345. Are You Reacting to the Headlines or Sticking to the Plan?

You weren't worried about your portfolio at breakfast. Then you check your phone and see recession warnings, tariff headlines, Federal Reserve predictions, and market experts declaring that "this time is different."

In this episode of A Wiser Retirement® Podcast, we discuss why reacting to headlines can lead investors away from their long-term financial goals. Drawing on decades of experience through events like the 2008 Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 market downturn, and the inflation-driven volatility of 2022, we explain why discipline, planning, and perspective often matter more than predictions.

Related Podcast Episodes: 

Ep 284. Fear, Greed, and the Markets: Mastering Emotional Investing (Part 1)

Ep 285. Fear, Greed, and the Markets: Mastering Emotional Investing (Part 2)

Ep 323. 2025 Market Recap & 2026 Outlook: What’s Ahead for Investors

Related Financial Education Videos:

Should Pilots Invest in Aviation Stocks?

Is now a good time to invest in the S&P 500?

Additional Info:

New Book: Everything Your Financial Advisor Won't Tell You

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- Schedule a Complimentary Consultation: Discover how we can help you achieve financial freedom.
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This podcast was produced by Wiser Wealth Management. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Fear Sneaks Into Your Plan

SPEAKER_03 0:00

You weren't worried about your portfolio at breakfast. Then you open your phone, and suddenly there's a recession warning, a tariff headline, a Fed prediction. Three experts saying this time it's different. By lunch, you're suddenly questioned your entire financial plan. Most financial plans don't begin with greed, they begin with fear. Stay tuned to learn more of how to avoid this.

Welcome And The Book Launch

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to a wiser retirement podcast, where we cut through the noise and bring you real, honest conversations about investing, retirement, and building lasting wealth. No sales pitches, no gimmicks. Just insights to help you stop guessing and start planning your financial future.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Welcome to a wiser retirement podcast. I'm Casey Smith. Today I'm joining senior financial advisor, Shauna Therrialt, to discuss if you're reacting to the headlines or sticking to the plan. Hey, Shauna. Morning. Good morning. Our world traveler has returned.

SPEAKER_04 0:55

It's hardly a world traveler if it's like one state over.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

I know, but did you not go to Epcot while you're in Florida? I did not. Oh, then yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:02

You just went to one state then. I did not. Believe it or not.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Client meetings in Florida. Sounds horrible.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

It was fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Probably a little warm.

SPEAKER_04 1:10

Actually, it was raining the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Wait, were you in Florida this weekend?

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Yes. Yeah. I was too. Oh. Well, you're a world traveler then.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Well, no, I went by car.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

And pulling a couple horses. Oh. So my daughter had a horse show.

SPEAKER_04 1:22

You can't bring the horses on the plane.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

No. No, not alive. Um, yeah, I was in Ocala, Florida.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Oh, I was close to you. I was like Orlando, so who knew?

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Um, I don't know. I don't know if Florida could handle both of us. It's crazy. There was no warning for them. Right, exactly. So, hey, the book is launched. Very exciting. You can buy it on Amazon. I'm sure we've linked it to this podcast somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

So uh check that out. We've got a few chapters in there. We did.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Yeah, absolutely. That was fun. That was really fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

All right.

Why Bad News Wins Clicks

SPEAKER_03 1:56

So let's talk about uh headlines that are built to capture attention. So I, you know, I think that people are smart enough, especially our listeners, because if you're listening to this show, you're probably pretty smart, that news headlines are made to capture attention. Like there's never there's not gonna be a news headline that says the long-term uh investor is doing great still despite the recent market turmoil. Never I've never seen it. The only time I have ever seen a person who only talks about short-term stuff break down and say you should just buy the SP 500 and hold it long term was Jim Kramer on CNBC during his uh his show that comes on after hours in the middle of the financial crisis, like Dow was plummeting through 8,000, headed down to 6,000. I think 6,500 was a low. I literally I remember because I would just sit there and watch the TV going, what in the world is happening, right? Just trying to make sense of it all.

SPEAKER_05 2:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

And Jim Kramer broke down. I wish I could find it on the web somewhere, but Jim Kramer broke down and said, you know, if you're gonna if if if you're a long-term investor, you just buy the SP 500 ETF, you just hold it. They probably deleted that from they probably paid YouTube to eliminate that.

SPEAKER_04 3:16

But it well, that's no different than any other headlines. That's you know, it's like what whatever the fear or the scariness of it's what sells, right? Like their job is the hook.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 3:26

So that's right.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

You know, yeah, that we have a um uh operations has moved into an old advisor's office, and uh so that's where Tiffany and Kyle share an office, and there's an old TV there. It's a new TV, but in an old advisor office, right? And it's it's up on the wall, and instead of taking it down and there being just like these big bolt holes in the walls, like, you know, we'll just leave it up and I put it on uh Bloomberg for them or something, and then they quickly changed it to local news, so it sits on local news all day long. And then one day I walked in and it wasn't local news, it was it was like I don't know, it was some show. I call it soap operas. They're not really watching this. No, they're not really watching this stuff, but it was on and uh I said, Oh, you changed it from local news. And they're like, All it is is murders.

SPEAKER_04 4:10

Right, exactly, exactly. That's like you know, scary things or sad things, it's what sells, unfortunately. Same in the financial discussions.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

There's there's there's no headline there. It says, uh, Martha walked down the street today and got a coffee, and it's a really nice day. You know, it doesn't that's not that's not how what happens, it's not how you sell coverage. Um, the same thing with with um our advertising. If you if you think about like for example, I know a uh I don't know her personally, I've just seen her stuff out there in social media, but she's an attorney. Okay, I can mean so many things, right? She's not a tax attorney or anything like that. She's just an attorney. She went to law school past. Congratulations. But somehow she became like this financial advisor. So she's an attorney. That's a financial advisor. And she's gonna tell you what what's really happening in financial services and what and how you should be investing your money. You know, most people think, oh, an attorney. Ooh.

