Are Money Scripts Sabotaging Your Finances?
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #253
Are Money Scripts Sabotaging Your Finances?
May is here, and so is a fresh episode of Our 2 Cents! We’re diving into money scripts and common healthcare costs Medicare doesn’t fully cover. Tune in now!
- The Threat of These Childhood Money Lessons:
- Hidden money scripts formed in childhood can quietly run the show when it comes to your finances. Here’s how they show up in retirement planning, and what to do if they sound familiar.
- What Medicare Won’t Cover:
- Here are five common health expenses that can catch retirees off guard.
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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: All right. Welcome to Our 2 Cents, everybody. You’ve got Gabriel and Steve here, and you can’t see it, but you’ve got a slightly bigger cast than usual here supporting us.
Steve Lewit: It’s actually a little intimidating.
Gabriel Lewit: Because our marketing team has decided they’re going to record this episode on video, as well as audio.
Steve Lewit: Now I’m self-conscious. I wasn’t self-conscious.
Gabriel Lewit: And I don’t know what they’re going to do with it just yet, but I’m staring at the camera right now and it’s looking right back at me.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And so yeah, I feel a lot more pressure for this to be the best show we’ve ever recorded.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Don’t you feel self-conscious? It’s like, I can’t make a mistake now.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m just joking about feeling that way, but maybe a tiniest little bit. Maybe a tiniest little bit.
Steve Lewit: Well, if I drink my coffee, I can’t dribble a little bit or anything. It’s going to be picked up on the camera.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, we’ll see, we’ll see. Well, anyways, we hope you’re doing great. We hope you’re having a wonderful start to your May, because today is May 1st.
Steve Lewit: And gorgeous.
Gabriel Lewit: Is it gorgeous out? It is the best month of the year because it’s my birthday month.
Steve Lewit: Yes, it is. I won’t-
Gabriel Lewit: If your birthday’s not in May, I apologize for saying-
Steve Lewit: I won’t tell people the topic for our next-
Gabriel Lewit: You can give a little teaser if you want. Just don’t spill the show.
Steve Lewit: First, did you know that there are certain months that most wealthy people are born? And I’ll give you a hint, Gabriel is in one of them.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course, yes.
Steve Lewit: And the other penny is still worth a penny, because he’s not.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and you’re going to have to wait till the next show to hear which these months are. We decided to give you a teaser of that here today because we were talking about it, but we’re not going to cover it on today’s show.
Steve Lewit: That’s correct. What do we got today, Gabriel?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we do have plenty of good things to talk about with you today. Now, one of these topics we’ve talked about a little bit in the past, but I don’t know how much we expanded upon it, but it’s the difficulty for people to spend money in retirement, even if they have plenty of money to spend. Number one, it actually came up recently in yet another client meeting that I had just the other day where they said, “Gosh, how do you get…” They just legitimately straight up asked me this. They said, “Gosh, how do I get used to spending some of this money, when I’ve just never been a spender?” And it got me thinking that we should talk about this again here on the show.
But we’re also going to give it a little twist because I think hand-in-hand with this, there are things called money scripts, which is how we grew up with money, that are really at the root cause of this.
Steve Lewit: Like old tapes still playing.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. And so, we’re going to combine those two topics together and talk about money scripts that we’ve learned in childhood and how those are potentially impacting you here today.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: We’ll talk a little bit about Medicare, a couple things, just little tips here about some items and some expenses that people don’t know about or generally forget about with regards to Medicare and what it does or doesn’t cover. And then depending on how much time we’ve got, we’ve got another great topic here about beating the stock market.
Steve Lewit: Oh, do you think people want to beat the stock market, or?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, they always sure do, but we’re going to talk about that here.
Steve Lewit: It’s like everybody wants to beat the market until they realize how much risk is involved.
