Your Financial Pain Points

Our 2 Cents – Episode #260

Your Financial Pain Points

A fresh episode of Our 2 Cents has arrived! This week, the Lewits discuss everything from sniffing chocolate and July’s financial planning calendar to the biggest financial pain points people face and how to overcome them. Listen in now!

1. Sniffing Chocolate:
   • Who says chocolate and workouts don’t mix? Discover how simply sniffing chocolate might give your next workout an unexpected boost.
2. July Financial Focus:
   • July is the perfect time for a mid-year financial checkup. Take a fresh look at your portfolio’s performance and your goals.
3. Financial Pain Points:
   • Learn about the most common financial pain points and practical strategies to help you move forward with confidence.

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Podcast Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening 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 another episode of Our 2 Cents. You’ve got Steve Lewit and Gabriel Lewit here and the crew behind the scenes making it all happen. Shout out to the crew. Yeah, this is becoming like a big production.

Steve Lewit: No, it’s it’s not. We used to have me and you. Then we have me, you and Katie. Now we have Me, you, Katie, and Gabby. Now we have Me, you, Katie, John, and Gabby.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you know, it’s got the show must go on, and we’ve got to make it a great show. So to make a great show, we need a great team.

Steve Lewit: We do have a great team.

Gabriel Lewit: We do indeed.

Steve Lewit: And so today So now we’re under pressure.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. So, let’s uh let’s jump into today’s topic. So, of course, we hope you’re doing well. Uh today is actually a smoky day.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, did you did you smell that?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, there’s wildfire smoke wafting down from Canada, I think, right? Is it Canada? Yeah. And it’s uh it’s quite it’s quite potent. And we’re indoors and I can’t smell it at the moment, which is great, but I can see it. It’s very hazy out there. And um hopefully the wind will blow this away quickly. Yep. And out of out of the way of our noses.

Steve Lewit: Yes. We want to be healthy.

Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. We do. Yeah, we’ve got a great show lined up for you. Hopefully, you’re staying indoors, staying away from the smoke, or you live in a different part of the country, and you don’t have this problem. Uh, but either way, we’re gonna cover our show here today with you. We’ve got some good topics lined up. We’re going to talk about our July topic of the month for your financial planning calendar of the year. That was a theme we had started earlier this year where we have different topics in different months, all designed to help you become masters of your personal financial planning, but we’re taking those in bite-sized pieces, so it didn’t feel overwhelming. So, we are going to talk about July’s goals here today.

Steve Lewit: Don’t eat the elephant all at once.

Gabriel Lewit: Exactly.

Steve Lewit: The little bits and pieces.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep, we’ve got some also, you know, it’s been a little bit since we’ve maybe summarized some of the major questions that we hear on the minds of our clients. And so, we’re going to talk about financial pain points, right? Big questions, big issues, big items we see most commonly from our clients. And, you know, of course, we tend to talk about a wide range of things to summarize what are the top topics now that we’re hearing very frequently from our clients.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, and I think you’re going to hear some surprises on this, Gabriel.

Gabriel Lewit: There might be a few. There’s going to be some, I think, that you’re expecting to hear, and definitely some surprises.

Steve Lewit: And you don’t hear, right? Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Uh, then we’ve got a little bit of uh, you know, uh fun fun here for you, I think. Steve.

Steve Lewit: I think we should start I thought we should start the show with this, actually.

Gabriel Lewit: We are starting the show with this. Steve found an article he just absolutely wanted to talk about here. I guess it’s because he’s uh he works out. He worked how often do you work out?

Steve Lewit: Uh four times a week.

Gabriel Lewit: Four times a week. And his new secret, here’s his new secret.

Steve Lewit: Four to five, actually.

Gabriel Lewit: Because he read this article, and so now Steve is a workout monster here. He said, apparently sniffing chocolate.

Steve Lewit: Sniffing. Folks, listen, not eating chocolate.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay.

Steve Lewit: Sniffing chocolate. Before a workout could add and in between sets.

Gabriel Lewit: Could add an extra 18 reps.

Steve Lewit: I can’t wait for tonight. Oh, tonight we have the uh market update.

