Episode 335 of the Pilot the Pilot podcast takes off now.

AV Nation, what is going on?

And welcome back to the Pilot the Pilot podcast.

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.

Today's episode is an Allworth Airline Financial webinar episode.

If you weren't able to make the live, I had a lot of people message me, hey, I want to listen to this.

I want to watch this, please.

How do I find this?

So if you weren't one of the the many people that signed up for the live, which is awesome to have you there and you asked some awesome questions, we have the posted version right here.

This is a state of the industry as there is Jim Higgins on here and we have a lease to talk about what a pilot should do, finance size.

Because you know, Jim and I, we're not financial gurus.

We do not know what 400 okay to invest in Roth or traditional whatever it is, but Elise does.

So she's here to help you understand what you do when you're a new hire, what you do in the middle of your career.

And we also talk about towards the end of your career.

And if you like any of this information, you can head to Allworth Airline Financial and you can click on Pilot the Pilot.

There also should be a link for this description as well.

They'll take you straight to their site and and you can go ahead and set up a call.

It's a free consultation and they'll tell you how they can help you because I promise you, they have helped me.

So go ahead and check them out.

But AV Nation, I'm excited for you to listen to this episode.

It is a great one.

As always.

It's great to have Jim and it's also great to have Elise on as well.

AV Nation, I hope you really do enjoy this and click the link below to schedule consultation.

Like I said, I'm also looking to get some new interviews coming out here soon.

I know that the last couple of months haven't been the greatest for content and we are going to change that.

So thank you so much for for standing by asking me what's going on, but maybe we'll we talk more about that in future episodes, but right now it just is what it is and we look forward to producing some more episodes here soon.

So without any further ado, here's a state of the Airline industry with Jim Higgins and Elise.

Hey everyone, Justin Seams here, host of the Pilot the Pilot Podcast and I want to welcome everyone to today's webinar, the State of the airline industry.

Whether you're flying today or getting ready for your next bid or planning your next chapter in your career, we're glad you made the time today.

There's a lot that we're going to cover and I'm very excited to get started today.

I want everyone to have the opportunity to hear from our speakers, hear from the people we have today as it's going to be very, very valuable information.

A little bit of myself.

I host the Pilot the Pilot podcast.

I recently went from a fractional company to a major airline so we can talk specifically about decisions and why one would choose and make that decision after being seven years into a career and why I thought it was the best choice.

And then we're also going to follow along a timeline of early in your career, middle of your career and end of your career of how you should invest, what you should thinking about.

We have a lot of good information and I'm very excited.

First, I want to go ahead and introduce the two guests that we have.

They're gonna be on for the webinar.

We have Jim and Elise and we'll have them go ahead and introduce themselves.

So Jim, if you want to start off and then we'll have Elise say something as well.

Thanks, Justin.

I'm Jim Higgins.

I'm a professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota.

Been talking with Justin since the beginning of COVID about all things aviation related.

Former airline pilot, now turned professor.

But before that I've also flown corporate and I've flowing freight and I was also heavily involved in the Airline Pilots Association's Master Executive Council at American Eagle Airlines, now known as Envoy.

So I was the MEC chair there.

So happy to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

Good afternoon.

My name is Elise Dominguez and I am one of the financial advisors here at All Worth Financial Allworth Airline Advisors.

I am a certified financial planner, CFP professional.

Most of the clients that I work with are airline pilots.

So I'm really looking forward to being part of this conversation with Jim and Justin today.

Now for the disclaimer.

This presentation is for general information only and shouldn't be taken as personal advice.

Things may change over time.

And as always, consult your financial, tax or legal advisor for guidance specific to your situation.

All right, Jim, Elise, thank you so much for coming on today for the state of the industry.

Jim, it's been a while since we talked.

There's a lot going on.

I figured today we can kind of start and break in and dig into what's going on in the industry.

So do you have anything that.

Since we last talked about, I mean, we really focus on spirit, We've talked about some of the other major hiring pauses and we've talked about what's going on with regionals and how some regional CEOs don't think that there is actually a pilot shortage anymore.

So is there anything else that you're seeing over at University of North Dakota or anything that you're reading?

Yeah, it's.

It's quite an interesting time, right?

It, it.

Sure.

It sure seems relative to recent times.

Sure seems like the pilot hiring has trickled or froze or it's not what it used to.

However, we just have to go back to the year 2000, all the way up to present.

You know, an average year, there's about 3,400 pilots that are hired at the largest carriers.

That's according to some FAPA data.

But that's been really skewed because in 23 and 24 we had 12,000 and 13,000 pilots hired during that time.

We've now returned back to about 4,000, 4,500, which still historically is high.

I mean, this year alone, believe it or not, at the largest legacy carriers, we could have the third or fourth best year since 2000 in hiring yet, because a lot of people are comparing it to 23 and 24, it seems like we're in a famine of hiring.

And so again, it's just all relative.

You know, you and I have talked about this so many times, Justin.

Whenever times are really, really good for pilots and the floodgates are open and everyone's getting a job everywhere, everyone just assumes it's going to be like that forever.

And then on the other side of that, whenever there's no hiring going on and there's furloughs and all kinds of problems, everyone assumes this is how it's going to be forever.

But you and I both know we've been in the industry now long enough that it's very cyclical.

And, you know, we've kind of regressed back to the mean, but there still are good opportunities out there.

I still believe it's a great profession, but certainly we're seeing some variation year to year.

Yeah.

And I have a buddy who is 24 years old.

He is a Czech airman at a regional airline, which, I mean, me saying that to you, you're probably like, holy smokes, how's it even impossible?

He's making more money than me as a second year major fo.

And he, he actually was turned down for.

For a major job.

And it was kind of his first disappointment in his career.

And I was kind of explaining to him, I was like, dude, you are very, very young.

I guarantee you, if you were on the phone with a lease, you'd be like, look, you're going to have many opportunities.

We're going to be able to set you up for retirement.

You're gonna have the best job you can possibly have.

It's going to happen.

It's going to happen soon.

Um, we just got to stick in there.

And it's kind of part of the process.

Right.

Like, being turned down in the past was not uncommon.

Right.

It was kind of just luck of when you interviewed.

It is not necessarily bad on you as a prospective candidate.

It's more of just, kind of just luck.

Right place, right time, right?

Absolutely.

There's no doubt about it.

There's definitely an element of luck.

People have to be prepared.

They have to go through the process to make sure they put their best foot forward.

But certainly you and I both know some great candidates in the years past that have been, you know, rejected.

And, you know, it's painful and it's difficult.

It allows for a lot of introspection.

But again, you know, your friend's not in a bad place at all.

24, you know, that's.

I couldn't imagine to be 24 and be a Czech airman at a.

At a regional.

He's doing great and has a very bright future.

And hopefully everyone that's listening to this realize that, realizes that as well.

Yeah.

I mean, when I was 24, I think.

I don't even think I had all my ratings.

I was working part time at the Apple store trying to finish all my ratings.

I was making like 12 bucks an hour.

So he's definitely doing way better than I was at 24.

No doubt.

And it's just going to get better.

Yeah.

And, Elise, when you see someone that's 24 years old making the kind of money that someone is at a.

At a regional and they're getting ready to make the transition to a major airline, I would imagine you're like, wow, you are in such a good place to start for saving, start for retirement, if you haven't already.

But it's like the amount of money that some of the younger generation is making right now has to be kind of awesome for you all to see and just see that, wow, we can really help you and we can really set you up for a good future.

Right.

No, it's funny because I work with many Pilots, you know, some who are just starting in their careers and others who, you know, are approaching age 65.

And it's kind of funny hearing the 65 year olds I work with saying, oh, you know, these youngins are earning a lot more than I ever did in my career.

They're starting off a lot.

You know, I'm retiring with what they're making right now.

But it is a cool perspective and it just brings it back to the focus that it's never too early to start planning for financial planning, you know, retirement, 65, 67, whatever that age is, you know, it's never too early.

And being 24 years old and having that income potential and just a long career ahead of them, it's really exciting.

And never too early to start thinking about retirement and then also diversifying your assets outside of retirement.

Right.

We don't want you to feel like all of Your money's in 401ks and IRAs, because you're going to want to purchase things throughout your, throughout your younger years as well, which is, it's a good way to, you know, bring in conversations about diversing your assets outside of just 401ks and retirement accounts.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, those are conversations that I've had with Gary, who helps me with my 401k, who helps me with my investments, who Gary was on this last time.

You've heard Gary on the podcast as well.

It's been great.

And I wish I had that at a younger age.

I mean, even when I was working at Apple part time, just knowing what I could be getting into.

Because the mindset of saving and the mindset of retirement and mindset of just kind of setting yourself up for the best success is huge to start early.

And I probably start a little later than some, but still earlier than others.

But it's very important to kind of have that mindset when you agree.

Yeah.

And I, I can, I can just add to that too, Justin, when one of the things we talk to our students about because we get those really early, early entrants into the industry, time value of money, which is just something that's so misunderstood by so many.

And it's not just a pilot centric thing.

I think it's just maybe I didn't know much about it.

I always knew you should save money and put money away, but, but I'm not a financial planner at all, so Elise may completely object to what I'm about to say, but I think if you do things well in your 20s and 30s, you've really got a foundation to kind of coast through your 50s and 60s into retirement and be very confident financially that things are going to work out well.

On the other side of that I was just listening.

You know, we've talked about social media.

There was a, my daughter showed me a tick tock or an older gentleman the other day who didn't save throughout his career and he's 65 now and he's looking for jobs and he's relying on Social Security.

And so it doesn't take much to, I think if someone were to see that other side of it where you don't plan well, it doesn't take much to scare you and to you better do the right thing if you possibly can.

And like you said, all these programs are available, the pays there, the salaries there, now starting salaries are there.

So there really is no excuse to not have some very good retirement options early on and get compounding interest to work for you.

Yeah, the best part about younger individuals who are starting in this profession is the greatest gift that they have is time.

Like you mentioned, that time value of money earning interest, you have those in that investment potential.

In the event of a down market, you have that time horizon to recover.

So it really is a really unique thing just knowing that, you know, the value of a dollar or the value of a dollar today is greater than the value of a dollar in the future because the profit that it can earn, you know.

So yeah, totally agree.

And Jim, with some, with getting back on kind of some current events, JetBlue came out yesterday, they mentioned cutting of services.

You know, if you're a pilot at JetBlue or say anywhere, I mean right now the market, it just seems like it's up in the air.

Right.

Like everyone for the last four years has been like the recession's right around the corner, the recession's right around the corner, like it's, it's going to happen.

But as someone who's been reading a lot in the industry, what would you kind of make of what JetBlue has come out and said or what is going on with Spirit?

Yeah, well, you know, when we look at the ULCCs in general, you know, I believe we're now seeing some pretty strong evidence that that business model is being exposed.

You know, you and I talked about this the beginning of COVID and I told you I think it's a pretty strong business model.

You know, they have the ability to ramp up through ancillary revenue.

