How to Ignore The News and Stick to Your Plan with Jonathan Blau - 187

In this episode of Money Talk, I sit down with Jonathan Blau, the founder and CEO of Fusion Family Wealth, to tackle one of the most overlooked but powerful financial habits: ignoring the news. We dig into why obsessing over current events can derail your financial plan, how emotions sneak into our money decisions, and what it actually takes to build a plan that can weather the emotional rollercoaster of investing. Jonathan brings a ton of behavioral insight, and we share practical steps you can take to avoid FOMO, build a resilient plan, and make better decisions with less stress. If you’ve ever felt anxious because of a headline or tempted to time the market, this episode is for you.

💰 This Week’s Money Talking Points

1. What value does ignoring current events bring you?
2. When was the last time you felt emotion around a financial decision?
3. How can you build a plan that will withstand the emotional rollercoaster?

📌 Resources & Mentions:

Learn more about Jonathan Blau’s firm: https://www.fusionfamilywealth.com/

📲 Join the conversation on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/moneytalk/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome Money Buddies to this week's episode of Money Talk. This week we're talking about emotions, ignoring the news and sticking to the plan. I'm your host, Skyler Fleming, and let's get talking. I am very excited for this interview today. This is something that I have thought about for years. Ignore the news. I have not watched a news broadcast since the pandemic, and even quite a bit before then. I hardly watched. I am all the better off for it as well. I don't worry so much. I'm not bothered by events that happen that have absolutely no impact on my day-to-day life. And I think I'm overall happier for not having watched the news in years, much to the chagrin of my grandma who thinks I'm missing out on what's going on around me. Frankly, I don't think it matters. I can choose to stay up to date with the things that I want to, but I don't have to deal with the drama and sadness and the. Depression that comes from watching the news. But today we're gonna take the idea and apply it to your personal finances. How can you avoid the current events and manage the emotions that come into your life with ever changing policies, news, different guidance and advice from all sorts of different people online? How can you build a financial plan on a solid foundation that's going to last? And I know this one is gonna help a lot of you out with sticking to your plan and not deviating so much. Let me know what you learned by sending me a text using the link in the top of the show notes or leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube and we can have a great money talk there as well. But I know this money talk is gonna bring some people into the light of ignoring the news and ignoring current events. So let's keep this train moving. I wanna jump in here today with a Skyler story Time. This one is gonna be about an update to the show. There's some solo episodes coming up very soon and there are some slight audio issues in this episode, so I apologize ahead of time. But do look forward to these solo episodes that are coming out. I believe it's about two weeks away that you'll be hearing a solo episode about me becoming a CFP. So make sure you're subscribed, share with Friends, and if you're interested in becoming a CFP, send me your questions that you might have, and I very well could cover them on the show. But today's Money Buddy is Jonathan Blau. Jonathan is the founder and CEO of Fusion Family Wealth, a Long Island based fee only registered investment advisory firm. His approach focuses predominantly on conditioning investors to learn to ignore current events, act on their plan, and never react to the markets and the media, which is perfect with what we're gonna talk about today. The money talking points today are, what value does ignoring current events bring you? Two. When was the last time you felt emotion around a financial decision? And three, how can you build a plan that will withstand the emotional rollercoaster with those money talking points in mind? Let's get talking and welcome Jonathan to the show.

Jonathan Blau: 2:47

Thank you, Skyler. Pleasure to be here

Skyler: 2:49

I'm super excited for this conversation because this is something that I especially preach to all my friends who are trying to get me to invest in the latest cryptos or whatever it may be, right? Whatever's that hot button item. We're talking today about current events, and frankly, why you should ignore them. this is gonna be a fun conversation because there is so much news out there that can pull and tug and make your mind go in so many different directions, make your wallet go in so many different directions. Let's kick it off with why we should have a plan for our money. And I know one of the main things we're gonna talk about is so that this current events don't impact it, but why do you think there's so much value in planning with our money?

