Taylor Schulte: Why You Might DIY, Tax Planning, and More!
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Welcome to the Stay Wealthy Podcast. I hope you, your family, and friends are doing well and staying safe out there. Today on the podcast, I thought I would turn the tables on myself and replay a recent interview that I did on the Get Wealth Fit Podcast.

I share my biggest financial mistake, why you might not need a financial advisor, how you're making a tax decision every single day without knowing it, and more. Really quick, before I play the interview for you, I just wanted to let you know that my email inbox is open if you're struggling with anything, have any questions, or simply just need a place to vent. We're going through some really strange, challenging times right now, and I just want to try and do my part to help.

My email address is podcast at youstaywealthy.com. I check the inbox outside of business hours, but I do read and respond to every message. So shoot me a note. Okay, without further ado, here is my interview on the Get Wealth Fit podcast. ♪

Taylor, for seven years, you had been grinding and working hard and it's starting to pay off. You have that high paying corporate job, but you're starting to realize that there are other paths to success and you find yourself at a fork in the road. One path leads to what would be the biggest paycheck you'd ever receive in your life. The other, the smallest. Why did you take the road less travel leading to the smallest check? And how in the heck did you come to that decision?

Yeah, it was a tough one. You know, it was like, I could go get a corporate job that paid me really good money, you know, healthy six figures and take care of my family and not have the stress that, you know, we all have as business owners and entrepreneurs, but yeah.

You know, actually both my grandfathers were entrepreneurs. One of them came over from Germany and was a very successful entrepreneur in the medical device business. And the other is a successful orthodontist. I think I just had like that blood inside me. Like I just couldn't get away from it. I knew if I didn't go and create something for myself, I would just like live with that regret. I also knew at the time that if what I was going to go and start and build didn't work,

I could always go get a corporate job. I could always go back to the nine to five. I had the experience, I had the credentials, I had the knowledge, I was hireable. And so that was always kind of my fallback option. I just knew I'd live with that regret. So I went 120% all in, started my firm in 2014.

were you antsy before, you know, coming to that decision? Meaning like you just knew like this corporate thing wasn't going to be your thing. And so you were starting to already formulate the exit plan or was it more like abrupt and like you were faced with the decision and you're like, now's the time. You know, I think I got really tired of being told no all the time and like clawing my way to yes for everything. And as you might find out, as we get to know each other a little bit better, like

I'm a creative guy. I like to try different things. I like to experiment and just be told no all the time. It's just really crippling, right? And so I think there's like over time, I'm like, I can't be told no, I need this creative outlet. I need to do things kind of my own way. I wouldn't trade my experience in the corporate world for anything. I learned a ton. I made incredible friendships. I had incredible mentors. I learned a lot. So I wouldn't trade that. But I think it just got to this point where it's like, it's time. Like it's just time to do something for myself.

And I also, I'm really good at paying attention to myself and like how I'm feeling. If I'm ever feeling stagnant that I'm not growing, it's a sign that I need to make a change in my life. And it still exists today with different projects and things that I'm working on. Yeah. If I just get that feeling that I'm just like, I don't really want to be here right now. I don't really want to be doing this. Yeah. This little light bulb goes off and says, it's time to make a change. You got to do something. And so that,

happened. And I, you know, I started to put the wheels in motion to make a change. You born that way, like being able to pay attention to yourself. And I asked to give it some context because I stayed at a previous business that I built for too long. And it's because I wasn't paying attention to myself. So I'm curious, did you develop this skill or do you feel like you've always been in tune?

I don't think I've always been in tune. I think it's been one of my weaknesses. But as I was in kind of the business world, and again, I had good mentors around me, I latched onto this like personal development, personal growth, and started following people like Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss, and just started to learn how to pay attention to these things and learn about myself and just want to become a better person every day.

And so I think I just become naturally just more aware of these things on a day-to-day basis, maybe more so than other people. So I don't think I was born with, maybe it was deep down inside of me. It was like, you know, made its way out at that time. But I really, really try to work on myself every single day and just really pay attention to those little things that I think people ignore. Absolutely. That decision. So, you know, a lot of people are faced with that and whether it's corporate or potentially, you know, business. And so oftentimes people know,

like, hey, if I'm going to go start my thing, this is like a less well-known road, obviously tremendous upside. So Taylor, my question for you is like, what advice do you have for someone in that similar situation where they can trade that safety and security, right? Which is very tempting and alluring for that road less travel. What do you say to them? I think there's two things that come to mind. One is if you've ever read any like stoic philosophy, there's this thing of

always kind of imagining or playing out what the worst case scenario might be before going into it. And I don't want to go into it with that mindset, like I'm going to fail. Right. But I think it's a healthy exercise to go through, especially if you're married and especially if you have kids to

to go through that exercise of like, what if things don't play out exactly how I think they're going to play out and have a plan to address that? And so I think number one, everyone needs to go through that exercise. And then I like just like push that aside, put it away. I don't want to think that way, but at least I've gone through that exercise. Number two is something I talk about a lot, which is

I think there's a giant difference. I know there's a giant difference between being a practitioner, like doing something that you're really good at all day long and being an actual business owner CEO. And it applies to every single industry. I think, you know, one that's extremely relatable is

the guy who cuts my hair. He's one of these like hipster hairstylist guys, right? That very, very well known in San Diego. And he worked for a popular barbershop in town and he built up his clientele and he decided I'm going to go start my own barbershop. Like I have my clientele, I'm going to go and do this. He quickly learned that there's a big difference between operating a business and hiring people and firing people, paying the bills, all the legal and tax work that comes along with it. There's a giant difference between that and just being really good at cutting hair all day long. And so

