Today, we dive into the topic of retirement planning and explore the essential steps needed to build a financially secure future. Dial in as Eric Brotman, CFP®, AEP®, CPWA®, shares invaluable insights on how to make your retirement the most fulfilling and rewarding phase of your life. Be empowered to take control of your financial destiny when you listen to the whole episode.
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Eric Brotman, CFrP®, AEP®, CPWA®
Eric is the CEO of BFG Financial Advisors, host of the Don’t Retire… Graduate! podcast, author of the Don’t Retire… Graduate! book, and a regular contributor to Forbes.com.
Connect with Eric
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
Today, we dive into the topic of retirement planning and explore the essential steps needed to build a financially secure future. Dial in as Eric Brotman, CFP®, AEP®, CPWA®, shares invaluable insights on how to make your retirement the most fulfilling and rewarding phase of your life. Be empowered to take control of your financial destiny when you listen to the whole episode.
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Eric Brotman, CFrP®, AEP®, CPWA®
Eric is the CEO of BFG Financial Advisors, host of the Don’t Retire… Graduate! podcast, author of the Don’t Retire… Graduate! book, and a regular contributor to Forbes.com.
Connect with Eric
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
[00:00:00] Eric Brotman
There is no better time than immediately to start doing some kind of inventory, some kind of strategy, some kind of planning. It will always be better today than tomorrow. It would have been better yesterday, but yesterday we don't have that option, because you're always going to get a better result when time is more on your side, and it will be more on your side today than tomorrow.
[00:00:00] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in.
[00:00:41] Ben Waller
I'm sure you've heard someone say, I am never going to retire. The word retirement gives the image of sitting around doing nothing. Today, we're excited to learn from Eric Brotman, the author of Don't Retire, Graduate. Let's jump in so that you can learn if graduating is better than retirement. Welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy Podcast. We created this podcast to provide financial tips and tricks to help you build up your passive income and also provide methods that you can use to protect your wealth. So that you can plan a better future for yourself and your family. We're grateful to have this podcast sponsored by Monument Real Estate Capital, Monument Real Estate Capital, helping you retire 10 years early through real estate investments.
[00:01:26] Earl Cline
On today's episode, we're excited to hear from Eric Brotman. We've brought him on this show today. Spent a few minutes with him before we started this, and I'm really excited about what he has to bring. Brief background about Eric. He is CEO of BFG Financial Advisors. We're excited to talk to him exactly what that is. He's been doing financial advising for over 20 years, which means that what hair's left is probably starting to turn gray too, as you can see from the picture, I suffer from the same genetic pool. So he has a host of a podcast, don't retire, graduate podcast. And I am really excited to hear exactly what that entails. Also wrote a book of the same title, hopefully get to talk about today. Is number one, a financial health checkup and exactly what that means. What does it mean to graduate and not retire and then steps to build your wealth?
[00:02:21] Ben Waller
Eric, thanks for being on the show with us today.
[00:02:21] Eric Brotman
Thanks, Ben. Earl, great to see you guys.
[00:02:25] Ben Waller
We're glad to have you here. Now, Eric, when we start out these, we like to ask, would you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got started as a financial planner?
[00:02:32] Eric Brotman
I came into the financial planning business the traditional way. I was an English major. And so that's the natural transition into finance. That makes so much sense, by the way. You're right. Well, it does. The reality is it was a complete accident. I graduated. I went to school thinking economics. I came out studying English and psychology and planned like every other English major. I had to learn to either teach or go to law school. So I thought, ah, law school might be the way to go. So I went to work. I got a job for a brokerage firm. I grew up in Baltimore and fell in love with the financial side of it as opposed to the legal side. And despite doing my LSATs and studying for it and applying to law school and actually getting in and paying a deposit at law school, I didn't go. I realized it was not my path.
[00:03:17]
I fell in love with the financial business. And you guys were nice in your intro to say 20 plus years. Next year will be 30, which is just horrifying. And yes, the gray hair is true. So I did come in in a way that's a little different, although. One of the things about financial advising is that there is no obvious career track. With medicine or law or accounting or other things, there's an obvious educational and career path. With financial advising, it's not quite as linear. And so I think there are a lot of ways to get here. But I started a practice in 1994 doing primarily estate planning and insurance work. In 1998, I earned my CFP designation. And so now for the last 25 years, I've been doing financial planning and wealth management for families all over the country. Very cool. That's awesome. Thanks for being here. Yeah, it's great to be here. This is going to be fun. I love that you, the show is named after one of my books because the second book I wrote I called Retire Wealthy. So you've got the happy part I missed.
[00:04:10] Ben Waller
That's kind of an important piece, right?
[00:04:11] Eric Brotman
Actually, it's the more important piece, hands down.
[00:04:14] Earl Cline
We'll jump into that as well. Absolutely. So I got a kick out of you being horrified the years you've been doing this. I actually got my realtor's license in 1985. When I speak in front of a group of real estate investors and joke with them that I actually started in the business before there were computers. We had the phone book size book that came out every two weeks and that's how you found properties to sell.
[00:04:37] Eric Brotman
I took my CFP exam with paper and pencil. It's true. It was not computerized even then. So look, I feel your pain, brother.
[00:04:45] Earl Cline
Anyway, we want to start talking a little bit about this financial health checkup. And I could probably guess exactly what it is, but why don't you elaborate a little bit on exactly what that is?
[00:04:54] Eric Brotman
I like to equate financial wellness to other types of wellness. And so when we think about health and we think about health care, there's really two ways to do it. You can either be proactive and get regular checkups or you can wait until you're sick and in trouble and then go get medicine, right? I think finance is the same way. So it's important to plan ahead. It's important to take inventory. It's important to do sort of an annual physical exam financially every year so that you really know where you are. Are you on track? Are there blind spots? Are there things you need to work on? It is so much easier. To stay wealthy than it is to get wealthy. And I would contend it's the same with health. It's much easier to stay healthy than to get healthy. People don't live their whole lives on cheeseburgers and fries and then suddenly wake up one day at 73 and go, You know, I think I'll get healthy today. And not that it can't happen. But that's not the easy way to do it. The easy way to do it is, you know, integrate a salad every now and again. And so I would say financially, it's similar. It's doing the right things along the way so that you don't have to have triage later.
[00:05:53] Earl Cline
Tell me a little bit about if I came in and said, Hey, I need a financial checkup. Give me some of the, I would assume it starts with a balance sheet, income statement, that type of thing, but it might be more complex than that.
[00:06:03] Eric Brotman
Well, actually, it's more simple than that. It would start before there. Because most families, if I said, bring in a balance sheet and an income statement, most folks would panic. In the same way, if I said, show me your budget. Folks don't want to show me their budget any more than they want to share their diet with me. So, what I believe you start with is inventory. You have to figure out, in the map of life, where is that, you are here, sticker. You know, the one from the old mall kiosks, you are here. If you don't take inventory to start, There is nothing else that you can do to figure out how to get where you're going. So yes, we will create an income statement. We'll create a balance sheet. We'll look at assets and liabilities and those things. But a lot of folks don't even know, Earl, which category to put that in. If I said, send me an income statement, we would be out of business because people wouldn't either know what that was or how to do it, or they would be so Daunted by it. They'd say, if I knew how to do a financial statement, I wouldn't need you in the first place. That's funny.
