How to Retire into a Dream Job: The Emotional Nature of Retirement | Ideas by Mike™ (Ep. 52)

Educate, coach, plan. If you had to pick one, which one would you pick and defend?

I could only pick one of those?

Only one.

Wow.

Um, wow. God, I, that's, that is a hard question. I guess, I guess I would say coach, and I'm gonna give you a really squirrely answer as to why.

Most people retire from something. The best people retire into something. My guest today has done it multiple times. He was a pioneer fee-only advisor in the 1980s. Back when almost no one in the industry had even heard the term, he coached high school basketball and taught man-to-man defense on purpose because it— he wanted his players to be self-sufficient. He helped lead his family business through a generational transition and an exit. And then after those 3 careers, he then went back to school, earned a PhD in personal finance, at Kansas State University and walked back into his alma mater for what he calls his dream job. So, if you've ever wondered what it really takes to leap from working to living a one-of-a-kind life, pull up a chair. This is Ideas by Mike. I'm Mike Milligan, and today I'm sitting down with Dr. Ives Maches.

This is the Ideas by Mike podcast, where your future starts living. In the past. Fear to faith, maybe too old plan, I'm not sure yet. I know I can educate my mind, light a fire in my soul, coach me through the doubt till I'm back in control. One of a kind life, I'm ready at last. Turn it up. It's The Ideas by Mike Milligan.

Welcome back to the Ideas by Mike podcast. If this is your first time here, here is what we do. We have honest conversations about money, life, health, mindset, courage, and what it actually takes to live what I call a one-of-a-kind life, because I believe deep down that your life is unique and your financial plan should be also. We're going to keep stacking episodes that feature academic voices, professional speakers, motivational coaches, and people who are actually living a one-of-a-kind story in the real world. And today's guest checks every one of those boxes. Ives is a clinical assistant professor of personal financial planning at Arizona State University in the W.P. Carey School of Business. He earned his PhD from Kansas State University in 2023, his Master's of Business Administration from Arizona State in 1989, and 2 undergraduate degrees, one in accounting and one in computer science from ASU back in 1986. Before his most recent time in academia at Kansas State, he practiced as a fee-only financial planner in Arizona. He then taught high school mathematics, AP statistics, and personal finance, or business mathematics to be exact, for 8 years. He coached girls' high school basketball. He sold his firm. He helped lead his family business through a generational shift into COVID. And now he's researching the relationship between financial education and financial health, which, by the way, is exactly the question every pre-retiree in this country is quietly asking. What I love about Ives' story is this. Most people pick one lane and stay in it. Ives has stacked 4 careers: practitioner, coach, teacher, operator, academia. And each one of them teaches us something about the leap from working to retirement. 3 words, my mission, run through this show: educate, coach, plan. Those— these chapters of Ives' life, the professor who educates, the coach who coached, the advisor who planned. See, this is not an accident that you are here today to hear this. So today, we're going to walk through Ives' chapters of his life, and we're going to pull out the lessons every retiree needs to hear, whether you're 5 years out, 2 years out, or already standing at the door wondering whether to walk through it. This is the show for you. Ives, I want to start where you started and let's go back to the 1980s.

The 1980s.

I know, right? That was back, for those that were listening today, that was back when there was covered wagons going in the 19th century, right? It was back in the old days. But the funny thing—

I still have a slide rule.

Oh, you do?

That's amazing. The financial industry was back during that time almost entirely commission-based, yet you hung a fee-only shingle when most people had never even heard the term. Take me back to what inspired you to be so different from the industry that you did something that today we'd find normally acceptable.

I saw my parents make a number of mistakes in terms of investing in tax shelters and things like that. And it seemed to me that the people that sold them the tax shelters were always doing well, but my parents were always being audited. And that wasn't a pretty good trade-off at all. And I had heard about athletes that were basically earning, you know, much more money than regular folks, if you will. And yet they were, you know, having to play extra years. Like Kareem Jabbar was maybe a good example of somebody who lost a lot of money because an advisor or advisors ripped him off. And I really thought about the idea of, you know, really at the heart of financial planning, and I don't want to oversimplify it, but it's avoid doing stupid things, right? If you can just follow a reasonable path, budget your money, Save consistently, invest for the long term. These are not revolutionary terms. If you can just do those things in a disciplined manner, you ought to come out ahead. And what I found out is that most people were selling things. They were selling stocks, they were selling insurance, they were putting you in a product, and then they were giving you, you know, these, I remember these insurance printouts, right? And if you put this premium in, And it shows a really big number and it's like, but nobody ever inflation adjusted that number back to today's dollars and said, you know, really you didn't make a whole lot of money. You didn't gain a lot of purchasing power. You were insured, you know, and I, the commissions on those products were pretty, pretty big. I heard about those things. So I decided, you know, I wanted to be on the side of my client. I wanted to come in and basically just give that basic foundational advice. And I didn't want to sell anything. I didn't want to have any kind of motivation. That says, I want to go here because it's better for me. And so, you know, I did not know the term fee-only when I made that decision, but I found that out later. But that's what I decided to do is just help people with their finances directly for the fee. And I figured if they're happy with me, they'll stay. And if they don't like what I'm doing, then they'll move on to another place. But I don't have to Lock them into something.

