Smart People Lose Money | Daniel M. Kopp | Growing Money with Sean Trace

I sat down with Daniel Kopp, CFP and founder of Wise Stewardship Financial Planning, for one of the most honest conversations I've had on this show about what financial planning actually means.

Daniel specializes in two groups that most advisors overlook - active duty military families and young widows, and the way he approaches both completely reframes how I think about money. 

We talked about why grief and financial anxiety are so deeply intertwined, how to slow down decision-making in the middle of a life crisis, and why the biggest financial mistakes people make have almost nothing to do with math. 

What's one money belief you grew up with that you've had to completely unlearn as an adult?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The knowledge required to be good at this is so vast. If you don't do it regularly and repeatedly, especially when Congress comes and changes the tax code, right? We've got changes in, you know, the index constitution with the recent SpaceX things like that. Right. There's always changes that are coming. And how does that apply to your financial plan? How do you avoid getting distracted by shiny penny syndrome? Ooh, let me chase this thing, right? So that's the beauty of that. So yes, in every single circumstance, I've always been able to come and help someone do it even better. Now, then it comes to what was you on the 80% solution good enough. Okay. Because this is the beauty of financial planning. If you do the basic things well, live on less than you earn, save and invest regularly, keep expenses low, don't get in your own way and over trade. Don't sell at the bottom of the market, right? And you know, be properly insured, have a good estate plan, et cetera, et cetera, right? The basics. If you do that, you are going to be better off than the quote unquote smartest person in the room. It's amazing. Intelligence does not correlate to financial success, right? It does not matter how smart you are if you do all the wrong things. It matters the consistency that you show up for those long-term goals. Again, get the basics right. That's 80% of the way there.

unknown 1:20

All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Well, welcome everybody back to the Gray Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I am your host today, uh, and every day. I don't have any co-host, but you know, I say that. It's my thing. Uh, and I've got an awesome guest with me. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, so excited to be here, Sean. Uh, my name is Daniel Kopp. I run a fee-only RAA, registered investment advisor called Wise Stewardship Financial Planning. I launched it about eight years ago, and we serve kind of three primary groups of clients. We have active duty military. I'm a prior Air Force veteran myself, so I kind of live that life, know the ins and outs, how to apply, you know, some of the specialized knowledge in the world of military financial planning. The other group that we serve is young widows. So typically in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, kids often in the picture, trying to figure out what's next. More often than not, that widow has not been the household financial manager or something like that beforehand. So they're stepping into this role. Grief is mingled with financial anxiety. I also have some personal lived experience with that. When my wife Sarah died when I was 31 several years ago, and it gave me that opportunity to see both sides of the grief journey, and now with that perspective, coupled with some of the professional expertise helping to help clients in those situations. Sometimes those two niches overlap with what we call gold star spouses or gold star widows. So that's someone whose spouses died in the line of duty while serving in the military. And they obviously have the combination of the financial expertise that comes with the specialized programs that go along with that, all of the important government veterans' affairs programs that support that, as well as this the grief journey. So that's where we're at today. I've got a small team of three people, and uh, we have about 54 clients right now. I'm also a partner in a tax firm, um, and we have about a thousand clients over there that we primarily serve military clients in our tax base, because again, lots of specialized expertise related to the state tax issues more often than not. I'm a professor in a CFP program, and then I do a lot of teaching and mentoring people who are coming from the veteran in the military space wanting to get into financial planning. So that's it at a high level.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

