The Wealth Equation Podcast by Maurice l Wilson reveals how to accelerate your wealth and secure more money, time, and freedom by leveraging the investment powers of real estate entrepreneurship, the stock market, and more. Tune in as host Maurice l Wilson, an engineer turn financial advisor offers you a step-by-step formula to solve your wealth equation once and for all. Here's Maurice.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Wealth Equation Podcast with Maurice l Wilson of Wilson Wealth. Today's gonna be a really great episode. Hope you're joining me live. If not, be sure to check us out on YouTube and all of the available podcast platforms. For those of you who are fortunate enough to be with us today live, you're in for a treat today. I have a very special guest out of Maryland, Eric d Broman, A BFG, financial advisors.
He is a accomplished he, I would say, Hey, Eric is life goals for me for people who understand that phrase I, Eric's one of those gentlemen, you meet and you realize you haven't been doing enough. And so I'm really gonna learn something here today as well. I hope you do the same, Eric, coming your own way introduce yourself to the audience. Oh my goodness. First of all you did such a good job introducing me. I want to just bring you with me everywhere I speak. That would be great.
No like you said I'm the CEO of BFG financial advisors here in Lutherville, Maryland. Been in practice for 32 years, so I think I got a number of years on you. So don't feel so bad. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Definitely. And we've been doing wealth management for families all over the country now for, again, three decades. Yeah. And I was a startup in 2003. And now I'm working my succession plan and writing books and speaking and just having a lot of fun.
One thing, one thing your audience is gonna find out real fast. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. So this should be a good time tonight. And the audience is really, is gonna be multiple ones here. We're gonna hit with what you primarily, I'm gonna say primarily do, but for anybody that's a financial advisor in the audience who's wondering why are two financial advisors talking? Eric let's just go ahead and do the spoilers now.
Tell 'em all the businesses that you do so we can really set the stage for what you do. Yeah, no I've been running what used to be Braman Financial Group and was rebranded a number of years ago as BFG Financial Advisors, now for 22 years. I also am a consultant. I started Braman Consulting Group a number of years ago and worked with financial advisors all over the country. And I do a lot of speaking and coaching and facilitations working with teams.
And then I also have a media group and that helped us create a podcast and create a brand. And I've written three books and a lot of articles and I'm easy to find online which is good, I think. And so my role is changing here, Maurice. I am January 1st of next year, stepping down as CEO after a really long. Wonderful stretch. My successor is being named. Okay. Your audience is gonna get a sneak peek 'cause it hasn't hit the papers yet, but it's coming.
And and my job is gonna be to do mentoring and coaching and teaching and speaking and growing the organization. So we're doing we've done a number of m and a deals, we've helped other advisors with their succession plans. You and I are, we talked before we came on air we're not competitors we're we're colleagues.
And at the end of the day, I think there's so much abundance and so many opportunities that you know, households, families need financial advice and they're gonna work with somebody they identify with and feel good about. And picking up on that what people, when they think financial advice and they think about what you and I do, if it's not college which is a very near term goal, we know it's retirement.
And that's what, from what I've read about you when we talked you, I'm gonna say specialized in, but you wrote a really good book about retirement called Don't Retire. Wait, sorry, don't retire. Graduate. It's sitting right here on the screen. I was gonna say educate. And so you can do that too. And I would say that of all the titles I've seen over my 20 years in the business, this is one oh graduate.
That's 'cause it's you're at the retirement stage and you jump back to the high school, college phraseology. Yeah. So delve into that. What does that mean for the audience who haven't been fortunate enough to read your book yet? Not yet, hopefully but, so here's the punchline. Okay. Retirement in its traditional sense is dreadful and no one should do it. And I there's your lift quote for the show. It retirement in its present form, the way it's drafted is a punishment.
It's not a, it's not something you succeed into. It's a terrible thing. And lemme explain what I mean. In the 18 hundreds, retirement was created in Germany and it was created by Otto von Bismarck. I'm not making this up. Van Otto. Otto von Bismarck. And what he did was he said that people will essentially be forced to leave the workforce so that there's jobs for younger people. And he, it was like a sentence, you were sentenced to retire. Okay. Which doesn't sound appealing at all.
There is a there is a building in, at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore named the Osler Building. And there was a study done in, I think 1913 or something like that. And there was a paper written by Dr. Osler who said that your years of value are in your twenties. Once you're 40, you're really not worth very much. And by 60 you've had it. And I don't know about you and I'm older than you, but not by a lot. I'm not 60 yet, but I don't think I'm gonna have had it.
No. And then remember, we, we speak English, but we really don't. We speak American, which is butchered English from the uk. And in English, the word retire means to sleep. Oh, wow. It's to retreat or to go to sleep for the night is to retire for the night. It's literally like a dirt nap. So you use LinkedIn. I know you use LinkedIn. There's people watching us on LinkedIn tonight.
If you are looking for somebody to network with and you see somebody's profile on LinkedIn and it just says retired, you're gonna keep scrolling, it might as well say dead. Yeah. Yeah. So I ref refine I redefine retirement. Not as the absence of work, but as the absence of needing to work. If you have financial independence, you have a level of freedom, whether you're 42 or 82. When you get there, you have a level of freedom that allows you to thrive and to find joy in what you do.
And if it happens to make you money, super 'cause you don't need it, but you're doing something you're passionate about. That sounds a whole lot better than daytime TV and shuffleboard. I agree. I'll pass. I agree. I agree. And think about graduation when you graduate. High school, college, any program when you graduate, it's the end. It's commencement, right? It's the end, but it's also the beginning. That's true. People look forward to it because it springs you forward. It's not a retreat.
So I wrote the book to help people re redefine what retirement means and to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. And I ask every guest on my podcast, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And some of them are dumbfounded by the question 'cause they haven't been asked since they were seven and they wanted to be astronauts. That's true.
But there's a better path for as long as we're blessed to be here and be coherent and physically able and doing something we love, I don't wanna stop doing what I'm doing. If I'm 80 and still useful I wanna be at it, not because I need it, but because it drives me. But I'm sure as heck not gonna try and die at my desk either. No. And I'm seeing, I'm on YouTube a lot and I'm seeing now where they're saying, Hey if you're 55 and working, stop.
If you're 60 in working, stop, they're lying to you about something. These are the titles. I haven't clicked on it 'cause it's clickbait. Yeah. I personally wanna work till 70. But Eric, I think like you're stepping down, but you're not walking out the door. You know what we get to do for a living is a blessing. Yes. And it's just so dynamic.
One of the main reasons I left engineering, I'm sitting in my apartment in Detroit in two thousand.com bubbles blowing up and there's these trackers on the bottom of the screen. Jim Kramer's is yelling and I'm like, man, whatever's, whatever this is about, it's way more interesting than what I'm doing in my cubicle down at Chrysler. Okay. I connect the dots. I'm like, the bottom of the screen affects Main Street. I instantly saw that.