As you go through this exercise and as you think about starting your own business or leaving the corporate world or you're just at this kind of fork in the road, I think you really think about that. Maybe you really just enjoy cutting hair all day long and then leaving and going home and not having to worry about any of that stuff. So I think people really underestimate that. You can do both for a period of time. You can be a good hair barber and a business owner, but you're going to get to a certain point where you just can't do both. And I've experienced that. And I try to kind of bring that to the surface for other people that are considering it.

so true i mean that was me i was a marketer right and then you know uh it was funny my my former partner and i we'd play hot potato with ceo he's like one month your ceo because like you know we both didn't want the job but somebody had to do it right and that's that's how we did it and you know that's not a good thing so well piece of advice there

Right around this time, I think this gets more interesting. So right around this time where you're at, I don't wanna say a dangerous, but it's an interesting point in your life and anything could happen. Yes, you could go back to that corporate job or go get a corporate job. But at that same time, your wife leaves her corporate gig to settle down and you guys start working on a family, which naturally, you're working on a family, you're gonna need a bigger space. And so you buy your first home, but this isn't just any home. This is one that teaches you many things

lessons to take us back, Taylor, to this interesting point in your life. Yeah. You know, the timing is never perfect with these things. So yeah, you know, my wife had a great corporate job that she left. She was working from home doing some, this still paid, you know, decent money, but she left that high paying corporate job. I started my business, which we poured some money into starting. And then we poured everything that was left our life savings into buying our very first home here in San Diego, beautiful home. The only problem was it was a brand new home built in an old

And it was a complete teardown. So the contractor came in, they tore the house down and they built a brand new house foundation and everything. And along the way, they cut some corners and they didn't quite build the foundation correctly. And so it looked and still looks like this just beautiful home in this nice neighborhood. We were the unfortunate people to purchase that home and not quite understand some of the faults underneath it.

And within a couple months of living there, things started cracking, front door started moving. We're not bad people. We don't want to open up litigation or anything like that. We try to go about things just the right way and say, hey, just let's fix this house and give us what we paid for type thing. Long story short, it turned into a three-year legal battle. Our credit cards are maxed out paying legal bills again,

I'm starting a business. She just left her job. We're starting a family. And this house just became this black cloud over our lives. And it did. It taught me a lot of valuable lessons.

The single biggest lesson is that life is just not a straight line. Right. And we were really fortunate up until that point to not, we didn't really face a lot of adversity in our lives. Like we had great families, we had great educations, we had great jobs. My wife and I met when we were 18, you know, she's my soulmate. Like everything was just like all lined up.

And then it's just life just slapped us in the face. It was like, sorry, dude, it doesn't work this way. And we got caught off guard and it was a really, really challenging time for us. You know, what's interesting, you know, the business that you started is a firm, you know, financial planner, you're helping people, you know, with reducing risk, you know, and managing portfolio. It's real easy to say, oh, financial planners, you know, they, they know money, right. They do all the right moves. And so here you are and, you know, like life was going and going well, but like, this is life and-

I appreciate you sharing that story because, you know, very easily, you know, you could say they're just blessed. They know what to do with money that, you know, life happens for, you know, for them, not to them, you know? And so you sharing that is very powerful. What is your biggest piece of advice around that learning lesson for somebody, a young family potentially wanting to buy a house?

Oh, wanting to buy a house. I think my first, the real thing that I learned is that you're making this one of the single biggest purchases of your life. And the last thing that you want to do is spend even more money during this process.

but I can't stress enough how important it is to hire inspectors. And a lot, most people, when they buy a house, they just hire a general inspector to come through, look at the house and kind of give you a thumbs up on it. And that usually costs, I don't know, four or $500 or something. I would recommend people spend thousands of dollars on inspections when they go buy a very expensive home. You're spending hundreds of thousands, maybe even more millions of dollars on a home. You should be spending thousands of dollars on inspection. So I tell people, look, if the house is,

full of hardwood floor, go hire a hardwood floor inspector to actually look at those. A foundation inspector, like find these specialists. If there's a pool, if there's a fireplace, go hire the specialist. And it's just a small insurance policy. Even if you have to go spend three, four, $5,000 on inspections,

on a $500,000 or a million dollar purchase, to me, it's a really small price to pay. And if we would have done just a few more of those and just done a little bit more digging, we didn't know any better. And I don't even know if we would have done it if someone told us to do it. So people listening are like, I'm not going to do that. But I highly encourage you, especially if there's a specialty things, right? Like again, hardwood floor all through the house or the fireplace or pool, go spend that extra money and try to uncover those things as early as possible.

It's crazy because you did have an inspector, like you can't close on a house, right? I guess maybe you can, depending on where you are in the country, but you did have an inspector, but it was a generalist, right? And so your big piece of advice is, you know, if they're substantial-

Not only did we have an inspector, but this house, this remodel was permitted by the city of San Diego, checked all the boxes. And they actually somehow missed one of the key ingredients to building a home, which is to have a soils report done. No soils report was ever done, nothing on file, yet it got through the city. So just because something's permitted or passes an inspection or something doesn't mean it's perfect. You need to do your own due diligence. Yeah.

Sue the city. Just good luck with that. That's the last thing we need. Yeah. So you, uh, I'm privy a little bit to this story. And so you go through it and like, like you said, like you're a respectable member of the community. You, you know, life is easy. You're not someone that's litigious, but yet like you need to, you know, recoup, you need to hold people accountable. And so you go through this whole thing, the emotional stress that it caused you, you know, your places, uh, your, your home is supposed to be a place that you unwind, you, you relax and,

And so you go down the route, you end up getting, you know, a judgment, but like basically you're throwing good money after bad money. Now knowing what, you know, going through this process, would you do that again? Knowing what you ended up with, which is far less. Yeah. That's a really good question. I probably would do it again. Just yeah. A hundred times over just, you know, out of principle, I just,

Again, I'd probably have a regret forever if I didn't actually go through that process. I wish I knew a little bit more about the process. I wish I was more informed about the legal system and what it actually looks like. You contact an attorney and pay a few thousand bucks. And then before you know it, you're $50,000 in legal bills. That's just, it starts to accelerate and escalate. So yeah, I would certainly do it again.

