Is the Grass Greener?

Our 2 Cents – Episode #118

Is the Grass Greener?

This week’s episode of the Our 2 Cents podcast features a thought-provoking topic about making financial decisions and comparing what you’re doing to what else might be out there. Then we answer a couple questions from listeners of ours, and Steve and Gabe are answering an interesting “Get to Know Us” question too.

1. Is the Grass Greener?:
   • Should you be doing something different with your portfolio when the market is down?
   • Is there someone out there who knows exactly when to move your money out of the market to avoid losses?
   • Are there ever times when the fence is worth jumping over for greener grass?
2. Listener Questions:
   • “I almost got out of the market before it dropped down recently. Now I’m back to where I was before. Should I get out now?” -Ellen
   • “I had kids later in life and now I am almost 60 with twin boys heading off to college soon. I want to be able to help them financially through college but I also want to retire eventually, too. What should I place a higher priority on – their college education or my retirement?” – Jesse

3. Get to Know Steve and Gabriel:
   • Would you rather have a pause or a rewind button in your life?

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Podcast Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, building wealth for life. Steve Lewit is the president of SGL Financial and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.

Gabriel Lewit: Good morning, everybody. Gabriel Lewit here, and Steven Lewit joining you live from our studio.

Steve Lewit: We might not be. Well, we are live. You always say that, joining you live.

Gabriel Lewit: I like to say it. It makes me feel like I’m running an actual live radio show, which I’m not.

Steve Lewit: Well, it is live in the moment. It just, when everyone hears it, it’s recorded.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s true. Well, anyways, we hope you’re doing great today. It’s believe it or not, November of 2022. How has the year gone by this fast, Mr. Lewit? Do you know?

Steve Lewit: I don’t know. I was just thinking though, if this was on Halloween, you could have said, “Hey, we’re bringing you dead here today.”

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe.

Steve Lewit: Maybe.

Gabriel Lewit: But we definitely didn’t do that.

Steve Lewit: We definitely not. Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween. You know what was sad about Halloween, Gabriel?

Gabriel Lewit: People already had their Christmas lights up?

Steve Lewit: Well, I think that’s sad. There are hardly any kids on the streets.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, around me, I saw quite a few actually.

Steve Lewit: Oh, did you?

Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lewit: A lot of neighborhoods were empty. People are afraid that their kids are going to go and get candy that’s got stuff in them, or they’re going to get kidnapped or meet mean people. A lot of so much fear.

Gabriel Lewit: What kind of neighborhood do you live in? I thought I knew where you lived, maybe…

Steve Lewit: Well, I grew up in the South Bronx, so maybe that’s still living in there.

Gabriel Lewit: Did you travel down to the dangerous parts of the city for Halloween?

Steve Lewit: No, I had clients in, and they also told me, “Yeah, nobody came to my door and everything.”

Gabriel Lewit: Weird. No, I had a lot, packs of them around my neighborhood.

Steve Lewit: That’s great. I’m happy to hear that.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, folks, hopefully you had a great Halloween as well.

Steve Lewit: What did you dress up as?

Gabriel Lewit: I dressed up as a businessman.

Steve Lewit: In other words, you got home and went out with the kids?

Gabriel Lewit: That’s exactly what happened, yes. Well, we hope you had a wonderful Halloween. We’ve got a great show lined up for you here today, and we’re going to do some listener questions here in a bit. Ellen, from last week, we have got your question here. We’ve got a couple others that have trickled in. So we’re going to do a few more minutes of client questions than we typically do, and we’re also going to talk a little bit about your favorite segment.

Steve Lewit: Oh, no.

Gabriel Lewit: Getting to know Steve.

Steve Lewit: I’m getting to know you.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s my favorite too. I like to surprise you with my unknown personal questions. Very nice serenading, by the way.

Steve Lewit: Thank you.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, so to kick into high gear though, we’ve got a topic here talking about, you’ve heard the phrase, ‘The grass is greener on the other side of the fence.’

Steve Lewit: Those a great… I’ve heard that. Of course.

Gabriel Lewit: Most people have. And it’s of course, referencing the thought that people tend to think that something different, aka the other side of the fence might be or they tend to think that it’s always better than what they have on their side of the fence, aka the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Steve Lewit: It’s like paying attention to somebody else’s plate.

