Afford Anything - How MICE Impacts Your Money, with Bryan Kuderna

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Money management is all about setting priorities. Maybe you have the twin goals of sending your kids to college while also saving enough for retirement. And maybe you’re struggling to figure out how to balance the two. Today, Bryan Kuderna, a certified financial planner, shares a framework for helping us set priorities. We talk about the importance of economic literacy, in addition to financial literacy. We discuss how retirement has changed throughout history. And we apply those broader lessons to how you think about retirement. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode468 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When it comes to how we make money management decisions, sometimes we don't necessarily have a strategy, right? There are two big elephants in the room, saving for college and saving for retirement. Those are the two big, big goals of the average person's financial life. And a lot of times we approach those goals by trying something for six months, trying something else. It can be a little bit of a mishmash of a random assortment of tactics rather than something that is rooted in a solid foundation of understanding the economics that play out around us and how we make our own retirement planning and financial planning decisions based on that. In today's podcast episode, we talked to certified financial planner Brian Kuderna about

figuring out what you should do with your money and rooting that in an understanding of the role we live in, in an understanding of economic literacy. and in an understanding of how our lives fit into this much broader macro picture. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. So what matters most? That's what this podcast is here to explore and find out.

My name is Paula Pamp. I am the host of the show. Please enjoy our conversation with Brian Kuderno. Hi, Brian. Hey, Paul. How's it going? It's fantastic. How are you doing?

Good. Thanks for having me on the first. show. I'm excited for this. Thank you for coming on. So we're going to talk about the question of, what do I do with my money, which whenever I tell people that I podcast about personal finance, that's usually everyone's first question is, what do I do with my money? Like, if you've got some savings, if you've got some left over. I mean, it's such a broad question. How do you even begin to approach something like this? Yeah. I think the most important thing is getting to know yourself and what's important to you, not just in a monetary sense, but what are the goals? Like,

if you want to accumulate more money, what's ultimately the purpose, whether it be getting your kids through college, trying to find a new home, trying to fix your car, just to going out to dinner tomorrow night, you know, all these different things, they come with a price tag. And so as we start to do any sort of planning or anything, we want to keep that in mind so that it's not just this random happenstance. Let's just accumulate assets for the sake of building a balance sheet. You know, there needs to be purpose behind everything that we do. Right. But given that there are so many competing priorities, how do you toggle all of those competing

priorities? You know, you want to send your kids to college. You also want to retire. You also do want to take that trip. Yeah. How do you balance all of that? Yeah. So that's life is this gigantic priority list.

And when you throw other variables in there, whether that be your spouse, your partner, kids, your business partners, you know, you have a lot of. you know, you have all these different voices that are all entitled to their opinion. First and foremost, you want to get the different players in the same room and create an atmosphere where everybody can let their guard down and really reveal what their concerns are and what their goals are and understand that everybody can speak freely and that every opinion is valid. And so we'll start there, and that's where we create this bit of a priority list and drill down on what's important, and we can get into the financial planning and the economics, I'm sure, today.

But I think that's why I spend so much time with clients coming back to understanding what's important to you. Those are things that are really important so that people can align their goals with whatever that process is that we're working on each day. And they change over time. And that's why, you know, one of the factors in mice is ideology, you know, what's kind of your North Star that we're going to aim for so that month by month or year by year, we're not just kind of pivoting to whatever the flavor of the week might be. Right, right. Now, so you've mentioned mice twice.

So let's go into that because mice is the framework that you use. Sure. So mice, your favorite rodent. Yeah, maybe if you're a Disney fan. So what mice is, it'll give you a little bit of the backstory. When I was growing up, like, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. My father works for the Army, the Department of Defense. And there was a thought in my head like, hey, maybe I'll go into law enforcement.

the FBI or something along those lines. He had worked kind of in that world. And so long story short, I read a book on the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. And one of the ways that they train their spies, particularly what they call the moles that go behind enemy lines and really embed themselves with the bad guys and are able to gather intelligence from them, they're taught very early on to use the mice. And what that stands for is money, ideology, compromise, and ego. and that these are four human motives that we all have and that it kind of dictate, you know,

our feelings, our passions, and ultimately our decision making. And so when you understand both what mice means to you, where does money play a role, you know, your ideology, what are you willing to compromise, your ego, your sense of pride of, you know, what you want to win, what you're willing to lose. And then when you understand the other side, on the other side of the table, whether it be a client, an adversary, someone you're negotiating with, when you get to the, you get to the When you get to kind of understand that framework, I think it gives you a lot of really cool insights. And so as I did the research for this book and really focused on a lot of different domains of economics,

I took that mindset of not just focusing on money and math in the traditional sense, but looking at this broader picture and how all the different decisions that occur on a daily basis from the kitchen table to the White House, what mice means in those scenarios. And I think it just gives you such a great way to frame your decision making. Right. When you say ideology, what do you mean in this context? Yep. So ideology is ultimately that North Star that each individual has.

Like at the end of the day, what's really important to you? What, if you took it all away, you know, how almost would you define yourself? And there's a lot of reference in that particular chapter on religion because everybody has some sort of like ultimate motive that they're not willing to kind of. compromise, some sort of faith. And it may not be in a religion. It may be in no religion at all. It might just be in themselves or their business or the family or something like that. So I think principles. Yeah, that's a good way to put it, you know, kind of principles that are not wavering in any respect. And I think that's where when you start to look at financial decisions, I always say finance and emotions never really mix well. And when you look at that emotional aspect and you say to someone like,

well, what's the big deal here? And they're just stuck on that one point of the contract or the one point of the plan. You know, it's, it's like you don't get to judge what is so critical or so important to them because that's their own feeling about whatever that subject matter is. And that's where ideology, I think, comes to the surface. And when we understand that and we can kind of put ourselves in their shoes, I think that's the best part of negotiating is being able to understand their ideology and your ideology and where kind of the interplay is. How do you do that in negotiations or contexts in which you can't directly or overtly ask somebody about ideology? So, for example, let's say that someone who's listening to this episode is in the process of applying for jobs and negotiating for what their future salary might be.

