Clay Finck (02:33):

Many people listening to the show might be wondering why they need a financial planner themselves or what the benefits really are. Why would a millennial want to work with someone like yourself to help manage their money?

Jim Crider (02:45):

That’s a fair question. And the reason I think that is often a question is because what’s been done in the past. Typically when you think of a financial planner, you think of your grandparents, or maybe your parents working with someone because they’ve accumulated $1 million, two or $3 million or whatever, and they’re about to retire. But frankly, the reason that’s been set, if you think about the historic compensation model of financial planners. So if I am billing my clients, one or 2% of assets under management, I’m going to be incentivized to work with people who have more assets to manage.

Jim Crider (03:15):

And typically that’s going to mean I’m working with people who have worked long enough to accumulate a few million dollars. However, I pose the fact that if you’re 65, you’re about to retire. Yeah, you have some major considerations in play and big decisions to make. You’re thinking about distribution rate of your portfolio, how do you allocate, do you pay off your mortgage and tax strategy and social security, but really that’s the extent of it from the most part and maybe annually you check in and make sure you’re not over or under-spinning your portfolio.

Jim Crider (03:44):

You juxtapose that to people like me and you, just consider the amount of decisions and opportunities that you face between your late 20s and early 40s and the impact even the small decisions can have over a long period of time and how those decisions can compound and have a large impact on your financial life now and down the line. And that can go through the implications on your financial life. So just negotiating a salary, starting a business, doing proper tax planning, all of those fun things and how those can accumulate and compound, but also just the life impact.

Jim Crider (04:20):

I’ve had the opportunity to work with tens of thousands of people and families over the years. And the majority of my time for a long time was spent helping physicians in their retirement planning. So these people were making $500,000 up to a couple million dollars a year, had good net worth. And so many of these families had massive regret, not along their money, but along their life decisions and the sacrifices they made to accumulate their wealth. So, it’s a dollars and cent side of things, but it’s also a life planning and intentionality along, making sure you’re doing what’s important to you in your life.

Clay Finck (04:53):

I really see financial planning as a big puzzle that goes beyond the numbers of the dollars and cents. Like you mentioned, working with someone like yourself just makes sense for many people in order to ensure that they’re making decisions that align with their values and where they want to be years down the road, just due to all of the complexity, it makes total sense to me why someone would want to work with someone like yourself.

Jim Crider (05:17):

You spoke to it there, first identifying the values and the goals then allocating your assets to make sure you’re aligned with that. And that’s exactly what we do with our clients. So, before someone becomes a client, when we first make an introduction, if they say, “Hey, I’m curious about learning more.” The first step is not talking about mutual funds or even talking about when you want to retire or how much money you want to have. Those are simply supporting actors in the narrative of what you want to do with your life and who you want to be. So foundationally, that’s what we want to understand is truly who are you? What do you hope to achieve in your life? Who do you want to be? What do you want? What do you want to be known for? Those are what we identify as your core values, the underlying, why?

Jim Crider (05:56):

Once we fully understood that and you know it about yourself, so many people don’t stop to peel the layers back like, “Oh, I’d like to do this in my life.” Then you press them on why, a lot of times there’s not an answer there. So once we press the individual on why, and usually we’re working with family. So once both spouses are aware, that’s really important to you, I didn’t know that about you. And they’re fully known as a couple and I fully know what’s going on here about the values, then we can go onto the goals.

Jim Crider (06:21):

Goals change, Clay I’d venture to say that your goals today are probably a lot different than they were five years ago. And realistically, they’re going to be pretty different in five years than they are today. And that’s okay. The purpose of a goal is really just to help put a stake in the sand of the best next step to take and the direction ahead, understanding that your goals will change over time, but we start with values, then we establish goals. And once we have those set, then we look at the decisions.

Jim Crider (06:46):

Everything in life requires a decision. There’s always trade offs. There’s always opportunity costs. So, we want to make sure that those decisions you make are done intentionally and in full view of really what’s important to you. And then finally, once we’ve looked at the decisions you’re going to have to navigate, then we can actually make smart, intentional actions that actually align with who you want to be, what you want to do and align that all the way to the actions you’re taking. And that is really what we’re doing.

Jim Crider (07:10):

And yeah, like I said earlier, the mutual funds and the tax planning and the goals, even those, those are supporting actors in the narrative of what you’re are trying to achieve in your life. That is why this stuff excites me. You’re right, what I do is basically working in a giant puzzle where the rules constantly change, and we’re also dealing with human emotions and biases and desires. And it’s so exciting. I love what I get to do.

Clay Finck (07:36):

Yeah. It’s important you bring up human emotions, that can really complicate things when it comes to investor psychology and sticking to the plan and remembering where you want to be in the long run. When should someone consider working with a financial planner? Is it right when they start their first full-time job or is it possibly later in life when there’s much more complexity around their finances?

Jim Crider (07:59):

I’d say the moment that you recognize that your situation is more complex or requires more than you’re able to put into it. And really there’s actually three things we look at, there’s will, skill and time. So one, do you have the will, the desire to manage this? So for me, for instance, changing my oil it’s a pretty simple thing to do and technically I have the time, but frankly, I don’t want to wake up on Saturday morning and go lay on my driveway in 100 degree weather in July here in Texas. I’d rather hire that out so I can go and play with my kids on Saturday morning. That’s the will.

Jim Crider (08:31):

Then the skill, changing oil’s easy, but doing something more complex in my car, I don’t want to mess with that because I’m going to screw something up probably. So, you have to look at your skill and then finally the time factor. Most of my clients are smarter than I am, but they’re busy individuals. So if you can say, “Yeah, I have the will, the skill and the time to do this.” Awesome, self-manage. But if you can’t check all those boxes, I would challenge for you to consider maybe working with someone. And again, you actually brought up the point a second ago.

