Tidying Up Your Finances
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #210
Tidying Up Your Finances
Spring is in the air, and Our 2 Cents is here to help you start it right. In this episode, Steve and Gabriel share their tips for crafting the perfect cup of coffee, followed by the parallels between cleaning out your closet and organizing your money matters. Listen in now using a link below and give your spring a fresh start!
- The Perfect Coffee Experiment:
- Scientists uncover how to unlock bold coffee flavor using fewer beans—your perfect cup just got smarter (and more efficient)!
- Discover what can help transform your coffee into the ultimate indulgence.
- Financial Spring Cleaning:
- The Lewits turn to professional organizer Marie Kondo to learn how her cleaning advice applies to your financial life.
- Declutter your expenses and investments with an essential checklist for a more organized and stress free retirement.
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You are 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 everybody. Welcome back to Our Two Cents. You’ve got Steven Lewit, the Magnificent-
Steve Lewit: Magnificent.
Gabriel Lewit: … here today.
Steve Lewit: Magnifico.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go. You’ve got Gabriel Lewit, the great.
Steve Lewit: Magnifico. The Greato.
Gabriel Lewit: We’re just teasing.
Steve Lewit: Boy, we are pumping up our egos this morning, huh?
Gabriel Lewit: Sure.
Steve Lewit: This is ego morning.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah. I thought that would just… I don’t know, it just kind of rolled off the tongue there.
Steve Lewit: Do you need a boost?
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, I actually need another cup of coffee, which is funny because we’re going to talk about that here this morning.
Steve Lewit: I love coffee in the morning.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, and some finance. So coffee and finance will be our themes for today, and thank you for tuning in and joining us. We love having you here. And of course, the last couple podcasts here, we’ve talked a lot about the stock market, right?
Steve Lewit: And tariffs.
Gabriel Lewit: And tariffs. We’re going to take a little break from that. I think, I don’t know about you guys out there, I’m kind of tariffed-out of hearing all the news every day about tariffs this and tariffs that. But we are continuing to monitor, and there hasn’t been a lot of big changes since last week, so we thought we would take that opportunity to switch gears here a little bit.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I would only say that, no, China’s not dumping all the treasuries that people think they’re dumping, but they might.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, if they do, we’ll report.
Steve Lewit: We’ll report.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay, so in the past we’ve talked a little bit about how to make the best scrambled eggs. So we are of course money people, but we do want to help you enjoy the better finer things in life as well. And so we’ve occasionally broadened our horizons and talked a little bit about health, wellness, various interests you may have.
Steve Lewit: Where to live, what’s the best place to live.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: And exercising.
Gabriel Lewit: So, if you’re wondering why are we going to talk about coffee here today, or why are we talking about how to cook the best plate of eggs, because this is important information.
Steve Lewit: Well, plus it’s our theme song, which is not about money.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: It’s about life.
Gabriel Lewit: And what is more important in life than a good cup of coffee?
Steve Lewit: First thing in the morning. Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Is anything better than that?
Steve Lewit: Well, it’s that first sip that… You know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been drinking-
Gabriel Lewit: You’re not drinking the mushroom coffee are you? Because that doesn’t count.
Steve Lewit: No, I’ve been drinking orange juice first, and it is really good before your coffee.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: There you go.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re just finding this out now?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Where have you been for your life?
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Orange juice and coffee, they go together for breakfast.
Steve Lewit: I rarely-
Gabriel Lewit: And eggs. I like them all together.
Steve Lewit: All right, so what do you-
Gabriel Lewit: Apple juice too. I’m a big apple juice fan.
Steve Lewit: Well, what do you got for us on coffee, man?
Gabriel Lewit: All right, yeah.
Steve Lewit: Because that’s a sensitive subject for me.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, here’s the title. All right, so of course I researched this. Scientists released instructions for how to make the perfect cup of coffee here on April 8th, 2025. So I know you were wondering about how do I make the perfect cup of coffee? And we are here to share what scientists have found out and discovered.
Steve Lewit: What’s amazing to me is how people find stuff to think about. And scientists actually spent time on this.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, here’s how it happened. Okay, so basically there is a guy named Arnold Mathijssen, I’m not sure how to say his last name, and he runs a group of physicists and fluid mechanic experts at the University of Pennsylvania. So they weren’t part of a department that was designed to study coffee, they had other original aims. But they started pondering how to extract the most coffee using the fewest beans as they hung out at their lab’s coffee table. That’s what scientists do.
