Money Management for Millennials: Left Brain Thinking podcast with Anna Kareis

Hello again, and welcome to this week's Left Brain Thinking podcast. On the podcast, we welcome dynamic thinkers from the worlds of investing and personal finance, designed to help you in your journey of building your personal assets. And a few words and a disclaimer: the opinions expressed by our guests are not endorsed by Left Brain and may not reflect the views expressed by other clients or investors. Depending on the facts and circumstances, public commentary made directly by a client about their own experience with or endorsement of an investment advisor, their personal investments, or their approval of Left Brain is considered a testimonial. Testimonials are based on unique experiences from current clients or private fund investors and are not representative of all client experiences. Testimonials are unsolicited and no cash or non-cash compensation is provided. To learn more about Left Brain and our research service, which provides subscribers 8 to 10 full-length stock reports per month and The Chosen, our favorite stock and bond opportunity of each month, head to leftbrainir.com. With that, we'll welcome this week's guest. Hello everyone and welcome again to Left Brain Thinking. Um, we're back again with another episode. I'm here with Anna Karras. She's a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual. Um, so I'll go ahead and let her, um, read you off her little disclosure.

Hi everyone. Like Brian said, my name is Anna Karras. I am a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual. Part of being with a larger firm is a larger amount of compliance. So real quick disclosure statement. Anna Karras is a financial advisor with the Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company, a subsidiary of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more information, please visit annakarras.nm.com.

All right, we got it out of the way. We will jump right in. So Anna, as we always ask our guests, I just wanted to get a little bit of background info on you, kind of what got you into investing, and we'll talk a little bit more about your practice.

Sure. So my professional background is actually in education. I worked in high schools. I taught Algebra 1 and 2. It was a learning experience that didn't last very long. I learned very quickly, luckily. And then sort of, I joke that I was dragged into the financial planning world against my will. I had a college mentor who had been with Northwestern Mutual for several years. He'd actually been in charge of the internship program in our Cedar Rapids office and had tried to get me to intern for him for a couple of years. Like most college students, I obviously had other ideas and I put him off for for a while until I knew that my education career was coming to an end, at which point he basically said, I'm not asking anymore, you're going to apply. And I said, fine, but I'm going to apply in San Antonio. I'm not going back to Iowa. So that's, that's how my illustrious entrance into the industry.

Okay. And, um, you know, Anna and I are LinkedIn buddies. Um, so that's how we found her. Um, so on your profile, you It seems that you work with a lot of millennials. So can you talk a little bit about what made you want to focus on millennials?

Sure. So on the one hand, it was sort of a, you know, that was the people I knew at Northwestern Mutual. They basically have you make a list of the people that you know already, reach out to them first, and then build out from there. And so I mostly knew people who were within, you know, 5-ish years of my age, and I am part of that millennial generation. So I started working with millennials. Um, I did branch out and work with people from other age brackets, uh, which was a wonderful learning experience, but I did find that just having that commonality in terms of our life experiences, you know, we were all going through a lot of the same life phases together, uh, relationships, you know, starting families, traveling, all of that fun stuff, uh, doing all of that at the same time did really build a bond. And there was sort of an unspoken trust between myself and clients because we already knew that we had that in common anyway. So I decided to lean into that, refine it a little bit to people who would describe themselves as ambitious, because those are people that I would obviously like to work with. And that's how The Financial Advisor to Ambitious Millennials came about.

I always kind of laugh about the media portrayal of millennials. I'm kind of on the borderline of, I'm an Xennial, I guess, but yeah, some of us are like 40 now. It's okay.

I'm a Zillennial. So I'm sort of, Same issue, but other end of the spectrum.

It's just always funny to hear, uh, you know, talking about, oh, they're these young kids and whatnot. And, uh, these young kids are now having kids.

So, um, you're like, I have a mortgage, leave me alone. Okay.