And so we love what we do, but a lot of our I'll say my clients, I won't speak for you. Yeah. And you're in the DC, Virginia, Maryland area. So everybody knows a lot of government workers and whatnot. Sometimes they take the great job, but they haven't, they aren't following their passion. So are you finding that this graduate, are you finding it's freeing people to pursue that? Have you found that as an inflection point for your clients when they've read the book or talked about it?
Certainly some of 'em have and we've actually had some prospective clients read the book and then come in and they have questions before we even get started about that, which I think is neat. Your question's a complicated one. Okay. Because, because everybody's different and you know that if you work with a hundred people, you're gonna get a hundred answers to this question. But I think there are two common themes.
There's those folks who really don't like what they're doing and they wanna reach that level of freedom so that they can do something else. I. Correct. And that's a lot of people. Yeah. There if you're starting to get sick to your stomach on Sunday night about seven or eight o'clock, 'cause tomorrow's Monday, then you're doing the wrong thing for a living. Yes. Okay. Yes. So if that describes you then you wanna be done as soon as possible. And that means you have to pivot.
And to pivot might mean getting reeducated or learning a new skill. It might mean hitting financial independence and doing something that right now is a side hustle. I like to beat on millennials 'cause everybody likes to beat on millennials, but they did come up with the side hustle. Us Gen Xers didn't come up with this.
No. And the side hustle is great because number one, it puts a few extra extra dollars in your pocket and allows you to save and potentially reach financial independence sooner. It also gives you a fallback if you wind up unemployed either on purpose because you've said, take this job and shove it. Or because there's been a layoff or where something's happened. And so they, they did discover something, I think really important or invent something important.
I'm giving them credit for one thing in one thing, OMA. That's it. So that's the first group. The first group is people who don't like what they're doing and really wanna be done and find another path. And the sooner they can get to that finish line, the sooner they can start living. And I know that sounds, it sounds profoundly sad actually, but there's a finish line and they're gunning for it.
They are putting away money and doing the right things and saying, I I'm gonna do whatever I have to do. To reach this inflection point, right? The second group of people are people who really enjoy what they're doing, right? And whether they've reached financial independence or not they want to amplify what they're doing. They want to impact more people. They want to change the world in different ways. They want to leave a legacy not just a financial legacy.
They wanna leave the legacy of a business or a farm, or a family or other things. And I think there's two tracks to run on here that are most common. Those who are enthusiastic about what they do during the day, and those who aren't. I. And it's pretty binary. It's pretty flip the switch because for folks who like what they do are much happier Yeah. In, in every conceivable boy than folks who are like, oh, it's Monday. I can't stand it. Yeah. Yeah. I like your weekend analogy.
I did, I tell people like, okay, Friday you're excited, you're done with this thing. Saturday you do your, for you and I honey do list for those who you know and how did you know I Exactly. And you start to breathe and enjoy life on Saturday. And it's, and I think on Sunday you start, on Saturday you start thinking, Hey, I can really embrace this and do something I want.
And then Sunday you, you rise determined, and then all your self doubts kick in on Sunday night and you trudge yourself to work on Monday. One of my jokes about. The AI revolution and all this stuff, or just people want to get, wanting to get back to factory jobs and whatnot, is that we never liked any of these jobs factory, right? We didn't wanna be in the farm, but there are things that people want to do.
But first you gotta get to that financial independence you were talking about, about, that's right. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes people have made or are making when it comes to. Getting the right or the privilege to decide, hey, I'm retired or I'm going to graduate. What do you, well, first there's so many, there's so many different ways to mess this up. Yeah. And I don't wanna make it sound like neuroscience. It's not.
Yeah. But we are all victims of our own behavior, our own upbringing, our own circumstances, sometimes. And so I think people have a tendency, a lot of folks have a tendency to overspend. I think folks have a tendency to, to inflate what they think their earning capacity might be or become.
Yes. You see some people who are really high income entertainers, athletes, people who make an obscene amount of money, by any definition, who forget that their career might only be three or four years all day. And and they start to live like they're gonna make that much money every year for the rest of their lives, and they're not. And it, it creates a real problem, right? I think part of it is not having the right habits, part of it's overspending personal debt.
Is an albatross student loans, by the way. Yeah. I consider student loans on almost any undergraduate education to be a terrible idea. All right. Now I know I just made a lot of people go, huh? Yeah. But getting an education and trying to improve your station in life economically is a wonderful thing to do. But you don't need a name brand school to do it. You need a piece of paper. That's true. That's true. You need an, you need an entry ticket.
It is not necessary to spend 50, 60, 80, 90, a hundred thousand dollars a year for an undergraduate education. If you wanna borrow money to go to law school, dental school for grad, I get it. Because that is now a career investment. But to borrow money, to go to some fancy school, to get a political science degree or a minor in art history, you're outta your mind. If you don't have money, if you have it, great, go spend it. Enjoy yourself.
But if you don't have it, you don't want to go into that kind of debt as a young person because it thi this really time is only on your side if you're able to start immediately. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I don't wanna interrupt. No, you're fine. So think about what it takes to build a nest egg. We all instinctively understand the math. You put away a hundred dollars a check for 50 years and it's gonna become something, right?
You can do the math, but if you're starting not at zero, but at negative 30, 40, 80, a hundred thousand dollars, that's true. It's gonna take you some time to get there. Sure. And if you look at the, look at social security, let's talk about the third rail. 'cause neither of us, I presume, are running for office. So we can do this without getting th you know, without having rotten vegetables thrown at our cars or something.
But not, but think about it when social security was started or pensions, which as have gone largely the way of the dodo. You've got some government pensions, but there aren't that many in the private sector anymore. When that happened, people were starting their careers at 18. That's true. In the fifties and sixties. Most people didn't go to college. They got a high school degree and they went to work. So they're 18 years old. They're getting emancipated they're starting their careers.
They were gonna work until 60 or 65 years old, and they were dead at 72. Okay. Today, people don't start their careers till 22, 23, 25. If they're doctors, they're 30. They wanna retire when they're 56 and could live to be 101. The math doesn't Math, it doesn't math. All right? And so social security has problems because the math doesn't. Math people are living 30 and 40 and 50 years past their retirement age. True. And they're not entering the workforce as, as early as they used to.
And when they do enter the workforce, if they're at negative 40,000, it might, people are paying for student loans when they've got kids to educate already. Yes. I've seen that firsthand. It's pretty crazy. So you asked, what are the things that derail people? Debt is a killer. Okay. All right. And not all debt is bad Debt. I understand that a mortgage is not bad debt if it's a reasonable mortgage rate.
And it's a home that's a potentially appreciating and it's where you're gonna live for a long time. That's fine. If you're buying a business or starting a business and there's loans involved in starting a business, I don't know what, how you started yours, but I had to borrow from every place. 'cause no bank would talk to me. No bank would talk to me. Now they're tripping over themselves to get in our door. They thought of p and l Correct? Correct. And some tax returns.
But when I didn't have two years of history, the banks were like, no, sorry. Thanks for playing. That's true. So if you look at the way that those decisions get made, and that's debt, but that's an investment. All right. Getting a Gucci watch is not generally an investment. Buying a car is a horrendous investment. They don't appreciate unless you're collecting at vintage, rare cars and there's a market to resell them. The Honda you just drove off the lot is not appreciating.
