More Money Podcast - 243 Making Sense of Money During the Pandemic - Lauren Silbert, VP, General Manager of The Balance

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

We're here! This is it! We've arrived at episode 243, the last interview episode of Season 10 of the Mo' Money Podcast...and my 5-year anniversary of starting this podcast! It is actually insane that I started this show half a decade ago, have interviewed hundreds of guests, and am still going. I do want to acknowledge that things have been very difficult in the world right now. I have a solo podcast episode that I will drop tomorrow to talk more about it, but if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, then you already know my stance and my feelings about everything. It's been a trying week trying to focus on anything, but I think what's going on right now is so important for us to progress as a society. But, that's not what this episode is about. For this last interview of the season, I have the amazing Lauren Silbert, VP, General Manager of The Balance (one of my favourite personal finance resources). I recorded this episode a month ago at the beginning of May, and we discussed how to make sense of money (and manage it the best way possible) during this pandemic. I just learned that in Ontario (where I live), our State of Emergency status has been extended until June 30, so we are still in the thick of it. I have no idea what the rest of the year will look like, but if there's one thing I do know, it's what to do with your money during uncertain times. This is the time to preserve your capital, save up that emergency fund I always talk about, and avoid making any emotional decisions with your money. Moreover, this is the time to start taking your finances seriously. I know it can feel overwhelming and stressful, but during chaos is the best time to try to create some stability in your financial life. So even though I'll be going on summer hiatus for the show (I'm sure I'll pop in with a few bonus episodes though), take this time to listen to other podcasts, read blogs and books, and make improving your financial literacy your number one priority. For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/243 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 243 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Welcome back to the show. So as I believe I mentioned last week, this is going to be the last interview episode of season 10 of the Mo Money Podcast. I will be releasing another episode, a solo episode with just myself, obviously, tomorrow. So today is the last interview episode of season 10. And this, I think today or maybe, yeah, no, today, I believe today marks officially my five-year anniversary of launching the podcast. So a big thank you to you if you've been listening that long or even if you just discovered this.

A big thank you for supporting me making this show and trying to make financial literacy information and insightful and inspiring interviews available to you wherever you live in the world. Now, I'm recording this intro for the show Tuesday, June 2nd. That being said, I recorded this episode of the podcast a month ago on May 5th. So a lot of stuff has happened since we made this recording. A lot of it has happened this week. And I am going to talk more about that in tomorrow's episode. I kind of wanted to do a special episode to talk more about what's going on. But this was such a good episode and I really wanted to share it. There's some really helpful information in it. And so I wanted to release it and make it kind of my last episode of the season. So I hope you really enjoy it. So I have the wonderful Lauren Silbert from The Balance.

So The Balance is one of my favorite resources. I go there all the time. If you do any Googling about anything related to personal finance, most likely you've stumbled upon one of their amazing articles. So Lauren is the vice president and general manager of The Balance. And we're talking all things money, coronavirus, how to manage your money during these weird, uncertain times. Just talking about what the heck is going on right now and what can we do? What can we do to take control when we feel like we have no control? What can we

do to create stability when we feel like there's no stability? So I know you're going to really enjoy this episode with Lauren. No podcast sponsor for this episode. So let's just get to the interview. Welcome to the Mo Money Podcast, Lauren. I'm so excited to have you on. Thanks for having me, Jessica. Yeah. So let's start off with, I've been a fan of The Balance for a number of years. I feel like, because it's so, tell me a little bit about it. So it started in 2015 and that sounds about right. I just feel like one day I was Googling and it popped up and I'm like, Oh, is this new? I mean, it was probably back in 2015 when it was new. I'm like, Oh,

where's this? And, uh, ever since then, yeah, whenever I'm like searching for something, I always find the balance. So it's one of my favorite kind of personal finance resources. So tell me a little bit about the balance and what you do. Yeah. So the balance has been around for about four and a half years and has gone through some evolution since then. But we actually were a part of about.com before we turned into the balance. So we're now a part of this company called DotDash, which operates a bunch of different independent websites that focus on sort of everything that you'll need to do almost in your everyday life. So anything from personal finance, where you can read about it on

the balance or our sister site, Investopedia. We also have sites on beauty, like Birdie, on tech, like LifeWire, health. We have a very well suite of sites that focuses on health, mind, family. And we also have food and lifestyle sites. So we really covered the gamut. And this really was all born out of the old about.com universe, which I think everyone remembered if you were alive when the internet started. Oh, yeah, I remember. And, you know, about.com had existed over 20 years ago. And I think what had happened was, is, you know, we realized as a company, because I was there when we were still about.com, that the world was looking for specialized expert advice on things, right? So you may not want to get your advice on

