Why I Started Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp

In this episode I outline the major challenges facing tech employees in their 20's & 30's that play an important role in their life.

These challenges don't just impact your financial confidence, but bleeds into all facets of your life: employment, personal health, family life, and social interactions.

My goal of this show is to provide you the education and knowledge you need to increase your financial confidence so that you are empowered to live the best life possible.

In addition to educational based episodes, I'll also have special guests who are related to the tech industry to share their unique stories and provide additional insight into how you may navigate your career path.

Level Up Financial Planning, LLC
http://www.levelupfinancialplanning.com

Music: 80s Motivational Chiptune by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Transcript

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Even though working in tech is a huge opportunity because of the amount of pay that you may be able to afford yourself, there's a that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be financially successful, which is probably why you come to this podcast, right? So you know that there's a huge opportunity with how much you're receiving in income, and you don't want to make a mistake. This is Tech Teach Personal Finance Bootcamp where I help tech professionals in their 20s and 30s balance a great life's day without sacrificing their future possibilities. I'm your host, Lucas Catares, certified financial planner and founder of Global Financial Planning, where I help educate, coach, and build strategies with my clients to help them take their financial confidence to the next level. Here's an important compliance disclosure. This podcast is for informational purposes only and are not to be considered recommendations. It is recommended you consult your trusted financial professional before implementing any information obtained from the Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp. Thank you for joining the introductory episode of Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp. I'm gonna cover in this episode the main reasons why I uh felt that I needed to launch Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp. So it's pretty similar to why I started level up financial planning. There's just a huge gap in financial literacy for young professionals and even older professionals at that. But what I've seen at my previous employer where I worked is we were only able to help people that already had money, and that didn't sit well with me. I felt like there's a huge opportunity with the knowledge that I've uh gained through both my college and working career that I could add a lot more value to people younger in their careers to kind of navigate those huge decisions that they have to make. So there was actually a study by George Washington Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center. Uh they do have an acronym for that, which would have been much easier to say. Uh but the study shows that there's 24% of millennials actually feel financially competent. So that leaves a whole 76% who are not financially competent. That's a huge problem. And there's a few reasons why that could be the case. So it's not taught in school. It's also not something that your parents most likely would have talked to you about. And even if your parents would have tried talking to you about it, they they may not have been a good resource. There's also a huge student loan epidemic, which is very concerning. It's something that I've had to deal with. Almost all of my clients that I work with now have some form of student loans. Even some of my clients that are older in their 50s and 60s have uh different types of student loans, either student loans directly, kind of that parent plus loans that you may uh be familiar with if your parents had to help uh fund some of that education for you. Uh but then also sometimes parents took a different route and maybe they took out like a home equity line of credit or some other personal loan to help you with kind of getting you launched. So that's that's something that's still common even among people that are older than 20s and 30s that are carrying student loan balances for a very long period of time. And the the reason why student loans are such a huge deal is because college costs have doubled almost essentially in the last 10 years. So it's pretty ridiculous to think that the common time frame for inflation to increase the costs and double the cost of expenses is typically about 24 years. So colleges have definitely surpassed that and have doubled in the last 10 years. Also, the people in their 20s and 30s, they're the ones that are making all the huge financial maneuvers that are definitely gonna change what their future opportunities, future possibilities are. So major life decisions are being made, like getting married, changing jobs, changing careers sometimes, uh purchasing their first home and growing a family. So all these things are very complex, have very uh long-term impacts on your financial health, and your finances impact your personal health and your personal relationships as well. So all these things are just quick overviews of topics that I'm gonna be covering a lot more in depth, more specifically, probably an episode for each one of these in reality. Uh, but all these things you have to balance them all together. So, how do you balance all of these different goals and responsibilities and create the different timelines where you feel confident that you're doing the right thing and you're not uh behind or or you're not sacrificing your great life today to live some distant future retirement? So it's always a balancing act, and uh, that's something that I hope to help provide that foundation of education around your financial situation. So, why I specifically serve tech professionals, so I've actually been serving tech employees since 2011, which that dates back to when I made the move to Colorado to pursue my financial planning degree. Uh, it took me a long time to figure out what I want to do college-wise, but once I did, I sent my sites on Colorado State University because they had that financial planning program that would allow me to become a certified financial planner. Uh so with that move, I was working full-time at the local credit union, which is called First Tech Federal Credit Union. And so I got to see pretty deeply into uh the tech employees, and predominantly it was HP employees, Intel, uh it was then Avago, now it's Broadcom and AMD. So those were the main kind of contributing, at least local uh employers that I was serving out of the credit union there. And so I got a lot of insight into how differently people manage their money. And it even though working in tech is a huge opportunity because of the amount of pay that you may be able to afford yourself, there's that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be financially successful, which is probably why you've come to this podcast, right? So you know that there's a huge opportunity with how much you're receiving in income, and you don't want to make a mistake. Unfortunately, that's not everyone's situation. People get too bogged down with the busyness of life and they don't really pay their finances the proper attention that it needs. And so one interesting thing that I noticed while I was working there, probably seeing over 2,000, 3,000 different interactions, different clients, uh lifestyle choices, and what that impacted their kind of personal finances. And I saw that it doesn't matter how much money you make. Uh, I was unfortunately sometimes on the bad end of giving news to someone that they were declining for either a credit card or an auto loan because even though they made $150,000, $250,000 a year, they were managing their finances horribly. They either had horrible credit because maybe they filed for bankruptcy or made some poor decisions. Uh, it could have been due to the the recent recession sometimes where people just uh weren't aware that something that drastic or that devastating could occur, and so it caused some uh issues there. But predominantly it just came down to lifestyle choices and and kind of leveraging their debt lifestyle too heavily, and so people were being declined even though they were making $150,000, $250,000 a year, and for just kind of modest type loans sometimes too. So it's important to be aware of that just because you make a lot of money, that actually could be a detriment if you're not managing it right. Um, and so that's one of the things managing lifestyle creep as your pay increases. So maybe you're still early on in your career and you're not hitting that maximum uh income potential at this point, but if you've even been in the industry for just a few years now, you've seen your income skyrocket uh a lot faster than most people outside of the tech industry where they'll be lucky to get their 3% annual increase. So um a lot of people in the tech industry are high, high achievers, which is one of the reasons why I like uh serving them, uh, usually goal-oriented. So it means that if I help them get that basic foundation and understanding, they're gonna have that focus and dedication to actually knock stuff out and and kind of be really aggressive with those types of goals that they set for themselves. Uh student loans is still a big issue. Trying to balance that out with starting your life right out of school is is a huge burden, and it's one of the things that causes people to delay marriage, delay buying their first homes, delay having children, all those things uh which are really scary. And one thing that I like seeing when I do help build these strategy guides for my clients, and and hopefully you can get some of this information just through listening to the podcast where you don't need to actually hire a financial planner if your situation isn't that complex. But basically just don't be afraid of looking at your finances and figuring it out because sometimes it's not as bad as you think, and sometimes it just means you have to be more efficient, you have to make smarter decisions, and you can still do all the stuff you want to do. You just might not be able to do some of those things yet, and it could just be a matter of time and delaying something a couple years and or just rearranging things instead of this thing occurring first. Let's have this other major life decision occur first because it makes the most sense. It's actually gonna empower you and kind of uh catapult the rest of your wealth building potential. Um, there's stock options I'm really familiar with. Uh huge part of compensation when you're talking about tech companies typically. So that's important to juggle and understand because there is a lot of risk there that people are not aware of or they just don't know how to tackle those things. So that's uh something I'm uniquely able to help my tech clients kind of navigate those things. Also, there's a lot of startup companies, which is really exciting. There's definitely a lot of pros to it, but there are some cons and some trade-offs that you have to be aware of. And so, how do you manage your financial life if you don't have the same benefits that a traditional employer may offer? Uh, is something to kind of talk through and strategize and make sure it's gonna be the best fit for you, uh, if not uh long-term, short term, kind of how how long is that gonna make sense for you? Also, I know there's tech is an awesome industry and there's a lot of opportunity for career changers. And so I've become very familiar with a few of my clients that are career changers, and some of them even gone through some of these cool boot camps, and so I'm exploring that a lot more, uh, getting more educated. I'm gonna have a few guests kind of from that boot camp and world to explore how that's an alternative option, and so I'm really excited to have them on in future episodes. Um tech is also a very volatile industry at times because uh if you're at all familiar with 2008-2009, or maybe you're a little bit older and are familiar with the 2001 financial uh or not the financial, it was the tech uh bubble that burst. And what happens is there's a huge hiring binge when things are good. So people are hiring as much as possible, offering all these great benefits and and rewards for hidden milestones. But then what happens when things slow down? What happens when the economy starts to slow down? Uh the tech industry has been hit very hard with those kind of slowing, slowing down uh companies, and then sometimes there's employment packages uh that you're able to take, and sometimes you're you haven't been there long enough. So navigating and preparing for those is also important. Um and another thing that I'm starting to see more common with the clients I serve, and this could be because I live in Colorado and it happens to be a high cost of living area, um, but a lot of tech kind of core areas have very high property values, which makes it hard to buy your first home, or or maybe you bought into your first home, but it was too it's too tiny for where your family's gonna go and what you need for uh the future. So um being able to navigate the high cost of living areas in the grand scheme and the big picture of your where you want your financial life to go and where you want it to empower you to make decisions, all those things are why I enjoy serving the tech comp tech employees and and having a lot of fun with them, strategizing because there is a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of different levers and buttons we can push to make sure that we are doing the best thing and just allowing you to live the best life that you possibly can live in. So, with that said, I'll close this introductory episode. Thank you for listening to Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp. I invite you to reach out, review, let me know what you want to hear more of. Uh, if there's things you don't like, definitely reach out, let me know. I want to make this uh the best uh resource it can be for you. And I just like you starting your kind of financial education and getting that foundation for you. That's essentially what I'm doing with that the podcast. Obviously, I'm very well versed on the financial aspect, so that's not that much of a concern, but uh trying to build it in a way that connects with you and is really meaningful for you to the point actually where you'll start sharing it with other people that you think would find value. That's really where I want to get this show. So any way you think I can improve, any specific questions, uh feel free to reach out. I'm gonna be happy to uh incorporate that into future episodes. And everything I do, whether it's in my business or any of the additional content I produce, is really just to help people take their financial confidence to the next level and just really improve and just live a better quality of life. So catch you next time on Tech Personal Finance Boot Camp.