Winning in Retirement

A Winning Financial Mindset - What if You Don't

• Akers Financial Group

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Brian Akers and Alex Monk, both Certified Financial Planners, discuss the importance of a winning financial mindset on their show "Winning in Retirement." They emphasize the consequences of neglecting financial responsibilities, such as not signing up for a 401(k) or not balancing a checkbook. They highlight the value of investing in oneself, whether through education or career advancement, and stress the importance of saving early and consistently. They also discuss the role of financial advisors in guiding clients through financial planning, emphasizing the need for proactive decision-making and careful investment strategies to ensure a secure financial future.

Unknown:

The following is a pre recorded show, welcome to winning in retirement with your host, Brian AKERS, Certified Financial Planner, professional and founder of AKERS Financial Group now helping you win in your retirement. Here's Brian AKERS, welcome to winning

BRIAN AKERS:

in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS from AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today. Is Alex monk, we are both certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS Financial Group, and we put on their show winning in retirement. Good morning. Alex monk, how are you doing today? Brian AKERS, my man, how are you I'm doing well, I enjoy doing the radio show with you. It's gonna be a lot of fun today, but we're talking serious. We built a show today that's going to be about a winning financial mindset. And the main comment that I have to say is that, have you ever thought about what if I don't? What if I don't? I just don't do it. I just don't do things that I need to do. I just don't do it. And the financial planners response to what if I just don't, that's what our show is gonna be about. So you're talking

Alex Monk:

about the under the rug. Move under the rug. Sweep it under the rug, and forget about it, or I'm not going to do that. Put it in another room.

BRIAN AKERS:

I didn't sign up for benefits. I didn't log on to my 401 K. I didn't finish college. I didn't want to do the trade school to get to move up at my job. I didn't want to buy that house. I didn't want to take I got my business so focused, but I haven't balanced

Alex Monk:

my checkbook. You see me squirming right now all these things you're saying, cause

BRIAN AKERS:

this applies every one of us absolutely. And the problem is, the priority is to have a winning financial mindset, where when it comes to your top of mind. We then need to understand, does it matter? And can we get it done right? And then

Alex Monk:

knowing, like, hey, all these 100 things I have to do, I just started this job, which are the five that I absolutely must do? Can you

BRIAN AKERS:

imagine this? You have a financial coach, a financial advisor, he's got a new job. And then they say, Hey, do these things. And then you come to their office, you go online together, and they click the buttons for you, and you lean back in your chair and like, oh, it's taken care of. That's a simple thing well, and for me, that's what I prefer.

Alex Monk:

Like, I don't I want to know that you did it and you did it right, and that your beneficiaries are correct, because it may not worry you, but it

BRIAN AKERS:

worries me. Yeah, we want it all right, no matter where you are in your life. We've seen this with our largest clients, honestly, all the time on larger clients. Now the word larger, I would say relative terms, depends on your relatives. Well, let me sorry. I know today's gonna be a lot of bad jokes. We don't really mean it. It's just gonna come naturally. What would be

Alex Monk:

a lot of money that you would want to give to the wrong person. So for me, I'd say

BRIAN AKERS:

anything or anything, right? No, yeah. But if it's 2 million, 5,000,010 $15 million and things aren't set up because I'm too busy. I'm doing I'm too successful doing what I'm doing, I haven't had time to make it all right? That's exactly why we want to have a talk show, a podcast, a combination winning in retirement, a winning financial mindset, where you take the concept, what if I don't and you think about what if I don't do it. Where is that going to take me in my life? Is it going to lead me to being fully successful? And what do I need to do right now to make it better, to make sure I can relax and do my do my other things,

Alex Monk:

and like so much of what I do, and I know you do the same thing, but it's explain to people how to invest in themselves. I'm here to help you. That's your

BRIAN AKERS:

very first big asset. Is to have the invest in yourself. That invest in yourself will trigger income and drive it'll give you the things that you would enjoy in life. Purpose, purpose. Well, it's like a concept of, well, I got a job that pays, like, in my case, just a simple thing as a teenager, had a job that paid, let's call it $6

Alex Monk:

an hour. Could we just say 10 so that we don't date six? Date me. It's fine.

BRIAN AKERS:

Date me and time of six, $6 an hour, and then I quit that job to start a $3.15 cent an hour job, yeah, and I moved from construction during teenage to financial planning as a 19 year old at the lowest rung to learn I had to take a cut it in half. That sounds like

Alex Monk:

how I got here. It was. You were the lowest offer I had at the time, and you said, I'm

BRIAN AKERS:

gonna teach you this business, and I invest in you, you're

Alex Monk:

gonna invest in me. And I was like, that sounds kind of cool, but I had

BRIAN AKERS:

to spend all that money, and that's why I couldn't pay you all that you're worth, and then you've earned it over time. So I mean, good, 14 years

Alex Monk:

it was like, It's a scary thing to go backwards, but sometimes you have to go do those things in order to get where you want, and it takes time.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, let's just talk about normal 20s. Even their 20s, they have discretionary income. That discretionary income is like a hole in your pocket. It burns, it goes, it's gone. It's a two seater car. It's two seater car. It's fuel every day in the large pickup truck. It's, you know, it's money that just goes out. It's the boat on the weekend that's 1200 bucks. It just money that's gone. And then you're sitting at 30 and you're like, I don't have any money. I didn't have any money. And then we say, hey, you need to change jobs inside your career, because that career right now might be replaced by AI. You might lose your job, like a lot of IT people are doing at the moment. And what are you gonna do next? Well, are you prepared for all that? Do you have emergency fund? Do you have your reasonable budget? Can you say, within your means? Do you have money set aside so you can maybe switch jobs with a little lower pay to invest in yourself to get where you really want to go, which is a job you love, pays you what you should get paid, and you enjoy each and every moment during the work career? Yeah?

