Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
A podcast for those who do not believe they were put on this earth to work 40 to 50 hours per week for 40 to 50 years, to hopefully retire at the age of 65.
Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
142. The Fiduciary Advantage: Finding Clarity in Your Financial Journey
š Redefining Financial Freedom: Insights from Michael Scarpati! š
Welcome to the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Podcast! Iām your host, Niyi Adewole, and today weāre excited to be joined by Michael Scarpati, the founder and CEO of Retire Us, a Fintech platform dedicated to simplifying retirement planning and connecting individuals with independent fiduciary experts.
š„ The Quote of the Day:
"Money is a jealous mistress. If you do not pay attention to it, it will leave you."
This quote encapsulates the importance of being proactive in your financial journey. Michael emphasizes that awareness and understanding of your financial situation are crucial to achieving long-term success. This powerful quote highlights the necessity of being proactive in your financial journey. Itās a wake-up call to all who may feel overwhelmed by their financesāunderstanding and managing your money is key to achieving long-term success.
š Weāre Unpacking Key Insights from Our Conversation:
š¤Understanding Money's Role:
Michael shares his unique upbringing with two contrasting views on money from his parents, shaping his perspective on financial planning.
1. The Inspiration Behind Retire Us:
ā£Discover how Michaelās experiences in the financial industry highlighted the need for accessible, high-quality financial advice for everyone.
2. Independent Fiduciary Explained:
ā£Learn the difference between independent fiduciaries and traditional financial advisors, and why it matters for your financial health. Fiduciaries prioritize your best interests over institutional agendas, ensuring you receive unbiased advice.
3. Common Financial Mistakes:
ā£Michael discusses the most overlooked financial mistakes people make during job transitions and how to avoid them.
4. Financial Checkpoint Tool:
ā£Explore the free financial checkpoint tool offered by Retire Us, designed to identify red flags and improve your financial literacy.
šļø Episode Highlights:
š” Navigating Financial Clarity:
Michael emphasizes the importance of understanding your lifestyle costs and how they impact your financial planning and retirement goals.
š Inflation Insights:
Gain insights into how inflation affects your purchasing power and why itās essential to invest wisely to keep up with rising costs.
š Building a Financial System:
Michael discusses the significance of creating a personalized financial system that aligns with your goals and lifestyle, rather than relying on cookie-cutter solutions.
š” The Importance of Financial Consciousness:
Understand why financial consciousness is more critical than mere financial literacy, focusing on the "why" behind your financial decisions.
ā
Key Insights Youāll Gain:
- Learn how 95% of financial advisors aren't legally required to act in your best interest.
- Discover the new subscription-based model bringing fiduciary guidance to small investors.
- Why having a 401(k) or brokerage account doesnāt mean you're financially healthy.
šļø Tune in every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern! Donāt miss out on our journey toward financial freedom through smart investments.
š Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications so you never miss an update! Letās unlock your potential together!
Our Links
ā£ Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083...
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Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.
Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group Podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work grind and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions and keep the momentum going.
Speaker 2:And good evening everyone. This is Nii Adewale, host of the Acaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group, and I am pumped to be joined today by Michael Scarpatti, who is the founder and CEO of RetireUS, which is a fintech platform on a mission to simplify retirement planning and connect people with independent, fiduciary experts. Michael believes that most people aren't suffering from a lack of knowledge, but really are being overwhelmed by too much noise in the social media realm and by all these different experts trying to help you out, and he's here to help us cut through the clutter and get the clarity, intention and the value-driven approach needed to be successful in your finances today. Michael, thank you for joining us. No, thank you for having me, and I know before we hit record, we were connecting on a little bit of our background up in Philly, and so I want to start before RetireUS even came into the picture. What did money mean for you growing up and what's your relationship with that coming up?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. First of all, thanks for having me on Love this. The Philly connection is what a nice little bonus surprise right there. Yeah, I mean money, money.
Speaker 3:How we are raised around money, I think, really shifts a lot of things and I was very fortunate that I kind of had two wildly different perspectives from my parents growing up around money.
Speaker 3:So my mom came from a family that was in the banking industry.
