Financial Planning Podcast - The Education of a Financial Planner

9/25/2023

Episode 31: The Many Sides of Diversification | Spreading Your Bets Across Stocks, Factors and Asset Classes

The idea of diversification is simple. Most investors understand that spreading your bets and avoiding overconcentration is a good idea. But the details behind how to do that can be much more complicated. In this episode, we take a deep dive into diversification. We look at the number of stocks a portfolio needs to be diversified, the importance of factor diversification, whether a portfolio with only stocks and bonds can be considered properly diversified and why rebalancing is an essential part of diversification.

9/18/2023

Episode 30: Direct Indexing | How it Works and Whether It Is Worth It for Investors - Featuring Lee Boudouris

Many believe that direct indexing will be the next big trend in investing. While it used to be reserved for high-net-worth individuals, zero commissions and the ability to trade partial shares has now brought it to the masses. But does it make sense for investors to utilize the strategy? As is usually the case with all investing tools, the answer is "it depends". In this episode, Lee Boudouris of Sunpointe Investment joins us to look at how direct indexing strategies work and the pros and the cons of the approach.

9/5/2023

Episode 29: Two Quants and a Financial Planner Talk Inflation

The inflation experience of the last few years has been unlike anything many investors have ever seen before. And it has impacted all of our lives in many different ways. In this episode we try to put all of it in context. We discuss the causes of inflation, the challenges of measuring and predicting it, how different asset classes perform during high inflation and how we look at high inflation from both a portfolio construction and financial planning perspective.

9/5/2023

Episode 28: Breaking Down the Greatness of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett just celebrated his 93rd birthday. And for most of his life, he has been demonstrating the power of disciplined investing and compounding to all of us. In this episode, we look at some of the most important lessons investors can learn from Buffett. We discuss his long-term focus, the simplicity of his communications approach, his optimism and flexibility and a lot more.

8/28/2023

Episode 27: Behind the Curtain of 401K Plans with Law Professors Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis

Many Americans rely on 401k plans as the primary source to fund their retirements. But many also don't understand the behind-the-scenes details that play a significant role in the outcomes they generate with these retirement plans. In this episode, we speak with Yale law professor Ian Ayres and UVA law professor Quinn Curtis to help us fill in these gaps and discuss how retirement plans can produce better outcomes for their participants. We look at the history of retirement plans and how they have evolved, why choice can be a double-edged sword, how guardrails can improve outcomes and a lot more.

8/21/2023

Episode 26: Inherited IRAs - What Investors Need To Know

Inherited IRAs can be very challenging for investors to understand. Not only are there a series of different rules that govern how money must be withdrawn from them in each unique situation, but those rules also changed substantially with the recent passage of the Secure Act. In this episode, we provide an overview of Inherited IRAs and what investors need to know about them.

8/14/2023

Episode 25: A Quant and a Financial Planner Discuss Factor Investing

In this episode Matt and Jack look at factor investing from both the perspective of someone who builds quantitative strategies and someone who utilizes them. They discuss what factors are, why they work, the different ways to combine them into multi-factor portfolios, the importance of matching an investment strategy with the end user's goals and risk tolerance, the important of human capital in portfolio construction and a lot more.

8/7/2023

Episode 24: The Truth About Market Forecasts (And Dollar Cost Averaging)

In this episode we tackle two topics that can impact investors as they seek to build long-term wealth. We first look at the idea of annual stock market forecasts. We talk about the challenges of predicting the market over the short-term, the importance of understanding base rates and how long-term investors should view forecasts. We also cover dollar cost averaging and the ways it can be both used and misused. We discuss why one use of dollar cost averaging is much more useful than the other and the ways investors with a lump sum of money to invest in the market can think about deploying it.

7/31/2023

Episode 23: A Young Financial Planner Shares His Most Important Insights for Early Career Investors

In this episode, Ben Tuscai helps us work through many of the issues that young investors deal with navigating early in their careers. He has a unique perspective to offer given that he has recently dealt with the many similar challenges in his own life. We discuss planning for having children, the basics of insurance, general rules for emergency funds, why investing early is so important, emergency fund rules of thumb and a lot more.