Alex Monk:

And, like, that's really, like, the ideal scenario. And if you can find something that you love to do, I would that's the best investment ever, right? Because, like, you got to do something, yeah?

BRIAN AKERS:

So general thing is this, in financial planning, you cannot say, Oh, I'm not gonna do anything, because my job's got me the government's got me there. I'm handled. I don't need to worry about any of my own finances. And you're saying the word wrong. Why?

Alex Monk:

Why is that? Alex won. I have not seen a company care about an employee the way that the employees care about their company. I mean, you've seen it. People have been there for 3040, years, and they're staying an extra year, six months at the end of their career to try to transition, and the company could care less. They're helping

BRIAN AKERS:

the next employee know everything, and

Alex Monk:

they're working certain text message, you know, the whole thing. And they're, they're loyal and like, that's what made them a good saver, right? Because they stuck to things, but the company didn't care.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Well, the company, if you think about companies over the last 40 years, they've gone from pension based that was part of your package to where the pensions went away. We do contributions. The contributions is a piece. They set up a plan where you can save out of your own pay and then invest, and you pick the investments, and then, based on fiduciary requirements, they give you some choices that are less risk than you should take, and so your money doesn't grow as fast unless you address the choices inside of a plan.

Alex Monk:

And some of the plans out there, the choices are terrible. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, but how would you know that, if it's the only thing you see and like, figuring out where the

BRIAN AKERS:

right I was, I had, like, a 37 year old person came in and make a lot of money, just he never, kind of never, signed up for the four, 1k plan, like six, seven years of matching, just missed well.

Alex Monk:

And the other part of that, that we're not talking about is that lifestyle that you're used to now that you're not putting 10, 15% away, you're spending it.

BRIAN AKERS:

And now you're used to that, right? Because the first job, you end up spending it all. And we were going to tell you a first job save first pay yourself, first throw to the future. Only you care enough about that person in the future, which is you, right?

Alex Monk:

And you should want that to be like, you know, your future self, like you have the most control over that. So that's the

BRIAN AKERS:

biggest part. Yeah. So what happens is this, is that you got to think about whatever's happening, whatever decisions you're putting off. And you're thinking, what if I don't do that? What if I, what if I don't buy that fancy car? Well, that's probably a good thing, and buy a more conservative car and save the difference, because the fancy card makes your budget tight. Or you go shopping and you buy everything you want, and all sudden you got this bill that's for the next two years, and you're tight. You can't there's no ability to save, right? And then now your

Alex Monk:

stuff's old and you're still paying for it. And, you know, your triggers are completely different.

BRIAN AKERS:

I don't like having debt after a vacation because it's not as motivating as saving before the vacations. Like, yeah, I'm saving money to go, but when you get back, there's a big debt sitting there, and I go, I gotta pay that. You know, that was fun two years ago. I can't go again. And that kind of mindset, right? Yeah, no, no. Because, like

Alex Monk:

for me, when I get back from vacation, I want to plan the next one. You want to have the day money,

BRIAN AKERS:

and you got the deposit, and you got to do all these things. You got to be proactive, not reactive. You have to look for opportunity. You got to say, Where am I at in life, and what can I change today to make it better? Even the most successful people we've ever met are sometimes focused on one thing, and that helps them be successful. But we can lose a lot of power of letting our money work for you. We can lose opportunity. We can lose protections that we need if we don't have a moment of time where you review it all and really think about it, and

Alex Monk:

the what if you don't like that is a decision you are actively deciding to not let your money grow for you. Like you're telling yourself that I'm not worried about future me. Like, that's a decision you are making, and to know that, like, once you tell someone that they usually respond right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And like, if you don't, like, if so you totally don't. Social Security has some basic pay now. Social Security is is geared towards those in that make lower to get more of their pay back. So if you're in like a $30,000 pay range, you're going to probably be real 80% of that off of Social Security when you retire. Lower, but social security is telling us that they're going to have to lower. And they don't say for just a few people, they say for everybody, and that's in 2034 if you don't have savings, and you only have whatever the government gives you, you haven't, haven't done the savings I was getting ready save, haven't bothered to save. The problem is that sometimes we speed through life, and you think about it, yeah, should, and you don't even realize

Alex Monk:

you're not doing or you don't know how, like, how do I need to start like, I'm so overwhelmed, like, by all these things, and a lot of people get bogged down by money. Like, for us, this is just what we do every day. So being able to tell them, Hey, I've seen your scenario, you can relax. Here's how it usually plays out. Now that we're relaxed, let's make some decisions.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, some especially, do it yourselfers will just put 100% gas in their portfolio, like the and what's the hottest thing, and they'll be day trading, whatever. Now sometimes that works extremely well for a while, if they're very good at it, a lot of people are not very good at it, and the institutional people make money off of that side, and they don't reach all their goals because they took too much risk. And so the idea is balancing having good portfolios, good good financial planning, to build what you should do so that if you don't, your money still

Alex Monk:

does right, and you don't want to have a lot of work associated with it, unless that's your choice, right? Like, I see a lot of people that get way too involved,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, and it's not simple, where you just buy one fun and forget the Forget it. There's so many choices at your work benefits, at what you could save, Roth wise or not. Roth wise people, most people we meet with the first time don't have their estate plan in line at life insurance, not not what they should have. It's it is a standard answer that they're just not as prepared as it should be, and that's no matter what age, what net worth level,

Alex Monk:

and even if we come in and we say, Hey, you did a fantastic job, wouldn't that be worth your time?

