Financial Snow Day
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #240
Financial Snow Day
A new year is the perfect time for new goals. The Lewits are sharing practical lessons to help you start the year strong. Plus, they explore the financial takeaways you can learn from a snow day. Tune in using the link below.
- 2025 Podcast Stats:
- A huge thank-you to our listeners for continuing to help Our 2 Cents grow, and we’ve got the metrics to prove it!
- Financial New Year’s Resolutions:
- What’s top of mind for a successful year ahead?
- Financial Lessons from a Snow Day:
- A snow day is the perfect reminder that life (and finances) don’t always go as planned. Here are a few money lessons we can take from an unexpected day off in winter.
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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 and financial news, trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Our 2 Cents. You’ve got Gabriel Lewit here, on microphone number one, Steven Lewit on microphone number two.
Steve Lewit: Maybe some time we should switch that, so my ego would feel a little more rewarded.
Gabriel Lewit: I’ve given you many opportunities to kick off the show.
Steve Lewit: Well, you could kick off and be microphone number two.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think it works that way.
Steve Lewit: Like number one QB, and number two QB.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: When the number two QB comes in, they don’t say he’s the number one QB. You say, “Number two QB is playing.”
Gabriel Lewit: Well, number two QB might start the game, but he still is number two.
Steve Lewit: He’s still number two, right.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, speaking of QBs, my Bears. My gosh. Somehow pulled out a-
Steve Lewit: They-
Gabriel Lewit: … an absolutely improbable victory last week.
Steve Lewit: They keep doing it.
Gabriel Lewit: And they somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
Steve Lewit: Yet again.
Gabriel Lewit: Yet again, right? And yeah, so I’m very excited, because I don’t know if you heard the stats. I’m a big Bears fan, so I pay attention to these things, but they hadn’t won a playoff game in 15 years.
Steve Lewit: 15 years. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: So, kind of puts it in perspective. It had been a pretty long time. So yeah, for all you Bears fans out there like me, hope you’re excited for the game coming up this weekend. We’ll know this Sunday. And if you’re a Packers fan, it was a very well fought battle-
Steve Lewit: Yes, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: … and you are still-
Steve Lewit: You should be proud of your team.
Gabriel Lewit: … your team has still beat the pants off of our team for many, many years.
Steve Lewit: Right. And we’re not going to say anything disparaging about them, other than we’re glad they lost.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t get into that level of rivalry.
Steve Lewit: And for you-
Gabriel Lewit: Let the players do that.
Steve Lewit: … and for you Giant fans-
Gabriel Lewit: Nobody is.
Steve Lewit: … from New York.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think anybody’s a Giant fan but you.
Steve Lewit: Come on.
Gabriel Lewit: Just you.
Steve Lewit: There’s one Giant fan out there. It looks like John Harbaugh will be the new coach.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, actually, that’s a… Yes, correct. And that’s actually an interesting transition. There might be Giant fans listening to the show, because we got here from producer Gabby, a bunch of stats from our show last year.
Steve Lewit: We grew, some.
Gabriel Lewit: And did you know that there were, of all the listens of our show last year, 525 cities listen to our, people in 525 different cities.
Steve Lewit: Is that right? Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: I mean, I don’t think the data could lie. I mean, maybe it can, but I don’t know why it would. We’re not like some big time show-
Steve Lewit: We’re not trying to-
Gabriel Lewit: … or a national show, right?
Steve Lewit: … and we’re not trying to prove anything to anybody.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you know? But yeah, it says 36 countries and 525 cities have listened to our show, somehow.
Steve Lewit: Wow. Wow. I’m impressed.
Gabriel Lewit: And so, the top countries are United States, no surprise, Germany, and France.
Steve Lewit: Wow. Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: So maybe somebody out there is forwarding our show to your son or daughter-
Steve Lewit: Well, that’s true-
Gabriel Lewit: … in Germany.
Steve Lewit: It could be. It could be.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: You know, who knows?
Gabriel Lewit: But that’s pretty cool.
Steve Lewit: Didn’t you always want to be a international star?