[00:06:54] Earl Cline
Years ago, I started, I'd been in real estate for a number of years before that, but I did some coaching started with Robert Kiyosaki and of course, everybody came in and we want to get out of the rat race. Can you get me out of the rat race? And it says, sure. That's what we're here for. Well, we're going to be coaching for the 12 weeks. Can you get me out of the rat race in the next 12 weeks? And of course you have to try really hard not to laugh, but anyway, the very first question obviously is all right, well, what's your monthly nut? Right? How much, because if you don't know what that is, how can you get out of the rat race if you don't know where you're at? And so that's the very first thing. And they'd look at me like, I don't have any idea where I'm at financially. So I could really relate to what you're saying there. And we would teach them how to do a balance sheet, give them a form and send them back out and say, here, record your income and what your monthly expenses are.
[00:07:41] Eric Brotman
And let's talk about it next week. And part of that is the way that humans behave. Is we tend to think we're terrific savers if we pay our bills and there's money left over at the end of the month. That's a win. That's profit. But the reality is I think we talk about paying yourself first and making that first bill that you pay every month either to be debt reduction if you're in that situation or to be something towards saving or investment or growth. And if you can live on 75 or 80 or 85% of what you make and you stretch that out over a long career, you can build real wealth. But if you're not paying yourself first, and you're hoping to have money left over at the end of the month, some months you will, some months you won't, that is a way to potentially outspend your income, and then you have a hole in your bucket.
[00:08:23] Earl Cline
It's no good. I've told the story a number of times, but when I started coaching, it was because I was in the middle of a really, really nasty divorce. Every asset I had was stripped. I was paying more child support than I was actually making at the time, because I'd started a new startup business, and so... I took on coaching to supplement my business income while I, while I got that up and running. And there were times that two days before payday, I'm going, I don't have enough gas in my car to get to work. And back then, if you had a dollar on your debit card, you could go to the gas station. And it would go ahead and allow you to, you know, today it checks and make, make sure you got 30 bucks or whatever in there. But it would allow me to fill my tank up with gas so that I could get to work. Half the time it would bounce, right? The thing would hit and that tank of gas would cost me 30, 40 and bounce check charges and just put you that much further behind. And it wasn't until I felt guilty. I'm like, I'm teaching these people how to do this and I can't even do it myself.
[00:09:20]
Right. And so I literally started with 20 bucks and I would just put 20 in my savings account, every paycheck. Right. Most of the time in the beginning, that 20 bucks went to buy the tank of gas two days before payday. But eventually I stopped paying all those bounce check charges. And it grew to the point where I felt comfortable starting to invest in real estate, which is what I was teaching people to do in the first place. I just, you can't invest in real estate. If somebody doesn't pay their rent one month and, and you're going to go bankrupt because of it.
[00:09:51] Eric Brotman
You're absolutely right. Those stories are great and we all have them. We all have, there's warts on all of us from those days. Getting started when I started this company, I had to borrow money from everywhere to do it. I mean, from everywhere. I borrowed from my house, my life insurance, my credit cards, my mom. It didn't matter if there was money that I could use to start it, I did it. And I joke that I paid mom back first because of all the places you need to keep a good line of credits there. And that's, that's completely true. I did pay her back first. But I bootstrapped and I was 30 years old. I was divorced. I was 30 years old. I was starting over. And I had to hire people and get space and build infrastructure and have technology and no bank would talk to me because I didn't have any money. So banks wouldn't talk to me and I had to bootstrap, do it myself. And then now banks are tripping over themselves. We'd like to be your bank. Oh, how nice. Thanks for that. Where were you when I need it? I tell clients all the time, borrow money when you don't need it, because once you need it, no one will lend it to you.
[00:10:49] Earl Cline
We're kind of in that strategy right now. I'm the one that signs on a lot of the loans for us, and they're still raising their eyebrows a little bit, but some of those loans are. Quite a bit bigger, several million dollars and more. They're still looking at me like you got a lot of debt out of the client. It's all being paid by somebody else, but I mean, properties and stuff like that. But speaking of debt, you know, a lot of people struggle with it. It's really, really a difficult thing for people. I don't know how young kids get started today and live on what they make. Kind of a thing, but what kind of strategies, how do you rescue somebody from a really bad debt problem?
[00:11:26] Eric Brotman
Without having them declare bankruptcy, the first thing is you asked how do young people do it today and the answer is they don't, they live with their parents sometimes till they're 30 years old. The best way to get out of debt is not to get it in the first place and where kids are getting in real trouble a student loan borrowing a ton of money. To get an undergraduate degree that really doesn't prepare you to do much of anything is a disaster. It's a recipe for failure. And so finding ways to get through education, which I do think is important, finding ways to get through education without being in the red so deeply that you're going to be paying for your sophomore year of college when you're 50, it would be better not to do that first. If you're already in debt, it's going to sound repetitive, but the first step is inventory. Figure out where you are. List the debts. Who do you owe? What is the monthly payment? What is the interest rate? What are the tax ramifications of it? And get some help if you're not sure. And figure out, number one, are you solvent?
[00:12:18]
Can you make More than the minimum payments every month and still live and still eat at a point where you're insolvent you either have to restructure debt if you have that luxury or Bankruptcy does come on the heels of that and I would like to try and get folks to never declare bankruptcy if possible That's never a good outcome Although and particularly with student loans because you can't wipe those out by bankruptcy like you can with other things And so I would say the best way to get out of debt is to avoid it in the first place and to take inventory, begin to chip away. There's lots of strategies and there's lots of books on do I do the avalanche or that there's names for all these different. At the end of the day, you typically want to pay the highest rate debt first. Usually, unless there's some very compelling cash flow reason to pay off a smaller debt that has a large monthly requirement in payroll.
[00:13:06]
And there are software packages that can calculate this for you that are all at 40 or 50 that you can get and do a debt reduction plan. There's a software called Quicken that does an awesome job with it that can help you avoid that. And if all else fails, there are resources through the U. S. Department of Justice, actually the there's the treasurer's office there that has various sources and places you can go for credit counseling that are legitimate. Because unfortunately, a lot of credit counseling services are scams too. And so then you're in even worse trouble. But there is a website. There's trustees under the website for the U. S. government that are at least reputable if you're in that boat. Interesting.
[00:13:39] Earl Cline
I have several of my kids that come to me now. I'm struggling to pay my bills or whatever. And it's the same question every single time. All right. Do you know how much debt you actually have? Have you listed it out? Do you know what payments are coming up when? And usually my resource to help them is, hey, I've got some projects here and I'm happy to pay you to come, uh, so I'm working on my computer in the evening, make some phone calls or do something along that line. With because I really don't believe in just giving my kids money, but but at least I can help them with that. But as many times as they've heard dad, they still come to me and i'm not quite sure. I think I know but i'm not sure I'm, like, oh you guys are an embarrassment go back and I shouldn't say this. Did you learn that from your mom or okay?
