Motley Fool Money - How US Presidents Manage Money

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

Reagan knew how to budget. Jefferson knew how to party. Megan Gorman is the author of the upcoming book, “All the Presidents' Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money.” Gorman is also the founding partner of Chequers Financial Management Robert Brokamp caught up with Gorman for a conversation about: - What FDR, a “bit of a trust fund kid,” did if he needed money. - How Ronald Reagan’s humble beginnings impacted his finances. - Why a Great Depression president was a great investor. Host: Robert Brokamp  Guest: Megan Gorman Producer: Ricky Mulvey Engineer: Tim Sparks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If FDR needed money, he simply wrote mother. And so when you look at the correspondence between him and his mom, there's always talk about money. Hi, I need this money for this or this money for that. And he also was a bit of a trust fund kid. So I love the fact that when you go into his stories, he used to do what we would call today Angel Investing. I'm Mary Long and that's Megan Gorman,

the founding partner of Chekker's financial management, a fee-only financial planning firm in San Francisco, California. She's also the author of the upcoming book, All the President's Money, how the men who governed America governed their money. It comes out this September. Robert Brokamp caught up with Gorman to learn about how Jefferson, FDR, and Reagan manage their finances, which president was the best investor, and the financial costs of being Commander-in-Chief.

Let's start with the history and the current financial benefits of being president. So what kind of salaries have they earned? What expenses were covered? And what did they have to pay for out of their own pockets? Yeah, Robert, it's sort of interesting because we've really only had six different salaries for the presidents. So today, you know, our president is Joe Biden. He is getting $400,000 a year. Now, what's really, really interesting is if we go all the way back to when we had

our first president, George Washington. From Washington to Ulysses S. Grant, right, they made about 25,000 a year. And then they got a pay increase to about 50,000. And that was from Grant to about Theodore Roosevelt. And then when President Taft took over, he got another pay increase to 75,000. And that 75,000 went until Harry Truman. And in 1949, they gave Truman. a raise, which is really important to his money story, which we'll get to in a bit. And Truman started

to make $100,000 a year. And so we paid presidents $100,000 a year through LBJ. And then in 1969 with Richard Nixon, we raised it to $200,000. And that salary went all the way through to Bill Clinton. And then starting with George W. Bush, they moved it up to $400,000. So, It's been a nice salary, but you have to remember the presidents are responsible for a lot of things on the personal front. So don't laugh, but they are responsible for all the food that is served at the White House. And if you actually read or listen to some of the things that the presidents and the first ladies say, this is something that drives them crazy because it is incredibly expensive. And you hear stories of John F. Kennedy.

just going absolutely bonkers with his team when they would have cocktail parties. And he would tell the White House butlers, don't fill the champagne glasses up until they drank the whole glass. Because he didn't want to overspend on the expenses. So other things that they're in charge of is gifts for other heads estate, dry cleaning, clothing, private events. So it's actually not the best financial move to be the president if you're just doing it for the salary because there's a lot of expenses tied in. However, it is really good today in our modern era to be the president because the post-presidential life is incredibly lucrative. Very interesting. So your book features all kinds of triumphs and travils of most of the presidents.

And I asked you to choose three that you felt had particularly interesting or enlightening stories. So your first choice was our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who was in office from 1801 to 1809, and of course, the primary author of Declaration of Independence. Regularly ranked by presidential experts is among the 10 best presidents, but he wasn't nearly as good with his personal finances. So tell us about how Jefferson managed his money. Yeah. I mean, Jefferson is a great case of what not to do, right? In fact, you know, I always feel like Jefferson's on a pedestal. this brings him down to be a mere mortal like the rest of Americans.

Jefferson grew up on a plantation, and he actually inherited his share of his father's estate, about 5,000 acres, including Monticello, when he was 14 years old. And he just was far more focused on things like going to college and so on. And in fact, when he went to college, he was known to be a bit of a partier and spend a lot. And he never really focused on some of the basic nuts and bolts of finance that we focus on, right? He really didn't focus on learning how to budget. And he didn't really learn how to manage illiquidity. And illiquidity is one of those sneaky little things that can come back and really bite you.