Speaker 3:So my grandfather was a real rags to riches story, started out as the janitor of this bank up in Northwestern PA and worked his, worked his way up to becoming a chairman and CEO of that same bank, expanded it With that mindset, a lot of obviously grit, hard work. But with that also came this hyper-consciousness around finances, with accounting for every single dollar and being very frugal in the way that you leverage money. You know the bankers, they account for every penny and you know I really learned a lot that kind of was instilled in me at a very young age of just being very aware of the value, you know the true value of money and making sure we're not being wasteful as a household, right, and on the other side of the equation, my father entrepreneur really more of a free spirit when it came to money, really sees money and saw money growing up as more of a tool to make life easier, right, and to kind of bring things into the world that you can kind of leverage and catapult off of.
Speaker 2:And so I was really fortunate I kind of got two like very different perspectives at a very young age and it helped me kind of model my own frameworks around seeing money more as a tool, right, and how we kind of use that tool and how we wield that tool, I think is what really ultimately gives us power, if done correctly 100% agree, and I know a lot of the people that are our listeners are on that path to entrepreneurship or are entrepreneurs as well, and it's one of those things where it's great to have that in you, but you can go a little too far on the risk side and get yourself in financial trouble, and so it's great that you had a banker right Also in your family that was able to kind of help balance out the perspectives, and I'm sure that helped when you started looking in and coming into contact with the idea of retire us. And so what was, what was the moment or the inspiration that that sparked that idea?
Speaker 3:Well, if you've been in the financial industry as long as I have, you have seen a lot of really bad financial plans and that was kind of the it as kind of a result of those investments.
Speaker 3:The way that I was brought into the industry was the complete opposite right Planning first building systems and then finding which products, vetting the entire marketplace to understand which tools will kind of fit into the system that you need for you personally.
Speaker 3:And so, as a result, coming into the industry 15 years seeing a lot of people that thought they had everything put together and only to find out that there was major, major gaps in the overall systems that they have had put together for themselves. And so it kind of seeing that over and over again, we started to kind of talk my my partners and myself around what's what's the, what's the issue, what's the major gap? Why do we keep seeing the same thing over and over, where somebody thinks they're in a good position, but when we really open up the hood we find out that there's actually a lot of problems that could cause damage long-term for our financial success. And what we found is that independent, fiduciary financial planning, financial advice and guidance is really it's not too abundant for the average person. Right, it's actually really reserved for the 1% to 2% of wealth earners. How could we leverage technology and create a different model that could kind of break that mold a littlearies and making it really easy to work with the best?
Speaker 2:And you've mentioned that independent fiduciary piece multiple times and for those who don't know, do you mind just explaining the difference between an independent fiduciary that's helping you with your finances versus somebody that's working for, say like a Northwestern Mutual or something of that nature?
Speaker 3:Imagine you went to the doctor's office, right, and you didn't feel super comfortable about that financial or about that health advice, that healthcare advice, and then you come to find out, well, the doctor actually doesn't work for you. They work for a pharmaceutical company, right. And the financial industry kind of works the same way, where the vast, vast majority of financial professionals do not work for you. They work for an investment institution and, as a result, they have no fiduciary standard. Fiduciary standard is a very simple concept. It just means, objectively, in the eyes of the law, is the advice that is being given to you have to be in your best interest? You would think that that would be the standard, when in reality it is actually not at all. You know, the 15, 10 to 15% is the stat that kind of flows out there around how many licensed financial professionals are actually independent fiduciaries in this process, which means 85 to 90% of licensed professionals do not have to give you advice that is, in the eyes of the law, in your best interest. And that's the issue. That's the problem, right? So most people are getting guidance, and it's not to say that the person giving the guidance has any malintent, right, it's just the fact that the ecosystem. They can only advise within the ecosystem in which they operate, and most of them operate in an ecosystem that is essentially run by the institutions themselves, not one that's independent, with an open architecture, and they don't work. You know, for you the individual right, the person that cuts the check, is the investment company itself in which they represent, and so that's kind of the that's the crux of the issue. Most people aren't aware of it but you, kind of intuitively, a lot of people feel it when they're, when they're thinking about getting financial advice, they're like ooh, I don't know how to trust that kind of this used car, old used car salesman connotation is what people fear, so they don't want to approach it.