It was a really unfortunate situation. And again, the hard part is like once you're in, you know, pretty deep, you can't stop. You can't go back. So like you're already here. You got to kind of keep going. I'm not going to give up now, but yeah, I would do it again. Yeah. To answer your question. That's fair. I want to go back to that corporate gig that you had. It was with a wealth management firm. And you said that you started your career with, you mentioned that people at the firm were talking more about how to make the firm money than your client's money. And that was like a big epiphany to you.

Why was it that way? Why is that environment about the profit of the company and not clients first?

I say it not to talk bad about the company, right? Many of these wealth management firms, financial firms are publicly traded companies. They have shareholders. They have shareholders. And so as a publicly traded company with shareholders, their job is to generate a profit for their shareholders. That's just the definition. Yeah, yeah. And so as...

an employee of that company as a broker, stock broker, financial advisor, whatever you wanna call ourselves, we have a job to do on a day-to-day basis and that's to make the company more money. And I guess when I started as a 22 year old out of college, all I knew is that I had a nice desk, I had a nice office, we had free coffee, I had health benefits. I'm like, this is great.

But then you have this awakening, you're sitting in these meetings and we're talking about one day we're selling mortgages, the next day we're selling life insurance, the next day we're selling the next hot stock. Do we start to realize that

All we're doing here is just trying to make the company more money. We're finding more, you know, different creative ways to, you know, generate profits. And again, it's not, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Like companies are in business to make money. Yeah. It just didn't quite align with what I was looking for, which is like, no, I'm sitting here trying to do good for my clients to make my clients more money. Like that's our job as financial planners. Yeah.

And so it just didn't really align with kind of where I was headed in my career, parted ways on very, very good terms and went and did my own thing. I'm curious. And the goal of this question is not to put anyone on the hot seat here, but my goal is to educate people. And so I can appreciate your response to that. And we'll get into what that looks like today.

I'm curious, having been on the inside, if I were to ask somebody, all hypothetical here, if I were to ask them like their stance on this, you know, what would the company line be? What would they respond back with? So people that can kind of weigh both sides of this equation, what do you think they would say? I think they'd say something along the lines of no matter where you're at, if it's my own company, conflicts of interest always exist. Like it's just impossible to get rid of all conflicts of interest. And

These folks that work at these publicly traded wealth management firms, they're not bad people. They are great, trustworthy people doing really good work for their clients. Conflicts of interest exist. Their job is to disclose those conflicts of interest and do right by their client. And you can do that anywhere at a publicly traded company, at your own firm, wherever.

my goal in creating my own firm was just to mitigate as many conflicts of interest as possible. So that's what I think their response would be. That'd probably be my response if I was still there. That's fair enough. So you have this revelation and you're like, you know what, I'm going to go out on my own. So you went out, you started to find financial, which is a fee only financial planning firm. Can you break down what that means? Like talk about

the traditional model and how that works and then talk about the fee-only model and what's the benefit for that. Sure. So I'll start off by saying that there's only about, I'll just be generous and say there's about 10,000 of us in the country that are legitimately technically fee-only financial advisors. Okay. There's about 300,000 financial advisors in the country. So we're a tiny, tiny percentage of the total advisor population.

If I really break it down simply, there's really two ways that a financial advisor can make money. They can sell you a product or sell you a stock or a fund and get a commission for that sale, right? I sell you a fund A, you pay me a percentage commission, you never pay me anything else again.

The other way you can make money is on an ongoing basis, right? By charging a percentage fee every single year, kind of the traditional, we'll charge you 1% per year to manage your investments. It could be a flat fee. We charge you $20,000 per year to manage your investments in your financial plan, but some sort of like transparent ongoing fee. Mm-hmm.

So there are some advisors out there that have both of those compensation methods where one day they're selling you a product and getting a little commission, but they're also managing your investments and charging an ongoing fee. So they kind of like put one hat on and take the other hat off and do both.

My firm, we don't sell any products for commission. We charge a transparent annual fee to all of our clients to manage their entire financial lives. So if we think that the client needs a life insurance policy, we will go out, we will shop the market, we will find the best product at the best price and help them secure that policy. And we do not get paid anything for doing that other than the transparent annual fee that we're already charging. So again, it eliminates that conflict of interest because if I get paid every time there's a transaction, I'm going to get paid every time there's a transaction.

as the consumer, you sit there and wonder, do I really need this life insurance policy? Or are you just trying to maybe get a sales quota or just make a little bit extra money this month? My clients already know how much that they're paying me, you know, month over month, year over year. So if I say, look,

you need to go get this insurance policy. They're going to listen to me. And again, it just, it avoids that mitigates that conflict of interest. They don't have to scratch their head and question. So in this world, you know, fees is a big part of this conversation. You know, you say, say 1%, I've heard other people, you know, the fees can go up and up and up is the only way to sort of mitigate fees, either to kind of shop around financial planners and ask them what their fees are here or to go with a fee only option. Yeah.

No, I mean, I think, look, you get what you pay for, like anything. Maybe a good analogy is to the tax world. You know, you can go do TurboTax and pay whatever it is, 40 or 50 bucks, or you can go hire a full service accounting firm and pay $10,000 to do your taxes and tax planning. And I think the same thing in the world of financial planning. I think the most important thing is the transparency aspect.

alignment of interests, and again, mitigating those conflicts of interest. There are scenarios, situations where working with a transactional broker could make sense based on your needs. It might be cheaper to go pay a one-time fee to somebody to get something that you need and never pay them another fee ever again. It could be the case.

