Your Hero's Journey: Stories and Lessons From Decades of Clients Overcoming Life's Financial Challenges

Arsenal Financial advisors Doug Orifice and Jeremy Vaille are trying really, really hard to make a listenable podcast about money and finance. In this episode they get together to discuss some of the stories and lessons they've learned from decades of clients making their way through all the challenges life throws their way. Listen to hear about:

• Jeremy's recent 24-hour adventure race story (and how he and his team made it through unexpected pitfalls) 
• Some of the stories of clients who have come out the other side of the loss of spouses, jobs, or otherwise...and how many times they've come out stronger.
• The lessons Doug and Jeremy have taken away from these clients' "hero's journey", from building your circle of trust, never thinking it's too late to tackle new challenges, and having the courage to ask the hard questions.
• Then finish up with some hero-themed dad jokes from Jeremy.

Learn more about Doug, Jeremy, and Arsenal Financial at arsenalfinancial.com or call (781) 335-9100.

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener’s personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.

Transcript

Doug: 0:04

All right. Thanks again everybody for tuning into the Arsenal Money Clip podcast, where we're trying really, really, really hard to give you a listenable podcast about money and finance. My name's Doug Orfice. I'm a financial advisor and investment manager here in Watertown, Massachusetts. Our firm is called Arsenal Financial. With me, as always, my bud and partner, Jeremy Vaille, who is down in Norwell, Mass on the South Shore in Massachusetts. JV, good morning.

Jeremy: 0:29

Hey, good morning.

Doug: 0:31

What's up, man? How are you?

Jeremy: 0:32

Good, good. It's been a week. It's been a year, been a summer.

Doug: 0:39

You look no worse for the wear though. 

Jeremy: 0:41

Oh thanks.

Doug: 0:43:

You know, looking good, looking good.

Jeremy: 0:44 

Thanks, yeah, you too, you too.

Doug: 0:46

In fact, I'm going to kind of put you on the spot too. I think when we first started this podcast, you had done your man vs wild endurance adventure during our first podcast or two, and you did that again. Before we get into finance, like I'm so proud of you that you do these things and so impressed that you do this. Could you just give like the quick snippet of what you endured and went through with your endurance trip in Maine?

Jeremy: 1:10

Yeah. So just to recap kind of what this thing is, it's called an adventure race. We do the 24 hour race and it's in Maine and every year it's in a different place. So last year it was in Brunswick, Maine. This year it was in Bethel, which is kind of near Sunday River, the ski resort, so a little bit more mountainous than ocean oriented like it was last year. But you don't really know anything about this thing. You don't know a lot of details, you just find out a lot of stuff when you show up. So same group of guys as we had last year. Last year we had four, this year we had three of the four. One of the guys didn't participate this year, so it was a three-pack. And you show up at Bethel Community Ski Trail two hours before the event, you get the rules of the road, and you've got 24 hours to find as many checkpoints as you can out in the woods. And you're on bike, you're on foot, and you're in a canoe this year.

Doug: 2:00

And this is 24 straight hours, right, limited to no sleep. You just go.

Jeremy: 2:05

Just go. I mean you could sleep if you wanted to, right, but that's time that you could be out gathering checkpoints. And it's no GPS, no electronics, it's all map and compass. 

Doug: 2:17

And I mean I know how you did, but if you got a client who's listening right now, like how'd you do? 

Jeremy: 2:21

Oh, we did terrible. Actually we were doing very well. So call it six hours into the event, we had done a trekking leg, so we were on foot. We found all the checkpoints minus one. And then we were on the bike portion. We were doing really well and we were actually third place in our division, so which would be like the men's open category or whatever. So we were doing really well. Going down a snowmobile trail in some park, and my bike exploded.

Jeremy: 2:51

So a stick got in the drive train and all the parts broke and flew apart. So we spent about an hour trying to fix it. And at that point everyone's passing by, right. Oh are you okay, what do you need? Do you need anything  Like? And everything was broken. So there's like nothing anybody could do. So we were trying to just get it functional to get going. So after like an hour and a half almost everyone had passed us. But we decided we're not stopping, we're not quitting. So with a broken bike and all, we did the next 18 hours, as a team we just decided we're gonna, and it's kind of apropos to what we're going to talk about with the underdog and kind of the transition and the rising of the ashes and all that stuff. So it actually made me think of a lot about kind of our walk of life and how, when things, things don't always go according to plan.

