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Strategies To Manage Financial Stress · HPK Provident Advisors: The Weekly Bull

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome back nurses.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I'm on edge today.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit stressed.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Brian's real tired dealing with me.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's not true, partially true Today's episode what are some actual strategies to reduce financial stress?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Brian hit him with the study that we came across this week.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an interesting one.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: This is from Bankratecom.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So in April of 2023, in a bank rate survey, 52% of US adults said money has a negative impact on their mental health, and everybody out there knows everybody out there listening knows that if it has an effect on your mental health, ultimately it's going to have an effect on your physical health.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: So, 52% of US adults said money has a negative impact on their mental health, including causing stress.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Of this group most of this group, 82% of them of the US adults who say money negatively impacts their mental health said it was caused by economic factors, which is interesting because their stress is being caused by something outside of their control.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Which is tough.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: That's tough.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: It's tough, but is it accurate?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: We're going to look at that Top-sided, money-related issue.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: negatively impacting mental health is insufficient emergency savings.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: That's a big one, and that is probably the first thing we'll chat about getting fixed, no doubts.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Also.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Interestingly, women are more likely to experience financial stress than men.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: 56% of women said money has a negative effect on their mental health, compared to 47% of men.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It's pretty close, so it's almost split, just slightly elevated, because I was going to say I think in the interactions I've had I have almost had a different experience about that.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I would agree with that.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I think most of the couples we work with, a lot of times it's the man who seems to be, you know, the husband, that seems to be a bit more stressed than the other party.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Well, the way I read that is.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It says 47% of men say that money has a negative effect on their mental health.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: So the other 53% are liars.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: True, that 29% of those say that money is a stressor, 29% of them worry about it daily.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, i mean, this is a big cause of stress which affects mental health, then ultimately affects physical health.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: no, there's no doubt there.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Money causes stress, right?
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: More money, more problems.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That's what they say, And it is true.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's a stress for everybody.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: You know they also.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: If you don't have enough money.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: You want more money.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: You've got too much money, or where does the government's going to take it all?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So there's stress there.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: What is it the widest in the wise words of Dane Cook, who I think disappeared into the sunset years ago?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it's fantastic, hope he still is.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You know, money won't buy happiness, but it'll buy you a jet ski.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But so, joking aside though, what are some real strategies that we can help our nurses with to reduce some of that stress surrounding finances?
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I think we're going to keep it really basic here in this episode and just give you some actionable stuff to go take home and do, because this is you know, this is a big thing, right?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Stress impacts you negatively, both emotionally and physically, you know.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: You know, if we throw our dirty corporate word wellness out there, you know wellness is affected by stress.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And what can we do to reduce that stress?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of it comes from understanding and just proper planning.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest thing.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time on our practice and we have an entire letter of our financial planning process dedicated to reducing stress.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: That's the R in our nursing process, right?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: So it's super important.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: But where?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: what's the very basic start of it?
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I would say that first stat you read I believe it was that the lack of funds to cover emergencies, if I kind of paraphrase it.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So, numero uno financial planning topic, as basic as it gets what I tell every single person we work with.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: You know most people have already gotten this covered, but Let's start here from the very basics, right?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: No judgment here.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Get an emergency fund, you know.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: If you don't have one, get one.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And what's an emergency fund?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: What's an appropriate level?
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: That's kind of that's a personal question, right?
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I can't help you answer that, but I can give you the general guidelines Bare minimum three months of living expenses in cash at all times.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Or you know something, what we like to call in the industry liquid.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Like what earth?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: You can flow it right out of there to wherever it needs to go.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You can get to it right away, right away.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So that would be.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: A bare minimum is three months, depending on your situation, even up to a year or more, depending on your employment situation, what that looks like, your home life, things like that.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: That becomes very dependent.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But step one get an emergency fund.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: There is nothing worse than having a big expense come up and not having the resources to pay for it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Right, and there's, you know, there's times where you're gonna have to get a little bit creative and do that, but for the most part, having an emergency fund will alleviate a lot of those issues and problems.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree and recognize we talked about it in another episode the opportunity cost.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: There's always an opportunity cost, right?