Jim Crider (08:57):

You said once things are more complex later on in life. I would venture to say that personally, maybe I won’t speak for you. My wife, her name’s Kendra. I’m 31, she’s 32. We have three kids. Our life I would pose is much more complex and requires a lot more analytical thinking on a regular basis than someone who is older, someone who is 64 and has $4 million, and they’re just looking at retirement planning. We are constantly navigating small and big decisions that will have massive impact on my family and the generations to follow. And I want to make sure we’re doing that well and intentionally for me, for my kids and my grandkids.

Clay Finck (09:32):

You mentioned that you work with a lot of millennials and younger people. How does working with millennials differ from other types of clients or maybe clients that are a little bit older?

Jim Crider (09:45):

Again, if we’re looking at someone who’s about to retire, there’s pretty normal things we’re looking at as far as you’ve accumulated, how do we spin this down, how do we do this in tax efficient manner? When do we pull in, how does pensions and fixed income and social security fit into this and all those things? It’s about it, typically most good financial planners are serving that client base again, because we look at compensation models and this historical norms of the industry.

Jim Crider (10:10):

And typically that type of advisor, you’re going to be working with them and checking in probably annually, maybe twice a year because your life is not that ever changing when you’re 68, there is not much that comes up. We work specifically with younger families. So, our families are going to fall between say mid to late 20s to early 40s. And the types of decisions you’re navigating, there’s more breadth to those and they happen more often. So Kendra and I, we’ve somehow managed to squeeze in a vast majority of decisions that our client set faces. We squeeze that in to three years, and it’s been a wild three years.

Jim Crider (10:44):

So, our clients typically we’re looking at both spouses are working pre-kids maybe, and maybe one or two or both are at a large corporate job. And then you have to think about, all right, we’re going to leave and we’re going to go to a small business, one we’ll stay at a corporate job. Okay, now we’re having a kid, one spouse, do we stay at home? What’s the impact on that? What do we need of our job? Now, maybe you want to start a business. Now we think about how do we cashflow? How do we fund this business? How do we live off of our savings? Or how do we get income from our business immediately? Do I jump right in while working in something else at the same time so we can pay a for our cost of living, or do I jump ship from my nine to five so I could fully devote myself to this business? And if we do that, what are the implications?

Jim Crider (11:24):

If my spouse, Kendra, Kendra left her job to stay at home with our kids. If you do that, and then you go start a business, how do you get healthcare, healthcare for family when you’re self-employed how do you navigate these decisions? All the while you’re thinking about the more traditional things, as far as retirement savings and paying down debt or utilizing debt properly. And now that you have those kids, what do you do for college funding? And what about, have you bought your first house yet? If you own a house, are you buying a second house and do you build a real estate empire or are looking at Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies or traditional investments? And what about my 401k plan and my stock compensation?

Jim Crider (12:00):

I’m sure, right now I’m just naming off a handful of examples, but these come up very regularly. Because of that, our firm, we meet with our clients when we have macro big picture meetings twice per year, but also we’re looking at the remaining 10 months of the year. We’re doing deep dives on micro topics that have an impact on your life. So next month, for instance, November, we’re doing a deep dive on tax planning for our clients to make sure we’re wrapping things up for the year for tax strategy before it’s too late, it requires a lot more hands on. I couldn’t serve my clients in the way that we should if we’re only touching base once a year. One, we’d overlook a lot of things. And two that one per year meeting would be probably seven hours long.

Clay Finck (12:41):

You touched on how there’s just so much to juggle for some millennial families, you have two jobs to manage, potentially, maybe there’s additional jobs outside of that. You got, who’s going to handle the health insurance, how are we going to pay for the kids, how are we going to plan for college and retirement and all this? So whatever the case maybe, how can millennials stay on top of everything when it comes to their finances and keep everything organized?

Jim Crider (13:07):

You can go the old fashioned way and get an Excel spreadsheet or a Word Doc and or a Google Doc and just try to manage it. For our clients, and I recognize that there’s again, because of the ever-changing landscape, you’re not hiring a financial planner to give you a one time map, a map or a plan is going to be dead the moment that your life and your situation changes. So you need something that’s going to be able to track dynamically and be more agile for you. So if you’re planning on your own, again, you need some resource that’s going to be able to be agile with your life.

Jim Crider (13:37):

You can’t have something that’s going to just, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing and we’ll reference this once per year.” So our client base, we use a software, just a phone app that allows me and my clients to communicate on a regular basis on specific points of their financial life. So I can at an instance, see what’s your savings rate, what’s your spending rate, what’s your tax rate, what’s your equity rate in your investment accounts. What’s your debt rate, all these things. So we can real time check in on these pieces of your financial life to see how they’re fitting together.

Jim Crider (14:07):

How you’re going to do that on your own, again, you probably default back to good old fashion Excel and try to keep track of these touch points. And again, you want to make sure you’re not getting buried in the weeds as far as like, “Oh gosh,” there’s so many people I think who put so much time into managing a dozen credit cards so they can optimize their points or something, which I guess that’s cool. But my concern there is if you’re so myopic on this little piece, chances are something else is slipping that has a lot more impact on your life. So zoom out, remind yourself, why am I doing this? What is of premier value to what we’re trying to achieve? And what are the big things that we can accomplish first? And then what are the supporting characters in that?

Clay Finck (14:49):

Yeah. Focusing on getting the maximum number of credit card points that the intentions are well, but maybe the focus isn’t in the right spot when it comes to your finances. You touched a little bit on debt, so part of managing your finances is determining how you’re going to manage your debt as you approach retirement. And debt is part of many millennials lives today, especially in the low interest rate environment today. And just how expensive some things are such as college and healthcare and such. Do you encourage your clients to get debt paid off early by making extra payments? Or do you prefer that they focus more on investing if they have all of their high interest debt paid off?