Steve Lewit: Well, I see-
Gabriel Lewit: They do science stuff.
Steve Lewit: … that’s the efficient coffee.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Yes. How do we…
Steve Lewit: How do we make efficient coffee.
Gabriel Lewit: Better taste, fewer beans.
Steve Lewit: Less money.
Gabriel Lewit: Similar to how we talk about how to make a more efficient investment portfolio, they were focusing how do we have a more efficient, better tasting cup of coffee, using fewer beans and fewer-
Steve Lewit: And get maximum taste out of it.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, we’ll weave in some inflation. You know what I do find crazy? I was at Starbucks the other day and I went to buy a regular cup of coffee, which I usually buy when I go. And I think this was a regular Starbucks, not like an airport Starbucks. And I’m pretty sure the regular cup of coffee Grande was like $3.50. I’m like, that used to be what a Frappuccino cost, and you could get the coffee for $1.50. I’m like, what’s happening here?
Steve Lewit: I get a cappuccino and it’s ridiculous what they charge for it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and then you look for a latte or whatever, it’s like 5.99 or something. It’s like, what the?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, morning coffee. You get coffee and a bagel and it’s like $12.
Gabriel Lewit: And just yesterday, I’m getting off course, I went to Qdoba-
Steve Lewit: You are.
Gabriel Lewit: … and I ordered a bowl-
Steve Lewit: Now we’re on the restaurant pricing tour here.
Gabriel Lewit: … a bowl with double chicken.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? And a drink. And it was $22.
Steve Lewit: Well, I’ve talked about that before. That’s lunch at $22.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, I digress. So point being is if you can save money on your coffee by extracting the maximum flavor from fewer beans, we are single-handedly bringing down the cost of inflation, folks.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And after you do your thing, I’ll tell you the best cup of coffee and how to get it.
Gabriel Lewit: No, we’re telling you right now.
Steve Lewit: No, I’m going to tell you.
Gabriel Lewit: No, we’re… The scientists are telling-
Steve Lewit: No, no, no. You’re telling us what the scientists said. I’m going to tell you what-
Gabriel Lewit: You think you’re going to one-up the scientists?
Steve Lewit: … the great Lewit coffee…
Gabriel Lewit: Now, in case you’re wondering, they actually published their findings. It’s titled Pour-over coffee: Mixing by a water jet impinging on a granular bed with avalanche dynamics. That’s the research paper. We’re going to break it down here for you. Okay.
Steve Lewit: I hope the audience feels better about this than I do.
Gabriel Lewit: This is a 10-page paper in the Journal Physics of Fluids, was published this last Tuesday. Okay.
Steve Lewit: Oh, amazing.
Gabriel Lewit: Point being, one of their PhD students, Earnest Park, big coffee enthusiasts, experimented with espresso machine, a French press and a pour-over setup. His opinion, based on their findings, is that the pour-over coffee is the best option here. Okay? That’s the starting point.
Steve Lewit: The best option for what?
Gabriel Lewit: For generating the best-tasting cup of coffee with the fewest beans.
Steve Lewit: Oh, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: So, this is what they’ve determined. Depending on, first and foremost, if you haven’t figured… Do you know what pour-over coffee is?
Steve Lewit: Well, that’s where they put the grounds down and they just pour the hot water over it.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. Yeah, so you’ve got a filter-
Steve Lewit: And it seeps through to the bottom and out comes this magnificent coffee.
Gabriel Lewit: So, the first part of the study is, folks, if you don’t have, which I don’t actually have one, and I’m thinking about, because I’m a big coffee fanatic, buying a pour-over gadget setup, so I can experiment with this. I’m curious myself as well.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? But here’s the trick. All right, apparently what height you pour the hot water in from makes a really big difference.
Steve Lewit: So, if I pour the water from three inches above the pot, or whatever it is, or six inches or nine inches, it makes a difference because of the pressure of the water as it hits the grounds?
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. Basically, and this is what fluid mechanics lab people experiment with, apparently, right?
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, basically they illuminated the side of the pour-over coffee setup with lasers to help assess things.
Steve Lewit: All right.
Gabriel Lewit: And yes, apparently the height of the water pour will essentially eject better flavor out of the coffee grounds if you pour from higher up.
Steve Lewit: I’m actually finding this interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: I thought it was very interesting.
Steve Lewit: This is fascinating.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m going to skip all the techno mumble jumble and just give you the answers here, okay?
