Awesome. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and, and dive in. So today's session is how much is enough. Uh And we're gonna talk about uh personal finance and outlines that I find way more inspiring than just money for money's sake.And more so how does money open up the things that you wanna do? Uh And what's important to you in life. Uh And so this slide has all the details on my back, but what I'll, I'll just kind of highlight um or two things, one a bit of my career path. I uh was a consultant at mckinsey uh for the better part of a decade and served a lot of large investors and banks. Uh And then I switched to go serve families directly um as in the US called, you know, White Glove Wealth Advisor to ultra high net worth families. And I just felt so frustrated that they information wasn't reaching more people. Uh And it was odd that, you know, I could only give advice to people on how to be wealthy and successful once they were already wealthy and successful.

So I've started doing these talks pro bono once each week to just share the information that A, I wish I had had a chance to learn from my parents. There's no uh course in school for this um and B to just pass it on and, and pay it forward. Um And uh we'll go ahead and dive in and if you've just joined us, please, the more questions, the better feel free to use the chat and, and add questions as we go. So rough agenda for today, we're gonna cover a few big topics. One, what should even be the personal finance topics on your mind? What should be on the to do list? Um As you look at this space, uh second, we'll, we'll, you know the name of today's event. How much is enough of how to think about um what kind of nest egg you need set aside to, to feel secure and confident. Uh We'll also talk about in my role, serve many families of what are some common mistakes I've seen made so that you can avoid them.

We'll also talk go a little more tactical into investing, especially with inflation if you're in the US or um all of the market volatility regardless of where you are in the world right now. Uh And then finally, we'll talk about some tools that are out there um to find support because there's actually a lot of really useful tools and resources online. There's also a lot of garbage on the internet um and bad actors will help navigate. What are some of the favorite tools that I like? Uh looking at? Um Let me start with a quick pull and throw in answers in the chat. What percentage of you and by you? I mean, women in tech, uh do you think will be the primary financial decision maker for your household at some point in your life? Uh Any volunteers to kind of throw up some answers in the chat. Any guess works can even think in your mind of, of what you think the answer might be. Ok? It turns out it is 95%. Uh And I was amazed by this, I thought, you know, maybe it was under 50% just given surrogates in the past uh around gender. But actually the reverse in that 95% of women and that's driven by a few different things. Um One women outlive men, right? Um by the numbers. And um also, uh there's, you know, adjustments in terms of family structure that are happening right now.

And what gets to me about that 95% is that women are working really hard for money, but it isn't working as hard for them. A lot of the wealth um held by women today is invested in cash and short term securities more so than men. Uh And what's extra kind of shocking about that stat is when you look at how women invest versus men, women are better at investing, you know, study after study is shown uh in comparison and I know that's a broad brush, right, of a whole gender. But um it's amazing to see women are better at investing but aren't investing as much and they're gonna be the main ones on the hook to make these decisions. And the other thing I'll mention is that the standard financial services industry today is not doing a great job for women. Uh It's funny like 90% of men say all good love the service I'm getting. Whereas almost that same number for women are saying this is terrible. It's not serving you well. And I put up this cheeky picture to show like what the standard financial services industry looks like. I've heard the joke. Um It's the same way some people describe the British Parliament, but it's pale male and stale. Um And I'm really glad to be on this call where it's a group of women that isn't that um discussing this topic.

Uh And then particularly just through a function of being on this uh call, you're an educated and career driven woman and we have an extra perfect storm, right? If um often maybe starting careers later because of education. Um And uh if you're gonna be handling kids in the mix as well uh and a gender pay gap. Um So all of which is that all these add up to, I am really glad you're here. Um And just taking this time out for yourself. I would say handling this topic is the ultimate form of, of self care. Um, and not only self-care but care for your family, right? Which is one of the biggest things that you'll probably be responsible for uh in your life. So let's talk a little bit about, um, and I'm getting a couple uh questions for folks asking for a copy of the link of the presentation. So I'm just gonna send that in the chat as well if you want to sign up. So what should even be the personal finance topics on your mind? Uh And we'll think about this in a few levels, right? First, the basics of budgeting and savings heard about those before the next is I would say the next level of sophistication up is not just letting it all sit in a bank account, but starting to get invested.

And II I think a better term for that is making the money work for you, right? You work really hard for money investing is now making the money go to work for you. Um and then financial independence and uh we'll chat about that in a second. Um But that's effectively when you have the option not to work, right? It may be that you're switching to a job uh that you is a passion project for, you might be starting some a business, maybe working for a nonprofit. But the key idea behind financial independence is when do you not have to work for money? Um I have a, I have a family answer and they call this kind of fu money of when they can walk and just go do what they want to do. And then the next level up is things like tax optimization and this will vary depending on the country you're living in. But a lot of countries have neat tax strategies set up um to help uh you encourage you to do good behaviors and in turn give you a tax break. Um So that's a really neat thing to explore. Uh and then uh um things like estate planning and estate planning, terrible jargon by the industry. But that means effectively in a God forbid situation for you who do you want, making financial choices for you and your family, who do you want making health care choices.

