More Money Podcast - 379 Balancing Wealth and Well-being with Mick Heyman - CFA and Author of Mellow Your Money

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Money isn't everything, and it most certainly shouldn't be the thing that dictates where your life takes you (or holds you hostage). No one knows this better than Mick Heyman, author of . After working in wealth management for 40 years, he realized he wasn't happy where he was and had been chasing the money to a life he couldn't even recognize anymore. That's when he made a big change, moved from Louisville, Kentucky to San Diego, and finally started living life on his terms. His years of experience in finance and life change (that turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made) inspired him to share his experience and best financial tips with others in his new book so we all can learn how to mellow our money a bit more. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/379 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lou, Lou, Lou, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 379 of the show. And we're going to be talking about how to mellow when it comes to your money because, I mean, money is a lot. And lots of the messaging out there is, you know, get more, hustle more, do more. I mean, I know the show is called the More Money Podcast, but as we know, get more, hustle more, do more. I mean, I know this show is called the More Money Podcast. But as we know, this show, I mean, some people don't know, but the show is not about how to get more money. It's really about how to be more, you know, aware of your money, how to save more, how to make more, you know, how to do more with your money. That's kind of

the little tagline I added, but also just how to think of money a little bit differently. You know, I don't know. We all know where this show name came from. It's an iteration of an old name and it's fine. But anyways, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. This is not about that at all. I should introduce my guest, Mick Hyman. He is a CFA and founder of Hyman Investment Counseling. He has a 40-year career in wealth management and has been helping individuals and institutions of all sizes to build and preserve wealth with his stress-free method for mellowing your money. Now, I really enjoyed his book because it was part memoir, part advice I love I love books like that. But it was really interesting to get his insight as someone who was like in the industry, but also someone who had a family, someone who, you know, had to manage his own money and

some of the things that he realized along the way and how kind of money isn't everything. And, you know, we talk a lot about that on the show, kind of just like the deeper parts of money, the psychology and the emotional components of money that don't often get talked about. And really bigger picture stuff is what are we all doing on this planet? You know, we're not just chasing money. That is not enough. Because let me tell you, once you reach the last of those milestones, what else are you going to do? You need something deeper and stronger, a deeper purpose, really. And so we get into all of that in this episode. And of course, I'm going to be also giving away a new book, Mellow Your Money. So make sure to listen to

the end of this episode to learn about how you can enter to win his book, but also a bunch of other books that have been currently featured on this season of the podcast. But before I get to that interview, I want to share a little bit more information about my online course that you may not even know about, but it's been around for almost three years called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. It's a course I built specifically with you Canadian listeners in mind who want to learn how to do passive investing like I've been talking about for years on the show. If you want to get rich slowly, invest for the long term, you don't want to day trade or dabble in something speculative like cryptocurrency

or some hot stocks that you find online. You just want to make sure you can retire one day or, you know, save enough for buying a home. And this course can help you. It is specifically about all the fundamentals you need to know about investing as a Canadian. But then I also show you how to build a strategic investment plan and then how to invest in your own portfolio by way of either using a robo-advisor or doing it on your own from scratch. There's lots of worksheets and calculators and spreadsheets that you will not find anywhere else on the internet, hence why I had to build them myself, but also get lifetime access as well as access to the private Facebook group, my monthly Q&A sessions for students, a private email you can contact me with, and you also get a private

one-on-one session with me when you finish the course as well. There are so many benefits to the course, so I highly recommend going to jessicamorehouse.com slash course to find more information and to apply. Again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash course to find more information and to apply. Again, that's Jessica Morehouse dot com slash course to learn more and to apply. Welcome to the More Money podcast. I'm so excited to have you on to chat about, I mean, you have literally a wealth of knowledge. You've been in the industry for a long time, but also your brand new book called Mellow Your Money. Welcome. Thank you so much, Jessica. I'm excited to be on here with you, too. Yeah. So first and foremost, let's dive in. You really do have, I mean, you have a lot of credentials. You've been in the business for over 40 years. Is that correct? Right. 1980, I started.

Oh, wow. And I mean, I got the sense of that from reading your book and you mentioning that, I mean, you were working in the industry when like Black, was it Black Monday happened at the dot com? But like, yeah, I mean, you've seen some things. Seen and suffered through a lot of things. But enjoyed some good things. Yeah, there's always some good things after the bad things. I mean, that definitely gives you some perspective. But it was actually really nice reading through the fact that you were able to live through those and experience those like on, you know, in your career, but also personally, it I mean, I think the main part of your book, which is to kind of just, you know, chill out, everything kind of

works out and to not freak out is really helpful. Having that perspective of someone who's seen a lot like the headlines say this is the worst time ever and then oh they say that again every couple years every every yeah that's right exactly and have been saying it and they keep on saying that exactly exactly so i i'm curious so you've worked in a number of different roles and you're still working in the industry what do you currently do because i know before you used to work kind of on the equity side of things you You helped manage people's portfolios. Do you still currently do that? Has your role kind of evolved over the span of your career? It surely has, but almost in a circle.