They're able to withstand downturns and you know, capacity problems.

But I Don't think that's true.

And you know, of course we've heard some of the main mainline CEOs, like Scott Kirby's one saying that he, I mean this is a direct quote.

The business model sucks for us.

They can't make money.

And I always thought it was kind of wishful thinking maybe from a mainline.

But we have some strong evidence, we have the spirit bankruptcy, the chapter 11.

They're going through that now and hopefully they're going to be able to emerge.

They have a plan that's been approved by the trustee.

You do have the JetBlue.

JetBlue used to be very profitable even through 9 11, all the way through the Great Recession.

They always were able to turn a profit until just recently.

And so you got to kind of wonder, gosh, you know, are they is the ulcc?

And then of course you can't look much further than Southwest.

They're reinventing themselves.

Southwest is now doing baggage fees, they're now doing premium se.

They're redoing their entire revenue management structure for fares.

Things that we, you know, I mean, remember the bags fly free and you know, Southwest used to have these massive campaigns.

Well, they've completely abandoned that and bags do not fly free there anymore.

And so they're basically reinventing themselves into the mainline model.

My point in all this.

And of course then you've got the united JetBlue partnership that was just announced as well, which is very interesting.

You know, so all of this is pretty strong evidence that there's some problems with the ULCCs.

The one exception seems to be Frontier and Allegiant.

I guess two exceptions.

They seem to be keeping their head above water.

And while they haven't been as wildly profitable as they have been in the past, they have seemed to solve that.

Part of that might be the route, structure, their equipment, you know, things like that.

But we are seeing, I believe we're seeing some exposure on the ULCCs.

Now that doesn't mean people should jump ship and leave, leave one of these carriers and go somewhere else.

It just means that when you're taking your long term career plans, keep in mind that these business models may have to change over time to, you know, make sure that the company stays profitable.

Yeah.

And Jim, as you've seen in your career here, there's very rarely do you jump from airline to airline unless there's bankruptcy, unless there's furloughing, unless there's just some kind of economic reason to do it as of late.

And as of the last five years I mean, I personally have had friends or I've seen people, whether it's Instagram, Whether it's on YouTube, some influencers, they've been talking about how, you know, I'm going from United to Delta, I'm going from Delta to United.

You know, you see a lot of more of switching between airlines where before it was kind of like, oh, my gosh, I made it, we're here, I'm never going anywhere else.

What do you think about that with.

When it comes to financial planning as well?

And at least you can kind of come in as well, because I'm sure you've seen those kind of questions too.

But what kind of.

What would you put on the basis of staying at an airline?

Maybe someone that's out of JetBlue or that's out of spirit, versus going into a different major that seems to be doing better now.

And at least you might be able to start off just explaining kind of the risk that you can go.

You know, seniority, you're top of the pay scale, starting at the bottom can be a big deal for.

For some of your finances and how you live.

Yeah, no, that's a great point, Justin.

And I'll just use an example that I had with one of my clients I was working with.

He is currently at Spirit.

He has been at Spirit for many years.

He doesn't want to jump ship.

He enjoys his, you know, his base, it's home.

That's where he's at.

And then also his family lifestyle, like you said, having that seniority there, he doesn't feel comfortable leaving that yet.

So he's like, I'm riding the wave until, you know, it crashes.

But in all seriousness, it allows us an opportunity to review his financial plan from a perspective today.

And it also lets us create what if scenarios.

Okay, well, what if you were furloughed or what if you retired early, you know, 10 years earlier than you were expecting?

How does that impact your plan?

And we even created a second scenario scenario of him moving to Allegiant just to kind of see what you would.

What it would look like, you know, starting with, you know, for fo pay, first year pay, how would that impact you as far as a financial perspective?

You know, so I think that was a really unique opportunity that ultimately provided peace of mind knowing that if you were to stay at Spirit, of course we have this baseline plan, but if you were to move to Allegiant, you're still okay because of the hard work that you have done so far in your plan to Make.

If you had to make a switch because of this, you're still okay.

And that provides peace of mind and kind of goes back to that.

It's never too early to start because there's a lot of things out of our control.

But what we can control is, you know, the inputs that we put in the event that there is a change.

So that was a really unique opportunity to.

To see on my end too.

And it helps provide some peace of mind and some sleep at night knowing that it is going to be okay.

Yeah.

I would just add that in addition to making sure that you involve someone like Elise to go through and financially plan any kind of transition like that, that, you know, where you end up working, where you start working transitions like that's a deeply personal decision.

There's a lot of variables that go into it.

Probably one of the biggest variables is location.

Right.

You know, a lot of people.

I mean, I commuted half my career and I lived in base half my career.

And I tell you, and I know, Justin, you're fully familiar with this as well, you know, it's a lot easier when you can drive to work than when you have to fly to work.

The stress level goes completely down.

And so, you know, there are people that have to make some tough decisions.

Maybe they're in base at a.

At a Spirit or at a JetBlue, but they have an opportunity to go to an American United Delta, and they would have to commute.

And that, you know, that in addition to all the other variables, the pay, the retirement, you know, the benefits, everything else that goes into it, but that's gotta be factored in as well.

And, you know, do you have kids that you want to be home with and, you know, go to their sporting events or their other events?

These are all things that, you know, you have to.

You have to balance.

It's the number one question I get.

I'm sure it's one of the big questions you get is where should I go and work?

And my answer is always the same.

You know, that's really a personal decision based on, you know, at least a dozen factors I can think of off the top of my head, with one of the biggest ones being lifestyle in terms of commute versus not commute.

And so it just depends, you know, if I'm pretty senior at JetBlue.

That's a difficult.

That's a difficult.

You know, maybe I live in, you know, in Kew Gardens right now.

You can drive to.

Drive to work at Kennedy or whatever, and.

And it's working out well.

For me, you know, and I can't get that base.

Maybe I'd have to go to Atlanta at Delta or something like that.

I, you know, I think it'd be very tough for me to move unless I'm convinced that my company's on the path to bankruptcy, which, in the case of JetBlue, I think that that's.

That's very unlikely.

Yeah, agreed.

I always ask my buddy.

He's like, my JetBlue guy.

Anytime I get news, I'm like, hey, what's going on?

He's like, dude, we're fine.

Stop asking questions.

All right, Sorry.

I just want to know, but going back to what you said about kind of moving airlines and picking what's best for you, I think a lot of it kind of ego and pride gets in the way, too, because, I mean, some people think, I mean, when I was at my last job, I'd be like, I'm a pilot.

Like, who do you fly for?

I'm like, I fly a fractional.

Like, oh, well, when are you going to go to the airline?

You know?

Or if you say you fly for Spirit, like, oh, when are you gonna go fly for United?

It's like, you kind of have to get past that.

Some people think that flying for a certain airline is a better job, when in reality, they don't know your personal situation.

They don't know that one, you can make a good amount of money at Spirit, and you can drop pretty much all your trips and have the best quality of life, which is the most important thing.

And maybe at least one agree with that.

Maybe the most important thing is planning for your future and your retirement.

But dropping trips and being able to choose when and where you want to work, I mean, that.

That really means a lot, especially if you have young kids or you have a family or if you'.

Just.

Maybe you just want to go hang out and go surf, I don't know, wherever you live.

But it's very important to kind of understand what is the right job for you and for your family.

When I was at my fractional, it worked out really well for us for time being.

When my wife was in medical school and we didn't know where we want to live, the fractional let me live anywhere in the country.

And we were able to move to her residency job, and then we were able to set roots and figure out, all right, North Carolina is where we want to stay.

Now let's look for the best airline that we can go to.

And, I mean, most people would imagine that's American because of the big Charlotte base.

Now, if I'll ever get Charlotte as a base.

That's yet to be determined.

But, you know, New York's not so bad.

I'm getting used to it.

When you said Kew Gardens, I kind of, like, shook.

I was like, oh, my gosh, that's too real right now.

No, I'm just kidding.

A lot of crash pads in Kew Gardens.

Yeah, a lot of crash pads.

But thankfully, short call era of my career in New York seems to be over.

And I've been able to hold a line the last two months and it's been great.

I've really enjoyed it and the flying's been awesome.

And everyone that we fund those.

Awesome.

Elise, I wanted to ask about, what's your recommendation?

Say someone is at an airline that's in bankruptcy.

Or maybe they're like, hey, like, I don't know if I trust where I'm at.

I may be.

They're.

They're a junior captain.

Maybe they've been there for a while, but they're just kind of like, hey, I'm thinking about jumping to a different airline.

Do you kind of give them, like pause and be like, hey, just really think about it.

Like, don't jump to conclusions.

Don't just do it because you think something's going to go bad.

Like, we really need to see what's going on and if it's worth the risk.

But what kind of do you recommend to them when they're in those situations?

Yeah, you know, and a lot of financial planning is emotional based too.

Right.

And you know, you hear about emotional investors and people get worried, so they sell everything or move everything to cash.

Right.

That's just part of who we are.

That is what we're made of.

We are, we're emotional, emotional investors.

And that also can impact decisions where we have a moment of panic.

And it's like, okay, well, I'm ready to move.

Let's do.

Let's do something else, or I'm ready to leave.

I really encourage my clients in the.

The wonderful pilots that I work with is just to take a step back, let's breathe.

What is keeping you up at night?

Because that is ultimately the biggest decision maker.

We don't want you to lose sleep.

We don't want you to be stressed.

So of course, I walk them through the financial perspective.

Okay.

Like, this is where you're currently at right now versus, let's say you did move to United or Delta or you have.

I had a couple of clients who were interviewing and they're like, hey, I have a couple of offers.

Which one should I go to?

It's like, okay, well, let's take a step back.

What is important to you?

Oh, well, I have young kids and, you know, they're in middle school and I like going to their baseball games at night or whatever that is.

Okay, that's important.

And really what my job is, is to make sure that emotionally we're making the best decisions and financially.

But at the end of the day, the airlines are very generous with their benefits, so we always factor in that.

And of course, there might be a little bit of a pay difference whenever you move to an air.

So that just involves a little bit of budgeting.

Right.

And sometimes we have to give up a couple of things in order to make that work.

It's a struggle in the beginning.

It absolutely is a struggle in the beginning.

And this is a little tidbit.

I'll add.

Something that Allworth Financial does offer is if one of our clients are at a, you know, a regional and they're doing really well there, and then they move to a legacy and they're a first officer.

Of course you have that pay adjustment.

We actually do offer free 401k management for the first year while you're at that new airline.

So that's something that has really brought in a lot of people.

And they're like, wow, like, this has really helped, you know, set the foundation.

And as I continue to build seniority and build my year pay scale, this is something I didn't have to worry about is, you know, paying for investment management.

So I know I'm going off on a little.

On a little tangent here.

I think that's great because I mean, I recently have switched and I went from, I think I took $120,000 pay cut my first year, going from where the fractional is at to the airline I was at.

I mean, that's a lot of money.

And I think you can kind of just like think everyone else does it.

It's okay.

But like, when it hits you and you see your paycheck, you're like, oh, wow.

