0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Security is offered through registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research Inc. A broker dealer member. Finra SIPC Advisory Services through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. A registered investment advisor. Cambridge and Greenway Wealth Advisory are not affiliated.

0:00:20 - Speaker 2
It's time to dive into some insider secrets of investing and retirement planning. To make your retirement as smart and as elegant as possible. This is Money Chic with Sherry Rash.

0:00:31 - Speaker 3
Hey everybody, welcome in to another edition of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in to Money Chic, with Sherry Rash from Greenway Wealth Advisory and myself talking investing, finance and retirement. And this week on the podcast we're going to talk about couples, some financial mistakes that couples often make, and get Sherry's input on some of these things. We're not always on the same page with our spouse Surely not right. That's a shock to anybody who's married or in a relationship. But first let's say hey to Sherry and happy birthday to you. We're doing this just right before a birthday, but it's coming out right after.

0:01:06 - Speaker 4
So happy birthday, thank you, and happy birthday to you.

0:01:08 - Speaker 3
I appreciate it. We are a couple of birthday Virgos just a couple of days apart.

0:01:12 - Speaker 4
That's right.

0:01:12 - Speaker 3
Yeah, so do you do the astrology thing at all, like, do you get into that?

0:01:18 - Speaker 4
Only for Virgos. Okay, so when I see a Virgo, I know what, because I am one and you are one, and so I know what makes us tick. I know what, how we think our mothers are both Virgos, right?

0:01:31 - Speaker 3
They are.

0:01:32 - Speaker 4
So when I see someone's a Virgo, I can. I know how they think and I know how they're going to be as a client especially, which is fun. Other than that, though, I really don't pay attention.

0:01:44 - Speaker 3
I got you. Well, we were both chatting about this and there's some fun little things about Virgos and successful money handling, and so we had chatted about this and there's a couple of fun little things there. I know you want to touch on these, but there's some fun little traits that kind of go with it, and so do you. Do you find that that that's somewhat accurate? Cause, like it's you know, one of them is that a Virgos typically are very successful money managers, and it's kind of funny because here we both are.

0:02:10 - Speaker 4
Here we are, yeah, so that that's cool. I also know that when I work with a Virgo, they are going to be very detail oriented. They are going to be very systematic and very logical. My mother's always told me how logical I am, but I find that also when I'm dealing with Virgos, very logical, black or white, very responsible, and Virgos also tend to be thrifty. But some at the same time and I think we talked about this when we talked about our, our spending strategies Virgos can be spenders, they can have expensive taste, but at the same time, they're thrifty, and I told you that. I said I am a savvy shopper with some things, but with others I like expensive and I like to shop and spend on something expensive.

0:03:03 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I think we did talk about that. We were kind of laughing. It's like I get, I get frustrated by the, the $100 at Target, but I'll drop a thousand dollars on something else like it and I'm not blinking eye or whatever.

0:03:14 - Speaker 4
Exactly, yeah, so it's. It's because we're Virgos, it must be.

0:03:18 - Speaker 3
And when I saw this Virgos are thrifty I was like, yeah, not this one, but I guess I am in a way. You know, so pretty funny stuff, pretty interesting stuff. So yeah, it's always a, it's always fun when you kind of find these little small world things. You know, we, we met up to, you know, start working together on your podcasts, and then we wind up being Virgos and their mothers are both, and then just we also we're both lived in a similar area in New Jersey when we were younger. So just, funny, funny ways the world works sometimes. That's right. Yeah, Well, we're not a couple, but we both, we are both in relationships. So let's talk about the fact that financial mistakes that couples often make because I don't know about you and your husband, but my wife and I were actually pretty good in the money category, I would, you know. No, usually that's the number one place for stress for couples, right, we are the opposite. For whatever reason, we'll argue about everything else, but not money.

0:04:09 - Speaker 4
That's good. Yeah, that's really good. My husband and I we day to day. We will have our disagreements with money, because he is much more price conscious and a savvy shopper, and so that's our issue is that I like to spend money on little things and he does not. So, there, that's it.

