Where All My Financial Knowledge Comes From

No industry is without its flaws, and the financial industry is no exception. Let’s explore some times where we’ve encountered annoying or frustrating elements of the financial world.

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Transcript Of Today's Show:

Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome in to Plan With the Tax Man. Thanks for tuning into the podcast, as Tony and myself talk about investing, finance and retirement. In this go round, we are talking about where my financial knowledge comes from. Now, I don't mean me specifically or even Tony specifically, but in general, if you ever thought about that, where do we learn the things we've learned, especially, usually it's our parents, money, finances, whatever the case might be, what shape your financial views? And of course, we are going to get Tony's input from that. Not only for himself, but also when he sees in his practice. What's going on, my friend, how you doing?

 

Tony Mauro: Doing good. Back from the holidays and getting ready to get busy.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, you're going to be a busy over the next coming weeks and stuff as well. We assume, right? We assume that tax times will be normal this year.

 

Tony Mauro: They're already starting to change it a little bit with the push back of the start or acceptance date, but it seems like that's more the norm now. These last couple of years have been extremely unnormal as far as tax season goes. They've been playing with the start and end date, well, the start date for sure, for a lot of years now. The end date, last year was the first time I've seen it extended ever in my career.

 

Speaker 1: It's definitely interesting times for sure. We have no word yet as to whether or not that'll transpire, but that could, I imagine we could see that happening before too long. Well, we're taping this just before we put this out. This is the 20th of January. So actually this I guess would be, this is inauguration date. No, this is the 19th. No, we're on the 19th. I'm sorry, I'm one day off, it's tomorrow. We're taping this on the 19th, we'll put it out on the 21st.

 

Speaker 1: Anyway, let's jump into the topics and see what happens. Who knows what's going to come down the pike from the new administration, but we'll see here real quick I'm sure. But let's get into our topic today for where does your financial knowledge come from. For our listeners or you yourself, Tony, are there any of these I guess talking heads, celebrity financial folks that you find interesting? Anybody that you listen to from time to time, be it Ramsey or Orman or somebody like that?

 

Tony Mauro: I don't have a long list there, but I do and have read a lot of Dave Ramsey's stuff. I like what he says, and I can resonate with it. I always tell clients, and I've never met him personally or been in any of his seminars, but here's a guy that basically took a lot of very basic financial advice, turned it into something that people can really understand and follow, and has made a lot of money at it. I always tell him, I'm kind of jealous because I was doing that for myself way before. I just didn't know how to make money off of it. He does have a lot of good insights and whatnot. I love his stuff on staying out of debt, living below your means, and saving a lot of money.

 

Tony Mauro: One of the lines that I still use today with every client, my own son as well is, and this is a quote from him, he says, you know, "Live like no other so someday you can live like no other." And when you really start thinking about that, you'll understand what he means by that. You got to sacrifice a little bit, you got to save, you got to stay out of debt, and then someday you can live like no other.

 

Speaker 1: True.

 

Tony Mauro: I like that. Outside of that, I don't follow a lot of the guys on CNN and everybody talking, everybody's got their own opinion.

 

Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure.

 

Tony Mauro: About that kind of stuff. So I like to stick to more of things of planning and staying with the plan.

 

Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. Best financial books that you've read or something that's really kind of shaped your financial views? Is there something maybe that you refer to clients from time to time? Say, hey, if you'd like to read something, this is a really good read?

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah. A lot of times clients, when they become a client of ours, I'll send them either the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, which is one of the best easy financial books ever. I like to send some of them Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is a great book on building wealth. And then I helped co-author a little book on IRAs and how to keep money as much tax-free. So I'll send them some of those. There's tons of financial books out there. And a lot of them are good reads. They're going to give you a lot of different opinions. Just got to kind of formulate your own opinion, and not everybody's going to be right.

 

Speaker 1: There's no shortage of opinion points in the world today about whatever. But it's always good to kind of get someone who's in the industry like yourself who does this day in and day out, to say, this is a pretty good read< these are something I enjoy or that you might find useful. So, a couple of good recommendations there. Like you said, you send those out to clients often, so that's pretty cool.

 

Speaker 1: What about our parents? I mentioned that in the opener there. A lot of times we do, we are influenced about many things in life from our parents. Yours specifically, did anybody have a real knack for money or investing? Did you get anything from there?

 

Tony Mauro: My parents were pretty conservative. Conservative meaning they grew up right after the generation after the depression. They didn't come from money, they didn't invest a lot and didn't know anything about it. It wasn't really till I graduated from college that I started in with them and helping them save for their own retirement. They're now retired and doing well. Whether they would have done that or not, I don't know, I like to think I had a part in that. They never blew a lot of money, but I do think most of us, our views and how we think about money comes from our family, whether they sit down with you and physically have conversations and educational things with you or not.