How did clients respond when they realized that you were paid directly from the clients instead of by a product that you offered?

You know, it's interesting because some clients were like, it's great that you're doing it this way. But the type of people that would respond to my marketing or would respond to the people that referred people to me, in other words, clients gave me referrals. So they've already talked about that, right? So by the time somebody actually became a client, they pretty much knew what the deal was going to be. And so that was not a very hard conversation. Having clients pay for the services was not challenging, was not difficult. Sometimes they were suspicious, like if we custodied an account at Schwab, well, is Schwab paying you? And I'm like, nope, absolutely not. But at the end of the day, other than not necessarily being clear on that, clients never had a problem paying my fee.

We always say you can always tell who the pioneers are in anything because they're the ones with the arrows in their back. What was the personal cost that you had to endure Like building a practice for being like one of the first, like fee-only people out in the marketplace?

A couple of things. One is I remember going to an IAFP meeting and that was the one of the predecessors to the FPA. And in all fairness, it's a very different organization today than in the 1980s. And the IAFP was much more of a marketing organization. And I have to tell you straight out, I'm not that marketing guy. That's not, That's not who I am. I'm not the networker. I'm not the reach out and glad hand at a meeting. But I went to IAFP meetings because I really needed to be exposed to the industry in terms of what other people were doing and whatnot. And I don't remember how it came up, but somehow or another, we were talking about compensation and we were disclosing, you know, how we get paid, et cetera. And I said that my clients pay me a check and the room laughed. And I realized they're not laughing with me, they're laughing at me. And that kind of, you know, that was both humiliating and motivating because it's like, okay, all right, you know, that's the look. Then this is threatening to you all because that's why you're doing this. That's why you're mocking this idea. So, okay, that's fine. And I was okay with that. And I know that when I was sending out my quarterly newsletter and I would build my mailing list, occasionally it would go to somebody that was a financial planner that wasn't the only, you know, and I would get some feedback from them about, you know, and I was a little bit preachy, I'm not going to lie. But I would get some feedback that, you know, you don't know what you're talking about and, you know, you don't understand how these work and we're in the best interest of the clients and you're accusing us of all these things. So I would get some of that, but, you know, that goes with the territory. I just stuck to doing what I was doing.

40 years later, that still goes on, by the way. Yeah. We, in the financial planning space, if you're not doing exactly what the other advisor's doing, you're wrong. Right? It's one of the, I say this in my book, like Retirement Déjà Vu, where like so many people have the best hamburger in the world. If we were the burger industry, have the best hamburger in the world, but they don't talk about how good their hamburger is. They talk about how bad everybody else's hamburger is. And that's what the financial planning industry has done. No wonder consumers and individuals are confused, right? That's one of the things that we try to get through to people who listen to our podcast. And just in general is if people are confused, not necessarily because everything is complex, it's because an advisor or a so-called fiduciary will tell somebody that that is wrong without really doing the pros and cons. And here we are, like you were one of the pioneers in the fee-only, but here we are and look what is in vogue in the mid-2020s.

Yeah.

Fee-only. So like looking back on this journey, and we're going to talk a lot more about your journey through like the professional world, but like for pre-retirees listening now, how should they evaluate whether the advice they're getting today is actually structured in their best interest from a wily pro who has been doing this for a long time?

Sure. Now I would say a couple of things you're going to, are going to be there and the compensation is one thing to look at. I mean, obviously if you don't know how your advisor's being paid. That's something you would want to know, and you would really want to know that in any service. But that is not necessarily the be-all end-all to, are you getting objective advice? I think the other thing you have to look at is, are they taking my goals into consideration? Are they talking about me? Is the focus on what it is I want to accomplish, or is the focus on how this product or how this particular item solves my problem. So if I'm being sold an item, if I'm being told this is what we do and this is going to solve all your problems, then you're probably being sold to, right? If somebody is saying, you know, these are your goals and these were the things that you want, here's some alternatives that you can choose to get to where it is you want to go. And this is what I think is in your best interest. And then you're allowed to make the decision without pressure. Again, probably the focus is on you because that's how you would advise somebody, right?

