BeansTalk
BeansTalk: Where Expertise Meets Opportunity, Mauldin & Jenkins' podcast, where we are sharing and showcasing our areas of expertise through conversations with practice leaders on their knowledge and experience.
BeansTalk
Building Wealth with Intention: When to Start, What to Know, and Where the Industry Is Headed
In this episode, we move beyond the buzzwords to explore what it truly means to build wealth with intention. Whether you are just starting your financial journey or looking to pivot your strategy, this conversation covers the critical roadmap you need.
About Our Guests
Doug Moses is a Partner with over 25 years of experience. He specializes in audits of governmental entities, primarily cities, counties, school districts, state agencies, and special purpose entities. Doug is also a member and current chair of the Firm’s Executive Committee, which governs the actions and direction of the Firm and serves as a member of the Firm’s Advisory Committee.
Don is co-founder/owner of Guardian Wealth and acts as principal investment advisor. He is also the Vision & Behavioral Coach to Guardian’s client-family. Don’s effectiveness in helping clients reach their goals is powered by a successful career as the owner of a CPA firm that also specialized in financial planning and small business consulting.
About Our Host
Brandon Smith, CPA, is a Partner based in the Atlanta office and the Advisory Practice Leader.
Learn more about our Tax & Estate Planning services here: https://www.mjcpa.com/industries/tax-and-estate-planning/
Welcome to Bean's Talk, MJ's podcast where we are sharing and showcasing our areas of expertise through conversations with practice leaders on their knowledge and experience. You've done everything right. You've landed the good job. You're contributing to Refor1k. Maybe you even saved up a little bit of a nest egg. But if you're honest with yourself, do you really have a plan? Or is your plan just to save and hope for the best? Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about why wealth management and wealth planning could be the most important blueprint for you and one you might not have yet at least. And so for today's episode, I'm very excited to be joined by two guests. The first is Don Van Landingham, who is the founder of Guardian Wealth Management. Hey, Don.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_02:Doing awesome. Thank you so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02:And also for today's episode, I have Doug Moses, who is a senior partner of Malden ⁇ Jenkins and a client of Guardian Wealth Management. Thanks for joining us, Doug. Pleasure to be here. So, Don, will you just do a favor for our listeners and tell me a little bit about your background, your experience, and your role at Guardian Wealth?
SPEAKER_00:I'm uh co-founder with my uh uh now retired partner, Kathy, um of Guardian Wealth. And I've been doing, I'm a CPA also, financial planner, and have been doing wealth management. First uh wealth management client I got was in 1987. So I had a CPA practice before then, and then just gravitated into the wealth management field from that point on. Awesome.
SPEAKER_02:And and Doug, I I know you're here as a client of Guardian Wealth, but just kind of a brief background for listeners too about yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. So you know I've been with Muller and Jenkins um now 26 years in counting, uh governmental audit partner, uh, serve in in multiple leadership roles at the firm, including the executive committee and and also as a a board member of Guardian Wealth Management. And so I'm just happy to be here, and this is awesome.
SPEAKER_02:So so, Doug, Don, to really get us started, the the first question I have on this topic is just the why. Why wealth management? Why is this important thing for all of us to consider and and how does this really impact us, maybe from a business perspective, or even most importantly, just me personally, from a personal and individual perspective. So, Don, will you help me just with that first overarching question? Why wealth management?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the first thing that comes to mind, Brandon, is we live in the richest country in the history of mankind. Yet uh take a guess what the average net worth of your average retired person in America is.
SPEAKER_02:If I were to think about the average for Americans um trying to plan for the retirement, I'd I'd hope in the hundreds of thousands, maybe 300K, I feel like, is a number that came to my mind.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Last study was 70,000.
SPEAKER_02:70,000 is the average. Right. I feel like my 300 is even kind of scary. That's even worse.
SPEAKER_00:Uh it is, right? Uh and that's retired. So that doesn't include pre-retirees, which will be less theoretically, right? Right. That's why.
