Lobsters and Longevity: Debunking Financial Fibs
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #181
Lobsters and Longevity: Debunking Financial Fibs
Welcome back to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit! On today’s episode, the hosts share inspirational quotes and reveal tips from a 104-year-old “Lobster Lady” on how she maintains her long life. Then, they tackle common financial fibs and how to overcome them. Listen in now using a link below!
- Quotes of the Month:
- “A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” – Greg S. Reid
- “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” – Sun Tzu
- Tips for a Long Life:
- Uncover the secrets to a long and happy life from the 104-year-old “Lobster Lady,” whose longevity habits and passion for lobster trapping keep her thriving.
- Money Fibs You Tell Yourself:
- Discover the most common limiting beliefs about money and learn how to adopt a healthier financial mindset.
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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: All right, welcome to Our 2 Cents. We’ve got Gabriel Lewit, Steven Lewit, and Producer Gabby and Producers Katie here supporting the show, of course, in the background, we can’t get them to come on the show, unfortunately. They keep saying no.
Steve Lewit: One of these days they will.
Gabriel Lewit: We say that, but we’ll see. I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Steve Lewit: I have bad news for Katie though.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, yeah. What’s that?
Steve Lewit: Gabby actually does a more dramatic countdown, 3, 2, 1 than Katie does.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, those are fighting words, man.
Steve Lewit: Those are fighting words.
Gabriel Lewit: Those are fighting words.
Steve Lewit: Those are really fighting words. Yeah. She puts a whole-
Gabriel Lewit: Producer Katie did the 3, 2, 1 countdowns excellently for like six years or whatever, a long time we’ve been doing the show.
Steve Lewit: She was fantastic. But now Gabriella comes in here and she puts shoulder movement into it and real drama.
Gabriel Lewit: We need one of those, like the movie things where they snap the thing.
Steve Lewit: Cut, cut, cut.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Oh, we do have one of those somewhere. Yeah. Anyways, well, welcome to the show. We hope you’re doing well today. We hope that you had a wonderful week and we’re excited to talk to you today.
Steve Lewit: Yes, we are.
Gabriel Lewit: So, to kick things off, I thought I would start with some quotes of the month.
Steve Lewit: Good.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: I love quotes.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we got some excellent ones for you. So let me find the page here with my quotes so I don’t have them memorized here. I got to read them for you. Quote number one. All right, if you’re ready to be inspired, I hope.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I think inspiration, I’m ready.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re ready?
Steve Lewit: I’d really like to be inspired right now.
Gabriel Lewit: Can I get a countdown for the quote?
Steve Lewit: 3, 2, 1, quote.
Gabriel Lewit: Look at that movement.
Steve Lewit: A shoulder movement.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. This one’s from a guy, an author, a motivational speaker named Greg Reid. He says, “A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.”
Steve Lewit: Ooh, I like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Mr. Reid. Well, what do you think about that, Mr. Lewit?
Steve Lewit: Oh, I like that. It’s like you can’t eat the elephant in one piece.
Gabriel Lewit: You do have to take bites.
Steve Lewit: You have to take bites. And if you want to get the whole elephant, you have to accomplish each step one at a time. But if you don’t know what the next step is, you don’t have a plan. That’s called winging it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes, instead of the elephant, I’ll use maybe a house analogy. In other words, when you build a house, you don’t just snap your fingers and there’s a house, right? You’ve got to build it in steps, right? You lay out the foundation, you… Well, I actually don’t know how to build a house, but you frame it.
Steve Lewit: Foundation sounds good.
Gabriel Lewit: You do the wiring, you do the plumbing, you put the finishing of the walls on, all that good stuff. I don’t actually really know how to build a house, but I know the fundamentals.
Steve Lewit: Clearly.
Gabriel Lewit: No, I got it right. The foundation goes in first. You dig the hole.
Steve Lewit: What does it start with though? It starts with-
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you got to have a blueprint.