Gabriel Lewit: If we have time, which I think we will, we will get to that here today too. So, you got to stay with us here because we’ve got a terrific show lined up for you and we’re going to attempt to keep you entertained with humor and jokes along the way.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Yeah, now I’m self-conscious about that. Now I have to be joking.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll try.
Steve Lewit: And clever.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s why I said attempt.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: I’m attempting.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. So yeah, let’s jump in here. And of course, if you have listener questions, you call us, you email us, info@sglfinancial.com. We talked about a few of those last time, we have to bank up more for the future here.
But yes, so the surprising part of retirement that nobody tells you about is, you’re not going to want to spend your money when you get there.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And I think when we talked about this in the past, and we’ll just redo a quick recap here. When you are 25 years old and you’re finally thinking about contributing to your 401k or hopefully even sooner when you get your first job, you’re doing it for what reason I always like to ask, right? Why are you placing money into your 401k?
Steve Lewit: Well, it is a retirement fund. So, one would suspect that you’re putting it in there for retirement.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you’re putting it in there because you think you might need to spend this money in retirement.
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: And typically, if you were to ask your 25-year-old self or 35-year-old self, you’d ask them, “Hey, do you want to put in three million? Do you want to save $3 million more than you’ll probably actually spend in retirement?” What do you think they would all say? “Sure, yeah. I’d love to do that.”
Steve Lewit: “Sure, yeah.”
Gabriel Lewit: “Yeah, I’d love to spend, save all this extra money that I can’t spend today so I cannot spend it tomorrow.”
Steve Lewit: Exactly. It doesn’t kind of make sense.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and then you’d ask that same person, “Well, let’s say, do you want to leave that three million to your kids, future kids, or grandkids?” They’d be like, “No, no, I don’t know. I don’t think…do that.”
Steve Lewit: Well, I’m going to kick back a little bit on that for you, Gabriel, my other penny, is that we save, we work so hard to save money because that tape is playing since we’re little kids and mom and dad said, “Here’s a little piggy bank. Why don’t we put the little pennies in here?” And they start you on a savings program, right? So we learned to save and then we have a family and we’re trying to save and everybody’s talking to us, “You got to save, you got to save, you got to save.” And then we get into retirement and that tape still plays.
Now what happens is that we save more than we need, based on our current expenses, and many people do. So, we reach retirement and then all of a sudden we could spend more than we’re used to spending for the past 50 years, and that’s ingrained in us that we can’t go above that level.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’re spot on. I wanted to, you’re about a couple minutes ahead of one thing I wanted to say before that.
Steve Lewit: Well, I like to lead the way.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Which is, we’re going to talk about why, but again, if you were to ask your younger self, would you purposely oversave $3 million that you don’t plan to spend in the future at the cost of, you could have spent it while you were younger?
Steve Lewit: Absolutely.
Gabriel Lewit: Most of those people would say no.
Steve Lewit: No, absolutely. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Now I think what you’re getting to is why do people oversave and why do they not spend? And we’re going to talk about that here in just a minute. But the other question here is as well, is another big reason why people tend to oversave in the first place is that they don’t have any target that they’re saving for. Okay?
Steve Lewit: All they feel is, I need to save as much as I can.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, imagine that I said, you just have to drive as far as you can in the future.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Right? You just got to make sure you have enough gas, but you have no quantifiable data of how far or how much gas you would need. You just save up as much gas as you possibly could save.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It reminds me of when we ask people, “What’s your goal for your money in the stock market?” What do they always say?
Gabriel Lewit: “As much as I can get.”
Steve Lewit: And, “I want to make as much as I can.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s not a goal.
Gabriel Lewit: So, we want to quantify that. And that’s first of all, the planning process can help you determine how much is too much or too little to avoid you being substantially over your target or required savings amount.
But let’s say, we’re going to fast-forward back to our retirement age person in this example. Right? If they had asked their younger self, would they want to oversave? They typically say no. But let’s say you’re in this boat now where you’re retired and you have a million bucks more than you need or two million bucks more than you need. We see this all the time, sometimes even more than that. The question that we were going down the path here that Steve was talking about is, why doesn’t that person spend?
