In this special episode, Jessica and Brandon joined forces for a live recording with Cisco Systems and their Connected Black Professionals Employee Resource Organization. From wealth building strategies to demystifying the complexities of savings plans, retirement, and the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency, Jess and Brandon break down financial planning into digestible insights.
This conversation is a detailed 30k foot view into the world of finance and proper financial planning.
You’ll leave this conversation feeling more knowledgeable, confident and inspired about your financial future.
If you’d like to leave us a question to be answered during future episodes, you can do so at Speakpipe.
In this special episode, Jessica and Brandon joined forces for a live recording with Cisco Systems and their Connected Black Professionals Employee Resource Organization. From wealth building strategies to demystifying the complexities of savings plans, retirement, and the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency, Jess and Brandon break down financial planning into digestible insights.
This conversation is a detailed 30k foot view into the world of finance and proper financial planning.
You’ll leave this conversation feeling more knowledgeable, confident and inspired about your financial future.
If you’d like to leave us a question to be answered during future episodes, you can do so at Speakpipe.
Today's episode of the Sugar Data Podcast is a bit different than normal. This is actually a recording of a live podcast session that Jess and I did with Cisco Systems and their Connected Black Professionals Employee Resource Organization. Cbp's mission is to provide a safe space for members to express concern, network and celebrate each other, while promoting unity, equity, culture, professional development and endless opportunity for success and achievement. In this episode, we sat down with the members and we talked about it all professional development and endless opportunity for success and achievement. In this episode, we sat down with the members and we talked about it all, from saving and investing for the future to retirement planning and cryptocurrency. This episode is jam-packed with great questions and a high-level but comprehensive picture of proper financial planning. If you'd like us to speak to your company in a similar way, be sure to reach out so we can discuss the details and make it happen. Now let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Sugar Daddy podcast. I'm Jessica.
Speaker 1:And I'm Brandon.
Speaker 2:And we're the Norwoods, a married millennial couple here to help you build wealth so you can live the life you've always dreamed of. Brandon is an award-winning licensed financial planner with over 10 years of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the US. Don't worry, we leave all the intimidating finance mumbo jumbo at the door Stick with us as we demystify the realm of dollars. So it all makes sense. While giving you a glimpse into our relationship with money and each other, we are so glad you're here. Let's get started.
Speaker 3:Without further ado, I want to turn it over to Jessica and Brandon Norwood and, just to make sure everyone is aware, jessica is part of our Cisco family. For those that do not know, she does her podcast in her spare time, so that's not her full time job. That's something that she gets to enjoy doing with Brandon, and they get to share a lot of useful information with their podcast community and have agreed to share information with us here today. So I'm going to ask Jessica and Brandon to introduce themselves, tell us a little bit about why they got into doing a podcast and tell us a little bit about how they chose the very unique name of their podcast as they go ahead and get into their episode. So, with that said, I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to Jessica and Brandon.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, darren. Hey, cbp fam, really excited to be here with you and bring my husband along on this exciting day. I'm Jessica Norwood. I lead a global digital sales content strategy for global virtual sales and engineering. I am not the finance person, I'm just married to the finance person and last June we started a podcast and it's called the Sugar Daddy podcast. My mom hates the name, so I think we're on the right track and the reason we named it that the tagline is how to become one and how to ensure that you won't need one, and so it's a his and hers perspective.
Speaker 2:On finance, we talk about pretty much anything. No topic is unavailable to us and Brandon gives his professional perspective on topics perspective on topics and I question him the way most of you probably would question things that we hear on TikTok, on Instagram, on the news, and so all we do is kind of go back and forth, you know, to discuss all of these different topics. It's a lot of fun. Like Darren said, we do it after hours, we fit it in when we can, we ship the kids off to the grandparents on the weekends and record. But it's been a lot of fun because it's something that we can do together and it challenges us and it brings us together, and you'll hear, today, one of the biggest things about finances is talking about them, and so that's what we do a lot of in our home so we're going to get into that, but I will let Brandon do his introduction.
Speaker 1:I'll say my name is Brandon Norwood and I have been in finance for over 10 years now.
Speaker 1:I am a licensed financial planner and I own my own financial planning firm called Oak City Financial.
Speaker 1:And part of the reason that we know we decided to go ahead and do this podcast was is that I know by myself I would never do a podcast just with me because I don't think I'm entertaining enough. So she definitely brings the entertainment aspect, but really where it came from was me always wanted to talk about all these different things with her and she's always like put it on social media, put it on social media. And for me, the way that I see a lot of stuff revolving around finances on social media, it has pros and cons, but the one big con I see is that it's very small snippets and not the detailed stuff. And it's called personal finance for a reason, because you need to take into account everyone's individual personal circumstances, and so for me, this quick little social media post wasn't really how I want to talk about it and that's just like let's go ahead and do a podcast so it all came to me in a dream which I know that sounds super corny and fake, but it really did.
Speaker 2:Came to me in a dream. I woke up, put it in my phone and then literally forgot about it. And then we were on a road trip on our way to a friend's wedding in Tennessee and I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot to tell you that I had this dream and this is what it's about and this was the title. So the title of the Sugar Daddy podcast literally was in the dream, wrote it down, forgot about it, brought it back up and he was like, okay, let's do it. So it's been a lot of fun. We've got over 20 episodes, I think at this point hitting our one year in June. We've got amazing people lined up. We've been doing some really great interviews that we're really excited to share with our audience. Hopefully you will now be a part of that moving forward.