Jonathan Blau: 3:24

So, it's critical, to understand the importance of a plan. I'll start off answering it with a reference to, one of my favorite characters, Yogi Berra. He said, You better make sure you know where you're going.'cause otherwise you might not get there.

Skyler: 3:38

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 3:38

if you have no roadmap, you're not likely to succeed other than by random chance or luck. and I wouldn't want to count on that for anything in life. So I always tell investors that, having a plan is never a guarantee that you'll succeed. In meeting all your objectives, but the absence of a plan is the closest thing I've ever seen to a guarantee of failure. So we have to learn to operate rationally. Under constant uncertainty.

Skyler: 4:06

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 4:06

having a plan is, here's my short term and long term goals, objectives. what is it that I should do in order to increase the probability? of achieving them.

Skyler: 4:16

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 4:16

that plan becomes your benchmark, against which you measure success or failure periodically. instead of what most people in the investment community do, they measure their, their, their success or failure against the random, irrelevant benchmark, let's call it the performance of the s and p 500. You know, it's up 25 and I'm only up 18 or 16 last year. Because seven companies are accounting for 70% of the return.

Skyler: 4:41

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 4:42

They're concentrating. You're diversified, you're prudent. Don't worry about the outcome we call outcome bias. Don't let the outcome dictate what your input ought to be.

Skyler: 4:50

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 4:50

when you have that plan and your benchmark then becomes the plan, now you have a rational benchmark. Hey, three years out, I embarked on this plan. I want it to have X amount of money so I can retire in five years. Where am I? And based on where I am, should I make changes? am I just fine doing what we're doing? What are the steps I should, adjust? You should never change it in response to current events.'cause current events have nothing to do with somebody's plan. I always tell people your plan. Is about, what you're gonna have 20 years from now and the 10 years on either side of that. That's the focal point of the plan. Whether we have a tariff today in 2025 or not, has nothing to do with that.

Skyler: 5:28

Yeah. you hit the nail right on the head with the main thing Causing so much commotion in people's finances is will there be a tariff? Is there gonna be some sort of pause around it? Will there not be a pause? Is it gonna go up or down? Like that's the main thing, pulling on everyone's money. But there's a couple key things in there that you talked about with why a plan is so important. And I've heard it described in a similar way, but saying like, if you're trying to get across the country and you did it with like there was no road signs, right? Like you can probably get a decent way across the country just with road signs, not even with GPS. Like if you get more granular and use a GPS map and things like that.

Jonathan Blau: 6:00

Right.

Skyler: 6:00

path, but trying to, if there was no like highway sign saying New York, 100 miles, things like that, you would have no clue where you're going. So that's the potential of a plan is building that framework to say, turn right in a couple hundred miles And I think that's the way I've heard it described is if you tried to get from Los Angeles to New York with no signs or a map you might end up in Canada or Mexico But that's the same sort of thing with your money.

Jonathan Blau: 6:23

It is true a hundred percent. You need guideposts and you need, benchmarks, that instructs what you need to change or not change based on, what you've accomplished toward your short and long term goals

Skyler: 6:33

Yeah, and I, I love the idea that you said there of that personal benchmark of having something that is your own goal set up to help you stay aligned, because like you said, is your benchmark, just this. Total market index fund. Is it the, just the s and p 500 who really, who really knows if you can keep up with that? if you don't have a specific goal in mind, you don't know which way you're going because you don't have your own plan. Where if you set some sort of plan that you need to keep, seven, eight, 9% benchmark, then, you know, is my plan hitting that. But another thing here, there's a couple of different things that you mentioned about components like having your own benchmark. Having your own plan as a guidepost, what are some other components that people need to consider in their plan?

Jonathan Blau: 7:18

So what they really should consider is a plan. A portfolio is not a plan, and the majority of investors think a portfolio is a plan. we need to understand that a plan in order to be effective, should be date specific and dollar specific.

Skyler: 7:33

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 7:34

by the time I'm 60, how much principle. Do I need to acquire in order to retire comfortably and stay comfortably retired? If I wanna spend x. If there is no date specific in dollar specific goal, you don't have a plan. those are the two most important components. the other thing I'd say is one of the most important thing about a plan is planning on a plan, not going according to plan.

