Latest / TaylorMade Retirement with Taylor Demars, CFP® / Conversation Starters: Questions Worth Asking About Your Financial Future

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Conversation Starters: Questions Worth Asking About Your Financial Future · TaylorMade Retirement with Taylor Demars, CFP®

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about money can be hard for some people, and sometimes it just takes the right question or two to get the ball rolling.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're unpacking some of the questions we've found to help people find purpose behind their planning.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Tailor Made Retirement, where we explore what it takes to build a retirement that works for your money and your life with third-generation certified financial planner Taylor DeMars.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome into the podcast.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for hanging out with us here on Tailor Made Retirement with Taylor DeMars.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we are going to talk about, I guess, conversation starters.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I had some stuff kind of listed out, Taylor, that I was going to toss at you and say, you know, maybe these are some different ways to ask people questions about money that's not really asking them about money.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because we get tight-lipped.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, especially depending on uh the way you were raised or type of generation, you know, what generation you're maybe from.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you I talk to advisors all across the country like yourself, and they'll say somebody comes in, they know they need financial help, and they they come in, they do the right thing, they make an appointment, they sit down, and then you start to talk and talk to them, and they're very tight-lipped.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Even though they know they need to discuss themselves, it's still really tough for people, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I had some of these that I was thinking about doing, but then it kind of thought about I thought, I bet you do some of this on your own.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna change our flip our script a little bit today and say, what kind of questions do you ask as conversation starters that aren't necessarily, you know, tell me how you wanna, you know, tell me how you want your finances to look or something like that, you know?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think I'm I'm glad you brought this topic up, Mark, because it it's it's such a crucial part of the planning process that I think the vast majority of the industry overlooks.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we just zoom out for a second, most people think that, you know, a planner is there to manage their portfolio, and and most are, ourselves included.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: But before we build a client's portfolio, we how are we supposed to know what to do if we don't have the roadmap, the plan to fuel it, right?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and in my opinion, how do we know what the plan really needs to look like if we don't know what the purpose or the foundation of it really is steering towards?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that we translate that for our planning process is is one of our very first meetings is we call a discovery session, where it's a series of questions we ask to help understand before we pulled out a spreadsheet or a statement or software, how do we understand what a client defines success in retirement as?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: How do we make sure that we can really truly tailor a plan around them?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that kind of unpacks where I'm coming from when I approach this subject.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that it's really neat to just think open-ended because not that I can promise everyone's needs, wants, and wishes, but I would rather discover what discover what those things are and see if they're possible rather than just assuming that we're going to continue to live you know the same lifestyle we're used to, or you know, suddenly tighten our belt in retirement just because, well, we're retired.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that I ask is, you know, if we were to, you know, give you a blank checkbook and money were no object in retirement, how would you spend your time?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that usually gets the ball rolling for most people as far as you know, rather than looking, you know, planning around their their their finances around their balance sheet, what does their true objective look like in retirement?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because I was kind of I was kind of thinking like the the first way I was kind of getting my mindset on this was like, you know, everybody has this abstract idea of retirement, and sometimes we kind of fool ourselves, even though I know we don't totally believe it, but we kind of fool ourselves into believing the commercials that we see all the time.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Retirement is, you know, the boat and the kids at Disney and playing golf and you know, fishing with your pals and you know, that kind of stuff.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: But there's also random Tuesdays, you know, that you do nothing or you have nothing planned.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And not saying you got to script out every minute of your retirement, but like, do sometimes people think about that?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Do they think, hey, what is just regular everyday life is still gonna happen, right?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you just no longer have the job, but you're not gonna fill retirement every second with a exciting activity either.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, retirement, the honeymoon phase, you know, lasts longer for some than others, but eventually it does wear off.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, honeymoon phase.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting you bring up that point, Mark, because I it's something I didn't expect when I started to ask this type of question, but people do make a direct connection between the, you know, what would you do if you if if money were no object?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And people just instead of talking about buying yachts and blowing it all at Vegas or you know, something crazy, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: I the response I usually hear from the at least our type of clients is something, and and there's no wrong answer to this, first of all.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: But what I usually hear from people surprise me because they start doing uh they do start to talk about the random Tuesday morning, saying, you know what, yeah, I I just need I just don't want to be told where to be and when to be there and you know be followed up on, you know, by by my manager and such.