Speaker 1:But we put out episodes on the 1st and 15th of every month.
Speaker 2:Payday, so you should remember. So if you subscribe, those will drop directly into your queue. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts Apple, spotify, google, et cetera. So are you ready to get into it? Ok, all right, darren, did we miss anything?
Speaker 3:No, that was perfect. I love it, I love it. I'm excited already.
Speaker 2:We're going to share our screen and we're not going to bore you to death with slides, but we do have just a little bit of an agenda that we wanted to go through. So if somebody, darren, can you give us a thumbs up, if you can see it.
Speaker 3:Thumbs up.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So we're going to jump into our financial philosophy, because it really is the basis for how we operate, what we talk about, how Brandon coaches his clients and teaches his clients, and we'll just go from there, and we're happy to take any questions. Again, really nothing's off the table, so if you've got a burning question, we'd love to answer it today. All right, so let's get into your philosophy. Why don't you tell us about it?
Speaker 1:Well, the main principle of my philosophy is the education aspect. I really feel as though that people have anxiety around money for two main reasons, one being a lack of financial literacy. They simply don't understand and they don't know what to do Now. The second one is they don't have a plan in place. You know, for so long, financial advisors often just you know took care of number two. They put a plan in place for you.
Speaker 1:But I'm really big on wanting to educate my clients along the way, because that empowers you to be able to make a decision for yourself, because ultimately, at the end of the day, any type of plan that we're doing, it's going to affect your life. So you want to be able to understand exactly what it is and all the different topics and services we're talking about and, honestly, just in general, like you know, finances touch every single aspect of your life. Whether or not you realize it or not, every area of your life has some aspect attached to your finances. So being able to have a good foundation in the understanding of financial literacy and then also just continuous education, because they're always changing, so I'm really big on the education aspect.
Speaker 2:And most of us didn't have it growing up. We don't have it in school. Now we're. You know, we're hearing all these things. Okay, I should have a diversified portfolio. What does that even mean? I should be doing this, I should be doing that. The crypto bros are telling us one thing, right, and then, like, what do we even do? And so having that background of education and not just handing your finances away to somebody and saying, okay, go do something with it, is really important.
Speaker 1:And the thing is what you know prior to you know the time period. Now the accessing information is hard because you didn't have access to it. One of the amazing things about the Internet is that we have access to so much information, but one of the downsides of that is that you have an overabundance of information, so it's really hard for individuals to weed through all the noise to find out one what is true, what is false, but then also what is applicable to their specific situation. So that's why having a really good financial literacy education helps you weed through all that noise and find out specifically what it is that's going to work for you. Now, one of the biggest things I also realize that a lot of people honestly do not do is proper goal setting. Most people, when I sit down with them, they have very generic goals.
Speaker 2:Vague.
Speaker 1:Like I want to. You know you might ask me you know what is one of your goals? I want to save up a million dollars. What does that mean? I mean money.
Speaker 1:I would say that money is not a goal, it's a tool, and once you understand how to use it as a tool and use it properly, then the tool is used for you to live the life that you want to live. So I'm really big on making sure that we get granular with your goals, because if you have a very generic goal, it can be very hard to figure out what the specific steps are that you need to be most efficient with achieving that goal. So being able to and also I realize a lot of people actually don't talk about their goals out loud period with you know, their friends, family, spouses I have sat down with spouses who we start talking and you know those are coming up and neither one of them had known about the other person. So I think it's really big to dream as big as you can in all honesty, and so you know being able to have a proper goal setting strategy is, you know, an integral part of the financial planning aspect.
Speaker 2:Now, I was going to say too. One of the things that he talks about often is people going to work for 40 plus hours a week and then not knowing why. Right, why are you working? And it's not just, or it shouldn't be, just to pay your bills and to keep the lights on, right? What are, what are your grand visions for your life? What are you really ultimately trying to achieve? So, if you walk away with anything today, I think it's think about your vision and your goals and your hopes and dreams, right, and make them big Really, make them audacious and get granular, because you're collecting a paycheck, but why? Right.
Speaker 1:You know, Now I'm also really big on the accessibility to quality financial information as well.
Speaker 1:You know, for so long our community did not have access to this information and I mean to say, through a certain sense, it's still limited in some aspects. So I do what I can to make this information known to as many people as possible and not just simply you know the, not just simply you know the information that I, you know, provide as a financial advisor, but also making sure that people know good resources to use as well to increase their financial literacy in all different areas. So the one way that you know you can start to level the playing field is to have that access to information. But then you also have to implement that information. So you know, you can be a student of, you know, financial literacy, but you also have the bigger part of not just you know, gaining all that information is starting to actually take action, and that's one of the biggest things I see. Unfortunately, people don't do. They'll read and read and read, but they don't at least take that first step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, let's keep going. So we want to get into a couple of myths and we'll show you. You know the link to our podcast and all of that so you can listen in and you'll get an idea of us leaning into all of these myths. But one of our favorites is I don't need a financial advisor until I have a lot of money. And you had a really good analogy the other day and it was you don't go to your trainer when you have a six pack right. Once you've gotten the six pack and your muscles are bulging and your body fat's all low and you're, you know, lean, mean fighting machine, why are you now going to a trainer? That doesn't make sense, right. And so going to a financial planner in the early stages to help you build your wealth is really what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:There obviously is an aspect of you have to be able to pay for one.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do have to afford a financial planner. He does not work for free, to be clear, I love providing information for free. That's what the podcast is for. Yes, you do have to afford the financial planner. He does not work for free, to be clear, I love providing information for free.