As I started off with a very small firm working with individuals and kind of learning from four partners who were kind of combined and very different personalities. And it was kind of fun to learn were kind of combined and very different personalities. And it was kind of fun to learn from each of them. And then over time, loved working with individuals, but got a great job working for an institutional firm. So there we're managing sometimes hundreds of billions or even a billion dollars for large either universities or corporations, unions, all kinds of different institutions. And then 1980, 1981, sold the business, was a partner there. And eventually, I traveled out here to California and fell in love with it with my young family at that point, and kind of circled back to

working with individuals again. And this time, I'm on my own. So I'm kind of trying to have all those voices of my past helping me out, managing people's money in San Diego here. What made you want to kind of go back to your roots and work with individuals again, especially since I'm guessing that if you were to stay more on the institutional side, a little bit more lucrative, you know, you can only make so much money working with individuals. Like, what made you want to go back to working one-on-one with people? I just love that. I love the relationships.

For me, that's part of the fun of the business is just working with people and seeing them, you know, kind of evolve and grow over time as I grow with them. And so some of the clients I work with, I've worked with for 30 years. Some of them I worked with even in the institutional years. I kind of had a few individual clients that helped start the firm. And, you know, I think I feel like I make more of a difference when I'm working with individuals. And, you know, institutions have a lot of different choices, and I'm working with individuals. And institutions have a lot of different choices, and they're working with consultants. And I'm not saying it's bad business to work with them. They need help too. But for me, the fun of life is working with people

I know and can work with over a long period of time. Now, the question is, especially too, since you've worked with some of these people for a few decades, has your advice changed over time or your approach changed or has the, you know, kind of issues or struggles that these people have with their finances, their investments, has that changed or has, is it just kind of, we're always on the same ride, same ups and downs, but just, you know, different decade? Yeah, I think over time, when I've worked with most of the clients I've worked with, you know, some of the lessons I took into the business have been, you know, I've been reminded of and had to lean into a lot of times because we, of course, over the last couple of decades have gone through a lot of turmoil at times. But the actual setting objectives, making sure people understand

those objectives and what they mean when the market might go up or go down and getting used to that and the coaching involved in that, I think that's been a very steady thing for me and for them. And I think they feel comfortable. I can kind of remember, especially in 2008, when we had the tremendous financial crisis going on and people were asking me, you know, gosh, are your clients calling you up and are they mad or whatever? And the most of the calls I was getting back then were about me. They were worried about me being OK. And so that's, you know, made me feel good. Like, like we were all, you know, they knew that the stocks were down, it was going to be a while. So that's kind of been the good thing is that it's been a very steady process and kind of staying

true to my, my roots. And now, I think the one thing that really drew me to your book, and what I really appreciated was your kind of overall approach to money and building wealth and investments. And, you know, especially since you got to experience kind of the heyday, the 80s, the 90s of, you know, and there's all those great movies that show how, you know, how crazy busy it was and how you can build so much money and, you know stock trading and and things like that um you know how did you not like kind of get caught up in the glory of it because it definitely is i mean it's we probably saw a little bit of it or i experienced a little bit of it in one way during you know 2020 2021 when everyone was going crazy with the meme stocks and crypto and everything like it just like was overwhelming but i'm sure it was like that on the trading floor back in those times. How did you always kind of it seems like your main kind of thing is you've got a level head.

You make some good decisions. You take your time. You're very patient. And that is clearly paid off. And that is like one of the things I liked about your book is it's very reminiscent of other books I've read, which is just a good reminder of these are the smart things to do. And it's because they're so simple, but they're hard to implement. So I'm curious, like, how did you build that kind of resiliency and not get caught up in some of the excitement of it all? Well, and as you've probably read in the book, I didn't always avoid it. Yeah.