In fact, it's worth a lot less than it was 10 minutes ago. Yep. So when we get into debt situations, it really does hamper us. And so I encourage people, and in, in the book, one of the things that I talk about is pay yourself first. Yes. It's not enough to live within your means. Because living within your means you make $80,000 a year and you spend $80,000 a year. You're living within your means, but the day your paycheck stops, you are broke.
Sure. So you have to live within some percentage of your means. And if you start doing this at 22, that percentage might be 85%. Right. If you started at 42. It might be 68% that you have to live on because you, you're not gonna catch up that you have time on your side when you start early. So you start those habits and you start funding your 401k and you start funding an HSA account and you start funding a mutual fund account or a savings account or whatever it is, right?
And you just do it and you ignore the news du jour, the crisis du jour, which I know you tell your clients that to is it a good time to invest? I don't know. I was watching CNBC and look what happened. That news, it doesn't matter, right? It's, it really doesn't matter. Now, I'm not gonna say it doesn't matter to everyone.
There are certainly people where it ma but if you're doing the right thing and if you're young and you're buying, it doesn't matter what the news du jour is, don't get fooled by it. That's true. So it's all behavior. It's funny when we started the company, one of the pillars, one of the pillars we were thinking of using in our branding and our marketing was that we were assisting with behavior management. This is true story.
And we had an advisory board and we had a focus group and we asked people what they thought about it. And the guys thought it was great. And the women hated it. They did not want anyone to manage their behavior in any way, shape or form. And I, it wasn't something I had thought of 'cause I have the Neanderthal brain but we had to not use it. But the truth is, behavioral finance has become a field of study.
It's psychology and the way to build wealth I believe is almost entirely based on behavior. Yeah. Be, I would say behavior is you have. Fees we won't get, whether you got fees, taxes, and behavior. Those are the three things that derail returns, and so you're totally right and the industry has tried to address this with the target date funds.
And used to be, when I looked at the client's 401k, you probably remember this in the days of the big time mutual funds, they'd have 50 mutual funds in their 401k. Yes. And I would've to charge because I'm like, I have to go through all of these. Then it was the index funds. Now it's a target date fund. So you feel like the target date funds are helping to address the behavioral lag on people's retirement retirements?
I think the target date funds are a little bit like training wheels on a bicycle. Okay. Okay. They're gonna teach you to ride, but you're not gonna look cool riding them for very long. Hey, I just wanna interject here because we didn't practice or do any. I was hoping you and I were on the same page on target date funds, and it sounds like we are because I, it sounds like we are. So you go ahead and I'm sure we'll find something we can argue about that makes for good, that makes for good video.
Right? That's true. But no target date funds. They're fine for a small account, right? Where you don't have to worry about allocation and you just do it. But here's the thing. Target dates aren't all made the same. That's true. Target date X and target date y and target date Z have completely different strategies baked into them. And the costs tend to be a lot higher. Yes. Because you've got, it's like the fund to funds. You've got the costs of the costs.
So while I don't think they're, I don't think they're horrible. I do think that they are training wheels and it's better to do that than do nothing. So if you're having analysis paralysis and you're saying, I don't know what to pick, it's much better to do that and say, okay, I'm gonna get on this glide path and start the account. If you're 23 and you've got your first job and you're putting $80 a check away, being a target fund, it's fine.
But at some point along the way, tho, those $80 deposits are gonna be come 10 or 20 or 30 or $50,000. At which point maybe you don't want to just hold a fund that's in whatever it's in. Cause you can look under the hood. It can, investors and consumers can look under the hood if they want, but they don't any more than I look under the hood of my car. 'cause I don't know what's going on under there. That's true. Same here. That's true. It's all transparent. It's in your 400 page prospectus.
Happy reading. Have you ever read a 400 page prospectus? To be honest with me, no. I check. I have my highlights annualized returns, fees composition. Okay. Management tenure. I don't, I'm not sure I know anyone who's ever read one. And by the way, if anyone generally were to sit there and read it, they wouldn't understand it in the first place. That's true. That's true. So it's not helpful. All the disclosures are not helpful.
There's a much better way to educate and we're not gonna do a compliance show tonight. Because everyone will be like, click, I'm done with this. I don't want to talk about that. But consumers beware because there's so much out there that is, it's confusing and I almost think it's confusing on purpose. Okay. Okay. I hadn't thought about that, but yes. It's much easier to hide the fine print on page 309. That's true. Than it is to stick it on a four page fact sheet, where it's a critical piece.
That's true. That's true. That's true. And that in contracts. You see it in legal documents, you see it in, in various types of things. And unfortunately, consumers, this is a trust business. It's a trust business. People have to, they in, in the same way that you have to trust that your dentist understands what's going on with your molar 'cause. You don't, you have to trust the professionals and the financial industry has a real problem, in my opinion.
It's got a real problem with helping consumers understand who are professionals and who are salespeople. This is true. This is true. And the day you graduate from college and you take a job at x, y, z, mutual, and I'm not picking on anybody, but you take that job and your business card says financial advisor, financial representative, you've got four hours of experience. That's true. O okay. That is like a license to hurt somebody is true. All right.
Accountants have to go through a various a process. They have to get their undergraduate degree, they have to do a certain number of hours. They have to pass a board exam, they have lawyers have to spend certain number of hours and go to law school and pass the bar. And there are credentials. You're a financial advisor. If you say you are the day you show up at some of these companies. I, it's true.
I think insurance professionals have to do a little bit more classes at least I did life. But not the day you show up, not the day you show mean. Yes. You, you have to be licensed to sell. But I got news for you. If you had a friend who wanted to buy something, they'd send somebody with you to sell them something. That's true. Somebody with a license was going with you. That's true. That's true. It's just and it's a system that, that it rewards bad behavior by the advisor. This is true.
It does not put the client first. And the big lobbies are fighting this stuff in Washington. They're fighting against fiduciary standards. They're fighting against putting clients' interests before their own because it's not good for the companies that manufacture product. This is true. This is true.
So I presume, and I'm in deep trouble if I'm wrong, but I presume that Wilson Wealth is not a product manufacturer and that you don't have your own fund, your own annuity, your own insurance contract, your own anything. You are representing clients and clients interest only, and that's that all day. A hundred percent. That's why I left the broker dealer. But go ahead. So here's what that means.
That means that if you have a hundred clients, you have a hundred bosses, but you're only responsible to them. That's true. You are not responsible to make sure that whatever company has, whatever on the shelf that you're making, having enough people buy it. So that you can keep your cubicle and go on your reward trip.
Yeah. There's no cau And consumers don't know the difference and it's and some do I know there's some savvy's, some savvy families out there and consumers out there but a lot of 'em don't. And so under being able to be transparent with your fees, 'cause they matter, right. And that's not to say that that the lowest cost provider is always the best. I don't want the cheapest dentist either.