So, I actually remember that that's not just for Elon Musk, right? Like that's for almost anyone over the age of 18. Uh and then finally charitable giving and family support and that's a big one. I know for a lot of folks I chat with in their twenties to forties. It's, you know, starting to have aging parents, um thinking about future Children and kind of what legacy or next generation uh to, to pass on to them, we could probably have a whole talk on that topic, but happy to answer questions on that one. underpinning all of that is what I've highlighted in yellow, which is the personal part of personal finance. And I'll just share a quick story here and this is what kind of inspired the name of today's talk. But, um, one of the most popular authors in the US, this guy Joe Heller, he wrote a book called Catch 22 and um, a story, another writer, um Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse, but I've told about him. Um when Joe Holder passed away was, uh they were at a party of some finance, you know, fancy uh multimillionaire billionaire type. And um Kurt Mogu just didn't needle Joseph.

He told him, you know, Joe, the guy throwing this party made more today than you've made in your whole lifetime selling this really popular book. Um and Joseph Heller without skipping a beat told him that's a ok by me. I have something he'll never have. And Kurt Von was confused and Joseph Heller said enough. And when I heard that story, it struck me in such a deep way because what I have seen all too often in families that I work with is that if you don't set the goalpost, best case, the goalpost seems moving and worst case, the goalpost just becomes money in and of itself. And oftentimes folks are in these life scenarios where they actually like being deeply unhappy with either what they're doing or the sacrifices they've had to make on the family side. And it's been so nebulous of like, what is the enough line, the finish line? And so I love using numbers and we'll talk about that today to just clarify that. So you can kind of go in a bit more clear eyed and more confidence into how to navigate, you know, those kinds of trade offs. Um Let's talk about how to ballpark that number. So, uh, we're gonna do some quick math to kind of figure out that number for you. So the first step is to estimate your current annual spending.

Uh and why that it's because that's gonna be the best predictor and lots of studies show this of after you stop working or if you choose to stop working, what you will be spending each year. It's like the lifestyle you're building today is a really good predictor of the life story you're gonna get used to for tomorrow. And so in terms of trying to figure out how to calculate your annual spending, um you know, one way is you can use a tool like mint.com. Um and I'm just gonna add that at the chat um uh or uh YN A um which is you need a budget.com and they help um you kind of estimate that out. You can also do like the back of the envelope math of some of your biggest expenses, right? If you add up your housing and credit card and any childcare um expenses, um that oftentimes is enough to kind of get you the bulk of the way uh there of that annual spending number. And the next thing you're gonna do is divide that number by 4%.

So by 4%. So study after study has been done that checks, ok? If I were to retire, you know, with a billion dollars today, if I took out 4% every year and withdrew just 4% of that, um, that would enable that a million dollars to last me through like the ripe old age of 100 for example. Um and that kind of intuitive makes sense, right? The way to think about that is the market and investments kind of on average have grown at about 6% per year. The 4% is more conservative because it's saying even if there's, you know, the 2008 financial crisis that's happening tomorrow, you're still gonna have a buffer built in, even if there's tons of inflation, you're gonna have that buffer built in. And so what I would suggest is if you're in your twenties to your forties, I would use 3% to be even more conservative. So that's the safe amount you can withdraw every year. And, and why are you withdrawing the money? It's to cover your expenses, right? That we, we calculated the number one because ostensibly when you hit financial independence, you're not working anymore. So your income isn't kind of covering um your expenses. So let's just use a real example.

So if you're in your thirties and you're spending a large amount of $100,000 a year, um, maybe not large if you live in San Francisco or New York, um where it's super expensive, but you'd comfortably have quote unquote enough when you and just divided 100,000 divided by 3%. Um You had $3.3 million and how to think about that nest egg. You wanna add up your current retirement savings, your personal investments. So that's your Vanguard or Robin Hood, you know, wherever you're investing on your own outside of work. And then, um and this is for the US specifically, but, you know, it'll vary in different countries but whatever the government is doing to support you and I've included a link and happy to share it in the presentation I share after um if you're calculating that in the US. Uh And um I should have mentioned this at the start, but uh my background in the space is I started doing these talks to um open up access to this info to more people. And so now I work at Stewart and I've started steward and our whole goal is to help people. Um And many more people beyond just the already multimillionaires, figure out these kind of enough numbers and tailor these estimates further. Um Because what I should point out on this rough math is it not factoring in things like buying a house along the way or paying for college and we like to help families tailor for that as well.

