Ep 272: You Don't Need to Become a Financial Expert (Do This Instead)

So here's a quick question for you.

Do you cut your own grass?

If you're a homeowner, do you pay someone to cut your grass, or do you cut it yourself every week in the South Carolina heat, sweating through a T shirt?

Because maybe I like torturing myself, maybe I'm trying to bribe my apple watch to get more steps, but every week I cut my own grass.

I don't mind it.

It's mindless.

It's outside.

I can think while I'm doing it.

I can listen to podcasts.

But I also know plenty of people just as busy as me, just, just as capable of pushing them over.

Who pays someone else to do it every single week.

And you know what?

Neither of us is right or neither of us is wrong.

We've just decided differently how we want to spend that hour.

So that's actually a really useful lens because it turns out that we all do this constantly in every area of our lives without really naming it.

Some things you do yourself, like cutting grass, maybe some people change their oil in their car.

Some things you want to be involved with, but you want an expert alongside you and.

And some things you just want handled.

You don't want to think of it at all.

Today, I want to name those three types out loud and then ask you an honest question.

Which one are you when it comes to your money?

Because I think a lot of people are trying to be a do it yourselfer in the one area of their life that's actually costing them the most.

And hey, here's a quick ask before we dive in.

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Welcome to the weekly wealth podcast.

I am certified financial planner David Chudick.

This podcast and my wealth management practice are both designed to help the mass affluent to live better lives by how they handle their money.

We talk about financial strategies, prosperous mindsets, and simply how to build true wealth.

So come on and let's enjoy this journey together.

Welcome to this week's episode.

This week we're talking about three personality types that I see in my wealth management practice with regards to how people handle their money.

I think you'll recognize yourself in all three, just in different areas of your life.

So the first one is the DIYer, right?

This is a do it yourself.

They actually enjoy doing it, not just the result that may be grass cutting.

You know, some people like tinkering with their Cars, somebody.

Some people like making their own home brewed coffee, set up.

Some people like DIY home repairs.

And there may be even some part of it that's like, why would I pay someone to do this?

At this task, I can do it myself and I'll save money.

Right?

So the DIYer.

Think about some areas in your life where you might be a DIYer, and are you that when it comes to your money?

Then there's the partner.

This is someone who wants to be involved and informed.

They want to understand the why, but they want an expert in the room.

Think the person who researches a car for weeks and weeks and weeks, but still wants the mechanic they trust doing the actual work and explaining the options.

And then of course, we have the delegator.

The delegator wants the outcome, not the process.

Doesn't want to learn it, doesn't want to think about it, just wants it handled well by somebody they trust.

A lawn guy's clients would be an example.

The people who use a CPA instead of doing their own taxes, even though TurboTax exists.

So where are you on the DIY, on the partner or on the delegator scale?

Think about some different areas of your life and then think about your money.

All right, but here's a quick gut check for you.

Think about your car.

Are you the person who does your own oil changes?

Do you research every repair before agreeing to it?

Or do you just drop it off and say, call me when it's ready?

That's the same three types, just about a different part of your life.

Now, none of these types is smarter or better than the others.

They're just different decisions about where you want to spend your attention.

But here's the part that I really want you to think about.

You're probably not the same type in every area.

So some people are a DIYer with their lawn, but a total delegator with a car's check engine light.

Yep, I don't know much about cars, so I'll just drop it off of the dealership and say, hey, please fix it.

Most people are a mix.

So the question really isn't which type are you, period?

Is which type are you with your money specifically?

And a lot of people have never even asked that question to themselves before now, in today's age of Google, of AI, of YouTube video, Reddit threads, robo advisors, everything like that, let's get one thing out of the way.

Information is not the bottleneck.

If you want to learn how IRAs work, how to pick individual stocks, how required Minimum distributions get calculated.

It's all out there mostly for free right now.

So the question in today's day and age is not, can I learn this?

Almost anybody could if they wanted to.

Now, there are some mist that could be made that sometimes somebody with experience can avoid.

But here's the real question that almost nobody is asking loud enough.

And I want to be really clear here because there's no right answer.

If you enjoy it, if researching stocks on a Saturday morning with your coffee sounds relaxing to you, genuinely keep doing that.

Some of you are DIYers here and some of you should stay DIYers here.

So the first question is, do you want to spend your time learning it?

But here's one thing that you can't get more of.

And here's what.

And here's where I want to borrow an idea from Bill Bachrach, who spent decades teaching a process called Values Based Financial Planning.

And the whole premise being that money was never really the goal.

Money is just the resource.

What you're actually buying with it is time and options in a life that looks like the one that you actually want.

So let me ask you something, and I want you to actually think about this for a second instead of just rushing past it.

If you no longer spent your evenings and weekends researching stocks, reading up on IRA contribution rules, or checking on your portfolio, what would you actually do with that time?

Okay, so let me ask that again.

If you were not spending time researching stocks, if you were not spending time learning the IRA rules, what would you do with that time?

