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, and I'm Brandon and welcome to Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, where we help you break through to a smart, stable financial future with the tried and true wisdom grandma used.
Amanda: And howdy - I'm Amanda. Today's episode is number 44 and we have titled it Seen, Not Heard.
Brandon: I've just got to go back and…you're not even from Texas - why are you saying "howdy?" Howdy.
Amanda: Because it's cool. It's a great thing to say.
Brandon: Okay. Alright. Whatever.
Amanda: Okay. Okay. Anyway. So today's episode is "Seen, Not Heard," and we have to warn you, in this episode we're going to be our true selves. We're going to share about some controversial things and any time any one chooses to talk about things like prejudice and discrimination, it's hard and its going to maybe ruffle some feathers, shake some boats, different things. [0:01:18.5]
Brandon: Shake boats?
Amanda: It's really hard.
Brandon: Shake some boats out on…I don't know…I've never shaken a boat.
Amanda: Rocking.
Brandon: Rocking some boats.
Amanda: It's going to rock the boats. Let's…yeah, yeah. But so, this is a really hard conversation to have, but it's really important, so we ask for your grace. This episode will not be perfect. We might, you know, say some things that are not 100% accurate. We tried our best and just remember that this is meant to be a conversation. We want to hear what you think too. This is an invitation to talk with us, to share what you think as well and we'll even share a phone number at the end that you can do just that. [0:01:59.5]
Brandon: And it's about something that's really important to you, Amanda. So you might have a lot more fire about it than most. Me, eh, I haven't' really dealt with it too much, for obvious reasons, but again, I am at your side, so.
Amanda: Yeah. And I do have to say - walking alongside me with this, you've done a really great job and I know it's impacted you because you care about me, so I think … thanks for being there with me in it and I think you'll have some really great things to share. So if you haven't guessed it already, the topic that we are talking about is about bias, prejudice, discrimination and part of why we chose to take on this topic is because the financial industry has not, by any means, been innocent of those kind of biases. I mean, not too long ago a woman couldn’t even get a loan from a bank without her husband's consent. Even today, if you just go to Google and you type in "bias in the financial industry," you're going to get so many hits and you'll find out lots of information about the current biases, like gender pay gaps and even AI and the algorithmic bias that even computers have. This is not something to just be pushed under the rug. It's something that's real and that impacts all of us. [0:03:23.4]
Brandon: Yeah and we recently watched a documentary on RBG, the notorious RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I think…
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: …who was one of the chief justices, female, and her work, regardless of where you stand on these kind of things, watch that documentary. It's really interesting to see how far we have come as a culture or how far we're sometimes moving backwards or whatever. It just seems we keep going back and forth, but her fight in the equality was a big one that I learned a lot from just last week. [0:04:02.5]
Amanda: Yeah and so the last thing kind of to say by way of introduction is that we call this grandma's wealth wisdom. Right? We don’t call it grandpa's wealth wisdom and there's some really important reasons why we call it grandma's wealth wisdom, but this idea of using what's worked for hundreds of years, but modernizing it to fit our current generation and where we're at is this area of correcting bias, you know, coming against discrimination and actually maybe even having a way more equal and equitable way of treating your money and using your money and the institutions that you work with to do that and all of that, that is definitely a way that we have modernized what grandma would have used before. So, with all that kind of out there to start with, I want to tell you a little bit about my story, reveal some of my own biases, some of where I come from. I am a female… [0:05:00.6]
Brandon: Really?
Amanda: I was born in 1984 and I've kind of always known that my dad really wanted a boy. They even had like cards that were that people gave them with baby shower gifts or whatever that had my boy name on there and stuff. My dad is really pretty old school. Like he had certain arbitrary rules - like I wasn’t allowed to use the riding mower. I could use the push mower, but not the riding mower and I couldn’t use any power tools, but I could totally use a handsaw or you know, whatever so I just had to work extra hard instead of like sit on the mower or have the saw do the work for me.
Brandon: This doesn’t sound logical, actually.
