The Downsides of Retirement

Our 2 Cents – Episode #102

The Downsides of Retirement

Welcome back to Our 2 Cents! This week’s podcast takes a different view of retiring that is not often discussed: the pitfalls that can come with retirement.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows every day of your golden years and we’ll share some of the realities you may face when you retire, as well as some ways to avoid these problems. Then we’re talking about levels of risk in your portfolio, and answering a getting to know us question!

1. The Downsides of Retirement:
   • The surprising fact about your net worth
   • When boredom begins to creep in
   • Struggling with spending guilt
   • Many years in retirement
2. What is Your Risk Profile?:
   • Are you too much of a risk-taker?
   • Risk assessments: how to identify a disconnect between your feelings about risk and your portfolio
   • Ways to reconcile the risk with your retirement money
3. Getting to Know Steve and Gabriel:
   • What kind of books do you like to read?

Tune in now to join us for this discussion!

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Podcast Transcript

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

Gabriel Lewit: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Our 2 Cents. This is Gabriel Lewit and Steven Lewit welcoming you to a wonderful new episode on a wonderful sunny day.

Steve Lewit: I was thinking today, Gabriel, that I have a middle initial. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe because we were talking about it. What is your middle initial? I forgot what I named you.

Gabriel Lewit: Come on.

Steve Lewit: David, right?

Gabriel Lewit: I’m glad you got that right.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, Gabriel David. I’m Steven Richard, so folks, this penny is Steven Richard Lewit, and it’s a name I never use.

Gabriel Lewit: Hey, Rich.

Steve Lewit: Rich, yeah. Well, that’s good. I like that.

Gabriel Lewit: Richie?

Steve Lewit: Good morning, everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: I didn’t know you were going there.

Steve Lewit: I went off on a tangent because I was just thinking about that.

Gabriel Lewit: Good morning. What’s your middle name? How are you today?

Steve Lewit: Right. This is your financial show talking about middle names.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, hopefully you’re out there doing great, and whether it’s morning, afternoon, evening, whenever you’re listening to this show I hope you’re doing well, and we are happy to have you with us.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: We’ve got a good show lined up for you today. We are going to talk about downsides of retirement that people either don’t think about or that you don’t hear about too often, and we’re going to shed some light on those.

Steve Lewit: Got a long list.

Gabriel Lewit: So that you have heard about them and you can prepare for those or at least think through them a little bit and see how they may impact you potentially in your retirement. That’s going to be one thing we’re going to talk about here. The next thing we’re going to talk about after that is what’s your risk profile, okay? Are you in alignment with your risk profile. What do you do if you and your spouse disagree? We’re going to dive into different things related to risk and portfolio and investments, some really cool stuff there that we’re going to cover, so you’ve got to tune into that, so stay tuned and ready for that. Then we’re going to round things out with a little bit of get to know Steve and Gabe.

Steve Lewit: Love it.

Gabriel Lewit: Which is some of our favorite topics.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, and if you and your spouse never disagree then you can tune off on the second part of the show.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, or at least hit mute for a few minutes and then tune back in.

Steve Lewit: Then tune back in.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, so let’s go ahead and dive in here. What are downsides of retirement. Everyone thinks retirement is a time of sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, rosy glasses and fine wine.

Steve Lewit: Well, it is. It is if the rest of your life is in place.

Gabriel Lewit: That sounds pretty good. I mean, I’d like a fine glass of wine and a sunny day and a unicorn. Who wouldn’t?

Steve Lewit: Oh, I’d love a unicorn, yeah. We call it the unicorn retirement plan.

Gabriel Lewit: You know, folks, but what about the other side of the coin? Are there things that perhaps will surprise you that you’re not going to be happy with or that are going to be maybe not so sunshiny, maybe a little rainy and cloudy?

Steve Lewit: Or just a challenge.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so these are some of the downsides that you don’t typically think about in retirement and we’re going to shed a little light on those here this morning. Okay, so number one on the list is your net worth becomes a little less relevant when you’re in retirement, and here’s what I mean by that. When you’re in your accumulation years, a big focus is how much money do you have saved? How much money do you saved? How much equity do you have built up? That’s a big, huge component. When you get into retirement, for most of our clients, for most people we see, that number is not as important anymore. It doesn’t mean it’s not important at all. It just means it’s not as important anymore.