So that was part of the, I guess, when you think about, you know, some of the lessons that I tried to write about in the book, it's because in my experience, that's how I learned the most, by getting caught up, making errors, both in my life and in the markets. My favorite books of all time in investing was written about 100 years ago called Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. And Jesse Livermore wrote the book, I think under pseudonames Edwin Lefevre, I believe. And it was about his mistakes. He made and lost millions of dollars. And this is before the fortune he lost or he made in 1929 and sadly the fortune he lost in the 30s, which led to his suicide. But here in the early 20s, he's writing about making and losing millions. And each time he's saying, this is a tuition fee. This is how you learn. And you can either learn from your mistakes or you're going to keep repeating them. And so, you know, in the 80s was,

you know, as I was a young guy, I was caught up in how much money you could make in trading. And I was trying all these different things. And I'm convinced there are people who are good traders who can make money trading, that it's a full time job and it's not easy, but not me. You know, I proved to myself that's just, I don't have the mind for it. And then it took me time to kind of see one of my first clients, her portfolio and working with her taught me one of the great lessons of, we used to nickname it benign neglect, which doesn't mean do nothing. I know, it's probably misnamed there. But seeing how doing nothing in her portfolio because her gains were so large and the tax capital gains rates were so high back then, you couldn't do anything. Time and time again, her portfolio was outperforming everybody's.

And so did I learn that immediately? No. I had to keep reminding it. And it doesn't mean do nothing, because obviously, if you had Xerox back many years ago, that's not something you wanted. Or BlackBerry more recently. There are things that change. But most of the time, let your good stocks run and be patient.

And those things that you read about and those steps that you read are for real. But the trouble is our emotions. And so I had to learn how to deal with my own emotions. And that's through the experience. And so it took a lot of time and a lot of, you know, falling down to get there. I'm curious what your perspective was, especially with young people getting into the market and learning investing for the first time over the past couple years. I mean, you probably saw, okay, I've seen this before, and people are making the exact same mistakes. I don't do you think people are actually learning their lessons from, you know, losing some money, you know, investing in some, you know, speculative, you know, investments or cryptocurrency

and things like that? Or do you think it just seems like everything is going so quickly, there's not enough time to reflect? I don't know what your thoughts are on that. I do fear that. And I do, you know, hope that, you know, that, you know, it's not just my book, but there are a lot of great books out there. Gosh, the person you had on, I can't remember her name. Is it Shannon about the no regret decisions? Yeah, yeah. Shanley Simmons, no regret decisions. Yeah. So many people out there with such good advice. But in the end, people are going to have to learn their lessons. But you hope to at least put enough perspective in there so that as they're experiencing these different

things that they can at least not panic too much. You know that with young people, the fear is that they get advice that is not bad advice. But if they're not told the downside of that advice, they can get scared out. For example, if you've got, you know, 40 years before you're going to retire, it makes sense. You could be fully invested in stocks and it will work out. Things work out. But there can be two or three years where it's terrible. If that's the first two or three years, then that first thousand dollars that you put in, you're going to say, well, this is stupid. I'm going to go off and do something else. And so knowing what the downside is and maybe for some young people, they don't want to put all of it in stocks just because they will get afraid.

They do want to save money to put in for another time. They may want to take some risk with cryptocurrency or some of these meme stocks, but do it with a small amount. Yeah. You know, and then if you get lucky on some of these, imagine you got lucky on Bitcoin and you made $40,000 or $50,000. But then you saw it go back to your original investment or whatever it was. Yeah. So hopefully you learned to take some off the table, you know, and I had to learn that

with some clients back in the 80s where they bought a stock they thought it was. And these were experienced people. But when you have something go up, you think it's never gonna go the other direction i know why is that like we never think it's obviously some behavioral bias we never think it's gonna go down for whatever reason we think it's gonna go up i know you shared a great story in your book about that guy who part of his portfolio i think it was uh close to like the dot-com uh bubble when he had some oil company was an oil company right it was actually before the dot-com yeah before that and it just skyrocketed and he made what he had a couple thousand or a hundred thousand dollars and it went to like a million and what happened

oh i think it's going to keep going because you just you you think that the world has changed and you struck gold and you're going to keep on getting more gold. And the other thing going on is the headlines are confirming you. Exactly. They're like, yeah, like, and you read the headlines, you're like, whoa, well, it's great. And of course, you know, the end of the story, lost it all, almost. And analysts, you know, very smart people are confirming you. They're going on TV and saying, look at oil and it's going to go up forever. And who would have thought back, you know, in the late 80s, when you had the early 80s, late 70s, when you had the gas lines and no one would have predicted that oil would go

down for the next 10 years or whatever it did. And they certainly didn't believe that that was possible. And so, yeah, and the sad part of that story is once something does start going down, then you have those regrets. And it's so hard to get out. It's hard. Because I guess it's kind of admitting that you're wrong or there's a failure, even though you're like, no, no, no, if you get out now, you're still going to be ahead. But it's down to 500,000, was still a ton more money than the few thousand that got out, unfortunately, when it finally bottomed out. But yeah, there's always