SPEAKER_02:So it's just kind of planning ahead to make sure we're not in that situation. Correct. To lead to a position to where and and for that why, I guess, you know, what does that mean to us too? Almost leading in from the why to the how when we're trying to avoid a situation where we can be forecasting out to where we might be trying to survive on a retirement at just$70,000. You know, what's the how behind trying to avoid that?
SPEAKER_00:It it kind of goes back to your first question, the why. Most people don't know their why. Um they uh they kind of live life, struggle day to day, go through all of that without a plan, and they don't really know their why. And so the first real key is to know your why, know your reason of why you're doing this.
SPEAKER_02:So the why is kind of an individual thing. Yes, very much so. So can you give me some examples of clients you've worked with and what their whys may have been?
SPEAKER_00:A typical why would be uh for my kids, uh so that they can have a better life than I had. Or if something happens to me, my wife or or my husband can go go on. Um so it's an integrity thing for them, also. Or it and a lot of it could be legacy as they kind of go through life wanting to leave something to their favorite charity as well as to their family and so forth. It's usually something bigger than money. It's something that is at their core of, again, what their number one reason is.
SPEAKER_02:And I I hear like financial security in some of those too, is almost kind of a backbone for some of those, whether that's financial security for me or for my family or for my community, even when it comes to, you know, you mentioned philanthropy.
SPEAKER_00:That's a little bit too general, though. When we work with people, we want to get even deeper than financial security, because financial security means different things to different people. And so we take them up a process of what we call a roadmap, where they talk about their reasons, and security is usually one of them, but it's usually something much b higher and bigger than that.
SPEAKER_02:So so the why is something we it might not be evident to me right now, sitting, like I might not even know today what my why is. And so you mentioned that kind of roadmap process. Part of that at the front end is discovering the why.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it is. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's the funnest thing of my job, actually, is helping the people discover their why and then getting really crystal clear on what their financial goals are.
SPEAKER_02:Well, well, Doug, I'll turn that question to you then. Kind of your why. You know, I guess did you already know your why up front before getting in touch with Don and bring it bringing together your blueprint, or was it already something you had to kind of navigate?
SPEAKER_01:Uh for the most part. Um, so you know, my wife and I, you know, sat down with Don um a few months ago and did our financial roadmap. And so for me, at that time, I already knew I wanted to create generational wealth uh for my kids and and future grandkids, right? And so that was one of my my biggest why I wanted to do this. And so um at the same time, you know, I don't think I had my financial house in order. Um we have two daughters, and we created a will back when they were like one and three years old, and now they're 16 and 18. And so we don't have any type of estate planning, we don't have any trust set up and things of that nature. So although I felt good about my financial projections and wanting to create generational wealth and getting increasing my net worth and things of that nature, but you know, not having a solid will, you know, a trust and things of that nature. So sitting down with Don and his team, they're gonna work with us on putting together, they've already put together a financial plan for us, and then we're gonna have um, you know, future checkpoints where they're gonna help us, you know, make sure our you know uh short-term, long-term disability is at the right coverage, um, you know, umbrella policies and things of that nature. So it's beyond just, you know, managing investments and things of that nature.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's it's funny because I'm even sitting here thinking right now, like, what is it's my why? Like to me it's financial security, but you're right, Don. That's a little too general. And need a roadmap, Brandon. You need a roadmap. And so so, Doug, when you were kind of walking through that, I mean, all those things really resonate. You know, did you feel like was that clear to you on the front end, or was it just kind of like this you had a sense that, you know, I I need to start thinking about this a little more, you know, intentionally and put it together. Um, and was it already clear to you your why, or was the process kind of enlightening?