That's a lot of cool stuff there, man. You've got a lot going on. And one of the interesting things too is like one of the things that I've noticed in the financial planning industry is that people um a couple things. One, a lot of people have really specialized needs. You know, uh, someone who is living overseas and is, you know, running a business remotely has different needs than someone who's been in the military 30 years, you know, who it's different than someone's that's a doctor, which is different than someone who's a small business owner. Like each of them, though they everyone makes money and has ways to earn, there's very different things that go on, especially when you're talking about um active duty military, you know, former military. And it's fascinating to me to hear people that are experts in that, but it's also awesome because, you know, if if I were to ever become a CFP, that's not a group of people that I would know how to serve, because that's not my lived experience, you know. And I'm not saying that you have to have that, but it's interesting and awesome when you get people who understand what you're dealing with. You know, I, my financial planner is a Vietnamese American. And one of the reasons is because I wanted someone who could understand stuff in the US, but also speak to my wife, who grew up in an entirely different culture around money. And when we were able to relate, you know, she's like talking to my wife and going, okay, V, this is what you need to think about and what you've got to figure out. And so it's able to someone who can speak to your experience is a powerful thing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

And that's so true because the thing that's I've come up over and over for me again. Um, in fact, I went back to school for it at Kansas State University in their financial therapy program, is money is not really about dollars and cents. I tell clients all the time, it's about the hopes, the fears, the dreams, and that's born out of our family of origin, the money stories. Um, the term that's often used is money scripts. I know you've had some people in the podcast talking about that before. So uh Dr. uh Klant's the father-son team, as well as Rick Kaler and others in this financial therapy space that developed this, which is looks at you know, how our origin, oftentimes even before we're ages of seven and eight, like develop the money attitudes that we have that carry over into our adulthood. And then you mix that with coupling up, partnering, married, getting all those things. Now your spouse is bringing something different to the table. You add in the layers of the complexity, whether you're living internationally, running a small business, have a unique skill set, job set. You layer on the tax code. I mean, this starts to get pretty complex. So, yes, that's why specialized knowledge can be so powerful as opposed to a generalist. I mean, I've often heard the analogy in the medical world, right? Would you go to a brain surgeon to operate on your foot? No, probably not, right? So that's the beauty of what specialized knowledge is. It's not just the planning expertise, but it also helps me as a business owner be more efficient. I can run operations where we don't have to answer a different question for 70 clients, right? We can answer the same question 70 times and get really good at that.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