So really picture it.

For some of you, it might be coaching your kid's team without half of your brain still on the market.

For some of you, it's a Saturday morning.

That's just a Saturday morning.

No spreadsheet.

Open in another tab.

For some of you, it's finally sleeping through the night instead of running numbers at 1am Whatever you picture, that's the actual return on delegating.

Not a better return than the S and P. The return is actually getting your life back.

And life is short.

That's not a scare tactic, it's just true.

Your Time is the 1 non renewable resource that you have.

Money.

Yeah, you can always make more of it.

Time.

No, you can't.

So the honest question isn't whether you're capable of managing it yourself, it's whether that's actually the highest use of your hours that you can't get back.

Quick question.

When's the last time you stopped to ask, where is my money actually taking me?

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So these are some philosophical questions here.

Now there's a book, and honestly, more of a mindset shift than a book called who, not how by dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

Now, Dan Sullivan runs an entrepreneur coaching program that I was in for a while called Strategic Coach.

The whole idea is pretty simple.

Most of us, when we hit a goal or a problem, we automatically ask, how do I do this?

Or how do I fix this?

How do I learn this?

How do I figure this out?

And the question by itself is exhausting and it puts the entire weight of the solution on your shoulders.

Now, their argument is that the more useful question to ask almost always is who can help me with this?

Not because you're incapable of the how, but because.

But because who gets you to the outcome faster with less of your own finite time spent and usually with a better result than you would have gotten grinding it through solo.

So the DIYer's instinct is to ask how do I do this?

The delegator's instinct is to ask who can do this for me?

Neither question is wrong, but only one of them gives you your evenings back.

So that's really all delegating your finances is.

You're not asking how do I learn to manage a portfolio?

You're asking who can manage this?

Well, so I don't have to.

Now another thing to think about is when you're making financial decisions, there are often times or a range of decisions that could be acceptable.

So the typical advice is max out your 401k if you can afford it.

Well, yes, but what if you're a little bit younger?

And of course 401k accounts are locked up until age 59 and a half.

Well, what if you have some goals that are financial goals in nature and they would require money prior to where you are 59 and a half.

Right?

Some good financial advice might be put some money into your 401k, but let's also invest some money outside of the 401k because your time horizon is pre 59 and a half, right?

So a financial advisor, an advisor of any type can help you to think about your issues maybe differently than just your standard Internet AI advice.

Same outcome, you're after a secure financial future, completely different question, and a completely different amount of your own life spent getting there.

So remember, time is a non renewable resource.

And with time being a non renewable resource, we have to again ask ourselves, how much of our time do we want to spend learning IRA rules, learning investment management rules, And I say it every single podcast.

I believe that how we handle our money should positively impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

So is studying and learning and becoming an expert at the financial rules, is that giving you a better life?

Now, I don't say that sarcastically, because if it is, if you get enjoyment from it, then keep doing it.

But if it's taking you away from the things that you enjoy, from the things that give you a fulfilled life, then maybe you are or should be a delegator.

Then there's another part of it, and it's implementation.

Implementation is the whole game.

One thing to know that it's probably be the time in your life where you need to get a will done, it's a whole other thing to actually get the will done, right?

So let's say you're a partner or even a DIYer and you genuinely know you should be rebalancing annually.

You know you should be maxing out your roth, updating your beneficiaries after a life change.

Here's the uncomfortable question, underneath it all, will you actually implement it on your own, on time, every single time, without somebody checking on whether you did it?

So you're busy, I'm busy.

We have kids, we have careers, we have businesses, we have obligations.

And even though we know that there are things that we need to do, oftentimes we don't do it just because life gets in the way.

And here's I see it over and over again.

And I don't say this as a knock on anyone.

We're all busy.

You've got a job, kids, aging parents, a life.

Knowing you should rebalance in January and actually sitting down and doing it in January are not the same thing.

This is a behavior gap.

And it's the same reason why gym memberships spike in January and empty out by March.

Knowledge was never the problem.

Follow through under a busy, distracted, stressful life is the problem.

So you could Google how to lose weight, or you could Google how to increase my bench press, and you could probably find some really Good information, because like we said, knowledge is not the limiting factor.

But would you not have better results if you pay a personal trainer and that personal trainer is going to push you to do that extra rep, that personal trainer is going to have some additional knowledge and experience for you.

And quite frankly, you're just going to show up for probably 100% of the workouts that you're paying for the trainer to help you with, as opposed to kind of, I would guess, if you're like me, when you're just working out by yourself, you let some workouts slip.

So my job is never to know something that you couldn't Google.

My job is to make sure that the right thing happens, even on the day that you don't feel like doing it.

That's accountability.

Not a lecture, not a guilt trip.

Just someone whose actual job is to make sure that the thing that should happen happens on a timeline, whether or not you were in the mood to think about your finances that particular Tuesday.