SPEAKER_05 5:05

And yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

So the point of it is that the hook is that there must be something different. Like there's probably some secret that I don't know about. And I dig through her website in the end, she's selling annuities. So she's she's out there going, I have something different. Aren't you tired of losing money in the market? Aren't you tired of this volatility? I have something different for you. This is you know, and and and it's not what you think it is. Because everyone goes, Oh, it's annuities. And then it's like, no, it's not what you think it is.

SPEAKER_04 5:34

Um, and so it again But yet it is how is that not like a bait and switch?

SPEAKER_03 5:39

Oh, it totally is a bait and switch. Um, so but but that's but that's how that's how the marketing hook can can work. You know, it's kind of what we do is a little bit different. You know, our our hook is like, hey, I is is your advisor just working on investments but nothing else? Like there's a whole yeah other spectrum of financial planning that is not being done in entirety. It's being done in bits and pieces by um our industry, but not done in entirety. Only four percent of us seem to be doing it in entirety. So so it it's it's uh uh and that and that that four percent number, uh, where did I see that? That I guess I was thinking from NAFA's website. You can go to NAFA.com and that tells you at what percentage of people um participate in and fiduciary fee-only type work doing comprehensive planning. But if we ran a bunch of headlines that were super negative, we could generate a lot of views and a lot of um uh a lot of attention. Uh in our our our advertising tends to be a little bit more positive than that, or you know, talking about giving people confidence, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Yeah, we'll talk about the planning side.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

But it's it's amazing. If you if you want to go outright negative, you can get a lot of attention. Maybe that's what happens in politics too, because we see that during politics. Every candidate isn't is is saying what other person won't do, but they never tell us what they're going to do.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

Right? It's just like I I think that resonates with people better, and maybe it's just human nature, but um again, nobody's gonna click on long-term diversified portfolio continues functioning normally uh in the middle of a in the middle of a um financial crisis or or or whatever it we have. But it it it there's there's um and I I don't wanna I don't I don't want to like make poke fun of people because in the end we're we're all susceptible to it because it's human nature.

Biases That Push Us To Act

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Yeah. Um human nature uh we have we have um normal biases. Um some of them are like action bias, loss aversion bias, recency bias, the emotional comfort of doing something. Um why staying um why staying disciplined uh uh can feel passive even when it's actually strategic. So it it's it's it's like if if your house is on fire, you do something. You get out or you put the fire out, or you know, you take there's action. Yeah. So sometimes doing nothing is not right. It doesn't it doesn't it doesn't feel right, you know? Yeah. Yeah, even in aviation, you know, when we're being trained to fly a commercial airliner and the engine catches on fire, you know, you you pause, you pull out a book, yeah, you open up this book and then you do step one, step two, step three. Because if you just react, you could do the wrong thing. You could shut down the good engine instead of the instead of the bad engine.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

Yeah, I mean, uh most reactions tend to be somewhat emotional. I mean, there's the fight or flight reaction, right? We have to do something because we're in a car accident. I mean, you know, this fight or flight, that's not what we're talking about. So we're talking about a long-term strategic plan that was carefully put in place so that you don't have to be emotionally reacting.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

And that doesn't mean the emotions don't come if you see your portfolio going down or something happening. But if you react to that and say, go to cash or do something in panic, you can really hurt your portfolio doing that.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

Yeah. That is correct. I'm I'm thinking um I think maybe education solves a lot of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:07

So if you can't do it, what do we do in a down market? Yeah. What do we do when we have an upmarket? And you know, it's not the same on the upside, too, right? Yeah. If it's like really, really, really high, you take your gains and you rebalance.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:19

That's that's strategic in nature. That's discipline. If it's down, maybe you tax loss, harvest, or buy more or follow the plan and wait. You know, so that isn't doing nothing is also an action. Yeah. It can be. It's a decision. So, you know, that's where it's like you you putting in place when things are going well, whether they're going well or going, you know, you putting in place what your plan is is what's going to get you over the long term during the downturns when they become emotional to be like, wait, remember what we talked about? You know, but it but you're right, it is education, understanding what to do. Because some people just, you know, we we have the luxury, I'm gonna say, that we've been in the industry and we've seen all these market cycles for the last 29 years. You think you similarly? So, and even if somebody's an investor, they've seen it too. So someone that has done this over time, they understand. And it doesn't feel as scary because we know that these things are coming. But, you know, someone who hasn't really maybe paid attention as much or doesn't understand it as much or hasn't studied it as much, um, for whatever reason, you know, are new to it, you know, it just feels different until they have that education really and they've seen it play out in real life.

Client Wisdom In Market Storms

SPEAKER_03 10:34

I uh had a client, her name is uh Nancy Christie. Nancy Christie passed away in 2020. She was one of my not of COVID, but just yeah, kind of old age, actually. Um but she uh she was one of my largest clients in the middle of the financial crisis. Me being a younger advisor, probably what, eight years into the industry at that point. Uh I, you know, I had to go do all these meetings, your portfolio is down 20%, portfolio's down 30%, your portfolio's down 40%. You know, you're just you're having these meetings just so draining. And you're trying to be being remain positive and say this is uh the market does over long terms, you know. Uh well she didn't she did drive, she shouldn't have been driving. Uh so I would try to go see her if I could. And again, client base back then was you know 40 people, 50 people, somewhere in there. So you can spend a lot of time um thinking about different situations. And anyway, so I would go sit at her kitchen table and remember uh Sydney has a miss Christy, this is the performance over the last year. I said, It's not really good. And I probably put my head down as I said it or something. And she looked at me and she says, It's gonna be fine. No one says that, you know, I'm supposed to say that to you. You're not supposed to say that to me, right? And I remember looking up at her and she's like, She's like, I live through the tail end of the Great Depression. I said, She's like, We're doing, we're doing fine, we're gonna be okay, everything is gonna be fine. And and uh and I said, Well, you know, we're in index funds now, these are broad companies. She's like, but it's all gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

Like, can you train our clients?

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

That was during the financial crisis.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

That was during 08 and 09, yeah. Yeah, so so uh seven, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:18

So she was with you for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Oh, yeah, she was with the firm. Uh the fur she was with the firm back uh so so the predecessor of the of this firm was a was another company that I that I bought, right? So the the the she was with that company, so she came with the acquisition of Wiser in 2007. Yeah. So not only was she uh have so much wisdom and understanding of of markets and what how things happen, but she also she also um you know, was a new client to me.