And it's.

It's really hard to, to kind of reduce your lifestyle, right.

When you get used to living a certain way, buying the things you want to buy, and if you don't save properly, then you might be able, you might have to make some changes.

And that's very difficult.

And it's not just for personally family, right?

Like telling your kid, oh, okay, let's not do that.

And then on the Flip side of it, when you.

You go to say you're Sam in a crew environment, I'm getting ready to fly a trip.

I'm a new guy.

I'm talking to the captain, the guy, the girl I'm flying with.

I'm like, oh, man, it's just been tough, you know, the pay cut that I had to take.

And then they're like, whoa, whoa, Whoa, you're making $125 an hour.

When I started, I was making $40 an hour.

So it's just, it's really interesting because, like, you.

You can complain because it's very valid, but when you complain to someone that's senior, that's been through 9, 11, that's been through 08, financial, been through all this, they.

They don't have much sympathy for you.

And I mean, for good reason.

They've been through a lot.

Right.

The lost generation, they've seen a lot of bad, Losing their pensions and going to 401k.

And it's just.

There's a lot going on in the industry.

So I guess when I'm going off on a tangent as well, but just be careful who you complain to when you make it to the airline industry, because they will quickly realize that, or you will quickly realize that they're not going to have much sympathy for you complaining about making $128 an hour your very first year.

Yeah, right.

And like you said, you get used to that lifestyle and then, you know, having to adjust and go back to, you know, a B sheet, and it's like, how much, you know, am I saving?

Like, am I going to deplete my savings?

What does that look like?

And sometimes we have clients that are.

They're the only one that's working full time.

Right.

And their spouse is at home taking care of the children.

And that's a big change.

And this is something that's very common that I see with my clients.

And my big focus is just to take a step back.

We'll view it from a financial perspective, of course, but also emotionally, what's important to you.

And then sometimes that means, you know, we have to commute.

Unfortunately, that's just part of it, because they want to still be able to support their family.

And that's a temporary thing for them.

They're like, I just want to get back on track.

And we have some who are like, nope, I refuse to commute.

I'm willing to take that, that pay cut.

So there's just a lot of different factors to.

To think about.

Yeah, Justin, I have one Quick anecdote to add.

I was talking to a captain the other day of a widebody, and he mentioned to me the best thing to do.

You know, pilots think they're experts in so many things, including financial planning, which is funny, but.

But he was telling me that, you know, if you want to do your retirement right, you front load against the IRS limits your first three months.

So you get that whatever you can, you know, 40, 50, 70,000.

I'm like, yeah, but what do you live on?

He goes, well, you just.

You just save up.

And, you know, November, December.

I'm like, you know, these are people completely.

You know, when you make $500,000 a year, it's probably a lot easier to front load, something like that.

So it's just.

It's all based on people's perspective and how they do things.

And one thing I do want to say that Elise brought up earlier is about this emotional thing.

We do have to watch out for that with pilots.

I hearken back to my Y2K days.

Some of you may or may not know what that was or maybe read about it, but I was flying with a gentleman that cashed out his entire 401k and paid the penalties and then bought gold because he thought the world was basically going to end.

And of course, we all know what happened.

What a silly investment that.

I have no idea how he did since then, but I know he lost a lot of money in that.

So we do have to be careful.

One thing I've always said is just like, no offense, Elise, I don't know if you're a pilot or not.

I'm assuming not, but I probably wouldn't want you flying an iOS with an engine on fire.

But I also wouldn't want that pilot giving me financial advice.

I'd want you giving me financial advice.

And so that's what I always tell pilots.

Get the experts, the people that do it for a living, to give you the best possible advice.

There's no guarantees.

But one thing I do know is you and I, Justin, probably know a lot of people that have really loused up their retirement and their savings and their financial situations because they didn't know any better.

And if you involve a professional early on that does this for a living, just like we do flying, let's stick to flying.

Let the professionals come in and do that.

We can avoid this emotional stuff.

We can avoid these Y2K stuff.

We can avoid all this other stuff that we.

We see.

And so I think it's such a great discussion to have.

Yeah.

And you're talking about making emotional choices.

The last two pilots I flown with were like, hey, sell everything in your 401k, buy XRP, buy Ripple by cryptocurrency.

Right.

It's the only way that you're going to become rich.

At least you're probably going to laugh at that.

But I mean, it is out there.

I mean, who's this?

I, I'm.

Who's to say he might be right?

Right.

Like, I'm not saying that it's not something you should do, but it's probably best to have a conversation with someone that sees the whole big picture rather than the emotional kind of attachment that someone can have to their choices that they have made and they talk themselves into this is the best thing that's ever happened.

Right.

And it's easy to believe it.

It's easy to get into it, like, oh, it makes a lot of sense.

But I think as Jim was saying, pilots are notoriously bad at handling money.

They're notoriously bad at just buying crazy stuff.

I mean, I've seen people get hired in a major airline.

They're buying a Rolex and they're buying a new boat.

And it's like, I know what you're making.

Like, I know that's not possible right now, like, what's going on?

So I think that's why it's just beneficial.

And I tell everyone who I recommend to all worth.

It's like, hey, just call them.

Right?

You get a free consultation call.

You can call them, you can talk to them, and if you think it's right, then continue the process.

If not, just hear them out, hear what they have to say and then go about your day.

Anything.

It's 45 minutes.

They can educate you a little bit on what you can do and then you can sign up.

So it's been very beneficial for me.

That's all I'm say.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

And moving on, kind of, as I mentioned there or in the beginning, we're going to kind of take you through the thought process of what it's like to invest, what it's like to be in the beginning of your career.

You know, we can use me kind of personally as an anecdote here where I am new to a major airline.

I'm at the lowest end of the pay scale.

You won't know how.

I'm in the second year pay, so I moved up a little bit.

It was like $60 an hour raise, which is awesome.

But at least when you get hired by the major, you think that you made it, right?

You see your life going from first year pay to widebody captain at age 65, making who knows what will be by that time.

We'll say like 500, 600 grand that some of these guys and girls are making.

But what do you.

How do you slow someone down that's like, all right, I made it.

Now let me live my major airline life.

Let me live like a captain.

Let me live like the first officer.

It's making, you know, 200, 300, or the captain's making 300 to $500,000.

How do you slow someone down and just be like, all right, yeah, let's see what we can do?

Yes.

And that is so common.

And something I always love to mention to my pilots is, you know, just because we make money doesn't necessarily mean we get to spend more money.

We want to create really good habits in the beginning.

So really, the first thing that I sit down or what I think about when one of my clients is starting off at a legacy airline, it's like, man, I made it.

I'm excited.

You know, I'm gonna stay here forever.

Really, the first thing I think about is cash flow.

You know, are you spending everything that you're making?

How much are you saving outside of the 401k?

And it's also really common for clients that I work with to say, well, you know, I'm getting 17%, 16.

17% from my employer, so I don't really need to put anything away.

And I'm like, like, okay, so why is that?

Why do you think that?

And something that I like to.

To recommend to the clients that I work with is every single year, at least, if you're not maxing out your 401k to increase your contribution by at least 1% every year, because it creates good, healthy saving habits.

And you kind of don't miss what you never had, so you don't really ever see that 1% hit your paycheck.

So it's not like it was ever really missing.

And it just creates, you know, that good savings habit.

So really, cash flow is super important.

You know, how much are you contributing as far as, you know your portion of the 401k, what your goals are?

Do you have any student loans that you're still working to pay off, any car loans?

I currently have a car loan.

It's not very fun, so just different things like that.

And then it allows me to create the first step.

And it's like, okay, so we still have a little bit of debt that we're working to pay for.

Maybe we have a revolving credit card balance that has 20 plus percent as that interest rate.

So maybe we should start paying that off first.

So that's the first thing that I like to look at and then like I mentioned is creating those savings habits.

Do you have an emergency fund which is typically three to six months of your expenses saved in either a high yield savings or you know, readily available assets like a money market account, something that you can easily pull from in the event of emergencies.

Something my dad used to tell me when I was growing up and I hated it was when it rained, rains, it pours and it is so true, so true.

I promise as soon as you start having car issues, that's when the cat gets sick, that's when the AC goes out.

It's like everything at once just starts to hit you and it's like you feel confident, you feel comfortable with your finances and then something happens and it's a domino effect.

So that's something I really like to signify importance to is that emergency fund is because we don't want to pay off all this credit card debt.

An emergency happens and then we're back at square one because we put everything back on the credit card.

So those are probably the two biggest things that I, that I think about before we start spending more money and then also continuing to save in that 401k, increasing your contribution because it won't take, it doesn't usually take a long time before you're maxing it out on your end too.

Yeah.

And I kind of say to that like life throws you curveballs.

Right?

Like my family's throwing a curveball this year as well.

You're kind of pressed into what's going on.

And I mean one of my first calls was to Gary reaching out be like hey Gary.

I mean he helps me with my financial advisor stuff through Allworth and just like hey, what do we do?

What do we do here?

Like what can I do here?

What is available?

What's the smartest move that I can make and how can I maximize?

Kind of like if I need more cash now versus keeping it.

Do you rec.

You know, just those questions were very beneficial to have with someone that knows what they're talking about because that goes back to the emotional side of things.

When you're facing something that might be challenging in life, you might emotionally make the wrong decision and having someone to talk it through is a really good idea.

So that was very beneficial as well.

And I really liked what you said talking about, you know, you made it right.

Like you're, you're at an airline, you're doing this.

It's like, well, you have student loan debt.

Most likely.

Most pilots have a lot of student loan debt.

They're coming through.

It's like, let's, let's focus on paying that off.

Let's focus on the 401k.

But also, yeah, you're making 18 from the company benefit.

But it's also a good idea to put your own money aside because I think a lot of people think of major airline retirement.

You know, that's going to be my only savings.

I'm going to spend everything else because I made it now, like that is going to give me a couple million dollars to retire on.

And I'm good.

But I love how you mentioned and recommended that you also do your own savings as well.

And Jim, you might have seen that personally too, working at an airline and wife.

Yeah, it's just.

It's funny how you bring it up.

I mean, I remember my first cargo job.

I was making $17,000 a year.

You know, my rent was 300 bucks a month.

We didn't have kids yet, thank God, but we were.

I remember sitting there thinking myself, there's been some months where, you know, how am I going to come up with rent?

You know, I'm notoriously was really bad with.

With money.

You know, my wife's a little bit better, but we did have to learn.

But now it's.

It's funny because the more money you make, you know, I have a very good salary here at und.

I also have businesses outside of und.

My wife, a senior FO now at United, you know, we're making more money than we've ever made in our lives.

But to Elise's point, you know, you really have to be careful because, you know, we just came back from a cruise overseas and I'm sitting there, these bills coming in, and I mean, these are just absurd bills that I would.

First part of our marriage I would have never considered.

And I remember thinking to myself as he's come in, you know, that could have been in.

You know, I could have been in my rock.

That could have been in my, you know, all these other things.

So.

