The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – PlanAssist®: Make Better Financial Decisions by Timothy Clifford

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

PlanAssist®: Make Better Financial Decisions Kindle Edition by Timothy Clifford https://amzn.to/4b0hWSv Planassist.com A comprehensive guide for individuals seeking to navigate the complexities of personal finance with confidence and clarity. Through the innovative PlanAssist® process, this book offers a structured approach to financial planning, emphasizing the importance of proactive decision-making, strategic diversification, and the value of seeking formal and informal counsel. It dismantles the often daunting landscape of financial management into manageable steps, making wealth-building accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial background or stage in life. At its core, the book champions the philosophy that financial success is not merely about making money, but about making wise decisions that lead to having money. By prioritizing planning, diversification, and seeking counsel, it guides readers towards achieving financial security and independence, advocating for a disciplined yet flexible approach to personal finance that adapts to life's changes and challenges. The underlying message is through responsibility, discipline, and informed action, anyone can navigate their path to financial well-being and stability, building a legacy of wealth that extends beyond the mere accumulation of assets.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you but doesn ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. Because, you know, I don't know, she wanted your wife to marry Bill. And Bill turned out to be that successful stockbroker. And she'll never let you live it down. But you know what?

Get on her good side. Refer to her and your family and friends. It's a good reason. Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com fortune is chris voss linkedin.com fortune is chris voss chris voss won the tiktok and all those crazy places on the internet we have an amazing young man and author on the show with us today he's the author of the newest book that comes out called plan assist make better financial decisions i like that title because some of us really need to do that. Timothy Clifford is joining us on the show.

He'll be talking to us about his insightful book. Tim began his career on the bustling floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the 1980s, starting as a runner and ending as a trader, gaining a solid foundation in financial markets. In the 1990s, he joined Charles Schwab & Company, working with financially successful clients and observing key distinctions between high earners who accumulated substantial wealth. This insight led him to focus on structured wealth building. By the 2000s, Tim advanced into leadership roles

and became more committed to helping others build and maintain their value. In 2012, he earned a certified financial planner designation and founded Corwell Consultants LLC in Central Florida. And the creation of PlanAssist marked his significant milestone. It aims to provide successful people with the best of both worlds, complete control while receiving guidance, while you can choose to follow or not. And PlanAssist offers formal input and assistance with financial decisions while keeping you in control. It embodies Tim's philosophy that financial success comes with consistent discipline,

decision-making over decades. And so I guess reckless decision-making doesn't work. Welcome to the show, Tim. Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. There you go. So reckless financial planning doesn't work?

No, reckless doesn't work. Most people, though, on a serious note, though, most people make good financial decisions interesting interesting enough, for the most part. It's just can you make better decisions? And that's really what I really, Harper, really try to help people with is a lot of people are pretty good at managing their own investments and managing their finances. But there's a lot of pieces that they could just do better, and that's really what I wrote the book about. There you go. Except for my Uncle Bob.

He lives down by the river. That's why his mother-in-law doesn't like him. See where the joke lies? There it is. There's exceptions, though. Yeah, definitely for him, there's exceptions. He's the weird one at the Thanksgiving dinners. I don't have an Uncle Bob.

Hey, Tim, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? PlanAssist.com. And then on LinkedIn, it's Timothy Clifford, CFP, or Timothy Clifford. You can find me. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book, Plan Assist, Make Better Financial Decisions?

Over the last 10 years, I've met with hundreds of clients. And one of the things that it's become obvious is, is people need a little bit of help to make better financial decisions. And like I commented on earlier, most people make good financial decisions, but can we make better financial decisions? And one of the things I kind of had an aha moment or a haha decade at Schwab is I noticed that people that made a lot of money made different financial decisions than people who had a lot of money. And so over the last 10 years, that's really been my main kind of focus is how do I help people make decisions that someone with a lot of money would

typically make? And sometimes it's minor minor differences but those minor differences make a huge difference over a decade or two yeah that's my my dad used to when i was growing up my dad used to love this question he would say there's something about how would you like a million dollars now or a penny a day with compound interest at whatever percent for 10 years i think that was the example or something like that and you know you'd always be like yeah take the million dollars and whatever the other example was of the penny a day the exponating factor of of compounding was like you know a whole lot more money whatever it was exactly yeah i don't remember the exact analogy but it's it's 10 it's it can be i think it's 10 plus fold over time.

