When Saving More Starts Working Against Your Retirement (Ep. 13)

You spent decades learning how to save. Retirement may require learning something much harder: when to spend, give, connect, and use your money while you still have the time.

In this episode of Mastering the 360 Mindset, Jon Meyer explores five questions he frequently hears from people approaching or living in retirement. He examines when continued saving can work against the life you’ve built, why spending can feel uncomfortable even when the numbers support it, and how money can be used to buy back time, health, experiences, purpose, and relationships. Jon also covers portfolio income, giving money to children, fair versus equal inheritances, and the role financial planning can play in making these decisions with greater clarity. 

Key points:

• Knowing when continued saving may be costing you valuable retirement years and experiences
• Using money intentionally to buy back time, support your health, and maintain meaningful relationships
• Moving beyond the idea that retirement spending should come only from portfolio income
• Giving money to adult children while you’re alive and communicating the purpose behind your gifts
• Understanding why a fair inheritance doesn’t always require dividing every asset equally among children

• And more!

Resources:

• Die With Zero by Bill Perkins

---

Watch us on YouTube at https://youtu.be/h2SPZAM_dpY.

Connect with Jon Meyer:

• BGM
• LinkedIn: Jon Meyer
• Email: jmeyer@BGM360.com
• Schedule a Call

---

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jon Meyer: I think people go through life saving money and using their time to build money, and in that way, the switch needs to get flipped. You need to start using money to buy time. And that’s the biggest thing that I tell people as you age, is the switch needs to flip to buying time, buying health, sometimes buying purpose through giving to charity, giving to your children, buying relationships, buying experiences.

[00:00:26] -: Welcome to Mastering the 360 Mindset with Jon Meyer from BGM. Join us as we explore ways to make the most out of your wealth, health, and time, unlocking opportunities for balance and lasting success. With insights from Jon’s years of experience and guest experts, you’ll gain the tools to design a life that works on your terms.

[00:00:47] -: Now, onto the show

[00:00:51] Jon Meyer: Hello, and welcome to Mastering the 360 Mindset. My name is Jon Meyer, and today I have with us Patrice [00:01:00] Sikora, who is, some of you don’t know, my behind-the-scenes producer, also an extraordinaire because she used to be i- in the reporting scene as a national reporter. So she today is gonna ask me questions.

[00:01:12] Jon Meyer: I thought today would be a fun time to go backwards a little bit. We’ve been doing the podcast for about nine months, and we’re getting some questions from people, both in the podcast as well as in typical client meetings, that seem to be following a similar theme. So I thought, let’s talk about the top five questions today that we’re seeing, and I’m gonna ask Patrice to do the interview today.

[00:01:35] Patrice Sikora: Oh, Jon, I’m so excited. I’m so excited.

[00:01:37] Jon Meyer: It’s up to you now.

[00:01:40] Patrice Sikora: All right. Jon, it is good to be with you today.

[00:01:44] Jon Meyer: Thank you, Patrice. Isn’t that how we start things? It’s great being here. Yes.

[00:01:48] Patrice Sikora: Well, Jon, I do like the questions that you’ve got here too, because they do seem to be very down-to-earth, something that everybody…

[00:01:55] Patrice Sikora: You know, they come up a lot in podcasts with other people as well, other clients. So how about let’s start [00:02:00] with, after saving for a lifetime, how do I know I have enough?

[00:02:06] Jon Meyer: That’s one question that I get almost daily, and I find it interesting because inherent in that question is maybe the other question, which is when does saving more work against you?

[00:02:22] Jon Meyer: And I look at it from the angle of, and I’m probably gonna touch on this a few times, the difference between happiness and joy. I think we spend a lot of time in life trying to get to a point where we f- try to find happiness, but happiness is so fleeting. And so joy is harder to find, and I look at it from the perspective of if we’re trying to find joy, it’s more about purpose.

[00:02:48] Jon Meyer: And purpose, when you’re saving money, is sometimes just the saving of money. Sometimes it’s your work you do. And so from the standpoint of [00:03:00] looking at after saving for a lifetime, how do I… I know I have enough, it’s turning on that switch. Because what I’ll tell you, and this is anecdotal by all means, but almost everyone I work with, after I, after they pass away, let’s say I work with them for 20 or 30 years, they live a long retirement, they, they pass away.

