It’s Just A Joke

The world is stressful. Let’s take a small break from it with some goofy financial planning and financial advisor jokes and see what kinds of lessons we can learn from them.

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Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com

Call: 844-707-7381

Transcript Of Today's Show:

Speaker 1:

Hey, everybody. Welcome into this week's edition of Plan With The Tax Man, here on the podcast. We're talking about being a couple of jokesters and that's going to be the fun topic this week, because the world of financial stuff is stressful. Heck the world is stressful. So we're going to take a break and do some goofy, fun, financial jokes and advisor jokes. And see what kind of maybe lessons we can actually pull from them as well. So it won't be all fun and games, it will be a little bit serious here as well.

 

Speaker 1: But first let's say hey to, Tony. What's going on, buddy?

 

Tony Mauro: I am good. I'm just kind of trying to get back in the swing of things. As I mentioned after the fourth I'm in the mode of still having this a short week.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah. In a chill mode. Right? Still want to...

 

Tony Mauro: Right. Very relaxed.

 

Speaker 1: That's all right. Nothing wrong with that. Well, like I said, right, the world is stressful enough anyway. So let's have some fun with this, Tony. Basically, I'll tell you the joke. We went and scoured the internet and found some financial jokes or adviser jokes, and then I'll let you kind of just give me your 2 cents on it-

 

Tony Mauro: Sure.

 

Speaker 1: and kind of what you think. Okay? Sound like a plan?

 

Tony Mauro: Sounds good.

 

Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. All right. Here we go. So here's the joke. I'm not normally one to brag about my financial skills, Tony, but my credit card company calls me almost every day to inform me my balance is outstanding.

 

Tony Mauro: Then they probably love you too. But what a lot of people, they confuse, I think, good debt with bad debt. And a lot of advisors, they don't like to have their clients with a lot of debt. Me kind of included. I'm not a big debt guy. Especially if you've done any reading and done any studying, the Dave Ramsey stuff and all that.

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: And getting out and staying out of debt. I do believe that that is a good route. However, obviously debt's a part of our life. And if you use it wisely, especially for large purchases, homes, the car, and whatnot and understand it and try to get out of it as quick as possible, it actually can be a decent thing.

 

Tony Mauro: But we do a lot of talking, clients about debt, because I don't think people understand it very well. And they just accumulate a lot of it, and don't ever make a plan to reduce it or get out of it.

 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.

 

Tony Mauro: And as soon as they do it's an instant raise. And so, we laugh about it and joke about it, but we've all been there. I mean, everybody's ran up a credit card or more, and got themselves potentially into situations, and some bad cases you see it all the time, where they ran up so much debt, they can't make the minimum payments.

 

Speaker 1: Right. Oh yeah.

 

Tony Mauro: That's horrible.

 

Speaker 1: It's a habit that definitely affects us Americans for sure. Because a lot of times they're really wealthy, right? They're saving money or they're doing things, and they've got more liquidity going on. And the banks that wind up having more disposable income, as of lately been seeing that, rates have stayed down, they're loaning money, things of that nature. And sometimes it's just the temptation to go, "Oh, well, wow. I've been approved for this and I don't really need it. But you know what? We kind of had our eye on this item or that item, so let's just go do it," right?

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah.

 

Speaker 1: And the interest rates are so low or whatever. So you find ways to justify this stuff. And then, before long you're like, "Man, we've got more than we really want to deal with." And as you're getting closer to retirement, well then maybe the joke's on you. Right?

 

Tony Mauro: Well, that's right. Going into retirement, I advise you to try to have as little or no debt if you can, because it's just going to make your lifestyle so much easier to maintain.

 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Tony Mauro: And so, around retirement, I mean, I think that's the best move as far as that goes. I think too, and I remember too, when you're young you got to get that first credit card. And it's like, "Wow, this is great." But now, when we talk to clients about debt, is we say, "If you're going to use debt to purchase something, especially if it's not going to last very long, are you okay if the sticker price is, let's say is $800? Are you okay with paying $1,000 for that same item?" And most people will say "No." And then, you start talking about what the interest is going to cost you if you put it on a credit card. That's what you're going to be paying, so.

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: You're not okay when you do it with cash, but you're okay with the credit card. And we've got to try to change their thinking on that a little bit.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you think about the joke. Right? So that's what we're doing, using that as a catalyst to have a conversation about something. And I think a debt was certainly a good way to take that one.

 

Speaker 1: How about this one? I got another one here for you. This reminds me, this is kind of a one-liner, like Henny Youngman. I know a lot of people may not remember him a long time ago, but he was kind of the king of the one-liners. Right? He would say stuff like, "The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret," so on and so forth. But this kind of sounds like one of his type of lines.

 

Speaker 1: Here's the joke. Why couldn't the advisor get people to buy bonds? Not enough interest.

 

Tony Mauro: Not enough interest.