how to manage, let's say, your MS symptoms from the same place that you are reading about how to stain your deck. And I think what we took that as was like, okay, we want to make sure that we're experts. We want to make sure our readers know that we're doing all of this amazing work, which we already were. So everything that was written on about.com was written by these subject matter experts, but we wanted to make it really clear and create these unique environments for users to come to. And so that's where we started breaking apart about.com into everyone's unique universe. So we broke out our health content, we broke out our personal finance content. And that's where the balance came into play is taking all of that personal finance content that we had on about.com

and bringing it to its new and unique environment that was really conducive to people learning about personal finance in a way that they understand. And it gave us an opportunity to like specialize how we wrote that content, how we verified it, how we fact-checked everything, how we worked with writers to make sure it was unique for that specific purpose. Yeah. And I think that's probably why it's a resource that I like to come back to because I always enjoy reading the articles. There's a lot of personal finance content out there, but it sometimes isn't super digestible. And there's people like me who've been doing this for a while. And so I don't mind reading some of the kind of clunkier, more technical stuff. But for people

that listen to my podcast are like, listen, I just want my information and I want to live my life and I want it to be understandable. And I don't want to have to learn a new language at the same time. That's why I'm like, oh yeah, this is why, yeah, the balance I think keeps coming up whenever I'm searching for a resource to share to somebody. Cause it's just like, you have the information and I always do find, yeah, it was like, okay, I think this was fact-checked. I think they actually know what they're talking about. This isn't just like a blog. I'm curious though, where's the name, the balance come from? You know, it's really about, I think it started at the idea of like creating a balance sheet for your life. And really, and I think that'll probably dovetail into some of the things that we talk

about today. But I think the idea is, you know, how do you create balance in all these different parts of your life? Personal finance is such a huge part of, you know, your mental health and, you know, your personal success, being able to get a hold on that and create a good balance of, you know, what you're spending, what you're not spending. You know, unfortunately, we always say, like, you know, money can't buy you happiness, but it's such a huge part of you being successful and, you know, reducing your anxiety is that we want to make sure that everyone is able to create that balance in their life. And it really works well with, you know, the creating of your own personal balance sheet in the world. Yeah, that makes sense. And since you touched on mental

health, I'm like, I feel like people are now really kind of getting that reminder, especially people who maybe like didn't experience like younger people who didn't experience the last market crash and recession, or it's just been a while. It's been over a decade. So we have kind of a short term memory. And we're like, Oh, yeah, that was a terrible time. I think people are starting to remember, oh, right, money and personal finance has a really big effect on my mood and my mental health and just feeling hopeless, all that kind of stuff. So I think more people are... I mean, at least I've definitely found... I've been talking to so many more people being like, okay, I know now I need to take my finances seriously and I've been ignoring them for a while and now I just can't, which is, for me, great news.

Yeah. I was saying, I feel like the one really positive thing that's going to come out of this is one, like you said, everyone is faced with this immediate reality of like, oh crap, what do I do? But I think that we also now have the time to actually learn and get smarter.

And I think the fact that, you know, people's financial situation is changing is forcing people to interact with a lot of their lenders in a different way. And the government and understanding how these systems work is making everyone so much smarter. People who would have never thought they would have had to understand how to submit, you know, PPP loan applications, didn't understand how things like the stimulus checks affect their taxes, or, you know, what to do down the line in anything. Everyone's getting the time, and they're sort of forced to learn all this information. So I feel like within a couple of years, we're going to get some really smart consumers on our hands,

hopefully. And I think it's really, you know, it's really good because we have the capacity to learn about it right now. And you're sort of forced to do it where a lot of people just never would do it otherwise. And we're seeing a lot of that too, like people coming to the site and looking for this information that they've never looked for before. And hopefully that's going to make them pretty smart. Yeah. And more people just talking openly about money, which is also nice to see. And sometimes it is just like, hey, I got my stimulus check. What do I do now? It's nice to see at least these conversations are happening because no one was talking.

It's still such a weird taboo subject. And I mean, I know I'm in a little bit of a buttable, so everyone's always talking about money. But when I go out and hang out with friends, not in my personal finance bubble, no one's talking about money. So it's nice to see that at least people are kind of starting these conversations and it'll make them think about other things.