Gabriel Lewit: We do. We have our market outlook and update mid-year update here tonight, and we’re going to probably talk about that on the next show as well, some of our key takeaways there. But yes, uh, in the report of Frontiers and Physiology, found that exposing someone working out to chocolate smells immediately before and between weightlifting sets significantly increased the number of reps that they could do without the participants feeling they were putting forth any greater effort.

Steve Lewit: But but not all chocolate counts equally.

Gabriel Lewit: Apparently, dark chocolate is-

Steve Lewit: Dark chocolate sixty percent. Now, Gabriel, I love dark chocolate, and I eat like eighty-five percent cocoa chocolate. I just love that.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay.

Steve Lewit: Now I can smell it.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think that’s dangerous because I think anyone that’s got the open candy bar right by their workout, what do you think they’re gonna do?

Steve Lewit: I don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe after you think they’re just gonna sniff this delicious chocolate and not eat any?

Steve Lewit: Well, here’s the deal. Smelling dark chocolate was also found to suppress appetite trial partitions by reducing. Everybody here, folks, is shaking their head. No.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know about this study.

Steve Lewit: No way.

Gabriel Lewit: You just lost me there, Steve. Yeah. I don’t think it suppresses appetites.

Steve Lewit: Well, maybe it quells your appetite after you give into eating it.

Gabriel Lewit: That would make more sense. Yeah. They forgot that part. Yes. Okay. So see, well, that was that was really all we wanted to say about that.

Steve Lewit: This is so important, folks. You’ve got to write this down and remember it during your workout today.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, give it a whirl. If you if you find that this works for you, please let us know. We would be very interested.

Steve Lewit: I will let you know on our next our but Gabby on our next podcast.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you do know that a a study of one, right? If you just tell us it works, it doesn’t give us much data. But if our clients and our listeners email in saying this works for them, we’ll have a bigger data set and we’ll be able to really assess this for ourselves.

Steve Lewit: Gabriel, one is better than none.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Yes. Okay. Wise man once said.

Steve Lewit: Once said.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. All right, let’s talk about our topics here. Let’s start with our July mid-year financial checkup. And of course, there were a lot of other uh parts of the financial planning calendar that we aren’t going to go into here today, but we had spaced these out across the year. And July’s is all about a mid-year financial and investment portfolio review. Okay. And I think this ties in well because we do a mid-year, as you mentioned, market and economic outlook, and we talk a lot about the themes that could be impacting your investment portfolio as well as your financial planning. And so if there’s one topic that perhaps should be something you do throughout the year, I would suggest it’s paying attention to how your portfolio is performing. I do think all the other topics we’ve talked about are equally valuable, right? We’ve talked about assessing taxes, we’ve talked about creating a plan. You know, we’ve talked about a lot of things, but yes, you don’t want to do all these things and then have zero idea how your portfolio is performing.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s like playing a game and you don’t know the score. You know all the rules, you’re prepare, you work out, smell chocolate, you do all the right things, but then you don’t know the score of the game.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s like the scoreboard’s dark. Dark. And you have no clue who’s winning or losing. Yes. Well, your portfolio performance is like that.

Steve Lewit: Great paraphrase.

Gabriel Lewit: Now sometimes it’s a you know, people do, I think, uh a a bare bones version of this. Well, they their statement said last year that they were at uh two hundred thousand and this year it’s at two twenty. And that’s the end of it. And they and they say, Okay, we’re doing good, right? We’re up twenty thousand dollars.

Steve Lewit: We’re great. We’re up ten percent.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, the question is, is how do you assess if that is good or not?