Steve Lewit: A blueprint. It starts with the plan.
Gabriel Lewit: And then that blueprint is the plan, and then it gets broken down into smaller actionable steps. And then of course, to make that dream come true, you actually have to take action on it and actually do those steps, step by step.
Steve Lewit: I wouldn’t use the word dream. I’d say if you have a vision, you have a vision of a… You want a really relaxing retirement. If you have a vision of buying a second home, if you have a vision of spending a lot of time with your grandkids, those visions, that’s the blueprint. And then you have to figure out, and the mind does this automatically. It figures out these are the steps you need to take.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes, I agree 1000%. I just had a client meeting last night with a new client that’s coming on board. And it was really interesting because obviously we talk a lot about money with clients, but he looked at me and he said, “I’m just really excited to have a plan because I had thought about all this before, how to retire. I want to retire, but I didn’t… It wasn’t spelled out concretely enough for me to really know how to do it.”
And really, he says, “That’s what I got when I came here to see you is I can actually see this now. I can see my retirement ahead of me. I know how to do it. It’s laid out in a way where I’m not worried about it, and now I’m feeling really excited about this upcoming retirement.”
Steve Lewit: I love that. It’s different when you’re thinking about retirement and it’s in your head. It’s a lot different than having it on paper and you can see each step. It’s like you’re trying to figure out how to fix your car. You might have it in your head, but it’s a lot easier to open the manual and get the directions on what to do. And that’s what a plan does. It’s like your cookbook. Here’s how long you got to do this. This is the flame, the heat that you… I don’t know how to cook either. Just like you don’t know how to build a house, but you get the idea.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. You start with a pot, you turn on the gas on the stove and you chuck some food in there.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s it.
Gabriel Lewit: Producer Katie knows how to cook.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, she’s a good cook.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: She makes the best cookies.
Gabriel Lewit: She bakes?
Steve Lewit: We haven’t had cookies in a while.
Gabriel Lewit: I think it’s been like a month.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, we got to get them.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so that’s our first quote of the month. Okay. So thank you Mr. Reid. Today wasn’t all about goal planning, but I thought that was a very motivational quote. It jumped out at me when I saw it.
Steve Lewit: All right, I’m inspired. I like it.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. And the next one comes from… Well, I’d be curious how you would pronounce this, but Sun Tzu?
Steve Lewit: No, Sun Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: Sun Tzu?
Steve Lewit: T-S.
Gabriel Lewit: T-Z-U.
Steve Lewit: Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: I think it’s Sun Tzu.
Steve Lewit: Well, you can think that, but it’s Sun Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: Sun Tzu?
Steve Lewit: Yes, Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Sun Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: You got it.
Steve Lewit: Very famous. Very famous what, Chinese?
Gabriel Lewit: Chinese Military General, I believe.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, books written.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. “The Art of War” I think is his main book.
Steve Lewit: It’s “The Art of War.” Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so Mr. Sun.
Steve Lewit: Tzu.
Gabriel Lewit: Says, “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy and do what is great while it is small.”
Steve Lewit: What the hell does that mean?
Gabriel Lewit: Are these the yogi-isms that we did the other time?
Steve Lewit: All right, could you say that again?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: I read Sun Tzu and I read some of his books, but I don’t-
Gabriel Lewit: It says, “Yes, plan for what is difficult while it is easy.”
Steve Lewit: All right, let’s just stop there. Plan for what’s difficult while it’s… In other words, don’t get caught in the middle of the rapids and then say, “What do I do now?”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. How do I float on the rapids is not a good question when you’re already in the rapids.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So if you’re in the middle of retirement and the market declines and you lost 40%.
Gabriel Lewit: Asking yourself at that point, how do I avoid losing?
Steve Lewit: How do I avoid this? Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, not so easy.
Steve Lewit: All right, so that’s planning. How did he say it?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. He says, I didn’t say, he says, “Plan for what is difficult, while it is easy.”
Steve Lewit: Like it, good advice.