Steve Lewit: Okay. Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: So, pour the boiling water over the grounds coffee slowly so the water has more time to be in contact with the grounds. The longer the pour time, the greater the extraction. But, this is right from their bullets, don’t pour too slowly because that can result in the water not fully mixing with the coffee grounds, resulting in the coffee being under extracted.
Steve Lewit: Well, this is not helpful.
Gabriel Lewit: So, you need a steady pour. A slow, steady pour.
Steve Lewit: All right.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Increase the pour height to increase the velocity of the water falling on the extracted coffee grounds. It creates an avalanche effect, causing them to be maximally exposed to the boiling water.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And yes, they’re recommending a thin jet of water most easily produced from a goose neck kettle, was the best way to get a slow, steady pour.
Steve Lewit: What’s a goose neck? Excuse me, what’s a goose neck kettle?
Gabriel Lewit: Goose neck kettle?
Steve Lewit: Goose neck kettle.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. We had to google this ourselves here. It’s a kettle that has a small little pour spout.
Steve Lewit: Oh, it’s one of those long kind of things that grandma used to use.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it kind of looks like an old grandma, goose neck kettle here, okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, got it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And there you go. That is how you do it.
Steve Lewit: How high is high?
Gabriel Lewit: Well…
Steve Lewit: How slow is slow?
Gabriel Lewit: Let’s see here. Well, we talked about the speed. The height, it does not say.
Steve Lewit: It doesn’t tell you how high?
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe I have to read the 10-page report. Yeah.
Steve Lewit: You’re going to do this?
Gabriel Lewit: No, probably not. But I’m going to go home and test. I’m not going to read the report.
Steve Lewit: I know. When’s your birthday?
Gabriel Lewit: It’s May 30th.
Steve Lewit: Okay. So I know what I’m getting you for your birthday.
Gabriel Lewit: A goose neck kettle?
Steve Lewit: A goose neck kettle.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So yeah, again, probably don’t stand on a chair and pour this, I’m guessing, but probably just raise your hands up. Don’t have the water right by the top of the thing and just dump it, you’ve got to give it some speed to avalanche in there.
Steve Lewit: This is really interesting, how fluid dynamic people…
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: … have a passion for this, and translate it into coffee drinking.
Gabriel Lewit: If anybody listening is an engineer, and I know some of you are, because I know who listens and some of you are engineers, please test this for us and report back your findings.
Steve Lewit: But I still have to tell you which is the really best cup of coffee. So I am hooked on Turkish coffee.
Gabriel Lewit: Turkish?
Steve Lewit: Turkish coffee. So I have a little pot, I don’t know what they call it, with a little handle. It’s a little pot, and you put the grounds in and you put the water in, and you got to watch it, there’s a way of doing it, and it boils, but you can’t let it boil. And it is the best coffee ever.
Gabriel Lewit: Interesting.
Steve Lewit: And then you can put cardamom in it and all kinds of things. But I’m telling you all out there, get your little Turkish coffee pot and give it a shot.
Gabriel Lewit: There, you have two great ways now of making your best cup of coffee ever. And please enjoy. Enjoy responsibly. Watch out for boiling hot water. That’s our disclaimer here.
Steve Lewit: Right. And my determination was published in the SGL Journal of Coffee Dynamics, which we’re publishing in a month or two.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Along with your taste testing for protein bars.
Steve Lewit: Double blind taste testing.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, there you have it. So with that in mind, let’s move on to our financial topics for the week here. Hopefully you found that as interesting as I did. So it is spring now. I think we can officially say it’s spring. Last weekend, it was…
Steve Lewit: Is it officially?
Gabriel Lewit: It is officially spring, yeah. But it didn’t feel like spring. But now it officially feels like spring too, right? We had a couple warm days last weekend. We’ve had some cooler days, warmer days. So I think we’re there. So we wanted to talk about spring cleaning and decluttering your finances using the tactics here of the famous Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo.
Steve Lewit: Yes, I’ve heard.
Gabriel Lewit: Is anybody out there familiar with Marie Kondo? You may or may not be.
Steve Lewit: I’ve heard of her, that she’s an organization nut kind of person.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So she has a-
Steve Lewit: I mean that in a positive way. I don’t mean critical.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. I’ll rephrase, she’s considered an expert in tidying and decluttering. She’s a professional organizer and decluttering consultant.