Steve Lewit: Yep. Right? Because that’s the that’s always the question in market performance, because everybody has a different idea of what good is, and everybody has a different goal if they have a goal at all. Yeah. Most people just want to make as much as possible, which is not a goal. So, if they see they’re up 15% for the year, they’re saying, Hey, that’s great. I’m good.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so we’re gonna talk about a lot of topics here with relation to your investment portfolio performance. One of those is having a goal of what you’re trying to accomplish, as Steve very aptly just mentioned, right? Is this meant to be a conservative portfolio? Is this meant to be an aggressive portfolio? And you may or may not have the answer to that, but if you don’t, I would suggest that the very first thing you want to do is figure out what is your intention for this portfolio and where does it fit within your overall financial plan? And then you have to do that, folks, for every single one of the accounts that you have.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I don’t get this actually, Gabriel. If you want to hear silence, folks, at one come to one of my dinner seminars when I ask the question is what is your goal for your investments in the stock market? What what are you aiming for? You’re aiming for five percent, seven percent, eight percent, ten percent, or twelve percent? And there’s total quiet. And uh you know, I say, why is it so quiet? Well, we want to make as much as possible. This is the common theme that I get. And then you know, I say, okay, why don’t you tell me what you would like? And then they’ll put on I’ll put on the board, you know, someone will say eight, ten, twelve, and fourteen percent. So, we do get a goal out, but I don’t think they’re investing or know whether their portfolio is built to achieve that goal or it’s not. And I think that’s what you’re saying is uh what is your portfolio? You have an aggressive portfolio or conservative portfolio. What does that mean?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’m I’m not even I I’m not even there yet. I’m a level above that. I’m saying, do you want your portfolio to be aggressive? I’m sorry. Right? Let’s say you have your money in cash.

Steve Lewit: Did you hear that, folks? He’s the level above it.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I mean I haven’t drilled down to that level. I don’t mean I’m I don’t know what you’re trying to reference there, but what I’m saying is conceptually, that would be the right question to ask for your aggressive growth portfolio, right? Because I want as much I can. But if you have a hundred thousand stashed in your savings account and you ask, what’s your growth goal for your savings account? Typically, the answer isn’t as much as I can. So, people do already somewhat do this, but the problem I find is a lot of portfolios live in this gray zone where people don’t really know what they have, don’t really know why they have it, don’t really know where it fits in their plan, and don’t really know what they’re expecting to get from it. And well and that’s a lot of don’t really know.

Steve Lewit: That’s a really don’t really they don’t know their goal, and they don’t know how much they could lose.

Gabriel Lewit: So how so well that’s another component as well, right, which is your risk. Okay, so so let me summarize this. So, reviewing your portfolio performance, because we could spend a lot of time talking about this, right? You want to know again where it fits in your plan. You want to obviously look at your statement and see how it’s actually performed. You then have to create a benchmark for that.

Steve Lewit: Explain a benchmark.

Gabriel Lewit: A benchmark is a well-known index or portfolio that you can use as a frame of reference to assess how your portfolio is doing. Okay. Um but different portfolios do have different benchmarks. Let me give an example.

Steve Lewit: Most people use the S&P as a well let me give an example.

Gabriel Lewit: If you have a cash account in a checking account, and you find out that the S&P 500 did twenty percent last year, well, how did your cash do? Did it do good or not good? Let’s say your cash earned three percent. Did your cash do good or did it not do good?

Steve Lewit: Well, in comparison to the cash marketplace, it did just fine.

Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lewit: In comparison to the investment marketplace, it lagged behind.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, the question is which benchmark was the better benchmark? Should your cash be should the performance of your cash be considered bad because the S&P went up 20%? Or should your cash performance be good because most cash accounts earn 1% and you earn three?

Steve Lewit: So, Gabe, I think people understand that. I rarely hear someone say they hold cash and expect it to perform like the S&P.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m going to actually well, I’m using a simple example.

Steve Lewit: Oh, you’re ahead, you’re uh above me again.

Gabriel Lewit: Uh no, not necessarily.

Steve Lewit: Or you’re below me.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m somewhere.

Steve Lewit: Are you with me?

Gabriel Lewit: I’m kind of with you.

Steve Lewit: Kinda.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. But I’m working my way towards something very systematically.

Steve Lewit: I can’t wait for the partnership to-

Gabriel Lewit: I’m building some building blocks.

Steve Lewit: A drama. Okay. So, what I see more I’m with you.

Gabriel Lewit: Most people understand benchmarks, especially when it comes to cash and it comes to stocks.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: You’re right. People in in the market tend to use the S&P. People with cash don’t tend to compare it. So, I think there’s a lot of understanding there. Where I see the mismatch with benchmarks is when you have, say, a client in a 70-30 portfolio. S&P went up 20% last year. Let’s say S their portfolio went up fifteen percent, and they look at you or they look at themselves and say, why didn’t I beat the market? Why didn’t I keep up with the market this year? But they’re using the wrong benchmark.

