That's probably the tradition that concerns me because I think in this evolution of money, it seems to have pulled thought processes away from a lot of people from soulish type things like living fully to making sure I have all of what I need to do paid for. And those things can get in the way of living sometimes.
Caleb:Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast, where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to level up your life. So buckle up and listen closely to Up Your Average.
Keith:Good morning, Doug.
Doug:We are live and active.
Keith:I was feeling a little nostalgic this week and just thought a little bit about traditions and the evolution of things.
Doug:Wait. You thought about traditions?
Keith:Yeah. You know that
Doug:Are I'm not you okay? Know you
Keith:know I'm this tightrope of contradictions. And so
Doug:Keith's not a very traditions kinda guy. You know, he's kind of ruined office party Christmas dinner expectations for me.
Keith:And oh, you saw my shorts.
Doug:Yeah. If you're if you're driving down the road, you missed that. You didn't get to see Keith's shorts. He's he's got he's got his COVID app attire on. Brooks Brothers shirt with some cargo man shorts.
Keith:Yeah. I was told I'm not supposed to wear cargo pants, but what are you gonna do? Well, I was looking for something, and I'm not finding it. But I
Doug:I interrupted you again.
Keith:It's all good.
Doug:I I found with your cute Spider Man
Keith:folders. Notebooks anymore either, so I gotta have that. But I've I've found this last you wanna hold that up for our friends?
Doug:Let me describe it. Let me describe it. Okay. Here it it's kind of tough to see. If you could if you're watching on YouTube, I'm sorry, first of all, that you're watching us.
Doug:But no. Thank you for watching us. But but this is the Western and Southern Life Insurance Company Cincinnati letterhead. And not just any letterhead, but it's Ralph W. Tyner member, quarter million club, quarter million club.
Doug:How cool is that? The power of inflation.
Keith:Yeah. So this is part of what was in my head. So I guess you could say my family has been in the financial services business for a long time. Because when I found this letterhead, it probably had been in storage since 1965. So it hadn't been touched for fifty years.
Keith:So that fifty or sixty years. So that's that's quite a thing. But what I was wondering was when grandpa Tyner was helping people with financial plans in 1965, what did that amount to? And so what I was thinking, has not only financial planning, how has financial services, how has the perception and needs of clients evolved over time? And I just thought I'd kind of dialogue around it in a couple different ways.
Keith:I think a lot of what happens in financial services, it used to be driven by the newspaper, right? Like that's and so I I went to my archives of interesting newspaper headlines. And this one was this one was traumatic to me. Black Monday two dated 10/20/1987. And usually, when you have a day like that, the media would use the word plunge, but they didn't.
Keith:It says drives Dow down. It drove it off a cliff. That was 1987. Then I I found this one from 01/03/2000, because we didn't know that the world was gonna be alive on 2000. Right?
Doug:Right. With Y two k?
Keith:Y February, all the COBOL programming, and that that was huge. Right? Like, that was a big deal that was going on. Were you in the markets then?
Doug:That was like the beginning your 1998 was when I So got
Keith:you remember the hoop law. There was a lot of compliance things we had to do and make sure all the companies we were investing in did their regulatory things, make sure their COBAL programs were taken care of. And then this was a horrific America under attack, 09/12/2001, the end of the year 2001. I don't know if you remember all the fear that was driven in that year. There was anthrax, there were other plane crashes, all kinds of anxiety going on.
Keith:And at this point, we were already a year like, at at the end of 2001, we're already a year and a half into a bear market. It was hard to tell how far we were in. And then this one's dated 07/20/2002, and it says the Dow hits a four year low.
Doug:2000 to 2003 was tough. Yeah. Very tough.
Keith:Yeah. And then I just grabbed one other one to kind of put a little bit of perspective in how you just don't know. This is 01/02/2007, and it says CEOs are confident about 2007 amid big challenges. 2007
Doug:There were some big challenges.
Keith:It was an on ramp to one of the worst bear markets in a long time.
Doug:You and I were driving back from Chicago, we were at a Genworth Financial Conference and there was a speaker there who just spoke a different message. And I remember as we were driving back, we were talking about his message and about extend and pretend financing. And we had no idea what was around the corner. But that was the first conversation I remember thinking, I wonder what that means. I wonder what that means for America, for stock investors.