I like that example of being really good at a couple of things. I knew this one kid was in a judo class. Uh, we had this kid, I'm a black belt in Japanese Sao Ji Jitsu, which is very similar to judo. It's not BJJ, uh, but I'm really good at judo throws, right? And that's part of what we learned. And this kid came and he came from the Kotokan, like straight up like original judo school in Japan. He was amazing. And he would watch us and he's like, wow, you guys know a lot of throws. We're like, Well, you don't? He's like, I'm good at this one throw. And we're like, What just one throw? He's like, No, I mean, I know others, but I'm really good at this one throw. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, No, I'll get you with that one throw. Like, guaranteed, it will happen. And I was like, whatever, dude. Let's say. Boom, he got me. Like two seconds. And I was just like, How'd you do that? And he's like, Well, I trained that one throw like a hundred thousand plus times, you know? And it's like, yeah, when you do that one thing and you're so good at it, it it's so second nature. Not saying that you don't learn lots of things or having people that know lots of things, but when you have that knowledge, it's it's a power, you know? And I wanted to ask you this because for you having that knowledge, you work with young widows and military families. What are the most common financial mistakes people in those situations make in the first year after a major life change?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Well, both of those groups are experiencing a lot of major life changes. I'll start with kind of the widow situation because this is where, again, that that brew of grief and anxiety, often financial anxiety, that persistent, ongoing worry about things that are new and different can be so overwhelming. For better or worse, there's a lot of people that often tend to show up in those situations wanting to help, wanting to offer their advice and perspective, whether it's well-meaning or not, and that may or may not apply to their situation. So there's this enormous pressure cooker of a situation, right? At the same time, there's a lot of psychological, sociological, and emotional challenges. Sometimes we call one of them brain fog, just the inability to focus and concentrate. I experience that myself. I see it every day in clients, which is just ordinary tasks that would normally be very easy for this person before grief. Now, in the midst of that grief journey, become that much harder. So the idea here is we want to slow down the decision cycle and also kind of outsource some of that research to come back and discrete decision sets. Let me translate that in plain English. Like when the widow is worrying about everything, working with a strong financial professional, especially someone who has a fiduciary fee-only focus, working in their best interest, right? Can say, here's a thousand options. I'll go and research them. We'll come back and we'll look at these ones and I'll make a recommendation based on what's important to you. So part of this goes to the decision triage theory, um, first populated by Susan Bradley in some of her work with the Financial Transitionist Institute. She wrote a book about sudden money a long time ago. She calls it the now, soon, and later buckets. So triage every decision. Some things have to be done now, right? There's probate deadlines, there's court processes, there's life insurance that needs to be applied for. But a lot of decisions, if possible, can be delayed. So my goal is just to be a thinking partner with clients in that to help them consider that, provide an additional perspective, and work through that decision one at a time. On the military side, right, so they're typically facing a lot of life changes due to frequent moves. We call them PCS, it's permanent change of station. So you're uprooting your family, you're moving to a different place, you're learning a new language because you're in an overseas location, right? You're having to interact with all these different systems. So again, the idea is financial life can be complex. What can I do? How can I help? Or if these people have their own kind of financial plan, right? How can they simplify things that they can't control so they can focus on the ones that they can?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I love that dichotomy of control, man. I I've been dealing, I deal with a massive anxiety. And a lot of it revolves around personal finance stuff and about growing my company and stability and changes in the market and ups and downs and all this stuff that I can't control. Like literally, I had to create a checklist for myself to get through every day and focus on the things. So I use like Monday.com, the project management software, and I list up these are the things I can get done today. These are the things that will move the needle. And as I deal with stuff that comes and goes, this is how I'm gonna approach that, you know, and what can we do to keep things calm, keep things stable in the in the midst of that. You know, that's the hard part is knowing how to kind of keep calm when the whole world is is going crazy around you. Yeah. But if you can find the tools to do that, it's a really great thing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. Well, that goes to the idea, just like all skill, I mean, you referenced your martial arts background a moment ago, that was learned, that was trained. There was a lot of practice, repetition, coaching, probably, people to help point out, hey, there's a better way to do this, right? So I feel there's a parallel here in the world of financial planning. You know, we didn't pop into this world figuring out how to navigate the intricacies of the tax code, right? These are things that require learning. For better or worse, most of the education system that I've ever seen all across the world, but especially in the West here, is not oriented towards personal finances. The burden for a long time has been on parents and families to kind of teach this, which can work well, but oftentimes doesn't because you've got unspoken rules. You've got taboo subjects, right? You interact all these things together, and then everybody shows up in adulthood expecting to know things. I mean, a pretty prominent example of this in the US is the student loans problem, right? You've got 18-year-olds signing up for things that they probably don't fully understand, and the next thing you know, they're walking away, maybe not even finishing undergraduate, with crushing student loan debts, right? That's a systematic problem, but at the same time, it was, you know, impacted by just a lot of financial literacy. Now, financial literacy is in and of itself not enough. Now, I know you've talked with other guests about this, so it's near and dear to your heart, because financial knowledge is insufficient because now we have to apply a behavioral element, right? Which goes back to a grounding in the trans-theoretical model of change. Sometimes we call it the change cycle, right? Just because we know something does not mean that we will do it, right? Else we would all be walking around, what's this phrase with six-pack abs, right, and a million dollars in our portfolio. But these things require repetition, training, coaching, which is where, again, working with professionals, other advisors, coaches, accountability partners, masterminds, whatever you want to do, to help build structure that helps can make an environment conducive. Because just because you know you what you're supposed to do is not mean you're going to be ready to do it. So all these things come together, right? And this is why personal finance is complex. It's interconnected systems all working together. And it's one of the reasons why I love it, because there's no simple answer. And even if it was, your answer, Sean, would be different than mine because your personal values and goals are different as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Right. That's one of the things that I think I try to remind people is that, you know, personal finance is personal. It's something that you have to figure out. And that's where you have to find the team that can surround you that can help you. Because it might be that you need different people that have different levels of information, you know. I I think one of the things for me is that um having a financial coach is one of the things to me that has been so helpful. My CFP, awesome. She's helped set me up. But having someone that I can talk to about all the stuff up here, you know, not just a coach, like a financial therapist. I got to work with a financial therapist a couple of times. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Because I was just sitting there going, I'm dealing with all this anxiety. And I suddenly realized that most of it is due to money and like the fear about not having enough, the fear of uh, you know, and let's say, let's be real, like COVID definitely amplified that anxiety for me, you know, the idea of suddenly we've got this pandemic, we've got all this stuff, and I just couldn't deal with that rising state of anxiety all the time. And I had to find ways to cope with that, you know. But I want to ask you too, because it's kind of connected. And when people start looking at their money, you know, and for me, one of the things I had to do is to start thinking about my values because there was a realization that I had the at one point I wanted to chase more, more, more. But then I realized I actually I don't want to. I want to chase enough. I want to chase meaning. I want to work with people that are amazing to work with, that have the same values that I do, that have the same, you know, vibe that I do and create with them and do things with them. Because to me, if I'm trying to make money but it doesn't match my values, I once had this job offer for a business that did not align in any way, shape, or form with what I believed. And I had to sit there and go, do I want to do this? It was a lot of money. But I was like, that's that's not where I'm at. And I it was some rough time after that. I was like beating myself up, you know what, I should have taken that, but like it didn't align with my values. And then now I'm building a life that does align with my values. And I think that that's more important, you know. But I want to ask, what does that actually look like in a real planning conversation to talk to someone about aligning money with values?

