The Retirement Risk Most People Overlook
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #249
The Retirement Risk Most People Overlook
Steve and Gabriel are back again with an episode of Our 2 Cents that’s full of great conversation. First, we’re unpacking the retirement risk that many people ignore… and sprinkling in some Oprah financial wisdom. Listen in now!
- Gabriel’s Quick Hits:
- A few quick thoughts on the Iran war and its market impact.
- Lift-off! Artemis II began its journey around the Moon.
- What does Easter spending look like this year?
- Live Longer, Planning Smarter:
- Living longer is great—if your money lasts just as long. Here’s what to do about it.
- And You Get An Oprahism!:
- Get inspired by Oprah Winfrey’s wisdom with our favorite quotes for financial inspiration.
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the president of SGL Financial and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, hello everybody. Welcome to Our 2 Cents. You’ve got Gabriel and Steve.
Steve Lewit: What was that?
Gabriel Lewit: As we were hitting play and record some guy, we thought it was like a howling ghost, but some guy out in the hall was wheeling a dumpster with a squeaky wheel, it looked like. I don’t know.
Steve Lewit: I looked around, I didn’t see anything. I thought, is there a ghost in the roof?
Gabriel Lewit: So, you caught us laughing right as the show started here. Well, anyways, we hope you’re doing great.
Steve Lewit: Good morning.
Gabriel Lewit: Happy April to you. And so hopefully you didn’t get too many April Fool’s jokes pranked upon you yesterday. Although I got mildly pranked by the internet because I was on the Bulls form, which I occasionally track to see if there’s any news. And someone had posted that the Bulls general manager had gotten fired and I got really excited because I think they’re doing terrible and I’m not happy with them.
Steve Lewit: They are.
Gabriel Lewit: And I click into the article to read the comments and the guy was, “April Fools.”
Steve Lewit: Sorry, darn.
Gabriel Lewit: Got me.
Steve Lewit: Darn.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah.
Steve Lewit: But we have April showers.
Gabriel Lewit: We do have those. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that will hopefully bring May flowers for us. Who knows to be determined.
Steve Lewit: But not hopefully. They will. May is just a beautiful blooming month.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed. Indeed. Well, we’ve got updates for you.
Steve Lewit: Don’t you feel excited about rebirth and spring and Easter and the whole … It’s just a wonderful time.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re in a very optimistic mood today.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know why. I mean, oil prices are like 110,000.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re going to touch upon that briefly. Not too much. Obviously there’s concerns. There’s questions about what’s going on with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.
Steve Lewit: I can’t figure it out. I don’t know what this game is.
Gabriel Lewit: And what’s going to happen with oil prices and where is the market going to go? What’s going to happen with the economy? So we are getting those questions still because this is lingering. Okay. When Trump first announced this whole conflict or war, was supposedly going to take a couple of weeks. Well, I think we’ve reached that point.
Steve Lewit: A couple weeks. It was supposed to take three days.
Gabriel Lewit: Or something to that effect. And he just actually spoke last night on TV. Apparently it’ll still be a few more couple of weeks, but they’re also sending tens of thousands of troops that direction. So nobody really knows. And that’s what’s creating, I think, for those of you out there wondering what does this mean for my portfolio? Well, I mean, how this all gets resolved is going to have an impact, right?
Steve Lewit: Well, I’ll tell you what it means. I keep making the foolish mistake of buying a car that uses premium gasoline. And I filled up my premium gasoline car yesterday. Gabriel, it was almost $97 to fill my gas tank.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, so obviously it means higher gas prices, but as far as the market goes, markets have been reacting to a lot of headlines and announcements that the administration has made. Whether or not there’s going to be a long-term global supply crisis, right? Depends on how this conflict or war gets resolved. And so we’re kind of in this wait and see mode. Obviously, the markets have dropped a bit. There’s no doubt about that. That has gotten some people a little rattled, but it’s obviously very closely connected to this conflict. And just like we saw with tariffs, I think last year, when those eased all of a sudden, the market recovered, this could happen.