Yeah. And then he'd laugh at you and be like, you're stupid, New Orleans dad. Appreciate that. So tell us a little bit about your, we hear a little bit of your bio, but we'd like to hear it from your words. How did you grow up? What were some of your influences? And what made you get into the stock marketing business? Well, I grew up in central Indiana in a really small town, about an hour, hour and a half north of Indianapolis, and really grew up with no money.

So I grew up in the class of, there were periods in time where we hadn't, my dad didn't make any money, periods where he made a lot of money, but we never had money. And so after college, I went to Chicago, got into the commodity business, spent a decade in the commodity business, which was an absolute blast. Probably the funnest 10 years of my professional life. But at the end of it, I really still had no money. So I made a lot of money and I lost a lot. Is that cocaine and hookers or is it just you're spending on? It was mostly just losing it in the market.

Fortunately. You should have put on cocaine and hook hookers because still have no money. But I did have, that's a fair point, because I did have lots of friends that lost money that way too. But mine was mostly trading. And so I kind of came to my senses of this isn't going to work long term, no matter how much I make, I just wouldn't hold on to it. So I went to work at Schwab.

And as over that 10 years in Indianapolis, I started to work with a lot of people who not only made a lot of money, but they had a lot of money. And it just became obvious. These people made different decisions than those who made a lot of money and so really i kind of just built plan assist out of that philosophy and and that kind of aha and and so you know it's been decades so it's not something i just kind of woke up and did it's something that i kind of put together over the course of 15 20 years there you go there you go. There you go. So now you're sharing that knowledge in your new book and the stuff you do. Tell us about your, you know, with the new book, you talk about several principles. So have a plan, be diversified, and seek counsel.

It seems like those are the three core structures. Is that about right? That's right. That's exactly right. So I have to have a plan? Oh, my God. This is work now and and don't think of a plan as something that's that is work with all honesty a plan is

you don't do anything you don't even go on a trip to the grocery store without a plan i'm going down this road i'm going down that road so a plan does not have to be some 35 or 40 page PDF with a bunch of details in it. It's nothing more than a kind of a here, there strategy of I'm here and I want to be there and then make sure your significant other is on the same page. And that's the beginning of a plan. But with that said, I'm in the process of building an extension on our house. And so think of the original start of that plan as super fun. It shouldn't be work. It should be enjoyable.

And what I mean by that is kind of what colors and what's it going to look like and what's the size of the walls and all that kind of stuff. But at some point, you want to connect an engineer to a construction plan so you need to have a CAD drawing put all that information in and some of the fun gets taken out of this extension when they start saying this this extent you need to put a pole here because this is too long without a support structure and you're like can we do steel or you know or the architect or the engineer will come up with that so my point is is is a plan does not have to be complicated and should not be early on but at some point you do want to connect the dots in the sense that you have some financial plan that does connect the dots like a cad drawing would with a extension on

your house and and but it still doesn't have to be, again, super complicated or really painful. It just needs to be clear. Here's what I'm doing. Here's how I am in connecting your financial decisions. And I imagine you give some examples of that type of blueprint. Lots of them. There you go. Yeah.