While we're talking about that at some point I'm willing to pay a little more for certain experience, for certain service, for certain value, for certain expertise. I don't want the cheapest lawyer. I don't want the cheapest auto mechanic. Alright. There's certain things that are commodities where cheap is fine. You know where it's fine. In our business index funds, if you're gonna buy an index fund cheap is good because it, they all own the same thing.
If there are six funds and they all own the s and p 500 index, they should be basically the same. That's true. At which point cost matters. 'cause they're all the same. That's true. But if there's any intellectual capacity, if there's any advice, if there's any crafting or uniqueness to the plan at all, it's no longer all the same. It can't be cookie cutter anymore. No, that's true.
And I think this is where we, this is all still related to the product we started with, which is target date fund where I think that's another product that the industry has created. To your point, it's very opaque. And I think one of the biggest disservices it does is it I think was created to, because the index funds got too popular, I think, and they were working so well, so they created this target date funds and they're everywhere now. They're in the 5 29 plans.
But I think one of the biggest problems with that particular product if I can, is that people, it's what you said earlier, the longevity is so long now, and I started so late and I'm shutting down at 55 and I probably should. Pressing the metal a little bit more. And if they don't have an advisor telling them that, then they're just saying, Hey, I wanna retire in 2035 and I'm 55 now and this is my solution.
So yeah, I think the industry definitely can do a disservice to people when they create these all in one products. Age isn't the only variable that matters. In fact, it may not matter very much at all. Health matters, family status matters. Your wealth level matter, all these things matter. If you show me two people who are 45 years old who make the same amount of money every year who have the same account balance.
And they both wanna retire in 10 years, and one of them has four children and an 80-year-old mom in a assisted living. And one of 'em is single with no kids. You can't tell me they should invest the same way. They're both the same age. They both wanna retire the same time. There is nothing else in common between those two human beings. This is true. This is true. And that's what's wrong with target dates, and that's what's wrong with just checking a box and moving on. This is true.
This is true. It's almost like you I know we're biased on this thing where we're almost expressing the need for intervention with a financial advisor or something. But it's not what I've learned. When I got in the business and everything was I'm Susie Orman, get Out Debt, or Dave Ramsey, get Out debt, right? We didn't talk about these type of pop topics. What I didn't see coming, at least for me, is the amount of wealth that's been accumulated in these accounts.
And now it's a, just a different story com combined with the money. That's one generation ahead. Hey, Maurice. I've just inherited a million dollars and I got everything you just said, Eric, about the multi-generational house, and what do I do? And so you can't just robo advise and index fund that has to be gained out. Trust accounts are no longer just for rich people. And That's right. Yeah. You almost and people say, Maurice, what are you talking about?
I don't know about you, but people still don't understand Roth IRAs. So people don't basically, you know what I'm saying? So if you don't understand Roth ira, then you know that it gets more complex from there. So it really does. It does. And and that's why it's like with your books and whatnot, you're making the industry more accessible, right? You're creating a glide path to get this advice, Hey, come in. And at your firm, and not that I'm trying to really we are plugging you.
Your advisors are compensated in a manner. I think I like what's to me that allows the client to feel okay. Tell 'em about how you work with your advisors. Yeah. No all of our advisors are salaried. Yeah. And when I say that at a financial advisory conference, they're all perplexed. What do you mean they're salaried? Yeah. And I mean it there, there's a salary because we're paid for the work that we do. Right.
And selling anything to anyone is not part of how any of our folks get paid. Our folks get paid on client acquisition, client retention, and client service. And and maintaining their integrity and their licensure and their compliance record and doing the right things. If you take great care of people, I. Others will flock to you. That's true.
It's just very simple and none of our advisors, it, none of our advisors are incented to behave in ways that so many advisors are incented out there in the universe. Sure. And people don't understand it because some people are like wait what if I bring in lots of clients? Then I assure you, if you bring in lots of clients, your salary will not stay where it is. But it doesn't matter that you've used Product X versus product Y or that you're generating a certain amount of revenue.
We are not tying it to that. We also, most of our advisors most of our advisors have come in, half of them have come in straight outta college. Okay. To an apprenticeship where they're spending five years with us salaried before they're sitting in front of clients by themselves. Wow. So imagine this you're 22 years old. Firm A over here says, oh, write down a list of a hundred or 200 people. We're gonna teach you a, a sales script. Call them all and sell them something.
Yeah. No. At our shop, it's come in, learn the business, be in investment operations, get your licenses, begin your CFP education. Start doing meeting prep. Start sitting in meetings with clients, doing the note taking, doing the wrap up, doing client communication. Be second chair in the session so that every meeting has two advisors in it.
One who is the seasoned senior person who's rendering the advice and one who's making sure that it all gets done and gets handled properly and is learning along the way. And by the time they're ready to take on client relationships, they've already been in meetings with these people for two and three years and exchanged emails and been on phone calls and they're already comfortable. And the transition is natural so that they don't have to go out and sell anything to anyone.
They can just they can just work with the families they already know, who already understand what they're about. And now they, now their career has taken a turn and they are lead advisors. Now, this only works if the firm is generating enough new clients to feed all those advisors. Hence the podcast and all the publishing and speaking. My job is to make rain, right? And if I'm making rain, if I'm attracting people to the firm, we then need lots of buckets to catch the rain, right?
Because there's only so much that I can do. So we have 10 advisors here. We have clients in 37 states, we have 10 advisors and and we work with folks across the spectrum. There's a couple other things. We don't have a minimum asset level. Okay. And advisors are like, what do you mean you should only be working with folks who have a million dollars or more, or whatever it is.
And I have too many people we represent who had $50,000 with us and paid for a basic financial plan and then inherited money or changed jobs or got married or something happened and now they're two and $3 million clients. Sure, that's true. And they weren't gonna, if I had said, Hey, thanks, but we won't work with you, they weren't gonna say, Hey, now I have enough money, can I work with you please? That is true too. They're gonna say, heck with that guy.
Yeah. So it so our younger advisors can work with families who are up and coming. We work with a lot of Henry's, you know what Henry's are? You heard that? Not high earners, not rich yet. People who have the ability to generate some wealth. But need the knowledge. They don't have the time, they don't have the acumen. Maybe just don't like doing it, and that's okay.
Right. Maurice I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna drop a little wisdom on everybody that you're gonna find surprising and so are they, and that is that not everybody needs a financial advisor. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. Not everybody needs one. Yes. I think outcomes tend to be better when you have an advisor, even if it's just an accountability partner. You know, I look at it as I have a trainer.
If I didn't have a trainer, I would not work out because if I have an appointment at four o'clock, I'm gonna be at the gym at four o'clock. If I don't have an appointment at four o'clock, I'm gonna have something more fun to do at four o'clock. That's true. That's true. True. And if I'm at the gym and I'm feeling a little sleepy, my workout will be shorter unless I have somebody barking orders at me. True. This is no different.
If you've got a meeting with your financial advisor and you said you were gonna pay off that credit card and you were gonna start funding your 401k and you were gonna meet with an attorney to get a basic will done, and you show up at that meeting and you haven't done any of those things, you're gonna feel a certain way. Yes. And so knowing that there's a, that there's a meeting in three months or six months or whatever it is, there's a due date for this homework. People get it done.