Steve Lewit: Also, net worth includes other assets like real estate and jewelry, and maybe you own a business someplace apart, and that has no bearing on cash flow when it comes to retirement. Gabriel, we have real estate owner clients whose net worth is tremendous and have no cash flow.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so for most folks they realize in retirement oh wow, this number, I guess that’s cool but how much income can I get?

Steve Lewit: Right.

Gabriel Lewit: The second part that’s interesting about the net worth is more often than not when you start to project forward, retirement projections, you see oh, I’m going to have $3 million or $5 million or $7 million when I turn age 85 or age 90. I look at my clients and I say, “Is that how much you want to leave your kids?” They look at me, well, they look at each other first. Husband looks to wife and they’re shaking their head no.

Steve Lewit: No. No.

Gabriel Lewit: No, definitely not, so I say okay. That’s what I mean when I say it’s not as important. What do people want to do? They want to spend their money. Most people want to spend their money in retirement, and so that’s an interesting thing just as you think about building and building and building your net worth. Keep in mind is it doing for you what you want it to do or is it just money sitting in a bank account or sitting in your house?

Steve Lewit: That’s going to go to somebody else. Yeah, so how do you solve that problem?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’ve got to have a plan, obviously, because without that you’re not going to be able to see what your future projected net worth is going to look like.

Steve Lewit: This is a test. What component of the plan is most important when you retire?

Gabriel Lewit: It couldn’t be income.

Steve Lewit: I like it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, your income plan, guys, is going to be really, really key to that. You’ve got to focus on income, income, income, spending, spending, spending. I had one client look at me and she said, “You’re telling me I can spend?” She looks at her husband and she’s like, “I have no problem spending.” I was like well, we’ve got to talk that through, but yes, that’s the idea. Yes, you’ve got to start spending your money.

Steve Lewit: Exactly.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s the opposite of building your net worth. It’s bringing it down, but it’s doing so with a purpose.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so we get a lot of people that come in and say we want to talk about our investments and growth rates. Well, that’s all important, but what’s important in retirement, a switch of thinking, the thinking instead of accumulating assets and saying how much are my assets growing by, the switch is I got assets, how much income can those assets produce for me so I can go out and have some fun.

Gabriel Lewit: Absolutely. That’s going to bring us to our next downside that people may not tell you about, which is you might get bored, okay? We’re talking about wine and rainbows and unicorns and dream retirements, but what happens if you get bored after you retire?

Steve Lewit: That’s a great question.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it’s funny because I’m not retired, obviously, but I’ve taken a week and a half off for vacation once, I couldn’t tell you when, once in awhile.

Steve Lewit: Once in awhile.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s been awhile, but I do remember very specifically at like the seven day mark, I’m like all right, now what?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’m about eight days. I don’t remember ever having a two week vacation, but somewhere back there I remember like in the second week, it’s man, I can’t wait to get back to work.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and it’s a little different if you know it’s temporary versus permanent, but that’s the question here. A downside is what if you get bored? What do you do about that, Dad?

Steve Lewit: What I do is, hmm, what do we do about getting bored?

Gabriel Lewit: I know what you do. You know, folks, there’s people out there that work to live and then there’s people out there that live to work, and I know which one I’m looking at right now.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I kind of love working.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Well, I enjoy it.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s one of the answers, right?

Steve Lewit: I never get bored here.

Gabriel Lewit: If work is your passion, whatever that might be, and you’ve got to find something that you’re passionate about, then you can do that either full-time, some of our retired clients realize they don’t even want to be retired and they work more. You could do it part-time, you could volunteer. You’ve got to find something, or the things that we talk a lot about, very much related to this topic we were just talking about about spending, is I ask this question. If money were no object, Dad, hypothetically for a moment, because everyone’s always going to be like well, I can’t do that.

Steve Lewit: I can’t afford that.

Gabriel Lewit: If money were no object, what would you really want to do? What’s on your, you call it a bucket list, but what would you really do? Think about that. Sit down and actually think about it. Don’t just give me the half a second well, I just want to do a little traveling.