Gabriel Lewit: Not really, no. No.
Steve Lewit: Neither did I.
Gabriel Lewit: No, actually not at all. I think you did. You were Mr. International Opera Man.
Steve Lewit: Well, that was different. This is like home, home stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And it does say the top cities, of course. Chicago, Illinois, Arlington Heights, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Steve Lewit: Milwaukee. Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: So, there may be Green Bay fans listening to our show.
Steve Lewit: Yes. We love you. We love Green Bay.
Gabriel Lewit: We do.
Steve Lewit: We were rooting for you. He lied.
Gabriel Lewit: We still love you, though.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, moving on, the other couple of stats here. We had more downloads, almost 30% more downloads last year than the year before, of our show.
Steve Lewit: Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
Gabriel Lewit: And increased listenership. And we are also on Episode 240 of our show, and we did 41 new episodes last year. So we endeavored to do, we try to do it every week, but there’s holidays and vacations, and Steve of course took some time off. Kind of ridiculous.
Steve Lewit: Terrible. Terrible thing to do.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, we are very excited. I think we’re on our, what, seventh year? Or, I don’t know, it’s been a while. But we continue to gain some traction. We are very, very appreciative of you, our listeners. And I did have somebody comment the other day, “Can’t you just get to the financial stuff, already?”
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And look, it’s kind of funny because I’ve had so many people that have come to me and said, “We like your commentary and your banter,” because I’ve listened to some just pure financial shows like, “So the Dow was up 360 points today.” And I have a lot of people that have told us if we sounded like that, they probably wouldn’t listen. So I guess we can’t appeal to everybody, but.
Steve Lewit: Well, people have different tastes-
Gabriel Lewit: … we certainly try.
Steve Lewit: …. and some people are very technical. Some people like-
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And we do try to balance those-
Steve Lewit: … like to hear good stories.
Gabriel Lewit: … we try to balance those out in our show. So we’re going to continue to try to do that, but thank you so much for continuing to listen, for sharing the show, for your positive feedback and comments. It gives us juice to keep on going.
Steve Lewit: We are juiced. Well, I shouldn’t say it that way.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So any-who, also the top episode, ironically, or I guess not ironically. I don’t know why I said that.
Steve Lewit: This one I don’t know. What is the top episode?
Gabriel Lewit: But the top episode last year was Downsizing in Retirement, is it the Right Move?
Steve Lewit: Really?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm. Interesting.
Steve Lewit: Well, I guess that’s a question on everybody’s mind. “I’ve got this big house, and we use two rooms in the six room house.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Do you need the other four rooms?
Steve Lewit: “Do I need the other four rooms, and taxes, and everything that goes with us?” Very common. Very common. Interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah. Well, let’s go ahead and jump in for our show today. So last week we talked about the intention of purposely not getting to resolutions on last year’s show, but we do want to talk about resolutions on this year’s show. And so, we’re going to switch it up a little bit this year. So we did some research, and we found some articles that was basically collecting a combination of suggested resolutions from financial advisors to their clients.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So these aren’t all our picks.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And we’re not going to talk about, how we don’t do our resolutions, or anything like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. This is just-
Steve Lewit: This is-
Gabriel Lewit: … “Hey, if you were to pull many financial advisors out there in the world, what would be the collection of advice for them to give to you for your New Year’s resolutions?” And we’re going to cover those here for you to kick off the show.
Steve Lewit: These are cool.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And we’re not going to put particular names on these, just kind of gather them up together. But mindset comes first. So, “Adopting a growth mindset, viewing past mistakes as feedback, not failure.” In other words, okay, you lost some money one time. Don’t all of a sudden never invest in a stock again, right? Stuff like that. And, “Personal development and financial success are deeply connected,” and, “Try to avoid tying your happiness solely to financial outcomes. Enjoy progress, not just results.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. No, oh, I love that. Yeah. So-
Gabriel Lewit: What’d you think about that one, Sir Steve?