So I think it's more about alignment of interest, reducing conflicts and just fee transparency. But I can't tell you how many people think that they aren't paying their financial advisor anything. I've never paid my financial advisor anything. They must be making money somehow, but I don't know how they're making money. So transparency is just really important. You should know exactly what you're paying and exactly what you're getting in return.

And if I were to ask a financial planner on that model, by law, do they have to tell me exactly what it is? Do they have to point to it? Oh yeah. Yeah. Fees must be disclosed. Okay. As you can imagine, there are creative ways to- That's what I'm getting at. Talk through, you know, if I put on my sales hat back in the day, you know, we'll say things like it's built into the economics of this policy type thing. And, you know, there are, again, creative ways to talk through fees

while also disclosing them at the same time, which is why I'm just a fan of just getting rid of that altogether. Like there's a line item on your statement. It says how much you're paying me. And if the value we provide doesn't outweigh that fee, then you should fire us. Like it's as simple as that. I mean, outside, it just seems like the fee only option seems...

Like it would make sense. Are there any, let's say we haven't done that yet or we don't go down that route. Is there any other ways in the other sort of world that exists to minimize or reduce fees? Can you call up and negotiate with a financial planner and say, Hey, you know, I found out you're making 2% or you just ask them, yeah, I'm making 2%. You know, I want it to be 1%. Can you do that?

I think you could. If I'm the consumer and I called my financial advisor and asked them to reduce their fee and they did, I don't think I'd feel very good. That's fair. I'd rather their pricing just be appropriate on day one. Yeah. So if I felt like I'm being overcharged and I did my due diligence and found out, yep, I'm being overcharged, I mean, I guess you could go negotiate. It just wouldn't be my style. Yeah.

Again, just like anything, there are different layers of complexity that cost different money. You can do a lot of this yourself and not pay anybody, especially when you're in the wealth accumulation phase of your life. Like

making more money and saving more money is going to make a bigger difference than picking the best investment. Like you could be terrible at picking stocks and picking investments, but if you're making more money and saving more money on a consistent basis, that's going to matter more. So for some people in the wealth accumulation phase, they don't have a lot of complexity. They're just trying to build that nest egg.

Maybe you don't need to go pay somebody 1% per year or 5% ticket charges for things. You might just stay focused on making money and saving money and save yourself a little bit of money. There are also other services out there that charge a fraction of 1% that provide lower tier services. Again, kind of depends on your complexity. Again, I just say you get what you pay for, really. How do I know if I'm ready for a fee offer?

only sort of situation? Is it based off of net worth? Is it based on how sophisticated I am as a shepherd of money, so to say? What's your advice there to folks? Yeah, this conversation just gets tricky. I don't want to confuse the listeners here. We talk about fee-only, a common word used in the industry is fee-based. Okay.

I hate everyone gets these words confused. Really what it boils down to is your advisor is either a fiduciary or they're not a fiduciary. And will you break that down? Sure. Someone hearing that first time. Yeah. So again, some advisors out there will make a commission when they sell a product to you.

they are not considered a fiduciary. Someone who charges a transparent fee in return for advice, they would be a fiduciary. And again, there's only about 10,000 of them in the entire country. And that's being a little bit generous.

So a fiduciary is required by law to put your interest first. It's as simple as that. And so when you're shopping for a financial advisor, I just think it's just a no brainer to go find someone who is a fiduciary. And again, fiduciaries don't sell products in return for commission. You're going to pay them just a flat fee. Now that flat fee could be 50 bucks a month. That flat fee could be $20,000 per year. That flat fee could be a percentage of your investable assets.

But again, there's no transactional fees going on. There's no hidden costs, anything like that. Everything's just out in the open. So your question was, how do I know if I'm ready for a fee-only planner? I would say, I'll just reframe and say, how do I know when I'm ready for a financial planner? My answer would just be like, you'll know.

life will get complex enough where you'll start asking these questions like, okay, I'm starting to make more money. I'm having kids. I'm buying a house. I'm changing jobs. I'm starting a business. What do I do? You just start to ask yourself these questions and it will usually trigger, I should probably talk to somebody. I should probably talk to a financial planner. And that's when, if you are going to go talk to a financial planner and say, you should find yourself a fiduciary. Again, you'll find somebody who

is fitting for you and your situation. There are fiduciaries out there that work with 20 year olds that are in the wealth accumulation phase of their life. There are fiduciaries like myself that work with people that are age 50 plus, and they're gearing up for retirement and everything in between. Got it. I want to step out of this conversation just for a second for the entrepreneurs in it. And I'm just

personally curious, I think a lot of people would be now knowing that you're not going for assets under management and taking a percentage, you know, that's, I think a goal of a lot of firms and some planners, right? Because if you get, you know, 10 million under management and you make X percent a year, you're good. And you, and you can live and service that client base. How do you think about like your own firm's growth and business now knowing like you need to

to get, you're only going to make an annual fee each year. Are you trying to get to a number of clients and you're done? How are you thinking about the growth of the firm? Well, again, and I know this conversation gets complicated. We do have clients that pay us a percentage. Again, the whole point is that it's a transparent fee. It's a line item on their statement. It's an ongoing fee. They know what it is. Again, if the value does not weigh the fee, they should leave us.

