SLCo Employee Wellness Wellcast
The SLCo Employee Wellness Wellcast is a fun, entertaining, and enlightening look at health and wellness. It breaks down complex health topics and interviews experts in the wellness field to help participants live healthier lives.
SLCo Employee Wellness Wellcast
Money Talks: Answering Your Financial Wellness Questions
Financial wellness is essential to living a balanced life and maintaining healthy relationships. Our experts provide valuable insights to your wellness questions including:
• Importance of financial wellness in relationships
• Understanding different money perspectives in couples
• Strategies for communicating about major purchases
• Teaching kids sound financial habits
• Tools for budgeting and handling unexpected expenses
• Getting started with investing and retirement planning
Hi listeners, this is Sadie Mae, wellness Coordinator for Salt Lake County Employee Wellness Program, and you're listening to the Salt Lake County Employee Wellness Wellcast, the podcast that breaks down complex health topics and interviews experts in the wellness field to help participants live healthier lives. Today, we are talking about financial wellness with Cass Fuentes and Scott Sherman, financial education managers from Mountain America Credit Union. Cass transitioned from social work to financial service industry in 2010, driven by her passion for helping people achieve their goals. With a master's degree in education, she creates engaging learning experiences for personal financial growth education. She creates engaging learning experiences for personal financial growth.
Speaker 1:Our other guest, scott Sherman, believes anyone can create a stress-free financial life with the right education tools and guidance. He shared that message with tens of thousands of people as a personal finance writer, speaker and coach for five years before becoming a financial education manager. He loves to help people find the resources that will make their financial dreams a reality. Thank you both for being here today. Glad to be here, yeah, excited.
Speaker 1:Well, we all know the stress that comes with managing finances, whether it's budgeting debt or planning for the future. Whether it's budgeting debt or planning for the future. But the good news is that, with the right tools and mindset, you can transform your financial life and experience greater peace of mind, and that is why, for the past month, we invited our employee wellness participants to submit their most pressing questions about financial wellness for Cass and Scott. Most of these questions they were about budget, retirement, investing, getting out of debt, and then a couple of miscellaneous questions were thrown in there too. Our first series of questions have to do with money and relationships, so I will just dive right in. Our first question from our employee wellness participant is how do couples with different spending styles get on the same page with financial goals?
Speaker 3:So I think that financial disagreements can feel really scary because we've heard that they can be one of the strongest predictors of divorce. So one of the best ways that I think that we can address those differences is just kind of understanding where the other person is coming from, specifically looking at their money scripts when it comes to their spending style, as well as their behavior, their attitudes and beliefs. When we can understand that, it changes the conversation from you know, rather than thinking about, hey, I want to spend my money this way or I want to do this with my money, it's more about what does, what do the values that they hold close to them look like, in the sense of you know, how do they live those out? And the conversation becomes less about spending or saving or, you know, doing what we want to do with our money, and more about what's important to each person on a deeper level. And I think with that that's where we begin to get the compassion and, you know, maybe feel it, maybe some of those negative feelings begin to go away.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the things that kind of from a practical standpoint, can help with that too, cass, is if people, if they have the same understanding and expectations, or at least understand what their partner's looking for, that can help right.
Speaker 2:So don't get angry at your partner for having a different spending style if you're not going to share the expectation that you know.
Speaker 2:This is what our shared goals are and we want to make sure that we're both reaching toward the same goals, even if in some aspects we maybe have a different approach that we want to take. And so, as long as you're meeting kind of the big picture goals that you want to meet together, giving yourself, your partner, some grace and saying, hey, you know what, it's okay that you want to spend differently than me because it's not actually affecting our bigger goals, right, and that might come with having things like different spending accounts or different credit cards that you use from one another, that maybe you're not all in the same bucket, right of money, but you're on the same page in terms of what are our long-term goals, what are our you know, what are we trying to do? And that might take some of the pressure off for people too, if they're. You know, they kind of separate their spending a little bit if they have a big disagreement on how those things go, but they understand that it's all part of the same bigger picture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I would even tack onto that that if we can set regular check-ins and clear boundaries, that's really going to help us in the space of, like, open communication, and I think what it does is it really makes each partner feel more supported, especially when it comes to their perspectives and needs.