That's 100%, right? That's the thing that we, that I've, have, that when I talk to financial professionals, when I'm educating them is, you know, don't be, don't be, don't tell somebody that this is the, my solution is the only solution that's going to help America get out of its retirement crisis, right? You have to understand the person. Their goals, their objectives, what they want out of this life and create something, give them multiple options and say, hey, what would you choose? I mean, you don't ever walk into a restaurant and the chef walk out and says, here's your food, right? They give you a menu and that's what we're used to doing. So the first lesson that in our pre-call, our conversation, there was a lot of lessons that we're going to gather out of today. And one of the first one is that like, you were a pioneer at a point in time where fee-only was something different. Pioneering is permission to be different, and you don't need everyone else's permission to do what's right for clients and what's for individuals. But then you took a turn, right? So you went from a fee-only advisor, and you did one of the most radical things that I think I've heard people do. You decided to go be a teacher in a high school, right? Tell me about what that— tell me the why behind that transition and what you learned from doing that.

You know, it's funny because if you ask me then versus you, if Versus asking me now, I have a very different perspective looking backwards and having the benefit of time. But the truth of the matter is that I was fee-only at the right time. It was a great differentiator. And over the years, my practice grew and it grew rapidly at times. And having an MBA, you would think that I was really schooled in being a business person, and I was schooled in it, if I'm honest. And there were things that I probably knew I should be doing better than what I was doing. I should have invested more money in infrastructure and I should have, when I entered financial planning, I was also, one of my undergrad degrees is computer science. I programmed my financial planning system and that was cool because in 1990 my software was better than the financial planning software that was out there.

Wow.

But in 2000 it wasn't. It was about the same. And by 2007, software could do a lot more. And my system was actually more of a drag because it took me longer now instead of shorter. And I did not keep up with the times in the back office. I kept up with compliance and legality and that sort of thing. And my advice was still what it should be, but I became considerably less efficient. And the other thing that I did is I didn't do as good a job growing my business as far as I brought advisors on, but I didn't really nurture them the way that I wish that I had. And so ultimately the business got big and it was all on my back and I kind of hit burnout and it was time to move on. I was fortunate in that I was able to sell my firm while I was still giving good quality advice and I was still staying ahead of the game. But I saw the time coming where that wasn't going to be the case. And so I felt, you know what, this is actually not a bad time to just be transitioning. I've done this for a couple of decades. I've helped a lot of people. People are in good spots and it was time for me to move on. So I did. And at that time I was already coaching basketball at the high school level. I was varsity girls basketball coach at Arcadia High School in Phoenix. Go Titans.

Right.

And I decided I really liked working with the kids and so I wanted to become a teacher and work with high school students. People would say, what's wrong with you, Ives? Right? But not actually, it was great. I loved the experience that I had there, but that's what I decided I wanted to do. So I got my teaching certification, took the courses, did my student teaching at Arcadia. Arcadia was very accommodative to me. I wanted to teach mathematics and so they were like, okay, well, we'll be happy to have you do that. And ultimately I inherited their, what they called business math course. Which I went to my department chair and said, can I teach personal finance instead of this textbook? Because the business math book, if you didn't hate math before, you'd have hated it afterwards. And I was like, I don't want to do this to people, but I'd like them to learn about auto insurance and stuff like that. And she's like, as long as these kids graduate, she didn't care what I taught.

Right.

So I was like, cool. So I redid the curriculum based on what I had been doing with financial planning, included the different elements and whatnot. not to create financial planners, but to give a 1-year broad stroke of the brush view of finance. So I got to do that along with AP Stats, which was fun. I enjoyed teaching that as well. So, well, that's kind of where I went.

So what an amazing thing to teach high schoolers about finances, right? That, you know, I also coached high school and this is where we're going to talk about your coaching a little bit. But one of the things about like, teaching a 16, 17, 18-year-old about like auto insurance or compound interest, or they have no wisdom around it because they've never experienced it before. But it's almost like with anything, when you hear something for the first time, it has no real bearing on you. But what you did is you gave people this whole idea of like, You sprinkled it on them and then you sprinkled it again. Yeah. And then it allowed them to be successful in others. Speaking of basketball and coaching though, this is where I really wanted to talk about this chapter is when we were talking about coaching, because when I coach high school baseball, right, the goal of coaching is every coach would say the goal is to make the players better humans.

Right.

But at the end of it, we're competitors and we want to win games. And so I asked you a question. I said, did you teach zone or man-to-man? And you had such an interesting answer about that because it was just, it speaks to like who you are and like what a financial planner's role is. But when you coach, did you teach zone or man-to-man?

I always started off with man-to-man. And we wanted to learn man fundamentals and man principles, help side, on ball, um, you know, one pass away, all the fundamentals of how to guard in a man-to-man defense.

