Retirement Wellness: Financial Checkup & Tips
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #170
Retirement Wellness: Financial Checkup & Tips
We are back this week with another great episode of Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel. They are excited to share some quick hits with you before diving into their main topic for the remainder of the episode: Retirement Wellness. Listen in now using a link below!
- Monday’s Moon Shadow:
- Those in a 115 mile path stretching across Mexico, the U.S., and Canada will get a brief glimpse at a “hole in the sky” moment on Monday.
- Be sure to wear your Solar Eclipse protective eyewear, and we hope you enjoy the sight!
- Retirement Wellness: Financial Checkup & Tips:
- Where to start: Checking your vital signs (a.k.a. your cash flow).
- Goals check-in: The progress made towards your goals.
- A strong immune system: Maintaining healthy saving and spending habits.
- Debt evaluation: Any extra debt dragging you down?
- Portfolio screening: Investment alignment with your risk tolerance and goals.
- Prescriptions: Your homework for maximizing your financial health for your next check-in.
- The follow-up: Regularly re-visit your retirement plan, your investment goals, and your overall financial health.
Request Your Free Consultation Today
847.499.3330
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: Well, hello. Welcome to the show here this morning. We’ve got Gabriel here and a far too enthusiastic Steve today.
Steve Lewit: Well, you know why. I saw the sun this morning for the first time in two weeks.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know how, because it’s cloudy.
Steve Lewit: Well, I did see the sun for a moment.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Folks, it’s the morning and I don’t think I’ve had enough coffee, but Steve has apparently had more than me, because he’s very, very perky.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’m like on fire this morning. What is that about?
Gabriel Lewit: But don’t worry, I’ll keep drinking my coffee. We’ll get revved up here for the show.
Steve Lewit: You’ve got to catch up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. We’ve got some great topics here lined up for you today. To start things off, though, before we jump in, we did get quite a bit of feedback on an apparently controversial topic that I knew would fire some people up last time.
Steve Lewit: It’s not controversial, anybody that drives normally, and has a normal sense of space. Go ahead.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so on the last show I talked about how Steve likes to reverse into parking spaces, and I am not a reverser. I prefer to drive front ways into parking spaces. And so we polled our audience to see if anybody else had some feedback and thoughts on that, and sure enough, some of you did.
Steve Lewit: Sure did. Thank you all.
Gabriel Lewit: So, I’m going to share some of this with you here. First up, we’ve got Herb.
Steve Lewit: Thank you, Herb.
Gabriel Lewit: He said he loves parking back… Sorry, reversing back into parking spaces whenever practical.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. It’s almost always practical.
Gabriel Lewit: And Herb says that it allows him to get into a space that would be more challenging with forward access, especially with a larger vehicle. And when it’s time to leave, he can pull out of the parking spot and have clear visibility-
Steve Lewit: You don’t have to look if-
Gabriel Lewit: …to any traffic.
Steve Lewit: …anyone’s behind you, you’re not going to roll over a dog. You just pull out.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so there is one item we got feedback on there. So Steve, I’m sure you like that.
Steve Lewit: I do like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And then I’ve got Roland. Roland, thank you.
Steve Lewit: Roland has a different view of the world.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, actually, Roland said not so much anything about the good or bad of reversing parking, but he said, make sure you tell Steve and the listeners that in some states or municipalities, backing parking can result in a fine when no front plate is required, because the police can’t check your license number when they’re driving by.
Steve Lewit: That’s a great point.
Gabriel Lewit: And I Googled this and it’s actually true.
Steve Lewit: I never thought of that. Well, I didn’t have, I have it now, a front license plate. And if I drove… When I went to O’Hare and parked in the parking lot, I always got a ticket for not having a front-
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I do not have a front license plate. So the good news is I do not like to reverse into parking spots.
Steve Lewit: No, but that’s not… No, no, no.
Gabriel Lewit: So, I think this is a perfect reason right here.
Steve Lewit: You had no idea about this before you took that route.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and the third comment, it’s not from a listener. Well, yes, it was a listener because it was one of our… We recently hired somebody new here at the office, and they were listening to our podcast, our most recent one, and they came up to me and said, I love reverse in parking. I’m with Steve on this one.
Steve Lewit: You bet.