BRIAN AKERS:

I love saying that. I've had some incredible people that had everything done, but they just had some worries. I agreed with them. Yeah, there's a few more things to do, and that's fun. They understood what I was saying now at AKERS Financial Group, we have designed the company to take care of you where you are and take you where you need to be. We're local. We're independent. We don't report to a big company on Wall Street. We report to you. We do have offices in Lutherville and fire clients all around the mid Atlantic region, all around the country and even a few around the world. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement, just give us a call and schedule your free meeting with one of our team of advisors by calling 830 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in person meeting. Go to AKERS financial group.com or call 833-946-7384 to start planning for your retirement. Now, should you really take that opportunity right now? We'll explain in a moment.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre recorded Show. Welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833, win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's Brian

BRIAN AKERS:

AKERS, welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS, and we do welcome back to our second quarter of the show. With me today is Alex monk, Certified Financial Planner practitioner, and been with me working for 14 years now. That's pretty good. We appreciate your work with the clients, and you taking care of them. Today's show is something that matters a lot to us, and that's the financial mindset we want you to have, a winning financial mindset. The talk about what if I don't is what we're going to begin with, and then what we're going to ask you to say is, what if I do, and what can I do? What should I do? And my answer is, got to start right

Alex Monk:

well, and like a lot of things that you may be thinking of that are impossible for you are actually not. Oh yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

we can have a couple shows on what clients have achieved over time.

Alex Monk:

I mean, yesterday I had a conversation with a couple and we've been talking for about a year about buying their second house in Florida. And the wife is just not used to this at all, and just we can't do that. We can't do that. And now she's like, yesterday, because it's coming real. Her husband said, he goes, Can you say what you just said to Melissa, again, I haven't seen her smile like that in years. And I was like, This is awesome. Like, all we did was talk about it in different ways to achieve their goals, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And then gave them a doable path to make it actually happen. And then Alex, the best thing is, you got to get down there and knock on their door. Oh, yeah. Well, there and say, Hello.

Alex Monk:

I'm trying to get them to go towards the Gulf Coast,

BRIAN AKERS:

just to because you fly down

Alex Monk:

or something. Keep my area simple,

BRIAN AKERS:

but very true. So, so the idea is this, is that there are opportunities in life that come to you many times you're going to just say, No, I can't do it. But are you prepared for an opportunity? Are you prepared to take that opportunity? It could be as simple as the company you work for. They say, hey, we have a stock plan. You could buy into the company that you're working hard for. And you say, Hey, I love my company. I'm doing this kind of work. It's a great thing. And it's, it's, it's a big deal. So if you think that's a great thing, maybe the company stock at a discount is a good thing to buy, right? When it

Alex Monk:

gives you some skin in the game too. Like, I always like that to get people involved, because you tend to care more about something that you're involved with, or you understand what its end

BRIAN AKERS:

goal is. Yeah, as you progress, you become C suite, you know, executive suite. They end up all giving you stock. And then the idea is, you got to keep some of that. You just can't sell it, and take the cash. You got to keep it to show your loyalty, and you got to build your wealth in that stock. So one idea is, there's opportunities at the work, at your work, beyond retirement planning, to save in other ways that they're actually saying, hey, invest alongside of us. We'll give you a discount to buy into our own company stock, and that,

Alex Monk:

I mean, they're giving you a discounts, just like your 401, k, if they're giving you a match, you got to go get it.

BRIAN AKERS:

You just think of companies, you know, and people who've had success over their time. Is to is to do that. The other thing would be, is, as they get too much of their portfolio in the company stock, we have to be the one saying, not more than 25% let's down. Let's sell some make sure we balance and rebalance. Build your protection and build your income and your plan so that you can win in retirement the day you call it quits. So opportunity. Opportunities come like going to school, going to college, going to community college, in college, some people have money that's been saved for their future. Some people have to go to college and go in debt for all of it. There's lots of people in the middle trying to get the training they need, right? We're not saying you got to go to college. Trade schools have done incredibly well, but most of our people that have been successful become like a journeyman and where they need four years of school, right? They get done work and go to class. That's not fun, now,

Alex Monk:

but they start to enjoy it when they see the paychecks and they're like, Hey, I'm finally making the money that my high school friends were making now that they went to college.

BRIAN AKERS:

And you're talking about, you're talking about the college kids. I found the college

Alex Monk:

kids and the trades, the tradesmen are finally beating the Oh, the trade school kids are

BRIAN AKERS:

beating them right away, right out of high school. But then they double, and they tripled their income the last five years. And so you got the college kids going, I need to make as much as they are. My friends crushing me because they're making they're doing very well right now. And I believe that's a niche that can't be taken away with technology changes. There are certain

Alex Monk:

things that you have to have a human to do. And you know, if you look around our world, our country. You know, there's things that we've built a long time ago, and we still use them, so we got to probably rebuild some of those things, and that was part

BRIAN AKERS:

of the government program during the Great Depression The 30s. So we're getting ready to go in the next set of 30s, and there's gonna be a lot of work to be done. So opportunity to make yourself more viable, more valuable to whatever job you would love to do is an important investment in yourself. How can we do that? Well, we have to do it. We got to find a way. Sometimes we got to work odd hours, double jobs. We got to have a certain time of life when you can do this, and

Alex Monk:

you have to identify what you're doing it for. Like, that's the biggest thing I don't like when I meet someone like, well, I'm going to school because I like this, yeah? And I'm like, Well, what, what do you mean? Like, you like to paint pictures. I get that, so do I. But I would rather have the decision on where I'm painting, or, you know, all these things that they don't understand the freedom side of it, I guess, yeah, the freedom

