- What happens when the market crashes? (1:34)
- The costs of working with a financial advisor. (3:47)
- The importance of having a financial planner. (5:59)
- The importance of having a financial plan. (8:24)
- The importance of having a legacy plan.
- How to use credit card points.
- Don’t try to chase travel points. (10:55)
- The importance of paying off credit cards in full every month.
- How to use credit cards.
- You start with the end in mind. (13:59)
- The old adage, start with the end in mind.
- The first thing to consider.
- How much more or less is the lifestyle going to cost? (16:33)
- How much more retirement will cost in the future.
- Everybody wants to do everything now.
- Why you should save for the future. (19:00)
- How to get in touch with Eric. (21:19)
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
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- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
- Email @: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
CORWYN:
Good day Exit Strategies Radio Show Family. Hey, look, we had an amazing show with our guest this past week, Eric Simonson with Abundo. Now we have broken down, get into talking about how you can start where you are in budgeting, and becoming more financially literate. And how you can start to quote-unquote, build and save and get to all these other things that we talked about on this show. So guys, we had such an amazing time, guys, that we had to break the show up into two parts. So please stay tuned, please get your pen and paper and let’s continue this conversation with Eric today. Guys, I’m super excited to continue with part two of our interview with Eric Simonson, CEO of Abundo. Let’s get started. So, real estate, I get that same thing in real estate, Eric, unfortunately, you oftentimes don’t know when you reach the top of the hill, until you’ve crossed over and realize that what’s behind you is as hard as what’s in front of you. And in there is no– they say this many years, whatever, there’s no fo–-, it’s just historically, these things have happened because, in the interim, these things have happened. And what happens is we learn each cycle, so something is different. So it goes further and further, there’s no way to time it, if you time it, it was just dumb luck, right? And coming back on the other side, as far as the herd mentality. And when you talked about Airbnb, I’m seeing that we got to learn you do this, on your travels, which we probably will get to but, you learned a house hack. I’m saying so but people running about Airbnbs And now you got the market flooded with so many Airbnbs that what happens is the occupancy rate goes down. So you bought this property as an Airbnb, but all of a sudden, 30 other people bought properties in the same area and put them up. So now you guys are competing on price and pushing it down, you’re not increasing the market, you go from occupancy at 200 – 250 at night, down to $100 or 150 a night. But your cost to turn the unit, you got to have somebody clean it, you got to refresh linen you got to do to work on it, or you got to hire it out. And the more that you have more properties that you have like that, the less likely you’re going to be able to do all of that every day. So you got to– if you bought it as an investment, you have a mortgage on it. If you financed, then you got the service charges and you got the work that you got to do. You could very well find yourself upside down or not just breaking even, and putting all the sweat equity into the property. Yeah, so, those strategies sometimes work. But we have to look at the bigger picture. But go ahead and I didn’t want to cut you off Eric.
ERIC:
Yeah, I think, it’s different now than it was three, four years ago when you could buy a property with a three-a-half percent, three-and-a-quarter percent interest rate. Now, it’s double that. And I don’t know if you’re going to be able to rent it out for double. If there’s like you said, if there’s that many more people kind of entering the market and trying to do the same thing. So the economics start to break down on that.
CORWYN:
Exactly, exactly. So let me– you talk about when you meet with people and all that kind of stuff, several different things. And I’m going to ask you this question because it’s always that burning question. What do you know that other people that do what you do know but won’t tell people?
ERIC:
Well, I know that. Yeah, I know that financial advisors charge a lot, there are a lot of costs involved with working with a financial advisor. And I think that historically most advisors and most people right there, just, it’s hard to get all those costs kind of out there because they’re, they’re layered, and they’re embedded. And so I think that’s kind of a big thing that financial advisors don’t understand, like, all these products probably are more expensive than then maybe what’s considered average, but it’s hard to always align the consumer with that. And that’s, again, part of also part of why I am working the way I am, and our firm charges the way we do charge because our clients know that they’re never gonna pay us a single dollar, above and beyond our flat, transparent monthly cost. Because we don’t, we don’t we don’t take commissions, we don’t manage accounts and charge a fee based on that. We don’t have a single product we can sell. So it’s all very straightforward. And so I think we’re, we’re working to kind of uproot that mentality, and make things a little bit more out in the open and transparent.