Gabriel Lewit: And now, the interesting part about that phrase is that it is not always true.

Steve Lewit: In fact, it most often it’s not true.

Gabriel Lewit: And so very commonly, when that phrase is used, it’s used in the context of so and so, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. It’s actually rarely used as, “Hey, the grass is greener on the other side of that fence.”

Steve Lewit: What? Say that again?

Gabriel Lewit: I was giving an example of how it’s used in a sentence.

Steve Lewit: Oh, thank you.

Gabriel Lewit: I said, “Hey, Steve, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence” is how that phrase is commonly used in sentence.

Steve Lewit: So, if you were talking to a friend and you said, “Look,” well, I’ll use in divorce when people get… I know we’re supposed to be talking about money. But a lot of people are unhappy in their relationships and they think the grass is always greener on the other side. So if you were talking to a friend, a friend would say to you, “No, the grass is not greener on the other side.”

Gabriel Lewit: Correct. And that’s what I was saying is, most people use it as an example of, you may want to stick with what you have potentially. But the point here is that when it comes to your financial advice, there is actually some great examples of using that phrase of the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. And the first one that comes to mind is of course, due to the market this year, portfolios are down. And many times, people feel like if they were doing something different with their portfolio, aka the grass would be greener on the other side of that fence. And what we find is that, that’s often not true.

Steve Lewit: Well, I had a client in yesterday that was complaining. So they came to see me or us here at SGL. They came to see me because they’re losing money in the stock market. And I said, “Well, the stock market is down. Of course, you’re going to lose money in the stock market.” He said, “But my advisor’s not doing anything about it.” And you know what, the question I asked Gabriel says, “What do you imagine?” Because it’s imagine the grass is always greener on the other side, is our imagination working?

Gabriel Lewit: We’re picturing what the other side of the fence would look like.

Steve Lewit: Might look like, which never is true. So I said, “What did you imagine your advisor to do?” And he had no answer. And he said, “Well, what would you do?”

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’ve had that similar conversations, and my feeling is that people would, in their perfect vision of the greener grass side of the fence, they would think that their advisor would have some magical recommendation to move their money out of what’s losing money into something that’s not losing money.

Steve Lewit: Like a secret sauce.

Gabriel Lewit: A secret sauce. Of course, I’ve even had people that have come to me, they didn’t end up becoming clients because I think they didn’t like my answer. They said, “So what do you do to move my money out of the market right now into something that’s not losing money when the market’s down like it is?” I mean, that’s literally what they came to me asking for. And I said, “Well, I think you’re going to be disappointed because anybody that tells you that they can do that, first and foremost, I personally feel is not being honest because it’s impossible to predict the market.”

Steve Lewit: It’s impossible to predict the market. You have an imagination of some magic formula that’s going to fix. What are you trying to fix? You don’t like losing money? Well, if you don’t like losing money, you shouldn’t be in the stock market, because if you’re in the stock market, you’re going to lose money. So for this potential client, I had a heart to heart, I said, “I’m going to be really candid with you. Losing money in the market is not a reason for leaving your advisor. If you think you’re going to come here, and I’m not going to lose money when the market goes down, you’re dreaming, because that’s not the way the real world works.” When the market goes down, people lose money.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, and there are advisors, funny enough, I mean, this is part of why people sometimes ask this question. There are advisors out there that, that’s what they hang their hat on is that they-

Steve Lewit: Or claim.

Gabriel Lewit: … claim to hang their hat on, is that they’ve got strategies that avoid all the downside of the market. And typically, those strategies are very expensive. They’re not proven, they’re oftentimes back tested and cherry picked to hypothetically have done better in a prior market downturn. And there’s also, there’s just no guarantee that, that’s going to be the case going forward.

Steve Lewit: Let me explain back tested in cherry picked, Gabriel.

Gabriel Lewit: Sure.

Steve Lewit: So what these guys do, or gals is they incubate like 20 different portfolios and back test them and work and work until they find the one that works.

Gabriel Lewit: Or that would’ve looked like it would’ve worked.