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'll get up when I want, I'll do what I want, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think some people are ready to kind of shake off those shackles, right?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I also hear people saying, you know, I would love to be able to double down on gardening, you know, something as simple as getting the dirt between my fingernails, and and and that's interesting.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's just the the type of people that I resonate with, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And tend to be very down-to-people, down-to-earth people, but they're they're generally when they when money is no object, it's interesting to me that that we don't see people trying to, you know, think, whoa, I'm gonna spend it on this or that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that gives me more conviction, I would say, that early retirement really is in the cards for most people, and they just don't know it yet until they've built a plan.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're right, most most people you know have this kind of surplus superfluous, uh ambiguous idea of retirement that the commercials show, and it looks very expensive, and so they feel that need to work longer, save more.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But when you actually do the numbers, right, and actually translate it to someone's real ideal lifestyle, it may not be as expensive as they think.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that makes sense.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what other things do you kind of use?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Little maybe unorthodox ways to get uh people you know to open up.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we've talked about money, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So what would you do if you had unlimited money?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: The way the other way I like to pose things is another form of wealth, which is which is time.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I like this thought experiment that I ask people to say, hey, let's assume that you have a good news, bad news situation where you go in and meet with your doctor, and bad news.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: You've got say five to ten years left to live, and then you're gonna pass.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the good news is in all that is that you're not gonna be sick, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Presumably.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna have good health until the day you die, but you don't know exactly when that is.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked that question because it helps, you know, I'll get some some tidbits of information about people's goals and such.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: But this really, I think, reframes the same topics for people to think, well, if I only had five years, suddenly I hear people bringing up maybe another point or two, or maybe you know, rekindle a connection with a certain family member they hadn't brought up before, or actually doing that bucket listed experience that they didn't bring up.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe they're saying still emphasizing the same things they've already told me put to that point, but they're really actually talking about them in an act actionable way, saying, Well, I would start this month to go out and visit my my siblings, or I would actually actually do the trip with the my my college buddies that we've been talking about for years, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I like translating their their goals in this time constricted based framing because it adds urgency and and a lot more actionable uh ways of making them happen.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So again, talking about conversation starters, and you know, you kind of already framed a couple of these really well.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe I'll throw this one at you just to kind of see how you feel about it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you're already doing something similar to this, but it was the I thought this one was kind of fun is the bucket list conversation.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um because everybody's got a bucket list when they come in to see a financial professional, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: They're getting close to retirement, they're like, ah, I've got these.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And for the sake of the argument here, Taylor, let's just say they got 20, right?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: I got 20 things I want to knock off before I I go.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so my thought was, well, let's let's look at those and maybe try to do them in five-year increments.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the first five years of retirement, which one should we tackle first?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I got to thinking about that is watching my own aging family members, it's like, you know, going to Europe and walking all around those cobblestone streets is maybe a lot easier at 67 than it is at 77.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: So do you do something like that?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you want to steal it?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: We no, I'll steal it for sure.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: We we definitely do think of retirement planning and goals in a in the go-go slogo no go time frames, right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which we don't have a crystal ball to say exactly for each client when that's a good thing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: You never know what your needs are gonna go or write or whatever, but but I do feel that we're we're not doing ourselves justice if we were to assume the travel budget retirement was say twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year and mark that to be indefinite, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we do um we do more often than not have our clients' goals set up to say what are those go-go year vacations look like, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're retiring at 59, right, what does that look like through maybe mid-60s, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or or late 60s, right?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: We we figure out what they're comfortable with and what they want to do.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll set a slow go goal that might be a drop in, say, 20, 30 percent of that same number to say often our clients are are still having the ambition to do to do things, but their mind and or body is just having less umph.