SPEAKER_05 12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

And and so she just yeah, and then for yeah I remember for years. I mean, I would I'd go by and see her every every every quarter, I'd go by and see her, and we'd sit down and I'd probably be there for three, four hours. And we probably talked about finance for 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Yeah, um, but yeah, she was she was uh she was real sweet. She used to always uh buy Christmas presents for my children. Oh uh I think she was one of the first ones to hold my daughter when she was born. She's sweet, she's 18 now. So she she'd come to the house.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

I love those kind of relationships.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

But yeah, but yeah, it is you know, but she had she had a she had already lived a long life at that point, and she had just had wisdom from that.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

And she understood how markets how markets work.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

And I feel that because the longer I'm in the industry, the less fear that I you know, and you can be confident about that because you've lived through it and you've watched, it's like, you know, I used to sit at the cross the table from clients, and it's like, well, you know, in a down market, it it's okay if you're retired. And of course, I've had people say, Well, you're not retired, you have time.

SPEAKER_05 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

Well, that's true. I'm not retired, but I've walked beside hundreds that have retired and I've seen how it plays out in their portfolios. And so I've witnessed a lot of different financial situations, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:00

And so she's the polar opposite of a person that I said was not a good fit for this firm. Uh, and that did that relationship ended very differently. But it was a lady that uh would watch the view and get her investment advice from the view, and she would call me and say, Well, the view says we need to be selling everything right now because you know, so-and-so is president. We need to be, we gotta be getting all our stuff out. And I'm like, I'm sorry, that that's not even financial news. Like, I'm used to CNBC says, but not not the view. Yeah, well, and after after I realized I wasn't calming this person down, I was like, it's all these is a good relationship.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

Yeah, market timing is not a good thing, definitely not, especially when it's based on politics.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Politics is a whole nother thing that's smoke and mirrors, right? So if you're trying to base your portfolio off politics, that is a that is a losing game. You're you're not you're it's not even a fair game for you. It's it's some a lot like buying a car. You know, every car I've bought, we lost money on this one. You got a good deal. Like, there is no way you lost money on this offer, you wouldn't be in business, right? Tell that to everybody that walks in this dealership.

2008 Crisis And Leverage Lessons

SPEAKER_03 15:06

So let's let's kind of go through uh uh a head what I call a headline hall of fame. Um every every single time clients would say, This time it's different. Oh, this time it's different. Uh and I've I've been you and I both have been doing this for about 26 years. So we we live through a lot of this. Um some of it's more recent than other times, but obviously I think I have to revisit this one first. Headline number one uh of this list is the 2008 financial crisis. I mean, that was that was the biggest and and it was long, so the long two years.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

Yeah, it was it was so it's so from start to finish, the market took four and a half years to recover. But the longest time period is like the dot coms and then into like 9-11. But you don't feel it the same because that was a lost decade, unless, yeah, because in the dot-coms Enron was in the middle of that time. Exactly. So like you don't feel it as much because if you weren't really, really, really tech heavy, like people who were tech because they were chasing tech. That's one reason to be, you know, diversified, right? Then it was, you know, you recovered fine. Um, you know, that was actually a really long time period, but the financial crisis hit different because it felt like it affected everybody. Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Banks were banks were collapsing.

SPEAKER_04 16:24

Bonds were down, stocks were down, which is usually that's the flip, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Yeah, well, it started in the bond market and then it transitioned into the stock market. It was a credit crisis.

SPEAKER_04 16:33

But normally, normally, you know, if stocks are up, bonds don't go down as far, you know. And that it was it was different in that.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

And then people were losing their jobs and people were losing their homes, and it felt very it was a 57% drop from the peak to the bottom during that time period. Um, many people believed that the banks were all gonna collapse with some beginning of their banking run. Didn't quite end up quite that bad. Um that that was that was a tough time period because I had we had transitioned the firm from all stock picking. That's what Mr. Weiser had done, who owned the firm at the time, uh from all stock picking to using ETFs, exchange traded funds, which were fairly new at that time, uh a new investment vehicle. But what was what was um what was shocking to me was he would use leverage in portfolios. And so we were d-leveraging portfolios starting in He was using margin. Margin, yeah. So he we were d-leveraging portfolios um kind of one client at a time back in uh mid-2007. So the deleveraging had already started, but for the clients that were still leveraged, you accelerate the way down. Like you accelerate if you borrowed money and then you're losing that much that fast, yeah, you're accelerating the the decline on that. And just like you accelerate the the upside of of the market. But I remember just sitting there going, because you own more of it.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

Because you're because you have less because you borrowed against it.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

So you own more of it. That's right. Yeah. So it it so but you get margin calls at some point. Yeah. If it comes down enough, you get margin calls. So we started getting margin calls on on client accounts. I remember um it was like all hands-on trading. Yeah, because it was we didn't have models back then, we weren't as sophisticated as we are, not nearly as sophisticated as we are now. Um so it was really like trade this account, trade this account. And we worked people through it. In the end, um, everyone recovered, uh, partially because uh, you know, people were concerned, but a lot of people were concerned about their jobs, uh less concerned about the the portfolios, right? Um in the end, everything everyone kind of came through it. But I remember one family that was really nervous about investing in that time period, and they're like, Oh, I don't know about the investing in the stock market, and they had a lump sum coming from a pension. So they're going from a cash type environment into the market.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Well, which that feels deregulated a little bit, you know, like so so I was so I was like, Well, um we can't get your house paid off.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