Jim Crider (15:26):

I don’t want to be cliche for a financial planner, but it depends. You asked about high interest debt, obviously if you’re serving your credit card debt at 28%, that’s a guaranteed negative 28% rate of return. I can’t guarantee that on an investment, the no brainers pay that thing off. The question that comes up on the other end of the pendulum is looking at, if you have a mortgage at 2.65% for a 30 year, my personal conviction and what I advise clients is hanging on with that bad boy, frankly, with right now, the CPI, if you even trust that CPI as a true gauge of inflation, which I certainly don’t, but let’s be generous and say, CPI is real, CPI itself right now is at what? Five and a half roughly?

Jim Crider (16:07):

So, if your mortgage is two and a half and CPI is at five and a half, you’re actually achieving a 3% arbitrage by carrying that debt. Now, the question really comes in if you’re looking at debt that’s typically between six to 9%, roughly, that’s where you’re going to say like, “Ah, what are your thoughts?” And really we have to look at what are your convictions as an individual? How is this going to impact your cash flow? What’s the opportunity cost for you guys? When we look at how do we pay this off versus where else we could deploy assets? So, there’s certainly good rules of thumb, but rules of thumb are meant to be general indicators. And then from there, we dive in specifically to figure out how this is going to impact you.

Clay Finck (16:45):

I agree that there is no one size fits all solution to this issue, higher interest debt you obviously want to pay off as soon as possible, it can really just eat away your financial situation if you let it get out of hand. But I can see that for many people, they might be fined with holding lower interest debt, especially something like a mortgage that is backed by an asset that generally goes up over time. And like you mentioned, when the interest is very low, it’s even lower than the inflation rate today. So, you’re actually coming out ahead just by carrying that debt and exploiting that arbitrage.

Jim Crider (17:22):

I have clients, I have a client that they’re making really good money, they’re in their early 30s making well over half a million dollars year annual income. And they live well below their means, they’re living as if they made 60 grand a year. This family, we’ve been working together for a couple years now and they came because they’re big Dave Ramsey people. So they’re very big on, “Hey, we want to pay off all of our debt, including our mortgage.” I talked to them about the opportunity costs and hey, if we just refi down to this interest rate from your current, we’ll have the savings and blah, blah, blah.

Jim Crider (17:49):

But their thought is, “We just want to pay it off, that’s what we’re comfortable with.” And I told them, frankly, “Your savings rate and your income and where you’re at right now, this is not going to make or break your plan. What’s going to help you sleep at night is going to be paying off the debt.” Awesome. Let’s do that. There’s no reason for you not to. Yeah, we could argue that we would achieve better. The Monte Carlo simulation looked better if we didn’t pay off your house, but you’re a person with emotions and convictions. You’re not a Monte Carlo simulation.

Jim Crider (18:16):

We’re not trying to solve for the optimal financial situation, we’re trying to solve for the way that, how do you live the life you want to live? And it’s not about the numbers, it’s not about the money, your money is simply a tool and a resource that is there to help you do what’s important to you in life. It’s not about the money, it’s about what the money’s there for. We have to keep that in mind.

Clay Finck (18:36):

That is a really good point. Like anything in life, there are opportunity costs and trade offs when it comes to how you allocate your money. For example, say you have an extra few thousand dollars from a tax refund, you could use that to take a vacation, go buy a new furniture, or even choose to fund your investment accounts and buy more investments. How can millennials plan for and invest in their future while still living for today? How can they find the right balance between the two?

Jim Crider (19:05):

I love that, because really that’s why we’re here. There’s value in planning for the future, but there’s wisdom in planning for the future while living in the present. And you don’t want to overlook that. Again, a big influence on how I work with clients is the stories I heard from so many people at previous firms. So again, I alluded to this earlier, I worked with retirement planning for years. So I heard a lot of stories about, your success and all that stuff. But here’s how those conversations went a lot of times, was you’re a physician you’re making $900,000 a year and you’ve got a really good net spend saved up. And so we talk like, “Hey, this is great. Congratulations. You’ve done really well, you can retire and continue doing well and you’ve achieved it. I want to hear your story, why did you get into medicine? How did you get here?”

Jim Crider (19:50):

And here’s the story I hear very often from these type of people is, well, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much and I always heard my parents fight about money, and we didn’t know when the lights were going to get turned off. We didn’t know we were going to eat. Our clothes were tattered. I got made fun of because I couldn’t get my haircut. My mom would do it with a bowl. So when I was nine, 10, 11 years old, I decided I want to make sure that my kids have a better childhood than I had. And then I went into medicine and we’ve made a lot of money and we did it. I said, “Wow, that’s awesome. So you made all this money, but you said you wouldn’t do this so your kids could have a better childhood than you had. How was that? How was having a family? How were your kids’ childhood?”

Jim Crider (20:26):

And man, right now I want to get tears. So often these families sit back and think about that for their first time. It’s like they realize for the first time in decades, why they set out on this and they think and they tell me like, “I don’t know how my kid’s childhood was. I was so busy working and saving that I don’t know. Maybe they had a good childhood, but I was never present. Yeah. They had lots of nice stuff, but frankly I don’t know them.” And that’s really, really sad. That’s why I do what I do. We’re here to help you do what’s important to you. That’s like Stephen Covey talks about climbing a ladder that’s leaned against the long wall. There are so many people who are successful financially.

Jim Crider (21:07):

They climb the ladder, they reach the upper rings of ladder just to realize my gosh, I worked really hard and I climbed really fast and I beat everyone else that’s not what I wanted. And we have to make sure you’re not doing that. I have a few clients, they’re in the military, they’re stationed overseas and one comes to mind. I love this family. They’re living in Germany right now, they’re stationed overseas for three years and they have two girls, two young girls, they got 11 year old and I think 11 and nine, I might be even mistaken on the ages. But yeah, let’s say 11 and nine. And they went over there and they said, “Jim, we’ve never been to Europe. We want to explore while we’re here, but can we do this, is that smart for our plan?”