 

Tony Mauro: But most of us don't and we're not getting it in school, which seems to me like a real tragedy. I mean, nobody would go to school for all these years, it's a big pet peeve of mine, and nobody teaches anybody even how to manage their own finances. And then we wonder why we've got people out that are fairly well-educated that have a disaster going on on the personal side with their finances. A lot of times it does come down to the parents because that's who you're with all the time.

 

Speaker 1: That's a great point because we definitely have, and it's been that way a long time. I mean, I was in high school in the 80s and I think it was literally one short class. I'm not sure if it was an economics or what it was, but it was like, here's how you write a check, and it was the basics of it. And that was it. I don't think there was really much else to it. So, as far as personal finance and economics, they really seem to be more about economics from a global standpoint really back then than it was about your own personal. So yeah, we definitely don't do< and that's maybe one of the reasons why Dave's stuff, as you mentioned, it resonates pretty well because it keeps it nice and simple for people to really kind of relate to and digest.

 

Speaker 1: Professional relationships. We talk a lot about athletes and you enjoy playing golf and all that kind of stuff. Even the best, even Tiger and Phil and all those guys, they have coaches. So, in your relationships, do you have kind of a coach or a mentor or something like that, someone that you maybe still turn to or used to turn to?

 

Tony Mauro: Yeah, I still am on the financial side still do a lot of stuff with Dan Cuprill, he's a financial advisor out of Indiana. He lives at breathes it. I love talking to him about things, been in the business a long time.

 

Speaker 1: Gotcha.

 

Tony Mauro: From a business side of things. But anybody that's been around it a lot on the financial side, most of us always looked at, well, we want to emulate somebody that appears that they either have it all figured out, wealthy, with money. But sometimes that's not always the case. In my professional relationships, it would be him, it would be some associations I'm in, and some little subgroups that we get together, and not only brainstorm on the business end of things, but where the industry's going and how to work with clients better.

 

Speaker 1: I mean, continuing education is always a good idea in any profession really, to continue to learn stuff and have somebody to kind of inspire you or share best practices and all that stuff. And it all kind of equates back to, helps you be better at your, well, what's the saying, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Well, no matter what your industry is, you can always practice and get better.

 

Speaker 1: As you've gotten older, Tony, have you changed your views on money matters? Anything that's kind of, that you've learned along the way where you've been like, this is really a good stable principal that I've kept the entire, time or some things you've been like, Oh wow, I can't believe how much I've changed?

 

Tony Mauro: I definitely as I've gotten older been fortunate enough, I guess the few things I've learned is, and most advisors will tell you this, but it is true, you ask somebody where the market's going and if they tell you, here's what I think, they're probably wrong, they have no idea. Nor do I, nor does almost anybody. But the one thing I've learned is, and I've always done this and I try to preach this to clients is, you need to invest through thick and thin, meaning put money away based on your goals, of course, and some other things. And you can't try to time markets. I've never seen anybody able to do it long-term and consistently beat the best of the best or the S&P and things like that.

 

Tony Mauro: In fact, I just had a client, and he's a fairly large client. Not to bring politics into all of this, but he emailed me over the weekend and was saying, you know what, now that the inauguration's going to happen, I want to pull all my money to the sidelines. In fact, he put it in bold in the email. I know that we're going to have a correction in 2021, and here's why, and it was basically because the Biden Administration may be raising taxes and all this COVID relief and whatnot. He may be right. But as I pointed out to him, you may be wrong.

 

Speaker 1: Well, that seems to be the case in the country.

 

Tony Mauro: When president Trump, a lot of people thought the markets were just going to go right down the tank, and they've done nothing but go the other way. I'm not going to get into whether that was because of him or the economy itself and all that. But point is, it's funny how people listen to stuff on the news, and then all of a sudden, now they're making predictions. That's something that I try to preach to clients when you asked, I try not to get clients to time markets. I try to show them what missing the 10, 15, 50 best days in the next, or the last 10 years would have cost them. And it just seems like, you're always waiting for that maybe not to happen as soon as you say it, is, over the longterm, the stock market is still one of the best bets. I love real estate too, but just talking smaller amounts, the market is the best place to be, and I don't think you can time it.

 

Speaker 1: And that's always the case just about with any item when we have new administrations, it's always one half says this is going to happen and the other half says that's going to happen. And nobody really knows until things go into play. You can have your indicators and your predictors, but if 2020 taught us anything, I mean, seriously, has never happened, who would have thought you'd see a 30% decline in the beginning first quarter during a global crisis and then end with all time highs in the same calendar year.

 

Tony Mauro: Same calendar year, yeah. And really going back to your last question about who I listen to, really, for us now as advisors, we're kind of almost, I like to think of the word coach, trying to coach the clients into or out of doing some things just based on just a knee jerk reaction. Like you said, when COVID hit, I for one thought, we all saw the markets going down, it's like, man, this is going to be a prolonged downturn. And of course, my always view is, I love it with respect to that I don't need the money right now that I'm investing, so I'm like that vulture, I'm always investing, so I'm buying more when things are low, so it doesn't bother me like it bothers other people. But if you're a retiree, obviously you wouldn't want to be in the market to the extent that someone that's a little younger is.

