Wealth For Generations
Dive into the essentials of wealth management with Ian Weiner and Todd Whatley on Wealth For Generations. This podcast brings you concise, expert insights on investment strategies, retirement planning, Estate Planning and financial well-being. This dynamic team of a Certified Financial Planner and Certified Elder Law Attorney are perfect for anyone from beginners to seasoned investors, our episodes focus on empowering you with the knowledge to make informed financial and estate planning decisions. Join us for clear, friendly guidance to navigate your financial future with confidence.
Wealth For Generations
Reflect, Adjust, Push Forward: Crafting Your Financial Legacy and Achieving SMARTER Goals
This episode explores how to make the most of the new year by reflecting on past achievements, aligning financial strategies with long-term goals, and implementing bite-sized plans for growth. Through a structured approach, listeners are encouraged to set meaningful resolutions and take actionable steps toward financial success.
• Discussing the importance of being proactive in financial planning
• Reflection on the past year’s achievements and challenges
• Evaluating financial decisions and unexpected wins
• Creating a plan to adjust current financial strategies to meet goals
• Implementing SMARTER goals for clearer objectives and accountability
• Emphasizing bite-sized quarterly focus for achieving long-term success
• Encouraging listeners to take actionable steps towards their goals
Welcome to Wealth for Generations, the podcast where you learn to grow, protect and preserve your wealth for generations. Our hosts on today's show are Todd Whatley, a certified elder law attorney, and Ian Weiner, a certified financial planner. Join us and our expert guests as we uncover the mindsets, tools and strategies to help you maximize your wealth and impact. Let's embark on this journey to secure your legacy. Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as financial or legal advice. Always consult with a professional regarding your specific situation.
Speaker 2:That's right. This is the Worth for Generations podcast. My name is Todd Whatley and, as always, I am very thankful that you are here, and thankfully, I am not here alone. I am here with my co-host, mr Ian Weiner. Hey man.
Speaker 3:Todd back at it again. This will be an okay episode Remember the good old days.
Speaker 2:It's going to be fantastic.
Speaker 3:And it is a new year.
Speaker 2:We this. It's going to be fantastic and it is a new year. We are recording this, it is the 13th of January and so we're recording this and hopefully you set some New Year's resolutions and you've kind of set them aside by now and we're going to come back and reinforce those, okay. So we're going to hopefully help you really focus on this next year and do better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know there's a lot that has been said and written about this topic and we don't want to, you know, redo all of that over and over again. But one of the most important things in life and in having a successful retirement, having a successful estate plan, is being proactive and thinking through what you actually want to have happen, what are your goals, and creating tangible steps to achieve them. And so, you know this is going to be a little touchy-feely but a little bit more tactical, and you know the goal is to look at that. I didn't mean to do that, that's fine. The goal is to, you know, have a couple takeaways and really make it the year that you want it to be.
Speaker 2:Right and I want to give you just a twist that I've learned, that I am implementing in my business and for me personally, and I think it's going to make a difference. I mean, I think I am more focused on my quote New Year's resolutions but it's things that I want to work on and you know, everyone, regardless of age, even if you're 98 years old, you probably want to do things a little bit better this year than last year, and I think it's good for us to push and grow and always have something to be working on. So, yeah, I think we may give you some new ideas here to help start the middle of January, end of January, and make 2025 a pretty good year.
Speaker 3:So let's jump in and we're really based on a couple different ideas. I like to do as many things as we can in threes because it's easy to remember, sure, and it gives us some good steps. So you know three. Here's your three steps reflect, adjust and then push forward. Don't worry about the past, push forward and actually grow. And so you know, reflect is this is the hardest part for a lot of folks. I think.
Speaker 3:And it's something that I do. Naturally, I think more than maybe I should. I'm very introspective. I don't know if you know that about me. I'm aggressively introspective, but part of that is just because I do want to be better and I want to continue to grow, and, you know, I want to do different things and experience different things in my life, and so the first step is okay, let's reflect on the past year, and so I'm going to give you a couple questions, but Todd, jump in a little.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and you can't change the past. Okay, what's happened has happened and I can almost guarantee you what has happened is not quite as bad as you're probably making it. Okay, meaning that you know I can think back when I was 10, 12 years old and you know things that I did that were really stupid and just you know dumb comments dumb like tripping and falling, you know, or something that stuck in my mind, but chances are I could go back to all my friends who were there and they would not remember doing that.