CORWYN:
Some of our listeners, Eric, and as our listeners, I want you guys– I want you to pay attention to this, because, sometimes, when certain conversations are being had, people tune out, that’s not for me, I don’t fit that mold, I don’t fit that category. Financial Planning is important for everybody. We’re now finally, as a society, getting to educate our children about money while they’re in school because a lot of parents don’t do it at home. Because they’re struggling at home, to just make ends meet. And they don’t expose their children to it so they can understand income and expenses, money in and money out. And they’re not able to save. So they’re trying to work through all of that, to get where they need to be. But Eric, explain to us why everybody, even if you feel you don’t have money should be engaged in what we’re talking about.
ERIC:
Oh, thank you for asking that. Because I’m so passionate about this. People think that they shouldn’t work with a financial advisor until they have money. Right. That couldn’t be further from the truth. You should work with a financial advisor to help you build wealth to help you gain that money. I mean, just thinking kind of generation to generation, right? Just after school, right? You’re getting your first job, your first paycheck, right? What do people normally want to do? They want to spend that, they finally have money, right? That’s the worst thing to do. Right? That’s the time when should be building those foundational habits around saving. Right? And so a financial planner can help you look at Hey, Greg, you’re making 800 bucks a week. Let’s look at it– you can spend 700 of that, and we’re gonna save 100 of it, right, we’re gonna save it up for this goal and this goal? Maybe they have benefits for the first time through their employer, helping coach them on what medical plan. Should you choose? What does that mean? If you have a medical event, right? How much will you be liable for Making sure they have savings to cover that? Helping them pick disability insurance through work and life insurance. So just really making sure they’re not misstepping on that first kind of key foundational decisions, right? Awesome use of a financial planner, then a little later on in life, right? Like in your late 20s, or early 30s. You have family, right? You’re balancing all these weird goals, you’ve got potentially a house that you’re looking to maybe move into, you’ve got retirement, you’re not trying to lose sight of, you’ve got college education that you’re trying to pay for, for your kids, you maybe have your student loans to pay for, right? That’s a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with like investments and investable assets, right? But that’s still a lot of planning. These are things that are so important to get advice on because you don’t want to set up the wrong type of college savings account, right? You don’t that and that’s a decision that you don’t want to regret. 18 years down the line and all of a sudden, your kid can’t pay for one extra year of school that you otherwise maybe could’ve if you made better decisions. So there’s a ton, right? There’s a ton of work through in kind of your late 20s, early 30s, mid-30s. And then you’ve got your 40s, right, maybe kids are going to college, you’re maybe supporting your parents, and figuring out, Hey, can I take them in? Can they live with me? Can I give them 100 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month to help them pay for their expenses? Is that part of the budget? Looking at maybe starting to think about when is your timeline for retirement, like 10 years, 15 years, I can keep talking, I’m gonna stop because you get the idea. Like, there’s just, there’s no matter the age, no matter your financial situation, you are making financial decisions day in and day out that matter, and they have a compounding effect over your lifetime.