Gabriel Lewit: And then part two of that is, “Do what is great while it is small.”
Steve Lewit: “Do what is great while it is small.” Well Son Tzu, you don’t know it’s going to be great when it’s small. But I think what he means there is all great things start-
Gabriel Lewit: Does he mean buy NVIDIA back when it was really low?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Before it quintupled in price.
Steve Lewit: But you didn’t know that ahead of time. So if you do small, I think this is what he means. Folks, if you do the small things the right way with intelligence and inspiration and you really believe in it, it’ll become a great thing.
Gabriel Lewit: I can get in line with that. I think that makes sense.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so it means, hold on. The Google AI here is telling us, hold on, Gabby, go back. Hold on. Go back up to the top there. Okay. It says, this is per Google AI. It’s a quote by Sun Tzu that emphasizes the importance of strategic and proactive thinking. It encourages people to prepare for challenges before they become overwhelming and to take advantage of opportunities while they’re still within reach.
Steve Lewit: Nice.
Gabriel Lewit: Google AI has an occasional ounce of wisdom there.
Steve Lewit: Not much. I put so many questions in there and I don’t get satisfying answers, once in a while. This one was good.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not going to spoil it. We are doing a market outlook event tonight. By the time some of you listen to this podcast, you’ll probably have heard it. And then on next week’s podcast, we’re actually going to talk about some of those market outlooks. So just in case some people don’t listen to the webinar, we like to cover some of those on the podcast.
Steve Lewit: And that will be recorded, the webinar.
Gabriel Lewit: It will as well. But yes, AI is a buzzword or a bubble word, depending on what you’re thinking. And if you want to know more, you got to wait until I tell you more about it.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: I’m inspired by that too.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Okay. So those are our quotes. We hope you enjoyed them.
Steve Lewit: You’re lighting me up today.
Gabriel Lewit: Perfect.
Steve Lewit: Great.
Gabriel Lewit: It is a bright and sunny day.
Steve Lewit: It is.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, so next we often talk finance, but we also talk health, wellbeing, lifestyle, things that are all about, money just is fuel for the journey. We always like to focus on the other parts of your life as well. So we’ve got today some unusual tips. One from a woman who’s 104 years old on how to live a long life.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but she’s not just 104 years old.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. She’s a, hold on, let me say this. She’s a lobster lady.
Steve Lewit: She is the Lobster Lady.
Gabriel Lewit: The Lobster Lady.
Steve Lewit: She’s been lobstering since she was eight years old, and she just renewed her license this year to go out and lobster.
Gabriel Lewit: Now folks, if you’ve followed us over the years, we love a longevity story.
Steve Lewit: Especially a lobster longevity story. How do you lobster?
Gabriel Lewit: There used to be a lady named Sarah Knauss we used to talk about, maybe this will become our new lady.
Steve Lewit: Sarah, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Who was 100 and, gosh…
Steve Lewit: Six.
Gabriel Lewit: Six, I think.
Steve Lewit: 104.
Gabriel Lewit: And she had six generations in a single-family photo. It was really cool.
Steve Lewit: It was cool.
Gabriel Lewit: It was a great story. Now we’ve got Virginia Oliver. Okay. It says here, Lobsters can’t hide from her because she’s 104 years old, but she’s still out there lobstering.” Okay? “She’s been trapping the crustaceans for nearly a century because she started at eight years old.”
Steve Lewit: Crazy. So, to lobster, you have to, are those metal crates that they kind of crawl into and then you pull them up? Is that lobstering?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I think so. I couldn’t independently vary.
Steve Lewit: Gabby’s going to find out how hard it is to trap lobster.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So the lobster season, which I learned this I did not know in advance, runs from June to October. Okay, so it is prime lobster season right now. Okay. And basically she says this, which I think is a great quote, “I am not going to retire. I’m going to do this till I die. I like being out on the water and being your own boss. I’m the boss.” This is her quote.
Steve Lewit: No, I love it. I love it.
