The 200th Episode Spectacular 🎉

Our 2 Cents – Episode #200

The 200th Episode Spectacular 🎉

Join us for this momentous 200th episode of Our 2 Cents! Steve and Gabriel commemorate this significant achievement, reflecting on their podcasting journey, and expressing their sincere appreciation to our loyal listeners. We then dive into the intriguing concept of ‘snowbirds’ as the winter weather takes hold. Listen in now using a link below!

1. Then vs Now:
   • Delve into the early days of Our 2 Cents and rediscover the initial themes and conversations that sparked our podcasting journey.
   • Explore our analytics to reveal intriguing data points about our podcast’s trajectory.
2. Getting to Know Steve and Gabriel:
   • What have you learned over these past 200 episodes?
   • What’s been the most surprising outcome of creating this podcast?
3. Snowbirds:
   • Uncover the allure of the snowbird lifestyle, explore top destinations, and key factors to consider before embarking on this seasonal escape.

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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 a CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news trends, strategies, and more.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, welcome to Our 2 Cents. Our 200th episode is here. We are so excited to share it with you. We’ve got the Champagne bubbly ready to pop.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s called a spiced … My son is drinking a spiced Coca Cola.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes-

Steve Lewit: On our 200th anniversary.

Gabriel Lewit: I took it out just for this special occasion. And if you’re not familiar with the spiced Coke, well you can’t get anymore because they already stopped producing it.

Steve Lewit: It didn’t sell very well.

Gabriel Lewit: And I had some stragglers left in the fridge, which I do like it actually. Yeah. So you’re here with, of course, Steve and Gabriel, producer Katie and Gabby in the background, helping us to put together 200 episodes of our podcast here, Our 2 Cents. And I think most importantly to maybe start off our show here today is just to say thank you.

Steve Lewit: Absolutely.

Gabriel Lewit: To-

Steve Lewit: Thank you all.

Gabriel Lewit: To all of you, our valued listeners. We appreciate your listening to us continuously, your sharing the show with friends and family members. Your letting us know that you enjoy and appreciate the show because it gives us positive juice to keep on cooking up new recipes for the show.

Steve Lewit: Love your questions and your feedback and it’s been really a lot of fun for us, hasn’t it, Gabriel? I enjoy sitting down every time we do these and we never know what’s going to happen.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think we have a semi-idea of what’s going to happen.

Steve Lewit: Well, like right now, you put your can of spicy Coke in the way of my hand, and now I going to knock it over. Whereas last week I had my coffee in the way of yours.

Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. You never know what surprises the show’s going to bring.

Steve Lewit: You never know what’s going to happen here.

Gabriel Lewit: So, on our 200th episode, we had a couple of ideas of what to talk about here. We thought we would give you 200 of the top tax tips.

Steve Lewit: And 200 of the best investment tips.

Gabriel Lewit: And we will have you here for about 200 hours as we go through those things.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, we can start today and finish on Monday.

Gabriel Lewit: And then we’ll tell you the top 200 places to live.

Steve Lewit: Yes. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: What do you think about that?

Steve Lewit: I think it’s a noble cause.

Gabriel Lewit: Just kidding.

Steve Lewit: And how we fit that into 30 minutes, I don’t know, but it sounds great. Start speaking fast.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, we’re just kidding. Well, what we do have for you today is I think a little bit of a trip down memory lane. So we thought we would talk about all the way back to show number one. And for many of you, you haven’t started listening since show number one, so for me it was also interesting to see what we talked about. So I thought we would just share a little bit of memory lane here with you and perhaps talk about what’s changed in these topics since we talked about them, I think it was how many years ago? Five? Five years ago?

Steve Lewit: Is it five years? It was a different world.

Gabriel Lewit: Hold on, hold on. Hold on, hold on guys.

Steve Lewit: Think of all the things we’ve been through. 2017-

Gabriel Lewit: I’ve got this here.

Steve Lewit: 2017, December 19th.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, yeah. 2017.

Steve Lewit: 2017.

Gabriel Lewit: Wow.

Steve Lewit: Wow.

Gabriel Lewit: We’ve been doing these for seven years.

Steve Lewit: Seven years.

Gabriel Lewit: Really? Wow. That’s longer than I thought.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Wow. That’s pretty cool.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I know we started off a little way back when a little slow. We started building up some momentum.