We could have the same impact here or it could get worse. So the problem is, of course, everyone’s asking us kind of like at the start of the year, “Dad, what’s the market going to do this year?” People are now asking, “Well, what’s the market going to do with this new Iran conflict?” Well, we don’t have that crystal ball, but if you can rest hopefully more confidently if you know you built your plan the right way, which is how we try to build every one of our clients’ plans and hopefully how you’ve tried to build your plan, you should hopefully not be too worried about this impacting you.
Steve Lewit: Well, I mean, we sing the same song out of the same hymnal every time we get on this. It’s that you have a plan and work your plan because you got a good plan and let the long-term markets do their thing.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, if this little rattle here has got you thinking you don’t have a good plan or you haven’t done anything yet
Steve Lewit: Or you have no plan and you’re listening.
Gabriel Lewit: And you’re listening in and you haven’t done anything about this yet, you might want to do something.
Steve Lewit: I would say that more forcefully.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, you should.
Steve Lewit: You should.
Gabriel Lewit: You should, yes. You should come on in, talk to us, let us help you build a plan because we talked actually on the previous episode about how it’s not too late to de-risk portfolios, right? It’s not too late to protect yourselves in case this becomes a bigger war or conflict. There’s a lot that you can do if you’re feeling uncomfortable, but if you have a plan that you’ve created, hopefully this won’t worry you too much.
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: I can’t just say don’t worry, but hopefully it won’t worry you too much.
Steve Lewit: Nobody likes losing money in the stock market, but losing money is one thing. Worrying about your entire future and whether you’ll have enough income and whether your retirement is going to be a healthy one and financially healthy. I mean, a plan takes a lot of that away.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, indeed. Well, that’s our update. We’re going to continue to keep you updated on anything materially that changes on this situation here, but for now it’s a bit of wait and see. Try not to worry too much. Markets have gone up and down quite a bit. Volatility is high right now on a daily, weekly basis, so try not to worry too much about that. And then we’ll give you further updates as they materialize. Now, in the world of exciting news, I think I was actually quite worried about this. The Artemis two rocket, which we had touched upon a month or so ago on one of our podcasts, did successfully launch.
Steve Lewit: I was so excited. Did you watch it?
Gabriel Lewit: You want to know, I didn’t watch it live. I watched it recorded. But the last rocket launch I watched was in the movie The Martian, and one of them explodes. And I kept thinking in my head, “Please don’t explode.” Because in that movie, The Martian, if many people have seen it was like, “Houston, we’ve got a shimmy, right?” And then the thing spirals out of control and explodes. And I’m like, “I hope there’s no shimmies on this one, man.”
Steve Lewit: This is the biggest rocket we’ve ever put up there, I believe. It’s amazing to see that thing and think there are people on the tip of it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Traveling at five miles a second or whatever.
Gabriel Lewit: There’s not that much I want to say other than we thought it was cool and we wanted to talk about it.
Steve Lewit: I was quite upset though.
Gabriel Lewit: You were upset?
Steve Lewit: I was very upset. This thing cost, how many billions of dollars, Gabby? $93 billion and they almost scrapped the mission because the bathroom didn’t work.
Gabriel Lewit: No, the bathroom doesn’t work.
Steve Lewit: Oh, it doesn’t work.
Gabriel Lewit: At the moment, they’re trying to figure out a fix for it. I was reading the live updates last night.
Steve Lewit: Oh, okay. So they’re up there for 10 days without a bathroom.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I don’t know that yet, but I think it might have been resolved.
Steve Lewit: $93 billion, folks.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. It’s been resolved. I’m reading a live update for you. In case you are concerned about this in the astronauts.
Steve Lewit: Imagine building your home for 93 billion and you can’t go to the bathroom.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. Well, now you can.
