Dr. Debi Lynes interviews Emily Johnson about financial planning for every stage in life.
(duration: 34 minutes 27 seconds)
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Takeaways
It’s never too late to manage your finances. More importantly, hire someone who can help you demystify your finances. Don’t be intimidated by the talk of money, savings or investment no matter what stage of life you’re in.
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Transcript
Debi Lynes: 00:03 Hi and welcome to aging in place for every stage in life. What if you could visit or have a home that would accommodate anyone, at any age, any physical ability, at any time? How cool would that be? That’s what we’re doing here at aging in place. Why me? Because I’m a doctor of psychology and I specialize in physical spaces and health and wellness. Also, I love designing with intent at any age. Why now? Because we the baby boomers want to age in place gracefully and we want our families around us as much as we can. And why you the audience? Because we want you to experience what it’s like to have a home that’s safe, aesthetically pleasing, and that you can live in at any age, with any ability, at any time. I’d like to introduce you now to Aging in Place Podcast for every stage in life.
Debi Lynes: 01:04 Hi and welcome to the Aging in Place Podcast for any stage in life. I’m here with my friend today, Emily Johnson from Polaris. She is a financial planner and a dear friend and an expert in her field. And when we talk about aging in place, you don’t really think finances until you go see Emily. And you’ve taught me a lot in the past three or four years. And really, aging in place is something that is, what we say, for any stage in life. I know I’ve got nine grandchildren and three kids and we are all at such different ages, but we all have different wants and needs. And I think the older I’ve gotten, the more, the more imperative planning for my future seems to be catching up with me. So I’m really excited to have you here today. What I’d love to do is introduce you to our listeners and let them learn a little bit about you.
Emily Johnson: 02:00 Okay. Well first of all, Debi is ageless. My name is Emily Johnson and I founded a company called Polaris Capital Advisors 10 years ago now. Now it makes me feel old, I guess. And when it comes to aging in place, the way that that comes up in my business is when we put together financial plans for people and they’ll come in our office looking for all different things. We’re different things for different people. For some individuals, we do investment management. For others, we do retirement planning. For others, we’ll assess 401k planning for business owners. It really just sort of depends what the needs are of the client.
Debi Lynes: 02:44 Well, let me ask you a question even to that, to that statement. When I come in, you say financial plan and can you give me an overview about what some of the things are at different stages in life? What’s important?
Emily Johnson: 02:56 Sure. So again, I mean, it’s different for everybody which is what makes the job so fantastic. So, it’s really more psychology with a little bit of finance thrown in than it is finance as the core. So let’s say, you know, plain vanilla would be, of course, you know, younger individuals if they actually do come to seek out the advice with financial planner, which is my hope and prayer because really that’s really what makes a great launch and plan is starting early.
Debi Lynes: 03:25 My son and daughter in law are like, “we don’t really have any assets. We don’t need to come and see Emily.” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, yes”
Emily Johnson: 03:31 Yes, definitely.” And, and that’s, that’s sort of the key is learning how to develop assets. And I don’t know that. It’s basically you have income, you have expenses, you have future objectives and those objectives are always going to change, but I know in the case that you’re talking about, there’s grandchildren that are involved, they have some small children, they have objectives for those kids and things are gonna happen fast and furious. So the earlier you can actually get comfortable with money talk and the earlier that you can start working towards those goals, the better. Because really my job is pretty easy. I can put a plan in place for somebody. It’s executing on it that’s hard. And giving people that comfort level to be able to talk about money and to talk about their goals and their fears. Sometimes there’s, you know, there’s embarrassment, sometimes there’s, you know, a concern about school debt that they don’t want to talk about or you know, a former spouse that there’s something that’s gone on. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that, you know, sort of sits in the back of people’s minds when it comes to talking about money.
Emily Johnson: 04:31 So I’m at different stages in life and I don’t care how much money clients have. There’s always some emotional hangup around their finances, planning, planning for themselves, for their kids, for their grandkids. And it’s very interesting. So when it comes to what people are looking for when they come to me, it might be that they’re looking to start a, a simple IRA, just a very simple IRA, setting aside $50 a month. Fantastic. You’d be amazed at how fast that actually adds up and it’s really empowering. It’s not so much the dollar amount as much as it is the confidence level that you start to develop and gain on as you start taking control of that. And I’m not talking about you have to have conversations every night around the dinner table more just, you know, more just maybe a once a month, once a quarter type check-in. And that’s, it gives you a lot of comfort.
