How To Make Money… 3 Proven Actions to Build Wealth | Brian Werdesheim

If you get in the habit of overspending, you've always got credit card debt at 23%. There's absolutely no way to get ahead.

Play that back. If you've got credit card debt, you're not getting ahead.

It's impossible.

How do you know when you have enough money? And what does that even mean for the way that you live your life?

I don't care whether you save $50 or $2000 a month. But that saving must begin at day one, because habits are important. Good habits are even more important. The ones who really end up with the massive wealth down the road are not the highest wage earners. It's much I'm saving and how well I'm investing. The power of compounding is the seventh wonder of the world.

Welcome back. Or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training, a high performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. To sit with the extraordinaries and learn to really learn about how they work from the inside out. Brian. I'm stoked to welcome Brian Werdeseim, founding member of the Summa Group at Stifel Financial Corporation. During this conversation, we dive into the single most important thing wealthy people take advantage of to grow their money.

As you think about your life and you think about where you are, just be mindful of the fact that things are very fluid. They're not standing still. You're going to get to a point to where it's going to become really important to think, what do I do to lock this thing down? But not get too, too conservative because I've got a lot of life to live and I don't want to have too much life at the end of the money. And I will tell you that's a mistake that a lot of people make.

I want you to reflect on your own relationship with money. And what would you change if you defined what enough looks like? If the listener is paycheck to paycheck, how should they be thinking about money?

The messaging is really simple, Mike. It's like, look, wait, hold on. Yeah, think about that.

If you're ready to create a healthier, stronger relationship with money, this is for you. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Brian. The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of Brian Werdesign and do not necessarily represent the views of Stifel. The information contained in this podcast is for educational Purposes only and should not be viewed as a recommendation of any specific investment or strategy. All right, Brian, here we are. This is going to be fun because we know each other and we've known each other for a long time, and I really respect you and, and how you work with managing wealth and building wealth for other people. So what a great time to have a conversation about money in the current climate that we're in right now.

It is. And you know, coming into, you know, 2025, there were already some serious issues with regard to uncertainty about a new administration, you know, control of the House, the Senate, somebody new in the Oval Office. And so that kind of picked up steam as we got into the year. Now, we all know that there's major conflicts around the world, there's geopolitical uncertainty, there's economic uncertainty. Who knows what the next move is by the Fed. So we can wake up every day and think about another problem. But I will tell you, Mike, it's not that much different today than it's been in the past. And I think it's timely because I think the most successful people as it relates to investing understand that while it always feels different, you know, there's a beginning and a middle of an end. But whenever we're into a new situation, like the pandemic or 9, 11 or some other major crisis, 2008, it always feels different. But, you know, I'm a, I'm a glass half full person. And so my job is to keep people sane. And it's not always easy.

Especially when it comes to something as intimate and overwhelming for many people as, as money. So, okay, let's just start at the beginning. How did you get into this field? And wait, hold on, before we say the field, define the field. And then let's get into how you got here.

Yeah, look, the field, you know, field of wealth management. I mean, we cover so much and there's a lot of ways to be involved in wealth management. And, you know, one of the reasons I did get into it, because at the time, which was back in the early 90s, there were some systemic changes that were going on that excited me. And I think, you know, part of the question that you probably have is, you know, how did this all happen? Well, I think the other side of that question is, well, why didn't it happen right out of college? Because it didn't for you? For me, I actually did not want to go into the financial services department area right out of college for a bunch of reasons. Number one, my father was deeply involved in Financial services, but not in the way I am more from an M and a corporate finance, investment banking, deal side. And when he was in the business.

Did he work inside a corporation or is he putting deals together between. Both.

Both. Yeah. He, he wasn't built for the industry that I'm in today. He was much more focused on a deal. Very visionary, good at understanding, you know, where the hockey puck was going and you know, from telecommunications to insurance, number of other industries, mining. He, you know, he had a good feel for things. But looking at the industry in the, you know, 80s and 90s, it was very transactional, you know, and I didn't think that I would be very good calling somebody, picking up the phone and saying it's time to buy Nike or Microsoft. I wanted to be in a business where I could have a greater impact on their wealth long term. And so what happened is Wall street was going through some pretty good changes, very positive changes. I was in the printing industry, My brother was already in the business. And I'll never forget the call that I got one day from my brother and my dad and they said, hey, we think that this is something you should take a look at. I flew down to Los Angeles, I was living in Seattle, Washington. It's a the time. And I came down and I said, you know what, this makes a ton of sense. Let's do this. And technology was changing, access was changing, you know, gaining access to more of an institutional type of money management was becoming more prevalent. So the individual investor could invest like an endowment, the Yale endowment, Princeton endowment, things like that. And that excited me because I never wanted to be transactional. I wanted it to be relation based. I wanted it to be holistic. And that made a ton of sense to me.

When somebody thinks of wealth management, how should they think about that role that you inhabit in people's lives?