SPEAKER_01:The process was enlightening. Um, you know, my wife, you know, had previous jobs where she had old 401k plans just sitting out there and and I always wondered, like, okay, we really should roll these. I've never done that process before. And so um having you know garden with management on board to help us with that, you know, through that process was was uh definitely beneficial. Um and then also just looking at other things that we didn't consider. Um and so yeah, it was very enlightening.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Doug's being pretty modest. He's a pretty sharp guy, and so's your Londa. I would say on a one to ten scale of financial housing order, they're pretty high up there, six maybe, but not a ten, to your point, right? But it's amazing to me, Brandon, how many very successful people, I dare say millionaires, whatever, they don't even have a will. It's shocking. And even those who have a will, uh the attorney may have done the work, but they didn't get everything titled correctly. And if you don't have everything titled correctly, then the will doesn't flow the way it's supposed to. And so that's a big part of what we do is get all everything in order to do that.
SPEAKER_02:So it's not just, you know, I introduced us as, you know, wealth management. We're talking about wealth management, but this is more comprehensive planning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, wealth management has really kind of been uh scaled down as really a marketing thing. Most firms that say they do wealth management don't really do wealth management as I define wealth management. They do really still selling products, selling investments or whatever. But true wealth management is you get everything dialed in, and you can't do that one meeting a year with someone. We have three meetings a year with our clients. And usually Doug's fairly new in our process, he'll probably take 18 to 24 months before we really can say his financial house is in perfect order. So it's gonna be a lot of work for the next two years to do that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so that's because that's where my head is going next. Is now that I realize the problem I have is the why, I can get into well, how do I fix that? What's the process I go through? And you just sort of enter that a little bit, yeah. Like three meetings a year. Right. You know, this isn't something that happens overnight. So help me drill into that a little bit more. What does that how look like? How does this process start? What what do we do in those meetings?
SPEAKER_00:I just happened to bring something with me, Brandon. And it starts with this little, and I mentioned it, it's called a financial roadmap. And the financial roadmap is our first meeting together, and it's about 75 minutes to 90 minutes long. And we're basically, it goes well if I shut up and they do all the talking. And so I'm kind of facilitating, and and it's really interesting when a husband and wife like you and you Londa did, Doug. Um one, I have to ask the I'll do the first one and ask the other one to be quiet and let let us have a conversation. And sometimes they'll butt in. I say, hey, we promise we'll talk. But uh once I get them all the way up through the staircase, usually uh one spouse will hear something they didn't know about the other spouse, which is very interesting, right? And then after I finish the first spouse, we do the second spouse again ask the other one to let us have a conversation. And then when they get all the way through, then we talk about that. And then we get uh talking together on where the where they're at, on what they want their goals to be, which is an entirely different conversation than their why, which is really their values, uh, what really makes them tick as an individual, um, which again is is a very fun exercise for me. And I I think it's was fun for you guys too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. I I I really ain't like the the thought process of you allowing a lot of to go first. So I mean it was like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she she kind of gave me a couple dagger looks because I asked her to go first, but uh, she did great and very was very articulate on what was important to her. And again, it came back to the girls and making sure that they are wise financially as well, which which again is um rare for people to even think that way. A lot of people are very private about their finances and they don't include their kids, which I think is a huge mistake, right? Of uh not raising them to understand money. I mean, your average kid coming out of college doesn't have a clue about money, and a lot of them will uh get in trouble with credit cards and all of that. I don't think that's gonna be a problem with your kids because you guys are really crystal clear on what you want for your children. So so the first meeting isn't just conservative, moderate, aggressive. None of that. None of that. It's really about your why. Yeah. And it uh now we do benchmark uh as you kind of look at the roadmap and we set the goals, then we benchmark where they're at, and we look at four key areas cash reserves, very important for emergencies and so forth. Um, and then your growth assets, which is what most uh investment people want to talk about. How much money have you got and how can we make it grow? But that's just one of the things we we want, how much debt you got, because we want a debt reduction strategy so that eventually you don't have any debt, and then a pretty detailed dive into their insurance, where there's usually risk management, where there's a lot usually a lot of gaps, as well as the estate planning and so forth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this isn't just taking a look at the nest egg I've been building up and trying to find a professional advisor to help put it in the right mix and and get the right you know differentiation and diversification. This is stepping back and and even insurance is considered.