And I and this is, I'm not saying this in any punitive way, I'm saying I'm the same way. Yeah. If I know that this, I need this by next week, it'll be done by next week. If it's get to this when you feel like it, it might never happen. Hold on. No. Redoing my closet, redoing my home office are things that I want do for myself, but there's nobody making me do it. And you know who that person would be in our households and they aren't making me do it.
So it's just keeps getting pushed down the calendar. And you're right. One of the principles of influence, and I might fumble this, I think is reciprocity where you ask somebody to do something and because you ask them to do it, it puts them on the hook versus you expecting them and not formalizing it. I think it's like when you you make the reservation at the restaurant and they ask you to call and cancel versus just not having any policy in place.
And I do find that clients do tend to apologize a lot when they don't do certain things. To me, and I hadn't thought about it in the way you just described. Because you're like, Hey, you're human, but they feel like they've let you down. And so they do want to hold themselves accountable going forward. Yeah. Yeah. And they want to exceed expectations. That's true too. That's true too. That's true too.
If they set a goal that I want be mortgage free by 2024 and it was 2018 and you've got six years now you got five, now you got four, now you got, and so how do we help you get there? Here's the track. If you wanna be financially independent in 2042. And that's an arbitrary number. I'm making this up, but if you said by 2042 I'm gonna be X years old, I want to be done.
We can instantly, you can instantly calculate, here's what you'd need to put away based on a reasonable rate of return and certain assumptions. This is what you'd need to put away. Now you mentioned the Roth ira, and I think this is interesting too. Okay. When whether you inherit money. Or whether you invest money or however you receive it in your life. A dollar is not a dollar, they're not all the same. Okay. If you have an IRA, you have a balance in an account that still has a mortgage on it.
Oh, I like that. I like that. Okay. If you have a, if you have an IRA account that's a million dollars. And you have a Roth IRA account that's a million dollars. They are not the same. No, they're not. Now I people tend to find this out the hard way. A lot of times. Sometimes they find out about it after they get through it, go through a divorce, and one party really messes with the other party because they're like, oh, you each get a million. That's, that wasn't particularly fair.
Somebody pulled one over on you. They're different because the Roth is spendable money. Yeah. And the IRA still has a mortgage on it, but unlike a mortgage you sign up for on your house the mortgage is unknown. What's the tax, what are the tax rates gonna be in 2041? Are they gonna be higher or lower? Where are you gonna be living? That's true. Are you gonna be living in California or Florida? It's true. Are you gonna pay 12 or 13% at the state level or zero? That's true.
Are you going to be in a high bracket or a low bracket? How are you gonna use this money? Do you know what tends to happen? IRAs get built up, 4 0 1 Ks get built up and then people have required distributions. Yep. And the age keeps getting older. With 70 and a half for a long time. Now it's going up to 75. Yep. And I don't know about your clients, but our clients, a lot of times they get to where they have the required distributions and they're angry because they don't wanna pay taxes.
Yep. Yep. Yeah. And what our job now has to be is not only do we want them to use this money smart in a smart way, we don't want 'em to wait till RMDs to do it. We want to play that tax planning game where how can we use some of these dollars and replace dollars that have a mortgage on 'em with dollars that are paid off. All day. All day. Okay. And if you have an estate tax issue now, the federal estate tax right now re requires you to be ultra wealthy. And most people are not near that.
Although it could be changing January one. But every state is different. And in the glorious state of Maryland, we have the unfortunate condition of being the only state in the US that has both an estate tax and an inheritance tax. Oh, wow. Okay. Both, which is my way of saying they get you coming and going. So if you're gonna lose some money. To the government instead of going to your kids. That requires some planning.
Yes. I also know there's a lot of people out there who don't understand what's gonna happen when they leave money behind. No, they don't. Not trying to tell. And I don't know. My daughter, God love her. She's 15 years old. Anything I leave her right now, of course is in trust. If it wasn't, she'd be getting it at 18. I don't know what you were like at 18, but if a bunch of money fell in my lap at 18, it would not have gone well.
'cause I didn't have the, I didn't have the wisdom, the maturity or the acumen. I would've messed it up royally. All right. And that doesn't necessarily change with age. I know this is, it's gonna sound strange, but some people are great with money, some people aren't. That's true. And so if you've got kids who are 35 and they're not great with money, or maybe they're great with money, but they're married to somebody who isn't. That's true. That's true. All right.
The reason to use trust, you said trust aren't only for wealthy people, and it's true trust or protecting people from themselves. Yep. Or from predators and creditors. Yes. All right. Predators in the form of a nefarious spouse. There's a reason why 23-year-old people sometimes marry 80-year-old people. I'm not saying it's not love, I'm not going there on the show but there could be, there might be other considerations. I'm just saying. So you have to protect people from that.
And you get money to your kids or grandkids, you want to keep it in the family line. You don't wanna lose it because one of your kids marries a knucklehead. It's true. I That's true. That's, that's true. I mean, and that's why the planning makes a difference. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. No and that actually brings me to something I wanted to ask you because you got the Henry's.
I've got the Henry's, and then yeah, we've got the people that's, and I feel like the, what people don't understand, people associate financial problems with just people like being broken in debt. You and I probably can attest that actually the problems increase as the income increases in terms of mismanagement. I would also say, just like you said, they think they'll be making this money forever, lifestyle creep. And then just not planning their dollars the dollars with the mortgage.
I love that I'm gonna borrow it versus the dollars without the mortgage. I have a lot of clients in that space. What have you seen that has worked to effectively communicate to that crowd? Hey, this is serious. You need to plan. You're not always gonna be in the chips, as they say. Can you break through, I guess is what I'm what cuts through the noise with that crowd, do you think? There's a couple ways to look at that too. First people confuse income and wealth.
They're not, they're not the same. And I know people, I've met plenty of people who have incomes that are off the charts, but couldn't rub two nickels together if they had to. And I know other people who have had what I would consider a relatively modest income, and they've built massive net worths. Yeah. Because, and we talked about behavior. It, the income in and of itself is not the same as wealth. You sometimes read, oh, this is the wealthiest state in the country. No, it's not.
It's the highest income state, but they take most of it. Right. So there's that. The second thing is that you talk about where problems amplify with money. I would say complexity, amplifies. I don't know there's necessarily problems. Good point. I think it, it things become more complex because there are more facets to the conversation. Now you have to look at taxes in different ways. Now you have to look at at how one decision impacts another.
At the lower end of the spectrum you have to understand how a certain income might, Inca might impact, for example, financial aid. If you've got kids and they're getting ready to go to school and you're in a position where you're gonna apply for financial aid, that might not be the time to start that side hustle and ramp your income up by just enough that the college goes, now you're on your own. Yeah. You go. Yeah, you go. All right. It's a simple example but that's true.
By the same token you don't wanna be in a position where you've got no tax diversification, and people think about diversification as just what their investments are. There's more to it. There's tax diversification and we never know what the rules are gonna be. Congress changes, tax laws, something like 800 times a year. It's the dumbest thing you've ever seen in your life. Yes. And the tax code, I think is the longest book ever written.