Skyler: 7:57

Yeah,

Jonathan Blau: 7:58

a plan B, right?

Skyler: 7:59

your assumptions will be wrong.

Jonathan Blau: 8:00

Yeah. and so you have to accept that it's all based on probabilities. I'll share with you, something that I think's relevant to this, Barry Riol has his definition of investing because I recently read his book and I love it. It's the art of using imperfect information. I. To make probabilistic assessments about an inherently unknowable future. that's investing. That's also planning.

Skyler: 8:23

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 8:24

so when you recognize the three most important words, as he says in investing are, I don't know.

Skyler: 8:30

Yeah. Or it depends.

Jonathan Blau: 8:32

How high is it gonna

Skyler: 8:33

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 8:33

Neither do these clowns on CNBC with the fancy titles. they don't have any more facts about the future than you or I my mentor, Nick Murray, always used to say the defining characteristics about the future is there are no facts about it.

Skyler: 8:45

I love that. we're just guessing pretty much if you get down to the nitty gritty, and there can be a lot of education that goes into it to make an informed guess, Ultimately, especially right now, things are changing so much. There could be some new tariff, there could be some new policy that comes out. There could be changes to legislation that makes your, your whole plan that you are planning for 20, 30 years need to change because of a different opportunity. if you try to stay caught up with everything in the moment that it happens, that just causes your brain to go haywire. Why should we ignore the news and current events around financial stuff that's flying at us?

Jonathan Blau: 9:19

so in short, there's a bunch of reasons. One is, it's not really news. it's, as I say, it's results oriented

Skyler: 9:26

entertainment. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 9:28

as journalism. it's actually worse than entertainment. What it is, in the media, whether it's financial or otherwise, the term that's always been used in the advertising industry, if it bleeds, it leads,

Skyler: 9:37

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 9:37

attack or a plane crash first. our goal is not to educate you about the world or the financial world of

Skyler: 9:43

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 9:44

Our goal is to maximize clicks. So we maximize ad revenues and we collude with our partners,'cause they also want action. They want you to. Be call to action so they can sell you their hedge products and all their alternative product and all the things that you might wanna buy,

Skyler: 9:59

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 10:00

in response to the fears that they're creating for you. So that's one of the reasons you don't wanna listen to it, because they're not telling you things to help you.

Skyler: 10:08

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 10:08

things to benefit themselves actually at your expense. The other reason not to listen to the news, and I'll give you this. in a nice little brief history lesson for my lifetime. I'm born in 1967, right before the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War. and the s and p was about 60, give or take.

Skyler: 10:25

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 10:25

and so you had the Vietnam War in 1962. You had the Cuban Missile Crisis where our country could be obliterated 90 miles off the shores of Miami by Russia via Cuba. And then you had the seventies, arguably the worst. Economic decade in our lifetime, modern history, where unemployment, inflation and, interest rates were all approaching 20%. The worst energy crisis in 19 73, 4 in history, the market declined 50% in 73. Four was the first of three. In my lifetime.

Skyler: 10:54

Wow.

Jonathan Blau: 10:55

Now you have 1987. The worst single day collapse in the market in history still holds the record. And then 1990, the worst real estate crisis, and you could keep going. The, the, the,

Skyler: 11:05

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 11:06

bubble down 50% followed six years later with the, credit crisis

Skyler: 11:11

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 11:12

So the market's down 50. 50 and 63 times in my short 58 years. And along those, with those three Hals or more, we also had a total of, let's say, I don't know, 13 bear markets, nine or so recessions. And also we had all those current events, terrorist attacks, everything.

Skyler: 11:30

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 11:31

the market go from 60 to 6,000. It's gone up a hundred times. A million is a hundred million.

Skyler: 11:37

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 11:37

did one have to do? As an investor in the s and p 500 or some similarly diversified portfolio of great

Skyler: 11:45

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 11:46

in order to have that happen

Skyler: 11:48

Yeah, you had to ignore all that.'cause if you pulled it out because it was going down, you missed out on all of that climb.