So I want to start off with, because I have been seeing online and on TikTok because that's where I spend my days just because I need a little upper and it's silly. And I am that 30-year-old who's way too old for TikTok. It wasn't the app we needed. It was the one we deserved. Oh my gosh. I was that like typical millennial. Oh, I'm not going to do that. And then I download and I'm like, why am I obsessed? I don't know. But there's some funny people sharing,

oh, I got my stimulus check and then making jokes about, oh, I just spent it on wine. But let's get real. Number one, it's a one-time payment and there's lots of great resources on the balance that share more information about it. And I'm sure people already know this information, but it's a one-time payment. You don't have to pay tax on it. But I think when you give people, here's some free, quote unquote, money, people don't necessarily know what the best thing to do with it is. So in your view, what are some things that you should and should not do with this money? Yeah, I think one, I think everyone's saying they're spending it on wine and stuff. I'm hoping for all of our sakes that this is just sort of the levity of humor that we need in this situation. I would say, and I'm assuming most

people are really being smarter about it and, you know, saying, okay, what can I use this first for? And really, it's going way back to the fundamentals of what that your budget creation is. And it's just saying, like, what are the essential things that I have to pay off first, right? You know, thinking about things like rent, or your mortgage, you know, food, utilities, your internet access. These are the things that you want to make sure you can keep. You know, we are so lucky that we have all access to a lot of these things right now that, you know, people in situations before who, you know, for going back to 1918 quarantine times, like didn't have access to any of this stuff. The things that you don't want to live without, you want to make sure you're putting

your stimulus check towards that first. There are many different options of, you know, how flexible are those payments. So things that we would have recommended earlier are, let's say, paying your credit card bills on time because they have super high interest rates. Now you may be able to get some sort of a deferment or forbearance from your credit card companies or some sort of easing on what those interest rates are. So things that I recommend, especially if mortgage is also giving you that sort of forbearance, rent is really important. Paying some of your utilities, keeping money for groceries and food and that internet and cable access I think is really important also. Yeah. So it sounds kind of like first find out what all your kind of essential

things are, your essential bills, and then find out, is there any kind of relief for any of those? Because I know lots of credit card companies are, oh, we'll give you some time, lower your payments or lower your interest rate or something like that. Find out where there's some relief and then kind of put that money towards the things that, okay, I need to pay this and maybe there isn't as much relief. Because yeah, I agree. I used to be to, oh, always put your money on the highest interest debt first. Now I'm just like, you know what? You need to feed yourself and you need a roof over your head. So maybe make those the priority right now because we're still kind of in survival mode. Yes, definitely. And I think it's, yeah, it's really about saying, it's starting your budget process all over again and saying, yeah, what are those fixed expenses

that you really can't live without that won't change over time, determining if any of them have changed and then making your calls from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've been getting a lot of questions too from people. It seems like there's kind of a variety of different people in different situations. There's definitely the people who have maybe lost their jobs or they have limited income right now because of the pandemic. And then there's the people that are still working kind of in essential services or they can work from home. And it's interesting because there's the people that are in survival mode. It's like, all right, we just got to kind of figure it out. And then there's the people that are kind of a bit confused because like, well, I'm not in that boat. I'm still earning money. But I want to be smart with it because what if I do lose my job if something happens? And I've been getting a lot of questions about where should my priorities lie if I am still earning an income and I may or may not lose my job? What would you kind of say to those people? Yeah, I, you know, first of all, you're

lucky. So, you know, I kept myself among the lucky people that are in that situation. And so what you want to think about is how do I prevent myself from becoming on the other side of that line? And I think the best thing to do is, you know, continue to make your essential payments like you have been, right? You don't want to start skimping out. I think if you can afford to take on the payments of things like mortgages and stuff that you could potentially get forbearance on, but you can also pay right now, you might as well pay them right now. So you don't have a potentially large lump sum of money that you have to pay at another time. So I think if you can keep your expenses normalized, that's a really

good place to start. But then it's also saying, let me make sure I get that emergency fund together in case something like this ends up happening to me down the line. How far ahead of that can I get? Can I save three to six months worth of expenses so that if all of a sudden I don't have income in two months, I'm able to protect myself for the rest of the year, let's say. So always starting that emergency fund and making sure that it can protect you if anything bad happens, you should definitely do that first.