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we we get ahead of ourselves with that, I think. I think first we've got to get crystal clear. Both the husband and wife uh need to get crystal clear. What do we want as a family? And then also getting crystal clear on your goals that you want as your family before you get into all the minutiae of how how we're gonna get that. Yeah. But to your point, then the second part is once, and again, this meeting, we don't charge for this meeting, so it's an hour and a half of a free consultation. And if they want to go further, then they decide if they want to hire us to put a written game plan together. Because every you know, everyone, here's where you're at, and the game plan is here's where we want to go, there's a gap, right? And so the financial plan has all the tactics in it to bridge the gap. Right. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:Now, when it when it comes to the investment side of things, that I think a lot of people, and maybe I was alone in this, but I do feel like that the sense out there is when you hear wealth management, you do just think of professional advisor over the investments, you know? And so even from that kind of shallow view, which you know, I'm I'm my paradigm is being shifted drastically right now, but but even just trying to bring back to that initial narrow view, it kind of leads to questions like, well, why don't I just buy a bunch of mutual funds or index funds, stuff like that? Like, like I am seeing the bigger picture here, and I'm gonna keep drilling into that, but just to that core concept of having investments and having those managed. What is the value of having a professional holding your hand rather than just going out and picking some some mutual funds that do have professionals you kind of indirectly helping you navigate?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, great question. So the value is uh leadership. Uh the leadership starts with here's your plan and holding the client accountable. So that's the first uh value of that is, and we meet with our clients three times a year, and uh investments always come up, but only one of our three meetings is really geared toward investments. We're always checking to make sure are you saving what you promised you, what what you committed to save, and then you know the market's gonna do whatever it does, but if as long as you hang in there with the with the right strategy, you'll you'll get there. I know that. So that's the job is to hold them accountable for that. But your typical person that's buying a bunch of mutual funds and whatever, most have never really been through a real recession. And those who have have forgotten what one feels like. Um, a lot of people think the uh pandemic was a recession, and it was technically, but it was very short. I mean, it was a three-month market went down 35% in like a month, right? Remember those days, right? But it bounced back very quick. That's not your typical bear market recession type of environment. 2007 through 2008, to through March of 2009 was a two and a half year bear market, and that took three legs down, a 20% downturn when uh the housing crisis first started coming to be known. It took another 20% down when uh there were some hedge funds that went under that summer. And then when Lehman went under and um President Obama was elected with r uh reform in the banking industry, it took another 20, almost 60 percent downturn for the S P 500 over two and a half years. Most people that have all their money in a mutual fund went down 60 percent. While if they had been properly diversified, they would have gone down, but nothing to that extent. And I think people right now are chasing returns, chasing what's hot, and that that those people are always gonna get clobbered when we do have a downturn.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I imagine a downturn too is when big mistakes are made.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. Well, they're but they're being made now, too, because people are chasing. AI is in vogue. You know every day you hear about Bitcoin, this, that, whatever. And so people are putting all their eggs in that one basket. And eventually, just like it happened in when the dot-com uh bubble burst, people forget in 2000 through 2002, when the dot com bubble burst, the uh the uh SP went down 50 percent, but the NASDAQ, which is where what's holding most of AI today, it went down 80 percent and stayed down sixty-seven percent for two years. It was a long road back for that. In fact, for the whole decade, 2000 through 2009, NASDAQ was down uh two-thirds. And most people can't hang in there for two years going down 80 percent. Can you imagine putting a million dollars in in 2000 and it turning into 400,000 by the end of the that decade? Nobody's gonna hang in there with that, right? And that's when those big mistakes happen.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and something that I think about too is like that's just a lot to try and you know, try try and keep a handle on. Yeah. Try and keep your eye out for and trying, like I got a job to do.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and that's so true. It's not a part-time thing, right? Um and most uh do you really want an amateur running your money? And and that's really what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_02:And and so I don't want to ask you like too many proprietary questions or anything, but you know, how do you approach that? Like when you when you when I'm working with a professional to help me keep a handle on that because I don't have the bandwidth or the expertise to do it myself, you know, what does that look like on your end?