Jim Crider (21:44):

I told them, we got their top destinations, I said, “Hey, you better go to these places before this year or else you’re going to be in trouble. That’s a homework and assignment for you. You’ll never get these moments back with your kids. There’s going to be plenty time to save. There’s going to be plenty time to invest, but invest in your family.” That’s not be goofy and go and blow money. That’s all about being intentional. It’s all about assessing the opportunity cost and is the opportunity cost of letting moments and memories slip by with my kids so I can have a little bit bigger 401k, man I wouldn’t take that trade off any day of the week. So, again, there’s opportunity costs in everything. We’re not just looking at comparing rates of return, but really your life and what are we giving up so what can we go big for?

Clay Finck (22:27):

You hit on a few points that I just loved. The one that hit home for me was your ladder analogy where someone worked so hard to climb up a ladder, just to realize that they climbed up the wrong ladder. It’s an important reminder to stay grounded in what you truly value and recognize if your actions are aligned with those values and determine if you’re climbing up the right ladder.

Jim Crider (22:49):

Exactly. That’s why we don’t start in goals. We go, we peel that back. For instance, again, my client base want early financial independence. So typically the families I work with want the option to not have to work by the time they’re mid to late 40s is very typical. Ironically, most of them, pretty much all my clients love what they do they just don’t want to have to do it per se. They want the freedom to not have to. So we’re working with families who want early work optionality and typically the reason they want that is because they want to have more time with the people they love.

Jim Crider (23:18):

So, the goal is early work optionality. If we stop right there, I would say awesome work more hours, save more and you can do it better. I’d pull that stream back. Hey, why do you want to be able to be off work early? For me, I want to be able to not have to work by the time I’m 45. The reason there is because when I’m 45, my kids will be in their late teens so they’ll be before they go off the call and you get married. And we love, like I mentioned earlier, we love getting in the mountains. I would love to be able to go and do the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail and the PCT, all these big trails with my kids while they still have time.

Jim Crider (23:52):

So that’s the reason why, but being informed of the underlying why because I want more time with my kids. It would be foolish to say, “Hey, I’m going to work really hard so I have more time with my kids,” yet neglect the time with my kids while they’re under my roof because I’m working so hard. So that informs the decisions I make for long term planning, but also the decisions I make right now. If I’m doing this so I can spend more time with my kids, yes, save aggressively so I can retire early, but also be there to read to my kids at night. You’ve got to find this balance and you’re not going to be able to do that if you’re running simply off of goals, you have to pull that thread further to see why do I want this? And you keep asking why until you actually have the thing that makes you go, “Huh. Yeah, that’s it.” Then, you know you’re there.

Clay Finck (24:35):

You mentioned financial independence and that work optionality, phrases like financial independence and financial freedom are really thrown around a lot. And I think it’d be good just to touch on, especially for those that just aren’t too familiar. What exactly does it mean to be financially independent?

Jim Crider (24:53):

Man, that’s a good question. That sounds so simple. The traditional, from what I’m aware of and you can correct me, maybe you know this more than I do, but my views of the FIRE movement, which is Financial Independence, Retire Early. My thoughts on the traditional FIRE movement is I’m going to work really hard for X number of years, whether or not I like my job so I can save super aggressively and then not have to work and retire by the time I’m 36. And maybe I’m putting words in everyone else’s mouth, but this is my observation from the outside in.

Jim Crider (25:25):

I’m going to work really hard doing this job I don’t like, I’m going to live really below my means missing out on lots of opportunities so I can save aggressive right now so when I’m 36 I can retire and go backpack in Southeast Asia. And here’s a problem with that. And again, maybe I’m really mis-characterizing this, but my thought, if that is what you’re looking for, one, what are you missing out on today? What’s the opportunity cost? Two, if you are thinking that you’re going to be satisfied whenever you’re done working at 36 and you’re in Southeast Asia backpacking, you’re going to get there and realize real quick, that one you’re empty, because you don’t have community, and two you’re empty because you don’t have a means of accomplishment and doing and serving and building and growing.

Jim Crider (26:05):

So, work optionality and financial independence to me is not retirement. My goodness, most people who retire at traditional age at 66 or whatever, realize after two months of playing golf with their buddies, that I really don’t like spending that much time with these guys. And I’m tired of golf. It’s got my blood pressure up. How much more so if you do that when you’re in your 30s. So, it’s not about, again, we’re not talking about early retirement, we’re talking about early optionality and independence.

Jim Crider (26:29):

And again, I’ve had a ton of these conversations. There’s three big things that come up with the reasons I want financial dependence so I can spend more time with those I love, so I can focus on my health and wellness, and so I can pursue passion projects, that can be nonprofit or hobby or business. So it’s not about stopping working. It’s about, I just want to be able to do those things if I choose to, that’s really important to focus on here.

Clay Finck (26:53):

Yes. I really like how you brought up the reasons why someone would want to become financially independent. It’s not so you can say you just retired at 40 years old and you’re never going to work again in your life. We’re not wired to just sit around all day doing nothing, you want to do things you enjoy, whether that be like you said, passion projects or just lines of work that you enjoy doing that might require some pay cut or just having that flexibility to spend more time with your family.

Jim Crider (27:20):

Something we do here. Whenever we go through a process of building a plan and talking about this stuff, we go through, we start off talking about dig into the values, we define goals. We assess where you’re at current financial situation and we discuss how we can get from here to there and the decisions and the things that are possibly going to come up along the way, the things that are looking around the corner that we want to plan for and account for. But we always circle back before we go and create a solid plan we define for all of our clients, what we call a statement of financial purpose.

