EPS 40 - Don’t Put Things Off: Financial Steps to Take Today

From wills to insurance to savings, here are 5 money moves you’ll regret not starting today.

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Transcript

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The best things in life are free, but you can give them Your love gives

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me such a thrill, but your love don't pay my bills. But before I get into that, you may have noticed what I just said at the very beginning of the podcast. Welcome to the Pink Money. We talk about all things related to money from a queer perspective. And, you know, the reason I changed that from gay to queer is because I've been encouraged to do that, number one. But number two, I guess I'm just, you know, when you're 62, as I am, and I've been calling myself gay for, well, ever since I was 18 and came out, you know, right after high school. So that's a very long time to identify yourself as one thing and feel like that is a huge piece of who you are. And then all of a sudden you change that into something that Quite frankly, you've avoided and hated like that word. But, you know, I guess things change and you have to change along with it. And sometimes change is good and beneficial. So here's hoping that I can embrace that. that term queer because I know that it's used a whole bunch these days or you know maybe people are shifting and I guess you just have to roll with the times it kind of reminds me of the pride flag right because forever it was just you know the way that it was by Gilbert Baker who designed it you know way back then and it didn't change forever and then all of a sudden you know people were like hey this doesn't really represent you know me I don't see myself here in this flag and why don't we do this and Next thing you know, there's new colors added, a new design, and now that's a flag we fly. So, again, change is inevitable and it's going to happen. And, you know, I just think that change is what you have to embrace and support. And no matter what age you are and how difficult it can be, I guess that's just life, right? Life is all about change. But anyway, enough said about that. The real topic I wanted to talk about is... procrastination, like I said, because when you put things off, I think we all know this, right? You put things off, it's going to be that much more difficult to tackle it later on. And especially when you're dealing with your finances, anything related to financial planning, these are the kind of things you really can't afford to put off. Yes, obviously lots and lots and lots of people do it, right? It's just, Our human nature to say, I will tackle it tomorrow. I mean, a good example is my website. This stupid thing has driven me crazy forever. I've had lots of people working on it. Nobody was able to figure it out. And it wasn't until I finally worked with ChatGPT myself to figure out all the reasons why it wasn't working. And there was a multitude of things that were wrong with it, including two separate websites and our... I don't even know all the technical terms for everything, but it took me a week, an entire week of working on it to finally fix it and get it where it's today. That was with phone calls, chats, chat GPT, you name it. Three different companies. Unbelievable amount of work I put into it. But hey, it is now finally up and running. So when you type in Pink Money Podcast, whether it's Apple or Buzzsprout or whatever other way you're getting it, you're only going to get my site and it should be functional and And it should be the first thing that comes up. And it shouldn't take you to other links or places, which it did before. And even sometimes it said page cannot be found. All kinds of craziness. But I think I've ironed out all that madness. And now it's, like I said, fully functional. So I have to pat myself on the back for having the patience to go through all that and not be able to lose my mind over all the things that were going wrong. But it's still a work in progress. There's a few more things I'm going to do to it. But hey, it's far and away a lot better than it was. So my point there is, again, putting so much effort into that took a lot of time that I just put off. And that also affected me actually putting out different episodes. So all that's done and back to the grind, which I'm perfectly fine with. So when you think about, though, your personal finances, it's the same thing, right? The thing that people never want to do is start today. They don't want to start saving money today. It's always going to be tomorrow. I'm going to see an estate planning attorney as soon as I find one, or it's something that's on my to-do list, or you name it kind of things. And the problem that you face is, again, the time may surface When you should have done these things, didn't do these things, and now you're paying the price for not doing it. And that may not seem like it really applies to some things, but obviously, like I said, creating a will, power of attorney, those things, right? They're kind of one-off things. They need to be looked up every now and then, but nevertheless... You really need to have these things because, again, you don't know what's going to happen to you. I watch a lot of YouTube car crash videos and craziness like that, and I see the kind of things that happen out of the blink of an eye, right? And it's really scary when you think about that you're going to the grocery store, and next thing you know, you're going to the hospital or you're going to the morgue. And it may not even be you. It could be anybody else. And so you really have to have your... Eyes dotted, T's crossed, you know, everything all lined up because those circumstances just hit us out of the blue. No pun intended. But, you know, they... They do. They happen to us too quickly, and we always reflect back thinking, gee, I wish I would have. So you really need to take account today of everything that you need to do, you want to do, and create some actual actionable steps to get them done. Personally, I have found, again, ChatGPT to be an amazing resource and tool. And I think that if you have... a particular issue, you don't think you have anybody to talk to about it, you're not ready to, maybe you don't feel like you're ready to approach a financial advisor for whatever reasons, then run your situation through it and let it help you come up with those practical steps. Because these things, like I said, really have to be done today. When you're saving money, And again, you think, I just don't have it today. You know, I will do it the next time I get paid. Well, the