[00:03:20] Jon Meyer: Almost every one of them dies with the same or much more money than they started retirement with.

[00:03:27] Patrice Sikora: Hmm.

[00:03:28] Jon Meyer: So it’s not a question of should they keep saving. I don’t think anybody really needs to keep saving. If you think about the other side to my question, when does saving more work against you? Well, if you’re saving, let’s say, 20, 30, $40,000 a year into a 401and, and maybe some brokerage accounts, if you work three more years, y- yeah, you’re gonna have $100,000 in more money, sure.

[00:03:55] Jon Meyer: But will you use the f- that 100,000? Probably not. [00:04:00] You’ll probably die with it and leave it to your kids. So why don’t you just retire three years earlier and enjoy your time more? And I’m not saying everyone should, ’cause a lot of people like work. A lot of people want something to do. But there’s this idea that they have to work or they have to keep saving, and I think that that’s the problem.

[00:04:20] Jon Meyer: So from the standpoint of How do I know I have enough? I mean, part of it’s math. So many people don’t go into this with math. They go into it and say, “Well, I’m not sure if I do, but I don’t really wanna hire a financial advisor because that’s expensive.” Well, if you don’t know the math, how do you know if you have enough or don’t have enough?

[00:04:40] Jon Meyer: Because oftentimes it’s first a math question, but then the second part is definitely, it’s a, it’s an emotional question. And so many people that I know, though, they should leave earlier. They really should. And I’m not saying that to say they should do nothing. They should move on to the next best thing, if it’s volunteering, if it’s [00:05:00] consulting, whatever that is, if it’s hanging out with your grandkids.

[00:05:03] Jon Meyer: But they should move on to something more than just working and slaving over saving money.

[00:05:10] Patrice Sikora: It’s interesting. We’re, we’re taught to save usually, but we’re not taught to spend. No. We don’t know how to spend.

[00:05:17] Jon Meyer: No. No, people don’t know how to spend at all, and what’s been so fun on our end sometimes is we get to talk about it from that angle of spending, and one of the parts that when you’re trying to encourage someone to spend is so antithetical to what financial advice seems to be.

[00:05:34] Jon Meyer: Because our industry is built on, well, save, save, save, and that’s because our industry’s fees are made by you saving more and us managing it. I get it. But the other side to that equation is when you’re trying to talk someone into s- to spending, it’s a lot of fun because you’re really helping people envision what they could be doing or where they could be going.

[00:05:56] Jon Meyer: And I always use this example, but [00:06:00] getting someone to, very first time they ever do it, fly first class changes their world forever. They will never, ever not fly first class again because they’re just amazed at how much simpler travel is and how much more refreshed they are when they get to their end destination But the, the amount of agony they have over, “Can I afford first class?”

[00:06:22] Jon Meyer: is amazing to me. It’s just amazing. So yeah, I, I think it’s really hard to, to flip the switch into spending.

[00:06:31] Patrice Sikora: Well, it’s not only, I think, the spending. We’re also kind of taught to, to save so we can leave something behind, leave something- Yep … to the, to the kids, to the heirs. Do you ever get pushback from them if they s- come and say, “You’ve told my parents to spend all this money that was going to come to me”?

[00:06:50] Jon Meyer: You know what’s interesting? I’ve actually seen the opposite. So what we do sometimes is we do family meetings. Not sometimes, we’ve done a lot more, actually, than, than not as we move [00:07:00] forward. We do these family meetings where we bring the kids in, and sometimes you bring them in before someone is doing their estate plan.

[00:07:06] Jon Meyer: Sometimes you bring them in after to explain the estate plan. But what’s interesting is when you bring kids in, particularly before, and you say, “Listen, Mom and Dad are gonna do an estate plan. You know, we need to know a couple questions, like do you want the family cabin? Do you want this? How about that?”

