of the portfolio distributions you're taking out is for travel, and you're saying, if things got really bad, I'd be willing to not travel for a year or two to make sure I'm protecting my portfolio long term. Maybe do you have the option to work part time temporarily if you had to again? Maybe you wouldn't you know.

You're saying I'm retiring, I want to be done, But if you were in a situation, would you be willing to work part time just even for a little bit to supplement your income. Are you open to collecting social sidek security earlier than planned? Maybe you were one of those who said I'm going to delay till age seventy but something happens and all of a sudden, you say, you need an income stream that's not affected by the markets, and you want to you know, be able to start

that clock. So as long as you're going to be at least sixty two, you have the ability to do that if you end up in a situation where you're saying, I need to not touch my portfolio for a little bit because of what's going on in the markets. So those are three things that three examples of how you

can maintain a flexibility mindset in in your planning. And it helps to really model it to see everything that you know could go wrong if you do have a badly timed bear market in your own retirement, if you retire and then within that first one to two years the markets take a downturn. Knowing, okay, you know that would that would not be great. But I have this plan, I have these things that I know I'm going to do.

I know I can handle that. They are you know, acceptable to me in my lifestyle, and I'm willing to do that to protect myself if need be. What I find and working with hundreds of clients over the years on plans, if this is a big concern for them, it helps so much to model it and to see

exactly what would happen. And it also helps a lot to say, Okay, I have my plan, A, B and C. That gives a lot of peace of mind where you know you're not stressed thinking if this happens, you know I'm done for you know, and I can't recover from it. Having that plan really can help to ease anxiety about retiring because it is a huge step. So hopefully that's helpful. We're going to head into the halfway point of all little news break here, but we will be right back

with more. Let's talk money, brought to you by Bouchet Financial Group, where we help our clients prioritize their health, where we manage their wealth for life. Don't go away, We'll be right back. Hi. Everyone, Thanks for staying with me through the break and thanks you're joining me on this beautiful fall day. I hope that wherever you're listening from today, you're able to at least see the Centraline

and enjoy it. It's such a beautiful part of the year, and in the capital regions take full advantage of it. It is almost in a September already, which is hard to believe, so you know, pretty soon we have October and then then the holidays upon us. Just seems like the end of the year always flies by. Well, thanks again for joining me today. My name is Harmony Wagner. I'm filling in for Steven Bouchet today. I'm one of

the wealth advisors here at Bouchet. I'm a CFP and a CTWA and I'm joined also by my colleague Edward Wilhelm on our portfolio team, and we're here talking to you about the markets, the economy, financial planning and anything on your mind. Full lines are open, so if you do have a question or something you'd like to discuss, please please call in one eight hundred talk WGY again. That number is one eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine. Ed and I live and breath this stuff.

Could talk about it all day, but we would certainly love to hear if our listeners have a topic or a question that they want to bring up now as I mentioned before. You know, one thing that we're always trying to do on the show and with our clients is to take these bigger macroeconomic or market themes and boil them down and say, you know what do what does the average person do with all this? How do

you know? How do you take this you know, big huge, you know information that we that we have all the reporting on the financial markets and the economy, and how do you boil it down and say, you know what does what do I do? And I think something that a lot of clients are asking us right now is, you know, with markets at our near all time highs for you know, a good portion of this year, is it a good time to rebalance my portfolio? You know? How do I take a look at that and reevaluate

my allocation and rebalance? And I will say, you know, Ed will talk about this in just a moment. On the risk tolerance side, and that's a lot where you know, our advisors get involved is guiding clients to you know,

what's your tolerance for risk? You know, we always talk about how in a down market you really you really know what your tolerance for risk is or your comfort level because you're experiencing the downside of it on the flip side during up markets and the last you know, twenty twenty three and this year year to date, it can almost lull you to a false sense of maybe being more aggressive than you really are because you're just watching the equities markets specifically just go up and up