[00:14:18] Eric Brotman
Yeah, I can't imagine why the divorce was acrimonious Throw her right under the truck and hope for the best that's fine.
[00:14:26] Ben Waller
Eric before we move on as far as dead is concerned If I'm asking the general question, let's say somebody has debt, the amount is irrelevant at this point, but do you think somebody should pay off their debt first or invest first or do it simultaneously?
[00:14:42] Eric Brotman
Generally, you're going to pay the debt off first. There are very few exceptions to that. And I think sometimes one of the exceptions is if you're giving up a company match on a retirement plan or something because that's free money. And because that's so accretive, it's worth potentially doing. You also want to be building an emergency fund because if you don't, you're And I like to call it an emergency and opportunity fund because emergency sounds like fire and brimstone. But if you're also building some savings, if you don't do that, you're going to be right back on visa as soon as there's a hiccup somewhere. So I think debt reduction does come first, restructuring or reduction. However, if there's free money on the table. And you can afford to go get it. Go get it because that's a 3% match on a 6% contributions, a 50% return immediately. That should be more than you're paying on your debt. Hopefully, unless it's illicit debt. We're not going to talk about that on the show. Well, and that sounds like a good strategy to be utilizing.
[00:15:30] Ben Waller
And that's one of the reasons to work with a financial planner, right?
[00:15:33] Eric Brotman
Certainly. I mean, all of us have finite resource and just about every household in America has debt. Sometimes. Uh, significant debt and I do think having an accountability partner and having somebody who can look at things dispassionately, it can be very helpful. It's also helpful with couples because money is one of the things people fight about the most. They fight about money and kids. And while I cannot help them with their children, I can help them maybe not fight about money and that's a big deal. So I think it's a combination of things, but accountability partner. I think having a financial advisor allows you to outsource some of the big decisions without outsourcing what's important to you. It's still your plan, it's your money, it's your goals, it's your dreams, it's your family. But let's figure out how to utilize the resources that all of us have that are finite. How do you make the most of them? While still enjoying your life because it doesn't make sense to build a ton of wealth and never enjoy it. Yeah, they say he who dies with the most toys wins. If he never played with them, why bother?
[00:16:28] Earl Cline
They look good in the garage though. You've got to admit.
[00:16:31] Eric Brotman
Yeah, maybe, but if you're not driving it, Earl, what's the point? I'm no longer a collector of stuff of any kind. I don't believe in necessarily stuff. I like experiences. And from gift giving and all those things, I think if you can create a memory and experience something, it's so much more important than a thing.
[00:16:47] Earl Cline
I have several motorcycles in my garage, but I do ride each one of them. And almost every day, you know, probably I rotate them around. Well, my joke to my wife is I don't ask you to wear the same dress to church every Sunday. You can't expect me to ride the same motorcycle to church. So they get used at least once a month.
[00:17:02] Eric Brotman
How's that? Well, at least you're using them. Although that is a real stretch, but at least you're using them. It helps him sleep at night, Eric. That sounds a little bit like rationalization to me, but that's fine. What do you do you?
[00:17:16] Earl Cline
If I can live my life in denial, I'll probably be happier.
[00:17:18] Eric Brotman
It's a great place to spend time. No doubt.
[00:17:20] Ben Waller
Let's talk about what we brought you on today for. So You've got a podcast and a book called Don't Retire, Graduate. We want to know more about this because I love this name, this concept. I think our listeners are really going to appreciate this as well. There's a lot we could discuss about what this is. I was doing plenty of research on the book. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about is the six retirement decisions you need to make and when to make them. So can we talk about what that looks like? The six retirement decisions?
[00:17:47] Eric Brotman
We can, Ben. What I'd like to do is take a step back and talk about what it means to graduate and then we can get into some of the, the micro. Absolutely. Let's hear it. I think retirement largely is a fate worse than death. And that's going to sound strange to people who've been told since the day we got our first job, make sure you're putting away money for retirement. Let's be clear. I'm a huge fan of financial independence. Financial independence, financial freedom is a beautiful thing. Making work optional, whether you're 35 or 65 is a beautiful thing. But the traditional retirement is kind of like being put out to pasture. It's a little bit like going from 30, hours a week and making a real difference and being fully engaged to daytime TV and shuffleboard. And I think it's torture. I would literally rather die at my desk than do that. Now, the way we consider a graduation, and the reason that I flipped the script on this is because when you graduate, it is the end of something, but it's also the beginning of something. To retire is to retreat, or to disappear.
[00:18:42]
In fact, in the UK, it's to go to sleep. Let's take a long 30 year nap. All of us could use some rest. A vacation's great. People, when I say, well, what are you going to do when you're retired? And people say, I'm going to travel. I'm thinking, well, unless you're living on a cruise ship, you're only going to travel so much. What are you going to do? I'm going to golf. It's great that you have a hobby, but even that, doing that every day will eventually get tedious to most, right? So I think it's important to maintain and have something to move towards. So I challenge our readers, our clients, and others, I challenge them to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Ben and Earl, think about what you want to be when you grow up. In this country, when we ask somebody, hey Ben, tell me about yourself, we have a habit of telling people what we do and not who we are. I'm an accountant, I'm an architect. No, you're a father, you're a husband, you're a friend, you're a volunteer, you're a hockey fan, you're a motorcycle rider, whatever.
[00:19:32]
And so I think there's so much more to us than just what we do all day to pay the bills. So that's the step back. The idea is that you're always advancing and that if you're 60 or 65 or 70 or whatever age it is, when you hit whatever financial independence means to you, work is optional. It doesn't mean don't do any. It means you don't have to. You can work a little, you can consult, you can moonlight, you could volunteer, but have stuff to do. So let's talk about the retirement decisions you need to make. And I'll talk about sort of the, the structural ones that happen at the end of your career, but then I'll also throw in a few that are more qualitative in nature. So the first thing is before you retire, say before you give up your day job, you absolutely want to have Um, all of your debt restructured because like we talked about, if you still have debt, whether it's a mortgage or line of credit or whatever it is, once you don't have a steady paycheck, banks will not lend to you unless you have good collateral and you've set it up properly.
[00:20:26]
They'll lend against real estate or life insurance or a securities portfolio, but not if you don't have income, it's problematic. So the time to clean that up and make sure it's pristine is before you give up your W2. And then the second decision is. How are you going to handle long term care? How are you going to handle what could happen down the pike if you get old, if you get sick, if your spouse does? And that doesn't necessarily, that's euphemistic for go buy insurance. There are lots of ways to handle it. Insurance is one of them, but it's not the only one. And so how are you going to handle some of the end of life... stuff. How are you going to prepare for the really morbid things none of us want to think about in advance? Are you going to self insure? Are you going to use a risk management or insurance? Are you going to retitle assets? Are you going to be 83 and your spouse is in the hospice and so you divorce her so that you can keep some of your assets? Like that sounds terrible, but it's also a plan. It's a plan. And so those are the things to do beforehand.