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: If I do one thing, that means I'm not doing something else.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: When you're talking about limited resources, most limited resources or time and money, And you know, if you've got a big, healthy emergency fund, let's go to personal reserve.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be for emergencies, It could be for opportunities, Let's call this a personal reserve.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So you got a healthy personal reserve of at least three months, depending on you specifically, you know, maybe even a year or a little bit more.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: There's a good chance that those monies, that personal reserve, won't be earning a ton of money.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: So the opportunity cost is it could be placed somewhere else where it's growing faster.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: But I don't think that's a very high opportunity cost.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: I think those that personal reserve is doing what it's intended to do Absolutely And we really shouldn't look at that money and say, hey, that's the money that's really gonna grow into the future.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: It's there for a purpose.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: It's there for a very specific purpose And you know I like to call it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: how much do you need there Another way to look at it how much do you need in that account for you to sleep good at night knowing it's there?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of our gauge.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: What makes you sleep good at night?
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Reduce the stress.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're losing sleep, you gotta do change some things up.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: No matter what you're working on, if stress is causing you to lose sleep, let's change some things up, especially when it comes to finances.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the bank rate survey that I'm referencing, bankratecom survey that I'm referencing again, it's April 2023, that was the number one stressor.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Is the personal reserve or lack thereof.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: So let's get that squared away.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: So how do we do that?
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: What?
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, go ahead.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I find this fascinating because a vast majority 82% of the 52% that said they have money stress said it was because of economic factors, And yet the biggest concern is they don't have a personal reserve.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I've got some groundbreaking news.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: If you're listening and you don't have an emergency account, it's not an economic factor, that's a personal problem.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a personal problem.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: That's a misallocation of limited resources.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, definitely.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So, I mean not to the three-iron or the bus or anything, but that is not an economic factor, that's a personal factor, and that the good news is that's fixable.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: So I would say how do we fix that One budgeting?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna recommend something that's gonna cause you stress and then reduce it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: That's budgeting Right.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many people we have come in here our clients, prospects, everybody.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: We have a low percentage of folks we work with that actually have a budget.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I would say that's pretty accurate.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: We have a low.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: It's not a requirement to work with us.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: A lot of folks get by fine without one.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: But if you're in the port, we need to put up that emergency fund and you want some clarity and you really get to a point where money's causing you stress.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Spend some time on a budget.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: There are tons of great resources out there, a lot of great free resources, but taking control of your finances.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Often that's the first step And there's going to be some personal responsibility that comes along with that.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: There is going to be some, you know, maybe hard decisions, but that is a great way to get that emergency fund built up.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Start budgeting.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: But one of the most important parts about budgeting is make sure everybody in the family's on the same page.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, generally there's.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times we worry about money, we stress about money.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: There's two parties involved in a lot of these scenarios.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: We may have a spender and a saver, and that's tough to communicate.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You know, you have to deal with some upfront stress to reduce it in the long term and budgeting may be that for you.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: So even if you There's so many things that we do in financial planning that come down to a simple concept short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Short-term sacrifices.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: be honest with yourself and those close to you about what you're spending, absolutely.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: You know most people, if they're doing it in their mind, they're undershooting what they're actually spending by 20 or 30%.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, for sure.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And you know that kind of brings us into be smart with the debt you're acquiring.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Let me say that again Be smart with the debt you're acquiring.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: You don't have to have a new car every year, you don't have to have the latest and greatest iPhone, like something as simple as an iPhone.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: It's amazing where we've gone, where I remember, you know, when iPhones first came out, it was one of those things that you would go, spend a ridiculous amount of money and go buy an iPhone And then you had your iPhone until you broke it and then you had to go spend a bunch of more money and get an iPhone.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Now you spend a bunch of money and get an iPhone, but they spread it over like what?
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: three or four years with all this.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: It doesn't even feel like that anymore.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: That's just my payment.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: It's just my payment.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: It's debt.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: It's debt, right?