and up, and it is sometimes can be giving you a false sense of confidence that that's all equity markets ever do, and we zoom out a little bit further, we know that it's not the case, and that there is there are downs as well as ups, although over time the stock market does always go on to make new all time highs. So it is historically, you know, the best asset class for long term growth, but generally speaking you have to be okay with the ups and

downs as well. So that's one thing that I'm kind of guiding clients on is saying, hey, you know, your equities most likely in your portfolio are overweight from your target because they've done so well. So if you have a target of a sixty forty portfolio, sixty percent to equities and forty percent to fixed income and conservative assets. Over the last you know, year almost two years, now

your equities. If you've done nothing, have probably had a really nice run, and maybe you're now at seventy thirty and you need to kind of say okay, just because that felt really good the last two years when the markets were doing great. If sixty forty is really where I'm comfortable with from a long term perspective, I'm comfortable in the ups and the downs at that allocation, it could be a time to start thinking maybe I should

read balance right, capture some of those gains. And we're not saying the market is, you know, on the edge of a bear market or a correction, but we also can't promise you that it's not. So it can be a good time to say, hey, I'm gonna I'm going to make a smart end this up online move right now. I'm going to rebalance and kind of step back to target. But Ed, I'll let you kind of jump in here as well and talk about rebalancing and what you know we're doing for clients at this point.

So one thing that is you know for certain over time is that you know, since two thousand, essentially the less frequently you have rebalanced, the better returns you've generated in your account. And as Harmony mentioned, you know it's because equities continue to run and if you started at that eighty percent, you know, like an eighty twenty portfolio, that grows over time and it compounds, but you do

start to carry more risk. So exactly figuring out when you rebalance, you know, there are a couple of you know, kind of core strategies. I would say the main two is just any sort of calendar frequency. So maybe that's quarterly, maybe that's semi annually, maybe that's annually. You know, that's kind of depends on exactly the composition of your portfolio. But as we know, the less frequently you've done it,

the higher returns you've had. So something like a quarterly rebalancing strategy has not been incredibly successful, you know, over the better part of the last two to three decades. What I'd encourage investors to do is maybe look at something that's more deviation based, so saying looking at your portfolio and saying, okay, I'm in a sixty forty right now, I'm comfortable with my equities going to maybe seventy percent

or eighty percent of my account. And once you reach that kind of you know, deviation off of what your target percentage is, that's when you look to rebalance. And that's more of a function of just risk management, because you do want to avoid trying to time the markets, which is the other difficult part of a less frequent rebalancing strategy. You know, if you are only rebalancing every you know, maybe two to three years, or potentially even farther,

you're then subject to the timing of the market. If you're doing it more frequently, the timing doesn't affect you as much. But it's also very dependent on the direction of equity markets. You know, I've been very fortunate for my entire life. We've been in a pretty systematic bull market, you know, minus a few black Swan events in eight and then COVID and then you know, short bear market in twenty twenty two. But that's why twenty twenty two

is such a tough year. You know, if you think about that sixty to forty portfolio with bonds and equities down, it wouldn't really have mattered if you had rebalanced heading into twenty twenty two, because both were both were tough. But I'd say for right now, you know, with markets at all time highs and US entering a fed cutting cycle, it's certainly not a bad idea to reevaluate, you know, where your portfolio is positioned, h and think about rebalancing

and at the same time harmony. As you mentioned earlier in the show, if you are in retirement or thinking about, you know, taking distributions from your portfolio, do you have that cash set aside, because really we are in the business of risk management, and you know, you explain just how detrimental a bear market early in your retirement can be.

The other option being to kind of set parameters for yourself and say, hey, if I my equities reach you know, this high above or below my target, I'm gonna rebalance. Both of those remove the emotion and the market timing

out of it, and that is really key. I think that's what you know as a financial advisory firm, that's what we do for our clients is take try to take the emotion out of investing, because you just see that as smart as the average person is, as much knowledge as they have available to them on the right things to do in your portfolio and the markets and what's going on, you still see that the average investor

will underperform the broad market over time. And it almost seems impossible because you know, if someone's going to underperform, why wouldn't they just buy the broad market index at the most you know, basic level. But we just see people either getting overconfident thinking that they can do better than the market, or getting caught up in the emotion of it and how hard it can be. You know, even people who aren't typically one to make rash moves.