And so Jefferson started to engage in a little bit of barring today with the hopes to pay it back tomorrow. And of course, as we all know historically, he gets caught up in all of the great moments of his day, and he gets, including getting sent to France, where he gains an even greater appreciation for the good life. And so, Robert, I know you're a CFP. And when we think about people who often have issues with money, what we often find is that they're not good with connecting to their future self. So when I work with clients, right, what do we often ask? We say, where would you see yourself 10, 20, 30 years from now? And most clients would say, I want to be retired and have my mortgage paid off. Jefferson probably didn't have that ability to do it. And I think some of it was due to the fact

that most of the time during that time period, people didn't live a long time, right? I mean, his wife died fairly young, his father died fairly young. So the idea of connecting with an 80-year-old self is very, very challenging. So what happens over the course of Jefferson's life is he keeps pushing things forward. You know, he'll figure out a way to pay for it the next day. And we get to the end of his life, and he has so much debt. I mean, the equivalent of over, you know, a million, probably close to $2 million in today's dollars in debt, that he has to reckon with potentially selling his prize possession, Monticello. And so he engages in what they often did back then. He decides to put it up as an auction and sell lottery tickets. And the lottery tickets and the

auction appears in the newspaper. And, you know, you got to think about it. Like this is someone, You know, it's probably 40 years since the Declaration of Independence, president for two terms. You know, people revere him. And now he's sort of trying to have an auction. And so people are horrified. And so, you know, a group of people come back to him and they say, look, this probably isn't the best thing. Let's just let us try to raise money for you. And they stop the auction, but they never really raise enough money for Jefferson.

And so the great tragedy is Jefferson dies still in debt. and his family inherits these assets that are covered in debt, and they have to start selling things off. And there's testimony from slaves who were part of the Monticello plantation, who were sold off to other plantations and split apart from their families because he couldn't manage debt. So I bring him up because I think there's something so human about this with him, and something that makes him like a lot of us. It's really, really hard today to manage expenses. And I think the modern American, as we sit here today in 2024, struggles with affordability.

We might call it inflation, but it's really affordability that we're struggling with. Let's move on to the second president that you chose. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president, office from 1933 to 1945, often ranked among the top three presidents, along with Washington and Lincoln. He was born into a wealthy family. And for good measure, he married another Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his fifth cousin and Teddy Roosevelt's niece. So what was FDR's relationship with money like?

Yeah, FDR is a really interesting character. He's one of those presidents that we all feel we know, but when you actually try to get to know him, he's hard to get to know. But his letters give you a lot of insight into money. So one thing you have to remember with FDR, is we focus on the Roosevelt money. But the real money that FDR had came from the Delano money, his mother's money.

His grandfather was involved in the opium trade in China and actually built a fortune, lost it, and built it again. So the trust he inherited from his mother's side were larger than even the trust he inherited from his father's side. And his father was an older man, so his father died fairly early in his life, and his mother was the trustee of his trust.

So just think about this dynamic there, right? This is a very educated man who growing up didn't spend a lot of time with his peers, was always with adults, but he always has to be asking mother for money. And so he doesn't have a lot of those formative experiences like having a first job and having to budget, right, and thinking about saving. If FDR needed money, he simply wrote mother. And so when you look at the correspondence between him and his mom, there's always talk about money. Hi, I need this money for this or this money for that. And he also was a bit of a trust fund kid. So I love the fact that when you go into his stories, he used to do what we would call

today angel investing. So he invested in dirigible, which, you know, like Goodyear Blimps. He invested in early technology in that, lost all his money. He also invested in this crazy lobster thing where he wanted everybody in America to eat fresh lobster, which is sort of crazy to think about because lobster is a very wealthy person's food. But he wanted to have it shipped all over the country, invested in this lobster company in Maine. But at the end of the day, the company was not run the right way. And he put more money in it after more money in it.

