Episode Takeaways
Most financial advice is designed to be simple. The challenge is that real life rarely is simple.
In this episode of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters explore why many common financial rules can fall short, especially for affluent families navigating retirement, wealth transitions, and complex financial decisions. Through practical examples and personal stories, they discuss why successful planning requires more than formulas, and why understanding a family’s values, goals, and emotions often matters just as much as the numbers.
Key Takeaways:
- Why the popular 4% withdrawal rule may not reflect how retirees actually spend money throughout retirement
- How retirement spending often evolves through the “go-go,” “slow-go,” and “no-go” years
- How financial decisions are influenced by personal experiences, family history, and emotions, not just math
- Common mistakes affluent families make when implementing advanced planning strategies without understanding the details
- How trust, communication, and personalized planning help investors avoid emotionally driven decisions during uncertain times
And more!
Connect With Danton Troyer:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Danton Troyer
- dtroyer@monetagroup.com
- (314) 735-9087
Connect with Kyle Luetters:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Kyle Luetters
- kluetters@monetagroup.com
- (314) 536-8297
Transcript
Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most
Episode 25 Why Generic Financial Advice Breaks at Higher Levels
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most with Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters from Moneta Wealth Management. In this podcast, we help corporate executives and business leaders navigate the real-life uncertainty around new financial life stages. From complex benefits and career changes to retirement and legacy planning.
Join us as we explore these career and life-shaping moments with our guests, helping listeners find clarity so they can focus on what matters most to them
[00:00:32] RJ Malyk: Hello and welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast with your hosts, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luettersders. I’m your podcast producer, R.J. Malyk.
Danton and Kyle, as always, great to see you.
[00:00:43] Danton Troyer: It’s good to see you as well. Looking forward to the show today.
[00:00:46] RJ Malyk: I guess it’s the three of us. We’ll be just chatting today, huh?
[00:00:50] Danton Troyer: Mm-hmm. It looks that way. We got some good stuff.
[00:00:52] RJ Malyk: Excellent. Okay, so I guess we’re gonna s- we’re gonna talk about advice for affluent families.
Right. Is that sort [00:01:00] of the direction we’re going in?
[00:01:01] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:01:02] RJ Malyk: Okay, so let’s start broadly. Mm-hmm. What is the broad advice for affluent families?
[00:01:09] Danton Troyer: There’s certainly no shortage of rules of thumb and some people take these as gospels. Let’s start there as far as why do these not work, especially as you move up the chain as far as being more and more dollars in your accounts.
One of the biggest one I think we see is the “4% rule,” and even this one I think a lot of advisors actually use and, and for those not familiar with it, it’s simply taking your portfolio or your assets and multiplying by 4% and that’s the income you should reasonably take throughout retirement And to say it doesn’t work probably isn’t untrue.
Uh, it does work, but it doesn’t work for people, ’cause people don’t generally spend the same amount every single year, year over year.
[00:01:53] RJ Malyk: Things come up though, right?
[00:01:54] Danton Troyer: Yes, exactly. You need a new roof, you need a new air conditioner. That’s not in [00:02:00] your daily budget. So if you go over that 4%, what do you do then?
If the rule says you can’t, so you’re not getting your air conditioner that year? And certainly as you become more affluent too, that 4% number may become, not irrelevant, maybe then you’re overspending as it relates to some of the goals that you might have had. So we certainly see that one start to fall apart the higher the net worth climbs.
[00:02:22] Kyle Luetters: It definitely does come up a lot because I think a lot of folks with their finances are looking for north stars. Am I on track? Am I doing the right thing? And 4% withdrawal rate is just one of those time-tested things, a lot like, for lack of a better term, we could all say maybe, General Mills and the cereal industry was behind breakfast is the most important part of the day
RJ Malyk: Sure
Kyle Luetters: or most important meal of the day. If you start saying something enough and enough people repeat it, then it must be true, like everything on the internet is absolutely 100% true. So… I think 4% rule came from there because it’s a good [00:03:00] guidepost. It’s conservative enough that it doesn’t seem outlandish.