Sometimes they're the ones to say, Okay, in a bear market, I'm going to sell out and go to cash. It's just too painful being invested right now. And they might even know that that's not the right thing to do, but it is so hard sometimes when it is your wealth that you've worked so hard for to see it going down, even when it's just a paper loss. It is so so difficult and so against kind of our our human nature to allow that to happen without taking action.

So that was the big takeaway I think from from what you shared at was just to take that disciplined approach and whatever you decide whatever is going to be right for you, to really stick with it, or to you know, engage with an advisors who can do that

for you because it is really tough. This kind of leads into the behavioral finance side of things, which is always an area that I'm super interested in, you know, as I work, of course on the you know, portfolio side a little bit and helping clients with their portfolio.

It's not quite as much as Ed and his team, of course, but I also see people and talk to people a lot, and you know, that's really my true passion in the work that I do, and so I'm always so interested in the reasons why we're doing the things that we're doing, especially when it comes to finance.

And so I learned about something that I had never heard of, this particular effect before, but I wanted to, you know, talk about it on the radio, see if it might help someone, because the stats on it were pretty compelling. This is called the fly paper effect, and the basic premise is that wherever money lands, it sticks, it kind of is related to inertia, which you know,

I'm going to try to paraphrase this. It's been a really long time since I studied high school physics, so don't judge me for that, but you know, basically, an object at resk is at rest, is going to stay at rest unless it's acted upon by an outside force. And when they were doing some studies on the way that money was invested, particularly Vanguard had a huge study.

There was hundreds of thousands of accounts, specifically retirement accounts that they looked at that had money going into them, and in fifty five percent of those accounts, money that went in stayed in cash for twelve months or more. So people are doing the hard work of actually saving, right, that disciplined work of actually putting money away instead of spending it. Which is great. People are saving towards their retirement, but the part that they're missing is the actual investment

and the execution of that. So even though they're putting money into an investment account, that money is staying in cash for a really long time. You think about the kind of market performance you can miss out on in a whole year or even longer. That's kind of a little sad to hear. And you hear about this in other ways too, Right, someone gets maybe they inherit something from you, a loved one, They inherit some cash or

some assets, and they never do anything with it. It stays in the same way that it trans for it over for a long time. And you know, let's say it came from a parent and that person was you know, farther along in life. The way that it was invested for them might have been much more conservative than it should be for their child who's inheriting it and going to try to make it, you know, grow over their own lifetime. So that's you know, another place that this

flypaper effect can can factor in. Also you might see someone setting up before one K at work and they never change it off of the default investment allocation, which is better than cash. But for most retirement plans it's fifty to fifty, which is probably more conservative than most people, especially people who are still working, probably should be more

aggressive than fifty to fifty in many cases. And so it's you know, a little sad to think about that people are doing the hard work of saving the money and maybe not doing that last little step of you know, making sure it's doing the right thing for them, and it's all because of inertia. Right when when that money goes in and it just starts sitting there, sometimes there is no outside force to prompt someone to go in

and actually, you know, invest appropriately. So today let me be that outside for us, for you, this will be your friendly reminder to check your accounts, rebalance if necessary if you have if you're working, check your four oh one K four three, check the allocation, make sure that it's set up for future contributions as well as the money that you already have in there, and make sure that's you know, after this money, you're saving this money,

you're working hard for it and putting it away. Make sure that you're you're doing that that last step to cross the finish line to you know, really get it to work for you so that down the road you're you're gonna be in a much better spot. We're going to take a quick break here, but we'll be right back with more Let's Talk Money on w g Y. Hi, everyone, thanks for staying with me through that brief break, and thanks for listening and spending time with me and with