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Oh, wow. This is one of my favorite topics. And I love that you just shared your personal example there because it reflects an evolution over time, but it was intentional. I I mean, the theme that I'm picking up on what you're talking about there is something that's very near and dear to my heart, which is the idea of stewardship over status, right? I named my firm why stewardship. This the idea we're caring for something that's bigger than ourselves. It's it's important, it's often applying to many other people, the our loved ones, our family, the causes that we care about, right? And money is just the tool that we use to accomplish those goals. It's not an end in and of itself. Again, let's look at the Western culture, which is very consumerist. Um, some people call it the hedonic treadmill, right? We get on it, we up level, we move to that new house, we get that raise, we upgrade to the nicer vacation from the last time, and we get that experience, and we're like, okay, that was amazing, and then it becomes normal, right? And so we adapt to our circumstances for better or worse, right? Now it's part of our um definitely helpful when we're going through challenges, and and but the the flip side of that is we need more, right? We need more, we need the next level. And we're constantly using external markers for validation too, right? So we're looking at the other people on social media, on the Instagram pics, right? We're looking at our peers and hearing them talk about only their wins, right? Nobody shares their losses publicly, hardly. And so we're starting to use these external validations to say where we're gonna go. We talked about the family abortion, right? Maybe there's external pressures from that background, that uh upbringing experience. You start adding these all up, right? And it's easy. It's easy. It's then all default path to fall into that and to say, all right, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pursue this without ever actually stopping to think. Like, does this matter? Is this what actually aligns with what's important to me? So that's where that stepping back, that introspection, and often it's done better with a partner. So what I love to do with clients, especially early on in a relationship, and then on a regular ongoing cycle every year, we come back, we pause, we reflect, we ask probing questions, right? So I'm borrowing techniques from the world of therapy. So I use a lot of modalities related to like solution-focused therapy. So a lot of scaling questions, a lot of ability to ask like what we do better, what's worked well in the past, applying it. We also do a little bit of like narrative therapy, helping clients journal through, like visualizing what the future could look like as if they were the author of their own story, helping them regain kind of locus of control versus, you know, the world is happening to me. And so when you help someone think through these things regularly with accountability, the clients just walk away again, which is why this type of planning, this life planning, this really leaning into that value is so valuable. Sadly, much of the financial professionals I've experienced don't do that. And then to your point about therapists, most of them haven't been trained to talk about money. So bringing those two worlds together in what we call financial therapy, just those melding of those two disciplines, can be really, really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