SPEAKER_00:On the investment management side, yeah. We follow two Nobel Prize-winning strategies that uh frankly everybody have their ought to have manage their money this way, but nobody does. The first one is called modern portfolio theory, which really gets into uh a question of asset allocation. How much do I want to have of my money in the markets, capital markets, stock markets, and so forth? And markets is plural, by the way. It's not just U.S. And how much do I want in cash and bonds? So that's the first real, because 90, over 90% of your return will be based just on that decision. Then the second part is diversification. Uh, but on both ends of that, on the uh cash and bond side, there's diversification, as well as on the equity side of that is diversification. And another Nobel Prize was won on that called efficient market thesis. So there is science behind what we do rather than picking up the phone and say, hey, I think uh Apple's going up another 20%. Let's buy more Apple or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:And so, yeah, Don, that really resonates with me, just bringing the experts to the table and having just a real mindful view and a full-time job of thinking about these types of things to make sure we're we're we're moving forward as we need to move forward for all of our clients. But but I do recognize that this is a little bit of a crowded field. You know, when you look at just the wealth management industry at large, there there are a lot of providers out there. So I will be curious about some differentiators you have at Guardian Wealth. But before I put that question to you, I'm I'm more curious for Doug's response because Doug, you walked this journey recently. So, what were some of the differentiators for Guardian Wealth that had you, you know, work with Don?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. So, you know, I had the opportunity to kind of hear Don's story. Um, he's been in it for a long time. He's been a long-term client of MJ as a tax client. And just hearing his story and hearing uh the fact that some of his clients who have been with him for over 30 years, they've been retired for several years now, and they still have that same strategy as from the beginning. And they haven't gone to being more conservative as they're in their retirement age. Um, and the fact that they've stayed in their seats during these recessions, and how Dunn has worked with them about, hey, it's okay, don't react to the market, you know. And so that really resonated with me. Um, and then also, you know, I'll admit, you know, I have my you know, Martin Jenkins retirement account, and you know, I've matts it out on my 401k account, and my wife is as well. But, you know, we're in that target date fund. And before joining Garden Worth Management, I always had questions about why I'm in that. Because I don't want it to switch to being more conservative as I get closer to retirement. And so I already knew I wanted it switched. And after sitting down with Don and going through that process and understanding a little bit more about those target date funds and that they only rebalance one time a year, and it should be doing more than that throughout the year, it was eye-opener for me.
SPEAKER_02:And really I'm hearing too, you know, just really getting into your why, you know, because I'm the same thing. You know, there's all these best practices, all these common things people say out there about, you know, when you should be, you know, 70% this and 30% that, and at a certain age, this is exactly how you trade. Like, like it's all just uh a set science, just follow these 10 steps and you're there. But there's more to it than that.
SPEAKER_00:You know, Brendan, uh my industry's notorious for noise. And we're uh, and a lot of it's marketing uh because most financial services firms make more money if they can get their clients to move money around, right? Every transactions generate commissions generates more money. Well, that's not our approach at all. Uh like Doug said, most of our clients have the same asset allocation strategy they started with because I know their why. And usually their why is something more than just seeing the money grow or find, you know, to retire with dignity and independence, but it's also to leave a legacy to the loved ones they they must leave behind once they're gone. And so that is very important. Doug mentioned the target funds, but and you're right. Uh and most people don't realize that. Yeah, they're they're they they perform well during good markets. They don't perform well during bad markets because they're not properly diversified, first of all. And like Doug noted, the older you get, the more conservative it gets. Where in your last when when you hit retirement and it's different now, used to you retired at 60, 62, and you died at 70, people are living longer. A to a typical 62-year-old couple, uh, one of them still gonna be here just statistically till 94. And most of our clients who have access to more money, better health care, so forth, it wouldn't surprise me if both of them don't live, especially with all the advances in medicine, that both of them live past 100. You better get a good return on your money during that 40 plus year period of retirement, or you will run out of money.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and talking about those kind of life expectancy stats, the earlier metric you uh uh stat statistic you threw out there about the average American was 70,000. Yeah. Contrasting that against what we were just talking about, life expectancy.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that that average person is living month-to-month Social Security.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and Don, I I was hoping to after, you know, tapping into your expertise to help me just kind of learn about the world of wealth management, then kind of take it into the philosophy of guardian wealth, kind of curious about how you approach business. But I I feel like we've been talking philosophy this entire time. It's just kind of in the DNA of what you do and how you look at this.