Jonathan Blau: 11:53

what we had to do as investors to turn our money, up a hundred times during that period I just described of recessions and halvings and everything else that happened, Republicans and Democrats, you name it.

Skyler: 12:04

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 12:04

rates as low as zeros, high as 20. What we had to do are the single hardest thing for us to do and the most important as human beings,

Skyler: 12:12

I love that. That's fantastic because as soon as you started saying. back when it was at$60, my mind went to put all of my money there, because between here and there, all of that current events just gets blurred and lost in time. if you look at that starting price and the ending price now. You're like, put all of my money in it. if you're 20 and listening to this and you think in 40 or 60 years, you're like, well, I don't know what the economy will do. I know the whole past performance isn't future results. But still, it tends to go up into the right. And in 40 or 60 years, if you do nothing, you're gonna have benefit from it.

Jonathan Blau: 12:44

Well, think about it this way, there's two options in life when we're investing. One is I can be a pessimist or I can be an optimist.

Skyler: 12:51

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 12:52

the pessimist for the last 500,000. years have lost,

Skyler: 12:55

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 12:56

five or 10 years. that's not to say the world can't end. It can, but people who premise their investment philosophy on some apocalyptic speculation, whether it's Russia's gonna engage in nuclear

Skyler: 13:08

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 13:08

and we'll have an Armageddon, or whether it's Donald Trump is coming in and we're gonna lose democracy, whatever the Armageddon is what I always tell people is, and this is Art Cashin, who was the floor trader for UBS who passed away in the last year or two, he said it best, he said, the world only ends once and betting on something that only happens once is a very long shot, if the world were about to end tomorrow, we knew that Russia was sending nukes over here and there was nothing to do about it. If we were in golden bonds instead of investing in great companies, it wouldn't stop it.

Skyler: 13:38

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 13:38

So what I tell people is if you invest for the end of the world, so far it's never happened. people who invest in gold and seeds and bonds and cash, things that freeze up purchasing power in the face of

Skyler: 13:49

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 13:49

the real threat, those people have never experienced an apocalyptic end of the world. they've unfortunately survived to live in a world that didn't end. But one which they invested their philosophy of invested for one that would end.

Skyler: 14:03

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 14:04

what happens is they've created their own financial apocalypse because they're

Skyler: 14:07

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 14:08

invest for a world that won't end, because if it ends, it doesn't matter.

Skyler: 14:12

Yep. That's one of my favorite things is people will talk about, put your money in a total market or an s and p 500 fund. If you're getting started and people will be like, well, what if the stocks go down? if that all goes to zero, we have other problems. Like if the s and p 500 crashes. Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 14:26

what if the stocks go down? I tell them, no, the stocks will go down.

Skyler: 14:30

Yes.

Jonathan Blau: 14:31

I tell

Skyler: 14:31

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 14:32

the s and p 500 goes down frequently, sharply, but always temporarily.

Skyler: 14:40

Yes.

Jonathan Blau: 14:41

the thing that human nature can't grasp is that we can't, the way we are programmed for survival, we have this amygdala at the base of our brain, the fear sensors and it's evolved to be the strongest and fastest reacting. That's why we're here today. We evolved

Skyler: 14:53

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 14:53

To protect us, but it protected us from the Savannah threats, of a bear or a lion in the woods.

Skyler: 14:59

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 14:59

Sensors today don't know the difference between a permanent life and death threat or bear market temporary. It sends off the same signals

Skyler: 15:08

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 15:08

so we are programmed for survival in the Savannah hundreds of

Skyler: 15:12

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 15:13

Is the worst way to be programmed to survive the financial market of gyrations. that's why what we do is so important from a behavioral temperament standpoint. We have to help people understand that they're programmed to fail in this endeavor.

