The Lazy Path to Riches and Wealth with Barbara Friedberg

Good day, good day, good day everyone. Are you working hard, hard to earn that paycheck but unsure of how to actually build wealth from it? Do you consider investing to be scary or hard or even risky? I, I can tell you I was right there with you about 10, 12 years ago, uh, thinking it was just all about 401s and putting all my money into a savings account and not really being in touch with how to build wealth. So we're going to get into all of that. Our guest Barbara Friedberg will answer the question, how can I automate my financial future so I can concentrate on what really matters and create the riches in my work and life that I deserve? So let's do this, shall we?

Are you ready to create riches in your work and life? It's time for Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches in life you deserve. So let's welcome your ball of fire host, Bernadette Boas.

Good day, good day, good day everybody again! And Barbara, how are you?

Hi everybody, I'm doing great, happy to be here.

Oh, I am happy to have you. And who doesn't want to talk about building wealth, right?

I don't know.

I don't know either. And especially if you can make the path so much easier, even lazy. I love that. Making you look kind of like the lazy path to riches. I absolutely love that. But before we get into all of that conversation, let's learn about Barbara. So where are you from?

Let me give you the Cliff Notes version. I was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, by entrepreneurial parents. My dad was dirt poor growing up. He started selling newspapers. On the street. He was a Depression-era child, my dad, and everything he had he worked for, right?

Yep.

So that was the mentality I was brought up with. I have a sister and we were both expected to do everything. There was no like, this is girls' work or we were raised as if we could do whatever we wanted to. My father introduced me to investing when I was probably a teen, and money was a part of our lives. Money was not to be wasted. It was to be valued. It was to be used judiciously, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's— yes, I can definitely relate because I'm one of 12. My, my dad also was, uh, grew up in the Depression, and he definitely like socked all of his money underneath the mattress and literally didn't have a credit card until he was about 65 and he wanted to start traveling. So I can totally relate to kind of the fact that you need to work hard, uh, to play hard, so to speak. Uh, now, why was that the— was that the springboard to why personal finance became kind of your area of expertise and your passion, or was it something else?

My parents were in a real estate business, and they built that up into a very successful— today it's really called flipping. That's what they used to do, but In the day, it was buy dilapidated buildings, fix them up, and resell them. They also had a retail brokerage, and my father was also interested in the stock market. So it was in our home. That's what we talked about. That's what was there. That was what I was exposed to, right? And I acknowledge that I'm very, very fortunate because many people don't come from that type of background or come from parents who made stupid financial decisions. Um, so the—

say it like it is, Barbara. Give it to us like it is.

Well, yeah, I mean, not to say I haven't made mistakes, or my dad or mom haven't. Everybody makes mistakes. Yes, if you've been alive, you make mistakes, right?

Right. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And I have to tell you, my whole money belief system was absolutely skewed by, you know, only being able to eat shit on a shingle and wear hand-me-down clothes. And, you know, never accept anything. No, you know, no, never accept charity. Um, and it definitely skews those early, early belief systems, carry forward into, you know, not only adulthood but even like grandhood, you know, when you're actually like a grand senior. Uh, so this whole subject, when it was, uh, brought to me, I was just like, oh, we need to help people.

Uh, well, Bernadette, it is so great that you mentioned that because so much of our psychology influences our financial decisions. And what I like to do is help you cut through the bad messages that you have given yourself in the past. Yeah, investing is gambling. Investing is dangerous. Money is scary, right? If I want something, I should have it now, right? All of those things are wrong.

All those things we've been operating under is wrong.

You know, they may not be wrong for you, right? But you don't want to hurt yourself financially by doing things that are not going to be helpful.

Right, absolutely. Well, and if you think about it, I mean, I, I just turned 60, so, and if you think about it, any of those that are like late 40s, 50s, and older, they have a lot of those older parents who definitely didn't talk about money. It was like taboo, and it still is in a lot of cases. But to your point, I have 6 brothers, 5 sisters. My dad never really you know, never really talked and shared anything with the girls, though it was one subject he would have with the boys. Um, now he did take us all to get our first— they used to stamp your bank cards, you know, those—

yes, your savings account book. Yeah, yes, where we'd go and deposit our 50 cents or our dollar in the savings account, right, and get paid 3% interest, which we thought was very low back then, right?