Ed this morning. You're listening to Let's Talk Money on w g Y. This is Harmony Wagner, one of the wealth advisors at Bouchet Financial Group. You're talking with you about markets, economy, financial planning, and the whole host of other financial topics. And there is still time if you have a question or something you'd like to discuss a financial topic, you can call in. That phone number again is one eight hundred Talk WGY one eight hundred eight

two five five nine four nine. I thought a big good time to share a little bit about women and wealth, which is an initiative that's really important to us here at Bouchet. Four of us on the advisory team are our women advisors, and we have a client service team that has some of the most incredible and powerful women that I've ever had the pleasure of working with as well.

And this past week we hosted a women's estate planning panel event along with two other local firms that work in that space, whether on the legal or tax side. So my colleague Nicole Globel was the monerator. I took part in the panel, and I just wanted to share a couple of takeaways from that. It was a great event and really kind of stirred my thoughts onto this topic, which is really important. And we're a financial planning firm of financial advisory firm wealth management, so we're not doing

a state documents in house. That's really important for our people to know. We are not preparing anything. We don't draft documents. That is all done by a licensed and qualified attorney. Should be an estate planning attorney, right, not just sending attorney, even though you know attorneys of all kinds are able to you know, write trust and wills

and things like that. But one of the key takeaways from the luncheon was to work with someone who's an expert in estate planning because there is so much nuance and laws and precedence out there. But you know, anyway, we partner with a lot of estate planning attorney firms locally, but we don't write those in house. However, a lot of times this conversation does come up when we're having

financial planning meetings with our clients. It is very intertwined with a lot of things, whether it's taxes, your family dynamics, complexities, charitable giving, your financial goals, and people that are important to you, whether it's you know, your children, grandchildren, other family members, you know, whoever it is those people that are important to you that you want to make sure are taken care of even when you're not here anymore. Those are all things that come out of the financial

planning conversation as well. So it does tend to converge upon This is state planning discussion and making sure that all of our clients have a right plan in place, that it's up to date, and that it is covering the major risks and concerns and desires of their own individual life. So you know, if someone is really concerned that they have a child who might not be able to manage money to in a way they're comfortable with, that would be a major concern that a state planning

can help address. Right, if you're leaving money to your adult child and maybe it's a minor child and you're saying, well maybe when they're older, but you know, if I passed away and they're still young, I want to make sure they're doing the right things and someone's taking care of them. Those are all things that you know, the estate planning process can can help with. One thing that we were talking about as well at the panel is

you know, why is estate planning different for women? And you know, as a firm that focuses a lot on women and wealth, especially for our female clients who are single, whether they're you know, widowed or divorced, you know, we're thinking about why is their financial plan different? Because there are things that are different for women. Women do tend to live longer. Their average life expectancy is about five years longer than their male counterparts. So what that might

mean is that they might outlive their spouse. They might have to seek outside care. Whereas their spouse if they need to care towards the end of you know, his life, then she might have been able to provide that for him. But you know, if she's on her own towards the end of life, she might have to seek outside care

for herself should she need that. Women tend to be more conservative and sometimes a little bit more anxious about these estate planning conversations, and they may also have different priorities than their spouse that they want to make sure their plan is addressing. So those are kind of all some of the themes that we talked about this event, and I just wanted to kind of put it out there

to the audience as well. You know, if you have an estate plan, to review it to make sure that it's you know, if you're married, if you're doing it with a partner or significant other, that both people kind of have their wishes reflected in there and have input into how the estate plan works, and that you're working with the right professionals, right your financial advisor of course, a great estate attorney that you trust, potentially your tax advisor,

if you have an accountant, to make sure that you're covering everything because there is so many parts of estate planning to think about. It's such a huge topic area and it can be quite complex. So that is you know, just some takeaway from our event and from the work that we're doing in the women in wealth space, which is so close to Steve Bouchet's heart and always has been, and a lot of us as well that work at Bluche just feel a very close, near dear to our hearts.