And it's the same process, I think, as really someone whose financial situation has changed, going back to your budget, getting real about what those costs are so you know exactly what you have to save. And I mean, I think we're all kind of spending a little bit less since we're not out in the world and spending on random frivolous things here and there, right? So much of your spending can just add up over time, Uber here, you know, going out for a drink here, that stuff's not happening. So I think you're much more in control of actually what you're spending now. So if you can get real about what you have to spend,

save that in an emergency fund, it's definitely going to help you and sort of going back to this mental health exercise of saying, okay, am I going to be okay if my situation changes in a couple of months, and just protecting yourself in that case. Absolutely. I've been seeing a lot of like, I completely agree. And it's interesting, I've been seeing a lot of, like, I completely agree. And it's interesting. I've been seeing, there's a lot of people I know or, you know, people in the finance space that said, wow, you know, I used to give the advice, have at least a thousand dollars in an emergency fund. Now they're like, oh, okay, have way more than that. That is certainly not enough. And so lots of people are actually even changing their kind of point of views on how much

should you save? And that's like one of the biggest questions I always get. It's like, how much should you save in your emergency fund? And like you said, I think it's so important to have a budget, really figure out what are your expenses? What is your cost of living? And then only you can determine what makes you feel comfortable and your different situation. If you're self-employed, you should have more money saved up than someone who is employed because you kind of are more at risk for losing more potentially in this situation. Yeah. And it's really about saying like, what is going to make me feel comfortable, right? $1,000 is such an arbitrary amount of money. You have no idea if that's actually going to make you feel comfortable about your spending, right? You want to understand

what are the things you can live without, you can't live without and save based on that stuff. That might be really different, especially depending on where you live compared to someone else. So making sure you're the one in charge of how much that money is instead of just taking someone's arbitrary advice is very important. And the other kind of thing I've been hearing too is a lot of people who maybe have never had an emergency fund. They're like, well, I've heard advice that it's silly to keep that much in cash when I can really just maybe tap into some low interest debt, like a line of credit. What would you say to people that, because I've for years seen advice of like, oh, and just have a line of credit as your emergency fund for me. I'm like, debt averse. I'm like, that sounds like a bad idea. What would you say to people that think, oh, no, I've got a line of credit that has low interest, so I'm good. Yeah. I always like to have some cash on hand. There's really nothing like being liquid if you need to be. You don't know what your situation is going to change to be. So even having a low interest loan or a credit card that you're going to use, you just don't know when are you eventually

going to have to pay that back? How much is that interest going to accrue? It's like you don't really you can't see into the future. If of money available to them and they know they'll have a lot of money available to them later on. But I'd say if having access to cash is important to you, having the actual cash is never going to – it's going to be hard to substitute for that. Yeah. And as someone who's been through, I feel like, lots of emergencies throughout my lifetime and I've always had an emergency fund. It's honestly been a lifesaver. I think maybe the people that kind of feel that way, they've never gone through an emergency yet. Yeah. Hopefully the whole world will feel very different about creating an emergency fund right now. Exactly. Because you don't ever think it's going to happen to you. You're in a really stable job and this is never going to happen, and then boom, the entire economy shuts down. No one is immune to these types of things, right? It's like you never know what it is.

No one would have assumed, even if you went through the 2008 crash, you still were able to go out to restaurants and have dinner. Maybe you wouldn't have eaten as much or gotten that really expensive bottle of wine, but you were were able to go out to restaurants and have dinner. Maybe you wouldn't have, you know, eaten as much or gotten that really expensive bottle of wine, but you're still able to go out. You're still able to travel. You know, the world is completely different now. The issues that we're facing now are so different. There's no way to predict it. So it's just about saying, I just want to protect myself in case anything possibly happens. Like you said, especially during times where you're just totally out of control of so many things, being in control of an emergency fund really relaxes your brain. It helps you say like, that's okay.

I'm in control. I have the money to protect myself. I'm not, my life isn't going to be ruined if something like this happens. I think people really underestimate how, like what ruined if something like this happens. I think people really underestimate what that security feels like. Absolutely. Yeah. It's like in these times of uncertainty, we need something that is certain. And sometimes having an emergency, for me, I feel so good knowing that I have that. And I'm glad that I did take the time to save it up. But obviously, there's now people who are in a situation where like, well, I don't have that.

And now I'm in this situation. And I think there's a lot of people that are kind of frustrated because they're like, shoot, well, thanks for the advice, but I can't go back in time and save an emergency fund. Is it really just like, okay, so you just have to look at your kind of relief options and cut back and just kind of weather through this storm? Yeah, I think that's really what it is now. I mean, you have to say, let's get in contact with all my credit card issuers. Let me get in contact with my loans and banks and mortgages and figure out what are my options, right? Never take things at face value. Never just look on their website to see what their options are that they have available. Almost every time you have a personal interaction

with someone that's a part of customer service from one of your banks or lenders, you can get so much more accomplished than just, you know, applying for whatever's out there in the world. There's always an opportunity for lower interest rates. You know, they want to keep you as a customer. They don't want you to default on loans. You know, they want to work with you. So if you're able to explain to them what's going on, even if it's like, I know a lot of people have gotten this forbearance on mortgages, let's say that they were able to defer payment for three months. Now everyone's sort of going to come up to their three months very soon from when this began. And it's saying, okay, now am I going to have to pay these three months of my mortgage right now?