[00:21:20]
When you retire, you have to make a couple relatively big decisions that you cannot undo. There's no mulligan. One is if you're lucky enough to have a pension, which usually now means you're a federal or state or municipal employee. But if you have a pension, you have to make an election on how that pension is going to be paid to you. You make an election in terms of when it starts, but you also make an election. What happens? When you die, and if you're married, you have to make a decision. Do I take less of a pension now so that my spouse will continue to receive a portion or all of that pension later? Or do I take the whole thing now and he or she's on their own? And it's not that one answer is right and one answer is wrong. Every household is different, but you have to make that pension election. You also have to figure out Medicare. And by the way, figuring out Medicare is darn near a full time job by itself. Don't wait until you're 64 and nine months to figure it out.
[00:22:09]
You have to have a plan in advance because it is the most convoluted, complicated thing only government could come up with. And they have mastered the art of obscurity and this is it. This is the worst. So after you retire, you're going to make a couple more decisions. One is you have to figure out when to claim social security. This of course assumes that social security still exists, which is a topic for another show. I think it will though, maybe not for everyone, but you have to elect that. And once you elect it, Again, there's no mulligans anymore. It used to be you could undo it, pay it back, make some changes. Now you're stuck with your election. So what's your health like? What's your marital situation? What's your budget like? When do you claim? It can be as early as 62 or as late as 70. And there's reasons for both, depending on your situation. And then lastly, is to review all of your insurances when you retire, because a lot of things, a lot of insurances are no longer necessary.
[00:23:00]
If you're paying for disability insurance and you no longer have an income to protect, stop paying for disability insurance. It's not covering anything. When you retire, a lot of times if you're not commuting, your car insurance and some of that stuff can get less expensive because you're no longer a working person in the grind every day. And so there's just things to look at where you can potentially save some meaningful money. By spending some time on it. And so I think those are the decisions, the trigger points that happened there. But I would say before you ever retire, you need to have a plan that's more than financial. You need to have a literal life plan. And I think it takes two years. It takes at least one, but usually two years to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. Because if you say, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to, I'm going to get involved with the food bank in my community. That's the most important thing to me. And that's what I want to do.
[00:23:43]
It's not generally in your best interest to retire on Monday and Wednesday, call the food bank and say, I'm here. It's much better to meet the people, understand how it works, know what your role might be, understand how you want to participate, know the right people. You still need a network. If you guys have LinkedIn profiles and you're surfing LinkedIn, do you ever see the ones that just say Ben Waller retired? If it says they're out there, it might as well say deceased. No, one's going to be like, there's a guy I got to get to know. Boy, do I want to get to know that guy? He sounds like a ball of fun. I'm going to learn a lot from him. How about former CEO of XYZ for 40 years? Oh, you've got some wisdom to share. You're not just sitting on your couch. Like, guys, Earl and I are older than you've been, I think, probably by a lot, which is hurtful. But nonetheless, if you think about it, in every village in the world, the elders always had the biggest tent. You went to them with the biggest problems. They had seen it before.
[00:24:39]
They'd been through the storm. They'd been through the famine. They'd been through the war. They'd been through whatever. Today, we put these people out to pasture like they are not useful. And the closer I get to being considered not useful, the worst that sounds as a plan. So why not utilize our experience and our network to make a difference in whatever industry community environment we want. I just think we have to rethink what this is. It can't be golf and shuffleboard and Oprah. It just can't.
[00:25:06] Ben Waller
Those are all great points, Eric. The question I want to ask is you're talking about putting this plan together. At what point do you think is the correct time for somebody to put together the plan? Is it yesterday? And is that doesn't matter what age they are.
[00:25:17] Eric Brotman
It makes no difference. You have to start where you are. And because you're starting with inventory. Whether you are six weeks into your first job or you're mid career and you have parents getting older and kids to educate and all this kind of stuff happening at the same time, there is no better time than immediately to start doing some kind of inventory, some kind of strategy, some kind of planning. It will always be better today than tomorrow. It would have been better yesterday, but yesterday we don't have that option. So, the best time to start planning and make sure you're doing it is immediately. I can think of virtually no reason not to, because you're always going to get a better result when time is more on your side and it will be more on your side today than tomorrow.
[00:25:57] Ben Waller
Absolutely. So, with what you've been talking about there with the plan, to me a lot of that sounds like the graduation piece or things towards the end of the line. As far as our full time working situation, I do want to ask you, in my research, I found some information you talk about tips for boosting peak earning years to maximize your retirement or your graduation.
[00:26:17] Eric Brotman
Can we go into that? Yeah, absolutely. The book is written like a college curriculum, though it's not a textbook. It's written to be fun. I quote philosophers like Chris Rock in the book, so it's not meant to be a heavy lift. There are essentially seasons of life. You have your freshman year where you're trying to figure out your first job or do you have student loans or how do you launch and what are the employee benefits mean? You have your sophomore year. It's maybe you're getting married. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're having kids. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're buying your first home or piece of real estate. And how do you do that? Junior year is what we equate to the peak earning years.
[00:26:49]
This is where you're in full swing. This is where taxes become a problem for you. None of us like them, but when you're in your peak earning years, it's like having a bullseye on you. Everybody wants a piece of you. And so that's the point in time where you have to figure out how to maximize not only what you have to live on today, but also what that's going to look like down the road. And that means not only building a good investment portfolio, Whether that's real estate or securities or some combination. And I would say, typically, the broader you invest, the better, though you don't want to dabble. And that's where you have to be really tax smart. You have to set up the various plans to say, do I need a deduction now? Or do I need to create some tax diversification for the future? Yeah, we diversify everything. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. We all talk about that. How about tax diversification? How about how much of this income is going to be ordinary income and subject to the same tax later? I don't know about you guys, but I don't expect the federal income tax brackets to be lower in 20 years than they are now.
[00:27:47]
The government's broke. If the government's broke, they're going to charge more. You know who they're going to charge? People with money. So if you have money that's subject to tax. And it's a higher rate then than it is now. All you've done is take a deduction for a small amount of money, when it was helpful but not life changing, grown the money for a long time until it was really big, and then paid a higher tax rate on it than you would have if you'd just done it in advance. So It means take advantage of capital gains tax. It means take advantage of 1031 exchanges or 1035 exchanges, different kinds of property swaps. It means taking advantage of tax deferral. It means using the four kinds of accounts. And this is fun because you guys know this stuff. So I'm going to quiz you and we'll see how you do on your own show.
[00:28:30]
If it doesn't go well, you can cut it out of course. But there are only four places where almost every American can put money. where it's never taxed again if you use it properly, at least during your lifetime. What are those four places? Never taxed again. That's available to almost everyone. Well, Roth is number one. Correct. And that's the Roth 401k, 403b, IRA. The Roth is the most beautiful invention ever, especially for younger people. If you're 22 and you're getting started and your company has a Roth 401k, Go at it. Grow as much money as you can that's never taxed again during your lifetime, which could be 80 years. That's a big deal. So yes, Roth is number one. What else?
[00:29:05] Earl Cline
Well, long term real estate, if you continue to exchange it and basically pass it down to your kids, you're not going to get taxed on it.