Or maybe they're in the process of negotiating for a car or they're bidding on a house, right? Some of the most common negotiations that the average person does. Sure, sure. You don't necessarily know when you're bidding on a house, for example, the motives of the seller. You can try to gauge it by asking your agent, but how do you dig into that? If you look at those four lenses of decision making that make up mice, there's scenarios in times in life where one will outweigh another. A lot of just the everyday stuff of, you know, I want to buy the car and I'm haggling back and forth with the salesman to save a couple thousand dollars. That's where obviously money is kind of leading the conversation.

I don't think someone's sitting there saying, hey, I believe in X, Y, and Z, so I'm not going to budge. Those are more obviously monetary scenarios. So I think in that respect, that one may not apply so much. That's going to be one that's focused just on money and compromise. Could be a little bit of ego. You know, that could be a scenario where you sit down. It's a car that you love. And you're not willing to budge because you feel like the salesman is winning because he won't kind of move off of his mark.

And so you might have walked in and said, I want that car. And the price range is totally within my realm. But now I'm going to walk out of here, not having purchased it, just because I didn't feel like I won. And that's where sometimes, not to believe it, point of a car sale, but where you could sit down and the car salesman might say, hey, well, what if I throw in the mats? Or what if we put some tinting on the windows? Something that means really nothing to their bottom line. But then the customer says, you know what? I think you got yourself a deal.

And they shake hands and smile. and they both walk out, you know, that was a good compromise where the car dealership said, okay, we'll eat just a tiny bit of our margin to put in nicer formats or whatever it might be. And then the customer said, okay, you placated my ego. And so we kind of checked a couple boxes there. So ideology obviously wasn't a factor in that micro decision where that plays perhaps a greater role in kind of their macro economy. But obviously driven by money and compromise and ego, that's how those maybe make up kind of

that triangle. On the topic of macroeconomy, so you write about the macro economy is one in which you say tradeoffs, incentives, and economics are terms that can easily blur together. I thought that was kind of insightful because oftentimes we do use these terms synonymously. I know I myself even use tradeoff and opportunity cost interchangeably. Can we take a moment to just delineate tradeoffs versus incentives versus, I mean economics is in theory, almost the study of tradeoffs. How are these conceptually different? So I think what's important in economics, if you go to the real basics and you talk about price and cost. Right.

Those are two real terms that are constantly thrown around as if there's no difference between the two. And I think that's where there can be gross disagreement between anyone in the decision-making process is one party might focus on price, which is just simply, you know, I'm going to buy X number of widgets for Y price. and it's just simple black and white math there. But then cost, I think, dives a little bit deeper, and this goes back to kind of mice again, where Price Think is just focusing on the money side, where cost is looking at that big picture of, what am I ultimately giving up? And then what are the repercussions of me giving up my time or my money for that product? When people start to look at tradeoffs and incentives, they need to understand that what might be an incentive for one person might not be for the next

person, and that just simply comes back to a disagreement on pricing cost. And so cost is the main variable, as we talk about wealth, where price is just a factor within cost. Right. And then there's separately the notion of value. Yeah. And again, everybody gets to define value in their terms. Just to take a step back and give some of the framework, if we go back to the etymology of the word wealth, it comes from an old English word wheel, W-E-A-L, and all that actually means is well-being. And so when people come to me to talk about quote-unquote wealth management, are we just talking about money now or are we talking about well-being? Okay. And so I think those are some of the things that, you know, as we define all these different variables, I think it comes

back to well-being and not just the piling up of assets. Right, right, exactly, exactly. And that, I think, is where, you know, the notion of value ideologically can even make an appearance because value then can be subjective and it can be based on your principles. You value what you value. Exactly. Yeah. And that's where it almost does get a bit philosophical in a sense where, you know, $100 to me is worth a different value than $100 to the next person.

Right. And that's how we navigate the world of finance. And I think once we'd get to see that big picture through some of those terms that I was alluding to, it just makes the conversation easier. And then I think that's where we can have more efficient. throughout economies, and we can make kind of one plus one equal three instead of, you know, just the classic two. Now, since, you know, this is a book about how to figure out what to do with your money, how to

plan for wealth for the long term. And you have a lot in here around population. You started actually with a discussion about population, which kind of surprised me. You know, you talk about education, the high cost of formal education, as well as other forms of education. You know, you talk about kind of global economy. You discuss the environment. You know, these seem on the surface to be very disparate subjects, right?

The environment is a big subject. Population is a big subject. You have a great comparison in here. I want to ask you about in a moment between a slum and Karachi, Pakistan, and Detroit. How do all of these tie in conceptually to this question of what do I do with my money? Yep. I think that's kind of where it all ties together is if a client, anybody, comes into my office and says, hey, that first question, of course, what should I do with my money?