You can retire sooner. He was in a job that required a lot of labor, but made decent money, had a large pension. Uh, it was a lump sum. And so we invested that lump sum um very nervously. Even even I was like, I don't know. The Dow was uh around 7,000 when we put the dollars in. And we invested half of it, and the other half went in like six months later. Should have put it all in because that was Dow 6,500 was the bottom, and it was pretty much all up from that point on. And in fact, the rate of return on his very conservative account uh was enough to pay off the house. And that was a life lesson to me, is like you can't time this stuff. You you you know, you have to you have to put the money in and just let it let it let it keep working. Um and also in 2010, so our our rapid growth rate really started in 2014. We've been growing 20% per year as a firm since 2014. Prior to that, it was it was uh still above normal, but it was in that eight to ten percent range. 2010 was a really big year for us for growth. It was a lot of people who used to have a million dollars, who now had $500,000 because they sold. Because they sold everything. Uh they were self-managed and they sold everything in the crisis. They will never ever get that money back.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Casey, I watched somebody during that time period turn seven million dollars into like three and a half million dollars just from like a couple of trading days. It was there had this client that um that uh his income covered his expenses, didn't really have withdrawal needs and had a lot of money invested in the market and wasn't even 100% in stocks, but it's you know, at some point, the you know, 08 and 09 happened, it's like around the time where GE went to like four. It's like when they stopped trading. It's like that's when they put in the stop trading and they halted trading for to pause because it was going too high or too low going forward, you know? And so on that day, called and said, I get me out. And I'm like, I don't recommend this. I tried to reference the plan and it was like, get me out. And so what happened after this? So we did with the client. I mean, it's the client's money. Yeah, you have to. I mean, I don't recommend it, but we did it. And so sold, of course. What did the market do? Straight up. Straight up. And so then it's like, what that's the problem. When do you get out? When do you get back in? And so he called again and is like, get me back in, put him back in. Market dropped again. He called again.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

He sold twice.

unknown 21:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

You can't recover from that. You have to be in that upside. And he didn't even need the money right now, or even in the next five, 10 years, but he couldn't stomach the decline. And it's like, you know, that's where it sometimes, even if a plan says it could be a little less conservative because you don't really need the withdrawal. But it's like, how do you react in those moments? Right. Because I'm gonna reference the plan and we're gonna reference these things. But I mean, I watched them turn their portfolio and cut it in half just from like three trading days reactionary, even though that we said we don't recommend it. It's like what we have to ultimately do what the client wants. I mean, it's their money.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

That's very true. Very true.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

You know, I mean, we can't.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

I'm very fortunate that that's Zach situation happened to me, but it happened to a person who I considered a friend, but it was also a client.

SPEAKER_04 22:05

Yeah. So you could be like, hey, yeah, I don't do this.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

I told him, I said, I said, if you sell right now, you'll never retire. You're gonna work forever. So he goes, No, I can't handle it. We I just can't handle this. I can't watch this stuff keep going down. I said, Okay, then you need to drive up here to the office. I will cue the trades, but you're hitting the enter button. I'm not gonna be responsible for this. And he got really pissed. Oh, he got really pissed at me for a couple of days, didn't show up to hit the enter button. And um, about a year later we were golfing and he told me, he goes, You know, I was really angry with you. But if you but if I had liquidated that, um I wouldn't be playing golf right now with you. I'd be I'd be working a second job or something.

SPEAKER_04 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Uh he didn't have a lot of money, but he had enough. Is that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 22:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

And and so um anyway, he went on to create a um actually he was a very generous person, but he created a foundation which we supported for many years here as a firm and um helped a lot of people um through his through his foundation and all that because he stayed was able to stay keep his head about him and stay stay in um stay in shape.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Not all financial advice is created equal. Available now. Everything your financial advisor won't tell you. An eye-opening book that reveals what's really happening inside the financial industry and what it takes to build a plan that actually works. Because what you don't know could be costing you.

COVID Volatility And Cash Buckets

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Uh another headline um was was COVID in 2020. Now, uh this headline obviously happened a lot later from the financial crisis, right? Yeah. So in the financial crisis, I I lost most of this hair, right? I don't have any hair. I guess that lost it all then. I'm sure it was because of that. Yeah, exactly. So so in the financial crisis, I learned a few things. Uh, one is we've got to make sure our our clients have uh enough liquidity, enough liquidity, enough reserves. And so that's when we really started ramping up financial planning. See, back then, most firms didn't do financial planning, they were just asset managers. And that's when I said, okay, we we need to get heavy into financial planning. Uh asset management will be fine, um, but we we need to make sure we're doing planning. And that's where their cash buckets came from, where we maintain cash. So when COVID hit, uh, people would call up and say, Well, I know this is really tough. Market's down 30% right now. Um, you can stop sending my withdrawals. I got some savings. I said, I've got two years worth of your withdrawals and savings over here on this side.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

Remember, this is why we have this.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

And you said, You mean that money hasn't lost money? I said, No, it's sitting in an FDIC insured money market. Um, and this is we keep it in those your paycheck. Yeah, we keep it two years worth of those paychecks in reserve. Oh, all right, well, send me my money then.

unknown 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

Yeah. And then we had another uh, so that was that was one segment. Another segment would call up and go, I know this has got to be temporary. Like, how do I, how do I take advantage of this? And that's why I started thinking, oh wow, like all of our podcasts. Well, we started doing podcasts in 2020, but all of our blogging and things and talking to clients is working because instead of them being fearful, yeah, they're going, oh my gosh, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Yeah, maybe it's down 30%. If I can get in now, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

And interest rates are down, so let's refinance again and everything else, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:23

So you start thinking more strategically, you're like, oh, this is an opportunity. Even in retirement, there's opportunities there.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

Yes, correct. So, so in in twenty, and I remember in COVID, bonds were up. The treasuries were up. So we're selling treasuries for for a gain, and then we're buying, uh, we're buying stock lower. And we had to rebalance three more times that year because the stock kept going up that we bought and and they kept getting too heavily weighted in stocks. We had to keep on selling stocks to put it back in bonds. That that actually was um, I honestly look back at COVID, other than uh not making light of the people, the loved ones we lost during that time period. Definitely not. Um it was actually not that bad of a year because we ended up with double-digit gains by another year. Uh, we did we only had only had one client who uh was panicking, who was upset. And and with them, I said, okay, we'll sell 10%. And then a week from now, if the market's down again, we'll sell another 10%. I mean, I kind of worked him off the ledge that way. Yeah. So I'd rather do the lose.