So people can figure it out for themselves and plan it out but you know it's true people especially people that are successful or rich and i resent all of them no i'm just kidding the people like that they they just have figured out little strategies they have strategies of how things work and they figured out angles and usually they paid high power attorneys to do that for them and or high power cpa cpas or whatever and you know those are the blueprints that you want to take and copy because you know doing the same thing over and over again getting bad results and expecting different results is you know not a way to really work things out when it comes down to it yeah the so the next step in your in your process is be

diversified what sort of diversification do you recommend? Should I put half my money on hookers and blow and then another half on Bitcoin? No, that's probably not diversification. I'm going to go with that speculation. Damn it. Damn it. I'm going to have to call my account. So diversification first, if you talk to any financial advisor there's a couple things that's important to understand about diversification but the first one is concentration creates wealth okay and diversification preserves wealth so concentration you put all your money in one place watch it closely. That's how people get rich. Once you get rich, diversification will preserve that wealth. Now,

with that said, you have to come up with some kind of balance and it's more art than science. So if you're in your forties, you can't just put all your money in, unless you're making a ton of money, but if you're not making a ton of money, you can't just put all your money in unless you're making a ton of money. But if you're not making a ton of money, you can't just put all your money in a diversified portfolio and think that's going to necessarily make you wealthy. You probably need to put some money in some concentrated positions, the company you work for, et cetera. The best story I can tell on that is I had a really good friend. He was 25 years older than me, but he was a super good friend and he made a lot of money, had a lot of money. And he used to say, he'd say, Tim, just take all your money and put it in S&P 500. And I said, yeah, but Joe, that's not what you did. You put all your money in. And back then he had not bought apart stores and he put all of his money in there. And then once he got rich, he went and diversified. I said, it's more a kind of when do you do it? So diversification is diversify across assets with

some concentration, which I talk about in the book using the core explore strategy. And I'm like, we don't have time to get into it here, but it is kind of a combination. And then lastly, you want to be diversified across kind of three things. So you want your assets diversified. Everyone knows that. Okay, so have large cap, small cap, international, et cetera. But you also want to be diversified across tax liability. So you want to have money in a tax-free, a taxable, and a tax-deferred account.

So when you get into retirement, you have some control over your tax bill. And then the last thing you want to be diversified across is income streams. So you want to have multiple income streams. So you're not kind of dependent on one thing from that perspective. So I touch on those kind of three concepts. There you go. And then the final one, seek counsel. Tell us about that. It's the hardest one. The hardest one, really? Yeah.

And it's the hardest one by a long shot, okay? Because to have a plan and be diversified, that's kind of pretty objective. And if you sat down with 10 financial advisors or 100 financial advisors, it's likely that they're going to come up with a very similar strategy or plan. The only thing that would change from advisor to advisor more than likely would be kind of prioritization and order that you're going to do stuff in, which can make a huge difference. So hiring a financial advisor is a big deal, but it's still going to be somewhat subjective or objective. When you get to seeking counsel, that becomes really subjective. And where I find the biggest challenge there is, is people who are

really successful, they're smart. I mean, they've acquired a decent amount of money in their 401ks, they're making good money, they're excelling in their careers. So seeking counsel is not something they do naturally, and it's not something they do happily, to be honest with you. And then kind of on top of that, it becomes even more challenging in the sense as there's two kinds of counsel that becomes blurred and people don't kind of realize it. And I do touch on this in the book is there's formal counsel and informal counsel. And what I mean by that is this formal counsel would be a counsel you pay for. This is what rich people are constantly doing. They have lots and lots of formal counsel to your point

about the joke about hiring a lawyer. They literally have lawyers, so they don't sign leases. They don't do anything without getting formal counsel. What a lot of people do is they get informal counsel, i.e. their friends, their parents, their neighbors, and that counsel can be really valuable and also pretty colorful, so it can be fun, but you have to get the balance. I'm not saying informal is bad or formal counsel is good. Comparing them, I'm just saying those are two different types of counsel that people really need to consciously think through, and you really need to get both, and they're very different counsel. So think of counsel, formal counsel, as counsel you pay for. So that'll have a tendency to have a little boring focus.

I tell some of my clients, they're like, this is really boring. Do we do something different? And I say, no, that's my job. Keep it boring. This is really boring. I mean, what do you want, the Kardashians to come out and give you financial advice? I mean, come on, people. People do.

You want P.T. Barnum to show up with a bag of clowns and be like, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Yeah, I mean, math and financials are boring, but they're really necessary if you want to retire wealthy and do all that stuff. It's kind of a deal, evidently, here. I don't know. I don't want to know. I'm trying to avoid retirement as much as I can, so I'm putting that off until I die or something.

