The Importance of Financial Planning for Young Adults with Joel Miller - 183

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Joel Miller, a Certified Financial Planner™ and the founder of Flames Financial Planning, to break down the intimidating idea of financial planning into something approachable, doable, and even enjoyable. We talked all about how young adults can get started with building a financial plan, why it’s not just for the wealthy, and how small steps can create big results over time. Plus, I share a personal story about the chaos we experienced with my wife’s student loans and why it’s so important to advocate for yourself when things go sideways.

Joel brings great energy and practical wisdom to this conversation, making it a must-listen for anyone who's ever thought, "I'll start planning my finances later." Whether you're just starting out in your career or trying to figure out your next money move, this episode will give you the tools and mindset to get going now.

💰 This Week’s Money Talking Points:

1. How can you start building a financial plan?
2. What small area can you begin with?
3. How can sharing your financial plan with others help?

⏱️ Time Stamps:

[02:00] Skyler’s Story Time: The Nelnet Student Loan Nightmare

[07:00] What Is Financial Planning, Really?

[08:30] Taking One Step at a Time

[10:00] The Importance of Emergency Funds

[13:00] Gaining Confidence in Spending

[14:30] Sinking Funds as a Game-Changer

[17:30] Uniqueness of Every Financial Plan

[20:00] Financial Planning Isn’t Just for the Wealthy

[23:00] Written Goals = Real Progress

[26:00] Estate Planning for Young Adults

[29:00] Other Easy Wins: 401(k) Match, Roth IRA, Avoiding Car Debt

🔗 Resources & Mentions:

Flames Financial Planning: Learn more about Joel’s practice at https://flamesfp.com

Text Joel: 952-300-9632

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Welcome Money Buddies to this week's episode of Money Talk. This week we're talking about financial planning for young adults and the opportunity of working with a professional when you're young. I'm your host, Skylar Fleming, and let's get talking. I. Today we're talking about one of those areas that can be a bit intimidating for people, a financial plan. Most people hear that and they think it's gonna be this big, scary, long process with an expensive professional, and that they may as well just avoid it. But know everyone should really have a financial plan. I like to use it as a way for my wife and I to know what to do with our next dollar. It doesn't have to be this massive, scary, long, and intimidating process. It can be pretty simple and straightforward. And today's money buddy and I are talking about how financial plans can be so helpful for young adults. They really are something that you can implement and use to your advantage regardless of how much money or wealth you have. You probably think a financial plan is only for the wealthy and those with money burning a hole in their pocket. But really, everyone should have a plan of what to do with their money. When you have this plan in place, it makes it a whole lot easier to manage your finances in a way that makes you feel confident and proud of how you handle money. The plan doesn't have to be super complicated, and I'm excited for today's interview because I think it's gonna help each and every one of you, regardless of whether you're a young adult or not. This is an episode that's gonna help you learn why and how to implement a financial plan into your life. I did mention previously that I was gonna share some more information about a story with my wife's student loans. Here it comes, in today's version of Skyler Story Time, I wanna share a story about my experience and frankly nightmare with Nelnet and my wife's student loans. So couple years ago, and that's a crazy starting point for this story because it's been going on for a few. Years. So a couple years ago, my wife got a student loan in, I wanna say the fall of 2022. Well, in January of 2023, great Lakes decided to transfer the loan that we had over to nail net, and that loan never showed up. And then she got another loan in the spring of 2023 that was gonna be combined into one loan, that 2022 loan and 2023. Should have been one loan, but they never showed up at Nelnet. So long story long, it took us forever to finally get through to anybody. We were calling the school, we were calling Nelnet. I called the Department of Education. I was talking to whoever I could to try to figure out where in the world this loan went. And this is just a story about how crazy debt can be and if it's something you owe money for, while it does come back to get you, because this loan was accruing interest from September of 2023, I believe, when student loan interest resumed. Until a couple weeks ago when it finally decided to show up. Years later, they tried to tell me that we owed$2,000 in interest on this loan, but we had been making payments to all of our other loans, and they wouldn't let us make a payment to this loan because it didn't exist in the system yet. So long story, it was grueling. It was brutal. I took very good notes, and finally we were able to come to a point where I said, Hey, we're gonna have to go back through. And any payment that I would've applied to this loan, we need to make some adjustments. So they combed through. It took several days. They combed through, I think, 17 or 20 different payments that they went through and backdated to our old loan because we were paid ahead on a lower interest rate loan. So I would rather have made those payments to the higher interest rate loan. And I had to work my way up all the way to, I wanna say it was a manager in their call center.'cause one time I called and every time I called Nelnet, it's a long process of, oh, we don't know when that'll be done. Our estimates say three weeks. It'll probably be more, call us back whenever you have to submit some sort of ticket with them. So this last time I had to submit a ticket and I'm like, listen, this case has been going on four years. At this point, can I talk to a supervisor? And I talked to the supervisor and they gave me the same thing of, oh, I'm gonna have to submit a request. It'll take three weeks, call us back next week, and you can get a status. And of course, that status is just gonna be, we're working on it. So, no, I asked for that. Supervisor's, manager. And sometimes if you're ever dealing with a financial institution, sometimes you have to work your way up the chain and it's completely okay and they're okay with it too. They have processes in place to handle this. So that is something to absolutely consider doing if you're dealing with a tough financial situation. Ask for a supervisor, ask for a manager. Ask for someone who can actually help you until you get the solution that you want. Because then it only took a few days for them to get it figured out and get us the updates made to the account that we needed to have happen. So make sure you're asking and being your own advocate when it comes to dealing with financial institutions because. We were able to get that interest reduced greatly by backdating a bunch of payments, and I wasn't gonna just give up and make a large payment to get the interest down because I knew we didn't rightfully owe that much. So this is, again, another time where it's important to have a plan and to keep track of your finances because when a situation like this comes up, you're gonna want to have your story straight so that you can demand and know what you should expect to have happen. With a financial institution. So that's the story of my wife's student loans. I wanted to put'em out here. Is there anyone else listening? Have you had an issue with your student loan provider? I would love to come on and talk about student loan debt and how that's impacted a fellow money buddy that listens to this show. So if you've had some sort of horror story with student loans, send me a text in the top of the show notes or send me an email and I'd love to get on a podcast episode and talk about it with you. But today's money Buddy is Joel Miller. Joel Miller is a CFP professional, dedicated to building relationships and creating memories. He uses his energy and enthusiasm to help individuals and families with their personal finances. He enjoys competing in Half Iron Man triathlons and pickleball, and this is a fantastic and fun conversation. I'm glad we had Joel on the show and let's get moving along with this with the money talking points. The first one is, how can you start building a financial plan? The second one is, what small area can you begin with? And third, how can sharing your financial plan with others help you with those money talking points in mind? Let's get talking and welcome Joel to the show.