Debi Lynes: 05:21 Are your consumers more educated now than they used to be? Number one. And number two, one of the things you taught me is I don’t have to even know what an IRA is. I can be completely naive to finances. No, and that’s the truth. And I don’t have to be embarrassed or shy because I don’t know.
Emily Johnson: 05:37 Exactly.
Debi Lynes: 05:37 I think that a financial planner and an excellent professional like you and many others around the US I think are able to walk us through plans, walk us through what we need. When you talk about vanilla or just doing basics, what are some basic, what do you like me or any of come armed with? What would help you? Well, from a paper standpoint, it’s ideal if he could come armed with existing statements.
Emily Johnson: 06:07 If you don’t have existing investments then you know, statements for your credit cards for your mortgage, for, you know, whatever other, if there’s student loans, things like that. Tax return is ideal. Existing W2’s. To be quite honest though, if you actually come with a yellow notepad and you have these things handwritten out, that’s good enough, that means that you’ve actually taken a look at it. Or at least you have some idea of where things are and you’ve jotted it down. It might be that you do everything online and so it’s easier to do it this way, whatever it might be. I’m just coming with some basic idea of what your income, what’s your expenses are. Nobody likes that. I don’t like that. I just, you know, nobody likes doing a budget. It’s definitely four letters, you know, without questions.
Emily Johnson: 06:53 But having some idea of what your inflow and outflow is what’s your assets and liabilities are and then what your objectives are. And that is really, that’s the fun part. And especially when you’re dealing with couples or people that have gone through a lot of transition, if you ask them what their objectives are sometimes they just don’t know or sometimes they don’t agree.
Debi Lynes: 07:15 I’m just going to ask and I’m cross talking and over-talking but because, what our objectives, what does that even mean? Is it I want to save for retirement or I want to go on vacation. I mean, how do I know what an objective is?
Emily Johnson: 07:27 And it’s so hard for people to define it which is what part of the fun is, is helping them define it, but on their own terms, and knowing full well that it’s going to change because life changes. So we do the best that we can at, what’s the saying? “Man plans. God laughs” and so true. But at least when you have that initial plan, that initial objective and you’re working towards it, it gives you the power to look at it and to be able to pivot at some point in the future if you need to. So, so some basics. I have a almost 13 year old daughter. So of course being the type-A that I am, I started setting up a 529 for her as soon as she was born.
Debi Lynes: 08:02 And 529 is?
Emily Johnson: 08:04 College savings plan and there’s lots of different ways to skin the cat, but that’s one, you know, one thing. So younger people might be setting up their first IRA. They might have an employer that has a 401k plan or something similar. So they might come to me and say, how should I invest these funds? So very sort of just getting started. Dollar amounts don’t matter. Again, it’s just the consistency. It’s like dieting. It’s doing something consistent all the time.
Debi Lynes: 08:29 A habit. It’s developing a habit.
Emily Johnson: 08:31 Exactly. And automating it. Automate it as much as you possibly can. So those are some basics.
Debi Lynes: 08:37 And automate it means?
Emily Johnson: 08:38 Automate it means a withdrawn from your paycheck. If you can have it withdraw automatically from your checking account, if you can. Just basically, it’s money that doesn’t exist. Okay. It’s probably a terrible way of saying it, but that’s what automating it meaning and there’s lots of ways to do it. So then you know, starting to save for retirement of course is also paramount. The earlier that you can get started with that, the better because time and time value of money and the ability to save is really the biggest benefit that we have.
Debi Lynes: 09:07 When you were talking about saving for retirement, again, is that an IRA? What does that look like? Are those investments, is that CD, I mean, how do you even begin to know where to begin?