Right. But that was it. That was my financial, you know, education. So you, you mentioned the psychology, and thank you very much for like hearing that, because I'm sure a lot of our viewers and listeners can easily put in your tactics, put into, you know, movement and action the tactics that you train, coach, and, and work on. Yet at the same time, they're messing with, you know, it's a whole, you know, head game. And I had done an intro about how scary it is and how hard it is. And don't you find, or do you find, that that comes from someone's belief systems, not necessarily fact or logic?

Absolutely. Fact or logic is that side by side, women are better investors than men. Okay, so you may be really scared, and you maybe think it's not for me, I can't do it. I'm here to tell you investing is not scary. It's a skill you can use. You can hire out to have someone else do the investing for you for very low fees. I'm going to tell you about that too, right? I have nothing to gain. I'm not a financial advisor, right? I'm an educator. I have a master's in business administration. I've got decades of investment experience. I was a portfolio manager, and I want you to grasp that whether you've never put a dime in the stock market or in the bond market, there might be a reason to do so, right?

Yes. And, and I think too, in speaking to the corporate professionals out there and the entrepreneurs that are making really, you know, nice paychecks, they want to ensure that that paycheck is just not covering expenses and getting them by, but is building them their future, their retirement, whatever it is that they want. Right.

And you can't— because I'm an entrepreneur as well— you can't look at your business and just be laser-focused on your business and forget about your life.

Right.

So you have to set up, as one of your former guests said, you have to set up a system for getting your finances on track, automating it, and then you can do everything else.

Yeah, yeah.

If you forget about investing— and I don't know how old you guys are, but let me just say, the younger you are, the earlier you start investing, the less money you need to reach your financial goals.

Right, right. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so let's get into it then. So why do you think So many people find investing scary. What is it about it that makes people think that it's so scary?

Typically, we're scared of things we don't understand, and most people have not been exposed to investing. They don't know what it is. They watch CNBC or the other shows where people are saying, buy this, sell this, do this, do that, and they— their head is reeling. That's not sensible investing. Now, there are a lot of different strategies, ideas. There's day trading, there's buying and selling stocks, there's crypto, there's all that stuff, right? I'm not going to talk about that. And you know why? Because there is research. Vanguard, which is a really big investment firm that is focused on low-fee investing, has done a lot of studies, and they have found that investing in a very simple market-matching portfolio— and I'll explain what that means— over the long term is going to yield you better returns than the majority of people that are looking for the next hot stock or, or, uh, hot crypto to invest in, right?

And what is the Of course, the younger you are, the better, right? Okay, so let's take that group out for a second. But what is the optimal age? How do I want to say this? What is the optimal age, oldest age that you can still create wealth for your retirement?

That's a— oh, sorry. That is a really good question, Bernadette, because I was doing some calculations about, and just putting as a benchmark, let's say you want to retire at age 67, and there's calculators online that can help you do the math super easy— easily. And so the oldest age I plugged in was 50. So if you want to have a viable likelihood of retiring at age 67 with $1 million, And I'm not talking about striking it rich, buying a lottery ticket, really, but through a viable way, right? A sensible, time-tested— and nobody knows the future, okay? So we have to use some historical data to make these assumptions.

Sure.