Joel Miller: 5:57

Absolutely. So happy to be here, Skyler. Thank you so much for what you do and having me as a guest appearance on the show.

Skyler: 6:03

Yeah, I am excited for this one. This has been a thought that I have had brewing in my mind for the last couple months. I'm right now in the CFP exam review stage. I'm taking the exam in July, so I. I'm,

Joel Miller: 6:14

I'll be

Skyler: 6:15

yeah,

Joel Miller: 6:15

you.

Skyler: 6:16

I'm pretty pumped for that. But I've been thinking about my podcast audience. I try to talk to young adults, and that can tend to be a crowd that says, oh, financial planning is for rich people. Financial planning isn't for me. I don't need it. I don't have any money. So I'm excited to talk about this episode with you because we're talking about how young adults can use financial planning and how it can be so important. let's kick it off with a simple definition right out the gate. What is financial planning?

Joel Miller: 6:41

Yeah, this is such an important conversation'cause I wanna bust that myth, right? Financial planning is for everyone who either cares about your own finances or the finances of maybe your family or people who depend on you. So the way I like to define financial planning is being aware. Conscious and proactive

Skyler: 6:59

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 6:59

what's coming in and what's leaving your net worth. Right? So it has everything to do with your income, your expenses, your budgeting, maybe benefits at work, your

Skyler: 7:10

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 7:10

So what is this big comprehensive subject? I think oftentimes we unfortunately put it off too long because it almost feels a little scary to talk about'cause there's so many different components.

Skyler: 7:20

Yeah. since there are so many components, you can take it one thing at a time. I like to tell people you don't have to develop this 50 page financial plan in one hour. You can do it. Say, Hey, I am starting a 401k at work. How do I plan about that? Or, Hey, I have an HSA. How do I plan about that? And then you can work it all together into one bigger thing. You mentioned that it's more than just investments, but how is it more than investments? What other things do we need to consider?

Joel Miller: 7:45

I love the way you said that oftentimes we are impatient and want something done quickly, but this is a process. This is a marathon. not a sprint, so it takes time. I, I actually think of it very similar to going to the gym. When you go to the gym once you don't see incredible gains. You don't gain all of this muscle over one, over one time. You go over and over. It's a repeatable process you fall in love with, and that's where you see major results over time. One of my other favorite analogies is this is a puzzle.

Skyler: 8:18

Mm.

Joel Miller: 8:19

Financial planning is a piece of the puzzle, but there's so much more than that. everyone files a tax return. Everyone probably should have an estate plan. You should have life insurance if someone else depends on you financially. we're putting together these different puzzle pieces and some of them are more or less applicable to you at different points in your life.

Skyler: 8:39

Yeah, that's such a great way to paint that picture, or build the picture when you're building your puzzle. But there's so many different little pieces. And then the fun thing is, you put that puzzle together and then some toddler comes along and smashes it all up and something changes. There's some sort of emergency that happens. My wife and I, her student loans, we had one that didn't transition correctly between providers. So there was this$20,000 loan that was just missing and it decided to show back up with$2,000 of interest. So we weren't completely planning for that. We knew in the back of our minds it was going to be owed and we'd have to do something with it, but we had planned around the loans that were showing up. now we have to go back in and rebuild our plan and say, oh yeah, we're not gonna be able to pay it off in the same amount of time something happened. And the people listening, that might be something like a flat tire and now you're not gonna be able to pay off your car as fast or something like that. It always comes in and something always screws it up. But if you don't have a plan in place, don't you think that can be so much more of a headache to try to make those adjustments?

Joel Miller: 9:34

Oh my gosh. The worst plan is having no plan

Skyler: 9:36

Yeah.