Jim Crider (27:51):

And what we ask them to do is, I desire early financial independence so that… And I have them answer the question and if it is so I can spend more time with the people I love and give more generously to the causes we care about. I’m going to press you to do that now as well. How can we make sure we’re integrating those things today while being able to go bigger on them later on? That’s what it’s about. The independence part is not about one day I’m going to hopefully be able to do that. It’s like, “Oh no, I want to be able to go bigger if I can.” That’s what we’re looking for.

Clay Finck (28:19):

If someone were to ask me, what does it take to be financially independent? Two ways that come to my mind are by one, withdraw from a portfolio of assets, such as a stock portfolio or two building the cash flow to pay for your lifestyle, such as through a real estate or a dividend paying stocks portfolio. Are those scenarios that you talk through with your clients?

Jim Crider (28:44):

I like that definition not to get to meddle or anything, but you could also maybe challenge that independence is simply a state of being satisfied with your situation whatever it looks like. I had a client I worked with that she was an executive at a major corporation, and in one of our meetings, one of our first meetings, she just started crying. What’s going on? We were here for a long time, found out. She said, “The last time I was actually happy, I feel like I’m a slave with golden handcuffs to this job. And the last time I was actually happy was when I was in college and I was pouring drinks at Starbucks for 20 hours a week.”

Jim Crider (29:20):

So we set up all right, your definition of independence is by 45 be able to quit nine to five. You’re much more hours than that to be able to quit your corporate handcuff, massive cash cow job, have enough money to basically live off what you need. Go sling lattes a few hours a week, you’ll like that stuff. I guess, is she financially independent because technically she needs to work a few hours a week at Starbucks or local coffee shop. We could argue the technicalities there, but in her mind, she made it, she’s doing something she likes. That’s what we’re looking for.

Jim Crider (29:49):

I talk a lot of the more out there types of things. And I certainly don’t want to discount the technical side. So yeah, we’re looking at cash flow and distribution of assets and all those fun things. So what that looks like for our client for instance, net worth is great to track. It’s a really good metric to see how am I doing? How am I progressing? But net worth is flawed in some senses. For instance, if let’s say your net worth is $3 million, but you have a two and a half million dollar house, what are you going to do? You can’t retire, really creative on maybe tapping into equity on your house, but besides that you’re stuck.

Jim Crider (30:22):

So we go beyond net worth and we look at, we call it your financial independence number. For instance, let’s say Clay, that you desire to have a hundred thousand dollars of annual income at retirement. That’s your financial independence number. I can do whatever I want at that point. Then we look at what’s your current investment assets plus savings accounts or whatever that is. So if you’re currently sitting at, let’s say $1 million and we’re going to assume for a safe withdrawal rate of 4%, just for fun. So, a 4% distribution rate. So that’s 40 grand that we could assume that you can pull from your investments. Your goal is 100, from your investment assets we’re looking at 40 grand, so we need another 60.

Jim Crider (31:01):

We have a 4% distribution of investments. Then we look at fixed income assets during retirement. So, if you also have maybe a small real estate portfolio that’s pulling in 30 grand a year from real estate. So now we’re at 70. And then let’s say, you said, “Jim, I truly want to go work at a French bistro. I want to go work at a winery for 10 hours a week, that would be amazing.” You say, “Do you really want to do that?” You say, “Yeah.” Okay. Let’s say you you’ll make 15 grand a year. So you’re getting again 40 grand from your portfolio, 15 grand now from the winery. And what did I say? 35 from… Now we’re at 90 grand.

Jim Crider (31:37):

So, we look at that your fixed income, distribution from your investments, you’re at $90,000. Your goal is $100, 000. So you’re 90% away to your financial independence number. Now we look at well, we can define financial independence by either saying, “I really only want $90,000. I’m there.” Or we could look at increasing your investment assets, buying more cash flowing assets or saying, “Ah, I’m fine to work a fun job, a few more hours a week. And hey, we made it.”

Clay Finck (32:03):

Very interesting perspective. I think the topics that you’re bringing up are topics that I don’t believe many people understand the mechanics around it and how it’s possible to retire in your 30s or 40s. You’re actually working with real people that are doing this, and it’s not like they’re hitting the lottery to make it happen, they’re putting it in the work and the time and being intentional with what they want out of life. And a lot of people out there just believe that working until you’re 65 is just the way life is and there aren’t really other options to explore. Have you found that to be a part of your job as well? Just explaining that to people and opening their minds up to what’s possible for them.

Jim Crider (32:47):

Our generation is starting to become more familiar with the concept of early retirement and those things. And I think we’re really drawn away from the traditional retirement scenario of you work at a big company, you get a pension, then you’re out at 65 and you watch jeopardy most of the days and go play golf once a week and then head to Florida for a few months a year. I think that’s a huge disconnect from that in our generation. But yeah, despite the fact that most people I work with don’t want that, there’s still a disconnect of bridging if I don’t want that really what do I want and how do I get from here to there?

Jim Crider (33:23):

A lot of this, again, you mentioned earlier, it feels like working a big puzzle, but it’s fun because it’s not just these set in stone math pieces. The math is actually the easiest part of my job. It’s the creativity of, well, what do you want? And what are other ways of getting here? That’s the fun part and opening peoples mind to what’s possible if we just consider other things, besides you work, you save, you retire. What else could we do?

Clay Finck (33:49):

I think a lot of people struggle with their finances due to information overload, with the internet today, information is free and everywhere. So you’ll read one thing on the internet today and the next day you’ll read an article on the same topic that tells you to do the exact opposite of what the previous article told you to do. So, how can people sort through all of the conflicting information and know how to use it and how to apply it to their lives properly? A perfect example of this is the payoff your debts versus investing the extra cash debate.

