On this episode of A Wiser Retirement™ podcast, Casey Smith, Missie Beach, CFP®, CDFA®, and Michaela Dowdy, discuss the importance of having a financial plan and a checklist for year-end financial planning.
At the end of the episode, Casey Smith is joined by Orrin "Checkmate" Hudson for a short segment. Orrin runs Be Someone, an organization that teaches young people to move with love through the game of chess. Orrin briefly shares his life story about being in a gang and how he turned his life around. He strives to help kids who are in a situation he was once in. He is hosting a free leadership training on December 22, 2023, in Atlanta. To learn more about this opportunity, click here.
Learn More about Wiser Wealth Management:
- Our website
- Schedule a complimentary consultation (learn more about our services)
- Click here to download one of our free guides that covers financial planning topics like retirement, investing, taxes, divorce, and more!
Connect With Wiser Wealth Management:
- YouTube Channel
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Casey Smith's Twitter
- Podcast
- Blog
This podcast was produced by Wiser Wealth Management. Thanks for listening!
On this episode of A Wiser Retirement™ podcast, Casey Smith, Missie Beach, CFP®, CDFA®, and Michaela Dowdy, discuss the importance of having a financial plan and a checklist for year-end financial planning.
At the end of the episode, Casey Smith is joined by Orrin "Checkmate" Hudson for a short segment. Orrin runs Be Someone, an organization that teaches young people to move with love through the game of chess. Orrin briefly shares his life story about being in a gang and how he turned his life around. He strives to help kids who are in a situation he was once in. He is hosting a free leadership training on December 22, 2023, in Atlanta. To learn more about this opportunity, click here.
Learn More about Wiser Wealth Management:
- Our website
- Schedule a complimentary consultation (learn more about our services)
- Click here to download one of our free guides that covers financial planning topics like retirement, investing, taxes, divorce, and more!
Connect With Wiser Wealth Management:
- YouTube Channel
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Casey Smith's Twitter
- Podcast
- Blog
This podcast was produced by Wiser Wealth Management. Thanks for listening!
come up with a 10 year goal. What is your 10 year goal? And that's going to be dreaming. You have to dream. If you can't dream, then you're never going to accomplish anything. Dreaming is very important. So where do we want to be 10 years from now, financially? Where where do we want to be five or three years from now? That's the next year. Next segment three years. Where do we want to be a year from now? And then, what do you have to do tomorrow? Welcome to the Wiser retirement podcast, where we believe the best financial advice should always be conflict free. I'm your host, Casey Smith, guiding you to financial freedom. Today are my co-hosts Missy Beach and Makayla Dowdy. Hello, ladies.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:So this team right here, you guys call yourselves the M&M team, best financial planners in the city Country, probably, honestly, world, I guess.
Speaker 2:Top tier, the A team, definitely the A team.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad to have you guys here. It's for those of you who have worked with them. You know how great they are. Makayla is a rock star, missy comes with so much wisdom, and so it's an honor to have you guys on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I think I asked you to be maybe you never choice, but I'm glad to have you here I want to talk about. Well, first of all. I mean, you guys are rock stars. We have a bigger rock star coming up after we do this segment Orrin checkmate Hudson. He's been on the podcast in the past and he's doing some great things in our community, and I wanted to profile him, since we're in the holiday season, and talk more about what he's doing to help young men, young women. So make sure you stay tuned for that. That's going to be way better than this checklist we're about to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yes a lot more exciting. We're on the same wavelength.
Speaker 1:Alright, so with you guys, let's talk about the annual financial planning checklist. So it's coming year end. There's probably some things you should be doing to get ready for year end. Honestly, if you have a financial plan which every client at wise wealth management is supposed to have a financial plan I think 99% do you don't really need a year in checklist because we've been doing planning this whole time. Right, that's the whole point of planning, but probably some basic things. Let's let's walk through our our list here before year end.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:I think it's a good opportunity to sit down and do a personal balance sheet. What are my assets? What are my liabilities?
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, see where you are.
Speaker 1:How much money, how much cash do I have? Right, let's not extend ourselves over the holidays and expenses.
Speaker 4:That's key, right there. Do it before the holiday, not after know what you have.
Speaker 1:I think emergency funds are important. I mean, a lot of people are talking about how bad 24 could be. Could be a recession, could be all these, all these negative things. Now, these people are always out there, always out there with their negativity, because they're trying to sell you something. They're trying to sell you a subscription. They're trying to keep you to stay tuned to the show.
Speaker 1:Watch the advertisements right, yeah there's always an incentive financial incentive for them for to be negative, but we still want to have an emergency fund set up. We want to have at least six months of our expenses set aside. Absolutely and if you have that, what's that all saying? If it's a recession when your neighbor loses his job, but when you lose your job it's a depression.