Um But that's just a rough ballpark rate and look lots of other things could happen. Maybe your expenses will change, maybe um other things will shift in the market, but this is just a pretty good ballpark to get you started and saying like, what number of zeros? Right? Um Am I looking at here to kind of feel comfortable and some families when they see that they realize, and I grew up in an immigrant family, right? Where there was this constant like scarcity mindset of, oh my gosh, we just have to keep working. Like my dad used to say work is worship and only when I met my husband, he was like, isn't worship, worship. But um but yeah, it, it's to just sort of create an idea of like, OK, um if there isn't enough point, I, by the way, also find this concept really helpful and probably the only defense against the envy and competition game, right? Of, you know, I even asked myself, it's tough not to do this when you were on linkedin or something like that, of seeing, oh, this and that person's career success. But really at the end of the day, like, are you on track towards your own enough number? Like, and that's it like, that's the game, right? Uh And it's funny, I often get asked, like, how much should I have in savings if I'm 20? And this enough number is a lot better to start to like, navigate against.

Because the answer is different depending on the person. If you're out buying a Ferrari every year, you're gonna need a lot more in savings than someone who's living frugally. And so comparing versus peers can be a bit of a, a weird game because everyone has different spending levels.

Um, but let me pause there and, and feel free to add any questions. Um, if, uh, if you have questions on, on this as we go, so let's go next to, um, I'm just gonna go back to the top, uh, personal money mistakes, um, that I've seen other families make and feel free to add in the chat. If there's one of these, you can just put in the number that you want to hear more about. Um, I can dig in further on, on the ones you're interested in. Um, I'm gonna start with the Goldilocks problem and what do I mean by the Goldilocks problem? That's like, you know, that old tale of, uh, someone having too hot of porridge or too cold or too big of a bed, too, too little, but in this case, it's either having too much cash or too little in cash and I say cash as opposed to like actually getting it invested in the stock market.

Um, and what I've seen, uh, in particular for women is an instinct of kind of hoarding cash and having too much in cash. So let's get really tactical on how much to have in cash. Um And that's my first challenge for you as a takeaway from the session. Um And so, you know, your first kind of do is figuring out your personal cash number that's strategic. Um uh And how to do that. So what you want to do is take the, you know, that estimate we do annual spend, figure that out by month. And you can again use a tool like mint.com, you can do some back of the envelope math um and figure out that monthly spending number, what you then want to do is say how many months of expenses would make me feel comfortable that I could sleep at night, right? In a worst case scenario, if my income cut off, I lost my job. There was a major medical expense that was unexpected like that would help me cover um a pause of of work and just some guidelines to start if you're a single uh income household or you know, the earner for your household, I would, you know, the benchmark is starting at six months if you're part of a double income household with an alternate kind of safety net.

Um I would suggest three months, ultimately, you know, your number, my husband grew up in a family with a lot of financial instability. And so for him. That number is 12 months. Right. You have to know yourself. But the key thing is getting that number because otherwise if you don't do that multiplication of m monthly expenses times, let's say three months, what can happen is that cash can just start to build and inertia is there and it's just not going to go back to work. Um For you, a big mindset shift for me as I started going deeper and deeper on investing was I was raised, put your head down and work at, right? And there's all this stuff for women, negotiate your pay, et cetera and like a part of it breaks my heart because what good is all that cash you negotiated so hard for if it's not going back to work for you, right? And so um that's that mindset and I've seen born out family after family and the numbers is your money can earn more than you can. And I say that with a lot of humility, right? You are a bad ass woman in tech, but like your money will actually be able to earn more than you can if you get it invested. Um And so that was kind of an eye opener for me.

Um Any questions on other mistakes here, please feel free to throw it in the chat of once you're curious about. Um And if not, we'll talk about missing a savings bucket. So let's first just talk about savings in general. Um what I suggest for savings and by savings, I mean, um your future self, right? Spending on your future self. That's, that's how I define savings. A nice way to uh break this down is um the 50 30 20 rule. And so of your overall income, you want to be spending 50% on needs. Uh no more than 30% on wants of like, you know, the nice to have stuff of life. Um I am not about, you know, full Spartans like I think you do want to live in the moment. So that's that 30% and then 20% on savings. So that's a good thing to check for yourself of, am I in like, am I putting away kind of 20% of my income towards my future self or, or to pay down debt? And so just through being on this call, you were above average, right? In terms of engagement, education like you really even signing in for this. So don't be, don't be under average on your savings rate.