same thing's going to happen the next time you get paid, right? You're going to be stuck in this same loop. So you again have to just take the baby steps because, you know, if you intended to invest, even let's just say 50 bucks a month, if you could do a five, how about an 8% interest? That'd be nice, right? Then you're going to wind up by the age 45 of having over a hundred thousand dollars. But if you wait till you're later in life, you'll need to put it probably like five times that amount in because you don't have money on your money, time on your side anymore. So the time value of money is critical. You need time on your side to help your money grow. And there's going to be problems, mistakes, everything that happens, right? The economy goes up and down and sideways and everything else. And you get a job, you lose a job, you change jobs, and all that craziness is going to continue to happen in your life. Again, going back to change is inevitable. You know, you really have to prepare for that change. I know I sound preachy, right? I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist by any stretch of the imagination, but Many, many times, you know, I have worked with people that should have done something and didn't do it and then, again, regretted it. You know, I can think of one situation just off the top of my head. Just a real quick story. So, this guy was working with his elderly mother. And... when they were working to create an income stream for mom. I don't know exactly the reason why. This wasn't my personal client. This was just a colleague of mine who related this story. But anyway, so he's trying to create an income stream for his mom. They dump a bunch of money into an immediate annuity, which is kind of like the lottery or something. So when you activate this annuity, then it creates an income stream that continues. Now, it can continue for a set period of time, let's say 10 years, or it can continue for a lifetime until you die. Um, it can continue for two people's life, husband, wife, wife, wife, husband, husband, and then one of them dies and then it can, we will continue for the other. Now, those kinds of options usually decrease the amount of money that you're going to receive because it's typically going to be paying out longer, but it's If that is important to you and you can live with whatever those situations are, I mean, in terms of less money, then do it. But back to my story. So mom, they decided to pull the trigger on this and create an income stream. And the advisor has to give you all the disclosures and they should really tell you all the pitfalls of doing this and instead of doing that. And so when you have the two, three, four options, whatever it is, and they know your situation and they recommend this, then, you know, hopefully they know what they're doing and that they make a strong case for you making the best decision. They can't obviously sign your name to the contract, but they can just give you their best advice. What happens is they're doing this annuity. They do it over the mother's lifetime. And, of course, she's an elderly woman, right? And they warn him. They said, you put this money into this annuity. You pull the trigger today. It starts paying the money out to mom. When she dies, if it's six months from now, 10 years from now, who knows when, the day she dies, this annuity ends. And there is no getting that money back. So we suggest that you put in somebody to receive this money if mom dies. And that way, you'll get everything you put in and then some, right? That's just good advice. Did they do that? No. What did they do? Did it strictly on mom's lifetime? Guess what? Not even a week later, she died. The man comes back. Hey, can I get the money back? Well, no. We just told you, you just bought this thing. I just dumped a hundred thousand dollars into it. You know, whatever it was. And they're like, we told you, you signed the contract. You knew they gave you all the disclosures. It's on a recorded line. You know, I I'm some of this, I might even have a little bit wrong, but I mean, the point is that. You really need to be careful about what you're doing and you need to do it today because the worst kind of situations can happen that are completely out of your hands that you just don't plan for. And I really suggest you take good advice when it's given to you if you can recognize it. There's a lot of people who try to, you know, they're shady and try to, you know, take your money from you. But there's a lot of good advice out there. And I always think that when you go with any kind of company, And especially if it's an investment company, you really want to go to what I would suggest is a reputable company. Because I can think of all those people who put their money with Bernie Madoff, right? And I don't even know how those people were not aware of everything that was going on. I know all these celebrities and everybody did it. And I guess they just invested by word of mouth. You know, hey, go to my guy. He's amazing. I get these 20% returns year after year after year. You know, I don't even know how he does it, but they're amazing. Well, that's just too good to be true, right? And it ended up, it was too good to be true. It wasn't. It was a complete scam. So I always suggest you go with a big company, at least a well-known company. There are countless companies that have also gone under, like Lehman Brothers, et cetera. People probably don't even know who they were anymore, Bear Stearns, et cetera. But the chances of a large company, like let's say there's Schwab or Fidelity or E-Trade or somebody, you know, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, all those companies, the chances of them going belly up overnight is not really very likely because they have the financial resources and the financial wherewithal to withstand those things. And they're well-run companies and they've been running for, you know, 50, 100 years, whatever it is, a long time. So you're better off going with a company like that so that as well, if you had one advisor, let's say with Merrill Lynch and your advisor quit, whatever, then if he's not practicing any longer or he's not taking any new clients or won't take you as a client any longer, that happens, then you hopefully will be assigned another advisor and you can continue on a relationship and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I always think that same thing in terms of an attorney, right? There's attorneys everywhere. You can go around the block and find, you know, ABC attorney. But again, and I've seen this firsthand myself, you know, with my mom, she picked some, some dude. I don't