Doug:And that was about a year and a quarter ahead of the 2008.
Keith:Man, I forgot all about that. That dude was spot on. He was. Yeah, and he, if I recall, when we circled back six months later, he didn't have a job.
Doug:No, wasn't.
Keith:Yeah. Yeah, if you work in the investment side of the business, you're not allowed to be pessimistic like he was. Right. He was, I don't know that he was pessimistic, he was realistic.
Doug:And it was a breath of fresh air to hear someone who was real.
Keith:Yeah. Yeah. And it's that's part of the evolution I wanted to chat about. So I just went and made a grid here. I got in the business in 'eighty six, so I put 'eighty '6, 'ninety '6, 2006, 2016, and 2016.
Keith:And so in 1986, a 60 year old that I would have been helping was born in 1926. Wow. A 70 year old 1916, and an 80 year old 1906. That just seems ancient today, doesn't it?
Doug:Absolutely.
Keith:Yeah, and so that 80 year old would have been alive during World War I, the 70 year old during World War Two, and the 60 year old would have just kind of lived through, you know, Vietnam, and all that was involved with that. But the mindset of what they lived through with those headlines would have affected their financial plan, right?
Doug:Absolutely. And how they think about things, what risks they're willing to take, what risks they even know about, what opportunities they even know about. I mean, where was the financial planning industry then? And so Like where were mutual funds?
Keith:Well, I was even gonna go back to that. Along with this letterhead, found this piece of marketing information. It says inexcusable when a father walks away and leaves his family's responsibilities behind. That was financial.
Doug:What was this?
Keith:This was an insurance thing. Dang. Excusable. Excusable when a father passes away and leaves poverty and suffering behind. So they're saying you can't walk away from your family, but if you die and you bought insurance, that's excusable.
Keith:So they're saying that the deadbeat dad inexcusable. Excusable when he turned away from life insurance he should have bought. I don't know, maybe that's inexcusable, but that Look at the photo.
Doug:Look at the sad mom.
Keith:Sad mom and the sad kids when dad's around.
Doug:Man, what's the marketing wing in New York City? Is it 5th Avenue?
Keith:Think so. Wow. Yeah. And then this was another one. This one says, you'll earn a fortune between your first and last paychecks.
Keith:And what it was talking about was the forced savings that you would have by using whole life insurance. And look at the money. Look at it stacked up there. Stacks and stacks of money. And so this is tradition, right?
Keith:Like this is the thought process. I don't know that anybody that thinks that way today, that they'll have a fortune if they buy whole life insurance. But that was probably prevalent all the way through when I got in the business in the eighties.
Doug:What options did you have back then?
Keith:Right. Right. Well
Doug:Or what options would Main Street know about
Keith:back then? They would have had mutual funds, but the people in those age categories were still scarred.
Doug:Yeah, they're not going to that. Right?
Keith:And so, what they would have thought, a financial plan would have been to put money in the bank, to pay off all your debts, carry no debts. None of these people I don't think that I would have been helping in the mid 80s would have believed in debt, right? Like they were they may have had a credit card diners club or something, but they Well,
Doug:and they're coming off some real high interest years.
Keith:Well, yeah. Yeah. We were we were getting 10 to 12% on certificates of deposit when
Doug:I got into my And if you had debt, you
Keith:You were getting smoked. You're
Doug:getting Yeah.
Keith:So so anyway, that's that was what was going on then. In the mid eighties, we had Jane Bryant Quinn, she was the person that would be in the newspaper telling you all the wise financial planning things to do.
Doug:Was was she like a Dave Ramsey or somebody?
Keith:Well, then you would have had before her, you would have or after her, you had had Susie Orman.
Doug:Susie Orman. She she was big when I first started.
Keith:Yeah. Then then you had Dave Ramsey, and there's somebody named Tiffany Alish now that I'm not familiar with.
Doug:I don't know who that is.
Keith:So she's kind of the new version that's coming along on the
Doug:I know Dave Ramsey's kids are in it too.
Keith:Yeah. He's got a big headquarters down there in Nashville.