BRIAN AKERS:

of financial freedom of financial freedom and financial independence is something that's basically accumulated over time. People love to get wealthy quick, and we believe wealth comes over time through good habits, good saving, letting your money work for you those kind of things. And that's how good planning really, truly works for each and every person's goals. And when I think about things, about opportunity. I think about myself at 23 I worked, was working for someone, and I quit, and I got because they did not have a progress, a progression inside their company for me to be the advisor I wanted to be. And I was 23 married, and I had, like, a five year window before we wanted to start having kids. I didn't need any money. I need because we did we I can reinvest

Alex Monk:

and start, I think your wife worked too, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And then she supplied. I got her the job to be, get us just enough to survive, right? And so that five years was plowing everything I can into of my first company we created. And then over time, it grew and grew. And then 20 some years ago, we started AKERS Financial Group, and lots of great people joined us and great clients. So it's been a long career of taking that initial opportunity where, in my life, I just had to start. I had to and I

Alex Monk:

can only imagine the number of people that were like, Brian, you're nuts. You're crazy. Why would you do that? You can go get a government

BRIAN AKERS:

job, the father in law, Brian, what are you doing? You just got married. You can't quit your job. Can't quit your job. Well, this is my time to quit the job. So a lot of you are driving around or on the or on the tractor golf course or in the workshop listening to show or or wherever you're listening to show a podcast, and you're thinking, Yeah, that's me right now, I have this opportunity in front of. Me, do I take it or not? And the thing is is, Are you financially able to? Do you have a way to pay your bills? Do you have? Are you too far in debt? Because what happens a lot of times is this, you get out, get your first job, and all sudden you want everything. You want everything that other generation above you has. And you just got to have them all. You got to have the car, the house, the furnace.

Alex Monk:

I make this much money, I deserve that car, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And so I'll send you your monthly bills. Become 50, 60% of what you're bringing in, and then you're stuck.

Alex Monk:

And if you haven't started saving you're stuck, yeah, you need that 10% in that paycheck like it's already promised, and it should be promised

BRIAN AKERS:

to yourself. And so the idea on the vice here is, what if I don't what if you don't save your money? Well, there won't be anything. You won't have the ability to do opportunity, to take advantage of it. Exactly. I just had

Alex Monk:

this one client who she's works with, like, in the pharma side, like the drug business, and it's, like, all over the world. So she's, like, calls into Australia, China, you know, all these things going on. And, like, over the last year, we've been trying to build enough cash so that she can go out and try to do it for herself. And you know, this just happened a couple months ago, and she's out there and she's finally realizing, like, hey, there's a lot of market value. Like, people don't realize how talented they really are, and that's some of the hardest things, making that switch from an employee to marketing yourself absolutely so this

BRIAN AKERS:

quarter, we're talking about taking advantage of the opportunity, whatever that might be. It might be through your work, the ability to save and defer more money. It might be buying a company stock. It might be the idea where you can invest a little bit better. Or it could be just what job we have, what kind of training do you need? What are you going to do when it comes to creating the income and the wealth that's going to be there for time? So my thoughts are this, if you have a financial planner, a financial advisor, that's someone to talk, to bounce ideas off of, and really just sort of think about you, a coach for you. That's what a financial advisor does, Certified Financial Planner, they're there building your plan.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and we're gonna ask you a lot of questions, like, I want to know everything. What makes you tick? What makes you think? So that I can try to help you get the most value out of your money, because delivering value to the client is the most important thing for me.

BRIAN AKERS:

I'm sorry, some clients some come in later in life, like we had a successful guy, he just really into investing and saving, but he knows that he won't be around forever, and he wants up someone to come alongside, see how he does stuff, make sure it's right for his wife. In case he's not there, he's at that point of playing, he's a great planner, and he's being proactive by trying to identify a trustworthy group to help his wife, if he's just not around. And that happens all the time. Yeah, it's a normal what age in late 60s, mid 70s?

Alex Monk:

Yes, it's usually the late 60s. Yeah. Or something happens, like a brother Pat, you know, something,

BRIAN AKERS:

something that brings mortality in mind, and then you have to then address so reason I bring that up is that the opportunities, the things, what if I don't so what if he does not pick someone out, does not get his wife right? Was his wife do? She's basically, in this case, she she says, You handle it. You've done extremely well, and it's been really great, 40 some, 50 years of marriage and money. Finances are all met. They're more than enough money, but day one, she wouldn't know how to balance a

Alex Monk:

checkbook, right? And then what does that money do? Nothing good for her.

BRIAN AKERS:

It doesn't when she doesn't know what to do. So the idea of education helping her, or at least having a trustworthy advisor, is very, very important in that kind of case. So when we're talking about opportunities, there's a lot of them in our lives, and taking advantage of them and understanding that you have the ability to take advantage is a is preparing, getting yourself, getting yourself right, and it gives you that

Alex Monk:

knowledge so that when markets drop, you're ready to put money to work like so that you know you can be, you know, the proactiveness that you're talking about so big.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, yeah. Proactive is a very important piece place to be, and sometimes it takes two or three years of work to get someone to where they could be proactive based on what they've decisions they made in the past, and

Alex Monk:

tax issues like, that's my big thing too. We want to make sure everything fits for

BRIAN AKERS:

you, and so as we're building all this, what we're trying to do is to build a retirement plan that's designed for you to be winning in retirement. So we all know, and we try to talk to our clients about that. The best part of retirement is getting your time back, where you decide how to use it. Before retirement, your time is tied up with other commitments, you know, mainly your job. A lot of that goes away in retirement, your time is now consumed by things that you want to do it's so easy to begin winning in retirement. Go to our website at AKERS financial group.com scroll to the schedule meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free consultation with one of our team of advisors. That's AKERS financial group.com or you can call us at 833 when retire. That's 830 3w. I n, r, e, t, I R. E we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in person meeting. Go to AKERS financial group.com, scroll right down, and you can set up the appointment right there. Actually ask for that. Or you can give us a call at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement. Now, who truly cares about your financial future? We'll talk about this in the second half of winning in retirement.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre recorded Show. Welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833, win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's Brian