You know, wealth management takes on a life of its own depending on where somebody is in their life, right? And you know, what they're really looking to do is create a level of wealth that takes care of themselves and their family and maybe even multi generational if they're so fortunate. You know, somebody walks through their lifetime, you know, there's the accumulation phase. So if you're a wealth manager, you've got to really dial into these various stages, somebody's life at a high level, right? If somebody's in accumulation mode and they're younger, then that means they should probably be taking on some more risk as they move into preservation mode. Maybe they need to dial that down. Maybe they're more focused on income and then the families that are really thinking well out into the future. And there's a lot of famous families over the years that have done an incredible job of preserving the estate through advanced estate planning, like the Kennedy family, which is a legendary example of how a family's been able to maintain massive wealth for multiple generations. But as I think about my role, I've got to be able to understand how somebody thinks about all these things at these different stages. So like today we have clients at every stage. You know, one minute I'm talking to a client who's trying to figure out how to optimize their giving through philanthropic activities in the most tax efficient, in the most responsible way. Next minute is I'm talking to a company founder, just had his first or her first major liquidity event and now they're thinking about their life differently. Right. As a wealth manager, what I've got to do is I've got to be able to connect with them and understand what happened in their life up to this point so that I can be the most responsible steward of their capital going forward. Not just from growing it, but from trust and estate perspective, from a tax perspective. So a really good wealth manager knows what they know and I think maybe even more important knows what they don't know.

Yeah, we're going to open up the relationship piece because I've had a handful of wealth managers that were very transactional and then I met you and it's different. And not only like are you helping kind of manage the asset, but you're intentionally wanting to understand what my ambitions are, what my dreams are, and then introducing me to people to help move that ambition forward where there's like a mutual fit between my ambitions and maybe another one of your clients ambitions. And you know, it's awesome. And I haven't met anyone like you and so that's one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation, and I'm going to say it again, is like money is intimate. There is a lot of anxiety around it for, for many people and there's so much changing underfoot. I just want to ground a couple, a handful of key principles that are really important for people to be better with money. And so that's why I'm asking you like what was like growing up like are you fluid in this language from like age 6? And, and it just is like the, the air you breathe and it's super simple because you make it seem simple to me. But sometimes I gotta say, wait, say it again. What does that mean. Wait, what, what is that again? Because I'm not anywhere near your proficiency. So I want to just make this really simple for the listener that is trying to understand what to do with their money right now. So when I just give you that last little bit, where do you go? How should we be thinking about money right now?

Yeah. So, Mike, look, there's a lot of stuff going on. And, you know, as long as I've been in this career, I can know one thing for sure. There's always stuff going on. It's not.

It's not really refreshing to hear you say that.

It's not really that different.

And it settles me down knowing that you've been thinking about money strategies for a long time. And, like, it does settle me down a little bit.

And, you know, what I was saying is the planning part is so important because if you do the work upfront and you know everything about somebody's life, about their money story, and we're going to talk about the money story, hopefully at some point during this session, then they're going to feel good about, better about how they're investing. And when, when we run into turbulence, when we run into uncertainty, when we run into outlier events, tail risk, which is 9, 11, or the financial crisis or the pandemic. If I've done my job and I've got a plan for them, and we know exactly what type of return we need to earn over an extended period of time to make that plan work, they're just going to be so much more comfortable. They're going to be a lot less likely to hit that eject button at precisely the wrong time. And I will tell you that over the course of my career, the thing that has separated, you know, the really successful investor who we've worked with for a long time and the one who hasn't been successful, it's that they trust you. They believe that you know what you're doing, and they know that you've done your homework to the extent that their plan speaks to their unique set of circumstances from every possible angle, from a return perspective, from a tax perspective, and from an estate planning perspective. And that, that, that gets people through periods like we're living right now. And I gotta tell you how many con.

Okay, there's probably two things that I hear here. One is your job is to help people manage or build wealth, right, by advising on where to place the money, long term, short. I don't know, like, lots of strategies that you deploy for that. And what I hear you saying is that the, your best clients are the ones that trust you. And I go, wait, hold on. Am I just abdicate? Because I do trust you uniquely. But this is not about people becoming your client. This is about, like, the relationship between money for somebody and now I've worked really hard and I'm going to give you my money, and now you want me just to trust that you're going to do right with it. But I don't know, like, how do I know how to trust you? Right? Or how do I know how to trust a wealth manager and not be like, look, I just worked. Let's say, let's say we're new. Like, I worked two years or 20 years, or I've worked 30 years and I'm making a shift to, to a new relationship with somebody that's going to manage or help build wealth. How do I know how to trust them?

You know, there's a playbook for this, and I've written about it. And, you know, think about being in the position where you've just come into material wealth for the first time in your life, and now you've got to go out and you've got to go hire somebody. You got to entrust somebody with this, with this wealth. There's a process and there's a, there's a right process and there's a, a wrong process. And so, you know what we do. And I can speak to not just the Summa Group, but I can speak.

To which is your company, which is.

My group within a larger financial institution, Stifel. You know, what we do is, again, like I said earlier, we're trying to uncover the real meat, the real things that are going on when we have that first meeting. Our only agenda is related to two or three things. Number one is we're trying to establish that there's some common set of values between us. We do, and the way they think about things. And what I'm really saying is if there's not a high level of alignment between the most important things that relate to, you know, their value system and our team's value system, then it's probably not going to be a relationship that's going to stand the test of time. Example, when you get into a really rough period and let's say the relationship's relatively new, let's say you're in the second year of a relationship, A pandemic comes around, markets are down 30% in a few months. They don't know you that well. That's a real challenging situation. But if you, before Bringing them on as a client. Ask them the really difficult questions, like, what are you going to do when the, you know, what hits the fan? What are you going to do when I call you up and I tell you, you know what, we're down x percent in this relatively short period of time. Now, if they believe that we've done everything that we possibly can to put them in a strong position, with each battle that you go through together, that trust builds. So, like you can imagine, I mean, I've been through the tech bubble. I've been through, you know, 9, 11. I've been through 2008. I've been through the pandemic. Now, the relationships of ours that go back that far, it's. It's not that difficult because they've been through this with you before, and they, they just. I can't explain it, Mike. They trust you and you're there. You know, I'm their advocate, and we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, client advocacy, but, like, going back to that first meeting, what I'm really trying to do is give them a playbook for how to make the best possible decision for how to hire an advisor without an emotional attachment as to whether or not they hire me or not my job. Educate them, Let them look under the hood. Give them full transparency with regard to fees. How does this crazy process work? How do I know who to really trust? What are the key things that make an investment or wealth manager successful? And what happens is that disarms them and they suddenly become. You can see all the tension leave their body because they see for the first time that this person on the other side is actually only interested, that they make the best possible decision, whether or not it's me or not.