Steve Lewit: Well-
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: I’m going to say it again. It’s the old tape.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes.
Steve Lewit: It’s just a habit we get. Look, Gabriel, we all get into a comfort zone and we’re very comfortable in the comfort zone. I said to clients the other day, they have far more money than they need, they could double their amount of spending. I said, “You got to go out and fly first class.” And you know what they said to me? “Oh, we can’t do that.” I said, “Well, why can’t you do that?” “Oh, I just can’t do that.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, so we’re going to talk about those tapes, if you want to call them tapes or money scripts.
Steve Lewit: Money, same thing.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, but some of the biggest reasons just very simply put are, and then the tapes are the whys behind here, but people still fear running out of money no matter how much money they have in their nest egg. They still worry about running out.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, there are some scripts from your childhood that could be at play there. Okay, we’re going to talk about that. There’s also a feeling of guilt. Spending on yourself can actually make somebody feel very guilty.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that. Yeah, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. I’m selfish, right? Why should I be able to… People can’t eat, why should I buy first class tickets? Right? There’s this sort of guilt around it. Even if you have enough money saved up, it can feel like frivolous spending. All right?
And so there’s also just what I call habit and momentum. And there’s actual research around this, where you’ve spent 30 years not spending, spending, spending, and you’re very comfortable and you get acclimatized to that lifestyle.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And all of a sudden you realize you’re comfortable with it.
Steve Lewit: Exactly. You fly first class and you’re looking around and say, “I don’t belong here.”
Gabriel Lewit: Or you’ve just gotten used to, you drive your cars 10 years and they’re great, reliable, non-flashy cars. Why do you need to go out and buy a flashy one, right? You’re just so used to a certain lifestyle you’ve got, comfortable with and happy with. And it goes back to the original point, which is you don’t have to have lots of money to be happy. So, many people are happy without spending lots of money and then they finally get to retirement, have lots of money to spend-
Steve Lewit: And they can’t spend it.
Gabriel Lewit: … and they can’t spend it.
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So, let’s talk about how and why this tends to happen through what are called four money scripts. And the goal here is if you can identify if any of these apply to you.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Not you, Steve, but you, the listener.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I thought we were getting personal. I was getting ready to give you like, “Yeah, that’s me,” or, “No, that’s not me.” So, what’s my first script?
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, money script. Okay, money avoidance.
Steve Lewit: No, I don’t have a problem with that.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Money avoidance.
Steve Lewit: What’s money avoidance?
Gabriel Lewit: People with money avoidance, with a money avoidance script tend to believe somewhere deep down that money is stressful, complicated, or even a little shameful. It tends to come from people who had bad experiences with money in their household as a kid. Maybe it was a source of tension, maybe parents argued about it, and they just don’t want to have to worry or think or argue. They don’t want it to become a problem in their lives that they have to argue about or be concerned about, so they tend to just avoid it. Some people go the avoidance route.
Steve Lewit: So they don’t want to spend it because then they would have to pay attention to it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, in many cases, this type of person, they may not even know how much money they really have. They may not have a plan.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I see.
Gabriel Lewit: They may not know why they’re saving what they’re doing because they just don’t want to think about it.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, and all of a sudden they’re at retirement age and they’re going to either have enough or not enough and they may perhaps not have planned much of this out along the way.
Steve Lewit: But even if you tell them they have more money than they need, they’re still not going to spend it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, these scripts aren’t directly associated with-
Steve Lewit: Spending.
Gabriel Lewit: … spending.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: We’re talking about the spending part and there definitely are some of these money scripts that will impact that.
Steve Lewit: These are just scripts running in the background.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct, yeah.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: One of them is money avoidance.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I don’t have that. Do you have that? You don’t have that.
Gabriel Lewit: Money avoidance?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: No.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: That wouldn’t be me, right?