[00:07:23] Jon Meyer: And inherently in that, the kids are saying, “Why don’t you enjoy your money more? Why don’t you spend it? Why… Don’t leave it all to us.” And in fact, there’s a lot of clients where I would say the kids are probably more successful than the parents. But I had the same experience. I sat down with my kids a couple years back at Christmas, ’cause they were actually all home for it, and my wife and I sat down and talked with our kids about, “Hey, here’s what we’re thinking.

[00:07:51] Jon Meyer: We’re gonna go do our estate plan. What do you think?” And they actually thought giving more to charity was a better answer than giving it all to them.

[00:07:59] Patrice Sikora: [00:08:00] Wow.

[00:08:01] Jon Meyer: And I was a little caught off guard by that. It changed my thinking a lot. A lot, a lot. I would say, I would say that shifted my wife and I’s thinking a ton, but I see that with, with clients all the time.

[00:08:12] Jon Meyer: So to your question, kids typically don’t think that that’s a problem usually. I’m not saying that’s not always the c- case, but usually. In fact, the way I like to say it to parents is, just as a reminder, if you don’t spend your money, your children will. So don’t take the first class flight. The, the week after your death, your kids will be taking the first class flight on your money.

[00:08:41] Jon Meyer: And when you say it that way, it kinda… Sometimes that actually flips a switch.

[00:08:45] Patrice Sikora: Yeah. All right, speaking of spending, let’s take that another step further. What do people want to spend on but they don’t?

[00:08:55] Jon Meyer: Yeah. So what I would say that [00:09:00] instead of categorizing it as things and whatever, the way I think about it is I think people go through life saving money and using their time to build money, and in, in that way, the switch needs to get flipped.

[00:09:18] Jon Meyer: You need to start using money to buy time. And that’s the biggest thing that I tell people as you age, is the switch needs to flip to buying time, buying health, sometimes buying purpose through giving to charity, giving to your children, buying relationships, buying experiences. It sounds interesting maybe to say- Hmm

[00:09:40] Jon Meyer: you’re buying things.

[00:09:41] Patrice Sikora: Yeah.

[00:09:41] Jon Meyer: But what you’re doing is you’re using money t- as a tool to actually start building purpose differently. Buying time is an important aspect of how we spend money because as we age, I think so many people still think that they need to do what they did [00:10:00] in getting there. So they might, for example, still wanna mow their own lawn.

[00:10:04] Jon Meyer: They might still want to, you know, blow their driveway for snow. They might still wanna clean off their own roof. But those are the things that you, we all hear about when we hear of, you know, people falling off of roofs, or we hear of people, you know, wrecking their backs or having a heart attack shoveling snow.

[00:10:21] Jon Meyer: Like, we should be buying the time back on a lot of that stuff and enjoying life, as opposed to feeling like we still need to do everything. That doesn’t mean you can’t mow your lawn if, if you’re 85 years old and you just have nothing else to do and you wanna do it for exercise. That’s cool. But I do think people don’t spend enough time thinking about what should I do versus what shouldn’t I do because I sh- I do have the money now to buy time back, and then take that time to use it for other things.

[00:10:49] Jon Meyer: So when I say buy health, part of it is Yeah. Maybe you pay for a trainer and actually start to get a little healthier, but you also now have time to go to the health club or to [00:11:00] do different things, to learn how to do different things. You know, the number of people I meet as they age that pick up biking, for example, like, that’s great.

[00:11:08] Jon Meyer: That’s where you can get healthier, and you have the money to buy a nice bike. Buying purpose, I, I’m gonna s- probably, we’ll probably talk about this a little bit with kids, but I see so many people, as they age, have so much more joy in giving their kids money and seeing their kids use it instead of waiting till they die.

[00:11:29] Jon Meyer: And I see that same thing with charity. When you talk to someone who says, “I might give a few thousand dollars to charity,” and I can kinda pivot that conversation to a point where I’m like, “Listen, you can afford to do X amount more,” and it, and maybe it’s 10 times more, 15 times, whatever it is, they are blown away, but it’s because of excitement, like the joy.

[00:11:52] Jon Meyer: And if you think about it, I catch my… I catch people in my family who are, even my own mother, who’s over [00:12:00] 90 years old, will send me reels or something occasionally from Instagram with these videos of people giving away money. “Oh, isn’t this cute? This is so much fun.” And it’s, you know, some young person walking around and gave $10,000 to someone on the street.