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There's a lot of different ways depending on how your business is built. Our business is really simple. You know, we earn a percentage, a fee based on the assets that are under management and it's based on the values of the accounts at the end of every quarter. And so it's very transparent. It's real simple, it's straightforward. We sometimes refer it as to a success fee, meaning as your assets and your wealth is growing, hopefully ours is too. And of course there's a lot of different things that come into play with regard to fees in Terms of whether or not you're investing in cash versus bonds versus equities versus hedge funds versus private equity. So there's a full spectrum two things.

You make money when the client makes money. So you're not. There's that other kind of skeptical, cynical view which is like you get paid for every transaction. So you're underneath the surface making all these transactions. And, and you're paid a dime for every transaction. And, and I, the client, have, have over time made a dollar. But I've. You've done 10 transactions, so now you've made a dollar and I made zero.

And that is called a conflict of interest. And that, you know, again, one of the reasons why I was not really considering this business, you know, right out of college, is even at that time, it was still a very transactional type of relationship. I didn't like the idea that I had to sell something to generate a commission to feed my family. That just, it doesn't make any sense to me, by the way. I wouldn't have been any good at it anyway. I would have been out of the business very quickly. So when you look at successful advisors, elite advisors, what they're really trying to do is to remove all the conflicts of interest. So the client's not questioning as to what the motivation is behind that particular investment.

Because you want to get your client to eventually feel like, I don't know the percentages exactly off the top of my head. But what would be a great year? What's a good year relative to the stock market?

Mike, that's a really delicate, good, tricky question. Because when you're a planning based group like Summa, we're solving for the client index, we're not solving for the s and P500 index.

What's the client index?

Client index is the number that they've got to generate over an extended period of time to target their financial plan work. So if they give me $10 million and they tell me, look, in 10 years, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, my job is to reverse engineer that number into an allocation that speaks to, again, all aspects of their financial life from a tax, trust and estate and wealth management perspective, which is not an easy thing to do. So when you ask me like, what's a good year? You know, what we tend to do is attempt to live in a narrower range of possibilities. So most of our clients, the mentality of someone who just inherited a bunch of money, or the mentality of a divorcee, an outspouse who just went through a tough situation he or she is not really thinking about how much they can make. They're thinking about, how do I manage this so that I can get to where I need to be but never subject the capital to what we call permanent capital impairment. That's a funny word that I like, but it's basically a way of saying, look, if I take a dollar and now it's worth 50 cents, I gotta earn 100% just to get back to break even. That is a game that nobody wants to play, but it's a game that a lot of advisors do play, and it's not going to ever lead to a good outcome.

So when you think about just in general, this term, financial advice, who needs it? Is this just for the wealthy? Is this just for people that have 10 million in their bank account? Like, help us, like, understand how to relate to your unique industry before we get into some interesting solutions.

Look, I think you can make a strong argument that somebody who's not necessarily a high wage earner or somebody who didn't inherit money or somebody who doesn't have vast resources needs a financial advisor more than the person who just created this, you know, fairly outsized liquidity. So what's important is to find the right fit. Not all advisors are created equal. Not all advisors are comfortable working with large estates. You know, over the years, like when I first got into the business, the definition of a perfect relationship has changed. Right when I first got in, if you had a heartbeat, I was probably going to try to convince you why you should be my client today. Because we're mindful of keeping the promises to our clients. We can't bring on every client. We've got to have a threshold. It's not meant to discriminate. It's just meant to make sure that we maintain the quality of what we're delivering and keeping the promises that we make to our clients.

You've got a target community and somebody else in your industry would have, you know, look, if you've got $100,000 in your bank account, it's a good client fit. And there's some people that have 100 million, that's a good client fit. And, you know, so. So I know the band that you're working for around in your client base, but I also just want to make sure that, like, if, if the listener is paycheck to paycheck, how should they be thinking about money and building, building their asset to their best ability?

When you think about financial success, there's only three or four variables.

Okay?

It's how Much you make, it's how much you save, it's your growth on your assets. And then there's a thing called inflation.

Wait, so duty. How much you make, how much you save. So that's a margin of how much you're spending. Right. And then what was the other two?

The other two. One is inflation, which was very benign. For decades. I mean, most of my adult life, there really wasn't a lot of inflation. But there have been periods of time where inflation changes everything.

Oh, well, it's just the last couple years.