that hope. And I guess that's the other point about the market is it is emotional. When you look at the steps and the things you need to do to be successful, it sounds so easy. And then something happens to trigger you. And we all get triggered by different things. But that emotion of, you know, the stock goes down from 40 to 34. And you're thinking, huh, if I can just get it back to 37. And then it goes to 32. And it's back to 34. And you're thinking, maybe I'll wait a little bit. And all of a sudden it's 25 and you're thinking, what have I done? that it shouldn't just be about chasing those winners. You need to have a policy. You need to have some sort of system in place or whether that's having an advisor that you can talk to to discuss,

hey, this is someone on the other side who's less emotional, be like, this is when we should sell or just having something, if this dips by this percent, we need to sell and stick by that. But again, I know people have a hard time sticking with some of those policies

that they set for themselves. Yeah, and I think you don't have to have a one size fits all. For example, if you have a blanket, something goes down 10%, I'm going to sell it. And then the market goes down 10%. Well, guess what? You'll lose everything. So I tend to focus on either large positions that can hurt me or stocks that go down so much that they've proven to you you don't know what's going on. You know, it's one thing for a stock to go through its normal wiggles that it tends to do. And some are more volatile than others. Apple is going to be more volatile and NVIDIA more volatile than Procter & Gamble.

But each of them have their normal corrections that go on. It's when they break those trends that I think you've got to pay attention. And then at some point, you know, you have a BlackBerry or a Xerox and you draw a line in the sand and say, there are other stocks out there. Yeah, I'll move along. And I guess the other thing that's worth thinking about, plenty of people are using index funds and some of my clients are, too. And I applaud both. I think there's a reason for some people to have individual stocks and others, depending on their objective, to have index funds. But the important thing, I think, if you're an index fund investor, is know what you own. If it's a one thing, like a S&P 500 index

fund, and it's one thing in your portfolio, or one out of five, let's say, and it starts going down, you're not going to feel comfortable. But if you look inside the fund, which Morningstar is a company that everybody could get hold of, and you look at what's in that fund, you say, huh, it's Apple, it's Microsoft, it's Procter & Gamble, it's Johnson & Johnson. Oh, I'm okay. Most of that fund are stocks that I know about. And so I think knowing what you own is really important and what they do and all those other lessons that people have. But even with funds, I think it's important to know what they do and all those other lessons that people have but even with funds i think it's important to know what you've got yeah i mean i think i talk to people all the time most

people have no idea what they're investing in they're they're like i have some mutual funds like what's inside what kind and what what companies are in there they're like i don't know and that's crazy when you think about it i mean it's not it's not their fault because i think a lot of people think they're doing the right thing. And, you know, it's not everyone knows this stuff right off the bat. But, you know, you wouldn't buy any other product without doing a little research about what's in there. What are the ingredients? What are the ingredients in this, right? Yeah, I've seen a couple of tech funds.

And it's okay if, say, you don't own any Apple or Microsoft and you buy a tech fund, you find out they're half the fund. Yeah. Two stocks. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot. And if that's part of your portfolio,

then I'm not saying it doesn't fit. It may fit perfectly. You may not own any, but if you have a lot of Apple and Microsoft and you say, I'm gonna buy a tech fund and then you get another dose of it, you think, yeah, you gotta look inside. Yeah, well, I see going to buy a tech fund. And then you get another dose of it. You think, you know, yeah, you got to look inside. Yeah, well, I see a lot of that, just like, especially on Instagram.

There's sometimes, you know, people, they're like, oh, buy these ETFs. And they'll give a few, you know, own these three ETFs. And then I, you know, look them up. I'm like, do they know what they're owning? Because those three ETFs, they have different names. They have a different number of holdings, but the same holdings. So you're just over, it's not diversification, you're just holding different things in different, you're holding the same thing with three different baskets, you know? Exactly. And it's a hard thing to say, because people, on the one hand,

you don't want to tell everybody, gosh, you got to do all this homework. And there are people who grow up and I actually when I was a kid, if someone told me I'm going to be working with investments all my life, I'd go, oh, no. No one dreams to be a financial advisor, do they? When they're a kid, I guess not. Exactly. And so, you know, you're telling them to do certain things. But I think what you want to emphasize is if you do these things, then you can have peace for a long time. And you don't have to watch these 24 hour shows that are spouting off, oh, we got a recession coming. Oh, maybe not. You know, maybe it's this or maybe it's that. And all these things that are going on 24 hours a day

with the current news, you can put that to bed. If you set yourself up for the long term, I don't think I emphasized it a lot, but I think the headlines and always those people in our lives. They're like, oh, I heard a really good stock pick and they're always wrong. And it's like, that's a really good representation for the media. If they're shouting from the rooftops, buy this stock or wasn't it, was it like Kramer or whoever that guy, there was something I saw in like last week tonight. And it's like, every time he has a recommendation,