[00:12:15] Jon Meyer: And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s because it’s fun to give money to people. It’s fun to give something that they don’t have and see how they use it,” whether it’s your children or whether it’s charity. So anyways, longs- long answer to how should we spend money, but I think people s- think of spending money as, “I’ve already got everything I need, so I don’t need to spend money,” and it’s like, “No, actually, you should spend more money.

[00:12:39] Jon Meyer: You’re just not thinking about how to use it to buy back your time, your health, purpose, you know, invest in some relationships.” And I’ll, and I’ll Just pivot for a second on that. As we age, we slip on relationships, and yet it, the, all the studies show that the, the one thing that [00:13:00] hurts us the most is loneliness.

[00:13:03] Jon Meyer: And if we are not… I mean, we have to think about this. One of the studies showed that loneliness equates to smoking 14 cigarettes a day. So loneliness literally can kill you. Well, the study that came out of MIT basically showed that we need to maintain about 150 relationships, and I’ve talked about this in the past, but that 150 doesn’t have to be all our best friends.

[00:13:29] Jon Meyer: Two people could be our best friends. Four people outside of those two could be close confidants. Six people outside of that could be general friends from our past that we still stay in touch with. But, you know, when you get outside of the bullseye, to, to fill in your 150, it could be your barista. It could be- Mm-hmm

[00:13:48] Jon Meyer: the person that just- Mm-hmm … waits on you at your favorite restaurant, the people that just help you assimilate into the community, because those relationships make you feel grounded. And I think what m- so [00:14:00] many people do as they age, and I encourage people to spend on stuff like this, what so many people do is they kinda go introverted.

[00:14:07] Jon Meyer: They stop leaving the house. They stop investing in those kinds of things. And so I, I always point out, for example, when you say, “Oh, I can give money to X,” I’m like, “Great, we should give money to charity,” but if there’s a way to give it to a charity that also allows you to do more volunteering or something so that you meet more people on a topic that you actually enjoy, that’s the healthier way to do it.

[00:14:31] Patrice Sikora: That’s it. That’s it. Well, look at, loneliness saps your purpose, which saps your joy.

[00:14:37] Jon Meyer: Yep.

[00:14:38] Patrice Sikora: You know, and if joy is what you’re after, joy is what keeps you going.

[00:14:41] Jon Meyer: Yeah. I can’t say enough about purpose and joy being the opposite of happiness.

[00:14:47] Patrice Sikora: Yeah.

[00:14:48] Jon Meyer: I mean, it’s just everyone seems to be chasing happiness, and happiness is so fleeting.

[00:14:52] Jon Meyer: I was so happy a couple nights ago when I had a steak, but it was like a 10-minute feeling. You [00:15:00] know? I enjoyed the heck out of it, but It’s not joyful.

[00:15:04] Patrice Sikora: You mentioned volunteering too, and I think that’s something that people may talk about but they don’t do, and yet the joy you can get from something like that, and as you say, you’re creating connections.

[00:15:17] Jon Meyer: Yes. Absolutely. The, the thing that I’ve seen with volunteering that’s so interesting is that it brings people together from disparate worlds-

[00:15:27] Patrice Sikora: Mm-hmm …

[00:15:27] Jon Meyer: who s- Mm-hmm … who have this in common, and I’ve seen it particularly when you volunteer, like if you have a, for, this is important actually, for people that have, like, a second home.

[00:15:38] Jon Meyer: Find something to volunteer at, at your second home, because you know what? There’s probably a lot of other people that have second homes around you, whether it’s a lake cabin, a home in a different state. And what happens is you start to find that all these people who have geographical difference with their first home start to come together and have a lot of commonality with you in your [00:16:00] second home And all of a sudden it becomes a group, and you have a text group going and it’s like, “Hey, I’m gonna be out there this weekend for whatever,” and people are like, “Oh, you know what?