I can throw out a million different answers, you know, of what to invest in, how much to save, what debt to pay, all this other stuff. But inevitably, as I sit down and I voice my recommendation, they're going to at some point say, well, why? And then when we answer these whys, that's when we start to dive down the rabbit hole of how things work, why one decision is better than the other decision. That's where we quickly get into economics. And economics shows us the entire setting of why things are the way that they are, how we got here, where we're headed, how money actually works. And so I take that standpoint of perhaps economic literacy leading into financial literacy, because one without the other, I think, is ineffective. If we just focus on financial

literacy, I equated to grabbing two kids to teach them baseball. And I say, hey, here's a bat and a ball, you know, go play. And they're like, well, what the heck do we do with it? They're bouncing it around or whatever. That might be financial literacy in a sense. Where economic literacy is, hey, you need, you know, nine players out there. You know, this is the bases that we're going to run around. And you start to kind of set the stage. I know a bit of a corny analogy there. But if we don't have the understanding of the economic side, then we're never really going to establish. some conviction in our plan. And I see this all too often where people will sit down and they say, right, that plan makes sense, or I listen to this podcast, or I read that blog, and I like the

concept. And then they adhere to that for all of about six months. And then they're on to the next idea. And the reason oftentimes is they don't fully understand, they don't fully believe in what they're doing. And I think that's where economics can start to build that conviction of saying, all right, I get it. I understand it. I'm going to now adhere to a certain point. plan or philosophy based on what I know here. Every economy is just a sum of its parts. And population dynamics have shifted so dramatically over time. And exponentially, just over the past 50, 60 years. So you're talking less than a lifetime. And so all the different variables that go into what should I do with my money have changed. And we have so many that started a certain way, you know,

60, 80 years ago, that are still in play today. But the world looks completely different. And so we need to keep up with these things or else, you know, both micro and macro economies are going to look different than we intended them to. And actually, that might be a perfect lead in to Karachi versus Detroit. Yeah. It was an interesting choice of example because right now, as of May of 2023, Pakistan is coming out of a 38% inflation rate. Wow. 38% inflation rate. That's as of May 2020.

Geez. I thought we had a bed with nine. I know, right? When you've got such a large population dealing with such a major inflation rate, I mean, well, I'll let you tell the story, the comparison between specifically this one particular slum and then how that compares, you made a comparison to Detroit. Yep. The thing to think about, almost every city, every state, every country, any economy, their value is ultimately in their people. All right. So rarely do you see any governor or any mayor saying, you know, I wish the people would just get out of my jurisdiction, out of my state or anything. It's the opposite. They want to attract people. They want to attract talent. And so that getting towards overpopulation, if you will, is often a goal in a sense. So then why is it a difficulty? Why do we see in Karachi that they have so many people there, but it's such a difficulty? It's if their system is not ready. to sustain a population, now it becomes a huge detriment. All right, because now instead of all of these people that are working for an economy and they're being, you know, productive and they're being givers, now they inevitably start to become takers.

And that's what I draw a lot of, you know, kind of references to this scale of givers and takers in every economy. And that if it gets out of whack, if we have more takers than givers, then that's obviously going to put downward pressure on the economy, on the system, on health care, everything else out there. And so that's kind of what Karachi is gone through. That's why it turned into a slum and has a lot of the data that I referenced in there. It was a system and economy not ready for a large swath of people that got flooded with people.

And so when people go there and they say, well, what do I do? If there's not jobs, if there's not running water, if there's not hospitals, if there's not schools, then I'm just going to have to survive. Right. And when people are forced just to survive, we have to make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the public. We have people that may be corrupt and everything else. And so I think that's kind of the big difference of where, you know, obviously a place like Karachi, it's a detriment. Whereas a place like Texas that's now being flooded with people from California and elsewhere, they're loving it.

Same with Florida because they're saying we're ready. We have an economy. We have a system here. We have a foundation that we can build on. now just give us the workers, give us the talent, and we will just, you know, explode with that in a positive sense. And so I think that's the big difference there when you start to talk about population and that argument of, is it a good thing? Is it a savior to kind of near overpopulation or is at the end of the world? Right.

So what I'm hearing, infrastructure, rule of law, lack of corruption, all of the things that make flourishing possible. Yeah. Yeah, it's just going to exaggerate things are headed in the positive direction. Then it's going to be kind of like a shot in the arm or supercharger for, you know, positivity. If the system, like you said, is not ready, not prepared for it and headed a bit in the wrong direction, if we throw more fuel on the fire, unfortunately, that's where it can get a bit out of control. And you also make it, you have a really compelling chart in there that shows that the U.S. receives more immigrants than any other major nation.

Yep. Yeah, by a huge market. margin. Yeah. And that's something that there's so many different ways we can go with this that I talk about in the book. But I think that's been one of the kind of X factor or the great strength of America has been our ability to attract talent and frankly almost be a bit of a brain drain on the rest of the world. And so if you look at that from an economic standpoint, it's easy for other countries almost to say, well, it's not quite fair. It's like it's almost like they're the Yankees every year with this unlimited. payroll that's just hogging the best players in the league. And that's what America has done for a very long time now, particularly since World War II. So I think that's something when people look at some of our entitlement programs and they have these debates of, you know, what can stay solvent, how can we keep these things going when we just look at the raw math, again, of the givers and takers. And we're saying our up-and-coming generations, let's say millennials or Gen Z right behind them,

are not having as many kids as their parents or grandparents, and they're waiting much longer to enter these big life events, like buying a house, getting married, starting families. It's like, how are they going to carry the load for the system that was developed for baby boomers and so forth? The answer is if the math doesn't add up, and I think this is what everybody's kind of hoping, is that as we continue to have such a strong immigration system, that that has always been our supplement that so many other countries are missing. Now, how does formal education, collegiate education, play a role in this? Because one criticism that I've heard in the opposite direction is some of our best universities and institutions, not just in the U.S., but also in the U.K., in Australia, will attract the best students from around the world.

