Stephanie McCullough (00:06):

Welcome to Take Back Retirement, the show for women 50 and better, facing a financial future on their own. I’m Stephanie McCullough, and along with my fellow financial planner, Kevin Gaines, we’re going to tackle the myths and mysteries of “Retirement,” so you can make wise decisions toward a sustainable financial future. Through conversations and interviews, you’ll get the information and motivation you need, to move forward with confidence. And we’ll be sure to have some fun along the way. We’re so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Stephanie McCullough (00:40):

Picture this. The client says…

Kevin Gaines (00:44):

It’s crazy to have so much money earning nothing.

Stephanie McCullough (00:48):

To which the advisor responds…

Kevin Gaines (00:51):

Well, let’s talk about that.

Stephanie McCullough (00:57):

Coming to you semi-live from the beautiful Westlakes Office Park in suburban Philadelphia, this is Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines of Sofia Financial and American Financial Management Group. Say hello, Kevin.

Kevin Gaines (01:08):

Hello, Kevin.

Stephanie McCullough (01:09):

So our little role-play earlier, we decided to talk about this, because Kevin and I, as financial planners, get this question on a very regular basis from clients. We’re at a very low interest rate environment right now, your money in the bank isn’t earning a lot and this bothers people. And yet in a well-thought-out financial plan, cash, money in the bank, plays a very pivotal role. So we’re going to walk you through the conversation we have with clients when this comes up.

Kevin Gaines (01:40):

So the first thing that we want to talk about is the job of money. Yes, every dollar you have has a different purpose. Some are long-term, some are short-term, some are going to be for fun. Some is going to be for just reserve if you need. Everything has a purpose. I would think Stephanie, that’s really the first thing we need to define is the purpose of any particular dollar to figure out what are we going to do with it? And then where should it be?

Stephanie McCullough (02:17):

Yeah. And it is step zero, and it might feel intimidating as I just sat here and listened to you say that Kevin, that every single dollar has a purpose and people might be saying, “Oh, I haven’t given every one of my dollars or purpose.” And that’s okay, absolutely, right? You could have a pot of money that’s for “retirement,” whatever the heck that means, or a pot of money that’s for stuff you might need in 10 years. But especially with this question of how much should I have in the bank in cash, we want to get really clear on, all right, what does this pot of money need to do for you? We’re fond of thinking about buckets of money or pots of money for different jobs. So this money that you’ve had in the bank for a while now, Mr. Client, Mrs. Client, that you think is too much earning too little, what’s it for?

Kevin Gaines (03:06):

And that answer is going to say, should we have it in cash or not? So Stephanie, talking about the issues of jargon and such, let’s define, what do we mean when we say cash? When we talk to clients and say, hey, we should have this in cash or this much in cash, what do we mean? And where do you put cash? That’s also an interesting conversation.

Stephanie McCullough (03:31):

Mm-hmm. This is important. This is a good thing to get into, because I remember when I was first becoming a baby financial advisor and reading about this stuff and that there is an actual technical definition of what cash is. And actually, there’s a couple of different things that fit that definition. So whenever we’re looking at a financial vehicle, we’re going to ask what the characteristics are of the vehicle. And especially in the case of cash, it has some very particular characteristics, which, as we’ll get into, makes it appropriate for certain jobs. So one of the key characteristics of cash is that it’s liquid.

Kevin Gaines (04:11):

Right. And what does liquid mean? Well, in a nutshell, it means you can get it the moment you need it, or darn near as soon as you can get it. Your checking account is about as liquid as it can be. And quite frankly, the way payments systems work nowadays, your checking account actually might be more liquid than the dollars sitting in your wallet.

Stephanie McCullough (04:37):

Yeah. Venmo and that kind of stuff.

Kevin Gaines (04:37):

You can only pay so many people in cash. Exactly. The checking accounts, they could actually be more liquid than cash. That’s physical cash, I mean.

Stephanie McCullough (04:51):

Well, right when we were kids, cash was like dollars in your pocket, right? And so there is a different definition of cash. So part number one of cash is that it’s liquid. You can get at it quickly and easily. And then part number two is that you’re not taking any downside risk. You know the value of it.

Kevin Gaines (05:12):

Right. And this is important, because let’s be honest, a mutual fund is liquid. A stock is liquid. You can sell that sucker and in two days that money, it could be sitting in your checking account.

Stephanie McCullough (05:24):

Right.