If someone were to say, “Hey, if I spent 10% of my portfolio every year,” people might question it; 4% seems like a pretty low barrier, seems like your investment should be able to keep up with it, so it just spread like wildfire. A couple of other ones. Go ahead.
[00:03:16] RJ Malyk: So but in your experience, have you seen it work the way it’s been proposed?
I mean- you’ve been, you two have been doing this long enough, and I’m sure you have people who are in that situation where they’re withdrawing 4%.
[00:03:31] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:03:32] RJ Malyk: Does it work generally? Except… But there are exceptions, as you said. But generally, does the 4% rule work?
[00:03:39] Danton Troyer: Yeah, I think it… and probably that’s the part where everybody’s a little bit different, but in general it’s probably too conservative.
And we, you know, have clients that might have pushed that number a little bit, especially when we talk about clients a- as we have the go-go years – cause when you first retire- those are the… you still got your health, hopefully, and you’re trying to do some things, so maybe you should be spending a little bit more money so you do get to enjoy the things that you wanted to do.
And [00:04:00] if you are only at that 4%, that might limit your ability to be able to do those things, just so you’re living so fearful that you didn’t get to experience the joys of being retired, not having to go to work anymore. We talk about the go-go years as the first part and then the slow-go years where it gets a little bit slower.
People traveling…international may not be as exciting once you get into your late 70s and 80s, those long flights. And then we start to see the no-go years where it’s more about healthcare costs and things really slow down from recreational spending, we’ll say. So that 4%, it generally works, but it also leaves some things on the table, and if you’re a person, it doesn’t really match with the real-life experience on how you would spend your dollars.
[00:04:40] RJ Malyk: Are you seeing… Because I think I look at my parents and, and their situation, and my dad’s no longer with us, but my mom is now 88.
[00:04:50] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:04:50] RJ Malyk: And I learned a lot by watching them. And my dad, my grandfather on my dad’s side, he came over from Ukraine when he was in third grade, and he [00:05:00] didn’t even have a high school education.
So he wasn’t good with money at all, and my father learned from that, and then my father did his things, and I’m learning from my father. And he did okay, but there’s some things I’m looking back at and saying, “Oh, geez, there are some mistakes.” So my question is, my generation, I’m getting close to retirement age.
Not that I’m going to retire ’cause I don’t really have a tough job.
[00:05:24] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:05:24] RJ Malyk: But I’m getting near that, and I’ve gotten a lot of friends who are in that. Because we’ve seen what our parents are doing, do you find people who are approaching retirement now are a little more educated than maybe our parents were?
[00:05:40] Kyle Luetters: 100%, because I think there’s a fundamental shift in the way that we retire and the source and the engine of retirement in this country. If we were to go back and look a generation or two ago, you had large pensions and retirement was a relatively new concept at that time. And I think a lot of people put pensions in [00:06:00] place because it was a nice employee value add, and you put in your time, we’ll send you money for the rest of your life.
RJ Malyk: Spoiler alert- … people didn’t live that long back then.
Yeah, right.
Kyle Luetters: And so they also, too, they did not spend a lot of time not working, okay? Sure. You might, within four or five years based on life expectancy, quit working and then be done. Now we’re starting to see some of these folks in intervening generations, they might actually spend, in theory, more time not working full-time or the same amount as they do working, if you consider a 30-year career. We have some clients that have been retired for 30 years. So I think the dynamic changes. I think it changes a little bit, and people had to be more educated because as pensions went away and the burden of responsibility for saving for retirement has shifted from the company or corporate America or whomever to the individual, [00:07:00] if you’re gonna be responsible for something, you’re probably gonna do some more research on it, and that’s where we get a lot of these rules of thumb from.
The 4% rule in retirement’s a big one. Think about this a second: for affluent families, if they retire, let’s say, at 55- they may take more than 4% of their portfolio because Social Security hasn’t kicked in. They’re not taking money out of pre-tax accounts. Uh, they may not have sold a business yet. They may not have fully exercised some stock options.