You know, students from Nepal, students from Sri Lanka, students from Bangladesh. They'll come, they'll study at Oxford, and then they will return, either by choice or because they're unable to get a green card. So in the conversation around sort of givers and takers and brain drain versus how does that all play a role in this as in this framework? Yeah. So I think the ultimate goal here is obviously we want to have the most educated population in the world. Right. And we know that knowledge is power, and that's kind of the fast track to really accelerating an economy, making it thrive, you know, all those things that we're all aware of. So then the question, you even see the state by state, you know, I'm from New Jersey.

I've worked with some deans and presidents of colleges in our state. And that's the great question is we want to get the best and brightest and most athletic, you know, high school students in the state of New Jersey and keep them. We want them to go to the Rutgers, the Princeton, the College of New Jersey. forth and not go down to, you know, Miami or wherever else it may be. Right. Because we want that homegrown talent and then we need it to stay there. We don't want to educate them and then ship them off to California. And now it's kind of like all this time they've been a taker of sense.

And when I say a taker, I don't mean it in a negative connotation. It's just the natural stages of life. When we're an infant to when we're, you know, 21 years old, most of the time we're taking from this beautiful economy that's helping us great. helping us get educated before they unleash us into society to now be a giver. Right. And now to contribute and be productive. And so when you raise somebody up and I'll kind of get back to the nation to nation part of it.

But as you're putting all these resources and efforts and time into creating this talented part of our team to then lose them is a huge impact negatively to that economy. in this context, the state. So I think to your question of, you know, country to country, it's the same conversation where people who are here in America, we want them to go to school in America, get the best education, and then stay here and be the ultimate giver to our country. And I think, you know, that's just the reality of it. I think we've done a very good job of that. Now, we do get a lot of folks in every college across all 50 states from around the world. and we want to educate them. And this is where all kind of ships can rise with the tide.

It's not a bad thing if they go back to their home country. And then they can elevate that because, you know, more thriving economies are good for everybody. It requires kind of less aid and everything else that we need to kind of balance everything. But obviously, if then they can stay here, if we can have that Elon Musk or, you know, whoever it might be, be an American and do all of that here, that's only going to help. the economy. So it's a little bit, if that was kind of answering your question on kind of the brain-drained situation. Right. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get

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Up to this point, we've talked a lot about the macro economy. Sure. Bringing this back to the primary question of what do I do with my money. You've made the point that economic literacy is necessary before you get to financial literacy. Correct. I guess it's kind of one is strategy and maybe the other is tactic. Yeah. As somebody is developing their economic literacy, how do they then, how do you take these lessons and start to draw

that line from, okay, I think I understand a little bit more about how various factors contribute to productivity at a macro level. But also, I have an extra $500 in every paycheck, and I don't know if I should put it in my 401k versus towards a down payment on a house. Right? Like there's a, there's a lot of kind of lines that you need to traverse. Yeah, a lot of dots. Yeah, exactly. Without a doubt. And so I think that's kind of where we set the stage. And that was done with intent that that first chapter's population, then entitlements, then education. If you just look at any commercial out there on wealth management, what are the two elephants

in the room, retirement planning and then college planning? These are the two monster big ticket items that I think every family has to prepare for or contend with. And so I think that's what sets the stage, you know, on the retirement side, you know, we've had a modern system that has relied on Social Security and has relied on pensions. All right. So we need to understand kind of how those work. And then if we're not fortunate enough to participate in them, I mean, we all get Social

Security right now. Could change down the road. We'll see. But pensions have almost been a precursor to that where we've seen defined benefit pensions change dramatically from, you know, the way people could retire 20 years ago to what we're seeing current workers retire with now. So we need to understand that. And then you could say, right, well, if I'm not going to get a pension like my mom and dad did, how then am I supposed to retire when my retirement hopefully is going to be even longer than theirs is? You know, it's kind of a push where we want to right now maybe retire earlier than we've seen people do beforehand. And we want to live longer than we've seen, you know, the prior generation. So obviously you do the math. That means a longer retirement time horizon where people can. actually spend now more years in retirement than they do in their career.

Right. And so that all comes back to, you know, well, how do we afford that? You know, the name of this is afford anything. How can we afford that? We have to find ways through our savings and investment habits perhaps to replace that pension or to supplement that Social Security. And so I think once we start to instill some of those realities, then again, it comes back to that conviction of, okay, this is what I need to do.

Or, you know, it's just a question of inputs and outputs of if we can achieve that. Conversation with college is the same exact thing. You know, it's become kind of ingrained in our society that you go to high school. And then when you graduate, you move on to college. Now there's a lot of debate going on. Is that necessary for everybody? And we can kind of go down a lot of roads there. But if that's the track that we envision for our children, again, big price tag to that.

We've seen how it's been outpacing inflation, you know, the tuition and so forth. These are just realities that we have to contend with. And then it comes back to that priority list that we started our conversation with and then folding that into the financial plan. Because at the end of the day, there's only so many dollars and cents to go around. With regard to both of those elephants in the room, I mean, first of all, you talked about longevity. It strikes me that in retirement planning, I think retirement planning is the only field that I can think of, maybe actuarial science. These are the only fields where longevity is considered a risk. Yes.