Gabriel Lewit: And so anyway, I’ve got a few other comments as well from people all over the map it seems over this particular topic.
Steve Lewit: Overwhelming favorite is backing in.
Gabriel Lewit: No, no, no, no. I would not say that as a conclusion.
Steve Lewit: See, people that don’t have spatial recognition want to go forwards. But once you know how to park backwards, you can just zoom into that space.
Gabriel Lewit: You’ll always take more time. If a study was done saying the time to park, it would be significantly higher if you’re reversing in versus the opposite.
Steve Lewit: Okay, I’m going to give-
Gabriel Lewit: I would bet. You’re going to commission the study.
Steve Lewit: No, I’m not. I’m going to let this one go because when I know I’m right, I’m right.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: There you go.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s all there is to it.
Steve Lewit: That’s all there is to it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, let’s talk about the next, I guess, tidbit, if you will. We have a very important announcement. The sun? No, the moon. What is it? The solar eclipse.
Steve Lewit: I’m not going to tell you.
Gabriel Lewit: The moon’s going across the sun?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. That’s what it is, right?
Steve Lewit: Oh my God.
Gabriel Lewit: See, I told you it was early in the morning.
Steve Lewit: College graduate.
Gabriel Lewit: My goodness. It wouldn’t make sense if the sun was going in front of the moon, there would be no eclipse. I figured this out.
Steve Lewit: Father of three. What are you teaching your kids?
Gabriel Lewit: See, I can crunch numbers, but astronomy… not my thing.
Steve Lewit: Right. Do your kids know the moon, sun?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so funny enough, they’ve never seen a solar eclipse.
Steve Lewit: Well, most people haven’t.
Gabriel Lewit: And I’m actually waiting to hear, I should know by the time you all are listening to this show, whether or not our kids’ schools are allowing them any time off or anything to view this. If not, I’m intending to possibly pull them out of school to watch the solar eclipse.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I would.
Gabriel Lewit: Because I think it’s a cool opportunity.
Steve Lewit: It might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I don’t know how short you think their lifetime is going to be, but there should be more.
Steve Lewit: Well, the last one here was seven years, I believe. But you can go like a lifetime without that, seeing a solar eclipse, I think.
Gabriel Lewit: Again, I’m not an astronomer, but I think they happen more often than that.
Steve Lewit: More often than-
Gabriel Lewit: Lifetime. Once in a lifetime.
Steve Lewit: More often than parking backwards in your backing parking spot.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so here’s what’s interesting. We were going to share a little bit of just interesting information about this solar eclipse with you. So first and foremost, if you have not heard about this, which hopefully you probably have, now you have, here’s the scoop. It’s Monday, so you won’t have a lot of time between the time you hear it on this podcast and Monday to prepare. But it’s going to be in a, I guess a path anywhere between Mexico… And hold on here, I’ve got a whole thing about it here. Stretches between Mexico, 15 US states and Canada. So there’s kind of like a band or a line between there that it’s going to be the head… The core area where you’re going to see the-
Steve Lewit: Where you see the full eclipse.
Gabriel Lewit: The full eclipse. And then it says here in the article, this is verbatim here. Well, everyone else in North America will see a meh partial solar eclipse.
Steve Lewit: Meh.
Gabriel Lewit: If you’re in this particular path, you will experience totality or near totality, which is pretty cool. Anyways, so here in Illinois, we’re actually pretty close.
Steve Lewit: Pretty close, yep.
Gabriel Lewit: I think it says we’re going to get something like… Was it 90%? 89, 90% of a totality event?
Steve Lewit: Director Katie is shaking her head affirmatively.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. And she even ordered glasses for all of us folks in the office.
Steve Lewit: Oh, was that you, Katie? Oh, that’s great. That’s great.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know why, last night I was looking for something on Amazon, and you know how… I don’t know where you bought these glasses, but I was like, what if she bought cheap knockoff glasses from Amazon and then we’re all going to get burned retinas and not be able to see from this… So I read about this once the last time there was one. You got to be careful. You have really good glasses.
Steve Lewit: Folks, this is really important. Do not look at the eclipse without glasses on.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. So we are going to provide some safety tips here for you. That is one of them. Make sure you use glasses, very, very important. You can be tempted not to.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Do you know why?