And when you coached against other coaches, did you know, you know, sometimes going into the game, this coach always runs zone defense or he always runs this? Yeah. And that, it's the interesting thing, right? Because if you know what the other team is always doing, You can, you can build a game plan of that game and it makes the game easier for your kids. But if you, if you teach something and then you could use that tool to transition into something that helps you win the game by making adjustments, it's better. So when you, like in teaching man-to-man, you have to teach self-sufficiency.

Right.

Um, so what did you see like in your players as a coach? What did you see Like when you were teaching it, like on like the self-sufficiency, making your kids better?

I saw players learning what defense was all about and understanding that they had responsibilities, but they also had responsibilities to their teammates.

Right.

So, you know, if a teammate lost a player, you're next in line. If we're in transition, it doesn't matter that your man is that person. It means you're going to get down first and you're going to stop them from going to the basket. So, We had to learn where we had responsibilities and where we had responsibilities to others on the team, how to pick up, how to be adaptable. What if they screened? Are we going over the screen? Are we switching the screen? What are we, you know, so we, we had these plans that were based on man-to-man defense, but, you know, there were, there were different responsibilities and sometimes we didn't want to switch big to little. So you had to fight over the screen. And other times we didn't think their guards could drive on our bigs. So we'd switch it. So, you know, we were, we were, we were looking to what is it that we can do and how is it that it's going to be helpful to the team? So we had to know how to do, am I going to switch? Am I going to go over? Is this person not a shooter that maybe I can go under and cheat it a little bit? Are we going to play the passing lane or is this team really quick at backdooring to where maybe I need to back off of that a little bit? So where am I going to be positioned? Is it going to be hard or soft? So I mean, man-to-man defense has a lot of facets to it. And, you know, my feeling was, is that if they knew all of those things, then when we put in our zone defenses, they knew the man principles. If I only taught a player to play the wing on a 2-3, that's all they'd ever know. And some of my players were going to go on and play at the college level. I'm like, when they go to that coach over there, if that coach runs a 1-3-1, they'll learn that pretty quickly. But if they only ran a 2-3 for me and now they have to play man-to-man up at the college level, They're lost. They're starting from ground zero again.

So you put fundamentals in these kids.

Yeah.

And had a general rule on your team that you were going to play man-to-man, but then the game starts and every once in a while you got to break the rule.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you have to go, you have to call zone, you have to call press, you have to do some kind of hybrid defense as a coach. Because an advisor acts a lot like a coach for somebody's personal side. As a coach or advisor, how do you know when to break the rules and maybe what signals are in place in the game to be able to know, to go to zone or to go to press?

Well, first and foremost is that not every time do we read the signals right. I want to be clear on that, right? But in general, if what we're, if we're, if what we're doing is not working or if what we were planning on doing doesn't really play to our strengths. So, you know, you look at a situation where their big, their, their post player is better than we thought. We saw film and their post player didn't look all that good. And we're playing man-to-man and we find that we're being outplayed in the middle and we need to pack it. Then that's really not going to be a man-to-man kind of a game. We're going to go 2-3. We're going to say beat us from outside, but we're not going to let your big just score buckets on us again and again and again. So, I mean, you respond to what your strengths are. Sometimes we would press teams because our guards were faster than their guards could handle and we could get a lot of easy buckets. So what are our strengths going to do and how can we play to those and how can we play to the other team's weaknesses? The other thing is sometimes life hands you whatever it hands you, right? So I've got my best on-ball defender suddenly picked up their 3rd foul and they've got a guard that, that person was the only player on my team that could stay in front of her. Then you know what? I've got to do something to change it up so that we just don't get sliced and diced. So again, it's going to be a matter of what did the game hand you and where does that put you? If I've got foul trouble, maybe I want to back off a little bit or something like that. So there was always something going on.

So you said to lead that off, right? That basketball analysis is sometimes we don't read the signals right. Like, I mean, just think about here we are when we record this in May, we have oil prices in the stratosphere with a market that's all-time high. Most advisors would be like, what the heck? The market is going down, right? But the market tends to just still move up. Even like a great advisor, like a great coach who reads the signals of the game, Sometimes an advisor sometimes misreads what's going on in the market, which often leads, like when you taught self-sufficiency, like to know the role, know the different ways to play defense. A lot of people will take that as like, well, why don't I just do it myself? Why don't I just do my retirement all myself? I don't need a team of people. I don't need advisors. When would, you know, There's this, there's a time to be self-sufficient when it's one-on-one and other times you're playing the game where you need a team. How do you know when you need a team versus when you should just go it alone?