What's the line I use? Warren Buffett says it. I'll retire seven years after I die. That's great. That's a good place to be. Yeah. So we've encompassed the three main pillars of your book, Plan Assist, and then you call it Plan Assist, and I believe you've got a registered trademark on it. Is this something that you teach or do something in your website

that is part of your counseling or coaching that you do? I do. And I've gone through over the years, I've kind of put seminars together and presentations together and done some stuff, you know, different organizations. So I have a whole process that I take them through. But the book is only 50 pages. I mean, so this is not some long, detailed book. It keeps you at 30,000 foot, but it really does touch on all the principles that I have implemented personally and seen people with wealth implement over the last 25 years of my career. And I don't go into like minutiae detail on any of them, but I get you enough to where you kind of have, I get that, or you can go do some of your own research on it. But all of it's pretty normal

in the financial services. If you go interview, if you go sit down with a financial advisor, if you read plan assist and go sit down with a financial advisor, it's very likely that you'll hear a lot of the same concepts from that financial advisor that I introduced in the book. So nothing in the book that I introduce is something that's kind of out there, not mainstream financial planning, basically. There you go. And so what sort of services do you offer at your website when people go to it? The most unique thing that I offer is there's some percent of the population that doesn't know anything. So both husband and wife,

and they have financial advisors to do, and I have that service. So I do it, and I charge a percentage, and clients come in and say, what should I do? And I'll help them through it. I'll explain and educate them, but for the most part, they don't have a lot of knowledge about it. The second part, the second service I offer is somewhat unique because there's a lot of people out there who manage their own investments and do it actually, I mean, do a good job with it. Now they might be missing some, they might have some holes in their plan, et cetera. But for the most part, I see lots of financial, lots of people doing their investments themselves. The challenge they have is if something happens to them, their significant other knows nothing.

And so then where do they go? And so I have quite a few clients that use plan assist subscription service for just that point where, okay, I'm going to interview you. We're going to have an annual meeting. I'm going to send you some reports, but I don't really need that. He or she doesn't need my advice. They already know what they're doing, but if something happens to them, there's an even other, at least has some place to start. They may not hire me as their financial advisor, but at least it's all one place and kind of here's what you got and here's how things go. And then the third is just for people who kind of both people know what they're doing and then it just helps them organize their investments.

So that's kind of my main service. There you go. Is there a minimum net worth you need to have or anything like that? For managing someone's investments where I do it themselves or I actually do it, it's $100,000, which makes sense because of kind of fees and those types of things. But for plan assist, there isn't because that's a subscription-based model where they just pay a hundred bucks a month and I'll give them my advice. I'll give them the technology. I'll show them. I'll build the plan for them. I'll give them some diversification

strategies. I'll help them with seeking counsel, rather. It's like I have my own kind of circle of advisors or use their circle of advisors to help them make financial decisions. That one is kind of they do it, though. We just kind of help them do it is maybe the best way to describe it. That's what you kind of clicked on when you started the show was best of both. There you go. Now I'm looking at the website. Now that explains the flat fee, one simple flat fee service to the plan assist. Exactly. They need to, they can schedule a call by hitting the button on the website and talking to you guys. Exactly. And that's probably the most unique part of my offering. Other advisors will have

a fee, but they don't usually lead with it. I kind of think that that's really unique in leading with it. So it's not a unique offering. It's just unique in the sense that I lead with it. There you go. And then you have PlanAssist Plus. Do you want to tease a little bit about that now? And the PlanAssist Plus is basically just the extension of I'm going to manage the assets and diversify the assets themselves for a flat fee. That's the $100,000. So you get everything the Plan Assist has, i.e. a plan, a diversified strategy, help them with seeking counsel. And again, people misconstrued this seeking counsel. I want to just touch on this before we kind of go is don't think of seeking counsel as someone selling you something or someone telling you what to do. It's literally just here's my situation.