Steve Lewit: That’s sad.
Gabriel Lewit: Now they can. We’re in good shape.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Okay. Did they fix it?
Gabriel Lewit: It sounds like they fixed it. Yeah. Crisis averted.
Steve Lewit: I feel so much better for them. I mean, holding it in for 10 days is hard.
Gabriel Lewit: That would be hard work.
Steve Lewit: Hard work.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Even in space.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So anyways, we’re excited to see how this thing goes. If they actually touch down on the moon.
Steve Lewit: Oh, they’re going around the moon.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, no. Yeah, this one’s going around it just around.
Steve Lewit: For the next trip-
Gabriel Lewit: The next one they’re going to do the touch-down.
Steve Lewit: … they’re going to land on the moon.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Okay. Well, either way, it’s pretty cool.
Steve Lewit: And do you know people still feel the first moon landing was not real?
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know. Well, I do know that these are real rocket ships taking off and they’re going somewhere.
Steve Lewit: Looks real to me.
Gabriel Lewit: Right? So one would believe there’s an outer space that they are floating in right now. And I do see the moon every night, so there is something up there.
Steve Lewit: There is. Right. Right.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, who knows, right? But I think it’s pretty solved size by this point. Anyways, okay, let’s move on. Let’s move on. Well, Steve, you wanted to just touch upon … I just wanted to say the number, 24.9 billion people are going to spend on Easter with a grand total of about $196 per person is what the data shows people typically spend on Easter. So if you’re planning for your Easter weekend, you got your baskets, you got your candy, you got your … I don’t know, what do you wear on Easter? Easter bunny sweater? If you’re a girl?
Steve Lewit: I learned something new today. What is it called? I didn’t know what a peep was.
Gabriel Lewit: You didn’t know what a peep was?
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh my goodness.
Steve Lewit: Well, I don’t celebrate Easter.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you can enjoy Easter peeps without celebrating Easter.
Steve Lewit: Jewish people don’t eat peeps. They eat matzah.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s not the same as a peep.
Steve Lewit: Peeps are more fun.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Anyways, well it’s …
Steve Lewit: So, the team is getting me some peeps to at least try one.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, candy is the biggest portion of the spending. 92% of people buy candy.
Steve Lewit: Well, the reason this caught my eye, Gabriel, is that prices are going up. We don’t know where the economy’s going. There’s a lot going on, and yet for the holidays, people are willing to spend money. And I like that because these are special times, whatever religion you are, these are special holidays, and it’s time for family, it’s time to celebrate. It’s time to have fun because there’s so much chaos around us. This is great. I say spend more and eat more peeps.
Gabriel Lewit: I think the goal of holidays is to try to make sure you have time to celebrate and family and friends and something other than the dreary doldrums that life could sometimes throw your way, right? It’s a way to just enjoy yourself. So I’m glad to hear that too.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so our hope for you, if you celebrate Easter or either way, have a wonderful weekend. If you go out brunching, brunch well, wear your finest bunny sweater or pants or shirt or whatever, clothing. 42% of people buy clothing for Easter is what this says. I was trying to figure out … No, 51%, sorry.
Steve Lewit: I like it. I like it.
Gabriel Lewit: I mean, for kids, right? It’s got to be like for kids. Like my daughter wears an Easter-
Steve Lewit: Well, your Easter outfit is, I understand, it’s special. It’s like when you go to church on Easter, everybody wears, like you go to the racetrack.
Gabriel Lewit: But I’m saying they don’t already have the Easter clothing. Every year they’re buying new outfits. I guess that’s news for me. I don’t buy that many clothes.
Steve Lewit: Well, the theme is rebirth, right? So you have to rebirth your wardrobe and follow the theme.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well-
Steve Lewit: You can’t resurrect old clothes.