Good opportunity to call your bank or call your lender and say, can I move the deferment to the end of my mortgage term? How can I work with this lender to make sure that I'm still in good standing? It doesn't affect my credit. And the lender is still going to get what they need out of the deal as well. Everyone's in this weird situation. All of your banks and lenders are trying to cope too. So just make sure you get in contact with people and talk them through your personal situation and figure out what they can do for you.

That is kind of like the one silver lining because everyone's going through this. The banks and lenders are more flexible. Whereas I feel like if you were just, you know, you know, a year ago wanting to be like, Oh, can I get into it for my mortgage? You'd probably be like, hell no, get out of here. So at least there's something that's like one little good thing. And I'd say, honestly, what we were talking about before and now it's like, they're much more willing to work with you if you're especially an existing customer of their institution, right? They don't want to have

you default, like I said. They want things to work out. It's not good for them when you do that either. So the idea is they're really focused on helping their existing customers through this time. And for the people that we were saying before that are like, oh, maybe I can just get a low interest loan or use a credit card or something like that. It's not as easy to get access to a lot of that capital right now because everyone is in this situation where they're like, okay, we need to plan for the worst. So they're not as into potentially lending out new money to people that they've never worked with before, especially if they have no credit history with them or anything like that. So especially if you can tap into your existing relationships, that's where you're definitely going to get the most

wiggle room if you're in a precarious situation. Yeah. So now there's also this kind of group of people who are, they're actually doing okay financially, but now they're kind of faced with this, you know, I guess, should I start investing or what should I start investing? I've been getting a ton of questions like that, even still now. And I think people are so confused about what's going on with the stock market, myself included, because no one knows what's going on with the stock market. What would you say? Because I know I've been getting a lot of questions being like, should I invest in stocks or should I continue my regular contributions or anything like that? Is this a good time to start investing?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's all depending on your personal situation, right? I, let's say, I don't want to tell anybody to invest, especially in a situation where we have no idea what's going to happen to the stock market. But if you are able to do it, it's still a good opportunity. I think still making your, you know, your contributions, especially to your retirement accounts and everything, is important to continue to do, especially if you're at an age where you have a long future ahead of you to do that, right? Because the whole point of the stock market is you're not supposed to be making rash decisions

where you're going to make movements within short periods of time, right? You should be weathering this storm. This may seem like it's an incredibly difficult storm to deal with, and you have no idea what's going to happen. And it's really scary because things went down, but the stock market has already gone up around 20 something percent from the lowest it was in March, right? And there's no guarantee that it's going to stay here. There's no guarantee that it's not going to go way up. So I'd say if you're continuing to make contributions to things like your retirement accounts, I think you should definitely continue to do that. You want to make sure as always,

you know, I don't think the rules of the road of investing have really changed very much. You want to have a diversified portfolio. You want to invest in things like ETFs and, you know, bigger products that are able to diversify what you're doing, not picking single stocks and investing in them because you just have no idea what's going to happen bigger products that are, you know, able to diversify what you're doing, not picking single stocks and investing in them, because you just have no idea what's going to happen in one specific sector, one specific company, things can be so volatile, that making sure you're diversified enough is really important to protect what you are doing. I mean, I think it's a good opportunity to potentially take advantage of low cost options. But, you know,

I'd say following the same rules as you would have prior to this is certainly what you should still go with. And I think if you're, you know, closer to retirement, you want to figure out options to protect the things that you have. But some of the the MoMoney listeners aren't that close to retirement quite yet. No, but they're parents. And I think that's a new conversation that a lot of younger people are having with their parents. And it's honestly very reminiscent of 2008, 2009 when I was... My parents weren't close to retirement, but they had friends that were... And I remember hearing, and it's still stuck in my mind, like, oh, so-and-so lost all their retirement investments.