even know how she found this dude. And he was the most impossible person to ever track down. And then when I did talk to him, he gave the worst advice and he didn't even remember her. I ended up finding out that he closed his shop altogether. So those are the kind of things that I totally would suggest you steer clear of. There's lots of big law firms out there that you can go to that, again, have some longevity. And then you want to, again, work with them so that if Joe Schmo leaves, then there's somebody else who will pick up your case and continue to work with you and that not everything is just thrown up in the air and lands wherever it lands. So I don't know. That's just my two cents about that. Again, I'm trying not to sound preachy, but I am just suggesting strongly suggesting that these are some things that I've seen happen firsthand and you really want to take advantage of them. You know, I remember again in their situation that comes to mind, even in my own family. So my sister was trying to give my mom, good advice. And I came home one time and talked to her and she said, Oh, your sister and me were working on, you know, my, my homeowner's insurance. And she made some changes to it. I said, what, why? She was like, she just thought it would be good way to save me some money. I said, why, what, what? So I got on the phone with her and the insurance company. Sure enough, they made these changes, but not good changes, changes that would have put her on home in jeopardy if something really happened. They underinsured the home is what I'm saying. My mom didn't really realize it. I don't know what the heck my sister was doing and why she decided to do that because she has no background in this. So I have... Anyway, that aside, I got back involved and we restructured the whole thing and actually increased her insurance because her house had been improved and there was... Obviously, time had passed, and so the value of the home had changed. And so with all those things taken into account, we had to reinsure the house for a higher amount. That included all the kit and caboodle things. So those kind of reviews, not that you have to do it every single year, but they should be done on a regular basis so that you're not caught off guard. And those kind of things can creep up on you. I live here in Texas, and not even a month ago, we had that huge rainstorm which caused all that flooding. Countless people had no flood insurance. Maybe they couldn't even get it because they were in a flood zone. That Camp Mystic, from what I read, and this may be wrong, but anyway, from what I read, that they were in a hundred year flood zone and petitioned FEMA to take them out of that flood zone or some of their buildings anyway, so that they could move them closer to the water of all things. And they did. And sure enough, what happened, right? The whole damn thing fell apart and all these kids and people died. It was unbelievable. So, All I'm saying is there's good advice, take good advice, and recognize the fact that, I mean, if you're in a 100-year flood zone, my God, why in the hell would you put your campers at risk by moving closer to the water? That's just idiocy, in my opinion. Anyway, all that aside, back to my rant about... taking the bull by the horns and doing things today because you really, really, really should. Now, there's a lot of things that you probably want to talk about, and you really should work, in my opinion, with a good financial advisor who's going to take a look at your entire situation, not only your investments, but your life insurance, your estate planning, your homeowner's insurance, your car, everything. They will look at everything with you. They may not do that all in one meeting with you, I would think not. I would think that there would be several meetings that you'd want to go through because you really need to work through this stuff systematically. Now, an investment review can probably take, I don't know, an hour or two hours, depending on, again, the complexity of what you got. You know, working with your estate planning attorney, that similarly may take an hour or two hours, depending on, again, your situation and, you know, all the complexities involved. Especially if you're, you know, part of the queer community. So if you and your partner together, you're not married, I would strongly suggest even if you are married, we don't know what's going to happen right now with, you know, gay marriage. We just don't. I mean, the Trump administration is crazy enough as they are. And if they are able to repeal Roe versus Wade, they could repeal gay marriage or who knows what. I'm not all that steeped in all the mechanics of it, but I'm just saying that if that is possible, then anything is possible. So you really need to have your documents lined up and not count on the fact that, hey, we're married. That is probably not a good enough backstop. I think that's the right term, right? Backstop. You're playing baseball and the ball goes awry, hits the backstop, right? That's well, anyway, whatever terrible sports analogy. But anyway, the point I'm making is that you really have to have all your, your eyes dotted T's crossed kind of things and listen to the good advice that's given you and work with somebody who you can trust to rely on, to give you good advice and guidance. And especially again, if you're a queer, I don't think that maybe working with a straight person, you know, advisor is the best way. Cause they may not completely understand who you are, how your life is structured and why it's important again, to do some of these things. I mean, I think it's unnecessary. I don't know. That's just my two cents, my opinion. Sometimes it's hard to even find, you know, a, a gay attorney, but it's just my suggestion anyway. Those are the kind of things I really wanted to stress. I think I've beat this horse to death, but I'm going to put a checklist on my new website, www.pinkmoneypodcast.com. That's the official one. Everything should take you right to that, whether you're on Apple or you just search on the web or you ask Alexa. I'm thinking of the ways that people usually get there. Then all that should work for you. I really hope it does. But also, as an aside, you should be able to contact me as well if you choose to, want to, question, comment, or feedback. Go ahead. Send me. I think it's a text. But however it reaches me depends on the format. It might be emailed to me. That I probably need to look into a little bit more as well. But anyhow, the point is that if you do great, don't great. I appreciate you listening. I hope it's helpful. And I guess I will just talk to you next time.