I'll go back to play to your strengths. So if you're willing to invest some time to understand personal finance, if you're willing to understand how much you need to be saving, a reasonable way to allocate that, You're disciplined and you're going to follow that path that you've set out for yourself and you've kind of taken the emotions out of it. I mean, there's no reason that somebody couldn't do that. The problem is for most of us is that when it comes to a lot of things that we do, our emotions get in the way. And I know you had Megan McCoy on and I think it was your last episode, right? Dr. McCoy. 2 episodes ago. And y'all talked about the idea of emotionality getting in the way of our money decisions. And I think that's a very human condition. A lot of doctors don't treat themselves for the same reason, right? You're emotionally invested in what's going on and it starts to cloud your ability to make a judgment. So it doesn't make you stupid and it doesn't make you incompetent, but it leads you to suboptimal decisions. And sometimes those decisions can be poor. And, you know, it was easy. People would ask me one of things that I felt very proud about. They'd say, well, do you follow your own advice? And I'm like, absolutely. And I'm very glad that I did. And my advice was never very glamorous. It was kind of nuts and bolts. We're going to have a budget, we're going to save money consistently, right? But I followed that advice and I was able to do that as an advisor and then tell my clients about that. And so I'm doing my own, but I would say that it is challenging. And a lot of clients came to me after trying to do it themselves and they recognized, you know, I timed myself out of the market, or I made another mistake. I invested in a variable universal life and I didn't understand what I got myself into, and now I have this thing and what do I do? So, you know, people will make mistakes. And so again, you have to play to your strengths if you're going to put the time and energy into it. And if you can kind of separate yourself from your emotions, then yeah, that's hard for most people.

Yeah. So I summarize like this whole conversation about coaching in like the retirement side is like self-sufficient, be self-sufficient on the fundamentals, but be humble enough to know when you either have to call a timeout or bring in an expert. And that's how you build like a one-of-a-kind life when it's all said and done. So, so now we've gone like 2 careers almost, right? So you were a fee-only advisor, you exited, you became a teacher coach, you exited that again. But there was a family business in this also. Yeah. You walked into a family business, I believe it was like a generational pivoting point almost. So how did, how did like having your MBA, exiting the business, being a coach, but also being a family member to the people in the business, how did that, what was that relationship like when you walked into that small business?

For me, it was really challenging. I was happy teaching and I was, you know, and I still coached after I taught, but I was happy teaching, but I left because there was a real mess. My father was very old and his partner had passed away. Nobody expected him to be the one that outlived everybody, but he did.

Right.

And the business was basically designed to be more or less an ATM. And it wasn't designed to maximize profits. It wasn't designed to be efficient. They did service their customers well, and that was the saving grace. They had a general manager who did not have profit responsibility, but she made sure that staff and customers were happy. And you know what? You can go a long way if you have happy staff and customers.

Right.

But there were messes that needed to be cleaned up. And so, you know, my job was to clean up those messes. And so I went there and did that. It was stressful because I wasn't fully supported by my father in terms of the things that I wanted to do. He had built personal relationships and wanted to continue to get products from these people instead of those people when we could easily save money here. You know, and it's hard for me when there's low-hanging fruit of saving a 5-digit number a year that you can't save it. So, you know, there were challenges there. Ultimately, COVID came, And we were a franchise. We actually made some pivots faster than the franchisor did, which was awesome. But ultimately things were really, really challenging. We were a group meeting, it was Weight Watchers basically. And that started to dry up. And you can see that the overall company is struggling still to this day.

Right.

But there was a lot of writing on the wall. And so I ultimately pivoted to sell the business while the business was still worth selling. And so it was the second time I went through a sale and I made myself unpopular, but I made the right decision. People were like, you came in here and you packaged it and you sold it. Well, no, that really wasn't the intent. I came in here and I cleaned up the mess, and in so doing, the business became a sellable property. And then COVID hit and the franchisor at that time was willing to pay a premium to bring everything in-house for changes that we didn't know were coming, but I felt like I ML, which turned out to be selling medicines and not having franchisees involved in that. So I knew there was going to be changes. I didn't know what they were going to be, but long story short, ultimately sold the business. And while I was working there, I also had the ability to go back to school, which I wanted to do anyway when I left teaching, because one of the things that my finance students asked was, why isn't this course required? And I thought that it should be required, but it wasn't. And I wanted to understand the relationship between financial education and does having a financial education class lead to a better outcome later on in life? Because that's kind of the idea, right? I mean, we're not getting financial education just so people can say, well, I know a little bit about the stock market. It's because I'm going to do better economically, right? That's what we want. We want people that can be their own advocates. So that's what I did my dissertation on. So I went to Kansas State University, I enrolled. It was a great experience, and I'm thankful that I had the opportunity. I got to work with a great cohort of people, a great set of professors who were also kind of movers in our industry. And again, you had the privilege of interviewing one of them 2 episodes ago. So I'm very thankful for that experience and I got to see that, yeah, there is a relationship. It's not as obvious as I wish it was, but it is there. And in so doing, then I also got to teach the intro classes at Kansas State and ultimately got to teach a few others. And so I suddenly transitioned to this role where I was something I was never thought I was going to be, which was a college professor.