Speaker 4:Yes, and the great thing is that you know your cash is actually earning a little bit now. That's new yeah it's true, not enough to keep up with inflation.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean, if you believe inflation numbers, cpi is right around 3% you're getting. You could get up towards a 5% on your savings account and high yield savings account now.
Speaker 4:CPI, but how about publics? Yes or rent.
Speaker 1:Yes, you guys talk with a lot of clients, don't you? Right, exactly. So theoretically you're you're beating inflation, but yes, we all know that real inflation is what it costs you more. And yes, groceries are costing a lot more now, but 5% is better than the zero we were getting before and having inflation.
Speaker 4:Yes, definitely, and I think by now everybody's heard the spiel about getting your money out of your big monster mega bank savings account earning 0.09% interest.
Speaker 1:How they just had me do a video about that. So they're about to get reminded what to be posted on our YouTube channel AY is a retirement. We can actually watch this podcast, oh cool. Hey, you know what the most watched podcast has been so far?
Speaker 4:I'm afraid to know the whiskey edition Of course.
Speaker 1:Whiskey the gift. We did that with our whiskey friend Robert, who's also the president of Teton Crypto Capital, but most watched on YouTube was our whiskey edition.
Speaker 4:At the conference we were at yesterday, they did a raffle for a bottle of whiskey after one of these sessions. We didn't win. Yeah, we didn't.
Speaker 1:Is that to get you to stay?
Speaker 4:Probably.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. That's what he said yeah. So you spoke with that conference. How did that go?
Speaker 4:It was great, so I spoke on the women in wealth panel to do the raw, raw speech for why women only make up less than a quarter of the population of financial advisors.
Speaker 1:Wow, I should be on that panel one time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there were no men.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's the whole point of the panel, but but no, I believe that women make better financial advisors than men in most cases.
Speaker 4:But on every other panel of the day I think there was what one other woman on the first panel where there was one other woman on the like third or fourth panel.
Speaker 5:But it was mainly men.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But those people are paying to be there right On some of those panels.
Speaker 4:Some were sponsors, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not that that changes anything.
Speaker 4:Yeah, only men have money to pay there and be a sponsor.
Speaker 1:No, no, but it's, it's. It's such a male dominated wholesale community that I kind of can see that.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah because women are smarter. They're not gonna be wholesalers. There's a purpose for wholesalers. Sorry if I offended if you're wholesaler, but but yeah, no, you heard you did great. Did you get pictures, michaela?
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:Let the post those somewhere on social media so everybody can see. All right, so we have. We want to make sure we have an emergency fund. We will make sure that our maybe our debts decreased over the year. You know, let's kind of get a status report of what's happening. Did our debt go down this year? Has it?
Speaker 4:been paid off, or yes, he's looking at me like down debt.
Speaker 1:You mean paid off debt right or have no debt still for our retirees.
Speaker 2:For sure, there we go.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, a lot of people talk about checking your credit score. I don't know. I'm not so big on credit scores. I just think you need to be debt free and not worry about a credit score and have your credit locked. That's my big thing for retirees for sure, but for young people who seen the podcast, who are looking to purchase homes as something that you probably should monitor.
Speaker 4:Yeah well, you can lock it and then unfreeze it so easily if you're going to go through a mortgage, you just unfreeze it for whatever time period you want to unfreeze it for.
Speaker 1:Setting financial goals. Now, this is something we do in our planning process, but for those of you who've not gone through that planning process, you really got to have like short term, midterm and long term goals, and we have whole podcast. We dedicated a goal setting, and my quick 32nd version of this is you come up with a 10 year goal. What is your 10 year goal? And that's going to be dreaming. You have to dream. If you can't dream, then you're never going to accomplish anything. Dreaming is very important.
Speaker 1:So where do we want to be 10 years from now financially? Where where do we want to be five or three years from now? That's the next year. Next segment three years. Where do we want to be a year from now? And then what do you have to do tomorrow? That's how you set goals 10, 3, 1, and then what do I do tomorrow?
Speaker 1:Or we in our office, we think in terms of rocks. You have to move over the next 30 days. So what are the things I have to do to fix these problems in our workflows or whatever those are in a happy fix the workflow and that's going to allow this to happen better, which allows marketing to do this better, which then allows us to then grow and hit our one year goal. Which we hit our one year goal, then we have a pretty good chance of hitting that three year goal. We hit that three year goal, we have a pretty good chance of hitting that 10 year goal. So that does those are. It applies to your personal life as well and how you set that. So short, mid, long term and goals are very important. I make my own kids set goals, which we talked about here in the podcast.
