Welcome back to Digital Suits, where we are wrapping up our mini series with Dan Kane, senior Wealth Manager from Seed Planning Group, and today we are tackling one of the most misunderstood aspects of financial planning. That is how advisors get paid and what real value actually looks like at every stage of wealth for clients. So in this episode, we will break down the myths between or around fees commissions in the true cost of financial advice while sharing insights on why smaller investors often face unique challenges, how industry terminology can be confusing and why working with a transparent fee only advisor can make all the difference in your financial journey. I'm Travis Moss, the CEO of Seed Planning Group, and this podcast is all about sharing professional knowledge and experience with you so that you can get more out of your money and life.

Seems like there are a lot of misconceptions about. How will a financial planner or wealth manager get paid? And we talked a little bit about this in the last two episodes, but somehow people also think that the size of the portfolio indicates the amount of work that somebody has to do. And we've had a lot of talks about this internally, um, because we've never had a minimum account size, but we're getting to the point where we kind of need to, because somebody with $5,000 literally might take as much work or more work than somebody with a million dollars, but they don't understand it. They just say, well, I only have $5,000. Why should I have to pay you? You know, if I pay you 1%, that's $50. Why should I have to pay you $10,000? Like that person with a million dollars

Mm-hmm.

not understanding, you know, what the services are, how they work, how people get paid, those types of things. So. Um, there's a lot of misconceptions about planners, how they're paid, whether or not the size of the portfolio should dictate how much somebody gets paid. This is one of the biggest challenges that that small investors have. So, a small investor, somebody maybe starting out five, 10, $15,000 is very hard for 'em to work with somebody who is fee only or somebody who is not gonna churn 'em. Churning as a term, when I sell you a product to make a commission, and as soon as the, let's just say time period where it's inappropriate to sell you something new, to make another commission, as soon as that's over, basically they, the, the advisor flips the product and makes another commission

Mm-hmm.

no investment purpose, just simply to make more money. And you see it a lot with annuities and, and you know, different types of UITs and stuff like that where people are just like. Essentially churning products, they're, they're selling them over and over and over again just to make more commissions, always at the detriment. And so what happens a lot of times a small investor who has 10, 15, $20,000, they stay small forever because they're giving up so much money in fees

Yep.

bad investment performance because of structured products. 'cause that's where a lot of the commissions are. Um, so I don't think people understand that either. You know, sometimes even though you have less money, maybe you need to pay a little bit more to a fiduciary to make sure that you have a chance to grow your money. Because if you're dealing with a financial advisor and you don't have a lot. They gotta make money somehow for the time that they're spending with you, whether, whether it's productive time or not, that's a different discussion. But they're looking at you like, okay, you know, I, if I gotta spend time with you, I gotta eat. So what can I take outta your account legally, basically. Um, but they, so they think that like the size dicta dictates it. Um, uh, they, I don't think people understand how much work is required for comprehensive planning. Um, and, and kinda what it's worth. And so I just wanted to know a little bit more on your thoughts on, on that kind of experience. 'cause you're coming from a place when people first engaged you prior to seed, it was part of the cost of being in the plan. So you were basically free to them as far as they know,

Yep,

right? So then you get into comprehensive wealth management, and now in order to work with you, I have to pay you,

yep.

which is a part of your discussion with every client that you work with, is what are we charging and, and what are you getting for this? How has that experience been and and what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, and I think you, you actually just said it, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter like the size of the accounts that they have or, you know what I mean? Because you can have somebody that has $5 million, but there's not, just not a ton of work for them to do. I mean, they're pretty much on auto autopilot. Right? And then

Right?

somebody with a lot less money that has of these other issues. When we do comprehensive planning, you're looking at estate planning. They may have some big estate planning issues or

Yep.

you know, a lot of tax planning issues. So. Yeah, that dollar amount doesn't necessarily mean that there's gonna be more planning if you have more money, um, that's gonna be dictated by life situations. Right. And I know

Yep.

in, in our kind of opening meetings with, with clients, we really try to dig into like those details with them and, and try to figure out, okay, what type of client is this going to be? Um, you know, how much work are we gonna have around, um, all the different areas of planning, not just, know, they have a few thousand dollars, so they're probably just a small client, no need to worry

Yeah.