They might need to take five, six, seven, eight percent out of the portfolio for a spell of time, and then when all this other stuff kicks in, the sale of a business over time or rental income is another one we see with affluent families. They own real estate, so they’ll get rental income coming in after a building’s paid off. Hey, we’re now down to 2% coming out of the portfolio.
So just to spread the peanut butter the same depth the whole way across from 4%, [00:08:00] it just doesn’t usually happen.
[00:08:02] RJ Malyk: So there are, as we are looking at, some basic generic rules that you can sort of… that’s your starting point, but I take it both of you then really have to take every individual you’re dealing with and look at what they’re doing, how they’re living, what their goals are, and then readjust as you go along. So they’re never really… even though they’re retired, they’re never really set.
[00:08:28] Danton Troyer: No. It’s always, we’re just talking about the clients that are retired. We’re not gonna just put this plan in front of you and say, “See ya. You should be good.” Everything’s gonna change. We all know that, so certainly revisiting that will make a lot of sense.
And one of the things you were talking about, like generational advice, it’s not bad necessarily, but to think, your parents and… they didn’t grow up in the same atmosphere as you did. I mean one of the biggest things we always hear is, “I gotta pay off my house.” You have a 2% mortgage; there is absolutely no reason. I could literally put your money in a money market right now and [00:09:00] earn more than you can paying in interest on your house. We just talked about that with a client the other day, and she’s like, “I know you’re right, but it just… my parents… and it just feels like I shouldn’t have this.”
It’s like you think about their mortgages, some of those were in the double digits as far as interest rates.
“Okay, yeah, let’s pay that off.” That advice – it’s not that your parents gave you bad advice. It was just a different time back then. And that’s part of it as well, is you gotta know what’s going on now and the reason behind that advice, and what was driving that is just different than it is today.
[00:09:29] Kyle Luetters: And what Danton just illustrated right there is the concept that money goes so far beyond math.
[00:09:36] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:09:37] Kyle Luetters: And the reason for that is that we all have a set of experiences. When we, my wife and I sit down with a premarital couple, one of our favorite questions…we talk about two topics, money and sex. We spend more time on money.
And one of the most fascinating questions to ask is what were your parents’ attitudes towards money? Spoiler alert, more often than not, you will [00:10:00] usually get one side of this relationship that’s coming together they spent freely, they had this attitude about it. The other one, completely different.
And now you look at this young couple and you sit there go, okay, now mash these two family of origin stories together-
[00:10:15] RJ Malyk: Wow. Yeah …
[00:10:15] Kyle Luetters: because you’re starting a new one, because at a certain point, to Danton’s illustration, it doesn’t matter about the math. If you sleep better at night knowing that your house is paid for, that’s ingrained somewhere deeply in your psyche, and maybe it was your parents lost their home to the bank, the bank foreclosed on it.
And you might be sitting on a 2% mortgage rate, but your parents’ experience, what you learned in your formative years, is shaping it no matter what the math says.
[00:10:43] RJ Malyk: It’s a good point because as you were talking about math, I’m thinking my wife and I are thinking about moving ourselves, but our mortgage rate right now is, it’s great ’cause we got it 10 years ago.
[00:10:57] Kyle Luetters: Yeah.
[00:10:57] RJ Malyk: And now we look at it and we’re like, [00:11:00] “We can’t. We can’t move.” It would be a financial mistake on our part if we do. So you’re, we’re sort of trapped where we are, and I’m sure a lot of people in this day and age could be facing a similar situation. And so how, how do you get around that? Or can you get around that?
[00:11:19] Danton Troyer: Nothing is impossible. You could move. You say it’s financially not responsible, and so that’s the math side of things. But it’s all give and take, so you would just have to give up something else to make that work potentially. And obviously I don’t know your specific situation, but that’s basically what it comes down to is, you know, clients will come in, for example, and say, “Hey, I want to retire at 55.” You say, “Great, this is the income.” “Well, what if I work five extra years? What does that do for me?” It’s just that trade-off. Do you wanna work the extra five years to have an extra $20,000 a year in income or whatever that math ends up being?
