Business Innovators Radio - Episode #75 – NY Financial Resolutions 2025 – The 15 Minute Financial Feast Podcast – With Mark Triplett & Troy Westendorf

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

We believe that every dollar has a purpose and a timeline. When and how your retirement assets will be used should be understood before making important financial decisions.The Triplett-Westendorf Purpose and Timeline 5 Step Planning Process (PT5) begins with Discovery.Understanding where you are now, and then defining where you want to go (Your Purpose) and when you want to get there (Your Timeline), programs your financial GPS. Our Purpose and Timeline 5-step process (PT5) programs your financial GPS.Learn more: http://triplett-westendorf.com/ | https://mypt5.com/The 15 Minute Financial Feast Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-15-minute-financial-feast-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-75-ny-financial-resolutions-2025-the-15-minute-financial-feast-podcast-with-mark-triplett-troy-westendorf

Welcome to the 15-minute financial feast podcast, bringing you 15-minute segments to help you retire with purpose on time. We're serving up food for thought and bread for the head. Are you hungry to learn? Here are your hosts, Mark Triplett and Troy Westendorf. Welcome to another episode of the 15-minute financial feast. Today, you are listening to the audio from a live television interview where one of our favorite local news station anchors asked us questions about a financial feast. topic on the minds of many hardworking folks in our community who are trying to make good decisions and get ahead. Welcome back, everyone. You know, many people out there are setting their

New Year's resolutions, but it's also the perfect time to maybe add a financial goal to that list. But saving money and getting your finances on track, it certainly isn't an easy thing to do. That's all we've got financial professional Mark Triplett joining me here today. And he's going to help us set some financial goals for 2025 and also talk about how to stick with those. So first of all, Why is it so important yet so difficult, Mark, for people to do this? Well, the new year gives everybody aspirations to do something different than they did last year and make their life better. But oftentimes when folks set those goals, they're too opaque, they're too general. They don't get specific enough.

So the first thing is to set real specific, attainable, and goals that you can track. Number two, that write those down. Until you write them down and they crystallize, they're really just a wish or a hope. I always like to tell folks, start with a spending plan so that you understand where your cash flow is coming, where cash was coming into the household, from employment, for example, where cash was going out of the household. And that way, once you've mastered where your money's going, you can control it rather than it controlling you. When you talk about being specific, some people may be thinking, okay, how specific is too specific? What's some examples of goals that we could make?

Well, somebody might say, well, I want to save more this year. Well, don't just stop there. Say, I would like to create an emergency account because I don't have one. And once you've mastered where your cash flow is for your household, you can take that spending plan, your lifestyle financially, on a monthly basis, and say, I need to put away three to six months of that just in case if something goes haywire. We're able to continue to maintain our lifestyle and give us some cushion. Now you have a very specific savings goal and a very specific purpose.

And you can work towards that. Now, I know you can't do like a one-size-fits-all, but collectively, what are some certain financial goals that we should all be trying to aim for? Well, beyond that emergency savings account, once you've mastered where your cash flow is going, now you can set up automatic payments to, say, for example, a retirement account, either your employer's retirement account or set up your own individual retirement arrangement or IRA, do something like that to put money towards your financial future. Also avoid borrowing money. If you have credit card debt, make it a goal, very specific goal, to pay a certain percentage of that down each month. We have over $1.17 trillion of credit card debt in the United States at an average APR of over 24%. And it is crushing folks. So if you have credit card debt, pay that down.

If you don't, don't take on additional debt if possible. And lastly, improve your financial literacy. A lot of folks just aren't that financial literate because we don't really take it. talk about it or teach in and up in school, 43% of Americans can't pass a high school financial literacy test. So maybe listen to a financial podcast or read a financial article one time per week, and over time you'll build knowledge. That is very good advice because like you said, a lot of people, especially young people,

really struggle on just how to even get started with this. Where can people get more information if they're trying to get some help from you? Well, we have a budget sheet on our website. You can download under the support tools, and you could start there just by crafting a spending plan for your household. Whether you're young or whether you've got kids in the house or you don't have kids in the house or something brand new to you, really track where things are going for your household,

whether it's ranch or a mortgage or the groceries or all of those different streaming devices that you might have or streaming services, and start listing those out. Look back the last three months of your credit cards, and your debit cards in your bank account and figure out just where all of that cash flow is going relative to the money coming into your household, that spending plan on our website is a really good place to begin. Always very good advice.

What's that website real quick? It's triplet-westendorf.com. Perfect. All right. Mark, thank you for your time. Appreciate it. You've been listening to the 15-minute financial feast podcast. Remember, every dollar has a purpose and every dollar has.

as a timeline. If you have questions about today's topic, schedule a call with a team member. Visit www.mip5.com. Until next time, be sure you're taking steps to retire with purpose on time. Mark Triplett is an investment advisor representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. Nothing contained in this program should be considered an offer to buy or sell securities. Different investments have different risks associated with them and not all investments are appropriate for all investors.