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. 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. 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 2

Welcome into another edition of Money Chic, women and Retirement with Sherry Rash and myself to talk investing, finance, retirement, all those good things. We're going to talk warning signs, just kind of how to spot problems in our overall financial life and just like the lights on the dashboard of your car can indicate when something's wrong. You know, low tire pressure, something like that. There's indicators in our financial life that maybe we see, maybe we don't see, and so we want one to think about addressing some of these. So that's the topic this week. Sherry, what's going on? How are you?

0:01:01 - Speaker 3

Doing all right. We have our third co-host with us, Flash Rash. He's sleeping at my feet.

0:01:10 - Speaker 2

I like Flash.

0:01:11 - Speaker 3

If you hear some yips, that's who it is.

0:01:14 - Speaker 2

Okay, okay, he's one of those yippy dreamers. They're so cute.

0:01:18 - Speaker 3

Yeah, he is, and he just gets really hyper and starts biting. And then, if he bites long enough, he then starts to bark a little bit at me. Oh, that's funny.

0:01:27 - Speaker 2

Flash Rash Got to do it. That's awesome. Now what kind of dog is he again? Golden Doodle, oh, okay, okay, I was like the only thing that made that better would be do you remember Flash from? Well, I think they use Flash in both names. I think it was also on the Dukes of Hazard. I think that was the big Bassett Hound.

And also in the Smokey and the Bandit movies I think the no, that was Fred. The truck driver's dog was a Bassett Hound named Fred. But yeah, you got to love like naming like a slow dog, flash, right, you know, or something like that. Or a skinny dog, you know, chunky, or whatever, you know the opposite kind of thing.

0:02:01 - Speaker 3

Well, right now he's living up to his name. He is quick, so hopefully he slows down a little bit. Yeah, well, you will.

0:02:06 - Speaker 2

He's young, so that's awesome, though yeah, mine is actually waiting for me to finish this podcast and then we're going for our daily stroll, so he kind of sits there and looks at me like yo let's go, wrap it up.

0:02:18 - Speaker 1

Wrap it up. I want to walk.

0:02:19 - Speaker 2

So well, let's talk about these warning signs and we'll get back to the dogs here in a second. But how to spot them, sherry, again you know, not even just from a retirement standpoint, but just a financial life in general standpoint, right, and I think the first one works really kind of well, no matter what time period of life you're in, and it's not truly having a handle or an idea of what it costs to fund your lifestyle whenever that might be right. People hate the budget word, they hate the B word and not necessarily a budget. But you got to have a grip. I think you know we do different. We do that fairly well at different times in our life, but other times we seem to kind of toss that aside and we don't truly know what our lifestyle costs us.

0:02:58 - Speaker 3

I'd be curious to see if, not knowing your lifestyle, the cost to fund your lifestyle coincides with the decreased use of a checkbook or a ledger and balancing your checkbook, yeah maybe yeah, I mean, most people have no idea what they're spending each month because you're getting bills from so many different places, from all of your utilities to your credit cards. You're getting bills everywhere and you're just paying them.

0:03:26 - Speaker 2

And, oh yeah, we nickel and dime this world crazy. Right, your Amazon deliveries on and on and on right.

0:03:32 - Speaker 3

Exactly, and Amazon can be for fun stuff that you could eliminate, or for the paper towels and the laundry detergent and all of that as well. So sometimes Amazon's necessities, and some of it times it isn't, but because everything's so electronic now we're not sitting down and we're taking a ledger and did more money go out this month than came in, so that that is a big question to ask, and it is actually hard for many people to answer, because when I'm planning for retirement or I'm sitting down, I'm working with with a couple. One of the items I do want to talk about is spending and, like you said, I'm not using a. It's not budgeting, it's not the B word, it's a spending strategy. You have a lifestyle, you're paying for it, but how much are you spending? And let's create a strategy around it and have an understanding of it.

0:04:24 - Speaker 2

Well, I've heard financial professionals talk about a couple of ways. That seems to pop up the most as ways to track some things. Yes, there's lots of apps and things nowadays you can download just about anything but some people might be like, look, I don't need yet another app on my phone, or whatever the case is, and it's either like tax returns at the end of the year, what you totally made, what you totally put out right, because then you know what's left is you either saved it or spent it and if you didn't save it, well then you spent it or maybe try to put everything on one credit card for a couple of months, like literally everything, and just see you know, like truly, what you're spending. You know don't use anything else, kind of thing. So there's lots of different ways to do it. Any thoughts there?