7/24/2023

Episode 22: The Many Facets of Discipline in Investing

Discipline is a word that everyone uses in investing. But saying it is much easier than living it. In this episode, Matt and Justin talk about the practical application of discipline in the real world. They revisit many of the topics from our previous episodes and discuss how discipline is a common thread among them.

7/17/2023

Episode 21: A Financial Planner's View of Factor Investing

Asset managers who build factor investing strategies can sometimes have a difficult time seeing how those strategies are used by financial planners who build portfolios with them. In this episode, we look at that issue from both sides as we ask Matt how he thinks about using factor portfolios for clients and we have an opportunity to answer some of his questions about how we think about building them.

7/10/2023

Episode 20: The Basics of Estate Planning

In this episode, we take a high-level look at estate planning. We discuss why it is important, the major areas that are important to focus on and the tools available to use. We cover wills, living wills, powers of attorney and the other most important documents should be put in place, the importance of trusts, the estate tax, intergenerational planning and a lot more.

7/3/2023

Episode 19: Six Lessons from the Epsilon Connect Conference

In early June, Matt attended the Epsilon Connect conference. The conference brought together a diverse group of people with a common goal of understanding how narratives and media bias affect our world and overcoming them to try to identify the truth and become better citizens and investors. In this episode, we discuss the biggest lessons from the conference and what they mean for all of us in the real world.

6/26/2023

Episode 18: Five Major Issues on Investors' Minds: Inflation, Recession, Valuations, AI Stocks, Geopolitics

In this episode, we begin a new quarterly series where we will discuss some of the biggest issues that investors are thinking about in the current market and try to put them in a long-term context. We discuss how investors should think about inflation and the potential for a future recession, how to interpret market valuations, the impact of AI stocks on the market and whether political and geopolitical events should play a role in an investment strategy.

6/19/2023

Episode 17: Aligning Your Assets with Your Purpose: Lessons from Peter Mladina

In this episode, we discuss the major lessons from our recent interview on our separate podcast Excess Returns with Northern Trust's Peter Mladina. Peter's work on goals-based planning, aligning goals with purposes, the importance of time and in many other areas has wide reaching implications for investors. But it also can be very complex. So we wanted to break it down in simpler terms than we were able to in the initial interview and discuss the most important lessons investors can take from it.

6/12/2023

Episode 16: Annuities: Useful Financial Planning Tool or Just a Bunch of Shady Steak Dinners?

Annuities have a bad reputation. From steak dinners to high fees to questionable salespeople, many investors are wary of using them. In this episode we look at how much of that reputation is earned and look at the facts about annuities. We cover the different types of annuities, both the good and bad uses of them and things investors should be on the lookout for when evaluating annuity products.

6/5/2023

Episode 15: Will ChatGPT Replace Financial Planners?

There is no doubt that ChatGPT and AI technology will change the world. Many think it will be an innovation that will be on par with the development of the internet in terms of its importance. But how it will do that and which areas of our lives it will impact the most is still up for debate. In this episode, we discuss how ChatGPT might impact the worlds of financial planning and asset management. We talk about the areas it might have the most impact and others where it might have a more difficult time causing significant changes.

5/30/2023

Episode 14: The Challenge of Understanding Your True Risk Tolerance

Figuring out an investor's true risk tolerance can be a very difficult process. There are certainly standard tools and processes that can be used to try to find the answer, but as Mike Tyson said "Everyone a plan until they get punched in the face." In this episode, we talk through the different types of risks investors face in markets and discuss some of the approaches we have used to better assess investors' true ability to handle them.

5/22/2023

Episode 13: Interpreting the Key Lessons from Great Investors

On our Excess Returns podcast, we have had the privilege to talk to many great investors. At the end of each of those interviews, we ask all of them one standard closing question: If you could teach one lesson to the average investor, what would that be? We recently published a compilation where we brought on all those insights together into one episode. In this episode, we discuss our favorite lessons from all of those we highlighted and discuss what they mean for investors.

5/15/2023

Episode 12: How Regular Investors Should Think About Alternatives to Stocks and Bonds

With inflation on the rise and the 60-40 stock and bond portfolio coming off one of its worst years ever, many investors are looking for alternatives. In our Show Us Your Portfolio series, we have looked at many strategies that go beyond stocks and bonds and the investors who manage their personal portfolios with them have made a compelling case for why they make sense. But they can also be complex and challenging to understand for many investors. In this episode, we asked Matt to give us a financial planning perspective on alternative strategies from the perspective of the clients who utilize them. We discuss the pros and cons of these strategies, how to analyze them and the importance of knowing yourself when considering them.