SPEAKER_04 26:19

So he felt like he was doing something.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

He felt like he was taking action and doing something. So I was like, well, he's gonna feel like he took action 10% of the portfolio is that he's never gonna get that money back, the the gains back, or or or the recover the losses in that 10%. But it's better than him going to all cash.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

And it's a it's a smaller percentage.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 26:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

And they weren't super happy with me in that process. My my job is not to be liked, my job is to tell the truth. Yeah. And so I was just telling the truth. Right. Uh, and then the next year they asked to meet with a different advisor, and and they did, and then they asked him why their return was lower than the benchmark. And he was like, Because you asked it was loose. You asked to sell the portfolio during COVID.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

I don't understand that.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

So anyway, um, but yes, it's it's um they're doing fine.

SPEAKER_04 27:09

But it's because we get amnesia during these times. These things happen again and we forget how it felt or what you know, we we we forget, or you're in a different life stage, right? Yeah, and maybe you're not saving anymore, and now you're in retirement, or you're in a different life stage when it happens, so it feels different.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

I mean, at that time during COVID, I just looked at everybody employee that was here and I said, Look, um, our company is in great shape. We're financially, we're in great shape. You guys are in great shape. You guys all have jobs. There's no one's getting fired or not fired, but let go because of economic reasons. Uh, I said, this is our Super Bowl. This is why people have financial advisors, is right now. So it's time to step up, put the extra hours in. Yeah. We kept coming to work, except for those who had uh children at home because you know we all had to turn into educators during that time period.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Yes, I remember.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

So it's so cute.

SPEAKER_04 28:03

You know how it is to teach a first grader to read when you're trying to do like all the stuff and you have two other kids. I'm like, I don't know how to teach her to read.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

It's it's a nail in the coffin for some kids. We'll never no math, or we'll never know whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_04 28:16

You skipped over this.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

And then we and we sent it back to school, and they're like, no, we're gonna keep these remote learning days, you know, once a quarter. This is crazy.

SPEAKER_05 28:24

So what are we doing?

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Um, so yeah, so so we we were able to um get through that as a firm because we were we I feel like we had educated so many people for so many years. Yeah. Uh and and then, you know, I will say there were a couple people, uh, one one guy, uh I love this family. Um, but the the they would call up and they would say, uh you know, uh tell us why we're not like moving to cash or not doing something about this right now. And I would repeat it. And then every week I said it, I would say something a little bit different, try a different angle. You're a teacher, right? So you're trying to say, Well, if I say it this way, maybe they'll understand it. And then and then suddenly by like the fifth week, um, the husband called and he goes, Well, I just tell me again why I said, honestly, I've explained this to you from different angles, and it's my fault. Like, I I'm genuinely upset with myself that I can't articulate, I can't articulate this to you. Uh and I said, I'm not being a very good teacher, obviously. And and he goes, No, no, no, no, no. Just tell me what you told me last week, and I want to hear that every week, and I'll be fine.

SPEAKER_04 29:28

You're like, let me write it out so you so you can read it.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 29:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Oh, yeah. And so sometimes we do that with our newsletter. Yeah, I said, I've I've I've said this every time, but people just want to hear it. Yeah. They want to feel better.

SPEAKER_04 29:40

Well, if something's going on, we're like, okay, it's time to send out a mass communication to you. Just I mean, we uh of course, you know, we'll get in front of our clients and call them and talk. And, you know, we know the ones that get worried, but it's like when we see something, it's like get ahead of it and let's address it.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

The hardest client to work with at times is the one that says, I knew this was gonna happen. And they're typically ones that maybe tend to be a little more pessimistic about things. Like I knew these valuations are too high. I knew this was gonna happen. I knew the market wasn't gonna sell off. Yeah, and it's it's very it's exactly what financial news media does. Market's gonna sell off eventually, market's gonna do this. You know, the guy who'd call who uh called the uh stock market crash is now calling for like an AI crash. Uh back in 08, he called the subprime crisis, like one of two guys. Um he's now calling for an AI crash and he's missed it. He's totally missed it. Um there's you know, you could say maybe it hasn't happened yet, but basically his his whole reasoning of AI crash, and and this is a could be a whole different podcast, but the summary of it is that the accounting of the AI companies is wrong, that that they're going to uh that they're depreciating these uh devices that they create, the hardware companies. They're they they're depreciating them too fast. They say they have a they have a three-year lifespan is how they depreciate it, but um really their lifespan is much shorter than that, or there's something along along those effect uh along the lines of that. Um but what actually is happening is um those devices after three years, those servers, those chips are typically resold again. They come back, they're resold again to somebody else who doesn't need as powerful of a chip. So the lifespan is really five to six years. So he didn't really understand the tech. And then he's trying to call a crisis. So anyway, point is that that you have to be really careful about listening to these people. Uh, I remember one point over Christmas, I was reading an article about how growth investing is dead and value investing is the way to go in the future. And it was very convincing. It was a two-page article in the Wall Street Journal. I was like, wow, this is very convincing. And so I sent that to a portfolio manager we had at the time, and he replied back and he goes, research the guy who wrote it. And I look up his name, largest value hedge fund in the country.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

Oh well, see, that's how can you really believe what you hear then? Because it's like he's trying to put a spin on it to sell something.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

That's my point. That's my point. Yeah, is that he's trying to sell his wares, and in the end, um, all everybody who is at that media level is doing that. They're they're being paid to be there. Um, they're they're, you know, it's like a lot of the people they're interviewing on CNBC. How this works, people, is you hire a PR company, you pay that PR company, and that PR company works the system to get you on, get you some airtime on CNBC. You get there to be on CNBC and you're talking about this or that, you're talking your book in order to benefit yourself. The people from stifle, the people from Ever Jones and all they're talking their book. Uh I think I think this is uh whatever is a really good buy. Well, they probably own it. And they don't tell you they own it or not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they do. Mutual fund companies I've always noticed that they almost always tell you, but these other large mandated firms, they don't tell you that. Um, so just you have to be very, very careful about where you're getting your information from. Uh we tend to just focus on the raw data and we'll focus on BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, what some of their people are saying um versus any one particular person. Yeah. Uh because again, they they typically have have um have an agenda.