Certainly it's a hot topic right now. Right. And then, and then, you know, the, the, the, the final thing. How well is your, your money doing? How is it growing? But the saving thing, Mike, is huge. Like, I work, My team works with a lot of different interesting folks who, many of whom who make very good livings. You'd be surprised, though. The ones who really end up with the massive wealth down the road are not the highest wage earners. And this speaks to your question, like, what should they be thinking about? My daughter is starting her first job in 30 days, and we're doing budgeting exercises. We're talking about, how much can you afford for rent? You know, how much is that going to leave for going out to dinner, having a, you know, going to a show? And what I told her is I go, I don't care whether you save $50, $100, $500, 1,000 or $2,000 a month. But that saving must begin at day one, because habits are important. Good habits are even more important. And if a young person can get into that mindset where it's not about how much I'm making, but it's about how much I'm saving and, well, and how well I'm investing that person. I mean, again, you know, the power of compounding is the seventh wonder of the world.

Hold on. Making, saving, and investing. I do not want to lose that last point, which is the seven. You said the seventh wonder of the world.

The power of compounding interest.

Compounding interest, of course. Okay, so we'll get it to that. Now, if I make $6,000 a month, $72,000 a year, how much are you advising me to pay for rent? How much are you advising to pay for entertainment? And how much are you advising for? And just think about, like, your daughter or me personally, how should I think about that?

Obviously, geography comes into play. I mean, if you're, if you're living in Mobile, Alabama, right, and you can get an apartment for, you know, $600 a month versus New York City, Manhattan, where a young person coming out of.

School and 3000 is barely getting it done.

You know, a tiny little space for. For two people is probably $6,000 a month.

Yeah.

And. And that's hard to.

So let's say rent is expensive. Let's say it's. Let's say it's 3,000. It's half of what I'm making. Oh, my God. Is that. Where do you go from there? Do you say, oh, boy, we got an uphill battle? Or do you say, we can do it, we can make it. We can make that work.

When you're young and you're just getting started, I always want to err on the side of conservatism. I. I don't want to.

Now's the time to play, though.

No, I know, but. No, you know, you're gonna have to exercise some discipline, and you're gonna have to find ways to just deal with it. Because I think in. In many respects, you know, there, that. That serves as motivation, you know, to. To save more, make more, be more focused on your career.

So you don't want to do percentages right now. You don't want to tell me. But I, But I. I've always thought like 30% for rent. This is when I was starting out, and this is how I'm going to advise my son. If you can do 30% for rent, I think you're onto something. If you can do 25 to 30% of savings, I think you're onto something. Is this close?

It's close. Yeah. So, like, let's say. Let's say, you know, you're in your first job, and let's just say, hypothetically, you're making about $7,000 a month, and maybe that converts to $5,100 net after tax. You know, you know, you're not in a huge tax bracket. You're taking home $5,100.

Okay, so you have, you have five grand. Let's just do it easy. 5,000 in your bank at the end of every monthly paycheck, and you're living.

In New York City. So what's the number? I mean, it's. It's really tough. I mean, it's not going to be less than 2500, so I'd be okay with that. And that's. That's.

That's 50%.

50%.

So you're doing after taxes.

After tax.

After taxes is the number if you.

Want to use $7,120 $500 is a lot less than 50% you're doing after taxes. I'm using after taxes.

Okay, so then what do you do? So you've got 50% going to rent, which is pretty reasonable in today's market. In the city life. How do I think about saving and how do I think about spending and how do I think about investing? So just do broad strokes here.

Look again, you don't want to inhibit or live a lifestyle that's not enjoyable. I mean, you want to be able to do the basic things. But my, my general message to young people is to be really conservative with your spending and to not buy things that are not going to appreciate. Okay. And I just say, look, it's discipline and you know, these are good habits. Like I was saying earlier, these are really good habits and they're going to live with you for the rest of your life. If you get in the habit of over overspending, you've always got credit card debt at 23%. There's absolutely no way to get ahead as far as investing.

Play that back. If you've got credit card debt, you're not getting ahead.

It's impossible.

I don't think I ever told you this. When my wife and I were really young. This is gonna sound as corny as you can imagine. Susie Orman was someone we talked about a lot. Do you remember Susie Orman?

I remember her watching and she's still somewhere.

Yeah. And so Susie Orman was a financial advisor. I don't know what her role like her title was, but like she, she would talk in plain English about money and we watch her. I think it was like Saturday night or whatever, but we tape it or whatever did. And Susie Orman said things like, never, never cash out your 401k. Pay yourself first before you're paying rent. And if you can't afford the rent, pay yourself first. Which means like put it in your savings account, take care of you before you're paying rent. And if you can't afford the rent and you're not paying yourself, like something's kind of wrong. It was just basic ideas that carried us. And I do remember, I think you're going to love this, of course, which is the appreciation bit. I could buy a new watch or I could take that money, hold it until I could buy something that is going to work for me. And I love that thinking from a 20 year old. I was like, wait, I want my money to work for me. I don't want to work for my money. What does that really mean? That means I need to figure out how to buy things that are going to work in the favor or the direction of the life I want to have. And the thing that I'm trying to build it, that simple little idea eventually led me to trusting you. So talk to parents. Right now we have more parents like the, the that age group than we do like the kids. So I know people are tuning like wait, hold on, I want to hear this again. How do I talk to my kid going into college about basic kind of money stuff.

The most important thing for that again, that that young person is to be either with an advisor or if they're that person who feels comfortable, you know, with the financial markets where they're buying, you know, low cost index funds or other types of investments that they can dollar cost average into over time. Dollar cost averaging is what you and I have been doing for a long time with regard to our 401k or our IRA. It's basically taking the same or increasing dollar value, putting into that same investment account every month, whether the market's up, down, sideways, knowing that over long term that money, if it's invested well, will grow more so than you could possibly ever imagine. That requires a lot of discipline. So the young person and the parent who's talking to their kid. The messaging is really simple, Mike. It's like, look, the sooner you start saving, the sooner you're going to get to a point in life to where your lifestyle is actually being funded by your investments and not your career. Think about that.