Joel Miller: 9:37

when it rains, it pours. You're gonna notice all of those things are happening at the same time. And that's why the first question I always start in financial planning with people is, let's nail down your emergency fund. Let's figure out. What you typically spend in an average month and how we can put that together. Do you want three months or six months? How do we keep this in a high yield savings account? It is foundational. Just like you build a house, you start at the ground level and you go up. So you need to start with the basic and most important features of your financial plan, like an emergency. And one of my favorite things about financial planning and building a puzzle and doing some of these things. so much easier with someone else. Imagine if you sat down for a 2000 piece puzzle and you tried to do it all by yourself. It's difficult. You can get distracted. Things can come up If you bring one person in to help you out with that, you it speeds up that process immensely. You're held accountable for staying to the goal of completing it, and that allows you to get more time back to do everything else that you love. The more. bring someone into that, you get to do it as an accountability, and makes it way more fun along the way too. it's not as hard if you have to go buy a new dryer'cause yours broke or you got a flat tire. is hard enough. But when you get to

Skyler: 10:55

Yeah.

Joel Miller: 10:55

with someone else and they become almost a therapist for you, your money therapist there's so many benefits to, talking about it out loud.

Skyler: 11:02

you mentioned a couple things that we're gonna get to today, like accountability partners because just having someone on your side, even if it's not like, big financial plans where maybe you're a multimillionaire and you have to work all the tax code and all that sort of fancy stuff, but. More often than not, that's not the normal person A financial plan can still help you out tremendously. Even just in the fact of having. Some sort of direction with your money. I like to tell people that when you have a plan, you know where to put your next dollar,

Joel Miller: 11:28

Yeah.

Skyler: 11:28

I think so many people don't realize there's money coming into their lives because they don't know where to put it. It just kind of goes into some checking account and eventually gets spent. But when you have a plan for it, you begin to notice all these different amounts of money that are just kind of coming up, oh, hey, I made some money from this side job. I made some money from my tax return, and then you actually know where to put it. Why is financial planning helpful for people beyond just a direction for their money?

Joel Miller: 11:51

Yeah, I think you nailed it. It's having a plan of attack so that way we know where that next dollar is gonna go. What debt should I pay off? Where should I be? How much should I be saving? How much can I be spending? Oftentimes, are off also like, Hey, I don't know how much I can spend. How much should I be spending

Skyler: 12:09

Hmm.

Joel Miller: 12:10

vacations or home improvements? Am I putting away enough for retirement? I wish. It's kind of shocking how many people I talk to and I ask, Hey, what is your ideal retirement age? I want to pencil something in. We're so far out from this, but when do you want to retire? And they're like, well, I don't know. I've never thought of that. Sometimes this is your. First opportunity to have a conversation like this with other people. And that's why it's so important because when you go into something with a plan, you're gonna be more efficient, you're gonna be more effective, you're gonna have goal setting. And we need to be moldable. We have to be shapeable and adapt because life is gonna throw us curve balls. So we might be on track for six months or two years, but

Skyler: 12:53

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 12:54

happens if something does come up that you're not ready for?

Skyler: 12:58

Yeah. That's when you have that little, like it's in the back, it's in the appendix that says what to do in case of emergency, and that's when you have those accounts lined up. You say, I'm taken from this one. And I think you mentioned, how much can I spend can be a part of the plan? And I think that's one thing that's intimidating for young adults is you have to spend money like it. It feels like a stage of your life where everything's ramping up, you're making more money, but maybe you're getting married, maybe you're having a kid, maybe you're trying to find a nicer apartment closer to your job, and you have to spend money to do that sort of thing. How can feeling confident with spending be helpful in terms of a plan?

Joel Miller: 13:32

Oh my gosh, it's so freeing. It feels so good to be like. I'm on track and I'm not overspending. One of the things that I love is to help empower my clients or my friends and family to know that they are doing the right thing. What I tell people is, if your short-term goals are looking good and we feel good about'em, if you're long-term goals like retirement or maybe

Skyler: 13:54

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 14:21

original goals are not on track, that's when I get to step in and say, Hey, can we pull back here? Can we pull back there? I think we might be overspending in this area, but that empowerment feels really good. And some of the ways I love to do that, and this is applicable for anyone, no matter how much you make, are sinking funds.

Skyler: 14:39

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 14:39

like to have what I call a sinking fund every single week I'm putting money away for. Home improvements vacations large bills or a

Skyler: 14:49

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 14:49

It can be as small or as big as you want, but that weekly accountability of the automatic movement from my checking account to my high yield savings account, those syncing funds can absolutely be a cheat code when it comes to saving goals in general.

Skyler: 15:03

Yeah. And when you do hit that emergency, that is completely unexpected. That money becomes available. it's the break glass in case of dire emergency. It's kind of like an extra padding to your emergency fund in case everything really hits the fan. Right. And I liked what you said about budgeting extra or creating sinking funds. My wife and I, probably go a little bit extreme in the sinking fund category where we have every category rollover. So we just build our savings in every different area, and it's probably led to us being a little too cash heavy. But that's a different podcast episode.

Joel Miller: 15:32

And as

Skyler: 15:32

thing,

Joel Miller: 15:33

good interest,

Skyler: 15:34

yes.

Joel Miller: 15:34

wrong with that. And the thing that you mentioned is everyone's unique.

Skyler: 15:38

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 15:38

a one size fits all because you might prefer something, someone else might prefer something else. Humans are unique and special and fun,

Skyler: 15:46

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 15:47

so cool is I can't take your financial plan and throw that and implement that into my life, which is why the one-on-one relationship is so important because you don't want to be talking to a different financial planner. Every single time you have a question,

Skyler: 16:01

Hmm.

Joel Miller: 16:01

speaking to the same person who knows you, knows your values, and that you trust, and that they have your best interest in mind, and you're not just another call center.

