January 2024
Stay tuned for more Couchside Conversations episodes! We have topics coming up like…
- Battle of the Spouses: Financial Edition
- Parenting Tips for Financially Savvy Kids
- Protecting Your Family Using Insurance
- Gen X: Complexities of the “Sandwich Generation”
Watch previous Couchside Conversations episodes here:
How to Maximize Vacations for a Better Life | Couchside Conversations (Ep. 1)
Investing in Your Community: Charitable Giving & Impact | Couchside Conversations (Ep. 2)
Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here today. The name of this session is Current Me vs. Future Me: The Modern Investor Dilemma. My name is Priscilla Brehm. I am a wealth advisor at Morton Wealth. And Stacey McKinnon is my co-presenter today. She is also a wealth advisor and our chief operating officer and our chief marketing officer. Stacey, I think we both agreed in preparing for today that this is not just an investor dilemma, but it's a human dilemma. And again, one experienced by all of us throughout our lifetimes. The first time I remember experiencing current me versus Future Me was when I was seven years old. I grew up on a small farm in Iowa and we always had lots of food on the table.
But cash was sometimes hard to come by. So imagine my delight when my dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a bright, shiny nickel and gave it to me. So there I was in Pee-Wee's Grocery store in Webb, Iowa, standing in front of the candy display, pondering my choices. When this little voice came into my head and say, Hey, wait a minute, maybe you should take that nickel and put it into your piggy bank and save it for your bicycle.
So my dilemma was sweets or savings Current Me vs. Future Me. How do you choose? Well, there's an old African proverb that says it takes an entire village to raise a child, and I think it to make good financial life choices. It takes time and energy and expertise and wisdom. It takes a village. So, Stacey, would you start our conversation today by sharing who is in your village and how do they help you?
Yeah, I'm happy to share that. And I share this earlier that if I wouldn't have started at Martin Wealth ten years ago, I wouldn't have known how to make good financial decisions for myself or my family. I didn't have the opportunity to have education in many ways. This is my soapbox moment. I think our education system has failed us.
I feel like everybody like goes through school. They get sent out into the world. They have to make decisions every single day. Money is at the center of so many decisions and we are not trained how to make those well. And so I'm so grateful for the opportunity to work at Martin and even be a part of it and be a partner in its future, too.
And that's why we're so passionate about education. So as I've started on my own personal wealth journey, I've also had to learn how to rely on the advice of others. I often times go to our partners and advisors, and when I'm trying to make a financial decision and I ask them for advice because it's a very different experience to give yourself advice than it is for someone else to.
And even though I do this for a living, I still want to get that other opinion. So I wanted to share a quick story of, you know, a time this happened in my life. More recently, my husband and I met when we were five years old on the elementary school playground. He's in the back right now wearing the hat.
You can look at him if you want to. He's just a. So we grew up in Lake Tahoe, California, in northern California. And while we've lived here for 20 years, Tahoe still feels like home to us. That's where we grew up. That's where we identify. So over the last few years, I've been on the search for a cabin in Tahoe so that I could have, like, that little piece of home that means a lot to us.
And it was on the search. And then last Thanksgiving, I finally found it. It's 5 minutes away, walking distance from my parents. It's one mile away from where he grew up. And we were so excited. We fell in love with this cabin. We are overcome by emotions. But then we recognized that interest rates had risen to six and a half or 7%, and the financial advisor in me was like, Can I do it?
Can I stomach this? You know, rise in interest rates? And so what I did is I went to our wealth advisor and a partner, Chris Zaleski, and I had Chris run a mini financial plan for me. I needed him to like, help me with this. And what we realized in running the financial plan is that I would have to pause making contributions to my four own K in order to afford the mortgage on the house.
And I was struggling with this decision, you know, because it felt like the right thing to do would be the 401k. But then he helped me to see that both of 401k and real estate are good investments, but only one of them gives me the memories I want with my family. And so as a Christmas present to ourselves, we bought the cabin in Tahoe last year and it's been such a blessing in our life.
But that's an example of, I think, how current me versus future Me plays out in real life. And just the impact of having amazing people in your life. Actually, my mortgage brokers in the room right now and CPA somewhere, they help give you that advice.
So, Stacie, you talk about people who were in your village. What would be an example of someone who would not make it to your village.
People who would not value the fact that I wanted a cabin in Tahoe.
So really, it's it's not about the numbers. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's about the numbers, but it's really about living your best life.
Exactly. Yeah. And it's so important to take into consideration both of those aspects. Right. The numbers and what's like theoretically the right decision and don't don't get me wrong, I'm I make good financial decisions all the time. I advise you on them, too, so I don't want to scare you. But the reality is that we have to make sure that we're enjoying our life also.