I love that. And I think that is important to start like learning to talk about that because you know, it's a lot of financial planning is about numbers, but it's not, you know, because it's like for the numbers to be in the right place, you've got to be working in other ways, you know. Uh, you know, if you don't have the habits to get to where the numbers need to be, then it's not anything about numbers, it's about that stuff that's up here that's keeping you from hitting your goals. Like you said, it's that six-pack, you know, you know, and we would all have it if we all were doing exactly the right thing. Yeah, I wish that I could wake up every day and have this little like heads-up display. And when I'm about ready to do something, it's like, no, no, not the right way. But I don't. And so, you know, I wanted to ask you this because like most people think financial planning is about numbers, you know, but what do you think it's really about?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So it really builds on that previous topic we just talked about, which is what's important to you. And that is a discovery process, and it also evolves over time, right? When I was at in my early 20s, this is a very different where I'm at now in here in my late 30s as a parent. I've got two young boys. We're trying to think about like the life lessons we want to impart to them. And I'm probably gonna be in a different place five or 10 years from now. So it's a life plan that is evolving, but it ultimately has to be rerouted, like you referenced earlier, in values, the core things that don't change, right? I reference stewardship. That's one of my core values. How do I carefully shepherd steward have responsibility for the things that I have control over, right? To do them in a way that, in my case, gives glory to God and honors and takes care and provides for my family, right? So is the lens of that applying to every area of my life. For example, if I want to expand the business or do an extra thing, what is that gonna cost, right? Everything in financial planning, everything in life planning has an opportunity cost, right? So I use this example with spending versus saving all the time. The reason why we save, we put a dollar aside to let it grow or use it in the future, is ultimately for a spend it or gift it in the future, right? Now, hopefully that's for your future self. If you've heard of like Hal Hirschfield, a professor out at UCLA, he's done a lot of behavioral research on this, like helping clients visualize their future self. One of the research papers I was reading recently talked about like people who struggle to save often don't have like have great difficulty visualizing their future self. It's as if they're a true stranger for them. So you're saving for your future self or maybe for your spouse or your legacy or charity or something like that. But ultimately the goal is to spend it, unless you want to give it to Uncle Sam, right? I mean, that technically is an option too, right, in taxes. But when you have that trade off, you have that opportunity cost. So you can spend it or you can save it, right? What is the value in that moment? Oftentimes, clients who come to me who start to work together. Are what I call a super saver. They are saving 30, 40, 50 plus percent of their gross income. Now, many of them are on the path to what we call fire or financial independence, retire early because they want to be done. But oftentimes when we step back, we work through this process, we have long conversations about what's important to you. We give them time and space, right? To stop and think, get off that treadmill, step back from the busyness of life. And they realize, oh, well, actually, here's what the trade-off is, right? And that's what the value of a thinking partner can come alongside and say, you've told me, Sean, you've told me that this is important to you, and yet you're not doing it, right? It's the whole idea of a conversation, right? You might fire me for about this, what I'm about to tell you. But if I don't tell you, you should definitely fire me. It's that level of intimacy, financial intimacy and accountability. One of the big thinkers in our space, Dick Wagner, who sadly died a few years ago, he wrote a lot about the future of what he wanted to see in the financial planning profession. Um collection of those essays are gathered in a book called Financial Planning 3.0. And in that, I love he talks about this idea, which is that financial planners have this sacred obligation to enter into this third space, right? Almost a confessional booth where people don't talk about this stuff enough, much less with professionals who can help. So a true financial planner, true financial planning, bringing it back to the heart of the original question, is helping clients think through what's important to them, carefully evaluate all the opportunity costs, because you can do anything, just probably not everything, and then at the same time, then go back and work through the logistics, implement it in accordance with the proper planning principles, the tax code, the save in this type of account, not that type of account. But it must be grounded first and foremost in values, which then can be played into goals.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I love that, man. It's like if you don't have things grounded in in some type of plan or reality, it's hard to get them going. You know, I I remember for years before I wanted to um get in shape, I would sit there and go, What did I do? I'd go to the gym, I'd kind of lift some. But then finally I got together with a personal trainer and they got me onto a path and I started making gains because there was a person who was sitting there with me telling me what to do, and like I was able to show up, you know. But it's like I think if you don't have that accountability, and I think that's one of the things that is so important, you know, and I wanted to ask you a question too, because you served in the Air Force and were a volunteer financial counselor, you know, working with people on how to be, how to be like um accountable, how to be better at like money, but like what did that experience teach you about how people actually relate to money?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Well, I mean, it gave me exposure to lots and lots of different backgrounds, things that I had not grown up with, things that I didn't know. I wish I had had more technical training when I was in that role, but you know, you you show up with what you got, right? Um, so thinking back through that experience is helping to the idea of, you know, made more popular, I think, by Ted Lasso, right? Be curious, not judgmental, right? It's easy for us as the quote unquote expert, professional counselor, like to be in a position of authority, right? A lot of the work of therapists is the idea of self of the therapist, self of the planner, how do we work, do our own work so we can show up ready just to help the client without projecting, right? That idea of putting our own feelings or biases on it. So that's a lot of what I learned early on there by trial and error, more than anything, is take myself out of the picture, show up curious, ready to learn, to ask good questions. Most people, when it comes to their financial priorities, especially in like a cash flow budgeting type realm, they probably already know the answer, right? So the idea is not to come alongside and just say, oh, go do X, Y, Z, but to carefully ask good questions, help them think through it, be that mirror who reflects back to them their own words and almost a guide, like think of it more shorpa, like we're going up this mountain together, rather than, you know, standing there pointing down at them, go do XYZ. It's a it's a relationship more of equals than it is of an authority transfer. And academic research has shown when you do a collaborative engagement, you get much, much better outcomes. So that's one of the first things that comes to mind, I think, about that prior experience of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Well, you know, what's is like one thing most people get wrong about building long-term financial security? You know, do people have it all together right from the beginning, or do you think there's a lot of things that people misunderstand?