Steve Lewit: I think I saw a picture of one of her closets, and it’s obscenely organized.
Gabriel Lewit: It is.
Steve Lewit: It’s actually intimidating.
Gabriel Lewit: Probably in real life, it’s not like that. It’s just for show.
Steve Lewit: Well, some people are like that.
Gabriel Lewit: That is true, yeah. So she wrote the book Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and she also has many notable quotes, or quotable quotes, about cleaning. And we were going to talk a little bit about how to correlate those to your finances.
Steve Lewit: That’s interesting. Interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: With the spring theme here in mind.
Steve Lewit: I’ve never thought of tidying up my finances, but there’s a lot to that. Because most people we meet, especially when we first meet them, Gabriel, have their… Well, it’s like having your clothes all over the floor. They’ve got their stuff. I just have a client that’s got 32 different CD accounts in 20 different banks. That needs a little tidying up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it sure does. Okay, so here’s the thing, so here are her quotes, some of them. The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask, does this spark joy?
Steve Lewit: Really? Does this spark joy?
Gabriel Lewit: And folks, this isn’t just about your finances. We could say, okay, you have two t-shirts you haven’t worn in a year. You pull it out of the pile and you hold it up and you look at it and you say, does this t-shirt spark joy in me any longer?
Steve Lewit: Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: And if the answer is no-
Steve Lewit: I’m throwing out my closet. All my clothes are going. I like my clothes, but I can’t say they spark joy in me.
Gabriel Lewit: They should.
Steve Lewit: I’m getting a new wardrobe. I am. I’m going to go out and buy a new wardrobe.
Gabriel Lewit: Then we’ll talk about budgeting next.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so with your money, can you ask that same question with your various investment and holdings, right?
Steve Lewit: Sure.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, this reminds me of one of my quotes, which is, do you even know what you have or why you have it? Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Why did you buy that particular investment? For what purpose?
Gabriel Lewit: And this is also related to the joy question.
Steve Lewit: Everyone’s going to say, because I want to make more money, but that’s really not a purpose.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, some people say, no, actually I don’t know, just what my 401k defaulted me to. So again, yeah, you can look at your investments and say, is this sparking joy? Is this bringing me happiness? And also the other thing about your money and your accounts, I like to say is, what is the purpose of that account in your plan?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, this is interesting, because I have, in my closet, I have probably six or seven shirts I never wear.
Gabriel Lewit: I have a whole drawer of, if I need something-
Steve Lewit: I might need it.
Gabriel Lewit: … clunky or junky, here we go.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, here we go. And they’re hanging there, and I see them every day, and I say, I got to get rid of those, because they have no purpose of being there.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, if you’re not even going to wear them as junk around clothes, if you’re cleaning out trash or something, then yeah, you should get rid of them.
Steve Lewit: You should get rid of them.
Gabriel Lewit: They have no joy, and they have no purpose.
Steve Lewit: They have no purpose.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: Now, I’ve got a question for you about joy.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure.
Steve Lewit: I own NVIDIA, and it’s way up and I’m joyful, but now it’s way down and I am sad. So what do I do, according to what’s her name?
Gabriel Lewit: Marie Kondo?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, what would I do? I can’t throw it out.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, it’s not just… Yeah, maybe there’s strategic de-joying.
Steve Lewit: There must be a strategic way of cleaning.
Gabriel Lewit: With your money, yes, you don’t just… Well, similar to your clothes, you could just chuck them in the trash or maybe you wait until the church is doing a donation drive. So there might be a better time and place to declutter certain things. But the concept there is if you’re realizing something doesn’t have value or a purpose or doesn’t provide meaning in your plan, assess what you want to do with it.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I love this because we do so much, at least I do, I’ll speak for myself, I do so much and I don’t give it that much thought. I just do it because it feels good or I like it. But I never say to myself, why am I really doing this? Take that moment and say, why am I buying this mutual fund? Why do I like dividend stocks?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, I had one client example here, very short one the other day. They have a couple million dollars, and they’re very, very aggressive. And they kept saying to me, Gabe, I want to make more money. And we started talking about goals. They had no kids, so I said, do you want to spend this money? And he looked at me and he’s like, no, we’re good on our spending. I was like, you’re getting really, really aggressive. You’re 66 years old.