SPEAKER_00:It it's it's uh so fascinating. It was in my DNA as a very young kid. Um, and part of it was seeing some things my parents went through. Uh, my dad lost a job very uh um in in the middle of his career and seeing how we had to scramble through that. Um had a profound impact. Plus, I just loved statistics and so forth, and studying how money grew, especially compound interest, always fascinated me. And then I met a mentor when I was in college, actually here in Atlanta at Georgia State University, uh, Dr. Norman Dressel. And I don't know what it was, but he he poured into me things way more important than getting my college degree. He actually taught me life skills, and one of them was about goal setting and the importance of goal setting, and then reaching financial independence. And uh that that just kind of propelled me into my philosophy. Yeah. And and helping your clients walk that same path. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. So so what does the onboarding process look like? If if I either I don't have somebody helping me now, yeah, or you know, it might be a situation where I do have somebody, but I'm not quite sure they're the right fit, especially if I'm not feeling like they never really asked me my why, let alone have a targeted meeting with me about it. Right. You know, I feel good about it, but you know, may maybe there's more to it than this. You know, what would it look like to start having a conversation with you?
SPEAKER_00:You would sit down with me for that hour, hour and a half, and do your roadmap. And not everybody ends up working with me. In fact, most don't. You said there's no cost to that. There's no cost to that. And I'm okay with that. What my goal is when we do the roadmap is they get clarity, better clarity than they ever had before. And if they still have uh if they have a advisor, if they take that roadmap to them and work with them with that, I'm cool with that. I did my job, right?
SPEAKER_02:Um people trademark it and you're not gonna come after them with the thing.
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm not gonna do any of that. Uh and then um, and the ones who do come on with us, uh, and some of some people do it themselves and they'll help them do it do it themselves better. Again, that's a win, I think. Hopefully they'll leave and say, you know what, that guy I didn't I didn't work with him, but he's a good guy and he helped me. That that's my goal. Uh the ones who do end up working with us, the next step to that would be they hire us to write a written step-by-step plan of action to bridge the gap from where they are to where they want to be. And then after and then it and again, that's uh that's one engagement. Then the second engagement would be if they want to go further, is to implement that plan with them, which is our three meeting process.
SPEAKER_02:And and Doug, for our listeners, do you have any advice to anybody who might be just thinking about this? Also be the right time for me, or I'm in a similar situation to what you were describing earlier, where you know, I I feel I feel like I have financial security, you know, I feel like I'm doing the right thing, I feel like I'm going good, but you know, I need to have some more alignment and and and and be a little you know further thinking, especially like you were describing, you know, when it comes to children. You know, do you have any just general advice for people who might be in a similar situation listening in?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure, sure. I I'll start with my younger self. You know, you know, I wish I would have gotten started earlier, you know, in my career. Um, you know, one of the things I always tell people when they're, you know, talking about getting into other types of investments and real estate investing and things of that nature. I always ask them, do you have your spending under control? Are you in major credit card debt? You know, get that under control first. Try to match out on your 401 and things of that nature. And I'm guilty of it. It took me probably at the age of 40 before I started matsing out on my 401k. Um, probably 42 getting out of credit card debt and getting my wife out of credit card debt as well, not paying interest on unsecured debt, right, that you can't write off. Um, and so I wish I would have, you know, been better prepared early on, but it wasn't it's never too late. And so we we're doing much better. Um but yeah, I mean it's it's never too young to start um working with a wealth manager. And if you know, for the younger people, if they can get started at an early age, they'll be better off later on.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Doug, I was asking you to answer to help out our listeners, but you're speaking right to me. Like I I feel all that. I was just making eye contact and I just think it was resonating, like, holy smokes. I need to you know, you could when can I schedule an appointment, Don? When do how soon can I go on the county?