Speaker 3:The platform is meant to cut through that noise. We're going to match you with an independent fiduciary financial professional with that open architecture, so they're not tied to any specific investment institutions and they can give you that highest quality of advice. But we don't have any asset minimums and we don't have any large exorbitant fees. Five, $10,000 is kind of the going rate in the industry. We have a flat subscription model. Depending on the tier. What you're looking to accomplish Starts as little as 60 bucks a month on the monthly option paid annually. That moves that number down to about $40 a month to get started to work directly with these independent fiduciaries.
Speaker 2:And that is pretty incredible. And I was laughing a little bit earlier because literally just last week I got contacted by another individual that just joined a company similar to what I mentioned before where, hey, they offer the products that are within that company and it's one of those things where, as you said, it does start to feel kind of like a used car salesman and it's like, hey, if you're incentivized to only sell these products, how can you advise me on other things, Like, what if I'm thinking about real estate that could help down the road? Or what if I'm thinking about getting into Vanguard ETFs instead of doing it through you? Is that still going to work?
Speaker 2:And so I love the fact that you are taking on this industry. When you mentioned the stat of only 10% to 15% being independent fiduciaries, that's actually pretty crazy, but it does make sense because these bigger guys have kind of created I don't want to say a monopoly, but they've taken over the industry for a long time, and so when you're seeing all these commercials out there, it's usually from one of these guys that's hey, selling you something from within their portfolio, not necessarily somebody that's independent, that can look at the whole landscape, look at your picture and take it all into account to advise.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's not to say, you know, it's not to demonize products, because we need them. Products are great. It's just the fact that products should be the result of a bigger picture. Products should be a result of a system. James Clear has a really great quote.
Speaker 3:If you ever heard of Atomic Habits really great New York Times bestseller book all about how habits drive our success right. And becoming conscious of our habits is something that really separates those that gain massive success from those that don't. And there's a quote in there that he says we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. And it's a very true perspective of how we should be approaching our finances too perspective of how we should be approaching our finances too. Most people have goals and products that they're trying to leverage to achieve those goals. Very few have actually put systems or frameworks or processes of how their behavior actually needs to change and how their decision making needs to be impacted by a larger system, so that our current situation, our cash flow, is directly interacting with things that will ultimately impact long-term tax ramifications or our legacy plan, our retirement, our short-term, our taxes I'm sorry our risk, our insurances All these things actually are part of a really big web. That you know.
Speaker 3:In that statement I didn't mention investment portfolio or product, right. That that's that web actually should come first, and then the products, the portfolio, should fit inside that web. For you, right, depending on who you are, everyone's going to be different and everybody's, you know, web of how all those things interact are so dramatically personalized. But we live in a world right now and the services industry is very much this cookie cutter, one size fits all type of approach. You know, you're 40 years old, you fit into this model, right, you're 50 years old. You know it's this risk tolerance or whatever it may be no-transcript.
Speaker 2:And then you find the right tools, the right people to help you get to the end, but to your point you got to start with that. Why and one of the things that you've mentioned in the past before is it's more important to have financial consciousness than financial literacy. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3:Well, start with the why. That's a Simon Sinek, I believe.
Speaker 2:Come on now.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Hey, you know the why is the financial consciousness, though, too? Right, financial literacy is all about terminology and understanding what things mean. Right, it's our knowledge and it's important, right, but knowledge without awareness can only get us so far, and you know, think of it. I think of financial literacy as, like to give you kind of an analogy you can be very literate when it comes to finances, right, you can be astute and you can understand different components of how accounts work and the minutia of the funds and the alphas and the betas, and really understand how things operate.
Speaker 3:And to me, a lot of times, that's like checking the boxes. Right, I have my 401k, I know the things that I should have, right, I should have some sort of savings account, I should have some sort of cash reserve, I should have some sort of retirement account. And it's like I think we get into, unfortunately, a little bit of a habit as a society of we check the boxes and we feel like we've done it, like we feel like we accomplished it. It's like if you've ever had the feeling of there's a lot of things on your mind, so you write them down on a list, and just because you wrote them down, now you're like, oh okay, but you never actually checked them off the list, right? Yeah, and that happens a lot in the finances is we have these things and we even are checking them off the list, but we don't necessarily have a true purpose for those accounts. We don't know why we have them.