Skyler: 16:11

Yeah. that's a fantastic way to put it is if you keep going with the same person or the same accountability partner or money buddy, you're gonna be able to build that rapport with them and that consistency. And then, like you said, it allows people to do different things with their different financial plans. For my wife and I, we have that cash buffer there. It allows us to, optimize. Our HSA like crazy, like we use that thing to the extreme when it comes to the tax efficiency in terms of reimbursing ourselves later. But because of that cash buffer we have, we're allowed to do that. because of the way we have our plan set up, we haven't paid for medical expenses because the money's invested and then we use the growth to reimburse ourselves. So that sort of thing is something that our plan allows us to do because we wanted to do that with our medical expenses. Maybe you want to invest a lot more so you don't keep a big sinking fund like we do, and you just funnel more things towards investing. There's a bunch of different ways to do it and that's what's so much fun and I think that's what can really be enlightening for people once they realize. But how can financial planning and the uniqueness of it help out young adults?

Joel Miller: 17:09

Yeah, I think this is one of the things that I find so often is I talk to people in their thirties and forties who are getting more to that midlife phase and they're like, wow, I wish I would've started this earlier. If someone would've told me this or educated me this, why don't they teach this in high school? Why didn't I learn this in college? We just as adults kind of get thrown into this when. Our parents don't wanna have that responsibility anymore. And that's at a different age for a lot of people. Right.

Skyler: 17:35

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 17:36

I think there's so many things that young adults can absolutely learn, and one of'em is the power of compounding interest.

Skyler: 17:44

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 17:45

A small number multiplied by a small number over a long period of time becomes a big number.

Skyler: 17:51

Hmm.

Joel Miller: 17:52

you might wanna start saving and investing earlier than you thought. You might wanna look at your financial risk earlier than you thought. If you're thinking about this now, I want you to attack that. I want you to jump on it and take advantage of that, because the best day to plant a tree was yesterday. The

Skyler: 18:09

Yep.

Joel Miller: 18:09

day is today. We're so scared to talk about our finances because it's private. that's why you wanna find that financial planner that you love doing life with, that you enjoy your conversations, you enjoy getting to know them and their life, and they love getting to know you and you life.

Skyler: 18:27

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 18:29

no matter how young or old you are, you are gonna have to file a tax return.

Skyler: 18:33

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 18:34

adult, you probably do need a estate plan. You are going to need investments, you're gonna have benefits at work. There are so many things coming at you from different directions, and unfortunately, options oftentimes create people to do nothing because we get scared to do the wrong thing. I'll talk to someone who thought they were contributing to their 401k for years. Then we have a conversation and I have to tell them Hey, actually you never got this set up correctly. It never finished,

Skyler: 19:00

Or it's all in cash.

Joel Miller: 19:01

yeah, it's all in cash. You didn't know that your investments weren't in the right place. A rollover happened. You switched jobs

Skyler: 19:06

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 19:07

money never got moved over. You either have to have the time, willingness, and ability to take on all of these responsibilities yourself, or we have to have the maturity to know when we need to bring in a professional to assist us with

Skyler: 19:20

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 19:21

big things in life.

Skyler: 19:23

Yeah, and it's certainly something that people could do themselves. there's some organization and simplification that you can do on your own. It requires some learning and different things, but there's also people out there that can help, I think that's where things really come into play and can be really helpful so many people think financial planning and there's kind of this stain of insurance sales on the the industry, but there's so much more to that. they may also think, oh, it's just for people who are loaded, or people who are the uber wealthy. Right. What other aspects besides just a ton of money that you're just sitting on a pile of cash, how can financial planning help beyond that?

Joel Miller: 19:56

Yeah, that's a great question, I think we're seeing this big push to flat fee planning, which I'm a big fan of because traditionally financial planning has often been tied to the amount of money you have, because that's how financial advisors get. Paid. So oftentimes they only wanna speak to you if you have 500,000 or a million dollars. So they can charge you 1% on that. And I love this huge push in this change that is called flat fee planning, which means, as long as you make enough money, we would love to partner with you in life because this membership is affordable for you.

Skyler: 20:31

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 20:31

So we look at your income, we look at your discretionary amount you have left over and we say, Hey, will this membership push you in the right direction, or is it going to slow you down? Or how do we help get you there? Right? So I think that this is gonna be a game changer for a lot of people because more and more firms are coming out with these flat fee options, which is great because then that opens up the door for

Skyler: 20:56

Mm.

Joel Miller: 20:57

to get financial planning. We were. Gate kept from financial advisors for so long and now this is so cool.'cause I have clients in their young twenties, mid twenties,

Skyler: 21:09

Hmm.

Joel Miller: 21:09

twenties, early thirties the very first time. That was never accessible before because those type of clients, those type of people have. Just as important financial planning

Skyler: 21:20

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 21:21

but no financial advisor wanted to work with them and that's why I'm so thankful for like my business and flames, financial planning, because some of my favorite conversations are, we're having our first child,

Skyler: 21:32

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 21:32

our first house. nervous about switching jobs'cause I want to get a pay raise, but I'm not sure how this

Skyler: 21:37

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 21:38

So that's what I, I just love that. competition is really healthy and good and more firms are coming out with flat fee planning, which I think just opens up the door for a whole lot more people to get help.

Skyler: 21:49

Yeah, that helps with all those basic aspects of a plan, because you mentioned that 1% fee, if these people come into the financial planner have a negative net worth because they're just coming outta college. Like, how does that fee work? It just can't. So I think that's where these new models and these new opportunities are gonna become. much more of a great opportunity, especially for younger and younger audiences. But I wanna talk a little bit about how people can take these plans and implement them and, and use them in their life. How are plans that are actually written down? How can a written plan help when it comes to going forward with our finances?