That's right. That's the idea. And let's say that I've got. Oh, what's the magic number? 20,000. 50,000 in savings. At what point should I. We need some money for a rainy day. So we're doing kind of really early career people. Now, let's say 100 grand is in the bank account. Okay. What would you say their percentage should be allocated to investments?

Are you talking about asset allocation right now? Yeah, like in terms of stocks, bonds, cash.

I'm brand new. I got 100,000, doll. My savings account.

Then how old are you?

Let's say 28, 26.

Yeah. I mean, unless you have some unusual fear related to the financial markets, no less than 80% should be invested in equities.

There you go. That's pretty aggressive. 20. 20,000 in. In cash.

20,000 in, you know, income. You know, there's, there's a lot of different types because you're still making money.

You're.

Well, yeah, you're just doing it differently, right? You're, you're, you're thinking more that as a kind of a place of stability, that's not going to have as much volatility, it's not going to have as much return. But in the short term, if there's a disconnect, if there's downward volatility, that investment will actually mitigate some of the downward pressure on your portfolio. But again, the reason I say that number 80% is because when you have a long term time horizon, when you look at asset classes, the range of volatility changes based on what time period you're looking at. So when you look at, that's why you asked, what is a 5 year or a 10 year or a 20 year period? Things become much more predictable. But in the short term, all bets are off. In the long term, if you study capital markets, if you study stocks, bonds and all the other things that we can invest in, the predictability goes up huge when you extend the time horizon. So the greatest thing that a young person has on their hands is time. Because they can withstand the periods of time that you and I have been through. They're not really thinking about it the same way. But if you're older, you can't put 80% of your net worth in stocks.

Okay, I'm not sure many graduates are going to have 100 grand in their bank account, but like they've, they've been chipping away. They're kind of out in the world a little bit. So maybe, you know, I like that you asked the age. That being said, can, can you convince me that the investment in the market is a better investment than real estate, is a better investment than holding cash and investing in other businesses versus investing in myself and kind of, I don't know, the business I want someone to build.

All those questions relate to where you are in life.

Let's go 30, let's go 35. You know, had a job for 10 years, got a little bit of cash to play, and like, I'm starting to really think about next phase of life.

I mean, again, there's so many variables that come into play here with regard. And I'm not trying to avoid your question, Mike, it's just that there's so many variables that come into play and it's hard to give one answer to even that scenario that you described. Because, you know, if somebody wants to have a billion dollars, you know, down the road, that playbook is completely different than somebody who's just looking to maintain kind of status quo. Like I have a friend who was one of the most conservative people that I've ever met went to work for a big accounting firm right out of college. His net worth today is north of $25 million. He never was comfortable taking a lot of risk, but he loved the certainty of knowing that if he did his job and he became a partner someday at a major accounting firm, that he was going to be okay. Now, he was exceptional and he recently retired. But when I think about that guy versus the serial entrepreneur who's going to not just have one major liquidity event, but they're going to have five, his mindset or her mindset is totally different. If you're working for a big corporation and your paycheck isn't really going to go up too much or fall too much over a long period of time, you really got to be on your game. I mean, you've got to like, you've got to really think about all these things that we've been talking about, saving, investing, well, taxes. Because there's not going to be that outlier event.

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Yeah. So look. And again.

Or pay that thing off.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of getting rid of that student debt as soon as possible psychologically. I mean, I was talking to client the other day. Daughter went to vet veterinary school for, you know, forever accumulated pretty significant student debt. It's down to now about 30 or $40,000.

Do you know what a private institution costs per year? I know you do because you're you and I talk about it. Per year, private institution is somewhere around $100,000 a year.

Well, look, you take that number times four, right? And if you're in the highest tax bracket, you basically have to make $800,000 to pay for one child's education at a private university. That's the math.

This is why people are, like, pissed. They're like, how does it make sense for me to make almost a million Dollars to send my kid to a four year college, good experience and, and I'm spending 400 plus thousand dollars and they haven't, they, they don't have anything.

And then again, I mean you're talking about the upper range of what a four year education costs because we're talking about a private institution. We might be talking about, you know, USC or some of these other schools, Ivy League school or whatever. You know, it is, it's, it's, it's very expensive. And that's a whole other conversation about does it still make sense for a young person or a family to invest that much money into a college education. But obviously there's vehicles, you know, that people are aware of that allow for savings for compounding money tax free and then pulling the money out tax free.

Yes, this is, you know, so someone advised me early on, 529 is the way to go. As soon as your kid is, you know, six months old, maybe even earlier, I guess I don't even know if you can do it before they're born. Probably not. They need a Social Security number, probably.

There's tremendous flexibility and creativity and latitude with regard to how you can Engineer the whole529Strategy for your immediate families, members, your extended family.

Oh, extended even.