it goes down the next couple of weeks or something like that. It's like, you he has a recommendation, it goes down the next couple of weeks or something like that. It's like you've got to be aware that sometimes when there's a lot of noise around something, that might actually be an indication to get out. That's no question. And just, you know, if you just Google the headlines at some of the peak times of the market and some of the lows, I mean, and these are, you know, what you'd say financial publications, Barron's, Wall Street Journal. I'm not insulting them. They, you know, have some good qualities. But you look at the headlines at some of the peaks and the bottoms, and they're the exact opposite. And one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld was that it's called The Opposite. And it's, you know, George is saying every decision i've ever made is wrong and i'm gonna and

then he changes and he says i'm gonna do the opposite and he has the chicken salad instead of the something but then he goes and he admits to the girl that he lives at home and doesn't have a job and he gets the girl he gets the job by doing the opposite of what we sometimes feel and i guess the funny thing with trigger and and it was invariable, every time he made a big bet, you knew. And this is a guy that you worked with. How did he still have a job? Well, you know, I never understood how he never kept score. Yeah. The little things, you know, he'd say, I, you know, I made I made a dollar on this trade or a dollar on that trade, but then he'd lose $10 on the next trade. And yeah, I don't know how he'd say, I, you know, I made I made a dollar on this trade or a dollar on that trade. But then he'd lose ten dollars on the next trade.

And, yeah, I don't know how he retired. But the other thing that I point out, as much as that was a funny thing that we laughed about, we all have an inner trigger. We all have that emotion that can cause us to do the wrong thing. And it's so it's recognizing, gosh, when I'm really fearful, take a step back. And it's the other thing is if you have the objective that you set for yourself as far as, you know, I can take risk, you know, if I'm 50 percent or 60 percent or whatever that level is that you could take the risk, then when stocks decline, you can be fearful, but you can also say, you know, this is about what I expected that could take the risk. Then when stocks decline, you can be fearful, but you can also say,

you know, this is about what I expected that could happen to me. Then I've got strong hands. I can buy instead of sell, even though I'm fearful. It's never feeling great at the bottom of the market. You'll never say, oh, yeah, this is a great time to invest. No, you're fearful and other headlines are bad. But if you didn't invest too much at the top, you have the strong hands to invest at the bottom. Yeah, no, I think that's a really important thing to say is that because people, I mean, for years and years and years, I remember a while ago, man, this is probably back in 2018 or something, I was doing a presentation after this young man came up to me. He was probably in his early 20s being like, hey, I want to start investing, but I'm worried. All the headlines are saying

there's going to be a big crash and recession. Is this a good time? And I just gave him like, listen, don't ever time the market. Just get in whenever because you're never going to know it's a good time until it's over. And I'm so glad I told him that because I'm like, actually, that was a great time compared to that, right? If you start investing then compared to like waiting a few years to get in. But I think, yeah, it's really important to recognize that emotionally and psychologically, it's always going to feel bad getting in at that right time. Like people, I think, assume that once it's at the bottom, and now, you know, by the bottom, it's going to feel great. I'm going to buy so many shares. No, because the sentiment everywhere is that don't

do that. You know, the world is collapsing, everything is going to be hard. And then even just holding on to what you're doing and continuing to, you know, buy shares of an index fund when things are going down. It feels awful. Right? It absolutely does. And I do remember a client talking to me, right? It must have been a couple of years ago when things were finally getting better with the pandemic. And he said, gosh, when we get through this, you know, pandemic thing, things are going to be really rolling, aren't they? It's like, no.

And I wasn't predicting a down market. I was just saying there's always the next thing. There's always the next thing. There's always, it's just never clear sailing. And I guess the opposite is true, too. When you are feeling really good about things and generally the market's up and say you've got that 60% or 70%, whatever it is that you were comfortable in the market, naturally stocks will take that higher. It's just math that all of a sudden that 60% becomes 65 or 70% just because of the market. That to me is another time not to have be dying neglect. Take a little off the table. Get back down to your 60%. People will say, why are you

selling now? It's crazy. Well, my objective is 60%, and that's where I'm going to get to. And if the market keeps going up after that happens, good. You've got 60% in stocks. Don't regret that decision because sometimes it will go down, and that'll allow you to balance back up. I mean, if that guy with the oil stocks had, you know, recognized the importance of rebalancing your portfolio, getting back to your target, setting those targets to begin with, he'd be a lot richer. He would have taken a ton of money out. He would have sold at times that would have looked dumb.