[00:29:12] Eric Brotman
You won't be taxed currently on it. That's true, but it will throw off income or other things that are taxable. So let's talk about completely tax-free. The Roth is one. You can put money in, it will grow tax free, you don't get a tax bill on it every year, and when you pull money out, it's not taxed. I think a life insurance policy is another one. That's correct. So certain types of whole life contracts and other things where you can grow it and it can essentially grow tax-free for the rest of time. So that's two. And I'm not sure about the other two. Yeah, I'm not either. The other two have some contingencies to them. But they're available to almost anyone. One is the 529 plan, which is for education, but it's a place where you can put money. It might be deductible at your state level. It might not, but it grows tax free.
[00:29:55]
It's used tax free. It's not in your estate. It doesn't compound taxes to anyone. And because you can change beneficiaries, it's a great way to move money from one generation to the other, even if they don't go to school, which people don't think about. And the last one, which is my absolute favorite, and the one that everybody misses, is the HSA. The health savings account is the single most powerful tax tool in the U. S. tax code that I'm aware of because it's the only account where, regardless of your income, you can get a deduction for your contributions, grow it and invest it tax free, and then pull it out tax free as long as it's for health care.
[00:30:34]
If you're, particularly for married people, if you're married, one of you is going to need health care later in life. So grow this thing, invest it, let it go berserk and build a huge amount of money. You can claim years retroactively, grow the money tax free, and then make a claim when you need the money for something. And if you don't use it for healthcare, you can use it as an IRA. It's not tax free anymore, but you can still use it like another retirement account, but one of you is going to need healthcare.
[00:31:03] Ben Waller
I have an HSA and I forgot that that was how they were working.
[00:31:05] Eric Brotman
Right. You're not alone. If your HSA is sitting in cash, stop that and put it in something. Hold an index fund, do something with it and make sure you max it if you can afford to do it because it is literally a complete free lunch. That the, there are no free lunches in government as long as you use it during your lifetime or your spouse's. It's a free lunch. It's the only free lunch I know.
[00:31:26] Earl Cline
Can you self direct a HSA like you would do a Roth where you can actually invest it in things like real estate and gold and things like that?
[00:31:33] Eric Brotman
That is an awesome question. I don't know the answer to that. I know that most of the time, the HSA does have some open architecture, but they're usually more like a 401k than an IRA. So, I'm not sure if you can self direct an HSA. I've never been asked that before, um, would have to do some homework on it. I suspect the answer's no, but never take your first answer if it's no. Always dig deeper.
[00:31:58] Earl Cline
You take it and then wait for the IRS to audit you and tell you, no, how's that?
[00:32:02] Eric Brotman
It's also not a great plan, you know, not when they're hiring as many people as they're hiring right now. They're coming for all of us. It's not pretty.
[00:32:10] Earl Cline
Don't take me too seriously, by the way. Oh, believe me, I,
[00:32:13] Eric Brotman
Are you kidding? Ditto.
[00:32:16] Ben Waller
Eric, you're providing a lot of great value about what people can be doing for retirement and you obviously have a ton of experience, which is why we brought you on the show today. So I want to ask you an opinion question. What changes do you see coming over the next five to ten years about how people should be preparing for retirement or graduation, whatever we want to call it today?
[00:32:33] Eric Brotman
There's a couple things coming and some of them are very obvious, but some of them are more opaque.Longevity has created some challenges for families and with longevity is postponing this great financial shift that we've been hearing about since we were kids, which was trillions of dollars are moving from one generation to the next. It is eventually coming. There will be a giant windfall to a generation of people. And when that occurs, it's going to create an enormous tax, uh, event for the federal government. It's also going to create a lot of new responsibility for folks. So on a macro level, I think what's coming is a very large transfer of wealth. That's going to create new responsibilities for folks who've never had to handle it before.
[00:33:17]
Almost sudden wealth. In terms of various steps, I do think that one of the things that's going to make retirement planning more challenging Is there will eventually be changes to social security. It has to happen or it won't exist. Um, and that either means that the government's going to decide to means test it and therefore not give benefits to people who don't need it, despite the fact that those are the people who paid the most for it, or they're going to eliminate the wage base that says you only pay taxes on the first 140, 000 or so of what you make. And after that, you don't have to, that could go away. Um, or they could change the ages and make them older. You know, in France, there were like pitchforks in the street when they suggested people work till 63. At this point, I do think Social Security was created to be a last resort for extreme old age.
[00:34:02]
And that's no longer what it is. Now it's basically a Ponzi scheme with a government seal on it. Don't get me started. All right. So that's, that's one. I do think income tax rates will be higher. They must be higher. I would love to sit here and say that what's going to happen is we're going to have a flat tax or a consumption tax, and we're going to get rid of the IRS and all those things. I don't know how you do that. I would love it, but I don't know how you do that. I do think we will see some form of VAT, some form of a national sales tax before we die. Just because there's such a need for revenue that I don't know how you avoid those kinds of things. I mean, whether it's gas taxes, or cigarette taxes, or alcohol taxes, or sales taxes, we pay taxes on our taxes in this country.
[00:34:40]
Heck, we pay into Social Security, that's a tax, and then when we collect it, they tax it. It's really ridiculous. I think that's going to continue to happen. I think we're seeing a real compression of investment returns. I think the idea of investment returns being anywhere near, uh, the way they were, you know, in the, in the nineties or even in the last decade, we've already started to see that compression. I think it's going to be harder and harder to find yield and defined solid returns. And so it's going to be more important than ever to look at asset classes that aren't traditional and by traditional, I mean stocks, bonds, and cash. There are half as many public companies as there were. A few decades ago, because so many companies are going private. So if you're not investing privately, whether it's private credit, private debt, private equity, private real estate, private something, if you're not looking at that, or if it's not something you're familiar with, I think you could be missing the boat because the basic indices only hold so many organizations.
[00:35:39]
There's only so many of them and they're grossly overweighted. In 1999, people were buying the S and P thinking they were diversified, but some 40% of it was tech. And when Y2K happened and tech got pummeled, so did the index. Well, right now, these indices are very large percentage of a very small number of companies. So people who think they're being diverse are not. And so I do think you have to look at other alternative strategies. And then lastly, the millennials and the Gen Z's out there, who I like to beat on because they're easy targets for me, they figured out the side hustle. And I do think this gig economy and the side hustles are going to continue. I think we're going to see a shift in this country from working for a company. We've already seen the shift from, I worked for this company for 30 years. I get a gold watch and a party and I leave. That's been gone a long time. But. I think we'll eventually see some portability of benefits in a different way right now.
[00:36:34]
Young people change jobs so often that they give up their vesting and they wind up walking away with nothing. I think we'll see something done there because such a large group of the population is mobile. They're all free agents. So I think the combination of higher taxes, inflation, which we haven't dealt with in a long time and which we're seeing right now, and I don't know if we're near the top of this or if we're just getting warmed up. None of us know, but if you've been out to dinner lately, uh, or you've gone to the grocery store or you've filled your tank, it's no joke and that's putting a squeeze on folks. And so unfortunately what we've seen in this country I think is the elimination of the middle class. There are haves and there are have nots and the group of haves is getting smaller and wealthier and the group of have nots is getting larger and angrier. And that's often a recipe for upheaval and whether that happens politically on Capitol Hill or whether it happens in some other way remains to be seen, but something's got to give and I'm, I'm, I'm not sure where this goes. And one last thing was we're talking about the next 5 to 10 years. At some point, we're close.