Speaker 1:That's what the podcast is for, as far as actually you do have to be able to afford a financial advisor and there are a wide range in regards to how a financial advisor is charged and what they charge, so looking for someone that fits within your budget is also key. But, as Jeff said, my biggest thing is that I want to help you along the journey, because with my help, we can actually be much more efficient. So you know, unfortunately, you know when you're on your own, sometimes you're going to have to learn from trial and error, and then also you have the learning curve as far as being able to have the time to acquire all the different knowledge.
Speaker 2:And sometimes the learning curve comes with losing money if you're not getting help, which you don't want to do. We also have a great episode on how to choose a financial planner or advisor. We also talk about is it a financial advisor, financial planner, wealth manager all the different terms? Are they synonyms? We dig into all of that. But we also talk about red flags, and we'll get into this in just a little bit. But we know that there's a lot of fear around working with financial planners. I think we probably all have people in our families down the line that have said that you know they didn't have a good experience. They got screwed, they lost money, and so again, there's fear, there's shame, there's hesitancy, and so we break down the red flags when working with a financial planner, because they're not all created equal. Not everybody out there is working with your best interest in mind, and so it really is important to look for those, those flags, early and to do your due diligence, because not everybody out there is on our side and is doing good work.
Speaker 2:You mentioned, obviously you get paid off of all the different things that you do. You should always feel comfortable asking your financial advisor how they are getting paid. If you are putting a new life insurance policy in place, you should be able to say hey, how are you getting paid off of this? How much are you going to make off of this? If you're a financial planner or the person that you're working with is hesitant in answering that question, move on. They are not the person for you. There needs to be a lot of openness and transparency and trust in this process as you're growing your wealth and your knowledge base with your financial planner, and if you ever have a feeling of he's hiding something, she's hiding something. Something's not right. Go with your gut, move on and find somebody else, because nobody that you're working with with your money should ever be hesitant in telling you how they get paid.
Speaker 1:And, let's be honest, the financial services industry has not catered to people that look like us, and I would still argue that it does not cater to people that look like us. Now there are changes that are occurring. So you are starting to see, you know, more diversity within that field as far as you know, more females, more people of color, but we still have a long ways to go. And so, you know, starting to maybe break down some of those walls that we had before as far as access to it, but then also just some of that, um, hesitancy, as jessica stated, for, you know, not trusting, and that comes from a place of validity. You know there are things the financial services industry has done in the past, and even recently, that does not benefit people that look like us.
Speaker 1:So I always say to individuals, even people that I'm sitting down with, you know, potential prospects. I'm like, if you don't trust me, for whatever reason it may be, we're not a good fit, because it's not going to be beneficial to you and it's not going to be helpful for me to help you. So I always say number one is you know a lot of us know a lot of the same things. A lot if the financial advisor tells you that he knows something so much more than the other one, I walk away from that because we know a lot of the same things and we have a lot of access to the same information. It really boils down to do you personally want to provide with that person? Do you guys have a similar mindset and do you trust them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a lot of things that, as part of Brandon's planning, that he recommends you put in place right Life insurance, disability insurance. Some of those come with a check of your medical background and records. So, again, there needs to be a strong level of trust and transparency, because the reality is he's going to see a lot of things that maybe people that are even closest to you don't know, and so if you don't trust your financial advisor, you're probably not going to grow together and you're likely not going to grow your wealth, because there's going to be gaps and you want to make sure that you really are working with somebody that you trust, that you feel has your best interests at heart, that listens, you don't feel rushed. It's just like going to a doctor. I don't want to work with a doctor who's rushing me out of their office, is not listening, is not taking notes, is not recapping what we talked about the last time, right? So it's a very similar type of relationship.
Speaker 4:Hey Jessica and Brandon. Do you mind if I jump in and ask a question? Yeah, no. So Belindia Taylor asked how often should you talk to your financial advisor, or how often should that financial advisor speak to you? Is that something you all can answer live right now? Brandon has very strong opinions on this Okay, great question.
Speaker 1:It depends on where you're at in the relationship. So, for example, when I bring on a new client, the first four months or so, I'm normally meeting with them at least once every three weeks. Reason being is that we are going through an initial onboarding process, so we are, you know, meeting through their current situation and addressing a lot of things and a lot of different topics early on.
Speaker 2:So data gathering, getting a lot of paperwork.
Speaker 1:First four to five months I really have a structured meeting outline that I would like from a meeting consistency standpoint, reason being that I've got a lot to get through. But then I also don't want to throw too much at a client at one time because there are going to be action items that they need to complete in between meetings. But I also don't want too much time to elapse that we forget what we talked about previously. Now, once we've gotten through that initial, I consider it my core meetings process. Then I kind of leave it open to the individual. You know, what does that person need? I want to meet you where you're at, and so I have some clients. You know, once we get that process, they want, you know, we have a monthly meeting. After that I have other ones that feel a little bit more comfortable, and then maybe every other month, but at bare minimum, once we've gotten through all that, I want to meet with you at least bare minimum once a quarter.