Speaker 2:No, because they're focused on those things for themselves. Yeah, people are very selfish. They are focused on what they're and the things that you're beating yourself up about. Last year, not that it was okay. If you did something bad, you know, let's try to correct it, but you can't change it. Take that, grow on it and let's move forward. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Let's you know. This is just the way to do it. Look, there were some goals that I set last year that I didn't achieve, sure, you know. And there were some that I did and I'm happy about those, and those are the ones that I'm going to. Reflecting is thinking about all of them, but I'm going to focus on the ones I did achieve and move forward. So just a couple of questions to ask yourself you know, what were the top three achievements your family or business reached last year? Yeah, I like threes. That's an easy one, you know. We start. We start positive.
Speaker 2:It's like the um, him, um, count your blessings one by one, you know. You know, once you go back and really think about what good has happened and don't focus on the bad so much, once you think about the good it's like yeah, that was a pretty good year last year. Yeah, some good things happened, and the more.
Speaker 3:Maybe you have more than three. Great, if you have more than three. Reflect on those, but spend time thinking about the positive things more you know. Another one is which financial decisions have the biggest positive impact. That's great, you know. It could be a small thing, it could be a big thing, but you know, be thankful and remember what that was, and if it's something you can do again, obviously do it again. You know. Number three what unexpected wins or opportunities did you experience? That's a fun one.
Speaker 3:What surprised you Surprises, good surprises, those are fun, and then we switch a little bit. What challenges did you face? How did you address them? So what we're looking at here is what are the actions that you took, because we can't determine what every outcome is going to be. But when we evaluate something like this, we want to evaluate the decision-making process and the decision. We can't always control the outcome, but do we make a good decision in the moment and do we have a good process to make that decision?
Speaker 3:So, number five did your actions align with your core values or your family's core values? Why or why not? Oh boy, we could probably do a whole episode on that one. How does our family spend money, and are we spending money in alignment with that? That's a tough one.
Speaker 3:What one financial decision from last year would you change, and then why? Okay, so that's not to beat yourself up. One financial decision from last year would you change, and then why? You know. Okay, so you know that's not to beat yourself up, but I think through those you're going to find a couple of those that really resonate with you the most. Spend a little time on that. It could be five minutes and then you know, adjust a little bit, and when you're thinking about moving forward, think about some potential. You know ideas or what you want to have happen moving forward.
Speaker 3:Now, this is a little bit more technical and a little bit more tactical, so hang with me here, but I think these are good questions for everyone to reflect on. Are your current financial strategies aligned with your short and long-term goals? What are your goals? Are you on track? Are you going to meet them? That's pretty straightforward yeah, it is. But you know what? I would think that people would be shocked at how little folks really pay attention to whether or not they're on track towards their long-term goals, or if they even have long-term goals.
Speaker 2:When's the last time you even thought about it or looked at it, you know, really looked at it, rather than saying, oh it's up or it's staying on. I mean what are your goals? What are the tax implications of that, the retirement implications?
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, it's time that you sit down and really look at it and take a real assessment of okay, where are we at and are we on track or do we need to make some adjustments? And that's the point of this, right? What lesson from last year can you help make better decisions this year? Okay, so you know decision-making as a process. You know, are there any accounts, investments or systems that need to be simplified? Big fan of simplicity, you know we don't need to have 50 IRAs. You know we can have one IRA and be going in the same direction. It's easy.
Speaker 2:I probably have more than I said you do.
Speaker 3:Actually, what habits could you adopt to better support your goals? So what things can you do? It doesn't have to be really difficult stuff, but what little things can you do to get towards your goals? For me, walking more is going to be something I'm focusing on. This year I got to drop a couple, and so walking is the way that.
Speaker 2:I do that and accountability is good If you share those numbers with someone, say I need you to help me, and if you know that you've got to go answer to someone like my good friend and I. It's somewhat loose, but we kind of have a weight thing and we're always accountable to each other. And he's like, dude, I'm up three pounds. I'm like, oh okay, what can we do to fix that? And then, you know, next time I'm like, dude, I'm down three. And he's like, all right, good, but then what?
Speaker 3:are the steps that you take to address that? Sure, yeah, and focusing on those. You've got to know what those numbers are. But, okay, getting to the goal, what are the steps that we're going to take? Because you're not always going to see progress right away. So, for me, the bottleneck, for me walking more right now, is having good walking shoes. I've got a lot of shoes, but I don't have a lot of shoes that are really made for walking, and I like to walk a long way On cloud man, and so I'm going to get some. You know, I don't want to look like a total dweeb, but I guess that's something I can't control.
Speaker 2:On cloud man. They're cool, Everybody's wearing them.
Speaker 3:This podcast is sponsored by On Cloud.
Speaker 2:I wish hey.
Speaker 3:On Cloud, we'll get there we're pitching our stuff.
