Kelly Ho – Do You Have a Life Plan?

I am Matt Parker, your host of the House Rich Homeowner podcast. Managing your home finances is hard. After many years in the mortgage industry, I've decided to combine my knowledge, resources and connections and turn them over to you. Each week, I'll be featuring different home finance experts or my own personal insight to help you achieve financial peace at home. Let's. I have known and worked closely with Kelly Ho for many years. When she speaks, I listen. Kelly is a certified financial planner, certified cash flow specialist, and partner at DLD Financial Group limited. Oh, and by the way, a very good friend of mine. In this episode, we discuss how estate planning is similar to financial planning, why you should look for a certified financial planner designation, and how to get what you want out of life with a life plan. I hope this episode helps you discover your true worth. Enjoy. Hey there. Matt Parker here. So excited to be sitting down with a wonderful partner of mine. Value her very much. Her name's Kelly Ho. She's a certified financial planner professional with and partner of at DLD Financial Group. Really grateful you're here, Kelly. Welcome.

Thank you for having me here, Matt.

Awesome, Kelly. I'm going to get right into it because, you know, I have a lot of fun questions that I want to ask you today. Why don't we start off? I really like to ask the question, what's something that not many people know about you?

In my early 20s, I trained about four to five times a week as a competitive amateur ballroom dancer.

Oh, very cool.

In addition to my academic. Okay. Pursuits.

Wonderful. Do you have a favorite dance?

Latin. So cha cha, ramba, samba, jive.

Wow.

So if you watch Dancing with the Stars, you would know what that is.

So you could, you could teach me a thing or two because I did not dance.

It's been a long time, so I. I'd like to think I still have the technique, but obviously that was a long time ago.

That's so cool. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate that.

You're welcome. Thanks for asking.

One of the things, because we want to obviously talk about your financial industry and then what you provide to clients. How did you get started in the financial business?

It was absolutely by accident. After I finished university, I did not know what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted a job where I would be making some money. And at the time, I was giving a farewell speech at a Kiwanis luncheon, which is a fantastic volunteer organization that I've been a part of for the last 20 years. Plus, in any case, I was giving a farewell speech for My post at UBC and I out of that I received two job interviews. One was for an administrative assistant position in the financial services industry and the other one was for a not for profit group. I interviewed with both, got both jobs. So I got to take my pick. I like the idea of working downtown and that's how I got looped into the financial services industry and the rest is history.

Wow, that's a great story. I know that no one wanted to hire me from the beginning, so you to have the selection of two positions is really cool. No, that's, that's wonderful. And now you know you've been in it for quite a long time now. I know that we were first introduced from a good family friend of ours, George Cadman. And he introduced us and I'm so glad he did. It's been absolutely wonderful to be able to get to know you if you weren't. I guess the other question is why do you love and what made you want to continue in this industry?

So I was an administrative assistant for about two years and a bit and I got bored relatively quickly because I can only be challenged so much in an administrative position. So I threatened to leave. Well, in a nice way anyways. And my then employer and now business partner partner really wanted me to stick around and he said, well, if you want more of a challenge, I'm happy to mentor you. So I went on to get out my licenses, got my certified financial planner designation and did a whole bunch of other designations that I will not care to name that you can probably find on our website. But any case, there was a huge need a lot of people in our industry. The median age is probably people in their 50s and they're mostly men. There is a shortage of women in this industry and women by nature, not to stereotype, but a lot of us were very detailed in nature and we care. I think when people are speaking with us, I find that clients feel that it can be a lot more open. The topics that we get into get very personal, whether it be from a personal financial professional standpoint. I find that I end up being that unofficial therapists sometimes for certain clients. But yeah, definitely there's a shortage of so called younger financial planning professionals. And as people retire there's not going to be enough of us to service the general public.

Oh yeah, no, no, thanks for sharing that. I know that. Which, which you know, I wasn't maybe 100% aware of that. That you first started out working for. For Dave.

Correct.

And now are his partners. So what a cool transition. I think that for myself, obviously having him as a mentorship style figure is the accountability and to be able to learn from him over that time. And I know that for myself having accountability and you know, check ins like that have been so helpful for me. I know from the many clients that we've worked with over the years together, the amazing relationship that you have with them and the trust level that you have is something that I am very impressed with and definitely strive to achieve on my own. So thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate that.