So the math is important, but it’s not what finalizes that decision. It’s just helping you make that educated decision so you can decide “That $20,000, yeah, I get to take an extra trip a year, but you know what? I [00:12:00] like being at home. I’ve got a good life, and I, I don’t really… traveling’s not my thing, so why would I do that? I’d rather be at home than working an extra five years.”
So there’s not a right or wrong answer to a lot of these questions, but it’s just how do you get to that answer.
[00:12:13] Kyle Luetters: The trade-offs concept is very, very important ’cause much like RJ, I was sitting on one of those beautiful, small, low single-digit mortgages and my wife said it would be great if the kids had a pool.
[00:12:26] Danton Troyer: Oh, God. That’s a double whammy right there.
[00:12:28] Kyle Luetters: That’s a double whammy. Two options. One, big ditch in the backyard I’m responsible for. Costs a lot of money. Two, move to a new home, higher interest rate, but there’s a neighborhood pool.
And so to Danton’s point, you’re always looking at trade-offs. Now, do I get my 1098 every year with what I spend in interest and cry? Yes. However, this weekend, we’re recording this around Memorial Day, so for whenever you listen to it, this is when we’re recording this. Tomorrow [00:13:00] afternoon, the neighborhood pool opens up. My kids will be the first two, I guarantee you-
[00:13:06] Danton Troyer: No matter how cold it is …
[00:13:07] Kyle Luetters: No matter how cold it is- … at the front gate of that thing, and they have been the past two summers that we’ve lived there.
[00:13:13] Danton Troyer: That’s funny.
[00:13:14] Kyle Luetters: So again, mathematically, did it make sense to move? No. Will my kids have the memories of playing at the pool about every day in the summer with their neighborhood buddies? What’s the dollar value of that? If anyone can quantify it for me-
[00:13:32] Kyle Luetters: I’ll give you my phone number and my email address. I haven’t been able to do it, but it hits right here in the soul.
[00:13:38] RJ Malyk: Sure. Sure.
[00:13:40] Kyle Luetters: So that’s where it goes beyond the math.
[00:13:41] RJ Malyk: Yeah. As people are preparing for life beyond working, what have you found, what details have you found gets ignored the most?
[00:13:53] Danton Troyer: I think it’s just that, it’s the details. We see a lot of higher net worth individuals, and we meet them at various stages of their [00:14:00] life. I met a couple, and they were with another firm, and they started handing me their information to look through and see if I could do a better job. And they’ve been doing…They were very proud. They were like, “I don’t think you’re gonna be able to find anything.” I was like, “If you’re open to it, I’ll take a look.” And they were right. They’re like, “We’re doing backdoor Roth ’cause we can’t contribute to a Roth. We’re doing all these things.” And I said, “Okay.”
And I got their tax return, and the problem was they were doing a backdoor Roth, but they missed the details behind it in that you can’t just say, “I’m doing a backdoor Roth,” and not look at all your accounts in total. So they weren’t aggregating the IRAs. We had a big decision to make… It’s do we go back to the IRS and say, “By the way, I’ve been doing this wrong for…”
I went back five years, and it had been done wrong that entire time. So the strategy in itself was great, but especially as you become higher net worth, these things get a little more difficult in the details. And if you aren’t on top of those details, it costs a lot more at that point, too, ’cause not only are you going back and paying, losing that tax-free income, you’re probably paying some penalties and taxes on those dollars as well.
So [00:15:00] I think it’s just that, is you’ve gotta be more conscientious of those details, of these strategies, ’cause they do get more complex, and they are more nuanced than just put money in an IRA, convert it to a Roth IRA, you’re good.
[00:15:12] Kyle Luetters: I think the way that we talk to a lot of folks, and Danton’s example there, and I’ll give a couple more, is that you’ll find this information posted somewhere, and it sounds like a great idea, and it is, but always the devil’s in the details.
Danton’s example was a good one. Another one was people, especially affluent families that gift, and they gift in cash. That is not something to be doing if you have substantially appreciated securities, stocks, mutual funds, ETFs. There’s a far better way to do it. I met somebody one time who said, “I give so much to charity.”
And I said, “Really? Wow, that’s neat. What do you gift?” He goes, “Well cash, of course.”