BRIAN AKERS:

AKERS, welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS from AKERS from AKERS from natural group. I'm president, founder. With me today is financial advisor Alex monk, and we hear talking about our show called a winning financial mindset. We're beginning with a concept called What if I don't. It's a hard thing. It's like, what if I don't, you know, just don't do it. And so we're going to talk about what if you do right? So this quarter that, as we begin the second half, we have the third quarter of the show, and what we were doing is talking about, who truly cares about your financial future,

Alex Monk:

so the government, but if you say, I

BRIAN AKERS:

don't, right, that means you don't care. If you say, I'm not going to do this, I don't,

Alex Monk:

it means you don't care. Yeah, you're making a decision, or you're declaring I don't care about that, but that's

BRIAN AKERS:

a decision. Yeah, it is. I'm too busy to do that website at work. I'm too busy to stop by that office. I'm too busy to go to an advisor just for a free meeting. I'm too busy. I'll get to it.

Alex Monk:

No, I mean, I get it. It's a fear thing, like, I don't like doing going to the doctors. I don't understand what they do, right? So I don't like that. I understand it.

BRIAN AKERS:

Sometimes I believe people think if I don't, it's still gonna work out, okay, I'll have time. And the thing I would tell you is that when you take your amount of life, and you all said, Take 10 years where you didn't save, and you squeeze the amount of money you got to save, it's a lot bigger number. And if you start young, start early, start small, you have a lot more set aside for you, since you can have a very enjoyable retirement because you did the little pieces right and let the money work for you over time, right?

Alex Monk:

And then you get used to it. You build it into your budget. It's not like the shock to the system when you're 15 years into the game, and then you start panicking, you know, all these things, like, let's just take the tiniest steps and move forward a little bit. And it's like, I tell people this all the time, and they're like, Well, Alex, I don't want to save that money right now. I'm like, You're not giving this money to me. Like, this is your money. I like, it's going into your account, your money, your future. I want you to have more in the future.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's a one little thing at your work, you might be able to pick a, say, 10% contribution and then put a 1% escalator so every year it sneaks a little higher. And if you get a little bit of raises, you might not even notice on a bring home pay. But because you set up the automatic ability to save more, and you don't have to make another decision, it's pretty

Alex Monk:

good well, and just like what I've seen, most people, they budget based on what hits their account. So if you're already getting that money that's going to your future away, you don't have that issue.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's one of the fundamental problems in saving is that if you don't save first, you're never going to save last. That means, when the money hits your account, and you i whatever's left over this month I'm going to save now. Now, if you're so frugal, you never spend a dime. That's that's the counter to my thing. But the average way American spends money is we drain that account and there's nothing left. And sometimes they go in the credit card hole just to get through the month because we spend it too fast. But then there is no leftover at the bottom that you can save by saving first and like, like, Alex was saying, making that a bill, and you're throwing it to yourself, it's your money, and setting it aside. You can accomplish a lot of things down the road, and it's not an easy

Alex Monk:

thing to do. Like, how to know that you're saving it in the right place? Like, that's like, Oh, should I be saving it here? Should be saving it there? I don't know I'm going to decide to not do anything, but really, I tell people call, let's ask the question.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, clients, they have their kids come by here. And so we say, All right, we're going to start saving money to a Roth IRA and to a personal account. That personal account is so you have some liquid money whenever you need it. It's almost like a car fund. Hey, if you have a car that's older and you don't have any payments. Hey, keep that car and make a car payment to your investment and let that grow and see if there's some money. And what happens is, by having a car fund where you're saving monthly, and then whenever you need a car, you say how much is in there, you try to buy a car based on that. If that's if you can get that far out, it's not a bad idea. Car payments. What's the average car payment nowadays, you know? Oh, I have no idea, 500 bucks. Oh, I wish. I think it's 800 to 1200 is, if you're buying a car over 50,000 you're in that $1,000 range, is what I've been seeing.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and that's sort of like a normal car, like we're not talking about a high end car.

BRIAN AKERS:

We're talking 15, 2000 a month or more. Huge number. So the idea is this, if you save that money first, you'll have you have the rest of spend, and you'll spend the rest. But if you don't set money first and put it away, I found that the most valuable thing I could do was to save money and almost hide it from myself, absolutely not leaving in my bank that I look at all the time. I move it away. It could be my emergency fund. That's like, online. It could be at my brokerage. It could be my retirement. It could be many other things, but the idea is having a plan for your money

Alex Monk:

and attack. Know how you operate, like, you know that, like, I'm the same wife, it's in my account. That's my money to spend. So if my emergency funds in my wife's account,

BRIAN AKERS:

I agree. It's like, if I have cash, I won't have it long, because if you're with me, I'll buy your coffee, I'll buy you ice cream, but the cash one is gone. It's gone, then we're ice cream after that. But the idea here is this, who cares about your financial future? And we're asking you to care, and the way you show that you care about your future self is by doing the work now, researching, getting information, getting an advisor, no matter what net worth you are. Now we can improve that net worth through financial planning. Financial Planning can take the most successful people and make that success permanent. Success becomes a legacy, becomes the ability to give to family, to charities. There's so many incredible things that we can take from where you are now to where you could be.

Alex Monk:

And don't think I'm too far gone. I just should listen to the next show and put all my money on whatever they're telling you to bet on, and you'll be fine. That's not going to work. That's not

BRIAN AKERS:

the way to do it. You're saying like, invest, invest all your money. And that's the way to win is to invest better. And the idea is planning and investing well within your plan goals and risk tolerance, tying it all in with purpose is really how you get to the

Alex Monk:

right answer, absolutely, and learning how to take risk. Like, how are you taking risk? Is it all in one place? Like, do you know? Do you understand? Like, the ability to not sell? Like, that's the key.