Thank you, Matt.

And in terms of anything else, like if you weren't a financial, a certified financial planner, what do you envision yourself doing?

I've been told by a more than one lawyer client of mine that I would actually be a lawyer, to be more specific, probably an estate planning lawyer because the work that's done by my state planning lawyer counterparts is very similar to the work that I do and in fact complements the work that I do and vice versa. The level of detail that's required, level engagement and I guess topics of interest, they're very similar. And in both situations I get to give advice. And I was told as a kid I was very bossy in nature in a good way and being able to provide advice, I get to be paid to be bossy.

You know, that's. You found your, your fit. But no, I think that you know that that makes so much sense to me is having that and then also the similarities between the two would be actually probably more prevalent than, than I could even imagine. So yeah, that's, that's very interesting. Any. I know that every client is their own unique plan and their own unique goals and ambitions and everything, but given the current market or just what's happening in, in your industry, just in terms of real estate, everything that's happening in Vancouver and locally today and obviously globally as well in your industry, is there any advice that you can provide on the current market?

Absolutely. And I would say this stretches beyond the current market. I would say this is advice in general. There are a lot of ads on television right now that unfortunately, in my opinion in poor taste portray some of us financial planners out there not in a, not a very good light. And I was telling this to a few lawyer clients of mine and they said they're used to it, I'm not. So I thought it's very important that given the negative media attention that it's important to clarify that we're in the business of giving an advice and it's very important that when you are Speaking with professional, make sure that they are a certified financial planning professional. Definitely in our industry it's changed over the years. The requirements to get the designation has changed and it's really the equivalent of speaking with a cpa. Right. It's really no different than that. And I know that nowadays it's very easy to get low cost alternatives. However, that doesn't come with advice and it doesn't hurt to get a second opinion because guess what, you can actually pay someone for that second opinion to make sure you're on the right track. So we find that with clients there's going to be two types. There are those who are going to be the DIYers, those who want to do it themselves, and then there are those who quite frankly have no interest and would rather have a professional do it for them. That's fine for the DIYers. I would say it's not, not a bad idea to check in. Just make sure that you are on the right track because otherwise with all the cost savings that you are experiencing right now, you, it may not, may or may not be the case if you find out too late in the game that you were actually off track.

Yes, well, yeah, and I can imagine that the complexity of the plan and also just life goals and then where they want to be in certain periods, all those different alignments. For myself, I think having professionals or experts in every different field that I involve myself personally and through my business is such a valuable resource because, you know, I wouldn't know where to start. So I think that having obviously a, you know, maybe a passion or just an enjoyment of doing things on your own and being a do it yourselfer is great. I think that can provide, you know, you know, a lot of fun and a lot of personal enjoyment. But I think that having someone like yourself is, is invaluable in terms of getting to where, you know, they really want to be and maybe a place that they didn't think they could get.

Absolutely. I will say that we do life planning right. Find the finances are part of it. But at the end of the day, the discussions that I have in meetings with my clients are of part about what they want in their life and my job is to figure out how to get them there. Right. Obviously using the most tax effective strategies. But that's the boring part for them. But in general, clients just want to know that they're going to be okay and that one day when their paychecks from their employer stops, that their paychecks from their retirement savings will allow them to continue living the life that they want to live for the rest of their life.

Yeah, no, and I resonate with that because it very much aligns with how I approach clients mortgages in terms of what is your vision, you know, what is that long term plan and how do we do it today to get us to where we want to be, which I think a lot of people probably look to short term instead of long term. So yeah, if you don't have a financial certified financial planner, if you're looking for a second opinion, which I think is such a valuable resource, Kelly is definitely someone that I can say 100% I would trust. And based on that, Kelly, where is the best place to contact you and to get further advice?

We have a website, www.dldfinancial.com we actually revamped our website last year so it's modern, it's nice and pleasant to look at. So I highly encourage you go to the website. There's a lot of information for for you and alternatively by email as well kellyld financial.com and we'll include that in.

The notes for the show. And again Kelly, thank you so much for being here. I know you have a wonderfully full schedule and I appreciate you taking the time and I'm very grateful. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity.

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