And that's something that's really important. I know you also have a few of these types of stories. Would you mind sharing something from your life where you battled this current me versus future me dilemma?
Of course, I've been around a little longer and so I have a lot more stories, but I picked out one to share with you. When my husband Tim and I were married, it's a little over almost 53 years ago now. He's right over there. We he was a freelance photographer and I had a job as a secretary. And between the two of us, we had one car and he had to take it to be all over the city for his photo shoots.
Right. And so I took three busses, three busses to and from work every day. Well, about a year and a half after we were married, he got a steady paying job as a photo teacher in a public high school. So now we had a dilemma What should we do with this extra money? And now we had kind of a financial plan.
We wanted to have furniture because it would be really good to have a place to sit and and, you know, want a car and a house and family and all of those sorts of things. Well, we talked to each other and we decided that we would continue to maintain our rather Spartan standard of living and save every one of his paychecks.
So every month he got his paycheck from Mary Jane, top him at John Burrows high school, drove to North Hollywood Savings and Loan, put it in our savings account, got the little stamp in the passbook, brought the passbook home to me, and we would celebrate by going to Henry's tacos for a for $2, we could have dinner. So at the end of the first school year, we had saved enough for a down payment on our first home.
So we made some short term sacrifices. But the long term consequence of that is that we now own not only our our own bigger home, but we also leverage the equity in our home. And we've bought multiple rental properties. So short term sacrifices, long term consequences. But I have a quick story. That's the other side of that. We were chaperoning a student group through Europe, and one of the stops on the itinerary was Paris, which of course is known for its fabulous food.
And so we said we're going to treat ourselves to an amazing dinner at the best restaurant in Paris, whatever that is. We have no clue. So we saved and we get to Paris, we get to the restaurant, the wine, the service, the ambiance, the food.
Can I go now?
It was an amazing evening. And when the check arrived at our table, I almost fell out of my chair. But Tim said to me, Relax, we've saved for it. We've planned for it. It's fine. Let's enjoy it. So to your point, Stacey, our memories are priceless. So memories are priceless.
And in our session earlier, we talked about making deposits into the memory bank, not just the bank account and that concept of just making sure that you actually enjoy life. And another strategy would have been don't look at the check that.
Was the one with the money. There's another story that goes with that, which I want to tell you now. That's so Stacy, that's a little bit of an example of how I balance. But can you share a story about how you balance? What are the things that you consider when you're trying to balance current me versus future me?
Well, I think that one of the challenges that most people have is that they they tend to go off their emotions today. And I think a really good question to ask yourself is would future me regret this decision? Right. And like actually sit in that reflect on it, like feel it out and know if, you know, that's the right decision for you to make.
But then in addition, like just like I said earlier, it's hard to be objective about yourself. Like find the partners in your life, the people just like Chris did for me in making the decision about the cabin that would allow you to do that. And the reason that I say this is really important is because emotions can sometimes draw attention in ways that we don't want them to.
And I usually see this play out in two ways. Sometimes our emotions actually stop us from enjoying life and making memories and having experiences because we're fearful of what's going to happen in the future. And that fear grabs a hold of us and stops us from having those like moments of nice life that we're going to really remember forever.
On the opposite end, sometimes we indulge a lot today and we're just excited and we're spendy. But Future Me kind of says, man, like, I wish I would have saved a little more. I wish I would have invested. I wish I wish I would have not had to work so hard and instead made my money work hard for me.
And so the goal here is not to choose one or the other. The goal is to strike a balance of both. You want to enjoy your life. You want to dine out, you want to travel, you want to have fun, you want to make those memories. But you also want to make sure that future me is protected. You want to have an emergency fund.
You should start planning for retirement, kids education, and also plan for the experiences and travel and dining out that future me is going to do. And I think something that's really important for us to remember is that eventually Future me becomes current. Me So you're not holding yourself back from doing something you're actually giving to yourself?
I love that. I love that future me gets here more quickly than you might think.
On that note, noted so personally, you've worked for decades with clients, and Priscilla, I think is our longest standing advisor here.
Yes.
Which is amazing. So you've you've seen a lot of the 40 years of us being in existence. So tell me, like your best advice for people who are struggling with this dilemma and maybe some of the mistakes they've made or just tips that you would give them as they navigate these decisions going forward?
Okay. Well, I think the first thing that I would suggest is we all think a lot about trying to avoid mistakes and then it's what it tends to do is lead you straight to the mistake. And so what I would suggest is try to focus on your positive outcome, visualize what you want your life to look like, not just now, a year from now, five years, ten from ten years from now.