Emily Johnson: 09:16 Okay, so, if we’re talking about saving for retirement, then we have to assume that a few other buckets are already filled. Okay. So the first bucket is going to be that, that classic rainy day fund, the, Oh my gosh, something hit the roof or my, you know, my transmission went out type fund. So that’s going to be the first bucket. So you should start filling that bucket. Rule of thumb for that is you want to have somewhere between 3 to 12 months of your expenses in that. And the idea is three months if you have a steady W2-type paying job, 12 months if you’re self-employed. Okay, so that’s a big number and that’s a big nut. So trying to move towards that is a goal. So you don’t have to have that there before you start saving for retirement, but there should be some money directed towards that objective to just sit in a very exciting 2% yielding savings account, which 2% awesome these days, for what it’s worth. Then the next one…
Debi Lynes: 10:10 So that is bucket one. I love buckets.
Emily Johnson: 10:11 I love buckets too. And you’re not seeing this, but we have lots of buckets and cans in front of us right now. They’re doing fake buckets. So bucket number two is going to make sure that you’re paying down debt. So you, you want to be accumulating some savings while at the same time paying down debt. And this is a common question of which do I do first? And the answer is you kind of want to do all three assuming that your debt is not eating up everything. It’s not 17% debt. Then you sort of, you want to be allocating funds towards each if you can.
Debi Lynes: 10:45 Can we take a quick break? She took a breath and we’re going to take a break. We’ll be right back to continue filling our bucket. Stay with us on aging in place.
Henrik de Gyor: 10:54 Hi, I’m Henrik, the producer of Aging in Place Podcast. If you’d like more information and transcripts of this podcast, visit aginginplacepodcast.com. And now, back to Debi Lynes with the next segment of Aging in Place Podcast. For every stage in life.
Debi Lynes: 11:14 We are back on the Aging in Place Podcast. We’re with Emily Johnson and we’re talking about buckets because we can. But these buckets are going to contain very important resources when you need them. So bucket one was something that kind of blew me out of the water. And that is as someone’s self employed, I should have a bucket full of enough emergency funds.
Emily Johnson: 11:39 And this, yes, this is buckets, you know, for getting started planning, but it’s also buckets for every portion of your life when it comes to your financial plan. So we’re really simplifying, but by simplifying it just makes it so much more real and you can apply it to all different stages of your life. So having that emergency fund is something that you do want to have as bucket number one to get started. Making sure that your debt is paid down is another bucket that you want to make sure that funds are going into that bucket to pay down student debt, credit card debt, sort of the debt that is not particularly helpful. Even though student debt is considered helpful, but credit card debt, definitely not. So those would be two buckets or places that you’re, you know, if you have $1,000 of income coming in that you’d want to put a few hundred dollars here, a few hundred dollars there, just dividing it up.
Debi Lynes: 12:29 And you can kind of decide exactly how many of those dollars we’re going to put in which bucket.
Emily Johnson: 12:35 Oh, Absolutely. So the third bucket…And we’re always dealing with three buckets, you can complicate this as much as you want, but I tend to just focus on three and you can always change the, sort of, structure of the three and how big the three are. But so then the third bucket is going to be saving for future. So it might be saving for future education for a child, that might be saving for retirement for yourself, which that’s a definition that’s constantly changing. So these different buckets, those are the three buckets that we always need to be looking at regardless of what stage in life we’re starting.
Emily Johnson: 13:03 And the catch-22 is when we start talking about financial plans. It’s so much fun to see people get a light in their eye of this is actually something I can actually do. I feel good about taking control of my funds. And then they say, well, you know, of my thousand dollars that is coming in this month, I’d like to put $900 towards each of these 300 here, 300 here and 300 there. And then you’ll usually have the spouse look at them and say, well now honey, how do we pay for food and the mortgage and the kids’ school? So the catch-22 is always wanting to save and then making it work for your cash flows. The reality, right? So my basic advice when it comes to trying to allocate to each of these buckets is you want to allocate enough to each of them on a steady basis that it hurts just a little.
Emily Johnson: 13:52 Because if it hurts just a little, then you actually feel like you’re doing something. It’s like exercise. You know, getting back to the same analogy, you know, if it hurts a little, you’re thinking, okay, I’m making a little progress here and you’re, and you’re cognizant of it.
Debi Lynes: 14:05 But I can still continue to do it. Just because it hurts little.