Um and look, there are excusable things like caring for a loved one that's sick, etcetera, but eating out et cetera can be things here and, and I see a question coming in on lifestyle crates. So let's cover that too if you're feeling like, oh, I'm not sure if I'm at that 20%. What I mean by lifestyle creep is uh here's what it sounds like because I didn't think I was guilty. And then I heard it and I said, oh, I'm guilty. Is I am working so hard. Don't I deserve X and X is, you know, insert expensive item here. And what I found time after time I, I used to work with a lot of high power women attorneys and we did a survey of like, what's your number one issue? And we thought it was gonna be, you know, some fancy investing or tax thing turned out the number one issue was cash flow. They were spending so much, they, they hated their job. And so they were kind of spending to compensate for that. And so they were really nervous, their spending had outpaced, even their massive income growth. And so I am all for, you know, uh getting a piece of the dream that maybe your parents didn't have et cetera.

But the key thing here is, um, that mindset of your investments can earn more than you can. And in order to do that, like putting something away for savings. Ok. So that's lifestyle here is how to prevent it. I'm gonna say something cheeky. I think budgeting is not great. And, and I thought what I mean by that is like, not that it's not great as an idea. Like it's a great idea, but it's not a great idea is not only good but it's implement and what I have seen time after time with people, families trying to budget is they're really good about it for the first few months. But then their app starts sending you're spending too much on food, et cetera and people just start to, it's really hard to stick with. And I say this as a person who has an unused workout bike behind me. And so if you're that person who can really stay on top of budgeting, go for it. Like all the more power to you if you're the person with the unused workout bike, um who worries about that? I would recommend something called reverse budgeting and reverse budgeting is saying that I am going to start by paying my future self first automatically sending money from my paycheck into an investment account every month. And that way you fill up your plate with veggies.

So there's less room for dessert and humans are amazing at kind of subconsciously knowing how much is left in their bank account. And you can let that happen subconsciously without constantly having to check every dollar you spend on coffee or something nice for yourself. And so reverse budgeting if there was and I'm gonna add that as the second to do from today, setting up some kind of automatic investing every month, right? Um Even if it's start small. Um but that's an amazing habit for wealth building to get into. And there's a lot of tech tools today that allow you to automate that, right? So you do the good inspiration the first time and then it'll kind of go deliver in the future. Um Any other uh questions um that you have around some of these common mistakes that um I'm listing here. Um I'm seeing a question from Marie, uh great question on how to invest um without risk or losing your initial investment. Um And uh let's, yeah, let's talk about, you know, different investment methods. Um We're just gonna go to the next slide. Um So what I laid out here and I will raise my hand, some of this is designed for a US audience. So I will um I will call out those as I go because I know a bunch of international folks are joining us today, but I think about putting your dollars to work, think of this as a cascading waterfall.

So I'm gonna fill up row one, then move to the next row, then the next row, then the next row. And so um this is maybe you specific but like first up your employer retirement plan, oftentimes they'll match the money you're putting in, that's free money it's worth pursuing. Um The second is that emergency fund we talked about. Uh And so Marie, this is a place, it's not really an investment, it's more of savings, but there's a really neat new set of banks called high yield savings banks. And um I think you but like often established players. So there's players like um uh in the US Market ally. Um and these are high yield savings and effectively they offer you a way better rate of return. Almost 50 Acts of a standard bank account. And why is that? They don't have a giant footprint of physical stores and so they're, they have lower costs and they pass that on to you um to be able to give you a higher interest rate in your bank account. Um They're like the tech disruption of banking. And so, um and market is actually, you know, run out of Goldman Sachs Ally is also very reputable. Um I use Ally personally but you know, you can't go wrong and you can search in your own country, you know, it does these types of things exist.

Um And I recommend those. Um I'll just cover a few others. I'm, I'm gonna cover row four and feel free to call out questions on the other rows, how to read this, by the way, as you know, what bucket to save into, why, how much to put in and then what are some ideas of, of where to put it? So uh Maria, I have bad news for you. There is, there are not like part of investing is literally taking a risk, right? And in return for the risk getting a higher reward. Uh And so there is not, you know, risk free investments uh by and large, but I have some good news to that bad news. The risk massively can reduce over time with two things. One, if you diversify, meaning instead of putting it all on black in a single bet, if you kind of choose a much wider spread of things you're investing in. Uh I think of it often as you know, like your college graduating class, right? Would you, if you could choose one student who was going to be successful, um Would you prefer to say I'm going to just choose one student and really hope they're successful or would you prefer to invest in the whole class?