Kevin Gaines (05:25):

That’s pretty darn liquid. And you don’t have to follow the investment markets very closely. Just watch the six o’clock news, market is up 2% one day, down 5% a month later. It’s hard to rely on that amount of money being there when you need it. So a known value is important.

Stephanie McCullough (05:47):

That’s a key characteristic of cash. And really when I used to give enrollment meetings for retirement plans, 401(k)s and 403(b)s, I would try to make this point. The difference between saving and investing. When you’re saving, you’re putting money in the bank, in cash vehicles, in something that you know is going to be there. When you’re investing, it could go up, it could go down. Now of course, the only reason we take the downside risk is that we believe the investments over time will outperform the cash. They will have a higher return over time. So, as I’m talking about time, we’re starting to get an idea that if this is a short-term need or an uncertain need, you don’t want to be taking that downside risk.

Kevin Gaines (06:34):

Right. Because if you’re going to use the money in a month, do you care about having a chance to earn 20, 30%? Not really. You need the money in four weeks. The most important characteristic is having that money there.

Stephanie McCullough (06:49):

Because if I need it in four weeks, let’s say I got $200 sitting there, I need $200 in four weeks. If it’s invested, it might be $150 in four weeks. But I need 200.

Kevin Gaines (06:59):

Right.

Stephanie McCullough (07:00):

So that’s really…when people complain that it’s not growing very fast, it’s not earning much interest, that is very true. And the flip side of that, because there’s pros and cons and everything and trade offs in everything financial, the flip side of the not earning much is that there’s no downside risk. And when people say, well, can’t I find something that’s going to earn me some more money with no downside risk? Not really, right? We’ll talk about the different types of cash, but anytime you’re going to go for a significantly higher return, you’re going to pay a price for that. The price is that you’re going to have some volatility.

Kevin Gaines (07:36):

You hear any advisor or financial talking head out there and they talk about how much money you can make investing in something, or how much risk there is involved with something. They always use two words. Risk/reward. Because you don’t have one without the other. To borrow from the old song, it’s like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other. Well, risk/reward, same thing. So they do go hand in hand. If you’re going to be going for some reward, understand there’s going to be risk. And going back to the point we just made, if you need this money in two or three weeks, do you want the risk? Can you afford the risk? And normally the answer’s no.

Stephanie McCullough (08:18):

Kevin, you are an old soul. Some of your cultural references skew older than your age would suggest, just saying.

Kevin Gaines (08:27):

Hey, what’s wrong with quoting the Chairman of the Board? I’m sorry, man.

Stephanie McCullough (08:30):

I didn’t know that song until I watched… What was that television show? With a-

Kevin Gaines (08:35):

Married with Children.

Stephanie McCullough (08:36):

Married with Children. And I didn’t know that song until Married with Children came along.

Kevin Gaines (08:39):

Oh yeah.

Stephanie McCullough (08:40):

Okay. So we have kind of alluded to this, but there are different places to hold cash or things that a financial person would consider to be cash. Money in your wallet, yes. Money in wallet is cash. The stuff in your checking account is cash. Now checking account, depending on your bank, you might earn a little tiny bit of interest, whereas the money in your wallet, if you hold it too long, could start to lose value in terms of inflation. But it’s not just those two things, Kevin. Where else can you find something that we would consider to be cash?

Kevin Gaines (09:12):

Lots of places. Banks don’t only have checking accounts. They also have savings accounts. And you poke around on the internet, type in earn more on your savings, you’re going to find these high-yield savings accounts out there, whether it’s SoFi or Ally, or… There’s a plethora of online banking things out there that are going to pay you more interest just to hold your cash. It’s cash. It’s fairly liquid. But once you get beyond checking, savings, bank savings accounts, all of a sudden now you’ve got to start asking questions about rules, because you can also talk about a money market account, whether it’s at your bank or you can go with a mutual fund company, whether it’s Vanguard, Fidelity, whoever, they have accounts that are just money markets. There’s not supposed to be any risk associated with it. It has that dollar per share values and it works like a savings account.

Kevin Gaines (10:13):

But again, there’s rules. There might be minimums to withdrawal. Or number of times you can take money out in a month. Or how much notice you have to give. Which then takes us to CDs. For example CDs are liquid, if you’re willing to take the penalty, if you take it out early and typically the penalty is just loss of interest, which if you’re saving for something and that money you put into the CD is what you intend to spend, okay, you’ll lose the interest, it’s not the end of the world. But there are rules you need to be familiar with.