Speaker 3:I think it's also a great way to maintain accountability, right, if you know that that other person is, you know, doing certain things with their money, just kind of like to what Scott alluded to. You know, in my marriage doing certain things with their money, just kind of like to what Scott alluded to. In my marriage we have a shared bucket and then we manage our individual expenses separately and we both know that we have to show up for those shared expenses and goals. And so, because of that, I'm going to manage my side of my money that I take care of a little bit differently than if I would, knowing it was just me and I had to just worry about myself. And I think what that does to the relationship as a whole is it actually creates, it strengthens the trust and really helps with the alignment in the relationship.
Speaker 1:Let's say we have a couple that has decided to sit down and actually talk about their money scripts and their values around money. What strategies do you have for them to communicate major purchases?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think, when we're thinking about how do we deal with those major purchases especially maybe if there's a disagreement on that, I think it comes back to those shared values and goals, and so one thing that we can do, instead of framing this as a debate of this is what I want versus what you want. It's more of how can we do this together. Can we look at this as a team and say how does this fit into our shared goals? If it's on an individual basis, you know that's a little bit different, because I think it's up to you to decide. But as together, you know, even if I'm looking let's say I'm looking at, you know, getting a new car on my own I've got to look at how that influences my ability to, you know, meet the obligations that I've agreed to with my financial partner, and so that's something to think about.
Speaker 3:And then, I think, just setting some clear boundaries around what decision making looks like. So if you are sharing money, you know, is there a limit that you can spend up to without having a conversation, you know? And then I think it's also good to give yourself a cool down period, especially on those larger purchases. It's so easy to get caught up in the moment emotionally, you know, and and sometimes we make decisions that we look back on and maybe we're like, ooh, maybe we could have done that differently, and so allowing ourselves that time to cool down can be really beneficial as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great point. Sometimes, if you're going into a major purchase together, it helps to sort of the idea of, like, begin with the end in mind, right? The Stephen Covey mantra is it's like what do we want out of this? Right, let's talk about a house, for instance. It's a big deal to buy a house, right? There's so much that goes into buying a house money, emotion, lifestyle changes, all of these things and each of you probably has some expectations about what you want that to look like at the end.
Speaker 2:And so get those out there early and have those conversations and really understand what are we trying to do with this major purchase, whether that's a house, whether that's a car, whether that's a family vacation that's going to, you know, cost a lot of money. Whatever it is, what are we hoping to do at the end? And kind of start from there and work your way backwards. Sometimes it's easy just to say we want to do this thing, let's go and figure it out, right, and you get to the end and it was a lot, it's different than you were hoping, right. And so just start with the end in mind and, like Cass said, talk about it up front. Don't only talk about things when they're a problem. Don't talk about those things. Don't only talk about money when it's a heated conversation. Talk about it when it's sharing your dreams and goals and hopes and all those fun things, because that's really what's going to make it easier for you in the long run.
Speaker 1:We have a couple. Let's say they have established these behaviors. They've communicated major purchases, They've set boundaries. Now how can they teach their kids about?
Speaker 3:money. There are a lot of different ways to go about teaching your kids about money, and I think it all starts with different ages. My rule of thumb is the sooner we can start the better, and so if we're talking about toddlers, you can start with something like a token economy where essentially you're giving them small rewards for small things and then allowing them to exchange those tokens or that play money for real life things so that they can start to understand that concept of money as they get older. It's good to involve them in different aspects of the budget and I say that kind of cautiously. I don't want people to take that as like let's give your kids the money from your paycheck and figure out what to do, because that would be really scary. But if you've got a kiddo that is maybe 10 or 12 and you want to teach them about you know, budgeting, you could say, hey, I have this grocery budget for Tuesday night's dinner. Can you help me plan that? You know? Allow them to go shopping with you, you know, or create that list and then go shopping so that they can see the different prices and begin to compare, and that kind of gets them into this idea of working within a constraint. And then I would also say, you know, for older kids, even doing that on a larger scale, maybe instead of the one night of grocery shopping or the family night, you're involving them in a week's worth of groceries and that kind of teaches them at a larger scale and just kind of gradually scaling from there.