Gabriel Lewit: … I think I’m just living in my little kid world because yes, we buy our daughters very much bunny themed Easter clothes, but …
Steve Lewit: They’re so cute. They’re so cute.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’ll move on to a more serious topic.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I think we should.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Okay. So we are going to talk about the retirement risk that no one likes to talk about.
Steve Lewit: It is true.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you know what it is?
Steve Lewit: Well, I read the article.
Gabriel Lewit: So, you do know what it is?
Steve Lewit: I do know what it is.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s you, folks. It’s you still here many years longer than you thought you would be. That is the risk.
Steve Lewit: Gabriel, how many times-
Gabriel Lewit: Otherwise known in a technical term as?
Steve Lewit: Longevity risk.
Gabriel Lewit: Longevity risk, yes.
Steve Lewit: We do financial planning folks. You all know that. And when we run a financial plan, we run it to the age of 95. How many times, Gabriel, have people said to you, “Oh, I’ll never make it to 95. I won’t even make it to 80.”
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I usually run mine until 90 because of that, but yes, you’re correct. If anytime I used to run them to 95, everyone would be like, “I’m not going to live to 95, right? Can you use a lower year?” I’m like, “Okay.” Well, the whole point of this article that we’re going to talk about here is that people are indeed living longer. And one of the recommendations that we’re going to get to here is in fact modeling out your retirement to age 95. I thought you’d be very happy with this one because it validates what you’ve been saying for a long time, which is, let’s run this thing to 95 just in case, right?
Steve Lewit: If you’re a married couple, 65 years old and healthy, one of you has over 70% chance of living into your 90s.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, I mean, people are getting healthier these days, medicine and surgeries and longevity is increasing. You used to say the fastest growing population, as if it was like in people, but a percentage. It was like percentage wise was centenarians living over a hundred.
Steve Lewit: I still say that, by the way.
Gabriel Lewit: We’re going to be swamped with 100-year-olds surrounding us, right? No. But yes, the whole point is the data is showing that people are living longer and that does present challenges. Longevity planning is one of the big challenges of retirement planning because what do you do? I mean, let me say it differently. If you knew your expiration date to the day-
Steve Lewit: Got to hope not.
Gabriel Lewit: There’s a movie about this where people knew their expiration dates.
Steve Lewit: There is.
Gabriel Lewit: I wouldn’t want to, number one, but number two, it would make planning a lot easier, right? If we could just Google, when is Gabriel Lewit going to pass away? And it said, “Oh, Gabriel’s going to pass away on April 17th, 2092,” or whatever it would be. That would make me actually too old. I think that would make me, that would be hundreds or something.
Steve Lewit: I like it. I like it though.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, that would make planning real easy. All right, but we can’t do that. And so we’re planning for this unknown ending target, and this comes up a lot also when people say, “I don’t want to leave a lot of money to my kids. I want to leave a dollar left.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s great. Just tell us. Just tell us when.
Gabriel Lewit: Just pull up the date when that’s going to be and we’ll plan it on out.
Steve Lewit: We’ll figure it out.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. So again, the challenge here is let’s say you plan for 85 or 90 and you live longer than that. What’s the risk there, Steve?
Steve Lewit: Well, first of all, there are two risks that immediately pop up in my mind. The first risk is, will you run out of money now that you’re living a long life? And I think if you have a good financial plan, you have enough wealth, if you live an extra 10 years, you’d probably be okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s the goal.
Steve Lewit: That’s the goal.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s the goal. Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Now, the bigger risk I think is long-term care costs, health costs, because those can be devastating. We were talking to somebody I was telling … Well, maybe it was an article I was reading, but there is a lack of long-term care facilities and for people to go, the prices are already through the roof. Home healthcare is going to cost you 75 grand a year. You go to a nursing home, it’s 120, 130 grand. That could be three, four, five years. And it gets worse than that if you have … Well, I don’t want to get into the diseases. It’s gray enough today.