Joel Miller: 22:24

I think writing down goals is a practice that we should do regardless of whatever industry it is, right? We should be writing down our career goals. We should be writing down, whether it's writing down or speaking it out loud, and kind of like back to the accountability a little bit, percentage chance of something happening. Goes up by a lot

Skyler: 22:45

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 22:46

we should be doing that with our physical goals We should be doing that with our career goals. We should be doing that with our financial goals. We should be doing that with our social goals. I'm a big fan of goal setting If you think it, it might come true. If you think it and write it down, there's a higher chance of that coming true. if you think it, write it down and tell someone, we are just increasing our chances of that coming true. Every single step we take further along in that process.

Skyler: 23:11

And you led perfectly into my next question. How can community or like, I like to call'em money buddies, help take that next step with your goals and actually talk to somebody about it?

Joel Miller: 23:19

Accountability is everything. That is when you bring someone into your life and you say, Hey, I trust you and I love you, and I want you to hold me accountable to this. So I try to do that in so many aspects of my life. I'm a big triathlete, and one of the things that's most difficult is training alone. I want to train with other people. So when I'm waking up for my 5:00 AM workouts, my long bike rides, I want to be going out and doing that with someone else because that makes it more fun and holds me accountable to getting up to my alarm, getting outside and going on that long run or workout. So I think the same thing translates to our finances. we don't have to be afraid of bringing someone in and talking about our finances because it's the same exact thing that's gonna hold you accountable to the spending goals that you want to set the retirement age, that you want to do the emergency fund that's sitting

Skyler: 24:12

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 24:13

there's a vacation I want to go on, or there's something I want to do and I have all this cash sitting right here and I have to hold people accountable. Like, no, don't touch that.

Skyler: 24:20

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 24:21

that's what I love most about it it's fun to go through life with people. Life is short, life is difficult, and it's a whole lot better when you bring in someone that you know or love.

Skyler: 24:30

Yeah, because money is stressful as is, but if you can have someone to offload that stress or they can say, Hey, that's not actually that big of a deal. Look at it from this perspective, and then you're like, wow, yeah, that's not a big deal. Let's move on from it.

Joel Miller: 24:41

Yeah,

Skyler: 24:41

much more fun when you can talk to people.

Joel Miller: 24:43

People have different ideas. We think of things at different times. So one of my favorite things is to bring up something that they would've never thought about. And then when that light bulb moment goes on and they're like, oh my gosh,

Skyler: 24:54

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 24:55

I'm here, to bring up subjects. We all have different levels of expertise and knowledge. that's ideally what you're doing. You're bringing in an accountability partner so that you can say, Hey, my backpack is really heavy right now and I can't carry this alone. a good financial planner should be able to help offload some of that and put that on their back, and they can carry that weight for you. I also use this analogy of spinning plates.

Skyler: 25:20

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 25:20

all have X amount of spinning plates, and the more you add, you might start dropping them. some decisions that we make you can fix or there's not a long-term impact. Your finances are one that absolutely can and do have a long-term impact. when you're trying to figure out, okay, what plate do I wanna spin? How many can I spin? This is one of those where it's like, Hey, you don't wanna drop the ball on these because these do have long lasting impacts.

Skyler: 25:48

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 25:48

big or small decisions can impact years or thousands of dollars. I think this is one of those where you're like, all right, I'm ready to pass this on to a professional. Like you mentioned earlier, you absolutely can do this on your

Skyler: 26:03

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 26:04

some people do it on their own very well. You have to look at your situation. You have to know this about yourself to figure out, is this something I can do or is this something that I should not do my on my

Skyler: 26:15

But you talked about, one of the things I want to touch on for young adults is estate planning. you mentioned most people should have one, and it's like everyone does have one. You either have the state's estate plan. That's going to happen automatically. Or you can figure out your own and we'll talk about some areas that young adults can set up early and on their own. one of them is estate planning. it doesn't have to be as complicated as you think. It doesn't have to be this big old binder. It probably should be a folder that has some key information in it. how can young adults when they're just getting started, think about estate planning to get things rolling.

Joel Miller: 26:46

I love this question because it gets pushed off way too

Skyler: 26:51

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 26:51

to people in their sixties and seventies that don't have an estate plan. So if you even say the word estate plan in your twenties and thirties, you are way ahead of the curve. That's one of the things I care most about is how can we decrease your financial risk if you have a loved one, a dependent a child,

Skyler: 27:09

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 27:10

is there in your life. It is a gift to them to start having this conversation early and often. I want you to have the proper amount of life insurance and I want you to have a estate plan, even if it is the most basic

Skyler: 27:24

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 27:24

possible that is better than no estate plan.'cause like you mentioned, if you don't have a plan, the government and the

Skyler: 27:30

Yeah.

Joel Miller: 27:30

has a plan for you. we like your plan more than we

Skyler: 27:34

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 27:35

there are three or four basic documents, will, power of attorney, medical directive, and guardianship paperwork.

Skyler: 27:42

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 27:43

we don't need to over complicate it. Maybe you can add a trust in later on if you want more control and more privacy of your estate plan. But if you. in your early to mid twenties. You have wealth, you have assets,

Skyler: 27:57

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 27:58

that is gonna go to someone. So the least we can do is write that down because life gets cut short way too often. We don't know when and we don't know how long we're gonna be here. it is a gift to. family or your loved ones, if you have this set up proactively done beforehand, even as something as simple as beneficiaries

Skyler: 28:20

Yep, that's what I was gonna say.