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Even even now, that's pretty much always no interest, right?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: That's a silly example.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: But even things as simple as that, like you're taking on debt in all these different things.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And you know one other thing in the scheme of debt those subscription services.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Everything is a subscription service now, absolutely.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I bet you have at least 50, 60 bucks a month.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: You can cut out a subscription to your life.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I could probably think of some right now that I don't use that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I'm still subscribed to that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: You can cut out Just some quick, easy ideas to try to reduce some stress, free up some money while you're working on that budget and work on while you're getting that emergency fund built up and you're getting your budget.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Don't take on any additional debt and make sure that your debt service level is reasonable in relation to your income.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And what do I mean by that?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: There's, you know, a couple of different factors you can look at.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But you know, i would say if you set aside 30% of your income to cover kind of your housing, your debt service, all of that, i don't really like to see it go much higher than that.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Roughly 30%.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So say you make a hundred thousand a year, 30,000 of that would go to housing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: You know debt service things like that.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Do you agree with that number?
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: is your number a bit different there?
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: know I'd agree with that number, but you know I'm looking a little bit more at this bank rate survey, so we gotta be careful about this.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Major causes of stress not sufficient emergency fund.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Number two is being in debt.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they don't break down the type of debt.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: No, and that's a very good distinction.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about types of debt.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: You know, i'd say the most common, one of the most common for nurses is student loans.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Right, we work with a lot of nurses who have student loans kind of well into their working years And it's really important to come up with a plan to pay those down.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I think Loans and that type of loans and student loans kind of always feel like a burden, even if they are good loans, even if you know needed to take them out to Get you to fund your education, to invest in yourself, to start a career and something you love doing.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Right, so student loans are Project your forward into, hopefully, higher earning absolutely positions, but a lot of people that feels like a burden and it causes stress and without a plan or a specific timeline Where you're looking to pay those off, that can that can hurt a lot too, and I would agree that you know.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Say, you get a student loan, you got and get a car, you go out and get a mortgage You can't quite afford and then all it feels like everything you're bringing every month is going out the door before it even comes in.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: That's a stressful place to be for anybody.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: So maybe Take a look at your current situation, do some, you know, self-evaluating, see where you're at budget, budget, budget, budget.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: But so let's say we've kind of done all these things.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I think most people would say their largest asset is.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Their house, their house, yeah, it's not your ability to make money.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Your largest asset is the education that you receive, the experience and your ability to continue to make money.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: That's really a largest asset, unless you're retired, then that's your house.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Well then, it's That's your house, and for a lot of people who you know, it's the retirement savings.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: At that point, definitely, but in your working years, mm-hmm, your biggest asset is your ability to make money.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And so let's let's talk about what can, what can really throw stress.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So you feel like you're stressed now, but if things go sideways and you're unable to work and You're unable to take advantage of your skill set, that can become an extremely stressful, extremely extremely stressful, especially without an emergency fund, especially without an emergency fund.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So one, that's the reason for emergency fund, but it's important to have the proper protection out there as well.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: And There's you know, that's a whole another podcast, but just at least start thinking about having protection in place.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: That's Health insurance, that's, you know, that's insurance for the most part.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: That's life insurance, health insurance, disability insurance.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, things like that are gonna make a bad situation bearable, instead of letting a bad situation really spiral out of control and put you in a very dark place.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Absolutely So that's it in the simple, simple way to look at insurance is You really want to look to ensure things that are low probability of occurrence, high impact.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: That's why you have insurance on your house.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yep, there's not a huge percentage of homes that there are some.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Obviously we see it on TV all the time where a tornado comes in and And blows the roof off On a percentage basis of the number of houses.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: That's not a very common, relatively not a common occurrence, but it has a huge impact.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And if your largest asset is your ability to work, it's not, percentage wise, going to be a high probability but would have a huge impact.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Those are the things you ensure.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely Well, let's take it from here.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: So I think a lot of the folks that we work with come to us with a basic understanding of this.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: They're budgeting, at least in some capacity, where and when I say some capacity, i mean they have a net positive inflow every month and they're able to save money.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: They have an emergency fund, they have some investments there.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: They're kind of well on their way.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: But they still have stress.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I would say their stress isn't necessarily coming from that first part.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: It's not coming from that lack of resources to meet immediate needs.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It's coming from maybe what's going on in their environment, in the economic environment, maybe the news they're hearing, but also it could come down to not having a clear path forward from where they are right now.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So I would say the next spot, once we kind of get those basics out of the way and we have a handle on it where do we go from there?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Well, emergency fund, manage debt.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: At least have a plan for the debt.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I'll throw this in here, the last one.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: These are all interrelated.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: The last of the top three in this bank rate survey is not having enough discretionary spending, which I would submit is because misallocation of valuable resources And you kind of tackle those stepwise.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Have an emergency fund, begin to tackle your debt.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: If you don't have enough discretionary spending, that comes down to budget.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: But you're calling it absolutely right.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: A lot of people come to us and say, oh my gosh, i've got a lot of pieces now.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of things going on.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Nursing stress is full enough as it is, especially in the last few years for all of the reasons that a lot of dynamics in health care, not as many practitioners at this point and all these other things.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: That's stressful enough.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Then you come home and then you start using to go from stressful items at work to stressful things at home with the money.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Where do we go from here?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Start a plan, start some clarity, organize all of the pieces, understand what role those pieces play in your life.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: What is my 401k?