Um, so, you know, that takes, that takes some skill and some investigative skills, I guess, to kind of determine, all right, what is this gonna look like? Um, you know, the, what's the whole picture gonna look like for these clients? Um, it doesn't necessarily mean that money is less work. I mean, it could be the complete opposite.

Well, so sometimes people, um, they don't understand. They, they have, you know, some kind of question that they have financially and whether or not you can answer the question in just an hour or two is a question in the first place. 'cause somebody asks you, kinda like a deep question, you might need a lot of background and it might take a lot of workup and projections to be able to give 'em an answer as a fiduciary, right? If you're just selling product, it's easy. I can give it to, you have to sit on my desk.

Yep.

But if, if we're talking about from a fiduciary relationship, I might have to do a workup for it. But the other thing that people don't understand is there's times where somebody comes in and, and we're doing planning and they're frustrated over what they have to pay for the cost of planning.

Mm-hmm.

Let's say it's maybe the first time they've ever worked with a professional and you know, they're, you're not paying just for time. You are paying for the fact that that person or that person's team has looked at that type of situation hundreds of times and understands nuance and all kinds of other things that we've talked about over the last two, uh, episodes. You're paying for all of that. And so if they look at this situation, they say, look, we're going to give you a, um, um, some guidance that if you implement the guidance, we think it's going to improve your situation by high six or even seven figures. And, and that's, that's a pretty common outcome. Um, what is that worth? Is that worth you bickering over, you know, a couple thousand dollars in fees? Well, you know, I need to see it first. Well, how do you see the future before it happens? Or is there a chance that I've worked on hundreds of financial plans and I could sit in front of you and say, by implementing this, this, and this, these are the expected results. Here's the range of output that has now been improved. That's worth something, you know? And so if you're going to someplace going, I don't see why I need to pay these people for it, or I don't pay them, it's free. None of it's free.

Nothing's

It's coming outta something, right? You're buying proprietary products, you're buying something. So not, there is not a nonprofit in this industry, and even like, oh, I went to Fidelity, or I went to Schwab, and they're working for free. They're not working for free. They're making money off of you. You better believe they're making money off of you.

yep.

you may not understand how the product are designed, or like, even if you're sitting in cash in one of their accounts, they're making money off your cash, they're making a spread off of it. There's no free lunch. So you have to understand that there's, you are always paying something. So the question is, is what is the value that you're getting out of that? And if you're like, well, I don't wanna pay anything for that, then, then, and, and you're not even open to the idea of, geez, you know. I spend a little bit of money. I make a little bit of money. Then, you know, as, as a client, nobody's gonna help you. But that also gets you to the difference in advisors and the difference in who you're working with and, and how they're able to articulate the value. Because they're, like, we've talked about, there's a dramatic difference between the different types of planners. And can they actually show you? Can they articulate? Well, we do. Roth conversions are a great example. So if I showed you a Roth conversion and I showed you, okay, I'm taking money outta your IRA, we're converting over to the Roth, we're paying the taxes. Look at the difference long term. And you might say, well, you know, yeah, that makes, that's, I look at, look at how much more money I have. But if, what if, what if in doing that, you've also manipulated the rate of return. So what if on the IRA you had a lower rate of return and on a Roth IRA you have a higher rate of return 'cause you're using, you know, some kind of historic analysis based on a, an estimated allocation. So was the, was the increase in assets because you have a higher rate of return, or was the increase in assets because of the differential in the tax planning? You don't know unless your variables are consistent. That's what you're hiring. You're hiring people who understand those things. It can actually articulate, no, this is where the value is. This is where you find those values so that you're not paying for people just to move you around their products.