Right? Anywhere else, it's desirable. It's a desired outcome, not a risk. Exactly. Yep. I mean, it's such a crazy thing. And we talk about this as a financial planner constantly, longevity risk. Right. It does sound like kind of like an oxymoron. Like, well, don't we want to live a long life? Exactly. But longevity risk is one of the biggest in the retirement conversation because it's a multiplier. You know, you think of all the things that we have to afford food, you know, housing, health care, you know, transportation, all the different bills that we just encounter through life, and we enter this

stage where the inflows stop as a worker and the outflows continue as a retiree, just living. And then when we add more years to that, all of those costs get amplified. So it is kind of a conundrum that we run into that we do want to live longer. But when we come back to mice and everything, money affects every one of these conversations. Does the idea that many of us, hopefully, will live longer, should that impact the age of retirement? Like, you mentioned that we've kind of got two things going on at once. We're living longer and we also, in aggregate at least, seem to want to retire earlier. So should there be some rethinking of that retirement age?

Or is early retirement still a worthwhile goal, even in the context of a substantially, hopefully a substantial, longer life. Yeah, so I think the answer is without a question. We have to take that into consideration. Because if we look at countries founded, let's say 1776, Declaration, Independence, and then we move on through the centuries up to right around World War I. Up until that time, retirement wasn't really a thing. What we did is we worked to provide, and then we did so as long as we could until eventually our time was up. It wasn't until the Great New Deal and some of these things that came about that we introduced really this concept of you can retire. You can have these later years that are just for enjoyment where we can exit the workforce. So it sounds kind of crazy,

but some of these ideas in the context of things are relatively novel. And then when we fast forward to, well, we don't want just retirement, but we want an earlier retirement. And then we want a longer, you know, further out finish line. All right. That just, it mathematically, if we just look at the raw numbers, it doesn't quite add up. So I think that's where when we go back to that balance of givers and takers, retiring early, that's certainly a fine goal. But we have to recognize if we're truly retiring and exiting the workforce, we're moving from that giving stage to the taking stage. And so I think if everybody were to do that all at once, of course, it would crush the economy. There's no way that we could survive that. So the question is either we cram in

a ton in those giving years. Maybe we work incredibly hard, great innovation, save like crazy, and prepare ourselves so that we can retire early. But what I counsel a lot of people is we don't want to just retire early just to lay on the beach. I like to see people when they have that goal to say, all right, we're going to retire early to pivot to our next career. And maybe that career now is one that has no financial burden and it's a true passion. And money doesn't play such a large element in it. And so that way we can really pursue, you know, some of the other things that we enjoy that excite us and that contribute to the economy just in a different way. But just to kind of answer your question bluntly, I think we do have to revisit that because the balance of how many

people contributed to Social Security when it came about versus the beneficiaries and how that scale has tipped tremendously to the current day. And you look at normal retirement age when it was founded was 65 years old. Here we are generations later, normal retirement age is 67. Right. So to say all that's changed is two years, that's not realistic. What I'm hearing from you then is early retirement can be a very worthwhile goal so long as the retiree thinks about continuing to give to society or to spend those years doing something that is beneficial to society. Without a doubt. And that's where I think the victory, the win. in quote unquote retiring early is we're moving from just a worker.

And now we're honestly becoming a bit more of an entrepreneur in the sense that you're paving your own path and you're able to go innovate and pursue things that maybe you're even better at because that's where your passion wise. That's where I think we all want to get too sooner than later. And that I'm huge on. And financial planning, sound wealth management, all that can only accelerate that process. Which is why I love what I do. I want to get people quicker from A to B where they feel free.

And now they can become the best version of themselves and remove money kind of from that decision-making process or from mice. Let's pull that out. They're freed of that. That's kind of utopia in my mind. But it shouldn't be. I just want to kind of check out. And I see this a lot with my clients. You know, I counsel thousands of physicians.

It's a marketplace that I'm pretty well entrenched in. And I want to see the ones that get just so. excited, almost obsessed with medicine. And I love to see that that every day, they don't mind working that 80-hour work week because they love it. They love being in the OR, you know, doing surgery and saving lives and doing all that stuff. But every once in a while, I meet the one that says, you know, I'm trying to move out of this because I just want to start, you know, this whatever random company or whatever it might be. I want to start my my videos on YouTube or something and go in a totally different direction. And they're just chopping at the bit to make as much

money through medicine to then move on to this other thing. And I think when you just take such a important career like that and use it as a stepping stone, that's where now it can get a bit dangerous because that person is not in the place that they should be. And when you just kind of, I'm just using that as one scenario. But when we extrapolate that across the economy, you know, we have to align people with what excites them. I think it sounds like that. financial planning just gets them there quicker. You know, I've spoken to some doctors who will volunteer in place. I'm from Nepal, so they'll volunteer in Nepal in a clinic there for a couple of weeks.

And what surprised me, you know, I'm like, oh, wow, that's, that's so nice of you. And what I've heard over and over are physicians who tell me, like, I'm not doing it to be nice. I actually really enjoy it because I get to just practice medicine without all of the paperwork. You know? Exactly. It's just the pure practice of medicine and none of the bureaucracy. So it's actually much more fun for me. Yeah, just purely helping for the sake of helping.

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. And so I think that's kind of when we come back to the origination of the conversation with population entitlements and education. It's kind of how can we leverage those things to make the structure of a macroeconomy work for us. So we understand it. We understand the strengths and weaknesses. And then where we, as one spoke of this massive wheel,

where we fit in and how to kind of leverage them for our benefit. So it frees us to do those things like you alluded to. That's the ultimate goal. And so that's why I think people need to at least have a cursory knowledge of that, how we got here. And then they can make their decisions, you know, should I go to college? Should I send my kid there? Should they go to community college or should they go get their doctorate? You know, we got to kind of look at the big picture.