Doug: 3:36

No, no, and like how proud is your whole crew, your family, your friends of you for pushing through and finishing, even though things went haywire six hours into us, right.

Jeremy: 3:47

Yeah, yeah. It was actually a good team moment where we really bonded and as a group. And so, yeah, we pushed the bike, we coasted the bike all through the night. The guys towed me, right, we had a tow rope. It wasn't easy. So we ended up like 27th out of 47. 

Doug: 4:06

Not last.

Jeremy: 4:07

So we did okay, not last.

Doug: 4:08 

And you finished. Incredible.

Jeremy: 4:09

Well, here's the thing If you don't follow the rules to the T, you get docked checkpoints. So one of our strengths, we follow the rules, we're rule followers.

Doug: 4:19

How compliant. I love it. 

Jeremy: 4:21

Compliance, yup. So, it was fun. It was a good trip.

Doug: 4:24

I'm glad it was a good experience. I'm hoping you have a more functional experience next year. And you're right, this is a good segway, because we talked a lot in advance of this podcast about what to talk about in 2025.

Doug: 4:37

Like most years, I guess, in our business, we're always talking to clients about their transitions right, going from one thing to another. Whether it's transitioning from working full-time to not working full-time or, you know, becoming a parent, becoming a grandparent, losing somebody, right.

Doug: 4:53

Every week we kind of have a front row seat for transitions, right. And just the same way that you went through this whole endurance test and then you had to go through transitions just in this 24-hour period that you didn't expect, we have this front row seat to see and sometimes help with client scenarios that are like this too. And there's a whole bunch of things that had us thinking about this right. So we're taping this here on July 31st, so, of course, like tomorrow's August and, before we know it, back to school. So we're talking to clients about their kids going off to college, and not just clients, but people in our circle, our friends, our neighbors, our family. Our own kids are going to head back to school for a new year and new challenges in September. And in addition to that too, Arsenal Financial, our firm, turns 15 years old in two weeks too, so it has me thinking a lot about like. 

Jeremy: 5:41

Happy birthday. A little quinceanera. We should have a little quinceanera. 

Doug: 5:44

We should have a little party. But it has me thinking about, like, where we've come from, what we've done and kind of what's next and what our next transition is too. So you know, anyways, our topic today is about transitions, challenges that we have going from one thing to another, and then the support system that you need around yourself when you are going through a transition. We can kind of start with us, I guess, right, because we both, in the last 15 years, left larger employers to embark on this thing, being entrepreneurs, running a business, right. I left Merrill Lynch 15 years ago and then started this firm. And then you left Fidelity in 2019, actually late 2018, right, and then took a leap of faith and hopped on with us. And it's cool, you know, like we've continued to build upon something.

Doug: 6:35

But then now we're at this transition point. What next? I woke up in the mirror and I realized, holy crap, I've been doing this for 27 years. I was lucky that I got started doing this when I was. I actually got licensed when I was 20 years old, right. So personally, I'm more than two thirds of the way through my career. You're probably thinking about the same stuff too, right?

Jeremy: 6:54

You almost have a three handle.

Doug: 6:56

Right. It's crazy.

Jeremy: 6:58

Of years in. Which is gonna be more than you'll have in retirement years technically ,right.

Doug: 7:02

Right, it's a little gross. So you know, where we have a business that's 15 years old, where you've been doing this long enough now that you're thinking probably differently about where you're headed, not just professionally but like the more important stuff, our households, our kids are getting older. So, anyways, you and I personally talk a lot about our transitions, our lot in life, right, and kind of what's next and where we're headed. And I think we're very lucky in what we do that we're privileged to have a seat for folks who are going through a lot of these things. And we realized that, we were talking about this yesterday, our clients have a ton of cool stories.

Jeremy: 7:38

Yeah, and I was thinking more about it, like I've always been the underdog and I've always loved the underdog story. So we think about like Rocky or Daniel LaRusso or like Rudy or the 1980 hockey team. I was thinking of all these stories that and we have clients that are just like that.