One other question that kind of came out of that, I was chatting with someone after the event and this person asked, you know, how do I know if my advisor acting as a fiduciary for me? And I thought it was a great question. It should be a lot simpler than it is. That that's, you know, truly how I feel about it. It shouldn't be a guessing game of whether the person you're working with is a fiduciary. But there is some nuance to it. And here's why.

There's two ways or or reasons that someone might act as a fiduciary or might be obligated to. It can be at the firm level, right, So for a registered investment advisor like us, for we're SEC regulated as a firm, we are held to that fiduciary standard, meaning that we have to act in our client's best interest to you know, remove and or disclose any existing conflicts of interest to make sure that our clients are making the most informed decisions.

And you know, as the little promo at the beginning of the episode was talking about, you know, we don't sell investments. We are a fee only fiduciary, and that's really such a core part of how we work and how we make sure that we're doing what's best for

our clients. So at the firm level, it can be like that, But there are broker houses that are much larger that aren't SEC regulated, that aren't necessarily held to the fiduciary standard as an organization, and in that case, the individual advisors may or may not have to act in the fiduciary and it may depend on what exactly

kind of service they're doing or providing for you. So, you know, as a CFP and a CPWA, both of those designations require me as an individual to act as a fiduciary for my clients in any professional capacity, even if I was with a firm or an organization that didn't necessarily have that standard. So even though you know, if you're working with a big broker house, not sure if they have a fiduciary standard, your advisor might might be obligated to act under that depending on his or

her professional licenses and all that stuff. Ultimately, I think it still has a lot of people's head spinning. And if I were, you know, trying to interview then advisor or working with someone, I'd feel the exact same way. And so what I would boil it down to you, and this is what I share with the person who asked me. That is, you know, are you receiving the type and quality of services that a fiduciary should be providing to you, and just focus on that and what

are those services. A fiduciary should be highly transparent about fees, and they should disclose all potential or actual conflicts of interest at a base level. That is something else every fiduciary should be doing. A fiduciary should also be providing thorough and comprehensive guidance and they should have a focus on giving you information so that you, as the client,

can make the informed financial decision. Ultimately, it's always your decision, right just like if you're you know, in a medical scenario, it is your decision as the patient and your doctor as your partner coming along you to alongside you to give you the best information, make recommendations and guide you that's how fiduciary should be as well, giving you all the information in an understandable way to say this is how you should be making this decision, and then you know,

guiding you through that and supporting you as a decision maker. A fiduciary should be responsible, responsive, knowledgeable, and ethical as well. These are all things where if you're saying, you know, forget about if your you know, your advisor is supposed to be acting as a fiduciary, are they actually doing it? Are you receiving these And if you have doubts about some or all of these points, you may not be

receiving fiduciary services. And you should be right. It's available, it's there are firms out there that do this really well. And so if you have any doubts about that, if the person you're working with as an advisor is maybe not providing these you know, it might be a time where you're saying, hey, I really want to work with the fiduciary. That's important to me. It's important to my well being as uh, you know, the person who's managing

my my finances or the finances of my home. I want someone who I know know's going to act in my best interest because, as with any of these, you know, professional areas right. We talked about legal, it's talked about tax. These are huge parts of your financial life and they are very complicated. There is a ton of law out there.

It can be hard to find the most accurate information online and so it is so key to have a person that you can really trust and not have to second guests and try to do all the research that you're on your own. Of course, if you want to risk to your own that's amazing, but you shouldn't have to feel like you have to fact check them because you're worried about what they're going to give you accurate

information or not. You should be working with the fiduciary that you really trust, who's actually providing the services that you receive. Well, thank you so much for tuning in for today's show. We'll be back here right here on WGY tomorrow at eight am with another broadcast, But until then, thank you for listening to Let's Talk Money, brought to you by Bouchet Financial Group, where we help our clients prioritize their health while we manage their wealth for life,

stay safe and healthy. Thank you for joining me and ed this weekend. Have a great rest of your weekend.