A hearty welcome to Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom with your hospitable hosts, Brandon and Amanda Neely. This is the only podcast for strategies to grow your wealth simply and sustainably like grandma used to. Without further ado here are your hosts.
Brandon: Hey, I'm Brandon, and welcome to Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, where we work with you to build wealth Grandma would be proud of.
Amanda: Hi, and I'm Amanda. Welcome. Glad you're listening today. Thanks for joining us. We have got a really awesome episode today. We have been looking forward to this interview for some time. This guy that we're interviewing, Tim Austin, has been on our list of potential interviewees. He's been #1 on our list, so we're really excited. Brandon is going to read you his official bio, and then I'm going to give you a little fun fact about Tim as well. [0:01:04.4]
Brandon: Well, first off - the episode number is 34, of course, and the title, and this is very interesting; I love this title: The Overlooked $2.7 million. The Overlooked 2.7 million dollars. Like, I don’t know what that means, that's all about, but 2.7 is, that's a lot to overlook.
So, who is this Tim Austin? How is he so famous, at least in some circles? So Tim is president and founder of Set For Advisors, a leading training organization for financial advisors who want to help their clients grow wealth predictably and without risk or volatility. He is also the cofounder and director of the Bank On Yourself authorized advisor whole life insurance concept along with best-selling author, Pamela Yellen, who wrote the book Bank On Yourself, The Life Changing Secrets to Growing and Protecting Your Financial Future. He's actually in one of the chapters that …[0:02:16.0]
Amanda: A couple of the chapters, actually.
Brandon: Yeah. Now Bank On Yourself is a major best-seller, hitting #1 on the USA Today and Amazon best-seller list, and is also a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publisher's Weekly #1 best-seller, so that's a lot of best-sellers, right. And we get to work with these guys - that's pretty awesome. Tim makes his home in Clarkston, Michigan (we won't hold that against him) with his wife and three children. Tim likes to test the limits of his physical ability and mental toughness, participating in Half Ironman triathlons and marathons. He actually does a lot of these things that I don’t, I'm never going to compete with him on that. I'll let him do it. So, anyway…[0:03:03.4]
Amanda: So as an…
Brandon: That's a mouthful.
Amanda: Yeah. So a little bit of fun facts. First I'm originally from Ohio. I'm a big Ohio State football fan. So the, probably one of the very few things I like about the State of Michigan is Tim Austin. I just have to put that out there.
Brandon: And the Set team over there. They're awesome.
Amanda: Right. Right. I said "one of the few."
Brandon: Yeah, okay.
Amanda: And then a little fun fact - so we send a book to our clients as like a thank you and a congratulations to them, and in …
Brandon: Wait, what book is that? We might have mentioned it already.
Amanda: It's a secret. When we send that book, we take a little postcard about the Grandma's Wealth Wisdom and we put it in the book at page 129. There within that book, page 129, it is recorded in this book what Tim is going to share with you today, with a lot, like he's going to share a lot more in detail. It's only summarized there on page 129 and 130, but he like gives the back story and the color to it. [0:04:11.8]
So I'm really excited for what he shares in this part of the interview. It's a lot of really golden knowledge that's come from his many years of experience in the financial sector. I mean, if you didn't get this from the bio, he's not a financial, like he's not just a financial professional. He trains financial professionals. So, I hope that you'll see that he really has a lot of knowledge to share with us and it only gets started in this episode. Without further ado, let's welcome Tim to the podcast. Welcome, Tim.
Tim: Well, hello, hello. Thank you, and thank you for having me on.
Amanda: Thanks for being here. We want to jump right in because we know you've got lots of value to share with our listeners today. Let's start early in your career. What were some of the turning points that helped you really learn about the wisdom that grandma has had to share? [0:05:06.5]
Tim: One of the things, Amanda, that I kind of talk about in my career is I am very blessed that I got into the business very early as a financial advisor. I was quite young, being 20 years old, still being in college and you know, getting into the business and out of kind of a passion, but still kind of looking at it as a part-time job that could help me to one, get through college, but two, to help people in a passion that I had. But early on in my career, I was very excited about helping people to build portfolios, to build wealth, you know, to really kind of focus on the market a little bit, you know, because that's what people were talking about is how do I invest my money, how do I make a great return on my money, and they look at us, as a financial advisor sometime and just that narrow scope and unfortunately, as a young person getting into the business, I don’t think I had the best mentors real early in my business. [0:06:23.9]
So one of the things that really, really benefited me, and it's interesting because it almost put me out of the business, and today, I look at it as I'm very grateful for it and I'm also grateful that, you know, I've been able to spend more than 30 years now kind of doing it a little bit better. And what I'm talking about is my grandmother and grandfather, but we'll talk more about grandma, because she is the one that was more upset. You know, they were one of my first clients. You know, when you first get into the financial planning industry, you know, you kind of want to talk to the people that will actually sit down and talk to you because they love you. [0:07:11.8]
Amanda: Yep.