Gabriel Lewit: All right.
Steve Lewit: Let’s talk of having a vision.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Think about it. This lady has made up her mind that that’s what she’s going to do and she’s doing it.
Gabriel Lewit: She didn’t retire at 65. She loves what she does and apparently I haven’t watched it yet, but there is a documentary about her called, Conversations with the Lobster Lady.
Steve Lewit: Amazing. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, well here’s what we’re going to learn from her. Okay, so also she works with her 81-year-old son, Maxwell.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. That’s like-
Gabriel Lewit: He’s still working on their boat named the Virginia, and they trap lobster off the coast of Rockland, Maine. Okay. Her son hauls the traps and her job is to fill the bait bags and measure the lobsters. And if the crustaceans are too small, they get thrown back into the water. Okay. All right. She also used to drive up until her 103rd birthday.
Steve Lewit: Oh, what happened on her… She didn’t say.
Gabriel Lewit: It doesn’t say.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So here are her tips for a long, healthy lifestyle.
Steve Lewit: Would you drive with someone that’s 103 years old? Be honest.
Gabriel Lewit: Is it like one of those DMV cars where there’s steering wheels and brakes on both sides?
Steve Lewit: If a client walked in that was 103 years old and said, “Hey Gabriel, let’s go for a spin, what would you really say?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, of course I would go for a spin.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: She drove here, right?
Steve Lewit: Well, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Are you ready for the habits?
Steve Lewit: I’m ready.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So we’ve got here, number one, keep moving. She says that it’s important to stay active because otherwise you’ll be in a wheelchair. And she credits staying busy on the lobster ships as one of the factors of her longevity. She says she works three days a week and wakes up at 3 o’clock in the morning to be ready to head to the boat before sunrise.
Steve Lewit: Amazing. Yeah. So movement, when things don’t move, they consolidate. They gel up, they rust, and the bodies do the same thing. If you don’t move your body, that’s where you’re going to get rust in your body.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. She also practices clean living. Tip number two, never smoked and doesn’t like to drink alcohol. Her son says, he sums it up as clean living. And what do you think is on her favorite diet menu?
Steve Lewit: Weed. No weed. Is that clean living, weed?
Gabriel Lewit: What kind of answer is that? She’s the lobster lady.
Steve Lewit: Oh, the lobster lady. Well, you never know.
Gabriel Lewit: Weed isn’t a diet item anyways.
Steve Lewit: For some people it’s a diet.
Gabriel Lewit: Are you self-acknowledging your… What’s going on?
Steve Lewit: I don’t smoke weed.
Gabriel Lewit: Where’s your head at here man?
Steve Lewit: I tried it. I don’t like it-
Gabriel Lewit: It’s legal. No knock on you, okay.
Steve Lewit: I don’t like it.
Gabriel Lewit: No, it’s not what’s on her diet.
Steve Lewit: Lobster.
Gabriel Lewit: Her favorite foods include lobster, of course. And it’s a low calorie source of protein packed with minerals such as zinc, calcium, phosphorus, selenium and potassium and B vitamins.
Steve Lewit: I don’t think it’s low calorie. Gabby, can you check that?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Fact check. We’ll do some fact checking.
Gabriel Lewit: She also likes chocolate.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I love chocolate.
Gabriel Lewit: And bean suppers.
Steve Lewit: Bean suppers.
Gabriel Lewit: Bean suppers. Creamy peanut butter sandwiches and homemade chocolate donuts.
Steve Lewit: What’s a bean supper? Is that just like, “Hey, come and get the beans guys.”
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know. Yeah, well yeah. So she also says, spend time in nature.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Very important, relaxing.
Gabriel Lewit: She likes the fresh air and the sea water.
Steve Lewit: Well, it’s relaxing. It’s like nature absorbs all of your agitation.