Steve Lewit: Or would’ve…

Gabriel Lewit: Had it used that strategy.

Steve Lewit: Had it look like it would’ve worked. And then they say, “See…”

Gabriel Lewit: Look at this strategy that we created. It would’ve avoided losses in 2008.

Steve Lewit: But you never hear the 19 others that didn’t. And here’s the problem, Gabriel, is that they could get it right once in a while. And that’s very enticing because we have these feelings. I’m losing money, I’m paying for advice. My advisor’s losing me money and I’m paying for that. I had one person call me and it was a client that I had to have a heart to heart with who said to me, “I’m paying you and you’re losing me money.” And it’s like wait, well, let’s back up here. We work hard in up markets and down markets and our portfolios have built certain ways to handle up markets and down markets. Yes, you are paying me to manage your money and to manage it through up markets and down markets because you will lose money if you’re in the market.

Gabriel Lewit: So just to recap there, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence when it comes to not losing money in the market, that’s a hard one. I mean, I get the appeal, the thought that there must be something else out there and there must be somebody out there that’s smart enough to avoid this. And it’s people trying to find a solution to something that’s painful for them, which is seeing their portfolio decline at key times in their lives.

Steve Lewit: When you think about it, Gabriel, that’s a good point. It’s really not about the money. It’s about, I don’t want to lose. It’s the feeling, the emotion or the anger or the upset or concern that I’m losing money that people are trying to get rid of.

Gabriel Lewit: Now, I want to take the counter side of that fence for a second. So we just talked about the fact that the other side of the fence may not be greener, but there are times when the other side of the fence might be greener.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: So, here’s what I mean by that, it all starts, depending on the portfolio that you’re in. Now, let’s say that your portfolio is down approximately what the market indexes are down. Maybe it’s well diversified and well allocated. And maybe you’ve got alternatives in there already, and for a fact because you’ve done the research and the review that you’ve got a great portfolio already in place and you’re just not happy with the fact that the markets are down. Well, the other side of the fence, the one that says maybe you should make a change, would be identifying if your portfolio really is underperforming or is really riskier than it should be for your age. I had a client just the other month that came on board. Her prior advisor had put almost $50,000 of 10% of her portfolio in a highly risky, unknown small startup tech stock that had lost 70% of its value this year and was down 90% since its IPO, which was three, four years ago, for a woman that said she wanted to be very conservative.

Steve Lewit: Amazing.

Gabriel Lewit: And so, now, if that’s you and you’re saying the grass greener on the other side of the fence. So, sometimes the answer is no and sometimes the answer is yes. We’ve got to be wise enough to assess when that fence is worth jumping over.

Steve Lewit: But, Gabriel, if you’re going to assess, then you can’t be emotional about it. You have to be objective about it. Assessing isn’t a subjective thing. So we know, well diversified portfolios long term perform better than less well diversified portfolios over time. Research tells us that, statistics, independent research, it’s all over the place. So there you can be objective. You could come in and say to someone like us, “Could you compare your portfolio, my portfolio and see if my portfolio is an efficient portfolio?” And that would be a reason to move because as you’re saying, it’s not efficient, it’s not a great portfolio yet, that would make sense to move. But just to come and say, “I’m losing money and can you help me with that?” And the answer is that, “Well, I don’t know about that.”

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes and no. Then certain advisors don’t provide options to their clients where they can avoid losing money.

Steve Lewit: That’s true.

Gabriel Lewit: And if you know us out there, if you’re a client of ours or potential client of ours, we represent an entire range universe of products, safe options, market-based portfolios. We like both of them for the right…

Steve Lewit: Bank options.

Gabriel Lewit: … bank options, high paying CD ladders. We’ve got lots of options that are safer. We’ve got lots of options that are more aggressive. And so, it’s also about identifying when it makes sense to move, because you open up more availability of options for you as well that you may not have currently had.

Steve Lewit: Okay, yep.

Gabriel Lewit: So, lots of interesting things here. And I know the year continues to chug along and I think there’s called ‘market fatigue.’ It’s a term where especially when markets are down and it starts to stay down for a while, people start to get fatigued with that. It’s like, “All right, I’m tired of this.”