Tim: And I did bring my manager, who was very experienced as a financial advisor. We was a CFE, actually, and he set, he basically ran the appointment with my grandmother, and you have to understand, you know, my grandmother and grandfather, they grew up through The Depression, you know - 1929, 1930, 1931, you know. This is when they found - I remember this story - they, you know, they found a dime on the sidewalk and it was the best day because they were going to be able to buy soup, you know, that day. So, when we sat with my grandmother and grandfather, they ended up investing $10,000 into a mutual fund that was recommended as a safe, relatively conservative mutual fund that my manager recommended. [0:08:10.9]
Well, for - your listeners may or may not remember, but this was early in 1987, and in October of 1987, I had to let my grandmother know that her conservative bond fund, mutual fund that was selected by my manager, that her $10,000 was now only worth $6000.
Brandon: Oh, wow.
Tim: And this is coming from grandma, who looked me in the eye and said, "I'm not concerned about the rate of return on my money. I'm concerned about the return of my money." And at the same token, she was told not to worry about it, this is a mutual fund that's, again, conservative, it's a bond portfolio, look at how well it's done in the past, and here it is, having a market value of $6000. [0:09:15.3]
You can tell somebody all day long that "Just hold on to it and it'll come back, you'll be fine, it's the market," but you can't tell somebody that that's never been in the market and has only been concerned about conserving what they've saved - a dollar saved is a dollar earned. Right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Tim: So that was a very, very challenging time and my lesson learned from that, you know, moving forward is I had to find a better way to work with clients, to work with people on what their goals were, on, you know, how to accomplish what they wanted, not what I want or what I think is best for them. I could think that this bond mutual fund was best for them all day long, but it's, that was never, ever right for my grandmother and my grandfather. [0:10:11.4]
So that's one of the very biggest lessons learned is how can I help people accomplish what they actually want to accomplish and do it in a way that doesn’t take unnecessary risks.
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: Sounds like younger Tim and you might not have gotten along when it comes to talking about financial strategies if you were to have yourself, early, come into your office.
Tim: Oh, we argue all the time.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: What a powerful story. Like, I just, if, you know, I put myself in my, like in my shoes and think about losing $4000 of my Grandma's money, like, or 40% of my Grandma's money…
Tim: 40%, yeah.
Amanda: I don’t think I could live with myself, and it seems like that really would catalyze a lot of change if that happened, and it sounds like you used that as an opportunity. [0:11:05.1]
Tim: It definitely was, and just maybe to tag onto to that - my uncle, who was much younger and but, he gave me $1000. He put $1000 into that and I had to tell him the same thing, but he kind of laughed it off and he said, "Tim, whatever. I'll just leave it there." He never touched it. He never touched it. It took 20 years for him to get back to his original $1000, you know. So it also goes to people thinking, "Oh well, you know, don’t worry about it. Just leave it. It's, you know, it'll come back." Now, this was a bond mutual fund, but it didn't come back for 20 years. You know, it's… if that was somebody's retirement money - oh, my goodness - what, how would they survive? And by the way, now 30 some odd years later, I see people making those mistakes all the time. [0:12:00.7]
So that people that I've seen in 1991, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2008 through 2011 - you know, these are people that are devastated because they thought all along, for 20, 30 years, they're putting money in these, in this plan which includes market-based risk and then all of sudden it takes a big hit, but it's right before the time that they're starting to take distribution and now, they've got a huge problem because they really are locking in all of those losses and they never built a solution that actually could give them the freedom to know what they could, what they'd be able to take out without loss. So that was very, very bad.
Amanda: Yeah. [0:12:53.7]
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Amanda: So you start on this journey to find a better way to actually reach people's goals without taking unnecessary risks. What are some of the things that you learned as you pursue that, especially from the grandma types that you were working with?