Gabriel Lewit: And there’s a quote here from a Dr. Natalie Azar who works for NBC as a medical contributor, said, “Just being near water can boost mental health by creating a sense of awe in providing soothing sensory experiences.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. There are people, Gabriel, there are people that will take baths every day and just immerse themselves in water because that water, it kind of expands the body, like you float in it and it’s so relaxing. They do that every day. I’ve taken one bath in the last 10 years.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s why you’re not stress-free. Any who. Last but not least, find your passion. And she says that she does what she likes or wants to do and in many cases there are very well-documented cases of people who have retired that felt like they lost meaning in their lives. And that can contribute to a lack of longevity.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, depression, agitation, no meaning in life, nothing to get up in the morning that you’re excited about. All of that kind of stuff is bad for your health.
Gabriel Lewit: Amen. Now, there was an entire other article here about stress-free blue zones, they call them in the world, which we’re not going to get to today. We ran out of time. We got caught up in quotes and lobster ladies, but we might come back to it on a future show.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I thought, this is so good.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it is good, but we’ve got to talk about some money stuff, man. It is a financial podcast after all.
Steve Lewit: Oh yes.
Gabriel Lewit: We do.
Steve Lewit: Okay, all right.
Gabriel Lewit: Well with that in mind, of course we can’t really help you too much with your longevity questions, but if we can, call us (847) 499-3330, I almost said 1, 3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, we will help you. Most importantly, we always suggest planning financially just in case you live till at least age 90. But in this case, she might’ve needed to plan a little longer, although she’s not retired, so she’s probably still earning a paycheck from her work.
Steve Lewit: And did I read that her brothers and sisters or somebody died much younger and she-
Gabriel Lewit: I think it was her parents who died.
Steve Lewit: So, folks, we hear this all the time. People will say, “Well, how long do you plan for it?” “Well, we plan to 95.” And they’ll say, “Well, can you just do mine for 80, because nobody in my family lived beyond 80.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and here are lobster ladies, parents passed away in their ’50s and ’60s and she doubled their life expectancy.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And you just don’t know how long you’re going to live. And if you’re going to live long and run out of money, you’ll live less longer because you’ll be very upset.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’ll be working on the boat because you need to, not because you want to, but because you need to make some money.
Steve Lewit: Washing the decks.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about money. And the second part of our topic really has nothing to do with the first, it’s just complete kind of 180 gears here, but we call this the lies you might be telling yourself about money. Okay. So over time, we’ve heard many things from clients. We’ve heard many statements, many phrases. Some of those are true, and some of those I think people tend to maybe lie to themselves, right? Lie is a very strong word. I was trying to think of a softer word. Maybe the…
Steve Lewit: Delusions or…
Gabriel Lewit: Delusions.
Steve Lewit: Misinterpretations.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, who knows?
Steve Lewit: Or misguided or…
Gabriel Lewit: Foibles?
Steve Lewit: Or meshuga, whatever.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Okay, so what are these? These are things that people tell themselves about money or retirement, but they might be in, I guess in the theme of motivation here, these might be mindsets that are holding you back.
Steve Lewit: Okay. And even if it’s not exactly these, it might remind you of another one that you kind of hold onto and you don’t even know you’re holding onto it because it’s kind of automatic. We just say things like the first one, Gabriel, go-
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I was going to pick my favorite because there’s too many for us to cover all of them here. All right. This is actually one, I’ve actually heard this before, or maybe it’s like a self-defeating belief or something, might be a softer way of saying it. This one is, I waited too long and now it’s too late to start saving for retirement.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s like, what does that really mean? It’s like when you really uncover it-
Gabriel Lewit: So, you’re 50 and you realize you haven’t saved enough, so you would just not save anymore?
Steve Lewit: So, you waited too long. It’s like, I’m hungry. I didn’t eat, so I’m not going to eat. No, that wasn’t very good.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you should leave those analogies to me, I think.
Steve Lewit: Okay. Can you think of a good one?
Gabriel Lewit: I’m just teasing with you.