Steve Lewit: Something that you’re passionate about.

Gabriel Lewit: Really sit down. Okay, so you want to travel. Where? What would be a dream vacation that you’ve never done that you’ve always wanted to do regardless of how much it would cost? Let’s figure that out, okay?

Steve Lewit: That’s right.

Gabriel Lewit: This is your time to do it because when you’re 80 and you haven’t done it yet, you’re going to be like oh, I’m too tired, I’m too old, or too unhealthy, whatever.

Steve Lewit: No, no, no. That’s not true. Some people at 80 are full of energy.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I should say yes, very much depends on the person.

Steve Lewit: Don’t paint that picture.

Gabriel Lewit: Very much depends on the person, okay?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so the end of boredom, here’s a philosophical statement for everybody and you, Gabriel, the end of boredom is the beginning of passion or the beginning of passion is the end of boredom. You like that, huh?

Gabriel Lewit: That’s deep.

Steve Lewit: Well, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: As quoted by Steven R. Lewit.

Steve Lewit: R. Lewit. All right. Take that all down, folks, and I’ll autograph it for you, and that will mean nothing. Without passion in life, life becomes boring. It’s just running from one thing to the other and nothing has meaning for you. I’m, so are you, Gabriel, I can see it in you, we’re passionate about our business, so we’re never bored here. We might get tired, but we don’t get bored. If I were somewhere and I’m getting bored, I’m going to go to my passion, which is I’ll probably take my computer and go to the coffee shop or sit by the pool and I’ll be writing for two or three hours, and I’ll be happy as can be.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep. Well, that’s really the key is finding things that you want to do. I mean, look, if you have money that you want to spend, you’ve got to find a way to spend it. If you are interested in non-financial things, that’s obviously much easier. You don’t have to worry about the money side of things, and in some ways that brings me to my third downside that I want to talk about here today, which is you may feel guilty about spending your money.

Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s so cool.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, so we’re following a little daisy chain trail here. Daisy chain? Is that the thing you did, girls did back in the day? Is that right?

Steve Lewit: I’m not going there. Let’s move on. Let’s move on.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay.

Steve Lewit: They’re linked up.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, you’re looking at me weird.

Steve Lewit: No, I’m not. I’m just moving on.

Gabriel Lewit: We talked about, first of all, you’ve got to spend your money if you don’t want to leave a bunch of money to your beneficiaries.

Steve Lewit: Why would you feel guilty about spending money?

Gabriel Lewit: Then you got to create a bucket list of how you’re going to spend it. Then you still may not want to spend it because you feel guilty about it.

Steve Lewit: It’s like you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing because all your life you scrimped and saved and put every penny away, and all of a sudden that boundary is taken away from you.

Gabriel Lewit: Right, yeah, and so it’s very, very common that people, regardless of amount of money that they have, big or small, let’s say you have $4 million saved up and you don’t need it all for income. You might be feeling very guilty about taking 10 or 20 or $30,000 that you could easily afford to spend and spend it, even though you’ve stated in your planning goals and objectives that you don’t want to leave all your money to your kids.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I had a client that wanted to buy a Tesla, and it was 120 some thousand dollars, and he was about to pull the trigger, and he looked at me and said, “I can’t do this. I feel so guilty about spending this money.” We had a long talk about that, and I felt like his therapist. He eventually bought the car and was just so happy with it.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, so that’s the idea, right? How do you get past that feeling of guilt, and being open and available to spend your money? What are some strategies somebody can use there to get away from that feeling of guilt?

Steve Lewit: Right. Well, you know, we always go back, you have to have a plan, because the plan is like a map. It’s a roadmap, and you just follow the roadmap because the roadmap gets you where you want to go and the game in life is I want to get from A to B. How do I get to B and not worry about it and have a good time?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, so folks, that’s another one there. You know, making sure that you don’t feel guilty and if you do feel guilty about spending your money, there’s ways of working through that in your planning that will allow you, whether it’s bucketing out a bucket of money that you can see in your plan, will never impact you and your income or your legacy, so you feel more comfortable about spending it. For others it’s leaving the money in cash.