Which brings us to where you are today. Before we close the chapter on that family business part, Tell me if you agree with this or not. Transitions are emotional before they're financial.

Absolutely.

And how, you know, now, now Ives, as the philosopher at this point, how would you tell somebody that's maybe a couple years before wanting to sell their business or You know, maybe a millennial who sees a parent still trying to run the business. How do you, how would you advise somebody to take emotion out to make the right financial decision? Because it's what you ultimately did.

And that's, and that's really, really hard. I had experience with clients that sold their businesses and a couple of things, you know, number one, the business is your baby. Yeah. Right. You invested in it, you grew in it. And the hardest thing is that the business and you suddenly become kind of melded. It becomes part of your identity. So you're not just selling off assets and cash flow, you're selling off part of you. And I really believe that most people look at their own businesses and think it's a lot more valuable than it really is. And to you on a cash flow basis, it might well be because the discount rate you would apply is different. than the discount rate a reasonable investor would use. So, you know, it's really hard to say. I mean, everybody would say, well, I would sell this if I got a billion dollars. Okay, well, that's okay. Let's get real. What would you sell it for? And then what is it actually worth? And people get insulted. You know, people want to sell businesses and still have ties to it, or they want to be able to sell a business but still have it be their way. Or somehow retain what, and sometimes it's like, you know, when you sell the business, it's gone. But, you know, you have to have a plan for what comes next as well. And you have to really think that plan out because otherwise selling the business becomes a moat you're going to avoid. Who has to step into a void? You know, so people almost will sabotage themselves so that it's not sellable. And like I said, I had a number of conversations with clients You know, one of whom worked probably a decade longer than he meant to because he continually wanted to sell his practice. His practice was really him and he was an expert in what he did. And he was, you know, he was called in as an expert witness. There weren't a lot of people with his skillset. So the companies that wanted to buy out his business were basically buying contacts and they were buying some staff and they were buying, a name, but if he wasn't going to be there, the business was worth a whole lot less. And it was hard for him to reconcile that. And I understand where that came from, but he couldn't see himself selling the business down. Ultimately, this particular individual transitioned the business to his daughter, which is kind of cool as a prologue. That wasn't something he thought he'd ever do either.

Right.

But he did it. She became interested in it. It all worked out in the end in this particular case, but I've seen places where it doesn't work out as well.

Yeah, it's almost like my wife and I have this home back that we have invested a lot in. Our listeners know this, but we live most of our year in Puerto Rico and then we go back to Virginia and visit from time to time. But we have this home there that we've put a lot of love and care into and we've got to make this decision. Do we sell it? Do we keep it? What we really want to keep it because it's on the water and it has a pool. And like a business owner who wants to still have his way in a business or sell, but kind of be like my wife and I selling our home, but having lifetime access to the pool. Well, that's not how it works. Right. Right. The new owners do not want me in my bathing suit out in their pool that we sold them. Right. So anyway, yeah, transitions are hard. And so, and you've made multiple, so as we've documented here, you've made multiple. You went from fee-only as a pioneer, you went into the high school classroom, you went onto the court to coach basketball, and then you went to help your dad with his business. And then you mentioned that you being in the business with your dad allowed you to go back to school and get a PhD. Why a PhD at this point in your life?

A couple of reasons. One is to some degree, it was an aspiration that I had for a long time. Okay. You know, to, I never thought about the words terminal degree, but to get the degree that showed that I really, you know, attained a level of expertise, understanding. I'm not sure what the right word even is, but that I kind of had that. And then when I spoke to my students about this whole relationship between education and financial outcomes, I kind of had a grandiose plan that I was going to go and learn this relationship and write some sort of a paper and march into the governor's office in Arizona and say, here, we need to make this a requirement. Now, when I step even 6 inches back from that, I'm like, okay, that is a grandiose plan, right? It's not going to happen. But I did want to understand that relationship. I felt like, I felt very strongly that there was a relationship, but I wanted to understand it and I wanted to understand how to properly research it and know a little bit more about the field that I spent so long in from a different angle.

And so your research, and you're doing this now, you mentioned you went to Kansas State to get your PhD, full circle, right? Because now you're back in Arizona at Arizona State University.

Yes.

Your research now focuses on the relationship between like financial education and financial health.

Yes.

After all your years in the chair across from clients, what surprised you most when you started looking at it through a research lens?