Doug:Yeah, he's done well.
Keith:Yeah. And so then, so that's where and Dave Susie Orman and Dave Ramsey would have been right around the kickoff of the Home Depot version of life, do it yourself, right? Yeah. Home Depot, Susie Orman, Dave Ramsey, there's just this do it yourself component of life. And it probably makes sense other than if you listened to last week, we were just talking about when to say no.
Keith:And you have to say no to things in life to have the excellent. And so then there were names on TV that were big time during that time. You had Louis Rukeyser, and you couldn't get financial information very easily. You had to be like tuned in to find it. It wasn't like you could just turn on the TV and go to a financial thing.
Keith:Then Paul Kangas was He's my favorite. He just had that grandpa kind of vibe to him, I think.
Doug:He's just cool. Yeah. He's a great interviewer.
Keith:Yeah. And I don't I couldn't figure out who bridged the gap between, you know, those guys and Jim Kramer is the one that came to mind. Don't if there's somebody in between.
Doug:Maria. I I think about I can't pronounce her last name. What's her last name? I
Keith:know who you're talking about.
Doug:Can't remember. Yeah. From here. I think she's pretty great. She came on like right as I was getting into the business.
Keith:Yeah. She was Arturoomo? Yeah, that's right. I don't know who she's with now. But but she she was all those, they would try to bring information.
Keith:And and what all of this does, think, is just puts a lot of noise in people's heads, right? Because you not only have with these different generations, you've got those people speaking into your life, like in your family. Then And you've got the media sources, whether it's Dave Ramsey or Jim Kramer, whoever, they're giving you different ideas. And then you've just got the timeframe in which you are coming to age. I'd say, when I look at Caleb, I just can't think of any difficulties in the last twenty three years for somebody that's 23 or 24.
Keith:Like, I can't think that they would have experienced cultural difficulties of magnitude to make them fearful, other than just maybe listening to the news, but maybe you were born in the 90s, you might have some recollection of the nineeleven, and that would have maybe traumatized you a little bit. Each time that you came along, those things would affect you.
Doug:COVID would be a big one for
Keith:those guys. Forgot about that. Sorry, Caleb didn't So mean to blaspheme when I think of financial plans, and I go back in those decades of those, you know, those people that might have been born around the turn of 1900s, I think their financial plan was just find a place to live and just kick the can down another day, right? Like, we just got to get food on the table this week. They weren't immersed in certified financial planning ideas, right?
Keith:Like they were just They didn't exist. They were just practically doing their thing. And I think from what research I did, most of this kind of kicked off as a result of the Great Depression When Franklin Roosevelt introduced social security, they never imagined it would become such a large portion of our economy. They never imagined people would live as long as they do.
Doug:The Investment Act of 1940 kicked in, and that's when some of this stuff started to get heavily regulated.
Keith:And the regulations even affect the way that people do things, right? Like the phrase caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, probably would make our economy stronger,
Doug:No doubt.
Keith:Rather than leaning into the regulators. And there's a perception that the regulators are going to protect your investments and your financial plan, but they just can't. They just can't. And so, you as a consumer, as an investor, as a client, I think you just have to be aware. There's just different risks that unfold specific to your time and history.
Keith:And you just have to be, I think, really diligent to protect those things. I think of these different generations and the wars they went through, and how those might have impacted their family, right? Like if you were probably born in the 60s, 50s, 60s or 70s, you probably know people that lost sons in Vietnam, like that was a pretty brutal thing. Maybe the people that lost family members in World War II, there's maybe not a lot of those people remaining out there to kind of help culture navigate through that. But a war has a big influence on your financial plan and your situation.
Keith:And we've been I know we're in a conflict right now, but we've been in a relatively peaceful time as Americans over the last twenty or thirty years, I think. Yeah. So when you think of the things that go into a financial plan, a lot of what people might be doing today are relatively new ideas.
Doug:Historically. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith:And why I wanted to kind of throw that out there to you is I think sometimes those traditions can put pressure on you that isn't really necessary. Like if I think of a Christmas tradition as a kid, we went to both grandparents every Christmas day. Well, Christmas Eve was one grandparent, Christmas day was the other grandparent. So we're in the car a lot with the young kids trying to get stuff done, and seldom did a Christmas day allow us to just relax and enjoy what we have because we're moving right now. No regrets of that.