Doug: 7:55 

Yeah, yeah. 

Jeremy: 7:57

Whether it's overcoming a layoff or a family disaster of some sort, right, or some sort of other major thing in their life, and we get to be a part of it. And always they're the underdog that rises up from the ashes.

Doug: 8:11

Right, right. And this is stuff that a lot of times we, these are things that we are kind of preparing for which is like retirement, you know it's coming and we're preparing for this.

Doug: 8:22

I always joke that you can hit a curve ball if it's slow enough to you or if you can pick it up, right. So we're trying to make sure that preparing for retirement is a slow curveball that you can hit right. We're preparing for that, but when somebody gets laid off in their 50s, they're not preparing for that. When somebody loses their spouse at the age of whatever it is. We've seen 70s, we've seen 60s, we've seen 50s, 40s and 30s, right, and it sucks.

Doug: 8:51

That is not something you're expecting. But, again, you know, to start to dig into this, I think maybe we can kind of storytell with some of the things that we've been lucky enough to be involved in and really seen like clients reinvent themselves over time. So maybe, like in a way to protect our clients' privacy and not talk about client-specific stuff, I'd like to get into some stories that we've seen over the past whatever, 20, 25 years. And hopefully maybe give people some hope that you know when they lose somebody or they retire or they get laid off or they face something that's a little bit more difficult, we've seen time and time and time again people be resilient and figure it out, right.

Jeremy: 9:27

Yeah, it's the getting back up element, right, and keeping going. And that long-term approach, right.

Doug: 9:32

And I love that we started with your adventure too, because when your bike drive train exploded, it would be one thing if you were doing this on your own, but you were a group of three.

Jeremy: 9:42

Yes, the support system.

Doug: 9:44

And you had your support system, right. And support system comes in a whole bunch of different ways. It could be family, it could be your coworkers. You're part of my support system. 

Jeremy: 9:53

Yeah, same here. 

Doug: 9:55

So I think maybe we can kind of talk about different client types that we're seeing.

Jeremy: 10:00

Yeah, I mean this is a perfect week example, like my wife's out of town, Heather's on vacation. I'm like lost without my two support partners. I got you, but there's certain they do that you don’t do. So it’s like, geez. We need them. We can’t do this alone.

Doug: 10:14

No, no we can’t. You know, maybe we’ll start age by age. So I always kind of think of our cohort because it’s close to us. Most of our friends are in their 40s and in the thick of it, going fast. I call it peak everything. We have a peak amount of stuff going on and then you're in the peak of whatever your career profession is. Then oftentimes like peak complexity too. So I think one thing that we see a lot in our world nevermind clients, but our world period, like our family network, our circles, is this Generation X sandwich thing. Where we're taking care of kids below us, where we're being involved with those above us, our parents or our in-laws or whatever it is. And then, you know, watching folks get through this stuff. You know, we're fortunate that we have some good support systems. But I think we have some clients and I know I have people I know in my circle and you have people you know in your circle that don't have as wide of a support system. And it's hard.

Doug: 11:13

But I also think back, like 20 years ago when I met a client that might have been middle aged, mid 40s, everything going on. You know, I now have the ability to look back 20 years and think about all the things that they conquered, right. Maybe mid-40s, they were like how the hell am I ever going to get my kids through school and pay for college. This mortgage, at whatever the balance is, how in the world am I going to pay that off? How am I just going to get to Friday, when it's Monday, because you got all this stuff going on right?

Jeremy: 11:43

Yeah, I know.

Doug: 11:44

We use a financial planning portal that is called Wealth Vision. Not only is it sort of an aggregator of people's, their assets, their liability, their income expenses, so we're looking at client balance sheets, but we can also do some projections to kind of see where they're headed. Here's one thing I'm amazed at, for those who were mid 40s years ago, who are now mid 60s, 20 years later, from a financial point of view, by and large, a lot of these stories have wildly exceeded expectations.

Jeremy: 12:14

Yeah, yeah.

Doug: 12:15

Where I've definitely watched some people who wondered if they could make it from point A to point B, either A, retire a little bit earlier. Have money become like a top three worry to now not being in the top five or top 10.