And finally he said, that's it, I'm out. And he probably lost a couple hundred thousand on that. So he was also, you know, he just wasn't into the nuts and bolts. But what he did that was amazing with money is despite the fact that I wouldn't put him as a great money manager, when he gets stricken with polio, he becomes focused on curing polio. And it's hard, Robert, for you and I to probably relate to this today. But in 1921, when he was stricken, polio frightened Americans, right? I mean, it could have been a lifetime and an iron lung.

And so when you read his correspondence during this time period, he's looking for a cure. And he finds these springs. He's actually introduced to springs down in Georgia. They're called the Warm Springs. And he goes there in 1924. He goes into the springs. And for the first time in three years, he can move his legs. And it's amazing.

And they actually have video of him, which is amazing to see him doing this. And he decides this is it. going to cure polio, he's going to find a way forward, and he takes two-thirds of his trust fund, and he buys this spring that's attached to this inn that is falling apart. And it's basically bleeding money. And in fact, his business partner, Basil O'Connor, basically goes down there and says, look, let me try to help you with this. Because FDR sort of thought, oh, I'll run this, and wealthy people can come here and use the springs, people with polio. can come here and use the springs, but wealthy people didn't want to use the springs with people with

polio. And so what's amazing with FDR here, and this is important for people in our shin, is he knew he could not build it up. He was busy on running for office and so on. So he found in Basil O'Connor a great partner, a great steward to help him manage this. And it managed it to such a point that first they were a Warm Springs Foundation, then they became the National Infantile Paralysis Foundation that found the vaccine for polio. But what FDR understood was that he couldn't do it himself. So when you're sitting there and you're trying to figure out how do I manage money, how do I make myself financially successful? I would really tell you, be like FDR and find a good steward. Find a great CFP or financial advisor or tax advisor who can really help you navigate the

complexity. And of course, as we all know, FDR does help us find a vaccine for polio, although it occurred 10 years after he dies. But a really, really inspirational story. Yeah, and it had trouble funding after the Great Depression. So someone came up with the idea of having basically birthday balls where people would send in dimes, which was the foundation of the March of Dimes, which funded the polio vaccine. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, an FDR, could you imagine a president today in getting every American to send in a dime?

I mean, there's no way, but he had this way with people. He knew he couldn't manage the dimes when they got to him. He had someone who's going to manage the dimes. But he had everybody send dimes in and made, he transformed charity because before this, charity was just something that the wealthy did. After this, charity was something that all of us could do. And that polio vaccine was something all Americans created. And each of these birthday balls he had generated about a million dollars for him, for in the charity, which is unbelievable.

So he really created something unbelievably unique in charity. And I think we can still sort of tip our hats to him today for transforming how this all works. So every time you're doing things like, you know, biking for a cause or walking in the Susan G. Komen Foundation's events, that's a little bit of FDR coming forward with us. Very interesting. So for our third financial biography, you chose our 40th president, Ronald Reagan, in office from 1981 to 1889. Unlike Jefferson and Roosevelt, Reagan was not born into wealth or even a particularly stable family. So tell us about how his, you know, his humble beginnings and maybe somewhat troubling childhood affected how he managed money.

Yeah, Reagan was actually interesting to explore. You know, I grew up, I'm born in the 70s. I remember Reagan as president, and he always looked so polish, so wealthy, right? But Reagan grew up in Illinois, in a small town, and his father was a shoe salesman at a department store. And if you go into the history of the United States, department stores transformed America. but his father was an alcoholic. And Reagan, to his credits, never saw it as anything more than a disease, which I think was wonderful. But his father would get paid.

And as his father would walk home, he would go into all the bars. And by the time he got home, all the money was gone. And so his mother was a very church-going woman, very strict. And, you know, she would try to keep ends, you know, keep them meeting ends until ultimately what would happen. in here is that they would have to leave town to find a new place to rent because they didn't have money. But Reagan sort of absorbed these experiences in a very unique way. He learned from watching what happened with his father and how his mother sort of budgeted that if he worked, he would be able to budget. And of course, we all know he was a lifeguard. That's a famous story of