We don't get paid transaction fees for selling products and things like that. So in terms of my firm, even though that's the case and how we charge, I'm really focused on

more the quality of clients that we take on, making sure that these are clients that have a problem that we have an expertise to solve means more to me than adding more and more clients to the firm. In the early days, I was just taught like, just get as many people as you can in the door. I quickly learned like, I'm not doing them any favors. I can't be an expert. I can't be an expert in student loans and cashflow and budgeting and investing and retirement planning and tax planning. It's just impossible. And so we really stay in our lane

We know what we're really good at. And I'm more focused on just finding the people that I know I'm the best at helping. And that's it. And who is, I mean, you, you hinted at it. Who is that person? The 50 year old. Yep. Yeah. Over the age of 50 gearing up for retirement, diligent, diligent saver. You know, they've have a nest egg of a million dollars or more.

And most importantly, I shouldn't say second, most important is that they're delegators. They don't want to do this stuff themselves because all of our clients have a passion. If you go to our website, you'll see the very first thing on the website is make work optional in retirement because all of our clients, the one thing that they have in common is that they're passionate about what they do for work, whether they're a physician, whether they're an engineer, whether they're an entrepreneur, whatever it is, they love what they do. They don't want to retire in the traditional sense.

They want to know that they have the ability to retire and feel safe and comfortable so that they can spend their time doing the things that they love.

even if that means continuing to work and doing that. So that's really the common thread between all of our clients. It's like, they love what they do. They've been awesome savers. They don't want to do this stuff. And they just want to know, like, if I want to retire, I just want to know that I can retire. So we call that making work optional. I love the clarity. I think that's a great business lesson or just a life lesson. Like the clearer you are on who you're trying to serve,

how you're going to bring value to the world, like the easier it is to find that person and say no to, you know, trying to get everyone through your door. Yeah. I'll give you a really good practical example. One of my financial planners at my firm, he shot some video on a family vacation and he wanted to get that video edited. So he took that video and went to Fiverr and he started looking around at Fiverr video editors, right? There was one profile on Fiverr that said, I specialize in editing family vacation videos.

Right. And that's what stood out to me. I was like, I'll hire that guy. Like that person, that's all they do is edit family vacation videos. And so I think it's a really good lesson for all of us as entrepreneurs, no matter what business that you're in. I really value that when somebody says, look,

I'm a heart surgeon. You need a brain surgeon. I just not what I do. I really appreciate that as a consumer rather than the person that says, yeah, I help everybody. Right. I do everything. We all know you can't be good at everything. It took me a while to learn that, but I know what we're good at. I stay in our lane. If it's not something we do, like we'll just get you in the right direction. Got it. I'm always curious. I think there's always a story behind a title or the name of the business. And so why define, how did you come up with that?

Over a lot of IPAs. And I worked with a branding agency in the very beginning just to kind of think about different names. I didn't want the firm to be about me and my name and Schulte Wealth Management or something. It wasn't about that.

And so we just kind of went through, again, I like the creative side of things and thinking about different things. And just, we just landed on the word defining, kind of defining your future, defining your retirement. And we just landed on this word define and kind of just fell in love with it. One kind of funny story is like when you start a business, you, at least me, I care about our search engine optimization and like visibility online, which is really important these days. And I remember one of the agencies telling me,

When you type in define financial, Google thinks that you're trying to find the definition of the word financial. You are never, ever, ever going to rank ahead of Webster, Wikipedia, these sites that define words. And so we ignored them and we went full steam forward and we've had zero problems whatsoever. And actually, it actually benefits us

Because when we write content, if we're talking about disability insurance, we might write a blog post that's called Define Disability Insurance. And we'll actually come up in some of these search results as someone who's providing an honest definition of something. So it's actually worked our favor. But long answer to your story, or your question. But yeah, that's kind of how we landed on it. It's been a lot of fun. And-

That's where we are. That's interesting. I want to go back to the money conversation and you have defined, I'm still going to ask the question anyway, just to see coming from this different angle, we'll give some more color here, some more insight. So it's been said that no one cares about your money like you do, but on the flip side, you can't possibly understand all the different investment opportunities out there. So working with an advisor can be beneficial. With that said, I'm curious to know like the working relationship of some of your better performing clients, whether

You said delegator, that's the person. But for me, I guess maybe I lean more to the do it yourself side. Maybe I'm more interested right now because this is my journey. Would you say some of your better performing clients are more proactive or more like, hey, you just take it and run with it because I want to get back to building this thing or hanging out at the beach? I think it's a general life philosophy. But I think we have to be really honest with ourselves.

I would argue that no matter what, you're going to be better off hiring a professional. Okay. Yeah. An expert is going to do a better job at something that you are like, no matter what. Yeah. And so I think we just have to be really real with ourselves and acknowledge like, yeah, an expert's probably going to do a better job at this.

So I just go back to this like general life philosophy is like, what do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? You know, how do you want to spend your day the entire day? And I think a really simple example is like mowing your lawn, right? Like I could go and mow my lawn and spend my Saturday mowing my lawn and doing that.

I don't really want to. I'd rather lay on the couch and watch a movie with my kid or spend time with my family. I'd rather outsource and pay somebody to do that. And that person is probably going to do a better job. They're probably going to cut the grass different ways and make my yard look much nicer than I would have done. And so I think it's just like this general philosophy. If you love investing and you love learning about this stuff, there's no better way than to do it yourself and learn through that process.

