The Compound and Friends - Balancing Today and Tomorrow (Tadas with Jeremy Walter)

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

“A right balance is somewhere in between – enjoying Today while planning for Tomorrow. And there’s no magical, universal formula, spreadsheet, or ratio to figure this out. It’s entirely subjective to each person and family.” Jeremy Walter (@jeremywalter) is the founder of Fident Financial, LLC and logs at Calibrating Capital:. Tadas got Jeremy on the phone to talk about a recent post of his entitled “Today vs. Tomorrowland” where he writes about the challenges of balancing our need to live in the moment while planning for our uncertain future. You can read more at Andrew’s blog Calibrating Capital: https://calibratingcapital.com/today-vs-tomorrowland/ https://calibratingcapital.com/living-in-today-a-case-study/ 1-click play or subscribe on your favorite podcast app   Subscribe to the mini podcast on iTunes or Spotify   Enable our Alexa skill here - "Alexa, play the Compound show!"   Talk to us about your portfolio or financial plan here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/   Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice just for you or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Please see this 3,000 word terms & conditions disclaimer: https://thereformedbroker.com/terms-and-conditions/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Jeremy, how are you? I am doing fantastic. Awesome. I'm on the line with Jeremy Walter, who's the founder of Fidant Financial, a fee-only registered investment advisor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I asked Jeremy on today to talk about a recent blog post of his entitled Today vs. Tomorrowland. The financial planning process is by its nature forward-looking, and in general, financial planners are trying to help their clients deal with goals that are set off in the future. But Jeremy notes that we all still need to live in and enjoy the present. So, Jeremy, what prompted you to write about this topic? Yeah, well, thanks for having me on.

I've been a financial advisor for, I guess, coming up on 13 years. And it was one of the first prospects or clients that when I was at my old firm, I still remember this pretty vividly. He came in to talk with us and had a fair amount of substantial savings build up. And as we were talking about what he wanted to accomplish and some of his goals and what he wanted to do with these funds, he really opened up and shared how he had worked a graveyard shift as an employer with the intention of getting to a point at some point down the road where he could spend more time specifically with his wife and with his kids and enjoy that retirement phase. But then he shares it. But during this, I lost sight of what I was sacrificing during that time. And so now he had attained this financial goal of being able to retire.

But I mean, very sadly, his wife had left him. And if I'm remembering the details right, he hadn't talked to any of his kids for a number of years. And it was such a shocking story to me of this guy hit his financial goals, but didn't have the family, you know, around him to enjoy it with. And as I think about, you know, our job as financial advisors, it's exactly what you said, you know, we're very forward looking, you know, we want to plan for retirement, we want to plan for education, we want to plan for, plan for a down payment on a home. And we can kind of get caught in this, what I call tomorrow land, and constantly be thinking about that state of tomorrow and really lose sight of today. And that's a dangerous, as I said in the article, it's a dangerous spot to be in because we don't know what tomorrow holds.

I mean, we're not promised tomorrow. And we do ourselves a disservice, I feel, if we kind of keep our head in tomorrow and not really looking around in today and enjoying it. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. My colleague, Chris Venn, talks about one of the great pleasures he has as a planner or as an advisor is to give people in retirement kind of the permission, in a certain sense, to be able to live their lives, to be able to spend down a lifetime's worth of savings. And that's a little specific to people who are in retirement, but I think the point is a little bit more generalizable in the sense that life is kind of a set of tradeoffs, and focusing on the future to the detriment of the present or the intermediate is a danger which you kind of highlight. is a danger which you kind of highlight. Yeah, and as I wrote in a follow-up post to that article, I had to almost shame myself in this,

in that here I was trying to very intentionally live in today and not be so caught up in tomorrow. And so I took this boating camping trip with my sons, two of my sons and my dad. So it was a tri-generational trip. And you had sent me a message about possibly coming onto this show to kind of share my thoughts. And I had very spotty reception. But every once in a while, my phone would kind of download everything. And I got your message. And I was really excited. And I spent literally 30 minutes walking around this island that we were on trying to find reception to send a message back to you before just being struck with the irony of I'm trying to live in today to respond to a message

about doing that very thing. And I'm neglecting the very trip that I was doing this on. It's hard. So even once you make the realization, staying in that moment, it it's hard, you know, and it's a challenge. Yeah, I think one of the other challenges that I think, you know, in our lives, we kind of, in a certain sense, we almost segment our lives up into sort of different phases. You know, you have your education phase, you have your early career phase, you have kind of a family phase, and, you know, there's different kind of phases. And, you know, when you're in one of those points in time, it's really easy to be sort of myopic and really just be focused on that particular thing. But like you said, you know, we have, you know, we have different things that are important to us and, you know, focusing on one to the detriment of many others

is, it's understandable, but like you said, it's something we have to work really hard to avoid. Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the examples I used myself in the original post was I started up Fident a couple of years ago, very much so still in startup phase of long hours and putting in the grind. And I work out of my home, and I heard two of my sons in the hallway one time talking back and forth. And they're just like, you ask him. No, you ask him.

No, you ask him. And here I thought they were going to ask for ice cream or something that their mom would have already said no to. going to ask for ice cream or something that their mom would have already said no to. But they finally came in and said, Daddy, will you come out and play with me? They're five and seven. It was in the middle of the afternoon. Typically, I'm going to say no to that, but it struck me that they had come to expect me to say no to their request to play. And here I am trying to build a business and to provide an income for my family to provide for the tomorrows.

And I mean, my kids are 10, 7, 5, and 1. They're not always going to want to play with me. And it was just another self reminder that, you know, I need to focus on these todays. Yeah, you know, I think some of it is really just, like you said, is almost just taking a beat, taking a moment and, you know, having it just having a just a short moment of introspection. And that can that can be helpful. And that's, you know, that's applicable in in all sorts of things in life, not just what kind of the stuff we're talking about.

The one thing I did want to touch on, and I hate to use a cliche, but we kind of talk about, the cliche is actually I think so inapt, is we talk about personal finance is very much personal. It's really about your finance is very much personal. It is, it's really about, you know, your goals and intentions and things. And I think that's where, you know, I think that kind of the rubber meets the road on this topic when it talks about individuals. You know, there's no cookie cutter. There's no thing that's right for everyone. And balancing those trade-offs between today, tomorrow, spending for today

and saving for tomorrow are really all personal. And some of that is, you know, what we talked about is about introspection, but it's also having a third party, somewhat disinterested third party who you can bounce these ideas off of can be really helpful. That's exactly right. Yeah. And as a financial advisor, I'm obviously going to be biased in this opinion, but I really do think that a trusted financial advisor, someone who you're going deep with and talking about really important things, they can be a good sounding board for you to kind of help manage that tension, you know, along with, you know, really close friends or your spouse. Someone to kind of get that outside perspective is huge.

You're exactly right on that. Yeah, no, I think that's one of the advantages, I think, of having an advisor and you kind of, at the top, you kind of had an anecdote about a situation that you had run into. And those types of stories and kind of that experience can be helpful when dealing with current clients and clients down the road. Yeah, definitely. Well, Jeremy, this is a great talk. And I recommend to everybody to check out your post and then your follow-up post. And thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Hey, thank you so much. It's an honor to be on the show, and I appreciate you asking. Thanks.