Jim Crider (34:24):

Okay, perfect. Let’s say for fun, you run into that and you read article one, how does that actually apply to you? Not just the dollars and cents, but yourself and where you’re at and the opportunity cost again, if you have 100 grand set aside and you have $100, 000 of low interest debt for mortgage, and you’re wanting to start a business next month and you need that money, hang off your house is probably a really bad idea considering you’re needed to cash your lifestyle next month. So take your situation into consideration.

Jim Crider (34:52):

Two, I guess again, besides the soft fluffy stuff, also the more analytical, actually, how do I weigh these conflicting articles? This article says X is good, this article says X is bad and you need to go with Y, how do I actually know which one’s true? That’s tough. There’s a lot of people out there who are one, paid to just put out content, despite the quality of it or two, they’re paid to sell a product. And it’s really important if you’re reading an article or even if you’re going to a local financial advisor, you need to understand, there’s a difference between a financial planner and a salesman who just happens to sell a financial product. You’ve got to consider that.

Jim Crider (35:29):

And yeah, if you’re reading an article that talks about, buying this whole life insurance policy, because it’s going to be tax free and infinite banking, and you’re going to be super duper rich. I think, why would they say this and are they also offering the alternatives to juxtapose to what they’re saying and to justify why this is good. And that’s a lot of information like, gosh, I could present these conflicting things about a million topics. So to take in all of these and then weigh the differences, that is heavy. Honestly, I forget if you’re really involved with whatever your job is, if you work on cars, you forget that most people get nervous just thinking about a transmission, because you’re around them all day. Like, I’m in the business, but it’s a fair question. It’s tough to do. I can relate to that.

Clay Finck (36:14):

There are definitely a lot of nuances when it comes to finance and I see it with people contacting me on how they should be handling certain things, whether it be their investment strategy, retirement planning or whatever, it can be daunting having to figure all that out yourself. So I’m curious, what are the most common goals you see from millennials you’ve worked with?

Jim Crider (36:38):

Kendra and I are pretty prototypical of our client base, so that makes it really easy. I typically understand where are these people coming from, what they want to achieve, I don’t know everybody, but I have a general understanding. Again, I’ve had about 30,000 of these conversations now, so I have a pretty good base case for what we’re looking at. And then again, because my wife and I and our family are in this same situation, I understand what you’re talking about. I understand the conversations that are happening behind closed doors too.

Jim Crider (37:03):

Can I answer that question with a story real quick? Because I think it’ll paint in a clear picture of what this looks like. If you haven’t picked on it by now, I really like what I do. I am a workaholic because one, this is my job, but two, it’s also just my hobby. I fall asleep every night reading about tax strategies and estate planning opportunities and investments and stuff, this is what I like. And Kendra, when she was working, she didn’t get that. Actually she had a great corporate job. But at that point we had one kid and we were about to have a second.

Jim Crider (37:32):

She really wanted to be able to leave her job and be home with our boys. And poor Kendra had to hear me every night, talk about this new client story or this new tax planning strategy that’s coming around the corner. And one night kids were down, we’re having dinner and she stopped me. I was telling her story. She said, “Jim, I just don’t get it. How do you like your job so much? It doesn’t make sense. I can’t stand what I do and I can’t imagine you loving what you do either.”

Jim Crider (37:54):

I said, “Well, what do you think that I do? When you picture a financial planner, what actually comes to mind, what [inaudible 00:38:00] going on at the office?” When I think about a financial planner, I guess I picture an old guy in a big pinstripe suit and one of those white collared shirt and he’s got cuff links on, I walk into this office and it’s all mahogany and a really big table. And I’m sitting in this massive leather back chair and I’ve got this guy on the other side at the table, we’re in this night suit. And then we sit down for two hours. He interrogates me for, why am I spending so much money on clothes and makeup and how much money do I think I’m going to need for utilities when I’m 73 and what type of mutual funds do I want and my rate of return?

Jim Crider (38:35):

And we talk about all these things. And then he gives me after two hours of this interrogation, he slides across the table, a two inch thick booklet of charts and graphs and rate of returns on investments. And I sit there and nod my head, pretending I know what he’s talking about, because otherwise I’m afraid I’ll look dumb because everyone should know this, I guess. And then he tells me that, “Hey, you may or may not be able to retire in 35 years, come back next year and we’ll do this again.” She said, “That sounds like a really bad experience. One, it sounds bad for me, I wouldn’t like that. But also as you as the old man in the office, that sounds like a poor, pretty boring job. I don’t get it. Okay. If that’s what you picture and it sounds so bad, what would actually be a good experience for you? What would you want if you could talk to someone about this?”

Jim Crider (39:21):

She sat back and she just thought for a minute, she said, “I wish that you and I had someone that we could go and talk to together that we could talk about what we want in our life and they could guide us, help us getting there. Is it possible for me to leave my job and actually be at home with the boys? What would it look like for you to actually leave your nine to five and go start your own firm? And do we need to work toward 65 or what does early retirement look like? Could we get a house in Jackson Hole or Telluride one day or is that only for the mega rich? Do we pay for college? Do they pay for it? Do we homeschool or private school or public school? All the things that we want in our life. And then also, I want someone to bounce ideas off of so I can get peace of mind for the things I’m afraid are going to happen.

Jim Crider (40:04):

Someone else’s like, “Is this going to be okay?” So I just wish we had someone to talk to us about what we want to have to look like, someone else to help guide us along the way. I just got this massive grin, so that just doesn’t sound like a financial planner, it sounds more like a life planner. I was like, “[inaudible 00:40:18], what you just described is exactly what I do. It’s about your life. Your money is just a way of supporting that. And that’s why I get excited.”