Gabriel Lewit: You were starting off optimistic today.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I don’t want to go down that road. But those are unknown costs that longevity hits people. Most people have been through it with their moms and dads. I was through it with my mother, your grandma, and that can be devastating.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed.
Steve Lewit: And you know what a lot of people tell me, “I don’t want to live to 90. I’m okay living to 95, but I don’t want to live to 95 in a wheelchair in a nursing home.” And these are very serious concerns because people do live longer. I tell the story of a client that he has passed at this point, but I had a client that came in 20 years ago and Gabriel, you were just starting with me because we’ve been together how long?
Gabriel Lewit: I’ve been here 22 years.
Steve Lewit: 22 years. I mean, we’ve been together all your life, but I mean.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, that’s correct.
Steve Lewit: I am your father and you are my son. But he came in and when he left, I said, “This guy ain’t going to make it for two more months.” I mean, he really looked in bad shape and he kept coming in for like 15 years looking in bad shape. So you never know. You just don’t know how long you’re going to live.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s the root of this challenge. So what do you do about this in your planning? Well, you just, number one, kind of be aware of it. So as you think about your longevity, try to avoid jumping to conclusions like, “Well, my parents didn’t live very long, so I’m not going to live very long.” I hear this all the time, where people just assume because their parents didn’t live very long that they’re not going to. Well, there’s so many more factors to it than that. And conversely, I mean, I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing, but when people say, “Oh, both my parents live really long times, we’re going to live a really long time.” I mean, it’s not necessarily related to the planning side, but don’t count it. Enjoy yourself while you’re younger too, just in case. I always say, just try to not make assumptions just based on family, although people always do, and it’ll probably be hard to stop people from doing that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I love the phrases that industry uses. You have your go-goo years, your slogo years, and your no-go years. And if you’re in your go-goo years, we try to get people to spend more money in their go-goo years because those years will pass by at some point.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. No, they really will.
Steve Lewit: We’re all going to slow down at some point.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And I have other people when they say longevity doesn’t concern them, “Oh, well, if I’m 90, I won’t want to do anything or blah, blah, blah anyways.” Well, the thing is, if you’re a healthy 90-year-old, which many people are, I actually had a client the other day just tell me that their mom was 97 and still driving, this a true story. I didn’t just make it up for this article.
Steve Lewit: Does she offer to drive you around? And would you go?
Gabriel Lewit: Sounds like she’s doing great. Well, the point is-
Steve Lewit: I wouldn’t drive with her. I’m not going.
Gabriel Lewit: … if you are 90 and still healthy, but you didn’t plan properly and you got no money, that’s going to be kind of a bummer.
Steve Lewit: Well, we have a client, how old is … He’s 93, 94 that we play golf with.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: And he’s still playing golf at 94.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s kind of the point, right? So you want to plan out for a longer longevity, 95. You want to stress test your plan for something called sequence of returns. So the risk of living longer is that you have more stress on your portfolio. There’s more withdrawals coming out. There’s more opportunities for bear markets to come along and deplete your dollars early at many various points. And so you need to calculate all of this into your plan, plan accordingly and ensure that you’re going to be in good shape even if you live to 95. Okay. And if you want to do a hundred, we could put a hundred into that plan as well. Whatever you’re thinking.
Steve Lewit: I had a client about three months ago, Gabriel. 95, she said, “Everyone in my family lives to over a hundred, so could you plan to a hundred?”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, man, I’d love it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely.
Gabriel Lewit: So that’s really the scoop here. Not too much more to say than that. If you have questions on longevity planning, obviously long-term care you mentioned is another component of that. It does become more likely that you might need it if you happen to live longer, just the probability of your health failing can increase, but let us know how we can help you answer any questions related to that in your planning. You can call us here anytime, 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com. And you can also email us info@sglfinancial.com.
Steve Lewit: Well said.
Gabriel Lewit: If you’d like.
Steve Lewit: If you would like.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Which we would like you to, if you have questions for us.