So it's just interesting.

The more money you make, it does not solve your problems.

There's no doubt about it.

And I can also just say from an emotional point of view too, it doesn't necessarily mean you're happiest either.

You get more money, you have more money problems sometimes.

So, yeah, good Stuff.

Yeah, I mean, lifestyle creep is a very real thing.

It's very easy to happen.

It happens very fast.

You don't even realize it's happening.

And before you know it you're like, oh wow, I had extra money, but now I don't have any extra money.

At least he's not going to like our next conversation.

Right, right.

Jim, I want to talk about kind of like the second phase now.

So you're at a regional, your first, first kind of major airline or even the flow through programs right now that are going on.

Have you seen any trends?

I know they've kind of slowed down.

I've known.

No, now most people aren't looking at like the two, three years.

It could be more five years.

But historically that's still good.

Right?

The trends of flow throughs, I mean we've seen, I've talked to captains are like, it took me 11 years to flow.

It's like just knowing that that happens now.

The flow programs are probably relatively new.

He probably got a flow maybe like five years in his career.

So maybe it was more of a seven year flow or like a six year flow.

But still a long flow can be typical.

And it has happened in the past.

Absolutely.

The original flow through program from American Eagle to American is one of those big examples.

But now a lot of them have it.

I will say this, it looks like we're going to hire we like I'm United or Delta or American, it looks like the industry is going to hire somewhere north to 4,000 pilots.

I suspect that most of those pilots are in some type of a flow program, whether it's, or whatever you want to call it.

United's AV8, Delta's Propel, you know, all the different carriers have different, different plans like that and I think most of them are coming from, from those particular avenues.

So the flow is very real.

But if you look at this historically and you know, Elise could always run the numbers for you, I'm sure, but let's just say there's a two year delay from what you originally thought you were going to do to get on at American.

And you know, what, what the two years is going to take.

Now as a first officer, it's not like you're not getting, I'm sorry, as a captain, it's not like you're not getting paid at your regional airline, you know, and so it would be interesting to run that.

But I think that hiring is still healthy.

I think that the flows are still there and it seems to be the primary method now.

It looks Like Boeing's going for certification of their max Sevens and tens and they may get that by the end of the year.

The 787 production is ramping back up.

Airbus and the Rolls Royce engines seem to be solving their issues.

So you know, depending on what happens in the economy, we are seeing some, we are seeing some softening in the markets compared to what we've seen in the past.

So there's that.

But all things considered, it looks like we will still be hiring well north of 4,000 pilots at these major airlines for the foreseeable future.

And maybe we'll even get back to where we before.

Because you have to remember some of these massive retirements have not yet even hit their main point.

Like, you know, United still a couple years away from where they're going to have the apex of their retirement flush.

I think American.

Justin.

I don't know, I'd have to go and look, but they're a pretty senior group, let me just put it that way.

And I think that there's a pretty good chunk of pilots that are going to be coming up retirement there.

I do think we might have crested a little bit on Deltas, but I don't know, I'd have to go back and look, look.

But the point is, is we still haven't seen the massive retirements that often kind of push the hiring.

And you know, with Boeing and Airbus coming back online, I think the future is still very bright.

You know, it's good to have these flow throughs, it's good to do those things.

But I would still not let the sunset on getting those resumes out there, you know, retailing yourself as a pilot just like the good old days, going to the conferences, you know, working your networks, all the things that have been proven in the past.

I would still continue to do that.

Yeah.

And Jim, you know, you're a check airman at a regional airline.

Not bringing up the same guy again, but just the job that he has.

You're making a lot of money, right?

These major airlines have invested in making sure their check airmen are getting paid very well.

So they don't lose them as often because they're very much needed right now to change to train all these new pilots that are coming in.

Do you think that's it's capable for those airlines or do you think they will always now kind of that they set the standard, have that pay or do you see that kind of being as a temporary thing?

Well, we are starting to see some of the hiring bonuses go away because of what you Talked about the beginning where some of these regional CEOs are saying, we no longer have this issue or whatever, which isn't quite true, but it's certainly not where it was a couple years ago.

But let's talk a little bit about the line check Airmen because that's a very, very specific, specific bubble.

That's a.

So it's a hard training program to get through because you have to schedule at the faa, you have to go through all this.

So to get somebody to that spot is very expensive for a company.

So my guess is, and by the way, once you become a line check airmen, you're almost instantly hirable at any major airline.

So when you told me about your friend, that did pique my interest a little bit because you don't hear too often about line check Airmen, you know, not making it.

But, but certainly I have, and they certainly have gone on to do great things, you know, elsewhere.

But that being said, that's typically the thing.

So to answer your question very specifically, I see regional airlines continuing to greatly protect their Czech Airmen resource because they're so hard to hatch, they're so hard to train.

And you know, when one leaves, it causes probably a 6x churn and training, and you still have to go through the approval process to let the FAA sign off on.

You know, they don't, they don't like a lot of Czech Airmen, typically speaking, leaking because of quality control issues and whatnot.

So it's a big process.

It probably takes from inception to somebody fully fed qualified as a line check Airmen.

Nowadays, I'm guessing six months.

Maybe some airlines can do that quicker, but, you know, so, so when one of them leaves, my goodness, it's going to be six months before that, that hole's filled.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I guess the better question is, do you think that because, you know, some people are like, hey, I'm making 400 grand at envoys because I'm a check airman.

Yeah, I'm set for life.

Do you think that's a good way to think of that?

Well, so, great question.

Right.

And I get this question a lot.

I'm sure you do too.

And I really am anxious to hear what Elise has to say about this as well.

I will say, generally speaking, at a younger age, at a younger age, it almost always makes sense to make the jump to your legacy carrier just in terms of retirement, just because I've so.

So I also sometimes serve as an expert witness.

I think I've told you that this before, Justin, and I never represent the airlines.

I Don't know if that's good or bad.

I always represent the pilots that have been harmed and that can't afford to pay their, pay their expert witnesses, but that's okay.

But I have done a lot of career earning calculations as part of damage calculations for pilots.

And we're talking, you know, if a 25 year old, for instance, stays at a, at a regional airline, even if they're a Czech airman, you know, and they're making that 400,000, and if that continues, I'm still telling you, and it'd be interesting, maybe, maybe I don't want to put a lease on the spot, but, but my guess is it's still a several million dollar difference in terms of overall compensation package if they choose not to go to a legacy carrier in terms of overall compensation, you know, by the end of their career.

But that being said, I would almost always encourage people to leave their regional airlines, if they can, until they get to a certain age.

And then the other, the other piece to that is, you know, everyone's situation is very specific.

Like I happen to know a captain has a special needs son and that person has the perfect schedule, you know, for, for their son at their regional.

And so it works great.

They make enough money, things are fine, they get the schedule they want, that person's never going to go to a, to a legacy carrier.

But generally speaking, I would say financially, all things considered, it would be better to make that jump.

I don't mean to put you on the spot, Elise, but I mean, I'm sure you run those.

What do you think?

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.

You know, like a lot of the regionals have matches, you know, like whether it's 6%, 9% total, it's not the 16, 17, 18% that you're seeing with the legacy airlines, which is absolutely insane and very well deserved, you know.

And then also with the legacy airlines, they're very generous as far as benefits goes for health, offering high deductible health plans, which allows you to open what's called a health savings account that has triple tax advantages.

You know, you, you, it's tax deductible what you contribute.

The earnings grow tax free, and if you use those dollars for medical expenses, they are tax free.

So, and then, you know, as far as working for a bigger company, it's pretty common that they are able to, you know, pay more of the medical benefits on their end or take more of the employer costs.

So you're paying very little rather than working for you Know smaller airlines or regionals where you may have to pay more out of pockets pocket for, for medical benefit.

So that's a good point.

I would absolutely recommend the same thing as both of you have said, if you can, it's better to leave when you're younger, as soon as you can at an earlier age just so you can continue to build that wealth at a legacy airline where you do have the potential to, to earn more and also, you know, benefit yourself with, you know, their, their employer benefits.

Yeah, one, one thing I'll bring up Justin, that just, you know, I used to also be a contract negotiator for American Eagle and we didn't start seeing some of 9% matches on 401ks at the regionals until, you know, post 911 when it looked like people weren't ever going to get out of the regional because most regional airlines had a philosophy that people weren't going to retire there.

So why, why would the union, why would the company spend money on funding these expensive retirement programs?

But we have seen some movement there and there are people now that absolutely want to retire at the regional.

So it is, it is good that we've got some of that 7, 8, 9% match that, that a bit little Elise is talking about, but it still is a dwarfs in comparison.

You know, my wife has a health savings account as well and I didn't understand that triple advantage until we started seeing that come in.

And you know, my goodness, there's just a lot of things like that that are available when you have all this, all these programs.

So, so yeah, if you can make the jump, make the jump.

Not everyone can and it's understandable if you can't.

Yeah.

And one thing I didn't know about when Gary and I kind of first started all this is the, the advantage of having all worth or, or your services and understanding the benefits that you have.

Right.

Like open enrol up.

And Gary's like, hey, do you want me to have my American guy talk to you about everything that we they offer so you can make the best decision possible.

I was like, please, because I don't understand any of this.

I, I can do a podcast, I can fly an airplane, but I can't read these documents and be like, oh that's makes sense.

That's the best for me.

It's, you know, I'm just kind of like plan A, cool.

Plan B, sweet.

All right.

You know that, that's kind of how I view it.

I'm like, that's what my buddy told me to do.

So I'm just going to do it.

But being able to talk to the professional at your airline, specifically if it's American or Delta or United, because there's always a little bit of differences what they offer, but having that ability to kind of sit down with someone and actually have those conversations is super beneficial.

And at least I'm sure you've recommended people to talk to those.

Those advisors as well, so that they can make the best decision possible.

Yeah, we always call our busy season October, November, during our open enrollment period.

And regardless if you are a client or not, we talk to anybody who is interested as far as their benefit goes.

The unfortunate thing is your benefits window is about two weeks long to make an election.

And of course, you're busy, you're flying, you have a family.

The last thing that you want to do on your day off is read about benefits when it's already pretty complicated and hard to understand.

And that's why, like you said, Justin is reaching out, talking to us.

It's like, hey, you know, my buddy's doing this.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best plan for you.

Like, we were talking about that hsa, that health savings account.

It is really great if you're healthy, relatively healthy, you never go to the doctor.

But I know some people who are like, hey, I'm expecting to get a hand surgery, and I may have to be.

You know, I don't want to have to pay that much out of pocket.

Like, how do I.

How does this benefit me?

So we're happy to walk you through pros, cons based on your personal.

Your personal situation, because it's different for everyone.

And that's something that's one of my favorite seasons of the year, just because we get to meet new people, and it allows to me, us to.

To bring comfort and peace of mind to the people that we work with.

And, Elise, when you are talking to someone, whether it's a new client or something you've had for a while, you know they're getting the itch, right.

To make that first big purchase.

And is it a conversation?

You're like, all right, you're making a lot more money now.