Tim: Yeah. So that, that put me into looking for better mentors than the manager and actually the company that I was even working with at the time. I looked for mentors that were outside, and I actually came across a mentor. He was out of Ohio and this person taught, he was 60 years old at the time, so again, I'm 20, coming up on 21 at the time, and he spoke to me. [0:14:13.5]
He spoke to me because he knew, he's been through everything, his clients, he was doing for his clients what I had hoped to be able to do for my clients for the next 50, 60, 100 years maybe. He showed me that there was a way to utilize insurance products to safeguard a long-term financial solution to help people hit all of their financial milestones without taking unnecessary risks by using insurance products to accomplish that and not just falling into this trap that market solutions is the only way to grow wealth or to do financial planning. So you know, he showed me that initial mindset shift. [0:15:08.3]
And one of the stories that he shared with me that got my attention, and I know you guys are in the Chicago area, so you might appreciate this but he shared with me this story. This situation had happened in the 1980s and it was an elderly lady that was living alone and it was rumored she had cash in her house, which most elderly ladies, you know, at that point in time generally did have cash in their home, and robbers basically came in. They did rob her and it was a horrible story because she ended up passing away. I think she had fallen down some steps due to this robbery going on, but she passed away but they did confirm that the robbers did get away with about $16,000 of cash that was in the home. [0:16:07.8]
They did get caught, by the way, so as far as that's concerned. But what they missed was the $2.7 million in the garage. So this lady had 55-gallon drums that were in the floor of her garage that her and husband basically just filled over their lifetime. And he asked the question to all these financial advisors sitting in this room, he just asked us, "Is that a good financial plan or a bad financial plan?" And most financial advisors, I think 100% quite honestly, I think the only advisors that didn't answer that question is they knew it was a trick question probably. But you know, most of us are like, "Well, of course that's a bad plan. There's zero interest forever, you know," and then he just came back at all of us and just simply asked the question, "How big are your barrels?" [0:17:05.0]
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Wow.
Tim: They were able to build $2.7 million of wealth. They lived in a home very comfortably. She was very happy. They raised their children. They, there was nothing, in their mind, that they felt that they were depriving themselves of, but they had $2.7 million of wealth. So that really got me thinking in a different way. So the next part of my story is that from that point forward with the clients that I was working with and I was very fortunate, again, because my work ethic, I come from a blue collar family and you know, working 12-hour days was, you know, not a problem for me. It's just that's all part of it, but I had the opportunity because I was rookie of the year. I was advisor of the month 11 months out of 12 for that particular year. [0:18:06.5]
The company I was working with allowed me to go out and see what they call their "orphan clients" - clients that no longer had a financial planner assigned to their account for whatever reason. So I was going out and seeing these people and most of them were in their 70s, late 60s, 70s and 80s and what I found out is. And the reason I was going out to see them, if I can back up just a second, is that they all had very small whole life insurance contract from a mutually dividend paying company at the time and I was going out just to service those policies but to see if there was anything else that we could do to help them in their situation. Well, the blessing that I received from being able to do that is the stories of how they used those policies and why they took them out. [0:19:04.1]
And what was the, what I found out from that is that these people had a varied opinion of how that product worked for them during their lives. If you go back into history into the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, almost 50% of America's wealth was housed in permanent whole life insurance and fixed annuities, and it was…
Brandon: Wait, can you say that again? How much was it?
Tim: It was almost 50% of America's wealth was housed in permanent mutual, mutual dividend paying whole life policies and fixed annuities.
Brandon: Wow, that's…
Tim: So an annuity contract that just paid a fixed interest rate, guaranteed dollars. And it was very uncommon for you not to have a whole, a small whole life policy. Now I'm talking small in the way of, you know, $1000 death benefit, $5000 death benefit. [0:20:07.1]
If somebody had a $10,000 death benefit, that was very, very large. But, what was happening back then is that product was being used as the foundation of somebody's overall financial plan. It was the product they could go to in the time of an emergency. It was the product they go to in the time of a purchase of a big item and back then, basically that was a car. Back then, they purchased their cars. There was no lease. Generally they kept it for probably almost 10 years. You know, that's a big purchase. And so, hearing these stories about how these policies paid for their daughter's wedding, how it helped them through emergencies, you know, like lost their job, they were out of work for six months - all kinds of stories and how the fact that they would never, ever think about giving up that policy. [0:21:08.8]
Like, you couldn’t drag these policies, you couldn’t pay them enough to, you know, to give up that policy because there was too much attached to what it was able to do for them. So, you know, the transition over that two-year period of losing grandma's money, figuring out if I need to get a different career path because this is just not working, I can't lose people's money and have them hate me the rest of their life. Just so you know, Grandma didn't hate me for the rest of her life, but I definitely felt horrible about that situation. And then to just be in a position to be able to go out and see all of these hundreds of people in their 70s and 80s as a young person and hear how they were able to build a financial plan that didn't have unnecessary risks in it and live great lives, raise their children, you know, be able to save and at the same time be able to spend, and you know, it was just a big blessing for me in my career. [0:22:21.4]
Amanda: Yeah. That's really powerful stories there. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Brandon.