And like odds are you're gonna find, you know, within that, there's going to be the one kid who is the Mark Zuckerberg um of that year. And so it's kind of diversifying. Um and the other thing that can help is having a long time horizon, right? That the market does go up and down, you know, pretty dramatically any given day, but over the long term and we'll talk about this in a bit. It is a nice up into the right curve. And so, um I think about investing like building a house in an earthquake zone, you are 100% expecting an earthquake. It's not a matter of if, but when, but you're gonna build it prepared for an earthquake, right? And you're gonna have that safety net of your emergency fund, you're not gonna pull money out, you know, just when you see a, a momentary drop, you're in it for the long haul to stay the course. Um But great question. Uh and immediately like for a lot of you, there might be a goal. I want to buy a house in the next couple of years. And so for that, I would recommend not the, the math strictly. The math is that if you do a uh portfolio that's 30% in stock and 70% bonds. Um That historically has been the max kind of like risk you can take and higher reward you can take.

Uh But even if there's a 2008 financial crisis that happens tomorrow within a couple of years, you would have been, you know, back to uh zero. In other words, back to where you started. And so for folks who are like, I have a goal in a couple of years, I don't want to be super risky with that. Um, that 37 it's gonna grow less fast and putting everything into stocks, but it's gonna be a conservative place to still see your money, um, grow over time. Um Let me go back. I saw there was a question on, unless there's any other questions on this chart, I'm happy to go deeper on any of these. Um And I'm actually getting a few questions of folks asking again for the copy of the presentation. So I'll share that in a second as well. Um But it looks like there was a question on the insurance track. Um And so that's a great one. So I'm gonna by a disclaimer. I do not sell, I guess not a disclaimer. I claim that I like, I do not uh sell insurance. And if you're ever getting insurance advice from someone, your first question to them should be. Do you sell insurance? Right.

Because then I like to follow the money and just make sure like am I taking their advice with a grain of salt if they're, they're aiming to kind of push insurance on me the insurance track. Um I have another wealth advisor friend and she says that her main job is to prevent people from getting oversold on insurance by a quote unquote, nice young man. And I say this um I'm sure I've offended someone on the call whose spouse or um sibling or they themselves work in insurance. But uh and I used to, I used to work in, you know, uh serve some insurance companies too, but my answer here is that um at least in the US term T er M life insurance um is the right and also happily most affordable option for most people. It's also less lucrative for insurance professionals to sell to you. And so you won't hear about it as much, but I recommend kind of really doing your homework. Um Peter Thiel. Um It has this funny joke where he's like if you mix insurance plus investing or insurance plus tax strategies, you end up with a house boat, which is not a very good house and not a very good boat.

And so, um I, I just, there are, you know, particular insurance types that are the right fit for like specific people, but I guess I would go in really antenna up if anyone's ever trying to mix investing in, in insurance with you. Um You might have heard of Whole Life insurance, universal, variable, universal uh and another good website to check out just to like jargon bust. Some of this is policy genius.com. They like break down in plain English a bunch of insurance policies but um great question on, on the insurance tab. Um Any questions on any of these other uh pieces um on questions around uh investments uh or kind of personal finance mistakes. Um I'll add one last one which is the kind of I got this advice, Amy Poehler. She's a famous comedian in the US and she actually give us advice on parenting that what's good for them isn't always good for me. And so someone might tell you, oh hot stock tip, you should buy XYZ. But my first question for investing is like, start with your goal and work backwards. And does the person giving you advice have the same lifestyle constraints, spending needs career goals as you do? Like if they do, it may be more worthwhile listening to their investing advice. If they don't like, that's a moment. Where I'd say. Hm.

I don't know if we have the same risk profile or if we have the same goals of what we want to do out of investing. So that's a, that's a good one to remember. Um, because, you know, I just sent the copy of the uh presentation. Um, let's talk about investing and just getting really tactical on that. Um Oh, number four can be tricky. Let's go back. Oh, yeah. Lifestyle group. Amen. Um It is a really tricky one and I think that reverse budgeting has been kind of my best saving grace there or just automatic savings over time and also a bit of grace, right? Of understanding, there's gonna be periods of life where maybe you're not able to save as much as you want, but at least um have you heard the phrase sunlight can be the best disinfectant? So literally just putting sunlight on it, knowing roughly what your spending number is is already a great even a scary step. And then also knowing roughly what your savings percentage is that could just be good if it it it's a really nice way to inspire some of the actions you wanna be taking. Um Let's talk about investing.