Yep.

the industry terminology, making it look like they're making you money. But in the end, it's kinda like, you know, if every time you go to the doctor, they just give you a new drug, you know, eventually you're gonna start scratching your head and going, why am I just getting new drugs every time I go to the doctors?

Right.

It's, it's like that with a lot of financial shops. Every time you go in, there's, they're prescribing you something different or they're just ignoring you completely, you know? And it's like, okay, what's this gotta actually do with me? So I, um. I do think that, that it's hard sometimes for people just to understand what the value is, um, that they're paying for. And that's the sign of, I think a good planner is somebody who can help them understand, look at the difference in the two paths. This is the path that you're taking currently. This is the path that we think you could take.

Yep.

By the way, it's net of our fees telling me that's not worth it. Like I've had literally, people come in, look at the difference. Yeah. I, I know that, and I know you can do a, a, make a big difference, but I kind of like, I, I don't care about money. I literally had people say, I don't care about, about having better returns on my investments.

Yep.

And I'm like, I, I don't understand that. You know what I mean? Like what's the, so if you don't care about having better returns, why don't, why don't you pay to have better returns and then donate the returns to charity or something? Right. Like, like, why are we haggling over a fee if you don't care about the returns?

Yep.

It's a, it's a, it is just this weird challenge, but I, I think it is very, very difficult sometimes for, for clients or prospects to understand, what am I paying for in this space?

It's tough. And I think, you know, one of the things I think that we do really well is, you know, we not only look at their situation, but then we say, okay, we did these Roth conversions for you, for example, but then also look at. For your kids down the road, right? Like, this

Yeah.

is what's gonna happen for them as well. So not

Yeah.

what they have going on, but also is what is gonna happen for your family too. Sometimes that, you know, strikes a chord with them, right? 'cause they're thinking,

Mm-hmm.

now my kids get the money tax free. Like, you know, in that example, right? So, um,

Which is also kind of always a little bit of a oxymoron to me. It's like, I, I really care how much money I have and how the market does, but I don't care about the taxes and I don't care about how much taxes my kids are gonna have to pay.

right.

Well, that's because the problem that you have is when you look at your account, you see dollars. When I look at your account, I see dollars that belong to you, and I see dollars that belong to the IRS.

Yep.

And so when I look at the account, I'm always trying to figure out how do I reduce how much of those dollars go to the IRS for you?

Mm-hmm.

But 99% of people are the other way around. They're looking, I've got $3 million in my account. Okay? And 3 million of that's taxable. And so either you're going to pay the taxes or kids are gonna pay the taxes, but nobody's getting $3 million out of this thing.

right.

So how do we chip away at the, at the chunk of money, are they gonna get 700 grand outta you or are they gonna get 500 grand outta you? How do we chip away at that?

yep,

So one of the compounding factors I think for this issue is also the non-standardized terminology that the industry is using. And for instance, there's fee only and then there's fee-based.

yep.

And I always love when I talk to somebody who has done just a tiny bit of homework and they'll be like, ah, so I see that you're fee-based. I really like that. And I'm thinking, you mean fee only, right?

Right, right.

I don't know anybody who goes, ah. So I see that. I have to have a PhD to know when you're making a commission from me versus when you're not. I really like that. Like nobody, nobody's thinking that, right? They're, what they're really thinking is, is I see that you're transparent and I pay you a flat fee for whatever you're doing for me, and that's how it works. I don't have to worry about you selling, you know, me proprietary products and making extra cuts on things and you know what's in there for you versus what, like, imagine, again, go back to the doctors. You go to the doctors, they give you a prescription, then you find out that that doctor, you were their 1000000th prescription and they got, you know, a villa in Italy for it. You know, like that would really piss you off. You would not be happy about that.

Yep.