Brandon: I was going to add - you said something that they were able to do is save. I think that's a very interesting thing that isn't really talked about a lot nowadays in the first place. Like we don’t save as much as we should. Can you tell us how much did they actually save, you think?
Tim: Absolutely, sure. So in doing all of that research, you know, Brandon, one of the things, you know, you mentioned we don’t really save today, but I would venture to guess that anybody that's listening to your podcast that heard you say that, they're probably saying to themselves, "Oh, well, that's not me. I save because I put 5% into my 401K and I match that 3%, so I'm saving 8% of my income," or "I'm putting 10% of my income away and I'm getting matched at 3%, so I'm saving." [0:23:28.6]
There is a huge difference in the two words of "saving" and "investing," and when you're putting money into a 401K, that is not what these people would have considered to be saving. And back in the 1940s, people were pushing around 27% of their income was going into savings. Now in today's world, if we look at today's numbers and compare them to the 1940s, you know, we are … gosh, the last report that I looked at, and there's several different places… obviously Google these days, you can just simply Google "savings rates in America." [0:24:13.5]
You can also, you know, Google "debt rates in America," and you'll get all kinds of different reports. But the Federal Government is the best source for these types of statistics, but you know, we're pushing 36%, 37% of our incomes currently are going to service debt. Meaning that if we earn $1, $0.36 out of that dollar is going to service debt. So we have a mortgage payment. We have car payments, many of them in some cases. We have credit card debt. We have student loan debt. We have, you know, all kinds of different debt payments that we're servicing these days. And if we go back to the 1940s, we were at 11%, $0.11 out of every $1. [0:25:07.3]
Brandon: Wow.
Tim: So if we're currently doing $0.36 out of every $1 and we used to do $0.11 out of every $1, and if we used to save $0.27 out of every $1 and now we're saving, you know, less than 5% or $0.05 out of every $1, what happened? What happened? And what happened is we started to buy ahead of the curve. We started to say, "Well, of course, I'm going to lease my car. I mean, that's just what people do." Right? "We're always going to have a car payment." Eh, I could agree with that in some ways but the way that people looked at it back in the 1940s is that they would, part of that 27% was broken down into what I now call "The 10/10/10 Rule." [0:26:02.4]
That's not what they called it. It's just that's what I derived from what they were doing. They were saving about 10% of their incomes for short-term goals, short-term financial goals. They were saving 10% for mid-term goals, and they were saving 10% for income replacement. So the only thing, in my opinion, that has remained today as a rule or an idea or philosophy for that matter is "Well, I should probably be saving 10% of my income for retirement." You don’t hear people that will say that. Now we know people aren't doing it, you know, and also why I'm sure maybe for another podcast - I've got an issue with the 401K plan, but you know, that's the thing that they remember, but what they don’t remember and what's been lost over the last, you know, 40 years is this idea that if you have a short-term goal, I mean, vacations or you know, you need, you're going to put the pool in, you're going, you need a refrigerator or whatever - you know, these are short-term financial goals that you most likely know are coming up. [0:27:24.8]
So instead of just going ahead and putting it on the credit card or taking out that home equity line of credit in order to go do that stuff, you should be planning for it, and you should be setting aside 10% of your income to plan for those things. And if you're going above that for those short-term goals, you're spending too much. If you're applying it to debt payment, then you're really spending too much. And then the same thing for mid-term. So a mid-term might be like college education for my children. You know, it might be a bigger, an addition to the home, you know. It might be health, you know, concerns or issues that you want to build up a higher deductible or payment cash for. So there's a lot of things that are in there. [0:28:16.0]
So one of the biggest lessons that I learned early in my career from being able to see all of those people that were in their upper 60s, 70s, and 80 years old that had all of these little whole life policies is I was able to learn the 10/10/10 rule. I was able to learn why this product was so important to them, why they were so passionate about it, Because even at that time, I wasn’t convinced that it might be the right product for them. When I was going out to see them at that time, I was thinking, "Well, maybe we could do better with what they had if they didn't need the insurance maybe or this or that, but boy, when I got out there and started to hear these stories and what the plan for that policy was, there's no way that I would’ve been able to replace that you know, too much, 40 some odd years of emotional attachment, 50 years of emotional attachment to the product. [0:29:13.7]
Amanda: Yeah. So if I were to summarize what you shared, you know, like we go back to that lady in Chicago with 2.7 million in the garage. She didn't get there because of her rate of return. She got there because of her rate of savings. And if people want to see that amount of money saved or more or less, you know, whatever their goal is, it's all about how much you save, more so than rate of return. Would you say that's a fair summary?