Steve Lewit: We should have an agreement with every client that they have to live to 95 if they’re going to work with us.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure, of course.
Steve Lewit: We should say, look, if you’re going to work with us, the deal is you have to live to 95.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Eggsactly. Okay. Did you hear what I said? Eggsactly?
Steve Lewit: Eggsactly. I love it.
Gabriel Lewit: Eggsactly. It’s a dad joke, you got to do it if you’re a dad. I’m getting the no good sign from my producers.
Steve Lewit: Folks, we’ve got-
Gabriel Lewit: We’re too cheesy sometimes.
Steve Lewit: We got three thumbs down here that you cannot see.
Gabriel Lewit: Eggcellent, eggcellent.
Steve Lewit: Eggcellent, eggcellent. Surely. Surely.
Gabriel Lewit: I got to have some fun, okay? How do I get myself through the shows? All right. Well, we’re going to end our show here with a topic about a name you probably haven’t heard too much in a while. Oprah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. She kind-
Gabriel Lewit: Mrs. Oprah.
Steve Lewit: Her show stopped.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So she has a podcast and a client was referencing something on the podcast. So we were looking at the podcast. We’re always trying to think of themes for our show, right?
Steve Lewit: Clever stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: We try to be catchy here, right? And so Oprah was obviously very popular for a long time, had a big show, big following, had a lot of-
Steve Lewit: Still does.
Gabriel Lewit: Still does, yeah. Has a lot of wisdom and phrases that she is known for.
Steve Lewit: Good marketing person.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And so we thought we would share with you some of those wisdom and quotes that we research and connect them to your financial and retirement planning.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And it’s worthwhile, not only because it’s Oprah, but she’s a very extremely wealthy woman. And it’s curious, what does she have to say about money?
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So let’s dive into some Oprah quotes and what it tells us about money. So let’s see. Well, obviously if you were on her show, you could have gotten free money because she gave out lots of stuff, but that’s kind of old. You get a car, you get a car, right? That was kind of the thing. So anyways, here’s one of the things that she said.
Steve Lewit: I didn’t get a car.
Gabriel Lewit: I did not either. Okay. The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: This is an Oprahism.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. So the biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. Well, what do you think about that, Steve?
Steve Lewit: I love it. There’s only one question. Can you afford it? Yeah. Look, this is what we were talking about earlier. We get to live on this earth for a number of years and it’s like if you have dreams and aspirations, why not go for it?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I mean, we were talking about that I think a few episodes ago about envisioning a ideal retirement and what does that look like and where would you live? So all these things can factor into living the life of your dreams, right? I mean, maybe not everyone can live … Maybe there’s your A dream and your B dream and your C dream. Maybe you can’t get to the A, but hopefully you’re accomplishing some of those things that you really want to in life, maybe not all of them. That’s obviously very lofty. If you can get everything you ever wanted in life, I mean, who gets that. But yeah, you can try to live the life your dreams is always a worthy goal.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I think behind what she’s saying is don’t get stuck, especially working … I think everyone, we kind of get stuck in her, right?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you could certainly say that in reverse. If you’re unhappy, try to do something different.
Steve Lewit: Do something different.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. To become happier.
Steve Lewit: Go for it. Yeah. Don’t let the fear of change keep you stuck in something that you’re not happy with.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Dream big, as they say.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: So Oprah, we concur. We concur on that one.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Thumbs up here.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think she’s listening to our podcast, but if she was-
Steve Lewit: She may not be.
Gabriel Lewit: … she’ll know that we concur.
Steve Lewit: She may not be.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Next one here, from Oprah?
Steve Lewit: She should. She should.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course.
Steve Lewit: And refer us.
Gabriel Lewit: Be thankful for what you have. You’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
Steve Lewit: Love it. Keep your eye on your own plate.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So yes, if you’re always frustrated about what you don’t have, you’re going to always be frustrated about what you don’t have and feel like you don’t have enough. And then you’re going to always feel unfulfilled and frustrated.