BRIAN AKERS:

And we've seen people do that back in like, oh 809. Was a very volatile down market, and it was about March of oh nine when it hit its bottom, and S and P was down 68% there are people that sold that in March of oh nine and got out and never went back in when they come in to retire their money's at in a money market if they've earned very, very little, and they don't have enough money because of a simple thing of how they invest it. In the worst of times, because they had too much risk, they took a big hit, and then they never recovered, because they didn't allow it to come back, right?

Alex Monk:

And it's tough to see a big perspective when it's yourself, like your own money, there's emotions, there's all that, because you put the work in to save and earn that money. So it means something differently to you, yeah. So when the you know the emotional things happen, not having a third party that can say, hey, we've, we've planned for this. Because if you think the market's never going to go down, you're, you're using the wrong variables in your plan. All right, this

BRIAN AKERS:

is my secret sauce. I wish everybody would listen to just the concept of that. That is cash flow. Is what matters. Cash flow in retirement, cash flow early in life, middle of life, with family, with kids, everybody. It's all about cash flow. That's money coming in, money going out. In other words, if you write on a piece of paper, there's the Plus, there's the minus. A plus, you got to write where all the money is coming from, and then the minus, where is it all going. I believe you need to look deeply at where all the money is going multiple times a year, so that you're not wasting any money or burning money in any type of things where you might let's say you subscribe to something that you don't really use, and it's costing you money every every month. That's a brutal thing to notice. Hey, I haven't done that. I haven't watched that. That cable thing been two years, right? Let's say myself, 100 bucks.

Alex Monk:

You find out that serious radio costs $50 a month and you didn't even know that you were paying for

BRIAN AKERS:

it, yeah? Or you have that magazine that it's basically a pile in your anything that you're paying extra for that's automatic, trying to knock that out so you can cut your bills down, shopping different types of insurance, finding ways to lower your taxes so you can save money. There all are important ways to have a better budget.

Alex Monk:

And if that sounds horrible to you, there's another solution, but it's make a lot more money. Yeah, but

BRIAN AKERS:

making a lot more money, so I don't think that's a solution for a certain mindset. Yeah, there's a I've had clients try to basically make more money to get them out of the bad habits. But the bad habits start to expand and just get bigger. And so the habits when we have little things, little money, little income, paying first helps the wealth grow. Yes, some people can get to a saver at a certain number because they if they paid off the debt that they had, but they were internally a saver already. They just weren't there yet, right?

Alex Monk:

Like, hyper funding the debt payoff versus

BRIAN AKERS:

the say, yeah, yes, I do try to bounce a cash flow. Like, recently, I had this one where a divorce was occurring. Yeah, and that the spouse, she's we're talking, I'm talking to her, and she has three debts after the divorce, and I'm thinking, what's your cash flow like? Well, we need to knock out the highest payment per month, even though the interest rates low, so that your cash flow is positive from day one, so that you can understand you're okay, right? And so we took some of the cash to pay that off, and that's, that's the first step of getting the cash flow

Alex Monk:

positive versus it being negative, and watching your savings deplete, deplete the other way, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Like that, slow trickle until and then that's a mental a mindset of, oh my, I can't make it every month, and it's a stress that you it's not needed with a financial decision, a simple one, in my opinion, of a knock that one, Dad off. Let's not pay off the larger debt, because that's a long time to help you.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and then that way you pick up and you need some snowball effect. Well, I did,

BRIAN AKERS:

we did talk about something called recasting, which is, after a divorce, she received some cash, but she had the house, the house had a bigger mortgage. We could take some of that cash, pay down the mortgage, get the mortgage in her name, and recast. It means to take the mortgage over the same period, but lower the

Alex Monk:

payment right, and you keep your interest rate, no refinance fees, usually like 500

BRIAN AKERS:

bucks, if that depends on the on the company. But the idea is to lower the monthly nut or the monthly need down to help your cash flow.

Alex Monk:

And where a principal payment would not accomplish that, it would just go right to the principal your average right? Well, if you do a principal you

BRIAN AKERS:

do a principal, you got to get 10 to 20,000 in minimum, and then after that, you can recast once a year. So that's not a bad idea to get the payment down, all right? So all these are ways and strategies of taking someone from where they are to where they need to be by understanding with sitting down with a financial advisor. It's not as simple of here's a solution. We need to have a mindset. We got to say, what if I don't care? Well, what if you do? Let's get excited about caring. Not that you have to do it. You should. What we want is this. We want you to come talk to us, and when you do this, you're going to say, hey, advisor at AKERS natural group. You do this for a living, and we're going to respond to you, yes, we do, and we love it. We love the fact that we know how to make these decisions. We've done it before. You enjoy the puzzles, the working together, right? My favorite thing in the world. So what happens is, when we meet with you, is we want to take your financial fingerprint, which is where you are today, no matter what net worth, how high, how low, it all comes down to where you are today and what you want to try to achieve. And then we work with that AKERS financial group wants to take, take you exactly where you are, and then guide you through financial planning, and then full implementation of that financial plan, your if your plan will follow your financial fingerprint and lead you to that future. And it will be multiple years of working together to really make a plan work. So it's not based on anybody else. It's not already written. It's ready for our first meeting. So just give us a call at 833 when retire, and schedule an in person meeting with one of our team of advisors. That's a three, 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, and we'll give you a call on Monday to set that free meeting our websites, at AKERS, natural group.com, I'll just give us a let's go right on there and scroll down and enter the information that you need. All right. Are you ready to imagine? What if you did? We'll talk about this. We return in the fourth quarter.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre recorded Show. Welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833, win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's Brian AKERS, welcome

BRIAN AKERS:

back indeed, to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS. Here with me today is Alex monk. We're certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS Financial Group. We want you to be a client of AKERS Financial Group. That's why we do shows like this. We want you to hear how we work, and then we want you to think about your exact situation. We call that a financial fingerprint. And then you check us out on our website, AKERS financial group.com find more out more about us, and then set up that free initial meeting with one of our team of advisors, and we sit down and talk about your exact situation. All right, the show has been called a winning financial mindset. We've talked about, what if I don't like people just what if they know? What if I don't open the statement? What if I don't set up my 401, K What if I I just don't fill the form that? What if I don't file my taxes? And there's lots of, I'm sorry, I should have said that way. I've seen

Alex Monk:

people, they're like, Well, I thought if I filed my taxes, then this might happen. So I just hadn't done it in five years.