Inflation 2022 When Bonds Fell

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Uh headline number three, inflation and rate shock in 2022. That was a tough year. Bonds were down because interest rates are being rapidly uh increased to try to take care of inflation and stocks are reacting to that. So the stock market in a high inflation environment will initially be down, but eventually it'll rebound because they benefit from inflation in the end. Bonds do not. So it was it bond values go down. Bond values go down. Um, that's another year that we uh for people who are retired, we did not sell anything from the portfolio from the live one. We reworked that cash bucket, the one we talked about we had during COVID to have this still have the same thing in 2022. Um, but you haven't seen inflation increasing that fast in over 40 years. The Fed totally missed it. Uh people in 21 were like, hey, what about this inflation thing? They're like, oh, inflation is transit transition to transition to that the right word, transition toy. People are making t-shirts about it. Uh the nerds are, because you know it's kind of funny. But um that was uh that was a that was kind of a nasty year. But in the end, uh if you had the perspective as a long-term investor, we did make adjustments to the portfolio uh prior to that, prior to 2022, to be on the short end of the bond market, meaning that uh the bonds would mature faster.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

So as the rates increase, you're you're getting higher yields. Yeah. And then you want to reinvest your dividends, uh, your income back into those bonds, bond funds to be able to capture that. So all that was happening in 2022. Uh 2022 also was like a death by a thousand paper cuts. There wasn't any like big thousand, two thousand point down days. It was more just I felt like it was just down five hundred dollars or five hundred points a day for almost a whole year. That's what it felt like.

SPEAKER_04 35:04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

But again, um, if you reacted to that, you you would have missed out on a tremendous uh rate of return in the end. 2023, it all came zooming back, 24, 25, yeah, yeah, 26. Yeah, and you're still sitting on the sidelines because oh no, this is this is stocks are stocks are overvalued.

SPEAKER_04 35:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

You know, it it's it's like so much of these headlines, people are reacting with emotion and and fear. Um and I honestly I struggle sometimes looking at is it are stocks really overvalued versus the P ratio thing called the Schiller index, which has been overvalued for 20 years, you know. Right. If you hadn't invested in 20 years, you don't have a whole lot of money. The last 10 years, the SP 500 is up over 300%.

SPEAKER_04 35:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

And you're telling me that you're an expert and you're gonna sell on the sidelines because it's gonna come down. What happens is I've seen people do this. Market goes up, you're like, oh, it's really high right now. I'm gonna wait to invest. Yep. It comes down, it has a sell-off. You go, oh, it's soft. I'm gonna put money in. All you did was put money in back at the entry point.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

It would have been in.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

It would have been in before, and you missed out on all the dividends. You missed out on all the income.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

Yeah. Well, even still, okay, even still, if you would have put it in at that point, and let's say you have a blended portfolio of some stocks and some bonds, you could have still taken some gains off the table too and capture them, put them in the bonds. So your overall value or your overall net worth could be higher and have the income from it, which adds to the net worth. Correct. Because then you're not spending from assets, you're spending from income.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

So Vanguard

Invest Now Or Try To Time

SPEAKER_03 36:40

did a study on this. You can you can go to vanguard uh.com and you can probably search Invest Now or Later. Uh, there's a PDF that will should show up in that search. And basically it's very draw, uh dry. I think it's like a hundred pages, it's pretty long. But is it better to invest now or is it better to dollar cost average? So if you're investing in your 401k, you are not dollar cost averaging because you're investing 100% of that money the day you get it.

unknown 37:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

You didn't have that money prior. Yeah. Yeah. They're not paying you now. If you have a lump sum of money, so you have $100,000 or a million dollars and you have cash, do you invest it all now or do you work solely work it in? So their studies show that if you bought at the high of the market every single time, you still came up better than than trying to time it as it went in. Obviously, if you bought the low every time.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

I mean, yeah, but you you can't know that.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

If you bought the low every time, we you and I should go to Vegas. Right exactly, I'll give you half my earnings.

SPEAKER_04 37:35

That's what I tell people. You know, if somebody tells you I can tell you, you know, this is what we're gonna do and we're gonna time the market, they're lying to you because if they could time the market, they wouldn't be working. They're lying to you. Like there's no, they're lying.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Some of the biggest hedge fund managers have gone out of business over the last couple of decades um over really bad timing, uh, buying things. Maybe they're ahead of their time, but yeah, really bad timing. Um, so everyday investors, uh again, it's it's it's it's like uh I guess it's like gambling at that point. So thinking about uh do we invest right now, one of the biggest reasons for doing that is is to get the income, to get the dividends.

The Lost Decade And Dividend Reality

SPEAKER_03 38:16

Well, that explains the lost decade, which is headline number five for us today. The lost decade narrative basically you had the 2000 tech crash, um, you had 9-11, you had Enron, you had the financial crisis. So between 2000 and 2010, that was like the worst time to be uh an investor. It was in an airline pilot. In an airline pilot. I was about to say it, I was like, no, I won't go airline today.

SPEAKER_04 38:40

Sorry, I just you know I know.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Yes, that was that was my my decade in aviation. There there was uh no upward movement.

SPEAKER_05 38:46

No, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

So, so it's it's the um uh during that time period, I remember looking back at portfolio reports, and basically the price of the SP was the same after 10 years. Yeah, but the income we got was the rate of return. Yeah. And the income looked huge compared to the price. Now, now the last 10 years it's been all price, and the income seems almost like a footnote, right? But back then that was it's really all about income. That's where uh people started these whole strategies like, oh, we just buy divid high-paying dividend stocks.

SPEAKER_04 39:21

You know, that's probably that's probably why it feels very similar to what your client was saying to you and I, because I started the industry in 1997, right before the dot-coms. So I learned going in during that hard time period and watched everything that transpired and heard the conversations that were had and that, you know, what actually worked during those times. And so now it's it, you know, and we're never gonna know 100%, obviously, but I feel confident in talking it through those times and then being able to say, well, I've watched how this works actually in this horrible downturn. And everyone was okay so long as you stayed invested and stayed the course.