Stephanie McCullough (10:50):

So a CD is a certificate of deposit with a bank. Usually they have a period of time associated with them. So then you get to the, are they really liquid? Well, as Kevin mentioned, yeah, you can take your money out, but maybe you’re going to give up some interest normally. But they’re going to give you a slightly higher interest rate than just a savings account, because you’re locking your money up, in theory, for three months, for nine months, for a year, for three years, for five years.

Stephanie McCullough (11:15):

So some people will ask me, well, should I get a CD? Okay, well how much higher interest are you going to get on that than just your savings account? And is it worth that trade off of perhaps a little bit less liquidity.

Kevin Gaines (11:28):

Right.

Stephanie McCullough (11:28):

But Kevin, as you mentioned before we pushed record, there is another thing that people often put on their list of cash or cash management, accessibility. Some people will say, well, I’ve got a line of credit, maybe a home equity line of credit or a line of credit with the bank. Shouldn’t that count as part of my cash?

Kevin Gaines (11:51):

Well, as we defined cash, the shorthand, initially, it sounds like it would be, yes. It can be liquid. You can easily move the money into your checking account. It’s a known value. You have the line of credit there, say, we’ll give you a 10,000, 100,000, whatever. But then it falls apart once you go to that next step, because if you spend cash, what is going to be the cost to you? Well, you’re not going to earn interest. But if you spend the line of credit, now all of a sudden you have to pay interest and interest rates aren’t all that high right now compared to where it’s been in history, but it’s still a cost. It’s not free money. And that’s something that you need to take into account.

Stephanie McCullough (12:41):

The bank would like you to think about it as cash, but it’s really debt. It’s a loan. It’s borrowing. So be careful about that. Any particular situation, we would want to talk in more detail. But be careful about relying on that too much. So we’ve talked about the characteristics of cash, the different places you would keep cash, but then people often come to us with the big puzzling question, like, “How much should I have in cash?” Very often people will have had some kind of event. Maybe they sold a house. Maybe there was a divorce. Maybe there was an inheritance. And they have a chunk of cash sitting in the bank and they’re like, “Oh, this is driving me crazy. It’s not earning anything.” And then we go through the exercise of figuring out, well, how much really should you have in cash? So we were thinking, Kevin, that there might be three different pieces to that equation of coming up with the number for you.

Kevin Gaines (13:40):

Right. And the first one is the one you hear us talking about frequently. Emergency savings. Because we always say, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and if the unexpected happens, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to use your investments or that you’ll have a particular amount of income, or guaranteed cashflow coming in or something like that, you need this rainy day fund that you can tap. So obviously that should be something that you can grab to immediately if you need it, AKA cash. But then the question becomes, and Stephanie, I know you have this conversation a lot, how much emergency savings should you have? And in a very definitive answer, we’re going to say, it depends.

Stephanie McCullough (14:34):

I’m sure you’re all shocked, dear listeners. But yes, I’ve heard this called the emergency funds, the buffer, the cash cushion, the F U fund. If you all of a sudden don’t like your boss, or your spouse, and you want to get out. So yeah, the classic financial advice is three to six months of your expenses. I have clients who feel comfortable with 12 months. They want to know they can float themselves for a year out of the cash they’ve got on hand without having to borrow, without having to use credit cards, without having to sell an investment or potentially do something a little bit more drastic. It is to some extent a question of personal comfort.

Kevin Gaines (15:12):

Right. And again there’s a whole episode about emergency savings. So without going into too much detail, it also depends on how risky is your life. I mean, if you work in the office, you collect your regular salary, things are fairly predictable, you work for a big company. Maybe that situation dictates that you would be comfortable with a little less than six months. But if you’re self-employed, you work on commission, you’re just seeing what’s going around with your income, AKA the company you work for, you may say, “Yeah, I need a little bit more because I’m not quite sure, things could go squirrelly fast on us.” That’s one way to think of it.

Stephanie McCullough (15:54):

So that brings up another category of this conversation of how much cash should I have. If there is any looming uncertainty in your life, maybe you’re planning to move next year, or you’re planning to search for a new job, or maybe there’s a new baby coming along, or if somebody is going to school, somehow your expenses are going to change. Maybe there’s a divorce in the offing, right? Any of that stuff where you’re not exactly sure what the future holds, I believe that are used for increasing your cash level, because you don’t really know what’s going to come about. There might be some changes, heck, with a move there’s always expenses you didn’t think about. If you’re buying something big, there’s going to be unexpected expenses. And the worst case scenario is, “Oh, you know what? I had that cash sitting aside and I didn’t need it.” Oh, that is definitely not the worst surprise to have.