Steve Lewit: What I think is that we tend… When the market is up, people are happier. When the market is down, people get depressed. It’s like money rules. We forget all the other great parts of our lives, the good things, the successes, the kids, the grandkids. We forget all of that.
Gabriel Lewit: Your daughter got married today, but the stock market’s down 2%-
Steve Lewit: The stock market is down, right.
Gabriel Lewit: …. we got a terrible day.
Steve Lewit: We had a terrible, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Hopefully that’s not the case.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, exactly. So an abundant mindset is how a lot of people would put it. An abundant mindset says, “Yeah, all of these things happen, but when you look at it as a whole, you’re really living a life that has,” especially here in this country, and especially in our neck of the woods, very abundant lifestyle. Now, people say to me, “Well, yeah, but there are so many people that are richer than I am.” It doesn’t matter. What’s on their plate-
Gabriel Lewit: And guess what?
Steve Lewit: … is their plate.
Gabriel Lewit: And those richer people have people richer than them.
Steve Lewit: Richer than them, right. And if you’re the richest one in the world, God bless you but, so what?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, here’s the funny thing. Actually, I don’t know why this came up the other day, but I was driving my son home from soccer practice. And he’s a big car guy, so he knows about Elon Musk, because he used to be really into Teslas. And he’s like, “Dad, I think I heard, isn’t Elon going to be the first trillionaire?” And he’s like, “What does he do with all that money?” And I said, “It’s kind of funny you ask that.” I said, “Once you get past a certain point, most of these people just get, you could never physically spend all that money. So even if you were the richest man in the world, why do you need to be? Because you’re not going to spend it all.” Most of these guys give away 95% of their wealth. I mean, you could say, “How much more, even than 100 million, would you need? At $100 million…”
And I tried to explain this to him. I’m like, “Do you know what interest is? ” He’s like, “No, what’s that, Dad?”
Steve Lewit: No, what is that?
Gabriel Lewit: I said, “Okay, do you know what investing is?” He’s like, “No, what’s that, Dad?” So we’re working on these things, starting them young. He’s almost 10. So I said, “Well, investing, of course, is when you put your money in something called the stock market, I’ll explain what that is later. And then you earn interest.” I said, “Do you know fractions yet, like 10%?” And he’s like, “No.” So this was a little bit difficult.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: But I said, “If you had $100 million, and you earned 10%, you just made $10 million per year, which is a little less than a million dollars per month, that you would have to live off of.” I said, “You wouldn’t be able to spend all this money.”
Steve Lewit: Right, right.
Gabriel Lewit: Imagine if he-
Steve Lewit: Imagine you had 200 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Could you eat them all?
Gabriel Lewit: No.
Steve Lewit: Right. That’s what it is like.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s a good analogy. I like that one.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes you bomb on your analogies-
Steve Lewit: No, this was a good one.
Gabriel Lewit: … but that was a very good one.
Steve Lewit: This is a good one.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. What do you need 200-
Steve Lewit: Well, I was a parent, once.
Gabriel Lewit: What do you need 200 peanut butter jelly sandwiches for lunch? It’s overkill, right? So yeah, so that’s, I think, the idea. If you cannot focus just on money, money, money, money, and try to ensure you have other positive aspects of your life. Because the research shows it’s not the money that really makes you happy, even when you have it.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely.
Gabriel Lewit: I mean, there’s a level where if you don’t have enough money, it can have a big impact on you. But having more, if you already have enough-
Steve Lewit: More money does not equate to great happiness.
Gabriel Lewit: Directly, does not directly mean more happiness.
Steve Lewit: Definitely not. There’s so many other components of that. We could do a whole show on happiness.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure could. Okay, so let’s see. Next resolution here, “Build automatic sustainable habits.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So in other words, if you can put things on autopilot, make them just like waking up in the morning and breathing, you don’t even think about it, you just sort of do. Right?
Steve Lewit: Not sort of. Either you do, or you don’t.
Gabriel Lewit: I mean, in general, you don’t think about, “Oh, am I breathing right now?”