Speaker 4:I was going to go down that path too. So, after you set your own goals, I think it's really helpful to sit down with your kids, especially teenagers, and say, okay, you know, dad and I have set our own goals. Why don't we sit down with you and figure out what your goals are? You know, look at, show them their W2 for their part time job. Like, for example, my son works at a golf course and you know, he made I don't know a couple grand last summer or whatever it was.
Speaker 4:And we'll talk about like, well, how much do you need for your walk around spending? And then, how much can you afford to put into your Roth IRA? And so we did the math and he figured out how much he's going to put into the Roth. And then I said, okay, we're looking forward to next summer. Do you think your hours will be about the same and you'll make about the same? And let's target that same amount to put into your Roth for the next year. And so it's just natural then that these kids will grow up to think about how much of my paycheck am I going to set aside for retirement? And it's a no brainer.
Speaker 2:Are you curious why annuities keep coming up as a potential investment option? People are often told that annuities can effectively mitigate investment risks and help secure their financial future. However, annuities often benefit the salesperson. It might not be the best choice for you as a consumer to learn more about the various types of annuities, the negatives of owning them and better investment alternatives. We have a free ebook on our website just for you. To download our ebook Fire beware. Why do they keep trying to sell you that annuity? Simply click the link in the episode notes or visit wiser investorcom slash guides. Now let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Chris, good habits.
Speaker 2:No, definitely, and it was interesting. Yesterday we were talking about getting women into finance and the women that were on the panel, or the ones that were speaking out about how they got into the profession, was because the parents sat down with them and had a transparent conversation about finances. And so that's not to say you want your kids to become financial planners or advisors Great, we'd love that. But definitely going ahead and giving them the space to feel empowered in finances is huge and to just set goals for themselves, career wise or school wise or otherwise.
Speaker 1:Another year in after you set goals. It's just looking at retirement savings plans. Are you maxing out your 401k? Are you allocated correctly? Are you allocating the right amount to Roth versus traditional?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And those are all things that require a little math, and that's where we can help with that.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, we love to do that in meetings when we're looking at client plans to look at the tax implications of pre-tax versus Roth contributions, because it's not always as you think it'll be, even if you're a high earner, a lot of times moving 401k savings to the Roth side and paying that tax now at a high bracket still makes sense over the long run.
Speaker 1:So Pins on timeline. That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 4:It's all a personal, unique plan.
Speaker 1:If you're the 37% tax bracket in your 20s, then the Roth is probably still going to work out. But if you're in the 37% tax bracket and you're 55, that's a different story right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, rebalancing the portfolio is important, so you want to make sure that your risk tolerance stays the same, so that's something you should be reviewing, probably near year end as you get ready for the next year Tax planning. So if you have a good financial advisor or a good asset manager, they're doing tax loss harvesting for you. We talk about this quite frequently on our podcast. This is where let's say that the S&P 500 is up this year double digits but let's say we were in a 2022 environment again, it was down. You could sell the S&P 500. You could buy another S&P 500 fund. This is. You're doing this in your brokerage account, not your retirement accounts.
Speaker 1:You would take the loss. You're not out of the market, you're just take the loss. You reinvest right back into a different S&P fund or a large cap fund. You take that loss in your tax return. That's called tax loss harvesting. It increases your gains over the long term just in a different way. Through your tax return, you can deduct up to $3,000 per year, but the losses carry forward. So if you're selling a business, you're going to have a $1.5 million taxable gain in the future. This year, you could realize $400,000 in losses in your portfolio. Take the loss. The credit rolls over. When you sell your business. There's less of a tax hit.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of a no-brainer. I'm amazed at how people don't do it. I know I don't think any Everdejones people do it. I've never seen an Everdejones portfolio that was tax loss harvested ever Other firms, I don't know. I think it just comes down to advisors that understand what's happening with you personally and most of them are just managing assets.
Speaker 4:True, right. Hey, on the flip side, if you have a custodial account and that has some gains. You could take like $1,000 worth of gains on your child's account and they're not going to pay any income tax on it.
Speaker 3:That's a good point.
Speaker 4:The way to not let a custodial account build up massive gains over the years is to just chip away maybe $1,000 a year of gain at a time up until the minor turns into an adult and kind of manage that account a little bit, so it's not huge gains when it turns over to them.
Speaker 1:That's a very good point, thank you. Saving money so I think most families want to save money, but they don't want to give up the lifestyle. But no matter how much money you make, saving money doesn't mean that you can't go do things. It just means you're smarter about things. So I would encourage people to go through three months of their credit cards and checking accounts looking for things that they're spending money on every month and they don't know.