Um, but the data we're using has been around for 100, 150 years, and there's really no assumption that it won't be good. First, I want to say investing in the stock market is putting your money in companies that you, that you use every day. Okay, you buy what is called an index fund, which is simply a group of companies. The S&P 500, many of you have heard of that. You don't know what it is. It's the 500 most important companies in the country. If you buy an index fund of the S&P 500, and what you are doing is buying partial ownership in those 500 companies, you're not investing in like the air or a casino, right? The prices of those stocks which are underlying that fund, they're going to go up and down every day. Yeah, don't worry about that, right? But over the long term— and when I say long term, I'm talking minimum of 7 to 10 years— so none of this applies if you need your money in 5 years. If you need your money in 5 years, then you want it in a CD or a short-term government treasury, period. Don't put it in the stock market. 2022 has shown us that, right, Bernadette? Yes, it has. Anyone who has a 401, an IRA, a mutual fund has seen their investments drop.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you asked me, what is the oldest age you can get started? I'm going to answer that for you now, assuming that you have— and we'll get into the specifics, so don't like glaze over now and think this is too much for me— if you can run your own business or hold a corporate office you can get this. Assuming you have 70% invested in an S&P 500 index fund or stock market type investments, 30% in bond type investments, you can expect that over the next 17 years you will earn a— you could earn a 7% annualized return per year. That's possible. It's not your most optimistic scenario. It's also not your worst-case scenario.

Right now, I want to— I just want to make sure we can clarify something. So if someone has a pool of money that every month that they can be investing, that's where the 70/30 comes in. So whatever pool of money that they have, 70% of it going to the S&P index, 30% of it going to bonds and other things is what that 70/30 breakdown was about.

Yes, thank you for clarifying it. I know that the lingo can sometimes be, um, well, and I need to—

yeah, and I need to kind of— yeah, make it very practical for my own understanding.

So yes, absolutely. And you can tweak that a little. It's not perfect, and you can add an international fund or whatever, but we're talking just Simple, simple, simple. Okay, so you all want to know the dollar amount. You're 50, you've got $10,000 in your retirement account. Is there any way to reach a million given this scenario? Okay, you're starting to invest at age 50, you want to retire at age 67, and You can invest $2,600 a month, which works out to be $30,000 a year. I know that sounds like a very lot of money, right? But this is if you want to reach $1 million by 67. If you want to reach $500,000, you can cut it in half. Sure.

Makes sense.

Okay.

Makes sense.

So you can tweak the numbers. Given a 7% annualized return, you will have roughly $1 million at age 67 if you start at 50. Right. But I got to tell you something, because maybe some of you out there are not 50 yet and maybe you're 40 or maybe you're 30. At 30, you only have to invest $485 a month. At 40, you only have to invest $1,045 per month. Right. Do you get the picture?

Yeah. So the, so the point being is that based on the amount of money you have, correct, like, you know, see if my logic's right. Based on the amount of money you have and, or, or wait, should they do it? The goal that they have, if it is a million dollars, then they would, and the age that they're at, how can they back into that number to say, like, how did you come up with you know, $1,025 based on the 7% too, to, to then say, okay, then at 40 you need to start putting away $1,025.

Wonderful question. You are just asking what people need to hear. I used a calculator.

Okay.

I selected 7% because over the last 100 years or so, stocks have earned an average of 9, 9.5, 10% a year. Bonds have earned an average of 5% a year. So you can tweak the percentages, you can tweak the numbers, but I know you're all thinking, well, how does she do that?

Where do I go?

What do I do?

Exactly.

Google online retirement calculator. Okay, there you go. There you go. And there's a ton of them out there, but there are some very simple online retirement calculators. So plug in the numbers and you can do it yourself.

Right, right. Awesome. And I think it's important, you know, I think it's important for people to kind of do that for themselves, even if they go to someone to handle, you know, that for them. So they're in control. You know, they feel, you know, now they're armed with more knowledge and more information, which makes them more confident about what it is that they're about to do, which is already scary to them, possibly. How would you support individuals that are looking to get into investing?

I would say you have to read. You have to also listen to reputable people online. Okay, because there are a lot of people out there with no experience, no skills, no financial background telling you so much different stuff. I'd go to the Vanguard website to educate yourself. They have wonderful articles. I would go to the big financial companies. They all have free educational settings. I would go to Investopedia. Which has basic investment courses. But I will tell you a secret. My favorite investing book is a 100-page book. It's a quick read, and it's called The Elements of Investing. It's by Malkiel and Ellis, and we can put these in the show notes, right?

We will.

And it just tells you everything you need to know.