Steve Lewit: That would be bad for a financial advisor.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So the… It would be, yes, right. So, people in this category can be very good savers, right? They have no idea what they’re saving or why, right? They have no clear sense of what they have, what they need or what they want.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And they’re just rolling with it. Okay, and that could go one of any couple of ways.
Steve Lewit: Smoking weed.
Gabriel Lewit: Who knows?
Steve Lewit: Who knows? Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Right, so the goal here is to attempt to have some clear guidance, get your finances in order, maybe not perfect order, that might be hard for you, but attempting to get some arms wrapped around where you are and where you’re headed, even if it’s uncomfortable for you because it should give you a slightly better sense of-
Steve Lewit: Well, that would be the real value of an advisor, is just to get you in there once or twice a year and say, “Look, let me at least give you the…”
Gabriel Lewit: Pay as little attention to it as possible, just delegate it to someone that can pay attention to it for you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, so at least it’s well managed. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah and give you just some bumper lanes on your bowling alley of money.
Steve Lewit: I’m thinking about that analogy right now. Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, bumper lanes on the bowling alley of money. There we go.
Steve Lewit: I don’t want to look at it, so okay, I don’t get it. But yeah, I love that analogy.
Gabriel Lewit: It means this person’s the bowling ball and the advisor is the bumper lanes, and they can do whatever they want to. And us, the advisors, we’re there to make sure they don’t go into the gutters.
Steve Lewit: Can we move on?
Gabriel Lewit: We sure could.
Steve Lewit: Thank you.
Gabriel Lewit: We sure could.
Steve Lewit: Okay, let’s move on.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Money worship is the next script.
Steve Lewit: Oh, interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Money worship, and it’s the opposite problem, right? They’ve spent their entire lives feeling like money security is just around the corner and is the sole holy grail to achieve. Right?
Steve Lewit: The more I have, the better I am.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. If I just can get there, if I can just have enough, everything, all my life’s problems will be solved because money is this pedestal that it sits on. Right? That if it’s this God-like being, if I just get enough of it, I’m going to be in great shape.
Steve Lewit: Well, exactly. And money also makes people feel meaningful or important or powerful.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re stealing the next script. Shush, shush, shush here, sir.
Steve Lewit: Oh, damn.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. You can’t get ahead of us all here.
Steve Lewit: Or, darn. I said darn.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Yes, so you’re talking about the very next money script, but it’s a little bit different. But yes, people with money worship-
Steve Lewit: Psychic, it’s amazing.
Gabriel Lewit: People with money worship are also reluctant to spend. This is a clear connection with the spending option that we just talked about, issue that we talked about. Why? Because if it means financial security, they almost never feel like they have enough, right? They need a little bit more to get there. And if you need a little bit more and you feel like you don’t have enough, it’s hard for you to spend.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Folks, we have clients that have quite a lot of money and they’re still in the market trying to get big gains and things.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, this might tie into, it does, the topic we get to it today about beating the market.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: The need to feel like you have to have more.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Right? Because you’re not there yet.
Steve Lewit: And I say, “Why are you doing that?” “Well, I need more.” Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. Exactly, exactly. And that can come from a deep-rooted belief that money meant everything. You needed more of it. Perhaps you didn’t have enough of it as a kid, you felt it was scarce, and you just want to hoard more of it to feel secure.
Steve Lewit: Okay. So I don’t have any of these so far. I’m feeling very healthy.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: I feel better.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, you want to talk a little bit about the next one, which is money status. Okay. This is a script called money status.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, a lot of people think they are their money. It’s like, if I have more money, I’m a better person, I have more meaningful, I have more power in the world. And it’s like, Gabriel, you ever meet someone that they get a little dent in their car and it upsets their week because they think they are the car. So, we think we are the money and we relate it that way. The more money I have, the better I am.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you get upset if someone dents your car?
Steve Lewit: My new car, someone goes near my new car, I’m going to like-
Gabriel Lewit: Steve parks on the opposite end of every parking lot.