And here's the part that I don't think gets talked about enough.

Because it's not sexy, it's not dramatic, it's quiet.

It's not the market crash.

It's not the stock that went up by 400%.

It's just like a form that nobody filled out.

So here's a real one.

Beneficiary designations.

It's not glamorous.

Nobody's ever excited to talk about it.

But I've seen retirement accounts and life insurance policies pay out to an ex spouse or skip a current spouse entirely because the beneficiary form was filled out once years ago, never touched again, through a marriage, a divorce, a remarriage, and a new kid.

I talked to somebody else a few years ago, and she was in her late 60s.

Her husband passed away and she's not a client.

She didn't become a client.

But we talked about how her money should be invested and she said that her husband invested it and she was sure that he knew what he was doing.

Well, he had passed away a few years ago.

Maybe it was appropriate for them at that stage in life a few years ago.

But that doesn't mean that it's still appropriate for her now as a widow without her husband, who maybe had some financial knowledge and without his paycheck.

So it's not really about taking the easy way.

It's about having someone to push you in the right direction.

The account doesn't care what you meant to do.

It pays out exactly according to that form.

That's not a market Risk mistake.

That's an implementation mistake.

Something small, something boring and completely avoidable that can cost a family tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and be genuinely painful to a family in a very painful situation.

So what about missing requirement distributions, deadlines and taking a needless penalty?

This isn't sexy.

This isn't something that is any fun to do.

But working with a financial advisor can help you to make sure that those things happen properly.

What about contributing to the wrong account or over contributing or unwinding it later?

What about an old 401k sitting at a former employer and never rolled out, never rebalance, quietly drifting away from where it should be allocated?

None of these require a genius to avoid.

They require someone whose job is actually to check it.

That's the cost of skipping implementation.

It's really one big dramatic error.

It's a small quiet oversight that compounds in silence for years.

I can bring you back to another example of someone who was another widow and her husband did not have her name on his on the beneficiary form in his ira.

Now this was more than likely a simple mistake, but it created a ton of frustration of heartache and delay with the widow receiving his retirement plan after he passed away.

So these are some of the little things that working with someone and being a delegator can help you to do better.

So let's bring it back around.

You already know which of these three types you are in most other parts of your life.

Think lawn care, think your car.

Think taxes.

You've never had to think hard about it because the stakes felt low.

The question I leave you here today is the one that actually matters.

Have you been honest with yourself about which one you are with your money?

Or have you been trying to DIY the one area where information gap was never really an issue, but the time, the implementation and the small quiet mistakes are.

You don't need to become an expert.

You never did.

You just need to decide honestly whether that hour or two or three hours of your life where you want to spend it.

So if you've listened to today's episode and you're thinking, you know what, I need to be either a delegator or a partner and you're ready to actually hand some of this stuff off, go to weeklywealthpodcast.com vision let's schedule a 10 or 20 minute Zoom call.

Let's talk about what you have going on in your life and and let's see if we can point you in the right directions.

And one last thing that I would like to discuss and I see a lot of Instagram posts, I see a lot of Facebook posts that talk about a financial advisor's fee and that it can cut into returns, etc.

Now, for financial advisors, fees can be charged in different ways, but we don't work for free.

Just like when you go to get your oil changed, it will cost you more in dollars than it would to do it yourself.

So if you choose to attempt to become a financial expert on your own, that may be the right decision for you.

And or if you choose to hire a financial advisor, yes, they're going to get paid in the form of either assets under management fees or flat fee planning.

But that would be you making a conscious decision that you are ready to delegate your finances to an expert, someone who can make sure that the right things happen at the right time.

All right everybody, so that'll bring this week's episode to a close.

Let me know.

Go to www.weeklywealthpodcast.com Click on the microphone icon.

Leave me a voicemail.

Let me know if you are a financial delegator, meaning that you work with experts and you talk with them.

They learn what's important to you and they put together a strategy that will give you the highest possibility of getting your goals.

Let us know if you're a partner where you want to maybe have some of your ideas verified.

Or let me know if you are a DIYer.

If you're one of those people that feels like there's no reason to pay a fee or any type of a management fee on any of my assets, because I can figure it out myself.

Let me know which one of those you are and let me know why you chose to be that one.

All right, if you everybody and until next episode, I wish everybody a blessed week.

Thanks.

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This week's bonus content.

Let's stop thinking about our financial plan in terms of strictly dollars and cents, like hey, I want to retire when I have X amount of dollars or I want to build up a portfolio to X amount of dollars dollars.

Let's start thinking about some of the goals that those dollars will help you to achieve.

So maybe you have a goal of paying for your grandkids college.

Yes, we have to know some of the quantitative details there.

But ultimately what you're really doing, you're making difficult decisions, you're making some sacrifices so that you can see them walk down the graduation aisle without having student loans.

That's what really what we're planning for, not necessarily the specific dollar amount.

Everybody hope that made sense to you.

We'll see you next week.