Speaker 1:Personally, because I feel as though, like there's certain things, especially at the age that we're at I work with, you know, basically millennials, or elder millennials, and so a lot of things change on a regular basis. You know, if you think about you know your life. Five years ago, like five years ago, we didn't have kids, so now we have two kids. A lot of things have changed job changes. So I really think that you, I really think that an advisor should ask the clients what do you need? Because I am here to help you, not you necessarily just fitting into one standard mold how I want to do things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've also had to segue. We've had friends in the last couple of years. You know who will pick Brandon's brain and he'll say well, did you talk to your advisor about that? Oh well, I haven't talked to him. Well, we know just from our interactions. Your salary went up significantly and you now haven't done anything to your life insurance, you know, to boost that as well. You went from zero kids to two kids, or two kids to three kids. Right, you went from renting to, you know, being a homeowner. Those are big life events that your financial advisor needs to know about, because it likely will make a change to your planning.
Speaker 1:It's a two-way street. The advisor obviously should be reaching out to his client at some point in time, but then it's also up to you, when you have these life changes, to especially reach out to them and let them know.
Speaker 2:I would say it's a red flag If you're the only one reaching out to your advisor and your advisor is never checking in with you. I would not think that that's good. I agree that's a great question, all right. So myth number two I'm young and single, so I don't need life insurance. Darren's laughing. I love that. He's like laughing.
Speaker 1:I feel, as though, that you know the black community. We have a strained relationship when it comes to more specific life insurance, and it comes from a place of validity, because there was a time period where, you know, black people were getting life insurance policies and then they were not. The company simply were choosing not to pay them out when the individual passed away. So it comes from a place of reality, but I can assure you that things have changed, so we need to get over that. You know, listening to our grandparents or you know talk about insurance, because things have changed. It's a completely different game and the reality is that, when it comes to life insurance, the younger you are, the more healthy you are, the less expensive it's going to be. Now I would say, from a mindset standpoint, that some people are, like you know, I'm single. Like you know, I don't have any real necessary needs for that.
Speaker 2:I don't have kids. I don't have kids, I don't have a house. What do I need life insurance for?
Speaker 1:But also there's a planning aspect. Do you plan on owning a house one day? Do you plan on having kids? The idea is that if you have any inclination that these things are going to occur in your life, go ahead and get a policy when you know it's going to be the least expensive and that you are the healthiest to be insured to get one, because a big part of getting a life insurance policy is are you insurable from a health standpoint?
Speaker 1:So there are a lot of things that can happen to you that are one maybe going to increase the amount that you would pay for life insurance and you'd be surprised that some of the things like you know if you have ADHD, you know if you see a therapist these things come up in the underwriting process and it could increase the price or possibly even make you uninsurable. So if you, for example, we've had parents of ours that have had bouts of cancer at a young age and they're in remission and they're healthy now but they're currently uninsurable. So I always say sooner the better, because you know you can put it in place, but then also not to get too much into the weeds Life insurance is. We normally think about it as something that you use if you die. If you don't use it, if you don't die, then you don't use it, and that's a misconception often, because the life insurance policies there's various kinds that can be used in other financial ways.
Speaker 2:And same thing for children, right? Like we have policies on our children they're three and a half and five, obviously, it's not so that it pays out should something tragic happen, it's so that they are insurable later in life, should something happen.
Speaker 1:So I have small whole life policies on each of our children and what a feature of that policy is is that it allows them to apply for more life insurance up to a certain amount once they're adults, without having to go through the medical underwriting part. So let's just say hypothetically, you know, god forbid something happened where they became uninsurable, where normally in that scenario they wouldn't be able to get another life insurance policy With the current policy they have. It has a feature on it that will still allow them to get the life insurance. So we have ensured their insurability in the future.
Speaker 2:And we have friends. Think about your network, think about your friends, think about your family. I think we all have stories where somebody was diagnosed with something that came out of nowhere. We have a dear friend of ours that has an MS diagnosis that she got in her early 20s. That's very rare, right. We have friends that have had cancer. We have friends that have had benign tumors that literally came out of nowhere, that needed to then be removed and even though they're totally fine, that's now a major surgery that they've had on their record and again, when he does underwriting for these insurance policies, that is going to come up. So I mean, there's just so much right. Our bodies are so complex, things can happen at any stage, and ensuring the insurability and paying a lesser premium is really, really important.
Speaker 1:I can make it very simple. So I have no problem saying we have a $50,000 whole life policy on each of our children, but the color rider on it allows them to get up to 400,000 in the future and we pay. I pay less than $25 a month for each one of those policies. Yeah, I mean, that's very affordable in my, in my opinion, very affordable for what it, what it protects and allows them once they get older get older.
Speaker 3:Okay, Makes sense. So we had a question come in. Myra asked. She says that she has universal index life for her two children. Is it okay to get an additional policy for each of them? They're aged nine and five right now.
Speaker 1:So I would have to look at the specifics of your policy to, you know, really provide actual advice.
Speaker 1:And so I just want to clarify that this is not advice, that I'm going to get sued, but I personally am not a big fan of universal index life. Reason being is that often those policies is a mixture of investing and also life insurance, and I don't like mixing the two, except for in very specific situations. Personally, I'm not saying that you should get rid of your policy or that you're wrong or whatever. I'm just saying that's just my personal opinion on it. And the amount of life insurance that you're able to get on your child is also in proportion to how much you have in yourself, so you have to make sure that. So if you want to increase a certain amount, you have to make sure that you have a certain amount of life insurance as well. So if you, you know, got your policy through a life insurance agent or a financial advisor, I would honestly recommend sitting down with them and really having that conversation, because they know the more they know the specifics of your you know your situation, but it's definitely worth exploring.