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, well, a lot of the clients who come to me, especially on the military side, because of that rugged, self-reliant culture, and a lot of the people are doing a lot of great things. I have worked with probably some of the best we call it do-it-yourselfers, right? These are the people who scour the Reddit forums on, you know, the Vanguard three fund portfolio, or, you know, they love, I'm not kidding, they love filing their own taxes every year. You know, now that this is the rare exception, but even those people, when they come in, I am always able to optimize their plan even further because the knowledge required to be good at this is so vast. If you don't do it regularly and repeatedly, especially when Congress comes and changes the tax code, right? We've got changes in the index constitution with the recent SpaceX things like that. Right, there's always changes that are coming. And how does that apply to your financial plan? How do you avoid getting distracted by shiny penny syndrome? Ooh, let me chase this thing, right? So that's the beauty of that. So, yes, in every single circumstance, I've always been able to come and help someone do it even better. Now, then it comes to what was you're in the 80% solution good enough. Okay, because this is the beauty of financial planning. If you do the basic things well, live on less than you earn, save and invest regularly, keep expenses low, don't get in your own way and over trade. Don't sell at the bottom of the market, right? And you know, be properly insured, have a good estate plan, et cetera, et cetera, right? The basics. If you do that, you are going to be better off than the quote unquote smartest person in the room. It's amazing. Intelligence does not correlate to financial success, right? It does not matter how smart you are if you do all the wrong things. It matters the consistency that you show up for those long-term goals. Again, get the basics right, that's 80% of the way there.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah. It's interesting too. I um have been, again, working to get back in shape. And uh I had a couple things that I I reached out to a trainer who's actually coming on my show. We're turning it into a whole segment for the Sean Trace show. And um one of the things that was interesting was that she started working with me uh on running and getting more cardio going because she's like a high rocks champion. She's really awesome and super rad. And so today I did this walk and then run, uh speed warm-up, and then I ran for it was like 2.5 kilometers in 25 minutes, which is a horrible pace, like literally a horrible pace. But uh, it's like a mile and a half, about two, a mile and a half to two miles. It's a horrible pace. Like it was a walk, then a jog, then a run. But one of the things that I noticed is but I haven't been running that I was like, well, I should do more, I should do longer, I should aim for four kilometers, you know. And sh and then all of a sudden that little voice in my head said, Show up regularly. Don't be a hero. You know, we don't need to be heroes, we just need the things that are gonna keep us showing up. And I did that, and then I did uh wall balls and this type of lift that she had shown me how to do that was just like a basic dumbbell that was like uh lifted it up to my shoulders and over my head. I don't even know what these things are called. I'm not that guy. Um, and then I did some, I did five, four rounds of Muay Thai striking because I love martial arts and muay thai, and it was at my Muay Thai gym. And so this was my workout. I was 45 minutes and I felt tired and I felt good, but it was so like I'm not exhausted, and it's something that I can go back to regularly. Yeah, three days a week I can do that, you know, and then I'm lifting weights on the other days. So it was this plan that I can fit into my lifestyle, and just like you don't have to tell people that you need to abandon every last spend that they have, that they need to throw every last, you will never have a latte again. Like, dude, no. You know, but you got to figure out about what habits are gonna help people get to where they want to be, you know. And I wanted to ask you this because that habit that we're talking about, what does a good financial plan actually look like? And how do you know when one is working?