Jeremy: 12:32

It's pretty amazing. 

Doug: 12:33

Even to go back to the stick through the drive train, is watching some of those folks that did have some things happen to them, divorce, loss of a spouse, layoff, health issues, whatever it is, and a lot of the perseverance that we're able to kind of reflect back on. It's pretty amazing.

Jeremy: 12:49

Yeah, yeah. I was talking to a networking group this morning and I was like if this was just math, it'd be easy, right. Our job is not the math. Our job is helping be a support system for these unknowns. Because we can plan for some unexpected things, but we can't plan for all these, all these occasions where it could happen. And that's where we're there, with our clients as the focal point of what's going on, but being able to help and support them through, whatever they're going through.

Doug: 13:16

Yeah, I think one theme I've seen over the years with this too, and let's go back to that support system, is building your sort of trusted network, right. And I don't even know if I want to use the word network, but maybe it's like your circle of trust. Where it's just like within your family there's somebody that you can talk to, and outside of your family there's somebody that you can talk to. And then for those things that maybe are not in your bailiwick, whether it is, you know, the person who deals with sort of like your home construction type stuff. It could be your plumber, it could be your accountant, it could be your financial planner, it could be your mechanic, whoever it is, just having that circle of folks that you trust so that you can kind of get through and then not have to go it alone. Know that you can trust people, know that you have some answers and kind of get from A to B.

Jeremy: 14:01

It's hard to get that too.

Doug: 14:02 

It is.

Jeremy: 14:03

It's really hard to find that.

Doug: 14:05

From a financial point of view, though. I mean thinking about those 40 somethings then, and us now, think about 20 years ago. I mean, there was a lot of hills to climb, right, 20 years ago. We're in 2005. And now we can reflect back on this. 

Doug: 14:20

2005, you're only a few years removed from 9-11 and the dot-com bust, and if you're in 2005, you had no idea that you had the financial crisis coming. So I definitely know people that were part of two layoff tornadoes, two terrible economies that happened within a 10-year period. And then, you know, from whether it's a financial point of view or just like making it through, the stick-to-itiveness of people, whether it's their financial plan, whether it's just getting to it and working really hard as a parent, a neighbor working in your community, working hard at your profession. It's been so interesting and gratifying to watch people reinvent themselves after going through a hard time during that 10-year period. Right, I mean, I was in the financial industry the whole time too, and the financial industry was like torn to shreds twice in 10 years.

Jeremy: 15:09

Well, we talked about the lost 15 years that were there last time, right. Like market didn't move anywhere but down and up and sideways and kind of flat after 10 to 15 years. Like imagine being 60 in like 2002 and wrapping up the last 15 years that way.

Doug: 15:27

Right, right. I guess maybe one takeaway out of this is, let's say you're listening to this and you're in the middle of it, you're in your late 30s, you're in your 40s, somewhere your early 50s, and you're in that sort of period where everything is going on, just everything is going on. Especially if you're taking care of family, you're starting to have your folks or your family above you, get a little bit older and you just take care of all the things. We've had plenty of evidence that there's a way through, and there's a way through when the backdrop is not great. 2000 to 2002 was not great. 07 to 09 was not great. And I think there's been portions here of 2025 that, depending on who you are and what your situation is, has felt not great.

Doug: 16:05

But here we are, if we can timestamp this, the final day of July here in 2025, we get market all-time highs, mostly across the board, bumping up on an all-time highs, S&P, Dow. If you've been an investor and kind of stuck to it and done the right things, 2025 has been an okay year for you, right. So it's not to say things are going to be completely rosy in the weeks, months and years ahead, but using the past as a gauge for now, there's a way through it, you know. So I think that's my big takeaway for our peer group, right, which is like when you're in the middle of peak everything, if we think of 20 years ago and what people had been through, and I know you have people in your circle who went through layoffs or hard times during that 10 year period, you can do it.

Jeremy: 16:51

And it's not too late. That's the other thing. You know, like I'm feeling older, I'm having another midlife crisis. 

Doug: 16:58

I'm right there with you. 