Oh, it's no like people who have a lot of money who are trying to figure out how to reduce, you know, the size of their taxable estate. In theory, they could set up multiple 529 plans to get that money out of their state. They can pre fund them. Depending on the state that the plan is set up in, it can be anywhere from a couple hundred thousand to a few hundred thousand where you're front loading it. And let's just say little Johnny doesn't go to college. That asset is actually transferable to another family member and not even just an immediate family member, which is, when you think about it from an estate planning standpoint, it's pretty powerful. And worst case is let's say that there's nobody that wants to go to college and that money is sitting in that 529 plan. The worst case is you pay a 10% penalty after it's been growing for 18 years tax free and you bring it back into your estate. So that's not a, that's not a bad outcome. So you know, the 529 plan, I think, you know, I used it extensively for, for my kids. It was very, very effective. Great way for, for savings. Great way for families to think about saving for college.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Okay, so what are some interesting little commercial books that you would hope I read and obviously people, while they learn.

A lot of people believe the ever, the greatest book ever written on the subject of creating wealth is Think and Grow Rich.

I love that book. You, you think that that's one of the really important books for all of us to read?

Yeah, that's a multi generational. Has concepts and principles and stories that will stand the test of time forever.

Good. I'm going to put it back on my rotation to, to revisit that.

There is another book that I loved when I read this when I was just getting in the business. It's. And it's, it's a little bit difficult for most people to read because it is a little bit technical. But it's the intellig Benjamin Graham, who's one of the classic value investors, really kind of the driving force behind a lot of Warren Buffett's investment principles being a value investor. Really great book. I mean it really teaches you about how to buy stocks, value stocks in particular, Fundamental analysis.

What is a value stock?

A value stock is something that is trading below its intrinsic or book value for various reasons. It might be because it had a bad quarter. It might be because the industry as a whole is suffering. People like Warren Buffett are notorious for being able to identify great companies that might be going through a difficult period. And he would rather pay 50 cents for that stock as opposed to the dollar that maybe he thinks it's really worth. And so buying it at a discount means he's got this built in margin of safety. That's what value investors do.

Okay, go back to compound interest being the seventh wonder of the world. When I first learned about this concept, I was like, oh my goodness, I gotta be in that game. So can you make it? Can you break it down? So it's super simple and for folks that already know this, you know, like they'll be like, yep, nailed it. But for folks that are like early on trying to understand how to generate wealth and what to do with their money right now in a VUCA environment, a volatile uncertainty, you know, complex and ambiguous environment, which what we're is what we're in. How to be thinking about using compounding interest.

So here's just a really basic illustration, Mike, that will allow anybody listening to understand why this is such a powerful force of nature. So let's say you have, let's just use $100,000 as an example and let's just say that you invest that money into a diversified portfolio. And let's say that after year one it's up 10%.

So I've given my money to you because you manage a diverse portfolio for me and it's up 10%.

Right. So let's not get into the taxes, whether this is a retirement account or a taxable account, but let's just assume, let's take taxes out of the equation for the sake of this conversation. But let's just say it's up 10%. So now that $100,000, when you wake up on, you know, January 1st, you had a 10% year, it's worth $110,000. Okay, let's say that in year two and I'm using a not a overly optimistic scenario, but let's say in year two it's up another 10%. Well, you're not applying that 10% to that original $100,000. You're applying that 10% to the $110,000. And when you're applying that 10% on $110,000, therein lies the power of compounding interest over long periods of time. Now year three could be a year where you're down 5%. And then year four, you could be up 15 or 20%. Again, the predictability of what your return stream is going to be is difficult. However, if you've got a plan and you're growing this money responsibly and you're invested in a high quality way, the long term trend has always been up because if you look back, you know, again 100 years, if you own high quality assets, they should appreciate. And the compounding impact for a young person is one of the greatest assets that they have in their favor because again, they've got the ability to persevere through all of that volatility. All these events that are inevitably going to always, you know, come into play.

When did you start investing for your kids? When did you start creating a little portfolio for them?

So, well, I mean, technically speaking, even though the money went to fund their college tuition, I initiated those 529 plans right after they were born.

Yeah.

And then I just dollar costed average, I dollar cost average into them every month for 18 years.

Okay.

And thankfully, as a result of that, there is no, you know, iceberg out there that I'm looking at in terms of, oh, shoot, I've got to send the check in August to the school to pay for tuition. And I think that's really, really important because, you know, if you're making X and all of a sudden you've got to make a, you know, $70,000 tuition payment, which, by the way, you got to make, you know, a lot more than that to pay for the 70. That is not a sustainable financial plan. That's not working for most people.

Yeah. Okay. How do we think about what's enough? When we think about, like, money, how do you think about enough?

So we have a lot of different types of clients where there's never enough. Examples of clients where the earnings are just use a number. 5 million a year. That's a pretty healthy living. $5 million a year. I mean, it would be hard to imagine how you could possibly outspend 5 million a year. Now, 5 million is really not really.

For some of these kids, you know.

Five million is really two and a half million, but.

But again, if you're making five, you're.

Making five, you're keeping two and a half. And you divide two and a half million divided by 12. Do the math on that. How do you spend more than that in a month? Right. Sadly, there are people who are in that exact situation, but their spending exceeds that $5 million a year salary. And as a result, they don't have the ability to invest. They don't have the ability to do all the things that, you know, they should be doing with that money. And the estate isn't going to grow ever. It's going to, in fact, be depleted. And there'll become a point in time where, you know, the chart has a crisscross on it which is the intersection is where that spending and that income are moving in the wrong direction. And then when the income stops, they've got a problem, and it's not really a solvable problem.

You just described many, if not a majority of professional sports people. Yeah. Which is a tragic. A tragic experience for so many because they make millions in the short career that they're in the league. And then afterwards are like, man, my money's gone. It's brutal. It is tragic to see, but. So you don't think about money enough being like this end game dollar. When you get 1 million in your bank account, when you get 1 billion in your bank account, whatever the numbers are, you don't think about end game. You think about it differently. It is.