Steve Lewit: We weren’t as regular as we are now.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And here’s what we had featured at the time in case you’re finding this, I think kind of interesting here. Our first podcast said, who is SGL Financial? Okay. Where did SGL Financial and its founders, you and I, begin? What are the goals that we have and the visions we have for our clients? What is the direction of our company now and in the future? And what makes us different from other firms that are out there?

Steve Lewit: And it was called SGL Radio, not Our 2 Cents podcast.

Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, very dull.

Gabriel Lewit: SGL Radio?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s kind of-

Gabriel Lewit: It was a good thing at the time.

Steve Lewit: It was okay.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so interesting. Has our company shifted in seven years? My goodness.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I was just thinking of that. I don’t think it’s changed much. I mean, the tools we use, the strategies we use have gotten more sophisticated and more comprehensive, but the vision is the same vision that you and I discussed seven years ago.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, as an example, I’m not even sure, I don’t have the exact timing of this. Did we even have a tax department seven years ago? Or maybe we had just started it.

Steve Lewit: We just started taxes.

Gabriel Lewit: So over time, just a little backstory. Of course, I started here with Mr. Steve Lewit here, 20, almost 21 years ago. And we had about what was it, a three-person team?

Steve Lewit: Three, three.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, me, you and an assistant.

Steve Lewit: There might’ve been another person.

Gabriel Lewit: There could have been another person. I can’t recall. It was a long time ago. And now of course we have 24 full-time team members. We have a comprehensive set of wealth management services, investments, tax planning, retirement planning. We support estate planning. You name it, we do it just about now, Medicare, insurance, the whole nine yards. And I actually find some clients are surprised, “Oh, I didn’t know you offered all those things.”

Steve Lewit: People don’t realize that we are a comprehensive one-stop shop, which I think is what the market really wants. And obviously our clients want it because our retention rate, thank you all, is really over 99% with us. I just went on a sidetrack here. Katie, are you the longest employee here?

Steve Lewit: How many years are you?

Steve Lewit: 12 and a half years for our producer, Katie. Who’s the longest? Oh, Jenny is long.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so and folks-

Steve Lewit: Oh, Lauren is, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: On the show can’t hear Katie talking in the background.

Steve Lewit: I know because Katie is shy. She refuses to put on a headphone and let us share her really interesting personality with us.

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe one day. Yep.

Steve Lewit: One day.

Gabriel Lewit: You never know. But yeah, so it’s been quite a journey and I think over the last seven years we’ve really strived to fine tune the services we provide, get more sophisticated, as you said, provide even more comprehensive services. We started offering Medicare support for example four or five years ago. I don’t have the exact timeframe on it. Of course, more advanced tax planning has been really a big focus of ours year in and year out as our tax team has really expanded and evolved

Steve Lewit: A larger array of tax savings insurance products and strategies that we never use. We’ve expanded our investment options menu. It’s really quite different than from what we were 20 years ago for sure, and certainly seven years ago. It’s shifted quite a bit.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. But I think one thing that you’ll find is the same as it was seven years ago on show number one is really our unwavering commitment to you, our clients. We put you first, always. It’s front and center in our minds at all times how do we provide a great client experience? How do we improve our response times? How do we communicate more effectively, more clearly? How do we provide better education, training, better investment services, better planning services? Day in and day out, our core focus is trying to improve all the time for our clients and to make your lives better, your planning better and your peace of mind better.

Steve Lewit: Well said. Well said.

So I was just looking at some of the topics that we’ve covered and some of the more popular episodes here, Gabriel.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, what I was going to say, real quick before we get to that.

Steve Lewit: But of course.

Gabriel Lewit: Episode number one was a little bit introductory at the time and we didn’t get into a ton of different financial topics. So episode two, which was where we really jumped right in at the time I thought was also interesting, was titled, Are You Ready for Retirement?

Steve Lewit: Yes. We’re asking the same question today, are you ready for retirement?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that is one of our focuses.

Steve Lewit: It is.

Gabriel Lewit: And interestingly enough, every single year, millions more are approaching that key retirement date. So that is generally a very timeless question. But we were focusing then, as we still are now, how to create reliable and long-lasting income. What are some of the risks that can impact you in retirement? How do people typically plan for retirement? And what else is important in retirement other than just the money?

And I do think just fast-forwarding seven years later, I think we do incorporate many, if not all of those same topics yet again in our current planning that we have today that’s available with SGL.