Speaker 3:In terms of the bigger picture, what are the actual needs that can hold those accounts accountable? Actually, how do we create accountability with our decision making and the accounts that we have? And so this idea of financial consciousness is finding the why right, having more expanded awareness on why do we have what we have, why are we saving what we're saving, why are we investing in what we're investing in, and what are kind of the right answers for you, right? What are the right answers for you in order to fit that smaller day-to-day into the bigger picture, right Into that bigger picture of what we're looking to accomplish long-term?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's one of those where I think we talked about it a little bit earlier.
Speaker 2:But you definitely have to start inward and then start to move outward to figure out how you're going to use these tools to help you, because what tends to happen, at least in my first financial meetings with individuals that knew a lot more than me when I first joined corporate, I didn't even know exactly what a 401k was I was like just talking to people around me like, hey, what do you do?
Speaker 2:Okay, we do a target fund, all right, but you don't exactly know what that means. And is it going to be the best thing for you, if you're 20 years old, to be in a target fund, or is it better to just be an S and P? Right Like? These are things that you need to be able to talk to somebody who's very knowledgeable, who has that 15 years plus of experience and has built out a platform to be able to do that, and so I know you have some tools and things of that nature to help people start to check in on their finances, and one of the things that I saw on the lead up here was you have a three question financial check-in. Do you mind talking about that?
Speaker 3:Well. So I think actually one of the things that would be really, really helpful is we have a tool called a financial checkpoint and this, the financial consciousness component of we don't know what we don't know, right, like that's kind of the biggest thing that gets in a lot of our way, and you kind of hit the nail on the head when you approach this. You know, when you're 20 years old it's just becoming literate is is, is the, is the best start, right, just what is a formal K? Okay, I should probably take advantage of that, right, and that. I know that feeling too. Right, I'm in the financial services industry now, but coming out of college, I didn't. I didn't know any of this stuff, right, I learned it on the job and, and I wonder if I would know any of this stuff if truly I wasn't in the business, right, and that's kind of one of the big disconnects we have as a society we don't really learn this stuff. I went to Philly school, st Joe's University. I wasn't a financial planning major, I was international business. I didn't learn any of this stuff about personal finances in higher education right, it wasn't a class. Now there is financial planning coursework that you can take to learn this stuff. But unless you, most people are learning on the fly, right, they're learning through. They get their first job.
Speaker 3:Here's the 401k and this idea of we don't know what, we don't know, right. The financial checkpoint that we have on retireus it's free. It will actually pull out these various financial red flags. We call them, and it's about a four-minute questionnaire, four-minute quiz that you can go through, and the financial red flags are those blind spots. Based off of your answers, what we're doing is we're flagging some things that you said.
Speaker 3:I actually don't really understand enough about this area and how it's impacting me. Right, and pulling those things out, I think is is one of the first steps for us to understand where we stand today, where our current situation is and what's actually in our way, and so I would really encourage people to take advantage of it. It's a free tool, but you know understanding what are the things that maybe should be prioritized right now for you to either learn a little bit more, increase your financial literacy or really take a deeper dive in and find out. You know how these things are going to ultimately impact that bigger picture. Whatever you're striving for, I think that could be be really beneficial for for the audience. Come on now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I'd advise everybody that's listening live and also going to listen in the future to take advantage of that tool at RetireUS to at least check in and see hey, am I missing something? Do I have blind spots? I think that's absolutely a first or next step for everybody within our community to do, and I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the things that are happening in the market today. Right, we know that AI has taken over and a lot of companies are starting to lay people off, and we've had and know some people that have been impacted and things of that nature. And so what are some of the most overlooked financial mistakes from people that are transitioning from jobs or maybe the worst at getting laid off from a job and now need to kind of figure it out from there?
Speaker 3:It's going to be. It's challenging time now and it's going to continue to it's. Things are moving quick, right With all this, the way that tech is advancing and how it's going to be more and more ingrained into our society and the workforce. It is definitely something that is coming, and the biggest mistake we see for most people is they're blindsided around their own current financial situation, around their own current financial situation. So I think that if we could if anybody has these concerns right, the biggest first couple of steps that I think are always key for everybody in their planning is to understand a couple key things. The first is what does our lifestyle actually cost? Right? There's two reasons for this. If you know what your lifestyle actually costs, if there are layoffs or buyout offers or opportunities for you that come down the pipeline, it helps to give you a little bit more clarity and understanding on truly what are your needs. Right, if you need to bridge some time with a buyout offer, we see a lot of buyouts right now.