SPEAKER_05 39:57

Right.

SPEAKER_04 39:57

If you started monkeying around or changing things or reacting, that's when things were not okay.

SPEAKER_05 40:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 40:02

The thing, the clients and that majority of them stayed the course and we we referenced the planning because I was doing actual planning all during that time period because I started in this industry doing that, which I'm grateful for. And so, but I've watched it happen in real life.

SPEAKER_05 40:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:17

And so your client that said, Well, I went through the Great Depression, this is nothing. Well, I feel like we went through this downturn for that whole time going into the industry and having those hard conversations and sitting with people going through this and holding their hand during those times. So when we have a pullback because a straight is closed, or we have a pullback because of whatever, I'm like, this is nothing.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Yeah, it's opportunity typically.

SPEAKER_04 40:42

Right. Or it's just like, great, let's harvest losses for a second. And, you know, because most declines are less than a year, they pop quickly.

SPEAKER_05 40:49

Yeah.

Buckets Diversification And Staying Calm

SPEAKER_04 40:50

We've been through the last decade. We worked in the industry during the last decade, and that was hard.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

You know, I I'm the president of Wiser Wealth Management, but I'm also the chief compliance officer, which is the most boring job ever. But I go through and I audit a lot of things, and typically I do this after hours because I can't do it during hours. But over the weekend, fun, fun activity when my daughter's at the horse show. I was going through investment policy statements and I was just looking at random investment policy statements saying this is how we should invest and this is how we are actually invested. And I was just comparing the two. And I kept kind of smiling as I was going through it because almost all the models are greater in stock. Now, not out of tolerance. We don't need to rebalance, but not out of tolerance. But I'm thinking, who would have thought that? And I'm thinking of all the people that we've worked with in this, uh, especially me that worked in the last year, that that hate President Trump, think President Trump's the worst thing ever. I'm like, you may think the president's the worst thing ever, but look at your portfolio. And you just can't go buy in politics and all this stuff. But this is what this is what happens is like we put together a plan and we've already back tested it to 2008. We know that catastrophe hits, we know that the client will be okay. It actually says 100% certainty on the uh on the on the probability dial, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:06

Or 99, because the number says 100, right?

SPEAKER_03 42:09

No, but if assuming that the rate of return, just a rate of return, that's 100. Yeah. Um yeah, the the Monte Carlos is like 99%. Um but it it's it's um what happens is is is people panic and they want to disrupt all that, just like your client that was you know selling the market at the worst possible times. So they start they start panicking, and then that's when the whole plan gets kind of jacked up because they they they they just can't they can't stand there's some there's something it triggers inside them and says, I can't I can't stand this loss. Right. And if you can show them that there's multiple buckets, yeah, like you love the bucket system. I love it. You have multiple buckets and you got cash right here, and then that's your paycheck. After two years, if it that runs out because the market's down, you can go to bonds, which typically are going to be up.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

Or not down as far.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Or not down as far, true. Yeah, and you got what 10 years probably worth in the bond fund. Yeah, I mean those two buckets you have like 12 years of reserve, and then you have stocks, which I tell most people you'll never touch stocks except to take gains. Probably the stock. Yeah, we'll fill the buckets back in and the stock will go to the next generation someday. Um, but if you don't put that in perspective, you can get really uh sideways. Uh I tell it this way it's like walking down the street. If you only look to your toes when you walked, you're gonna end up on somebody's uh somebody's TikTok reel or something, right? Yeah. Because you're gonna run into a building, you're gonna run into a pole, you're gonna walk into a fountain. That's not how we walk or how we drive. Some people might drive that way. But you don't look at the hood of your car when you're driving. You you're looking out down the road, out down the down the sidewalk. And investing is the same way. You have to be looking out down the road. That's that's why I like having you know one to two, three. Of digital assets inside a portfolio. Because I'm looking down 10 years down the road, going, there's probably something here. I don't want to risk my retirement, but I also don't want to risk not being there. That's a reason. Because just a little dabble, just a little, just a little bit of salt, not the whole thing of salt, just a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 44:18

Because we learned that in the dot coms. You can't put it all like that.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

So so you just have to be really careful that you you have a plan in place and you don't abandon that plan. That's why some people are more successful in real estate because crazy things could happen in real estate, but it takes you at least 30 to 60 days to sell a house. Yeah. And so if you you become rational at some point, yeah. We're in stocks now we can sell it click with a click. And then pretty soon in the next couple of years, NASDAQ, uh New York Stock Exchange moving to the blockchain. Um, that's it's gonna be 24 hour trading. So you're gonna be able to liquidate your portfolio uh 24 hours a day.

SPEAKER_04 44:55

After hours when you've had a drink and you're tired, and that's not a good thing. I don't think I know. I j I mean I don't even drink, but I'm just saying, like, you know, the big I I can tell some of the people because there's some people that will email you really late at night and you're kind of like, oh, they're stressed a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

I I uh I yeah, I I don't know. I joke with the young people here. I say, well, we're doing the night shift by seniority, so you guys will be working the night shift. That's funny. Um, so yeah, so disciplined investors are gonna filter all the noise from all these things, and these are big headlines. There's smaller headlines. Um, the Iran war is probably a smaller headline versus um uh versus some of these other big ones we've talked about. But the disciplined investors are gonna focus on that plan, focus really on a more diversified using low-cost ETFs versus individual stocks. Yeah. Uh they've eliminated company risk, right? So they're not they're more worried about where the market overall is going to be, not where one company is going to be. Right. Um, and then they're they're making sure everything's working together. So that's your estate planning, your tax planning, your your um insurance planning, all these things come together is into one plan, which is what our job is is uh advisors here at Wiser.

SPEAKER_04 46:09

Well, just make sure you have the money to live off of to weather a downturn. That that's the whole purpose of the bucket system. So it's like the market is going to fluctuate. The market is a long-term strategic move, but as long as you have, you know, the money to live off for the two year, your paycheck, if you will, and then you know, maybe your your fail-safe backup that's, you know, if it goes beyond two years, or just just to help with the overall risk of the portfolio because you can't stomach those downturns, too. So long as you're spending at a rate that is not, you know, going to cripple you. Because if you're making huge, large withdrawals and you're spending too much, that system doesn't work either.