0:04:30 - Speaker 3
But the big things we tend to be on the same page on Well good, let's talk about them from a retirement standpoint, then from a little bit later in life standpoint and some places where we can make some mistakes and not be on the same page. And when you have a couple come in, you have a couple come in. I would imagine that you're going to go through all these different pieces, but do you find that some of these things have already been checked off and they've already had these conversations, or do you get to navigate these in a very fun way? For example, if you're lucky enough to have a pension, you've got to be careful about this whole thing because the spousal benefit option can be a real make or break in the situation for your loved one in the event that something happens to you. It's enticing sometimes to go with the bigger number, but making that wrong choice can provide to be a big impact later on.

0:05:15 - Speaker 4
Oh, I mean this is definitely a opportunity to remove emotion from money management and have the couples look at just very factual, because oftentimes, generally speaking, the husband has the pension and he wants his retirement money.

Understandably, he worked all of these years, it's time to get the pension and he wants to get as much out of it as he possibly can. So usually with pensions they give you a wide variety of different payout options, but the most popular is a single life or joint life, and single life covers just the employee for the rest of his or her life, and then the joint payout obviously covers the employee and their spouse for as long as if one were to pre-decease the other. The income continues for their lives. So obviously with a joint payout the payment's going to be less and it could be significantly less because from the employer standpoint is they could be paying out for a really long time and it's oftentimes the employee will want that larger payout because it's their retirement money coming back to them. But it happens that God forbid what happens if they pass away a year into retirement and they only got one year's worth of that pension and then his spouse, his or her spouse, has nothing.

0:06:43 - Speaker 3
Yeah, another 20 years or whatever right 30 years. They're going on and that happens. We've seen these situations in the financial services world.

0:06:52 - Speaker 4
Absolutely, absolutely. I have a couple that they couldn't decide what to do as far as get the joint or the single life because there was such a big difference. And then he ended up passing away a year after retiring and they thankfully chose the joint payout.

0:07:07 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

0:07:08 - Speaker 4
Otherwise, it would have been financially devastating to them.

0:07:10 - Speaker 3
Very much so, very much so, and it goes a long way in strategy planning for that. That's part of the whole concept of building a strategy for yourself, and so is social security. It's not just as simple as and we talk about this often and we'll always talk about it because it's another big facet of the financial planning strategy it's not just turning it on when you both hit 62 because you want to get your dough out of it, or whatever the case might be. If you have to think about a strategy between the two of you because we talked about this on the prior show a couple of weeks ago that if one person is, let's say, making $2,500 on social security and the other person is making $1,500 and one passes, you're losing one. Now you're only getting the higher of the two, and so maybe the strategy, sherry, is to leave the higher income earner working, pulling up, I guess, building up longer right and Social Security, so that they can use that as that fallback.

0:08:02 - Speaker 4
Social Security is another item that is pretty emotionally driven when we start talking about it, initially Because, again, the thinking is I've paid into this my whole working life and I want my money back.

0:08:14 - Speaker 3
I want my money, that's right, yeah, I want my money and so.

0:08:18 - Speaker 4
But again, you have to step back and look at what makes the most sense. And yes, I would agree that in most cases it makes the most sense for the higher income earner to wait as long as possible, Because when you receive Social Security, you can either get your benefit or your spousal benefit, which is 50% of your of the higher income earners paycheck. Well, the longer the higher income earner waits, the higher the spousal paycheck will be. So definitely, coordinating and creating a strategy around Social Security is necessary.

0:08:51 - Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly, and a lot of that. And as I kind of teed this whole segment up a little bit by saying, you know when people come in, do you know? Are they having these conversations in front of you? Have they worked some of this stuff out? And that kind of rolls me into number three here, which is how often do people actually come in and have figured out what they want to do in retirement before they actually retire?

0:09:13 - Speaker 1
Because a lot of couples right.

0:09:14 - Speaker 3
You know I've talked to advisors all across the country and I hear them say very often we wear a marriage counselor hat because you know, folks just have not had some of these conversations or they maybe didn't have them as truthfully, just with each other.