Speaker 3:We'll tag them. And then number five is just, you know what's actionable right away. Are there upcoming deadlines that you need to prioritize? Okay, how do we create? You know, prioritize and a lot of this is some of the stuff that we do with our clients. Hey, what are the goals, what do we need to address right now in order to get there and what are the steps that we can take? And then you know, the last section is okay, let's grow. How do we grow? All right, let's say we create some goals. How do we create goals and how do we actually see them through? I'm a fan of what's called smarter goals. You might have heard of smart goals. These are smarter goals.
Speaker 2:I've taught that before.
Speaker 3:Okay, so this may be remedial for you and I'll run through it quick. You can go back to it. So smarter goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound ones that you evaluate, and then there's a little reward, a little treat at the end. So specific what exactly do you want to achieve? The example we give is save $10,000 for something by December Okay, that is specific. You'll know whether or not you hit that. For me, just going, oh, you know by December. Okay, that that is specific. You'll know whether or not you hit that For me, just going, oh, I want to. You know, lose some weight? Okay, how much? If it doesn't have a specific amount, it's very hard to accomplish that Measurable. Can you track the progress? Yep, you know how much you've saved. You know how much weight you've lost. It's measurable. And what's great about that is it keeps you honest. You can't fudge that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can I throw a twist in there? Yeah, so what I've done, the change that I've made for me in my business and personally, is I've broken that down into a quarter, a yearly quarter, three months, I like that. Okay, three months seems very. You know, that's around the corner. You know, a year, it's like a year that's a long ways away, that's after next Christmas, and Christmas never comes really, and so, but three months, it's like, man, I need to work on this because I'm going to re-evaluate this in three months. And so if you said, rather than save $10,000 in a year, it's like I want to save $2,500 by the end of three months. Sorry about that. And so, you know, divide that by three and that's about $800 a month, $850. Let's say, well, yeah, $850 seems very attainable, when $10,000, god, that's a lot of money. And you know, it's like if I save $10, that's nowhere near $10,000. But if I save $10, that's a much bigger percentage of 850. And if I save 100, I'm an eighth of the way there. You know, it's very— Bite-sized chunks, bite-sized chunks.
Speaker 2:And so one thing we've done in our office is we have set three-month goals and we've really focused on one thing per quarter. And so you know we don't have five different goals. We have one and we're focused on it intently for three months and I'm going to wear everybody out for those three months, but by George, at the end of three months we're through with it and then we move on to our next goal, and it's just smaller, obtainable, and I think I'm kind of a short-term type guy. I like to know. You know, three months will be here before you know it.
Speaker 2:Where a year you're like I'll get to that later. It's easy to put off. It's easy to put off. It's like I'll get to that later because I still have a year In three months. If you procrastinate a month, you're a third of the way there. Yeah, you have two months. Yeah, procrastinate a month, you're a third of the way there. Yeah, you got two months. Yeah, you now only have two months to meet your goals. So it's just, it's bite-sized pieces. So think about that in your goals. Rather than have five different goals, just say, okay, let's do one and let's really focus on it this quarter.
Speaker 3:There's a couple of principles that I've forgotten the names for and they have names, but and they go with this, which is really interesting. The first one is this idea that work expands to fill the time that you give it. Okay, I guess it's named after somebody, but the idea is look, if you, if you block an hour to do a task, you know what you end up. Most of the time, it takes about an hour to do the task. An hour long meeting always takes an hour. It's going to be an hour, yep, and so you know, one of the ways that you can kind of it's not trick yourself, but you can just set yourself up for success is exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:Instead of giving in a year, see if you can't get it done in a quarter. And you know the brain is amazing and you can do probably more than you think if you give yourself that. The other thing that is interesting is there's this idea that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in five or ten, and so you can apply the same idea to the quarter and the year. Right, so people underestimate what they can do in a. I'm kind of flipping it actually, but I think it's true. You underestimate what you can do in a quarter and sometimes overestimate what you can do in a year, but if you break it down that way, it's easier to attain.
Speaker 2:Hey, get your mic up. Okay, making me nervous, just force it. There we go, pick it up, there we go Sorry about that little backstage technical issues going on.
Speaker 3:Okay, I bet our editor can pick that out. So achievable is the goal. Realistic it's not save a million dollars by December. That's great. That's a nice goal to have. I'd like to save a million dollars by December.
Speaker 2:It may not happen. It may not exactly happen.