If I'm not mistaken, the US tax code is in fact the longest book ever written. I challenge you to read it. You're better off with a prospectus we talked about. So if that's true, we don't know if a certain administration's gonna say, we want to tax the heck outta capital gains because they're only for rich people. Where now if you were relying on accounts that had capital gains, you don't wanna do that. Or they say, capital gains are great. We're not gonna tax those anymore.
We're only gonna tax ordinary income. You said, oh my gosh, all my money's in an ira. It's ordinary income, right? You want to be able to play the game. And it is a game. It is a game. If you've played Monopoly, and I know you have never with your grandmother 'cause she always be Right. But if you played Monopoly and you played at somebody else's house, did you ever notice how occasionally there were house rules? Yeah, particularly in Uno as well, particularly.
Okay. Did you ever play with somebody who changed the rules in the middle of the game? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's what the government is doing constantly with our tax rules. That is true. They're changing the rules so our job now is we have to plan based on what we know, which is what's here now. Yeah. I hear people making decisions based on what they think the government's gonna do. I've heard people taking social security at 62.
Instead of waiting 'cause they're afraid it's gonna go away. They might be right, they might be wrong. I think probably they should play with the rules they've got, not knowing what's coming. There, there are people who will capital gains rate. We talked about that.
If you're relying on a step up in basis And I don't mean to get technical but if you've got an account and you've got a million dollars worth of funds or stocks or whatever it is, and you paid a hundred thousand dollars for it and it's worth a million dollars and you sell it, you have to pay capital gains tax on $900,000 all day. If you die with it and you leave it to your daughter doesn't have to pay taxes on the $900,000 anymore. That's true.
So what people are doing sometimes is they're gifting their daughter some of the shares where she doesn't get that step up and it doesn't make sense. It's generous, it doesn't make sense, people are people are so generous with charity, right? People are so generous with charity, but the vast majority of people are doing it in an inefficient way. Most people with some resources should not be making charitable gifts with cash ever.
Because if you have a mutual fund that grew and you can donate the fund, you can avoid the capital gain. That's true. That's true. What you don't wanna do is sell the fund, pay the taxes, and then make the gift. And do you know if you have that million dollar IRA and you leave it to your kids only have 10 years now. Yep. They have 10 years to spend the whole thing.
Yep. If we lived to be 93 and we leave a big IRA to our children who at the time are 65 our IRA could screw up their Medicare premiums. Yeah. Yeah. When you think about the way it can snowball, if you leave the IRA to charity, they pay nothing.
And Q CDs I don't, I'm assuming you're seeing some of these for older folks, they're qualified charitable distributions Once you're 70 and a half, and of course that 70 and half didn't change, like the RMDs that did change 'cause why make it simple but you can gift money right outta your IRA to charity. That, that is for anyone over 70 and a half. I can think of no better way to give to charity than that. Cause it counts toward your required distribution if you have one.
Okay. It goes to the charity and it avoids, not only does it avoid the ordinary income tax that you would be paying, it reduces your balance a little bit so that your required distributions won't be as big so they won't cause you tax. Tax creep. Yeah. Yeah. You got a good point. Yeah. All right. So what else has the government done in the last decade?
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017. 2017 the government came in, and this is not a political statement 'cause both parties are full of nonsense and they go back and forth all the time. But tax cuts and Jobs Act changed the way people itemized on their tax returns because it capped the salt, the state and local income taxes got capped at $10,000. So people who were living in California or New York or Maryland, who paid a lot of state income taxes, used to be able to deduct that against the federal tax.
Yep. And now they can't. So when that occurred, they also, to offset that, they raised the standard deduction pretty dramatically. That means something like 92% of people in this country now don't itemize. If you don't itemize, you don't deduct charitable contributions anymore. So now you're making a gift to charity, but unless you do some planning around it, you're not getting out. You can love the charity and wanna do something nice and that's a great thing.
But if it's real money that you're donating to a charity, if this isn't what you put in the collection plate, but this is some real whatever. Right. You plan around it. So now you have donor advised funds. Yep. And donor advised funds allow you to take five years of a potential gift, put all of it in an account, now take the tax deduction, make sure you itemize, and then drip it out to the charity over a period of time.
Yep. People aren't, no one who's not in our business is keeping up with all this stuff. In fact, people in our business aren't keeping up with some of this stuff. No No. It is too much. That's the one thing about the business as their problems. But you're right to say complexity. We've gone from mutual fund pushers and get outta debt people to everything. You just talked because you talked about Secure 2.0, secure the first one. All that happened since the pandemic. 2017 act.
And then the donor advise. These are all things that have really come on my radar in the last really eight years. Through application. But yeah, some people, they slam into it because they back into it. And if nobody's there to help 'em, they just, they're just operating off an old playbook. It's something you constantly have to reevaluate. You even said it might change again in January.
It may, in fact I read an article today that talks about the house proposal and the senate proposal and they're different. Yep. And so even how this potentially changes is gonna be argued about for a while and then they'll wait until the 11th hour and then something will pass under the cover of darkness and then we'll read about it and have to react the next day. 'cause that's what Congress does. So the, in, in my estimation, we talked about tax diversification.
In my estimation, one of the, one of the true paths to financial independence is having not only enough money to live on adjusted for inflation in a way that you can't outlive it But ideally in a way that also won't be impacted by dramatic tax code changes. Ask me all day. That all do you remember in anything you studied over the years, what the highest marginal income tax rate was in this country? What it 90%? Am I right on that? 90, I think it was 91%.
You know the, when they were making movies in black and white? Yep. All right. And they had to pay for a war. The highest marginal tax rate was 91%, but the reason it was 91% and the way that they got away with that, 'cause I would say if the government's taking 91%, I'm not working anymore. I'd rather just I'll live under a bridge. Thank you very much. But everything was deductible, everything. So what it did was it created an entire generation of people who had to make this choice.
Think about this choice. When you get your check, I can either spend a dollar or save 9 cents. They all spent the dollar. And why not? The reason that was important when paying for a war is that our gross domestic product is based mostly on consumer spending. Ah, okay. Okay. Which means if people stopped spending money because they were afraid of war time, it was gonna hurt the economy and that was paying for, among other things, the conflict.
Do you remember a, after nine 11, do you remember one of the first things that George W. Bush told everybody to do? Buy cars. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. I didn't, I don't remember. I remember getting a check. He gave out, I don't remember the cars thing. It was by cars. Car interest rates on cars went to 0%. Okay. Everything was same as cash because they knew that consumer spending was gonna stop because there was fear.
So they had to incent consumers to spend, because if consumers aren't spending our economy crashes. Our economy is totally consumer driven. 70%. Yep. Government and business can't fix it. It's all about the consumer. And when consumers are freaked out. They're not spending money when there's fear. They're not spending money when markets get real ugly or the recession happens. So what happened during the recession, interest rates dropped to almost zero.