So investing is made out to be supremely uh complicated and um really it boils down into two big schools of thought which I'm laying out right here. There's the active camp and the passive camp. And so the active camp says, um I'm gonna do a bunch of research uh and pick individual stocks, um based on, you know, their, what I've learned about them, et cetera. Uh The other camp is passive and what that says is rather than trying to individually find the needle in the haystack, I'm gonna buy the whole haystack. Um And you might have heard this called Tracker Funds or index funds. Um That means like an example of an index in the US, the S and P 500 it's the biggest 500 stocks. And so you're saying I'm gonna just uh you know, use that whole basket as opposed to doing individual picks. So any guesses in the chat on, what do you think? Warren Buffett, probably the most famous investor of our time has laid out for his trustees of his will. So this is where all the money goes when Warren Buffett dies, you know, for his future family. Um And by the way, that number, we can check the latest, I think it's like somewhere around $100 billion which is, which is just wild. Wow, you guys got it. This blew my mind, right?

He is an active stock picker like that's what's made him famous and he literally lays out in his will, a two ingredient investment portfolio. So if you're looking to get started, this is Warren Buffett's very simple two ingredients. He puts 90% in a low cost S and P 500 index fund. And he literally suggests the provider vanguard, which I also happen to really like, uh as well too. What I like about them by, by the way, why they're always kind of really good on low cost. They're not owned in the stock market, they're not owned by a family. Um, they're effectively almost set up like a co op or they're owned by their own shareholders. A kau if you invest in them. And so they're constantly driving down cost. So he says, low cost S and P 500 index bond of 90% and 10% in short term government bonds theme. That's it. And what's amazing about that? And I'm gonna kind of talk a lot about this passive investing strategy is uh there's an amazing old Wall Street book and the title of the book is the punchline of the story. I'm about to tell you, but it talks about a guy from a small farm town coming to visit some very fancy, you know, finance town and he sees all these beautiful yachts and boats of investment bankers and asset managers.

And he asked a very simple question, where are the customers? Yachts? And that's the title of the book. And my dad gave that to me when I, when I went to Harvard Business School um as a reminder for me and it's really inspired me in my life of where are the customer's yachts, right? And so there's a lot of incentives in the finance industry to tell you you need the super complicated fancy thing. But actually, you know, the good news, if you're starting investing is like simple answers can get you a ton of the way there. Um It's really a psychology game as opposed to, uh, uh, a technical game and women by the way, are killer at both. Right? Um And how I think about psychology first is this is just good life advice, think about things that matter and things that think you can control and focus on the overlap of the two and for investing, you know, that's things like your expenses for investing and your own emotions around it, right?

Um Whereas what's out of your hands is all the stuff that makes the headlines, right? S and P 500 down 20% bloodbath in the market that makes a good headline because it sells newspapers or online blog content. But in reality, and I'll show you a chart that really drove this home for me in a second um that adjusts over the long term. Um And we talked about diversification. So I'm gonna skip ahead. But the another question I asked you on investing is, and this is really what drove home for me that your money can earn more than you can. My question for you is how much would a dollar in 1926 be worth today if you left it in cash versus if you put it in kind of large stocks over time. And that's a large cap in the finance industry. Um And what's fascinating to see here is this is the chart that finally got on my seat investing. If you had left it in cash and even if it was magical and kept faced with inflation, it would be only worth $14 in the bank account, right? Whereas if you put it into large cap stocks, it would be worth 7000 and smaller cap stock 20,000. And why I show you this chart and this is coming back to your question, right?

That blue line, the Rocky Road where that investor did lose money along the way, right? But that's the cost of admission to this wealth building ride. The gray line, nice and smooth but gets you only to 14 the blue lines, more Rocky Road, right? But much more wealth building capability. So a huge thing here is just having a long term mindset, right? And through being on this call, you are not likely someone who's already in their sixties and seventies, you have time to let this run out. I think the number one advice I would give you is kind of stay the course, especially right now, there's a lot of market headlines, things are dipping et cetera. But um I like to also just show um this chart as well of these were all of the reasons to sell, right? Um of at each point in time. And by the way, if you are feeling tempted and scared when there's a dip in the stock market, you are not alone, right? It is um, a neurological response in your mind. They've done brain mapping of when you see your market, um your stock investments go down, it causes the same brain reaction as being in mortal danger, like it's wired into us.

And so what I'm saying about this is I'm acknowledging it, but like the first step is awareness, right? If you realize that's the emotional reaction you're having, I like to look at this chart and remind myself man, if I had just stuck it out, right? What I could um achieve and, and what I see all too often for families is this kind of cheeky illustration which is um you know, buying at the top, everyone's showing off about their Tesla investment then selling at the bottom, which is happening a ton right now. And it's so sad for me to see and then just this vicious cycle that, that repeats. Um So I, I know we only have a couple of minutes left. So I'm just gonna skip ahead a bit to tech tools that are helpful. And I'm happy to share these slide. I also encourage you if you've found anything helpful um for uh for yourself, that's um uh a tool that's helpful or did I get kicked out? Sorry about that. No, thanks. Uh hopefully you guys can still hear me. I'm, I'm not able to see you. Oh, ok. I'm back. Um, but uh there's a lot of tools that are kind of out there to go look at and so I've shared a few of my uh favorites here um for budgeting. Um There's, you know, a reverse budget is my favorite, but there are some good budgeting apps and there's actually a great uh subscription trimming app because all of us are like on the software as a service type models, but true bill and trim, they'll even go fight the cable bill for you.