We do find a lot of do-it-yourself investors do get to this point, especially as they kind of get close to retirement when tax planning gets really, really important. You've got a bunch of different income sources coming in, you know, different places and there's a lot more complexity. Also, they start to realize, you know, I'd really rather spend my time with my grandkids or traveling or whatever else. And I just don't want this weight on my shoulders. I'd like to kind of hand it off. So

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it yourself, but I do think we have to be real with ourselves. Like an expert is going to do a better job. That's just, yeah. I'm just more curious. Like the, I agree with you. The expert is there in any relationship, you know, like even in business, like, you know, the business owner that says, I'm just going to outsource marketing or I'm just going to outsource this to,

What I found is like when you have meetings, when you're in communication, when you're more proactive, when you understand a little bit of the language, not that it's like, hey, Mr. Planner, go invest in this stock. But it's like, hey, I was reading up on this. I'm real curious about this as a strategy. Is that a factor in like their success or not really? Maybe. Okay. One way maybe I can answer that question is I have noticed that clients...

who have learned the hard way. I think we all have to learn some of these lessons of the hard way, right? You think you're an excellent stock picker and you go open up a Robinhood account and you start trading stocks and then you have a week like we had this week. And so what I have found is the clients who were working with the wrong advisor, the wrong type of advisor, or they were doing it themselves and they learned the hard way that that wasn't the right way to be going about it.

and they finally found us and they turned the keys over, those people I think are more successful than the ones who have never experienced that. So I think there is something to be said for learning and doing and going through these exercises yourself so that when you do turn over the keys, you are, you know, you have some knowledge around some of this stuff. But we know we do find people that are just like, I don't know how to do this stuff. I just, you know, they care more about finding and hiring the right person. So maybe kind of answers your question. That's fair. I do think,

one of the biggest threats to a financial plan and your investments is ourselves, right? And so I think we can go too far in that direction where you're too involved, you're getting in your own way and you're causing problems. And so that's where I think having somebody in between you and your money can be really, really impactful. Like sometimes people hire advisors just to protect them from themselves, right?

So, you know, a financial plan needs time to breathe and time to work. If you spend time tampering with it and moving things around too much, not only can it increase fees and tax consequences, but you can cause some significant damages. So I think there's a healthy balance. Yeah. This question might not necessarily pertain to your style, but I think you would have insights on it. So, you know, for the person that's making a commission off of a product,

My question's always been about like, why are they going to recommend like real estate outside of a REIT where there may be, you know, some sort of commission on there. So as a financial planner from that kind of operating in that world, why would they ever say, Hey, I think you should go buy gold and silver. Why?

you know, diversify. I think you should have some in a real estate property. Can you talk a little bit about that? Why they wouldn't want to diversify? Why they would advise that. So knowing like in that world where they're getting paid off a commission, would it ever be in their interest to advise someone to say, Hey, go buy some, some real estate property, knowing like there's not going to be a commission there.

Yeah. I mean, again, I guess it goes back to, I know this stuff gets complicated, but like if you have an advisor that's a pledged fiduciary, they're required by law to make the proper recommendation. And so-

If it makes more sense for my client to keep their account at a certain place or hold a certain investment, I have to let them know that that's the case by law. I think where you get into some uncharted territories when you're not working at the fiduciary, they don't have that legal obligation and they are selling you products that pay them more money because they can. So yeah, again, it goes back to like, there's this conflict of interest that exists and

doesn't mean that there aren't honest advisors out there that have that conflict of interest. They disclose it and they do the right thing by their clients. There's plenty of them out there, but it just adds more to the equation than I think is necessary. Let me ask this a different way. So like in my business growing uppings, if you want to call it that,

I had a mentor that would always say this line. They would say, you know, like if you're sick and you're a chiropractor, the solution is crack your back. If you're sick and you grew up in traditional medicine, it's go see a doctor, go to the hospital. If you're a naturopath, right, that's the answer. And don't go see, you know, the doctor.

thing there. And so a financial planner, typically, if I'm not mistaken, they deal with equities and bonds and stocks. They're not necessarily, I don't think they're necessarily prescribing real estate. They're not prescribing gold and silver. And so when someone grows up in a system, all they may see are stocks and bonds and equities, and they're not seeing real estate. How does that weigh into the equation? Sure. Okay. So now you're getting into this world of

different types of professionals. So there are your traditional stockbrokers or money managers, as we might call them. And then there are your comprehensive financial planners. So your money manager, stockbroker folks are what you're talking about, right? They just live in this really isolated world, trading stocks and bonds. They kind of stay in their lane and yeah, who cares what gold is doing or real estate or like, this is what I do. That's what you hire me for.

Myself, I'm a certified financial planner. I've gone through extra education. I spent $15,000 getting this certification. I am trained to understand just about every facet of your financial life. So everything from tax planning to financial planning to real estate, charitable giving, insurance, and all of your investments as well. We are looking at the complete picture and then

prescribing that recommendation to you. So I would say like every relationship should start with a comprehensive financial plan first. The best analogy is you go see your doctor or better yet, you're at a party, you meet a doctor and you say, hey doctor, what prescription should I be taking? And he's like-

I don't know. Like, why don't you come to my office? Right. Let me ask you some questions. Maybe we'll do some blood work. Maybe we'll take an x-ray or two. Yeah. And then I'll decide what to prescribe to you. And the financial planning, the actual financial planning world works the same way. If you meet with a financial planner and the first thing that they're talking about is stocks, bonds, and real estate and investments.

You're in the wrong place. I promise you're in the wrong place. The conversation should start much like it would with a doctor. Tell me about your needs and goals. Where are you in life? What are your pain points? What are you doing for charitable giving? Where's your money going on a month-to-month basis? Do you know how much money you spend? We should be asking, where do you want to be in 10 years? Where do you want to be in 15 years? Tell me about some mistakes that you've made. Like we should be asking a lot of those really good questions. You should walk out of there with that type of conversation. Investments will come, right? That prescription will come once we have all the relevant information. So-

I think what you're talking about is like these money managers that exist, they serve a purpose. Like, hey, I have a bucket of money that needs to be managed by an equity manager. We talk about finding the expert. You know, you could go give it to that person, but they're going to stay in their lane there. Got it. Fair enough. And I appreciate you making that distinction because in that world, it's like you think you're going to someone to manage your money. And if you're not clear on who that specialist is, then you could be going down the wrong road. So-

Recently, I heard that you don't need a planner to acquire wealth. And this really, this really stuck out to me. You don't need a planner to acquire wealth. Instead, you get a planner to protect your wealth or dare I say, stay wealthy. Do you agree with this statement?