CORWYN:
And, I remember, so, I have a have an FP and I’ve talked to a couple of people a few times before but having that conversation introducing somebody into that– just for lack of a better way to put it, they just, it’s foreign to them. Why do I need or even– I didn’t realize that I should have, but just an eye-opening experience to say, okay, look, and as an FP you recommend everything: insurance? you might need to what, what does that look like? What’s your succession plan? What do you plan? We talk on this show about legacy, that’s our thing. What are you leaving for your children? What is that inheritance? As we talked about, and do it from a biblical principle, the inheritance for your children’s children’s children, and so forth, and so on. We speak about that. And this is a component of that, and you need some help, you need some guidance, because see, what happened is, and I don’t know why I’m even saying this Eric, but what happened is social media, have you buying a new pair of jays, when you need to be putting some money in the bank for your future towards retirement, and you need to be investing to our IRA or a 401K. Matter of fact, let’s do it this way, you may be putting that money into a 401K. But social media got you going about a new pair of Jays. So you ain’t go far enough on the alphabet, you stopped at J and didn’t go to K. So we got to work on that. That’s the thing that we need to do. So I’ma ask you to hit on another note. So we haven’t talked about or touched on– and I think kind of put this thing head down for the people that are like, okay, well, look, I don’t feel I make enough money for this. But no, you need some guidance. You need some guidance financially. So budgeting is going to help you to save money, but saving money, putting money in the bank isn’t investing and building the future, oftentimes that we desire, we want. I’m gonna say this briefly. We just had a major employer here who’s been here for 40-some-odd years now announce a shutdown like– HOH, we have gone, this day out. So what does that mean for all those people? And what if they didn’t invest money? What if they didn’t have a planner to help them, now I’m gonna take you on the other side to the other end of the spectrum, to see how to hack their credit cards, and what I mean by that– Before y’all– our listeners start running out and doing the wrong things! We gon’ to talk about that, we talking about how you can use credit cards, bill reward points, and leverage that that’s a great tool. I just started doing it. So if you don’t mind. Eric touches on how people can use credit card points, and how they can leverage them financially. Now we ain’t talking about going out and taking out credit you ain’t got. But I’m gonna let you clarify that for our listeners, Eric. But let’s talk about that on the other end of the spectrum, and then it’s come back in the middle for a couple of other final points.
ERIC:
Yeah, I mean, I think the important thing with credit cards and managing that is, of course, don’t try to chase travel points and rewards, if you can’t pay your credit card off every month, and fall every period. Because the second you don’t do that, all those potential rewards you would have gotten are offset by the cost that you’re going to pay in interest, right? So that’s– to get in the door, you have to be responsible. But assuming you are, then this is such a great way for people as you’re discovering for people to subsidize or travel. Right? There are several great credit cards out there that are gonna allow you to build points quickly, usually, two, three points per dollar on average is about what you can get, so if you spend $10,000 over a year that’s 25 – $30,000 or 25 or 30,000 points you can get and then those points if you’re smart about how you use them, you can get 2, 3, 4 cents per point in value. So if you had 25,000 points like you could be getting, gosh, five, do my math on that, but, enough to pay for probably three round trip, airline tickets in a year, just off, a modest kind of modest monthly spend. And it’s, I would say, it’s not easy, but if you got a little kind of savviness about you, you can figure it out. Like, yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s free travel to be had.
CORWYN:
I just started with this, I’ll say fairly recently because I travel business– a lot of business travel. And in that business travel, oftentimes, I’m reimbursed if not, as if it’s my business I’m on, then obviously, we foot that bill, but if it’s another business I’m traveling for, I may be reimbursed for expenses. So, I have rewards with hotels, I have rewards with, airlines, and I just got to the point, I’m like, wait a minute, why am I– why have I not been doing this? So accumulating points that can be used for upgrades on flights and things of that nature, I’m a big guy, and I want to be comfortable as I can, if I’m flying, I can’t sit in the tin Can in the back and be comfortable, I’m just kind of closed up in there. So being able to use our rewards for that. And what I get the opportunity to do is that when I’m reimbursed for the expense of a trip, pay that off.
ERIC:
Yeah, Oh, that’s the dream. That’s the dream right there. Yeah.