Speaker 1:For me this is small, but we have the family plan you know with Apple, and the kids will somehow get subscribed to things. It's $2.99 a month or it's a, you know it's. It's whatever it is, but it all adds up. Go through your iPhone under the subscriptions, get a setting subscriptions and see what's in there. I found Paramount. I have a subscription to Paramount. I've never watched Paramount a day in my life. I don't know how that got there, but I was paying like $9 a month for it or $5, whatever it was. I said well, I don't know what that is, that doesn't bring me any joy, so that is going away.
Speaker 2:And no one's. One of the kids favorite shows.
Speaker 1:And that was like, but that was months ago and no one said a word. That's just it.
Speaker 2:No one cares. I signed up for the free trial.
Speaker 1:Someone who wants to watch a movie signed up for the free trial and never turned it off. If I ever do that, I just immediately go turn it off.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know, but other people in the family don't think that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Go through, go through, look for that, Look for things in your checking account. They go oh, I don't really need that anymore. I think about my car internet. Half the time I'm like I don't know if I need internet in my car. Do I really need internet in my car?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you do, yeah, you work out in your car.
Speaker 2:You do.
Speaker 4:You're office away from the office.
Speaker 1:I go like months and not use it and then sometimes it like saves me. So you know, but yeah, I look at that every time I was like I don't really spend $15 a month on that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, go through that. Another thing is car insurance. So right now in Georgia there's mostly price increases. It's harder going to find deals on auto insurance right now, but that's something that you should review. I would honestly say don't review it for cost, but review it for quality. I'd say, what do you say? 40 to 50% of the time there's modifications that have to be made to property cash insurance. When we do financial planning, Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Like not enough coverage, Like if something had happened you wouldn't have gotten a whole house back or it would have been smaller.
Speaker 4:It's scary how many people come in and we'll have like the minimal coverage.
Speaker 1:And you're like your net worth is 10 million dollars net worth and you have liability coverage in your car. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:Because you wanted to save a couple grand on car insurance and you're putting millions at risk.
Speaker 1:In the planning process, always tell people there's more than one way to lose money. It's not just a stock market.
Speaker 4:Absolutely yeah, and that's why we do holistic planning to protect that nest egg.
Speaker 1:Also, you know if you're not maxing out your 401k, if you've gotten pay raises this year I mean, I think the average Americans had at least a 4% pay increase this year Maybe take a percentage or that and apply it towards your 401k to help try to save more money for the future.
Speaker 4:Or maybe you're in such a you know plush cash situation. At the end of the year you can ramp up your 401k savings and withhold all your last check to the 401k.
Speaker 1:True, true. Another way or another thing to think about is can I do a Roth conversion? So if you're married jointly, standard deductions a little over at 24,000 this year, you're in the 12% tax bracket up until around 68,000. So if you add the standard deduction to that, that's almost $90,000, you're in the 12% tax bracket. So if you add up all your income and in the future you think you'd be higher than 12% tax bracket, now's a great time to be converting IRA to Roth because you're in the low tax bracket.
Speaker 1:Now. If you think you're being a 12% tax bracket rest of your life, then I wouldn't make, I wouldn't prepay the tax. But if you can save 10 to 12% on tax by converting your retirement to a Roth, now that's something to consider. Other with other way, if you're, if you have earned income but maybe you're earning less than the threshold for a Roth, you could both put in $7,000 into a Roth IRA. You want to do that. But now that doesn't have to be done by 1231, that just needs to be done by the time you file your tax return next year.
Speaker 1:So that's something else to be thinking about. That's something we go through during our review meetings with clients, which is why we want all of our clients to do review meetings with us once a year and make sure that we're missing any of those opportunities.
Speaker 4:Exactly and send us their current tax return.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the current tax returns are very important. A lot of times they're surprises to us on there that we go oh wow, we have. We actually have an opportunity to do something a little different. We didn't realize that, and that comes from the tax return, the I guess the other part is, if you're, if you don't have a 401k available to you, you can still contribute to an IRA and get a tax deduction. So those are things to think about as well as you approach the end of the year. What am I missing there?
Speaker 4:One other thing is with withholding.
Speaker 4:If you feel like you are under withheld for the year and your CPA thinks you need additional withholding, the best way to do that is going to be via payroll withholding, because that gets evenly applied throughout the year, no matter when it goes in via payroll withholding.
Speaker 4:So even if you have, like your, all your checks withheld for federal tax in the month of December, the IRS thinks that's okay. I'll spread out that, those withholding payments throughout the whole year, versus if you sent in an estimated payment, that would only get tagged as of the date that you sent it in. So, for example, if you got paid a huge bonus in the beginning of the year, you're probably going to be under withheld because you're in a high tax bracket and that only gets withheld at the statutory rate of 22%. So you probably have a little differential that you're going to owe at tax time and perhaps be in an underpayment penalty situation if you don't meet the safe harbor. So check in with your CPA to see if you're in a potential underpayment position and you might need to jack up your withholding in the month of December.