SPEAKER_00:Well, he brings a great point, though. Life's short, uh, to reach your pinnacle highest level of success, you don't get there by yourself. Um Michael Jordan, my opinion, the greatest basketball player ever. He had five coaches in his life. Everyone needs a coach. He had obviously the head coach, Phil Jackson, uh, the guy who did the circle offense sub. Winter was his name. He had a shrink, he had a strength and conditioning coach, and he had a uh a new nutritionist. He had five coaches in his life to help him get to his highest level. Everyone needs a coach. Life's too short. Do what you're great at and delegate everything else. Uh it's it's a time management thing as well. Um, and so I think that's critical as well, is uh obviously be on top of your finances. And believe me, all my clients that they are not uh naive at all on that. When we have our three meetings, they want to know. And it basically I have to produce the results to achieve the goal, or I won't continue to be their advisor. So uh it's a uh it's a partnership together of uh if as they progress along, um, we do with them on that.
SPEAKER_02:Don, I've already learned so much. This has been just fantastic. I I am curious, is while I have you, just I want to tap into as much as I can from you, just kind of looking ahead too. I'm curious about any kind of trends or initiatives or changes, just kind of in your professional realm, anything kind of around the corner that's that that you're keeping an eye on that we can kind of share some insights to our listeners about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a couple things. One is I mentioned, I alluded to it earlier. We haven't had a recession in 17 years. Uh, and I'm not a gloom and doom person at all. You can't be a great uh advisor with fear, so I'm not at all with that. But I do have my eyes wide open. Um we're normally you have a recession every five, six years. We've gone 17 without what I would call a real one. You could call the pandemic one, but and it counts, but it wasn't that normal 12, 18, 24 month recession. And people are kind of oblivious to that right now. So we do uh a thing with all of our kind our clients called lifeboat drills, which is basically taking them through 2007 through 2009, showing them what would happen to their portfolio if that were to happen again. And it's not to scare them, it's to get them emotionally prepared for that. Because at the end of the day, uh success or failure comes down to having high EQ and motional intelligence uh is really more important than IQ because uh emotionally, being humans, we want to flee when we feel we feel there's danger. And when you open your portfolio account and you see it go down 20% or whatever, that that can cause those feelings to come up. And that's the real value of having a coach is to basically don't do that. And I say it a lot uh with with respect to the client, but that's my job, is to hold them accountable and keep up, keep the ship pointed in the right direction.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because you said earlier on like there's a degree of the market's gonna do what the market's gonna do. So sort of understanding our why, what's really driving us, and then not making the mistakes today, even when things are pretty good, and then preparing for what will come eventually, who knows when, but you know, that that recession that it does come, it will come, and uh making sure that we're set up for it in advance and then not making a mistake at that moment either.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then the second thing, Brandon, that we're we're doing that I'm really excited about as our clients do reach those years of retirement and so forth, what are you gonna do with those years, right? Because you're really um you're on the back nine of your life. What are you gonna do uh at those things that you couldn't necessarily do while you were working, right? And so we're really good at helping them get dialed in on their health. Because, in my view, especially anyone over 40, 45, your number one job is your health. And most people, uh we have a obesity epidemic in America now. And so we are really pushing our clients. We have one person dedicated totally to having conversations with our clients on getting their health dialed in so that they can um live that not just long life, but healthy life, which is way more important than how long you live. And so we have them do a questionnaire, uh, which will definitely get their attention because it's based on um obviously on their uh their their genes and so forth, but also on their lifestyle, more so toward their lifestyle. And that questionnaire will come back and say, Hey, Doug, you've got 30.2 years left to live, or whatever it says, right? And of those 30.2 years you've got left, uh 18 will be you'll be very active. And then six of those you'll start declining, and then six of those you'll need some sort of uh assisted living, nursing care, or whatever. That gets people's attention, right? So but we don't just give them that, then we give them things to move that thing to the right, how to extend your life, but also more importantly, I think extend those active years. And so that's all that's something I'm really excited that we're working with people on.