BRIAN AKERS:

Okay? I've had people not apply for Social Security because they thought Medicare would it would affect their health insurance while they're working at the age 73 so they missed three years of Social Security. It's just knowledge, and then applying the knowledge of their situation. The What if I don't is sort of an attitude of people sort of get by each day, and they think they can't right, like, oh, I can't. I don't know what to do. I don't know what that first step is. What we want is to have a mindset, and we think that's the first step. And then that mindset starts to guide us, boom, boom. And then it's like you start a snowball thing, getting better and better and better and better, and before you know it, you've reached. Just the goals that you

Alex Monk:

thought were impossible, and the goals are so different, right? Like there, I've never heard one that's the same, even brothers and sisters are completely, wildly different. Oh yeah. So just

BRIAN AKERS:

husband and wife are wildly different.

Alex Monk:

Sometimes that can be a problem, but a lot of times, that's what you know, meet someone in their 50s, and husbands thinking this, wife's thinking this. They both say it out loud. And now I know where everyone's at. So let's try to figure out where everyone wants to go. Sometimes, the

BRIAN AKERS:

first time they've had that talk, they don't have financial summits at their home and talk about goals and plan like I might to a my house, which might be a little annoying, though, my wife. Yeah, all right. So this, this quarter, fourth quarter is winning time, and we want to teach I'll have a winning mindset. And imagine, what if I did, what if I did that work? What if I know I don't go to the movies or whatever it costs 30 bucks this weekend, and I save that 30 bucks? What does that really do for people?

Alex Monk:

Alex, well, it's gonna change what you get out of your money. Like, and I tell people this, like, yeah, right now, when you go out and you hit that button on Amazon, you get a little zing, and then when it shows up at your porch a day or two later, you get another little zing. But let's change that to where you don't buy that and you put $50 into your savings account, and then you get a little zing seeing that go up. So replacing those little I

BRIAN AKERS:

like seeing your net worth rise, seeing what's your net worth today? What was it? Where are we at now? Markets don't always go up. Markets are volatile. They up, they're down, but the idea is you want to invest and save with purpose, and by doing that, you know the it's going to be all right in time, yeah,

Alex Monk:

and to know that you have enough, you've saved enough, and it's doing what you want it to do, right? And that's the biggest thing. Like in retirement, is if you're worried every day, you're not

BRIAN AKERS:

really retired, absolutely, because retiring and to have any stress now, years ago, 40 years ago, they used to go to the mailbox to get their checks that would come to the mail. Nowadays, it's it's loaded to your bank account. It's a lot simpler when it comes to where's your money. So security even makes the money go directly to your bank account, automatic, no

Alex Monk:

option, no other direct right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And that's they have to do it that way, because they do millions of checks

Alex Monk:

every Wednesday. The mail is not great either, but you got to be able to, all right, where's my bank? Where's my emergency fund? Where are all these things? And then we get to show you that. And then just this week, I had a client call me. He was in Germany and needed a couple 1000 bucks to finish his taxes. Yeah, we've done the work. No problem. It's here we go.

BRIAN AKERS:

All right, so you had someone to call, which is cool. All right, so we're talking about this winning mindset. So the mindset is this, how do I say it the best way possible. So where are you now? And are you happy with where you are now? Some people that are not happy are successful and doing well been, but they're not happy because they believe there's another notch to go. And I think that's a lot of people, when it comes to becoming the best at something, they're always, never satisfied. I think that's a great mindset to have. Some people are almost a polar opposite in that they say, Oh, I can't do that. I can't be that. I it's not what if I don't it's just a matter of, I can't do it. I can't reach that goal. It's not going to happen for me, because I'll never have the things that everybody else has. And I try to explain to them that my best savers are my people that make the less money because they save a portion of their money. And guess what, if we get to a certain level of value they have. They're fully covered what they're living off of, and they're fine. The people that struggle are the ones that make hundreds and hundreds of$1,000 of income. They're trying to replace that at retirement, and even their own four, 1k plans limit them at 24, five, or something like that, and they're like, I can't save enough to match that's true. You gotta save more and more and more to reach that three, half a million, whatever that number is going

Alex Monk:

to be. And like, the grass is always greener, meaning, like, once you've had it, it's hard to cut back. Like, if you have you spent it, right? Yeah, you've spent 10 years doing your life this way. I don't really expect that to change immediately. Oh, I

BRIAN AKERS:

believe going from debtor to savers three years, I think it's a huge mindset of saying no to yourself, or we can do that later. I need to pick one of the three. I had to talk with someone about, what do you want? Do you want to have an RV? You want to have a second house? Do you want to retire right now? Which of the three matters the most to you when it comes to retirement, if you want all those things working, then you work, and you got to pay for it, and then you take small vacations and you use a little bit. I think RVs are built for driving, not for parking, for leaving them parked too long.