Skyler: 15:27

Yeah, maybe we need to stop calling it a bear market and use some sort of happy term we need to call it a fire sale. you're getting your stocks on sale,

Jonathan Blau: 15:33

remember what I always tell people is, we don't, as investors, long-term investors, my clients,

Skyler: 15:38

mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 15:38

own the stock market.

Skyler: 15:40

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 15:41

the craziest place where some of the craziest people gather every day to respond to every crazy news item that there is. We don't buy that.

Skyler: 15:49

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 15:49

buy great companies and the way we buy them is they trade as stocks and you have to access'em through that stock market. But if you're a long term investor, the flash crash where the market goes down, in a minute has nothing to do with you. I don't care if the market closes for five days. He says, look, market closes every weekend. I don't have a panic attack every As long as I'm buying great companies, they're gonna keep doing what they do. The population's growing, and whether the market's closed or open, like it was closed for four days after nine 11, I'm gonna make money.

Skyler: 16:18

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 16:19

And so what the market does on a daily basis, has nothing to do, and when the stock prices go down, the value of what I own is increasing.

Skyler: 16:29

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 16:29

Two months ago, prices of stocks went down 20% The value of those companies that I owned increased. I'm getting more earnings for less money.

Skyler: 16:37

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 16:37

growth for less money. That's a blessing for someone who has money to invest, but it's meaningless for someone who's a long-term investor and understands that short-term price decline is temporary and the long-term enduring values of those companies certainly didn't decline yesterday by 20%.

Skyler: 16:52

Yeah. And the one thing that I think is great too, I like to tell my friends and people, when you're doing those regular monthly contributions to your investment accounts or your 401k When you're in those periods of it being down, that's a chance to buy it on sell. I looked at my stock and stuff. I looked at my investments and our index funds yesterday, and there was one purchase we made that was probably the bottom of whatever turmoil we were having a couple months ago. I look at that now and I'm like. Wow. If all of my money could have been right there, like there's, there's a chance, but you have no way of guessing that. But that is the way to buoy yourself up and look at it when it's going up.

Jonathan Blau: 17:25

so any investor, to your point, who's got more than a month to retire, I'm being

Skyler: 17:30

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 17:30

Someone who's got 5, 10, 20 years to retire,

Skyler: 17:34

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 17:34

should be wishing that the market goes

Skyler: 17:37

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 17:38

for the next 15 years. Because Warren Buffet said if I'm a producer of hamburgers, I want the price of cattle to go up. Right.

Skyler: 17:47

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 17:47

if I'm a consumer of hamburgers, I want the price to go down.

Skyler: 17:50

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 17:51

who are retiring 20 years are consumers of those hamburgers, but they want the prices to go off.

Skyler: 17:56

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 17:56

They're happy when it goes up 20%. Now I'll buy, it's the most irrational, thought process, and that's what we do.

Skyler: 18:02

Yeah, that's the key thing, being rational, and that's where the plan can be. Huge. When it comes to avoiding that FOMO or feeling like, oh, I'm missing out on the big stock boom. It's like, well, if it's up at the top, you've already missed out on it. it's the climb that makes people money, not the peak that makes people money, but people often, listen to these current events or get on Instagram reels looking at all the financial news and they feel like they're missing out on something. how do we avoid feeling like we're missing out with all the news going on?

Jonathan Blau: 18:28

that's an important issue. I think the best way to do that, to not feel like you're missing out is focus on what it is that you don't want to and can't afford to miss, which is the achievement of most or all of those goals you set forth in your plan.

Skyler: 18:42

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 18:43

And so if you focus on that, you recognize, all right, by 60, I wanna get to 5 million, and this way I can spend 400,000 a year or whatever the number is, 200,000 a year. what do I need to do to get there? I need to work until age x, to save X amount a year. I need to keep my spending at this level and choose investments that'll make somewhere in the neighborhood of eight plus percent a year.

Skyler: 19:06

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 19:06

And then if I do all that right, that 8% a year, that's the key is that people think that in order to succeed with their investments, they need to find and identify always what is the next best investment, highest returning investment gonna be? And let me get in on it, that's impossible to consistently

Skyler: 19:24

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 19:24

And what that does, it leads to performance chasing, which is the surest way to underperform your goals.