Speaker 3:But then there's also you know how do we introduce them to credit cards and loans, and I recently had the opportunity to do an IOU with my son. He wanted a larger purchase and he had a little bit of cash at the time and because it was Christmas time, we were, you know, seeing a lot of sales. I was like, dude, this is the best price you're going to get this item for. And so I went ahead and did it. And I think the key to doing something like that is you've got to hold them to the remainder of that balance, right, just like a creditor would. But what that does is that gives them that experience of you know, hey, I was able to borrow money and I repaid it. And again, that follow through is really critical. But there are different ways that you can do it at different stages of childhood. I think that's one of the more fun things about money is getting to teach your kids.
Speaker 1:I'm going to transition now to some of the questions that we received about budget, and the first one I have is why do I always have expenses that don't fit into my budget? This may be hard to answer, since we don't know this particular person's situation, but we can do our best.
Speaker 2:Well, if you have a pulse, you're probably going to have a situation where something comes up that you weren't exactly planning for. Right, that's just life. It happens One thing, yeah, it does depend on what the thing is, but I would always say there's always something different every month. Right, there's always something that's going to happen every month that was different than last month and it will be different than next month, and so if you find that that's happening a lot, just build a catch-all category for that, right. If you need to start budgeting a little bit of money for the random thing that comes up, then that's okay. I actually have a slush fund that I put 10% of my check aside for, just so I can spend it on random things that come up, whether it's something that I want or something that was unexpected or an opportunity that came my way, and I don't have to necessarily keep a new, a tight budget category, but there's money there for that.
Speaker 3:So I'm a little bit different in the sense of I'm a I'm a big fan fan of knowing what my upcoming expenses are, and then I have a bucket that is just for unexpected expenses.
Speaker 3:And so for me, I try to keep what's unexpected out of sight so that I can allow it to grow, because if I could see it, then I would just think that everything is an unexpected expense and that's just the reality of who I am.
Speaker 3:But for me, when I am able to think about what's upcoming, you know, every year, I know I have to register a car, I've got to replace the tires and the brakes on my car, car is getting older, I'm going to need to, you know, do some work on it. I talk about my car specifically because that's the one that comes to mind. But you know, I have five kids and they grow, they wake up one day and their pants don't fit, and so that's another area where, you know, I want to be thinking of anything that you are doing on a regular basis, or every, I would say, like every three to six months. Let's start putting money towards that, even if it's a little bit, that can really empower you to, instead of having those things just like kind of surface or come out of the blue. You have a, you have a plan. Even if you don't have all the money to pay for it, you're a lot closer than you would have been had you not started working towards it at all.
Speaker 1:And this next listener wants to know some effective ways to save for those larger purchases. So vacations, big ticket items, scott's a lot better at this than me.