Gabriel Lewit: Why? Even though that’s not a great financial decision, when money is invested people feel like they shouldn’t spend it because why? It’s invested, so for some, leaving it in cash, a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash kind of encourages you to spend it. Why? Because it’s just sitting there not earning any interest. You might as well spend it. There’s little strategies that we can use to help make sure that we’re accomplishing these things on your list. Okay, there is a long, long list here, Dad. How about you pick the last one before we move on to our next topic here. These are again, downsides of retirement that you may not be thinking about in advance.

Steve Lewit: Okay, I’m going to pick this one that says plan for a long retirement. Plan to live a long time.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s a good one. That’s a good one. I just to talked to someone the other day. Our standard projections and our plans goes out to age 90. She looks at me, dead serious, and she says, “Oh, I’m not living past 80.”

Steve Lewit: Yeah, and it’s like how do you know? Well, mom and dad died at 80 and my brother died at 74. Yeah, but we’ve seen so many people that have the same story that are 90 years old and if you don’t plan for that you’re going to run into trouble.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s almost like it’s funny, because a downside isn’t that you would live a long time.

Steve Lewit: No, the downside is you’re going to spend more money.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Correct.

Steve Lewit: Then you’ve got healthcare to face if you have a long-term care situation where you need home healthcare or you’re going into assisted living, or you’re going into a nursing home. Where does that money come from and is it in your budget that yeah, I might live a long time, but the chances of me getting ill living a long time are higher because I’m living a long time. This is why years ago cancer rates used to be much lower. Why? Because people were dying at 65 and 68. Now people are dying at 95 and 100. 100 is not unusual anymore.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: I had a client who said to me, “I don’t want to live to 90.” I said to her, “Why not?” She says, “Well, maybe if I’m healthy.”

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing, right?

Steve Lewit: Sure, of course.

Gabriel Lewit: Folks, yeah, in your planning that’s a very simple one. You project out longer and you make sure that we’ve got that accounted for, and you’ve got to make sure you’ve got enough money saved up just to be on the safe side in case you live a long, healthy, active, enjoyable life. Those are some of the downsides, and there’s many more. Maybe we’ll circle back to this on a future episode, but there’s things that you don’t always think about in retirement. You focus on A but you forget about B, and these are things that might be worth identifying and thinking through a little bit sooner.

Steve Lewit: So you don’t wind up at C or Z.

Gabriel Lewit: Amen.

Steve Lewit: Amen.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s right. All right, so our second part of our show here today, and folks, if you have questions on that or we can help you in any way, shape or form, give us a call at 847-499-3330. Of course if you’re a current client, we’re always welcoming of a review call or any questions or needs you might have.

Gabriel Lewit: If you’re not a client of ours, everything starts with just a 15 minute introductory phone call to see how we might be able to help and what your top concerns and goals are. Again, give us a call or go to our website, sglfinancial.com, and click Contact Us. All right, so today on our second part of our show, we talked about, we’re going to cover here, hold on, let me find it, your risk tolerance and are you taking too much risk or being too much of a risk taker for your current age or lifestyle? That’s a good intro there, right? Good question.

Steve Lewit: In our business, they give tests or we give tests and that’s supposed to give a risk profile.

Gabriel Lewit: Can’t pass, can’t fail, just gives an answer.

Steve Lewit: It gives an answer, and it says oh, you should take a 60/40 portfolio, which is 60% equities and 40% bonds and alternatives.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and others, it depends, there’s lots of these out there you can take.

Steve Lewit: A number.

Gabriel Lewit: Give you a speed limit sign with a number on it, right? You’re a 55 mile per hour, which really just means you’re a 55 stock, 45 bonds, okay, but it’s all designed to tell you, in the spectrum of all stock versus 0% stock, how much do you want to have in stocks and equities?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so risk profile is really asking you this question. How much do you want to worry about your money?

Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm

Steve Lewit: Do you agree with that?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It’s basically saying do you want to have big swings and volatility and really focus on aggressive growth? Because as you guys know, you can’t get huge returns without taking any risk, and so risk is a primary driver of your long-term return to some level. Depends on your portfolio construction as well, but very high level, more risk equals usually more return long-term.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, so Gabriel, how do I go about finding my risk profile? Because the tests really don’t, they’re not me. They’re just numbers and they can’t interpret my emotions. A test may say you should be comfortable driving at 92 miles an hour, but when I get up to 80 I’m scared stiff. The test didn’t work out.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, there’s two ways to look at this. There’s what are you comfortable with and what should you be doing?

Steve Lewit: What are your goals?

Gabriel Lewit: I’m going to use your analogy here. I’m comfortable in my car, very comfortable, this is a bad thing, driving 100 miles per hour down the highway. Now, not if there’s lots of cars, okay?

Steve Lewit: I’m with you. I’m right behind you, by the way.

Gabriel Lewit: But if there were lots of cars, should I be driving at 100 miles per hour even if I was comfortable doing it?

Steve Lewit: Exactly, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: The answer to that is no.

Steve Lewit: Nope. Nope.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s similar with your retirement. You may come in to me and talk to me, and I’ll ask you this question, “Sir, ma’am, how are you when it comes to your risk? Are you aggressive? Are you conservative?” Almost undoubtedly, the husband looks at me and says, “Yeah, I’m pretty aggressive,” and the wife looks at me, “Yeah, honey, I don’t like when you’re taking all that much risk.” Not to stereotype, but that’s very common. But the question is okay, let’s say you’re the aggressive person. Should you be taking that much risk as you’re entering into your retirement years? Okay? There’s another example that’s commonly given, which is climbing a mountain. They say that the ascent is not as dangerous as the descent.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: You actually need to go slower and more carefully on the descent because of the additional danger that you face in going down.

Steve Lewit: Love it, so climbing the mountain I accumulate my three million bucks, and now I’m on the descent because now I have to spend it. That is much more complicated and dangerous than just climbing up.

Gabriel Lewit: Especially because there’s a closely held relationship between risk and spending that doesn’t exist when you’re in accumulation mode, and you know what it’s called. I’m going to test you today.

Steve Lewit: There is a correlation between spending and risk in retirement.

Gabriel Lewit: Sequence of returns.

Steve Lewit: Oh, I thought you said in accumulation mode.

Gabriel Lewit: No, I said that’s not there in accumulation.

Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s not there. I missed that, and I’m saying what does he know that I don’t know?

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, I mean lots of things.

Steve Lewit: I’m supposed to know more than you because I’m older than you, but that doesn’t always work that way. Yeah, sequence of return risk. Ask yourself this. If you have money in the market, and this is 2008, and let’s say you had a million dollars. A million dollars in 2008, 13 months later it was worth $490,000. If you saw, if you had a million dollars in the market and it turned to $490,000-

Gabriel Lewit: At one point.

Steve Lewit: At one point.

Gabriel Lewit: It didn’t stay down there for long.

Steve Lewit: No, but let’s say that happened today. The market’s headed down. Let’s say it keeps going, and your million dollars is worth 490. Will you worry about your income and spending? Will you sleep at night or will you freak out and say oh my God, what do I do now?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s interesting you use that number, because I have a client that just came onboard with us. Now, it’s not going to impact him because we’ve bucketed out all of his money. We can circle back to that. It’s one of the strategies, but yeah, he has a million dollars almost to the tee, and his portfolio went down, at one point I think it was 8%. Even at 8% down, so 920, he’s looking at me like is this going to throw me off? Yeah, obviously, if your million goes to 500,000 right as you’re about to retire or right as you’re entering into retirement, that’s a massive, massive-

Steve Lewit: Or even five years afterwards.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. That’s a massive shift.

Steve Lewit: It’s a massive shift and the question is when that happens and you lose your confidence and you don’t sleep at night, and you talk about it or you start cutting back your spending, then you’ve exceeded your risk profile.

Gabriel Lewit: Right, and there’s two parts, is even if you were, in your mind, comfortable with that, the numbers might tell you that it’s not going to work out for you. You can’t lose that much of your funds while pulling out your income in retirement and survive it. That’s the sequence of returns risk. It’ll cause you to deplete far too soon even if you were magically comfortable with that kind of volatility.