Kevin Gaines (16:47):

Right. We think of it this way a lot of times in our conversations is, cash gives you flexibility and you want flexibility when you’re not sure. The more certain you are, hopefully right. That you’re right, that you’re… To be certain, you don’t need that flexibility so you don’t need as much cash. But if things are in flux, cash is the ultimate in flexibility. But there’s another point we wanted to touch on, Stephanie, is okay, fine, we talked about the stuff that you always hear financial advisors talk about, but let’s go to budgeting 101. You’re going to go to Disney next month. You may want to have cash for that. It’s not emergency savings. It’s not uncertainty or anything. In fact, it’s darn certain, you already got the tickets, you got the reservations made and all that stuff, right? So yes, upcoming expense. Known upcoming expense. Car. You want to buy a new car. Might want to have the cash set aside for that.

Stephanie McCullough (17:45):

Yep. Kids going to a school trip and they got to write that check, right? Anything that’s coming up in the next, what would you say? I would say if you know it’s happening in the next year, maybe even a little bit further out than a year, that argues for more cash in the bank.

Kevin Gaines (18:02):

Right. And the bigger the expense, I would also say. If it’s, again, Disney, 12 months from now, probably want to have cash or at least some of that in cash. A car coming up. Again, it’s a big expense. Have that cash set aside. If you know you’re going to go out and have a dinner. Yes. I know. Who pays cash for dinner anymore? But work with us on this one.

Stephanie McCullough (18:25):

You’re going to have to pay that credit card bill.

Kevin Gaines (18:27):

You got to pay the credit card bill. Exactly. And it’s a smaller amount. You don’t necessarily need to have as much.

Stephanie McCullough (18:34):

Well, and then I’ve had people who are planning to buy a house in three years. That’s a big expense, right? So maybe they’re having to put a couple hundred thousand dollars down as a down payment. Yes, that money should be in cash. You really don’t want to take investment risk with something. And maybe you don’t know exactly the timeframe, right? Especially in this housing market, I hope to buy a house in two years, what if the perfect thing comes up in 14 months?

Stephanie McCullough (18:59):

Or it’s taking you longer than you expect to find it. I still believe that money just needs to be sitting in the bank. And here’s a trick that we use pretty often and we suggest to people. If you can find a bank that’s not going to charge you extra fees, having separate savings accounts for separate purposes. And my bank even lets me on the app and when I log in, I can rename them. This is the vacation fund, and this is the new car fund, and… That has a psychological effect, too. I’m going to be less likely to raid the new house fund for a new pair of shoes than if it was just all sitting in the same savings account. So sometimes that’s a little trick that can help.

Kevin Gaines (19:40):

Well, speaking of being older than my years, who out there remembers club accounts that you used to have? You used to have the Christmas club account, there was a vacation club account, and I also remember at our credit union we also had…They called it the ‘you name it’ club account. Not that you actually got the name it whatever you want, but they had it there because they knew people, well, we needed to save for Christmas and needed to save for vacation. And there’s just this other unnamed special savings account.

Stephanie McCullough (20:10):

Right. It could be anything. So how much cash should you have? How much do you feel comfortable as an emergency fund? Do you need a buffer for any looming uncertainty, and then upcoming spending in the next year to three? Depending. That is the equation that we feel comfortable walking people through to figure out, okay, that’s the amount you should have in some type of cash or other. We can talk about which cash vehicles. But then let’s say you’ve got more than that, right? Just inherited from great aunt Myrtle. And you figured out how much cash you needed, but there’s more than that in the bank. Then what should you be doing with that money?

Kevin Gaines (20:47):

Me? I’m going to Disney World. I don’t know.

Stephanie McCullough (20:52):

No, you’re not. You’re going to Atlantic City, let’s be truthful. You’re going to Vegas, baby.

Kevin Gaines (20:56):

I was going to say, depending on how much cash, it’s Vegas baby. Or if I’m lucky enough to win the lottery, it’s Monte Carlo, baby. But anyway,

Stephanie McCullough (21:03):

I’m going to Paris. Just saying.

Kevin Gaines (21:06):

Yeah. And that’s where I lose my wife, because yeah, once we cross the pond she’s staying in Paris and I’m going to have to go south on my own, which… She’ll probably be happy to be away with me for a while, so anyway, sorry, Melissa.

Stephanie McCullough (21:19):

Now we’re getting too personal.

