4 Seasons Podcast

Why a Proven Plan Beats the Hype: Building Wealth Without Quick Fixes

• Jeff Bingham • Episode 19

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hy Does A Proven Plan Beat A Quick Fix Every Time When Planning Your Financial Future?

The loudest voices in money often promise shortcuts. We take the opposite route and show how real wealth grows from simple habits, honest planning, and a strategy you can actually follow when markets turn noisy. With Jeff Bingham of B&H Wealth Strategies, we unpack the gap between hype and reality—what “quick fixes” look like in the wild, why they’re so tempting, and how to build a durable plan that fits your life instead of someone else’s playbook.

We start with the three anchors of a resilient plan: know where you are, decide where you want to go, and match your investments to your true risk tolerance. Jeff explains how FOMO leads people to jump on trends late, why misaligned 401(k) allocations quietly derail goals, and how a simple “pay yourself first” habit compounds into freedom over decades. Along the way, we explore the difference between transactional advice and a transformational relationship—why the first meeting should center on trust, transparency, and your whole picture, not a product pitch or quick trade.

You’ll hear practical guidance on resisting algorithm-driven spending, navigating debt and lifestyle pressure, and making tough tradeoffs for big goals like homeownership. We revisit the timeless “Millionaire Next Door” lesson: consistent savers with modest incomes often beat high earners who chase status. The result isn’t a get-rich-quick tale; it’s a blueprint for becoming the quiet success story—one automated deposit, one aligned decision, one steady year at a time.

If you’re ready to choose financial freedom over noise and build a plan that sticks, hit follow, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest money question. Want help mapping your next step? Schedule a free 20-minute consultation at bheretire.com or call 423-247-1152.

To learn more about B&H Wealth Strategies visit:
https://www.BHRetire.com
B&H Wealth Strategies
423- 247-1152

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Four Seasons Podcast, brought to you by BH Wealth Strategies, serving Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia since 1966. Here, we guide you through the ever-changing seasons of your financial journey, offering insights to help you grow, protect, and enjoy your wealth. Ready to turn your financial dreams into reality? Dare to dream. And now, here's your host, President of BH Wealth Strategies, Jeff Bingham.

SPEAKER_01:

Success isn't built overnight. In this episode, we explore why long-term planning outperforms shortcuts and how to build a strategy that actually sticks. Welcome back, everyone. Skip Monte's co-host slash producer back in the studio with Jeff Bingham, president of BH Wealth Strategies. Jeff, how have you been this week? I have been very well, Skip. How about you? I'm doing just fine. And you know, I was thinking from the last episode we recorded uh talking about interest rates and uh financial policy changes. And your advice was, you know, stay the course. Depends on your individual plan. Don't make any quick, you know, overarching decisions without talking to somebody like you. So I think that dovetails right into what we want to talk about today, which is, you know, let's talk about why a proven plan beats a quick fix when planning your financial future. Take it away.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think that's I think it does just kind of it's a very good segue, what we were talking about in the in the last episode. So, you know, and I I was thinking about the the topic of this is, you know, a proven plan is you know better than a quick fix kind of thing. And I I don't even I'm not even sure that I know exactly what a quick fix would be in a financial plan, you know. I mean, as I started just kind of, you know, kind of thinking about it and kind of tossing it around in my mind, you know. I mean, I know that in the world that we live in today, we look for quick fixes or everything. We want to find a way to make a lot of money. We want to invest, you know, in mean stocks and all these kind of things. And, you know, and I and I don't, I'm not saying that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but if that's part of your big picture plan, like your your plan, like the future you, then God help you and good luck, you know, with that. Because, you know, I think, I mean, just the the idea of that, I kind of makes me shudder, you know, thinking how how to have a quick fix to your financial plan. Um, you know, I mean, I know there's from advertising to social media and everywhere you can look, you know, there's always the advice, and you can get there quicker, you can do these things, you can use options, you can do da-da-da-da-da-da, all these kind of things. Yeah, and maybe some people can, and maybe some people can use those kind of exotic things, and maybe they can really, you know, leverage and get these, you know, asymmetrical, you know, out-of-line returns, you know, beat the market. I mean, I think that to me, what a quick fix is in a financial plan, I guess, and maybe you I'll let you kind of define what you might think that it is. I think that that's where people have expectations, unrealistic expectations, or some way that they can outsmart the market, figure out a place to be, put some money in and watch that money go up, you know, double very quickly, or have some kind of you know, exponential return on that. You know, like in other words, maybe we've talked a bit about it how quick, well, I was gonna talk a little bit about Bitcoin, but I I might not be, I might not get this aired, so maybe I not shouldn't say that. But something like something like a cryptocurrency where you know you kind of see it and everybody else has kind of jumped into it, and then you think, well, that's the way to make a lot of money quickly, right? And they and you jump, you pour some money into that, and then all of a sudden it doesn't work out, you know, and it goes down and you get disenchanted. I mean, that's that's typically what quick fixes you know kind of occur for people, is that they they invest in something once they've heard about it, you know, and that and that train has left the station and you try to jump on it when it's already going 100 miles an hour, you know, and you don't make it, right? It doesn't work. I mean, you're just gonna get splattered using that analogy right there. And so I that's that's to me what a quick fix is versus a prudent financial plan, as we referred to it, is sitting down with someone like myself across the table and really just putting all your cards you know out there and not and not just looking at, you know, again, I and I use this every time and I will again until until I'm done doing this. Where are you, right? So that's the first thing that we want to find out. And the where are you is that you're gonna tell me what your current, your present financial picture looks like, or me or anybody else, or or tell yourself that honestly, perhaps, you know, when you're when you're doing it. And that's you know, I've got a 401k, and here's where my money is, here's where my debts are, you know, and then you go to the next is what am where do I want to go, right? What do I want the future, me or the future family to look like? And so that's where you begin to sit there and you know, if I'm doing my job, I give my clients, hopefully, and hopefully they feel like this. But man, if you get people to start talking about that, they will paint a picture of where they want to go, you know, and uh and then you begin to kind of develop the third part of that, which is understanding what their risk tolerance is. I mean, it kind of goes opposite of what we were talking about on quick fixes. I kind of defined a quick fix is they're trying to find a way to make a bunch of money in an investment strategy real quickly, versus almost nobody has that kind of appetite really for risk. The only time they want, the only