CORWYN:
Yeah, that’s a life hack there for people. On the other end of the spectrum, now for our listeners, a full disclaimer, I’m not suggesting telling you don’t go out and get credit cards, if you are not ready, if you’re not financially ready to have credit cards, talk to Eric, first, before you go get any, talk to your planner. So, Eric, let me kind of bring you around on this one because oftentimes, we’re talking with FP, we’re thinking about if we’re starting early, the adage of you starting with an end in mind. So, oftentimes, the conversation goes to, end-of-life retirement into life. Tell me what does that look like? Like, when you’re consulting with someone potentially? What does that look like? And what approach do you use to kind of get them to look at not just today, but this is what we want to lead up to so that when you get to retirement, you’ll be able to live this way? And at this point, this is what will happen, or should happen with your assets?
ERIC:
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s going to depend a bit on the age. Give me an atrium, you’re thinking about, like, are we talking to somebody?
CORWYN:
Tell you what, let’s start where I am, let’s say middle age, Well I say middle age, but let’s say 45, or 50.
ERIC:
Perfect, 45 to 50. So, at this point, you probably have a lifestyle that you’re used to, right sounds like you’ve got a certain level of travel, you’ve got certain things, maybe memberships at different places. The first thing we would want to talk about is, as you see yourself transitioning to retirement, or we like to use the term becoming financially independent, right, not required to work. What sort of lifestyle do you want to maintain? Right? Is it the current one? Does that feel right? Or do you see yourself adding hobbies, adding additional travel, maybe visiting kids in different parts of the country, like really visualizing that right and talking through that? So that’s the start of the conversation, and then we back into, okay, if, if that’s what the lifestyle is going to be? How much more or less is that going to cost? And so we look okay, maybe you’re spending $4,000 a month right now? Well, we know that retirement because of these different awesome things you want to do, it’s going to be closer to like, 5000, right? So okay, if you need $5,000 A month, right? And that’s gonna sustain this lifestyle, you need to save X amount by the time you’re financially independent. And right now you have this and we want to get you here. So to do that, you just have to save 300 bucks a month. And your goal, right and well, we’ll adjust or add or reduce as need be, but that’s the basic and at its most easily digestible form, that is the conversation. I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s– Yeah, I mean, everybody has their lifestyle, right? And we don’t want to force them to do something, but we want them to think about how is that lifestyle going to shift as they age.
CORWYN:
That is, that was the answer to my question. And what I heard in that– and people don’t think about this, everybody wants to do everything now. And what I mean by that, Eric, and for our listeners, everybody wants to do everything, they want to travel now, they want to, they want to do everything now and to an excess at times. And, your retirement life looks different, sometimes, because you didn’t do things differently. Now, when you retire, when you’re able, when you ain’t got to worry about going back to work. The next day, you can take a trip around the world. Now people are, I mean, a life hack, many of them are taking these old cruise ships, and rebuilding them and putting them and sailing people around the world for a year. Imagine doing that or being able to do that, because you didn’t take every vacation that you could have taken now you stack that or what have you, or you want to live a different life in retirement because sometimes people want to do that by the time they retire, typically, they have gotten all the children out of the house, they’ve gotten a massive amount, or they had massive amounts of debt, they’ve gotten a lot of that stuff, either lower to taking care of. Trustfully they’ve worked to save, that’s the time that you want to be able to live differently. I have a client in their retirement, who takes, a cruise or two if not more than a year, they take a trip. They do how they do a flip house, older couple. Pass it to Elder Evans, I talk about them constantly here on the show. They are loyal listeners to us and they flip houses but when they finish the house, they take a trip. That’s true. That’s their reward.
ERIC:
That’s awesome, yeah, love it!
CORWYN:
That’s their thing! When they do, when they finish a house. Okay, that celebration, we’re gonna take a trip. And it is amazing to me. That’s what I do it for like, Okay, well look, the house gonna take pay for the vacation. So I’ll make this investment, and pay for the vacation. I’m gonna go do it. It’s like a no brainer dude
ERIC:
Yeah, I think the thing I’ll share that would maybe help some listeners think about why they should save for the future or why they should plan for the future is because everybody, thinks right, if I ask you, Corwyn, when are you going to retire? You’re gonna give me an age, right? 62, 65, whatever 58. The reality is, it’s probably not going to be that age. And more often than not, it won’t be your decision. You mentioned that factory. Right. And your– the business, the local business, think all those people plan to retire right now, how many of them are now forced to retire? And are they ready? Right? Did they save? You could have a health issue, right? That you just can’t work because of it. There’s– I don’t have the exact stat in front of me. But I’ve heard that over 50% of people don’t retire at the age they planned because they were forced to retire because of those things, job change, maybe helping out family, like parents are sick, husband, wife is sick, kids are sick, right? It’s always something unexpected. So you have to plan for the unexpected.