 

Speaker 1: Exactly.

 

Tony Mauro: Well, my father for being one, his portfolio, even though he's now 80, and knows nothing really about investing, he always says, yeah, I don't want to take a lot of risk, I don't want to take a lot of risk. And we go over his portfolio, but he is in blue chip stocks that pay him a lot of dividends and he loves that income. He's on the other side of the line, and people sitting in CDs and things getting a half a percent, they're starving. But for that, he's got to put up with some volatility, but he understands that now. He's not searching for that nest egg, he just wants return of his principal and a good income on it.

 

Speaker 1: Right, right. As we age, that tends to be kind of the norm, how we start to kind of view things. When we're talking about our financial knowledge and just our growth patterns, that's going to make a lot of sense. And I'll finish off with one final question for you on this, when we're talking about where financial knowledge comes from. With the advance of technology, you can have all kinds of philosophical arguments. It seems the smarter we're getting tech-wise, the dumber we're also getting about a lot of other things. You could go wherever you want to go with this conversation.

 

Speaker 1: But from a financial standpoint, is it a double-edged sword the technology, Tony, because in some ways, to your comment earlier, we'd never really learned enough, it wasn't enough in school for that. Now you can find the answer to any question in seconds on Google. You can invest your entire life savings if you want to with a click of a button from your phone. But is that a double-edged sword because there's so much information, you're not able to really discern what's accurate or correct for you?

 

Tony Mauro: I would definitely agree with that. And I'll answer that with a question. And then we can kind of just digest it. If the advancements in technology were helping us so much, why do we have so many people that aren't prepared for retirement or worse?

 

Speaker 1: Good point.

 

Tony Mauro: And just let somebody try to explain that to me. So I think it helps and hurts. I mean, on one hand, obviously, even for us, we've got information at our fingertips that we could only dreamed of even 10 years ago.

 

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. It's amazing.

 

Tony Mauro: 20, 25. But I think now that it's out there, that there's so many different opinions and information, you don't really know if it's authoritative or not. Most of it is. I think sometimes people get information overload and they really can't make any decisions. And the same gentleman who sent me the email I just mentioned, he's one of those guys that really, he wants to get into it, he wants to research, wants to do, do, do, do. But he never says he has the time. And then he'll go on a binge and look at a bunch of things and formulate opinions. It's like, why do you torture yourself like that? Just follow the plan. The plan will work. You don't need to really subscribe to all of that. There's a fine line from telling people don't pay attention to anything and just stick your head in the sand to being crazy the other way.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's a great resource to get some basic knowledge or to maybe kind of look up some specific things that you're contemplating. But then you really need to take that to someone who can get to know you. I mean, that's one of the points of an advisor, where you can go and you have this working relationship so you can say, all right, so how does this, what about this concept? Does this work for me in the things that I already have, because that's a lot of times where, I mean, even with our show, and I say that many times on the podcast, and I host shows all across the country, and I always say, anything you hear on this show or any other, Dave or anybody else that's out there, always take that information to your specific advisor who knows you and see how it will work in your scenario because it's generalities. We're talking in general kind of concepts because it may relate to you and it may relate to the next person and not everybody's the same.

 

Speaker 1: So, you got to really digest it and see what's going to be the best fit with any financial knowledge, whatever you've learned, whatever you've learned coming up, whatever you learn from somebody else, whatever it might be. I think that's just a great philosophy to have, is take it, wrap it around a little bit and see how it's going to play out, but then bounce it off a qualified professional like yourself, Tony, who does this every day. And that way, you know for sure if it's going to really work in your scenario.

 

Tony Mauro: I agree, totally. Absolutely.

 

Speaker 1: And so, when it comes to the financial knowledge, folks, it's always good to have a little bit, what was it, Ben Franklin that said education, I think he said education pays the best benefits, or knowledge pays the best benefits, there we go. Get some knowledge, get some education. If you've got questions or concerns, reach out to Tony here on the podcast. He's an EA and a CFP, he's a certified financial planner of over 20 years, approaching 25 years in the industry. So give him a jingle. 844-707-7381. That's 844-707-7381. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast plan with the tax man. You can find all the information really, it's just kind of simple for you to just go to yourplanningpros.com, that's your planningpros.com, and check us out there as well. And you can find all the subscriptions if you want to on Apple, Google, Spotify, all that good kind of stuff. No cost or obligation for any of it.

 

Speaker 1: We certainly appreciate your time as always on the podcast. Tony, my friend, thank you so much, I hope you have a great week in, and you don't get too busy too quick.

 

Tony Mauro: All right. Sounds good. We'll see you on the next episode.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see you the next time right here on Plan With the Tax Man with Tony Mauro.

 

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