Speaker 1:I think that probably covers what I'll be looking at near the end of the year, but really it's not much different than an annual review meeting that you do in our planning process.
Speaker 4:Oh, one more thing.
Speaker 1:And there's more, there's more Sorry.
Speaker 4:Before we go, check your beneficiaries because this is huge. So just log in at your custodian. You know if you're with us, you're at Schwab and we've done this at your annual review. But don't forget to log into your 401k plans at work, your life insurance, and check your beneficiaries to make sure that they coincide with your estate plan. And you know, everybody's still living. You still like everybody.
Speaker 1:You know all those questions you know one that I would add to. That is in a brokerage account. People don't realize you can add a transfer on death.
Speaker 4:Yes, perfect.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 4:Why do you want to do that?
Speaker 1:You want to do that because now that account can skip probate.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It makes it so much easier because we have quite a few clients right now going through the process, so we're could have just been a tod and would have been so much easier, and they're having to go through hoops upon hoops to get things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they think their parents had everything buttoned up and then they'll find, like these, rogue accounts that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to say you have to be very diligent and uncovering everything, even clients that we've done a state planning for and they passed away. It's amazing how many times we still see surprises.
Speaker 4:I know these little checking accounts.
Speaker 1:We had one that still had a checking account with their joint with her ex husband at another bank. Oh, and from like 10 plus years ago. I guess she had forgotten about it. I don't know. But how do you forget about the statement comes to the house every month? Oh you know it's like how do you forget about that? So it's just you have to, even if you're not super organized. You have to take some time and be super organized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And button and button everything up. But yeah, the transfer on death is a great thing. To add to a brokerage account. Now your IRA, by default, is going to be asking for a beneficiary but not a brokerage account. But you could do the same thing to your checking accounts at the bank. You can put to these on your checking and savings accounts.
Speaker 4:And that's the key it's only at death. So it's not.
Speaker 1:Yep Doesn't give many rights when you're living. That's very true. So well, thank you, ladies. I think those are all good topics, and thank you for all your hard work. It's been a busy year.
Speaker 4:It has been, let's close it out.
Speaker 1:You guys keep doing this. That is the third time. That's how in sync you guys are.
Speaker 4:Well, next time you just need one or one. So we say the same things.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, I'm sure we'll be getting lots of positive comments from the women's panel. You're on, missy. Thanks for representing Wiser, and.
Speaker 4:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:McKayla did you get pictures.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:I think I actually got already.
Speaker 2:I did. Yeah, I was gonna airdrop them to Hadley, but we've been busy this morning.
Speaker 1:Good, all right, we gotta give that on social media and show what a rock star you guys are. All right, guys talk to you later, so I'm excited to welcome my friend, oren Checkmate Hudson. Thank you From Be Someone. Back to our show, oren. It's been over a year, I think, since you've been here and we have a much bigger audience now. So let's talk a little about what you're doing in the community.
Speaker 5:Well, I'm teaching young people to move with love, to do no harm, to be a force for good. I'm teaching them to pause, pardon the pivot, pray proceed, then you can prosper. Don't do the first thing that pops in your head. The first thing that pops in your head is usually a trap. So and you're doing this through chess I'm using the game of chess to teach six magic words. Take time to think things through. I owe my life to a white teacher in an all-black high school who pulled me to the side and said listen, I'm gonna teach you chess. I said no, no, no, I'm a checker guru. He said checkers youth in half of the board. He said checkers are all men. He said chess, the female is the most powerful piece on the board. I said let's get on with the classes.
Speaker 1:So right now you're doing after school events, right?
Speaker 5:Doing that? School events? I'm doing an event on December 22nd, which is on a Saturday, so it's more than after school. So just trying to get kids engaged and teaching them to think and teaching them to just be a good human being, you know, do no harm. Human life has value. Think it out, don't shoot it out. Push pause instead of drug. Get your head up, get your pants up, get your grades up and the big one never give up.
Speaker 1:And so tell me what you're solving in the community, because I guess in the past you know we've talked about and these kids are on the streets if they don't have something to do. Right, and so many other programs have been failing. And how do you? How is chess? How are people attracted to chess?
Speaker 5:Because it's instant gratification. We teach them how to delay instant gratification, how to delay the process, but your moves matter. Moving is life and the moves you make determine the role you take. You got to think things through the more hands you shake, the more money you make. We teaching children that moves matter and all moves are valid. It didn't matter who you are, it didn't matter where you come from. If you make a good move, you get good results. Nature is neutral, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I would think at some point that you're also a great male figure for a lot of kids who don't have male figures in their lives. I mean you. You know I talk frequently and you were telling me you had a lady come to you and say, hey, can you help my son? You know he's making bad decisions.