Keith:It just wasn't what it was. But when you step back and think about things, you can maybe navigate the world differently. And one of the traditions of financial planning that I've just always thought was absurd was an emergency fund.
Doug:Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug:So so, like, that would be like a staple, a Dave Ramsey staple. That I don't know what baby step that is, but it's it's gotta be like number two or three. Right? First save a thousand dollars or something like that. I
Keith:never went through it, so I don't know. But
Doug:Yeah. I think the emergency fund is
Keith:I'm not saying I'm not saying you shouldn't have some money available. I'm just saying what we're told like, today
Doug:Yeah.
Keith:Yeah. I think it's six months living expenses is what people believe today.
Doug:That's a that's a lot. Right. That's a big hurdle
Keith:for And it just always Yeah. Seemed absurd to me. I know some of these people that were
Doug:A family in their thirties aren't going on vacation for like the first five years of their married life if they're if they're aiming for six months of savings. Well, sorry, Dave. I'm thinking of these Go on vacation. I'm thinking of these
Keith:early clients that I had in the eighties, like the the ones that were 60 in 1926, or or they were born in 1926, they were 60 in 1986 or '70, they were born in 1916. Those people, they probably had six months cash in their mattress after For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so they would have told their kids and their grandkids Yeah.
Doug:For
Keith:sure. Do this. And it would have been absurd because we've seen what inflation does. Right? And and the the reason I kinda wanted to talk about this is I'm all about people living their best lives.
Keith:And if you think a financial plan is gonna be a cookie cutter on how this thing is gonna work out well, I think you're gonna be disappointed.
Doug:When I think about a financial plan, I think the biggest struggle is comparison. You know, we're We're taught, I don't know if it's taught anymore, but I was taught like you can't keep up with the Joneses. And so in the financial plan, here's the standard that you have to meet, and you review it, you talk about it with your financial consultant or financial planner every quarter. Realistically, they create a plan for you that has a whole bunch of dust on it after six months, and you never crack it open again. But this idea that you have to hit this standard every time, or else you're not going to be able to live your life in the future, it's just crazy.
Keith:Yeah, no, when I was looking, I just put some dates that somebody was when they were born and what their financial plan would have looked like. Like somebody born in 1926, their financial plan would have been heavy cash and as little debt as possible. That was their plan. So they would have worked their whole life. My grandpa owned a grocery store and he was a do it like a handyman until he died.
Keith:Like I think he went and helped somebody, went in the hospital and died. That was his financial plan and it seemed to work fine. Right. Then if you were born in 1936, then you would have probably got some slick sales techniques. And the insurance guy back then, for those people born in '36, so they would come to age in the fifties, the insurance guy was knocking on their door collecting the premiums every month.
Keith:I don't know if it was month or weeks. Wow. But you would have seen that person all the time. So they they would have had heavy life insurance, probably not much debt because their parents would have harped on them and they would have been the first people to have IRAs. Yeah.
Keith:And they would have that might have been the first step into a mutual fund.
Doug:Right.
Keith:Because they didn't know they could go to the bank or whatever, and those were $2,000 per person.
Doug:Yeah. For a long time.
Keith:And that probably was what revitalized the mutual fund industry, was that age of people. The mutual fund industry, I think, was pretty much dead. When I got in the business, nobody was doing
Doug:Is that right?
Keith:Yeah, mutual funds. We were well, mutual fund I sold in 1986
Doug:Had an 8% commission.
Keith:At point 5%.
Doug:Well, think that's where like Peter Lynch and Fidelity, they came on strong into a market that was untapped.
Keith:Right.
Doug:And with the Magellan Fund, and they created an avenue for the do it yourselfer to
Keith:To open that $2,000 account, right? Like, you could go and, you know, at $2,000 an IRA, a stockbroker could make a living. Like, he could get enough people and then they would put those in monthly and do it. And so that was the mid 80s what was happening with people. But mutual funds prior to that, were not a thing of substance.