0:05:04 - Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean that credit card that that could hurt, right, that could be a real eye opening. If you did that one month after one month, how?

0:05:12 - Speaker 2

large that bill could be Right. I mean gas, you know, snacks, whatever, right, Like everything goes on it.

0:05:19 - Speaker 3

Yeah, and I like that idea a lot, because then? But the thing is that you have to pay it off right, you can't say, well, I'm going to do this much on, and then I'll take care of it next month. You're not taking care of it next month because you have those, a lot of those recurring expenses happening. So, if you have the cash to cover what what you're spending, or that really big credit card for that first month of this experiment, then that could be a really good way, yeah.

0:05:46 - Speaker 2

Put it all in the savings account, right. Sit it there and don't touch it, so that when that bill comes to you, you can actually pay it, because you're right Self-discipline If it goes out the window. Now you got another set of problems.

0:05:55 - Speaker 3

Exactly. Yeah, that's a great point.

0:05:58 - Speaker 2

Okay, what about the the count balance, the net worth, the specific dollar amount scenario that many of us might find ourselves in? I use my daughter as an example on this one. Now that she's a fully adulting and has a, you know, a real career, and so on and so forth, she's like really tickled by like how she you know she sits like these targets of saying, oh, I've got X number of money in the bank now, so now I need to get to the next limit you know, $5,000 more than where I'm currently at, kind of thing. And she's playing this game with herself, which is cool because she's going in the right direction. However, some people will attach a number to you know, whatever you know. Often we hear something like the million dollars. For example, I got to have a million bucks to retire, or whatever the case might be. And if I'm not there, well then, I'm not ready.

0:06:40 - Speaker 3

This is a conversation I have quite often and I love talking about this because this comes down to your money personality. Which is something I focus on and I really try to understand when working with my clients is what is your money personality? Because if you are a saver, there is no number that is going to be big enough to satisfy you, right. But if you're a spender or you're okay with getting your account down, you're not as focused on getting your account to a certain balance. But I like to understand.

If a client comes to me and they say you know, I really want to have X amount in my savings account, I first ask why? Why is that? And most of the time it's emotional. There's no concrete reason. It just makes me feel better and when it comes to money, it is quantitative. Right, we can put all the formulas and the rules of thumb and apply all that to our lives, but at the end of the day, we still have to answer to our emotions, because you could follow all the rules the right way, but if your stomach doesn't feel good about it, then it's all a waste.

0:07:46 - Speaker 2

Yeah, good point. And on that emotional conversation piece, the one that ends up winning a lot for people is I don't know if this is a motion or not, but maybe it's not an emotion, but it's just avoidance, right? So I guess just ignoring it, head in the sand, whatever you want to call it. But rather than face it maybe that's fear, I don't know but rather than face it, we just choose to like, give it no attention. We just don't pay enough attention to it.

0:08:12 - Speaker 3

Yeah, overwhelm. You don't even know where to start. You're not educated in it. So there's so many reasons why we stick our heads in the sand. And again that comes back to you know our money memories and our money personalities if we're avoiding or keeping track of our expenses because everyone's different but if you're finding that you are avoiding, we need to get to the bottom of why. Do you think that you're behind as far as savings go? Do you not feel good about the amount you've accumulated? Are you nervous about the future? What is it that you're trying to avoid? Because I can guarantee continuing to avoid it is only going to make whatever you're nervous about worse.

0:08:54 - Speaker 2

True, inside a couple dynamic, it's really interesting how that can change from a different standpoint, from, like, a medical standpoint. I've got some medical issues and so my wife is always on me about making sure I'm keeping up with that, but yet she will not do the same for herself, and so if I pester her, well I'm mean or I'm nagging her or something like that. But yes, she can pester me and it's because she cares.

And so and I think in a financial dynamic we do that sometimes too One side will be one way and one will be the other, and we don't figure out a way to communicate well enough on that. So that's the one area my wife and I struggle with is the is medical conversations, but financially we don't right, but a lot of couples do.