Speaker 2:But kudos for having insurance for your children Correct. Yes. Right Silver lining. You made a step in the right direction right.
Speaker 1:I just find that sometimes the universe, a lot of times, unfortunately, life insurance agents don't fully understand the policies. In addition to, it's a more complicated policy and it makes it really hard for individuals to understand it because sometimes they think they're paying a certain premium in addition to. If the investment side of the policy is not performing the way it's supposed to, then the policy itself can quote unquote implode in the future.
Speaker 2:Because there's no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to investing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so that's why I am kind of iffy about those.
Speaker 2:Good question, all right, I want to be mindful of time, so we're going to keep it moving. If y'all have questions, keep calling them out. Myth number three investing is complicated.
Speaker 1:So I think, as somebody who works in the financial services industry, I think one of the biggest things that they wanted people to think is that you 100% need us and there's no way that you can ever understand all the details of what we do, and that's just false.
Speaker 2:If you listen to right, Ramit Sethi right now is huge. He's got his Netflix show. Tori Dunlap is all over the internet. They are like you do not need to pay a financial advisor, Don't pay a financial advisor, Don't pay them a set fee, Don't pay them a set percentage. Right, you will hear those, those things said. But with that, what do you say to that?
Speaker 1:Well, what I say is that everyone's different. So therefore, you know um most of the time, you're looking to pay a professional to help free up your time to do something else. So, for example, I always say to individuals that there's nothing that I know that if you did, if you were to do this for a living, that you couldn't figure out yourself. It doesn't matter that we all have the same 24 hours in the day and you need to choose how this is best allocated, best allocated. So investing itself, in all honesty, the best investing is very basic and boring.
Speaker 2:Not sexy.
Speaker 1:Not sexy at all. All the stuff that you hear on the news about day trading and cryptocurrency and all that other stuff. Yeah, it's more fun to talk about those things, but that's not real investing, to be honest with you, that's not like. The aspect of it is what works, and it can be very simple as far as how you set things up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to stand the test of time, right? You're not putting your money in the market to then pull it out two weeks later because you decided you wanted to buy something. That's not what proper investing should look like, and so if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it sounds really, you know, sexy and fun and exciting, it's probably not going to stand the test of time.
Speaker 1:Also investing, doesn't a lot of people think that investing is going to turn them into a multimillionaire overnight?
Speaker 2:And that would be really nice Individuals that are multimillionaires.
Speaker 1:their money mainly came from the career or business they started, whatever that may be, and then they also invest that money. But that overnight success, or even you know, two, three years success, is not going to invest it, and so I like to, you know, dispel that myth, and also, in the sense that you want to invest your way to wealth overnight, it's a long-term play.
Speaker 2:But you can't invest your way to wealth versus saving your way to wealth.
Speaker 1:You cannot save your way to wealth. You invest your way to wealth over a long period of time, not overnight.
Speaker 2:Right, but also, you know, like you said, we all have the same 24 hours in the day it also comes down to. Is this something you want to immerse yourself in? Is this something where you want to learn the ins and outs of all of the different vehicles that you could use for life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance? You know what's an IRA, a Roth IRA, a solo 401k?
Speaker 1:The hardest part is that a lot of people by themselves look at all the different aspects of their finances as individual silos, when in reality you need to take a much broader view because all of them interconnect. And you know I have, you know I have clients that are servants and all different types of doctors, and you know all different types of professions that are extremely intelligent people and they don't know these certain things. I always say to them I was like it's because we're not taught it, and then also, like I can never be a surgeon, like no, I'm good, thank you.
Speaker 2:That is not where I would excel. He's good at a lot of things. You don't want him to be your surgeon. Yeah. Okay, did we have another question, darren, or can we keep going?
Speaker 3:No, you can keep going.
Speaker 2:Okay, Awesome. So a couple of things from investing right. What are your key takeaways?
Speaker 1:First, you need to determine what your actual goal is. Most people I hear always say I don't want to invest. Well, why? What is the purpose? What are you trying to achieve?
Speaker 1:Because, as I said before, I don't think anyone's ultimate goal is to just simply grow a large sum of money. What is that money going to do for you? How is it going to allow you to live the life that you want to live? So you really need to determine what your goal is initially, because sometimes the goal that you're looking to achieve is not going to be achieved via investing. So if some people are like, oh, I want to buy a house, yeah, if you want to buy a house, that's you don't invest the money to try to buy a house, right? I'm assuming that most people that want to buy a house probably want to buy it within a five-year time period, and that's probably pushing it further out when someone says I want to buy a house 12 to 18 months, so like one of my rules is that, like if you are going to need the money that you are investing in five years or less, do not invest it.
Speaker 1:If you're going to invest, it needs to be longer than a five-year period to put in the market. And the reason being is that when you're investing, one of the biggest benefits to you is time. The longer period you have, the much higher probability of you having success as far as the growth in your money is going to be.