What are the qualities that you want in your life and focus on that. So know yourself, know what your values are. And as you go through this process, write down what those things are. Make a list. You can set them as goals or characteristics, whatever you want to label them, but make a list. When you write it down, you tend to make it happen because it gets planted in your subconscious and all of your choices tend to drive you towards achieving this thing that you've written down.
So write it down. Put a time horizon with it. When do you want to accomplish this thing and then identify it as a want or a need? So know yourself. Visualize your positive future, Write things down. Create a plan. When you have a plan, it is much, much easier to make decisions because you will be able to assess whether this choice today leads you closer to your goals or makes the goal further away.
Okay, so those are the first things. Focus on the positives. Know yourself, respect yourself. Then you know, when it comes to building wealth, I think we have a tendency to make it hard. I would say make it easy, and by that I mean, for example, if you can do an automatic deduction from your payroll into a401k, that's a decision you make once and then boom, you're saving every paycheck, right?
Whereas if you live on from paycheck to paycheck, which some have have to do, if you save what's left over instead of paying yourself first, that's just it's not the right mindset. So shift your mindset to pay yourself first.
Yeah, that's a really important point because decision fatigue is a real thing. Like the more decisions we make in a day, the tired or like more tired we get and then we don't always make the best ones, right?
And when you set up an automatic deduction, whether it's into a41k or just a deduction from your checking account, you only make that choice once, right? Whereas if you're saving what's left, you have to make that choice every time you pay the bills. So make it easy. Yeah. And the other positive outcome I would focus on is when you get to that stage in your life, when you are living on your accumulated assets, please, please, please give yourself permission to enjoy that.
That's what the money's there for. Now, you may say to yourself, I really want to leave a financial legacy for my kids. But the financial legacy was one you built up. So please give yourself permission to step up to business class on a long flight or, you know, do something whatever, whatever it is that makes you live a better life.
So I stay clear of any thoughts on any of those things that I said before we go on to our next.
Yeah, I think just highlighting a few things sometimes like money equals anxiety for a lot of us. And what Personal is really trying to encourage here too is like, don't let that take over. Like, don't let that happen to you because what will happen is you'll just recluse and you won't get to enjoy your life. And you've worked really hard for what you've built.
It's like the nest egg, the legacy of your life. And so make sure that you're being thoughtful to approaching it in a positive way, having a healthy relationship with money. Because I think that viewing it through that positive lens is really going to make the biggest difference.
So my next question for you, Stacey, is we have a lot of people coming to us for advice. That's kind of what we get paid to do. And sometimes we each get the question, is there a secret formula to building wealth or a silver bullet? So how do you respond to that question?
Well, earlier, if you were here for the welcome, I shared that like our equation for success and at Martin is that the right mindset plus the right strategy equals a better investor. And then it really starts with mindset first. And I think you hit on just identifying your purpose, the why behind your wealth, but then also making sure that your mindset is to make this make the process processes least stressful as possible.
So one of the things that we've done over the last year in building out our modern offering is we wanted to figure out a way to make it less stressful for any clients that work with us. So we created basically the equivalent of a concierge doctor model where we can be on call for our clients and help them to make those decisions, take some of that stress off their life, but then also have milestones along the way that helps make good decisions around tax.
What benefits to have in a company estate planning insurance. So that's kind of how we've been thinking through, like making it not as hard. One of the revelations I felt more recently is just how technology has changed our behavior. It feels like in many ways our phones still time from us because someone or something always wants us or it needs us.
And what that does is it makes us rush through the rest of life. And so my biggest recommendation to people is to like, take the time necessary to just sit, reflect, make the decision, and also recognize that plans change along the way. And so having a partner that you can kind of pivot with is really important, especially for our modern clients in their thirties and forties.
I mean, tomorrow is going to be different than today. And so making a 30 year plan doesn't quite make as much sense. It's better to get in the habit of pausing, reflecting. So my silver bullet for you all is not whether you should spend more on current me or spend more in future me. It's actually a habit that I would encourage you to embrace the habit of pausing, reflecting, finding someone in your life you trust to ask advice, and then make those financial decisions for you and your family.
Thank you. We have one minute left together. We want to encourage you to take this conversation and continue it with your own family, your own friends, or grab any member of the Martin team. We would be happy to have this conversation with you. We want to we want to help you if we can. And we would like to leave you with a somewhat paraphrased quote from Gandhi.
Beliefs become thoughts. Thoughts become words, words become actions. Actions become values. Values become your destiny. And we would add actions become your legacy. And we hope that your legacy is to live the very, very best life that you can. Thank you and have a great day.