If you're conflict averse, they'll, they'll go do it. Um I uh for brokerage accounts, I really like Vanguard and Fidelity um Betterment and M one are also good options that kind of take you even one step further and we automate all of that for you. Um And uh if you're looking for more financial planning stuff, um I'll raise my hand and I'm gonna go back a slide um for a second, but um I'll be the first to say like there is no one single silver bullet for folks. Um I am in the category of like a hybrid that's both uh a human advice plus using, you know, cutting edge tech. I, I love that combo, but I'm not the right answer for everybody. Um And so kind of going out to do your homework and kind of figuring out based on where you are in this quote unquote enough journey, um figuring out the right match for you. Um And what I'll also share some of my favorite books to read. If I had to recommend a single book, it would be um the Simple Path to Wealth, um which is by JL Collins. He wrote it for his teenage daughter. So it's in plain English, it's terrific. Um And there's also uh I don't even know if this counts as a book, but the first one is if you can, how millennials can get rich slowly. And so that's a great one as well.

Um But one last thing I'll share and I hopefully we have more time to open up for questions. I'm happy to stick around another, you know, 5, 10 minutes. But um if you'd like a copy of the presentation, I've shared the link uh in the chat and um you know, would love to also connect with you on linkedin um or hear from you. And what I'll also share is the reason I actually got invited to this is someone else who attended one of my presentations said, hey, I think this community could benefit. And what I'd love to ask your help is in paying it forward. Um If you're part of a work community that could benefit from this, I do one pro bono talk each tweak and I'd love to come join uh your work community and help you spread the word. Um, really, I think I hate that this is kind of limited to the 0.1%. And so, um, I'd love to work with you to spread it to more people. Um, so most important, certainly. I am so glad you took this time for yourself. I'm giving you a high five virtually. Um, because this is step one. Right. Even looking at this, which is scary. You just did it. Um You're awesome for doing this.

Um And um I, I'm hoping that, you know, we get a chance to meet in prison at some point and, and I really appreciate you guys joining today. Um I'll stick around to answer any questions for the next uh five and 10 minutes. Um Looks like there's one from uh Cassie on uh what your advice would be per emergency savings versus investing. Yes. Awesome question, Cassie. Let's go back to the um kind of waterfall chart that I shared. So what I recommend is step one getting that emergency fund set up and why is that? Like, I'm gonna go back to just overall values. Um The number one predictor and they looked at this in a lot of studies of happiness for people is a sense of control and security. And so, um that emergency fund is the like sleep well at night fund, right? Of not putting you in a position where you're having to take a job you really don't like. Um, because you know, money is tight, et cetera. So I would always recommend row two that filling up the emergency fund before starting to um invest kind of more aggressively or maybe what you want to do is kind of do them side by side and start, just start, you know, um $10 a month, $100 a month um into investing but, but make the primary the major versus the minor goal um that emergency fund.

Um But great question. Any other? Uh no, what was the question? How do you get back on track with budgeting after a big lifestyle change? Um Yeah, that's an awesome question and by the way, like very common. Um What I'll share with you first is something that I know, I see a lot of people's incomes and trajectories over time, but I know that's rare. Um There's a nerdy wealth advisor joke that like if you ask people at a table to share their income versus to share the last time you had, they had sex, uh they'll all, you'll a very sexy conversation because people are so nervous to share their income and I understand it right?

Like we're raised kind of unfortunately with this like taboo around money. Um But I guess what I'm gonna first share with you, Noel is like that big lifestyle changes and swings and expenses like you got, if you're thinking about that, you have a lot of company and by the way, also people's income trajectories are quite, it's not this flat up into the right that I had originally dreamed of back when I was in college.

So um I would say the first step for this piece is to do a bit of your own personal check in on your budget. Like look at the numbers is step one. And um I would say another exercise I really like to do is something that I call values based um budgeting. And what that is is I take my budget um for the past year or not budget, my actual spending um for the past year and I sort it from get the smallest. And then I say, you know, what uh can I link those to a value in my life? That's really important to me, right? Like um family, right? A big childcare. So I have a two year old and a seven month old. We spend a ton on childcare, but that's a value that's really important to me. But if there's some big expenses in there where you're like, oh, this is not aligned with the value that's important to me or there's a value that's important to me that like is missing. That's a really nice way to kind of come back to it. I'm gonna also share um a blog post I wrote about lifestyle creep and how to combat it. Um That goes deeper on that question. Um The other thing I would suggest is this reverse budgeting tactic?