So that means after that period of time, that means that money was cheap and people could borrow. Which means people could buy houses. Right. That's Yep Yep. If you ever feel like we're just marionettes and there's puppet masters with strength, it, arguably it's true. And that's not conspiracy theory, it's just that's what drives behavior. Yeah. No it's because everything you just said up to that point, that's how we got to the housing bubble, right? Everything got zero.
People started jumping into their houses and started, we started farming out the loans and everything. Yeah. And packaging it and selling it and not caring who paid it back. Yeah. Because they 'cause all the homes could never fail. Yes. And people who couldn't qualify for a Discover card were getting homes with 125% loan to value because they only go up there. We go what could go wrong? Marice? So I got a question for you and I would never put you on the spot. It's your show.
If you were on my show, I'd put you on the spot. But in my estimation, there are four places that most American taxpayers, I'm not talking about something esoteric, but most American taxpayers have four places I'm aware of where they can put money. Okay. Were used properly. It's never taxed again. At least during their lifetimes and possibly thereafter. What life insurance? Roth, I a I know I guess it's the Muni, but No, they're tax. I'm gonna go life insurance and Roth ira.
I'm gonna go two for four. That's two. Alright. So yes. And most people don't get the life insurance, but the permanent life insurance is in that way. Incredible. And in 2008 there were only two asset classes that made money. One was permanent life insurance and the other was managed futures for people who were slinging natural resources and agriculture and precious metals. They had a great year. They haven't had a great year since, but they had a great year in 2008.
So the other ones are the 5 29 plan. Okay. Okay. Okay. And the health savings account, I always forget the HSA, yeah. Don't forget the HSA. Yeah. Here's what I would say. The HSA is the most perfect. Tax vehicle ever invented? The HSA is an accident. It's a gift from Congress. Okay. And don't tell anybody because they'll change their minds. But here's how the HSA works for those who maybe don't have one or don't know how to use it.
The HSA is the only account that I know of where you can take a tax deduction for your contributions, regardless of your income. You can grow the money tax free and invest it. It doesn't have to sit in cash. You can withdraw it tax free so long as it's for medical care. But that can include Medicare premiums, long-term care, other types of things. Yep. Used properly. It's the only triple tax free thing on the planet. Do you know how to screw it up? I guess don't put money. There's two ways.
There's two ways to screw up the hs. Three, okay. One is to pull money out for something other than medical care. That's a disaster, and don't do it. The second is to die with it. Oh, if you own an HSA when you die, it's a hundred percent. Unless it's to your spouse, right? It's a hundred percent taxable the year you die. That's a terrible outcome. And lastly, don't confuse the HSA with the FSA and see, that's why I stay away because you always have to.
They did throw that wrinkle in where it's okay, you have a HSA or FSA, because it's very different. But go ahead. The flexible spending account is use it or lose it with a very small carryover, a few hundred bucks. It's gonna be in cash. You have to decide before the year what you're gonna spend, and you can't change it during the year.
And so you put a little bit of money away and you get a tax deduction for it, and then December rolls around and you wind up with six pairs of glasses that you don't need because you didn't spend it. However, that's what there's also a flexible spending account for Dependent care. Okay. Okay. Which is a home run. Okay. Because if you are a single parent, or you're in a two parent household and you've got kids in daycare it allows you to put $5,000 a year into a plan that's pre-taxed.
You can essentially write off some of the daycare. Right. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Daycare's real expensive. So that's a big deal. Yeah. That'll cover some of daycare for two kids. So HSAs, you don't want to die with five 20 nines you can die with as long as the kids aren't the successor owners. Okay? Okay. You want to name successor owners who aren't the beneficiary so that it doesn't become an irrevocable gift. And if you do that, these can go on for generations.
There's rules against perpetuity in trusts. Trusts are limited to 99 years, five 20 nines don't have limits on 'em. You could essentially pass this down for three generations if you wanted to. Now I didn't on that one with the three generations it does, there have to be somebody under a certain age. I cause No. Okay. So it can just sit there. First of all I there are people who are single and they're not even married yet.
They don't have kids and they're opening five 20 nines for themselves because in their state they can get a deduction for the contribution some states do, and then you can change the beneficiary once a year. So once you have a kid, you name the child and now you have an account that you've already started funding. You started paying for college before you got married. It, five 20 nines are incredibly powerful, used properly.
The other thing that they can do, if you've got grandparents out there Yeah I don't know about you, but I think most grandparents think their kids are rotten and their grandkids are perfect. That is consistent. Yes. Okay. So grandparents can put money away for their grandkids education. They're allowed to fund five years upfront. So they don't have to use the annual gift exclusion. They can gift five years upfront, put it in the account.
It is outside of their taxable estate and it's not an irrevocable gift. They can still take the money back if the kid turns out to be rotten or if they need the money. Yeah. Show me something where you can make a gift that's taxed, like a completed gift that you can change your mind on. And that's not included in your estate, even though you have control over it when you die. See. You are. 'cause I have not delved this deep into 5 29 plans and that's usually not my thing.
I'm usually a nerd about a lot of this stuff. But one thing I took away from 5 29 plans, and maybe you can correct me on this might blow, but is there I know there's a dollar limit, but nobody really knows what it is. I always thought it looks like these are estate planning vehicles. I, that was my, in terms of you can chuck all this money in, Yeah. And do different things with it, as long as you've got somebody out there that can get it.
And I guess you're saying that in better ways than I'm saying, and it's up under the rug. Nobody really talks about it. Yeah. No it's a wonderful estate planning tool. Okay. Okay. It's a tax reduction tool. It, it creates enormous opportunity for kids to avoid student loans and those kinds of things. It passes it down between one generation to the next income tax free and estate tax free if you do it right. There's ways to mess this up too, don't get me wrong. Yeah. Here's the other thing.
It allows you now to take up to $10,000 a year out of the 5 29 to pay for private school. Oh they updated that. Okay. K to 12. Yeah. So if you've got a kid in private school and let's say your state. Allows you to deduct, like the state of Pennsylvania allows you to deduct up to $19,000. I think it's the full annual gift from the state of Pennsylvania's taxes, for example.
If you've got a kid in private school, you can literally fund a 5 29, put in $10,000, get a state tax deduction, and pull it out three days later and pay it towards tuition, and you just got a tax break on your tuition legally. That's true. That's true. The, these rules are they're so absurd. But if you know how to use them and none of these things are, none of these things are gonna get you audited. We're not talking about anything that's in any way nefarious.
No. I would never suggest that my reputation is not something I'm willing to risk for anything like that. Yeah. But these are things that if people understand how to do it there are some really thoughtful ways. There's upstream gifting, there's downstream gifting, there's charitable, there's split gifts, there's trust. No client gives a darn what the tool is. That's true. They don't. It's alphabet suit. It's, here's what I would like to accomplish.
Maurice, I trust you to come up with a solution that will accomplish that, and you might come up with four and you can talk about which one works best and there's pros and cons and all. That's great. They don't care what it's called. You could call it green jello if it solves the problem. Really? Yeah. No, you're totally right. So if that's true, if that's true then our job is to not only communicate and educate and advocate. But it's also to motivate because people have to take action.