You know, he would have sold at, say, 25 or 30 and the stock kept going up. But good. That's great. Then you can sell more. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, people just have a really hard time actually taking their profits. Just like kind of at the casino, it's hard to walk away from the table when you're doing so well because you think you can do even better, right? And with stocks, you don't have to sell your whole position. It's just cutting back to the normal size, whatever that is.

With Apple, the best thing, if you bought it 10 years, five years, 20 years ago, you'd still want that position. Yeah. But you can cut back over time. Absolutely. Now, another thing I really liked and think is really important in your book is you talk about kind of losing sight of like, wait, what are we doing? So you mentioned, you know, you and your wife and your young family moved to Louisville, Kentucky. And you're like, I don't know why we're, you know, you're just like, this is a random place to move. But hey, this is a good career opportunity. And then you're there for a while and you sold that company and then you were still living there. And then you kind of had that moment. I know there's a moment with your child that you're like, why are we

still here? Like, part of it is like, there's the safety, the comfort, the familiarity. But I think a lot of us get into make a choice that has a specific purpose, like I'm going to move here, live there for a little bit, do this thing with my career, and then we're going to make a different decision, maybe move. And then you lose sight of it and 10 years go by. And you're like, how did that happen? Tell me a little bit about that decision to to move to California, which you seem very happy, you're still there, you're very happy with and, you know, just recognizing, you know, getting back to living instead of just plugging away. I think lots of us just plug away and don't realize life is passing us by.

I think that's right. And my wife, we did end up getting divorced. But at the time, she's from China and she made the joke, you know, I didn't move all the way from China to live in Louisville, Kentucky all my life. And it's nothing against Louisville is a beautiful town, very nice people. But there really was no Chinese food and there was no much diversity and things. And we knew that was important. And when the when the boys were very little, it didn't seem to matter. You're just into your kids. But at some point we woke up and realized through different events that it was time to at least look around

and we've got the freedom and we can take that risk. And I suppose trying to move that to the markets a little bit is be willing to look to the new thing occasionally. It doesn't mean don't keep to your objective, but if you only, you can get stale. And there's an old objective or old saying in the market, hire a kid. They'll be the ones that know NVIDIA before the rest of us or whatever it is. And so I've tried to keep that frame of mind being not a kid anymore.

But it is a challenge for all of us because we get stuck with our same old thing. And for us, it was just a bright light to move out here. And the kids got totally into surfing. And I got into it a little bit. They wouldn't call me a surfer, but occasionally I can go out there and paddle around with them a little bit, stumble and bumble. And there's not a lot of surfing in Louisville. So it was really a change of pace for all of us. Well, I know also there's a story that you shared when you were surfing. And, you know, tell me a little bit about it. It was, there were some big waves, you went to a new place, there's some really, really big waves. And you're like, this is how I die. I'm like, I've been in those situations before, especially

with water. You're like, this is how I die, I'm gonna drown. And you recognize that you're like, actually, if I just like, turn around and look towards the beach and the shoreline, I can make it back home. And I think that's such a really important kind of just like representation of, again, us losing focus or getting, you know, lost in the weeds or lost in the waves just crashing over us when all we have to do is turn around and see that's our home, that we need to just move forward and we can get out of this. It's part of also the reflecting on your life, too, because at the moment, I was just thrilled.

I was not, I didn't drown out there. I mean, nature is rough and the market is part of, it can act like that. And ironically, some weeks later, months later, that's 2008 happened. And I felt like I was drowning again. And that point that you make of looking to shore, looking to the steady thing, if you kept with your objective, and yes, it was a terrible, terrifying time. And believe me, we all felt it. We were trying to hold our clients' hands, but we weren't. My stomach was broiling through it all. Mr. Mellow was not being mellowed. But, you know, if you look to shore, think to your objectives and know that these things have happened before, it can calm you down. But boy, in the midst of it, there were these huge waves holding me down. And it was actually another fellow in the ocean that looked at me and knew what was happening and pointed toward the shore.

And it's like, oh, yeah. And so sometimes we have to be reminded, you know, from other people or ourselves. But to reflect back at those moments in our lives when we are, because, you know, the emotions that we experience we share yeah we do we all have them i think a lot of people forget especially if you have a lot of experience or you're the industry it's like no we feel them because they're unconscious and they're they're deep down from our ancestors from you know neanderthal times you can't get rid of them but you can control them and and it is interesting when we think that we all share these things and yet we feel so different,

but everyone has loves and hates and broken hearteds and all kinds of things that it's gone back. There's a great book, Sapiens, that I read. And he was talking about, you know, somewhere in the caveman days, there was some snotty teenager yelling at his parents. It's like, yeah, that hasn't changed. No, no, no. So I'm curious when you are in those times, and I feel like we're always in these times, maybe there's a few moments of peace, but I even feel like in those times, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. How can we have something that can be our like North Star, something that we can look towards when we're in those chaotic emotional times to keep us steady