Um, well, I want to talk to you a little bit more because in my practice too, I definitely work with, um, quite a few, quite a few people in the same age bracket as you seem to. Um, so, you know, part of the reason we're doing this podcast is to help folks who are dealing with some of the newer, some of the issues that come up in life from a financial point of view. So let's talk a little bit about some of the issues that you seem to deal with, with folks that you work with. So I guess the first question I have is, how is investing different for millennials?

[Speaker:KATIE_GRIFFIN] So the fundamentals of investing are largely the same across the board. You want to buy low, sell high, and give the tax man as little as possible along the way. And for millennials, that's obviously the case as well. One of the upsides of working with a younger group of people is that they do generally have a much longer timeline before they're going to need to rely on their investments as a source of income. And because of that, in theory anyway, they can be a little bit more aggressive with some of the choices they're making, maybe owning a little bit less fixed income at this point in their life. However, that's all in theory, because in reality, what I've found is that there are a lot of people in this generation who are maybe a little bit more conservative in their investment approach than their timeline would indicate. And I think that's just a factor of the times that they grew up in. You know, a lot of people in our generation entered the professional world in some very interesting circumstances, you know, between the recession and a pandemic and all of the other, you know, first, you know, once in a lifetime events that have happened over the last 15 years or so.

Yeah.

Many, many, many an unprecedented time for our people.

How do you deal with some of that? I mean, obviously we, you know, have to take on board kind of the way that people feel and incorporate that. But obviously part of our job as advisors is to kind of, you know, help people deal with these emotions and make that, you know, help them make the right decisions, you know, despite the biases they may bring into the situation. So Kind of how do you deal with those things?

Uh, so I think one of the first things that we kind of have to help clients do is determine what is something that they feel is true versus what is actually true, because we can, we can get really stuck in our beliefs just as people, and we can let our emotions and our thoughts about something sort of dictate how we see it from then on. And so as an advisor, I see it as my job to First ask questions, you know, let's, let's figure out where these things that you're saying are coming from, and then, you know, potentially start to, to poke holes in the argument. Um, I thought for a really long time that I was going to be an attorney, and while obviously I'm not doing that, I still use a little bit of the skill set.

Sure. Um, so what are some of the, you know, issues? Like, we, we've got student loan debt and credit card debt is something that a lot of people in this age bracket are dealing with. And it seems to be impacting their ability to form households, buy houses, and get started with investing. So how do you counsel people to deal with kind of the debt they bring to the situation and also start making some of the right decisions from an investment point of view?

Well, I think so the debt question, I guess it has 2 parts to it. One is the feelings that people have around it, like you just mentioned in your last question. People have a lot of emotions around money. That's just, it is what it is. And debt is one of those things that I think people have some of the most emotions about. I don't think it's a coincidence that the word debt sounds a lot like the word death, if you think about it too hard. Don't think about it too hard. And so I think first, it's just recognizing that people do feel that way. We can show people mathematically that putting money into the market might be a better long-term strategy than paying down their student loans more quickly. But ultimately, people are people and they're still going to make emotional decisions, even if they would like to say that that's not what's going to happen.

Sure.

So you've got the emotions of it, and then you've also got the, the reality of it. I've got one client who's a medical doctor, and she's got the medical doctor student debt. Well, she had it anyway. She just paid it off in March, which is very exciting. And when she was paying it off, she, you know, it was, it was a minimum payment of $2,100 per month that was going towards her student loan balance. And if, you know, you'd have to be crazy to think that there isn't something better that $2,100 a month could be going towards, you know, that's, that's a, that's a whole mortgage payment at that point that, you know, could be used for something else and now can be used for something else. So there's, you know, there's, there's the feeling of it holding people behind, holding people back. And in some cases, it is actually very, very true, because this is money that could be going towards other things.