Jeremy: 16:59

I don't know if you told Matty Ice, but I got a bass guitar. So I'm going to be a bass player before I turn 50. And sometimes, you know, when I'm doing the race, I'm feeling like, oh man, I'm the old guy of the group. So it's just like, am I too old for these things? But there's plenty of time left. 

Doug: 17:18

There's plenty of time left and you gave yourself great data that you’d push through. 

Jeremy: 17:22

Yeah, exactly. And it's the same way when you go through a divorce or, you know, you lost a spouse or you lost your job, you got, there’s time here.

Doug: 17:29

I have another couple client heroes that I’m thinking about. There’s a client of mine that I met in the mid-2000’s, actually 2004 or so. Her husband passed away from cancer in early 2005 and, you know, I was lucky enough to get close to this client over time enough that she felt like family and watched her reinvent herself where she was, you know, part of a tight-knit family for a long time, had never really done a whole lot of stuff on her own, whether it's running her household and figuring out her finances, to like figuring what you do with your time and whatnot.

Doug: 18:05

And this particular person, I watched her gain confidence in who she was, travel, find a whole bunch of new interests and everything. Go from being in the you know the single family house alone to figuring out a different place to live. And you know, 20 years have gone on so she's gone through that period of life where she was in the single family home and then some sort of condo arrangement that was a little easier that she didn't have to worry about the day to day on that, and now she's in a retirement community. But watching the reinvention of somebody like that, who went through a hard time, has been pretty cool. So, you know, another piece of evidence that you can go through these transitions, which are super, super hard. She had a bunch of people that she could trust in her network. And she's made it and she's continued to make it, right. And now she's, you know, in her early 80s and she's a pretty happy person, with some perseverance and a combination of sticking to the plan and then being able to make adjustments on the fly.

Jeremy: 19:06

Yeah, a couple that come to mind for me are those that started a business in their 40s or 50s. Me being one of them, almost, right, I think I was 39, but more recently we've got a couple clients that they're 50 years old and they started their new business. And that was not really in the plan. Some of them have been by choice and not due to a layoff of some sort, but, you know, that's a major undertaking at kind of the back half of your working career.

Doug: 19:30

Right. I have several examples of clients that either A, went through a layoff mid to late 50s, had a special skill set. Now I sound like Liam Neeson from Taken. I have a special set of skills. 

Jeremy: 19:45

Good, good, good luck.

Doug: 19:48

Had a special set of skills, right, which he realized was kind of a niche. And then was like, hey, you know, I just got laid off, this kind of sucks, but can I be a consultant given what I do for a profession.

Doug: 20:06

And this guy started not one business, but actually started one business based on his profession and then a second business based on something he likes to do. His hobby turned into a side hustle and then turned into a business. And that was somebody who experienced this life-altering layoff which just wasn't in the cards. I've got another client who in his 70s, after a bunch of health problems and a career that was actually filled with layoffs here and there, kind of invented his own business in his 70s.

Jeremy: 20:31

In his 70s, when most people are heading into their, you know, second phase of retirement 

Doug: 20:37

And then, you know, me, the money guy, watching this, I think one of the things that I found so gratifying about being in the front row seat for that client is money was always a top three worry for that client and now it’s not even in the top ten. Because hey, found something that they like to do, brings in a few extra bucks doing it, takes a little pressure off of retirement distributions and is having a good time of it, right. And then has some extra bandwidth to pay attention to health and what's next and family and all that stuff.

Jeremy: 21:08

Yeah, reminds me of when, you know, you start the baseball club in the next chapter. 

Doug: 21:12

Oh goodness. Trying to torture me. 

Jeremy: 21:16

The club baseball. It's good. Well, I'm going to be a bass player in a band, so.

Doug: 21:23

I mean the midlife crisis right there.

Doug: 21:28

Hey, I know you have a couple situations where you said something to me recently. You were saying 80 to 90% of your conversations have nothing to do with financial planning in terms of helping one of your clients who runs a business. And trying to be careful, right, so that we don't give anything away, but also maybe give some insight to folks out there, maybe share a little bit about that.

Jeremy: 21:50

And I mean I don't know if that's just limited to him either. I mean there's so many that are just most of the conversations are life planning, you know. Like I talked about when I was mentioning that networking group, what we do is not the dollars and cents all the time. That's a portion, obviously that's the important part when, you know, you get down to the tactical components of it.