Well, it's a world of relativity, really. When you think about income and lifestyle and spending and investing. Again, it's not how much you make, it's how much you save, but it's.

Not actually how much you save. Because if I just put all my money, my cash into a. My bank.

Yes, true.

I'm missing.

I'm making the assumption that the savings is getting invested.

That's what you're doing.

Oh, when I say saving, when I say saving, I mean that you are actively pursuing investment opportunities, whether it's real estate, stocks, bonds, and other asset classes that are, you know, widely available to people. So when I say savings, I mean, I'm not saying go put it under the mattress or go buy a money market fund. I mean, money market funds, you know, 4.5% today. Not bad given where we're coming from. But that's not a investment plan to put all your money in cash, no matter what.

With people's lack of trust in institutions right now, there's a real cynical, skeptical narrative about I don't know what to trust. Institutions writ large have, have lied, let us down. There's a corruption. I don't know what to do. That is a generative kind of populist idea that is part of the narrative. How do you convince. I don't. I know this is not your job to convince somebody, but the listeners like, man, why would I put money with somebody? Like money? Cash is going to be gone. Are you kidding me? We're all going crypto. And at any point in time, the. Whatever government can freeze all our assets, but they can't do it to crypto. How do you think about that? Do you say, I don't know, you know where I'm going about this? This mistrust is kind of the big question.

There's a couple of things like, now, mistrust. Are you speaking about what happened back in 2008? Because that was a problem, right? These big banks leverage their balance sheets, and we had a massive deleveraging process that forced the liquidation of everything and anything. It didn't matter if it was high quality or low quality. So if you were at a baking institution and even Goldman Sachs ran into trouble, I mean, it basically had to be bailed out by Warren Buffett and others, which was unbelievable. One of the greatest investments he ever did was when he, when he went in there, you know, that's a good day for him. That was unbelievable. It wasn't.

He bought it.

He.

He leveraged his assets to help out an incredible institution in a compromise situation.

Yeah, I'd like to know what his IRR was on that transaction.

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But let's get back to, you know, this nihilism, this.

I don't know what to believe.

No. So, I mean, the good news is that today, even though there are major concerns with regard to budget deficits, federal deficits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, entitlement programs, some of the smartest people that I talk to on a regular basis say that that's the thing that we should really be concerned about because there will be a tipping point in which there is no point. There's a point of no return. You know, with, with $35 trillion and a trillion eight last year alone being added to our deficit.

Yeah, that's our number, 35 trillion.

It's a bit north of 35 trillion.

That we owe is the.

Which. Which we owe. And that's a big number. And, you know, gets kind of scary when you start to think about what happens if we get into a rising interest rate environment where, you know, the U.S. treasury is, you know, forced to, you know, sell bonds that are paying out really high rates of interest. That's not a good scenario. But even like when you look at entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all these things, the problem there is that the generation today that's feeding and putting money in isn't enough to sustain the amount of money that's actually being taken out by the generation, even people who are now retiring. And so there's a mismatch. And if we don't solve some of these issues, it could present some challenges. But regarding financial institution strength and, and kind of some of the things that you were referring to about trust, I think the banking industry today is actually on way better footing than it was 15 years ago. It's not even close. The regulatory requirements, the transparency. A lot of these big banks were forced to sell a lot of assets to deleverage their balance sheets. So actually, I feel really good about the banking system now. Trusting an administration or trusting things that we can't necessarily control. We could, you know, have a conversation about that. But I think most investors today should feel pretty good about the strength of the banking system. There's not a dangerous level of leverage within the financial system today compared to other periods of time.

Okay, so what would you want? One, two, three things for our listener to take away from our conversation? What's the, what's what are the high notes that you hope people can take, understand and or take action on?

One of the most important decisions that a family, not so much a student right out of college, but a family makes has to do with whom they're going to entrust their wealth with. I think that's a big thing and there's a right way and there's a wrong way to do it. Secondly, as you think about your life and you think about where you are, you know, just be mindful of the fact that, you know, things are very fluid, they're not standing still. You know, if you're in your 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, you're, you really are in kind of accumulation mode for the most part. Now some people, like Mark Zuckerberg, you know, think differently about that because they went from being in growth and accumulation mode to something totally different. And then be mindful of the fact that that's not going to be forever. And then you're going to get to a point to where it's going to become really important to think about how do you protect this? Right. And what do I do to lock this thing down, but not get too conservative because I've got a lot of life to live and I don't want to have too much life at the end of the money, is what I like to say. And I will tell you, that's a mistake that a lot of people make. They get too conservative too early in their life because they're looking at things a little bit differently. So if you're with a really good advisor, that person's gonna make sure that you don't run into that problem. And the way to do that is to bring in a healthy combination of growth and income. And then a lot of our families are in a fortunate position to where they're starting to think about distribution. And estate planning is huge. And right now I'm speaking to, you know, an audience that is maybe not your whole audience. Right. Because estate planning really is where you're trying to pass wealth in the most tax efficient way possible and to also protect your estate from the government and from not being efficiently distributed upon your demise. Right. And there's a lot of things that people need to do and think about as they get older. And look, philanthropy as you know, Mike, is a big thing for me and I advise my clients on that. And I think that's another thing that, you know, people should be thinking about. It's a part of the, it's part of the relationship, you know, that you have with your advisor. And hopefully as you kind of get to that phase, you can have intelligent conversations about how to utilize your wealth to empower your kids and your next generation. That's a big thing. You know, that's a thing that you can do by setting up family foundation. Let them sit on the board of the foundation, give them decision making. Let them see what the world's, you know, what's going on out there and how they can make a huge impact. So, yeah, these are the types of things, Mike. I mean, when I think about my relationship with my clients, I never think about it in transactional terms. I don't think about it in terms of how well we did in any particular year. We are advocates and because we have this high values alignment, the ability to advocate and connect the dots for these clients to make sure that they can check those boxes is huge. And I think that as you, as you build your balance sheet, as you build wealth, make sure that you're working with somebody who quantitatively and qualitatively understands every aspect of your financial life.