Okay. Yeah, it's all— everything's cost-benefit, right? So that's what we're definitely trying to help people work through. I mean, obviously a lot of these things are second nature to us, but it isn't to, you know, the folks that we work with. And yeah, that's, that's what financial advisors are definitely here to help you do is, you know, sort through a lot of the emotions that come along with money. We understand that's That's just the reality. I want to talk to you, and this is kind of related. Media narratives around investing, I think, drive a lot of the emotions that people feel toward the markets, toward investing, and everything around that. I wanted to talk to you about the difficulty of tuning out advice from questionable sources. I think this is something that we all sort of deal with as advisors. A lot of well-meaning people and a lot of not so well-meaning people definitely get into the heads of investors and folks out there that can be parents that have experienced things in a certain way in a different time, influencers and things like that. So talk to me about the difficulty of dealing with that and how you tend to deal with that.

Well, you've heard this rampage sort of in short. I'll clean it up a little bit because you've definitely heard the not so PG version. Version of it. So there's really two questions I like to have people ask themselves is, one, what is the source of this information? What qualifies them to be giving you advice? If your dad's a CPA, he might actually have some good tidbits to give you, especially when it comes to saving money on taxes, which we're all a big fan of around here. But if it's your Uncle Joe who's maybe declared bankruptcy in the last 5 years, then maybe we take him as a cautionary tale and maybe we don't take his hot stock tips. Stock tips, you know, just little things like that. And then the second is, what is this person's motivation for giving me advice? You know, like you mentioned, there are some people who are well-meaning when they're giving other people advice. They genuinely think that they're telling people something good. And then there are some people whose motivations are maybe a little bit more questionable. So if you're— and this is something that I've run into as I've gotten towards the younger end of the millennial generation and definitely Gen Z— is if your favorite influencer or Twitch streamer is telling you to buy a crypto coin, then maybe you should think about if that person is actually getting paid to tell you to buy that crypto coin. What is their stake in this? Because I can guarantee most of the time that it isn't just to give you a cool tip. It's because they're getting paid to do it. And you should think very strongly about that before you take any advice.

Yeah, I've been in the investing business for a long time. And when you start seeing, I mean, I'm not going to name any particular celebrities, but we've seen dozens of them backing a lot of these crypto investments, I'll put in air quotes.

Astrid next to that one.

Yes. Yeah, I tend to want to run the other way when I see things like that. So it's interesting. And then you also have kind of the doom and gloom from the investing press that's out there. Similarly, how do you deal with that when people come to you and say, "Oh, well, I expect a crash in the next 5 years, so I just can't stand the idea of putting money into the market." Katie Gatti I just remind everybody that ultimately the media and news outlets and everybody, they're a business at the end of the day.

Their job is to drive eyeballs, which is what drives revenue for them. And if statistically it's been proven that the negative stories drive far more eyeballs than the positive ones. So, you know, writing about recessions and crashes and things like that, that's, that's going to get a lot more views than writing about things being hunky-dory. And I think that's why you see so much negativity basically all the time at this point. You know, yes, there are things in the world that are not so great, but you, you almost have to go looking for the positive. And that's just because the positive doesn't really get as many views. So that's always my two cents to everybody. And then it's also a reminder that our business cycle is cyclical. So we are always either in a recession or headed for one eventually. And that's just the way the cookie crumbles, unfortunately. So you can either accept that fact and do the things to prepare yourself for it, or you can just sort of cower in your corner and wait for the next bad thing to happen. And trust me, there's a place for cowering every once in a while, but it's not the best way to live your life financially anyway.

How do you deal with it, like, as a, as a planner, as an advisor, um, when there are threats of a recession? Does that change the way that you manage client accounts, or do you stay pretty steady with things?

Uh, so that is an enormous upside of working with a pretty much entirely younger client base. You know, most of my clients are, you know, 25 to 40. So a short-term recession even is really not going to have too terrible of an effect on their overall portfolio or their overall life picture in general. So we'll do the very basics, making sure we've got the emergency fund, making sure that we've taken a look at the budget, we've trimmed out the fat where it's needed. And then really we can stay pretty consistent with whatever strategies we'd already come up with on the investing side of things. If, God forbid, they lose their jobs, then that's what emergency fund is for. If we have to tap assets, then it's not ideal, but it's still an option. So might as well just keep going until we know more about what's happening, because we don't want to make decisions around question marks if we can help it.