Tim: Absolutely.
Amanda: Okay. Now…
Tim: Absolutely. Can I - I'm sorry - can I add just part of that because …
Amanda: For sure.
Tim: … when you do save, you know, and we use the barrels as an example and yes, but in today's world, the other thing that has been completely lost is, you know, Albert Einstein said it best, "Compounded interest is the eighth wonder of the world. Those that understand it, earn it. Those that don't, pay it." Uninterrupted compounded interest has, it's just, it seems like it's been a lost philosophy in today's world, and I explain it this way: Have you guys watched the news recently or …[0:30:28.6]
Amanda: Unfortunately.
Tim: … you know, have you ever seen them brag about the market has hit a new high today?
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: Yes.
Tim: Brandon, Amanda - do you know that my financial solution has hit a new high, every single day for 32 years?
Amanda: That does not surprise me.
Tim: Why on earth are they bragging about breaking even after 12 years?
Amanda: Yep.
Tim: You know what I'm saying? It's like, "Oh my goodness; we hit a new high in the market!" Well, uninterrupted compounded interest, it can, it just can do so much for people if they understood it and implemented it in their lives. [0:31:18.8]
Brandon: And I think the key is "uninterrupted" compounded interest …
Tim: Yeah.
Brandon: … because I feel like some things that I, I mean I watch and I'm like oh, they're saying "compound interest" but it's interrupted. If there's volatility in the market or anything, it is not uninterrupted compound interest.
Amanda: Real estate is the same way.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. Another thing I was thinking about - you mentioned mentors and how we came into this is, into the Bank On Yourself world is through our friend and mentor, Mark Willis, who actually I believe meets with you regularly and has been a part of the Bank On Yourself revolution for I think eight or nine years, and so I feel like it's kind of like if we think about this, if you think about generations in the business, Mark Willis, who was in our last episode, is kind of like our dad as a mentor and then you're our grandpa, and in this whole world of the Bank On Yourself, and so thinking about that from a Grandma's Wealth Wisdom and why we even named the podcast that is thinking about these aspects and not just saying, "Oh, I'm 70 years old now. I'm a grandpa," but there's other aspects of legacy and compounding and the fact that plays into not just money, but …[0:32:41.1]
Tim: Oh, absolutely.
Amanda: So that was the first half of this interview. Obviously in the next half, we're going to go into some more lessons that Tim has learned through his career as a financial professional working with grandma and her generation. I want to go back to this story that Tim told about the 2.7 million hiding in the barrels in the garage. And we titled this episode The Overlooked 2.7 Million, and of course, we're talking about the robbers, like they overlooked that 2.7 million in that lady's garage here in Chicago back in the 1980s, but I wonder how many of us overlook the 2.7 million in our lives. Like, if we're making any kind of money, 2.7 million or more is probably going to pass through our hands at some point, a little, you know, over the course of our lifetimes and what matters is what we do with it and are we overlooking it? Are we letting people rob it from us or are we using it and being good stewards of it. [0:34:01.8]
And if each us, you know, potentially has this kind of opportunity, then if we're just looking elsewhere, you know, trying to be good stewards, you know, save diligently, those kinds of things, we could be like that lady. You know, like, and it's really awesome, too, like she had this 2.7 million but know what? Like she had it. She didn't change her lifestyle. She still lived in the same house. It was there for her when and if she needed it. Now, maybe she could have done something better, maybe she shouldn't have saved it all to herself and she could have been more generous - who knows the full story there. But what's the overlooked 2.7 million or whatever figure in your life would be the question that I would invite us to ask ourselves.
Brandon: And the other question that the person asked was "How big are your barrels?" And maybe that's a question that we need to be asking ourselves, is okay, how big are our barrels, wherever the money is at - are they one - accessible, are we able to access it for emergencies and do we have barrels that have 2.7 million, like. So yes, we laugh at her having barrels hidden. At least she had something, more than a lot of people. So, I don't know. That's a big thing, big thing to ask of how big are your barrels.
Amanda: Right. And are your barrels growing.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: Yep. The uninterrupted compound interest are your barrels growing?
Okay, we're going to sign off for today. Be sure to join us for the next episode, where we're going to dig into the Eight Lessons from Grandma's Generation. So this was lesson #1. We're going to have eight more lessons that Tim is going to share with us next time. So be sure to tune in.
Brandon: And keep building your wealth simply and sustainably for your own future and the future of our grandchildren's generation.
The topics presented in this podcast are the general information only and not for the purposes of providing legal, accounting, or investment advice. On such matters place consult a professional who knows your specific situation.
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