And then understand that money is a factor. It's unavoidable. Whether we like it or not, it's going to factor into these decisions. but the sooner we get in a position where it doesn't have to, then the better off we are. But we can't be disrespectful of money, on the other hand, either. You know, we've all seen the story of the child that grew up, you know, the millionaire family that has no respect for money and says,

oh, yeah, I'll go to the most expensive college in the world and just sit there and party for four years. That's where now, okay, money is no longer a restraint, but we lost respect for it. We lost value for it. And so that can be just as the day. as well. Right. How do you maintain that respect? How do you keep from taking it for granted? That's a great question. And I think obviously life is kind of the best teacher. We're a product of our

experiences. So I think if we grew up understanding the value of the dollar, having to work hard, you know, kind of go get that paycheck from a very early age and understand how important it is, I think that's the ultimate. And that's where you kind of instill that financial discipline in someone that can then carry it forward the rest of their life. Now, naturally, if we grow up in a lower to middle income scenario, that might just be par for the course. Because we've got to go work if we want to go buy a new video game or we want to pay for our cell phone bill. So we know how important it is to put that eight-hour day in when we're 15 years old. And then exactly where that money's going.

And we see the little bit of tax taken out of that paycheck. and it's like, oh, man, what does that mean? Why is that getting taken out? Right. So those lessons are so critical. We don't want to just teach them all that they learn in school. Well, that's all well and good. Just as important is that sense of financial literacy from a discipline standpoint,

creating those healthy habits early on are critical so that even when you move past that and hopefully that young adult then thrives in their career and makes their fortunes and everything else, they can always look back on, you know, maybe when they didn't have and they had to work so hard. Give a quick story of, you know, when I was a porter boy at a beach club on the shore in Jersey, I was 14, 15 years old. I was going cabana to cabana. And before we opened the beach club for the summer, you know, I was scrubbing the paint off the wall in every cabana with this wire brush.

That's all I did. It was like working in a mail room where it was just cabana after cabana from sun up to sundown and then go back to paint them. And I remember one of the people that vacationed at this beach club, he, he, he, he, came by and, you know, pulled up in this beautiful brand new Mercedes and just kind of threw his towel in his cabana and walked on. And there was this bit of me that was just kind of, you know, I wouldn't say jealous, but it was like, oh, like here I am, slaving away. That guy's throwing his stuff in here without a care in the world. Probably has more money than God.

And he just came back for whatever reason. And he just said, you know, you're really going to appreciate this job because you're never going to want to do this the rest of your life. and that always sat with me and he just walked off and I just remembered that. I was like, you're right. Like, I don't want to do this. And so just moments like that, I think are how a very long story to a short question. But those experiences, I think, are how you develop respect for the dollar. And then no matter where you go and you can accumulate billions, you'll always remember how hard it is to go make a dollar in this world.

And then I think that's where you can remove money as a restraint. but you'll always have respect for it. And then when you do other things like build a team or a company and reward your employees or get into philanthropy and different things like that, you'll always guide as a smart manager of money because you have that respect for it. You'll return to the show in just a moment. Let's talk about the C and the E, because we've talked quite a bit about M and I, like money and ideology or values or principles.

But where does compromise come in? Well, actually, I'm not sure which one we should address first. Compromise or Ego. Ego seems more like a threat, whereas compromise seems like a solution. And that's a good way to put it. They go hand in hand. All right. So that's when I sit down with clients and I say, hey, tell me, guys, like, what's on your mind?

What can I help you with? And the wife shouts out, you know, I just want to make sure the kids get to college and don't have student loans. And the husband's like, I just want to retire in three years. I'm done. And then it's like, bam. And they'll look at each other almost as if they've never heard these ideas. as before happens every single day in my line of work. And so there, first off, we have compromise. All right, we understand there's a finite amount of dollars that are available here. And I just

heard from one spouse that college planning is at the forefront, from the other, it's retirement planning. And so that's just kind of one small scenario where we say, all right, well, we need to compromise here, you know, and that's where if we can look at a financial plan that can just kind to grow the pie, then that makes compromise easier because we're all giving up less. If I have to ask them both to give up more, that's not a win for anybody. Right. And so that's why, you know, we get into trying to be more efficient, of course, to make compromising easier.

But that's just an instance where every time we make a financial decision, it's a compromise. From after this podcast, am I going to go grab a steak or am I going to grab a slice of pizza? You know, these are economic decisions in which I'm going to come. compromise, you know, a little bit of money or a little bit better food, you know, all these things kind of fold into the mix. And then ego is where things can get irrational. And it's only irrational if we don't understand what we're thinking emotionally or what the other party is thinking. Because if the other party says, you know, I want to go grab the steak, you know, and I'm like, no,

we're not doing that. We're going to get the pizza because it's cheaper. This is where ego can come into the mix, which all comes back to just defining our values. The compromise is just letting go of a piece of ego. And I think that's what, you know, all negotiation, life is just a big compromise. And ego is the part that we always say it doesn't make sense. When we look at anything from an investment decision, when we see the sinking ship and we won't let go of it because our ego told us, you know, don't be wrong, cling to it to the very last second, that's where we just have to be able to kind of control ego to an extent.

You know, if we don't, that's where emotions mix with money and it can get ugly sometimes. When it comes to investing then, how do we, in deep reflection, how do we know the difference between ego versus conviction? It's a very good question. So I think you want to think ego is just about what's going to make me feel better. All right. ultimately and feelings are temporary. They don't last. How I'm feeling right now could be completely different from how I feel an hour from now.