0:09:34 - Speaker 3

It's very rare to have a have a couple that they're both completely on the same page with finances and because it comes down to our money personalities, everyone has a different one or everyone has a different first money memory that has shaped our relationship with money forever. So definitely understanding your spouse or partners money personality can help to make those conversations a lot easier.

If one partner is a saver and there can never be enough money in that account. Then you have to know that when you're approaching conversations and kind of like, okay, what? What feels good, when you open up the, the app on the phone and view our account, what number feels good and what number feels bad? So, and let's just keep at the number that feels good. But there is a reality that having too much in the account, in the savings account, can hurt, especially when there's nine percent inflation.

0:10:30 - Speaker 2

Very true, I may have to try that money personality thing, but from medical personality, what if I could try that on the wife? See how that would go? Find out why she's afraid of the doctor. Okay, so let's go to another one here, because, well, 9%. So you mentioned something that's topical. So current events certainly not easy to digest right now. It's constantly something you know you and I were just talking about the bond market not, you know, doing well either because of rising inflation rates, of course stock market's not doing well, and so people wind up feeling like and that maybe that adds to that head in the same thing. But we're like man, we're just so either worked up or terrified of current events. We either pay too much attention or not enough.

0:11:12 - Speaker 3

Yeah, and if you're getting worked up with the day to day of what's going on and how it impacts your money, take a step back and again ask yourself why all of these warning signs? Take a step back and ask yourself why. Are you getting worked up because it's just terrible to see, or are you getting worked up because you don't feel confident in your financial situation as a result of these issues?

0:11:37 - Speaker 1

Yeah.

0:11:37 - Speaker 3

So could you be taking more risk than you should? Should you have some more diversification? What can we do to make sure that these events are not causing you to lose sleep?

0:11:47 - Speaker 2

Yeah, I think, for right now people are struggling with like just what to do period. Like I mentioned, we're in kind of a perfect storm, sharon, you know, really, if you think about it, and not a good one, obviously, of all these things that have kind of come to fruition. We were long overdue for a market downturn. Everything was way oversaturated. You know, we were long overdue for interest rates rising, which they're doing now, but of course you know that causes the bond market issues. So we're kind of in this area where people go, wow, I'm not even sure what to do, which does again lead back into that whole conversation of just head in the sand and not really kind of being able to identify the financial problems that we might have in our life.

And I guess maybe the last one then to kind of just bring it all back home would be just taking care of ourselves in general, but not just today, but also our future selves, right it's? You know, if you're a small business owner, you've heard people say, hey, make sure you're paying yourself. You know you got to pay yourself first sometimes when you own a business, or make sure you're paying your future self, which is AKA retirement, however you want to look at it. You got to take care of yourself from a medical standpoint, like I just talked about, a financial standpoint and also a long-term financial and medical standpoint.

0:12:55 - Speaker 3

Yeah, absolutely, and do a gut check on yourself and if any of these warning signs ring a little bit true, you know, talk to a professional advisor about it and try to get to the bottom of it, because we, when we ignore our the light in our car, which sometimes I do- Right, okay. It only creates a bigger issue in the end and a more expensive issue. So if the warning light comes on, take care of it and then let's get it shut off.

0:13:23 - Speaker 2

Nice, Good way to bring that back around to the beginning and that's a fantastic way to wrap up the podcast this week. So don't ignore problems in your financial life, Don't you know? Just you know, kind of turn the other way, Look for these things, spot them and work on them. Get to the financial doctor, if you will, and have a conversation with Sherry or someone you know, a financial professional but always check with one before you take any action. And, of course, Sherry is here to help. You can find her at GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom. That's GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom. She's a financial advisor and money coach and here to help you get to and through these questions and times and all that good kind of stuff. So reach out to her.

Don't forget to subscribe, by the way, on Apple, Google, Spotify, all that kind of good stuff. Whatever platform you like listening to or using for podcasting needs. You can find it under Money, Chic, Women and Retirement that's the name. Just type that in the search box or go to GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom. I'm Sherry Rash. I'm your host. Mark Killian, We'll see you next time here on the podcast. We appreciate your time.

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