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: What is my 403B?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Do I need an IRA If you have a spouse, what are my spouse's benefits in all these other things?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: First, it starts with understanding what each piece is, beginning to prioritize each of those.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: How much goes into my retirement plan at work?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: How much goes into an IRA, if I'm eligible for an IRA, and all those other things It really starts with take stock of what's there, understand how each of those things work on your behalf and then begin to execute on each of those.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Once you have the understanding of how they work, how they fit into your life and fit into your future, then you begin to let those things work for you as opposed to oh my gosh, i have no idea how much goes into my 401k.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the options are in there.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: That's stressful.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Once you understand what it is and what you have available to go towards those, and why you're putting money into those things and how they work, those things begin to work for you as opposed to against you.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And then the biggest thing is how do they all fit together?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And what he takes solace to is that there's a lot.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Brian, you just mentioned a ton of moving parts, but you don't have to tackle them all one day.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: You can take it step by step.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: But you can also seek professional help to help you make sense of it all.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And that's where we come in.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: In folks' lives a lot, a lot of folks that, as a nurse, you're educated, you're smart, you're bright, you're perfectly capable of being able to do enough research to figure this out, at least to get you on the right path towards retirement and having a successful retirement.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Well, with WebMD, i could probably go out and do surgery on myself.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: That's fair, but I don't want to take the time to Exactly.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Right, and that's the thing.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Time is your most valuable resource and if you would rather spend time with your family than looking over the investment options in your 401k or making investment decisions, then there's a strong point at this point, once you've got those basics down, to seek some outside help whether that's us, anybody, any other qualified financial advisor and we have a whole episode on what to look for in the planning process.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: But that is a great place to go from there to help Take all those moving parts and provide some clarity on it.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Either do it yourself or find some help to be able to outsource that part.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: And a lot of our clients are similar to your patients in the sense that a vast majority of patients probably did some level of self diagnosis and, whatever is going on with them, they did some level of treatment plan for themselves.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Right, i've got chest pains, i think it's heartburn, i'm going to take some antacids.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Well, they diagnose themselves with chest pains, they take some antacids, and then they reach a point where they think to themselves I need help.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I've got to go see people that really understand these things and get them engaged.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And that's the way a lot of our clients are.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: They do self diagnosis.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I want to retire at x age.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I have no idea.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: They go through the process of treating themselves, if you will, in the financial aspects.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Well, i'm going to do this, i'm going to do that, i'm going to buy some mutual funds, i'm going to go online, and then they realize this isn't working And then they seek professional advice.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: So it's very similar to the patient nurse dynamic.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Absolutely And I would say, if we take a step back.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: so planning is fantastic, but maybe we're not quite ready for that big full sweeping plan.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: We're not ready to bring in an outside professional.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Having a first step of targeted savings goals is probably a very good place to start for a lot of folks.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And that can be pretty simple.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: As a general rule of thumb, a bare minimum.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: You want to save 10% of your income.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I would say, especially as you get up in your working years, you want to save a bare minimum of 10% of your income, up into the 20% plus if you can.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: That's a good place to start because you may not understand what the big picture looks like yet, but at least you can set yourself up for success by having some consistent saving habits.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Pay yourself first.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Probably heard it a million times.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yep Got a lot of bills.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: some are required.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Keep the lights on that type of thing.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I've tried that.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, i'm just cheap, but you really got to pay yourself first, which really starts with that kind of personal reserve.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Again, a lot of people call it emergency fund, but it could be for opportunities as well and it's a personal reserve.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: So really sock away in that And paying yourself first could be also reducing debt.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, you don't have to go through a super detailed, elaborate financial plan to begin tackling those things, but be organized, understand how each of these things work.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Also, something that often helps me when I'm dealing with stress is really take a step back and think about the three different areas of things Things you can control, things you can influence and things you can't do a damn thing about.