Yeah. I also try to tell people that, especially in this age, if you're young, a lot of times these are opportunities for you, right?

It's a flash sale.

Yeah, absolutely. As stocks are cheaper, you get more shares for the same money. So it's actually a great opportunity if you're younger. Obviously, if you're near retirement, I can understand where the trepidation would come in, but it's definitely an opportunity is if you're in that accumulation phase like most of your clients seem to be. So definitely worth noting for the younger investors out there. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that millennials face specifically and the type of clients that you deal with. The first is, you know, folks who are of this age bracket are starting to have kids. A lot of them have parents that might be aging, aging in a certain way to the point where they might need help financially, medically, whatever the case may be. How do you, how do you help clients balance those type of priorities, um, you know, as they're trying to build their families and also, you know, be helpful to their, uh, to their aging relatives?

Uh, I think the first step is— and I'm basically just gonna keep beating this drum— is the first step is just asking questions. So figuring out, you know, having the client have a really honest conversation about what their priorities actually are. And, you know, everybody has a list as long as their arm— well, not everybody, but most people have a list as long as they're arms of things that they would like to accomplish or things that they would like to do. But then there's a much smaller list generally of things that are actually important to them, meaningful to them, and actually achievable if they're going to be honest with themselves. So it's one, figuring out what their priorities are, what their values are, and then two, figuring out what— especially, you know, specifically if we're looking at the helping their family members, you know, what's supporting them really looks like, you know, what version of support do they want to be responsible for? You know, and for some people it's, you know, hey, if somebody asks me for money, I would like to, you know, have something set aside to give it to them just if an emergency comes up. And, you know, in those cases, then we'll usually just build a sinking fund into their budget. For other people, it's, you know, hey, I know my parents have done a little bit of planning, but if one of them were to get sick for a long time, you know, whether it's a cancer diagnosis or an Alzheimer's or something like that, then, you know, we could really be up a creek without a paddle. And maybe at that point we're talking about long-term care, which is a super cheery conversation to have, obviously, but it's, it's necessary and ultimately can really save a lot of people a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of confusion to just have the conversation as early as possible.

Yes, it's something you learn as an advisor is you do get read in on some of the more difficult conversations in life. And, you know, it does put it in perspective, like the importance of what you're doing, right? Because when people do run into those, those moments, you can really, you know, be the, be the helping hand that they need. Okay. And then kind of college planning as, as you know, the type of, the type of folks that you work with are starting to have young families and Obviously, college just gets more and more expensive in a trajectory that's pretty hard to believe. How do you look at college planning for the ambitious millennial?

So again, as always, it's going to start with a bunch of questions. If we have produced our 2.2 small humans or whatever the average is at this point, I think the average might be less than 2.2, but I don't want to be wrong. If we've made our people, then it's all right, what, what are we going to tell our young small humans as they're growing up? When I was growing up, I was given 3 options basically by my parents. And it was, you know, ideally we'd like you to go to college and we'll help you as much as we can at that point. 2, you can join the military. Long and glorious history of military service in my family. So you can join the military and we will absolutely support the heck out of that. And 3 is you can get a job, in which case you've got 6 months to get out of the house. Or we will drop you at the military recruiting station of your choice. And that was the entire conversation for me growing up. Uh, so I want to know from my clients what conversations they're going to be having with their kids. You know, if, if we are going to be pushing college as the number one option, then maybe we are looking into the, you know, the tax-advantaged 529 accounts and things like that. But if we're going to be a little bit more open and loosey-goosey on the approach, then maybe it's an UTMA or an UGMA, or if we plan on having the kids start working in the family business early, maybe we're setting up a Roth IRA for Junior, who knows? So it's just a matter of figuring out what the client envisions for their children and then doing our best to make that happen in as flexible a way as possible. Because like you mentioned, the cost of college has been going up, for a long time at an astronomical rate. The 7% inflation that we're seeing in the overall economy has been the inflation rate for college education for decades at this point. So it's like the rest of the economy is finally catching up to college education. So it's, how do we help our clients plan for that if that's what's important to them? But also how do we build some flexibility in so that if Junior maybe gets a scholarship, which we'd all be very excited for, then we can roll the money to whoever's next in line. And I think, you know, kid number 2 would probably have been Sally for previous generations, but she's probably like Brindley or Lakely for our generation. They give their kids weird names. You're laughing because you know I'm right.