Okay, all right, okay. So what— so I want to talk— as, as a result of asking that question, um, that I can't seem to get out of my mouth, um, I then want everyone to understand where Barbara Friedberg is concerned, what will they learn from your microbook, How to Invest and Grow Your Wealth?

Oh, that's simple. Yeah, I'm offering a free microbook All you have to do is give me your email and, and that means you'll get some educational content from me and you'll get an overview of how to get going with this procedure.

Right. Okay.

And actually, yeah, the, the Malkiel and Ellis Elements in Investing is good. My free ebook is shorter and discusses the same concepts and it's free. So anyone who signs up and and Bernadette will give you the link. You get that for free.

It's right there.

And I'll put it in the show notes. Link below.

Link below. And I'll definitely put it in the show notes. But that's where I was going with that question about how you, Barbara Friedberg, can help them.

You gotta spell it out for me.

Okay?

I can't talk and read at the same time. That's way too much for me.

That's quite all right. That's quite all right. So, okay, so we're helping them get beyond being scared because now you're arming them with information. They're getting knowledgeable. They have a calculator that they're working on. So I have to ask for myself and for my listeners, isn't it— isn't investing just like a big casino? Isn't it just like a big crapshoot?

If you're investing for a day or two or a week or a month, yes. Absolutely. Then you're just rolling the roulette wheel, right?

Right.

If you are investing for 10 years or more, 7 years or more, think about it. What do you think is going to happen to the majority of important countries— companies in our country and across the globe over the next 10 years? I'm just going to pause it to you. What do you think's gonna happen with those companies over the next 10 years, Bernadette?

Well, I personally think some of these juggernauts are gonna have to split apart. Um, you know, as opposed to continue to monopolize and take over the world, they're gonna have to split apart. But these companies are going to continue to grow and therefore their, their value, I would only expect, will go up.

So given that assumption, and that's what most investors believe, or else they wouldn't put their money with these companies, right? And, and then also you can also invest in a fund that goes for smaller companies. I do that as well because those are going to be a little faster growing, right? Um, but we're, we're just talking in generalities now. If you think that world and U.S. economies are going to grow in the future. Don't you want to be a part of that? Don't you want to be on the end of benefiting from that? Not just being a consumer, but also being an owner, right?

Absolutely. Now, how do you get them over the hurdle that so many people I talk to right now, especially from a business coaching and, you know, and leadership coaching perspective, They're, you know, the whole world is all in their head about this recession that's, you know, going, you know, and everything's going to just go to shit again. Excuse the French.

I love it.

And therefore, talk about being scared. They were already scared and nervous about not understanding investing, but we've got that taken care of for them. How do we get them over the hurdle? How do you get them over the hurdle of the fact that they, they're so focused on this looming thing that may or may not happen, and therefore they're like, I can't invest a dime, I just can't give up any money, I just need to hold on to it and not do anything with it. How do you get them over that hurdle?

Wonderful question, because 2022 has been a real white-knuckle period. It has. We have seen the first significant losses in both stock and bond markets in over 12 years. But I've got good news for you. First of all, that's rare. Second of all, you can expect that if you're investing. If you cannot tie up your money or leave your money invested over the long term, continue to add to it and tolerate periodic declines in your value, then you probably shouldn't be in the investment markets. Then it's not for you. But if you understand that periodic recessions, depressions, um, what we call bear markets is when the investments go down, typically they happen every 5 to 7 years. We've just been blessed because of the last 12 years, we really haven't had much of one. And that's why newer investors are really scared, right? But if you can understand going in and tolerate the reality that there's a reason you're getting not a 3 or 4% CD rate, but that you're getting a, an average of a 7, 8, or 9% return on your investment portfolios, You're being paid that higher return for the specific reason that it is not a sure thing. You're paid to accept the risk.

Ah, okay, interesting. Oh, interesting.

Investing in the stock market is riskier. Any stocks are riskier. I'm contrasting that with if you put your money in a CD where you might get 3%. The only risk you have with that is that some of your value of your dollars might shrink due to inflation. But if you invest $100 in a 3% CD, at the end of one year, that CD will be worth $103. If you invest $100 in a stock market index fund, and it might be an exchange-traded fund, and that's just a whole basket of a whole lot of companies that you can buy in one fell swoop, right? Well, that investment, that $100, that might be worth $120 at the end of the year, or it might be worth $80 at the end of the year.