Speaker 3:So I'll let him have the bulk of it. But again, for me, because I am a I am a little bit more of an impulsive person I do have to just kind of automate everything. That way I don't have to see it or feel emotions about it, and it's kind of fun because I'll go and I'll look at an account I'm like, oh, I didn't realize I had that much money in there and and it in some money. In the brain perspective it reinforces that idea of saving, because I'm getting the positive hormones, the endorphins, from seeing that rather than thinking about what I could have been doing with that money instead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, cass, you hit something earlier that really makes a lot of sense here, which is look ahead. If you're planning ahead for those big ticket items, then you should be able to kind of chunk money away along the way. One of the things that we teach is to turn your big expenses, your long-term expenses, things like that, into a monthly cost, right. And so if you save $100 a month or $200 a month toward that big ticket item, knowing how many months away it is and so you're going to need the full sum, then you can really absorb that a little bit easier, right, work it into your budget. So those are kind of good things to do, whether that's automatic transfers or you know we like to say secondary savings accounts are great. So you know I do this as well. So have a savings account specifically for vacations, have one specifically for those car expenses that Cass has coming up, right, so you know exactly how much you have available for those and where that money is, and you can kind of keep yourself honest and not go and spend it in other ways, kind of to some of the things that Cass talked about earlier, right with her kid. There's sometimes an ideal time to purchase those things, and if you can look ahead and say, hey, you know what, there's going to be a sale around this holiday or around this certain time of year, that might be the best time for me to make this large purchase, then that might save you some money right there. Right, you might be able to save a big chunk of money on the cost by buying it at the right time, versus buying it when you think about it or just at some other random time.
Speaker 2:And the other thing you could do is, for things like vacations or something like that, figure out other ways to cut costs. Can you use rewards points through your credit card? Can you find discounts on certain aspects of your trip? If you're going to go to an amusement park, a theme park, maybe your financial institution offers discounts. Mountain America offers discounts to a bunch of theme parks. So when I went to Florida, I bought tickets for those parks through my Mountain America account and it was actually cheaper than even the Florida resident value was. My parents live out there, so they had that option. But we saved even more that way, right? So you can look for different ways to save on the overall cost, but then also save up for it along the way.
Speaker 1:Fantastic tips, and this next question, I think, is something that we all are relating to, especially right now, but this person says that they're struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living on their salary. They've cut every luxury out of their budget, but it's still not enough. They say that they like their job and don't want to leave their current employment, so can you recommend some side hustles or passive income tips that can help them stay afloat?
Speaker 2:I feel for that person it's a tough place to be coming from, right. You kind of look around and you do everything you can to cut back and you keep cutting, you keep cutting and it doesn't feel like enough, and so that's a tough place to come from. I would say, first off and we'll probably talk a little bit more about this later but come and speak with Cass or myself as a financial coach, right, let's actually dig into your specific situation and see what we can do to help you the the right details um to to better answer your question. I think that's that's an important thing. If you've already cut back on on the luxuries you know, are there other places in your necessary expenses that you might be able to find some savings as well? Right, things like car insurance, right. If you haven't been re-quoted in a while, try to get that re-quoted and see if you can find coverage you know, good coverage for a lower price. Are you paying more for your cell phone bill than maybe you need to? Can you switch carriers? Can you shop at a different grocery store and maybe save a little bit there? So there's definitely some places that you might be able to save there.
Speaker 2:And then sometimes it really is about earning more income. You know it may just be that, yes, you know you can't really out frugal life. At some level you do need to make more income. And so that may be a conversation with your boss to say, hey, things are not really working out for me in the way that things are going right now. What can we do? Is there another position that I can take on some more responsibility? You know, can I get a raise? Is there something that we can do? Because I like this, I want to stay here and your boss wants to help you out too. Right, I think, if you're a good employee and they want to keep you, see what you can do together.
Speaker 3:Those would be tips that I would have, for sure. Yeah, I echo a lot of what Scott said. I know for me I have looked at ways to kind of increase more so that I can have money for fun things, and so I do photography. I do it on the side. It's not something that I actively promote, but I do have people who are like hey, can you take my photos? Sure, I'm happy to take photos for you. Right, other people have amazing talents.
Speaker 3:If you're a writer, if you're an artist, if you can do web development, those are all skills that are very sought after on the freelance side of things, and so you might be able to look for different, different organizations that support those. The ones that come to mind are like Upwork is one that I can think of immediately. House sitting and dog sitting are becoming more and more popular. I didn't realize that this was such a thing until last summer. My dogs we had to go out of town and we ended up having somebody come to our house to check on our dogs twice a day, and the amount of money that girl made just from stopping by and hanging out at our house for an hour a day was like pretty incredible.