Steve Lewit: They’re comparing apples and oranges.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So, they’re what’s happening is they’re comparing an all-equity portfolio, the S&P 500, with a stock and bond portfolio, which is not the same thing. They have different risk and return profiles.

Steve Lewit: And one cannot perform the same as the other because the composite is different.

Gabriel Lewit: Correct. Correct. So again, we’re not getting too deep into the world of benchmarks here, but one of the things to assess your portfolio performance, which is what we’re talking about here, is to understand and find a good benchmark.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. And the other part of that, folks, is when you’re at a party and your friends say, Oh, I’m making 20, 30 percent, just don’t believe them.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And you mentioned the other side of this, Steve, just a moment ago, which I wanted to expand upon, which is the risk of a profile, uh risk profile of a portfolio. Do you what do you want to explain what that means?

Steve Lewit: So look, folks, let’s say I ask you, what is your growth? You got money in the stock market. How much do you want it to grow by? What is your goal? And you say some of you might say six percent, some of you might say eight percent, some of you might say ten, twelve, or fifteen percent.

Gabriel Lewit: Or even as much as I can.

Steve Lewit: Or as much as I can. So, the other side of that is if you pick a growth goal of eight percent, is what can you lose with that growth goal growth?

Gabriel Lewit: Along the way.

Steve Lewit: Along the way. So, the benchmark that we use is the worst case in uh possible, which is 2008. So, if you were aiming for 10 or 12 percent in 2008, you probably lost thirty-five to forty percent in your portfolio. So, if you’re doing that today, if you’re saying to yourself, I want to make ten percent, then the other side of that is are you willing to accept a bad year where you lose thirty-five to forty percent, which is totally possible in that kind of portfolio. So, each portfolio, so if you’re aiming for six percent, that portfolio in two thousand eight was down twenty-two percent. So, each portfolio has an upside, but it also has a downside.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, whether you know it or not, yeah, I mean whether you know the actual numbers, every portfolio has some level of downside to it.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so Gabriel, if someone says, Well, I want to make as much as possible, what’s the downside to that?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you ask, well, how much are you willing to be comfortable with volatility-wise to try to achieve that high return that you want of as much as possible? I’ll give an example. Some individual stocks uh can be very, very explosive in their gains, right? 10x, 2x, 3x, but they can also, like I have a couple that I can share examples with. For example, um, Carvana was one of my favorites, which at one point lost 99% nine percent of its value from its peak. This was like a couple years ago, folks, and has since recovered. Yep. Back to its prior all-time high. Yep. So, it it you know, massive gain potential, massive risk potential. And I think if you were to ask most of your clients, Steve, hey, are you comfortable with your your stock portfolio temporarily being down 99.9%? What do you think they would say?

Steve Lewit: Well, when I asked that question at seminars, you know, I say, okay, you’re aiming for 10%. How much are you willing to lose to get that 10%? You know what the answer is?

Gabriel Lewit: None, Steve.

Steve Lewit: Nothing. I don’t want to lose nothing.

Gabriel Lewit: But this is our human nature, right? We want as much as we can with the least amount of risk, but I’ll tell you that is the whole goal of portfolio design.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. And so that’s not the focus of today’s topic here, but the key is here’s the takeaway.

Steve Lewit: To understand that.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Here’s the takeaway. Your your homework, right? Because this is about giving you actionable items. So, here’s your homework. You need to go look at your investment statements. You have to pull you have to go to the websites, you’ve got to download by the end of Q2, right? The end of June 30th, download your statements for each of your accounts, look at your year-to-date performance, look at your trailing one year performance, look at your compounded since inception performance if they have that on the statement, and then take a look at your benchmark for that portfolio. And if all of this is sounding like Greek to you, you can call or a lot of work.

Steve Lewit: Come on in, folks.

Gabriel Lewit: You gotta give us a call. Okay.

Steve Lewit: And and where do they call?

Gabriel Lewit: You want to do it today?

Steve Lewit: No, I don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Come on, give it a whirl, give it a whirlwork, give it a whirl. You’re you haven’t done this in a long time.