his. But when he got to college, which actually he wasn't supposed to go to college because he didn't have money, but he went with his girlfriend on the day he moves on the day she moves into college. And the football coach gets one look at Reagan. He's basically, you know, a big, tall, broad guy, looks like an amazing football player. And they create a football scholarship on the spot for him, which is unbelievable. Reagan also worked while he was in college, right? He worked at a fraternity and helped out. But Reagan was really good at building and creating stepping stones. So he would look to build relationships with men who understood more than he did. And this was really important. One of his earliest guides and mentors was his girlfriend's father, who impressed upon him

the ability to save. And then, of course, Reagan makes his way to Hollywood. And as he gets into Hollywood, he learns how to negotiate contracts. He gets his first contract where he's making about $10,000 a year in 1937. So as he makes his way along, he learns through relationships to meet people who end up getting him to be in position to become the president of the Screen Actors Guild. And from that, he connects with a gentleman named Lou Wasserman, who was a big agent of the time. And Lou Wasserman has a client called GE. And GE wants to put on this weekly show in the 50s, where it would be a television show

with different plays, musicals, variety acts. And so he convinces GE to hire Reagan. And Reagan gets paid $125,000 a year to do this show. And he does the show. And he also travels the country speaking to do. GE employees. And he really starts to build wealth here. And that was sort of the amazing thing is when Reagan had the ability to make money, he would budget like nobody's business. In fact, he was almost like, it was almost too frugal at times. Right. And when he and Nancy Reagan bought their

first home, you know, he had budgeted such that he said, Nancy, look, we can buy the house, but we're not going to have furniture for a while. And Nancy was fine with it. And that's what's so amazing is Reagan is a good example of finding a spouse who you can connect with. And Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan were very well aligned when it came to money. And so you can see today when you go to the Reagan Library the fruits of all of his labor, he was amazing with money. And he didn't let having an alcoholic father impede him at all from that. Yeah, truly a great. Ragster Rich's story. Let's move on to a sort of a lightning round here in which I give you a series of quick questions about presidents and their money. You ready? Okay. Yep, I'm ready. Let's do it.

Which president was the best investor? Oh, this is easy. Herbert Hoover. Now, Herbert Hoover ranks as one of our worst presidents. He was our president in 1928 to 1932 during the Great Depression. Hoover, however, when it comes to money, unbelievable. Grew up in Iowa. His parents were actually middle class, but they both died and left him an orphan. And his mother actually had life insurance on her. Hoover was a Quaker. And so what the Quakers did was really unique. He had a guardian, his uncle, and then the Quakers had a financial guardian for him,

a senior elder. And so when Hoover needed money for school clothes, you know, food, he would have to budget it out with his guardian. and they would submit it to the financial guardian to get money. And Hoover learns really early on how to budget. And this skill propels him because he continues to grow on it. And we get it into the book. He goes to Stanford. He becomes a geologist during his time at Stanford.

But when he gets out of school, he can't find work. So what does he do? He goes to the Sierra Nevadas. And he actually goes into the mines and learn, mining literally from the ground up so that when he gets a job with an engineering company and they send him to Australia, he's going around on camels in Australia and he sees terrain and he says, there's gold here. There's something here. And he writes back his bosses in London and says, this is where we should really mine because I think there's something here. And he basically,

they go into the mine and he's right. And he becomes an owner and he ends up over the course of his life owning mines all over the world. I think his most prosperous minds were in, you know, in what was Burma back then today, Myanmar. But what's interesting in this lightning around really quickly is Hoover was also very charitable. And he used these skills to always give money to friends, families, institutions. And his budgeting skills were so strong. He used them after World War I and World War II to help fight off the starvation that was going off in Europe. He worked with Truman and Coolidge to help them on those things. We talked about Reagan as a good, Rags Riches story.

Is there another one that stands out to you? You know, Lincoln's obviously the obvious one, you know, grew up a log cabin. But there's actually another person that was actually just as poor as Lincoln was, and arguably even poorer. But he's not as known as Millard Fillmore. And he was born, and, you know, when historians talk about his childhood, they consistently say incredibly deprived, really, really poor. And he ends up getting an apprenticeship at a mill, and he hates it. But it gives his family money because they didn't have much money.