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: So why would we plan on spending that same amount indefinitely, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we do, I would I I mean it is a different take on what you're saying, but maybe I'll steal your steal your idea, Mark, uh, is to say what are those specific goals and how do we segment them according to you know when you actually feel like doing them.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think sometimes just from that standpoint of it kind of, you know, people can be uh checklist oriented, not everybody, but certainly they could be, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: So it could be like, oh, well, I want to tackle with that in mind, why don't we knock off these five, you know, in the first five years or whatever the case might be.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um again, the idea here, you know, Taylor, which you're obviously fully aware of, is sometimes just getting people to open up and say something other than when they first come in, I'm a I'm worried I won't have enough money to retire.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Can you help me?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, okay, but there's a whole lot more stuff we need to unpack.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, hopefully we can help you, but let's get to know you.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Let's really get into some of the specifics here, and I think that's where sometimes people just struggle.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: They just get they just get shy because they were just maybe brought up not to talk about money.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Money, in especially in our culture, is is a very much a societal taboo topic, right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: People don't share their compensation in the workplace very often.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh family matters, you know, that's probably another topic for another day.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, family relationships and perceptions can shift dramatically if they they they know what you make and they have certain expectations or perceptions uh based on that.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and so yeah, it it does feel like we're definitely trying to break the mold when it comes to a professional setting and and it and it can be hard, but I think the clients that we do the best work for are those that are the most transparent, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I'm trying to you know get into business that's not my own, but money is a very emotional topic.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: They may be just digits or numbers on a screen, but at the end of the day, it is one of the most emotional things that we have in our lives.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's understandable that if it's hard to kind of open up and break the mold on it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Taylor, before we go, anything else that you've got, the things that you already doing or that you, you know, you like to try to uh use to pull information out?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I so I think we kind of set it around, it seems uh two questions so far, and I'll introduce a third.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: The first one has been, you know, with a blank checkbook, what would we do?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the second one is with limited time frame, what would we do?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the third question I get for a different angle of what people are really trying to solve, you know, from a financial standpoint in retirement, is I like to pretend that if I had a magic wand or if I could rub a lamp and get a magic genie out, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the top three problems that you would want solved, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there may be overlap with the prior questions that we talked about, but oftentimes I'm hearing from people not just what they want, but what they want to avoid.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that can really help us uh plan accordingly because the numbers may say one thing on the table, but that may be incongruent with what people really uh don't want to see happen in their retirement.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So these are some of the questions that I find are helpful for me to just start to get to the tip of the iceberg of understanding how do we truly tailor um, as this podcast is named, Taylor Made, uh trying to tailor someone's plan around their actual life and what they want and what they don't want.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because I mean you might be more inclined to say, oh, I would love to have a man a genie magically, you know, solve this problem for me.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas if you were just saying, hey, you know, what do you need help with?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they kind of just freeze sometimes, or you know, maybe it's like how to I want to figure out how to plan um you know our legacy a certain way.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And some folks are you know comfortable popping that out there, but then other times they're not.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So again, it's all about just conversation starters, just getting people uh loose and comfortable enough to really be honest about what they want to accomplish with their retirement journey, uh, and that's what Taylor and the team do.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if you'd like to see if you could be a fit, well then click on that button on the website, could we be a foot at demarsfinancial.com.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Again, click on the could we be a fit button at demarsfinancial.com.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: We got links in the show description so you can go check that out.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: But reach out to the team, have a conversation, get a retirement readiness roadmap for yourself uh and see if they can uh help you get to and through retirement with the situations and the strategies and the things that you need for your unique situation.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Taylor, thanks for hanging out and having some conversations with me.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mark.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Always appreciate it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time here on the podcast, Taylor Made Retirement.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Subscribe to us on Apple or Spotify or whatever app you enjoy using, and also check out his YouTube channel as well.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: So he's got a lot of great content there.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So go check that out.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: All of it at the website, demarsfinancial.com.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time.