Speaker 2:Can we pause for a second Because I think it's really important and I've learned this over the years. Right, so many people are thinking I have to invest $500 a month, $1,000 a month, $5,000 a month for it to mean anything and really your benefit is again, like Brandon said the time, right, if you were like okay, I'm going to be disciplined, I'm going to skip the Starbucks. You know, we all know, skipping the Starbucks is not going to make you a millionaire, right? The lattes are not killing your budget.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's not the case. Take the $20 and put it in the market and do that consistently as early as you can. Take the $50, take the $25, take the $12. It doesn't have to be hundreds or thousands of dollars to see the investment grow over time. I think that was my biggest misconception when I first started learning about investing is I thought I needed and I came from an education background. We all know teachers don't make any money right so I was like I don't have any money left. The money that I did have left, I was buying snacks for my kids. There was nothing left, but the little bit adds up over time and so remove that mindset of I need hundreds, I need thousands of dollars in order to invest properly, when really the best time to start is now with what you have. And if that's $5 a month that you have left over and you can freely put that somewhere, put it in a high yield savings account or invest it.
Speaker 1:Also, the thing is, too, is that you're building in the actual practice of investing. So, whether or not that's $25, $50 a month and you seem like, oh, that's not a lot, I'm not going to, I'm going to wait until I can do more, no, getting in the habit of doing, you know, having good financial habits is the biggest part, and that is one of the hardest things to actually teach someone. So when I sit down with someone and they already have these good habits of saving in place, I'm like telling them you're going to make my life so much easier. Because the reality is that majority of people, regardless of what their income is, live paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 1:I have sat down with people that make, you know, $40,000 a year to people that make over $500,000 a year, and some of them are living paycheck to paycheck. So just because you make more money, people always think in their mind that, oh, I'll have better saving habits or investing habits when I start to make more money. No, you're just going to continue spending more money because you're making more money. So the earlier you're able to build in those good habits, when you start to make more money, then you are going to make those right financial decisions. It's all about the habits.
Speaker 2:I think, overall too, the people who make less budget better can save more than the people that have more access. Right? Because, yeah, the more you have, typically, the more you spend, correct, yeah?
Speaker 1:And, you know, kind of leading to the next one. We've already kind of talked about this One is determining your time horizon. As we said before, time is your biggest factor when it comes to investing. The longer time horizon that you have until you need to access the money that you're investing, the more aggressive you can usually tend to be. The reason being is that with more time, you have a lot more chances to deal with the ebbs and flows of the market to ensure that you are positive when it does come time for you to actually get the money out.
Speaker 2:And also just stop looking at your investment accounts. You don't need to look at them every day Like, just stop, Cause you'll. You'll get anxious and you'll be like, oh my gosh, the market's down. I lost a ton of money Remember the money is in there for a long time.
Speaker 2:You're not going to touch that money for another 10, 20, 30 years. You don't need to panic about it, you, you don't need to panic about it. You don't need to make rash decisions because you lost $10,000, $20,000. We've all lost a ton of money lately. Don't look at it, don't lose sleep over it.
Speaker 1:You're not touching that money right now. Yeah, the easiest way I can think about it is with your 401k plan, the reason being that a 401k plan has parameters built into it until you can actually access money without incurring a type of penalty. So with a 401k plan, normally you can't access that money until you're 59 and a half years old, or else you'll be assessed a 10% penalty. So if you're like I'm 40, it's another 19 years before I'm going to be able to access that money. Me looking at it today, tomorrow, next month, and it's down and worrying. You're missing the point. Like Nina said, you need to see the forest, not the tree. You know I'm not going to access this for another 19 years. I'm going to see ups and downs.
Speaker 1:The main thing is that you want to make sure that you are focusing on the act of contributing to it. And then also, there is an aspect of what's called asset allocation, and what that means is how aggressive you are or how conservative you are within a portfolio, and you have the ability to be more aggressive the younger you are, normally because you have more time on your hands. Now, as you get closer and closer to that time period of when you're going to be accessing the money. You do want to go from being more aggressive to a little bit more conservative, because now you have less time before you're going to access the money and you do want to, you know, build, you do want to protect that money, that growth that you have.
Speaker 2:You see, why we have a podcast, because you can't put that on like a blurb on social media. Because he has a lot to say. Okay, Okay, we're going to keep going. I'm the one that manages the time. All right, Okay, very briefly, because I feel like this is a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Crypto like this is a rabbit hole. Yeah, crypto and nfts here.
Speaker 1:Here's my statement if you don't have an emergency fund set up, you don't need to be thinking about crypto and nfts correct, it's in order to things and I think people want to hop into crypto entities once again because it's fun, sexy thing you don't have a six to 12 month emergency fund saved up if you're not contributing to, you know, your 401k plan. It's best, if you're living paycheck to your 401k plan, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck. Cryptos and NFTs is not something you need to be focused on Very risky.
Speaker 1:Now, with that being said, if you have all those other things taken care of, I personally and once again, this is not advice to you guys as individuals to do this I personally think that it does have a place in a portfolio. You know, the kind of industry standard is that no more than 5% of your portfolio should be allocated to cryptos or NFTs, because it's what's called a speculative investment, which means that it has a high probability of going up, but also has a high probability of going to zero. We just don't know, but mathematically, if only 5% of your portfolio are less allocated towards these, if they take off and do really well, it can obviously exponentially grow your account, but if it shoots to zero and you lose everything, it should not derail what you actually want to be able to do, because you still have 95% of your portfolio. However, you do need to understand what it is you're investing in. I'm like as, once again, the education aspect is big to me you should not be investing in anything that you do not understand whatsoever, and majority of people do not understand cryptocurrency or whatever.