again? For me, it has really helped to kind of lean into history a little bit. That so often, I heard it so often in the pandemic, this has never happened before. Right? Yeah. And you're like, this is, I mean, maybe this scenario specifically, no, but there's similar things that have happened, right? This emotion, and it's certainly the emotion you feel when things are out of control. And surprises happen all the time

and they're gonna keep happening. And so that was one of my first lessons in the business where I had to go back and collect this data back in from the 20s on. But instead of just writing down the numbers, I would be looking at the headlines. And it was the first history. I never liked history. But here I was learning history through the headlines. And it was amazing to me that we were even, you know, of course, there's Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination. But in between, there were numerous things that

people thought, oh, my God, you know, this time it's different. And they always say in investments, those are the four most dangerous words, because it's not different. The new paradigm, now it's AI. Of course, the internet back in the 90s, it's happened before and will happen again. And things pass and the market goes up and down. But in the midst of those things, you need to both reflect that the objective you've set encompasses these potential surprises. And so that'll help you. And so if you're 100% in stocks, it's going to be really scary. But if you accepted the fact that it can go down 30 or 40%, and you lean into the fact that over time, these things pass, you'll be okay. If you couldn't accept that at the beginning, then

you know, if you had 60% in stocks, you think, huh, I think, you know, I'm down, but I'm not down as much as I could be. Those are the things you want to try to anticipate so there You know, we're fighting Wall Street. You know, the little guy's going to win this time. And now a lot of people just lost a lot of money in meme stocks. And then the NFTs, this is new thing. And crickets, lots of people lost a lot of money. But now I've been seeing a lot of headlines and people just kind of fear mongering this AI. They're going to take your jobs you know be right i'm like you know i there were similar headlines with social media it's gonna take your job like or just anything that's new it's always scary but then i feel like we forget as humans that we're pretty resilient people and adaptable if we want to be and so maybe we shouldn't be afraid we should see like okay maybe my job is not going to look the same in 20 years that's probably a good thing that means there there's some progress. But how can we move with these changes? That's the only way we're going to survive. No, that's a great point. And when people do, and of course, things might be moving faster now because of technology, but people had to adjust to cars coming. And imagine you know, imagine you're the horse and buggy guy. And it took a while. But,

you know, we're going to adjust to AI and all the different things. And the thing is, everyone's trying to predict what that would mean. But even back in the heyday of the 90s, and I'd say most of those stocks that were going like crazy have disappeared. But a lot of them haven't. You know, obviously, Amazon was not just a bookstore. You know, there's time, though. You don't have to catch these things immediately. And it's very hard to predict who would have predicted what we're doing right now. And, you know, back 20 years ago. But there's time. You can take your time and look at, you know, what's stable and what's going to be there in five, ten years.

And sometimes we'll be wrong and you've got to move away from it. But, yeah, be calm and know that there is time to take advantage of these things. Yeah, like instead of thinking, oh, this is going to take over things and everything's going to get worse. Where's the opportunity there? Like the fact that we're talking, we're in very different parts of the world right now, recording a podcast, you were able to, you know, write this book, and I was able to buy it and get it in a few days. I mean, these are wonderful things and opportunities. So we shouldn't be afraid. I always feel like it's easy to be afraid. And it's a very natural

feeling. But we can't let that be the predominant emotion. We need to flip the script and be like, okay, what's the positive of this? There's always some sort of positive with this. And again, that goes with anything to do with investing and money. It's scary and it's intense and it's emotional, but there's a good side. The whole reason we're involved in it is it's like, how can we make this help me get to where I want to be in life? I mean, for you, you live in San Diego, and you can work with clients all over the country virtually if you want. And you can go, you know, to the beach. That sounds pretty awesome.

It does. And it did from the get go. But you're right. And the same thing with, you know, it's a circular thing. But the same thing true in the markets are in our lives. You know, things are going to change and whether it's health or family or relationships, and we can learn from all of them and apply them to investments. And some of the things in investments can help us through some of the troubles and challenges that we face in our lives. Absolutely. And yeah, really, you know, the key going back to your book, got to think more mellow about our money, right? Like I found that always being calm and patient and taking your time, letting those emotions kind of go through you, but not letting them take over the situation. I've never regretted that. It's never been a regret. It's always been a regret where I'm like, oh, that decision was based off emotion, and now I regret doing that. No, absolutely. And to have patience with yourself, too. We're not going to escape without making some mistakes and acting like trigger occasionally.