time they're okay with that is if it works, right? But the problem is oftentimes is it doesn't work. And when you have even a true investment strategy that matches your risk tolerance, you know, and a risk tolerance, you know, way you come up with risk tolerance is through, you know, it's kind of an art and a science. I mean, we have little you know scoring tests that we can give people and ask them certain questions, but it really is, and you know, and we use them, but you can you can talk to people for you know 15 minutes to an hour and you can find out where their risk tolerance is most of the time. And then you can also look at their current investments if they got a 401k plan. And oftentimes that risk tolerance that they're talking about that you're beginning to identify and helping them identify for themselves and what they're doing in their 401k plan, they're kind of doing on their own, right? The 401k plan is a kind of a do-it-yourself, here's your investment choices, good luck. When that's what kind of your employer does, and those things are oftentimes just wildly mismatched, you know. Like I'm very conservative, I don't want to take a lot of risk, and you look and they've got you know all their money, and the company that they work with and you know, a growth mutual fund, you know, like is 100% stocked. You're like, well, that's not a conservative stance, right? Or it could be just the opposite, you could flip it, turn that upside down, it could be just the opposite of that. And so, and I say all that to say, but that's that's where you begin to develop truly a prudent financial plan, is it is a honest conversation, not only with yourself. I think an investor or a client of mine has to really, you know, have to be honest with themselves and be honest with me. And if they put those, if that honesty and that trust, right, you know, so this is not a trend. So what I always say is that what we're looking for for with our clients is not this is not a transaction. I don't, you don't, you've got some money you want to invest and you want to do it. That's a transaction. What we're looking for is a transformational relationship to where we want to get to know you, the one size fits one that I come back to all the time, kind of our four seasons approach, which is really getting to know you to develop a relationship. And like I said, if you've you know, I've this business has been here, the B and H well Strategies has been around, it'll be 60 years on April 1st next year. And wow, and that's and that's you know, it's it's quite extraordinary, you know, and and we use the term around here that you know we're a family business and family is our business. So we've got multi-generational families. So we're building long-term transformational relationships with our clients. I have no interest in a transactional relationship. Now, there's a lot of advisors, a lot of ways to do transactional relationships, and I'm in a transactional business. The financial service industry, the investment services industry, by nature is transactional, right? Buy and sell stocks, buy and fail ETFs, all the things we've talked about. But that's transactions are just what we have to do to put that conversation, to put your plan together, right? We don't want to be transformational in that relationship and just trying to, oh, you know, here I've got some money. What do you think I ought to do? You know, how should I invest this money? Like, and when people ask me that, you know, I've got$50,000, I've got$100,000. How should I invest my money? And they'll just ask me, that'll be the first thing they ask me. And I'll go, I have absolutely no idea. I mean, no, you know, I mean, how would I know? Right. And then, and they're like, Well, what do you mean? Isn't that what you do, you know, for a living? I'm like, yeah, I mean, well, kinda, but what I really do for a living is I have conversations and relationships with clients and families over a long period of time. So I understand exactly where you are, where you want to go, and how you want to get there. And I'm gonna help you do that. And then we're gonna figure out together how where that this$50,000 or whatever that number is that you're talking about investing in today is what does everything else look like? Give me, you know, put all your cards on the table. Just like if you go, you know, you go to your doctor, your general practitioner, if you only tell him part of what's going on or part of how you feel, or all those kind of things, you know, you know, if you don't tell him you're allergic to penicillin and you've got, you know, you got a cold or something like that, you know, you need an antibiotic and he gives you penicillin, it'll kill you. And the same thing is true on my side of the table. If I just took$50,000 and invested it the way that I saw fit, right? The way that I think this client wants me to do it without knowing anything else, I mean it's malpractice. And uh, you know, like I said, I mean, there's there are ways to do it. You want to go do that kind of on your own, good luck with it. But if you want to sit down and talk with someone at like myself at BH Well Strategies, we're gonna we're gonna dig into this thing, and there's not anything we're gonna do, you know, in that first meeting. We're gonna get to know each other. You can ask me anything you want about the firm, get to know, get to know me, develop that relationship, develop a bond of trust, because at the end of the day, this business is all about trust.