I do. I know you're right. Yeah, the names that were supposed to be unique, and then there's like 3 in the preschool class. Um, how do you balance— how can, uh, how can parents balance the college planning, uh, savings with, you know, making sure they're funding their retirement properly?

Oh, that's a, that's a real fun conversation to have. This is where we as the advisors get to be the bearer of bad news in certain circumstances, because we, we do ultimately have to prioritize. And as much as it can feel selfish as a parent— and I, I don't have kids, so you're gonna have to, you know, back me up on this one— it can feel selfish to prioritize your own needs above that of your kids, you can't take loans out for retirement. And any loan that you do take out in retirement is probably not a loan that you really would like to have on the balance sheet. So you need to be making sure that you're at least on track in that aspect before we start focusing on the kids' options. And in an ideal world, you'll have buckets of money that can be accessed for any number of things. If you started a midlife crisis fund in your 20s, then perhaps that could be for when we decide to lose our mind in our 50s, or it could be for kids' education. Who knows? So I think that's where flexibility becomes key, as early as possible in the planning process.

Hey, I don't think it's that selfish. I was on a plane with my kids yesterday, and they said, if, you know, depressurization happens, put the mask on yourself first. So I guess there's precedent for that.

But hearing it and feeling it are two very different things, as you're well aware.

Yes, true. Yes, true. Okay. Well, I want to just shift gears a little bit and kind of for the last segment is talking about getting started with investing, because I know a lot of folks, I mean, even might get to age 40 and not have any experience with it. You know, let's talk a little bit about how people can get started with investing and some of the basics they should know. So the first, the first topic I have here is, you know, just 401(k) match and IRAs. How do you look at that? How do you incorporate that into your process?

So first things first, we're going to be looking for company-sponsored retirement plans. Most of them do allow for pre-tax or post-tax contributions, so traditional or Roth contributions. Love the flexibility. So we'll be looking to contribute to those because it's already built in. Fees are usually pretty reasonable. You don't have very many investment options, but usually that's where the company tacks on a match. And we obviously want to get as much free money as as possible because free money is the best money. So company-sponsored plan, at least up to the match point. And after that, that's when we'll sort of pivot and start looking the IRA direction depending on income levels and risk tolerance and all of that fun jazz. But we'll just, I think that's one thing that as advisors, or two things I guess, is that we need to be cognizant of is one, most clients, aren't always going to admit what they don't actually know. Nobody wants to feel like the dumb kid in class. So they might smile and nod as you talk about their 401(k) and pre-tax contributions, but in the back of their head, they're like, what is this guy talking about? And then the second is that we know all of these steps. So to us, it's a very simple process, but I think making it as bite-sized and taking this big thing that is investing and breaking it down to a bunch of much smaller steps so that our clients can not only understand it, but then actually execute on it because action is ultimately what's going to make the difference at this point is going to be what our role as advisors is going to be most important.

[Speaker:BRAD_STONE] There's some proverb out there about eating the elephant in one bite, right?

There are a lot of elephant-related proverbs. We were just talking about the, the one, the how do you deconstipated elephant one, which might not exactly be pleasant for your viewership, but it's, it, it exists.

Um, I just kind of in, in relation to what you just mentioned is, um, there's so much information for people who are just getting started out, um, to, to, you know, bring on board and, and sort through. The phrase that when we talked before, you mentioned paralysis by analysis. That seems to keep a lot of people from getting started maybe earlier than they should. How can advisors and how can we help young investors overcome that paralysis by analysis and just get started with the first step?