And at that time, I had no financial literacy. So I honestly thought, oh my gosh, they lost all of their money. But actually what happened was the value of their investments went to decreased and they cashed out. And that's how you lose money. And that hasn't changed. This is the same rules back then. So I feel like everyone should look at what happened back then. It's a good little reference point. Yeah. I mean, as we always say,

the way that you're definitely going to lose money is when you take money out of the market at the lowest, right? You're not going to see any success. If you can afford to hold on and wait as long as possible to start taking any money out of your accounts, you should, because you just, you really never know what's going to happen. You know, you're still going to have to pay taxes on that money. You definitely don't want to do that now, especially if you are still employed. So you want to make sure you're assessing all of your options and really just following the same rules of the road. The stock market is meant to have ups and downs. It's what it's done since its inception. So even though this seems so traumatic right now,

it's going to be okay. And I'm sure something like this will happen in the future. It will. And I think it's just like, this has just been such a reminder for so many people like this. Yeah, the stock market doesn't always go up, but because it's been going up for so long, we kind of forgot that it can go down and down for a number of different reasons. So I think this is a good, not a good experience, that sounds terrible, but a good learning lesson for a lot of people, especially younger investors who didn't have an experience to anything quite like this. But I think they're also realizing, and people have been talking about this for a while, I'm sure there's so many articles on The Balance about this, about how emotional investing is. You want to talk a little bit about what are some things people should prepare themselves for?

You just said it. The stock market is going to go down. It's meant to have these sort of corrections and adjustments over time. And especially if you are young, the whole point is you have a really great runway to wait it out and see what ends up happening. You're really not supposed to be touching things. Your investments in the stock market should allow you to have them invested for 10 years, let's say five to 10 years. You shouldn't be using that for liquid cash that you potentially need to buy something with, right? You should be able to weather whatever that storm is, which is what we've seen in the past is like time periods that

it takes for things to rebound or adjust, you know? So knowing that things will change, I mean, I don't know about you, but I haven't really been taking as close look at everything I have in the market right now, because I'm like, I look, I'm just going to be freaked out by what's happening right now. And the idea is like, there's no point because listen, I can, I'm planning to keep my money there for however, 10 more years. And whatever's happening today is not going to be the same thing as when I actually need to withdraw those funds down the line. So and I think doing things like we said is protecting yourself with things like ETFs and mutual funds or things that are allowing you to have exposure to more than just one specific stock allows you to feel a little

bit more protected knowing that there may be volatility across industries and sectors that you know can change but you'll generally be as protected as you possibly could be absolutely and yeah i've i've been having a lot of conversations with people about um yeah just some of these like core principles and also just like giving reference like remember when everyone was talking about, well maybe not as much in the States, but in Canada, everyone was talking about cannabis stocks like,

you know, a year or two ago and everyone's like, this is how we're going to get rich. The whole world is changing. This is it. You know how many people I know have lost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, it's because it was speculative and people were buying individual stocks or

even in like, you know, cannabis ETFs. And yeah, I'm like, yeah, we all knew this. Nothing changed. But I think sometimes people need to experience those losses to really have that learning lesson. And the same thing, yeah, for buying individual stocks, like I dabble in that a tiny bit, just a tiny bit of my portfolio. And it's so emotional and stressful. I actually don't enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, that's when you're really getting into sort of like gambling territory, I think. You know, if you're thinking, you know, sometimes it's fun, right? Especially if you are like personally interested in a specific company or industry. I think that's good. But I think the

idea is like keeping yourself almost on a budget for how you're investing is really important. So I think part of that is really good in terms of you getting really familiar with how the market works, what are the dynamics, how do you purchase, how do you sell, you know, what are all the tax implications, doing that is actually really helpful for getting yourself sort of invested and excited about the market. So I think there is like a good portion of what you can do, you know, associated with that. But the idea is that if you're looking at this as a way to grow your wealth over time, you know, doing the safe and diversified things are always going to be the better strategy for you

down the line. Yeah. If that's what the experts have been saying for decades, maybe we should probably listen. Yeah. It's so sad, but like nothing has changed. There's nothing new. Nothing has changed. And I think that's actually an important, honestly important thing for people to hear because people are saying, oh, everything's going to change. The world's going to be so different after this. I'm like, is it though? Like, we don't know. Like it'll probably change in some ways, but I don't know. People just, you know, saying, oh, well, the handshake is gone forever. I'm like forever. It'll probably change in some ways, but I don't know. People just saying, oh, well, the handshake is gone forever. I'm like, forever? It's been around for so long,

though. I don't know if the handshake is going to be gone forever. I think it's too early to say what on earth is going to happen. Yeah. And I think it's always important to invest in the stock market, invest in things like money market accounts and high yield savings accounts and CDs. And that way you are protected across a bunch of different assets and you're able to experience the stock market and understand how it works, but do it in a way that's safe for you. Absolutely. And take this time if you don't know some of the terms that we've been saying or don't know if your portfolio is diversified, well, take a look at what you are personally invested in. I know I've been having so many conversations with people who are like, I think I'm in mutual funds. I don't know. The guy at the bank just got me in this portfolio.