Gabriel Lewit: Because you will burn your retinas.
Steve Lewit: Because the rim has a certain kind of radio wave that comes out of it, an X-ray or something like that. It’s very intense. And you can look at it for four minutes and burn your retina.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, no joke. Anything with the sun is no joke. And then the second part is if you do buy glasses, and I was thinking about the show today, which is maybe why this was popping into my head. Make sure you don’t buy cheap knockoffs. Buy the certified… And don’t just use your sunglasses. You don’t want to use your sunglasses.
Steve Lewit: You can’t use your sunglasses.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. So we’re here to take care of both your financial health, but also your eyes.
Steve Lewit: Your eyes.
Gabriel Lewit: Your eye health. Yes, exactly.
Steve Lewit: For sure.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, some interesting data for you here. Did you know Mr. Lewit?
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: That there is a town that has named or dubbed themselves “Eclipseville.”
Steve Lewit: “Eclipseville.” Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: You knew this?
Steve Lewit: No, I didn’t know it until I-
Gabriel Lewit: You yipped like you knew.
Steve Lewit: No, only because I was affirming what I read in the article that you gave me 30 seconds before we got on air.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so this last one was from 2017 when the last eclipse was, I guess around. And there was a tiny town in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which changed its name for one day to “Eclipseville” to mark the longest duration totality anywhere on the path at 2 minutes and 40 seconds. And it spent a marketing budget of $3 million and generated a $30 million windfall from 48,000 visitors.
Steve Lewit: So, here’s this wonderful, wonderful natural event about the universe working. And guess what we do in the United States and probably all over the world? Make it a profit-making event.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course. What would be more American, right?
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, if you happen to have no plans and you listen to this on Sunday, you could immediately fly yourself out to Rochester, New York, which has been preparing for four years for its 3 minutes and 38 seconds of totality. They have a weekend filled of festivals, events and activities. The whole town is just buzzing with excitement apparently.
Steve Lewit: Well, there was one town, I think in the article, Gabriel, that’s going to a city, 5 million people or something, like some huge number of people that… I think New York is in the band too.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, Rochester is in New York.
Steve Lewit: New York City.
Gabriel Lewit: New York City. Oh yeah, well, I think everywhere will be able to see it.
Steve Lewit: Amazing.
Gabriel Lewit: Just how much of it you’ll be able to see. But yeah, Rochester here is even closing schools on Monday for the kids.
Steve Lewit: Well, you could move to Rochester for the day.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s what I’m saying. I’m going to pull the kids out for the eclipse, I think. Katie, do we have any extra glasses or do I need to get some?
Steve Lewit: I would be surprised if the school wasn’t doing anything.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know yet. They haven’t said anything. Yeah, I’ll know by Friday. They usually send out their announcements for the next week, so I’ll know later today.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, don’t mess around without those glasses. Make sure you get those glasses.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, exactly. Well, that was all we wanted to share on that with you today. Just make sure you were aware of that. We like to talk about timely news, things that you might find interesting. And I guess now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I thought that was the end of the show for a minute.
Gabriel Lewit: No, that was a little detour down eclipse lane. Okay, well, we’ve got some financial topics here to talk about with you, notably retirement.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, we haven’t done a just retirement, retirement podcast in quite a while.
Gabriel Lewit: We haven’t. We always like to rotate topics and I think for the rest of… Well, we do have a listener question today or more to the point, a client that asked you a question in person, but she listens to the show as well and says she thought it would be good for the show. So we will share that and talk about that here as well. But yeah, we wanted to just talk about some retirement wellness with you. Now, I was thinking about this because all my kids just had their birthdays. They’re all in a two week span. Now, they’re eight, seven, and four. I’ll get to the point of what this means in a second.
Steve Lewit: Folks, this is the longest birthday celebration.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s like two weeks of never-ending birthdays.
Steve Lewit: It’s like two weeks of celebrating birthdays.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m exhausted and so is my wife for doing all the birthday planning and decorations and everything. But around this time of year, you usually schedule all your kids’ checkups. And my birthday’s coming up in a month and a half, and I’m thinking ahead to planning all my checkups and wellness. So it just got me thinking about the retirement wellness checkup. And it’s also a time of the year where we’re continuing to have reviews with clients, talking about the year ahead, doing a financial wellness check-in with them as well. And so dad, Steve, if you listen to the show you know I mix and match those.