[00:16:11] Jon Meyer: I, I, I’ll come out. If you’re gonna be out there, I’ll come out.” And I’ve seen this actually in action more than you think. I’ve seen this in action. It is so cool, and it creates almost that second life for people as they age because they’re at the same spot as all these people that are, they’re getting together with.

[00:16:28] Jon Meyer: Everyone’s in the same spot. Everyone’s searching for what’s next.

[00:16:32] Patrice Sikora: Well, we have strayed from the questions. We’ve gotten a little philosophical here.

[00:16:35] Jon Meyer: Hmm.

[00:16:36] Patrice Sikora: But let’s get back to, let’s… Hmm. How do I live on portfolio income and not touch the principal? Do you really get that question?

[00:16:44] Jon Meyer: I get that question all the time, and it’s interesting to me because from 2000, let’s say the mid-2000s, like 2008 or so to 2022 roughly, interest rates were very low, [00:17:00] right?

[00:17:00] Jon Meyer: Right. They were almost at zero.

[00:17:01] Patrice Sikora: Good time to get a mortgage.

[00:17:02] Jon Meyer: Yep, but not a good time to be a saver. Not a good time- Right … to earn interest. And so what really went out the window a bit was this idea that portfolios would generate enough income to live on. And so what really shifted was more of that focus on total portfolio return.

[00:17:19] Jon Meyer: Can we still get a certain rate of return instead of worrying about just interest? What’s interesting to me, ’cause our parents and our grandparents definitely still think about it as income off our portfolio, is that this just hasn’t died. People still are saying like, “Well, I wanna get a certain amount of income off my portfolio.

[00:17:37] Jon Meyer: I never wanna touch the principal.” And I’m like, well, first of all, you couldn’t do that for about a 15-year period. Now, when interest rates are higher, theoretically you could do that. But I find it to be such a limiting belief to say, “I’m gonna live off the interest,” because what you’re basically saying is if you want to do something extra and it, and the income isn’t there for it, [00:18:00] you’re just not gonna do it.

[00:18:01] Jon Meyer: So you’re gonna let millions of dollars just grow and give it to your kids because you don’t think you have the money? That makes no sense to me. So it’s really hard to get people to shift their mindset towards this idea of a total return instead of living off the interest. It really is. Like, it’s a daily question and, and it’s even with people that have invested with us for a long time.

[00:18:22] Jon Meyer: So I just bring that up because it, it is a problem, and I do think that for most people- The answer is hidden in the fact that we have to view the portfolio as this huge pile of money that you’ve built, and how do you wanna use it towards the end? I bring that up because especially towards the end, end, when people start saying, “Well, I don’t wanna spend money on healthcare.”

[00:18:48] Jon Meyer: Like, if I get disabled and I could maybe live a better life by bringing in a home healthcare worker, but I just don’t wanna spend the money, that’s where I kinda jump in and say, “But what’s the money for?”

[00:18:59] Patrice Sikora: Exactly. [00:19:00] And what are you gonna do, sit there and, and veg?

[00:19:03] Jon Meyer: Right. And that’s the thing, though. They’re like, “Well, I don’t- my income can’t cover it.”

[00:19:07] Jon Meyer: And I’m like, “But the whole point was to save all this money to do things like this.” Like, if, if your life’s better off by bringing in someone to make your meals or just be with you for four hours and do your laundry, like, that’s, that’s what the money’s for. So I just think people need to shift away from this concept of, does it, does the portfolio give me enough income?

[00:19:28] Jon Meyer: It’s an old concept, but it’s also a concept that makes sense to people because it’s similar to, I got a paycheck every day when I worked, and so they think, oh, well this is the same thing. It’s not. You can structure the portfolio to kick off their paycheck every month or every two weeks, just deposit right into their bank account, and they don’t even have to think about whether it came out of income or it came out of principal or whatever that…

[00:19:53] Jon Meyer: Like, we can do that. That’s not a problem. And half the time when you can do that, people kinda say, “Oh, I get it now.” [00:20:00] But anyways.

[00:20:01] Patrice Sikora: This all goes back to the same thing of, of what are you gonna do with your money? If you’re not gonna spend it on home healthcare aide, uh, your kids are gonna use it for a first class seat on a plane.