 

Speaker 1: You can hear the rim shot right there.

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah. And a lot of people don't like bonds, and that is kind of the joke. And they don't pay a lot of interest in today's environment. People who've been around a while, remember those days of the 1980s, when a money market account was paying 9%.

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: And those have trickled down with inflation being low, and they just aren't able to get that type of interest anymore, pretty much on anything. But that doesn't mean bonds don't have a place in your portfolio.

 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Tony Mauro: Especially as you get towards retirement and whatnot, and you're not really seeking to bring in capital appreciation. You're really looking for return of principal, and then that income that hopefully you can't out live.

 

Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.

 

Tony Mauro: So bonds do have their place, and especially in the accumulation phase, probably not the best idea for most, depending on your appetite for risk. But for some people that's all they can stomach as far as risk, and that's why they're out there.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you seen that recently? Where people are like, "Hey, I'm not interested in bonds, because the rates are so low."

 

Tony Mauro: I've seen that, when the market's going crazy, the stock market that is, everybody wants to be kind of, so to speak where the action is. Well, gosh.

 

Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.

 

Tony Mauro: They read it on the internet that some guy's doing this or that. And so yeah, I do get a lot of that.

 

Speaker 1: Okay. All right. Now this next one here I've got, Tony, sounds a little bit like a Groucho Marx-ism. So we'll do this one here. This one's pretty funny too.

 

Speaker 1: I'm not saying my financial advisor was bad at his job, but when I went into his office and asked him to check my balance, he tried to push me over.

 

Tony Mauro: That's a good one.

 

Speaker 1: As somebody who has vertigo that's really hilarious to me.

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah.

 

Speaker 1: Because I'm dizzy on a regular basis, so I could totally see that and just die laughing.

 

Tony Mauro: We talk a lot to clients about keeping some sort of balance in their portfolio-

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: A little bit. And many times when clients first come to us, I mean, they don't have any balance. Meaning that generally they'll have, let's say in their IRA or their 401k, and they're 55, 58 years old, and they have all of their money either in, maybe this is just an example, their own company's stock or one very narrow invested fund. In other words, almost a sector fund of some international fund type of thing. So they don't have diversification.

 

Tony Mauro: And so, we try to talk to them about that and, "You might want to diversify because generally speaking it's the best way to go over the long term. And so, by having those concentrations, yes, you are going to pick up some gains when that area is doing well. But boy, when it's not, you really suffer."

 

Speaker 1: Yeah.

 

Tony Mauro: And so, try to instill something in them to just start thinking about that.

 

Speaker 1: Well, talking about balance, and this next joke here actually kind of goes towards the question I was thinking about asking you the last time we talked and I totally forgot it. So it's kind of fortunate that it wound up being on here. But here's the joke.

 

Speaker 1: What's another name for a long term investment? A failed short-term investment. Right?

 

Tony Mauro: A failed short-term investment. Yeah.

 

Speaker 1: Is there such a thing, Tony, as a short-term investment in retirement planning, or is it always the long-term people are looking for?

 

Tony Mauro: Well, I think the people we've talked to, they're always looking to make money in the short-term, and we try to force them to think long-term. But I do think there's such things as short-term investments.

 

Speaker 1: Okay.

 

Tony Mauro: I don't think, I mean, it might have some place in a person's retirement plan. I mean, obviously as things come in and out of a favor you're changing things up, so it might be a short-term investment. But I don't think it's necessarily because it's a failed investment. It might just be because your goals change and you need to have something else-

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: type of thing. But I think most people think short-term in their retirement. And they don't think that if they can't get X amount percent in a certain period of sometimes days, instead of years, they think it's a failed investment.

 

Speaker 1: Okay.

 

Tony Mauro: And we try to tell them, "That's not the case. We need a long term approach here."

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: And I think they got to remain that. But again, I think that's a product though of too much news.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Being short sighted and too much news. Yeah, I think that's a very fair point. Because when you see something, and we're like, "Oh, well this is happening or that's happening," or, "We've got to get in on this or out on that," or whatever the case might be. And we don't really stick with the plan that we've started working on.

 

Speaker 1: And I get if the plan starts to seem like it's going awry, it makes you nervous, and you want to... maybe the immediate thought is to make a knee jerk reaction and change it.

 

Tony Mauro: Yes.

 

Speaker 1: But that might not be really what you need. You need to evaluate and take a look first. Because often, especially financially speaking, right, that when we make these reactions, we wind up kind of regretting that after the fact. It's not like you've got a plan together to use this bucket to haul up some fish or something. And the fish just aren't jumping in the bucket, and you got to come up with a new plan. Right? It's not like you're going to starve to death because of that. But you are going to have to work through it and try to figure out a good way to analyze, is it really the right time to change that plan, talk to the advisor, or am I just being nervous?

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So speaking of nerves. Let's do this one. Here's the joke. Why was the client sleeping like a baby when the stock market crashed? Well, he woke up every hour and cried just like a baby.