That's what's happening. Like imagine if you found out, oh, I bought this insurance product, or this annuity, this index annuity. 'cause they said, well, you know, everybody needs it and this is why I should get it. And so I got it and I, and then, oh, I, I just saw this announcement that so and so won a trip through the annuity company to, you know, Punana to the Hard Rock Hotel on me.

Yep.

know, it's like, yep. Congratulations. You fell into that one.

and that does happen with pretty much firms out there. Right? Those types of trips happen.

They're not supposed to do it anymore. That was, that They took, that they, yes, they passed a law that, or rule regulations said you're not supposed to do this anymore. But, um, you know, everything can be signed away with the right disclosures and the right paperwork. I think for most places it's like we're not really doing a sales quota thing, but if you sell enough, you get to go to the leadership council retreat now. You know, so that's for people up in this threshold. Uh, but we're not gonna tell you what you have to sell. But some of these things pay you 8%, some pay you 2%, you figure out which one you wanna sell.

Exactly.

Um, or they all, they all are the same, but some of 'em equate to double the points, you know? So it's like, yeah, okay. Whatever,

Yep.

know. Um, so, uh, but what is it, how would you explain the difference between Yeah, I can joke about it and our listeners probably get tired of me saying it over and over again. So how would you describe the difference between fee based and fee only? I.

Yeah, I mean your, your fee, your fee uh, advisors or planners like us, the only way we make money is through either an hourly or, yeah, an hourly rate, I guess you would call it, um, a flat fee or assets under management. So there's no commissions involved whatsoever. Um, we have no incentive, you're just talking about, to sell somebody an annuity and make a huge commission off of it or sell somebody life insurance. Um, so, you know, all of our planners are salaried. Um, we don't have that incentive. So, and, and honestly, that ties in with all of our, like the whole. Part of our business where we even talked about before, like with teaming, right? It's not my client versus your client and I'm selling them a whole bunch of products and you're sell your clients a bunch of products. It's, work as a team and these are our clients together. They're

Yep.

Um, so yeah, so there's no conflict of interest really. That's, that's the main thing is to avoid that conflict of interest where we don't, you know, we're not selling you something, um, just to make a commission off of it and then never talk to you again, right?

Yeah. Yep.

that's not our business model at all. But that is, you know, there is some business models that are out there like that. Um, the fee based is more of a hybrid model, so you have that, they may potentially pay assets under management plus a commission, right? They may manage some money for you, but then also sell you some financial products. So I guess it's more of a, of a hybrid model. Um. You know, and, and when you hear fee based, I think people, like you said earlier, confuse the terms fee based and

Yeah.

So they think, oh, fee based is, I'm not paying them a commission. Well, you very well could be. So, um, it's,

and people throw the terms around too, though I'm a fee-based advisor, but I don't sell anything where I can make a commission, but I work with other advisor. 'cause like to call yourself fee-based or fee only is actually a dictation of the firm. You can't be fee only if the firm has anything where they're receiving commission. So that's why you see the bigger firms, and none of them are fee only because it can't be. But then you can have advisors within the firm who operate kind of like a fee only, even though they're licensed, where they work at a firm to sell commission products. They don't, but a lot of them partner with another person at the firm who does. So they're like, I don't sell anything that makes commissions, but the guy down the hall, he sells life insurances and I send people down to him and he sends people to me.

Right.

Well, guess what that is? You know that that's a nice way of saying like, I've got an incentive that like, I need to send you over to that guy so he'll send me some of his clients.

right.