Speaker 1:The first thing I would say to people is that the word currency, cryptocurrency, is a misnomer. It's crypto assets, because currency is something that is stable. That is one of the key definitions of a currency. It doesn't fluctuate on a second-second, minute-to-minute, day-to-day basis, so it really is not a currency. It's more of an asset. But then you also need to understand the underlying technology of cryptocurrency. What is its use case basis? You know what is blockchain technology. Do you understand that? Do you understand even what an NFT is? You know what NFT stands for? To begin with, non-fungible token. What does that mean? So really make sure that you understand these basics before you even start to dive into it, which, unfortunately, a lot of people don't. So those things I always say to people is like if you're hopping in an Uber and your Uber driver's trying to tell you about some cryptocurrency, maybe you know it's not the power of cryptocurrency when everyone and their mom is talking about it. So really have an understanding of what you're getting into.
Speaker 3:So you're saying don't just go out and start sugar daddy coin tomorrow and time it.
Speaker 1:I personally think that there is going to be some form of cryptocurrency in the future, especially with the blockchain technology. If you really think about it, we've kind of been in digital currency age anyways. You know how many of us actually go somewhere and pay cash, so you really are some type of digital form. Now, what that's going to look like as far as what is the leading point or what are you going to use on a regular basis, I have no idea. Your guess isn't as good as mine, but you know, as I said before, it's just making sure that you understand something before you start throwing money into it, and then also making sure that you have all your other areas of your finances secure before you start throwing money into something where you can potentially just go to zero.
Speaker 3:I read something interesting yesterday or Tuesday and it talked about the fact that millennial millionaires right, so this is this was people who were younger, millennial millionaires, so people who were in their late th 30s and younger and have a net worth somewhere between a million and a half and three and a half million dollars.
Speaker 3:And it was interesting that, because these people had seen the economic downturn in 2007, 2008, when they were young, and they saw what happened in the market then and they see what happened in the market in 2022, that they have become somewhat disenfranchised with stock market investing and many of them are looking for alternative forms of investment and somewhere along the lines of 25% of their assets are invested outside of the stock market. Right, you know, maybe a significant portion of that is in crypto, some might be in real estate, etc. Versus, if you look at older investors, somewhere in the range of 67% of their assets are invested in the stock market. So I thought that that was interesting that younger people were so negatively influenced by the market downturns the severe market downturns we've seen twice in the past let's say, 15 years or so that they become relatively disenfranchised with the stock market. How do you counter that when you're talking to clients, or when you're talking to people who are saying that they're concerned about the risk.
Speaker 1:Well, first I would say if you are concerned about the risk of the stock market I know where you're going and then saying that you're going to put your money in crypto. That doesn't align, I get it, I get it. That doesn't align, I get it, I get it. The risk associated with cryptocurrency is significantly higher than the risk that is associated with the stock market. But then I also take a step back, and this is not the conspiracy theorist in me or anything, but simply saying that there is so much money within the stock market, do you think that they're gonna allow it to fail? Imagine what the world would look like if the stock market just completely crashed and we had I mean, obviously we can't conceptualize because none of us were anywhere being thought of, you know. But you know, back in the 1930s, when you know, black Friday happened and the stock market completely crashed, like they're not going to allow that to happen because they can't in this environment, can't in this environment.
Speaker 1:But I would always, I always say to individuals you know, you need, I can, I can advise you on, you know, based on my expertise of what I think, but ultimately the day, it's your decision. So I would probably say that people who have you know 25% outside of the market. I would say that majority of that's probably real estate, which is perfectly fine because that is something that is, you know hand in hand some aspects of the stock market on how things have been for the long time in regard to growing and storing wealth. But I would be like I want 25% and I'm a millionaire. I want 25% of that in cryptocurrency. I would say that's your choice. I wouldn't recommend it. Mathematically it doesn't make sense personally, no, I agree 100%.
Speaker 3:I saw the article and I said well, you know, if you look at what was in November 21, right, just if you look at Bitcoin itself, bitcoin was somewhere around $67,000, $69,000 a coin, you know then you fast forward to a few months ago. It had dropped as low as $15,000 a coin, right, and now it's somewhere in the high 20s. So I mean, you can't get more volatile than that. So, again, I was a little bit shocked when I read the article, but it's a concern, right, because people become disenfranchised and they want the newest, next greatest thing to invest in that they think is going to make them even more wealthy, and they're taking on more risk than they would if they used traditional forms of wealth for them.
Speaker 1:And, as I said before, most people don't want to focus on the boring stuff, even though the boring stuff works. Yeah, they prefer to like, they prefer to have a complicated portfolio. It's more fun to tell your friends oh, my portfolio of cryptocurrency and this, and I have these stocks. It's much more fun to talk about complicated stuff because that's what people feel. It makes them sound more interesting, more intelligent, more in reality. Putting your money in an index ETF that mirrors the S&P 500 is what majority people should be doing. Right, it's very simple, it's very basic, it's not going to talk about, but it works.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm going to keep going. Like I said, this is you can go into the rabbit hole. Darren, I know you mentioned wanting to close out as talking about finances as a couple. Obviously, that's what the whole podcast is about, and so I think we would end on. If you are in a partnership of any kind, whether you're, you know, dating married, have been married for years, whatever that looks like for you, it always comes down to communication. Brandon and I, you know, communicated early in our dating relationship. This year is 10 years together for us and he knew right from the very beginning I had $100,000 in student loans. He had like $2,000 in student loans. That was a big thing that we needed to talk about. I was very firm on. We will not have combined finances. You will not be an authorized user on my cards. I will not be asking you to co-sign on anything. I very strongly and that's something that, like, we get a lot of messages about, but I just want to keep my finances separate in that way.