Steve Lewit: It’s like reading out of our hymnal. That’s the song we sing, if you will.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t have a hymnal, but …

Steve Lewit: Well, that’s the how about a song we sing? Although I’ve never heard you sing a song.

Gabriel Lewit: You don’t want to hear me sing a song.

Steve Lewit: I need a good laugh now and then. So yeah, look, these are timeless questions. Where do you get your retirement income from? What are the hurdles that undermine retirement? People don’t really plan. We know that. Most people don’t plan. And what are the components of, what was that last one? Retirement other than money, which is our slogan. Life is not about money, it’s about the journey and enjoying the journey.

So I feel really good when I was looking back at this, I had a little nostalgia because there’s a lot of effort and very rewarding for us and we’ve covered a lot of territory. But I think we’ve stayed on track to our vision, Gabriel, and I just want to congratulate us for doing that.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, congratulations to you.

Steve Lewit: And congratulations to you.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, thank you.

Steve Lewit: You’re very welcome.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, so that was a little trip down memory lane for episode number one, episode number two. We also have some interesting data and analytics here for you that you might find interesting or I just would like to share just to give you a scope of our show. So some of the most popular episodes, number one here, episode 163, Strategies to Pay Zero Taxes on Social Security.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, man. Top of the charts.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Wow.

Gabriel Lewit: So, if you are interested in that topic, it clearly was a very interesting one. So maybe that’s something we revisit down the road here. But of course, just to make sure we cover some financial topics here, how do you pay zero taxes on social security? In essence, in a nutshell, you’ve got to set up all your income in retirement to generally be tax-free from various tax resources, whether it’s Roth IRAs, converted IRAs to Roth IRAs, Roth 401Ks, tax-free life insurance. Any other source of tax-free income, which will generally keep your overall tax bracket very, very low, which then in turn creates no tax on your social Security.

Steve Lewit: Or less for sure.

Gabriel Lewit: And as a result of that, you can end up with no taxes whatsoever in retirement if you are very specific and proactive about that as a goal.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So if that’s something you have interest in, you could head on back down to episode 163.

Steve Lewit: It’s on the website.

Gabriel Lewit: And maybe we’ll include this in our email out here, some of these best ones. You could click on some of the ones from the past as well. Okay. Number two coming up right behind.

Steve Lewit: This is embarrassing, Gabriel. I don’t remember what that was about.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t either. Yeah, episode 185 says-

Steve Lewit: It’s very embarrassing.

Gabriel Lewit: Rocking Your Retirement Jersey.

Steve Lewit: Second most downloads. What on earth did we talk about?

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe it was customizing your retirement for you like a jersey?

Steve Lewit: Like a jersey? Putting your name on it, having the right number?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, could be.

Steve Lewit: Colors?

Gabriel Lewit: Next up on the list, number three was episode 108, The Inflation Reduction Act: How It Could Impact You.

Steve Lewit: Big question at that time.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep. And inflation of course was a pretty hot topic since then. This was an interesting one. Merry Retirement: Christmas Facts and Stock Market Commentary coming in number four, episode 160. And then episode 184, Retirement Regrets and Revelations.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that was a big one too.

Gabriel Lewit: As the number five most historical downloads.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so it’s interesting. These cover a lot of different topics. And folks, we never know what’s going to kind of grab you and what isn’t. So Gabriel really leads the way on this. We try to find topics that we think are interesting. But anytime you have a topic that you think is interesting, please let us know because we’d love to dive into it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And actually speaking of that, going back to again some historical questions that we got. So we do get listener questions very regularly. So we had one, these are just a snippet or a couple samples here.

Steve Lewit: Can I interrupt you for a second?

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: Katie, did you find out what the retirement jersey thing was about?

Steve Lewit: She did. Now I know you can’t hear her because she won’t put on her headphones. Real quick, can you say?

Steve Lewit: Oh, it is like a football jersey. Your retirement plan is like a football jersey, has to have-

Steve Lewit: Yeah, every detail can shape your financial, the colors, the emblems. It tells you who you are.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, yes, I remember that.

Steve Lewit: I don’t.

Gabriel Lewit: A little bit. I’d have to go back and reread it. Apologies for the-

Steve Lewit: You’re younger than I am.

Gabriel Lewit: … for the small pause and silence for you probably on your end there. But yes, that was I think a very good one. And-

Steve Lewit: Maybe we should do it again?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, who knows, right? So yeah, some of the listener questions we’ve got answered this past year, episode 195, “What’s a mega backdoor Roth 401K?”