Steve Lewit: I probably don’t even remember the phone number.

Gabriel Lewit: You can call us 847-499-3330.

Steve Lewit: That’s the right number for it.

Gabriel Lewit: Or go to SGLfinancial.com or email us info at SGLfinancial.com and we will set up a time to talk with you, a complimentary, right? Uh consultation. Let’s find out about how you’re doing. Let’s see where that fits in your plan. Let’s make sure you’re you’re optimizing your portfolio. All these good things that we want to focus on here in this world of assessing your portfolio performance.

Steve Lewit: But but, Gabriel, there is more.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re not gonna cover these ones today on this list. No, I’m just gonna mention them. Because if we give you too many folks, if we give you too many homework assignments in a in a given month, you know what you’re gonna do? You’re gonna do none of them.

Steve Lewit: No, I have confidence in our clientele. They’re gonna do if we give it, they’re gonna do it, and they’re gonna write us and tell us how they did.

Gabriel Lewit: You know what? We’re gonna save some of these for uh we’re gonna we’re gonna chop these up a little bit. But the other items in theory you could be doing in July would be evaluating your savings and spending, reviewing your investment costs, and assessing big deal, and assessing your tax efficiency. But we are going to break these up for you, folks. Your homework for this month, look at your portfolio performance, assess your benchmarks, see where it fits into your plan.

Steve Lewit: Okay. You’d be a you would have been a great teacher.

Gabriel Lewit: I wanted to be a teacher.

Steve Lewit: I know, you did. You would have been a great teacher.

Gabriel Lewit: I like I teach people every day in my job.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, but I mean you have like the uh this way of making things simple and understandable and and like stay above where I would go, which I make it more detailed. You you work at such a high level. No, I’m serious. You would have you would have made a great teacher.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, well, thank you. I try. You know, I try, I enjoy it. I like talking about these things, hence why we do a podcast where we try to help our listeners understand these complex concepts in simple ways.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, Gabriel wanted to be a history teacher, folks.

Gabriel Lewit: Briefly, this was a short-lived, a short-lived endeavor.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: And then I saw how how much it costs and how much it costs to get trained for and how much they made it.

Steve Lewit: Long term, it’s a great career.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I couldn’t do that. Yep.

Steve Lewit: Try raising three or four kids on that.

Gabriel Lewit: Uh I didn’t want three jobs and work through summers and all that other sort of thing.

Steve Lewit: They work hard.

Gabriel Lewit: They do.  Okay, let’s shift gears here, folks. So, I mentioned before we wanted to talk about financial pain points, meaning what are the things that typically keep most of our clients up at night?

Steve Lewit: Or I I wouldn’t even go that far because a lot of people don’t stay up at night.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s uh it’s a it’s a phrase.

Steve Lewit: I’m above you on this. Before we get down to up at night, how about we just say people get disturbed or agitated or disappointed or nervous, all those other qualities before we go to the deep one? I’m not sleeping at night.

Gabriel Lewit: Amen. You said that so much more beautifully than I could have. Yes. Elegant, eloquent-

Steve Lewit: Eloquent.

Gabriel Lewit: Amazing, phenomenal.

Steve Lewit: Elegant, too.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Sorry.

Steve Lewit: No, it’s fine.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, yeah. So, these are not the worries that keep people up at night. These are the worries that some people might what what did you say? Can you repeat that?

Steve Lewit: They’re bothersome. They’re agitating, they’re annoying. They come up, uh, you know, you want to go out for a dinner and it’s $400, and it’s like, can we do that? I don’t know if we can maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we shouldn’t.

Gabriel Lewit: Let me phrase it. To be fair, I never start my initial client meeting saying what keeps you up at night, but I do say what’s top of mind most for you.

Steve Lewit: Top of mind, yeah. I think that’s the question.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, so we’ll call these top-of-mind possible pain points.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: That don’t or maybe do keep you up at night.

Steve Lewit: You had to get in it.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. All right. I will allow it.

Steve Lewit: All right. So, Steve, if you had to, if you had to pick number one, number one uh top of mind topic for clients.

Steve Lewit: So interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, that we tend to hear. I and I’m guessing if you’re out there, you’re you’re starting to rifle through what you think this might be before we say. But what is it? Do you want to give the surprise away here? The number one topic we hear all the time.