And then when that third party sitting there, they feel a little more comfortable, maybe dropping a bomb, right that well, in all actuality I don't want to get the RV, or whatever that might be right. And then it turns into this conversation of what do you actually want to do? And that's a mistake couples make, not getting this sorted out ahead of time.

0:09:44 - Speaker 4
And I would say most people do not talk about these items. Before coming into my office, before speaking with me, they may have their ideas in mind. Oh, I want to start Social Security at 62. I want to take a single life pension, because they're just thinking about getting their money back to them, where they're not thinking about the household. But I would say most people do not talk about what they want to do in retirement. They may have some ideas.

0:10:10 - Speaker 3
Like I want to travel.

0:10:11 - Speaker 4
Travel. Yeah, exactly, we'll travel. We'll do this. But Google retired husband syndrome. It is a real thing, it really happens and it is something that you really need to consider it's. There is a huge emotional shift when you retire and retired husband syndrome is basically saying you know, we're together all the time. Now he's driving me nuts, or she's driving me nuts because we don't have any time apart, or I lost my routine. I was used to getting up, going to work, have, you know, coming back fighting traffic and you lose all of that. So you really do need to have a plan, not just with your money, but with what you're going to do with your time. Find a hobby and start it before you retire. So then, when you do retire, you're used to it or a charity, or Donating your time, or volunteering. You have to have a plan as to what you're going to do, because I'm the type of person that I enjoy being on vacation, but I really look forward to getting back to the grind after a week or so of unplugging and relaxing.

0:11:20 - Speaker 3
Right.

0:11:21 - Speaker 4
I know in retirement I'm not gonna be able to sit still and I'm gonna need things to do, so you have to have a plan for that. It's really important, especially for your mental health.

0:11:31 - Speaker 3
Well, sherry, and to that argument, right, so he's driving me nuts, she's driving me nuts. Get out of the house, go. You know what I'm going and doing something.

Well, that's how you start extra spending now Not to say that you're living so tight that you can't just jump in your car and go someplace and, you know, hit some extra golf balls or something at the driving range.

I'm not trying to go, that, you know, minute with it, but just simply that's how you start to do the little things, because you're all you're trying to. You know, for lack of a better term avoid one another so that you don't get on each other's nerves too much. And if there's any and there's virtually no way to find a silver lining with COVID, but if there's anyone we could find, it would be the fact that it's kind of highlighted for a lot of people when we're, you know, being locked up in the house together. You know house, you know how strong your marriage is and how things are gonna work out, especially if you were getting closer to retirement age is almost like a precursor to hey, this is what we're gonna be doing, we're gonna be seeing each other. I mean my wife I'm, I'm turning 50 or turn 50 actually, since at the time this has come out and she's 45 but we're spending all this time together and it's like, hey, this is what it's gonna be like in another 10 or 15 years.

0:12:30 - Speaker 4
So that's right, absolutely.

0:12:32 - Speaker 3
Interesting ways to think about things sometimes and that's hopefully what we shine some light on here on the podcast. So we're talking about these mistakes that couples make financially, so I got a couple more here sharing them. We'll wrap it up a coordination of the individual accounts, like a 401k or an IRA, to be sure that the, the assets are actually working together. So this is different than like merging accounts, right? This is just coordinating what you want them to accomplish.

0:12:57 - Speaker 4
This is a big one, this I would say clients. People do not think about this at all and when I explain it to a couple, the light bulb really goes off and goes wow, I didn't even think about that. So you cannot look at your money in silos. So my money can't be just looked at as my money and the investments picked that way, or my spouses. They pick their investments their way. Reason being there could be a lot of overlap.

401ks, four or three B's in general do not provide that robust of investment options, so it could be very likely that there is a lot of overlap already in your employer sponsor accounts. So looking at your investments as a household and Allocating that way to minimize overlap because overlap is a big deal if you have too much of a concentration in a certain Sector just because you were not coordinating our accounts, that could actually create more risk in the portfolio and more risk than what you were intending on Creating or having in your portfolio. So looking at everything as a household and everyone's account is just a slice of the pie. So it's what? My 401ks, my slice of the pie. But everything needs to work together instead of working in their own silos, working separately.