Steve Lewit: You’re not going to spend it.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re trying to double your money here. Over the next 10 years, he said, I’d like to double my money over the next 10 years. I said, so in 10 years you’ll be 76 and you’ll have $8 million. And I said, and what’s the purpose of that money? He looked at me and he’s like…
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I don’t know, I just want it to grow. It was really hard for them to figure out what the… I was like, are you charitable? He’s like, no.
Steve Lewit: Well, here’s the deal, maybe having more money gives him a lot of joy.
Gabriel Lewit: I think that’s it.
Steve Lewit: He just feels good having $8 million instead of $3 million.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s where we came down to.
Steve Lewit: I’m down with that.
Gabriel Lewit: But it’s important to identify that.
Steve Lewit: We’re going to do a piece on why people don’t spend money. I think we have that on the agenda.
Gabriel Lewit: We are going to talk a little bit about that here, yes, indeed. Okay, next Kondo quote, tidy by category, not location.
Steve Lewit: This is really interesting too, because when I tidy up in my house, I look at a location and I say, look at all those books there, or look at that pile of papers. And I go for that and I clean it up, and I feel really, really good. But then I go upstairs and guess what? Look at that, there’s another pile of books and another pile of papers. And what she’s saying is get them all in one place and see how much you really have. So how does that apply to money?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It’s kind of like if we recently decluttered some of our kids’ toys and we gathered up-
Steve Lewit: All the toys.
Gabriel Lewit: Not all of them, but in one room for Nathan this last past weekend, we spent three hours cleaning his room, and we did, we took everything out of the closets, everything out of the drawers, put all the toys in one spot, and then we said, whoa, Nate, you’ve got things in here you haven’t even touched in two years. Do you really still want this? And of course the kids were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then eventually we came around and we donated a bunch of stuff that we weren’t using.
Steve Lewit: Nice, nice, nice. So how do we apply this to finances, Gabriel?
Gabriel Lewit: As you’re thinking about what you need or what you don’t need, you got to look at all your investments. You can’t just look at one account, because you’re missing the other pieces. So you have to assess all your toys together to decide which of those toys are worth keeping and which ones aren’t worth keeping. If I just look at a handful of toys in the closet, in a vacuum, it may be harder. Maybe I have another duplicate of that toy downstairs in the basement and I don’t need two of the same toys.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Are you saying it’s like the person that has some money in the stock market and money in CDs, and they’re losing money in the stock market?
Gabriel Lewit: No, actually a little different. A little different. Let’s say you have one account that has a US large cap fund in it, and you have another account that also has a US large cap fund, and you have a third account that also has a US large cap fund. If you happen to just look at one account, should you keep that US large cap? Well, if you’re looking at just the one account, it’s the only fund you have. But if you were to look at all three accounts, you realize you have duplicates in there, you have more than you need you. You may want to declutter that a little bit. There’s overlap.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, you could have 10 mutual funds and they all own Apple, and now you’re over-invested in Apple.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly.
Steve Lewit: Got it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So that’s the idea there. Next quote, when we really delve into-
Steve Lewit: I’m sorry. So part of that is domestic and international?
Gabriel Lewit: It’s not nice to cut somebody off.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I know, but you did that before, so this is getting even. This is what goes around in the universe comes around.
Gabriel Lewit: All right.
Steve Lewit: So anyway, so what, that’s like having domestic in US, that’s like having different business sectors. They’re all duplicable, if that’s a word, in a portfolio. And a lot of people become overweight in technology, because they own technology in everything.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly.
Steve Lewit: Okay, sorry, I apologize-
Gabriel Lewit: Next Kondo quote.
Steve Lewit: … for interrupting you.
Gabriel Lewit: When we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two, an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.
Steve Lewit: Brilliant. Brilliant.
Gabriel Lewit: She’s not talking about money here folks, but it’s got a lot of applicability to money. So yeah, if you have a shirt, maybe it’s a very meaningful shirt, you bought it on a great family vacation, it shrunk two sides, it doesn’t even fit you anymore, but you just can’t emotionally let it go. Got three holes in it. Stains.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I got a couple of those.
Gabriel Lewit: But you’re keeping it because it’s hard, it’s an attachment to the past.
Steve Lewit: Or you might say, like I do with a lot, there’s going to come a time when I’m going to wear that shirt.
Gabriel Lewit: There will be.
Steve Lewit: What if I need it and it’s not there?
Gabriel Lewit: That green St. Patrick’s Day shirt is going to sit there until I go to that Patrick’s day parade at some point in the next five years.