[00:20:10] Jon Meyer: Totally.

[00:20:11] Patrice Sikora: And in fact, you could use it to get that first class seat for you and your aide on that plane.

[00:20:16] Jon Meyer: Correct. And it doesn’t have to be out of your income. Just enjoy your money.

[00:20:20] Patrice Sikora: Enjoy it, enjoy it. And then here’s a question. All right, we’re talking about the kids and the money. Some people think if they give their kids money, it’s gonna make the kids lazy.

[00:20:32] Jon Meyer: Yeah. We get the lazy question all the time.

[00:20:35] Patrice Sikora: Really?

[00:20:36] Jon Meyer: Yeah. And I get it. Here’s what I tell people, and I really have internalized this with my children. You pretty much know by 16 if your kids are screwed up-

[00:20:47] Patrice Sikora: Hmm …

[00:20:47] Jon Meyer: because you did it. So, if you’re looking at it and saying, “Should I give my kids money?” You already know the answer.

[00:20:57] Jon Meyer: Like, if they’re in their [00:21:00] 20s or what, like, you kinda know who they’re gonna be. One kid’s a saver, one kid’s not. One kid’s gonna be super successful, one kid’s gonna be a struggling artist. Whatever it is, you know these things to some degree. And so, you know, in the book Die With Zero, he, he talks a little bit about how kids really are struggling between the ages of 25 and, and 40.

[00:21:22] Jon Meyer: That’s where life happens. That’s where people, you know, need to pay off school debt, they get married, they buy their first house, they have their ki- first children, all those kinds of things. And so if we’re gonna help our children, we should be helping them at that stage. And I do see people oftentimes at that stage saying, “Yeah, but what if my kid decides to stop working?”

[00:21:43] Jon Meyer: Listen, if you have a 28-year-old that stops working, like, you got other problems. Mm-hmm. So, why don’t we just help them a little bit in a way… And, and sometimes I, I encourage people to work into this slowly. So, an example slowly might be, [00:22:00] what if we gave them a few thousand dollars today, and then in a year we give them $5,000, and a year after that $10,000, and a year after that $25,000?

[00:22:12] Jon Meyer: And so what happens is, you know they’re probably gonna not spend the money as wisely, unless it’s an emergency, or unless it’s for sure a need, like they’re buying a new house and they need a down payment. But I s- I, I tell people, “If you, if you work in slowly, you get to see how they use it, and if they don’t use it well and they blow it, they’re blowing a small amount.

[00:22:31] Jon Meyer: And then next year they blow a little bit less, it’s still kind of a small amount. By the time you work up the amounts, you’ll find that they’ll have had practice, and they’ll have had the ability to talk to you about what’s important and how they did well or not so well with that money.” And by the time you start giving them really big dollar amounts, we’ve found, ’cause I’ve actually done this with clients, that the kids actually are pretty good at using it wisely.

[00:22:55] Jon Meyer: They actually want to save a chunk of it, and they realize that’s a good future answer. [00:23:00]

[00:23:00] Patrice Sikora: And they talk, they talk to their parents.

[00:23:02] Jon Meyer: They talk to their parents. Oh. Yeah, they actually communicate with their parents, which is a shocking thought. But I also encourage to that point, this communication. Like, “We’re giving it to you now for this reason,” as opposed to getting all excited, “I’m gonna give my kids $10,000,” and, and, “Oh my God, this is so great,” and it’s like, well, you should have more communication than that.

[00:23:23] Jon Meyer: So what I encourage people to do is talk to them about why you’re doing it. Talk to them about your concern that they don’t blow it. Like, that’s fine. Just say, “I, I, I have no, you know, say in this after I give it to you. I get that. I’m hoping that you’ll use it wisely.” You know, you can say that. But what I’ve seen is people just jump to…

[00:23:47] Jon Meyer: And I get it They’re gonna get lazy. Yep. But they probably won’t, unless you just have that person. We all know our children well enough to know if they are that one. And if they are that [00:24:00] one, then you talk about other ways to do it so that they don’t get access to it as fast maybe. Because I do believe in the concept of fair and equal are different.