“Do you have any investments outside of retirement?”
“Oh, yeah, a lot. I don’t sell any of them because there’s a lot of taxable gain in there- … ’cause I did so good.”
Okay, time out. I can help here – one little [00:16:00] thing, and that’s the details about it.
‘Cause we all think, okay, if I’m gonna give to charity, I’m gonna pull out my wallet, I’m gonna open my purse, I’m gonna give cash, or I’m gonna write a check and leave it in the little bowl. Which by the way, as a deacon at a church, can somebody please start doing that more? Because it looks pitiful when I stand there at the end and say goodbye to everybody, and there’s one check in there.Personal tangent, we can move on.
But… Danton mentioned the backdoor IRAs. I would say, too, when you get into retirement, we find more and more people when they’re in the accumulating stage,… you’re putting money in, it’s almost like a slow cooker. You can get in there to mess with asset allocation, but as long as you’re putting money in there, you’re doing the biggest thing that you need to be doing.
But when you retire and you start to pull money out, the timing of it, how you pull it out, and oh, by the way, how you’ve mixed the investments for distribution and tax efficiency, there’s a lot of detail work to that. And the [00:17:00] average investor is not willing to invest the time into studying the appropriate methods, where we do it every day.
I don’t wanna say we could cover our eyes and do it. We don’t do that. But we’re well-versed enough and to know it’s like when a doctor comes in and looks at a chart, and in 30 seconds his mind is already going down a path. It’s the same thing in our business; we do it every day.
[00:17:24] RJ Malyk: Speaking as a non-financial person, that’s why I hire you.
I’ve got my, I’ve got my job that I’m focused on-
[00:17:34] Kyle Luetters: Yep …
[00:17:34] RJ Malyk: 100%. And we, my wife and I, we have our own financial advisor, and we’ve been with him for years, and we trust him, and he’s doing a good job for us. But that’s my attitude is that’s your job. You better do a good job for us. And you’re, as Kyle said, you’re focused on it.
So I think, I would think then for you guys, the biggest problem is not a person like myself, who is not [00:18:00] going to be calling you every month going over things. It’s the person who thinks they know everything and tries to tell you what, tell you how to do your job. I would think that would be kind of frustrating.
[00:18:14] Danton Troyer: Yeah, and certainly we don’t mind feedback from clients.
RJ Malyk: Sure, sure.
Danton Troyer: But certainly the clients that kinda do have that trust with us and, you know there’s a certain level of… And it’s hard because like any industry, there are bad advisors, there are good advisors, and how do you know who’s who? I certainly get that.
So you gotta build that trust over time, and so we don’t mind questions at all, but at some point, do you trust us or not? And I did have a client years ago who goes, “I will never trust anybody in the financial industry.” And I was like, “How… I don’t think this is gonna work out very well for you.” And sure enough, it didn’t.
Uh, and that’s the hard part. And, and so you can’t just say, “Hey, blindly trust me.” We need to earn that over time, but there has to be some level of trust. And it goes both ways, too. If clients that try to hide stuff from us- that becomes very problematic. And it’s not that we’re trying to [00:19:00] pry into your personal life, but if you didn’t tell us about something and we’re doing something on, on the other side not knowing about this, for example, like those Roth conversions, it makes our job very difficult.
I think a lot of people nowadays in the era of TikTok and 30-second videos, everybody wants that quick fix, but the nuance that goes into these strategies, especially as you accumulate more and more wealth, it becomes more and more important. And if we’re not on that and just trying to get the quick solution, it does become a problem.
[00:19:27] Kyle Luetters: There’s a lot of things to consider when answering that question around trust. RJ mentioned one thing. We trust him. He’s done a very good job for us.
Understanding what the client’s level or barometer for success is, in my opinion, is also very key to building a trusting relationship. For a certain person, it’s gonna be fire this thing to the moon, and come what may, if we blow up a few things along the way, fine.Other people, that’s not their barometer of success. You can’t apply that universally.
And then when you do that, [00:20:00] it builds trust on the advisor side. “Hey, we know what target we’re aiming at, so we can apply our knowledge, our wisdom, and our skill.”