Katie Gatti I think, so finally realizing that was kind of did kind of lead to some changes in my own practice, you know, as much as, you know, again, it's the difference between knowing it and actually taking action on it, um, was so I switched my, you know, plan presentation process to rather than just having, you know, the big pretty 40-page PDF that has all of the pretty pictures and all of the charts and all that in it, I, you know, yes, I have those because I like pretty pictures. I'm still me at the end of the day. Um, but I've also moved to also having a one-page summary of recommendations. And honestly, that's where I base most of a plan presentation or close or whatever we want to call it around is, these are the risk management steps we need to take. Cool. These are the debt payoff steps we need to take. Here's why I think we need to do that in this order. And then here's the investing and wealth accumulation steps that we need to take. And here's why I think those are the steps. And here's the order that we're going to roll all those things out in. Questions. And it's become a much smoother process, not only for myself as somebody who ultimately this is how I make my living, but also for clients. The cloudy look that would develop in people's eyes after a certain amount of time, it's not there anymore. They're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Let's do that." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me too. I came from a background of pure investment stuff. So it's It's been an adjustment for me getting into the advisory side of things.

People. Yeah.

No, it's just I think of things in a certain way and you need to boil it down in a way that's more palatable and understandable as what you're speaking to. And I think that's definitely the best way to connect with investors and help them understand what we're trying to do here. And then as the relationship deepens and builds, you can read them in a little bit more on the technical details of what we're doing exactly. So yeah, so I guess this speaks to what we were saying, but how you speak with new investors is sort of, I'm interested in.

So for me, and again, that was another realization that I had within the last 6 months or so is by the time somebody's gotten to me, it's because they would like me to tell them what to do. They don't need, in most cases, they don't want all of the background as much as I, you know, as a former teacher, I like giving people all of the background and I want to give all of the information because that's what makes me happy. Ultimately, that's not what the client has signed on for. They have, you know, they're coming and they're just like, please tell me what to do. You seem like you know what you're doing. Glad I managed to fool them into that. You seem like you know what you're doing. Please just give me the information. Tell me what to do. Would love to know why you think that's important because people like the why, but really that's what it boils down to is I, you know, I'm going to give you, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about what's important. I'm going to ask you about, you know, where you're at at this point. So, you know, I want people, I want to understand what's going on, but I also want people to know that I know what's going on. So they don't just think I'm pulling things out of my backside. And then, and then I'm going to make those recommendations and I'm going to make them in as simple of a way as possible. And then, like you mentioned, the upside of working with younger people is that this relationship will develop over time, ideally anyway. Just because we're starting with a Roth IRA doesn't mean that eventually we won't move into something a little bit more advanced. It's just this is our starting point. And the sooner we can get to the starting line, the sooner we can start running this marathon we call life.

Yeah, it's just kind of the blocking and tackling of the 401(k) and the IRA is definitely the place to start, I think, for younger folks. And, you know, just build, build from there. And that's, you know, as you said, when the relationship builds, we can get into more and more techniques of, you know, tax management and things along those lines. State planning, which are— yeah, state. Yeah. Which are all important for everyone, really. So, okay, as we wrap up here, kind of, do you have any, you know, thought or two for, you know, the type of folks that you're trying to reach that are just getting started, what should they do as they're trying to begin building their financial nest egg and getting on the right path for retirement and all the other goals they're trying to reach?