God, that's a great question. You know, I would say that what surprised me most as I was practicing Is how much clients, how intelligent people were on the other side of the desk. And yet there was basic knowledge they weren't aware of. And when given that basic knowledge, their ability to understand what it was we were doing was so enhanced that, you know, really, to be honest with you, clients are smarter. I think sometimes people take that for granted that I know more than the client. And okay, you're more of an expert perhaps, but clients are smart. They get it and they want to understand what they're doing most of the time, and they want things in their best interest. So I think that it's underestimated and we do have a financial knowledge crisis in the country. So what I think now as a researcher I look at is the fact that even people who are grown adults and successful in their fields, they would generally like to know more about finance than they do. And if they feel comfortable with what they're being told, they will absorb that knowledge quickly.

That, uh, what you said there is so true. Like, I mean, I cannot, I cannot echo that any, any better than what you did is that our clients are smart. They're just lacking. That's that whole part of when I was talking earlier about being self-sufficient on the fundamentals, but knowing when to call a timeout and bring somebody in. Understanding the basic concepts and how they apply in your situation, your unique situation, is what makes financial planning so great, is those of us who can listen to where a client is and help take them where they want to go. You also have done, co-authored some research on trust and commitment and how that relates to financial anxiety. What does that research show about why pre-retirees freeze even when they know what they should do?

Well, I think that, you know, number one is we come in with some preconceived notions when we're going to engage a planner, right? You know, we have a general idea of what it is we want to do. And so now the question's going to be from the advisor standpoint, because really I think the advisor needs to do the work here. It's not just a matter of being a subject matter expert. The client did not sign up to go to school. The client signed up to be understood. They want guidance. Okay. And in order to accept that guidance, I've got to feel good about who's guiding me. So number one, do we relate? Do I feel at the end of the day when I leave your office or when I get off the Zoom, do I feel good about what it is you're doing? Do I feel that you're believable and that you're there for me? Okay. And that's the trust part. And we also have to deal with the idea that, you know, we're anxious about money. Money is an anxiety-inducing subject. And so, you know, those 2 things kind of play off of each other because if I don't trust you, my anxiety's going to be higher. And if I'm really anxious, it's going to be harder for me to trust because I can't make that leap. So as planners, we have to work on both, number one, presenting ourselves to our clients in a manner that makes it clear that we're trustworthy. That we've earned their trust. And number 2 is to work through with our clients, their emotions, to read, as we talked about earlier, what's going on with the client? Why are you feeling the way you're feeling? You know, maybe we have to delve back again, getting into Dr. McCoy's territory. What is it that maybe you went through that made you feel that you're never going to be able to accumulate money? Let's talk that through. Okay. How can we understand that? And now how can we take that lesson And apply it to why today is different and how I'm going to be able to help get you through that. So we've got to address those things because if clients feel anxious or if clients don't feel they can trust you, then ultimately they're not going to really want to take your advice. And here's the thing, and this is something I think is a hard lesson learned by many a planner, sometimes including myself, is if a client takes advice that they really didn't feel good about, They'll follow along until something goes wrong. And then what do they say? Tell me what they say when something goes wrong that they didn't feel good about at the beginning.

Something they'll say is they'll be, you know, they'll say, you never, I mean, they'll say things like, you didn't tell me this. Or they'll say, or I knew this was going to happen. Oh, I knew this was going to happen.

That does happen a lot. Right? I knew I shouldn't have gone 60% in stocks because I knew it was going to happen. I let you convince me and I knew this, and you're right that you didn't tell me and things like that, but you can disclose away that you didn't tell me. But the, I knew this was, I knew this was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. And now you got me into this and I'm going to get out. So, you know, the big thing is before we increase our allocation to equities, then it's not just a matter to tell the client you might lose money. That prevents you from losing a lawsuit.

Right.

But it doesn't prevent you from losing a client.

Correct.

So what you have to do is coach them through, okay, this is a very real possibility. Here's the dollar amount we're talking about. So before we go in, how would you feel if I'm sitting with you at the quarterly meeting and I'm telling you that you just lost $150,000? Well, nobody feels good about that. And that because of that, you might have to work a year longer.

Right.

Okay. That's a different thing. And you know what the client, what the client's going to hear Because I care about you enough to have this conversation. And I understand now that there's an upside and a downside. And fortunately for me, then the kinds of conversations I had with clients in market downturns weren't, you didn't tell me. It was more of, okay, what effect does this have? Do I need to change anything I'm doing? Are we still good? Is the retirement projection still showing a surplus? So we were having those kinds of conversations, and that's a much more comfortable conversation for a planner to have. Than the one where it's like, we lost a bunch of money and you're really angry.

Your, the wisdom that you just gave us right there is like, it only can come from somebody who's done the amount of research you have, but also has been in front of clients at the same time. I want to end with a couple rapid-fire questions if you're okay with that.

Sure.

I have a personal philosophy that is, it's 3 simple words: educate, coach, plan. If you could pick one of those and defend it, which one would you pick?

I could only pick one of those?

Only one.

Because I got to tell you, I like your philosophy there. That's, those are a few great words.