Skyler: 19:30

Yep.

Jonathan Blau: 19:30

you need to avoid fomo understand that when it comes to successful investing, if someone said, what's the most important thing I can do to make the most out of my investment wealth? The simple answer is, start as early as you can

Skyler: 19:44

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 19:44

Time is the key. compounding is not about finding the best returns It's about finding the best kind of average returns that I can sustain

Skyler: 19:52

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 19:53

period that's compounding and that will get me to my goals. anyone can run their plan on seven or 8% and see that it, we get them there

Skyler: 20:00

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 20:01

And that's how you avoid fomo.

Skyler: 20:03

I love that. your fear should be missing out on that sit steady, eight to 10% return, your fear shouldn't be missing out on the 25% return. That could also be the 100% decline because that little small startup goes completely under. And you miss your normal eight to 10%, so let that easier number be a little bit more scary for you to miss out on.

Jonathan Blau: 20:23

Think about baseball, right? the people with the low batting, averages, they don't have low averages'cause they don't hit enough home runs. They have low averages'cause there's too many

Skyler: 20:30

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 20:31

and pop outs and that kind of strikeouts. It's the same thing with investing, right? you don't have to hit home runs, don't even try to hit don runs, you're gonna fail. So, so if you can internalize that. And understand that it's about consistency and applying the inputs that have worked for 200 years, not what may be working today or this year.

Skyler: 20:52

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 20:53

That gives you the highest odds of success. It's that consistency that gives you the highest odds, and once you abandon that, most people will fail miserably.

Skyler: 21:02

This has been a fantastic conversation. we've covered a wide range of things already from creating your plan, making sure it's time and dollar based, ignoring current events, because They're just gonna leave you chasing the hot stock instead of keeping that consistent return. Now that people have a plan in place, or want to get a plan in place, there's still gonna be emotions flying at'em. Like you're not going to say, I'm now going to ignore the news and not have any emotion come into play because you're gonna hear it. Things are gonna come up, things, your stocks and investment accounts will go down, and that's gonna cause you to look up why, and then you'll get some emotion going. What kind of emotions can people expect even though they're on this consistent and well laid out plan?

Jonathan Blau: 21:39

Every kind of emotion can still be expected, one of the things I counsel people on is I will never tell someone to suppress the emotions that are natural, You, you can't do that. All I say is never. Express those emotions and those fears by changing your portfolio construction designed to get your goals and response to it. and so that's what we do as behavioral investment counselors, which everyone needs. As long as you're a human being, you need it, I you always need to be aware, for example, of some of the basic, biases that are embedded in us that will cause us to be afraid or want to respond.

Skyler: 22:14

Hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 22:14

to make sure they don't respond. so for example, loss aversion bias is one of the most powerful biases. Basically says it's proven that we feel, it's through money investing or anything else. Human beings feel the pain of a loss two to two and a half times more than we feel the pleasure of an equivalent gain

Skyler: 22:32

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 22:33

we don't seek out strategies that maximize our long-term wellbeing financially or otherwise. We seek out strategies that minimize our chance of short-term loss

Skyler: 22:42

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 22:43

our chance of short term pleasure. That's our

Skyler: 22:45

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 22:46

And those are the opposite things. We need to succeed long term and investing and really most other things in life, right? people are gonna always be afraid no matter what we tell them. The key is to get them in the right allocation. More of the investments that are safe, which are real assets, stocks to protect us against the real threat inflation. I. of money, unless that are risky. The bonds that freeze our money in the face of the disease of inflation and actually carry the disease, cause the disease to continue. Nobody can fight. Human nature. Human nature, my mentor says is always in everywhere, a failed investor.