Emily Johnson: 14:08 If it hurts too much and you’re finding yourself in a constant cash negative or you’re building up credit card balances or your spouse is upset at you or whatever it might be, then that’s where you’re going to change the plan. And if you change the plan, then you’re no longer moving in the direction that you have, that I have helped you set up according to what you’re saying your goals are. So we want it to hurt just enough so that you feel like you’re doing something meaningful but not so much that you take a step back and, and negate the plan altogether.
Debi Lynes: 14:40 Is there a time when you should be more risk taking than others? Like I am 66 versus my daughter at 32?
Emily Johnson: 14:47 Okay. So I have two answers to that. One is yes, when you’re younger you have more time. So therefore you should be able to take more risks. That’s the reason that you see, you know, whether it’s on TV or on the internet or with other financial advisors saying that when you’re younger you can take more risks, therefore have more funds and equities. So that’s, that’s one simple answer. The other though is the sleep-at-night factor. And if you’re 37 years old, but you are extremely risk averse because you saw your parents go through a really difficult time financially or because you know you want to change careers or something like that, then you don’t need to take that extra risk. I don’t care how old you are.
Emily Johnson: 15:22 So I mean what you need to realize is that everything is a trade-off. So if you’re taking additional risks early on, history would show that you are going to, over time, achieve higher returns. You could have a few bad years, however, and if you can’t stomach those bad years. And again, with married couples, this is even more complex because it has two personalities. Exactly. So, and when it upsets the home life, chances are the plan’s going to change if they aren’t really in unison on that risk tolerance. So yes, over time if you take more risk in theory, you should actually have higher returns and therefore you benefit if you’re younger by taking more risks. However, if again, it’s, you’re going to be taking so much risk that you can’t stomach it and you’re going to stop the plan altogether, then don’t do it, then dial it back to a level that you can actually sleep at night. And that might mean putting more money in the cash bucket because you know that you can dig into it. It might mean taking less risk overall in your portfolio. And there’s lots of ways you can measure that, that are way more boring than this talk here. You know, so, so I think those are two really important gauges. One is age and one is the sleep at night factor.
Debi Lynes: 16:31 Well, let me ask you a question about your profession as a whole. Why is it so important that I have someone to help me navigate through this? And I mean, I can give a testimonial. I think for me it was being with someone objective who was also a professional in the field and knew all the nuances and that to me was worth its weight in gold. But I would love to hear your opinion on why is it really helpful to have someone?
Emily Johnson: 16:58 Well, first of all, I just absolutely love my profession. So I’m a certified financial planner. I was an investment banker before that. And I can say I love this part of the job in finance a heck of a lot more than I enjoyed that part of the job.
Debi Lynes: 17:10 You said that there’s a lot of psychology to it and listening.
Emily Johnson: 17:15 There’s so much to know and it’s just like any other field. I mean, if I have physicians as clients, you know, I don’t know everything that they’re doing. I go to a doctor for a reason.
Debi Lynes: 17:24 That’s right.
Emily Johnson: 17:24 You know, same thing with my engineer clients, you know, I certainly, I can’t change the oil in my car, let alone any of the things that they could do. So, but they come to me because this is what I do all day, every day and I love all of the little nuances and the little changes that constantly happen. That’s what I do all day and every day and I’ve seen it now over the last however many years in so many different forms and iterations. So I think that’s number one is this is my trade, this is what I do. But the other is, you know, finding somebody that you feel really comfortable talking to about your finances, about your fears, about your insecurities, about your goals about the son in law that you don’t like, but you know, you want to make sure that there’s money there for the grandkids. I mean, it’s things like this and also somebody that you don’t worry about asking questions of. You don’t feel like, Oh, if I ask what an IRA is, is that going to show that somehow I’m going to be taken advantage of? Or something like that. So being open and able to ask those questions. So finding the person that you can do that with is really important.
Debi Lynes: 18:26 Is the professional really fluid and dynamic? Are things oftentimes changing? Markets are volatile and money. I mean it’s just a chaotic world in many ways.
Emily Johnson: 18:35 It’s definitely fluid, but really, you know what the market’s doing. Yes, that’s sort of the sexy part of the job. And that’s what the news focuses on. But if you look at statistics, actual your allocation and what you are actually invested in only I think I want to say it drives about 3% of your overall success in achieving your goals. So if you look at all of the factors that allow you to, let’s just say you want to retire with $1 million, there’s your standard that you see on TV. You retire with $1 million. So if you start saving when you’re 25 years old and you assume that retirement is 65 then your success and achieving that goal is derived about 97% just from your ability to actually save.