You've kind of paid off some stuff.

It's okay to kind of buy something big that you want, whether you can afford it.

Right.

I'm sure there's a limit, but kind of, what's your thought process if someone's like, you're talking to them like, I think I want to get a car or I want to Buy this house or I want to buy a new watch.

Like, what's your thought process?

When.

And say I come up to you, and I'm like, hey, I really want to finally make my big airline pilot purchase or my big captain purchase.

What.

What kind of the talking points you have with your clients?

Yeah, Everything in moderation.

Right.

I'm not gonna lie.

I like going to Taco Bell and eating bad food sometimes.

So everything in moderation.

So I am a firm believer of you don't have to save everything that you make.

I am a younger investor, so I believe in finding a nice balance of savings and then also treating yourself.

You know, life is not guaranteed.

If we knew everyone's date of death, we would have the perfect financial plan for you.

But unfortunately, that's just not how life works.

So whenever I have a client who, for example, I have someone I'm working with, and they're still working and they really want to buy an rv, I think it'd be really cool just to, you know, drive wherever we want, wherever we want and be able to park and enjoy that with our family.

And it's like, yeah, like, everything in moderation.

Of course.

Course.

We'll take a look at cash flow just to make sure that we're able to afford it.

How much are you having to borrow?

But I am absolutely.

I'm usually giving the green light to, yes, let's go ahead and make that big purchase.

We're comfortable.

We're saving.

We have that emergency fund.

Let's move forward with that purchase, because most of the times, you can't afford it.

And if we can't, then we figure out a way to.

Maybe it's not in our timeline now, but give us two years and we'll be there.

Yeah.

And find a specific way to save for it or have a bucket for what you want to buy.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then we're gonna ask Elise a question.

Can.

Can you tell my wife it's okay for me to get an iPhone 16?

I'm not up yet on my plan.

Hey, phone's not coming out till September, so you have.

Okay.

All right.

I might work.

Let me check my phone.

I just got a Zelle from Jim, so, yes, it's okay.

I love it.

And at least when we're kind of talking about, like, you know, the second part of your career, you know, the last part was kind of regional flow, first year major, and now we're kind of talking about you're in the thick of it, maybe you have kids now you're thinking of college savings.

You're thinking of 529 plans.

You're thinking of ways to really kind of set up your family.

Gary or not Gary.

Sorry, Jim.

I've said Gary so many times today.

I'm so used to it.

He'll probably love that.

I'm just talking about him.

Phantom.

Oh, his, his ears are burning right now.

I know.

He's probably calling me like, yes, you did it.

But Jim, I mean you're, you have a family.

You, your 529 plans are very probably prominent in your conversations with your wife and saving.

But what's the thought process?

You know, there's always the idea of like lifestyle creep.

We talked about four.

You want the captain house, you want the boat, you want the fun toys.

But there's also important things to think about, like college plans, like buying your kids their first car.

So kind of talk about at least your game plan for someone that's in the second stage of their kind of career with families, young kids and moving up and making sure they're set up, set up for retirement life and current life.

Absolutely.

And I'm also a big believer in, you know, everyone's situation is different.

I have some clients who are like, hey, I had to pay for college all throughout my.

Or had to pay for college by myself.

So my kids, I want them to have that same lesson.

I have other clients who are like, hey, my 529s are set up, but my children don't know that they have college savings because they want them to have skin in the game and they don't want to, you know, feel like they just.

College is being paid for.

Let's, so let's take it as a joke, but really I like to put my focus, of course on my clients.

Are we saving enough for retirement?

That should be priority number one.

Okay, so now we're maxing on our 401ks.

We have a healthy savings account.

What do we do next?

I very commonly run 529 scenarios for my clients to see how much should we be funding for college?

I typically recommend, you know, around two to three years because I'm sure your children are going to be very bright.

They may have scholarships, whether it's, you know, for grades or for sports.

So we don't want to overfund your college savings account and then be penalized for using those dollars for non educational expenses.

So we kind of.

Or I like to walk through.

Okay, let's aim for this amount.

Of course, like your financial plan.

We do update that college analysis on a year basis just based on returns.

And, you know, maybe the grandparents gave a generous gift one year.

So that definitely helps out with the cost.

And something else I really like to think about mid career is do you want to work until 65?

I feel like a lot of conversations that I've been having as of recent have been no, I don't see myself flying until 65.

I'm thinking maybe 55, 60 is more in my range because I have, I started having children later in life, so they're still growing up, they're still young, and I want to be present for those moments.

So I do feel like it's been very common for me to not run plans that have my clients retiring at 65.

And let's do 55.

What does that look like?

And if we are a little bit short of our financial goals, how do we get there?

You know, we're maxing out that 401k.

What else should I be investing in?

I'm sure you've heard of taxable accounts sometimes, sometimes known as like individual accounts, joint accounts, brokerage accounts.

But that allows us an opportunity to do more things from a tax perspective.

I don't.

This might be getting into the weeds, but it's called tax loss harvesting.

So it allows us to be more intentional with what we're buying and selling in your accounts.

Because unfortunately, and fortunately, 401ks and IRAs, they are already tax deferred.

So from an investment perspective, there's not a bunch that we can do in there.

But for taxable accounts, we are able to mitigate that tax bill a little bit, which I know that we try to mitigate that tax bill depending on if you have losses and offsetting those with gains, which pilots do like that because you're typically a high income earner.

So that's something that we think about too, is diversifying our assets.

Outside of the 401k 529s, how much are we looking to save?

Are your children inclined to go to college?

Okay, well, what happens if they don't?

Do we have another beneficiary for those accounts?

And then also going back to you, this is your financial picture.

Do you want to retire at 65?

Do you want to retire earlier?

How does that impact you and your quality of life?

And we'll set a plan to make sure that we are able to accomplish your goals so that those are reached.

Yeah.

And Elise and Jim, you can kind of talk to this next question too, because your wife sounds like she could make this decision as well as A senior Fox.

So you're probably having conversations now about like, all right, do I want to upgrade?

Like, what is it going to benefit me to upgrade?

Obviously, there's a ton of money, but as Jim is probably going to chime in and be like, well, senior fo life.

You know, you can make pretty good money, and you can also not work very much.

So it's.

It's a very, very great side of the industry.

If you want to be a senior fo, pick your trips, fly to get the long overnights in Rome if you're on the wide body, or the islands if you're on a narrow body.

But, Elise, what's kind of your.

Your focus on a conversation?

Say I come up to you, you know, I'm currently 35.

I'm.

I might be able to upgrade in the next two years.

What do you recommend?

What do you think I should do?

Or what kind of.

What kind of questions do you have for them when they come to you with those with that option of upgrading?

Yeah.

So it's typically the first thing is family.

I do have one of my pilots that I work with, and he was one of my first clients.

He is in his mid-40s, and he made some unfortunate financial decisions in the beginning of his career.

So he has a lot of debt, and family is very important to him.

But he's like, you know what?

I have to take this upgrade in order to continue to pay my bills, because I feel like I am still spending everything that I'm making towards this one credit card because you pay it off, and then that interest just continues.

Like you.

Every time you make a payment, it's like you're not even touching the principal.

Right.

And that can be very discouraging.

So that's what I typically like to.

To talk about is, okay.

Based on your financial situation, I think that taking this upgrade will benefit you from a financial perspective.

Because.

Because we're a little behind, and that's very vulnerable.

And it can be very emotional as well, feeling like you are behind.

And everyone's financial picture is different.

And I always tell my clients and prospective clients if anyone is judging you or making you feel bad based on the decisions that you're.

That you made or that you're trying to improve on.

I wouldn't want to work with someone who makes me feel belittled or judged.

So there is never any judgment in these conversations that I have with my clients.

It's just honesty.

Because sometimes we do need a little reminder, and I.

A little hit on the hand, like hey, okay, so we maybe didn't make the best decisions back then, so let's fix it now so that we're not in this hole for the rest of our lives.

So that's a big question that I do have for clients and it's very rare, but I do have some that kind of feel forced to take the upgrade and then most of the time they don't feel forced and they have the option to, you know, do I take it, do I not going back to the conversation of a family, you know, how the flexibility that you have now, the schedule that you have now.

I have something, some pilots who are like, you know, I really like where I'm at and I don't really, I don't really feel the need to upgrade.

Like I'm, I'm financially okay, I'm financially secure and that's okay too.

It's just having that conversation with someone that's unbiased, that won't judge you, which is me to see what fits you and your lifestyle best.

Just because someone else is doing it and other people, their goals are to upgrade as soon as possible, doesn't mean that that's going to be the best scenario for you.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Gary, Gary, Gosh, I did again, Jim, you know you mentioned your, your wife is, is a junior fo.

So you probably have had these conversations.

I mean any junior fo that's been at an airline.

Not a junior fo, senior fo.

Any senior fo has been an airline for a while or calls himself a senior foe, can definitely upgrade at this time.

And we've seen two year upgrades, we've seen 18 month upgrades at most of these airlines.

So the conversation has had to come up like, hey, should we do this?

Are we going after more money?

Do we need the more money or do we really want to prioritize our schedule and our time as a family.

Yeah, those are the exact conversations we have.

In my wife's case, she's also now just about able to hold a captain slot and not be on reserve.

So that was kind of the bedrock, the floor of what she wanted to do to upgrade.

So yeah, I think she also wants to make sure she has one more Christmas off.

So I think we're going to probably aim for, you know, sometime in January, February for her upgrade.

But yeah, it'll be a, it'll be a change because right now she completely controls her schedule through prep bidding.

I mean, she gets whatever day she wants off and she gets to fly the trip she wants to fly and it's it's very, very nice.

It's also a dangerous game, right?

Like, I mean it's one of those things in your mind.

You got to understand that upgrades will not always be there.

Right?

Right.

UFOs in the past, my previous company that I worked for, when I first got hired there, they had 17 year first officers that were waiting to become captains.

Right.

So you don't know if the opportunity is always going to be there.

You might find yourself stuck as a senior FO forever or vice versa.

That you might find yourself, if you take the first upgrade possible, you might find yourself as a junior captain for a while.

So there's no guarantee that the movement will come.

There's no guarantee that you will be able to get the upgrade.

But it's kind of one of those things you're like, man, do I take this right now that like, I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be able to like say I want two more years as an fo to live the good life of not flying very much and making good money.

Maybe that won't be afforded to you in two years.

You don't know that.

So you really gotta, it's kind of like playing a game, flipping a coin, really, if it's going to be there or not.

Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

You absolutely are right.

It's very difficult to plan like that.

You can kind of have some goals, some milestones, but you won't know until you, the time actually comes if you're going to be able to execute or not.

That.

Yeah.

And Elise, when, when you get new clients, right?

I mean the, the range of age has to be just insane, right?

You're picking up people that are 23 that are getting hired at airlines for the first time, whether it's a regional or some of them get lucky and they're getting hired on in a major really young.

But what are your kind of for different lifestyles for say for me coming in at 35 or someone coming in at 55.