Skyler: 23:18

you're definitely preaching to someone who loves talking about money, hence the podcast name and everything, You're saying these people need to have, someone in their corner, a professional or a friend or a group that they go and share saying, Hey. I'm feeling these emotions. Can you help? Maybe talk me back into my plan. Having a money buddy is what I like to call it. the goal is to say, here's all this emotion that I'm feeling. I'm gonna talk about it before I go and make a change. Like your first place when you hear, oh, there's new tariffs, or, oh, the stock market just plummeted. Your first place should not be your investment account. It should be to, like you said, a behavioral counselor or your investing professional that's in your corner Maybe you start submitting some questions to different podcasts, which they're gonna take a week or two to get back to, so that'll give you a chance to calm down about it while you wait for a response. I think the whole thing is just putting some delays in there and talking to somebody about it is gonna be a huge helper when it comes to handling those emotions. That's a fantastic place to leave it on. I got two final questions and I really wanna hear your one to the last question, so we'll just kind of hurry through. How can people contact you? That, of course, will be in the show notes. Your website is fusion family wealth.com. So anyone who wants to get in touch with you or learn more or ask any questions, head over there or head to the show notes and you can find your email and contact information. But the last question that I wanna ask you here, Jonathan, is what's one thing you wish you would've known sooner about emotions in financial planning?

Jonathan Blau: 24:36

I wish I would've known, a long time ago before I got into behavior about 15 years ago in earnest. I wish I knew a long time ago, that the pivotal point

Skyler: 24:48

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Blau: 25:01

On what we do, not what we

Skyler: 25:03

Mm.

Jonathan Blau: 25:04

Yeah.

Skyler: 25:04

Yeah.

Jonathan Blau: 25:04

be the smartest person in the world. Did I sell out an abject fear in 2008 to response to the financial crisis? You bet I did. Didn't matter how smart I was, it's what we do, not what we know. if I knew that 30 years ago, I'd have been a much better advisor, helping people preserve and build a lot more wealth a lot sooner. So that's the one thing I wish I learned early on.

Skyler: 25:26

Stick to your plan and just keep doing it no matter how smart you are or whether you think you found the next hot item that's gonna go to the moon. As people like to say, stay consistent with your plan and that's what's ultimately gonna matter. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been a great conversation.

Jonathan Blau: 25:41

Thank you, Skylar. I enjoyed it.