Speaker 5:I had a lady call me yesterday who's having trouble with a son and I told her I would help him and we'll get him on track, because that child is me and we. I helped this kid not long ago and I helped him get a job, got him cleaned up and he called his uncle, crying, and said wow, I can't believe I met this guy and he helped me get a job and he blah, blah, blah His. He called his uncle and uncle called me. Like oh my God, man, you made my nephew cry and I'm coming to see you because what you're doing is work.
Speaker 5:I said your nephew is me right, and when I sincerely desire for others, what happened for me?
Speaker 1:So, as you go through the program, what's your retention rate? How long do these kids come through the program? Well, it depends.
Speaker 5:Because there's probably different ages too. I've got some kids that have been helping for the last six years, so it just depends on the?
Speaker 5:will they move away? Will they go somewhere? But I'm just helping children for life. I mean, you help me for life. If you ever need me, I'm here for you, and if I can help you get a job, I'll do that as well. So I'm helping children get jobs. I'm teaching them how to make a decision. I'm teaching them to be a force for good. I'm teaching them that the good you do comes back multiplied to you.
Speaker 1:What do you think? Well, I know you have alumni. You have alumni that have. I mean they're grown adults. Now You've been. How long you've been doing?
Speaker 5:this. I've been doing this about 23 years. I have some kids, a couple of kids who graduated from college and who are doing guru. One of my students went to Georgia State and they said they never have volunteers, but we gonna hire you Because I'm teaching my students to go above and beyond and to do everything. Would be amazing, because excellence is not enough. You have to be amazing. Steph Curry is amazing and you have to be amazing. Now, when you are amazing, you separate yourself from the competition. When you are amazing, you have no competition.
Speaker 1:Right, what? Yeah, so you're going through college. You know, something that we've talked about on the phone is schools, and it shocks me that the schools just don't open up their doors and let your organization come in. What's going on? Do you think that? What's the resistance.
Speaker 5:People don't know what they don't know, and then they'll see it eventually and they go. Oh wow, I did not know that. So it's making a way. I remember I submitted something to do something with somewhere in the Cap County and 11 people said no. And the lady said no, no, no, we getting him. And I got in. But what? Thank God she showed up in the building and she had power to bring overturned to other people. I did some stuff with the library system in the Cap County. The lady said if I have a meeting, they'll block it. So I'm gonna prove this ahead of time and when I did it was very successful. So some people don't get it, you know, and we have to help people who don't get it, because it's the responsibility of the conscious to help the unconscious be conscious of their unconscious behavior.
Speaker 5:In other words, those who don't get it. We have to help those who don't get it, because those who don't get it don't realize they don't get it. So a lot of times people don't know. It's called poor passing over opportunities repeatedly. For an example, atlanta Falcons had Brett Farr. We cut Brett Farr. People don't get it until it's too late, so sometimes-.
Speaker 5:And many other people actually over the years, you know sometimes a profit is not welcome in his own country, because sometimes people don't. People assign a number to you and they will keep that number assigned to you, no matter how advanced you are, and then they'll see it later. Like in the town where Jesus was born, he can help many people because of their unbelief. So we got to believe and people are getting it through the parents that I'm helping and the parents are kind of like oh hey, man, this guy helped my child, la, la, la la, and they see testimony. So I'm doing God is good. I had a principal call me the other day and they see the value in what I'm doing. So it's coming around.
Speaker 5:Just some people just don't understand because they say, well, how he's able to do this. But I'm getting help from God. I really am. I teach the children as though my life depends on it, because we all are one, and I was a state trooper for seven years. I had the blue light, the bad, the blue prevents, but everybody I stopped. I treated them like the most important person in the world because we all are one and what you sincerely desire for others will happen for you.
Speaker 1:So, as you go through your program, so you have the after school program, you have this event in December. Where is the event being held?
Speaker 5:It's gonna be at the training center it's gonna be 949 Stevenson Road, stone Mound, and we're gonna be teaching children how to navigate through the complexities of life and how to make your next move the best move.
Speaker 1:So move with love. Leadership training is that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, move with love. Leadership training where you have a life-size chessboard, where we're gonna be teaching people how to think things through and how to be a champion, and that you know pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is the key to success in all fields. Once you know the pattern, you can plan, you can prepare, you can position, you can predict. Success is predictable If you make good moves. It didn't matter who you are, it didn't matter where you come from. If you make good moves, you will get good results.
Speaker 1:What I like about your program is you're teaching people that, no matter what your circumstance, that there are opportunities for you, and not to play the victim. So much of our society red, black, yellow, blue people it doesn't matter. We love to play the victim, love to say, oh, woe is me, this couldn't happen to me because I'm whatever, or they don't like me, or and that's not. That's the message. You're not playing the victim message. You're saying that, that you're in charge of yourself.