0:14:21 - Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, hey, I've got Tesla. Hey, I've got Tesla too, right, you know that kind of.

0:14:24 - Speaker 1
Thing.

0:14:24 - Speaker 3
So, yeah, okay, so that's a good way of looking at that as well.

And then, finally, it's the same kind of avenue of conversation that the risk often times, and this is usually where that marriage counselor comes into play when you're sitting there with a couple and they maybe haven't been completely honest or frank with each other about managing risk, and in a lot of times the traditional way we see things is one is totally okay with swinging for the fences and the other not so much, and they don't get on the same page and then it's like wait a minute, I'm totally not comfortable with the fact that we're taking too many chances with our retirement money or whatever, and they haven't really discussed that, and so now you've got to figure out how to get that risk in an allocation that works for both people.

0:15:07 - Speaker 4
Exactly so. Again, we just spoke about looking at the entire household and everyone's slice of the pie serving a different purpose, but it all works towards the greater good. Risk is the exact same way and, yes, it's very rare to have both spouses be on the exact same page when it comes to risk. Usually one person is more aggressive than the other person. So, again, instead of allocating just one account independently, work together.

My accounts may be more risky in general than my husband's because I am more of a risk taker than he is, so I could have the more aggressive allocations in my 401ks and in my IRAs and he may be the more conservative. But overall, when you put everything together, when you put the pieces of the pie together, it still creates a moderate, appropriate risk for our ages and our you know time to retirement or time to when we're going to access our accounts. So, keeping it as a again looking at it as a household level a very macro approach to the risk taking. Same way, we look at it more of a macro approach to the investment allocations. So I think it's very important.

0:16:26 - Speaker 3
Now that's a great point. And it's often not the case when you know, as we pointed out, until you come in and start working on a strategy with someone who does this day in and day out, because a lot of times we just, you know, we tend to we don't want to argue, sometimes with our spouse, right In a lot of ways, so we kind of tend to cave. And so maybe if you're, you know, doing the DIY approach and it's like, well, one person is kind of dominating that effort, the other person just kind of goes along with it and they're not really as comfortable as they could be, should be, or that we would want them to be, and maybe they don't feel comfortable speaking up about it. So, because you typically just don't want to argue, you know you, what's that? What do we say in when we're married? Right, you pick your battles right.

So it could be a. That's a thing to me. That's another really fantastic value add to working with a financial professional. It's that third party sounding board, mediator, whatever you want to call it to where you guys you know you can kind of get that help to kind of see both sides of the equation, and it helps that think everything smoothed out.

0:17:24 - Speaker 4
Exactly, yeah, all right, well, there you go.

0:17:26 - Speaker 3
So good stuff this week here on the podcast for those couples out there financial mistakes that sometimes we make or often we make when it comes to a few of these categories. So, again, if you got some questions, you need some help before you step into that and have yourself a fight that you don't necessarily need. Have a conversation with a financial professional, like financial advisor and money coach Sherry Rash here on the podcast, and you can check her out online at greenwaywealthadvisorycom. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button on Apple or Google or Spotify whatever platform you like to use. It's all available right there at the website greenwaywealthadvisorycom. Well birthday, girl. Happy birthday again. I hope you have a fantastic or had a fantastic birthday and the rest of your month as well.

0:18:10 - Speaker 4
You too, thank you.

0:18:11 - Speaker 3
I'm going to try. I'll see you when we get into October and I'm proud of us because we didn't talk about pumpkin anything yet.

0:18:18 - Speaker 4
So, no way, it's still summer, that's right.

0:18:21 - Speaker 3
We'll talk, maybe, pumpkin spice a little bit in October, where it should be, where it belongs, that's right, it does not belong in September. Folks Just saying We'll see you next time here on the podcast. This has been Money Chic with Sherry Rash.

0:18:40 - Speaker 1
Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered through registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research Inc. A broker-dealer member, finra SIPC advisory services through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. A registered investment advisor Cambridge and Greenway Wealth Advisory are not affiliated.