SPEAKER_05 46:44

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

You know, so so long as you're spending within your means, which most clients that have saved have spend within their means, that system works. And so it it you can really that doesn't mean that it doesn't feel uncomfortable when we watch our values go down or, you know, when things are happening in the world that make us nervous. But, you know, once you've been through a couple of these declines, especially in retirement, because that's when I feel like clients feel it the most. It's like I don't have time anymore. I don't have time and I'm not adding money anymore. And it's like, but there's other moves you can make, you know. So it's it's so long as you've been through a couple of these declines during your retirement and you see how that works, I think it brings them a lot more peace and they can sleep at night. And I can sleep at night knowing how it's invested too, you know. And that I've been, you know, and and there is something to be said that some of newer advisors entering, you know, when you've walked beside clients during those time periods and you've witnessed what's happened, it's it makes it I don't want to say it's easy, it's more thoughtful and you can be, you know, more understanding because you've actually been in the trenches with clients during those times. You know, yeah, like so it's a totally different situation.

When A Change Is Actually Smart

SPEAKER_03 47:54

And just to make sure that um we're clear, it's like it's okay to make changes. Yeah, but you you need to make a change for seeking a better outcome, uh, not your like immediate reassurance. Yeah. So you're making we've made changes during crises before, but it's it's pivoting. Uh it's pivoting to take advantage of a situation where I think um people are irrational on the other side, meaning uh the markets, right? Yeah. You don't want to chase returns. Correct. Um, is that change aligned with your long-term goals? That that could be important. Um really are you reacting to information or emotion? And information is not a pundit on the news channel. It's gonna be real economic data.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

Yeah, like are companies still making money from widgets, you know? I mean, are if are they making money or are they truly overvalued where you know their stock valuation is here, but they're putting losses on the bet books. Right. Well, that's overvalued. But if a company is valued here and they're still projecting and making money and they're profitable, well, is it's not overvalued potentially.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

You know, there's there's there's always going to be a future headline. And this podcast, unfortunately, probably won't make a difference because people are gonna feel the way they feel. And what I tell everyone here is we should always be empathetic. Uh, we should always understand where the clients come from. Don't don't roll our eyes and go, oh my gosh, this is this is this, you know, it's another person wanting to sell again, you know. And none of us here act that way.

SPEAKER_05 49:23

No.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

Uh, but it's you're empathetic and say, I understand. I mean, I'll log in every morning. You log every and every every morning too. And we see, we don't see one account, we see all the accounts.

SPEAKER_04 49:34

Yeah, we see where our AUM is, or because that's all the values of the client account.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

On a bad day, $10 million might disappear. And uh, trust me, I can be empathetic because I'm like, holy crap, that's this name, these numbers are these numbers move a lot every day as a as a whole. Um, but then we have to be able to say, okay, well, tell me why you feel this way, and then the why is typically something emotional. Um and then from there we say, okay, this is how we build the plan. This is what you're invested in. You're invested in 6,700 stocks, 12,000 bonds, chances of going to zero are probably there, but a very, very uh small fraction of percent. If it happened, there's probably a zombie apocalypse or something too happening.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Yeah, I mean, we're we have bigger problems.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

The US has gone out of business, you know, something like that. Um, but then zombie apocalypse. So that so from from there, um it's like, okay, well, we've we've built this portfolio this way, this is why. And we build our portfolios to withstand a lot of these things so we don't have to make moves in irrational markets.

The Advisor Hotline And Next Steps

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Right. So it's no different than your emergency procedures and flying an airplane, you're not panicking, you're allowed to say, oh, blank for a second, and then after that you go, okay, well, there's a process for this. Let's work through this process. Yeah. And that's very much the same with investing and risk management in general.

SPEAKER_04 50:56

And that's our job is to remind you of the process and what we'll put in the process.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

And that's that's the value of a financial advisor. It's is not because there's some secret sauce to investing, it's because you have you have a hotline to somebody that you trust to pick up the phone and they're we're gonna talk through this and figure this out. But in the end, it's like, oh yeah, you're gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_05 51:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Oh, I am gonna be fine. That's great.

SPEAKER_05 51:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:15

Right? That's the value of an advisor. And and the people who don't have that, uh, again, another Vanguard study shows that they have a lower rate of return because they tend to react to their emotions and have anybody to bounce anything off of. Uh, and they they tend to go to cash in the worst possible times.

SPEAKER_04 51:30

Yeah. Yeah. Which you can't recover from.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

No, uh, yeah, especially if you're if you're out of it for uh for a long time period. Uh anyway, thanks for listening to uh today's episode. If you uh are interested in learning more about wiser wealth management, I want to schedule a consultation to meet one of our fiduciary financial advisors, you can do so by going to wiserinvestor.com. You can click in the episode notes uh as well for a link to our website. There's other uh podcasts out there. We have a Fear Greed in the Markets. Uh, this is a mastering emotional investing. That's episode 284 and 285. I strongly suggest you listen to those. We dive, we dove deep into uh the psychology of the human mind uh and why we do what we do. And if you want to learn more about our industry and why people don't always talk the way we do, go buy our book. Everything your financial advisor won't uh isn't telling you is available on Amazon.com.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Thanks for listening to a wiser retirement podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. That way you don't miss any new episodes. We'd also appreciate if you could leave a rating and review. If you have any questions about anything that was discussed today, head to wiserinvestor.com and reach

Disclosures And Final Wrap

SPEAKER_00 52:43

out. This podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and is not to be considered as investment advice or solicitation to buy or sell any financial products, securities, digital assets, or any other investment vehicles or basis to make any financial decisions. Wiser Wealth Management Incorporated is a registered investor advisor with the SEC. The host and or guest may personally own securities, digital assets, or other investment vehicles mentioned on this podcast. Neither the host nor guest of the show are compensated for their participation, and no referral fees are paid to or received by any host or guest for clients, listeners, or similar interests. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor, tax professional, insurance professional, andor legal professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.