Speaker 3:The federal government is a big area where we've been supporting a lot of these transitions. As I know you're aware, that's been impacted significantly with these layoffs and downsizing the federal government. The biggest thing we see there is there's not a ton of clarity on what it would mean if you don't have your paycheck next year, right, and how that would actually impact the retirement goal. So it all really is going to be relative, based off of where you are in your career trajectory. If you're really close to that retirement timeline, understanding your current expenses and your current lifestyle costs. That also helps us understand what our retirement needs will be right. A lot of people like to operate on rules of thumb, but the reality is your retirement is completely subjective to what your lifestyle is and that varies dramatically, right? But if you know what your lifestyle costs, then you can start to reverse engineer and understand what your retirement needs are. All roads lead to retirement when we're in the workforce right, all roads lead to retirement and being able to navigate these transitions while also understanding where we're headed right.
Speaker 3:That's such a key piece of information because it helps you understand how much time you may need to, or how much time you may be afforded really, until you desperately need to find something either equivalent or what that comparable pay may be right, it may not be exactly what you're used to making, but what it, at least bare minimum would need to be so that you don't knock some of the retirement plans also off track, right, and you can kind of stay on the pacing that you're at.
Speaker 3:So it's just, it's math, right, it's numbers, it's getting clear understanding on the math of our current situation what is our lifestyle cost and then ultimately, what does that mean in terms of how much we will need for our retirement goal? Because at the end of the day, that's what we're working towards right when we're in the workforce. If you have those two key pieces of data now, you can start to really reverse, engineer and understand and model out different scenarios. When you know the situation arises that you may have to transition your employment. You can do that with you know, sound data and analytics, versus just kind of like intuitive feel 100% agree.
Speaker 2:And it's one of those things where it's a lot of people try to put their blinders on and just say, hey, as long as I'm able to cover my bills and I can go out and do things, everything's okay. But it's one of those things where you really got to start tracking it if you want it to grow. And so a few years ago I just started doing an exercise alongside my wife where we do it once a month, but I'd recommend at least once a quarter. We get together, we have a financial meeting and we actually track our net worth. We pull all the assets, all the liabilities, and we see and over time we've been able to knock out debt and actually see our assets grow and say, okay, this is a good area and now we're moving toward where we want to be for the future.
Speaker 2:But one thing I would say as well, or I would ask you, is you know, our parents are from the boomer generation. Right, we're, we're, we're, we're from, you know, the millennial generation. Our parents are the boomers and they get to work kind of the same job and then move into retirement, and that was kind of what they knew. They didn't have to do any crazy investments unless they wanted to, and so is traditional retirement still a thing for our generation, or is that gone?
Speaker 3:I think it's probably the way that we define retirement is going to be much different than the way the previous generations have, and then the generations after us will probably be a completely different thing that we can't even think of or comprehend at the moment. But you mentioned something. I love that tradition, that ritual that you've created with your wife. It's such a wise thing to do so hats off to you guys for doing it. Here's a politically incorrect way, probably, to think about this when it comes to money, but I think it's a great way to conceptualize it. I heard a phrase one time that said money is a jealous mistress and if you do not pay attention to it, it will leave you. Right, and it's. It's a good way for us to frame actually how we, what is our relationship with money, because most people it stresses people out, right. And so to circle back to the why, right, doing the inner work actually is a good starting point to understand. Why is it stressing us out? 90% of the time that we see it, it's just because it's a fear. There's a fear and it's all driven because we don't have all the information that we need right. We're just not clear on what our needs are what the money actually means and we're afraid to face it right. We're afraid that it's going to be maybe worse, we're going to be in a worse position. But the reality is we have to come to terms and acknowledge the fact that the longer that we ignore things, especially when it comes to financials, the worse problems become. And so, kind of going back to that, why that you mentioned earlier, if you have that gut feeling, doing the inner work of well, why do I actually feel this way? And kind of giving yourself a couple of those prompts to get a little bit of a deeper understanding of what it is that you actually need to do, what is the action that you can take to allow the gut to kind of unclench a little bit? And you can kind of take the you know shoulders, relax and you kind of breathe and go, okay, all right. Well, at least now I know, and now I can, I can do better, I can create better habits. I can, I can, I can do a monthly meeting where we're looking at it and we're tracking it. And because the reality is it's slippery man, money's a slippery thing and it's easy, especially now we live in a time where it is easier than ever to waste money. It's easier than ever to just blow money and the more that we look at it, I do a very similar thing.