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's really important to understand what in your financial life falls under those categories, and we'll give you some quick examples just to help clarify that.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So your annual savings rate, your budget, where you're allocating your resources, is something you can control directly.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: What you can influence you can probably influence what your work-life balance looks like.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: You can probably influence where you decide to work.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: There's a ton of great opportunities for the nursing community right now.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: As far as careers go.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: You probably have some influence on what that looks like for you And you may have some flexibility and some options, because it's a very competitive landscape for nursing professionals right now.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: What you can't control you can't control what other people are going to do.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: You can't control what the market's going to do.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't control where your kids are trying to go to college.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Things like that You can influence.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: But you can definitely influence it.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: But so there's a lot of things you can't control, and if we can at least, it's impossible to not worry about things we can't control.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's insane.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: How much of just my I kind of philosophize and look around the world, how much stress do we overlay on ourselves on things we can't do anything about?
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: So much?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, can we really do anything about this administration or that administration, or who controls?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I mean we can barely influence They.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Let us believe we can influence it, but the reality is I can't really control what the Senate's going to vote on.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: No, i mean I really can't.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: But it's presented to me every day in the news and all over online that I really need to be stressed about this.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Do I?
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Do I?
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: No, no, what I can't control is how I react to it.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the biggest thing right, take a step back, breathe.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: There are very, very This is different than your job Some of the decisions you make in your job especially for our nurses working in trauma departments in things, some of the decisions you make are life or death.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: At work, some of those frontline decisions that have to be made quickly can be life or death When it comes to finances.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: There are very, very few things that are irreparable.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: There are very few things that are actually life or death decisions.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: There are a ton of mistakes you can make and recover from.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: So don't let the fear of making a mistake or doing something wrong or just not making a plan, don't let the fear of messing up keep you from trying something or trying to make a plan.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I think that's really important.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Don't let the fear of or the analysis paralysis keep you from acting and making healthy financial changes, because there's very few things you can mess up And if you're really worried about it, like we mentioned before, seek that professional advice.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and similar to nursing.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I mean there are processes and procedures.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: You can control what steps you take.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: You can certainly influence outcomes in a lot of ways by making sure that you're following the processes and procedures.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: You're engaging the resources, whether it be equipment, other healthcare professionals.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: You can certainly influence that.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: But occasionally and you all know this there are things you just can't do a damn thing about.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Some patients aren't gonna have a great outcome And it's certainly that stressful.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: But again, be comfortable with your processes and your procedures and influencing how you're engaging the resources available to you and really gravitate to those things And then the outcomes will fall where they may.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Financial planning is a very similar way.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Gravitate to the things you can control.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: You could certainly influence the amount of money that you make go into different roles in healthcare, different locations.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: You can certainly influence that and take control of some of that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: You can't really control the policy decisions that come out of Washington DC, but you can control how you react to those.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Definitely, financial planning is just very similar.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Quite honestly, it really is, and there's not rocket science either.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: That's the thing.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: It's people and the brokers of old that we talked about in length at one of our other podcasts.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: So the brokers of old held themselves out at these magical stock picking wizards that there was some big magic behind investment decisions and they were gonna beat the market every year.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: And financial planning is very much not that There's so much information at the fingertips of these managers.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Now Some people argue whether active management, which is actively picking stocks and bonds, is even an effective means of investing anymore, just because of how much access to information the world has.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: That's all another topic, but just keep in mind that this is not rocket science.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: There are some very basic themes that will help you plan for the future, reduce and reduce stress along the way, and so if we take this whole conversation and just encapsulate it in some very basic recommendations, what are those?