Steve Lewit: Uh well, I’ll tell you the number one topic that research says is on a retiree’s mind or someone that’s thinking about it.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t want I want Steve’s research, real life research.

Steve Lewit: But I’m going to give you my real life. The number one question that research says that you all are asking is will my money last my lifetime? That’s the number one question.

Gabriel Lewit: And Steve’s research corroborates or not corroborates.

Steve Lewit: So, at seminars, you know, that’s my research because I do hundreds of them and have done I don’t know, maybe done a thousand of them, I don’t know. Forever. I ask that question, folks, what’s the top of your mind? And you know what I get first? Taxes, not income. And it’s always surprising to me that people get hooked on taxes and one, and then somebody might say, well, I don’t know, maybe I I kind of wonder if my money will last. But taxes have a bigger pain point because I think I’ve been thinking about this, because it’s immediate. You know, taxes really hurt. You gotta write that check at the end of the year. Income planning is not immediate; it’s in the future. Yet I would say in retirement, your number one priority is to get your income straightened out. Otherwise, you know, a life without income is not a great life.

Gabriel Lewit: Let me humor you for a minute. Let’s say taxes was number one.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: What would be number two?

Steve Lewit: Uh number two is well, I get-

Gabriel Lewit: If taxes were number one. What would be the number two most talked about topic you hear from clients?

Steve Lewit: Let me see. Because I usually help them with that as a number two. So that that would be um healthcare cost. Believe it or not.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, you’re you must have different clients than me. You’re you’re having uh a different experience than I have. So, the number one for my clientele is what the you know the study you referenced mentioned is is retirement income.

Steve Lewit: That’s when they’re sitting here.

Gabriel Lewit: Uh what we’re talking about is the people we talk to, what they experience the most, right, that I hear and experience is this question around creating retirement income and not running out of money.

Steve Lewit: How do we have different clients?

Gabriel Lewit: The second one is taxes. I I agree. Taxes are very high on the list. The second one I hear all the time is how do we save money on taxes? Those are my one and two, and your one and two is taxes and health care. So that’s interesting.

Steve Lewit: Well, I’m going to put income up there with health care. I’m I’m I’m kind of on the fence on that. But yeah, yeah. I mean, the I I got 30 people sitting in front of me. I asked the question and they raise their hands, and that’s what they say.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Who knows? Well, look, there are many different concerns out there.

Gabriel Lewit: Lots of people have different times-

Steve Lewit: And if you ask maybe the it’s the way you ask the question. So, you know, I since I’m older than you, I’ve been asking this question longer, so maybe I get a more um honest answer.

Gabriel Lewit: Who knows? Who knows?

Steve Lewit: Who knows?

Gabriel Lewit: Who knows? All right. Well, it sounds like we are getting close to this consensus, though, that taxes is a top topic. Definitely. And and specifically, what do as you mentioned, what do we mean by that? People want to save money on taxes. They don’t want to pay more than they have to.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s irritating.

Gabriel Lewit: I think that makes a lot of sense, right? Retirement income. People want to know that they’re not going to run out of money during their lifetimes.

Steve Lewit: And healthcare really ties into that.

Gabriel Lewit: So, and healthcare is, of course, a top topic. It’s actually right here on the list. Uh, I think on the list that I had put together, um, well, it’s it’s often related to an unexpected healthcare event that people worry they might have that’s going to cost them lots of money, but that’s generally, as you mentioned, this concern about healthcare costs.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Right. It’s this fear of the unknown. What if I have, you know, what if I get cancer and I need expensive therapy treatments that aren’t covered by insurance, right? What if I have long-term care events? What if I have to take care of a family member that’s sick or ill, right? These are concerns around health care costs that very much could impact some someone’s retirement income.

Steve Lewit: Right. That answers usually prefaced at my seminars with well, I would just finish taking care of my mother or father in the nursing home. So, they have had this painful experience of having a relative in a nursing home, which is a terrible experience to begin with, usually, and then the cost of that is right in their face.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, what else do you typically hear? So, we’ve got a good collection going here, folks. We’ve got health care costs, we’ve got retirement income. Are you going to have enough to last you? Do you have uh your taxes as optimized as you can? What else do you typically hear about, Steve?