Steve Lewit: And it’s kind of like COVID, people just got tired of it.

Gabriel Lewit: And sometimes when you start to get tired of it, you feel like you should definitely do something. And again, we don’t sit here and just say by default never do anything. But you want to assess and analyze and review your portfolio. But again, if you’ve got a great portfolio set up, if you’ve got diversification, if you’ve explored totally principle protected options and decided you don’t like those and you want to stay in the market. Well, markets do what markets do, which is go through cycles. And unfortunately, this is the down cycle part of the cycle.

Steve Lewit: You just wrote a piece about that.

Gabriel Lewit: I did. I think we might be sending it out. I’m not sure if we’re sending that letter or a different one, but I wrote a short little white paper letter.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I love it.

Gabriel Lewit: About cycles.

Steve Lewit: And I love correcting the English and grammar.

Gabriel Lewit: Of course, you do. That’s your favorite thing, I think. So, well, guys or gals, if you have any questions on that grass is greener question, give us a call 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com or email info@sglfinancial.com. That’s I-N-F-O @sglfinancial. But let’s go ahead and move into some listener questions. Speaking of emailing, that’s how we get most of our questions here. So we’ve got a few lined up here for today that we are going to dive into. And we’re going to start with Ellen, because we promised that we would answer your question on our show here this week. And I don’t want to inadvertently run out of time. So, Ellen, you had mentioned in your email that you almost got out of the market before it dropped down and now you’re back to where you were before. Okay. And should you get out now, is your question. Should you sell now? Okay.

Steve Lewit: I could be a kind of silly and say, “What did your advisor tell you to do?”

Gabriel Lewit: If you could, Now, my question was, I don’t know when and how she got in or out and how she’s back to where she was. Because the market as a whole isn’t back to where it was prior. But that’s I guess a different detail here that we could get into later if we ever talk one on one. But the big question is, I guess here, should you get out now and…

Steve Lewit: Well, even if you were back to break even. So the market went down, went back up, you’re at break even. What should I do?

Gabriel Lewit: Right.

Steve Lewit: Well, I’m kind of curious why Ellen would want to. Well, maybe Ellen, you’re thinking that now that you’ve got back into break even and you didn’t like the feeling of losing money, that maybe it’s time to change to something where you’ll have less losses or no losses. You think, Gabriel?

Gabriel Lewit: I definitely, I mean, I assume that’s the question is there’s some concern that the market’s going to go back down the other direction, and you didn’t enjoy that experience that you’ve just gone through.

Steve Lewit: Ellen, so what’s your plan for this money? Let’s say you have half a million dollars in the market that’s now recovered. What is the role of that half a million dollars? Why is it in the market? What is its goal? Where does it fit into your plan? So if this is not money you need for income, it’s not money you need in the future or for big expenses, and it’s literally, how should I say it? If you didn’t have it, your life wouldn’t change. Maybe being in the market is a good thing because you can afford to wait for the markets to recover and go through all the ups and downs. So what is the goal? How much growth are you looking to earn? If you’re looking to earn 3, 4, 5%, then there shouldn’t be in the market. You can get guaranteed 5% for five years now, but if you’re looking to make seven, 8%, it has to be in the market. So what is the goal of this money?

Gabriel Lewit: And I also think it’s important to assess your future self, if you will. And imagine that you got out of the market and then the market continues to go up.

Steve Lewit: Going straight up for 10 years.

Gabriel Lewit: You are going to sit there and kick yourself in the tushy or are you going to be like, “Okay, I made that decision.” And what’s common is a lot of people, they say they don’t want risk and then you provide the idea of a risk-free option and then they say, “Well, I don’t want to lose the upside.”

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s funny.

Gabriel Lewit: And it’s just such an interesting phenomenon because I think it’s a function of the fact that we have hundreds of conversations, and so we deal with this all the time. But folks, you can’t eliminate all the risk and still get all the upside. And I know you know that.