Steve Lewit: I was Steve up until now.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go. I thought I’d throw in a dad in there for you.
Steve Lewit: I’m still your dad.
Gabriel Lewit: Where would you-
Steve Lewit: It sounds like the name of a book, the retirement wellness checkup.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m sure somebody has written that already.
Steve Lewit: I bet.
Gabriel Lewit: Where would you start with a retirement wellness checkup?
Steve Lewit: Well, where would you start with… If you were going for a physical, where would you start? Well, I guess I would start-
Gabriel Lewit: They would change you into the robe.
Steve Lewit: They would change you into the robe, then they would weigh you.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re not doing that, so don’t worry about that.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know, how would you weigh your retirement? Well, to me, retirement’s all about cash flow. Cash flow is how much income do I have in retirement? Because if I don’t have income, I don’t have much of a retirement. So the first step for me would be what are my expenses? Am I in a budget? Am I spending wisely? Am I frivolous? Can I afford what I’m spending? And then the second part of that is where am I getting my income from? Is it sufficient? Is it too much? Am I getting it from the right place? How did I do?
Gabriel Lewit: I think that’s pretty good. So we could call those your vital signs, maybe your spending, your income, kind of like your pulse rate and your breathing. And they put the little stethoscope on your back and tell you to… It’s a stethoscope, right?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, there’s even a preliminary-
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s the thing, right? Where they say, breathe in, breathe out.
Steve Lewit: You could even go one step beyond that Gabriel, you just gave me an idea. You could say the first thing is… Like you go to a doctor, the doctor says, so how are you doing? And you say, well, I’m worried about this. I got a lump here. I got a nervous here. Well, you could ask yourself first thing, how do I feel? How am I doing about my retirement? Am I worried about it? Am I concerned? And start from there and identify what it is that’s causing you some agitation and concern.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we do have many reviews with clients where we’ll start off very similar and say, how are things going? And sometimes the answer is great. And other times, it’s well, I’m a little concerned about this and this-
Steve Lewit: We’ve got a big expense coming up.
Gabriel Lewit: This big bill came up and our roof fell off.
Steve Lewit: Or positive things. I was with a client yesterday, we want to buy a new house and that’s $400,000. Where are we going to get it from?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So I think that’s a good starting point, is just taking stock of where you are today and how you’re feeling and any concerns or wants or wishes or worries that might be on your mind. And then that would be a good place to start focusing on.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, it’s our slogan. It’s not about money. It’s about your life. It’s about having peace of mind. And retirement is that time when you’re really supposed to be having a good time. So if you’re worried about it, doesn’t work out too good.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now, one of the other things that we’ll talk commonly about in a wellness check-up is are we on track for any bigger goals that we had already established? So that’s similar to imagine you’re with your doctor and you had talked about, I don’t know, some weight loss goals or getting your blood pressure down.
Steve Lewit: Fitness goals.
Gabriel Lewit: Fitness goals. So sometimes in your reviews, you’re checking on those things to see how was our progress going? Now for us, one of those major milestones and just sort of an overarching biggest goal that we have with clients is being on track for retirement if you’re not yet retired or are you still on track during retirement to ensure your money is never going to run out and that it’s continuing to grow or be the amount of money that you want to have. In some cases, we’re even checking on people’s spending. If we gave them a spending plan, aka, hey, you have too much money. Did you actually go and spend any last year? We even check on those kinds of goals as well.
Steve Lewit: It’s harder to get people to spend than to save.
Gabriel Lewit: It really is.
Steve Lewit: It’s amazing that-
Gabriel Lewit: I wouldn’t have that problem, I don’t think.
Steve Lewit: Well, that was my fault because I don’t have that problem either.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m actually a good saver, but I try to spend too. A good balance.
Steve Lewit: But you know we have clients that have quite a lot of money and they live on 40 grand a year. And I say, you could double that. And they look at me puzzled and they say, well, what would I buy? It’s like, I don’t know what I would do with it. And I try, like you, to give them a spending plan. Well, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to two shows in Chicago and spend $500. And do they do that Gabriel?
Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, once in a while.
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe one show.
Steve Lewit: One show, maybe.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now let’s say that we find out that during your wellness check-up here, something’s not on track. Similar to you think your blood pressure’s supposed to be down and it’s still up. It’s good to check on these things so you can recreate a game plan or readjust your game plan. And so commonly in the financial world, that might be your budget. Let’s say we asked you to do a new budget and your budget comes in and you’re spending $10,000 a year or $5,000 a year more than what we plan for in our retirement plan. What would you do about that Mr. Steve?
Steve Lewit: Well, we would go through their budget and find out why. What happened that you’re spending this money? Is it important? Is it the real level that you’re spending and you want to be there? And then can you afford it? And if you can’t afford it, how do we make that happen in the most efficient way?
Gabriel Lewit: So, tweaking your plan and basically assessing with this new higher budget, if it is in fact important to you, or you can’t cut back or get back to where we thought we needed to be, then the question is, are you still going to be okay with this new higher level of spending? So we’ll start to rerun and remodel your plan. And I think this is a good example of why when we commonly say to people, a financial plan is usually out of date the moment you walk out of the office, because so many things typically change or shift or need adjustments along the way. It’s rare for that plan to just be rock steady every single time you meet without any changes or adjustments.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And I think a lot of people, Gabriel… You might have a tweak in your hand or something. They don’t go see the doctor. They say, I’ll just live with it. And they’ll say to themselves, I’d like to spend more money, but I don’t think I can afford it. And they won’t come in to see us when they can afford it, and they don’t go see the doctor.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. So imagine for a second you had a doctor that you didn’t have to wait six months to schedule an appointment for because-
Steve Lewit: Or more.
Gabriel Lewit: Or more. Because with us, you don’t. You should call up when you’re thinking something, right? Don’t just wait for your next annual check-up. Say, if you have something that’s on your mind, call us. And this is a good interlude. You can call us anytime at 847-499-3330.
Steve Lewit: I love the way you-
Gabriel Lewit: Or go to sglfinancial.com.
Steve Lewit: I love the way you fit that in. That was so cool.
Gabriel Lewit: Thank you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, very smooth.
Gabriel Lewit: I tried.
Steve Lewit: But here’s the thing that’s really… We want you to call. Some people will say, well, we didn’t want to bother you, Steve. No, no, no, bother me.
Gabriel Lewit: Please bother.
Steve Lewit: Please bother me. That’s what we hear. That’s really what we enjoy doing.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I just had a good example. I had a client yesterday, just emailed me and she said, I was at this little workshop thingy for this medical ambulatory insurance pitch, basically where they said that Medicare doesn’t cover enough costs for medevacs and aerovacs. They want me to pay $4,000 to buy a lifetime membership and they’ll cover all the costs associated with any emergency medical transportation. Is that a good deal? Was her question.
Steve Lewit: My first reaction, ouch.
Gabriel Lewit: So, what did we do? We looked into it for her and we found out, hey, what kind of Medicare plan are you on? Is it a supplement? Let’s figure out what kind of coverage you have. I don’t think it was a very good use of money, but ultimately at least we gave her some sounding board and some feedback on that so she could help make a good decision, not just in the vacuum.
Steve Lewit: It’s what we do.
Gabriel Lewit: It is.
Steve Lewit: And we enjoy doing it, folks. It’s not like it’s a bother or we say, oh, here comes Sam and Jane, and they’re going to come up with other questions for us.
Gabriel Lewit: More questions the better.
Steve Lewit: So, if there’s somebody out there named Sam and Jane, I’m not referring to you.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, now the other thing you always want to do when you’re at the doctor, they talk about staying healthy. They give you their stock tips on building your immunity and keeping your immune system high and keeping your weight low and your health in check. So we’ll provide some of those to you as well. Make sure you’ve got your emergency fund. Make sure that you are staying on track with your savings. That’s a very healthy habit. Make sure you’re not indulging in too much junk food aka spending on frivolous things that you can’t otherwise afford to spend on.
Steve Lewit: I love junk food. I have this junk food problem.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it was Nathan and Ava’s birthday yesterday, April 4th. Both of their birthdays on the same day, very odd, four years apart. And of course our house has been filled with cakes and donuts and ice cream and pies, and it’s just been brutal for my self-control.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know how you do it. I mean, I was there for one day and it was like I ate more sugar in one day than I probably do in a month.