Speaker 3:I was like, well, I think I may need to look into that. I love dogs so I'd be happy to do that. But even things like you know, can you, can you do house cleaning and organizing on the weekend? You know, I know some of those things aren't aren't the most fun. There are definitely ways, if you are looking, and I think between Scott and I we could probably go on, and I think one of the best things to do is again what Scott has said kind of look at how you can trim your expenses and then, if you do need to look at increasing, meet with us so that we can kind of help you find something that is specialized and something that you'll enjoy.
Speaker 1:Thank you. You both provided a lot of tips on this. And dog sitting. Yeah, you're right, I did this for the longest time, actually, and it's one of the most enjoyable ways Sit someone's house, snuggle their pups and get paid for it, and you get to make your own hours. It's a great tip. Okay, we will transition over to our retirement questions. So this first one is actually a three-parter, but how do you know how much money you will need for retirement, how much is ideal for investing in a Roth IRA and how much should you set aside for investments?
Speaker 2:All right. So investments I love talking about retirement. This is one of my favorite things to talk about, because I feel like people sometimes overthink it when they don't need to and they put it off longer than they should Right, and so all of these questions really are kind of getting around a similar thing, which is basically like how much do I need and how do I know how much I need? Right, and really there's not a one size fits all answer here. Everybody's going to be a little bit different. You know how much you need in retirement is going to depend on a lot of factors. It's going to be things like when do you plan to retire? What type of lifestyle are you hoping that you're going to have when you get to retirement? And you know what are the costs that you have now versus in the future? What expenses do you have that will change? Is your mortgage going to get paid off? Are you going to plan to travel three times as much as you do now? What are the income sources that you might have? Are you going to get a pension? Are you going to get social security? Are you going to get real estate income? Do you have other sources of income? Are you going to work part-time? Are you going to snuggle everybody's dogs and maybe fully replace your salary? All these different things come into play in terms of how much do you need for your life, right? And then, of course, there's the other thing how long do you think you're gonna live right? That might be a question of your current health, of your family history, all those things. So there's a lot that goes into that question. Nobody can really give you the exact number, right, but a good, qualified financial advisor is gonna be able to run a variety of scenarios that they're going to take the information that you give them and say, okay, here's the percent chance that at this rate you know your money should last you through this sort of scenario, things like that. And so it really comes down to you know, how comfortable are you with those projections and with the risk you need to take to get there right? Do you want a big cushion, a little cushion If the markets take a turn? How do you feel about that? So once you kind of know, okay, well, where do I need to be, then it gets easier to answer the other questions of you know how much do I need to invest? Because you need to know where you're trying to get to before you can decide how much you need to invest to get there right. And again, a qualified financial advisor can help you figure this out better. You can do some back of the envelope math yourself. There's a ton of websites out there that will help you sort of project that out and you can do that.
Speaker 2:But how much is ideal for, say, investing in a Roth IRA? Roth IRA is a specific type of account. Right, it's an after tax account. You won't have to pay taxes on that money in the future. You can do up to $7,000 if you're under age 50, up to $8,000 a year If you're over age 50, you get that $1,000.
Speaker 2:Catch up. How much should you do of that? That's again kind of a personal question. If you're somebody who is maxing everything else out and you want to do more, and that's your vehicle great. Or if you feel like you'd rather just take that sort of unknown of taxes off the table now and shove more money into an account that won't be taxed later, go ahead and do that. It really depends on what your plan is and where that fits into your overall financial plan. And again, with just trying to figure out. How much do I set aside for investments. Personally, I like to say if you can invest more, great, do it. It doesn't hurt to have more down the road, but make sure that that fits into your overall plan too. You don't necessarily want to sacrifice everything today and not enjoy today just so that you have way over abundance of stuff in the future If that's not what's going to speak to your values and your goals.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad you said that last part, scott. I was like I hope he does. Yeah, I'm one of those people where, you know, I value nostalgia and adventure, and so, for me, like maxing out my 401k and maxing out my IRA isn't on my the top of my to-do list, right, but at least having a plan and I think to Scott's point, really sitting down and meeting with somebody and talking about what your future looks like. Somebody gave me the advice of like what? What do you want your Tuesday to look like? Right, realistically, I don't think I want every Tuesday to look like the commercial, the Sandals Resort commercial. That's just me, though, but you know there might be somebody who does, and so their strategy is going to look a lot different than mine.