Right, okay, all right.

So that's why you don't want to invest in the stock market for one year, right? But likely, if you keep that $100 invested in the stock market for 7 years, 10 years, and you keep adding to it, then at the end, your, your annual return is likely going to be higher than if you had kept it in a certificate deposit or a government bond.

Perfect sense. Now that makes perfect sense. Thank you very much, Barbara. Thank you. I was a bit confused. I was a bit confused. All right, so where is the best place to begin saving and investing? I mean, there's so many options out there. Every time you turn on the TV, there's a different, you know, new app.

It's overwhelming, and they all send them to me for review. It's like, oh my gosh. Don't you think I have a job? I can't review every one of your new apps. I mean, no offense, because, you know, many of them are very good.

Right, right, right, right.

It really depends on your interest. If you have no interest in doing any investment management yourself and you want to implement investing in a sensible way for a low fee, you can hire a robo-advisor, an automated advisor, to do it for you.

What is a robo-advisor? That's new.

I'm so glad you asked. I actually cover this a lot. I have a website called Robo-Advisor Pros where I do review them. There are about 20 or 25 of these digital investment managers.

Wow.

In the US. And the benefit of a digital investment manager, first of all, the fees are very low. You're not going to pay a lot to a digital investment manager. So some of them actually don't charge any annual management fee. Like SoFi or M1 Finance. Some of them charge like 0.25%, so it's like 25 cents for $100 managed. And what you get is a risk-adjusted portfolio that fits your goals and your risk tolerance. Now what the heck does that gobble— gobbledygook mean for you? You're right, practically, right? Okay, so almost every robo-advisor is consistent in that you get started by answering 4 to 10 different questions about yourself. Stuff you know: how much money you have, what are your financial goals, How much risk can you handle? Then from your answers, they're going to give you a customized mix of stocks and bonds that are going to be diversified across the US and the globe, and that is your investment portfolio. If you like it, you can say, okay, I'm in. With—

right there with that robo-advisor?

Absolutely.

Interesting.

And then all you have to do is you open your account, and most of them will give you either a joint or individual taxable account, a retirement account like an IRA or a Roth. And for you business owners, most robo-advisors offer a SEP IRA, which is a business And for some of you more sophisticated corporate executives, they offer trust accounts.

Oh, wow. Okay. Okay.

And so you open your account, you link your bank account to the platform. They're all secure. If you do online banking, you're going to be fine.

Right, right, right. I agree. I agree.

And then You transfer money in. I would say set up an auto deposit, however much.

Absolutely, right? Absolutely.

And you can designate different accounts frequently. Like, Betterment is really good for goal-based investing. And let me just ask you, Bernadette, can we put a link to, uh, my robo-advisor website?

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, I have a quiz on my website that will help you decide which robo-advisor is best for you.

But not your Barbara Friedberg website, your robo-advisors.pros website. Okay, all right.

Yep. And so again, I'm so worried that I'm gonna scare you off. You're gonna go heading for the hills and say, I can't do this.

Yeah, no, no, our listeners are pretty— our listeners and viewers are pretty savvy. They just need some guidance and some knowledge so they feel empowered to go and do these things. So no, this is awesome, this is awesome.

And actually, Ellevest is a robo-advisor that is designed for women, is very low fee and offers tiered services depending on your needs.

Right, right.

It is ideal, especially if you're a woman or a single woman.

Right.

Um, but back to the process.

Yes.

Number one, you take the quiz, you look at the, um, results, you say this looks okay or this looks— and they'll give you a projection. They'll say How do you feel if your portfolio loses 20% in a year? And you say, yikes, I can't handle this. And so you say, I want a more conservative portfolio. So they'll, they'll throw up another option. Yeah.