If you had to pick one, which one would you pick and defend?

Wow.

To apply to myself or to work with others about?

Let's, let's, let's put to apply to yourself.

Um, wow. God, I, that's, that is a hard question. I guess, I guess I would say coach, and I'm going to give you a really squirrely answer as to why, because I think that coaching is where planning and education meet.

That's why coaching is in the middle of those 3 words. So like you nailed it on the top, like my personal mission, educate, coach, plan, because like I can coach somebody and help them with their education. I can coach and help with plan, but it's hard to build a plan when somebody's uneducated.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's almost impossible. If you could go back to 1980, '80s, let's say 1986, and tell young Ives one thing, what would it be?

This is going to be the strangest answer. I'm thankful for the path I have and I would not do it any other way. I'm glad I ended up where I am. That having been said, if I went back to 1986 and talked to young Ives and I heard what he was going to do, I would say, are you crazy? Have you, have you even thought for 10 minutes about what it is you're doing and why you're doing it? You know, I mean, and I would have said, you're very idealistic young man and you're very, you have very strong opinions and you have some skills, but doing what you're doing is begging for a financial outcome that isn't going to work for you. I would have been wrong when I told him that, but that's what I would have said.

That's what you would tell him now, knowing what you know.

Yeah.

Just a couple more of these quick hitters. What does never miss a moment mean to you?

You know, it's something that maybe as an older person, I feel a little bit more about is we only get certain numbers of experiences. And I think this kind of comes to that whole idea in financial planning. That we really need to balance spending money and saving money and make sure that we don't, for the sake of one thing, miss out on the other. We don't. And so never miss a moment really means live the life that you're living, experience it. Take a second to look at it while you're still in it. You know, if you're coaching a game, you shouldn't only have a memory of it because you had tape. Live that game. You know, so I think that you want to be present in your life and I wasn't always, but I try to be now.

We all could say that one. We always were not present all the time. Favorite type of music?

What they now call yacht rock. People say it derisively. I wear it as a badge. I listen to the Eagles. I listen to Hall and Oates. I listen to the Commodores. I listen to Air Supply.

Yes. And listen, there's a lot of people when they hear that, they're going to be like, oh, that's why the song in the podcast is like that. Number, the last question for today. Where in the world are you right now?

I am in Montevideo, Uruguay.

And tell our listeners why you're there.

Well, I have, I'm on my third marriage. You know, we all go through things, but I love Heidi and we have a great relationship. We have her stepdaughter and our grandchildren. And we did a lot of research about, you know, the society, the economy, et cetera. And really felt that the best place for our grandchildren, who are also Asian Pacific Islanders as well as Hispanic, that a really good place for them to grow up would be Uruguay. And experience the culture and the society here.

I have a, you know, obviously educate, coach, plan, never miss a moment. But my last thing I always tell people is to be one of a kind. And there's no doubt, Ives, you are one of a kind. Thank you for coming on the Ideas by Mike podcast. This This is the kind of conversation that makes this show what it is. Every guest I bring on the podcast has earned the seat, but you have done a lot of things that are just a little rarer than the ones before. And you are living a one-of-a-kind life on purpose. Well, thank you. So if you could leave with our listeners one thing, is there anything you would like to leave with them? Either maybe how to get in contact with you or something you would point them based off wisdom from what you have lived?

I would think that the biggest thing is know who you are and be on that journey to understand who you are. Because if you do things coming from you being you, generally, I think things are going to work out better for you. If you do things for reasons other than that, You're always going to look back and say, I wish I had, I wish I had, I wish I had.

Well, that's amazing. Guys, if you want to connect with Ives like I did, you could find him on LinkedIn. He's got a very nice presence out there. For those of you who've listened to our podcast for maybe the first time, he did reference episode 50 with Dr. Megan McCoy, which is absolutely, you know, a 5-star podcast recording also. And to hear more of our podcasts in the future, be sure to subscribe to the Ideas by Mike podcast wherever you listen. Leave a rating, leave a review, share this episode with a friend who's somewhere on this journey that we call life. Again, this is Mike Milligan, and this has been the Ideas by Mike podcast. He went first when feet only was This has been the Ideas by Mike podcast with your host, Mike Milligan. Today's content is for educational purposes only. Please do not rely on it to make financial decisions. Consult with a financial professional that's both licensed where you live, but also credentialed to do the work necessary for you to build a financial plan. Mike is an investment advisory representative with Advisory Alpha LLC. Ideas by Mike, doing business as One Oak Financial, is an unaffiliated entity of— is not affiliated with Advisory Alpha LLC and is thus unaffiliated. For more information on One Oak Financial, go to www.oneoakfinancial.com. For more information on Advisory Alpha, go to www.advisoryalpha.com. We'll see you on the next episode of Ideas by Mike.