Keith:And not only that, in the mid-80s, there were people like our friend Stan and other people that said it's absurd to buy and hold. Yeah. But that's where the mutual funds have heavily come into the marketplace and built that tradition. That's that's what they've told us is that you should buy and hold. And it generally works until it doesn't.
Doug:Back then, if you're buying a stock, was, you know, $250 a trade.
Keith:Right. Because
Doug:it's percentage based off the amount of the stock price. And this is the other thing in
Keith:the mid eighties, your financial plan in the mid eighties was not do it yourself, it was you were sold your financial plan. Hi, Mr. Jones, this is Keith Tyner. I've got an interesting investment idea I need to talk to you about. So whether you had insurance, mutual funds, mostly your financial advisor was a salesperson who just was trying to make it through the month, trying to help you do the best that they could, and maybe trying to get you to move part of your money out of checking, savings, CDs, things like that.
Keith:And a lot of savings bonds back then too. Yeah, municipal bonds. Yeah. And then you moved into the 2000s, the 90s and 2000s. I think that's when April finally kind of started launching.
Doug:Well, in the 90s, you had the tech run ups. And so you started to read about all this new innovation, and you could be part of it.
Keith:Do it yourself. Like, I forgot who
Doug:you could own Intel. Like you could own the newest and the greatest thing. I think that was what was so exciting about the 90s stock market.
Keith:And in that stock market, people were doing it themselves.
Doug:Like I was in college, but I knew about it.
Keith:Right.
Doug:And I knew about what was going on and the big future that it had. And so it was something that was gaining traction, I think by and large, because 401ks were popularized. And the average American household now owned something like IBM or General Electric. And they had never done that for generations, had never owned actual stocks.
Keith:And along with that, what was happening is you had the baby boomers were coming to age.
Doug:Yeah. Yeah, was a lot of money, a lot of power, a lot of spending power.
Keith:Yeah, I mean, had baby boomer presidents right then for the first time, right? And so at that point in time, it's not the same today, but in the nineties, your peak spending age was about 48 or 49. Now people are not getting married as early, they're not having kids as early, and so
Doug:I think inheritance increased around that time as well. I mean, for the first time, wealth was being passed from generation to generation. And so there was a responsibility that you had all of the sudden that maybe a couple generations before didn't have to deal with that responsibility.
Keith:And I think that's about the late 90s and early 2000s. I think that's when I started perceiving like the CFP and things like that becoming regulated in and of
Doug:themselves. The certified financial planner.
Keith:Yeah, the way you do your financial plan is regulated, we're going all do it the same way.
Doug:There's a best practice out there.
Keith:Right, and that's probably the tradition that concerns me because I think in this evolution of money, it seems to have pulled thought processes away from a lot of people from soulish type things like living fully, to making sure I have all of what I need to do paid for. And those things can get in the way of living sometimes. And that's it's a kind of a funny thing as a financial planner kind of mindset that a lot of things I've evolved to do as an adult haven't been planned out as strategically as one might think. And I think that's the cynicism in me of watching these things and like, oh, that may or may not work out. But we're told it's the proper thing to do.
Doug:I think Mike Tyson's advice is the best on financial planning. He said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I don't know what the punch in your faces look like in your life, but we've all had them. And so how do you plan for that? Well, there's resiliency, there's character, there's vision, there's hope, there's faith, and that kind of stuff.
Doug:That's what really works in your plan. That stuff works for you while you're sleeping.
Keith:I think, you know, I didn't even have that in my notes, Doug, but I think that's what actually happened to me. I literally got a financial punch in the face and what happened is in about Easter time 1995, I was in Evansville and pulling out of a Kmart parking lot. That's old school in and of itself. And there's a road, Burkhart Road, that has two southbound lanes and two northbound. The inside southbound lane was backed up to the intersection and beyond.
Keith:And so I was inching out into the second one, and a car or a motorcycle hit me, shaved off the front end of the car. Two bodies were a couple 100 yards down the road, on the road. And you were
Doug:how old?
Keith:I would have been 35. Yeah, and I was traumatized by that. And thankfully, the couple on the motorcycle lived, but I've never been in a car wreck of anything like that. But the fact that people kill people in cars became real to me. They survived.