Steve Lewit: As far away as possible.
Gabriel Lewit: Go walk one mile to the store so it doesn’t get dented.
Steve Lewit: But I am not my car. Well, maybe I think I am. I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. So the money status-
Steve Lewit: It’s an ego thing.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Money status script here means that you’re hoarding money because you think it makes people think better of you, right? You’re a better person, more valuable, you mean more because you have money. It is tied right into your ego and your sense of being. And that’s another reason why you may not spend that money because if you spend it all, and you actually might spend it, it can go the opposite way too, right? You might spend all of it because you’re trying to put on a persona.
Steve Lewit: Show off.
Gabriel Lewit: Showing off, right? Nice cars, fancy cars, keeping up with the Joneses, Rolexes, fancy clothes, fancy dinners, vacations, first class flights.
Steve Lewit: You know what’s interesting? There’s an assumption that most people have that I meet that says when they look at somebody that has a big house and lots of big cars and flashy stuff, they always say, “Well, they’re so well off.” You know, folks, a lot of those people are dead broke.
Gabriel Lewit: Could be, yeah.
Steve Lewit: And they’re troubled about their money, they’re worried about their money, they’re overleveraged, and they’re just putting on a show.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I have a client because this is a perfect example, and certainly won’t share names, but real client where they are a little tight on money, but they had high incomes during their careers and they spent a lot of it and they did not save enough. And we’ve had real struggles because we had conversations about downsizing a home to try to free up some money because they had a very big house.
Steve Lewit: It’s so hard to do.
Gabriel Lewit: And I’m just going to use an approximate number, it was like a $1.1 million house and they were really short on cash and they wanted to spend a lot in retirement. So I said, “Guys, you should downsize maybe a 400, $500,000 condo, you’ll free up six, $700,000 in cash and equity and have that to spend.”
Steve Lewit: Simple.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, except for one problem.
Steve Lewit: Very simple.
Gabriel Lewit: They couldn’t do it. They said, “Well, we might be able to downsize to like a $950,000 condo, and it’s got to be nice and it’s got to be…” but this is-
Steve Lewit: We’ll go one block from the lake instead of being right on the lake.
Gabriel Lewit: Right, and then they went out and bought some new cars. Right? So it was all about having these shiny new things, the big house, the fancy condo, that was their main driver. And actually, they are still working because they don’t have enough to retire, but it is more important to them to maintain these nice things that they have than to retire and possibly have had to downsize. So, money status is a big driver in many ways, can infiltrate your financial decisions.
Steve Lewit: I think I talked about this at one point, but in economics, there’s this thing called the Duesenberry hypothesis. And what Duesenberry, he was an economist said is that in life, in spending, you have a ratchet effect. Like once you get to a higher level, it ratchets and it’s hard to go back because of that ratchet.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, it’s incredibly hard.
Steve Lewit: And these people have built a lifestyle and now the reality hits them that they need to go and do something, and they can’t do it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, the ratchet is a status effect.
Steve Lewit: It’s a status or ego-
Gabriel Lewit: An ego boost.
Steve Lewit: Ego boost, whatever it is.
Gabriel Lewit: Absolutely.
Steve Lewit: It just locks in there and you can’t go backwards.
Gabriel Lewit: And for those people, it feels like you’re pulling them apart to go backwards, down a prong or two. So, that’s a hard one. Okay, last one is we’ve got money vigilance. Money vigilance. Okay, and-
Steve Lewit: It sounds dramatic.
Gabriel Lewit: They tend to be very smart with money, vigilant about it. They tend to be cautious. They make good savings decisions. They are thoughtful about their spending. They don’t get into a lot of debt. But believe it or not, this is also an obstacle, especially to what we were talking about earlier, spending more money in retirement. Right? If you’re diligent, vigilant, cautious, safe, secure, prudent, well, yeah, I can’t drop some money on first class tickets, that wouldn’t be prudent.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. These are folks, I guess, Gabriel, that they’re tracking every expense, they’re looking at the price of gas and why should I go… I think I mentioned this too. I have a client that’s really, really, really wealthy, will not take a toll road.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. That’s not prudent. Right?