5/8/2023

Episode 11: Key Lessons for Investors in Their Later Retirement Years

In this episode, we take a look at the major considerations for investors in their later retirement years. We discuss how to think about spending in your later years, the rules for required minimum distributions, inherited IRAs, Roth conversions later in life, charitable giving, estate planning and a lot more.

5/1/2023

Episode 10: Using Variable Withdrawal Rate Strategies in Retirement Planning

Many investors are familiar with the 4% rule and fixed withdrawal rate retirement strategies. But in the real world, maintaining a fixed withdrawal rate is rarely the way things actually work out in retirement since the future is impossible to predict. In this episode, we look at the advantages of variable withdrawal strategies and look at the major approaches they utilize.

4/24/2023

Episode 9: Using Monte Carlo Simulation in Retirement Planning

In this episode of the Education of a Financial Planner, we take a detailed look at Monte Carlo simulation and how it is used in retirement planning. The look at the inputs that are used, how the simulation works and how to interpret the results. We also discuss some of the limitations of the process, how to calculate expected market returns to use in the simulation, the importance of properly framing the results and a lot more.

4/17/2023

Episode 8: The Importance of Asset Location

Most investors pay close attention to their asset allocation. And that makes sense since research has shown that the asset classes a portfolio is allocated to drive the majority of its return over time. But asset allocation isn't the whole story. It turns out that where those assets are located among taxable, IRA and Roth accounts can also have a big impact on an investor's after-tax return. In this episode, we take a deep dive into asset location and the key concepts investors need to understand.

4/10/2023

Episode 7: Understanding the 4% Rule and Safe Withdrawal Rates

The 4% rule has become a standard used by many investors to determine the amount they can safely withdrawal in retirement. But most don't know where it came from, the assumptions used for it and how safe withdrawal rates can be impacted by the many factors we deal with as investors. In this episode we take a deep dive into the 4% rule and the concept of safe withdrawal rates and look at the answers to those questions.

4/3/2023

Episode 6: Lessons For Investors Approaching Retirement

In this episode, we talk about the most important things people need to know as they approach and enter into retirement. We discuss the importance of maintaining a purpose in retirement, managing sequence risk, how to think about home equity and Social Security in a retirement plan, how to avoid the most common mistakes retirees make and a lot more.

3/27/2023

Episode 5: Retirement Planning in Your Prime Earning Years

Regardless of when you start saving for retirement, the most important period to save is probably the period when your income is at its peak. In this episode, we discuss how to think about retirement saving during your prime earning years. We discuss the Roth vs. traditional IRA debate, the importance of avoiding lifestyle creep, how to think about how much you need for retirement, the benefits of Monte Carlo simulation and a lot more.

3/21/2023

Episode 4: A Detailed Look at FDIC and SIPC Insurance and the Protections Available for Investors

With the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, many investors have been worried about if their money is protected. In this episode, we take a detailed look at the protections provided by FDIC and SIPC insurance and how they work in the real world. We also look at protections available for depositors at credit unions, cash value in life insurance policies and a lot more.

3/13/2023

Episode 3: What You Need to Know About Retirement Planning Early in Your Career

There are so many things to think about early in your career. Starting a new career, potentially paying off student loans and managing other expenses is usually the focus of young workers. Retirement is often not a major consideration since it is so far in the future. But saving early can start the process of compounding and can make a big difference down the road. In this episode, we discuss the things that young investors should keep in mind as they balance their present needs with their future retirement goals and get into the details of some of the vehicles available for retirement saving.

3/6/2023

Episode 2: A Primer on College Planning and Saving

In this episode, we take a detailed look at the options available to save and invest for college. We discuss 529 plans, UTMAs and UGMAs and non-traditional approaches. We also discuss financial aid, grandparent 529s and a lot more.

2/27/2023

Episode 1: The Basics of Goals-Based Planning

In this episode, we talk about the basics of goals-based planning. We discuss how to define goals, how to balance multiple goals, how to think about future return assumptions and where goals-based planning can go wrong.