But then also, too, when you hire someone to do something, at a certain point you have to step aside.
We had all the concrete poured at our house. If I stood over the guy’s shoulder while the truck was backed in and said, “Hey, I think you should brush this a quarter of an inch this way”- and I said that enough times, he was gonna wheel around, throw the broom down, get the truck out of there, and say, “Hey, go to Lowe’s and get some bags of Quikrete. It’ll do the same thing.”
That’s where, again, like when you hire someone, you have to be willing to sit there and go, “I know this is a hard thing to get rid of, or a hard thing to let go of. Not get rid of, but let go of. But you have to have that element of trust, and if you can’t ever build that trust, then maybe the relationship’s not for you.
[00:20:49] RJ Malyk: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. And I think you also have to know what you’re capable of and what you’re not capable of. What is your strength and [00:21:00] weaknesses? And for me-
[00:21:00] Kyle Luetters: Yeah, I’d screw up Quikrete.
[00:21:01] RJ Malyk: Yeah. My strength is not money.
[00:21:06] Kyle Luetters: Yeah.
[00:21:06] RJ Malyk: I know that; I’ve been in broadcasting my whole career.
You wanna talk about advertising and public relations and promotions and things like that, yeah, I know what to do with that. But as far as my financial part… that’s why we hired a financial advisor.
[00:21:24] Danton Troyer: Yeah.
[00:21:24] RJ Malyk: And he’s been good to us, so that’s a good thing.
So as we’re going through this…people are looking at their retirement. When should a person pause before acting as far as they’re looking at things? And obviously what goes on in the world, in the news can affect what’s going on with your retirement portfolio. How difficult is it for a person to pause when things are going crazy?
[00:21:53] Danton Troyer: Yeah. We’ve, I think just in the last couple years especially, the political environment we have now, it’s challenging.
[00:22:00] And from our standpoint, obviously we have our own personal biases, but we have to remove that from every conversation. And the problem for that is some of the clients, some are better than others, but we certainly have both sides of the aisle as far as clients go. And so you can tell when someone didn’t get who they wanted, and they’re like, “Oh my God, we gotta go cash -the world’s ending.”
And you’re like…
Kyle Luetters: On both sides, by the way.
Danton Troyer: Both sides. Oh, absolutely. This is not a one party situation. Yeah. Right. Like we’ve had clients come from both sides. Like we did, we had a client who basically said, “I don’t trust this current administration, and I wanna move everything into this indexed annuity.”
And the problem as we step back, you could tell it wasn’t logical as you start to ask a couple questions, but this thing had a 10 or 12 year surrender period where she couldn’t get the money out. I was like, “This presidency’s only four years, so-” “… what are you gonna do then?” So you could tell it’s very emotional for them, and there, at that point, with that specific case, there’s just no talking sense to them. Most clients, though, if you start to ask them questions, they can start to visualize. And we have a, actually a whole PDF that we call it the Wall of [00:23:00] Worry.
[00:23:01] RJ Malyk: So I like that, the Wall of Worry.
[00:23:02] Danton Troyer: And it’s every headline over the day. And if you watch the news, it’s literally, it’s gonna make you worry; that’s what it’s designed to do.
[00:23:09] RJ Malyk: So- That’s mistake number one …
[00:23:10] Danton Troyer: Right! I think Ciaran on one of our episodes was like, “Yeah, just don’t tell me what’s going on.” And that’s trust, but also obviously we need to know what’s going on. So we certainly have folks that are making decisions that just, it’s all emotional. And so once they take a step back, if they could take a step back and pause, I think they can make a little bit…
And that’s what we try to do too, is give them that flexibility to say, “Hey, look, right now I understand that’s what you wanna do. Why don’t we give this a week or month or, whatever the decision is, an appropriate timeframe is, to let this settle out and see where you are then.” And so I think giving people that opportunity to pause as well really helps.