Steve Lewit: It’s not prudent. I can go for free.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. So I like the way some of the article-
Steve Lewit: But I will tell you this, he has no problem spending money.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Basically, it says every expense feels like a threat. The vacation they put off seems irresponsible. The kitchen remodel feels reckless. Lunch feels indulgent. Right? None of these things are practical, smart, prudent, they’re luxuries and we don’t need those. We’re vigilant, money, vigilant, money script. Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. so I would say, Gabriel, that everybody, because I’m looking in myself, I’m going to say, I can see where I’m connected on one of these. I’m not going to say which one, but what do you do about it?
Gabriel Lewit: Well-
Steve Lewit: Look, let’s say I buy an expensive car because my ego wants an expensive car.
Gabriel Lewit: Well-
Steve Lewit: I can afford it, but is that frivolous or what do you do about this stuff?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, the first thing is, and it’s a bit beyond the scope of today’s show, because we might spend the entire show talking about that if we did that, which wasn’t the intention here. But you have to know who you are first. Okay? You’ve got to really be… Some people struggle being self-reflective because they don’t like to be self-critical.
Steve Lewit: There’s a book out there that I know. There’s a-
Gabriel Lewit: Right? But you’ve got to feel honest about which one of these you might fall into and which side on each one of those. We talked about how, for example, there’s pros and cons of each of these things. And for example, the ego ones might just hoard money because the hoarding of the money isn’t the safety net, it just makes them feel egotistical, but they also might be big spenders because the spending makes them feel real status-y about their money. So, we’ve got to understand how these things really impact you.
With all of these, and we obviously repeat this all the time, you’ve got to have a financial plan, because it’s going to put all of this in context with real numbers. See, the numbers are the numbers, they don’t have a bias. Right? The numbers themselves don’t have a bias.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, they’re totally neutral.
Gabriel Lewit: They’re neutral. They’re just showing-
Steve Lewit: They’re just numbers.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s a dotted line on a map showing you something and it’s up to you to interpret that and do with it. And that’s where we as advisors also have to be trained on many things behavioral finance related, because these things come into discussions when it comes to your money and we can help you navigate through these as a starting point. There are little tricks for each of these that’s, again, a bit beyond the scope of today’s show, but we can help you overcome some of these obstacles. Not always, sometimes people are really stuck in these ways, but we can at least attempt to overcome some of these.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and I would add to that, Gabriel. Folks, there’s no right or wrong here. You are who you are. If you have peace of mind and you don’t spend money, just go for it. The idea though that I like in life is to challenge my comfort zones, because I find that when I can challenge my comfort zone, I learn a lot about myself where I’m locked in or where I’m free or stuff comes up. So I would urge you folks, even if you’re comfortable and you got great peace of mind, maybe go out and have that $300 dinner and just see what it’s like. And you may never do it again, but at least you-
Gabriel Lewit: If you have enough for it.
Steve Lewit: If you can afford it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, don’t do it if you don’t have the money.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, right.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s like one of those, what are they?
Steve Lewit: They pay your credit card off first.
Gabriel Lewit: The 16 course meals that are like $300 a person, right? And it’s just like you sit there for four hours while they bring you course. I’ve never done one of those. There’s some funky stuff they put in those meals, I don’t know if I’d like it.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, crazy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: I did one.
Gabriel Lewit: Did you?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it was away at a hotel that was-
Gabriel Lewit: That tracks.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, that does track.
Gabriel Lewit: That tracks, yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, unfortunately.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh man. I think I know which money script you are too, but we won’t go there.