[00:37:43]
At some point, we have to change the way college works in this country, the way education works in this country. It is not sustainable, it is not affordable, it is not reasonable to pay some of the things that families are paying, and it's also not valuable in most cases. And so I think education is going to have to become more of a continuum and less of a four year stepping stone. Why is it four years? Why isn't it two or three or 17? Why is it four? Because it's always been because there's a revenue baked into that because Yale and Harvard figured it out. Therefore, it must be true. Right. So I think we're going to see a change to more of a lifelong learning continuum, which is good because I don't know about you guys, but what I learned in school is barely relevant anymore because the earth hadn't cooled yet and it was a long time ago.
[00:38:28] Ben Waller
Eric, I love the value you shared for our listeners. A lot of great insight into what you just said there. I want to focus on one of your comments. You were talking about over the next couple of years, there's going to be a massive shift in wealth in this country. And one of the things that I want to ask as a question to our listeners to be thinking about is if you're not used to having a lot of wealth because maybe your parents or grandparents or whatever are the ones that currently hold it, but it comes to your shoulders, do you feel like you would be ready to handle that? Because if you're not, now is the time to prepare for it. Not when they hand you a check and say, good luck, right? Like you could lose that money really quickly if you don't know how to manage it, right? It's easy to spend money. I can spend money really fast.
[00:39:13] Eric Brotman
Yes, I'm adept at it myself, man. And you're absolutely right. The time to build the relationships and know who you're going to call. You know, it's kind of like you don't put lifeboats on the ship after it's at sea. We learned that the hard way. I think you have to be ready for this and parents and grandparents have some responsibility to prepare the next generation or two for what's coming. Doesn't mean you have to be transparent because the last thing we want to do is, you remember the Adam Sandler movie, Billy Madison? We don't want to create Billy Madison's. You don't want to have your kid not be industrious because they think they're going to be rich someday and they'll just hang out and wait. That's not good. That's not helping anybody. On the other hand, you can prepare qualitatively for these are the people to call, and this is what to do, and this is who takes care of it, and this is the attorney, and the accountant, and the financial advisor, and the real estate people, and here's, we've got this team, and by the way.
[00:40:03]
Parents should be asking their financial advisors, will you work with our kids? And if the financial advisors say no, that's a red flag. That means that advisor may or may not exist when it's time for your kids to do this and they're going to have to find somebody. And years ago it was the yellow pages, now it's a Google search, but whatever it is, if they pick somebody out of a hat, they're in deep trouble. So, You know, we make it a point to be multi generational, not only in the planning we do with clients, sometimes three and four generations, but in our advisors, I'm the old guy in this office. We've got a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings who work with the grown kids and grandchildren of our higher net worth clients so that they already have a relationship. They're prepared for some of this. Here's how much you're going to get. But when the time comes, you're going to be responsible for some things and we want to make sure you're ready and you know who to call. And that has been a godsend. We've protected a lot of people from predators and credit.
[00:40:54] Ben Waller
That's beautiful, Eric. And I want to add to that for our listeners that the financial education is not taught in schools. I wish it was, but it's not. And what Eric's talking about is that it's our responsibility as parents to be teaching our kids how they need to be managing money. And if you can find a great financial planner that can work with you and your heirs, that's even better. So thank you for sharing that, Eric.
[00:41:13] Eric Brotman
Absolutely. And financial literacy or financial illiteracy is as dangerous as traditional illiteracy. You are just cannon fodder if you don't know what you're doing. It is complicated world, which is better simplified and shared and discussed than it is ignored. You can't do the ostrich approach and expect good things to happen.
[00:41:31] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Thank you. So just a quick reminder for our listeners today, Eric's been giving us some steps to focus on financial health checkups. We've talked about what graduation looks like as opposed to retirement and why graduation is something to look forward to. It's the end of something, but the beginning of something new. And we're also going to talk a little bit about steps to build wealth. We've already covered a little bit, but we're going to jump into it a little bit more.
[00:41:52] Earl Cline
So I'm curious as we're sitting here listening, you're talking about basically about asset allocation and coming up with a different strategy to the traditional, I think it's 40, 60 probably bonds and stocks is probably what you learned when you went to your first financial training class, right?
[00:42:06] Eric Brotman
That was 60, 40 was the 60% stocks, 40% bonds. And that works great until it doesn't like anything else. And in 2022, it didn't. Because for the first time in 50 plus years, stocks and bonds dropped simultaneously, only the third time in a hundred years, you talk about alternative assets.
[00:42:22] Earl Cline
And I've seen a lot of financial planners that are starting to recommend more like 50 stocks, 30% bonds, and 20% in alternative assets. And sometimes they'll even switch that around and get 30% alternative assets, that type of thing. Talk about alternative assets and what you recommend. I know a lot of financial planners are not really that interested in real estate investing, but I think that's probably the lion's share of what the alternative assets are right now.
[00:42:51] Eric Brotman
You ask a good question that I think real estate investing is one of those things that. I encourage clients who want to do real estate to actually be in the real estate business, to decide that that's something they're going to do. Don't have one property, any more than I'd say buy one stock. If it's your objective to buy a property every year or to buy a couple and to get to five or 10 or 15, so that when you have a lousy tenant being commercial or residential, you can survive it. The portfolio can handle when there's an insurance claim or there's a vacancy or there's other issues. I think you need to decide if real estate is something you're going to do and then really do it and do it. Great. Don't dabble. I think dabblers get pummeled at, at anything, whatever you're dabbling at.
[00:43:29]
You wouldn't dabble at skydiving, right? Just don't do that. Know what you're doing and be great at it. In terms of alternative investments, some of them are tied to real estate. A lot of them are ways to lend money that aren't bonds, or to invest money that aren't common stocks. And that is just tapping into a whole different type of marketplace that is usually It's usually a little more exclusive, so not everyone can qualify for all of the various vehicles that exist. They require you to be accredited for some of them. But done right, it is a diversifier that will behave differently than an index, largely because the index is subject to the whims of the herd. And so here's what I mean. Take any index you want, any equity index that you'd like. And recognize that every time someone buys into that index, they buy into, and you can't buy the index directly. You have to buy a fund that invests in the index that mirrors it. So you buy shares of the fund. And when you buy shares of the fund, the fund manager must, by perspectives, buy in and keep the underlying portfolio in the same bundle of securities as the index itself. If that's true, the manager has no choice what to buy.
[00:44:42]
No choice when to buy and arguably no choice when to sell, because if the news breaks that company XYZ is being booted out of the S and P 500, that news will break before the big index funds can sell the stock. The stock will have been beat up on the way down first. Does that make sense? Once that's news, people are going to run for the hills. And what's nice about more illiquid investing is that you can't run for the hills, or if you do, you're not pulling everybody with you. If a traditional bond fund starts to look lousy because interest rates go up and the underlying bonds drop. What the lemmings do is they jump off the cliff at the wrong time. The herd will do the exact wrong thing at the wrong time. They will sell low and buy high. They will buy high because their neighbor's getting rich and they're not, and they're talking about it at the driveway, and they feel like they've missed something. They're like, I need this tech fund. Or they're getting pummeled, and they just can't take it anymore, and they throw their arms up.