25:52

Thank you so much to Jonathan for coming on this episode. we are gonna have some solo episodes coming up, so stay tuned for those. It's gonna be just me talking about personal finance, which gets back to the basics of what this podcast started out as, but the first money talking point today. Is, what value does ignoring current events bring you? Well, for me, it can bring immense value. It brings you clarity of your own plan. You don't have to worry so much about negativity news, changing your plan. The news really only ever brings negativity into your life. Uh, that's, that's a point that I'm gonna choose to stand on. The news really only ever brings negativity into your life'cause you don't watch the news. And remember that one good feel, good story. You always remember those negative things, the heartbreaking things, and the things that just make you feel gross because they suck. Like who cares? Don't watch the news. There are a lot better ways to find positivity than the rare gem that the news will deliver. That's another thing. News is a net negative, so stay away from it. Watching the news is like dumpster diving. You may find something really good, but ultimately you're just sifting through garbage. Not watching the news and ignoring current events is gonna help you be less reactionary. News and big financial TV media is not about helping you. It's about getting you to purchase and sign up for their products and services are a subscription to their website. Emotional and mental fatigue are a very real thing, and this stress can take a physical toll on your body. Always absorbing negativity is going to wear you out. Let's think about it for a second. When was the last time you watched the news? Was there anything good that you remember? It's unlikely because you're probably just remembering the sad thing, the car accident, somebody dying, something crazy happening. Yeah. Anyways, you're not going to remember the positive little, tiny, tiny rare gems that come from the news. It's just gonna wear you out, and that's a great reason to ignore current events just in your life as a whole, let alone your financial decisions, because financial decisions can be emotional enough. Now, think about how emotional it can be when you weren't even planning on making a decision in that area. That's what, watching the news and trying to always stay up to date with current events can do to you. It brings emotion and stress into areas in your life that you don't even need to be thinking about. Which leads us into our next money talking point. When was the last time you felt emotion around a financial decision? Well, my wife and I are currently talking about what we're going to do with health insurance now that I've quit my job, which was providing us with health insurance. There's a lot of emotion around this. It's a great time to find health insurance that's gonna cover some medical things that were. Looking to do in the future? Or is it a time to save money? Do we wanna maintain HSA eligibility? Is it a time to save money since only one of us is working? Should we go uninsured? There are a lot of emotions around this seemingly simple decision now. What kind of decisions have brought emotion into your life? I want to hear from all of you listening. Leave a comment on Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're listening, shoot me an email or a text. Please reach out. What's a financial decision that you have felt a motion around recently? I would love to hear examples of this. The third and final money talking point here is how can you build a plan that will withstand the emotional rollercoaster? Well, the main thing that you gotta do here is build the plan. When you're in a good emotional place, you gotta be date and dollar specific. I really like the phrase mentioned by Jonathan in the interview being date and dollar specific. What does that mean? Well, it means you have a specific amount and a use by date on that amount. For example, you could say, I want to go on vacation in 2027. The date is kind of specific, but there's no dollar amount behind it. I would even argue that you may want to get a little bit more specific about the vacation itself and the date itself, but you could say something like this, I want to go on a vacation that will cost$8,000 in June, 2027. It's helping you narrow your target and your timeframe, so give your goals, date specific and dollar specific measurements so that you know exactly how much money you'll need by a certain date. And then make sure you plan for the emotional rollercoaster. Get a professional, a friend or a money buddy in your corner, and go to them first with your emotional reactions. Go to them for things like feeling the need to invest in Bitcoin because it's at all time highs. Go to them for things like feeling like you have to buy a house, because how are you ever gonna buy a house in the future if you don't buy one right now? Go to them for emotional things like, I need to get a brand new car or anything like that. That is just a decision that's being based off of emotion and maybe not entirely off of your financial plan, but also like a word of caution here. Make sure this isn't someone else who suffers from the same emotional fluctuations as you do. Or you may both end up making that emotional financial decision that you are trying to avoid. So be careful there. Don't have a money buddy in your corner that loves crypto and likes to buy it at all time. Highs and always isn't putting money in when it's at an all time high. And then you go to them saying, Hey, I'm feeling a lot of emotion about investing in Bitcoin right now. And they say, me too. Let's both do it. Let's double down. You have to be careful about those sort of things and make sure it's somebody who can actually calm you down when you have that emotional situation coming up. Instead in that example, I could talk to my wife who could not care less about crypto, and that's great for helping me get through that emotional rollercoaster of wanting to invest in crypto when it's going up or when I start seeing it in the news or in current events. But that does it for the money talking points today we're at the finish line for this episode, so let's wrap this one up. Thank you to each of you for listening to this episode. I wanna announce my very own subreddit to all of you listeners here at the end. Head over to reddit.com/r/money talk to join today. I think it's gonna be a great place for us to have some simple and powerful fun money talks. Join today and be one of the first in the group. But in today's episode, we impact one of the most toxic things that impacts our personal finances. I. Current events and news. This is an area that we feel like we may not have a lot of control, but turn off notifications. Stop listening to the news, and don't worry about tariffs or whatever they're gonna do to your retirement plan. That's 30 plus years away. Don't fret so much and take it easy. Remember the news is like dumpster diving. There may be something good in there, but really you're just sifting through garbage. What I really want to drive home is this idea of building a system that will ebb and flow with your emotional rollercoaster that we're all on. Make sure that you have a money buddy in your corner that you can run your emotional decisions by to help you slow down. Take a deep breath and stop you before you do anything harmful to your plan. Build a plan that fits your life. Automate where you can and find someone to talk to when the emotions run high. Because at the end of the day, sticking to your plan is how you actually win with money. 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 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 you might have. 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, what you can do now at reddit.com/r/money talk. So head over there and let's get talking. But thank you for listening to this week's episode of Money Talk. I'm your host, Skylar Fleming. Have a great week.