That's true. I. And the Susie Warman's and Jim Kramers of the world are not educating people. They're entertainment. And I was once asked, when I started my podcast I was working with an agency that was trying to help figure out, I was like, what do you wanna do? And what do you want? Why do you wanna write books and do podcasts? And I said, 'cause the world deserves better than Jim Cramer and Susie Orman. Why not me? That's literally what I said. Yes. Jim Kramer's entertaining.
But if you were to take his advice, you'd be outta your mind. That's true. That's not to suggest there aren't people doing it and getting hurt by it. Oh yeah. Suzy Orman back in the recession, who was talking about all these various things, actually, I believe, and I don't wanna, I don't want to be smirch the woman 'cause she, she could come after me all day long, but I believe at one point her entire portfolio was in muni bonds. Yeah. I've heard something that I think, yeah.
And look, maybe that's a old wive's tale. Maybe it's urban legend. But if it's true, she was saying thou shout, but not for me. I own my own everything. Our investment committee. I own what our clients do. And I will tell you, if you've ever been in a restaurant where the chef won't eat Yep. Don't eat. There you go. You're totally right. This has been great. This has been like a, what a one of my favorite sports guys. It's been a football meat sandwich, but it's been a a lot of stuff.
You really have enlighten me on the HSA and the 5 29 plan, but for people who are going to who are in these positions how can they get work with you, what are give me the litany of ways they can reach you. 'cause you're so prolific and I think it bears stating that you are, if I read your bio, aren't you an accredited state plan? Do I have it right? Yes. Yes. So if you're wondering how Eric knows this, he's just a financial advisor. He is. Check out his bio.
He's got an alphabet suit, but the estate planner stood out to me. It thank you. No I took a lot of courses. Yeah. Early in my career, because I looked, I was 21, 22 years old. I came into this business. I was trying to start a practice primarily in life insurance. And I looked 12. I didn't even shave every day at the time. I, and I'm trying to render financial advice and as that's nonsense. So I had to learn. Right. And I went to every class I could get my hands on.
I had an employer at the time, willing to pay for my schooling. I didn't take loans to do it. And I got every piece of education I could because I knew I couldn't artificially grow gray hair or a bald spot, although I'm doing fine now. I couldn't artificially do that. I couldn't fake or make up wisdom or experience. Right. But I could know more than most of the people I was talking to. Yeah. And what's interesting is now I encourage our advisors to do that.
And now I'm no longer trading on intelligence, I'm trading on wisdom. 'cause I've seen it now. That, that is a pendulum that has swung where I'm now the old guy in the office who says, oh, I remember this from the nineties, and da. For me to suggest that I'm technically sound as somebody who just passed a CFP exam last month I'm not. But I've seen some of it before, so it makes a really good combination.
For folks who want to get a copy of the book I'll shamelessly plug the book because it's here. Yes. That is Don't Retire Graduate. You can go to, don't retire graduate book.com and buy it. There's also a workbook with it. If you go through the workbook you'll wind up with a financial plan. And in fact the book itself, I don't believe in homework.
So even though it's written a little bit like it's a college curriculum, it's the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years of your financial world, and that's how it's broken down. Every chapter ends with a quiz. They're not graded and an extra credit assignment. 'cause I don't like homework, but everybody does the extra credit, right? So if you do those assignments, you will wind up with a financial plan.
And some of them, some of the assignments are things like, have a conversation with your parents if they're living about their care and what's important to 'em. This isn't all just, Hey here's how do you invest, right? It's a lot more than that and it really does walk you through and it meets you where you are. If you're a young person just getting started, definitely start at the beginning.
If you're a, if you're a grizzled veteran of these battles and you're trying to figure out what's next you can skip some things. There's a couple chapters on how to get outta debt. If you don't have debt, skip the class. Go directly to the advanced lesson. So that's the book. You can also go to bf gfa.com. That is our company website. I think Maurice there's so many different kinds of of investors and of families and of financial advisors.
And ultimately I think it's real important to find somebody you're comfortable with. And so the folks who are choosing you are often not gonna choose me. And the folks who are choosing me are often not gonna choose you. And that's okay. It's okay because what whatever folks are looking for this is a relationship that is as it's really as intimate as medicine. Correct. There, there's no disrobing in our office most of the time, but it's, you have to have personal conversations.
You know about the marital stuff and you know about when there's a kid with a gambling issue or a drug problem or a lousy spouse or boyfriend or whatever. You have to be transparent and we're not therapists, I don't know if you have a therapy degree of any kind, but I certainly don't, I'm not a therapist. No. But we do deal with some messy stuff in life. The tragedies, the opportunities the crossroads, the do I take this new job? Do I move to North Carolina for this?
Do I what do I do with mom's house? Do I take dad's car keys? All, whatever it is. We're we wind up involved in those conversations and so you need to find somebody you feel real comfortable talking to. That's all. Yeah. And to your point about. It's so many you're gonna pick who you're comfortable with and blah, blah and things of that nature. I feel like if I did pick an advisor, and there was one guy who was like, I don't talk to my, I don't talk to other advisors, just me.
I know everything. Versus somebody that's, Hey, I go to conferences, I learn from other people. I'm keeping my textbooks and whatnot. I'm gonna choose the latter. I just feel like we know this, the day you think you know everything you're done. And yeah. When I talk to people like you and I don't talk to a lot of other advisors until we go to conferences later this year I I can bypass the education, like the table stakes education and we can get deep into cases, right?
Yeah. Because yeah, that, and that's where you benefit. So I, and as when we first met, I was a little leery of oh, how does it work for two advisors on the show? But now I'm like, yeah. I'm gonna do this more often because you definitely things to like, so I just think, I definitely think it's something that should happen More often.
I take that as a high compliment and I've had a lot of financial advisors on my show and and they are, they're, as long as they're doing the right thing by people, it comes down to, to comfort, it comes down to and it's hard breaking up with a financial advisor is hard. When somebody's got an advisor, they're real hesitant to go the banking industry learned a long time ago that if they have four or five different lines of business with you, they can't leave.
It's a nuisance to change financial institutions. And so you really have to, you really have to feel like something's wrong, right? You're uncomfortable or there's really something significantly better. And I think trust your gut. Trust but verify look up the records, look up the compliance records and all the public thing. And because some people are just wonderful salespeople, but not particularly good advisors. Definitely. Definitely. Great. I appreciate your time.
We've definitely gone over our allotment, but hey, it's, 'cause it was fun. I'm gonna dig into some of the things you brought up here and just this is a point of professional pride and just check into it. But thank you for your insight. You can find me at to just wilson wealth.com the Wealth Equation podcast on YouTube. And we have our newsletter. Thank you audience for spending time with us today. Hopefully you've been enriched.
Look for more to come and I think we'll have Eric again and this time maybe I can teach him a couple of things. I'm Always excited to learn something from you. Definitely. Thank you very much everybody. Have a good evening and we will talk. It is a pleasure to have you join us for this episode of The Wealth Equation. Be sure to visit wilson wealth.com for more information about building wealth. We look forward to helping you next time on the Wealth Equation.