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, that’s the idea. You can essentially, whether it’s money or not money, but especially with your money, because this is predominantly a financial show. If you can put your 401k on autopilot, maybe this year you just increase it by 2%, your contributions. You may not even notice it missing, but you all of a sudden made a sustainable habit, right? If you can put things on autopilot, the data shows you come out further ahead when you do that.
Steve Lewit: Well, what is the most, one of the most popular books written out there? Is The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. And by the way, folks, if you want to have a good read, and you’re interested in this kind of stuff, that’s-
Gabriel Lewit: I think it said-
Steve Lewit: … a great book to read.
Gabriel Lewit: … it said number one was, listen to Our 2 Cents-
Steve Lewit: Number one is download Our 2 Cents.
Gabriel Lewit: … by SGL Financial.
Steve Lewit: Download Our 2… Yeah. If you’re going to be successful, you have to listen to these guys. Their podcast is like, out of sight.
Gabriel Lewit: Just kidding, folks. It wasn’t his number one recommendation on that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but what Gabriel is saying is that, look, we all have habits. A lot of them don’t work for us, and some of them do. You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you have a ritual, which is just a habit. And that works for you.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I will ask you to toot our own horn, just a tiny bit. I have a few-
Steve Lewit: You’re on a roll.
Gabriel Lewit: … I do have a few clients that say, “Gabe, I don’t know if I’ll always learn something new on your show, but just in case, I listen to every episode.”
Steve Lewit: And that’s a good habit.
Gabriel Lewit: It is. It’s an automatic habit. And this one fellow I’m thinking of says, “And the other day you said this, I had never heard about that. It really got me thinking.” So you never know when you’re going to maybe pick up on something, and learning, lifelong learning. Reading, going to conferences, podcasts, stuff that you may or may not find something valuable every single time, but if you do it consistently, you generally will always come out with something. At some point.
Steve Lewit: So Gabriel, I have a question for you. What is the habit that you have, that you think is not most meaningful, but a really meaningful habit to you?
Gabriel Lewit: Geez, goodness. I brush my teeth a couple of times a day.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I drink coffee.
Steve Lewit: Well, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: I mean, meaningful.
Gabriel Lewit: Meaningful?
Steve Lewit: Meaningful.
Gabriel Lewit: You know, I wake up during the work week, I wake up consistently pretty early. I find it to be very valuable for my time and my schedule. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a good question. I just have to think about it more. I don’t want to stumble on the show, here.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, I think just like everybody, I contribute regularly to my 401k. It’s on autopilot, same with other savings contributions, 529s. It’s all on autopilot. I don’t, “Should I do this this month? Should I not?” I kind of believe in eating our own cooking, here on the show.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Also, one of your great habits, I will tell you, is this thing called trust and verify. And not only in business, but in life, is to see things, to check out. To trust people, but also verify the data. Like when you were building your pool, you hired the… Well, there were problems with your pool.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think I probably said this on the show, and I won’t go down a rabbit hole. But I checked it, as they first dropped the pool shell, because it was a fiberglass shell into the hole.
Steve Lewit: Trust but verify.
Gabriel Lewit: I was home and I was like, “There’s no way this wouldn’t be level and square, right to my house. I mean, it’s got to-”
Steve Lewit: “The guys are experts.”
Gabriel Lewit: “… These guys are experts.”
Steve Lewit: “They know what they’re doing.”
Gabriel Lewit: And then I checked, and I was like, “Guys,” because they’re starting to backfill it with all the sand and the dirt and everything, and pour in water. I’m like, “It’s not square with the house.”
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: “It’s not parallel.”
Steve Lewit: Right. “It’s a little…”
Gabriel Lewit: And the guy’s like, “What are you talking about?”
Steve Lewit: What did he do?
Gabriel Lewit: “Of course it is.” And I said, “Well-
Steve Lewit: “Well, of course, it isn’t.”
Gabriel Lewit: “… go take a look. It’s not.” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, look at that.”
Steve Lewit: “Oh, yeah.” And I mean, that’s a wonderful quality, because I tend to be very trusting and I don’t verify all the time. So that’s a great habit that you have.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we even do that with our clients, right? We send you a deposit through an ACH, and we’ll typically have the team call you, or email you to verify that you-
Steve Lewit: You got it.