 

Tony Mauro: Just like a baby. Well, a lot of times, especially when the market's going good, like it has been here lately. We get all kinds. People that meet with us first time, they are afraid. They get stressed out because again, they watch a lot of TV and whatnot. They think the market's too high, they're stressed out. They think that we need to get out or they need to get out.

 

Tony Mauro: Others come and say, "I've never been in the market. Everybody's talking about it. I think it's time for me," but they're stressed out too, because they don't have any idea as to what they need to be doing. And they just think that, sometimes they can just go buy some equities and all of a sudden make a lot of money. And that's not the case a lot of times.

 

Tony Mauro: So I think that people get stressed out about it. But like you were talking about earlier, as long as you've got a long-term plan. And that's what we do with them, is we've got to have a plan. People just come and say, "Well, I want to buy some equities." I mean, for us, we're not the advisors for them. We want to plan, we want to know what's going on, and why you're putting money away, and things like that, versus just kind of trading.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's got to have a purpose.

 

Tony Mauro: Got to have a purpose.

 

Speaker 1: Yep. Okay. All right. Final one this week here on the podcast. Here's the joke. I've just got some great news from my financial advisor. He told me I could retire at 64, and live comfortably for an hour.

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah, right.

 

Speaker 1: Right. Nobody wants this. Right? We want to make sure we can get to retirement and stay retired.

 

Tony Mauro: And stay retired. And yeah, if you're coming to an advisor at 64 or 65, and have not planned, there's some things you can do. But more than likely, you're going to have to continue to work if it's possible, depending on what type of lifestyle you're looking for and what level of comfortability. But the best way to prevent this of course, is to plan. Plan early, and keep it going. And that way you won't have this type of thing.

 

Tony Mauro: And every, I don't know, two to five years, especially as you get into your 50's, I'm all already doing it, is I like to take a look at my own portfolio. And say, "All right, I've got this much time left. Assuming a reasonable rate of return and how much I'm putting in, what am I going to have as my nest egg? And will that last me the rest of my life once I decide to call it quits?" And that's what you have to do. You can't certainly just wait until the end and hope.

 

Speaker 1: Certainly not. And Tony, I imagine, well, typically that's the number one question. Right? Somebody probably comes in and they sit down with you for the first time or whatever. And they're like, "Hey, here's what I'd like to accomplish when I get to retirement, or, "I want to retire by this age or whatever. Now, how do you keep me there?" Right. And they want you to now walk them through how to build that structure, so that once we get there, we can stay there.

 

Tony Mauro: That's right. And luckily for us as advisors now with the software being so good, you can run scenarios very easily and let the software do all the heavy math lifting. And show a client, "Based on this, is what you have now. And this is when you want to retire, if you want to either take principle or just live off of the earnings."

 

Speaker 1: Right.

 

Tony Mauro: "Based on market conditions, this is how long your money will last you." And I like some of the software, the reports they spit out now of saying, "There's an 85% chance, or a 50% chance you won't run out of money," type thing. And people like to see, "Well, gosh, I want to be up there in 85-90%. Even if I live to 100, I'm not going to run out of money," type of percentages. You get down there in the below 50%, and they're like, "Okay. Well, what do we need to do?"

 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Tony Mauro: "We have to fix it."

 

Speaker 1: Yeah.

 

Tony Mauro: And there are ways to fix it, but it may not be that pleasant, depending on how long you've waited to get started. Meaning that the longer you wait the more you're going to have to set aside to reach goals, or you've got to change the goals.

 

Speaker 1: Right. Exactly. Well, you know what? We don't want to be the joke. Right? We want to be the brunt of the joke for sure when it comes to retirement. So do yourself and your retirement a favor and have a conversation, and get started to Tony's point, take some action and go through some conversations and some pieces. And if you're not doing that, reach out to a qualified professional, like Tony here on the podcast.

 

Speaker 1: 844-707-7381 is the number to call. And of course, as always, you can just subscribe or follow, and find all the information that you really need. The easiest way to do it is just to go to Tony's website, yourplanningpros.com. That's yourplanningpros.com.

 

Speaker 1: If you're already working with Tony, but you listen to the podcast on the regular, make sure you share it with folks who might benefit from that message as well. You can do a little share link right there on the webpage, if it's Spotify or Apple or Google or whatever you like, all those social media things, give us options to share those with friends and family. So feel free to do that as well. But again, you can stop by the website at yourplanningpros.com. And find us on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, and so on.

 

Speaker 1: All right, Tony, thanks for hanging out with me. I guess we'll both go back to work and do some more stuff. And hope you have a great week.

 

Tony Mauro: All right. Thank you. Talk to you soon.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, well talk next time here. We are going to be firmly into July for our next episode, so should be nice and hot as well. It's already been fairly hot. So we'll see you next time here on Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro, from Tax Doctor, Inc.

 

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