Steve Lewit: I get questions. Uh, should I have a trust? Uh, my 30-year-old son is living at home. Should I continue to support him?

Gabriel Lewit: Uh would you call that a top topic?

Steve Lewit: Uh no.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. What are your top topics? We uh I know because there’s a thousand things people might bring up. What are the ones you hear the most?

Steve Lewit: Okay. The third topic would be where should I invest my money now?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: And I think that ties into what we’re talking about today, right? About assessing your portfolio performance. But but the economy is shifting and changing. The market is reaching new highs or volatile. There’s AI, and there’s this question. There’s wars, and there’s this question exactly as you phrased it, where should where should I my money be now? What should I do with it now?

Steve Lewit: You know, should I be in the market? Should I be a little more conservative? And that goes back to the uh their their job for for July is to evaluate what your goals are.

Gabriel Lewit: Goals, benchmarks, performance.

Steve Lewit: Things like that. Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: But there’s a there’s that question surrounding that. What should it be in, right? Not just what is it and how’s it performing. Like, because you could find out that you have an aggressive portfolio and that it’s doing as good as the market is, but that’s different than the question we just talked about, which is where should it be? Yeah. Right? If you’re one year away from retirement and you’re in ultra high growth technology stocks.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Maybe not maybe not. Where should my money be now? Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Where should my money be now? I don’t know if it should be there. Not all of it.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, okay. And the other thing that I’ve discovered is most people that I talk to, their options in their mind, when they say where should my money be now, they’re really asking, should I have more stocks of bonds? Mm-hmm. That that’s the only thing on their menu, because that’s what they’ve done all their lives, determine stocks and bonds. And as you all know, folks, we are very holistic, and our menu of different investment options is very, very broad, and it’s not just stocks and bonds.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So, there are more places for where your money might be or could be than just stocks and bonds. Okay. Now another one you you touched on it, but I want to just emphasize it is estate planning.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Right? Do should I have a trust? Do I need a trust? Do I have a will? Powers of attorney? Uh are they structured properly? Are they updated? These topics surrounding estate planning don’t tend to be number one or two on the list, but they they do bubble up relatively quickly once we start checking things off the list. That one is still there as a top topic. Okay. Uh so I didn’t want to skip past it without overemphasizing that. That’s another key one.

Steve Lewit: It’s quite important.

Gabriel Lewit: It is.

Steve Lewit: And and a lot of people we see folks do not bring it up and will bring it up. And uh, you know, hey, what have you done about a trust? Oh, you know, I’ve been thinking about that now. Uh how long have you been thinking about that? I don’t know, ten years or so. We’re getting warmer.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, Steve, we really should do something about that.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, we really should.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, do you want to do something about that now? Well, let’s wait a little bit.

Steve Lewit: Let’s wait another ten years and I’ll consider it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s very common. But those it’s interesting because some of those same clients really are concerned about earning more money on their investments and saving money on taxes for money that they’re gonna leave to their kids, yet they’re going to lose money through probate or possibly tax inefficiency or other things for estate planning by not doing some of the estate planning strategies.

Steve Lewit: And it’s not a little bit of money, it’s a lot of money.

Gabriel Lewit: It can be a lot of bit of money. Yes. Now, a lot of it. That’s a lot of it.

Steve Lewit: A lot of bit. A lot of it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Now, uh the other one, because we’re getting closer to our time here, that I hear a lot, is interestingly enough, uh not for everybody, not everybody has the luxury of falling into this camp, but if you have more money than you can spend, there’s a reticence to spend, and people come to me and say, how do I get more comfortable spending more of this money? I’ve never spent money in my lifetime, I’ve always been a saver. Right? How do I how do I do this, Gabe, right? We have those conversations. Um oh, yeah. Um let’s see. Let’s say we have time for one or two more, because there is a long list. Long list. What would you say would be your final item to add to the list, Steve? Top topics.

Steve Lewit: Let me take a quick look here. Um no no no uh tension between spouses.

Gabriel Lewit: Can you elaborate, sir?