Steve Lewit: I actually think there’s a lot of wisdom in that because we never … I shouldn’t say we never. Most of us, including me, are never accepting of just the way we are. We always want to change things because we think we’re going to be better or better off being different than who we are today or what we have today. And that sets up that dynamic. You know what it’s like, Gabriel? It’s like the folks when we say, “Well, what’s your goal for your money in the stock market? What’s your growth goal?” And they say, “Well, I want to make as much as possible.” You’ll never be satisfied.
Gabriel Lewit: Which interestingly, I haven’t heard that one in a while, but yes, we do come across that quite frequently.
Steve Lewit: At my seminars, Gabriel, I asked that question. Everybody, I said, “What’s your growth goal?” “Oh, we want to make as much as possible.” And then I say, “Okay, well, what’s your risk goal?”
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, we don’t want to lose anything.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course. Yeah, zero.
Steve Lewit: Zero.
Gabriel Lewit: As much as possible, zero risk. Where is that? What do you mean? You don’t have that?
Steve Lewit: That’s living in the wrong dream.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh yeah. So it doesn’t just have to do with your investment returns, right? Yes, you could be thankful for getting a 20% return, even though you heard that somebody out there got 30%, right? Maybe he’s got twice as much risk as in his portfolio that you have, right? So that’s always relative. But obviously from a life perspective, and you hear this a lot in the New Year’s resolutions and things of that nature, which it’s a true thing. There’s research behind it. Gratefulness and gratitude help you feel more fulfilled and more content. All right.
Steve Lewit: That’s what my book is about.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, the book that’ll never be out.
Steve Lewit: August 28th.
Gabriel Lewit: The next Oprahism we’ve got here-
Steve Lewit: August 28th.
Gabriel Lewit: … is? This is about Oprah, not you. Okay. Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Steve Lewit: Did you hear how he straightened me out there folks?
Gabriel Lewit: Straightened you out. Okay.
Steve Lewit: Straightened me right out.
Gabriel Lewit: Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, this is hard.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So well, again, we’re going to give a little financial angle to this. Well, were there mistakes that happened or bad things that happened to you financially? Maybe they weren’t mistakes. They just caught you, I don’t know, how you want to position them, right? But things that didn’t go great with your money and financial wounds that you can learn from. You can turn them into wisdom. Okay? Well, just to use another simple analogy, well, if a football player fumbles a football or makes a mistake and doesn’t catch something, you get it on tape, right? The whole world sees it. And it’s what they do the next day, the next week of practice. They do film review.
Steve Lewit: And he’s carrying that football and everybody’s trying to knock it out of his hands.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. And they double down on that to try to make it so it can’t happen again. People learn from it, right? And when those things don’t happen, things can catch you off guard. The Artemis space shuttles, the space rockets that go off, they’re actually trying to figure out all the problems with these things before they launch.
Steve Lewit: Like the bathroom.
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe they didn’t catch that one. They’d rather test it and it blow up during testing than on the real one because they’re going to learn from that. Okay? So that’s why Elon Musk, another big space guy was talking about how he once said he wanted his rocket ships to blow up.
Steve Lewit: So, Gabriel-
Gabriel Lewit: Because that’s how they’re going to get to the version that doesn’t blow up faster.
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. But it’s one thing to build a rocket ship. It’s another thing to lose all your money.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. So we don’t want that to happen going forward, but if it’s already happened to you early on in your life-
Steve Lewit: Then what did you learn from that?
Gabriel Lewit: … you will hopefully have learned from it and it’ll make you a better investor. If you never learned that ever, right? And all of a sudden, let’s just say you inherited 10 million bucks today or won it on the lottery. You never invested before. You don’t even know what 2008 was when the market lost 40%. And you’re like, “I’ll just chuck it all in stocks,” because you didn’t know better. Next big market crash, you could be caught very unaware. So learning these things early on actually prepares you for the future. So turn your financial wounds into wisdom.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So it’s like when you work out, you need friction because it makes you stronger.