Give me some feedback and then you choose whether to follow it or not. And I can tell you of all the things that people with lots of money teach their children, that is it. Those people really know how to. I am one of those people who remember every day of my life. There you go. Starting at age six, now 64. I'm sorry. I remember the day of the week.

It's reading actually one of your pages. My speechify is going off. So some of the stuff that you've covered here is great. What do you find most people are struggling with, with, with their finances? What's, what's the number one thing that they screw up the most or they need to work

on the most? Well, I, this sounds ridiculously simple, but it, but it is, is, is living outside their means.

I mean, most of them don't have a plan and they just spend more than they make. I mean, I mean, that's relatively obvious. And then the second is they'll save a lot of money in their retirement accounts and then spend all the rest of their money. So they don't end up with, you know, like a now bucket, a soon bucket, a later bucket. And then probably the third is they think their house is their investments.

We don't even count your house in a financial plan or a net worth because you've got to move somewhere else. And too many people in America think their house is an investment. It's just not. It's where you live. Even now, the housing price is soaring stupid crazy? It's not. It's not?

Wow. If you have a million-dollar house and you sell it, where are you going to go? You're going to go to another million-dollar house. Ah, I see how that works. Yeah, that's true. Most people do that, and they upgrade and stuff. That's exactly what happens. So a few people will downgrade, but even downgrade.

So I'm in central Florida, and even downgrading is difficult because you sell your house for $800,000 and you don't, let's just say you don't know anything on your house. You're not going to buy something relatively nice for, you know, less than say 500. If you're used to living in an $800,000 house and neighborhood, then you're going to pay taxes. You're going to pay the moves. It's going to cost you a hundred grand. So you might bank 200,000.

That's not, that's not a retirement plan yeah that makes sense you know one of the problems if you've been in the house for a long time especially with what's gone on with inflation you know you may own a house that's worth a million but you paid half a million for it and if you sell it you know all the new houses are a million so you're kind of fucked that's right yeah that's exactly right yeah my mom's been in the same house for 30 years and i'm like mom you should move and she's like i can't buy a new house for correct doesn't trade across and i'm like yeah i get it and and think about it and then people will see their house and say, I have a million bucks so I can afford a Lexus when really they should be buying a Toyota. And again, I'm not pro-Lexus or Toyota.

I have no problem with people having Lexuses or anything. It's just it needs to be, again, one thing the plan does for people is even if it's a simple here, there plan, I am here and I want to go there, is it doesn't help. It helps with the no. It helps with that no, we're not doing that because that does blow our plan up. Wow. There you go. Yeah, you know, I was reading something the other day. I think it was maybe it was a TikTok video, but it basically said, you know, lot of people a lot of people like to you know they have money they drive like bum cars that are like older

and ratty and and you know i mean they're ratty maybe but you know they're older cars i think even warren buffett drives like an older cadillac or something like that. It's kind of funny, you know, and yet I see these people, they buy these cars and the payments on them nowadays are like stupid, like stupid. You know, one of my things is I actually, what I actually do is I keep a beater car because I don't have a wife and kids. I don't have places to go with it. And I work from home, so I don't have any place to go.

So if I have a date night or if I want to go someplace where I'm worried about the car breaking down or something, I just rent a car for the weekend. That's smart. That's it. And it's cheaper to do. I don't have to maintain it. You know, you throw the insurance on there. You got a nice car for the weekend.

You can go on dates. You can go to Vegas. And I can do whatever I want. And it's cheaper than what people, I think there's people paying $2,000 a month for a freaking car payment now. It's like dumb. That's a house payment. Think about that.