Gabriel Lewit: … did, in fact, receive it. Right? That kind of stuff.
Steve Lewit: It’s a great habit.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways. Okay. Next one up, because the whole show isn’t going to be resolutions, here. I’m not going to dig into this one, but one of them from a financial advisor again was, “Review and update your estate planning.” How many of us postpone and procrastinate on this? It’s very common. Make it your New Year resolution to get that thing complete.
I like this one a lot. “Live intentionally before retirement.” I really like this one. I think we talk about it a lot, but it’s not always about getting to the destination as fast as humanly possible, while skipping everything along the way. More often than not, you want to enjoy the journey, right? And here’s how you know this. There’s studies that have been done. I say, “Producer Gabby, if right now you could swap yourself with a 78 or 80 year old person with $100 million-”
Steve Lewit: What kind of question is this?
Gabriel Lewit: No, I’m asking this question, honestly.
Steve Lewit: She would become that person.
Gabriel Lewit: She’s like, I don’t know how old is she, 30 or something? Maybe she’s even younger than that, right? Yeah, she’s a young kid-
Steve Lewit: You’re not allowed to ask.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyway, I know. She’s our employee. I have her person-
Steve Lewit: We’re going to get a lawsuit.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, but if you were a 30-year-old would you, whatever, not $100 million dollars. “Would you swap yourself to be an 80-year-old with $100 million?” And the answer for most people, they’ve done studies on this. People will say, “No, I wouldn’t.”
Steve Lewit: No, no.
Gabriel Lewit: “Because the experiences of life that you have are more important than just having a bunch of money in the bank.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And if you’re 30, you don’t want to be 80.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s not about the age. It’s just that, it proves the point that most of people are looking for money not to just have it in the bank, but to allow them to enjoy themselves along the way. So that’s the main objective, right? Is to enjoy the journey, not reach the destination.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I know that’s a little philosophical, okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it is. I love it, but we won’t go down that road much further. But one of the things you can do, folks, that I do in the morning that works very well for me is, I set one intention a day. It’s like, I wake up in the morning I say, “Okay, what one thing today am I going to be really, really intentional about?” And it might be, “I’m not going to be late for any meetings today,” or it might be, “I’m going to get my emails done earlier.” Or it might be, “I’m going to eat a healthy lunch.” But if you pick just one thing a day to be intentional about, that really helps build a habit.
Gabriel Lewit: “Going to get those French fries right after work.”
Steve Lewit: A habit of… I love French fries. Who’s got the best French fries?
Gabriel Lewit: Ah, that’s a whole show right there.
Steve Lewit: It is.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I think that being intentional in all parts of life can be very valuable. Okay. We have obviously another one here, a little more money-oriented. “Stay disciplined and diversified, and avoid chasing FOMO.” We talked about FOMO, fear of missing out, right? The hot trends, what’s hot right now, “Let’s jump into it, we don’t want to miss out.” Staying disciplined, staying diversified is very hard for a lot of people. And so, you can commit to that. And all the data shows if you stay disciplined, diversified, have a long-term time horizon, contribute on autopilot, you’ll easily be a millionaire later in life.
Steve Lewit: Definitely.
Gabriel Lewit: The sooner you start, and the more you just follow that very simple system, things compound substantially over time.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And Gabriel, I don’t like to use the word discipline, because that sounds so hard. Or, nobody likes to be disciplined. You never loved… I remember you as a kid, and when I tried to discipline you, it didn’t work out too well. I want you to know that.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you know when you look at the dictionary, there’s different definitions of words for different purposes.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but I, but just as a suggestion I like the word intentional a lot better than discipline. “My intention is to have a million bucks. How do I get there?” And then be intentional, rather than disciplined, about that. Which has a negative connotation.
Gabriel Lewit: If I was going to argue with you, I’d say that-
Steve Lewit: No, don’t.
Gabriel Lewit: … intentional is very different than disciplined. From a definition perspective.