[00:23:47] Kyle Luetters: I’ll agree with Danton. One comment for RJ since he’s an old broadcasting hack like me. We were taught, at least for me, it was in broadcast writing 101, if it bleeds, it leads. That’s what he wrote on the [00:24:00] chalkboard on the first day of class.
[00:24:01] RJ Malyk: Yes. Yeah.
[00:24:02] Kyle Luetters: And we are all emotional creatures; we get spun up about that. And then when our livelihood now is no longer in our hands, it’s in somebody else’s hands, it creates more anxiety.
And so this might be a controversial statement, but it’s a podcast – what the hey, let’s do it. You can check the planning ability of your financial team by this simple little barometer:
If you are retired, do you have six, 12, 18 months’ worth of your distributions set aside in a cash bucket or a cash equivalent bucket? Because then at that point, we’ve seen what have happened in markets. The downturns are usually measured in weeks. But if we have 18 months’ worth of our distributions, it doesn’t matter what happens.
We have opportunities to focus on inside the portfolio, but your primary [00:25:00] concern for most people is not who was elected, what this stock or ETF did, it is, “Am I going to get my money, every month?” Or however often they get it. That’s their primary concern. If you remove that, that’s the pause, but that was done on the front end of it.
[00:25:15] RJ Malyk: Okay. All right. Well, unfortunately, because I’m enjoying this conversation- … we’re running out of time. So how do you wanna wrap this up, then? Danton, we’ll go with you first.
[00:25:27] Danton Troyer: I think all of these, especially again in this TikTok, social media area, there’s a lot of people giving financial advice, and so it’s always important, they don’t know you, and so that’s the difficulty. And so you’re trying to follow this advice that, in general, may sound like it works, and it may even work, but it may not work for you.
So taking that time to pause and really reflect, and maybe have someone who’s just not tied emotionally to your money take a look at it, make sure if that’s gonna make sense for you, is probably your best thing you can do as you’re making these really important decisions.[00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Kyle Luetters: I am an aspiring barbecue pit master and I watch an inordinate amount of YouTube videos about how to cook briskets, pork shoulders, ribs, the whole nine yards. I will never, ever be able to accurately reproduce what the guy in the video did because I live in a different part of the world.
[00:26:25] RJ Malyk: Yep.
[00:26:25] Kyle Luetters: The air was different. The fuel source, whether it was charcoal, wood, whatever, was different. The cut of meat was different. I can’t replicate exactly what I saw the guy do, and that’s, to me, the danger in, in following some of these broad-based statements. Now, can we all agree that you should apply heat and smoke to a piece of meat and come out with something yummy? Yes, that’s like your 4% rule of withdrawal. That’s like 5% in a concentrated stock position. It’s, yeah, it sounds nice to pay off your home.
But when you dig into the nuance, and the nuance is atmospheric conditions, fuel source, [00:27:00] cut of meat. Every one of them’s different; they require different things.
That’s your financial plan. There are things unique to you, both actual data and thoughts, feelings, and conceptions that change what the advice and the plan is, and that’s the whole ball of wax – that’s why it’s personal finance.
[00:27:21] RJ Malyk: Makes sense. All right, gentlemen, before you go, Danton, contact information?
[00:27:26] Danton Troyer: Yep. Easiest place is on our website, witwisdomandwhatmattersmost.com.
You can listen to our past episodes, but also if you need to connect with us professionally, we’ve got a link there for you as well.
[00:27:37] RJ Malyk: Excellent. All right. Kyle, do you need to pass on your contact info, or is that basically the same?
[00:27:43] Kyle Luetters: It’s basically the same. Website’s the easiest spot, but please check out the LinkedIn content that we do produce. There’s a lot of good little nuggets in there. Again, they’re just a starting point, but they’re to invite and to kick off a deeper conversation. So follow [00:28:00] along there, plus I do post some recipes from time to time.
[00:28:02] RJ Malyk: Excellent. I’m gonna have to check that out. I do a little cooking myself, so I’m gonna see what you got lined up there.
Gentlemen, again, thank you, and we’re looking forward to your next podcast. And thank you for listening to today’s Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast. Please follow and share this podcast with friends and family, and until our next Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast, I’m R.J. Malyk.
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