[00:45:38]
And the folks like Warren Buffett, who make a bloody fortune, are making a bloody fortune off the lemmings. He's said. The time to be greedy is when others are fearful and the time to be fearful is when others are greedy. And if people are pouring money into a fund and it's going up, up, up, up, up, it's probably overheating. And if they're pulling out and it's going down, down, down, down, there's probably not something fundamentally wrong with it in most cases. Usually it's just panic or it's algorithmic trading. Remember that so many of the trades on Wall Street aren't placed because somebody makes a phone call, like the old days. You're not looking at a stock chart and saying, I think I'll buy IBM today. They're algorithms. The computers go, Oh, this one dropped a quarter point. That triggers a sale. And once one triggers it, then another triggers it. Next thing you know, everybody's cascading. For no reason. I do think that the public markets, while they're important and they need to be a piece of your world, they can't be the only piece.
[00:46:33]
And so I do suggest alternative investments in a lot of cases. They're not for everyone, but in a lot of cases, they make a difference. I certainly hold a meaningful piece. In things that are not stocks, bonds, and cash. Um, that said, you asked, well, what percentage? That's going to be completely different based on people. I know that's a boring answer to say, well, how old are you and how much money do you have? And what's your emergency fund? And do you have debt? And do you have four children or none? You show me two 45 year old people making a million dollars a year, and I'll show you two different households if one of them has five kids and the other doesn't.
[00:47:04] Earl Cline
Absolute complete sense whatsoever. Yes. What about, uh, self directed IRAs, 401ks? What's your thoughts about that? It's probably more, uh, non traditional asset allocation would be, would... it.
[00:47:15] Eric Brotman
And all I would say is tread carefully and know what you're doing. Because there are a lot of ways to mess up an IRA with something that creates a UBTI. The unaffiliated business. Yes, the unrelated business taxable income. That is a disaster. You can blow up an entire IRA and it means protecting some of your assets from your other assets. So not only if you're going to self direct know what you're doing, but don't self direct. Uh, a part of an account, have it completely separate from other things so that if you do mess one up, if you do kiss that third rail by accident, you don't affect your other investments. I would say the same things with traditional real estate. If you're not holding that real estate in some kind of limited liability entity and having each property, if it's a rental, have its own entity so that if someone falls down the stairs or the house burns down or something goes horribly wrong and you're sued.
[00:48:09]
That your downside is limited to the downside or the value of that property. As opposed to your entire wealth could be decimated. There are things that you can do to protect your wealth that have nothing to do with insurance. They have to do with asset titling and legal agreements. Um, and some other things that I think for people who are really trying to build wealth. I think that makes sense. On self directed IRAs, there's definitely a place for them. It's a blessing if you do it right. But I say tread carefully because there's a lot of ways to mess them up. It's kind of like, you know, people talk about, uh, are annuities a good thing or a bad thing? And you say it and people's, the hair on their arm stands out, they're like, Ooh, that sounds terrible or a reverse mortgage. Ooh, that sounds terrible. Well, the fact is they're both tools. They might be good in a certain situation and awful in another situation, and they're all booby trapped. So if you don't really know what you're doing, you will be hurt by them. But if you do know what you're doing, they're all tools for a reason.
[00:49:06]
They exist for a reason. And so I don't think any tool is one to be totally disregarded and ignored. Um, with probably one or two exceptions, there's some things that I simply would not own. One of them is any oil and gas partnership when I'm the general partner. Not doing it. You could lose everything very quickly. If I have unlimited liability on anything like that and the caribou are wiped out in that province, I'm out. So you just have to be real careful with some of these things. Some of it's in the fine print. You don't want to invest 10, 000 in the fund and lose your house.
[00:49:39] Earl Cline
We're running short on time here, but I do want to ask you about one thing. You wrote an article, I believe that says, do you save for your own retirement? Or pay for your children's college personally espoused the belief that I don't want to corrupt my children And so i'd rather spend the last dime just before they put me six feet under But I don't know how successful i'm going to be with that I'm afraid i'm gonna have to leave my children something to fight about when i'm gone But tell me your philosophy on that.
[00:50:02] Ben Waller
Hey Eric, Eric before you before you answer that just for our listeners Eric is a frequent author on forbes articles. So He's got a lot of knowledge and that's what one of this articles is based on. So that's why we're asking the question. Forbes. com.
[00:50:14] Eric Brotman
I write usually something every month or so this particular article, I do believe you should say for your retirement first, your financial independence first. Otherwise you're going to have some really well educated kids. You have to decide which one to live with. I say that kind of like whenever you board a commercial airline. And they give you the safety lecture. Once they've taught you how to use the seatbelt and I contend, if you can't figure out the seatbelt, you should probably not be in public, but first they teach you how to use the seatbelt. Then they tell you in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, masks will drop from the sky. Please secure your own mask before securing the masks of anyone you're traveling with. And I'm a dad. And I know that if I was in that situation, my immediate instinct would be protect my daughter. However, if I protect my daughter and then I pass out, I'm of no use to her or anyone else.
[00:51:02]
So the advice is sound. And the financial advice is equally sound to say, Take care of yourself first. Help your kids as you're able and as it's important to you. But take care of yourself first because if you don't... You will be a burden to them at some point later and depends on the relationship with your kids But most of us don't want our kids changing our diapers later.
[00:51:24] Earl Cline
I think it's a fact of life for most of us to be honest with you. It's something It's part of life cycle But at some point somebody's gonna take care of us when when we get to that point But I agree with the premise that take care of yourself first.
[00:51:37] Eric Brotman
So yeah, and I, I have told both of my parents, I'm blessed to still have two living parents. They're not married to each other, but they are both married for many, many years. And I've told them both the same thing. You don't have to leave me a nickel, but please, please handle your own bill because I'm paying stuff for my kid and for our own household and looking toward financial independence myself and working with the company, all these various things. Please just handle your own stuff. You don't have to leave me anything. I don't need anything other than not another set of bills going North. Like the ones I have going, so one, one quick thing.
[00:52:10] Earl Cline
Also, what's the number one extra credit assignment you give people in your book?
[00:52:15] Eric Brotman
There's an extra credit assignment at the end of every podcast episode. And at the end of every chapter in the book, I'm not sure that I have a favorite. And I. I think they've all been very different. I would say my favorite, if I had to, actually came from the podcast, not the book. When I asked someone what they wanted to be when they grew up, what was the, the extra credit assignment, and they said something about Tinkerbell. Like, I've now heard it all. Now, now you win. The extra credit assignments are basically the steps you would need to take to reach financial independence. And I don't believe in homework, because people hate homework. So, every chapter has an extra credit assignment, and if you do them, there's a workbook that goes with it.