Steve Lewit: We won’t go there.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, folks, if you have questions on that, hopefully you found that interesting and possibly you self-reflected as we were talking about these to identify which of those you may be or not be. If we can help guide you through these though, if you have questions about your finances, if you want a second opinion about how you’re doing things and how we might be able to help you optimize your plan to do better, give us a call here, (847) 499-3330, or go to sglffinancial.com and click contact us, and/or email us info@sglfinancial.com. We’d love to talk with you anytime, except for like midnight. That would be too late.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, let’s see, let’s see. To round out our show here, I don’t want to rush it. So, I do want to talk next show. If you’re interested, we’ll actually talk about the beating the market topic, and also I’ll connect that back to some of what we covered today on these scripts, these money scripts, because there’s some nice parallels there.
Let’s just spend a few minutes here, however, I wanted to cover this Medicare topic. This came up in some recent meetings and also found a helpful article that helps me stay organized for the show here. But five common expenses that many people miss when it comes to Medicare. I’d recently helped the client sign up for Medicare and they were surprised about these expenses and they thought they would be all included somehow, some way, but they were wrong.
Steve Lewit: There is this misconception out there that Medicare covers-
Gabriel Lewit: Everything.
Steve Lewit: … most everything.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so let’s cover that list here. Number one, dental care. Now-
Steve Lewit: Nope.
Gabriel Lewit: You might have a Medicare Advantage plan that does cover your dental care.
Steve Lewit: Some of it.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Some Medicare Advantage plans will cover Medicare, but Medicare Advantage, not to get too deep in the weeds, is different than the original Medicare or a Medicare supplement. Those do not cover dental costs. So depending on what route you go when you sign up for Medicare, for most people, if you have a supplement like a Plan G or a Plan N supplement, it will not have any dental coverage. And if you want or need dental coverage, you have to go out and buy a standalone policy.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and folks, even if you have dental coverage, that coverage is pretty limited.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. Unless it’s a dental, it says here, that’s directly related to like you crash your car and it’s like medically oriented.
Steve Lewit: That’s-
Gabriel Lewit: But not your routine dental care.
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Now, vision care, eyeglasses, another one that’s very commonly excluded unless you have a Medicare Advantage plan that tends to bundle those in. Now, that’s part of why some people really are drawn to the Medicare Advantage plans because they seem like they offer all these great deals all bundled together. But as we’ve talked about before, and we’ll probably talk about again at some point, Medicare Advantage plans have their own drawbacks-
Steve Lewit: They do.
Gabriel Lewit: … relative to a Medicare Plan G or Plan N supplement, and you may not want to go that route despite the bundling of all these things together. All right, but yes, vision care-
Steve Lewit: Have you bought glasses lately?
Gabriel Lewit: It’s funny you ask that. When I first got contacts and glasses, I don’t know, 30 years ago, they gave me a pair of glasses.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I have not bought a single new pair since because I always wore contacts. I still have the same pair of original glasses, it’s like four prescription changes old. One of the little lens, the things over the ear has broken and I’ve taped it back together. I’m in dire need of a new pair of glasses, but I don’t wear them ever, so I don’t do it.
Steve Lewit: What script is that, folks?
Gabriel Lewit: That’s, I don’t have the time. I don’t have the time.
Steve Lewit: Oh, well, I’m not too sure about that.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It hasn’t been a priority. Let’s put it that way.
Steve Lewit: I wanted a nice pair of frames, better look. It’s exorbitant, it’s crazy what a pair of glasses, what you can spend. Now my daughter, your sister, did it all-
Gabriel Lewit: You know you’re giving everybody exactly which money script away, right?
Steve Lewit: Okay. They were modest. No, they weren’t.
Gabriel Lewit: Gold plated frames, Steve’s glasses.
Steve Lewit: Plastic costs, they cost a… And then the lenses cost another fortune.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. Well, I wear my glasses maybe once a year and so this little taped up-
Steve Lewit: Yeah, Julia got them on the web for like 50 bucks.
Gabriel Lewit: See, there you go.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. She said, “Dad, why don’t you do that?”