Debi Lynes: 19:18 Wow.
Emily Johnson: 19:19 And time value of money. So the actual the other percent that’s there, the 3% that’s there, a portion of it is allocation. And a portion of it is what you’re actually invested in. So all these arguments about mutual funds versus ETFs versus individual stocks, whatever. That’s what sells advertising, right? And that’s what sells TV. And that’s what sells CNBC. And that’s where the big money is because saving is not sexy. Saving is boring. But that’s really what drives the success in a plan. So it’s why I think that a plan is so important because it brings you back to looking at what you can do and what is within your control because the market’s outside of your control. You do the best that you can to manage the risk so that you can sleep at night. But what’s within your control is the saving.
Debi Lynes: 20:05 We’re going to take a quick break, Emily and we’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about the aging in place market over 50 and if we’ve been afraid or haven’t done as well as we should as we’ve gotten older, we’re going to talk a little bit about that, so stay with us. We’ll be back on aging in place.
Debi Lynes: 20:22 Hi, I’m Dr. Debi Lynes. Design elements are psychologically and physically supportive and conducive to health and wellness. To learn more about what Lynes on Design can do for you, for more information on certified aging in place and facilitative and supportive design. Look for us at lynesondesign.com. That’s L Y N E S on design dot com.
Debi Lynes: 20:47 We’re back here on aging in place and Emily and I are talking about as we get older, what is it that we all really want to know? Well, of course, everyone wants to know something different. But I think what probably is important for the folks who are 50 and over who really want to get serious now, Oh my gosh, I just had a big birthday and I want to make sure… I’m 66 I want to make sure that at least I have a fighting chance of, if not retiring, at least not being a burden to my kids. So how do you begin to really counsel someone or take someone through the process of getting older and beginning to fill those buckets, if you will?
Emily Johnson: 21:30 So the first part is just asking a whole lot of questions and really trying to get a good feel for if you say you don’t want to be a burden, do you mean that you want to stay in your own home? Do you already anticipate that you have one child that you know you’ll be moving closer to them because that’s just the way that’s going to be. So questions like that just to get a better feel for you, for your family dynamics and things like that. So we start with that. And then of course the next part is going to be asking questions about all of your assets. So very rarely do people think of their home and the equity in their home as something that they can use towards retirement. And there’s lots of different ways to do that. You know, you might have longterm care insurance, which is first a question.
Debi Lynes: 22:14 I was just going to say, do you have life insurance?
Emily Johnson: 22:16 Life insurance is an interesting one, especially for folks that are, I would say over 60 because life insurance is a new investment and I’m sorry to all the insurance agents that are out there that hear this, but life insurance as a in general as an investment at this point in time where interest rates are, is not necessarily a fabulous investment. However, back in the day when interest rates were a lot higher and whole life insurance was sold in abundance, it was a heck of a great investment vehicle. And if you’ve had it for a really long time, then it’s a great investment vehicle and chances are you have a lot of cash in it. And rarely do people actually look at. And another thing I find interesting about it is people have 15 policies. They bought one from their son’s soccer coach. They bought one from their brother-in-law. They bought another one when they moved in and got a new job. Some are term and some are whole life. But they’ll have a boatload of it and there’s a lot of cash in there. And unless they actually have a state issues, tax issues, you know, different things. and then we won’t even get into any of that. Most families don’t. That’s just suffice to say most families don’t. So unless you have an emotional tie to that insurance for some reason, there’s oftentimes a lot of cash sitting in those policies that can be a great resource to people in retirement. You can take notes from that and better used because it’s sitting there. So we’ll ask about all different assets. Even if it seems like, wow, why are they asking about that?
Emily Johnson: 23:40 That doesn’t make sense. Because when you pull it all together, the idea is trying to make sure that pie stays as large as it possibly can for as long as possible. And the two biggest problems that we have keeping that going is taxes and interest rates. And so because interest rates are really low, fortunately taxes are historically low too right now, but they’re still higher than interest rates. So trying to manage where different funds come from so we keep as much invested as possible and minimize taxes is a key. So those are two big things, you know, trying to get a better feel for the individual, the family dynamics, all of that is paramount. And then number two is okay, if that’s what we have as sort of our environment, you know, what are the tools that we have within that environment to make it hopefully right.