Joel Miller: 28:21

done, man, we just have to get it done. It doesn't take that long. It's not that expensive, but people put off life insurance and an estate plan because we overcomplicate it way too often.

Skyler: 28:33

Yeah, it can be as simple. if all you do after this episode is set up a beneficiary on your 401k, that's a win. that account might grow over time and then maybe you die in 10 years, but you set up the beneficiary 10 years ago so you at least know. It has some sort of correct path to go and the state isn't just going to decide. But there are other key areas that young adults can set up early. What are some of those that come to your mind that people can get working besides estate plans?

Joel Miller: 29:00

I think a 401k match is a no brainer.

Skyler: 29:02

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 29:03

money that we're turning down. If we can't even get up to that typical three or 4%, average. employer match

Skyler: 29:08

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 29:08

So that's one of the things I love to set up on day one is let's make sure we are at minimum putting away the employer match. And then a Roth IRA is really popular right now and I think for great reasons. A Roth IRA, you can put in money using after-tax dollars. It can grow tax free. You get it invested in low cost ETFs. So those are just some really good ones that I think a lot of people could either start or think about starting very, very soon. One of the biggest things right now is we just love to take out loans.

Skyler: 29:39

Yeah,

Joel Miller: 29:39

loan

Skyler: 29:39

everything.

Joel Miller: 29:40

house, we have a loan on our car, we have a loan on our swing

Skyler: 29:43

You have a loan on dinner sometimes. Now even.

Joel Miller: 29:46

Yeah. There's so many options and you see commercial after commercial about, hey, take out a loan interest free. We want money so quick, and we are not patient enough to wait for it to actually be there. So I think something that I try to push in my practice into my clients is. We need to save up for something before we actually buy it.

Skyler: 30:06

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 30:06

the money for it, then that means it has to wait one month, three months, six months, or one year because I'm sick of how large these car loans are nowadays, cars are expensive and they're basically, we're driving a, a driving around a laptop nowadays. So that's something I want young adults, people in their twenties and thirties to think about get back to a world where we save up for something and then try to buy it in cash. That doesn't apply for every situation and every purchase, but if we have a large car loan, might attack that loan. We might try to get out of that loan before we do something else.

Skyler: 30:42

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 30:42

those are the things that I care most about.

Skyler: 30:45

Debt is a huge burden on people. the amount of times people roll one car loan into the next with trade-ins, they don't realize how damaging. That is on their personal finance. When your loan to value is like 110%, that emergency fund is not going to help you. When you, when that car gets in an accident and it's total like you, you are so screwed because of that high loan to value, your insurance isn't gonna pay more than the value of the vehicle. And even then they're gonna pay less because It depreciates. So, yeah, you're gonna get me going on cars. I think they're very damaging financially, but that's a huge one.

Joel Miller: 31:16

I see a lot of college grads come out and go buy that$35,000

Skyler: 31:20

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 31:21

I think that's one of the biggest decisions that's gonna set you back,

Skyler: 31:24

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 31:25

are trying to best utilize our resources, and I'm not saying you shouldn't have a nice car, I want you to be safe. I want you to get to and from your activities, but I just don't see a reason why you should be putting yourself into 20, 30 or$40,000 in car debt because all that's gonna do is slow us down from achieving the rest of our goals. One of the most, Ironic things about a car is you can get from A to B in a$5,000 car,

Skyler: 31:54

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 31:55

car, or a$500,000 car. So they are very different assets and different to plan for compared to a lot of other things in life.

Skyler: 32:03

Yeah, you just said one of my favorite things. My wife and I love to ride our e-bikes and I just laugh continuously when we go from one stoplight to the next, next to this$80,000 pickup truck or whatever, and I'm like, I am sure glad you paid$80,000 to go down that stretch of road when I paid a thousand. So that's.

Joel Miller: 32:18

right next to each

Skyler: 32:19

Yep. it makes me laugh every time. let's move back into talking about financial planning. What is the value in having a financial plan? Let's send it off here with a wrap up and put a bow on the idea of building a plan.

Joel Miller: 32:32

I don't want to quantify it from a dollar perspective, Because I talk to a lot of people and they're like, I paid X amount, but I didn't even get that much in interest in my account.

Skyler: 32:42

Hmm.

Joel Miller: 32:42

did you do that created X amount of value in this one month? And that's when I take it back to a gym membership. why I love the flat fee planning industry is because. everyone at the same gym is paying the same amount and you're whoever's going the most, whoever is the most accountable to the process and the goals is getting the most value when it comes to a financial plan and paying for that. You should find, that one dedicated advisor that you love doing life with, that you have immediate access to, that you know that you're not gonna be put on a two week wait

Skyler: 33:17

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 33:36

I think the right time to hire a financial planner is when you have enough discretionary income after your expenses are paid, where you're like, Hey, I know that we can afford a financial planner and they are going to help me go forward

Skyler: 33:51

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 33:52

They're gonna help me review my short-term goals, review my long-term goals, be looking out for me, and bringing in subjects that I might not have thought about

Skyler: 34:01

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 34:01

So to kind of answer your question, it's not always about the dollar value, but it's about the responsibilities that they are going to. Take off your shoulders

Skyler: 34:12

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 34:12

you time back. If I talk to one of my clients and they say, wow, I'm less stressed about my finances. I don't have to think about them often. I haven't thought about this or that in three to six

Skyler: 34:24

Mm-hmm.