Yeah. I mean, I know people that they're paying, what is it, $150,000 for some of these trucks? $150,000 for these trucks? Yeah. And man, if they don't have good credit they're really up but i mean i think those are good credit rates i mean i guess 1500 is like not unheard of for an average car payment now and i'm just like i'll just drive a ratty old car that's and then i see them in the shop all the time on tiktoks and so i'm like you know i think

i like the old cars they don't break down as much there's not they're not as complex and like right now the insurance is going through the roof on cars because they're so complex and and i guess a lot of these cars are have gotten so expensive that when they total them it costs the insurance company a fortune because if you you know if you have a fifteen thousand,000 pickup truck versus $150,000 pickup truck and you total it you're kind of screwed and even like there's there's certain ones these electric cars i think it's rialto or something or it's i forget it riddle it starts with an r but they built the panels of the truck so they're one piece they probably did it for production method but the problem is if you wreck them you have to replace the whole one piece,

which is like half the cabin bed of the truck. So it totals the truck. Yeah, so it totals the truck or you've got to find something. Like even like if you dent like a panel, that whole piece has got to be replaced. And so, yeah, the insurance companies, the insurance is going through the roof. The housing insurance is going through the roof. I'm just going to live in a van down by the river at this pace because, you know, fuck it. I pick a lot of money.

And I love having cash laying around and paying off credit cards every month. I like that. It's a great feeling. Yeah, it really is. I like to tease my credit cards. I run one up for a month and I'm like, ha, not. I just fooled you. Pay that off. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the way to go. I like to tease my credit cards. I run one up for a month and I'm like, I just fooled you.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the way to go. What other advice as we go out, maybe we haven't touched on about the book or things that you want to share with the audience? I think the other kind of embedded philosophy is maybe a better way to word it than the three principles, have a plan, be diversified, seek counsel,

is the first philosophy is financial success is not an event. It's the combination of all the decisions someone's made over decades, and that's why having a plan, that's why really thinking through your financial decisions matter because you think one little decision doesn't matter, but maybe it doesn't individually, but the accumulation of those decisions do matter over a long period of time. And then the second philosophy is, is you have to spend enough time to understand what you're being told to do or what you're being suggested or what the advice is or the counsel is, because if you don't understand it, you're not going to do it. And so

the best way to kind of think of that is, and this comes from Charlie Munger, is people will only do what they almost know. So if someone tells you to go do something, if you don't kind of already, already know it or think about it, you're probably not going to do it. And, you know, you kind of got to almost know. And I think that's something that this book will help with is, is if you understand kind of those basic principles and philosophies that I kind of touch on in the book, when you sit down with your financial advisor, I think you'll find it a much more productive and enjoyable experience to be honest with you it won't feel like it's being you know you're not going to the dentist you're going to kind of enjoy the you know to

basically make better financial decisions over a long time to become financially independent there you go and your teeth won't hurt after. Exactly. That's right. I'll tell you, though, that I have clients that they just think of going to an advisor is like literally the dentist. It's really rough. I'd rather go to a financial advisor than a dentist any day. That's the side role. Sorry. I'll bet it's 50-50, though.

If you poll the audience, it's probably 50-50, yeah. There you go. I probably lost the five dentists to listen to show with that comment so sorry guys fun is fun final thoughts as we go out and pitch people on where they can reach out to you find out more about you your dot com etc etc you know again planassist.com i can only help people i I'm a state-right licensed financial advisor in Florida. So I can really only help people that are in Florida, Indiana, and Michigan. So I'm licensed in those three states. Everywhere else, I'm not actually licensed. But the concept of plan assist and kind of have a plan to be diversified and seek counsel

applies to everyone. So whether you're already really wealthy and you're probably already doing some of it, but can you do better? Or if you're just making a good living and not saving the amount of money, it gives you some kind of key pieces to think about and manage. There you go. And give us the.com one more time as we go out. It's planassist, P-L-A-N, and then assist, it's plan assist p-l-a-n and then assist a-s-s-i-s-t dot com so plan assist dot com there you go thanks tim for coming on the show we really appreciate it thank you chris i enjoyed meeting you and thanks for having me i appreciate it

yeah thanks for coming by we've learned a lot today more of the book folks wherever fine books are sold it's called plan assist with with one word. That's Plan Assist, Make Better Financial Decisions by Timothy Clifford. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, FortunatesChrisFoss, LinkedIn.com, FortunatesChrisFoss, ChrisFoss1 on the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Thank you.