Steve Lewit: Well, you know, human beings are human beings, and we all see the world differently. And when it comes to money, that’s very polarized. You know, I’m sitting with uh you’ve done this, you know, you got a couple, they’re very happy, they seem to like each other, they communicate well, and as soon as the money comes up, he’s conservative, she’s aggressive, or vice versa. And now it’s like one wants to do and one the other doesn’t, and they kind of get polarized in their positions, and then I I invite them to marriage counseling on Sunday morning, which I don’t really hold, but-

Gabriel Lewit: No, no he does not.

Steve Lewit: But it’s-

Gabriel Lewit: I’m here sometimes and I don’t see them here with anyone.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, no, but it’s like I have to put a different hat on. I don’t want to say I’ve become a therapist because I’m not a therapist, but I have to help them negotiate through their difference of opinions so that we can reach an agreement, and that’s not easy to do.

Gabriel Lewit: It is challenging sometimes. Yeah, but important. It’s very important for couples and spouses to be on the same page. Well, if I have to pick one last one just to wrap a bow upon this, it would be the fear of making mistakes.

Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s a huge one.

Gabriel Lewit: Fear of making mistakes. Now they’re they’re maybe not losing sleep over this at night, literally, but there is this concern, you know, I only get one chance to retire. Really, right? You don’t get a lot of practice at it typically.

Steve Lewit: Well, you can’t make it, yeah. If you make a mistake at retirement and you come to us ten years later and say, please fix it, that’s not going to be possible.

Gabriel Lewit: You don’t really want to be learning from your mistakes in retirement. That’s not a great time to be learning from your mistakes. Whoops, I just lost a million dollars. Uh I won’t do that again. Right? You know, so there’s this concern about avoiding mistakes and leveraging our ability to have have done this with thousands of people, right, to help ensure that they’ve got a real clear-cut plan. And then I think they hopefully value our guidance, right, on these matters that most of our clients that come to us do, that’s why they come to an advisor. Um, some people out there, you know, might be looking for that, right? Well, there’s a and that’s a very key thing.

Steve Lewit: There’s a huge psychological shift, Gabriel, when people retire. Because when you’re working, you can always make more income. When you retire, you have a bucket of water, which are your assets, and you start drinking that water. There is no refill.

Gabriel Lewit: There’s holes in the bucket.

Steve Lewit: Beg your pardon?

Gabriel Lewit: There’s holes in the bucket.

Steve Lewit: Or there’s holes in the bucket, yeah. There’s no refill. And I think that scares the daylights out of people. We run out of this uh in the desert. We’re in the desert and with nothing.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that’s a it’s a long list, guys and gals, listening, and and I thought it would be helpful just to kind of list those. I mean, if you ever pay attention to really what we talk about on the show, we’re ranging from all these different topics at a high level, right? Investment strategies, planning, taxes, estate planning. We weave in a little bit about uh workouts and health, well-being, and chocolate.

Steve Lewit: Sniffing chocolate.

Gabriel Lewit: Whatever else we might cover.

Steve Lewit: That’s a highlight for me of this podcast.

Gabriel Lewit: But if there’s anything on this list that’s causing you any sort of distress, questions, frustrations, loss of sleep, anything that you could say I might value talking to Gabe, Steve, or SGL Financial about this.

Steve Lewit: Anything you worry if you’re worried, come on in. Let’s see. Give us a call.

Gabriel Lewit: Give us a call. You can reach us anytime here at 847-499-3330. We can set up a complimentary consultation or phone call just to get a chance to know you a little bit. There’s zero pressure of any kind. We just want to hear about your goals, hopes, wishes, and dreams and get to know you a little bit. Uh, come on in. You can also email us info at sglfinancial.com, or you can go to our website and click contact us, and we would love to talk with you anytime.

Steve Lewit: You do that so well. I would never want to take that away from you.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you ever do, you let me know.

Steve Lewit: Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, just for a guest appearance from time to time.

Steve Lewit: Once in a while.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, folks, have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day and week. We uh appreciate you listening. Share with friends and family if you’d like. Uh and we will talk to you on the next show.

Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.

Steve Lewit: Bye.

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.

Disclosure: Investment advisory services are offered through SGL Financial, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Adviser. Insurance and other financial products are offered separately through individually licensed and appointed agents.