When I in my hiring class we had a guy that was 55 that got hired for the airlines for the first time?

Time.

Your conversations have to be very different with both of us.

What are your conversations like for someone that is my age getting hired versus someone that's 55 that has 10 years or 60, that's, that's 60 that only has five years left.

What are your conversations look like between both those age groups?

Yeah, no, that's a great question.

So like we, you know, have talked about in the beginning of our conversation with a lot of our younger FOs who are getting hired onto the airlines at a young age, you have that time horizon.

Horizon.

You have that earning potential.

So they're typically pretty aggressive as far as their investment goes, and they're still figuring out maybe contributing 3 to 5% of their earnings to their 401k.

But whenever you're 55 and you get hired an airline, you don't have that same time horizon.

Right.

You have about 10 years left of working years at this point.

And it's like, oh, gosh, you know, these are different conversations that we're having, and some of them feel like they have to make up for that time that they lost, you know, and they're like, well, I.

Should I be aggressive in my portfolio because I only have 10 years.

But it's like, well, we want to be cautious because we don't want you to lose out on all your investment earnings too.

Right.

So the big conversation, you know, regardless, young or old, is we want to mitigate risk across the board, whether that's investments, estate planning, making sure that you're in, your loved ones are taken care of, insurance planning to make sure that your family's taking care of in the event of you're not working, disability.

So a lot of the conversations are the same as far as mitigating that risk.

But, you know, something that we talk about whenever you're 55 is, okay, so we're going to work until we're 65.

How should that portfolio be allocated to make sure that you're, you know, still having those investment earnings while also mitigating that risk and protecting you from the downside?

And then also talking about, you know, Social Security and Medicare because you're 10 years away from that, you're not 30 years away from that.

So that can be very intimidating, too.

Right.

It's like, okay, I just got started at this incredible legacy airline, and now I have all these decisions to make, and it can be very overwhelming.

So I would say that that's like the big difference as far as, you know, the topics of conversation is whenever you're older or more senior, as far as age goes, you have have those Medicare and Social Security and just different events to think about because you're closer to retirement.

And we unfortunately don't have that same gift of time as we did whenever we were 24.

Absolutely.

And at least when do you have the conversations about some of the stuff that's maybe not as exciting because you never want to use it, but it's always good to have it like disability insurance or some unions offer really good benefits that maybe the airline might not offer.

So you want to look into those.

Those benefits as well.

But when do you kind of bring that up?

Is that something right away?

You're like, buy in, buy in, buy in as early as possible.

Because I know at my airline you have to pay for the union side.

You have to buy it within the first five years.

So you never have the opportunity to buy it.

And it turns out it's pretty good, pretty good option.

A lot of the pilots I would like, you have to have it.

And apparently it can pay some serious money when.

When you're putting a lot of money into it.

Yeah.

So we do run insurance analysis and I think that goes back to the financial plan of.

Okay, well, what assets do you have?

What liabilities do you have?

Because we want to make sure that your.

You're not overinsured and then also not underinsured.

Right.

Because we still want to be able to pay off those liabilities and thankfully at all worth.

You know, I know investments are really important.

I want you to do well in your investment account because I like my job and I want to keep it.

And I also want you to do well in your accounts.

But it's not just about investments.

Right.

It's about mitigating risk.

And insurance is part of that.

You know, your career, a lot of things that you can't control, maybe that's a medical issue or a disability that maybe our medical license gets taken away.

Right.

And that can be absolutely devastating.

But we want to be able to be prepared in those events and here at all worth.

We actually do have an insurance team as well who is able.

We don't sell insurance, we don't sell products, nothing like that.

But in the event you did need additional insurance outside of your employer, we.

We are able to run different quotes for you just to make sure that you're not paying anything like any crazy premiums, but also that you're buying from a company that's stable and that has a good reputation.

And that's very important for.

For us as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, my wife is a doctor and you mentioned the disability insurance of doctors are kind of the insurance that you need as a doctor separate from the airline world.

But it's still important for you to have it as well, because there is no guarantee you're going to make it to age 65.

I think the data even shows that you're most likely.

A lot of people retire earlier in 65, whether you're forced to or whether, as we talked about earlier, you just don't want to fly to 65.

Because let's be honest, I would love to not fly to 65.

I would love to have enough money in my retirement accounts to be able to do whatever I want at 55, at 60 and not have to go fly a four day trip.

You know, eventually you're going to want to live your life and it's better to do it earlier when you're younger and you can still walk pretty well when you get older and you're having surgeries or having any health ailments, which I think everyone can agree to that.

So yeah, it's important to look at.

All those and then also the peace of mind that it provides too.

Right.

I know there's different premiums involved with insurance, but I have clients who are like, hey Elise, like I would rather pay the extra thirty dollar month premium or whatever that dollar amount is to have that peace of mind knowing that if something were to happen, I'm okay.

And I don't think there' there's anything wrong with that either.

So.

Yeah.

And another big thing is life insurance too, making sure you have that.

So you set up whether you have kids and make sure your family that gets used to living the certain lifestyle because there's a lot of families out there that where the pilot is the only job.

Right.

Like, not everyone has dual income.

You know, you make it as a major airline pilot, if you're making 300 to $500,000, it's a good chance that that's going to be the sole owner, ownership and sole earner, I should say, of, of the family.

So having the life insurance, which I'm guessing you can communicate with back and forth with Elise or your team, figuring out what the right price is and what the right amount is for you and what you want to, what you would want to leave for your family.

Just there.

Sorry, I think I had a pause.

Oh, we gotcha.

Okay, cool.

And then, you know, Jim, Elise, when you're getting into later in your career, right.

There's, there's different opportunities for saving.

So we talked about kind of, of 55, but even you get 60 your last five years, there's emergency catch up, there's a lot of other opportunities that you're allowed to.

I think you can do emergency catch up up to I think maybe 50, I'm not sure.

At least you can correct me with that because I'm sure, you know, but there's different opportunities, you have to save, right?

Yes.

At age 50, you are offered what's called a catch up contribution, which allows you to contribute more to your 401k.

Right now it's 7500 each year.

It does change a bit, little, little bit for inflation.

And there's also something new called the super catch up.

And I know people are like, what is that?

But the super catch up contribution, and this might be going to a little bit into the weeds, but it's actually an $11,250 contribution that you can make for and for employees who are aged 60 to 63.

So that's kind of new.

And that's just a reminder that the IRS is always changing the roles, changing the laws, and it's hard to keep up with that.

And it is our job as a fiduciary, which means that we put our clients interests ahead of our own, is to make sure that we're kept up with the most recent laws.

So that way we're able to create a financial plan that's compliant with what the IRS is saying now and not years, five year outdated numbers.

Numbers.

Yeah.

And Jim, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in our career, right.

Like, you know, 30 years ago or a long, long time ago, people would never imagine that TWA would be out of business, would be merged into American Airlines.

They would never imagine some of these very prominent airlines that own ruled the skies, that would not be here anymore.

And then you find yourself at the bottom of the seniority list or, you know, there's other things that happen.

September 11th happens, financial crisis, wars happen.

There's a lot of uncertainty in this career and what you think might happen doesn't actually happen.

So I know Elise and Jim, you can kind of touch on keeping a cool head and just understanding that you got to write it out.

You know, we've really harped on this whole webinar about trying to take the emotions out of it and try to really rely on a professional because it's so good to have a sounding board.

And I'm guessing both you would agree with that.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

I will say, when you look at this career, especially someone that's coming up on age 65, that, yeah, they've been through quite a bit.

You know, through consolidation, through, you know, pandemics, you know, depression or not depressions, recessions, you know, all kinds of things.

They've seen a lot.

And you know, you brought up TWA, but of course it's also America west and USAir, which I know, you're very familiar with Justin, but there's also a lot of other.

Other things that have happened.

And you know, I look back to my own father who retired at UPS and the 747, but he, he worked through Continental and then got.

Went on strike in the early 80s and never got back to the airlines until up went to UPS.

But he would have been, he was very junior at Northwest at the time.

And had he chosen to stay at Northwest, he would have retired a very senior 747, 400 captain there.

So it just goes to show you choices that you may.

And I tell students this all the time.

You just have to take the best information that you have at the current time.

Time and do the best you can with it.

You can never know perfectly how things are going to turn out in this career field.

I will say the stability is a lot better today than it was even 10, 15 years ago and 30 years ago and, and so forth.

But it's still one of those careers that people have to be adaptable and flexible and take a bigger look at things.

And the ideas behind having the emergency funds available that Elise talked about earlier, these are very important things for people pilots to make sure they can withstand some of these, some of these issues that they might face in their career.

Yeah.

And I think that's what makes, you know, financial planning so important too, is that this isn't a document that we create once.

And you're like, all right, Jim.

All right, Justin.

We have the perfect plan.

We don't.

We are required at least once a year to review our financial plan with you, just to make sure that we update according to new laws, that the IRS is making, any new tax codes, estate codes.

But it's also responsibility for myself as an advisor to reach out to my clients if there are any concerns, and then also my clients and my prospective clients to let me know and to be transparent as possible when it comes to their finances, because I would rather adjust something sooner rather than later.

So I think that's, that's really important.

And as my clients are closer to approaching retirement, I like to meet with them on a quarterly basis, at least just because I know that's kind of the time, time period where we need a little bit more hand holding to know that it's okay because some people are like, I'm ready to retire.

You know, this is the best day ever.

And some people have a little bit of a harder time when they aren't going to be getting a paycheck.

Like they have been Getting for the past 40 years of their life.

It's a big change, and everyone has a different reaction towards it.

And retirement looks different for Everybody.

Your goals 10 years ago are different than they are now.

They're going to be different ten years from now.

Our perspective changes.

The industry is always changing.

And that's.

That's part of my job, is to make sure that we're having those ongoing conversations to make sure that you're not only financially set up successfully, but your family's taken care of and that you have that peace of mind to know that, you know, we're mitigating risk across the board.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what Jim was talking about, too, about making those decisions and what's at least talking about.

You don't know if you make the right decision until age 65 comes or age 67, if that ever comes to fruition.

And you look back on your career, you're like, oh, well, maybe I should not have left less.

My left, my fractional to go here, or, man, I should have gone earlier, or I should have done this.

You know, you don't know if the decision is the right decision until it's time to hang it up, until it's time to retire.

So, as Jim said, make the decision with the most information that you have available and make sure you keep your financial advisor in the loop, because they can be like, hey, that's dumb.

Don't do that.

But it's important to just make the decision, trust yourself, and just know that you're not going to really know if it was the right decision until the end, because there's a lot of people like to talk about that, that thought they're at TWA and thought they'd be at TBA forever, and turns out now they're flying for a different airline.

And maybe they didn't enjoy the seniority that they had, which I'm not laughing.

It's the truth to it.

Yeah.

But talking about kind of the last step of this, you know, you mentioned the last five years of a quarterly meetings.

You mentioned all that.

There's Medicare, there's Social Security, there's other health care things.

You've had health care for so long, and now you're gonna have to figure out another way to have health care.