Kevin Gaines (21:23):

So what do you do with this extra money? Well, and notice we said money, not cash, because, yes, it’s cash at the moment, but we’re going to do something with it. So what about your retirement accounts? Have you maxed them out for the year? More importantly, have you contributed enough in your workplace retirement, whether it’s 401(k), 403(b), whatever letters, number combinations you actually have. Have you contributed at least enough to make sure you get the company match? We’ve said it before. For all intents and purposes, that’s free money. So it’s real easy to get a decent return on those particular dollars. The trade off, it’s not very liquid.

Stephanie McCullough (22:10):

Right. So anytime we’re going from the cash to the investing, right? That’s what we’re doing now. We’re crossing that time, horizon line. We’re assuming we don’t need it for short term stuff. So now if it’s longer term stuff, we might want to invest it. We want to try to get a higher return over time and because it’s longer term we’re okay with taking a little volatility. So yeah, I totally agree. Maxing out those retirement plans, if you can. And then, are you able to contribute to a Roth IRA? Are you eligible? Reference our episode number 20 for more details than you wanted to know about Roth IRAs. But your future self will be really happy if there’s some money in a Roth IRA, just saying. And believe me, if you should pass away, your kids will like it way better than your regular old 401(k).

Kevin Gaines (22:58):

Absolutely. And a quick other point about the Roth is, as a reminder, this is after-tax money that is going into the Roth so you never pay tax again on it. All right. So we’re going down the conversation list, number three on the list. HSAs. Just talked about it, episode 27. Health Savings Accounts. Great way to save for medical expenses in your retirement years or, theoretically, next week even, if you have that expense. So yeah, that’s something good to put your cash into if you can. And again, it kind of works as a savings and it gets back to, depending on how risk averse you are, you might feel comforted knowing that if I have a medical expense, which is looming uncertainty, emergency fund, some of the times you would use cash, you have this HSA. Those dollars are there that you can access fairly quickly. And assuming you have it invested in cash, as opposed to some sort of risk/reward vehicle, you have a known value, so it’s still cash, but now it’s actually in a tax favored vehicle. Downside is you can only use it for certain things, AKA medical bills.

Stephanie McCullough (24:14):

And that’s assuming you’re eligible for one and you’ve made the decision that it’s the right way to go, of course.

Kevin Gaines (24:18):

Exactly.

Stephanie McCullough (24:18):

As we mentioned, see episode 27 for more than you ever wanted to know about HSAs. Okay, but if none of these things qualify for you…I guess we should say if you’re self-employed, right? Some kind of self-employment retirement vehicle is definitely if you get a 1099 at all, either in addition to, or as opposed to a W2, which means you’re self-employed, then there are certain retirement vehicles you can do, which would probably have to do a whole episode on that.

Kevin Gaines (24:48):

I was going to say, that’s going to be episode number X. We actually haven’t done it yet, but yes, self-employed retirement plans are probably a very important episode for us to have at some point.

Stephanie McCullough (24:59):

So all those four that we just mentioned, those will give you some kind of a tax break, but, and I think people overlook this, you don’t have to get a tax break to invest, right? What if there’s some goal that you have that’s not short-term, but it might be before “retirement”. Before all those years that you get into with the rules around IRAs and such. Maybe there’s a dream to start a business, or buy a vacation home, maybe it’s taking a giant trip with the family, or something that’s maybe 10 years out and that’s-pre retirement.

Stephanie McCullough (25:34):

It is perfectly fine to open an account and invest your money for those type of goals, right? The way you invest, the actual things you buy, the risk levels you take might be different than in your retirement accounts, because perhaps we’re talking about a shorter time horizon, but it’s still long-term. So I think sometimes people get caught up in the, “Oh, I’ve already met the limit on my IRA. I’ve maxed out my 401(k). I’m done investing.” Heck no, you can open up as many retirement accounts as you want. The good part being, there’s no rules around it, because there’s no tax breaks around it, so it’s your money you can use whenever you like.

Kevin Gaines (26:15):

Absolutely. And then again, like you said, whenever you like, however you’d like. Yes, you don’t get the tax benefit. Even if in your mind, this is retirement savings, six months down the road, you know what? Let’s take a trip, we’ll tap this money. It’s not ideal, okay? And six months, that kind of defeats the argument we’ve been making that short-term spending you don’t want to take too much risk for. But it’s there. Grab it when you want it. As long as the IRS gets paid, they don’t care what you do with it. That’s probably one of the easiest ways to define all these accounts. Does the IRS get paid? The IRS gets paid. It tells you how complicated the rules may be.