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: I actually had a number of clients reach out to me and say that was really interesting.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So did I, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: So, if you missed that one and you’re curious what a mega backdoor Roth 401k contribution is, go back and listen to episode 195. And episode 188, Finding Your Financial Risk Comfort Zone. We had some questions about being remarried and how to handle your assets and finances in scenarios like that.

Steve Lewit: Especially with kids. I think these folks had kids.

Gabriel Lewit: And what to do if you want to retire sooner than your spouse.

Steve Lewit: And what’s the dynamic in the family when you do that? Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: So, some interesting questions there. Plus of course, there was many, many more. Here’s some other interesting data. In 2024, we did surpass the 10,000 downloads milestone. And as of, I think today we are at 11,641 total downloads of the show, which is great.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Gabriel Lewit: And I think I got some email from a podcast site that we use, and we host on saying we’re in the top 1%. Apparently there’s a lot of podcasts that don’t get very many listeners. And having 11-12,000 is actually considered, I’m very pleased with it, but considered very good.

Steve Lewit: And most of those are in the recent three or four years. We got very, not very few, but not nearly as many early on.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. So thank you once again for listening. And again, please send this to your friends and family and tune in as much as you can. We try to keep things entertaining here for you. You might also be interested to know the vast majority of people listen to this through Apple Podcasts on their Apple iPhone. A whopping 65%, listen on mobile phones. And a few do listen through Spotify and of course on our website through what we call a Buzzsprout embed player. Interesting data there.

Steve Lewit: And Androids, which is my favorite phone, is last on the list.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s because-

Steve Lewit: Not very popular.

Gabriel Lewit: … not too many people-

Steve Lewit: Not very popular.

Gabriel Lewit: … have Androids.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I know.

Gabriel Lewit: Apparently, we also have 279 downloads from Europe, so we’re global.

Steve Lewit: Well, I love the fact that we also have 10 downloads from Africa.

Gabriel Lewit: 10 from Africa. 21 from Oceania.

Steve Lewit: Wherever that is.

Gabriel Lewit: And 236 from Asia.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: But the vast majority of course here in local North America.

Steve Lewit: So folks, because of your listenership, we’ve become an international podcaster.

Gabriel Lewit: We are an internationally known podcast.

Steve Lewit: Yes. Thank you very much.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, so that’s a little recap down memory lane. What we thought we would do, of course today is chat a little bit maybe about the show and how you felt about certain things and a little bit of get to know us.

Steve Lewit: Gabriel, do you remember your favorite show at all? Does one stand out in your memory that, hey, that was the best?

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I do have one. I don’t remember the specifics. I want to go back and do this more. But there was some show where I was quizzing you and I was trying to stump you. And I was looking forward with eager anticipation to see if you would get the question wrong. And I think I recall you got them all right.

Steve Lewit: I did. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Or most of them.

Steve Lewit: I remember that one.

Gabriel Lewit: But I remember I was excited because, oh, I got a chance to stump the elder Lou here. And maybe we should do more of the yeah, stump the Steve.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: We could call that-

Steve Lewit: I like it.

Gabriel Lewit: … the segment name.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I couldn’t really think of one. But what I did think of, I love joking around with you and picking on your grammar, your pronunciation of words and your misuse of words is really very funny and very interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t misuse that many words.

Steve Lewit: That’s not a-

Gabriel Lewit: Just an occasional one.

Steve Lewit: It’s kind of laughable. We like it.

Gabriel Lewit: I do mix up, you know the phrases that people, like pigs in a blanket, or people have phrases like that. I mix those up a lot as I’m using multiple phrases.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Any who’s.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: So, Mr. Steve here, what have you learned from doing 200 podcasts here, if anything? What would be your kind of takeaway from that personally, professionally, podcast professionally?

Steve Lewit: Yeah. My takeaway on these, I feel really good about these when you and I have a lot of fun. The topic is really, really interesting and there’s a certain realness to the podcast. In other words, I feel like if I can be myself and you can be yourself, and we’re really talking folks, we’re not trying to create an impression, we’re not trying to sell something. We just want to do good and pass along good information. When I come out of a podcast and I feel we really did that, I feel great. That’s a very rewarding feeling for me. What about you?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, for me, I think I find that preparing for this show, I believe makes me just far more knowledgeable as an advisor.

Steve Lewit: A better advisor.