Jim Crider (40:26):

Frankly, I don’t love numbers per se, I get excited when I look at someone’s situations say, “Hey, if we do X, you’ll save $80,000 in taxes over the next five years,” I don’t get excited about $80,000. I get excited about the fact that that is all the more times you can go to Disney with your family and that’s a down payment on that cabin in the woods that you all can make memories at for generations to come, that pumps me up. That’s why I get excited about this.

Jim Crider (40:52):

So, I tell you that, in there are sprinkled around some things. So typically yeah, my clients, will go like us, hey, can one spouse maybe leave work to be with our kids more? Or maybe we want to leave our nine to five job and start doing this fun passion project that maybe snowball into a big business one day, but that’s not our goal. And again, what would it look like to not have to work forever? And typically a lot of families want to possibly have a beach house or a mountain house one day. And typically, we want to be more generous with the causes and the people we care about, the people around us want to make sure we’re supporting.

Jim Crider (41:26):

A lot of those things they just want to figure out if there’s an easier way to do it, if it’s possible, all of these things sound so big. We don’t know if it’s even within reach and reasonable to do. That’s a big problem I think with a lot of people desire this stuff. That’s I think a reason that money is really the last taboo. It’s not really talked about recently, a guy went around in New York or actually before all this COVID shutdown, the guy went around New York asking people, “When was the last time you had sex?” And pretty much everyone answered that question.

Jim Crider (41:52):

And then he asked, “Hey, how much do you have in your bank account?” And people were telling him to get out of here. People don’t talk about that stuff. And I think the reason is you show me your spending habits, you show me your credit card statement or whatever, and you show them your calendar and I’ll be able to tell you what you’re valuing in your life. And the problem is one, most people have a disconnect between what they say is important to them and the way they’re actually living their life.

Jim Crider (42:15):

And I think a big reason for that is because if you say that you want something, but you don’t think it’s actually within reach, you’re not going to actually live in line with that. That would be cool, but it’s not possible so I’m not going to make the sacrifices even to be able to do that. And I don’t remember who said it, but you can have anything you want in life, you just can’t have everything you want. Most people don’t realize that, so I’ll just keep going and doing what I’m doing because really is it possible to do that? I don’t know, whatever, I’m just going to keep living it.

Clay Finck (42:42):

After doing some research on you, I saw that you are a fan of Bitcoin, which is a topic I would love to dive into. So, millennials today are face of the very expensive stock market when analyzing traditional measures and it makes Bitcoin potentially something that’s attractive to investors to enhance returns on your portfolio. What is your take on Bitcoin? And should millennials consider it as a part of their financial plan?

Jim Crider (43:11):

Clay, you’re going to get me in trouble with all the other financial planners out there. I take a lot of flack for this. I’m a big fan of Bitcoin, Kendra and I pretty much almost all of our net worth is in Bitcoin. I don’t know if you had this disclosure brought to the show, but don’t take this as investment advice this is just anecdotal. But yeah, my family about 95% of our net worth is in Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining companies. Just the way things fell and our convictions, our clients, we’re very big on Bitcoin.

Jim Crider (43:36):

Last week, we hosted a seminar for our clients about buying, holding, custodying, securing your Bitcoin. There’s some we’re actively bringing up. I’m not waiting for my clients to ask me and I’m hiding from it because I want them to be in traditional assets. No, we’re proactively talking about this. Our average client has 10 to 20% of their total investible assets in Bitcoin and Bitcoin related companies. This is something we’re definitely pursuing. We believe we have high conviction on. We make sure we educate our clients as to why we’re doing this, what the opportunity cost and what the opportunity is here. Yeah, certainly the risk and the volatility. But yeah, this is something we’re all over.

Clay Finck (44:14):

You touched on asset allocation in there. When you have a new client that would like to gain exposure to Bitcoin, what advice do you give them as far as an allocation towards Bitcoin?

Jim Crider (44:26):

Again, not to be cliche, but it depends. But again, going back typically our clients are 10 to 20% of total investible assets in this space. And when I say total investible assets, a lot of my clients, most of your listeners, I’m assuming have money tied up in a 401k. So let’s say you have, let’s just make it easy, let’s say you have $400,000 tied up in the 401k and you have $100, 000 outside of your 401k to invest. And you want 20% of this in Bitcoin or Bitcoin companies. Well then we’ve got to take 100% of what we’re able to manage and put that into it, considering your outside assets. So, that’s where we’re at.

Jim Crider (44:59):

Technically we could go in and do a smaller allocation and I wouldn’t fight you on that per se, but we manage this with pretty high conviction. And again, we certainly make sure our clients are educated and aware of the volatility, but also I let them know there’s a massive difference between volatility and risk and talking through that. One of the biggest compliments I got earlier this year was when, remember Bitcoin went from the sixties to $29,000. I didn’t have a single client reach out, not a single client texted or called or emailed or whatever freaking out, no one.

Jim Crider (45:29):

And why was that? Well it’s because there’s two things. One, they had conviction. We talked to them about why is this part of their portfolio and two, they knew where it fit in their plan. They weren’t sitting there sweating it because we just haphazardly put it in there. No, this is part of what we’re doing, we’re informed, it’s a purposeful, intentional thing we’re doing here, we’re in our portfolio sizing our overall plan.

Clay Finck (45:49):

That alone goes to show how well you do at educating your clients as this asset can be extremely volatile and really test your temperament. With that, how do you recommend your client’s purchase Bitcoin? This is a question I get all the time so I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this and what you tell people, because I suspect that you get this question a lot as well.

Jim Crider (46:14):

There’s a few ways that we can handle it if you have taxable assets. So after tax money, typically I’m going to advise to self custody so then we’ll talk about the tax implications, but also the options and the flexibility with custodying on your own and all of that and stuff. I think that obviously purely owning Bitcoin directly is the purest way of owning Bitcoin and that’s why I advocate for it, so if someone says, “Perfect, let’s go ahead and put X into Bitcoin itself,” then we’ll talk about what exchange to use. We’re going either to Swan or strike depending on their needs and how quickly we want to get money in and how much and all that fun stuff.