Jeremy: 22:08

But a lot of it is just helping people with the things around the edges and being the support system. Whether it's just being that, you know, in this guy's case he was taking a lot more risk than I was comfortable with. So I was at least that voice of reason like hey, just be aware of what we're talking about here. You know, there's a lot of risk involved in this and still persevered through it. And I mean this guy is probably one of my greatest heroes just the way he was able to transition from a career, a very successful career with a family. And then has just exploded by going after his own business and making something really special, because now he impacts hundreds of lives as an owner, an operator of a business. And it's just far beyond, exceeds whatever either of us thought at the time. But yeah, every step of the way we've been hand in glove and just worked through all the challenges that he's experienced over the years.

Doug: 23:04

Right, I think of another characteristic of some of these client relationships that we're thinking about, and one big characteristic, I think, throughout a lot of these stories is great communication and asking really good questions. Some of the conversations I enjoy most is our clients, who are asking really good questions and maybe asking the scary questions too. And sometimes they're really simple, which is just like am I going to be okay? Right, I plan on retiring in two years. There's a lot of stuff going on out there. And this can be not just 2025 set of news about global trade and tariffs and whatnot, but there's all kinds of stuff that people will get nervous about.

Doug: 23:43

But I think not having the fear hold them back from asking good, real hard questions usually ends up leading to some confidence, right. Because you and I, in our situation, it's like when we get a pointed hard question, we kind of start with the mathy piece of it and then kind of get to the root of the issue of like hey, it looks like the math is okay, I have some confidence about you being able to retire in a couple of years. But there's something else there, right. I've said this a bunch of times that I wish we had psychology backgrounds, because it's a large part of what we do. But I think not being afraid to ask the questions that you really want to ask, help a lot of people stay grounded with what they want to accomplish and then also like stick to their plan too. Right, whatever their plan is, and stick to their goals. So I guess that's a takeaway too is asking good questions. Having, you know, as open communication as you're comfortable to have with your circle of trust is huge. Yeah, that's again in the category of try not to go it alone.

Jeremy: 24:42

And I think it's a vulnerability too. The people you can open your kimono with, right. Because we're guarded in everything 

Doug: 24:50

Right, especially about money.

Jeremy: 24:51

Especially about money. It's taboo to talk about money. So when we have that support system and you can be totally vulnerable about the things that you've done in the past that you're not necessarily proud of, financially speaking, then you can really make progress there. Because if you keep it on the back burner and you don't discuss it, then you don't necessarily make progress on it. But when you're able to bring it out there to your support system and you can get help and assistance, then you can really move the needle on it.

Doug: 25:16

I see a lot of similarities to whether it's a head of a household, whether it's our client or your neighbor or you or whatever it is, and how we run our business, right. Because if we think about like, we have a five person business and for us it's our ancillary family, and our worst days, and you're talking about that this week, our worst days is where we go it alone, right. And I think one of my biggest educations as a business owner is I remember and it was actually, holy crap, it's 10 years ago right now it was the summer of 2015. I was a two-person business at that time, I had a young guy working for me who we knew that his role was limited with what I was able to offer him and I knew he was destined for bigger things. So it was just like, hey, cool, serve out your time here and go find what you need to find. He went off and did that, but I had a four plus month period where it was just me.

Doug: 26:09

It was the only time it was just me. And it was my worst time in 15 years of being involved with this business. Because I was doing everything and I realized that I don't enjoy a lot of the things that come with running a business. And there are probably some people out there that are better suited for certain roles that probably should be here, right. Kind of goes to the opposite side of the coin, which is okay, our best days is when we're all in sync and when we're all working together and we're all helping each other. So there's a lot of similarities to just us and our own business, or really any business that might be running, which takes sometimes five, 10, a dozen, 25, a hundred, a thousand, 5,000, or, if you're Microsoft, thousands of people to accomplish what you need to do, right. So, as an individual investor, as a head of a household who has to make the families, as a couple that does a great job making these 50-50 joint decisions, it takes a village. It takes a village to make it happen. So it's interesting constantly seeing these analogies to how a business might be run and how you share the burden, and how, if you're in a family, if you're head of household, sometimes it helps to take the same sort of approach to where you have people you can delegate things to. Where you have people you can offer things to whatever it is, and that you don't have to do everything on your own. 