Right, of starting to set aside, um, money for your future savings and then letting you know the rest kind of the work get done for you since you're setting that aside for the future. Um, great question. Um, any other, uh, questions that I missed from earlier, um, or common mistakes folks wanted to hear about or pieces around, um, fees. I knew there was a question earlier. I'll just do one last question, uh that came through of this kind of uh idea around um good for them equals good for me. And what I meant by that was, um just really checking that like, I think that's false. In other words, like oftentimes people will be really aggressive about promoting a particular investment type, but it's not always, you know, the one that might make the most sense for you. Um because I, I'll just give a simple example if you want to buy a house in three years, taking advice from, you know, a single tech, bro who has no Children to support and doesn't have a home buying goal. It's maybe not the best idea, right? You just have different, different uh situations and what you want to use the money for what I like doing in my own investing portfolio is giving every dollar a quote unquote use by date, you know, like how milk it's like use by June 1st, et cetera.

And that's helpful for me and also providing me from selling at dips because if the use by date on my retirement account is 2050 like the stuff that happens tomorrow, not that big a deal, like I'm not going to sweat it. And it's amazing. Actually, this is a place where laziness pays off. People who only check their investing account once a year do better than people who check daily. Because if you check daily, you're gonna see a lot of red and that's scary. And so in some ways, kind of taking this long, deliberate and even quote unquote lazy approach can, can be a positive, um, uh, tax saving strategies. Um, there are lots of, um, neat strategies out there. Um, the page I direct you to and I'll show this in the presentation is, um, this ones and row 56 and seven are some really neat tax strategies to go out and research. Um, if you have kids, the 529 is like terrible industry jargon. It's a tax break for saving for them, for college. Um, the Roth Ira and back door, Roth Ira. You can check out more of those on our, on our blog at our steward.com. Um, those are neat tax strategies. Um, and another neat one, I'll share for you if any of you are charitably minded, but giving money to charity and this is for the US specifically. So sorry for folks who are international.

But if you give money as a stock as opposed to in cash, you'll get taxed on the gains of that stock so you can effectively give 20% or 15% more to charity. Um, if you donate, uh, stock versus cash, that's one that was a surprise for me to learn. Um, so that's a really neat one as well. But, um, check out our blog, we're constantly posting more neat strategies on that one. Um, J has a question on small cap funds. Yeah. So this is a good question, right? Um I think you are 100% right? That small cap, you know, slightly is higher risk. Um And just that makes sense in theory, right? Like smaller companies on an extreme, you could say VC companies, right? They're banking on nine out of 10 companies failing lots of extreme risk, but then small cap is kind of further along in their journey and large cap has more power. Um Actually, the data has shown Eugene Fama Nobel Prize winning research has shown that small cap companies and you saw that on my chart have slightly outperformed um large cap, you know, over long periods of time. And that's uh there's different theories on why that has been shown out in the data. But um a part of it is, you know, it's uh harder for a giant Titanic ship to grow than a small robot, right?

It's just, it's just becomes harder for something to grow over time. Um I would say the key thing for you and this is maybe more sitting down with, you know, an advisor just figuring out based on your goals, um the breakdown. But um I would say that uh that those work over kind of longer time horizons. And if you're truly diversifying, right, if you're taking that's on a single small cup stock that can, that can get a little scarier. Um You're welcome you to come try what we do at stew to try other providers like uh Vanguard has an advice tool, um as well and, and that can kind of figure out the right asset allocation for you specifically. Um What I will say is if you're looking for like, uh this is a true like set it and forget it, solution our target date fund. Um I'll, I'll write it in the chat, um is a one and done solution and that will literally figure out the right allocation for you. And these are blowing up in popularity in retirement funds and for some reason people aren't using them outside of retirement, which is, which is silly.

It's, you know, the fees are really low and great and it'll automatically do all the work to rebalance to get more and more conservative as you get closer to your goal. Um So those are, those are a great option if you're worried about allocation choices. Um I've gone 10 minutes past our time, but it's only been honestly been a pleasure to meet the folks on the call. Um And uh please do reach out, I'll, I'll write my email here as well. Um If you know your company, I focus as you probably are these past strategies of folks in the US. But um if you are, you know, based in the US and, and would be interested in, you know, having me come chat. I, I'd love to hear from you and would love to connect on linkedin as well. Have an awesome time at the rest of the conference and uh great to meet. Thanks again for doing this.