Gabriel Lewit: The first goal, folks, is figuring out okay, where am I risk tolerance wise today? That’s step one. Not how you feel about it, where am I today in my portfolio? There’s oftentimes a big disconnect. I’ve seen many people that thought they were conservative that turned out to be aggressive, people that thought they were more conservative because they were in a target date fund that was actually very different allocation than they thought it was. There’s all sorts of different misalignments, right?

Steve Lewit: Well, here’s the question that nobody asks, and here’s the thing that many advisors don’t talk about. If you go to an advisor, say, “I’ve got a million dollars,” the advisor says, “That’s great. I’m going to build you a great portfolio,” and you’ll say, “Well, how much do you think I can make?” The guy says, “I don’t know, somewhere between six and 8%,” and you say, “Oh, that’s pretty good.” But what you never talk about is hey, if 2008 hits me, how much can I lose? Can I lose 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%? How much will this portfolio lose in a year like 2008? That’s the real conversation.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so our topic here, again, is what is your risk? Are you comfortable with it? Step one is knowing where you’re at today. You start by identifying what’s in my portfolio? You take inventory of everything. Now, you can do that with us. We can run an analysis for you where we type in all your holdings and your tickers, and we will be able to tell you instantly how much of your portfolio is equities versus bonds.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s part one. How much is really risky or speculative? What’s your downside risk? This portfolio that you have today could go down 40% in the next 2008 type crash, and then we have to assess how do you feel about that? Is that where you want it to be? Is it in alignment? Then could your plan even sustain that level of risk? We have to mash all those together to come up with a determination of if that’s a good fit for you in your planning.

Steve Lewit: Now, Gabriel, you brought up bucket planning. Give a two minute summary. I know we need to move on, but give a two minute summary of how that mitigates risk and gives people a higher confidence level.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, I will. Actually if you’ve been following us at all or you’ve ever talked to us, you know we’re big, big fans of a strategy called bucket planning in retirement. Quite simple, it’s almost a way, I call it this, a way to have your cake and eat it too. Why do I say that? Because what you’re doing is very purposefully de-risking money you need in the short-term. For the conservative part of a family household, they’re very happy there, right? They’re seeing that okay, we’re going to take money for the next five years or the next 10 years.

Gabriel Lewit: We’re going to de-risk that and have either no or very low risk or volatility for that portion of our money. Then the other part of the family member that’s the aggressive one who says hey, well what about me? We say no problem. We got you covered, because in our 10 year buckets and our 15 year buckets and our 20 years buckets, guess what? We can take much more risk and be really aggressive and growth oriented. Why? Because we have time on our side, which you don’t have in the shorter term years. Like magic, everybody seems to really love this approach. It does work so well, folks, and it’s amazing how many people out there have never heard of this approach, don’t have it implemented, don’t understand it. We can help you noodle that through.

Steve Lewit: Or hear about it in a very limited way. Yeah, so there is a way to take a lot of risk in the right place that will make you feel comfortable. Even though you don’t like losing money, you know that hey, this is in my plan. It works. I’ve got plenty of time to recoup the losses and I don’t have to worry about my income tomorrow.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep, income’s covered. All right, so guys, if you have questions on that, of course call us, 847-499-3330. Always happy to help reconcile the risk and get you in alignment. Every year or so when you get your car tuned up, you check if your wheels are in alignment. We’ve got to check if your risk is in alignment with your personal life car.

Steve Lewit: I have to check if my body’s in alignment.

Gabriel Lewit: My knee’s not in alignment, I’ll tell you this.

Steve Lewit: Your body’s not in alignment.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, well, let’s do one minute of getting to know the S&G here in SGL.

Steve Lewit: Oh, here we go.

Gabriel Lewit: We’ve got a few different questions here that producer Katie curated for us.

Steve Lewit: Thanks, Kate.

Gabriel Lewit: Thanks, producer Katie, and I’m going to give our esteemed Mr. S the opportunity to ask the first question.

Steve Lewit: Okay, so the question Katie said is how many books do you read? I’m going to change that a little bit. What is the best book you’ve read, what are you reading now? Okay, if you’re not reading anything-

Gabriel Lewit: I have kids.

Steve Lewit: So you’re reading stories.