SPEAKER_01:

All about trust. Very good advice. Well, speaking of advice, and before we started recording, we were talking about younger folks, another subject, but what's your advice for somebody just starting out and starting to think about their financial future?

SPEAKER_02:

Put yourself on the payroll first, you know, start saving now and you know, figure out how much money you can do. It you know, there will always be things that'll be pulling at you. Is you know, my dad used to always say, and I use a lot of my dad's sayings that we would sit down and talk to people, and it's whether you're, you know, whether you make a lot of money, whether you make you know, an average amount of money, whether you make a little bit about a little bit of money, if you put yourself on the payroll first, maybe tithing is first, you may be putting God on the payroll first, that's a different conversation. But put yourself on the payroll first before everything begins to pull on you before you start buying the material things that you that you need to have, and you'll be a financial success, whether you're rich, poor, or in between. You know, and rich as an income, because you can make a lot of income your entire life, have a very you know high-paying job, and and but but spend, spend, spend, and you will not be a financial. You'll have looked like you're a financial success, but you'll get out there at the end of the runway, you know, as you get closer and you really you want to step into retirement or you want to leave your kids a legacy or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish and you got nothing, right? That job goes away and you're you look into your coffers and they're empty, right? The income stream is stopped. But if you but and if you're if you're of modest income throughout your life, but you sit put yourself on the payroll first, you'll end up at the end of the day when you're you know 60, 65 years old, and all of a sudden you're you know, it's the millionaire next door, all of a sudden that person that looked like they were, you know, the the the white-collar worker, someone like myself that dresses and you know, that that works with their mind and their hands and makes money, you know, versus the person, the blue-collar person that's working, but put themselves on the payroll first. At the end of the day, that person has the blue-collar person from Eastman being the classic example of this over the years, you know, that had a modest income, worked their butts off out there, worked overtime, funded that 401k plan. They walk in here, you know, we call it the Millionaire Next Door. There's a book called The Millionaire Next Door, and they've got a, you know, they've got a portfolio that's got a million bucks in it, versus talking to the doctor, the lawyer, the attorney that's been working all their life and you know, driving nice cars, living in big homes, and they come in and say, look, they they they would be looking for that quick fix, right? Think about it, they'd be looking for that quick fix. Like all of a sudden, you know, my health's failing, you know, I'm 65 years old, I can't work much longer. You know, I've got$10,000 in a in a savings count and a bunch of, you know what I mean? Like, and that's what it is. So it is always put yourself on the payroll first, start early and never stop doing it. And you will be amazed at how much money, you know, as you enter into the workplace that you will have, you know, when you get there to 55, 60, 65 years old, you know, kind of at the end of wherever your goal of retirement is, assuming that's a goal. You know, I I I kind of look at it as not, we use the word retirement, we can say the word with a retirement planning specialist, but really what we're looking for is financial freedom. You know, what what what I really preach and talk about more than anything else, and probably preach about it, is you want to get yourself in a position to control your own destiny, right? And so you want, you know, it's the roadmap. We want to build a roadmap to your financial freedom. And like I said, in the earlier you start, man, it's amazing how much money you can accumulate. But it's hard to start when you're young, too, because again, you know, you need you want to buy the house, you're gonna have kids, you're gonna, you know, you want the car, you want the, you know, you want the prestige of the of the things. And when we see our neighbors, you know, and and everywhere we turn, you know, online or watching TV and commercials, every, you know, the algorithm, the algorithms are set up to not allow us to put ourselves on the payroll first. I mean, right? I mean, we got credit cards, we got, you know, buy now, pay layer, you know, schemes that are out there now. Um, you know, with the what is it? The not I can't think of the couple of the companies that are out there. I mean, it's it's it's really it's it's almost it's not criminal, but maybe it should be. Hopefully I won't get scratched out of this, out of this. But you know, I mean, it is, and it's it's you know, it does it to us as as at our age, but think it as you're coming out of college and you just get inundated with that all the time, and you're on your social media sites, and they know that algorithm knows exactly where to take you and tempt you for and tell you you need those things, right? You gotta have the newest, the brightest, the shiniest, the best, you know. Uh keep up with keeping up, you know, it's the old expression. Going back is I don't know when it started, but keeping up with the Joneses, right? We all have the, we all are in our human flesh way, we are always comparing ourselves to our our contemporaries, our neighbors, our peers, you know, and that's and and we've got it, you know. I think if you can get away from that, you can put yourself, put some money aside, as a young person, you can, you know, this world is it seems like it's stacked against you. I get that. You know, we were talking about interest rates in another episode and cost of houses, and you know, the average, you know, not less than 10 years ago. I think I'm right on this, and maybe slightly off on my stat. The average age of a first-time home buyer was 30 years old. It is now 38 years old. You know, and that's you know, and that's that's that's that's a shame, you know. And and I talk to, you know, people that I know. I mean, my wife's daughter just thinks there's, you know, she's a nurse and she makes good money, and she thinks there's no way that, and she's putting some money aside, but she thinks there's no way that she'll ever be able to own a home. And that's you know, that's that those are the things that that need to be addressed. And, you know, I don't know as it is an advisor how much of that I can help with that and I can talk with that. I mean, I think there are ways to do it, but it requires some sacrifices that the world is stacking against you to think that those sacrifices are worth that to to be able to get and buy that home, right? Because I gotta have, you know, I gotta have the newest, you know, smart TV, I gotta have the newest iPhone, I've got to have the newest, whatever it is, you know. Do you and I gotta go to Starbucks, and I'm not trying to pick on all these companies necessarily, but man, that's just that's what it looks like out there. We've lost, and now I guess I'm on my soapbox and preaching a little bit, but there's a reason, there's a reason why, for the most part, we're not called we're not called citizens anymore. We're called consumers. We're thought of by by corporate America and to some degree the government, we're thought of as consumers, not as citizens anymore. And I think we need to claim our citizenship back.

SPEAKER_01:

Amen, brother. Claim our citizenship. Claim our citizenship and put ourselves back on the payroll. That's great advice. Amen. Amen. Well, Jeff, thanks for the insight once again. Um, at you next time to continue helping folks turn their financial goals into reality and achieve financial freedom. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you very much, Skip. Have a great weekend and see you soon. God bless. All right, all right, brother. You too.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for tuning in to the Four Seasons Podcast, brought to you by BH Wealth Strategies, where your financial success is our priority. Schedule your free 20-minute consultation today by calling 423-247-1152 or by visiting bheretire.com. Take the first step toward making your financial dreams come true. Until next time, remember every season is the right season to plan for your future. Securities and registered investment advisory services offered through Silver Oak Securities Inc. member FINRA SIPC, BH Well Strategies, and Silver Oak Securities Inc. are not affiliated.