Speaker 1:And can you both discuss how the HR 82 bill will impact those who have a government pension?
Speaker 2:So I can speak to this just a little bit right, and probably not any more authoritatively than your Google search will. But HR 82 was the Social Security Fairness Act. It was just signed into law, I believe on January 5th. It doesn't affect everybody. It affects some government employees who were in a position previously didn't qualify for social security, or they received a reduced social security payout based on having had a government pension or working in a position that didn't put into social security basically. So it doesn't affect everybody, but it may very well affect some of the people who are, who are listening to this, and so I would say, if it affects you, you you probably know, right, you would probably know in that, um, you either weren't paying into social security or you were looking at your your uh pension benefits and your social security uh, expected benefits on something like ssagov and you would see that that might, you know, be a factor for you. So if you're not sure if that's you, you can always go to ssagov or contact your local social security office and ask them and they can look into it for you.
Speaker 2:But the thrust of what the law did here is it removed these two aspects called the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset that were reducing some people's social security benefits by using a formula, and so basically now the people whose benefits were being reduced, they won't be reduced. It's going to take, from what I've seen, a little while for that effect to kind of trickle through the system, and so people may not necessarily see it happen right away. But my understanding is, if they don't see it happen right away, they should get sort of a lump sum back payment for that time frame between when the law went into effect and when their check catches up to the full amount. So everybody should be made whole whenever that happens. But it might take a little while. I did see something that said it could be up to a year. So take that for what it's worth, but definitely, if you're wondering about your own situation, reach out to the social security office and they can help you determine whether that affects you.
Speaker 1:Well, when it comes to financial wellness, our participants are always very much interested in investing, and so the next question is what is the best way to start learning about investing, and where would you suggest someone go if they want to learn more beyond the basics?
Speaker 2:So much information out there, right, there's just so much. Here's where I wouldn't start. I wouldn't start on TikTok, I wouldn't start on social media. A lot of times, what you want to do is you want to make your decisions based on seeing the same thing from a bunch of different places. That makes sense in all those different places, right, and so while you might find something that's on social media that seems like it might be a great idea, don't act based on that. Go and use that as a springboard to go and find some more information from other sources that are maybe a little bit more thoroughly fact-checked or a little more reputable. There's so much out there. Your library has a ton of good books that are going to cover all sorts of things on investing right, it's going to cover different aspects of investing. Whatever it is you're interested in, there's probably something there.
Speaker 2:I would say most people overestimate how much information they need to make an informed decision on some basic investing, and they underestimate their ability to understand it. It's really not as hard as people tend to think, and you can really get 80, 90% of where you need to be with much less information and much less expertise than a lot of people think it requires. So listening to podcasts, reading books, finding some good blogs that do a good job of really explaining some of the kind of basics of investing and then sort of point you the direction of what are maybe some of the more advanced techniques that I might need to learn more about, right? So to give some example, somebody who's interested in a Roth IRA and investing in a Roth IRA might start there, but then they might find out they make too much money to qualify for an IRA. But then they might hear about this thing called the backdoor Roth IRA and that's an advanced technique that's just allowing them to utilize that tool, but it doesn't really apply to everybody. It's not necessary for everybody, but it's not that hard to understand and once you come across that you can say, oh okay, hey, what this might affect me. Let me read a little bit more into that, right? So that's an example of where starting off with something basic can lead you down the path of something a little more advanced, but there's still good, solid information out there.