[00:52:51]
And if you do each one, you will have a financial plan. It will have happened by accident. If I said, Earl, sit down, read a book, and do your own financial plan, you'd be like, I'm out. But if I said, just check this out, each workbook is three, four pages, it's a brief exercise, and if you do those little... Tiny bite exercises, those little extra credit assignments. By the time you get to the end, you will have a financial plan. And one of the chapters, um, toward the end senior year, when I give an extra credit assignment, I sound like a Yogi. I just say the extra credit assignment is breathe. Just breathe, relax, go enjoy your life, honestly, breathe. This is, this can be stressful stuff and it, it doesn't have to cause you or your relationship or your family that much grief or that much stress. Understand where you are, be honest and authentic with yourself and your advisors.
[00:53:45] Ben Waller
Sounds like your book is a great way to build a financial plan. So if any of our listeners feel like they're lacking a financial plan, check out Eric's book, Don't Retire, Graduate, also his podcast. Uh, Eric, in respect of your time, we're going to wrap up and we have four questions that we ask everybody on this show. So let's get started in our final four. Eric, what is your favorite business book?
[00:54:03] Eric Brotman
My favorite business book of all time is called Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty. It's an old one, but a good one. And it's all about how you build your network and how you build that community of stakeholders. It's a fun read. It was, uh, it's Harvey Mackay’s. And it, it is just a read that I could pick up over and over again because it's bite sized ideas and pieces that I can, that I can still use, even though it was from an IT standpoint, it was written at a time where people were mailing postcards. But the premise is still completely sound. Uh, and so as a business book in general, that's my favorite.
[00:54:40] Ben Waller
Well, it sounds like you could probably apply that pretty well to what we were talking about a few minutes ago with people preparing for their financial wave they might be getting from their parents, right?
[00:54:47] Eric Brotman
Well, you absolutely can. It's funny because I get asked a lot what my favorite book is, or the book that means the most in my career, and it's actually not a business book. I tell people The Catcher in the Rye. Which must explain the English major thing, but they look at me funny and I said, well, no, if you think about the premise of The Catcher in the Rye is that Holden Caulfield is standing on the edge of this cliff trying to protect people from falling. And I feel like I do that and we do that every day, trying to protect people and their families and their wealth from themselves, from others, from the unforeseen. And so, and there's a quote in that book that I use to live my life by. To this day, and most people have read it, but not since like eighth grade. There's a character in the book, one of Holden's teachers, Mr. Antonelli, who says something so profound that I use it as like my quote on some social media sites, and that is, the mark of an immature man is to die nobly for a cause. The mark of a mature man is to live humbly for one. It's so simple and I love it. And so my favorite book is not a business book at all, but my favorite business book is Harvey MacKay's.
[00:55:55] Ben Waller
Well, that lot of wisdom there. Thank you for sharing that, Eric. And that kind of leads into our next question. What brings you happiness?
[00:56:01] Eric Brotman
Well, my happy place is any beach, anywhere, anytime. I don't care if it's snowing on the beach. If I hear, if I hear that sound. I'm a very happy human. So I, I am planning my graduation into retirement will involve a beach not as a, I'm going to sit here all day and do nothing, but as a backdrop to whatever I am doing so that I hear that sound. That's beautiful. That sound and the sound machines, they don't work. Go out and spend 18 bucks on like a, the sound machine that you have for your, your nursery or something. It's not the same. Have the smell
[00:56:33] Earl Cline
It's got to have the site, the sunset, the whole bit.
[00:56:37] Eric Brotman
Uh, All of it. If there is, if there's sand between my toes, I am a ridiculously happy person. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that the other thing that brings me the most happiness and joy in my life is my daughter, because if she ever hears this show and I don't mention her, I'm in deep trouble. But it's a combination of the beach and my daughter, and preferably both at the same time.
[00:56:57] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Well, and you've sort of already answered the next question, but I got to ask it anyways. Describe what your future retirement slash graduation looks like.
[00:57:05] Eric Brotman
Well, first and foremost, I don't ever plan to retire. I plan to work until I am not useful, you know, for whatever reason, but my work will be very different. You know, I'm doing a lot more consulting and speaking and writing and teaching. I'm hosting and facilitating study groups for financial advisors and helping financial advisors figure out how to create influence in their world and those things are fun. I'm mentoring young advisors and that's a lot of fun. I'm volunteering for financial literacy programs and those kinds of things. And that's been a ton of fun. So. I'd like to sort of change the world a little bit, but I'd like to do it at a pace that allows for that beach time. So when I started my podcast, I was asked by a media PR company, they said, what's your goal with this? And I said, well, the world deserves better than Suze Orman and Jim Cramer.
[00:57:50] Ben Waller
Why not me? Maybe you should just host your podcast on the beach.
[00:57:53] Eric Brotman
I think the odds of that are extraordinarily high. Stay tuned.
[00:57:57] Ben Waller
And you've already answered this next question sort of as well. What do you think is the best way to give back?
[00:58:01] Eric Brotman
Well, I think first, be authentic with yourself and don't just give to give. Find something you're really passionate about and be involved. I mean, anybody can stroke a check to a charity. Well, not anybody, but a lot of people can stroke a check to a charity. But to actually get involved, to actually make a difference, and to actually help an organization thrive. I think is much more rewarding and that, that could be volunteering. It doesn't have to involve money, you know, they say it's time, talent and treasury. So I think the best way to give back is to find one or two things you're amazingly passionate about and go deep. Don't just spread stuff all over the place like you're, like you're making rain. Doesn't make sense.
[00:58:42] Ben Waller
Well, it looks like you're doing a bunch of that. So we appreciate you being on the show today. Eric, tell us, where can our listeners find you online?
[00:58:47] Eric Brotman
To find the podcast and the books and all the various, uh, information go to brotmanmedia. com. And to learn more about our financial advising firm, we are at bfgfa.com. And of course, we're on Amazon, although Ben, I will tell you, there is another Eric D. Brotman who writes books. This is a true story. Your listeners will love this because when I wrote my first book many years ago, people would Google me and they found a different Eric D. Brotman, who is in fact a PhD who writes books on how to toilet train cats.
[00:59:20] Earl Cline
That and financial preparedness are about the same thing, aren't they? Just as difficult.
[00:59:27] Eric Brotman
So I have received a ridiculous number of, I might be his biggest customer because I have gotten so many of those as gag gifts from people go, Hey, I got your book. Would you sign it? And it's like a picture book of cats on toilets. So I leave you with that. I hope you will check out my actual book and not the book about mango, the cat. I did not write that one.
[00:59:47] Ben Waller
We'll put the correct link in our show notes for you.
[00:59:49] Eric Brotman
I appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:59:50] Earl Cline
We really want to thank Eric for the time that he spent with us today. We hope that our listeners came out of this among many other things with the idea of how incredibly valuable the advice can be from a financial planner that can give you a financial health checkup, get you started on the right direction, hopefully, as Eric says, keep you healthy before you have to get healthy, right? That you stay healthy and continue to grow and progress on your financial future. Again, man, we really, really appreciate it. We've had a blast talking with you today and just really appreciate the time that you spent with us. And I'm sure our listeners will appreciate that also.
[01:00:31] Eric Brotman
Thanks a bunch. I've enjoyed it. You guys are great. And I wish you continued success.
[01:00:34] Earl Cline
Thanks, Eric. Again, thanks for joining us on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. And we'll see you all next.
[01:00:40] Podcast Outro
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