Gabriel Lewit: My last book, if you ask me the last book I read-

Steve Lewit: Moonlight, Star Night or whatever it’s called.

Gabriel Lewit: Hold on, it was-

Steve Lewit: Goodnight, Moon. You’re reading Goodnight, Moon.

Gabriel Lewit: Llama, Llama something.

Steve Lewit: Right. All right, so I’ll rephrase that. If you had time, what book would you pick today, or what kind of book if you don’t know a specific one, would you pick today to read?

Gabriel Lewit: You know, I always liked a good like a crime thriller, so who was the guy back in the day? He was more a legal guy, I guess, Grisham? He was like a legal crime.

Steve Lewit: Grisham, yep.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so I used to love going to Barnes & Noble when I had time and pick out that new best-

Steve Lewit: Easy reading.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, best release, new release, bestseller, and just kind of tune out and live in a different world there. I like the Jack, is it Jack Ryan?

Steve Lewit: Jack Ryan I think is a movie, no?

Gabriel Lewit: Is it Jack Ryan? Can you Google that real quick, Katie? Producer?

Steve Lewit: The author.

Gabriel Lewit: No, it’s the character of the books. I think it’s Tom Clancy, I think writes it.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I just watched a series.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, okay, no, they got the TV show out now. I read all the books, the Jack Ryan books.

Steve Lewit: Jack Ryan.

Gabriel Lewit: I like those.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, those are good.

Gabriel Lewit: Because it’s all about terrorists taking over the world and nuclear threats and he saves the day, and I don’t know. It’s kind of fun.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, yeah, I enjoy that too.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so those would be some of my top picks, but I’m on Llama, Llama right now.

Steve Lewit: I like Llama, Llama.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s a really cute book.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it is. You know, some of the kids’ books are really interesting because they’re really very deep in many ways.

Gabriel Lewit: Little Pea, P-E-A, where the little pea, the trick is that he only likes to eat vegetables and his dessert is candy, and he does not want to eat it. He wants to eat his vegetables for dessert.

Steve Lewit: Oh, this one, it must be a new one because I don’t know that one. You know, after five kids you think you know them all, but there’s always new ones.

Gabriel Lewit: Right, yeah. Well, how about you?

Steve Lewit: Oh, well, okay, so my current book is pretty heavy duty. It’s and anthology. It’s very thick. It’s almost like 500 pages and it’s called Poems That Will Break Your Heart.

Gabriel Lewit: I just got really sad.

Steve Lewit: No, no, they’re great. They’re really great to read.

Gabriel Lewit: Great as in depressing?

Steve Lewit: No, no. Well, some are. You know, poetry, even though it’s depressing, there’s something very beautiful in poetry even though it’s depressing or can be depressing. The trick in poetry is how can you talk about something that’s depressing and feel good about it in the words and the way it’s said and everything?

Steve Lewit: But these poems are just out of sight and the guy that wrote it, I can’t think of his name at the moment, he analyzes the poems for you and tells you the background and where they came from and how they evolved. That’s even more interesting than the poems because each poem is built in a certain-

Steve Lewit: You know, if it’s a Russian poet, they’re talking about the revolution or they’re talking about the oppression or something like that, where that all came from, so it’s quite interesting. It’s quite long and it’s a slow read, so I just pick it up and read a piece here and there, but I love this book.

Gabriel Lewit: Cool.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, I’m going to be honest. I’m not going to rush out to buy that.

Steve Lewit: I know. I don’t think many people will. If anyone wants a copy, let me know.

Gabriel Lewit: If there was something polar opposite of the Jack Ryan terrorist, nuclear annihilation, it’s probably your love poem, sad love poem anthology.

Steve Lewit: Sure, poems that will break your heart.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, okay. Well, folks, we want to do more of these, but we’re out of time here for today. We’ll do more on the next show. But thanks again for tuning in. We’ve again, loved to have you join us. If you have questions give us a call, 847-499-3330. Got to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us, and on our next show, I know we were supposed to do another listener question from last time too, we’re going to get to that on our next one, so tune in and we’ll see you there.

Steve Lewit: All right, folks, enjoy this beautiful weather. Stay well, and we’ll see you soon.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye now.

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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