I don't. Okay. How so? Again, I mean, well, everybody's does like a real blanket statement that can't apply to everybody. But again, I mean, I think everybody could benefit from a financial planner. I think the problem is, is that our industry has not done anyone any favors, right? Like we have a bad reputation. You know, we've gone through the 08, 09 financial crisis. We've had the Bernie Madoffs of the world. Like I would argue that we aren't a profession yet. We aren't an actual profession, much like a doctor or an attorney, right?

We're getting there and we're really close. I think everyone can benefit from having a real financial planner that has an expertise to solve your unique problem that you're in right now. Even if it's, I'm in my twenties, I have my first job. I've got this employment benefits package that I don't understand. Like, what should I be doing?

Again, you don't need to go hire someone for $10,000 per year. There are financial planners out there that work with people in their 20s that will charge you on an hourly basis or a small monthly fee to help you navigate that employment benefits package that could change your life forever. So I do think everybody could benefit from having a professional in their life as long as it's the right type of professional and our profession needs to kind of step it up and get there and make them more accessible to people. Yeah.

But I will go back to my other point earlier, which is making money and saving money means more than just about anything else. Yeah. So, you know, if that's all you can afford to do right now, or you just don't need or want a professional in your life, like,

Make money and save money and you will be ahead of 99% of the people that are out there, even if you make some stupid investments along the way. Let me ask you this. If folks want to like dip their toe in the water, but they're a little hesitant for like this long-term relationship, like you talked about, you know, an employee plan, right?

you know, could be, you know, a company savings plan, something like that. Can one find people and would you recommend it that you simply say, listen, I have a very specific question. Can I pay you for your time and get some advice? Like, does that exist? And it's good advice. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. There's a group out there called the Garrett planning network, Garrett planning network.com. Okay. It is a group of hundreds, if not thousands of financial planners. They are fee only. They are a fiduciary and they charge on an hourly basis. Okay.

So you can search your zip code or by specialty and find somebody and pay them by the hour to answer your questions. So you might just have a few questions you want answered and pay an hourly fee and be on your way. Or you might really like them and say, hey, can we develop a longer term working relationship? There are also financial planners out there that you can find through NAPFA, N-A-P-F-A.org. Again, fee only fiduciary advisors that charge flat project fees. So maybe you say, hey, I just got married. I just bought a house. I just kind of want like

Someone to look at my whole picture and just tell me, am I on the right track? Am I doing the right things? Can I optimize some things? Have I made some mistakes? And you might pay them just one flat fee, a one-time flat fee to kind of do that comprehensive plan and then kind of get you on your way. You may not need them on an ongoing basis. One of the things you talk about among many things is reducing taxes and that comes with proper planning. Can you talk about like what events...

trigger, what events should trigger a conversation around this? Because it's very easy to just kind of go through life and you're just

this was me. I was just focusing on increasing my income and the government was going to take whatever they were going to take. Are there any events that sort of trigger like, okay, now I'm making a lot of money at this level. Should I be having a conversation around taxes? Are there any markers? I mean, there are some major markers probably as you get to certain tax brackets, certain liquidity events, retirement opens up a giant tax planning opportunity. There are some years between the

maybe age 50 and 70, which we call your gap years, your gap planning years. There's a lot of tax planning opportunities there. But I will say that no matter what stage you are in life,

you're making a tax decision every single day. When you get a job and you have access to a 401k, most companies these days are going to say, you can put your money in a traditional 401k or a Roth 401k. You're making a tax decision, not only today, but you're making a future tax decision as well. Maybe you don't have a company that offers that. Still, you go to Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, wherever, you have an option. You can put money in a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA or a taxable brokerage account. You're making a tax decision.

If you buy a single stock or a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund or real estate, you are making a tax decision when you make that investment. And so every single day we're making these decisions. I wouldn't say there's like one single point that would trigger. There are some, again, like major life events, right?

buying, selling businesses, retirement, like they'll naturally trigger a tax conversation, but every day you should be thinking about taxes. How do you weigh in the picture? Cause there's sometimes there's legal ramifications, there's tax ramification. I got to imagine there's probably lifestyle, you know, ramifications in a, in a decision, you know, an example would be, you know, you could open up an LLC or you could put it in a trust

or a family limited partnership, right? And there's all these intricacies to that. How do you kind of navigate that or how does one weigh that in their head? You know, what takes more precedent here? I think those are really good questions. And like, if you're in that situation and you're asking yourself these questions, like, yeah,

should I open an LLC or an S-Corp? Should I have a trust? Should I be putting money in a traditional or Roth? Again, I just think that's where you go. You should talk to an expert. You shouldn't try to figure this out yourself. You're making a huge decision here. So when it gets into the legal world, I would say, go find yourself a really good attorney that specializes in that arena to help you out. A good CPA is one of the most valuable things that you can have in your life. And so to find one that you can trust and lean on to help you answer some of those questions are really,

really, really valuable. I'm not that expert. I can't speak to every little piece of business structure and tax entities and shelters and things like that. I think you should be asking yourself those questions and finding the expert. The beauty of working with a certified financial planner is we're kind of that initial point person. So that's a really good question. I'm not the expert there. Let's go grab so-and-so and bring them into the picture here. Let's all sit down and have a conversation. We got it. I think that's incredible. The

strategy, the idea, the action item for everyone listening is to put together their power, your power team. And I want you to talk a little bit about like, as you, you know, start to find advisors that you like, whether they're, you know, accountants, attorneys, planners, that

that sort of thing. Talk about the evolution of that, because oftentimes when you're younger, you're going to start off, ideally, if you get them, a certain set of advisors. But as you grow, as sad, I guess, as it is, but you generally will outgrow. I mean, this happens in life. You start a family, you're going to outgrow the condo that you live in, you move on to life. So will you talk a little bit about that nature and that dynamic? I mean, do planners, do advisors...