Alex Monk:

No, and like, that's what the conversations I had. Look people, it's like, okay, well, you're retired, and you're trying to spend your time, like, we've got the plan set up. What do you want to do? And sometimes that's the most difficult thing to figure out, like, the money, once it's taken care of, we don't worry about as much, yeah. But then it's like, okay, well, what do you want to do with your life or your time, or, you know, whatever.

BRIAN AKERS:

I had a bunch of reviews over the last week, and those reviews were all about what's going on this next year. And they've been in their house 1020, 30 years, almost like every 10 years, there's a big item, a roof of HVAC. There's something coming up. And I try to say, well, we have money set up for this, because we build the income plan, the retirement plan, to have money available. No matter what the market is doing, it's already available to cover those things. And we just work through the taxes. We take the number, divide it by one, minus tax rate, and we get the the amount of money they need to take out. And then we send them the money the next day and that they're handling that event. And then it's no longer a worry of what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it, or it might be a dream thing, redoing a kitchen or bathroom or a trip or, you know, whatever it might be, yeah,

Alex Monk:

like a lot of times you you get back all this time, right? And now, how do you deploy your time, too? And those are usually expensive decisions.

BRIAN AKERS:

Nothing more valuable than your time. As you get older, you want to find that it's not really anything about money, it's your time. That's the most valuable thing. When you're younger, you think you have time. And I would say, give your money time. Let your money have compounding, where, if you let your money double three or four times, it can go from one to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to 16.

Alex Monk:

And that 100 to 200 is not that cool, but that 1 million to 2 million. It's cool. Same math.

BRIAN AKERS:

I like two to four, and I really enjoyed the four to eight for a couple of clients. It was amazing to go over that number with them, and they're like we never believed. Or when you do a family meeting after your clients pass away, and you're disclosing their inheritance, and like, we never knew they had that kind of money, I said, well, they saved it. They taught you these habits. And what my job is to teach you the same habits, to take their legacy, and then we'll want to talk to each one of you individually. We had four kids in that situation, and talk about their planning, what their their parents goals were for them, and to get them on path. And that's what's great, is all four kids have begun that kind of work. That's great.

Alex Monk:

What you said earlier is how we have clients. Kids come in, and I tried to jump in and say, like, that's one of my favorite things to do. Like, for me, I want to know who my next client is going to be. I already know their parents. Like, I know the history. If we can turn you into a great saver, then I'm already working with people that are great people.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, I have, I went to a financial planning conference, and we call them g1 g2 g3 generation one is the client right now. G2 is the next. Generation three is the grandkids. Who gets all the money? You know, you just skip right past g2 sometimes. So there are a lot, a lot of ideas and planning, but the idea is, this is it's you, and if you don't care, my answer to you is no one else will no if you need to care more, get a coach, an advisor to help you care. Don't get a salesperson. Get a planning advisor. We believe strongly in certified financial planners. We believe and strongly in a planning approach to get to the answer that you need the answer. Might be a product, but it's not going to be one product to be a combination of answers, and that takes time and information, and it's worth it, because you go from I don't care to I do care. And look at

Alex Monk:

that, and you know why you care?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, it's not just you don't have to become an expert at it. Let us be that for you. Let us help you, and let you do what you do well, and then we help make it all work for you and your family for the rest of everyone's lives.

Alex Monk:

That's what the goal and being honest with yourselves, right? Like, if you struggle with saving you got to get in front of someone to help you. No one else is going to do it for you. And Social Security,

BRIAN AKERS:

like, yeah, we have, I have this one police officer. He comes in, he's all in full uniform. He goes, All right, here you go, make the changes. He's like, blunt. It's like, just make the changes. What else I need to do? Let's make this go a little higher. Do this to this. All right, see you next year. Elise is a great one. It's very, it's very, pretty quick. We have the login forum. It's, it's, uh, it's streamlined at that point. But it's not like, I don't think he would do any of that on his own at all, but his, um, his captain told him to come in, and we've been doing that. There's a fun one to me. It's, it's a really fast meeting, because he's like, yes, and he's all in. Then we say this. He says, Yes, we do it. We put online, and he goes with and he comes back the next year.

Alex Monk:

And like you said earlier, like time is the most important, so once we have that trust, like it's about getting that person's time back to him. So a

BRIAN AKERS:

winning financial mindset was a show. Basically, it's really hard to realize what if you don't care? You. You need to care if you don't do things. What if you do? So what if you do is a key thing, and that's their answer is, what if you do? Let's dream about that, think about that, and make something happen by go ahead and give us a call to do that. All right, so thanks, Alex monk, for

Alex Monk:

a good show. We appreciate it and fun.

BRIAN AKERS:

Brian, it was. We do look forward to meeting with you. We want you to win in your retirement by taking advantage of the opportunity to begin planning with us at AKERS Financial Group to schedule your free meeting with one of our team of advisors. Go to our website at AKERS financial group.com scroll to the schedule a meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free meeting right there. That's AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833 wind retire, that's 830 3w. I n, r, e, t, I R, E, we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule a free in person meeting with one of our team of advisors. Start planning for your retirement now. Go to AKERS financial group.com or call 833-946-7384, thank you for listening. I'm Brian AKERS from AKERS Financial Group, and we want you to be winning in retirement.

Unknown:

You've been listening to winning in retirement with your host, Brian AKERS of AKERS Financial Group. AKERS Financial Group offers securities through arcades capital an SIPC and FINRA member firm. Advisory services are provided through arcadios wealth. AKERS Financial Group and arcadios do not share any common ownership. Neither arcadios nor AKERS Financial Group provides tax or legal advice. Advice given on winning in retirement is general in nature, and one should seek further advice from their financial advisor, broker, attorney andor tax accountant before investing, be sure to read each prospectus carefully to understand all the risks associated with each investment. Examples and scenarios shared are meant to be for illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.