CORWYN:
Interesting because I had that conversation with somebody who was telling me that they had a friend or somebody who worked over there, and they weren’t ready or planned to retire yet. They found out because the news article or someone called them just kind of in passing or whatever. And just said it in conversation, Oh, I saw that you guys are closing. And they were like, wait a minute, what? Because they hadn’t been told their employees, yet. The announcement got out before the employees did and they weren’t planning to retire for another year or two. So like you said, now they’re being forced. And the option is to go find another job somewhere. But if you’ve been season, that long, and I think they have been at the plant for probably about 30 years, they will be up on retirement, most companies aren’t going to make that investment into someone, because they don’t see the longevity in it. So what do you do? So, guys, we have to, we have to do it differently. Eric, we talk about that constantly on our show. Trying to expose people to different thought processes and all those things, because we want them to pursue greater opportunities, not just the status quo. Now, Eric, look, I mean, I’m having a real good time with you, man. So, we’ve been going, and having this conversation. But I want to, I want to ask you a couple of things. One, first of all, give your
contact information to our listeners. How can people reach you?
ERIC:
Yeah, so they can find us online at Abundo, a b, u n, d o abundo. AbundoWealth. We’ve got advisors all across the country. We work with clients, virtually. They can find this on social media, Twitter, Instagram, and AbundoWealth.
CORWYN:
All right, awesome. The next thing I’m going to ask you as we wrap up today’s show. I want to ask you if I call it my mic drop question. It is: What thing, whether it be one or whether it’s a combination of things could you share with someone that if someone had told you would have made all the difference to you? A long time ago? Yeah, that’s a deep one.
ERIC:
Yeah, that’s a good one. I haven’t been asked that one before. I will give a piece of advice that I was told when I was young that I think applies. I made a mistake in my very first job in high school. And I was, of course, devastated. And my boss told me at the time, he said, Eric, it’s okay. Because no one will ever know or care that this happened. And, of course, I was relieved by that. But then I reflected on it for years. And I thought all of us live so much in our heads. And we’re all our hardest critics. And we all think that everybody else is judging us the same way. But in reality, no one is going to care or even know if something happens. So just be easier on yourself, be kinder to yourself, be kinder to others. That would be my message.
CORWYN:
Interesting. I like that, my man. I love that. So, Eric, thank you so much for being on the show with us. Thank you for– as I tell our listeners all the time, how grateful I am for the guests that come and leave their wisdom with us. Let me phrase that because you got to take you got more, you got planning this spread around, but leave a portion of their wisdom with us, to help us to be better, to educate us, to inspire us, to encourage us. So I am going to say this to you yet. Again, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for being part of Exit Strategies Radio Show Family, and for spending some time with us today. For our listeners, guys, this has been an awesome show. There are a lot of nuggets in here and I want you guys to go back, I want you to look at the episode, online, at exitstrategiesradioshow.com. Guys, I want you to share it, I want you to encourage others, I want you to go to abundo.com and I want you– Is it abundo.com
ERIC:
It’s abundowealth.com. But don’t worry, they can find us.
CORWYN:
Abundowealth.com, guys, and I want you to go there and I want you to plug in, you guys have the outlet. You guys have the plug, you can connect it to the plug to the outlet and make it happen. So once again, final time again. Thank you all. Thank you our listeners for tuning in. Y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say? I’m gonna put the two of them together and I’m gonna say it to you this way, which is I love you. I love you. I love you. And we’re gonna see you guys out there in those streets.