role with you? Are there times where you have to just leave that person behind or leave that expert behind because you're at that next level? I think there are situations where you do need to have that hard conversation and move on to the next level. I'm in this kind of unique situation where I'm young, right? I'm 35 years old. I work with people 50 plus and

one of the main reasons why they choose me versus some other firms is because of my youth, they know that I'm going to be there through the end of their retirement, through the end of their life. So they don't have to make that transition where they go hire a 65 year old and say, are you going to be around when I really need you? So I'm in that kind of unique situation. But if you're in a situation where you're outgrowing something, like absolutely, it goes back to, you need to find that specialist in your life. If all of a sudden,

you start a business and you become a successful entrepreneur in the real estate world, you should go find a financial planner, a CPA, an attorney that specializes in working with people just like you. I have a buddy out in Indiana. He's a financial planner, a rockstar financial planner. All he does, he works with optometrists. That's it. Optometrists. I've

I have another friend in Florida, speech language pathologist. That's it. Can you imagine if you're an SLP and you meet my friend Craig and he says, all I do is financial planning for speech language pathologists. You would hire him right there on the spot. It's so magnetic. Yeah. And so that's what's happening in the financial planning world. Just like it is in the legal world. You don't go hire an attorney that says I work with everybody. Like if you need a divorce attorney, you go find a divorce attorney. And so that's what our profession that

it's turning into is starting to head down. And that's how you should think about it. So if your life changes, you leave the corporate world and you go work at a startup, there are advisors, there are financial planners out there that specialize in working with people in the startup world. Like I would tell you, like, that's not my expertise. I don't do that.

Yeah. I love that. That speaks to the power of niche. And, you know, like when you are so for somebody, you know, the sales process is really minimalized because it's like, wow, this person gets me understand my needs and concerns. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, again, our industry just hasn't done people any favors. We were kind of jack of all trades for a really long time. If you have money, we help you. That was it. And we were doing a disservice to everybody involved. So.

It's changing rapidly. It's changing rapidly. Well, because guys like you, I want to ask you this, Taylor, you've got a podcast and obviously we're a fan of podcasts, having a podcast of our own. Stay Wealthy San Diego. I wanted to ask you, how did this come to be starting a podcast? And what's the thing that has surprised you the most about interviewing and doing, you know, I don't want to say solo acts, but like, you know, you getting on there and giving advice out there.

Well, the first thing I'll say is that the podcast is no longer called Stay Wealthy San Diego. I chopped off San Diego maybe about 18 months ago. Why? I was going after this like hyper local San Diego type thing. And it just wasn't becoming what I thought it was going to become. And I felt myself like really backed into a corner. I always had to be about San Diego. I was interviewing people in different professions and I just wasn't loving it. Like I missed talking about personal finance and investing and financial planning. And so...

I chopped off San Diego. We kind of came up with an avatar for our ideal listener and just got really specific. And what do you know, like the show just kind of took off from there. So it's a retirement focused podcast. Our listeners are generally, you know, 40 plus getting closer and closer to retirement. To answer your question,

I think the most surprising thing that I've learned is one, how many nice and generous people there are out there in the world. I don't know about you, but just like the engagement that I get from listeners. I had a listener randomly mail me a check just to say, thank you for all of your work. You'd have no idea how much you've just helped my family through this podcast. Go take your family out to dinner like that. I mean,

I don't need anything else ever from that podcast. That was really amazing. The other thing that really surprised me is, and I've learned this through a lot of the pro bono financial planning work that I've done, is people are in better financial shape than they think they are. Again, I'll go into these like low income areas in San Diego. There's some organizations I volunteer for and do pro bono work. These people come in and they're so stressed about their situation and they've got their statements and they're talking through it. I'm like,

you know what, you're actually in like, you're in much better financial shape than you think and than most people. And so I'm really surprised by a lot of the engagement and people that I hear from that are worried and panicked and anxious about money. And they're in much better shape than they thought they were. People generally do a pretty good job

I mean, I know a lot of the country does battle with debt and serious money issues, but that's just one thing that surprised me. That is surprising to me. And we haven't had anyone mail me a check yet, but I invite that, by the way. No, I'm just kidding. You know, that does speak to the power of who you are as a person. I mean, you're paying it for you. You most certainly don't have to do a podcast. You most certainly don't have to do pro bono stuff. Although, you know, these are ways for you to be seen, but, you know, very easily you could have given up. You could have said, well, I'm just going to shut the whole thing down. And so-

The fact that you're putting out information, you're helping people with their financial journeys and, you know, paying it forward is speaking to who you are as a person. So I just want to acknowledge you and say thank you for that. And thank you for being on the show. For folks that want to continue the conversation, they can check out youstaywealthy.com.

And for folks that maybe meet the demographic of 50 plus, they like to delegate, they want to go live their life, maybe not have to work or choose to work. Where's the best place for folks to continue that conversation? Yeah, my firm is Define Financial, definefinancial.com, but youstaywealthy.com will get you there as well. Yeah, I'd love to share the podcast with you. And if you reach out via email, I answer every single email, I read everything. So I'd love to hear from you. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks so much, Justin. I appreciate it.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. This podcast is not engaged in rendering legal, financial, or other professional services.