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Well, the idea that there's one financial plan is, you know, it's a starting point, it's a point of departure, just like any kind of road trip or travel experience, right? Now, I love travel planning. I don't know about you, but I love to travel and I love to make a good plan. In fact, for me, half of the fun of travel is all the anticipation and the planning ahead of time. I'm a little bit of a nerd like that. But I've never yet once been on a trip where everything went exactly according to plan, right? There's a flight delay, right? There's a construction that we didn't anticipate, there's something else going on. Oh, the event is actually closed, you know, so we had to change it to a different day. The weather impacts things, right? But when you have a good plan, I like to think of it as guardrails, right? Left guardrail, right guardrail, we're going down the road, and we know as long as we stay within these boundaries, we've done the research ahead of time, we know what we're gonna do. So we can have more fun, less time stressing. So similarly, that financial plan is do these things or stay within these boundaries, right? Because a lot of failure, quote unquote, in a financial plan. So I most clients would probably define that as running out of money. One of my uh widow clients defined it, she told me one time, she's like, I don't want to be a bag lady. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Tell me what that phrase means. She's like, you know, you go to the grocery store, you know, here in the US, and there's people who bag your groceries as you get to the checkout counter. She's like, sometimes there's some elderly senior citizens people there. You can tell some of them want to be there because they like that. They show up because they want to have conversations, they're having fun, they're doing it part-time, something like that. And then you can tell there are others who are there because they have to be, because that's how they pay their medication bill, because that's how they make sure that they have groceries on their table, right? Now, we won't get into the whole socioeconomic status of that, but she does like, I don't want to be that. So if we define kind of failure in my case of like permanent loss of purchasing power, right? The not having enough to fund your life's expenses and your goals, right? Then the things that get in the way of that are back to what we talked about before, the behavioral ones, the interrupting the plan, the let the interrupting the compounding of your investments, right? To the behavioral mistakes far more than anything else. And that's why for many, many people, knowing yourself, who you are, like what are the things that you need to stay on track. I I've heard it said in our space that there's three kinds of people in the world when it comes to money. There's, I referenced that do it yourselfers earlier, right? They really like digging into this, but oftentimes they need accountability just so they don't get you know rabbit hole tunneled down into one project. So whether that's a spouse or a mastermind or a friend or a planner, there's a validator. So these are the people who often come in who are doing most things well, but but want, you know, a complete physical. They want somebody to come let them know not just their unknowns, but the unknown unknowns. What are the questions they don't even know to ask about their financial plan? Right. So oftentimes those people do really well with a project or an hourly type engagement, kind of on an as-needed basis. Especially in the US, there's a growing advice-only movement. So you pay people a flat fee and they give you advice for your situation, then you go on and implement it yourself. And the last group is the delegators. Now, this is the one that historically the financial services in the US has focused on, which is all about hey, you've got a million dollars or whatever your minimum fee is, and you're about to retire. Give me that million dollars, I'll manage your portfolio, I'll do your investments for you, and maybe we'll do some planning. Planning is growing, but there's a lot of people that historically have just done investments, that's it. Nothing else. And so that group of clients has been overserved, where in my opinion, the first two groups have been underserved. So a lot of this is which one are you? I self-identify into that group, and then what kind of relationship with a professional would make the most sense so that you can stay on track.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