Speaker 2:I think that the key here is investing versus gambling. You can gamble on the stock market. I don't want to encourage that at all. Investing is a long-term strategy that you're following to gain wealth and to build wealth in a reasonable way over time. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme. So if what you're hearing is investment advice on how you can turn $10,000 into a million dollars in the next two weeks, I would probably just run from that. You're probably not hearing reputable information. Go find some good information that's going to tell you how to build a strategy for the long haul over time, and you can do that through some podcasts, through some books. Some of my favorite podcasts are like Stacking Benjamins Afford Anything, choose FI Popcorn Finance Things that have a long history of giving good, solid advice, have a variety of viewpoints and address questions in a way that is approachable and gives good, solid information along the way.
Speaker 1:I just have two more questions for you. They are from our miscellaneous category, and the first one is what's the best way to leave your money to someone when you pass away?
Speaker 2:That one probably is going to require a call to an estate attorney, because there are so many nuances that could come into play here. It depends on what kind of assets you have, who you're trying to leave it to, what you want that process to look like. It may be different depending on the assets you have or what kind of ownership you have of those, the state you live in. Even so, really, as far as leaving your money to someone, it may be simple, but the best answer is you want to talk to a qualified estate attorney who can really let you know. You know what what's going to apply to you.
Speaker 1:And then my last question is can you tell us more about the Mountain America Financial Counseling Services?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can definitely tell you more about that. So I was actually just talking to somebody today about our coaching and how it's. It's cool that we each have a little bit of a different personality. So you can obviously tell from listening to this Scott's very knowledgeable about investing and he is very strong when it comes to motivating people to save and really stay focused. And I tend to lean to more of an emotional side. And how can we leverage what we know about our emotions to, you know, create systems and really help us kind of get out of our own way? And so it's funny because, like we, we joke there there are varying personalities and so there's there's really somebody for everybody, I think.
Speaker 3:And and I've even had questions like well, is it, is it judgmental? You know, I'm working with somebody right now and one of the questions that he asked me was are you gonna go and talk about me behind my back or are you gonna laugh at me because of my situation? And I said no, never. And he actually did ask me like, is this the worst thing you've ever seen? And I was able to like truthfully tell him no, like you might feel like it, but we've seen a lot of things, and so if you're sitting there wondering like, ooh, this, this is going to be, you know, maybe this is just terrible or this I mean, between Scott's experience and mine and Holly's, I mean, we've seen a lot of things and there are very few things nowadays that really surprise us.
Speaker 3:But our goal is really to you know, understand what it is that you are trying to do and so, kind of like what Scott said, you come in with the end in mind. What are you trying to accomplish with coaching? We know that you guys get the incentive, and we always want it to be more than just the points that you get for wellness, right, we really want it to be something that adds value to you, and so you can expect that. The first thing that we're going to ask you is you know, what would you like to talk about today or what can we do for you? And from there it's very much, it's very directed by you. We're really just here to show you your options and kind of give you things to think about, connect you to resources that may be beneficial, but never, ever are we going to ever tell you, hey, you should do this or you need to do that, because that's just not our philosophy.
Speaker 1:And these counseling services are free and, like Cass said, you can earn wellness points for attending them. So we highly encourage them and I just want to give a very special thank you to Cass and Scott. And if you would like to learn more about financial wellness from our wonderful guests, we do host virtual financial wellness workshops. They happen on the third Thursday of each month from 12 to 1. And they are recorded and posted to the webpage, so don't fret if you're unable to make it. But I want to thank you both again and just give you a moment if you have anything else to share before we head out.
Speaker 2:I would just say that we love doing this series with Salt Lake County. It is one of our favorite groups to speak with. You guys always have great questions and great interaction and we really appreciate the chance to work with you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, the feeling is mutual. And don't forget to join us next month for another Salt Lake County employee wellness episode. And thank you for listening and until next time, have a healthy day.