Debi Lynes: 24:28 Oh, it’s a little overwhelming isn’t it?
Emily Johnson: 24:31 So you basically, if you break it down, so I’m a checklist person, Okay?
Debi Lynes: 24:33 And actually I’ve actually seen that.
Emily Johnson: 24:37 And I find that, you know, if you started having these conversations very wide open, but then if it becomes overwhelming trying to put things down as sort of an order of operations, sometimes it’s more info gathering as the next step. Sometimes it’s again, budgeting. Nobody likes that. You know, sometimes it’s really having to have the heart to heart with yourself or your spouse or your kids about what your plan is. And earlier on, like when you are 50, that’s probably not even considered. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s right. Yeah. but, but some, for some people it isn’t, especially now with the definition of retirement changing so much and people having multiple jobs throughout their life, you know, 50 might be when they’re actually starting a new career.
Debi Lynes: 25:18 It’s funny, I’m 66 and when you were saying, Oh, it’s 65 at retirement, Oh, I missed that.
Emily Johnson: 25:23 And I think there are a lot of people that are offended that the idea that 65 is retirement. I mean, I, you know, I’m 42 and I look at that and I think, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. I mean I do not even have any hobbies now, but it’s probably because I have a kid and a career, but I’m good with that, but still I think because the definition of the workforce and your job progression and the idea of retirement is changing. Yeah. So the whole idea of financial planning is changing too because setting up a plan that says, “Okay, I’m 42 years old and I’m going to set up a plan that says I want to retire when I’m 60 and this is what I think I’m going to do.” Who the heck knows? I’m doing the best I can and I’ll set that up and then I’ll have a game plan, but I know darn well that between now and then, life’s going to happen. And it will allow me to be able to make those changes.
Debi Lynes: 26:19 Well, talk to me about things that I never thought I’d be asking about. Like social security, reverse mortgages, all of these fun things. Medicare, it’s really like, Oh.
Emily Johnson: 26:30 I know, and they all seem like black boxes. So one thing I want to say from the very, very beginning is that every tool that’s there, whether you call it a product, an investment, a policy, a contract, whatever it is, every tool has its place. So don’t let anybody tell you that what you have in your portfolio is bad or wrong or terrible or whatever, because everything has its place. So you’ll hear people say, Oh, reverse mortgages are terrible. Well, you know what, for who? It might be for you, it might be for your brother-in-law who just told you that it’s terrible, but that’s in a vacuum. If you look at it in your particular scenario, it might be that that’s the best scenario or the best tool to achieve whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. So, you know, if you’re talking to the folks on your tennis team or you’re forcing the ball, you cannot apply the same logic that somebody else does to your plan.
Debi Lynes: 27:25 So it is like medical care to me. Everybody’s different. Everybody has different tolerance.
Emily Johnson: 27:32 Same thing when it comes to investment tolerance and that type of thing. So you know, definitely look at everything. What is it they say? Trust, but verify. So you know, definitely consider the opinions that you hear and consider, you know, the different products and solutions that are out there, but verify that that particular opinion at that particular product solution, whatever is right for your scenario.
Emily Johnson: 27:56 And the only way to do that is to really look at your comprehensive plan. It’s like putting together a color palette. You know, if you know that you like blues and greens. You know, that you like blues and greens, but your tennis partner tells you that the latest thing is going to be bright, cherry pink and you say, okay, well let’s put bright cherry pink in here because that’s the thing. It looks terrible with your color. It might look great depending on what you think. Maybe it’s great for you, but the point is that it really needs to fit into your palette. So definitely, you know, listen to other’s opinions about things, become educated, but just consider it as one point of reference. You can work into your plan, take that piece of information to your financial planner, to your financial advisor and say, “Hey, you know, I heard about such and such. Would that work for me?” It just might, it might be something that’s outside the box that they hadn’t considered. It might be, you know, something new. So definitely bring it to your advisor and see if it’s something that fits. If it’s not something that fits, then ask them why it doesn’t fit so that you can at least, you know, you feel that you’ve verified it.