One of the things that I was thinking about too is that there's a spectrum of people for earnings for a lot of things. And like we don't, like you said, like there are different groups that are overserves served by this industry. And I think that what I'm hearing though is that people are trying to talk to different groups more and to work with them more, you know? But I want to ask you to do this because as you're working in this profession, and you were named one of the financial planners like rising stars of 2025, which is pretty awesome, man. Yeah. But like if if you, if I gave you uh Aladdin's lamp that you can make a wish, what would you like to change about the whole profession?

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Oh man, I don't know if I could do it just one. I'd need all three. But certainly the first one goes back to the are the interests aligned. The vast majority of people in financial services work under, you know, a non-fee-only model, right? I'm very biased, that's what I do. What that means again is I only get paid by clients. There are no kickbacks, there are no commissions to help reduce the conflict of interest that is so prevalent. Again, back to that whole power imbalance thing. There's also a knowledge imbalance thing, right? Consumers are often unaware. It's difficult for them to discern these things. They want to go to brother-in-law, so-and-so, or the neighbor recommended this person. Most people, I think statistics, somewhere in the high plus 90 plus percent range in financial services, do not operate in a 100% fiduciary capacity all the time. I won't get in all the nuances, but with I had one wish, it would be if you are in any way helping clients and giving anything that approaches financial advice, like even way more than what the DOL fiduciary rule was, you are a fiduciary full stop 100% of the time. Okay. Now I think that would ultimately reduce the conflicts of interest because the compensation models would have to change to follow that truly. Um, you know, we were chipping away at this, like the CFP board has a has their definition of it. There's the uh some legislative and regulatory attempts that have had some mixed success. We're we're moving there. I've seen promise, though, in other countries. So uh, you know, Australia, India, the UK in some ways are a little bit further ahead of where the US is here. So I'm holding out hope. And then the last thing is consumer preferences and tastes are changing. I've gotten so many referrals in the past year or so from AI. So people are talking with Copilot or Chat GPT or Gemini or something about their situation. At some point, they ask for a recommendation to a financial advisor because they're in my niche, it recommends me. They come, they start becoming a client. And inevitably, what these chat uh engines are recommending are fee-only financial planners. So there is growing in there, but we still have such, such a long way to go. I love that, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Well, I love hearing that you're making change and one step at a time. But where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Well, I uh let's see, this is a podcast. So let's start with those. I host two podcasts. One is called Military to Financial Planner. And so this is for those who are coming out of the military space, whether military spouse, veteran active duty, something like that, trying to break into financial planning. But if you're a career changer, you would probably benefit from a lot of the topics that we talk about there as well. Uh, we're about to relaunch with season three here shortly. Widow Life and Money is my other podcast. So we just did season two last year. We're about to do season three. Again, helping to reach people. Our current focus is a lot of that content around educating the gold star spouse situation. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so that's probably the best place to get connected with me there. I'm pretty much the only Daniel Cobb with the CFP that I'm aware of. And then my website, Wise Stewardship FP for financial planning.com.