Speaker 3:Relevant. Does it align with your priorities? Me saying, hey, I want to become an expert synchronized swimmer doesn't really align with a lot of my other priorities, and so that could be a goal and it could be measurable and attainable, but if it doesn't align with your priorities, maybe that's something we should get rid of right? The other one is time bound. There's a deadline Todd is suggesting quarters and that makes it great and then evaluate. How do you evaluate the progress regularly? Set up the evaluation method at the beginning. Every month you're going to check the balance and you'll know whether you're on track at all those times. The reward this is an important one. This is super important one. You know people are much less sophisticated than we'd like to admit. On. You know, people are much less sophisticated than we'd like to admit, and the way that you train a person is very similar to the way that you train a dog. Just don't get mad at me when.
Speaker 3:I say this but you know, we respond to rewards very, and the faster you can get the reward, the more we respond to it. And so you know, set a reward, put it in front of you, focus on the reward, and then you know, set a reward, put it in front of you, focus on the reward, and then you know, take the actions.
Speaker 2:Well, again back to my three months. One thing we're going to do is, at the end of three months we're going to have a whole meeting on reflecting on did we meet the goal or not?
Speaker 3:And if not?
Speaker 2:why, and you know that's very quick, it's very to the point, and if we did not meet the goal, we're not a year down the road thinking, well, shoot, that didn't work. We're three months into it. We still have three other quarters or nine months to fix this and really make a difference within a year and get back on track, get back on track.
Speaker 3:And the way that I begin to think about this is and I like that feedback loop. And those feedback loops are really important because the longer you go putting off something that you know you need to change or you need to do, the harder it is to get started. And I think a lot of ways estate planning and retirement planning, financial planning fall into these categories. They're not fun to deal with because you've got to face your mortality and you've got to face the fact that there's probably things you could have done better or you're maybe not as on track to your goals as you want to be, and so look, you put it off 20 years. Don't put it off another 20 years. That's what we always talk about. Let's do it. You're in the zone of getting momentum. Let's get some more momentum. Let's do it. Let's figure out where you are and you might be closer than you think to the reward. You might be closer to the goal than you think and you know that's the opportunity is figuring out exactly how close you are.
Speaker 3:You know we meet with folks all the time they don't think they can retire. We go actually yeah, you should have retired a couple of years ago, and it's like man, you don't want that feeling, and if we have to have a conversation about how to make some adjustments and how to get you there on a reasonable timeframe, we'll do that too. But knowing where you're at, having clarity about where you're at, is don't want to face because it's just like, oh, I don't want to be less far along than I am. You know what You're where you are. There's no shame in that. There's only shame in that if you don't face it and address it. And so that's what we're encouraging you to do. I know this one's a little touchy-feely, a little rah-rah, but this is part of life and this is what we do with our clients all the time is we help them set their goals and we help them reach them. It's very important.
Speaker 2:I don't want to wait after an indulgent weekend, but the number is what it is. You might as well get up there and get slapped in the face and realize okay, I need to fix this.
Speaker 3:See the way that I deal with that is, my scale doesn't have batteries in it, and so it doesn't work. The scale doesn't, oh, so I don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2:Look, I'm not perfect folks, okay, but the point is the number, is the number and you might as well know what it is, and let's address it okay, we're not going to beat you up about anything, absolutely not.
Speaker 3:It's really not our way. It's pretty rare that we have to have those conversations with like people really kind of know where they're at, you know and, and really what what's important is, can we, can we get you on track and how fast can we do it? Because by the time people leave those conversations they're like gosh. I wish I would have done this 10 years ago. I feel great. It really does. That's how they report it to us. At least it really does happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are fun meetings and the ones where we get to tell people you can spend money. Oh, yeah, and you should. We've done podcasts on that. Yeah, it's a good feeling and we're not your typical advisor to say, oh, save, save, save, you gotta save. Don't spend money. No, you've earned it. Enjoy it, someone's gonna spend it.
Speaker 3:Somebody's gonna spend it might as well be now we want to do it thoughtfully and we want to, you know, do it in a tax-efficient way. Blah, blah, blah. But, um, you know, just a couple, a couple of thoughts here as we, as we enter the new year, you know. So, um, if you've got some goals that are big goals, tell us about them. We'd love to hear about your goals. We'd love to hear about how we can maybe help you achieve your goals. Feel free to share this, but we appreciate you, as always, and look forward to seeing you next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Wealth generations. We hope today's insights inspire and guide you in your financial journey. Remember, the path to wealth and legacy is unique for each of us and we're here to help illuminate your way. Before we part, a quick reminder this podcast does not provide financial or legal advice. The content discussed is for informational purposes only. Please consult a financial planner or legal advisor for the content discussed is for informational purposes only. Please consult a financial planner or legal advisor for advice specific to your situation. Visit us at wwwwealth4generationscom for more resources and don't forget to subscribe to Wealth for Generations. Until next time, keep building your legacy, one decision at a time.