Doug: 27:31

All right, JV. We've been talking a lot about our clients as heroes. We like to watch a good movie or a show or whatnot, and thinking about an analogy of a movie to some of our clients. What do we want to kind of compare this to? I think like Rocky is an example, right.

Jeremy: 27:44

Rocky's a good one, yeah., 

Doug: 27:46

You think about like how Rocky starts, right, and then Rocky is a complete loner at that point. Doesn't really have friends fighting on his own, trying to tackle everything on his own. Through this whole thing, finds Mick, finds his trainer, finds a little bit of belief in himself, right. And then 

Jeremy: 28:03

Yep, meets Adrian.

Doug: 28:05

Meets adrian, right. So starts to like let the guard down a little bit and starts to find a little bit of belief in himself from where he can go. So, like the hero's journey, good example, right.

Jeremy: 28:16

There's one thing that really sticks out to me. I remember in Rocky 2, where Apollo was like I got to fight him again, I got to rematch. and I forget was the guy's name Duke, like his support guy. Duke comes up to him and he's like, and it's not verbatim, but he's like, you punished this man and he just kept coming. And he said we don't need that in our lives.

Doug: 28:43

I do remember that line.

Jeremy: 28:45

That was the best. Yeah, I love that. And his ego, his ego prevented it from, you know, and he went after it anyway, and the rest is history.

Doug: 28:55

So what else are we thinking today, bud?

Jeremy: 28:56

You want to hear some dad jokes?

Doug: 28:58

I think it could be that time. All right, in the transition episode, I think right now it's time to transition into some dad jokes. What do you got, JV?

Jeremy: 29:09

[Hold on, daddy, don't try to be cool. Don't try to be cool, bro. With your dad jokes.] All right in the spirit of the hero. Since we're talking about the hero's journey of our clients, I have two that you might not get. All right. Which Marvel hero would be the best nemesis of the Riddler?

Doug: 29:32

Answer man. Is that close?

Jeremy: 29:35

The Punisher.

Doug: 29:36

Ah, I like that. That's pretty good.

Jeremy: 29:42

All right, one more. Why are there no vegan DC heroes?

Doug: 29:48

One of these days, we're going to get one of these, Matt. Tell us, JV.

Jeremy: 29:54

Because they're afraid of rotten tomatoes. 

Doug: 29:59

That's funny, I like that. Matt's shaking his head. I don't think you can see it right now.

Jeremy: 30:04

He doesn't like it. We haven't done a myth buster in a couple episodes. Gonna have to bring that back too.

Doug: 30:08

We will have to bring that back. No myth buster today.

Jeremy: 30:10

No, I don't have any. I don’t have any other than the fact that it's never too late.

Doug: 30:16

All right, you ready to wrap?

Jeremy: 30:17

Yeah, let's do it.

Doug: 30:18

Well, hey, thank you for hanging out with us today. Hopefully there was a story or two that you can relate with here. Again, you know, as part of what we do, it's been really gratifying to be a part of a lot of different stories over the years, watch people make it through different transitions, different struggles. It's really what keeps us going and keeps this walk of life fun for us and interesting and has us kind of pushing through to keep being a part of everybody's life and journey here. So if you have thoughts, you want to share your journey, you have any questions, reach us at info at arsenalfinancial.com. Our website is www.arsenalfinancial.com. If you want to reach out to us, schedule some time, it's 781-335-9100. JV, thanks for hanging out on a Friday.

Jeremy: 31:03

Always a pleasure. 

Doug: 31:04

I'm hoping your bike is in better health.

Jeremy: 31:07

It's not.

Doug: 31:12

Actually, this is just the excuse for you to get your long-awaited new bike. 

Jeremy: 31:15

That's right. That's right. Yeah, to go with the bass. 

Doug: 31:18

Oh man, all right, well, until next time. Thanks for hanging out with us for the Arsenal Money Clip Podcast. We'll see you next time.

: 31:29

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