Speaker 3:Actually. We kind of the wife's pregnant now, so this isn't the case, but we would do like a little wine date night is what we would do, and we would. We would actually, um, her father every year gives her one of those big calendars that's like month um, you know, the month over month calendars, the ones that you would see on, you know, like an executive's desk back 20 years ago, big paper calendar. But so one of the things that we found really helpful is we'll we'll integrate this into the finance process, where we go through the calendar and we actually plot out all of the big things that are going to be happening, because the big things also generally have big dollar signs behind them. So we go and we actually map it out. We get, like you know, some markers and we draw on this big calendar and we write out all the fun things that we're going to be doing. It also kind of helps us understand the vision for the one-year picture of where things are going, and then we take that and then we kind of reverse engineer some of that.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, we have five weddings this year, so there's a lot of things that are going to go into that, and it kind of helps us get more of a clear picture of just some of the short-term extra liquidity things where we might need to be saving for so that when the time comes, we're not just, you know, charging it to the game on the credit card and then kind of digging back out. And so that's been a really helpful process for us and system right, thinking about the system. That's a good, easy cash flow system that you can kind of put in place to map out the short term one year picture, bring it down to the day to day to see okay, well, what do we actually need in order to have some of this excess liquidity? So I love that you do that. We do a very similar thing and it's been giantly beneficial. Once we started really as a couple focusing on the household's health financially, things dramatically started to shift.
Speaker 2:Come on now and, michael, I love what you're doing in this space. I think it's desperately needed because when you look at just the expenses that are going up and a lot of the roles that people have nowadays, not even being able to really keep up with the just day-to-day expenses and the inflation that's happening, it's only going to get worse. And you really got to get a handle on your finances early if you want to have success down the road, because the earlier you start the better. And so for those that want to join the community, that want to go on and do that financial check, that four minute check and hire and kind of learn from the RetireUS team, how can we get in contact with you? How can we reach you? Where should we go?
Speaker 3:Retireus. That's the URL. That is the best place to go. There's a free mindfulness tier where you can get started. You can do that checkpoint to get some insights and awareness on where you are today in terms of retirement pacing, tax planning. Also, we'll pull out these various red flags when you're ready to work directly with somebody. The platform makes it incredibly easy to onboard your data, kind of get started, take that first step. That's kind of the big thing that gets in the way for most people is just taking the first step. What I can promise you in this process of becoming more financially conscious is that take the first step. The second step is always easier than the first and the third is easier than the second, and so we got to get out of our own way a little bit to take that first step. So retireus also on Instagram and LinkedIn. At retireus, we'll be pumping out a lot of different content around financial consciousness, literacy tools, tips, techniques that you can use to become the master of your finances.
Speaker 2:Come on now and we're definitely going to be sending some people your way, those that are listening live. You're free to go ahead and jump into the chat and or unmute to ask questions and those that listen. In the future, we want you to go to retireus, to go check this out and work with Michael and his team on getting your financial literacy, as well as your financial consciousness, up and ready to rock before that retirement age. But we'll pause for a second to see if there's any questions in the chat and or questions from the group, and then I got one or two more. I want to ask before you get back to your beautiful family.
Speaker 3:Hey, one thing I wanted to that spurred a thought too. You really pulled out a really great thing around inflation that I think this is one of those topics that the media can be a little misleading with inflation and people don't fully understand the scope of what we need to prepare for when it comes to inflation. One of the things I see constantly in headlines is inflation Will inflation go down? And correlating that with when will prices go down? And I think what's important for people to understand and needs to be articulated is that if there is any level of inflation, prices will never go down. Right, you need deflation.