And it gives him a little bit of money to take part in this traveling library. And the traveling library lets him learn enough that he ends up clerking and becoming an attorney. over the course of his life, he, you know, is pretty much upper middle class. But after his presidency, his wife dies and his second wife is wealthy. And so Millard Fillmore does what a lot of presidents did. And that is they married up. And so his wife was wealthier. And he finished his days in Buffalo, New York, one of the wealthiest men in town.

Which first lady and president did the best job of managing money as a couple? A lot of them did great jobs. You can't lose sight of that. I mean, I just mentioned Ronald and Nancy Reagan. But I always love LBJ and Lady Bird. Like Millard Fillmore, LBJ married up. Lady Bird came from money. In fact, her mother died when she was young.

And Lady Bird had a pretty significant inheritance that her father and uncle had taught her to manage. And they worked really well together. You know, she was very grounded. And LBJ was that aggressive, intense, passionate idea person. And those two skills kept them in check. So I would probably tell you them. I would also briefly tell you, John and Abigail Adams had a little habit that they did with each other that I think helped them with money discussions.

They always wrote their letters to each other to my dearest friend. And so they were talking about money in their letters. But when you count it to my dearest friend, you can't really be like, why did you spend that, my dearest friend? Like you tend to be nicer about it. And I think that's a good trait to have. A good story you tell in the book about LBJ and Lady Bird is that they bought a struggling radio station in Austin. I guess I meant thinking maybe it wasn't in the 30s or something like that.

But basically it stayed in the family up until 2003 and the family sold it for over $105 million. Quite a success story there. Complete success story. And what's interesting with the presidents is sometimes just the normal stuff that happens, you know, from a political lens, they can build a lot of craziness into it, right? and LBJ gets criticized for this radio station over the course of his career. But truth be told, they did run it. They worked hard at it.

They took risk to do it and build it. And it's a great story. What fact about a president or his money do you think most people would find most surprising? I think that most people would find surprising is that up until Ford, if you were president and after you left the White House, there was no guarantee you were going to have money. You know, a lot of our presidents went back to work after the presidency. Or they simply died, right? I mean, it was one or the other.

So Jerry Ford was the president who changed this. You know, when he finished the presidency, he was very clear. He was like, look, I'm young. I'm like in my early 60s. And I'm a capitalist, and I'm going to go make money. And he does. He gives speeches. He joins boards.

He writes a book. He and Betty have the first. first joint book deal of any president and first lady. He's the one who really transformed it. So every president from Ford on, they really should, you know, tip their hat to Jerry Ford and the fact that he changed the optics of presidents making money. Yeah, one of the things he did was basically be a spokesperson or an ad person for the Franklin Mint, which some people thought, I think they used the word tacky, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. Yeah, I mean, we look I look back at some of the stuff I found when people were critiquing him for doing things,

doing these medals with the Franklin Mint. And I think, oh, God, today, you know, we were so pure back then. I mean, today, that would barely garner a notice based on what presidents are doing. I mean, Michelle and Barack Obama have a production company. Donald Trump has new golf courses all around the world and a wine. And, you know, it's very different today with how we view modern presidents. So let's wrap up with another question or so. What lessons do you hope people will take away from reading about presidents and their money?

Yeah, I mean, look, here's the thing. The presidents are really a vehicle to talk about the skills and the traits. You really need to cultivate to be successful with money, to be what we would call financially resilient. And in reading the stories and learning the stories of the presidents, what you come to a realization is the American dream is still, alive, but it is much harder today than it was 50, 100, 150 years ago. They all struggle with the same things we struggle with today, paying the bills, paying college tuition, you know, all of that, buying a house, all of those same issues are there, but it's just harder today because we're struggling with affordability. So I want people to really think about

that in terms of how they manage their finances and give themselves a little bit of gentleness because it was much easier to be Richard Nixon in the 30s paying $280 a year for college than it is today if you go to NYU and pay $90,000. It's a harder world today. Well, Megan, this has been a fascinating discussion. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, Robert, thanks for having me on. As always, people on the program may have interest in stocks they talk about. And the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.