Steve Lewit: You know folks, we turn our seminars all the time. So I was giving a dinner seminar, I don’t know, three, four weeks ago, and it always comes up at a dinner seminar when I do Q&A questions and answers. Someone will say to me, “Tell me about how do I protect myself in the stock market?” And I go through a similar talk I did about Ellen, what’s your goal? And then, I pick somebody that I think that wouldn’t mind, and I say, “Do you have money in the stock market?” And they say, “Well, I do.” And I say, “Well, what’s your goal for that money?” And they always say, “Well, what do you mean? I want it to grow?”

And I say, “Well, how much do you want it to grow by?” And they always say, “Well, as much as possible.” And then I’d say, “Well, is there a specific goal like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10%?” And for invariably they say, 8 to 10%. And then I say, “Look, if you have an 8 to 10% growth portfolio, which is a high risk portfolio in a year like 2008, that portfolio lost 49%. So are you willing to lose 49% in order to get that 8 to 10%?” And the answer is always, no.

Gabriel Lewit: No, of course, not.

Steve Lewit: Of course, not. Well, then you can’t get 8 or 10% because that’s the risk you need to take to get that. So, if,-

Gabriel Lewit: You’ve got to go through those up and down cycles to get that long term number.

Steve Lewit: But if you’re only looking to make 5%, well, we can get you 5% guaranteed with no risk.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s so interesting because I think it’s hard to accept as people that we can’t get everything we want all the time. Just back when you were a kid, I have a couple kids, so I see this. You want what you want and you want it now and you want to get it your way and-

Steve Lewit: The old cake and eat it then.

Gabriel Lewit: And that’s tricky when it comes to your investments and whether or not I’ve had clients that tell me similarly that when we do the risk analysis, I say, “How much risk would you like in your overall portfolio?” The most you’d like to see it declined by-

Steve Lewit: Nothing.

Gabriel Lewit: And well, no, most people actually will give me a number. They’ll say, “Mine is 10%.”

Steve Lewit: 10%.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And I say, “Is that the most you got? So if you had a million bucks, you’d never want to see it get below 900,000,” they say, “Yeah.” And I say, Okay, so that’s like not so much this year.” I would say normally that’s like a 30/70 portfolio, 30%-

Steve Lewit: Very conservative.

Gabriel Lewit: … equity, 70% bonds. And then, even of course, this year, that’s a whole different story. And people say, “Well, I don’t want to go that conservative.”

Steve Lewit: Exactly.

Gabriel Lewit: And I say, “Well, and the other thing is, if that portfolio is designed to bonds are, we look at the outlooks from Vanguard, the outlooks from BlackRock and the outlooks from Schwab. And they all say that bonds over the next 10 years are designed to do about 3 to 4%, and equity is about 6 to 7%. So a 30/70 portfolio is going to average about 5% if you use those numbers. And I said, “But, by the way, you can get 5% with no risk if you were okay with it.” “Well, I can’t do that.”

So if you’re out there and this is resonating at all to you, I think the recommendation is you’ve got to sit down and we call these core financial priorities and we use them from time to time in our planning, but you’ve got to say, what is most important to me of all these things? What is going to be my primary driver? And you have to start there. So if that number one priority is I don’t want to lose money, well let’s check that box first and then move on to what hits that box and then gets us maybe now the best growth inside that no risk option.

Steve Lewit: But if you do that, okay, Gabriel, then it goes back to where we started our podcast this morning is you can’t say, “Okay, I don’t want to lose money.” And then look at the market going up and say, the grass is greener over there.

Gabriel Lewit: So, Ellen, I don’t know if we just talked ourselves in circles with you or if we gave you some interesting feedback for you to use.

Steve Lewit: I think it was interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: I think so too. But the question is, I would say you’ve got to figure out your priority first, which is my long circular answer to give you a direct answer. And then, if that priority says, “I don’t want to lose any money,” then the answer to you would be, yes. Maybe now that you’re back to break even, maybe you should move it to something safe if that’s your top priority. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, next question we’ve got coming on hot.

Steve Lewit: Is there a little birdie coming down with it?

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know, I was just trying to inject a little life into the questions here. I’ve got Jesse. And Jesse, a little longer email here, I’m just going to try to summarize for brevity’s sake. But you said you had kids a little later in life, you’re almost retirement age, age 60 currently, and your twin boys are heading to college in a few months and you would like them to not have any student loans. But you are worried that if you pay for their schooling, you’re going to really put yourself in the hole for your own retirement. And your question was, this is verbatim, “Which should I place a higher priority on? Their college education or my retirement?”