Speaker 5:You're responsible for your own success and it's no blaming this game. I'm responsible. I have everything I need to win the game. I have my mind, I have my ability, I have my talents and my time. So we ain't playing the blame game. We're going to take a hundred percent responsibility for our success. If it's to be, it's got to be me. No one's coming to the rescue.
Speaker 1:So how does that go against current culture though?
Speaker 5:People are people playing the blame game, People always. Uh, I was telling. I went to Sonic's the other day and I bought a banana split and the the clerk forgot to put the bananas on and I told my staff when I got back to the building. I said I caught it ahead of time. But I said it's not her fault, it's my. Everything is on me, no matter what. So I'm a hundred, we're a hundred percent responsibility for no matter what.
Speaker 5:I was a state trooper. I remember one time this lady came to me and she said oh, and I hit five accidents and the insurance company counselor me, and none of them were my fault. I said you accident prone, you accident prone, it was not your fault, but you. You called five accidents in a few months. You accident pro. Yeah, but that was never my fault. You still accident pros, Right. So I tell people it's always on you. Here's why the mountain can't get any bigger. But you can. And if you blame the mountain, if you blame the government, taxes and prices, you can't change that. But you can work on you and you can get stronger, you can get wiser and you can get better. So every day, just become a little bit better and look for the silver lining. When something happened to you, there's always a silver lining. Everybody falls sometime. You got to have the strength to rise from the ashes and make a new beginning, Do you?
Speaker 1:feel like that. The young people that you work with come in with that attitude that they've already been beaten down. Or in your I guess in your example, someone who is a troublemaker, who's known as a troublemaker, eventually identifies themselves as a troublemaker and that's all they can do is make trouble, right?
Speaker 5:I tell them my own story. I was a gang member in my teens. I was making the bad, making a lot of bad decisions. I was mostly following the following and the teacher said listen, orrin. He said I'm going to teach you how to think for yourself. He said make sure what you do is a product of your own conclusion and don't just be a follower, because when I was a teenager they say breaking as you do it. They said do this, you do it. I was just following the following. So I thank God for James Edge Hayes, high School teacher, taught me how to think for myself and make sure what I'm doing was a product of my own conclusion. So I'm teaching children not what to think, but how to think and how to make the next move the best move, because moves matter. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So your organization is a nonprofit. He's a 501, 63. This is 100% of your life. You do this 24 seven. A full-time soldier sleeps with his boots on A lady called me at 1.30 in the morning.
Speaker 5:She said her son was in a gang. Nobody would help her. And she said would I volunteer my service and sign a court after David for a year to help her son? I said yes. I helped the son he graduated. Reporters said why don't you take a phone call from a complete stranger in the middle of the night? I said a full-time soldier sleeps with his boots on. It's not about me, it's about we, and it takes teamwork to make the dream work.
Speaker 1:You remind me a lot of my grandfather, who, pastors, are always pastors. But he was a pastor out in Pauldin County when they only had one little flashing light before the super wall mark, the K marks, and all that came in. And I remember sleeping at his house as a young man, probably 10, 11 years old, and there'd be a knock at the old screen door and it was the police with a homeless man who'd shown up in town because it wouldn't, like it is today, they moved the homeless people on, you know, and he would get up and he would offer him some food and take care of him. Now he wouldn't let him stay in the house, but he would take him across the street to the church at 1 30 in the morning, you know, and, and and he's still today, even at 94 years old, he's, he's still a pastor, still caring for the, for the community. And when you have that calling, it's what you do 24, seven, you don't. You don't turn it off at 5 pm.
Speaker 5:You don't turn it off. I get a kick out of helping people. I just I love it because I'm making the world better and I'm. People want to see a sermon instead of hear a sermon. So, people, this event I got coming up December 22nd is free food, free parking, free training. I want people to see the sermon. I want them to see moving with love. I want to see how I do stuff. I care about the world. I know I've never seen a child on the news that I didn't do my program for some on the news negative, because I'm teaching children how to be a force for good and to do no harm, just be a good human being Right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very refreshing, Oran, and obviously you know that we support you here at our firm and you know, for people who want to learn more about Oran and his, his organization, be someoneorg. You can go to be someoneorg. You can see what he's doing there. It's a great website.
Speaker 5:Have you guys updated that recently.
Speaker 1:I think I'm, I think I really knew.
Speaker 5:I think I need to do a little bit more change, but I will say Casey Smith is a real deal. This brother there's a list that I have, who can I count on and who can I count out? And I sent an email out to a thousand people and he's the only one responding. So I just know that God is going to be with you and I pray that God multiply whatever you've given to us a million fold, because everybody is not who they appear to be, but this dude is a real deal holy field. So, Casey Smith, please support his work and what he does, because you call this guy midnight, he delivers. So he is the. He's the same like he is now in behind closed doors. So people, everybody is not genuine, but Casey Smith is the real deal holy field and for that I say I appreciate you and we're in business because of this guy.