Steve Lewit: Well, intention creates discipline.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, anyways.
Steve Lewit: We’re not going to argue.
Gabriel Lewit: Last one here, which of course speaks to our theme here at SGL Financial, of building wealth for life, but “Focus on your health as well as your wealth.”
Steve Lewit: Got to work out, folks. You got to walk. You got to-
Gabriel Lewit: That’s kind of the theme here.
Steve Lewit: … work out.
Gabriel Lewit: Your money is not going to mean much without your health. Ironically, that was my goal to start out the year. I talked about that, I think, on one of the previous shows. And I think I mentioned this last year, I got diagnosed with a herniated disc and I was out of commission for almost two whole weeks, and that actually flared back up on me last week. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t walk for five days and I was like, “Damn.” It’s like, “I got to focus more on this, because it’s obviously going to become a recurring problem if I don’t pay attention to it.
Steve Lewit: And I made a resolution not to call you fluffy this year.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, thank you.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: That was very kind of you.
Steve Lewit: I’m being very kind.
Gabriel Lewit: I won’t call you old.
Steve Lewit: Oh. Touche, my son.
Gabriel Lewit: You got to dish it. If you dish it, you got to take it.
Steve Lewit: You got to take it back.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, well, we hope if you’ve got any New Year’s resolutions you’d want to share with us, that you thought we missed that are really important, you want us to share it with the world, write them into us info@sglfinancial.com. We’ll share them on the next show. And of course, we love your comments and your feedback anytime you want to send them our way.
Okay. So let’s switch gears, here.
Steve Lewit: Sure.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, people that listen to our show know we talk a lot about analogies, or even metaphors. They’re different. But we’re going to talk about, here, what does sledding have to do with retirement? I like this one. You know why I like this one? Well, two reasons. Actually, I think the title that we found here, where the heck did it go? Hold on. I had it right in front of me. Okay. Oh, sorry.
Financial Lessons from a Snow Day is what we called it. And one of the items was thinking about sledding. And two things. It snowed a lot yesterday, so it got me thinking about this. And two, I got home, and it turns out my kid’s school wasn’t canceled, but my wife gave them a snow day for whatever reason.
Steve Lewit: How great she is. What a great mom.
Gabriel Lewit: My mom never did that.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” And so, yeah, I thought this was a fun one and very timely, given some of our colder weather here. Okay. But yeah, let’s say you had a snow day and you go sledding down the big hill.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Now what does that have to do with retirement?
Steve Lewit: Well, everything. Everything. Well, how did you get to the top of the hill?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s a great question.
Steve Lewit: All right. So it was really hard. I remember we used to sled… You know, I grew up in the South Bronx, and across the street was a place called St. Mary’s Park. One killing every evening, but during the day, it was very safe. And we had a hill called Dead Man’s Hill.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh. That sounds safe.
Steve Lewit: And this is the steepest hill you ever saw, and the bottom of the hill was this big oak tree about five feet wide. And if you weren’t careful, guess what you sledded into?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Your grave?
Steve Lewit: And that’s why it was called Dead Man’s Hill. But it was great going down. But you know, getting up there was hard. And same in retirement. You’ve got to accumulate and work hard, and save, and work hard to get to the top of the mountain. Going down is easy, and the most dangerous.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, going down is easier, but yes. Potentially much more dangerous, if you don’t do things, which is why we talk about how planning is so important. We actually do call it retirement mountain. In other words, sometimes when I’m explaining, just at a very high level what we do, I draw this little mountain and on the left, I say on the left slash, it’s like a V, upside down V. A little retirement mountain.
So at the peak is R, retirement. On the left side is A, for accumulation. So you’re hiking up the hill, it’s hard, it’s kind of a slog. And then on the right-hand side is de-accumulation, or spending, or income, which is sledding down the hill, then tends to be a lot more interesting, a lot more fun. And that’s retirement mountain.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And did you know, most people know this, you probably know this. More people die on Mount Everest going down than going up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And I try never to put that in there, because I don’t like to fear people into being like, “Oh, you better do this, or you’re going to die.” But yeah, to your point, going down the hill is dangerous if you don’t do it the right way.