Amanda: Well, it was his rules and we followed them and I respected them. I still do. He is a great guy. But it was my mom, actually, who was the one who worked and my dad who cooked and cleaned. So he wasn’t actually that old school. Actually, that set up, an interesting example for me and my mom taught me those values that I could be and do whatever I wanted. [0:06:05.5]
My mom's the typical boomer parent in that's something that she instilled in me. You can do what you want if you just put your mind to it, that kind of thing. Then my dad taught me the work ethic that I needed in order to get, to be who I wanted to be and to do what I wanted to do. I mean, he was a lot older than my mom, part of the greatest generation and kind of gave me that really cool part of his generation that they worked hard for what they wanted.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And I'm grateful to have learned both things. Right?
Brandon: Because again, your dad was old and we always think our parents are old, but your dad was actually older than most…like he was the age of my grandmother, actually.
Amanda: Yeah. He was old enough to be my grandpa, for sure. Yeah. So then, in high school I had a friend that I'll never forget. His name was Greg. I doubt he's ever going to listen to this, but Greg, if you ever hear this, hi. And I don't know if he even remembers me or whatever, but Greg thought that just because he was older than me, he knew more about everything that I did and I told him even though I was younger, I could have maybe more experience in some areas than him, which could mean that I new more abut that area than he did and we argued about it over and over and over again. [0:07:20.5]
We got pretty philosophical at times. I remember even saying something like a 50-year-old hermit could probably learn a lot from a 20-year-old world traveler because of just the difference in experiences, but Greg never budged. He maintains that the 50-year-old would always be wiser than the 20-year-old or the 17-year-old would always be wiser than the 15-year-old or what have you.
Brandon: I hope that's not the case.
Amanda: But you know, with age does come wisdom but there's also experience and I think there is a lot to learn from people of all ages. I really love when there's people in their 90s that are still learning and are willing to learn from people in their, you know, that are kids and teenagers, that kind of thing. [0:08:03.4]
I also grew up in a Christian home and you might not be surprised by this but one of my favorite verses in the Bible was when a guy named Paul wrote to another guy named Timothy and said, "Don’t let anyone look down on you because you're young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity." And if you want to look it up, it's I Timothy 4:11 and these words really stuck with me, don’t let anyone look down on you because you're young, but you know, set an example. Like be who the older people can learn from. Right? But the problem with this verse is that he wrote it just two chapters after he wrote some passages about women that are super controversial and the church that I grew up in and literally like was born going to and continued until I left for college, they had a pretty conservative interpretation of those passages about women. [0:09:00.4]
Then when I got to college, I ended up finding a church that had a less conservative interpretation of those passages and actually, the year Brandon and I got married, that group of churches that we were a part of came out with a statement that effectively took any and all ceilings off of women and their leadership within the church, not without controversy, not without different interpretations of what that means, but they basically said there's no ceiling. But my actual interactions with some of the male leaders in that church told me a different story. There was one male leader that actually said to me these words, and I quote, "You talk too much for how young you are." And I don’t know if this is because I was a woman, because I was young, but he literally said that, "You talk too much for how young you are." And then, a few months later, another male leader told me that exact same phrase, "You talk too much for how young you are." And my only explanation is that those two leaders had had a conversation about me and the one had said those exact words to the other one and so they just repeated that phrase. [0:10:02.0]
Now granted you're listening to me talk right now. You know I do talk. I do share my opinions when I'm asked for them. And I have kind of always thought that we're all equals and everyone has a right to share their thoughts and listen to others' thoughts as well, no matter their age, no matter their gender, that that's part of what it means to be in relationships with people. Right? I was 21 when I first heard those words, "You talk too much for how young you are." And I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but literally, the rest of my 20s were a quiet decade, especially when I was around older men.
Brandon: Except for me because I am a little older than you.
Amanda: That's true.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. When we were dating, Amanda heard those words, "You talk too much for how old you are," and I remember …
Amanda: Young.