Steve Lewit: Whoa. Wow. We’ve all gone through that college is expensive.

Gabriel Lewit: I think even if you’re near retirement or further away, you’re thinking, should I put this in my IRA or my kid’s 529 plan? There’s some similarities there. The question is, which are you putting first?

Steve Lewit: I’m trying to figure out how to answer that question. I think that’s where you’ve got to sit down with yourself and get real about where you are financially headed. So getting real, to me, Gabriel means, “Hey look, I’m going to put my kids to college and I’m going to feel good about that.” But real is the understanding that for the rest of my life, I’m going to worry about every dollar that I spend because I put my kids through college. And which one feels better? Because this is all about feeling better because you have limited resources.

Gabriel Lewit: Jesse, this is a very hard question for us. I don’t know, there’s some rules of thumb, I guess, if you will, about it, that by default, the general consensus is that you should probably emphasize your retirement a little bit more than your kids’ college because of things like the fact that your kids have a long horizon in front of them and they can work and they can pay off those loans hopefully if they’re not too crazy high. Whereas for you, what’s the alternative? Is the alternative you working until you’re 80? And then you might say, now, your kids might be too young to answer this now, but I know being older now, if my mom had said, “Hey, I paid for your college instead of retiring.” I would be like, “Man, I wish you didn’t do that,” because I would want to see my mom able to retire. So, that’s, a tricky one.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I think what gets mixed in here again are the emotions, because I love my kids. I want to do well by my kids, I want them to love me back. I want them to know that I’ve done everything to support them, that’s possible. But you also have to put yourself in that picture, it’s just not about the kids, it’s about both of you.

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe there’s a balance, Jesse, maybe there’s a way you have, I agree with you that you said you’ve got to sit down and map this out and maybe crunch some numbers and say, “If I did pay for all their college, what does that mean for me? Does it mean I retire two years later, then I’d like to, or does it mean I’m working until I’m 80?” There’s a big difference between the two. And if it is those two options, then maybe there’s a balance in the middle where you help cover half their college and you work through 70 if that would make you feel better or give you the goal that you’re looking to accomplish.

Steve Lewit: And the other part of this, look, if you have limited resources, which most of us have, and paying for college is going to be a burden. In other words, you got to sacrifice something. A lot of people think it’s selfish of me to take care of myself and not take care of my kids. And that’s not being selfish. That’s taking care of yourself, which is very different than being selfish. And you need to take care of yourself and your kids need to take care of themself. So the reality is you can’t afford to pay for college because you need retirement. That’s not selfish. That’s taking care of yourself and the kids, letting the kids take care of themselves.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep.

Steve Lewit: So that’s, Dr. Lewit’s therapy.

Gabriel Lewit: Dr. Lewit’s 101.

Steve Lewit: 101 therapy session for this morning.

Gabriel Lewit: You can buy his e-course online.

Steve Lewit: My e-course on selfishness is coming up soon.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. So we had another question here. I’m going to punt that to our next week episode just because I don’t want to completely run out of time here. But I do want to make sure we have time for your favorite. ‘Getting to know Steve Lewit.’

Steve Lewit: Here we go.

Gabriel Lewit: That was my-

Steve Lewit: I just love this.

Gabriel Lewit: … fake announcer voice.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it was pretty good. Getting to know Steve.

Gabriel Lewit: I could make a funny voice for you because I like to clone Stacey King from the Bulls. I’ve been watching the Bulls a lot lately because they’re back in season and he’s a great announcer. And the other guy, Adam Amin is a great announcer too. But Stacey King has these funny voices that he uses.

Steve Lewit: I don’t know it, so.

Gabriel Lewit: This is funny. Maybe on a future…

Steve Lewit: Am I going to hear one?

Gabriel Lewit: No. Maybe on a future episode, I’ll do my Stacey King impression.

Steve Lewit: Well, maybe this is ‘Getting to know Gabe.’.

Gabriel Lewit: No.