Gabriel Lewit: My gosh.
Steve Lewit: Yes. So let me ask you a question, Gabriel. In this analogy… These are analogies, right?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: In these analogies, where would debt fit in?
Gabriel Lewit: Debt?
Steve Lewit: Debt.
Gabriel Lewit: Debt would be a bad thing.
Steve Lewit: I was trying to do something clever saying, well, when you’re overweight, you have too much debt. Or when you’re something you have too much debt. I couldn’t think of a good analogy for debt in our human check-up system.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s a good one. I’m not sure in our medical analogy here, what debt would be.
Steve Lewit: What debt would be.
Gabriel Lewit: A lot of bags that you’re carrying into the doctor’s office. Baggage.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Heavy bags full of bricks weighing you down.
Steve Lewit: Full of bricks. I don’t know. So anyway, debt would be definitely healthier not to have than to have.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. So we could do a debt check-in as well, right? See how you’re doing there? And then of course, we’ve got the… I don’t know the analogy for this either, but for your financial health, your portfolio, and how is it doing? And are you happy with it? Are you unhappy with it?
Steve Lewit: I won’t tell you what came to mind.
Gabriel Lewit: Knowing what you sometimes say…
Steve Lewit: No, no, no. I think I can say this. How are you doing if you like… Do I have a lot of wrinkles? Do I have bags under my eyes? That would be kind of your portfolio.
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe. I don’t know if I see it, but that’s okay.
Steve Lewit: Well, you’re young.
Gabriel Lewit: We try.
Steve Lewit: You’re young, you don’t see it. You get a little older than these things start to come up all of a sudden.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure. Well, portfolio health, really it comes down to, I think a few things. What are you expecting from your portfolio? Always is where we start. If you have a bond portfolio as an example, and then the S&P is up 15%, you shouldn’t be concerned that your bond portfolio’s not tracking the S&P, for example. So everything goes back to your portfolio to what was your intention when you purchased it?
Steve Lewit: What was your goal?
Gabriel Lewit: Your goal. Your intention of the investment strategy you selected. Why did you buy it? And I can’t stress that enough.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, so the first question isn’t, how is my money doing in the market? The real question is, is my money reaching the goal that I set for it? Which is totally different.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s easy to just look on the surface and we just get bombarded with tickers online and on any news service that we read and on our phones for the S&P, for the Dow and the NASDAQ, right?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, the market-
Gabriel Lewit: You don’t see the bond index ticker. You see those three things. So it’s very easy-
Steve Lewit: You don’t see the annuity ticker.
Gabriel Lewit: You don’t see the buffer ticker; you don’t see the cash ticker. Well, some people sign up for cash alerts and money markets and stuff, but what you see all the time is S&P, Dow, NASDAQ, right?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And so, it’s so easy to fall into the trap where, oh, I should compare everything to S&P, Dow, NASDAQ. Well, if you have a bond portfolio, even if you have a portfolio of 50% bonds and 50% stocks, or 60% stocks and 40% bonds, none of those compare apples to apples with the S&P, the Dow and the NASDAQ.
Steve Lewit: And the S&P is 500 stocks. You may not have all of those. You might have international stocks and small caps and all the things that aren’t in the S&P, in a well-diversified portfolio.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. And the other thing is when you see returns on the S&P and the NASDAQ and the Dow, those returns do not mention anything about risk. You’re just looking at returns. Now, if you see that they went down the prior day or the prior week, then sure, you’re kind of assessing that, but you don’t get a quick measurement of how much risk something has. So when you review your portfolio, we want to take a look at why did you buy it? What was our goal? Was it to be conservative, moderate, aggressive, diversified, speculative, ultra aggressive, generate income? Everything goes back to why did we buy what we bought? And so one of the check-ups we have is are we in alignment still with what we bought and why we bought it?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s like going shopping for clothing. You just don’t go buy stuff you’re shopped for… If you’re going to a fancy party, you’re going to shop for a suit. So everything should be measured against the goal. If you are shopping for a party, a fancy party, and you come out with a bathing suit, well, the bathing suit might be beautiful, but it’s not going to get you to the party.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, well, you could wear it to the party. You might look a little off.