Right? So, and that's why it's at the firm level, that designation is important. So when somebody says, I'm fee only or I'm fee based, you really wanna understand how they operate and. Are there situations where they're kind of getting kickbacks? You know, because it is, I like, I've been in there, I've been in in the industry before where I literally watched advisors give other advisors envelopes of money for sending them clients,

Yep.

you know, um, because they couldn't. Split a product fee with them, but they wanted to make sure that they were, you know, rewarded for, for sending them somebody, you know, so they might throw them some dollars on the side and it's like, okay, well you know, you as the, as a client don't know that. You don't know that, okay, they said that they only do, you know, only charge assets under management, but yet they refer you somebody within the firm who does something commissions and that somehow matriculates back to them in, in most situations. Most situations. I don't wanna say all, 'cause I don't know, you know, I'm sure that there's some places out there that are, that keep the lines fairly clean. But I would say that in the industry it's probably, um, a minority of places that. Have a, you know, a firewall there where they say, look, if, if our advisor tells you they only get paid on assets under management, that's truly the only way anybody here gets paid. You know, if, if you have an advisor at a big firm and they're getting paid only in assets under management, that firm though, and they say something like, well, it's not on our approved list. You know, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, any of the big wirehouses and stuff, a lot of companies pay them a fee to have their investment products on the shelf at that investment firm or at that broker dealer. Um, there's a lot of other money to be made behind the scenes you don't understand. So a lot of times it's like, well, you know that I actually heard somebody. Well, how do you pick investments for clients? Well, I use the firm's approved list. Okay. So that's everybody that's paying the firm to have an investment on a list to make it look like the firm has somehow vetted them.

Yep.

What's your vetting process of the firm's approved list then, you know, so if maybe I wanna work with you, maybe you're great and maybe you have to sell off this list of 8,000 investments, but how do you filter that 8,000 then that's what I wanna know. And so that's, again, it's, it's nuanced, but it's, it's the type of advisor that you might be working with. And you need to understand these things when you're, I think when you're engaging with 'em, because you know, nobody wants to pay more fees. Nobody says, well, geez, I'd like to pay you an extra 1% of investment management fees. And in fact, a lot of people, I'll go index investing so I don't have to pay a fee. Okay, but do you understand all the hidden fees? Do you understand all the ways that they're making money off of you? Because those are coming outta your bottom line someplace.

Yep.

Um, all right. So a recent, uh, uh, in a recent meeting, let me stumble over myself. In a recent meeting, it came up, um, so we were having a group meeting and we were talking about clients that have less assets that. There was a perception that maybe they don't need fee only advisor helping them. Maybe they, they should just go to, you know, just go, should go buy an investment, get a in a fund someplace, get in an index fund, get in a American funds, just buy a fund, get your money there. You don't have a lot, you just need to grow your assets. Um, and I think that there could be an argument. I, I do believe that there is an argument. Get your, when you don't have a lot of money and you're trying to accumulate, it's more important to get as much as you can working in a diversified way

Yeah.

at as low a fee as possible to kind of build that portfolio up. Because your, your options at the small end of things is you're either going to get a lower quality advisor, um, because lower quality advisors will work with lower paying clients. That's the reality of that. Um, or you're going to be getting sold things that are very expensive.

Yep.

Um, and where you're gonna be dealing with like pro, pro proprietary, proprietary, let's go over that. You're gonna be dealing with proprietary type of en en engagements where I call it Vanguard. And they tell me what fund to buy, right? Or, or what's, what's, they won't even tell me what's funds available. They'll say, these are all the funds that are available based on how much money you have. These are the funds that you can get into. Um, but they won't necessarily tell you the difference between the funds, right? You've gotta figure that out yourself. So that means you now have to become investment expert. Um, so people with less assets, I think do or would benefit from a fee only advisor because they would avoid the commissions, the proprietary stuff, getting in higher quality investments right from the get go. Um. There's just a ton of issues that plague 'em. So let's focus on this a little bit 'cause I do know we have a lot of listeners that are in that. I'm just getting started phase. We would call 'em like Sprout or Ignite Clients here.

Yep.

Um, what are some of the challenges that are facing that group of clients that are just trying to get started out? They've got 5, 10, 15, $20,000 that they should be aware of.