You're gonna be paying a bit, little bit more.

There's going to be so much going on, but at least you're in your fast couple years.

You know, age 65, age 67.

What do you recommend for someone that's out there?

Because we talked about what it's like to kind of reach your end.

And we also never really touched on that.

A lot of these people, they are so caught up in being a pilot, they don't know how to live without being a pilot.

Right.

Like, they got to reinvent themselves.

But what do you recommend for people that are getting ready to retire in that case?

Yeah, I would first, you know, try to create a picture of what does retirement look like to you?

I have some clients who are like, hey, I still want to be involved in the aviation world somehow at some capacity.

I have some who are like, hey, I enjoy living in Florida and golfing every single morning, and there is no right, no wrong.

It's basically what you want.

Right.

So I always.

And sometimes people are like, I don't know.

And that's an answer, too.

Right.

So we're able to sit down, talk about what's important to you.

And also involving the spouse as well.

Whether, you know, it's a female pilot, a male pilot, involving the spouse.

Spouse.

Like, what do they want together?

You know, sometimes we want to do a big trip, a big.

Or maybe we want to travel once a year.

We want to spend $15,000 a year on it, whatever that looks like.

I enjoy having those conversations with my clients and their spouse to make sure that they're both involved and included in those.

And then also, as far as, you know, age, you know, we're approaching 65 or close to retirement.

Well, when should I take Social Security?

Am I going to need that?

I have some clients who are like, Elise, Social Security is not going to be around when.

When I start to withdraw.

Okay.

If you believe that we can plan for that.

It's very common for me to plan.

You know, you're only going to receive 50% of the benefits that you actually are, just so it provides that additional comfort, that additional being conservative in the plan as well.

So we don't rely on it too much, but just different conversations that involve, you know, healthcare, what you.

You know, what you envision retirement to look like, and if there's, you know, do you want to continue to work?

Some of my clients work part time, and they.

Or they volunteer.

And then also something that's very important is what legacy do you want to leave?

You know, do you want to help out your grandchildren with college education?

How do you want your, you know, your.

Your family to benefit whenever you pass?

I have some clients who say, elise, I want to die with $1 to my name.

Name.

And I have others who are very giving, and Gary and I did say Gary.

So he always says in his meetings, you can either give with a cold hand or a warm hand.

So something I encourage my clients to do is if they are able to give while you're still alive, you know, you want to be able to put that joy on your, your family's face and helping them buy a house or whatever that looks like, or funding your grandchildren's education so that way they can see the gifts and also thank you for it too.

I think the legacy planning is something that's very near and dear to my heart because that's what you're leaving behind and this is your family.

So those are the big topics of conversation that I, that I like to have.

Yeah.

And Jim, we'll kind of leave it to you.

The question that's on a lot of people's mind, especially when I fly with people that are 64, 65, they're like, you know, I think I could do this till 67.

Like, who's to tell me that if I can still get a medical, I can't fly?

In our previous care, I was, is that this was a big deal because you could fly.

We had 80 year old pilots.

You could fly as long as you wanted.

And that's a pretty sweet deal when you're making the top of the seniority list and you have seniority, not fly very often.

So it's, it's very real right now.

It's very real out there.

Are they going to get two more years?

Have you heard anything on this is kind of been put on the back burner or what's kind of going on with the age 67 rule?

Well, it's certainly being talked about, it's talked about annually in Congress.

It would take a congressional change.

You know, what happened the first time we went from 60 to 65, this is my opinion.

But one of the big reasons for that was because the Social Security age changed, you know.

Well, it didn't change, but you couldn't collect until you're 65 and you had this mandatory retirement at 60.

And then when the pensions went away, when, you know, when the guaranteed stuff went away, there literally was a five year gap where some pilots who had been making 2, $300,000 a year went to zero income and couldn't get their Social Security security for five years.

So I believe that's when the labor unions change their, their policy because they very much opposed an age 65.

Remember, as a contract negotiator, we negotiate the size of the pie first.

We do the macro negotiation this is how much is available and then we divide up the pieces.

So when you do it to 60, the pie is bigger for everybody else until you get to 60.

The philosophy from a union is you can make all the, you make the same amount of money and you can be done at 60 that then you could make a little bit less money each year, still get the same amount of money when you're 65.

But that all changed in my opinion when Social Security changed.

Well, now we also have the Social Security change again because you know, most people in my age group won't, shouldn't really collect till they're 67 or maybe even a little older.

So now you got that two year gap.

So you are seeing some of those, some of those things line up again.

The union still is steadfastly alpha, at least is still steadfastly and the membership is still steadfastly against any further raises.

But it does come up every year and there's a fair, a fair number of congressional support.

But like you said, Justin, that just applies to 121.

And there are plenty of seats out there in the 135 world, part 91 world that people can still and still do.

You know, there's also a whole world of flight training.

You can go work at one of the, one of the, you know, you know, semi flights or something like that.

You know, wealth of experience there.

So it does.

Just because you hit 65 and can't fly for your 121 anymore doesn't mean your ability to, to stay in aviation goes away completely.

Yeah, but let's not kid ourselves.

There's a lot of 121 pilots that kind of forget what it was like to fly at 135Amen or 91k.

Coming from that world and now being in the, the 121 world, I'm like, oh my gosh.

I flew my first three leg day at American in a whole year and that was, it was like, oh my God, this is way too much work.

But my last job at a minimum, we threw three legs every single day, three to five legs.

And I'm so far I'm a year removed from that.

In the morning you're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to do.

It's awful.

So yeah, it's all relative and you kind of forget how, how good you have it.

You know, turning left is, is amazing and shutting the door and just flying the airplane and then going and just being done.

It's great.

And, but it is something to think about.

And I'm sure Elise can.

Can also come in or someone from all worth can.

Can come in and be like, all right, you know what, you did start a little bit later.

If you can find something to do for another two years or, hey, you know, this fraction, we'll get you till 70.

Why don't we try to apply there?

And you can make good money, you know, so at least you can probably say that these conversations happen and you can really tell someone, like, hey, no, trust me, you are fine.

Retire, enjoy your career or enjoy your life.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

And it's always one of my favorite parts about being a financial advisor is walking a client through retirement and them knowing that it's okay.

And it's.

It's really common.

And the best thing ever is I've recently been working with, of course, mainly pilots, and then their sons and their daughters are also pilots.

And working with the whole family has just been a really unique perspective for me.

And it's just, you know, aviation is a.

Is a career I'm also very passionate about.

And just being able to have the opportunity to meet clients where they're at.

Whether it's the very beginning of your career or, you know, we're close to that retirement or we're right in the middle.

I love meeting my clients where they're at.

Everyone's situation is different, and it's not cookie cutter.

Just because one person is doing something doesn't mean that you need to do it.

And that's the best part about working with an advisor and especially at all Worth is having those conversations that are unique to you, just like your industry and your journey in your industry as well.

A hundred percent agree.

And that pretty much wraps up the main portion of the webinar.

Elise, Jim, I appreciate your insights.

You know, it's great to have the financial insight and it's great to have the insight that Jim has as well.

Well, of just the wealth of knowledge and what's going on in this industry.

It's really helpful for anyone.

So I appreciate both of you right now coming on and giving your time.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it was fun and I look forward to, you know, if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me.

There is a.

There's a button link on your screen or in the chat.

You can request a consultation.

My favorite part is, you know, creating a financial plan, a personalized plan based on your airline, your timeline and your priorities.

And I would love the opportunity to.

To have that conversation with you and.

Like you said, if you are looking for guidance and you want some more information, there's a complimentary phone in, not interview but a phone consultation that you can have and someone from All Worth will talk to you.

They will figure out what they can offer for you and if you like it, continue and have that conversation and have someone like Elise offer their expertise to give you the opportunity to have the career and have the lifestyle style that you want to have.

So thank you so much for listening today.

I really appreciate all your time.

Don't forget that there is a question and answer which we're going to head down to now.

So if you haven't asked a question, still ask your question now.

We'll read them and we'll be able to answer those questions for you right now.

So let's head over to the question and answer.

Thank you so much for spending the last, what hour and 20 minutes with us.

There's a lot of information.

I'm sure Jim and Elise are just excited to answer some more questions that we have had come up through this webinar.

The first one that we had, I wrote some of them down so I'm looking down on them right now.

Is this was a personal question from my friend Dan.

Actually shout out to Dan, thanks for watching this and asking this question but it says more just looking at your thoughts.

I'm retired military.

I make 81000 a year.

Just waking or just waking up.

Thoughts on having a 401k, other investments etc since the annuity is basically worth 2 million in investments.

And Jim, I'll probably let at least answer this one unless you have some kind of financial degree that I'm not aware of.

No, I think that's smart.

You can definitely chime in if you like.

Well first off Dan, I want to say thank you for your service here at All Worth.

We are heavily involved in our tag, the Rotarita Airline Group.

So there are a lot of, you know, clients that we work with that were in the military currently serving, are done with it and who are working, you know, outside of that.

So thank you so much for your service.

Just wanted to, to make sure I mention that and I think this is a great question.

You know, your pension is going to be worth a lot of money and that's, that's really great.

So there's just a couple of things that I would definitely ask as far as the 401k thoughts on not having a 401k.

Well, first question, are you offered a 401k currently?

If so, I would definitely at least contribute up to the match that your employer gives you you because that is free money.

We don't want to leave any money on the table that your employer is offering you.

So absolutely, I do believe that you should still contribute to a 401k.

And as far as, you know, outside of investments besides the 401k, you know, with your pension, you are relying on that dollar amount to keep up with inflation.

It may not always receive cola, that cost of living adjustment.

So if that's the case, you know, the $81,000 that you're making now isn't going to be the same value as tomorrow.

And you know, Outside of the 401k, you are able to contribute to a Roth IRA since you are under the income limits.

So you do pay taxes on those dollars today.

But the growth in earnings is tax free whenever you retire.

And as long as that account has been open for five years.

So there's definitely opportunities to diversify your investments because your pension, you don't really get a lot of options as far as where to diversify those assets.

But with IRAs and 401ks, you do have more flexibility as far as growth potential.

And I think that's really important.

And just going back to what I stated about legacy planning.

Do you have children?

Where do you want or what do you want your legacy to be?

Are you wanting to, you know, and have your children or nephews, nieces, whatever, whoever they are, inherit those assets.

So by paying taxes like for the Roth IRAs on those dollars, now they can inherit those accounts tax free, which is a great benefit for them.

So, you know, it really depends on a lot of different factors like how important is family and beneficiaries because typically pensions die with you or with your spouse and you know, you having to rely on the government to apply that cost of living adjustment, that can be, you know, sometimes risky depending on, depending on the circumstances.

So I hope this answered your question, but this would be a great opportunity for us to sit down, have a conversation, take a glance at what your financial picture looks like today and we can make improvements on it and show you what it looks like if you do contribute to a 401k or outside investment accounts.

Love it.

This is another question we have here.

It says the airlines have hired so many new pilots the last couple of years.