I have no idea what it's in. So this is a good time to take a look at what is going on, what are you investing in. And then if you don't understand something, this is the time to start researching and educating yourself. I know you mentioned earlier that the company that owns The Balance also is part of the Investopedia, which is another resource that I go to all the time. Great resource and great information there. So a great place to start your journey. Yes, definitely take some time to learn all of these words and what you're doing and get familiar with what your retirement accounts are invested in and see how much you can get smarter about what's going on in the world. Absolutely.

So before I let you go, what else do you want to make sure? I'm sure you've been also getting so much data and just questions from people. What are some key things you want people to know in this weird situation that we're currently in about just general personal finance management? What some smart things that we should all be thinking about and doing? Yeah, I think, you know, what we were talking about at the beginning is creating that personal balance sheet for yourself in a budget is your first step. I think the other really important

thing for everyone to think about and sort of what we've been seeing is that there's so many best practices out there and the balance is in about all the processes for what to do with your stimulus checks, your taxes, investing, loans, mortgages, what's happening there, small business loans. The hard part is, is that we're in such an uncertain world right now. And so many things are not working as planned and, you know, best practices may not stand up to the test right now. But it's really important to persevere through everything. Don't stop calling. Don't stop checking on your applications. Contact as many people as you possibly can. Try to take as much control as possible. Being passive in this environment is not going to work for you.

You want to make sure you are taking an active role in what's going on with your finances so that you can sort of regain some of that control that you may have lost doing, you know, due to all the things that are changing. So keep calling your banks, you know, keep checking your applications, following up and making sure that you are not just sort of letting things happen to you. You know, you're happening to other things. Which is just great advice in any situation. Don't let your money take it. I've been having so many conversations like this too. It's like you feel, you know, maybe anxious or a certain way because right, maybe up until this point, money has been making the decisions for you, but you should be making decisions about your money. You're the one in control. Even though we're in this world world where we don't feel like a lot is in our control, there's still some things we can control. Definitely. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining me. Where can people find, if people want to maybe follow

you on social media, where can they do that? And I guess they can go to thebalance.com for all of this great resources. I'll share some links that you shared with me that are very topical in the show notes, but where can people maybe want to follow you if they want to see what you're up to? Yeah. So if you want, you can go to thebalance.com. We're also on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook at The Balance. So you can find us all over the place there and on LinkedIn as well. I'm also on Instagram and Twitter, Lauren Silbert. So you're able to find us anywhere and reach out with any questions that you might have. I think we're really open to hearing a lot of the things that consumers are experiencing and trying to answer them pretty easily on our site. I think that's one of the things that The Balance cares about the most is saying, like, let me answer these things for people in English that have never actually had to deal with this stuff before.

So if you have a question, send us a note and ask us and we are really willing to and excited to actually help answer them in an easy to understand way. Amazing. Amazing. Well, thanks again for joining me. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks so much, Jessica. I'll talk to you later. Have a good day and be safe out there. And that was episode 243 of the Mo Money Podcast with Lauren Silbert, VP and General Manager of The Balance. Make sure to check out thebalance.com to learn everything you could possibly think of about personal finance. Honestly, whenever I Google something kind of obscure about personal finance,

usually their articles pop up. So it's a really, really great resource. So make sure to check them out, thebalance.com. Make sure to also check out the show notes for this episode on my website, jessicamorehouse.com slash 243. I'm going to include a recap of what we went through, some resources that we talked about, some of my favorite articles from The Balance. So make sure to check that out, jessicamorehouse.com slash 243. And of course, you want to check out the show notes for any episodes you've ever listened to. It's just jessicamorehouse.com slash 243. And of course you want to check out the show notes for any episodes you've ever listened to. It's just Jessica morehouse.com slash whatever the number of that episode is.

Now, as I mentioned, I will be dropping another episode tomorrow. That will be my final one. And when I say final, that doesn't actually mean anything, does it? Because I'm not actually going anywhere. I'm still stuck in my house and I'll probably, uh, probably want to make some more episodes. I basically just needed quite honestly, I needed a, I need a break because I've made a lot of episodes this season and I need a break. So even though I'm going on, quote unquote, summer hiatus, I'll probably pop in here once in a while, maybe once a month or every couple of weeks. I don't know.