Steve Lewit: I know you are.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m just messing with you, but no, what does this, I mean, yeah, I actually, I really have heard this before and I ended up having a conversation with this client. I said, it’s never too late. I mean, let’s say you managed to save up, let’s say you were going to live off of Social Security anyways as your only source of income because you didn’t save for retirement. Well, if you can save $100,000…
Steve Lewit: You’re better off.
Gabriel Lewit: You could do all sorts of things with that. It could generate you 5, $6,000 a year in retirement. You could take some vacations with that. So it’s never too late to save. And that’s a, I do think a very self-defeating mindset.
Steve Lewit: It is. It’s saying that because I didn’t reach my goal or I can’t reach my goal, I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to get halfway there or 10% there or 30% there. I can’t reach my goal and too bad for me.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. Do you want to pick, because I typed up or prepared for you a long list of these. Do you have a favorite Mr. Lewit, that comes to mind for you?
Steve Lewit: Let me see here. Why don’t you go with another one while I scan?
Gabriel Lewit: Ah, yes. Okay.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I like this one here. My partner handles all the finances. I don’t need to worry about it. Really?
Gabriel Lewit: If I had a dollar for the number of times I’ve heard that.
Steve Lewit: Oh my gosh, yeah-
Gabriel Lewit: I would have many dollars.
Steve Lewit: All the time. And it’s men and women. It’s not just women. A lot of women run the money and the man sits there and says, “I don’t really care.”
Gabriel Lewit: Sorry, when you said that, I was thinking of a client conversation I had the other day the woman, the female spouse was managing the finances. I asked if her husband gets involved. She said, “No, he only wants to know if he can afford to get a six-pack each week.”
Steve Lewit: Can he buy the boat?
Gabriel Lewit: Can he buy the beer this week? I’m like, “Oh, I’m sure. Okay.” He doesn’t worry too much about the money side of things.
Steve Lewit: Now why is that kind of a self-defeating, let’s not use that word, lie, self-defeating headset?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I mean, in general, unfortunately, we’ve seen scenarios where the spouse that manages all the money, something happens to them, they pass away, and the surviving spouse has absolutely no idea what’s going on and is now struggling to deal with all this in the midst of going through a very difficult grieving period. Now, that’s one reason. Okay.
The second is that many fights in relationships are related to money. And I think if both spouses are involved, they have a better understanding of the budgeting needs, the saving, the retirement goals that are set out. And it doesn’t become a problem about, the goals are aligned, in other words. Let’s say in this example, they couldn’t afford to buy the six packs of beer, although that I guess could be in most budgets. Maybe if the husband knew the reason for that is because they’re trying to save up for their dream retirement lifestyle, couples can get or be more aligned in their thinking and their discussions and goals.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s also, what I get when I see couples like that is, whoever’s not managing the money, let’s say the guy is managing the money and the woman wants nothing to do with it, she really becomes dependent in a very unhealthy way, having to ask her husband, “Can you give me money to go out and buy something special?” Because she’s not involved in it, so now her husband becomes, or the wife becomes like the parent giving out the money or not giving out the money. And that’s a dependency in relationship that’s really not very healthy.
Gabriel Lewit: Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t think of it from that angle, but I would agree with that. That does create some unusual dynamics, power dynamics, a couple things-
Steve Lewit: In self-esteem and control, in power. In relationships, there should be equal power. Years ago, it wasn’t that way. Years ago, men had the power and women were subservient to men, and it ain’t that way anymore, although sometimes it is.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, that’s a very, very good point. Okay, well let’s move on to another one on the list. I like this one. I think it’s an interesting, again, I don’t know what we’re calling these, but real estate always goes up in value.
Steve Lewit: Oh my.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Yeah. I buy real estate because gosh, it’s such a great investment. It always goes up in value.
Steve Lewit: Can’t lose your money.
Gabriel Lewit: You can’t lose your money in real estate. Mr. Lewit, is that true?
Steve Lewit: Let me see, 1978, 2008. No.