Gabriel Lewit: Because I purposely read just, I mean, oodles and oodles. That makes me think of noodles. Oodles of articles. Maybe I’m so hungry for lunch here. Yeah, I read oodles and oodles of articles. And I’m always thinking, “Oh, this would be great for the show and this would be great for the show.” And then I read this and I say, “Oh, this could be great for the show.” But the end result of that is I read oodles of articles and they help me remember and learn lots of new things.

Steve Lewit: So, you can oodle through the show in a better way.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, precisely.

Steve Lewit: Yes, yes.

Gabriel Lewit: And I think also it’s also worked on a little bit of on the cuff, just ad-libbing. We don’t have this whole show scripted out. We just have bullets sometimes and some articles. And makes you kind of think on your feet a little bit and try to figure out how to make this semi-entertaining. I don’t know if we make this full-fledged entertaining, but we try.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, we do. Yeah. We don’t rehearse the articles folks. And it’s not like Gabriel and I sit down a half hour before, “Okay, what are we going to say about this and what are we going to say about that? And how do you want to approach that and how are you going to make that sound good or better?” We just dive in and speak our hearts to you. And sometimes it comes out better than other times, but it is honest.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, indeed.

Steve Lewit: Straightforward and honest.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, let’s see. I do think we have a real topic to talk about here today on our show. But before we do that and switch gears and wrap up our 200th episode special here, what else would you say has been the most surprising thing for you in having a podcast that’s gone on for 200 episodes over seven years?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’ll tell you. So you know and folks out there know I was an opera singer. And as an opera singer, you learn scores and then you do performances. And every performance is the same score. It’s like somebody on Broadway, they’re doing shows every day, the same show. But yet everyone is different. And I think what I really value here is that every time I’ve done this, it’s like a new show. It never gets old for me. It’s like, hey, we’re doing this for the first time almost. And in a sense we are, because the topics are always different. So it is for the first time. But I just never get bored of this.

Gabriel Lewit: Great, great. Yeah. Well, we have another 200 lined up I think, going ahead in the future.

Steve Lewit: I think we plan on doing those tomorrow when you give the rundown on the 200.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, the 200 tax tips, the 200 places to live and all these other things.

Steve Lewit: We’ll just add that in.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, once again, we thank you for being value listeners. We’re going to talk now a little bit about … Well, I thought this would be an interesting topic because it’s been so frigidly cold here in Illinois. And apparently there’s a, what do they call it, a polar vortex or something? There’s been like an ice age across the … I think I saw a picture of them throwing snowballs in like Louisiana, right?

Steve Lewit: Louisiana.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: It’s like they didn’t know what it was. This is snow.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So this topic is about the snowbird retirement.

Steve Lewit: Ah, perfect.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay? I just had a meeting yesterday with a client, “Yeah, we’re heading off to Florida.” I’m like, oh, that sounds nice right now.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Can we come?

Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, I thought this would be a timely topic. I can’t recall the last time we’ve specifically talked about this. But the snowbird retirement, what is it? Is it right for you? How do you think about it from a financial perspective? And first and foremost, maybe to kick things off here, Steve, what is a snowbird?

Steve Lewit: A snowbird is somebody that leaves the snow behind and flies somewhere else. That’s a snowbird. And what’s interesting about snowbirds is I never thought of myself as a potential snowbird. But here’s what’s happened to me as I’ve gotten older. There’s a part of me, not that I’m leaving or retiring or doing anything like that, but there’s a part of me that really understands now why people snowbird out of here. Because it’s so darn cold and you get tired of dealing with it and putting on the clothes and all that stuff you got to do. And you hop off to Florida for two months and it’s like things are easy.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, most people don’t know this about me because most of the time when people see me I’m always in a suit and tie for being in the profession we’re in. That tends to be the dress of choice. But if I had my druthers?

Steve Lewit: Good job.

Gabriel Lewit: Is that the, druthers? Okay.

Steve Lewit: Good job.

Gabriel Lewit: I do look for you for grammatical corrections.

Steve Lewit: Good job.

Gabriel Lewit: I would wear flip-flops, shorts, and a t-shirt every day. That would be it.

Steve Lewit: That would be the end of it.

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe the swimming suit for when I jump with the pool. But yeah, to your point, you can’t do that here in minus eight degree weather here in January in Chicago. So yeah, snowboarding is for many an interesting topic. Some people love it. It’s kind of like a lifestyle choice. Other people are against it. So first and foremost-

Steve Lewit: But I would say this, Gabriel, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I did. I guess I do mean to interrupt you. I think everybody that approaches retirement that lives in Chicago at one point or another, sits down with their partner or spouse or with themselves and say, “Should we get a place in the warm weather?” Just consider it. Even if they don’t do it, they think about it.