Well, so first step is always going to be figuring out where you're at right now. So open your credit card bill and actually look at how much you might owe, or open the letters the student loan people are saying and and know how much you actually owe. As depressing as it might be, you know, you have to know where you're at in order to start building a plan. And I've met a lot of people who, you know, in preparation for our first conversation, they were like, I probably have like $5,000 credit card debt. Mazel tov. But then as we start going through the discovery process, and they start, you know, opening their statements and having to look at APRs and things like that, they're like, oh, Oh, I have closer to $20,000. And again, those are very different numbers. And not understanding that and thinking that you're maybe a little bit more okay than you are is not a great way to start. But the alternative of that is that there are also a lot of people who are in better shape than they might think. So, you know, you might think that because you've got, you know, $50 a month going towards student loan payments that, you know, you're almost done with this. You're this total and complete failure because Dave Ramsey said you shouldn't have any debt. Oops, sorry. I'm not going to name names. You can bleep that out if you need to. But, you know, in reality, if you started putting money into your company 401(k) when you were 25 and you're 40 now, granted, last couple of months of the market notwithstanding, you've probably got a nice little nest egg already saved up for yourself. And, you know, those little wins are worth celebrating. So I think, like I said, first step is just figuring out exactly where you are, positive, negative, or otherwise, and then starting to seek information based on where you want to go, not where you think you should go. I think that's another thing that a lot of people in our generation are faced with is the things that they should be doing because their mom said so, or because social media said so, or something like that, versus what they actually want for themselves.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] I really like what you said there. It's that head-in-sand mentality a lot of people have around finances. It's these conversations can be difficult and challenging. You know, the last episode we had somebody talk, uh, talking about the pitfalls of finance, finances and relationships. Um, yeah, it's, it's definitely something that, uh, you know, money is a hard subject for people to discuss. Um, and like you said, you know, part of the process of what you mentioned is probably, you know, 2 spouses sitting down and talking earnestly about, you know, the situation that they face, it's more difficult than a lot of people think it might, should be.

Well, and I will say, if you're already married and you haven't had an honest conversation with your spouse, you need to pause this podcast and you go do that right now. Like, yeah, right now. I personally, I think that you should start talking about money as soon as you've gotten serious with somebody. You should, you know, start having those conversations around like, what are your values? Are we savers or spenders? Just to sort of like sneaking it in there a little bit. And this is also part of the reason why— controversial opinion— but I'm very pro-prenup because part of the prenup process is the full financial undressing, as it were, where both parties have to be very honest about what they've got, positive or negative. And I just consider it insurance, basically. It's —people want to say that, you know, marriage is just for love, and love is a part of it, but it's also a legal contract to a certain extent and deserves to be treated as such.

Yeah, it's a business relationship, really, at core. I know that a lot of people don't want to hear that, but it's the reality.

We are going to get some comments about that, Brian. No, definitely.

My wife is my business partner. I have to be upfront and honest with that for sure. That's— there's no doubt about it. In any case, well, hopefully we do drum up a little controversy with that. I don't mind it. And I will have to second what you said. I am pro prenup. I think it does make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. Like you said, insurance, let's protect ourselves. You know, lots of, lots of these relationships end in divorce. For better or worse.

So, well, and you know, one of the top reasons for it is money. So again, part of it is just, you know, making sure that this person that you're, you know, considering spending your life with or are spending your life with, because you already, you already signed on the dotted line, um, is, is actually compatible with you and, you know, values the same things and is where you think they are. And if that's not the case, one, figuring out as quickly as possible and to doing whatever possible to course correct. And what's the corporate jargon, the S-word? Synergize. We're going to go with that. We're going to synergize.

I like it. Okay, Anna. Well, I've really appreciated and enjoyed having you on. It's been a great conversation. I think millennials are coming of age and it's time to start thinking about and talking about these subjects of finance, as uncomfortable as they might be. Um, so I know I can— I know we can find you on LinkedIn, Anna. Um, where else, you know, how else can folks get in touch with you?

Um, I, like any good millennial, am available on most social media platforms. Uh, so I'm— I've got the Instagram. I, I mean, I've got a Facebook, but I really— my mom is the only person that looks at that. Um, so your, your best bet is going to be LinkedIn, probably. Uh, I post there just about every day, taking a little bit of a break this week week for creativity's sake. But yeah, that's where I'm going to be most of the time. You can also reach me by email and that's just going to be anna.karis@nmmikemike.com. Great.

Anna, we'll put all that in the show notes. So folks who find the podcast in the various channels will be able to reach you. So Anna, thank you so much. We really appreciate having you on. I appreciate it. Thank you.