Gabriel Lewit: No, yes or no is the answer.
Steve Lewit: No, it’s not true.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, that’s correct.
Steve Lewit: That’s correct. Real estate is an investment. And guess what investments do?
Gabriel Lewit: They go up and down in value.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, they do folks, they do.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you’ve looked at your Zillow Zestimate, or not Zestimate, what do they call it? That’s like the Zestimate?
Steve Lewit: Is that what it’s called, a Zestimate?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, your Zestimate from Zillow.
Steve Lewit: Oh, well, I’m going to go get my Zestimate.
Gabriel Lewit: They’re substantially higher now than they were three, four years ago. And for folks that have done absolutely nothing to their houses. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, just like any market or index, and here we’re talking about home prices, they can go up very quickly in value, but guess what they can also do? They can go down in value. So I have been cautioning people, don’t expect these high prices to what goes up quickly tends to come down at some point. And we could be in a little bit of a real estate bubble potentially. It may just kind of smooth itself out, but there is some concern there. And of course, you know there are people that bought 2007 right before the 2008 crash.
Steve Lewit: They did at very high prices.
Gabriel Lewit: Very high prices that have since maybe just barely gotten out from being underwater, like 16 years later. So that is a, I wouldn’t call it’s an okay phrase, right? Real estate does generally over time go up in value, but you got to be cautious there.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s the old mom and dad thing from years ago, which says the first thing you buy is a house, that’s your best. Well, it’s your biggest investment for most people, but it’s not necessarily your best investment.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah.
Steve Lewit: It’s safe. You’re not going to lose your house unless you don’t pay your mortgage. In that way, it’s safe, but as an investment, I don’t know. It goes up and down like everything else.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, I’m going to give another one here. This one does pop up periodically. I don’t have enough money to hire a financial advisor. And with my little asterisks on this, that’s coming from people that certainly do indeed have money. They just in their brains, don’t think they have enough to warrant having a financial advisor.
Steve Lewit: I just don’t understand that. You get what you pay for. So if you hire a good financial advisor, this is the way I see it, and this is the way I see the services we offer, Gabriel, we charge a fee, but if we earn our fee plus, a lot over the fee, then that’s a good investment. So I don’t understand why people wouldn’t hire, the only reason they wouldn’t is they don’t think they’re going to get the money’s worth out of the fee. It’s not that they can’t afford it,
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think, actually, and I’ve talked to people that have had this mindset before, it had nothing to do with paying the fee. They honestly just in their heads were like, unless I have a million dollars, a financial advisor can’t help me. But that would be very, very far from the truth.
Steve Lewit: I hadn’t thought of it that way. Yeah, it doesn’t matter how much money you have.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you have 100,000. I mean, if you have a 100, that’s your 100, and I’m sure you don’t want to lose it or have sequence of returns risk with it in retirement or you still need a plan for inflation, you still need a tax strategy to save you more in money. In other words, honestly, the less money you have, I might even argue, the more you need a financial advisor.
Steve Lewit: Yes, I would argue because you have less room for error. If you make an error, you like sunk the ship, the ship goes down.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, look, you have 10 million bucks. Yeah, you put a million on a crypto and it crashed and you lost all that money. Ah, that’s okay. You still got 9 million.
Steve Lewit: So, you’ll leave 9 million behind instead of 10 million. But if you’re living pretty much on a tight budget, you can’t afford to make mistakes, you’re absolutely right. That is where an advisor could really help. And I’ll tell you also, the world has changed. Years ago it was just the stock market, that’s all there was. You either bought a conservative portfolio or you bought a middle ground portfolio or an aggressive portfolio. But today there are so many different products. There’s the market, there are structured products, there are ways of using annuities, there’s CDs, there are treasury. I mean, you’ve got all of these selections and that’s another reason you need an advisor, I think, because you can’t keep up with that and you don’t know about it. So you wind up either putting your money in the bank and buying a CD or putting it in the market and there are lots of other choices that could be a better and more efficient way of growing your money that people don’t know about.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, no, I agree. Let’s see. We probably got time for one more here. There’s some good ones on here. Okay. How about this one? If I pull money out of my savings to buy something or to put a down payment on that, it’s okay because I’ll pay it back. I’ll resave it.