So of course, and of course, I want to stop you there for a second. And of course, if you don't need the money anytime soon, you know, you, you don't want to automatically just go, oh my God, 20%? Are you kidding me? Because you could make up that money, right, in the long term if you have decades. Unlike me, I would have more of the 7-year, but many of our listeners are like 35 and 40, so they have a lot of time, don't they, Barbara? If they took a 20% loss, they have a lot of time to make that loss up.

And if you're younger, okay, you're gonna invest in a more what we call a conservative portfolio. So it's going to have a smaller amount of stocks, which are typically have more volatility, more ups and downs.

Yeah.

And you'll have more of your money in like bond-type investments, which might give you a lower return but much less risk.

Right, right. Okay. So, and then, so we did talk about if they wanted to get to $1 million. Like if they wanted to become a millionaire by the time that they retire. What other factors or what, what, what else plays in that other than the number of years they have, the amount of money that they put in? What other things should they consider, you know, other than, you know, whether or not they go risk or conservative? What are some other factors?

Well, we're talking a lot about your retirement savings. Okay, and the main thing you have to consider is the future is unknowable. You don't know, right? All of this data is based on the past. I have been investing for 40 years. I've seen my portfolio drop 30, 40%. What you have to know is if you get frightened when you go through a normal investment drop and you choose to pull your money out, then you are unlikely to reach your long-term goals because you will need to be right twice— when you take your money out, and then when do you go back in, right?

Right.

So the research is very clear that you want to keep investing through the down markets.

Yes.

And there is a very good likelihood that you will reach your goals.

And it's also why auto-deduct is probably the best way to do it, because you can put it on automatic and not pay attention to it. Like, you know, like you don't have to— you just let it— just let it go every week, every month, whatever the cycle is that you're doing it. Um, but you don't have to always just question it, and, and then all of a sudden one week or one month is tight, so you're like, oh no, not this month, and then the next month's good, so you do it. It's just, just do it. And do you do a lot of— do you kind of provide a lot of guidance in the fact that they should make this like the first thing they take from their monies and just sock it away?

Yes.

Okay, can you talk to that?

Absolutely, I certainly can. I believe that budgeting— the super easiest way to budget, because raise your hands if you don't like to budget. Okay, the super easiest way to budget is— and if you're an entrepreneur, you may not know how much money you're going to make every month, but you can make an assumption, right?

Right.

And so you can set a specific amount of money that you auto, um, invest in an investment portfolio also. And, and you set that up with your bank, you know, you go tell from my checking account or from my savings account every month, I want this money directed to either a robo-advisor Or I want to do it myself. I'm, you know, I can buy a few funds and figure out what amount to have in them. I'm gonna have this money diverted to, say, Schwab or Fidelity or Vanguard into funds, and it will automatically get invested in those funds. Yeah, you don't see that money, so you're not gonna spend it. You don't worry about it, right?

Right.

But that's not all you do for your finances because it's, it's important to consider retirement.

Sure.

But you also have to think of that, you know, like I just had a $2,000 shower repair. I even heard of that. I got a second opinion too, because I thought to replace a valve costs $2,000. Well, the other guy charged $2,500.

Holy mackerel, right?

You need an account that we call whatever, you know, when you need that money, just in a savings account, a money market account, right? And you probably should have, you know, $50, $100 a month going to that account until it reaches about, you know, maybe whatever you think is reasonable, $5,000, $10,000. To pay for those what have— what if expenses, right?

And then there's that traditional, especially for our corporate professionals listening, there's that traditional, like if you were to lose a job, make sure you have, you know, certain number of months of savings to be able to cover yourself while you're looking for another job. Has that number— I want to say it used to be 6 months. Has that number changed or what is that number?

It really depends on your psychology and also your field. Okay, so for corporate people, and also your expenses, you know, and your sources of income. So there's no hard and fast rule, but as COVID showed, you know, you need to prepare for the unexpected. Yeah, so you do need a set amount of living expenses put aside, right? And that could be 3 months, it could be 6 months, it could be 9 months, it could be a year, right?

Right.

You just need to really look at your own situation and say, what if my job went away tomorrow? How long could I survive? What are my sources of income?

Yep, absolutely.