Speaker 1:When you say separate, it doesn't mean that we don't have access. It's not secretive.
Speaker 2:It's not secretive, it's separate. I know what he has. He knows what I have. We do have savings together.
Speaker 2:Again, we talk about this all the time and did that very early on. He's a product of divorce. I'm a product of divorce. We saw what that did for our families. I saw what that did for my mother. She stayed home most of my life and my dad was, you know, the breadwinner, but she handled the finances. And then when they got divorced in my late teens, in my late twenties, actually it was bad. It just it wasn't pretty.
Speaker 2:If you're a product of divorce, you know what that looks like, and so we just talked about that very early on and I set the expectations and my comfort level and so it was never a secret. And so think about all the things that you talk about. You know, when you're getting into a new relationship, when you're in an established relationship, when you're getting married, that's not the first time that your partner should hear about your credit card debt or that your credit score is X or that your student loans are in, you know, or forbearance or collections, right Like you have to talk about those things, because not talking about them unfortunately doesn't make them go away. So talk about it early, talk about it often, talk about it honestly. I think it is the overarching theme of if you're in a relationship of any kind that is our big recommendation.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, there's no one way to handle finances within a relationship. The key is simply have the communication of what you guys want to do and make sure that you're in agreement with each other on how to proceed that's it because people like said people ask me that should we have joint accounts?
Speaker 1:we have separate accounts. I'm like it doesn't matter, as long as you've talked about it, you are both in agreement on how you're going to proceed forward, as before. You know, personal finances is personal in the sense of how you handle it. Now I do believe that we should start talking about finances more, but in regards to your specific situation, how you decide to handle it within your relationship, whatever works best for you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then it's ongoing, right. Just because you've had the conversation once or twice, or before you got married and now you're married, things change. Situations change, salaries change, needs change. You know, did you not have children? Now you have children. You were renting. Now you're owning. You know your goals have changed now that you're in this partnership. You have to continuously talk about it. One of the things that we've talked about is maybe having a monthly money meeting right, Like, make it like a date night. You don't want it to be something that you're dreading. You want it to be something that you're excited about. You've set your goals, You've written them down, You've communicated them, You've said them out loud. Okay, what are you doing now to get to those goals together and how are you tracking right? Grab some wine, make it fun and make it something positive that you guys are doing together, because ultimately, you're working towards that common goal. Whether you have joint accounts or not. It needs to be an ongoing conversation to make sure that you're still aligned and that you're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1:I always tell people and my clients there obviously is an aspect of a financial plan, but the more important part is to focus on the concept of financial planning, which is constant.
Speaker 2:It's a verb. Correct. Yeah, you're so smart. Thank you, that's all we have, darren.
Speaker 3:Jessica Brandon. Thank you both so much. This has been fun. I love you know the different aspects that you've talked about. You know topics that are front and center for a lot of people.
Speaker 3:There are so many people who are concerned about insurance, right, and trying to think about whether or not they have enough insurance, or when's the right time to buy insurance or what types of policies to buy. There are people who are concerned about investing in the market and getting in at the right time, or how much should they be investing, and thinking about their time horizon. And, obviously, cryptocurrency has been a hot topic for several years now, right, probably going back to about 2015, 2016, when a lot of the conversations started becoming more mainstream, and so I think that the things that you all hit on today are a lot of topics that are front and center for many, many people in the audience. So thank you all for sharing, and hopefully you get a host of new listeners to your podcast on a regular basis and hopefully they'll reach out and ask you questions. I know we didn't get a chance to go deep into Q&A today, but hopefully people will join your podcast, reach out and ask questions for things that they want to explore more.
Speaker 1:The thing with our podcast, too, is that we do have a link on there to what we call. It's called SpeakPipe, and what it allows you to do is actually record a question and we listen to those and we go ahead and answer them actually on podcasts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so please subscribe once you've listened Great and review. It means a lot to us. Slide in our DMs, ask us questions. Obviously, I work for Cisco. You can slide into my WebEx too. It's fine. I Webex too, it's fine. I'll just relay it to Brandon. But we love the conversation and we really are just here to help, inform and educate.
Speaker 1:Also, too, there is no such thing as a quote unquote stupid question when it comes to your finances. I'm a very sarcastic person in my normal life, but when it comes to finances, always ask the question that, even if in your mind you think it's a stupid question, it might be a question. It's a question needs to be answered and you think it's a stupid question, it might be a question. It's a question that needs to be answered. So don't be scared or afraid or came to ask a question, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, agreed right. Everything is worth talking about when it comes to finances, because you just don't know what. You're not asking. That's going to negatively impact you because you didn't get the answer when you could have. So again, thank you both. We really really appreciate your time today. We appreciate you sharing and welcome to the financial well-being community. You're part of CBP's financial well-being family now, so this is great.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we're so glad to be part of it. Thanks everyone, don't forget Benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid Until next time. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We are so glad to have you as part of our Sugar Daddy community. If you learned something today, please remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with your friends, family and extended network. Don't forget to connect with us on social media at the sugar daddy podcast. You can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our past the sugar segments at the sugar daddy podcast at gmailcom or leave us a voicemail through our Instagram.
Speaker 1:Our content is intended to be used, and must be used, for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based upon your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a licensed professional in connection with, or independently research and verify any information you find in our podcast and wish to rely upon, whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise.