Between Two Advisors - A Conversation with T.J. van Gerven

In this episode of The Money Script Podcast, host Yohance Harrison sits down with TJ van Gerven, CFP®, and host of The Do More With Your Money Podcast. Together, they unpack the financial implications of the recent U.S. presidential election, discuss strategies for optimizing taxes, and highlight the importance of building diversified financial "buckets." TJ shares a deeply personal memory of financial hardship that inspired his career in financial planning. Whether you’re navigating market highs or preparing for uncertain tax policies, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you improve your financial literacy and make smarter money decisions.

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Transcript

TJ van Gerven 0:00

What are some things that are in our control? Right. Thinking about what is our current, effective and marginal tax rate? Right. Are we using our tax deferred accounts like a 401k, like an IRA or a Roth IRA or a health savings account? Right. Making sure that we're using up our available deductions regardless of what current or future tax rates are going to be. And then also, are we building different types of buckets of money at.

Seth Harrison 0:34

You are tuned in to the Money Script Podcast. Today we will share strategies to help you grow your financial literacy and improve your Money Script. I'll be back with some important announcements. Until then, enjoy the show.

Yohance Harrison 0:53

Welcome back to the Money Script Podcast. It's your host, Johan Saracen. So happy to be with each and every one of you day life home learners of financial literacy. I need to just pause for a second. I know TJ is here. For those of you that are watching on YouTube, you can see TJ and I know it's just awkward because you're just sitting there quiet, but this is the intro and I don't have an engineer to switch back and forth. So maybe you see him or maybe my engineer figured out how to do that. I don't know. It's impulse. The point is, I want to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The outpour of support that we've had for the podcast recently has been incredible. I am booked out with the guests until, I think February, so I'm so excited to have these conversations with all of you. Once we talked about moving the podcast next year to talk more towards the medical community. I want to thank the medical community for saying I want to be on the show. So we look forward to learning from you and just period, learning from you. So we're excited. So thank you. Thank you everyone for all of your support. Thank you for liking. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for. What else do you do? Thumbs upping. Thank you for sharing it with one person. That is. That's been like the best because I've had a few texts from people saying, hey, my friend sent me your podcast. I'm like, oh, you were the one person. So when you're done today, right now, you don't have to wait till you're done. You can pause right now and just hit the share whatever button. Screenshot, send it to a friend, say, hey, everybody, talk about some money. We might learn something. Let's. Let's listen together. So with that TJ Van Gerdevin, he did nice, TJ and I shared another podcast together. His podcast. I was so excited to do it. His podcast is the do more with your money podcast. Catchy name. I love it. And he's a cfp. He is hailing from va. Is that we are right now. Outside Massachusetts. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So up outside of Boston. Mom says removing the Boston.

TJ van Gerven 2:43

No, I'm actually in Massachusetts.

Yohance Harrison 2:55

Tj Good to see you again. How have you been?

TJ van Gerven 2:57

I'm doing really well. It's good to see you again. We had a great conversation on my podcast and I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and hopefully add value to your audience.

Yohance Harrison 3:05

There's no hope here. You're going to add value. So this is our, we've been doing this all season long. It's between two advisors. It's where I sit down with another advisor and we just kind of talk shop. I mean, I mean it's like if we were working in the same office or the same floor and happen to come across each other and at the water cooler, you know those big things, five gallon jugs. For those of you that work from home, you, you might have a water cooler. I guess they're less popular these days. You can just get, you know, the fridge with the purifier on it, but you'd meet by the water cooler, by the coffee station and you just strike up a conversation. You know, you're supposed to be working, you know, you got stuff on your desk that you're supposed to do, but instead you're just hanging out with your co worker, just talking shop. So this one is, is going to be, this one's going to be a little different, I should say, because we don't like to get into politics a lot on the show. I mean we talk about some political things, especially in the realm of money. Of course, that's where we're going. But we just had so for us today, we're recording on Friday and it is Friday, November 8th. So the election just happened happen. So for those of you that this is your first time paying any attention to what's happening in the world, Donald Trump has become the 47th president. He is the first president in 100 something years. I think it was Rover Cleveland. I think somebody fact checked me on that. So he's the first president 100 something years that lost that shooting, was a president, lost the reelection and then came back for the, came back around again four years later. He's also the first president that has a laundry list of, let's just say, skeletons that are in his closet. But you Know what American people said, we like that better than the other. So we've been getting a lot of questions. TJ I'm sure you have. I'm speaking for myself. I've been getting. TJ I'm sure you've been getting questions from your clients, questions from prospects. Just saying, what does this all all mean? What is it going to mean for the stock market? What is it going to mean for my investments? What is it going to mean for Social Security, for Medicare, etc? And I guess I'll just go ahead and start out by saying TJ and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know.

TJ van Gerven 5:17

I think that's a fair assumption. Yeah.

Yohance Harrison 5:19

Yeah. Look people, we help you plan the future, not predict it. That's all. We're here to help you plan your future not predicted. And good financial plans are prepared for the inevitabilities that may be headed our way. Now, just to dive into this, if you're, if this isn't your first time listening to the Money for podcast, a few weeks ago I had another guest on and we, this was before the election and we talked about how the stock market performs underneath elections and I have this and TJ was so kind to allow me to share it. So I'll let him give just kind of his first thoughts on it. So this is the S&P 500 performance throughout U.S. presidencies going back to 1943.

Yohance Harrison 6:07

So T.J. you're a smart man. Can you, can you share with the people for those that are listening, those that are listening, not viewing. You can't see this. And we'll put a link to this. This is from Y charts. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. The show notes. But TJ can you, can you share with the people a little bit about what you see in the chart here?

TJ van Gerven 6:25

Yeah, I mean I'm seeing a pretty clear uptrend here. Over the long term, obviously there are some small, you know, declines along the way. But I think the real takeaway here is that, you know, as long as you believe in, you know, the innovation and competition of free markets and you're a long term investor that, you know, I think we probably put a little too much stock, pun intended, into how much, you know, a, an administration can influence markets, obviously policy is going to have some downstream effect over time. But again, it's really important that we avoid making these decisions, especially if we're making huge all in decisions to get in and out of stocks or move into different asset classes that, that's probably going to hurt us in the long term. And so having this long term perspective is important for kind of reiterating that message that we, we tell the clients all the time.

Yohance Harrison 7:23

You know, one of the things I noticed on this chart, TJ is that there's not a presidential term.

Yohance Harrison 7:32

And these are, excuse me, this is Democratic President versus Republican president. For those of you that can't see it, it's there they have blue representing Democratic presidents and red representing Republican presidents. And it's the S&P 500 since 1943. And as TJ says, it's all going up into the right. What stands out to me, TJ Is that not one of these blobs of time for Republicans or Democrats have a negative number associated with it.

TJ van Gerven 8:03

Yeah. It is interesting to note that. I think that it just goes to show the power of time and staying disciplined to your strategy. I think that, you know, part of the reason that we're compensated for investing in the stock market is that there is short term risk, which is really not impacted, in my opinion, by administrations as much as we may think it is. It's really about external factors, things that can happen. And so the longer that we stay invested, the more likely we are to see the value of our investment increase. And that's the nature of long term investing.

Yohance Harrison 8:35

You said it. That is the nature of long term investing. And I like that you mentioned that. We don't find the administration will have a overall sweeping effect on the entire stock market. However, policies will affect some sectors or even individual companies

Yohance Harrison 8:56

in dramatic fashion. It can, but again, we can't predict what that's going to be. And sometimes bad news isn't always, excuse me, bad news isn't always bad for the stock market. And sometimes good news isn't always good in the stock market. Sometimes it's just news.

TJ van Gerven 9:16

Yeah, I think a lot of it too is you have to think, you know, a lot of times things are when you read information in the news that has already been reflected in the price movement. Right. The, the stock market's pretty good at taking new information and basically pricing that out over time. So you want to be careful, like when you're reading things in the news to not react to that necessarily because that's probably already been priced into what's happening.

Yohance Harrison 9:40

So I had a client last week, TJ that or not last week, this week we're still in the week that on Wednesday reached out to me in, in the evening. For those of you that weren't paying attention to stock market on Wednesday, it was one of the best days of 2024, I think one of the best days since 2021, I think for the major indices that be the S P, the Dow and the in the nasdaq. And in the message she said, hey, I see the stock market just hit an all time high. Let's hold off on investing any money. And I just thought to myself, really. So I decided to use a little chat GPT because it's been helpful in cases. And I said, Chat GPT. I need to know the S&P 500 over the last I look see how old she was and I put in her age for the last 42 years. How what year had the most that The S&P 500 have the most all time highs. And it told me, I think it was 2017, fact check me on that. I believe it was 2017. It had 62 all time highs. Do you know how much the S P has returned since 2017?

Yohance Harrison 10:50

Okay, so it's like if you did not if you said, ah, I'm gonna wait until it goes down, I mean your best chance would have been maybe 2022. But the problem with waiting for it to go down is that where's the bottom?

Yohance Harrison 11:04

I mean we gotta be right twice.

TJ van Gerven 11:08

Absolutely. One of my favorite educational resources is JP Morgan guide to the markets. Anybody can just Google Guide to the markets and it's a slideshow that they do on a quarterly basis. And there's a principles tab for investing principles. And one of the charts actually shows historically, if you had invested at a new all time high, your return in different periods, looking at 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year. And actually what we find is that investing at an all time high, you're actually more likely to have a better return moving forward than if not. And so it seems counterintuitive because we all think like, oh, things are going to revert and there is reversion. Right. Within markets, of course. But historically speaking, with the evidence that we have, and again, you know, it's a decent sample size like 100 years, you know, investing in a new all time high at a new all time high tends to lead to more all time highs. And so this is why it's just important to have some perspective around historical evidence there. Not that that's going to always happen in the future, but it is the best guide we have.

Yohance Harrison 12:13

See, because we have technology, we are going to pull up exactly what you just talked about.

TJ van Gerven 12:22

There you go. I love it.

Yohance Harrison 12:23

I do too. Thank you. You showed me something new. I forgot about JP Morgan's wealth of knowledge here.

TJ van Gerven 12:30

Yeah, they have some good charts in there. And I think also, you know, one of the things to consider too is if you are concerned about, you know, maybe you are in retirement and you're living off your investment assets and you don't have, you know, fixed income sources and you're concerned about, you know, how your portfolio moves. I mean, first of all, that's why you want to really be confident in your overall investment strategy. But also understand that you probably don't have a hundred percent u US Stocks. Right. There is some benefit there to thinking about owning companies outside of the U.S. we showed a chart for the S P 500,

TJ van Gerven 13:02

you know, but having geographical diversification as well can, can add some benefits there.

Yohance Harrison 13:09

Agreed, Agreed. So this is what you were speaking of. Okay. So it says investing all time highs, all time highs and market floors. So the number of all time highs in 2024 was 47. I didn't have to look as far as I did before. TJ thanks. All the way back to 17% of days the S P closes at all time high, 6.6%

TJ van Gerven 13:26

Gotcha.

Yohance Harrison 13:34

of all time highs that act as a market for. Wow. 30% of all time highs wind up turning to a market floor, meaning the market doesn't go below that all time high anytime in the near future. Wow. So if you were to invest on any day over the last five years, your return would have been 73.8%.

Yohance Harrison 14:01

Excuse me, that's not five years over the last. It was a lot more. Oh yeah, it's five. The five year.

TJ van Gerven 14:06

Wait, I was so on the right. Yeah. Chart. What it's showing is that basically looking back at historical data back to 1988 for the S P500, if you invested at a new high, that's the green bar, then your, your, your return three months, six months, one year, two year, three year, five year. So the return is higher than on investing on any day. So that kind of dispels kind of that idea of like, hey, I'm concerned it's a new all time high. What if there's a reversion? Well, at least historically, this chart looking back to 1988, you would have done better.

Yohance Harrison 14:27

It is, yeah.

Yohance Harrison 14:40

Wow, that's pretty cool. Thanks. See, I told you this is water cooler talk. This is just two advisors learning from each other. This is a great resource. Thank you, tj. Absolutely know who you are. I'm looking at you. You know who you are. You sent me that email. I'm sending you that. J.P. morgan report. Okay.

TJ van Gerven 14:57

It's a good principle. And I like within that guide to the markets, the principles pages in general because it's a good thing to show if you're new to maybe thinking through investing, creating a household investment strategy. These are principles to understand because it can be easy to get caught up in maybe some myths of investing. And also one thing to consider too is that's looking at the S P 500. Right. So the true, a good proxy for the U.S. stock market versus individual stocks are going to behave differently. Right. With an individual stock, you can always have permanent loss of capital, meaning that you lose your entire investment.

TJ van Gerven 15:33

Yeah. If the S P500 goes to zero, well, that has some like, actual implications for life, like practically speaking. So it's probably more unlikely that would happen. It's not, it's, it could happen. But if it did happen, we'd have bigger problems. Right?

Yohance Harrison 15:47

Yeah. I like sharing with clients. It's exactly what you said. It's like, look, if, if the S P500 goes away, never to return. I mean, even if the Dow, we lost the 30 largest companies, United States, all at once, we, we have problems that not. I can't help you.

TJ van Gerven 16:03

Right. You should have been investing.

Yohance Harrison 16:04

I'm gonna, I'm going to need help too. So I, I, yeah, I, and that has huge implications on just the dollar and the United States government. So if you want to go down that path, Mr. And Mrs. Client, then I also would encourage you to dig a hole, build a bunker. Rice, beans, ammunition, Tylenol, feminine products, you know, all those sorts of things. And if you want to ask, well, should I have gold? Well, I mean, how do you measure the value of your gold dollars? Okay, so if the dollar doesn't exist,

TJ van Gerven 16:23

Exactly.

Yohance Harrison 16:41

what's the gold worth? One box of Pampers or two, you know? You know, it's interesting that

TJ van Gerven 16:47

Yeah.

Yohance Harrison 16:51

I'm thinking back. What's that, that television show Walk the Walking Dead?

TJ van Gerven 16:58

Yes.

Yohance Harrison 16:59

In the Walking Dead, they did a shortcut because they assumed that we immediately would go back to a bartering type of system. The truth is, and there's a lot of very good data out on this, on just historic from a historical perspective is bartering is really hard to do

Yohance Harrison 17:23

because there's so many goods that have to be matched up with each other. And what tends to happen is that we create some sort of monetary system. If you look across all the different societies where, and that was,

TJ van Gerven 17:27

Right.

Yohance Harrison 17:37

that was kind of like I said it was, it was a shortened or revisioned history of how money was created. And we've always had some. I won't say always, but for a longer time than you think, there was a monetary system. As long as we had a way to account for things, there was a monetary system. It may not been a dollar or a deutsche mark or any of those other things that we're familiar with now, or even a Bitcoin or whatever else is out there, but we had a system of figuring out how much parties owe each other and how that debt is paid, whether it is actual items or if it's just other things that that society decided was worth something. But I went off on a tangent there. Sorry about that. How did we get here? So,

Yohance Harrison 18:29

so, so TJ with the

Yohance Harrison 18:33

election that has happened, I know we're not here to predict the future at all, but some of the questions that come up or have come up is taxes.

Yohance Harrison 18:43

And,

Yohance Harrison 18:45

you know, we could try to look back to his previous presidency to see, okay, what things were implemented then. But, I mean, there's no guarantee he's going to do the same thing in this presidency as he did in the last one. I mean, he's in, he's in a different time. Interest rates are different, Unemployment is different, the manufacturing sector. So we're also post Covid. We're in the post Covid world. So things are a bit different right now. But what are you saying to clients as it relates to taxes

Yohance Harrison 19:15

in the assumed Trump presidency starting next year?

TJ van Gerven 19:19

Yeah, I mean, the way I always approach these conversations is, again, going back to principles. I really try to not speculate on things that are out of our control. Right. So even. Yeah. The future of fiscal policy is not really in my control because they're going to make whatever determinations they make now, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Right. From previous with the lower marginal tax rates. I assume that'll stay now. So I guess you're going to have the same.

Yohance Harrison 19:47

There's, there's parts of it that are set to expire next year, though. So that becomes the question, you know, are they going to expire? Or like you said, will he just make them all stick?

TJ van Gerven 20:01

I. Again, I have no idea. So basically what I would say exactly, that is that.

Yohance Harrison 20:05

Yes, that is what I want the people to hear. You're talking to very two. You're not, you're not talking. We're talking, but you're listening. You're hearing from two very intelligent individuals that have been doing this for a long time. And you're hearing us say vulnerable. Say vulnerable things like, I don't know, because we Don't. We really don't. We're here to help you plan for.

TJ van Gerven 20:27

Your future, not predict 100%. And that's why I think it's so important to listen to shows like yours where you're gaining financial literacy. Right. So what are some things that are in our control? Right. Thinking about what is our current effective and marginal tax rate. Right. Are we using our tax deferred accounts like a 401k, like an IRA or a Roth IRA or a health savings account? Right. Making sure that we're using up our available, available deductions regardless of what current or future tax rates are going to be. And then also are we building different types of buckets of money that people don't understand? You know, when you have, when you put money into a pre tax account, you know, the government hasn't got their cut on that, on that income tax yet. Yet. Right. So over your lifetime, one thing, things that I try to coach clients on is like, hey, if you are in a down year, maybe you took time off from work or even you got laid off, but you have some resources saved up, maybe this is a time to consider doing something like a Roth conversion where you're converting money from a pre tax account to a Roth account and paying taxes and insulating yourself from future tax rates. Right. So these are things that you can do regardless of administration

TJ van Gerven 21:40

and regard. Yeah. Regardless of political party.

Yohance Harrison 21:43

True. Indeed. Now there's an article I came across, TJ recently where it was a Kitsis Michael Kitzis article where the financial advisor he interviewed had actually created some data around the Roth 401K and was contesting some of our general knowledge on it and saying that maybe a Roth 401k isn't the best investment during your peak earning years. Did you have to come across that article?

TJ van Gerven 22:14

I did, yes, I did.

Yohance Harrison 22:16

What were your thoughts on it?

TJ van Gerven 22:18

Yeah, I think it's a great point. I think a lot of people will get confused about Roth versus traditional. So one thing that's really important to understand is that if your tax rate is the same, your income tax rate is the same today as it is 30 years from now. It doesn't matter whether you put it in the Roth or traditional. Okay. The tax savings comes if you are in for Roth, for example, a lower income tax bracket now than in the future because when you pull it out, you're avoiding that higher income tax later in life. Right. So like you said, if you're in your prime earning years and you're in that, you're in the highest income bracket for you personally that you're going to be in. This is again, a speculation. You don't know, but you have a good idea, then. Yeah, you probably do want to go pre tax so that you can get that valuable deduction. Right. And then when you're in early retirement years or you take time off from work, then those are years to consider either converting some money to a Roth account or prioritizing Roth contributions.

Yohance Harrison 23:15

Yeah. And you bring up a great point. And I think it just goes back to what we stated earlier with predicting the markets. You threw a lot of assumptions out there about how much money am I earning in the future, what are tax rates in the future or what, what are your cash flow requirements in the future? And so that what I like to share with clients is that I just think it'd be cool to have choices. Yeah. So if you've been someone and I don't, I. That's the other thing about peak earning years. How do we know these are your peak earning years? Okay. So what I share with clients is, look, I think you'd want to have some choices in the future. And if you want to make some assumptions, I just ask them, do you think taxes will be the same, go up or go down? No one says go down. Okay. Do you think your income would be the same go up or go down? Now it's only the pre retirees as they go down because they're expecting their income to go down. But the folks that are like 30, 40 years old, onward and upward, baby. Let's go.

TJ van Gerven 23:46

Right.

TJ van Gerven 24:13

Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, one thing to note, I guess that I do have some concerns about with different administrations is right now you can go to usdetclock.com or.org and see the actual, the different, where our money's going basically. And right now we're paying for the.

Yohance Harrison 24:31

Sake of keeping my lunch down. I'm not going to pull that one up because it makes me sick every time. But, but go ahead, T.J. i'm sorry for.

TJ van Gerven 24:38

No, you're good. Yeah. So basically, like we're spending more on our interest expense currently than we are on our defense budget. Right. So. And we spend a lot on defense. And so basically anytime we increase the deficit, meaning that we spend more as a country than we make, what that really is, is we're kicking the can down the road and we're going to basically future generations or whatever are going to have to pay that as we increase the debt. Right. We're going to have to figure out how to increase Taxes to pay that. So this is another reason also, like you said, to build for balance, right? Is at least have some tax free bucket of money and take advantage of. Like even if you are a high income earner, for example, and you are doing pre tax contributions to your 401k, you can still do a backdoor Roth IRA, right? They still get that $7,000 into that Roth IRA. You're still building that bucket over time and having some future flexibility.

Yohance Harrison 25:31

And shame on you, Congress and IRS. You didn't increase the IRA contributions for 2025. What are we doing here?

TJ van Gerven 25:37

No inflation adjustment or anything.

Yohance Harrison 25:39

Come on. All the inflation we had, what are we doing? Ladies and gentlemen, please write a letter to your local congressperson and say, really, what are we doing? That's all the letter needs to say. Well, and then say the Roth contributions and IRA contributions will go up. But it should start off with, really, what are we doing here? So, tj, with every guest on the show, we like to ask them a question about their past. That question is, will you share with us your first memory of money?

TJ van Gerven 26:11

Man, I got a lot of them. I mean, first memory of money is. I mean, the first one that comes to mind is, you know, my, my dad during 07 08, got a little extended with, you know, trying to make a real estate, you know, build some sweat equity in a real estate transaction. Got over his head and ended up actually having to, you know, sell our home at the time.

Yohance Harrison 26:37

Like the home you were living in? Oh, that's heavy.

TJ van Gerven 26:39

Yeah. Yeah.

TJ van Gerven 26:42

Yeah, it was tough. It was tough and, you know, we figured it out and I actually, I lived with a friend for a year to say I got heavy quick. Yeah,

Yohance Harrison 26:50

Okay.

TJ van Gerven 26:53

that was a big one. I mean, that was just the first one that comes. I'm sure there's ones before that, but.

Yohance Harrison 26:57

I mean, that, that, that's. I think that one takes the cake. Wow. So I follow up questions. How old were you?

TJ van Gerven 27:06

I was like 12 at the time. Yeah, 12.

Yohance Harrison 27:10

So for those of you that didn't pick up on the words he didn't say is. What he said is that him and his family were homeless for a short period of time because his father was forced to sell the home they were in due to being overextended in the real estate bubble of 08.09. TJ, my heart goes out to you. Is your father still with us? Okay, good.

TJ van Gerven 27:30

Yeah, he is, yeah. Now he bounced back, man.

Yohance Harrison 27:33

Hey, when you see him, give him a hug for me, man, that's.

TJ van Gerven 27:37

It was a tough time. For him. Yeah, I saw him definitely, you know, mental health struggle. He also came from very much like a scarcity type mindset, where he was one of six. His parents were Dutch immigrants, and he was very poor to grow up, so he worked so hard for that money. And he. He. Real estate was really, to him, kind of the safest type of investment because it's tangible.

Yohance Harrison 28:00

So he learned. He learned with safety.

TJ van Gerven 28:02

Yeah, yeah. So that would probably be one of my. And then obviously that kind of inspired me to be like, okay, well, yeah, I kind of.

Yohance Harrison 28:11

I also was able to put that together as well. I don't know if our guests were, but. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Or our listeners. Yes.

TJ van Gerven 28:16

Yeah. It makes sense. Why I'm a financial planner today is really just like, figuring out. I was confused at the time. One thing I actually used to ask him was like, how is everybody struggling at the same time? I kind of viewed, like, economies as, like a zero sum game. Right. Not everybody can be struggling. If somebody's struggling, there should be somebody doing well, should be a winner on. Yeah. But there really was winners. Yeah. Or at least I know.

Yohance Harrison 28:35

The other side, you would think.

Yohance Harrison 28:38

Yeah. Well, they were. They just all had already kind of rode off into the sunset and left America holding the bag.

TJ van Gerven 28:46

That's right. And the taxpayer eventually. Right. With the. So, yeah. So, I mean, those are, I guess, the kind of, you know, financial traumas. Right. That shape you as a person.

Yohance Harrison 28:58

That's huge. Well, tj, thank you. All the thanks to your father for fortunately and unfortunately taking you through that valuable lesson. Because now look at all the people that you're touching with that, with your expertise on how to not make some of the same mistakes. You know, we. We can. We can absolutely learn by doing. But if someone wants to tell me that, hey, watch out, there's crocodiles in that river, I'll take the word for it. Okay, cool. I don't need to swim in the river to find out. So I'm. I'm very happy that it turned into a positive for you, and I'm sure it is for all the great work that you do for your clients.

TJ van Gerven 29:36

Yeah, I mean, that's. The goal is like, you know, money. You know, it's a cliche, but money is just a tool. Right. So we want to avoid having attachment to it. We want to use it. I mean, the idea of building wealth, in my opinion, is actually to use it. Right. It's not just for the sole purpose of running up the numbers. So, yeah, I love the idea of really maximizing your resources. So that you can do more with your money. Right? That's the, that's the goal.

Yohance Harrison 29:58

That's the goal. Do more with. I see what you did there. So, ladies and gents, yes, it's a new day in the United States of America. We have another president. Happens, excuse me, about every four or sometimes eight years. It just so happens that this one is a previous version that we've kind of seen before. It's almost like, you know, you sold your car and then you went back and bought it again. Okay, why don't we get rid of that car? Let me get it back. So what impact is it going to have on taxes? What impact is it going to have on the stock market? Well, over the last four days it's been positive, but long term. But sources say that probably the market's going to go up and it's probably going to go down and it's probably going to go up some more. So more of the same. But as TJ was sharing, focus on your goals, focus on your relationship with money. Focus on the economy that is in your household. That is the most important economy to you, is the economic factors, the fiscal policies of your household. And of course, if you need some help, reach out to a financial advisor. Doesn't have to be me, doesn't have to be tj, but it should be someone. Find someone that you can trust. Do the little chat. GPT. What are 10 questions I should ask before hiring a financial advisor? It'll give you 10 great questions to ask. Interview someone and get some help. And by all means, as I mentioned earlier, share this with just one person. Yeah, that person. The one you just thought of. Share it with that person and hopefully they will start to improve their financial literacy as well. So with that, we will see you next time on the Money Short podcast. Thank you TJ so much for spending some time with us and we'll see you next week.

TJ van Gerven 31:42

Thank you.

Seth Harrison 31:57

I'm back. Wasn't that a great show? I hope you learned something. I know I did. Now, before you go trying anything you heard today, remember it is not intended to be specific tax or legal advice. If you need that, go see a CPA or an attorney. If you would like any complimentary consultation with a knowledgeable advisor, visit moneyscript.com and schedule a 15 minute consultation. Want Johans to come speak at your next event? Go to the MoneyScript website for that too. Of course, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like comment, subscribe and click the bell for notifications. MoneyScript Wealth Management is a registered financial advisory service in multiple states. Want to learn more? Get the full disclosure on our website moneyscript.com.