I'm concerned for you. I think you're going to get a lot of calls or emails, you know, so I'm sorry for that part of this conversation because I don't want to inundate you with, you know, our community. But I mean, at the same time, I want people to understand what great sounds like and feels and, you know, like that's what I wanted this conversation to be about. And you're knocked out of the park in that way. And also like just a couple very practical ways to think about what to do in our current environment with money. And you're still going to point to invest, invest, invest, save. Don't get caught in the spend loop. Save as much as you can. Get that over to a financial advisor, someone that can invest for you and trust that person. Said it. Let them run with it. Let them do their job. Ask questions is what I do, you know, but like not trying to inspect, I'm just trying to understand.

Yeah. And I think if you're a parent again, going back to the importance of your kids understanding how all this works, you know, and there are, there's just so much, there's so much information available to us today. Like it was never available to you and I when we were that age, there's such a wealth of information. But as a parent, you know, just really instill the right values about money, the respect for money. And there's a lot of ways to do that. But I just think that you know, as a parent and me being one of a 20 and a 22 year old, I'm dealing with this right now. You know, where I've got a kid in college, I got a kid starting their first job. We're talking about money for the first time in a real, like, deep, practical, real sense. I love talking to you and Lisa and Grayson. And you know, the call we did the other day was amazing where he was asking some great questions.

Yeah, this is, is fun. So the listener wouldn't know this, but my son is, you know, a teenager. And you said, hey, let me, let me get him started. I was like, really? So you've been treating him just like your wealthiest client that you have. Like, it's been awesome and he's been loving it. And so this is. Now just speak to the, to the listener. If, like when you're thinking about who you're going to invest your money with, whatever that is, make sure that they're interested in your whole family and you could bring your teenager to the dance and then that person goes, look, it's a whole family. I'm going to take care of all of you and I'm going to help you. I'm going to be a partner in this thing. And so it's awesome. I love just kind of being a fly on the wall and listening to how you're speaking to him and challenging him and helping him think about investment. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

It's education, right? I mean, that's one of the things we deliver. And I think helping the next generation really feel comfortable with money. And I mean, knowledge is power as it relates to your financial situation. And the more, you know, the more empowered you are, the better you're going to feel about what you're doing and the more incentivized you're going to be to actually save. Because, you know, if you save and you know how to invest and you're working with smart people, it's fun. I mean, it's, it's exciting, it's fun, it's dynamic. And I'm, I'm basically, you know, I'm, I'm paid to be informed on a lot of different subjects. The most important one being how to invest my clients money. But I will tell you, if you asked a lot of my clients the question, what's the most important thing you know, that Brian, you know, brings to the table? They're not always going to say it's just the investment returns. They're going to say, he cares more about my money than I do. Number one, they're going to say that he thinks outside of the box and he's so dialed in that, you know, it could be a health related issue, it could be a finance related issue, a tax related issue, a trust in the state related issue. That's kind of where you really move the needle in the game of life for these people. They're not waking up every day concerned about whether they're earning 9% or 10%. They want to know that everything is kind of locked down, that there's this ring fence around every aspect of their financial life. Tax, trust and estate, financial planning, wealth management. And when they have that, that's when they sleep at night. That's when they really sleep.

Amen. I agree with you and I'll tell you like, you are rock solid in what you do and your team is great. And so anytime I've got issues or concerns or questions, your team is like, oh, look this person or let me answer that for you. It's just been awesome. So again, for the listener, I want you to hear and feel and if you're watching, see what great looks like. Thank you for being an emblem. Thank you for representing Sumo Group in a world class way and our family in return. Appreciate it. Thank you for all that you've done for our family and for now the broader founding Mastery community.

Hey Mike, I'm a huge fan. I've been talking to you a lot over the years about this part of your life and to be sitting here with you is amazing. I have a pretty good understanding as to why you are so successful and your ability to pull from somebody's consciousness and to get the best out of them is magical. You've been amazing and I'm just happy to be here and I hope that there were some things that were shared today that will add some value to some of these listeners lives. Thanks, Mike.

Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by the incredible oxana Masters, a 19 time Paralympic medalist multispect sport athlete and someone who truly embodies grit, humor and resilience. In this episode, Oksana and Dr. Gervais dive into the mental skills that have powered her from childhood adversity in Ukraine to standing atop global podiums and what it really takes to rewrite your own story. This is a conversation about facing hardship, but also about laughter, luck and finding your light. Join US on Wednesday, August 20th at 9:00am Pacific for an inspiring and candid conversation. All right, thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery. With us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community and if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you have if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.comnewsletter to sign up. This show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously and the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals@findingmastery.com sponsors and remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional, so seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode. Be well, think well, keep exploring. Come on.