Gabriel Lewit: Now, let me quiz you. Let me see if I can stump the Steve here in preparation of a future whole element-

Steve Lewit: I’m all nervous.

Gabriel Lewit: … of the show.

Steve Lewit: I’m all nervous.

Gabriel Lewit: To be a snowbird, do you have to own a second home in the place you are snowbirding?

Steve Lewit: Nah. No, no. You just need to rent.

Gabriel Lewit: Was that your?

Steve Lewit: Nah.

Gabriel Lewit: Was that your-

Steve Lewit: Well, that was just an outright, nah.

Gabriel Lewit: I got you.

Steve Lewit: Nay.

Gabriel Lewit: Nay, Okay.

Steve Lewit: Nay.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that would be ding-ding, correct.

Steve Lewit: Ding, ding.

Gabriel Lewit: You do not need to own a home. So yes, snowbirding is the act of moving to a warmer climate to get away from the snow. But many people often conflate that with they have to have enough money to own a whole second home. And for some they don’t have the funds. And for others that do have the funds, what they realize is owning a second home-

Steve Lewit: Is a lot of work.

Gabriel Lewit: … can be kind of a pain.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s a responsibility.

Gabriel Lewit: Things break. You have to worry about security. You’ve got double bills. You’ve got property taxes in two spots. You’ve got all these other elements.

Steve Lewit: Hurricanes and stuff like that. No, I have clients, as you do Gabriel, they rent the same place three months out of the year and it’s almost like a ritual for them and they’re very happy.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And the most common spots of course are Florida. You’ve got Arizona. I’ve got a couple clients actually in where I would like to snowbird, Hawaii would be my spot of choice personally. You’ve got some in Southern California.

Steve Lewit: Don’t go. No.

Gabriel Lewit: You’ve got some in Georgia.

Steve Lewit: Don’t go to Newport Beach.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, gotcha. All right. But yeah, there is no one right or wrong spot.

Steve Lewit: I spent a week there in cold weather and overcast.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, all right. Sorry for you.

Steve Lewit: I snowbirded to California and froze to death.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it happens.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: So, the idea number one is make sure you like where you’re going. But you could have a three-month rental over the winter. You could do a one-month right in the middle.

Steve Lewit: Simple, simple.

Gabriel Lewit: For some clients, they prefer hotels, others like Airbnbs or VRBOs. The concept here is do you like this idea of getting away from the snow? And of course, do you have the money to finance this whichever route that you might take?

Steve Lewit: And you can find very affordable rates in different places that allow you to go out of town for three months and just get out of this cold weather.

Gabriel Lewit: You can also find unaffordable rates. This was just for fun. I googled, I’m a little behind the eight-ball here on planning a spring break for the kids. And so I think the prices are a little inflated.

Steve Lewit: Uh-oh.

Gabriel Lewit: I happened to look at one hotel that was in Puerto Rico.

Steve Lewit: Uh-oh.

Gabriel Lewit: And I had heard it was very nice, and I looked up the room rates.

Steve Lewit: $1,000 a night.

Gabriel Lewit: No. So yeah, I’ve got a family of five.

Steve Lewit: $800.

Gabriel Lewit: Two adults, three kids. Hold on. I’m getting there.

Steve Lewit: $2,000.

Gabriel Lewit: So, it prompted a suite option for me.

Steve Lewit: Oh, of course.

Gabriel Lewit: I selected my date ranges, and the price came out to a small nominal sum of $8,103 per night. And I promptly said, “I don’t think that’s going to work for my budget at the moment.”

Steve Lewit: You don’t want to spend $100 grand on a little trip to Florida?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, this one was in Puerto Rico.

Steve Lewit: Oh, in Puerto Rico. All right.

Gabriel Lewit: But I was like, who spends $8,000 a night?

Steve Lewit: How many rooms? That had to be like-

Gabriel Lewit: It was a two-bedroom suite.

Steve Lewit: $8,000?

Gabriel Lewit: $8,103 per night.

Steve Lewit: Did that include breakfast?

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think that was the breakfast inclusive option actually.