Gabriel Lewit: No, we already used some analogies on it. We don’t have triple analogies on the same side.
Steve Lewit: Folks, I’m getting corrected again.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we have two more quotes to get to.
Steve Lewit: Oh, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: I’ll gladly let you pick the analogy for the next one.
Steve Lewit: Okay. Thank you.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: It was great analogy.
Gabriel Lewit: Because this one’s-
Steve Lewit: It was really good.
Gabriel Lewit: This one’s a good one. With age comes the understanding and appreciation of your most important asset, your health. This is an Oprahism.
Steve Lewit: Well, I think it’s more than an Oprahism. I love it because yeah, as you get older and get closer to the end days.
Gabriel Lewit: The end of times.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I think you start to value each day more. I mean, look, I’m older and I have placed a lot of value on health and thankfulness that I’m as healthy as I am and I’m very fortunate. But even those folks that are not as healthy. They’re very fortunate too because you do the best you can, but health, it’s all about health.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you have an analogy for this?
Steve Lewit: No, I was just going to say when again, I’m back in my seminars because one of the things I ask people is what’s the number one thing you value most in your life? And I get two answers. First the answer is-
Gabriel Lewit: Full ice cream?
Steve Lewit: Oh, I love ice cream. First one is health is the most important thing. Now this is a crowd 50 and over. It’s not 30 to 40. 30 to 40, I think I would have said my family, my children, something like that. And the second thing they say is peace of mind. I value health and I value peace of mind. And something changes as you get older and the health becomes priority because you know what? You see a lot of people around you that are not healthy as you get older.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And if you’re not healthy, you can’t do much. You can’t enjoy much. Well, last quote here from Oprah.
Steve Lewit: That was very serious.
Gabriel Lewit: That one?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. No analogies or anything.
Gabriel Lewit: What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter, and that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people’s lives. Now, Oprah, of course, was very materially successful or is, sorry. And she’s trying to take that and help other people. Okay. And she’s saying that’s one of the benefits of if you’ve been very successful materially, you’ve made lots of money. Maybe you can do something good with it. And I actually heard a quote once too called learn, earn, return, which kind of stuck with me.
Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s nice. I never heard that before.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, in your younger years, you learn, you should learn, hopefully. Then you earn, right into your higher earning years and then eventually you return, right? Give back. It doesn’t have to be money, you could give back wisdom and guidance, right? But yeah, can you find a way to use your success either materialistically or otherwise to give something back and do something good, return back to others? It’s a nice way of thinking about things. So I thought it was a very nice quote by Oprah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s a nice quote. I was just adding an addendum onto that is that you don’t need money to make an impact on the world.
Gabriel Lewit: True. Very true. But if you have money, you could also make a financial impact as well as a non-financial impact.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. You have more freedom.
Gabriel Lewit: You do. Indeed.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, absolutely. No analogy there either.
Gabriel Lewit: Nope. Not everything needs one.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So well, that’s what we’ve got for you folks.
Steve Lewit: I didn’t want to disappoint you.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’ll have more chances. Don’t worry.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: I meant for analogies not to disappoint me.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I thought both actually.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, man. Oh, man. Okay. Well, we hope you had a fun time joining us here for today’s Easter special.
Steve Lewit: Maybe it was a ghost.
Gabriel Lewit: We of course are here to help you with any questions. Call us. Let us help you. Let us help you work through your financial questions. You can reach us 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com or email us info@sglfinancial.com. Any questions you’d like us to cover on the show? We’ve banked up a few of those. We’ll do some more coming up soon. Otherwise, have a wonderful rest of your week. Enjoy our new April spring weather and we will talk to you more on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody. Keep your feet on the ground.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Steve Lewit: See you now.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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