Debi Lynes: 29:00 Is there a rule of thumb about how often you like to see a client or how often you like to at least touch base or accessibility, things like that.
Emily Johnson: 29:10 Sure. It’s probably better to ask the clients that, right? Because each client is so different. So from my younger side…
Debi Lynes: 29:20 Some of us are hand holders. Need some handholding.
Emily Johnson: 29:22 I know exactly who’s going to call when the market’s down 360 points and I tried to preempt that. And you know, and I know, you know who we need to deal with at year end for charitable gifting. I mean, you know, I know all of those things, but I think that it’s different for each person. So I think that the best is, you know, if we can actually ideally meet to discuss things twice a year, that would be ideal. because really quarterly, even though that’s the, people will say that’s rule of thumb for a lot of people, that’s too much. It’s if you see my phone call coming in, you’re probably thinking, gosh, if it gets to that point then we’re definitely doing it too much. So I’d say, you know, every six months because things can change every six months and also just making sure that people are opening their statements and things. So that’s, that’s a good general rule of thumb.
Debi Lynes: 30:14 Well, it has been such a treat to have you here today. I’m always a little intimidated when I talk to you as a financial planner because I think, I think it can be, like you said, there’s this element of mystery for a lot of people.
Emily Johnson: 30:32 The key about a really good financial plan is removing the mystery from it and not trying to address it in using words that are made to sound like foreign or lingo or jargon or whatever. But words that actually apply to your situation. I have a client that likes to use the word money market for different things and I know exactly what she means. Is it a money market? No, but I know exactly what she’s talking about when she’s talking.
Debi Lynes: 30:57 Exactly. Emily, it’s a, it’s a real treat to see. I want to thank you. I want to thank you all for joining us this week on aging in place for any stage in life.
Emily Johnson: 31:06 Thank you very much, Debi, for having me here today. My name is Emily Johnson of Polaris Capital Advisors. If you have any questions about anything that we have discussed today or have anything that is lingering in your mind financially, please give me a call. Our number is 843-686-2425 shoot me an email at emily@polariscapitaladvisors.com or just check us out on Instagram, Facebook. We look forward to seeing you soon.
Erin Lentz: 31:33 For podcasts, links, information and media inquiries, please visit our website at aginginplacepodcast.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as our host Debi lines and her expert guests discuss relevant topics for creating a home for all decades in life. Don’t miss our weekly podcast on aging in place for every stage in life. Transition through life where you are with the comfort and ease you deserve. Discover how you can start creating a home that will adapt to you as you journey through life and the changes that will bring.
Debi Lynes: 32:05 I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine, Tracy. Tracy is naturally curious and always creative and when we were doing the Aging in Place Podcast, she said there are so many quick tips that I can think of offhand. My response, who knew she’s going to be with us every week, giving us a quick tip and to hint that is a practical application.
Tracy Snelling: 32:34 Thanks Debi. A cool selfie with a refrigerator helps your grocery shopping become a little easier. Like I know I have six bottles of salad dressings, but what were they? Is my milk half empty or is it half full? And don’t forget to snap a picture of your freezer too to make sure you have room for that gallon of ice cream. If you like taking pictures when you empty your bottle or jar, snap a picture of it. It comes in handy if you send your teenagers to the store and they don’t really know which brand you like. And if they’re like my kids, they always would buy the cheap stuff anyway because they always got to keep the change. Who knew pictures of food would be so popular. Days don’t think so? Just check out social media. I know what my friends eat almost every day by their posts.
Debi Lynes: 33:20 Wow. My head is exploding with everything that Emily taught us today on this episode of aging in place. All right, here’s the bottom line for me and the takeaway. It’s never too late to manage your finances. More importantly, hire someone who can help you demystify your finances. Don’t be intimidated by the talk of money, savings or investment no matter what stage of life you’re in. Again, it’s been wonderful having you here with us on aging in place.
Henrik de Gyor: 33:56 Aging in Place Podcast is hosted by Debi Lynes, marketing by Erin Lentz and produced by Henrik de Gyor. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to debi@aginginplacepodcast.com We would love to hear from you. If you’re interested in advertising or sponsoring this podcast, email us at PR@aginginplacepodcast.com. Thank you for listening to Aging in Place Podcast.
Aging in Place Podcast 