Steve Lewit: It probably wasn’t.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I don’t think so. So yeah, you can find better deals, places, VRBOs if you want to buy or rent I should say a condo or a home. Start to map out. Go onto the apps, see what the cost would be and then we can see. I actually have a couple clients, we literally in their plan have a column in their budget that says, winter snowbirding $30,000. They’re looking to spend no more than $10 grand a month for three months. And that’s their budget.

Steve Lewit: And they figure it out.

Gabriel Lewit: And they’ve built it in, right? They’ve really made this a reality for themselves and they’re very excited about doing this.

Steve Lewit: Sure.

Gabriel Lewit: And again, no muss no fuss with home ownership.

Steve Lewit: And it’s great when you build it into your budget like that and make it a separate column and a separate expense, guess what? Then you really do it. Whereas if it’s in your regular budget, you say, “I don’t want to spend the money.” But in a separate budget, which we love to do, folks in your plans is put in a separate travel budget. And then you’ve got that money to spend and it makes life a lot easier.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Another option that we haven’t discussed here yet is you could, if you were so inclined, I have a couple of clients that do this as well. You could RV yourself to a warm weather locale. And RVs are not these small, cheap little things. You can get these monsters that are like $600,000 and have five bedrooms in them.

Steve Lewit: More than that.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, my goodness. If you dive into this world of RVs, you’re going to be like, “Wow.”

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Be careful.

Gabriel Lewit: Right?

Steve Lewit: It sounds so romantic to take an RV across the country. Here’s one problem that I learned from two different clients. Man, they break down. And when they break down, you can’t get anyone to fix it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s a small issue.

Steve Lewit: Because all the parts of an RV come from different places. So there’s no one place. Like if your faucet isn’t working, they say, “Well, call the company that installed the pressure driver or something like that.”

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. So that may or may not be for you. And the last concept here is if you do decide you are going to buy a home or rent a home possibly for more than six months, you can also start considering some tax planning as part of this. So you could use stay there six months, maybe the majority of them are in the winter. And you can establish new residency in a different state that may be, in some cases, more tax efficient than here in Illinois. Especially if you are someone that’s crossing into a estate tax territory for Illinois, and maybe there’s another state that doesn’t have an estate tax that you could establish residency in. There’s another way to think through that too.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. And be careful there because they might not have an estate tax or state estate tax, but their property taxes are through the roof.

Gabriel Lewit: Ours aren’t here? I think you go downhill from here.

Steve Lewit: Do they let you own property here? They’re still letting you. You got to pay through the nose. Yeah. So if you’re thinking about that or thinking about your taxes and what state to move to, that’d be another great reason to contact us and let us walk you through that and have our tax team do an analysis for you.

Gabriel Lewit: On our 200th episode, Steve, to close things out, do you want to do the send away?

Steve Lewit: The send away?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: The send away.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, first, yeah. Anything else?

Steve Lewit: Adios, amigos?

Gabriel Lewit: Anything else that you would like to say to wrap up this episode here for us?

Steve Lewit: Well, I think the main message, we’ve already said a number of times, and I’ll say it again, thank you, thank you. And thank you for entrusting us with your money, listening to us, participating in this journey that we’re all taking. And man, I love it, so thank you.

Gabriel Lewit: Ditto, ditto, and ditto.

Steve Lewit: And ditto.

Gabriel Lewit: And now for the final send away, Sir Steve. Can you-

Steve Lewit: I’m not singing.

Gabriel Lewit: No, you got to say the close.

Steve Lewit: I got to say the close.

Gabriel Lewit: Of the show.

Steve Lewit: Call us at (847) 499-3330.

Gabriel Lewit: There it is. Or?

Steve Lewit: Or, you can write us on our website. What’s the name of our company? Sglfinancial.com. Click a button and contact us for all your financial needs.

Gabriel Lewit: Or?

Steve Lewit: Or, you can call Gabriel at 847-

Gabriel Lewit: No, no. Or email us of course.

Steve Lewit: Or email us of course.

Gabriel Lewit: Info@sglfinancial.com.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. You do this better than I do. I just want to admit that to everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: You did spot on, perfect.

Steve Lewit: Thanks, man.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, thank you all for listening to our show. Again, I’ll echo what Steve says. We appreciate your listenership. Have a wonderful rest of your day or week. And if there’s anything we can ever help you with, give us a holler.

Steve Lewit: Stay warm everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye now.

Steve 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 Adviser. Insurance, and other financial products are offered separately through individually licensed and appointed agents.