Joel Miller: 34:25

that's a win, and that's hard to put a dollar value on, but that's a win in my opinion. That means you're paying for a service you are utilizing to its

Skyler: 34:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a fantastic way to put it. There's so much more than just a dollar value to a plan, and I think that's the hard sell for getting people on, budgeting apps and things like that. They're like, why would I pay$15 a month to have someone manage my money? But there's so much more value than that dollar amount that comes, especially when you start thinking about compound interest. Like if you're able to get someone set up with their employer match, I hope they actually realize that that decision and someone pointing them in that decision was your doing. And they attribute that value to you because there's. A lot that can come from that. Like I remember the other day I looked at my 401k at my work and half of the value was growth and employer match. I've doubled my money essentially, just from meeting that employer match and letting that grow. But let's wrap it up here. I got two final questions for you to send us off. The first one is how can people contact you or learn more about you?

Joel Miller: 35:20

I love to provide free educational, financial content. So if you love learning and if you love watching short form content, I post a daily video between 30 to 60 seconds. That's just educating you on a certain subject, and I haven't asked me anything form where you can submit any question, and I would love to answer that in a video. if you're looking for free content, you can follow me on Instagram or YouTube If you're interested more about a membership at Flames Financial Planning, I am the CEO and founder of Flames fp. you can send me a text at 9 5 2. 3 0 0 9 6 3 2 and I would love to meet you. We can do an introduction call completely for free. You can send me a text and I would love to learn more about your financial story and tell you about a membership at Flame Financial Planning.

Skyler: 36:10

Awesome. That's fantastic. texting is such a fun way. It's an easy way to send a quick text. You can text me. In the show notes, I'll put Joel's number in there as well. send us a text if you have a question. If there was something that stood out that you want more information about, just send us a quick text. it's super fun and easy to chat with people that way. my final question that I ask every guest, some sort of variation of this, is, what's one thing you wish you would've known sooner about implementing a financial plan in your life?

Joel Miller: 36:33

Something very important to me and my why of everything I do are my two boys. Parker is three and Brady is coming up on 1-year-old, I probably could have planned a little better for the expenses of a baby, I was fully utilizing a 5 29 A-U-T-M-A, which are great accounts for investments for kids. But I, I think I underappreciated and maybe under planned for the diapers and the wipes and the clothes and the, just everything else that comes along with that. So that's something that's near and dear to me with two boys right now. It, but kids are expensive and there's trade-offs with everything. I'm happy to spend more on the kids than myself and my wife and, and some of the other goals that we had, but that's definitely something I was not ready for the Costco runs where you go into Costco hoping to, to escape under a hundred dollars and then somehow it turns into two to$300. But we're thankful for our best friend Costco, who helps us out with all of our major expenses. But that's definitely something that I probably could have planned for a little bit more before. For I had kids was just being ready for more expenses for kids than I previously would've thought.

Skyler: 37:39

Yeah, and that's something you can implement in that plan to start a sinking fund. maybe you're planning on kids in five to eight years. that's kind of in that time horizon where you could invest it a little bit. there's so many options if you get ahead of it. Just a little bit that you can build into your financial plan. But Joel, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great conversation. I.

Joel Miller: 37:57

It was my pleasure. It was great to meet everyone. excited to be here. Thanks so much, Skyler for hosting.