Steve Lewit: And I know what shirt you’re talking about, because you wore it and I couldn’t believe you actually wore it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So you stash your closet with all these things. So what about your finances? Why don’t people… You have NVIDIA, right? You’re scared to sell it. Why are you scared to sell that? Why are you hesitant, might even be a better word, to sell that stock? Hold on. Is it, A, an attachment to the past? Or B, a fear of the future? Or both?
Steve Lewit: Both. I think it’s both.
Gabriel Lewit: Can you elaborate?
Steve Lewit: I can. So look, what do stocks do? They go up or down. So we fear when they go down and we hope when they go up. So if we have NVIDIA, and we’re fearful that it might go down further, we’re going to sell it. But then when we say that to ourselves, what do we say? Yeah, but I might be wrong.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s the fear of missing out. FOMO, as you…
Steve Lewit: FOMO comes in, and now what if I’m wrong? I’ll sell it and I’m not going to make what everybody else is making.
Gabriel Lewit: And this is also where the attachment comes in. Oh, this has done so well for me in the past. I made so much money with this stock, I couldn’t sell it now. It’s got to go up more, right? And what if I miss out? So both are happening at the same time. You’ve got this attachment of how well something’s done in the past. You’ve got this fear of missing out in the future, and then you end up riding the ship down into the waters as it sinks, in some cases.
Steve Lewit: How many of our clients, Gabriel, have big positions, they work for AbbVie and they have tons of AbbVie stock, will not sell it. They have tons of McDonald’s stock.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and AbbVie’s done great.
Steve Lewit: It has. Do you remember when Walgreens… I had clients that own, because we have a lot of clients that worked at Walgreens, and they would not get rid of their Walgreens. They wouldn’t diversify. And because Walgreens was the queen of drug, whatever they call it, we call them drug stores. And look at that now. So we get attached to it because we get attached to the company, we get attached to the name, we get attached to owning it. Grandpa owned it or dad owned it, so I’m attached to it, and that does not serve us well.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. And now recognizing that can help you potentially decide if it’s worth keeping it. You’re identifying why you’re feeling resistant to something, that can sometimes help you actually overcome those resistances.
Steve Lewit: Well, then you’re making a decision based not on reaction to an emotion, you’re making the decision based on logic.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now, Kondo’s last quote, this is a big one. From the moment you start tidying, you’ll be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change, and that’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. Your life will change. I assume she means for the better.
Steve Lewit: You mean if I tidy up, I will be transformed?
Gabriel Lewit: You will be compelled to reset your life, and your life will start to change.
Steve Lewit: I can’t wait to get home.
Gabriel Lewit: That does sound inspiring.
Steve Lewit: This weekend, guess what I’m doing?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, to be fair, my son’s room last weekend was a royal tornado disaster.
Steve Lewit: I was there two weekends ago. It’s disaster.
Gabriel Lewit: It’d be just stuff everywhere. And when we were done with it last weekend, after two and a half hours of cleaning, which he actually was, he put on music and he was helping me clean, I was quite impressed. It really looked good and it felt good. I’m like, this feels nice. Feels real nice. And then we proceeded to clean the rest of the house.
Steve Lewit: I guess because we go home and leave home and come back and leave and come back, that if it’s a great place to come back to, where it’s sharp and clean and alive and filled with joyous things, that has to have some impact on your life.
Gabriel Lewit: It does, yeah. Spring cleaning, I think whether it is actually your clothes or your closet or your garage or your finances, really has that, it’s sort of spring is new life. There’s new leaves are finally growing.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, rejuvenation.
Gabriel Lewit: The tree to my right here has nice yellow…
Steve Lewit: Buds.
Gabriel Lewit: … buds.
Steve Lewit: It’s budding.
Gabriel Lewit: Some are pink. It’s just very pretty. It’s very rejuvenating. So you can feel the same about your finances too. And how by creating an updated plan, by really working through to organize your entire financial house, that can rejuvenate you. Really feel good. Really feel good and on track.
Steve Lewit: That’s like painting your house. You feel clean. Yeah, I like it.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Now, last part here, because we’re going to end up having to wrap here soon, these aren’t from Marie Kondo, but here’s a checklist here. Seven better ways to organize and declutter your retirement finances. We’re just going to run through these fairly quickly. Okay? Number one, take inventory of your expenses. Review your checkbook, credit cards, debit cards, budgeting programs. Get a sense of what you’re spending today. Are there things you could eliminate or cut back on if they’re financial clutter, from an expense perspective.