SPEAKER_02:Let's Donna, I I admit I thought we were gonna be talking like small cap, large cap, domestic. I can go there too, believe me. But this is but this was this is the value. Yeah, like this this is what we should be thinking about when we're thinking about management. I think so. So so again, so the kind of a first step would be just scheduled a meeting with you, no cost, coming up with that roadmap. Correct. Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_01:Hey Don, I had a question for you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I d I knew you were gonna do this to me, Doug.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, you know, you hear a lot, you know, people talking about having multiple streams of income while you're working. Um what would be a good recommended um number for multiple sources of retirement income once you retire?
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that is a great question. Um I'll I'll say this first. In the uh before your normal worker would get a pension. Those are gone now. Companies wised up, I don't know if wised up's the right word, but they knew they could increase their profits by taking those pensions away. So they invented this tool called a 401k, where the company would put some of it, but they started requiring the employees to start putting money in it too. So that's been a huge shift in our culture from the really the 80s to now. Um and so now it's more on the individual to fund their retirement and not depend on their company to do it. And then especially for younger people, they better be better really get into saving for retirement, because I'm not sure Social Security in their life is gonna be any anything what it is for current retirees. I'm not saying they won't get anything, but it'll probably be less percentage-wise of their retirement income, and it'll probably be lot later in life when they get that. So that's that's a huge shift that's coming for people. So they've got to start thinking out of the box, which is one thing we help them do. Obviously funding your 401k, but you maybe should be also fund and making sure your spouse is, but maybe funding non-deductible IRAs, maybe funding a chunk of that into Roth, Roth uh instead of pre-tax, because we are in an environment right now where taxes are lower historically than they've ever been. Uh, I come from a world where the top tax rate was 70% in in the early 1980s before Reagan was elected president. And I'm not saying it's going back to that, but it's going to go to something higher in the future. So taking advantage of these low tax environments is important. So a lot of our clients have real estate. Um that's not an easy thing to do, but if if they they go into it with their eyes wide open and understanding now the work, all the work that that requires. Never in our country's history has it been easier to be an entrepreneur than now. So a lot of people are going into various forms. They may have a job, but then on the side, they may be doing some sort of entrepreneurial ship until that becomes big enough for them to go into that full time. So that there's a lot of other things to do there, but that those are two that jump to mind.
SPEAKER_02:Like retiring but still having that barista job to get the insurance kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00:But or or home or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_02:I like that. So it's not just diversifying the portfolio, it's kind of just diversification from a bigger picture. Like, really, what are all the different sources and how is that all featured?
SPEAKER_00:Again, Brandon, it goes back to their roadmap and their reason. Yeah. And and having a plan and and then articulating what you want that part of your life to look like too.
SPEAKER_02:Don, I really want to appreciate you for joining me today. This was a lot of fun, very enlightening. It was fun. And Doug, also thank you for joining us to give us some additional perspective from the perspective from from the paradigm of a client who've walk in this journey and also just really open my eyes to, okay, Brian, it's time to act. Thank you to all of our listeners as well. Uh, please, if you're navigating any of the financial challenges that we discussed today or any other financial challenges, don't hesitate to reach out to us at Malden Jenkins at www.mjcpa.com and also look on there for guardian wealth management.