Steve Lewit: It’s a metaphor. It’s a metaphor.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. I know that. Yeah. I know that.
Steve Lewit: It’s okay.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, so keep that in mind. Okay. Next one here, because I want to get through this list here. Rolling the snowman. Okay. Have you ever built a snowman?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you just all of a sudden start with a very large ball of snow?
Steve Lewit: No. Oh, that’s what they… You got to roll it up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you start with a hand-sized snowball.
Steve Lewit: We used to pack it and roll it.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s usually, hopefully, pack-y snow. It doesn’t work well with the fluffy snow.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: But you start rolling it all around the yard, and your yard looks crazy. And then all of a sudden it just builds and builds and builds, and gets bigger faster the more you roll it. Well, what does that remind you a lot of? Well, we’ve talked about it already today. Compound interest, right? Starting small, gets bigger and bigger, and it becomes easier and easier. The bigger that amount grows, the more it compounds, just like building your snowman.
Steve Lewit: Like it. Good. I like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Now the snow yesterday wasn’t packing snow. It was the light, windy, icy, fluffy stuff. But, anywhos, it was a good thought here either way. We did build one snowman this year.
Steve Lewit: Did you?
Gabriel Lewit: It has since melted.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Okay. So sometimes when, let’s say the roads are really icy, as they were yesterday. Sometimes the safest thing to do is to stay put.
Steve Lewit: That’s good. Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Not test the icy roads.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So the market goes down, icy, right? And dicey.
Gabriel Lewit: Icy and dicey?
Steve Lewit: Icy and dicey.
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe even spicy.
Steve Lewit: Well, I don’t know about that. But-
Gabriel Lewit: It doesn’t get like that-
Steve Lewit: … the market goes down, stay put. Don’t go out there and slip and slide, and try and figure out how to get across the street, when you don’t have to get across the street because eventually the ice is going to melt and then you just walk across the street.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So keep that in mind, right? As you’re thinking about the market, if it seems dangerous, maybe you don’t go diving head first into it.
Steve Lewit: Well, people always have this drive to do something about something they don’t like.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: With the market, though, that’s an emotional reaction. A bad habit, is to think, “Oh, I have to do something about this.” So, no you don’t.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, yeah. And to put my final two cents on that here. Yeah, if it’s extra icy and you do go out into the road, drive extra, extra slow. Be cautious, don’t go rushing, speeding. Caution is sometimes a very important trait.
Okay. I just love this analogy so much. Dressing in layers.
Steve Lewit: I love dressing in layers.
Gabriel Lewit: Now sometimes, when it’s really cold, I actually did have… I did take my son sledding once, when we had a bunch of snow a while back. And he dressed in layers, but before I forced him to dress in layers, you know what he was going to do?
Steve Lewit: Well, knowing my grandson, he probably would have gone out with a little T-shirt.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, he had his T-shirt on in the house, right? A super cold day, about to go sledding and, “Okay, let’s go. Get dressed, guys.” And he just throws on his simple, single, semi-moderate, light to medium coat, right?
Steve Lewit: Yep, yep.
Gabriel Lewit: And, “Okay, I’m ready to go, Dad.” Well, what was he missing there? He was missing layers, right? Now, a couple of things can happen. You’d be hiking up the hill, you get hot, the weather changes, it gets cold. If you dress in layers, you can take layers off, you can put layers on. You are basically hedging against either really hot temperatures, or when you get heated up, or you’re hedging against really cold temperatures if you get really cold.
Steve Lewit: Which in financial terms is-
Gabriel Lewit: Diversification.
Steve Lewit: … diversification, exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: So, you’re investing in layers. One of our favorite approaches, if you get to know us and our planning a little bit better, is a three bucket approach. Which, very simply put, is you have a safety component to your plan. You have a buffered, or even moderate, but usually more of a buffered component to your plan. And then you have an aggressive long-term growth component of your plan. Now, imagine this. It’s three layers. You have a T-shirt, you have a sweater, and you have your heavy down coat.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: If it gets really, really cold, what are you happy that you have?