It really depends. And drop another episode, either an interview or another solo episode or another Money Minute episode. We'll see. It really just depends. But basically, I just needed a little bit of a break so I can focus my energy and time on some other projects that I've been really wanting to do and some new things that I want to kind of try out. Back in the day, I think it was a couple of years ago now, I had a book club and it was a format that worked and sometimes didn't. It was great, but it was just hard to organize. It was kind of a webinar. I always had to have the author and then we kind of had a live book club with the author, which is really great. But I'm thinking of maybe expanding this and maybe just having,

you know, a book club where we all get together, you know, on Zoom, we read a specific book and then we have a chat about it and I have a bunch of questions like a regular book club where we all get together, you know, on zoom, we read a specific book and then we have a chat about it. And I have a bunch of questions like a regular book club. That's something I'm thinking about. I will let you know if that's actually happening, uh, to stay in the loop. Cause again, I won't always be on the podcast. Make sure to either get into my Facebook group or to most especially get onto my email list. I honestly only email you probably every two weeks at this point. So I'm not going to even bug you that much. And you can do that by going to jessicamorehouse.com slash subscribe. Speaking of my email list, I recently kind of did a little update to my free resource library on my website. So made a few updates to some of the documents. I'm going to be including some new documents. I think I just put in a new,

like a new brand new resource. And I have not even told anybody about this. I can't believe I did that. Now, what is it is the question as I look. Oh, yeah. I just dropped a debt payoff cheat sheet because I got a lot of questions about, hey, I want to pay off debt. I don't know where to start. I made a little cheat sheet on my website, but if you're curious, what the heck is in my free resource library? And again, it's free. I have a net worth cheat sheet, a credit best practices guide, a tax prep checklist, a moving out checklist, a mortgage prep checklist. I've got my free budget spreadsheet with video tutorial. I've got a few past webinars. One is how to file your taxes the right way when you're self-employed or have a side hustle or how to become a side hustler. And, uh, okay, that's it

at the minute, but that's still quite a bit. If you, you know, that's quite a bit. It took me a while to put all that together. I'm going to be, um, putting some new ones. Uh, I'm, I, as I mentioned last week, I'm working on some new spreadsheets and that will drop soon as you know, it was a bit of a crazy week. So, uh, kind of didn't have the focus to finish up that project. So that is on its way. Same with my DIY passive investing for Canadians online course that is coming. And I know I've been saying that for like one to possibly two years, but it is coming. But in terms of courses, I still have my six week Fix Your Finances Masterclass that you can register to now. And also my Investing Foundations

for Canadians course. So if you have any questions about those, you can just hit me up on social media or email me. Um, but there were some really great courses and I've gotten some really great feedback from it. So, uh, definitely, you know, that might be a good idea to check those out. And also since I was not able to do a millennial money meetup in the spring, and I don't know if I'll be able to quite honestly do one in the fall at this point, I'm just like canceling 2020 nothing's happening, uh,, that is. But I hope to do one or two webinars, maybe more. I don't know. We'll see what happens throughout the summer, just so we can get together and I'll, you know, do, I'll figure out what kind of topics people want to hear about. But I'm definitely going to do some webinars. I'm going to be more active and, you know, do some kind of community building

things. I think that'd be, I mean, I need that, you know, do some kind of community building things. I think that'd be, I mean, I need that, you know, again, I'm lonely over here just hanging out by myself at home. So, uh, I think doing something like that would be kind of a cool and pretty fun. Um, do I have anything else? Oh yeah. The last thing too, just to let you know, I am still, uh, taking new financial counseling clients. So, um, if you want to learn more about that, go to jessabarros.com slash discovery call or go to the financial counseling page on my website to learn more. Book a discovery call with me. We'll chat, see how I can help you with your situation. That'd be really cool. But otherwise, yeah, I'm going to be back here tomorrow with a special

episode to really kind of address what's going on in the world right now and where I stand and how it kind of relates to money and what's going on. And I hope, yeah, I haven't recorded it yet. I'm making a bunch of notes. So I hope it's going to be a good one so you can look out for that one tomorrow. But just again, thanks so much for supporting my podcast and listening and sending me your Instagram DMs or your emails or your tweets or your LinkedIn. I get in some LinkedIn messages, which is really nice, saying that you really enjoy the podcast. That means so, so much to me, especially right now where I don't know. I can't because I don't talk to anybody else.

So it really means a lot that I am hopefully helping people because that is literally why I'm doing this. I just want to try to make the world a better place if I can. So I really appreciate that. Anyways, that is it. I'm a rambler, as you may know, if you listen to the podcast. So I'm going to let you go. Thanks for listening. See you back here tomorrow. Have a good and safe day. See you back here tomorrow.