Keith:However, we were sued because of that. I had done the financial plan, everything that I would have told you to do, including getting an umbrella policy for that type of a situation. And I remember, probably would have been in '97, the Colts that year, I think stunk and so on a normal day as having, I would have had three young kids at that point. So Sunday afternoon, they would have been taking naps, and I would have been on the sofa one eye open watching the Colts, and my phone rang, and it was the attorney for the insurance company that was representing us
Doug:On a Sunday. On a Sunday.
Keith:He said, we're going to mediation tomorrow, Keith, to try to bring this to closure. If it doesn't close tomorrow in mediation, I'm going to send you a letter recommending you hire private counsel.
Doug:What does that mean?
Keith:Both of my eyes opened up and I'm like, we didn't have a million dollars at that point. What are you talking
Doug:about here?
Keith:Yeah, we didn't have a million dollars. And my umbrella policy was a million dollars. And I'm like, it occurred to me like, I'm like, I'm gonna have to hire an attorney, everything like, and I had already burned out once in this business. And I'm thinking everything I've worked for could be gone. And my eyes were open.
Keith:And I'm like, oh, I guess that's just life. I guess my plan may not work. And I just closed both eyes and went to sleep, because I'm like, why would I fret over something I have no control over? And that's the punch in the face is that as we're helping you think through your financial plan, we can't navigate every punch in the face that can come your way. But I think what we can do is add wisdom to the situation that you're having.
Keith:I think we can add history and knowledge and ideas and creativity. But I'm not saying you don't need to have a plan. I'm just
Doug:saying that
Keith:a lot of a financial plan has has has occurred because of the marketing of financial services over the last one hundred years. And those things could become burdens on your back. Like I think most people my age or a little bit younger feel a financial burden to pay for their kids college. Yeah. And that that was not the case, and probably till the 90s.
Keith:Like, don't think my parents, they thought it'd be nice to help. I don't think they felt the burden. And so as financial plans have happened all the over time, all I'm saying to y'all is that burdens happen from these plans that maybe aren't your responsibility. And we're happy to help you think creatively about your future and how your finances might not have to be as complicated as what our industry has made them.
Doug:Yeah, I think it's just it's it's important to have a vision, but to stay current with people. And you or Amanda put out the questions in our financial planning questionnaire. And one of them says, hey, you're 85 years old. What two things do you look back on? And it puts a smile on your face.
Doug:And so if you start with that, and then you work it backwards all the way, if you're 20 right now, you work it backwards to there, and then you stay current as you grow with someone, with an army of people, I think you'll just have a lot of success. You've probably got so many blind spots where it's helpful to have someone else looking at things.
Keith:And
Doug:that could be someone like a financial consultant or a planner or attorney or just friend, that it's helpful to stay current with somebody a couple times a year and just talk it out.
Keith:There are definitely new challenges that unfold consistently with technology and with financial services and things to that nature. But one of the things we, I think, are very good at is staying up to date on what's going on out there and having creative solutions. So, as you're thinking about your own financial plan and where you are, there's probably things that need to be tweaked today or just maybe rethought out. I think Or questioned.
Doug:Yeah. Like, why? What's the purpose?
Keith:Right. There's a point at which, like, enough. Enough. You can start gifting or passing things on to others. And that's just a wonderful part of your financial plan.
Doug:Good friend of mine recently told me, and he's a financial planner, he's a smart guy, he's in his late twenties, he once told me, he's like, I got a full cup and I don't want a bigger cup. And I think that's the trade off is with the financial plan. It's like moving the cup, making it bigger and bigger and bigger. And maybe you have a full cup right now and now it's just a great time to use what's in it.
Keith:Man, that's such a good word. Well, this trip down memory lane, I think the main point I wanted to get across to y'all is to be flexible, to realize that there may be a financial punch in the face sometime and it's not the end of the world. It's just not that deep and that you can navigate through whatever life brings your path. Yeah. I hope your guys' weekend is a great one.
Keith:It looks like it's going to be a little bit sunny and maybe a little rainy around here. I hope you get outside and enjoy your family this weekend. Thanks for hanging out.