Steve Lewit: What’s interesting about that for me is I haven’t done a budget in a long time, and I found this program, it’s called Monarch, which is a budgeting program, which I think is pretty good. And I started doing my budget. It’s like, are you kidding? You spend money on that? You spend that much on that? It just went down the list. It was incredible.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you are like many people, you don’t per se look at it every single day. None of us do. So periodically it’s good to re-review your budget and declutter where things make sense. Okay, number two, make a list of all your credit card debts, retail cards and auto-pay subscriptions. If you’re not using them, get rid of them.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. There’s actually a program that will help you track those.
Gabriel Lewit: There are.
Steve Lewit: I can’t remember the name of them, but there are a few of them.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. If you have multiple retirement accounts, three, four old 401Ks, a bunch of small CD accounts, consolidate these things together. Roll them into… I had one client went from 15 accounts down to three once because they just had so much stuff everywhere, and it was so much easier for them afterwards. They felt like they had more money, because all of a sudden they looked at one balance that was three times the size. They didn’t have to log into 15 places to do their taxes the next. I mean, there’s a lot of benefits there.
Steve Lewit: And think about it, if you have 15 accounts, you’re carrying that in your mind, in your thoughts. You have to track 15 different things. And if you’ve got that kind of clutter with everything else, it’s impossible. It’s confusing and I think creates tension and anxiety.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Another one here, number four would be, if you are comfortable with it, put your expenses on autopay, the ones that after you’ve reviewed them, you are confident you need. That can just declutter the amount of work you have to do in any given month or week or day. Just put them on autopilot. Money comes in, zap, it goes out. There’s some risk there. If you’re not periodically reviewing your budget and your expenses, then autopay can be bad. But if you are, then it can be a very helpful tool just to make things simple and easy. As long as you’re spot checking those.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and you avoid those letters, hey, you’re a month late on your…
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, whatever.
Steve Lewit: It’s like, oh God, I spaced that one.
Gabriel Lewit: Last one here. Reviewing all your various life insurance policies or old policies. A lot of people collect a bunch of these. I had one client had four different term policies here, and they were 66 years old. It’s like two were from current work, two were from old. They were still paying premiums on them. They weren’t even efficient. And I was like, why do you got all these? He was like, huh, I don’t know.
So maybe you don’t need those old policies anymore. Maybe they’re not very valuable or they’re coming close to their term and your health is great, and then you can make a conscious decision, do I still want to pay into these things that maybe won’t deliver the value down the road? Now, do not just go willy-nilly canceling your insurance, please, without a thorough review. But that’s the idea behind that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Yeah, a couple of quick tips there for you. And what else? I think that’s it for today. Next time we’ve got a-
Steve Lewit: I was just wondering, how often should we intentionally just say, you know what, I’m going to dive into my finances, I’m going to dive into my home and really get it organized?
Gabriel Lewit: I like the spring cleaning analogy. I think it’s…
Steve Lewit: Like twice a year, right?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, spring would be once a year.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s a good minimum.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Let me think about that. Yes, that would be once a year.
Gabriel Lewit: I like spring cleaning. So you think twice a year?
Steve Lewit: Twice a year.
Gabriel Lewit: Spring’s twice a year now, right?
Steve Lewit: Spring and fall.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, maybe fall. But yeah, you could do spring cleaning, fall clean up, but minimum, I’d say pick one. Do a fall clean up or a spring cleaning. There you go. Good baseline.
Steve Lewit: Kate, how often do you spring clean? Once a year.
Gabriel Lewit: We got a once, yeah. I think once is a good…
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Most people won’t do this twice a year.
Steve Lewit: Okay. I agree.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, well if you’ve got questions, we’re here to help. (847) 499-3330, or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us. Let us know if you try the coffee tricks. I’d love to hear what you think by changing the height of your water pour. And if you do have any thoughts about spring cleaning, coffee, other financial questions of any kind, send us an email here, info@sglfinancial.com and we will share our feedback with you all on the next show.
Steve Lewit: I’m going to go clean my office now.
Gabriel Lewit: Good. As you should.
Steve Lewit: That’s where I’m going.
Gabriel Lewit: Get to it already. What are you are waiting for?
Steve Lewit: Fill my morning with joy.
Gabriel Lewit: All right all, have a great rest of your day.
Steve Lewit: A joyful day.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Steve Lewit: Bye now. 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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