Speaker: 38:12

Thank you so much to Joel for coming on the show and for that fantastic interview. I know I thoroughly enjoyed that one, and that was a fun conversation. But let's get into the money talking points here. These are gonna be some great ones today. The first one is, how can you start building a financial plan? Well, you need to start from a very simple place. Take it one small step at a time, and that's honestly been a theme on the podcast over the last few weeks and it continues into next week's episode. So be sure to subscribe. But find one small thing that you can do in an area that you want to get started with and start with that. Don't try to do it all at once because that gets very overwhelming, incredibly fast, like insanely fast. If you try to learn everything all at once, start with some short term planning. I. Outline some goals like building an emergency fund, saving for a small purchase, and I say small so that you can get a quick win with this one. Like something like shoes, maybe you wanna buy a nicer pair of shoes. That can be a short term goal, or maybe you wanna save up to buy you a new phone. That can also be a short term goal, and I say small so you can get a quick win and all of this that you're working on or thinking about, this is planning. It doesn't have to only be long-term, gigantic financial goals when it comes to financial planning. So get started with some short-term goals and some short-term plans because these can be a massive deal and a huge motivator for you to show you that it can be done and that you can achieve goals. So I'm gonna ask you, what is a short-term goal that you have in mind? What would you like to see happen in your life financially in the next two to three years? I think that's a good short term range, but what's something you wanna see happen financially? In the next two to three years, and I'm gonna need some responses on this one. So send me a text or an email and let me know. I want to hear from each and every one of you listening, and if you're driving or on a walk or something, set a reminder right now. Tell your phone to remind you when you get to wherever you're going to send Skyler a text about what is a short term financial goal that you wanna see in the next two to three years. I want to get to know more of you out there listening, so please reach out and let me know what you think, because I'd love to have money talks with each and every one of you. But the second money talking point is what small area can you begin with? Well, for me and my wife, it's estate planning. And I know that sounds like a big one and it might not be your next small area, but for us, we have other things under a good control, but we need to organize our beneficiary information and that's really the main thing we need to do. That's our next small step that we need to take because we have life insurance in place, but we also need to make sure we know who is going to get our money with the beneficiary information. We also need to look into our power of attorney and medical documents to make sure we know who is in charge of us or who is in charge of our money. If anything should happen, that is the next smallest step for my wife and I. And the next thing could be something completely different for you. Here are a few key different little areas that you could consider when you're trying to find your small area to begin. The first one is have you already done a few things in the area that you're considering? I think that's a great place to continue and keep up your momentum. Maybe your small area is emergency planning, and you've already started saving for an emergency fund. Great job. Well, that means it's gonna be a great place to continue working on. The key is to make it small and break it down into small pieces. Figure out somewhere that you can build a plan around. It doesn't mean you have to organize the entire world and get everything situated at once. Do it a small step at a time. Take a small area and work on figuring that out and how that little area could work better for you. But that does it for the second money talking point. Let's talk about the third one here. How can sharing your financial plan with others help? And this again, just goes to that. I want to hear from more of you. I would love to be your money buddy, your accountability partner. And my episode coming up next week is gonna be fantastic for this. So be sure to subscribe so you don't ever miss an episode. But next week we're gonna talk all about how we do better with money by talking about it. But in relation to this episode, sharing your plan with others, especially your spouse, and especially building your plan with your spouse if you're married, but sharing it can be a huge deal. You can get someone on your side to help encourage you and motivate you towards your goal. You can have someone check in with you and bounce ideas off. It could be a great way to collaborate and work together. One of my favorite things that Joel and I talked about is how you can have someone who can help give you a different perspective. Especially if you're in different financial situations or if you're working with a coach or an advisor, you can get different ideas and a different route to go on, which is fantastic. Like it's such a big deal if someone is able to maybe redirect you down a better path or help you stay away from a credit card debt laden path. There are so many great perspectives out there and that's why we need to be talking about money with everyone else. Maybe you get told that you shouldn't bother with credit card hacking and that's something you didn't realize was even possible. Maybe you thought that you had to put all of your effort into credit card hacking, but now you have this new idea and you're free from the burden of tracking and spreadsheets when it comes to your credit cards. This was me for a while. I thought that my wife and I had to hack our way to free travel and it's all we could do, and that I had to do all the credit card tracking, and it was frankly overwhelming to me. So once I realized I could just simply do cash back, I was freed. I was freed from the burden of credit card hacking, and I was all for that. And I found some great cash back cards, and we stuck with those where we just find a 5% back card or a 2% back card. But now that I've gotten a stable foundation under me with credit card reward, I've been able to wade back into some credit card rewards as needed, and it's phenomenal. It's working really well for us. Like I shared a few weeks ago. My wife and I, we booked all of our flights on our trip to New York City for free. How awesome is that? But the main thing here is to share with someone so you can get different ideas and that someone else can help hold you accountable because those different ideas. Are gonna be incredibly valuable, and if you need someone to help hold you accountable, I would love to be your financial coach and your money buddy. I have a link in the show notes where you can sign up for a free money talk with me and we can work on figuring out some of your goals and building a plan to get you moving in the right direction. But that does it for today's episode. And as we wrap up this one, I want to remind you that building a financial plan does not have to be complicated. You don't need a 50 page spreadsheet or a perfectly polished portfolio. Just start from a simple place, one small step, and that is all. That's been a theme here on the podcast lately, and it's going to continue next week. But maybe for you, the first step is setting a short-term goal, like building a$500 emergency fund, or saving for a small purchase to get a quick win. That is planning. Financial planning isn't only about big retirement goals that are decades away. It's all about what you wanna see happen in your life over the next two to three years or longer. So what is a short term goal for you? I'd love to hear it. Send me a text or an email and let me know. But for me and my wife, the next small area for us is estate planning. We've got life insurance in place and we really need to organize our beneficiary info to make sure that we're covered with power of attorney documents. And I know it might not sound small to you or be the thing that you wanna work on, but that's completely okay. Your small area might be something else. Maybe it's continuing to build that emergency fund that you've started working on, or review your 401k contributions. Whatever it is, don't try to do it all at once. That's when it gets overwhelming. Break it down and work on one little area at a time to make it work a little bit better for you. And finally, don't do this all alone. One of my favorite things that Joel and I talked about was the power of sharing your financial plan with someone else. Whether it's a spouse, a friend, or a coach, talking about your money goals with someone can unlock so much clarity and motivation. I've seen it in my own life, especially when I realized I didn't have to hack my way to free travel with credit card points. I could just use cashback and simplify it. That shift came from a conversation and from listening to other people talk about money. So make sure you're having regular money talks, and if you're looking for someone to be your money buddy, I'd love to help. Use the link in my show notes to schedule a money. Talk with me and we can figure out your next small step for your financial plan. But thank you for listening to today's episode. The best way to stay up to date and connected with All Things Money Talk is to subscribe to the podcast and sign up for my email list. Head over to Money talk.show and submit your name and email right there on the homepage. You can also use the contact page on my website to send me any questions. If you're looking to get started with budgeting, I've partnered with my budget coach, a platform that connects your budget directly to your financial coach, and I'd love to work with you over there and help you with your budgeting. The link, of course, is in the show notes. And remember, the best way to learn from today's episode is to go and have a money talk about today's topic with a fellow money buddy. But thank you for listening to this week's episode of Money Talk. I'm your host, Skyler Fleming. Have a great week.