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I would say one spend less than you earn.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And these are gonna.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say these and be like Colin.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Obviously that makes sense, but they're being said for a reason.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: It's because they don't always happen, right, you know.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Spend less than you earn.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Give yourself as much time as you can for your goals, save as much as you can as early as you can, as long as you can, and have a positive outlook on your future.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Those would be my big takeaways from this.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: If we don't have hope for the future you know I'm a big proponent of that If there's no hope for the future, like, why are we doing anything right now?
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: So that kind of is where it all starts.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: For me is what I want my future to look like.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Write it down.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Hopes are only.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: You know what do they say?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: When you write something down, it becomes a goal.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Until then, it's just a dream.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: There's an actual quote like that, but I don't remember There is, you know, a goal without a plan is just a dream.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Oh thank you, and you know I can't find where I saw this, but I did.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: I did see it.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: All stats are made up on the fly, except for the bank rate ones.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I did read those off the internet, by the way, but I had seen.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: This is many years ago.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: They did a survey of successful people and they called success just wealth, and they had three characteristics At that time.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: It's probably changed.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: The good bit, maybe not.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: One characteristic is they had advanced education, and certainly the nurses were talking to you have advanced education check.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Two was that they had some sort of military and or scouting Boy Scouts, girl Scouts experience.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: The third was the most common and the most important.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: They had written goals.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: They wrote down.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: They had a physical representation of what they wanted to accomplish.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: If that physical representation is I wanna save an extra $100 a month towards my emergency goal, write it down.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: If that physical representation is I wanna pay off my student loans in three years, write it down.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: It's magic how, when things are written down Which is what we do here with financial plans We write them down, we put them in a physical forum, present them to our clients and hand it to them, and then it becomes a physical representation of what's been running around in their mind.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: So I would say putting pen to paper is very, very important, and I think many people will discover the magic of that simple act.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: So, to sum it all up, there are some basic things we can all do day in and day out that are gonna help alleviate some of that stress.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We can all try to not worry about things we can't control.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: But we know that the world we live in that's pretty tough these days.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: But being able to step back and look objectively at that and realize that we're worrying about things we can't control at least for me, helps frame it And then I'm able to let go a little bit more.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I might not fully let go of that stress because it's hard to do that and it's hard to do that for a lot of folks, but it'll at least give me an opportunity to do a little self realization of hey, this is where this is coming from.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I actually can't control this.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Is there something better I can be doing with my time?
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: The answer is always yes, but if I listen to myself, i'd be in a much better spot than I am now, and it's okay to ask for help.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: It's okay to ask for help.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: If you've got goals, write them down.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Ask for help, do the fundamentals, do the small things, and I think that is just a base of something we can all do to remove a little bit of stress from our finances every day.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: the world gives us plenty of stress And turn off the news.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: That's.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: You know, joking aside, the key to successful retirement is turning off the news.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm amazed at how many folks that we know just that.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I know, or I work within a professional capacity that they retire and they have more time and they spend more time on the news than they did when they were working.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: And there are studies and I don't know where any of these studies are either, but there's studies that equate the amount of time we spend on our phones to unhappiness, right?
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So the more time the studies are, basically, the more time we spend on our phones or on devices, the less happy we are.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, i take that like personal experience.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I think the least amount of stress I've ever had is when I was a rock climbing guide back in college.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Think to the time in your own life where you weren't stressed.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: It was probably, you know, probably some of your younger years, maybe it was high school, college didn't have a care in the world And think of how unplugged we really were at that moment.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I think, for me especially, that act of unplugging can be so powerful.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Even just turn off your cell phone I mean, bring it with you because you never know what's bad is gonna happen, but turn off your cell phone and go for a walk in the woods, you know, just take time to calm, have some time to yourself.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I think that can make a massive impact.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: A very simple act kind of a massive impact on your overall mental health and your ability to reduce stress day in and day out.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: As I said, turn off the news.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I think, if they're hundreds of years from now, if they look back and the civilization falls, I think the beginning of the end was the advent of 24 hour news.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: And then social media, just for a quick, a quick second.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: And Dennis Miller, who was from Pittsburgh, where we are located, in one of his comedy specials years and years ago.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: I can't even think of what year it was, but I just remember him saying don't we just look for things to bother ourselves with and remove those things that are a bother?
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Well, until next time.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: everybody, find less things to be bothered about, and we can't wait to catch up with you next show.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Be safe.