Gabriel Lewit: You could do that. You could do that.
Steve Lewit: And my script said, “No way, Jose. I’m not doing that.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right. Well, a couple other things Medicare doesn’t cover, hearing aid and hearing exams. Okay, so that doesn’t cover hearing aid and hearing exams. Long-term care. I know you and-
Steve Lewit: This is a big one.
Gabriel Lewit: You and I know this because we deal with it, but a lot of people think that Medicare will cover long-term care.
Steve Lewit: And the answer, it covers, what is it? 90 days, Gabriel?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, something really small. Yeah.
Steve Lewit: At a limited amount. But folks, this is a big one. Most people I talk to say, “Well, doesn’t Medicare cover my long-term care?” And the answer is no, it doesn’t.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly.
Steve Lewit: It’s very limited.
Gabriel Lewit: And if you’re worried about long-term care and didn’t know that that was the case, there’s options, of course, to help you cover long-term care costs. But no, Medicare does not cover it. And generally speaking, there’s very limited Medicare coverage for healthcare outside of the US. Okay?
Steve Lewit: I hadn’t thought of that.
Gabriel Lewit: So, you’ve got things where if you’re traveling, there’s some Medicare Part B coverage for travel, but not much. Pretty limited. Okay?
Steve Lewit: Your supplement might cover it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so, also limited there. And most Medicare Advantage plans cover even less for overseas travel. So, you’ve got to be aware of what your plan does or doesn’t cover as far as overseas travel, so that if you’re traveling overseas, you have coverage just in the off chance something happens to you.
Steve Lewit: And two weeks ago, Gabriel had a client in Italy who fainted and wound up in the hospital. And I don’t know the coverage they had, but that stuff does happen.
Gabriel Lewit: It does, especially if you’re a traveler. So, be aware of that. We can talk to you a little bit more about that, we didn’t want to get into a deep dive on the ins and outs of everything Medicare related today. Just a little snippet there about a couple things that people aren’t familiar about. So, if that perks anything in your mind about checking on your plan or your coverages, hopefully that’s what it was designed to do. It spurs you to go out there and confirm what you have before you go traveling overseas. All right?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, we covered a lot today.
Steve Lewit: Is that a wrap?
Gabriel Lewit: We are at wrapping time; it’s like closing time. If I had the song, I’d play it.
Steve Lewit: By the way, folks, Gabriel loves rap music. I get into his car and it’s like… Something like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Is that supposed to be rap music?
Steve Lewit: See, that’s why I don’t do rap.
Gabriel Lewit: It is very far off. Okay?
Steve Lewit: That was more like jazz bee bop.
Gabriel Lewit: Something.
Steve Lewit: Give us some rap.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not going to do that.
Steve Lewit: Come on.
Gabriel Lewit: It is absolutely not going to happen.
Steve Lewit: Give us one line.
Gabriel Lewit: No, sir. But I will say I have eclectic taste, it is not just hip hop or rap. I like-
Steve Lewit: Well, you see how you’re in your comfort zone?
Gabriel Lewit: I like pop, hip-hop.
Steve Lewit: You will not get out. He will not get out of his comfort zone.
Gabriel Lewit: Some country.
Steve Lewit: Just stuck. Just stuck. Cannot sing one rap line.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not going to do it on the show, that’s for sure.
Steve Lewit: All right. See, that’s how the comfort zones work.
Gabriel Lewit: There’s a reason I’m not a rapper. Okay, I like to sing off key in the car, that’s about as far as I get.
Steve Lewit: All right.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. If you have questions, needs, set up an appointment, a time for a review. Give us a call here. We’d love to chat with you, (847) 499-3330, or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us. Email us info@sglfinancial.com, we would love to talk with you. Thanks as always for joining us on the show. We appreciate having you here. Share with any of your friends if you’d like. But meanwhile, we will see you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: All right. Be well, everybody.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Steve Lewit: Bye now.
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