Speaker 3:Inflation is simply a measurement of the rate in which goods and services will continue to increase in price. So the damage has been done with inflation and what we would need is heavy deflation for prices to actually come down to prices that we saw pre-COVID or pre-2022, 23,. We really saw a massive spike in inflation. That damage is done and what we're talking about is what's the rate in which that is going to continue to increase over time? And is that in normal ranges versus some of the high inflation that we saw a couple of years back? And with tariff policy, it's unlikely that that's going to honestly be the case. So I do want to prepare people.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't expect prices to come down In the history of commerce. That's just not a thing that happens very often. It's happened a couple of times, but it's not something that happens very often. And it's happened a couple of times, but it's not something that happens very often and it's not something that we should be preparing to have happen. So we got to be extra vigilant about making sure that any of the money that we have is not sitting in accounts that's gaining 0% interest or a half a percent interest. You have to find high yield savings. You have to find things that can get the three to four percent at least at a minimum, because that is the rate at which things are getting more expensive and every day that money is not keeping up with it, it's losing value.
Speaker 2:So just something to throw in there for the audience happy that you touched on this piece because it's something that has been heavy on my heart in recent years. I read this book. It was about hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. I forget exactly what the name was, but long story short, they went through this whole cycle of hyperinflation and it destroyed that country.
Speaker 2:And you're spot on. It doesn't mean when inflation's like, hey, inflation is down, it doesn't mean the price is going down, it just means it's back in a reasonable level of increase. But the key is, can your wages and your investments keep up and hopefully beat inflation so you can get a little bit ahead? That's part of the reason why I put a lot of my assets into real estate and a lot of our community does real estate as well stocks and bonds and things of that nature. But heavy into real estate because historically it does keep up with inflation and then at times it booms and beats inflation and if you buy in the right location and you do some updates and fixes you can definitely even generate more. But the main portion is that if inflation goes up 20, 30%, that real estate's probably going to go up the same and at least it's holding its value over time. That's kind of one of my strategies too.
Speaker 3:Sage advice and sage strategy. I love the way that you articulated that, too, about inflation. It's the way that rates are. How did you say? You said-.
Speaker 2:Can your wages and your investments. Keep up or beat inflation.
Speaker 3:But I think you also said the rate at which prices are going up is now within a reasonable range, that's the politically correct way.
Speaker 3:Increase. You said it's increasing within a reasonable range. That's such a good way to explain it, because that's what we're actually talking about and that's missed a lot the way that it's explained to the public. Things are going up and, yeah, real estate I mean real estate. I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Prior to starting Retireus, I was practicing as a financial professional and working with a lot of high net worth individuals, people that have had, you know, come from, came from generational wealth or built it, and real estate was always a mainstay right. Real estate was always a big component of that story. You know the people that build a lot of wealth. Consistently. One of the constants was real estate was an asset class that they were also investing in and not and not from. You know the, the markets, reits those are things that you could do too, but this was hard. Real estate, rental properties, multifamilies, even just you know, flips, different things that they could, they could do to um. You know, cause with with real estate comes also some complex, advanced things that you can do to um to favor tax treatment on some of that growth and some of those gains and uh, yeah, great, great, call out, man, I definitely, definitely agree with you wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2:Come on now.
Speaker 2:I know we talked about it at the top, but I uh actually was a uh uh in the medical device industry for about seven years, selling uh selling devices, and along the way, I just invested in real estate, invested in real estate and after seven years, when I looked up, I was able to actually move into full-time real estate as a realtor slash investor because of all those investments.
Speaker 2:And so, to your point, it's something I hold dear, but I also put into the market and try to diversify as much as I can. A lot of it's something I hold dear, but I also put into the market and try to diversify as much as I can. A lot of it's in real estate, but I do try to diversify at least cash as much as I can. And I think that this conversation is going to help a lot of people within our community that are focused either heavy on real estate and need to diversify a little bit and or just need to take advantage of what's going on in their jobs, because if you're at a job that's offering 401k matches and things of that nature, you should be taking advantage of this stuff. It's free money, and so I'm excited for people to use the retireus platform and to partner with you and Michael. We cannot thank you enough for taking your evening out to join us on the Financial Freedom Mastermind podcast.
Speaker 3:My pleasure man, I love this stuff.
Speaker 2:Come on now and we appreciate you. I will put all your contact info into the notes and, for those that are going to listen to this later, go ahead and hit that follow and that like button and go ahead and check out retireus. We appreciate you and we'll catch you on the next episode of Acabo Holmes Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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