And I do want to throw out, if you are a corporate executive and you are working for a company, the, the most important place to start investing is in your 401k or your 401— 403b, especially if your employer is matching your contributions. Absolutely, that's free money. So absolutely. And if you don't know what to pick, you could just pick a target date retirement fund, which is simply a fund that's kind of like the mix of assets I talked about before, and it's targeted towards the date when you think you'll need that money— your retirement date or another date.

Right. Absolutely. That's fab— fabulous. I'm so glad you got that in because, as I mentioned at the beginning of the thing, that's all I thought it was, was 401, which I did, you know, beginning when I was in corporate at 20. Um, until I left, uh, and I thought it was that and savings and that was it. And so I'm so glad, I'm so glad that we had this conversation, uh, of which we're gonna have to have again because right around the New Year is when also, you know, this subject of money, money comes up. What one last tip would you provide, Barbara, to all of our listeners and viewers when it comes to them focusing on investing in themselves investing in their future to build wealth?

It's scary. I get it. I know it's easier to avoid. My best tip is to start small. Take one activity, whether it be just going to a retirement calculator or taking a glance over your checking and credit card and seeing where your money is going. Going, or figuring out how much you can divert to an emergency fund and an investment account. Just do that. Just get started. Yeah, you don't have to figure it out today.

Right, right.

And I'm going to give one more tip.

Yep.

Don't get scared of losses. You're investing for the long term. If you're not invest— if you don't— if you need the money for a shorter term money market account, certificate of deposit, right? That's where your money should be for short-term, under-5-year needs, right?

Well, and, and, um, I have to touch on that though because I want to make sure that that hits. Should they— could they have that bucket but they also have the long-term bucket? So if they are nervous, they can have both?

Yes, you need to have more than one bucket your money.

Yeah, awesome! We are getting wealthy here and shutting the bitch. We are all going to be powerhouse savers and investors, um, so you feel confident and empowered. Uh, Barbara, I could— can't thank you enough. This has been absolutely fabulous. Thank you so much.

I am thrilled to be here. Please, I have a contact form on my website If you're interested, yes, below, it's a long, long name, Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance. You can Google me. Dot com. Yes, you can Google me. I'm everywhere. I write for Forbes, I write for US News, and email me your questions. I also have a YouTube channel. I review a lot of robo-advisors and give investing advice. Yeah, so don't get scared, take action.

Love it, love it, love it. Barbara Friedberg, personalfinance.com, everybody. Whether you're listening or watching, be sure to go out and check that out as well. Download her free microbook, How to Invest and Grow Your Wealth. You can find that at tiny.cc/barbfriedberg ebook. All right. And all of this will be in the show notes. So if you, whether you're listening or watching, if you haven't been taking notes, we'll make sure that we get all of that for you. Barbara, thank you so much. I so appreciate it.

It has been really fun. And I, I answer my emails. I look at my emails. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Right. Awesome, awesome, awesome. All right, everyone, I am so glad that you've been here. I have learned a tremendous amount, especially about that roboadvisors.pro. I mean, come on, that makes it easy for you to be able to really understand what you need to do to invest and meet the financial goals that you have for yourself. I'm thrilled that we had this conversation, and if you need to go back and listen to it again so you can take notes, we with everything that Barbara shared, um, then be sure to do that. All right, and then if you want to be the powerhouse leader that you can be and get over any of these fears and insecurities and doubts and negativities about investing, then feel free to reach out and let's have a conversation about it. You can always go to coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall and plan that out. Whatever you do, take her advice. Don't be scared. Don't, you know, believe it's hard. Forget all those old beliefs that you've had about building wealth and just build the wealth that you deserve to have. All right, and until next Tuesday at noon Eastern time, I'll look forward to having you then. And have a rich, prosperous week. Bye everybody!

Thank you for taking part in Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV with Bernadette Boas. We would love to know what your biggest takeaway was. Go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or YouTube and leave a comment. You can also subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you don't miss a single episode of the show. And with your input, we can help other powerhouse women just like you find the show and decide if it's right for them. Learn more about Bernadette at balloffirecoaching.com. See you next week!