Yeah, I think, and you kind of mentioned it, right, like getting started and not getting frustrated when things, um, don't quickly ramp up in that space. Right? So it's getting started and being consistent with, you know, putting money away. I think having. You know, a planner or somebody who, who can be by your side to actually show you, all right, this is, this is what you will have someday. Right? Like, don't get frustrated that this is gonna take a while because it

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's a slow build. Right. But, um, know, and even, you know, away from the investments and, and not even necessarily younger people, but even people with, uh, that are approaching retirement that may have smaller account balances that are like, you know what, why am I paying for this planning? I don't have much money put away, but there's other factors that go into all of these other things that, that you can be helped with, right? Like even like social security planning

Yeah.

pension selection, those types of things. So, um, I think it kind of falls in like the younger crowd, just kind of having somebody by your side to help guide you, but also, you know, even the crowd that's getting closer to retirement. If you may not have a ton of money saved, but there's a whole bunch of other factors that advisor, a good advisor,

Yeah.

can help you save long term of making the right decisions, right, the make, making smart decisions. So,

I think that that's a good point though too. That age group that you were talking about, like, I'm getting new retirement. I've got three or $400,000 that I think is where most of the retail abuse is. So what I mean by that is if you wanna know where the most sharks are looking to make a buck off of somebody, it's in that dollar amount. Because when you have three, $400,000. Um, you can see how you could run outta money. You can see how you could spend that much quicker than, say, if you have a couple million dollars,

Right.

um, and maybe bigger pension and bigger social security. So what happens is you've got every insurance agent, every broker, every small advisor kind of competing for that three or $400,000 trying to sell their thing. That can make a commission. And a lot of times you end up with products like indexed annuities,

Yep.

variable annuities, fixed annuities, CDs, stuff like that there where they prey on your fear of losing it. On the fear of running out.

I was just gonna say, it's a lot of fear-based selling right

Yep.

Yep.

And they make massive commit commissions. But your upside gets inebriated and, and your access to principle can be taken away. And, and my experience with clients in that size is. Yes, there is a, a potential that you could run out of money. There's a potential, anybody could run outta money, but the bigger risk is not that pot pool of money not growing at all because you, you ended up in a product where it's the top side is cut off where losing access to your principal and now life happens and you need some of that principle and you can't get it without blowing up All these quote guarantees that you've paid for that will never come to fruition. Um, because you know what? When you only have three or $400,000 and something happens to one of the kids, you don't think of yourself, you think of the kids and you cash out part of that three or $400,000. And a lot of times that's blowing up some of the products that the smaller advisors are gonna be selling. Most likely, if you're dealing in the three to $400,000 range and you're not dealing with a fee advisor, you're gonna be dealing with commission heavy products. You know, or proprietary products. 'cause you're gonna be dealing with smaller advisors, you know, people who are newer in their learning or in their career, or you're gonna be dealing with people who are more seasoned in their career, um, but not as successful. Lemme put that way. Right. And that's why they're still selling commissions or, or higher cost products, trying to, you know, get their next paycheck. And that's a lot of times where we see churn and stuff like that. So I think that that's really, I think that that's really, really good advice is because it isn't just about young people. This is also about, you know, I have a lower assets for maybe my age and, and, and retirement goals. And it allows me to be preyed upon based on, oh, aren't you afraid you're gonna run out? Let us show you how you won't run out.

Yep.

Um. So I, I also think that it's like, it's like habits, right? Like you need to have, you need to be prepared. And having, um, a coach and having you establish certain disciplines early is really important. It's harder to change when you're midlife, right? I'm in my forties, I can say it's a lot harder to get up and join a gym than it was when I was in my twenties or thirties. Um, you know, so it's just harder to change. So you build the habits early, um, and get yourself set up. You can accumulate faster, then you have a lot more options, uh, and a lot more flexibility as you age. Um, and then you have that compounding interest. You know, you're, you're, you mentioned it, you know, it sound, it feels like it. It's very slow. Your first $10,000, when you make 10%, it's gonna go to 11,000, and that's not gonna feel like it did anything. You're gonna be like, so what? What's a thousand dollars?