Steve Lewit: Oh, that was the first one, I totally forgot, but that was the first one I wanted to do. Oh my goodness. How often do we hear that?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’ve got a story here which I’ll share for just 30 seconds. So a client came to me about a year and a half ago and said, so I’m just going to simplify it. They had $50,000 in an individual investment account and they were comparing a auto loan at, I think it was like 5% versus pulling the money out of their individual investment account. And I distinctly remember, I said, “Well, look, you’ve worked hard to save this money. The goal wasn’t to buy the car,” or no, the interest rate was on the car loan was going to be like 8%-
Steve Lewit: 8%, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: … that’s what it was. And she said to me, “Well, I don’t want to pay the 8% interest. It’s okay. I will just pay myself back the money. I am going to take the money. I’m going to pay for the car and I’m going to take the money. I was going to pay for the car payment and I’m going to just save that and I’ll build it right back.” Well, she did offer back and forth and discussions because we did discuss this. We took the money out, she bought the car outright. And to this day, a year and a half later, after multiple discussions, has yet to start resaving the money. Why is that?
Steve Lewit: Well, do you remember the big thing was, don’t buy whole life insurance or universal life insurance, you buy term, save the money and invest the difference. And if you invest the difference, you’ll come out way ahead, which numerically was true. There’s only one problem.
Gabriel Lewit: People didn’t do it. It’s also like-
Steve Lewit: They spent the difference.
Gabriel Lewit: … there are people that, I mean, not in today’s market, but in the past, where buying a mortgage with property taxes was more expensive and people would say, “You know what? I could afford it, but I’m going to rent at a lower price and I’m going to save the difference and I’m going to build equity that way versus buying the more expensive mortgage,” which by default, bills equity. There’s only one problem with that. They paid the lower rent and then did not save the difference and thus they were building zero equity. That’s exactly right. So what would you call this, human nature?
Steve Lewit: Human nature.
Gabriel Lewit: Human psychology.
Steve Lewit: If you don’t get into a rhythm, if it becomes optional, say, I like automatic saving. That’s why 401k has worked so well because it comes out of the paycheck automatically. You don’t think about it, you never see the money, you can’t spend it, and then you accumulate money in your 401k, which is great. But if you try and do that on your own every month or every two weeks, say, “How much of this should I put away for savings? Oh, I got to pay for this and I want to buy that, and let’s buy that extra bottle of wine for dinner-”
Gabriel Lewit: And it’s gone.
Steve Lewit: And it’s gone and there’s no savings.
Gabriel Lewit: So interesting stuff here. Many of these just go into the psychology of human behavior, of investor psychology. There’s a whole field on it. And as part of what we do as advisors and planners is help you try to, I don’t know, eliminate these self-deceptions or these, I won’t call lies is a strong word or self-defeating beliefs, things that are adverse to what we’re trying to accomplish that we get trapped in based on psychology. So some interesting stuff here. Hopefully you found it interesting as well, our valued listeners.
Steve Lewit: I found it interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, good. I’m glad to hear that.
Steve Lewit: And inspirational.
Gabriel Lewit: Excellent. Well, yes. We covered a lot of territory today from the words of wise generals past to 104 year lobster ladies, de-stressing tips, and then investor psychology. What a whirlwind.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, whirlwind is good.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, thanks for coming on this journey with us. If you’ve got questions on how we can help you improve your finances, make better choices and plan for the future with security, give us a call, 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com. Click contact us, or email us info@sglfinancial.com.
Steve Lewit: Folks, always a pleasure. You stay well.
Gabriel Lewit: Talk to you next time.
Steve Lewit: Bye now.
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