[00:24:11] Jon Meyer: So every parent wants to be equal, but that’s not always fair. And I, and I, and I’ll, I’ll go to an extreme on that. The extreme is if one of your children is disabled and will be disabled for life, do you leave them the same amount of money as all your other kids, knowing they have probably higher healthcare expense?

[00:24:30] Jon Meyer: Or do you leave them a lot more of the money so that they can live comfortably? That might be fair, even though it’s not equal. And I’ll tell you in that example, ’cause I’ve had that example a few times, the other kids actually don’t mind if you leave the disabled child more. But you have to have that conversation.

[00:24:49] Jon Meyer: So that’s an extreme, but I’ll go back to what if one of your kids is the one that’s gonna quit their job and be lazy Well, fair and equal would [00:25:00] suggest you can almost be equal, but you’d set it up in a way that is fair, knowing that they’re going to spend it, you know, weirdly. And so you do it in a way that says, “I’m gonna dribble it out to them in small chunks.

[00:25:14] Jon Meyer: I’m going to help them on specific issues,” whatever those are. You know, that kind of way of doing it, as opposed to other kids where you might just say, “Well, I’m gonna give you $50,000,” and that child might invest it all and never touch it. So there’s different ways to think about it. I think people just jump to one answer, and it’s…

[00:25:35] Jon Meyer: Every, every personality’s different, so we gotta talk about each one individually.

[00:25:39] Patrice Sikora: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, we, we have one question left. We did kind of touch on this, why spending feels uncomfortable even when you know you can afford it. But any final thoughts on that? ‘Cause we’re kinda wrapping up, coming up against the clock here.

[00:25:53] Jon Meyer: Yeah, so the, the… I think there’s a couple things. One is, and I, I’ve said this, people’s identity gets wrapped up in it, [00:26:00] and it’s, it’s a lot about, “Oh, this is my… You know, it’s my work. Saving is who I am,” that kind of thing. Saving’s not who you are. Hmm. Like, saving’s a habit, and I think that’s what ends up, people end up forgetting is that their habit of 30 or 40 years of saving versus the immediacy of spending on something, spending on the first class ticket, spending on giving a charity a, a check 10 times bigger than you’d used to, I think that’s a bit shocking to the system.

[00:26:33] Jon Meyer: But if you recognize that and just say, like, “I had this habit. I’m going to change my habits into new habits as I get into spending phase.” And I use the word spending, by the way. I don’t use the word budgeting. Budgeting has a very negative connotation for a lot of people.

[00:26:49] Patrice Sikora: Oh, it does, yes.

[00:26:50] Jon Meyer: W- yes. We, we’re talking about s- the spending phase, not the budgeting phase.

[00:26:55] Jon Meyer: We don’t talk about controlling everything. So what I would [00:27:00] say is spending money’s uncomfortable from, from the standpoint of habits, identity, control is an issue, and I’d say this for business owners especially, they grew up knowing with 60% of the information what the move should be in their business, and so they’re used to controlling the outcomes.

[00:27:18] Jon Meyer: And all of a sudden you say, “Well, we’re gonna put all your money in the stock market, and we are going to start giving you whatever you need monthly,” that, that’s a lack of control for them, and that is really hard on people. So you have to walk through that. And I think, honestly, people are looking for permission sometimes to spend.

[00:27:37] Patrice Sikora: Yes. Yes.

[00:27:38] Jon Meyer: I think that’s half the answer. It’s no different than checking in with your spouse and saying, “Is now the right time to buy a new car?” You know? ‘Cause you want buy-in. And if you’re gonna work with someone else, like a financial advisor, you gotta get that buy-in sometimes from them that, “Yeah, go ahead.”

[00:27:55] Jon Meyer: And so a lot of times our job is just, “Yeah, go for it,” right? [00:28:00] Because our job should be to build the guardrails, to build the confidence so that we know the math works, but the math is not about comfort and discomfort. That’s a slightly different issue. The math just says, “Yeah, it’ll work.” Now you gotta get over the discomfort issue.

[00:28:17] Patrice Sikora: Hmm.

[00:28:18] Jon Meyer: But that’s a long conversation. That’s not, like, that’s… I’ve had clients where it’s taken me years to convince them that the math works and that spending is okay, so.