Steve Lewit: What kind of impressions do you do of voices?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, that would be a Stacey King one.

Steve Lewit: Right.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Mr. Lewit?

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Would you rather?

Steve Lewit: Would I rather.

Gabriel Lewit: Have a pause or a rewind button in your life?

Steve Lewit: Oh!

Gabriel Lewit: And yes, I Google these random questions online. I don’t just write them up.

Steve Lewit: Would I rather have a pause button or would I do it over a different…

Gabriel Lewit: Or rewind?

Steve Lewit: Or rewind.

Gabriel Lewit: Rewind button.

Steve Lewit: I’m not big on going back and doing things over again. Even though if I did go back and do it over again, I would do it differently, but I don’t regret.

Gabriel Lewit: So, would you not hit the pause or the rewind button?

Steve Lewit: No, I love the pause button. So I think we all need to pause during the day or during the week or during our lifetimes and just take stock of where we are and get quiet with ourselves and just get to know who we are and where we’re at. And what’s making us tick and why we do what we do, and that all happens when you take a pause. You let all that activity kind of die down. It’s like the times that you’re sitting on the beach and just looking at the ocean, Gabriel. And it just feels good to feel nature and the ocean in yourself. And that’s the pause I think we all need. So I’m a pause person.

Gabriel Lewit: You’re a pauser.

Steve Lewit: I’m a pauser.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. And I assume the point of the question is you can’t have both if you had to choose one or the other.

Steve Lewit: If I had to choose. I’m not big on looking back, so I’m not big on nostalgia. I don’t like to have these conversations. Do you remember when we were dancing?

Gabriel Lewit: We were playing kick the can in the backyard alley.

Steve Lewit: And Mark went over there and kicked me in the knee.

Gabriel Lewit: All right.

Steve Lewit: And I hugged him at the end.

Gabriel Lewit: Interesting.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Now, what about Gabriel?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, so the question, I would have a follow up question to my own question that I asked you.

Steve Lewit: Wait, you can’t have a follow up.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, my point is that I meant a clarifying question.

Steve Lewit: No. You cannot have a clarifying…

Gabriel Lewit: I meant of the question itself.

Steve Lewit: No.

Gabriel Lewit: For me, let me finish explaining. In other words, if I answer that question, my question would be, is the rewind button permanent or do I rewind and then I get to jump back ahead?

Steve Lewit: That’s tough luck, man. I didn’t have that clarification. I just had to answer it the way it was. So there was no clarification. You do not get special privileges.

Gabriel Lewit: Producer, Katie. He’s saying I can’t.

Steve Lewit: No. She’s disagreeing.

Gabriel Lewit: I just have to answer the question?

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Then I would say I’d rather have the rewind button.

Steve Lewit: Okay. For po quo.

Gabriel Lewit: But I would only want to rewind if I could jump forward again.

Steve Lewit: I knew you were going to get that in there.

Gabriel Lewit: Po quo. I don’t know there, I feel like life goes by fast man, and I wish that’s where the pause button would be helpful to slow it down in the present. But I also feel like your ’20s go by fast and even your college years go fast. And the high school went by fast. In hindsight, it goes by fast. And I feel like I wish I could have rewound and paused more at those times. So I want both a rewind and a rewind plus pause button plus then a fast forward to get back to where I am if I want to be here.

Steve Lewit: Folks, my son is very demanding.

Gabriel Lewit: I can’t answer that question. Clearly I want…

Steve Lewit: He wants his cake and eat it.

Gabriel Lewit: Clearly. All right, well we only had time for that one here because we try hard to stick to our show timeframes here. But folks, what would you prefer? Rewind or pause button? A fast forward? Both? A full remote where you can punch the agents on the number buttons.

Steve Lewit: I can tell you this, a lot of folks, when it comes to their money, they want to rewind button.

Gabriel Lewit: Or fast forward until it’s back.

Steve Lewit: Until it’s back. Exactly.

Gabriel Lewit: So, if we can help you in any way, pausing fast forward, rewinding, financial advice, you name it. Give us a call 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com and we would love to chat with you.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, we would.

Gabriel Lewit: So, hope you have a wonderful day when you are listening to this and we will see you on the next show.

Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.

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