And when that happens, be patient with yourself, learn from it, and move along because, you know, there's always the next thing. And we don't know. Even from our mistakes, sometimes it leads to better things. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, Micah, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Where can people, you know, grab a copy of your book, learn more about you and potentially your services if someone wants to look to working with you, where can they find more information? So the book is Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or almost anywhere that you want to buy a book. And to find me or learn more about me at www.meloyourmoney.com.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Mick, for coming on the show. I feel relaxed already. Oh, thank you, Jessica. It's been a lot of fun. That's always good when you're like, oh, I feel better. We need more people like you to make us feel calm because it feels like you look anywhere else about money and it's very chaotic. No, I appreciate it. And it's been great being on your show. I think you're doing some great things too. I appreciate it. Thank you. So that was episode 379 with my guest, Mick Hyman. He, again, is a CFA and has his own investment counseling practice called Hyman Investment Counseling. And you can grab a copy of his book, Mellow Your Money at mellowyourmoney.com. Very easy. And you can also

follow him on Instagram at mellowyourmoney. And of course, find him under his name, McHyman on LinkedIn. Yeah, so I highly recommend I really honestly enjoyed his book. And I would not say that if I didn't. I really would. So yeah, I've got a few things to share with you. So stick around. I just want to share something special with you. Do you want to figure out where your money is going? Do you want to organize your finances once and for all? Do you want to feel less anxious about your money? Well, I have a great tool for you. My collection of budget spreadsheets, which you can find at jessicamorehouse.com slash shop. These new and improved budget spreadsheets have helped thousands of people over the years. And these are honestly the budget spreadsheets that me and my husband still use

today. They come in Google Sheets and Excel. They also come with a comprehensive video tutorial to show you exactly how it works. And they're very easy to use. Not only that, I've got versions for pretty much any scenario. So if you're an employee, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you are self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you're in a couple and one of you is an employee and one of you is self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. I've got seven different budget spreadsheets for any kind of situation. So no matter what's going on in your life and your income, I've got a budget spreadsheet for you. So if you want to take action and see some progress with your finances, this is one really easy step that

you can take right after listening to this episode. Just go to jessicamoorehouse.com slash shop, find the right budget spreadsheet for you, and then start making some moves that future you will be really, really thankful for. Okay, first and foremost, make sure to enter to win a copy to win his book, Mellow Your Money, or any of the other books that I'm currently giving away. Let me look on my list to find out what those books are, because there's quite a few books now. There's Bad with Money by Gabe Dunn. Thanks for Sharing by Eleanor Tucker. The Confidence Map by Peter Atwater. Money is Done by Manisha Thakur. The Immigrant View by Ayo O'Ddeni. And we've got more books to come, more books to come, which I'll kind of tell you a bit more about in a second. So just go to jessicamorehouse.com

slash contest is where you can find all of those books. You can enter to win all of them. I don't care, but you'll, you know, if you're a lucky winner, you're just going to win one. But jessicamorehouse.com slash contest where you can find that information. And also should have mentioned earlier, if you wanted to check out more information about today's guest or things that we talked about, make sure to go to the show notes for this episode, jessicamorehouse.com slash 379. And if you ever want to find the show notes for any episode, you want to look something up, just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash podcast that goes to my website and you can do a little search. You can take a look at what's going on. That is where you can find all of those things.

Now, to let you know what's going on next week, I have an Olympian on the podcast. First Olympian. That's exciting. I've got Mary Sanders on the show. She has a new book called Nine Lives by 35, An Olympic Gymnast's Inspiring Story of Reinvention. She has a crazy life. I mean, it's really interesting. It's a great book to talk about what it's like becoming a professional gymnast. And then she was also in Cirque du Soleil, but also how to reinvent yourself over and over. And I think that

even though lots of us are not gymnasts or Olympians, the kind of message that she and things that she talks about in her book are so relatable, because, you know, surprise, life is not linear, we have to reinvent ourselves. Time and time again, we really have to adapt to change, which is so hard and unpleasant to do, but we have to. And, you know, it's always worth it in the end. Every time I've made a pivot or taken risk or just done something different than maybe the path that I, you know, foresaw for myself, it was always something I'm like, gosh, I'm glad I did that. Gosh, I'm really happy how things have played out. And sometimes, you know, that's kind of what makes life exciting is not like how boring

would life be is if you set your own path and then just did exactly what you thought you were going to do and end up where you thought you're going to end up. That's boring. No, we want some excitement. We want some surprises, don't we? I don't know. That's one way to rationalize it, I guess. But yeah, so that is what is going to be on the podcast next week. So yeah, that is really it for me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I will, of course, be back next Wednesday for next week's episode. And big shout out to my podcast editor, Matt Rideout. I will see you back here next Wednesday. Have a good rest of your week. this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network find out more at women in media.network