Stephanie McCullough (26:52):

Right. Yep. So on that case I’m going to open up an investment account that’s not got the word retirement in it somewhere or other, how should I be investing that money? And that’s when you get to like, well, do you think it’s just to supplement your retirement accounts in retirement? Or is it something that you might be tapping for who knows what, trip, home, heck, medical expenses, you don’t know, right? Then maybe you want to be a little bit more conservative with it. But when people ask me my own personal regrets on my financial situation, that’s something I wish I had been doing more along the way, is building up a pile of investments that were not in a retirement account, right? I’ve got my cash stuff going. I’ve got my retirement accounts in pretty good shape. That middle piece, personally, is something that I haven’t done as well about.

Kevin Gaines (27:42):

Me? I’m actually the opposite. I’ve been very good about putting money in that non-retirement investment account. Where I’ve fallen short is I then take it out to do something silly or frivolous with. So at the end of the day, I’m pretty much where you are Stephanie, but I put the money in. I just was taking it out as well. So, I kind of lose any moral superiority there real fast.

Stephanie McCullough (28:13):

But I talked to a friend this weekend and they had decided to invest in some rental property near where they live. And they had some investments that were outside of the retirement structure, because they’re not yet 59 and a half. They had an investment that had done pretty well over the years. So they sold that investment to plop the money down for this new rental property. So they’re moving from one type of investment to another type of investment, right? Real estate is a different type of investment than the stuff that Kevin and I more often deal with. But when you’re not inside a retirement vehicle, yeah, you can use this any time to do the things you want to.

Kevin Gaines (28:51):

So Stephanie, cash. Is it good? To answer our beginning question, what do you talk with clients about when you say cash and why you want cash, even though you earn nothing, quote, unquote.

Stephanie McCullough (29:09):

I am a big fan of cash, I have to say. Cash plays a very important role in your financial life, in your financial plan. So people do get down on themselves. “I can’t believe I’ve had this much sitting in cash.” Hey, no, cash is not stupid. Cash is important. You need quite a bit of cash, right? As we said, emergency fund, F U fund, that all should be cash, any upcoming spending, and then uncertainty. But yes, it’s perhaps true that some people could have quote unquote too much cash. And that’s when you start back again with question zero. All right, what’s this money’s job? We’ve delineated emergency fund money, uncertainty money, and future spending money, like one to three years, maybe. All right. Maybe you’ve got more than that. What’s that money’s job, right? That’s the next juicy question to dig into.

Stephanie McCullough (30:05):

And I think it’s fun. Like, I have some dollars here. Let’s give them a job. And guess what? It’s okay if we change our mind, it’s okay if the job changes in a month or in three years, that’s fine. You have an asset there that you had thoughtfully put aside for your future self, and now your future self has options. Kevin mentioned flexibility earlier. We like flexibility. We like options because life changes, we’re always guessing when we’re doing financial planning. And it’s perfectly okay to guess. And it’s perfectly okay to change our minds.

Kevin Gaines (30:37):

Think about it this way. We’re talking about this money having a job. How often have you changed your job? How often have I changed my job? We changed jobs, so why can’t our money change jobs? Life is ongoing. Things are going to happen. Two, three weeks from now may give you a slightly different outlook. Don’t get hung up on, “Oh, this can only be for this or that.” Hey, if your life changes, let your money change with you.

Stephanie McCullough (31:08):

That’s why we emphasize the importance of financial planning as an ongoing practice and not a financial plan, as a forever snapshot that you have to stick to forever. Well, that’s crazy. That’s not how life works, right? So come up with your current strategy. Move forward. Every year that goes by is another year you know what happened, and then you adjust. That’s what we do.

Kevin Gaines (31:33):

Absolutely. Couldn’t have ended it better myself.

Stephanie McCullough (31:36):

Thanks for being with us today, we’ll talk to you next time. It’s goodbye from me…

Kevin Gaines (31:40):

And it’s goodbye from her.

Stephanie McCullough (31:44):

Be sure to subscribe to the show and please share it with your friends. Show notes and more information available at takebackretirement.com. Huge thanks for the original music by the one and only, Raymond Loewy through New Math in New York. See you next time.

Disclaimer (31:58):

Investment advice offered through private advisor group, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Private advisor group, American Financial Management Group, and Sofia Financial are separate entities. The opinions voiced in this material, are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice, or recommendations for any individual security. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor, prior to investing. This information is not intended to be substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.