Speaker 5:So God bless you.
Speaker 1:Well, I, I love what you're doing. I love people that are the real deal like yourself, but, more importantly, they are not out for self gratification but to make people in society better. I feel like at my firm. Obviously we make a profit, but only 2% of the of the world operates the way we do, is fiduciary and fee only, and when I see you, you know a lot of, a lot of a lot of nonprofits or for-profits. If you start looking at people's salaries, right, and you go man, how much of my money actually goes to help people, when the president's making $900,000 a year and you you're literally you you would empty out your bank account to help these kids and and that is uh, that's very special.
Speaker 5:Well, that kid is me. I had a lawyer call me and he said man, I sent my Latino kid to you and everybody else rejected him, but you welcome him with open arms. I said yes, because the Latino kid is me, we all are one. Like I said, when I was a state trooper, I could have messed a lot of people up, but I treated that person like it's me, because we all are one and I have to sleep at night. Yes, the judge want me to tow your car.
Speaker 3:Yes, she want to see you.
Speaker 5:Yes, she going to put you in jail for a few days. But you know what? I'm going to stop her from doing that because I'm going to bump this speed down and let you melody. Oh man, thank you. He don't understand. You are me, so I want you. I want to treat you like you're me, because we all are one. That's right. And I have to sleep at night. You know, we used to. We used to hold driver's license check and we have a. When we close the road now you can't get by unless we check your license Right. So I've stopped a few people. That was suspended license and I'm just trying to feed my family. I'm going back and forth to work. Please don't write me this $500 ticket. I said okay, I got you. I got you. Don't let me catch you again. Get your license, just, you got to treat people like it's you. He said I'm trying to feed my family. You got the road closed Like you know, just the person is you, you know?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So we got to have mercy on people, we got to have compassion and we got to know that we all are one. What do you? What do you?
Speaker 1:do with, with tough cases. I don't think I've ever asked you this before, but not everybody is going to conform. Some people are sent to you versus coming to you. Those are two different things, right, what are? What do you do with kids who, just who, just who, come into the program but continue to make a ruckus? Well, I, I try. I mean at some point they have to leave. You don't put a bad apple with good apples.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I hear that, but I I believe that I can. I can show love no matter what. And the law say stone this woman, but we ain't stone and nobody. We going to try to work with everybody, because I remember a case in point this lady, her son, took a loaded gun to school and her mom she wrote them off. I said, no, we're not writing this kid off, we going to work with this kid, we going to get them on track.
Speaker 5:So I believe that, no matter how bad it is, I believe there in second chances. I believe in having mercy, I believe in sharing stories that can help people, because we all got to have mercy and we got to forgive those who trespass against us as we forgive those who trust them. And so we got to. We got to show love no matter what, and I always believe there's a silver lining. I always believe in the power of God and moving with love. The word love means to give, but I expect that anything returned. The word love means to look for the good, and if you're looking for the good and you give what I expected, anything in return, you will always win. So my, my message is mercy, mercy, mercy. Give people, just try to love, love on people, just just love people.
Speaker 1:So your program operates a hundred percent on donations. These kids and these families aren't paying you. This is not AA. This is not rehab of some sort. Uh, where you're paying $40,000 into the door. Uh, you're offering this as a community service for free.
Speaker 5:I'm having it for free and be totally honest with you, I every penny that I ever made in the last 23 years I put it back into the program. So I'm not only CEO in the world that just just put everything back. Why? Because I love it. I love making a difference. Like I said, when the lady called every agency in Atlanta, no one would help her. People with millions of dollars told her no.
Speaker 5:but I said yes because I know that that child is me and though if he wins I win, it's not over until we all wins.
Speaker 1:So I would encourage our listeners who've been moved by by or in, like I have over the years. Um, you can go to his website, be someoneorg. There's a there's a donate now button there. Consider donating um directly through his website at be someoneorg, and you also read more about his uh, his bio and what he's doing um in his uh in his community. Uh, thank you for Oren. So much for driving up here to Marietta and uh and doing this with us today for the podcast, and Merry Christmas to you and and your family and and um all those around uh be someone.
Speaker 5:Thank you so much. Uh, thank you, casey. Casey Smith is a real deal and uh, please, uh, support his work cause he, he, everybody is not the real deal. Some people will say something on camera and be a totally different Alf camera, but this guy's at midnight, he's the real deal. So for that I say thank you. God bless you. Merry Christmas, happy holidays to everyone is listening and what we're doing has your name on it. You could be a part of changing the world, one move at a time. Be someoneorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
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