Yep,

Your first a hundred thousand, when it goes up 10%, same 10% that it did when you had 10,000, it's gonna go up to 110,000.

yep.

Now you're gonna say, Hey, that's cool, but it's still only $110,000. But when you have a million, it goes up to 1,000,001.

Yep.

Now you're gonna say, well, that's a, that's a fancy car I could buy right there. And when you get to 3 million, it's gonna go up $300,000. Then you're gonna say, okay, I could that, that's a vacation house. You know what I mean? So you're, you're, you have to understand that it's not sexy and it's boring, but in order to get to the bigger number, you have to go through the smaller numbers. The way that compounding math works, you wanna get all those thousands as you can. So if you have an opportunity to keep more money in your pocket or give yourself upside on investments. You, you need to seriously consider how are you appropriately doing that, even if it means you have to pay for a coach,

Yep,

because what you need to do is avoid the pariahs coming and basically keeping you small because they're, they're living off of you because they're not successful and they bent your ear and they got you kind of ensnared in kind of whatever kind of business that they're doing.

yep. And that, and like you said, that first, uh, that first a hundred thousand dollars, that feels like it takes a while, right? It feels

Yeah.

when is this gonna happen? And then all of a sudden the compound interest starts to accumulate and it's like, whoa, okay, here we go. And you get some momentum, and you get some momentum and momentum. And all of a sudden, you know, like you said, on a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, that's a lot of money. but it, it, it is a slow process, for people who are just starting out. But, you know, if you have somebody by your side to tell you this is gonna look like and show you what this is gonna look like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years, um, I think it makes it a little bit easier.

And I don't think you have to have a million dollars by the time you're 40 either. Like I can think of a handful of clients that we have that their goal by retirement and retirement was like, I think late fifties, early sixties for them was to have a million dollars and now they're at $2 million.

Right,

And, and that was five or six years ago. They retired, you know, just before COVID. And so you can see how quickly it took 'em 30 years to get to a million. It took 'em six years to get to 2 million or something like that. You know, it was a pretty, it was a pretty explosive pop from a million to 2 million. I, I can't tell you exactly how much time period, but it's a short amount of time when you think about it. It took their entire adult life to get to a million

Yep.

and then. It took the, essentially we're a couple years into retirement and now they're at 2 million. And they're like, well, I never thought I'd be here. And you know, you get that sheepy little grin like, okay, now what do I do next? You know? 'cause it's like I never thought I'd be here. You know, when I was a kid, everybody talked about maybe someday you get to a million. And I did it. And then, wow, now I'm at 2 million now. And then, and this is why when, when you re, when you retire, a lot of times your, your goals and things change. As you get into like your seventies, that compounding math just starts to get wild.

Right.

here you are, you've been disciplined your whole life. You've accumulated a couple million dollars, you get to retirement and you, and you don't need a lot of it. Right, and that's part of how you accumulated it because you've been pretty disciplined living within your means. So you get to retirement, now you have this big pot of money and you're like, okay, well I'm still nervous 'cause I'm retiring, I'm not getting a paycheck anymore.

Yep.

so I'm, I'm not really thinking about philanthropy or giving to the kids at all. Then you get into your seventies and you start looking at what the RMDs are gonna be and you go, holy cow. I never thought I'd have three and a half, $4 million. I don't know how I got here.

Yep,

Um. But I'm looking at the tax bill that's coming my way in the next couple of years. What can I do about this thing? And that then all of a sudden, philanthropy comes in and the kids, you know, giving to the kids or setting money aside for the grandkids come in. And that's when that conversation actually starts to get fun because you're subconscious or you're mentally dealing with the fact that you also never thought you'd have that much money. Uh, but it happens. And, and, and it just, it just goes to show, you know, it's, it is that last 10 or 20 years, not the first 20 years,

Mm-hmm.

you need to save in the first 20 years so that you have something to grow off of.

Yep.

But the big growth is gonna come in the last 10 and 20 years.