Steve Lewit: The heavy down coat.
Gabriel Lewit: The heavy down coat. If it warms up, the sun comes out, you’re hiking up the hill, you’re hot as can be, you’ve just got the T-shirt. If it’s somewhere in between, you’ve got just the sweater and the T-shirt, right? So you’ve got those layers.
Well, the three buckets works just like that. Now, imagine if you knew it was going to be just 100% hot, sunny, you just wear the T-shirt, right? You know it’s going to be freezing, no chance it’s going to warm up, you could just keep the heavy duty coat maybe. Well, investing is like that too, right? If you knew it was going to be a bull market the next 10 years, just absolutely knew it 100%, what would you invest in? Would you buy cash? Bonds?
Steve Lewit: No, the market. No, I’d go right into the market.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And if you knew it was going to be the lost decade, like it was in the 2000s where stocks made nothing over the next 10 years, would you buy stocks?
Steve Lewit: Wouldn’t bother.
Gabriel Lewit: No, you wouldn’t. You’d buy something with a fixed yield. Well, when you don’t know, and there is no such thing as a crystal ball, what can you do? Well, that’s where that three bucket approach comes in. You win a little bit in all scenarios, right? If it’s a rising, roaring market, you’ve got the stock piece, you’ve got the buffered piece, that’ll still make money. Even your safe piece will make money. If the markets are down, you’ve got the safe piece, you’ve got the buffered piece, and the stock piece won’t do as well. But that’s the idea here behind both diversification of strategies, asset classes, and also behind layering when you go out on your snow day.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. Now here’s the problem, Gabriel. In many of us, the child who wants to go out in the T-shirt in the ice-cold weather still lives in us. So we have people that know the market is dangerous, that know it might come down, that have already won the game of retirement, that are still wearing their T-shirts in the stock market. For no reason at all.
Gabriel Lewit: And they might get frostbite.
Steve Lewit: And they might get frostbite.
Gabriel Lewit: They might get frostbite.
Steve Lewit: That’s the child in us.
Gabriel Lewit: And you’re willing, willing to do that.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, to close things out here, enjoy your snow day. Because snow days are special, you don’t get a lot of them, especially these days with iPads and stuff. Half the time they, some places even make poor kids do remote learning, instead of snow days. Ugh, terrible.
Steve Lewit: Terrible.
Gabriel Lewit: Got to let the kid have a snow day.
Steve Lewit: Have fun.
Gabriel Lewit: So, enjoy that, right? Once you know everything’s in place, you can enjoy the journey here. That’s been a big theme of our show here today. And that’s kind of the theme of, I think, many resolutions. We want to make our life better, we want to improve our future, our family, our health, our wellbeing, our finances, all of the above.
Steve Lewit: And it’s really not about the data, it’s not about how much will the market return, or will the market go down? Resolutions to me are about a headset, a mindset, which is where we started this podcast, is you have to-
Gabriel Lewit: We’ve gone full circle.
Steve Lewit: … exactly. If you have the right mindset, that’s the best beginning, and then everything else falls in place.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, absolutely. So if we hopefully helped you get some thoughts and ideas for the year, for resolutions or how to build and grow your financial wellbeing, or your mindset, or any of the above, we are happy to have covered those here today.
Steve Lewit: And for you people, folks, listeners that want us to get to the financial stuff, we did. Just in a different way.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. We did. We got there. Okay. Well, if you have any questions, give us a call, 847-499-3330, or go to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us, schedule a time to talk if we can help you with any parts of your financial or retirement planning. If you have any concerns about the market, anything we can do to give you better peace of mind, we are here and we would love to talk with you.
We are hoping you have a wonderful rest of your day. If you are a Bears fan, go Bears. If you are out of the playoffs, let’s just root for some great football either way, and we will talk to you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Be well, everybody.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Steve Lewit: Bye-bye.
Gabriel Lewit: See you.
Steve Lewit: Bye, 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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