What do you see hiring look like over the next five years?

And Jim, I'll pass that one on to you.

Sure, great question.

It's a question that we get quite regularly.

The truth is the hiring is certainly not, as we mentioned before, certainly not what it's been in 23 and 24 where we saw saw an unbelievable exponential growth of pilot hiring.

Nonetheless, it's still on tap for north of 4,000 at the major airlines.

And you can check this all out at the FAPA website, which is still historically a very good year for hiring.

On an average year going all the way back to 2000, we had some lean years and the Great recession and some mid 2000s and post 9 11, but we average about 3400 pilots a year.

So having 4000, we're still north of what a normal year would be.

So.

So we're still good.

The other thing to take a look at is the number of retirements.

Some airlines, some of the major airlines have not gone into their big retirement push yet.

Those are still a few years off.

And that's another in addition to the growth, that's another reason why we see pilots get hired is to replace those that are retiring.

And so overall prospects are still good.

Certainly it's gotten a little more competitive in the last couple years from what we saw saw in 23 and in 24, but it's still not historically where as bad as it could be from a pilot perspective.

So the future's still bright, no doubt.

Yeah.

And one thing to note too, I think is take those retirements and check and see which airline has the most favorable retirements for you if you're looking to get hired.

Because if you're younger, you might want to go to the airline where you're going to get above 50% seniority rather than the other one or you might be sitting 50% much later in your career.

So it might just be another metric to take in to into a consideration when you're looking to see what airline you want to go to because as we all know, seniority matters for vacation, for bidding, for everything, for bases.

So it might be kind of a good idea to check out who is going to be retiring more pilots because some airlines have hired more and are more set up to not hire as many in the future.

Yeah, sage wisdom there and there, there certainly are certainly are some airlines out there.

American Airlines comes to mind.

They have a very, I like to say seasoned pilot group.

So there's a lot of, a lot of pilots.

I don't know what the average age is there, but I'm sure it's close to 50, if not higher maybe in that neighborhood.

And then the other thing to keep in mind is historically speaking, and it's Gone up a little bit.

Only about three out of five pilots go all the way to the retirement age.

Sometimes it's a little higher than that.

There's some airlines that hit 75%, some that don't hit that, but it's about 60, 65%.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

Of course, loss of medical is one.

But also there's pilots that choose to retire a little bit early.

I'm sure lease has clients like that.

So.

So not every, you know, we're, we're assuming everyone makes it to 65.

So that's another variable.

But what Justin's saying is a perfect thing to take into account for your long term career planning.

That is definitely a variable I would look at.

Another good question, is this one's for Elise?

Probably a lot of people have this question.

You know, you get hired by a legacy, you get hired by a major, and you see 16%, 17%, whatever.

I don't know what all the new contracts are saying for direct contribution, but is that enough for someone to do?

Like, do you recommend if someone's coming up to you, like, all right, should I max this out or should I maybe not put as much in because the company's going to match and then should I have some other investments as well?

So I guess what's the importance of kind of your actual company funded 401k versus doing outside investments?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Especially with the younger pilots that I work with when they're like, you know, I'm not really going to contribute to my 401k because, because my employer is giving me 16, 17%.

And that's incredibly generous.

But like I mentioned during the webinar, setting those healthy habits of at least contributing 1%.

And whenever I have clients, which it usually doesn't take very long, once they reach that seniority, they max it out.

And the importance of, you know, out investing outside of the 401k is a lot of the pilots that I work with that are at 65, they are retired.

All they have is their 401k and it's a significant amount of money in the 401k, but that's it.

So when it comes to diversifying your investments, you know, on those 401k dollars, a lot of it is traditional, which means that you pay taxes at retirement.

And then I'm sure you've heard of RMDs.

Those are required minimum distributions at age 73.

So from a tax perspective, it really is a good idea to diversify your investments outside of the 401k.

So that way whenever you are age 65, whenever you start pulling out from your 401k and your investment accounts, you have the control from a tax perspective to be able to choose where you are withdrawing those funds.

So you don't feel like you're forced to have to pay the taxes on those traditional 401k dollars.

Because you have, you have Roth money too.

You have individual accounts, which, those are taxable accounts.

So you have more flexibility as far as that goes.

So I always encourage, especially my younger pilots to diversify your investments.

Go ahead and contribute to Roth if you can, if you're in a lower tax bracket and also look at individual accounts too.

So that way, you know, if you have medium, shorter term goals or medium goals, you can take them out of the taxable account.

Absolutely.

That's great advice.

I always talk to some of my friends and I, they mentioned, yeah, like what's the compensation for a pilot?

You kind of explain to it and it gets really confusing, right?

You have your hourly rate, Well, I fly this much, I get paid that, but I could theoretically not fly at all and don't make any money.

So they're really confused on that.

But then when I get to my retirement and I kind of tell me, yeah, well, they do 16% or 17% direct contribution and they think it's taking that out of my salary.

But when I tell them no, it's like an addition to my salary, they're kind of just dumbfounded.

They're like, what?

But my question for your lease is, would you say that, that airlines and airline pilots have some of the best retirement programs set up out of most jobs that you've seen.

Oh, absolutely.

And it's always funny when I work with a couple and one of the spouse is a pilot and the other one works at, you know, as an engineer at, you know, some firm or some company and they're, they're getting a 6% match or a 7% match and then the pilot is getting 16 to 17%.

So it's a, an essential amount of money that you are receiving automatically regardless if you contribute or not in your 401k.

So these benefits are incredible.

They're unheard of.

I've had some clients who I've spoken with and like, yeah, like no one understands or they think I'm making this up.

And I'm like, no, this is legit.

So it's really, it's worth it though because the amount of hours that you have put in to get to this point in your career.

It's definitely well deserved.

Deserved, absolutely.

I would agree, Jim, the big news or not big news, but everyone has questions about age 67.

I'm not going to ask you if it's going to happen or not because I don't think you have a crystal ball or Magic 8 ball.

I don't think you can look and see if it's going to come to fruition.

But how would you say someone that.

The specific question was, I'm a 25 year old new hire at a legacy airline, what should I think about age 67?

Is it going to hinder my career like you think that's an extra two years that I have to seniority, stagnation.

Should you look on the other side like, yeah, well, you and the end of your career will have an extra two years of big pay.

But how would you, what would you say to someone that's in that situation if it does come true?

How should they look at it as a 25 year old pilot?

Yeah, this, this question came up quite a bit when we went from 60 to 65, as you pointed out.

And there's a lot of pilots in the industry that, that blame that change on stagnation for them.

And I think that that certainly was a contributor.

There are other contributors as well.

Well, not the least of which was just the general economy and passenger traffic.

That being said, in this particular case, there probably would be some type of an effect to go from 65 to 67, but I would argue it would be a lot less one because it's just two years instead of five years.

It's two year Delta instead of a five year Delta.

And then also on top of that, there's going to be less and less people that make it medically from 65 to 67 or even voluntarily make it from 65 to 67.

So certainly it could have a little bit of an effect.

But to answer your original question, if I'm 25, I'm not really worried about that too much.

I've got 40 years at least ahead of me, maybe 42.

I will tell you from a earnings point of view, those last few years of earnings, when you're a widebody captain or you're at the apex of the carrier, you want more of those years available to you.

I will tell you it's complex from a union point of view.

I used to be a union negotiator, as you know, and we used to, we used to negotiate pay, pay rates.

It is difficult because sometimes when you Raise the retirement age.

One theory is, is the overall amount of money that the company can pay stays the same and you're just spreading the workload out, you know, over more years, more work years for the pilot.

I'm not convinced of that, but that is definitely the conventional wisdom.

And so it is possible you could see some adjustments in collective bargaining in the future that would capture that reality.

So.

But who knows if 65 is going to change?

The 67, it is talked about quite a bit.

There's a pretty vocal group of pilots out there that want it changed.

So far, the Alpa referendum and other airline pilots unions have.

The union membership is not in favor of it.

So right now I think that's enough to probably keep it from happening.

Yeah, for now, like we said, I mean, whether you want it to happen or not to happen, just one of those things we got wait and see and just kind of, it's one of the things you have to accept that this career is just a wild ride.

You don't know where it's going to end.

You don't know how, how it's going to be.

Or you can look back on your decisions.

When you are finally 65 or 67, you retire like, yeah, I made all the right choices.

Or you're like, dang it, I should not have done that.

Elise, this is the last question we have.

But it's, it's more on the financial side of that same question.

Right.

So 65 to 67, if you can continue to make the top end widebody captain pay, I'm sure you as a financial advisor, like, please, please, please, two more years.

I would.

The things we could do with your money for two more years at $500,000 a year is probably pretty great.

Yeah.

And like Jim mentioned, of course those two additional years you have more compounding interest.

You have your, you know, you're a captain widebody and you're at your peak of your income earnings, which is incredible.

So two years can really, you know, that's a significant impact on your financial plan.

And something else that I would, would remind you of is the IRS is always changing rules, regulations, different things that are going on.

Like for example, I talked about those required minimum distributions.

It used to be age 70 and a half.

It used to be age 73 or 72.

73.

And then by the time that we retire it's going to be 75.

So there are all sorts of different ages that are changing.

People are living longer, people are working longer.

So that's part of, or a good Thing about working with an advisor is it's our responsibility as fiduciaries to make sure that we are up to date with those IRS changes and roles.

So that way we reflect your financial plan to be in good order with those, those changes.

So, yes, it can be a significant impact and a lot of strategies that we can utilize just to make sure that you're all, you're all set in your retirement, even though at age 67, it'll be a little bit less of a, a time horizon for those retirement years.

What Jim and Elise, those are all the questions we have.

It's.

It was a great webinar.

It's awesome to talk with Jim always.

Right.

We have the State of the Industry podcast that we do to have these conversations and just talk about what's going on in the industry, because as we've noticed, there's a lot going on at all times.

It doesn't matter if it's Covid.

It doesn't matter if it's someone trying to buy another airline.

There's always a news story for us to talk about, no matter what, what could be going on.

And at least it's always great to have the, the kind of the expertise that Jim and I don't have when it comes to finances.

You probably look at ours like, oh, wow, I could really help you guys.

But we appreciate you coming on and sharing this information and talking with us.

I'm sure there's a lot of good value that everyone got out of this.

And if you do have more questions for Elise, there is a phone number down below.

There's a form.

You can get in contact with Allworth and you get in contact with Elise and they can answer any question you have, I'm sure.

And I said any questions from, like, don't say that, but they can answer.

They can help you out.

So go ahead and contact them because I can tell you personally, it's been great for me.

Just peace of mind, you know, historically, pilots aren't the best for their money, so why not have someone help you out?

But go ahead and fill out that information and give them a call if you have any extra questions.

Other than that.

Elise, Jim, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming on.

I appreciate your time.

Thanks so much.

AV Nation.

That is a wrap on episode 335.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.

I appreciate you all taking the time.

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But AV Nation, I hope you're having a great day, and as always, happy flying.