[00:28:32] Patrice Sikora: That’s very interesting. Is it our society? Is that the way we’re brought up, do you think?

[00:28:38] Jon Meyer: A, a little bit. Saving… I, I would also argue, and I’ll- I’ve said this earlier, our industry basically spent all its marketing money on getting you to save money because we make fees off of it.

[00:28:52] Jon Meyer: And I think that we have done a bad job of talking to people about how to spend, and [00:29:00] we’ve done a bad job at discussing, you know, accumulation’s easy, decumulation’s hard. And our industry’s just done a really bad job of the decumulation part, and I think that there’s a, there’s a shift going on. I see it.

[00:29:14] Jon Meyer: Like, you’re starting to see it more and more, especially with those of us that have been around a, a long time, because you see that happening. But the media, the advertising, everything’s kinda working against you on this topic a little bit.

[00:29:26] Patrice Sikora: What, why do you think there’s the shift happening? I, I’ve seen it.

[00:29:29] Patrice Sikora: I talked- talking to several advisors, yes, I see that shift. Why do you think that’s happening?

[00:29:36] Jon Meyer: Yeah. I think there’s a couple of things that are starting to happen. The Gen X generation, as they’ve come into money, is starting to s- They’ve always been the mindset that I, you know, don’t trust institutions. I don’t wanna do it as- the same way as everyone else.

[00:29:53] Jon Meyer: I’ll just do my own thing. And so they’re receptive to the message. That’s part of it. [00:30:00] But I think honestly, you see this with COVID. I think people looked at it and said, “You know, buying more stuff doesn’t make me happy.” ‘Cause COVID allowed us to buy a lot of stuff. Mm-hmm. We had a lot of downtime and a lot of money piling up.

[00:30:15] Jon Meyer: And I do see people now saying, “I don’t want more stuff.” But COVID did increase the wealth of a lot of people. It really did. It changed things. Part of it, even i- if you just think about it, just by changing interest rates upwards over the last three years or so since they’ve really gone up, everyone sitting on cash is getting a, a…

[00:30:39] Jon Meyer: I know people getting thousands of dollars a month in interest payments off their cash that they didn’t get going into 2020, right? And so they got all this cash that’s coming in, and they’re like, they can afford to do stuff that they weren’t doing before. And so as that happens, they’re like, “That’s cool, but I don’t wanna buy more stuff.”

[00:30:58] Jon Meyer: And so they’re, they’re just thinking [00:31:00] about, “How do I, how do I get more meaning out of this?” There’s definitely been a shift

[00:31:06] Patrice Sikora: Well, Jon, I think we should wrap this up. I hand it over to you. This was a joy.

[00:31:11] Jon Meyer: Well, yeah. Thank you. This is, this was fun because sometimes it’s fun to look back and see, like, what people are asking and thinking.

[00:31:18] Jon Meyer: So I, I find this stuff fun. So if you do have questions, I, I, I throw this out there. If you do have questions, by all means, send them our way. You can do that on our, via our website, bgm360.com. And as always, I encourage you to listen to our, our podcast, and, and have a great day. Thank you, Patrice.

[00:31:37] Patrice Sikora: Thank you, Jon

[00:31:41] -: Thank you for tuning in to Mastering the 360 Mindset.

[00:31:44] -: If you enjoyed today’s episode, help us spread the word. Share it with your friends and family and anyone you think you could benefit. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Want to learn more about working with BGM? Visit bgm360.com [00:32:00] today. Until next time, keep mastering your 360 mindset.

[00:32:04] -: The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Jon Meyer or BGM. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investing advice.

[00:32:22] -: Always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service provider with any questions you may have regarding your investment planning

---

Thank you for tuning in to Mastering the 360 Mindset. If you enjoyed today’s episode, help us spread the word. Share it with your friends and family and anyone you think you could benefit. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Want to learn more about working with BGM? Visit bgm360.com today.

Until next time, keep mastering your 360 mindset.

The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Jon Meyer or BGM. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investing advice.

Always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service provider with any questions you may have regarding your investment planning.