Steve Lewit: You’ll look awkward.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. Well, so I think for now, the most I wanted to say about that, but ultimately, if you have concerns about your performance and you’re not happy with your performance, that’s something you need to bring up. Just as if you were at a doctor and you weren’t happy with your, whatever, the way the wrinkles on your face are wrinkling, according to Steve’s analogy, you wouldn’t be happy with the wrinkling on your face.
Steve Lewit: You didn’t have to bring it up again.
Gabriel Lewit: You brought it up.
Steve Lewit: I brought it up the first time. You are following through.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: There you go.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, so let’s finish rounding out our wellness retirement financial check-up here. We’ve got future protective measures. As you’re starting to leave the doctor’s office, they’re saying, okay, let’s recap here. You’re going to do X, Y and Z. You’re going to head over to the pharmacy and pick up that medication. You’re going to watch what you eat, you’re going to do blah, blah, blah, right?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: So, what are those typically like in the financial world Mr. Lewit?
Steve Lewit: You’re going to… Well, we take care of all of that kind of, they don’t have to do much.
Gabriel Lewit: You never give any of your clients homework or advice for after the meeting?
Steve Lewit: Well, yeah, kind of. But not like a doctor would give a prescription and say, go to the pharmacy. I’m sorry.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re ruining the analogies here, Steve.
Steve Lewit: I’m ruining this. Okay, then let me do this. Gabe, what do you think about this?
Gabriel Lewit: That’s a great question.
Steve Lewit: Sure.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we sometimes give 401(k) prescriptions, for example. We actually call them that for example. So you could go and make sure you tweak your 401(k)-
Steve Lewit: Good one. I didn’t think of that.
Gabriel Lewit: To change this allocation. Make sure if you… Hey, we’re talking about your budget, but you haven’t actually checked on it in a while. You just feel like you’re spending more money, go complete your budget. Make sure you take some time to analyze that and track it in our budget spreadsheet-
Steve Lewit: Or send us a copy of your tax return or send us a copy of your trust.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So whatever it is, we’re looking to create those follow-ups, those-
Steve Lewit: I’m getting it now.
Gabriel Lewit: Those next steps to really help ensure that everything we’ve talked about during that meeting stays on track and continues to go on course to help optimize and enhance your financial health.
Steve Lewit: Brilliant. It’s just brilliant.
Gabriel Lewit: And then of course, just like with a doctor, we will probably have a follow-up meeting.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: To check on how things are going.
Steve Lewit: I know how to do that.
Gabriel Lewit: You sure do.
Steve Lewit: I bring them out front and say, book an appointment.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: There you go.
Gabriel Lewit: Just like the doctors does.
Steve Lewit: Just like the doctors do.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we don’t have time today, unfortunately, to get to our listener questions, sometimes it happens.
Steve Lewit: I was looking forward to that. Where are we?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we are at our time limit here. We really got sucked into this doctor’s appointment here, but we will cover that on our next episode for you guys. So certainly stay tuned for that. It’s going to be a really good question here. I think you’ll enjoy it. But in the meantime, if you haven’t had a financial wellness check-up in a while, I’d say now is a good time.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. And if you need a parking check-up, I give instruction on how to park backwards, back into your space. It’s a life changer, folks. It is a life changer.
Gabriel Lewit: We’ll see how many people will take you up on that.
Steve Lewit: I don’t think many.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you have any questions, we are here for you. Call us anytime, 847-499-3330. Of course you can go to our website, sglfinancial.com. If you want to email us any questions, comments, things you want us to talk about on the show, email us info@sglfinancial.com, and of course, we love to hear from you. In the meantime, have a wonderful rest of your day, week. Enjoy the solar eclipse.
Steve Lewit: Buy your glasses.
Gabriel Lewit: Get your glasses, and then tell us what you thought before our next show.
Steve Lewit: Be well, everybody.
Gabriel Lewit: Take care now.
Steve Lewit: Bye now.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye.
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.
Prerecorded Voice: Investment Advisory Services are offered through SGL Financial LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Insurance and other financial products are offered separately through individually licensed and appointed agents.