Right. So if I'm just trying to satisfy my ego or if I feel like my ego got hurt because the other side, you know, apparently one, it's just a feeling where conviction is that thing going back to ideology that's going to say, okay, here's our plan of ultimately what I'm trying to accomplish in life and what's important to me and that I'm not going to compromise. So I think that's kind of perhaps where the two come together. You know, Warren Buffett, going back to the investment side, I think he said it best when he said it's not how your investments behave.

It's how you behave with your investments. And that's what I try and show clients a lot, is if we have conviction, we have belief in this process, then we can design it and we can maximize its productivity and stick to the plan, stick to our investment strategies. And we've seen that's usually staying the course is usually. where people get rewarded in the investment world. When ego enters the equation, which ultimately generates feelings and emotions, that's sometimes when we act irrational again.

It doesn't make sense, but we did it. We sold at the wrong time. We bought it at the wrong time. And that's where we're not behaving right with our investments because we kind of exited the laboratory. We entered the real world. And we said, okay, we know mathematically this may not be the right choice, but it feels good.

It feels right. and that feeling is fleeting. And so that's where, again, ego, it's a yin and a yang. It's almost an enemy that can constantly disturb what we're trying to do. But also having pride is a great thing. That's what can maybe take us to put in that extra hour of work or to amp up our savings rate or whatever the case may be. We need to acknowledge its existence, but then we have to control it.

When people make irrational money decisions, which is, I'd say the bulk of decisions tend to be irrational. Sometimes it's obvious that there is ego involved because, you know, that famous quote, you're buying things you don't need

to impress people you don't like. But other times, there seems to be emotion involved, but not necessarily emotion that I would characterize as ego. So, for example,

a person might have a feeling of anxiety and a particular purchase soothes that feeling. Or a person might have just a feeling of something seems fun. I don't quite know how to characterize that,

but a thing seeming fun doesn't necessarily seem to be an ego-driven, at least, you know. And that's okay. And I would say that's one that I would not qualify as ego. And that comes back to the conversation of price and cost, you know, those economic terms. I could look at the price of that and say, hey, you just spent all that money on, you know, that pair of shoes. That was irrational. That why would you ever do that? That's crazy.

But to you, that's not irrational. And I'm not saying you. I'm saying this hypothetical person because maybe it relieved that anxiety or it made them feel better. They like it or whatever. Okay. So I'm looking at a high price where this person's looking at it as a low cost because it comes back to value. To me, I'm saying there's no value in those shoes. You can go to Walmart at the same thing for a fraction of the price.

But that person's saying, well, I see a lot of value in it because it's, because it's makes me feel better. It's it's this reward, this achievement of my hard work or whatever the case may be. And so it maybe relieve that anxiety or it boosted, you know, how we're feeling. And hopefully, again, that feeling is one that's going to carry forward and generate more value. So I don't think that that's a decision driven by ego by any stretch because that person, as long as they understood the value in that, it's not irrational, right? That's just a judgment. That would be me saying it's irrational, because I don't understand how you're valuing your purchase. But if that person's saying I put a high value on that, so there was a fair cost to it,

there's nothing at all irrational about that. And so I think when we look at economic behavior, that's what it's all about. And that's what every company in the world is trying to do is saying, I want to produce, you know, this commodity, this object or whatever it is for a lower price for our company, charge a higher price to the consumer, and then we have a transfer of wealth here. But this company has generated a value around that product or a perceived value, and that's how they've created a fair transfer of wealth that both parties went on. The company's making a profit.

The consumer is enjoying what they've now just put their dollars towards, and it's bringing them happiness. And I always say, I quote Abe Lincoln a lot when he said happiness is a choice. Okay. So if that person's happy by that choice, then more power to them. I don't think that would fall into the category of ego. Now, if they did it to say, I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses, my neighbor had those shoes.

I need those shoes because I want to keep up. My ego is now controlling me. People might not do something for value. And they can tell you the next day, man, I wasted money on that. Right. That's where ego won the day. and that's something that we've all got to be able to check. So what I'm hearing then is that financial literacy requires not just an understanding of broad macroeconomic factors,

but in addition to that, it also requires a deep understanding or a deep self-reflection of your internal factors. So it's almost like you've got this middle tier, and that's where financial planning lives. and then, you know, at the 30,000 foot level, you've got understanding economics. At the core level, you've got understanding yourself. Yep. Right? It's in the balance of the two. That's a good way to put it.

And you have, you know, the macroeconomy is this monster construct that we live within. The microeconomy is like the self. That's our world that we understand that we operate in every day. And then the levers we get to pull each day are kind of the control that we have. We have to be respective and understanding of each of those. elements. And then when we are, it just puts us in a position of control. And that's the whole point going back to wealth management, well-being, is that we want to feel that we're in control. And when we do, we have confidence, we have conviction. We lessen the anxiety. You know,

when you say every year they do all these polls of what's stressing Americans. And every year, money's, you know, near the top of that list. It doesn't need to be that way. I think it's lots of times either A, people don't understand money. So they're trying to do good, but they're making mistake after mistake because they're not understanding the macroeconomy that we live with and what their options are, those levers to pull. Or they understand it all, but then ego, that last part of mice just keeps kind of stealing their thunder. That's where they're, you know, a victim of their own ego. Right. Know your society and also know yourself. And then it's almost the balance of understanding options and opportunities, as well as threats and risks, understand the landscape

and understand how you yourself operate within that landscape. Exactly. And when you do both that, then almost by its very nature, answers the question of, all right, now, how do I use my money as a tool accordingly? Exactly. We start with really those foundational type of principles. Some might seem obvious, but then we have a lot of the history of kind of how that affected our country and the world.