Jim Crider (46:48):

But then also we look at other means as well. A lot of my clients again have money in retirement accounts or even Kendra and I, we have a lot of our assets is wrapped up in retirement accounts. So in that, we could look at self-directed IRAs, but an alternative is what we look at generally is going to have an account that’s allocated to Bitcoin mining companies. So, we have a discretionary portfolio that we’ve built that currently is allocated between 8, Marathon and Riot. So, that’s how we’re also getting exposure inside of a Roth IRA is going to be through those mining companies. But again, money that’s already after tax in taxable accounts, we’d like to go and see and put into brilliant Bitcoin.

Clay Finck (47:29):

Someone listening to this and maybe after hearing your personal allocation and how much conviction you have in this, they want to go and learn more. What resources would you recommend for them to start to dive in and learn more about Bitcoin?

Jim Crider (47:42):

Well, not to pump it too much, but I’d go to The Investor’s Podcast with Preston Pysh, no doubt. Preston has had a massive impact on my life, I think he’s a phenomenal resource. I heard about Bitcoin in 2012, but it was from a dude who was pretty much always high, so I’d put zero weight in what he had to say. And then I’ve been listening to Preston and Stig since 2015, I believe. And there’s smart guys who aren’t just talking about meme stocks and yellowing into stuff, they’re actually analyzing the value of what they’re talking about.

Jim Crider (48:13):

So when they started talking about Bitcoin, actually it had some weight to it. So, I’m onboarding a couple clients right now. Today we’re setting up accounts and this evening, we’re going over, I’m going to their house and we’re sitting down, we just open up Roth IRAs, we’re maxing those out. We’re going to put those towards those mining companies, then we’re going to take the rest of their money. We’re going to sit down. We’re going to open up Swan. We’re going to put a pretty hefty lump sum. Then we’re going to talk about the different ways to store it. We’ll probably be putting in a cold card.

Jim Crider (48:39):

But yeah, education like these new clients, these other clients, like I said, we just did a seminar with Bitcoin itself. I brought in an expert for our clients to listen to. And yeah, gosh, I share podcast all the time with friends and clients and families. It typically is going to be Preston. I know Robert Breedlove got a lot of flack over the last few months, but Preston’s conversation with Robert, I don’t know, what was that? Nine months ago, roughly? I think it was the first episode of the Bitcoin specific podcast. That one, that’s good stuff. That’s a resource I utilize all the time.

Clay Finck (49:12):

Yeah. For those who aren’t familiar, Preston Pysh has a weekly Bitcoin specific show that is every Wednesday on the podcast under The Investor’s Podcast Network, it’s called, We Study Billionaires, it’s released every Wednesday. He’s been releasing that for just over a year now. And I am also a huge fan of that show as well, I have been for quite a while. Before we wrap up the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency talk, do you only recommend Bitcoin or are you open to other digital assets as well? This is a question I get all the time. What do you think of X coin? What do you think of this one? So, what do you tell your clients? I’m sure you get the same question too.

Jim Crider (49:52):

All the time. I get it a couple times a day from people. I’m only in Bitcoin, our clients only invest in Bitcoin. My family, we’re only in Bitcoin, we’ren’t in other cryptocurrencies. I wouldn’t say I’m not open, but man, you better present a really, really good case and bring about an attribute, characteristic that Bitcoin doesn’t have. And I’d yet to see any other cryptocurrency that has the attributes that Bitcoin has.

Jim Crider (50:15):

Because of that we have very high conviction, you can turn on my laser eyes I guess I would self-identify as a Bitcoin maxi. I didn’t know Bitcoin culture existed. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I never had a Twitter until earlier this year I got in here and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s a whole culture of people who are nuts, who love this stuff.” So, it’s pretty fun getting on Twitter and seeing these other guys out here. I definitely am one of the guys who preaches Bitcoin, not crypto, Bitcoin, not blockchain, all that stuff you hear.

Clay Finck (50:44):

Well, Jim, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I really appreciate it. I’ve really enjoyed learning more about financial planning and diving into Bitcoin with you. Before we close out the episode, where can the audience go to connect with you and learn more about you?

Jim Crider (50:58):

One, you can follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is JimCriderTX, as in Texas. So, JimCriderTX, and you can go to my website for our firm, it’s Intentional Living FP as in financial planning. So Intentional Living FP and Clay, if you want, I can actually just make a landing page directly for [inaudible 00:51:14] listeners. I’ll make that. So, if you go to intentionallivingfp.com/millennial investing, I’ll make a landing page for you guys. I’ll have my calendar right up front.

Jim Crider (51:22):

So if you want to put 15 minutes of my calendar, honestly, if you have just a easy question or stupid question and you want to ask me, hey, this on my 401k or Bitcoin or tax planning or whatever, put forth 15 minutes on there, I’ll be glad to take a stab at that question for you. Or if you want to talk like, “Hey, things are getting a little bit more complex or whatever, and we’re looking for net financial advisor. What would that look like? Or who should I talk to?” I’d be more than happy to chat with you as well. So, definitely open the chat if I can help out in any way.

Clay Finck (51:48):

Fantastic. For those interested, we’ll be sure to link all of those in the show notes. Jim, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Jim Crider (51:55):

Yeah, Clay. Thanks for having me again. I appreciate it.

Clay Finck (51:58):

All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please go ahead and follow us on your favorite podcast app so you can get these episodes delivered automatically. And if you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out our website, theinvestorspodcast.com. There you’ll find all of our episodes, some educational resources we have as well as some tools you can use as an investor. And with that, we’ll see you again next time.

Outro (52:21):

Thank you for listening to TIP, make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network, written permission must be granted before syndication or rebranding.