And then we kind of graduate into talking about, you know, tech and environment and some of these other things where those now are more of the tools or the elements that get thrown into the mix. And that's where we get to start to actually kind of play and use these things. Because ultimately that's what we're after is just kind of getting the most productive, the smartest economy possible. And then technology is just the next iteration of what they're able to innovate and create. And then environment is at the end of the day, that's all that there is. is the elements that were gifted to planet Earth and then how we can leverage them to create better and better technologies every day. And that's where there's just this huge interplay.

And I love it as a financial advisor. I love it as an investor because we all get a say in it. We get a say of, you know, what ultimately to invest our dollars and our time into and then how to kind of create the most efficient microeconomy that we can. And then the macro economy, again, it's just a sum of its parts. So it all kind of comes back together and feeds off itself. Excellent. We are coming to the end of our time.

Is there anything that I have not asked about that you'd like to? No, I know we covered a lot of ground here. I hope it was an informative conversation for everyone. It kind of maybe gives them a new way to look at money and to look at economics. Just really encourage people to go check out my book again. What should I do with my money? It's a sledgehammer full of information in there. It's well worth the investment where then you can,

and walk away and again, just understand how money works ultimately. And then with that can come, you know, the best decision-making possible. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Paula. This is great. Thank you, Brian. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, we hear from a lot of people who write to us saying that they want to manage their money better, but they're not quite sure where to start. Brian says that one good starting point is to approach your finances by understanding yourself,

your goals, right? What specifically is it that you want to do so that you're not just saving for the sake of saving and it isn't just random like, hey, I'm building a balance sheet? Start by understanding the purpose behind every single goal. The most important thing is getting to know yourself, honestly. And what's important to you, not just in a monetary sense, but what are the goals? Like if you want to accumulate more money, what's ultimately the purpose? Whether it be getting your kids through college, trying to find a new home, trying to fix your car, just to going out to dinner tomorrow night, you know, all these different things, they come with a price tag. And so as we start to do any sort of planning or anything, we want to keep that in mind so that it's not just this

random happenstance, let's just accumulate assets for the sake of building a balance sheet. You know, there needs to be purpose behind everything that we do. So the first key takeaway is know thyself. Key takeaway number two, the importance of economic literacy. Many people focus on financial literacy, but financial progress can be limited without a solid understanding of economic literacy. So economic literacy is just as important as financial literacy. Because you need to understand the world around you and the factors that drive the economy in order to understand your place in it and how to make solid financial decisions about your life.

Because financial markets are impacted by economics and your career, your business, everything you do is impacted by economics. So economic literacy is just as important as financial literacy. If we just focus on financial literacy, I equate it to grabbing two kids to teach them baseball. And I say, hey, here's a bat and a ball. Go play. And they're like, what the heck do we do with it? They're bouncing it around or whatever. That might be financial literacy in a sense.

Where economic literacy is, hey, you need, you know, nine players out there. This is the basis that we're going to run around. And you start to kind of set the stage. I know a bit of a corny analogy there. But if we don't have the understanding of the economic side, then we're never really going to establish some conviction in our plan. And I see this all too often where people will sit down and they say, all right, that plan makes sense, or I listen to this podcast, or I read that blog, and I like the concept,

and then they adhere to that for all of about six months. And then they're on to the next idea. And the reason oftentimes is they don't fully understand, they don't fully believe in what they're doing. And I think that's where economics can start to build that conviction of saying, all right, I get it. I understand it. So get rooted in economic literacy. That's the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, the strong. struggle to reach financial goals can feel really isolating. Ironically, a lot of people share the feeling of isolation. When it comes to approaching those big goals, particularly the two big

elephants in the room, retirement planning and college savings, there are a couple of things that have changed and that might make those two goals feel less overwhelming and less isolating. Let's hear him talk about that. look at any commercial out there on wealth management, what are the two elephants in the room, retirement planning and then college planning. These are the two monster big ticket items that I think every family has to prepare for or contend with. And so I think that's what sets the stage, you know, on the retirement side. We've had a modern system that has relied on Social Security and has relied on pensions. All right. So we need to understand kind of how those work. Pensions have

almost been a precursor to that where we've seen defined benefit pensions change dramatically from the way people could retire 20 years ago to what we're seeing current workers retire with now. So we need to understand that. And then you could say, right, well, if I'm not going to get a pension like my mom and dad did, how then am I supposed to retire when my retirement, hopefully, is going to be even longer than theirs is? It's kind of a push where we want to right now, maybe retire earlier than we've seen people do beforehand, and we want to live longer than we've seen the prior generation. So obviously you do the math, that means a longer retirement time horizon, where people can actually spend now more years in retirement than they do in their career.

We have to find ways through our savings and investment habits, perhaps to replace that pension or to supplement that social security. I think once we start to instill some of those realities, then again it comes back to that conviction of, okay, this is what I need to do, or it's just a question of inputs and outputs of if we can achieve that. Conversation with college is the same exact thing. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with certified financial planner, Brian Kuderna. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review. If you're on Spotify, you can leave a review of the episode itself. Leave a comment. Tell us what you thought. If you're on

Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review there. It's so instrumental in helping us bring on amazing guests. You can also subscribe to the show notes at afford anything.com slash show notes. Thank you again for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant, host of the show, and I'll catch you in the next episode.