Brandon: …"How young you are," and I remember how much they impacted her then and for a long time after. It took a lot of I'd say healing and development herself and getting away from some of those people that said that and having different voices speaking to her. [0:11:12.8]
Amanda: And the hard truth is is that my story isn't unique. I think each female, each young person, we all have stories like this and I totally admit, I've got a lot of privilege too. I'm white. I'm heterosexual. I can't even imagine the deeper bias and prejudice that others experience day in and day out, but this is why I love the work that I do now. I mean, we get the honor to work with lots of people who would not have access to the type of work we do just a few decades ago, maybe even a decade ago. Like and I know my parents never had a financial professional to help them with their strategy. Even something as simple as life insurance wasn’t widely promoted in African American communities for generations. Right? [0:12:04.2]
I still talk with neighbors here in Chicago where no one in their family has life insurance because it hasn’t been promoted. There aren’t even financial institutions active in their community working with them to improve their financial paths.
Brandon: One quick thought here: Religion and money are often very divisive, especially when combined. When you combine religion and money, oh my gosh, the Twitter comments and Facebook comments are going to be insane, who knows. And even though we come from a Christian background, we love working with clients of all different faiths and beliefs. I think that's where you commented, for us, a different approach, but even within the Christian tradition, there's a lot of variety. We have had the honor to learn lots about how others view money based on their background and I think we're continuing to learn lots about how to change or how to be more empathetic or I don't know just educational and knowing that there's a lot of things that we think about money or culture that are sometimes not even true. It's just because it was handed down to us.
Amanda: Yeah. [0:13:25.7]
Grandma always said, “Eat your vegetables.” She loved making home-cooked meals with healthy food and from-scratch desserts. Would you create a diet of fast food or cookie cutter financial products that made you fat and bloated with fees or would you like wholesome time-honored wealth strategies served with balance and trust. Get started with your healthy money planning by downloading wholesome wealthy recipes; your moola cookbook is waiting for you at grandmaswealth.com.
Amanda: So what do we do? What is it that helps reverse these biases and prejudices besides just having conversations about it? I mean, I think conversations are really great, but they're not the end all, be all. Right? [0:14:13.2]
You actually have to seek out improvements. And I've kind of teased this before, but I really want to flesh it out more fully now. I've told you, you know, the work we do actually gives women an advantage. Now, there's still plenty of advantages for men and the legacy they want to leave too, but it just so happens that grandma's strategy has an advantage for women and has an advantage for young people too. So we're going to go through four ways or actually three ways and then kind of a half way, 3-1/2 way, grandma strategy is awesome and gives an advantage for women and/or for people who are young. So do you want to give us number one, Brandon?
Brandon: Yeah. So grandma's strategy uses uninterrupted, key word uninterrupted, compound interest. [0:15:05.4]
The young and the female have a huge advantage here. So they use uninterrupted compound interest so the young and female have an advantage here. So statistics show that women actually live longer than men. That means you have longer for the uninterrupted compound interest to work for you because you're female. You're going to live statistically longer. And the younger you start, it starts working for you. Of course, the younger you start. Right? That's better because you can see more growth as the interest compounds year after year after year.
Amanda: Yeah. So that's the first one, with uninterrupted compound interest that gives the advantage to the young and to the female who statistically live longer. The second one is that, so grandma's strategy uses a specially designed high cash value dividend paying life insurance and females, because we live longer, life insurance costs less for us and then also the younger you are, typically, the lower the "costs" for life insurance and I use that quote unquote cost because we could totally show you how not to pay those costs and actually have your life insurance working for you instead of costing you money. [0:16:30.5]
We'd love to show you that but because we're talking about life insurance, females and the young have an advantage when it comes to life insurance. So that's number two.
Brandon: And I'll go with this third one because it probably is going to impact me in a huge way. So grandma's strategy often provides for widows. So most men actually die married. I'm going to say that again. Most men actually die married. Sometimes widows scramble to figure out where their husbands had the money and what strategies they were using because they died married. [0:17:12.3]
The wife is then left as the widow. So there's two important things here. If at all possible, as much as possible, we work with couples together and make sure they are both involved and comfortable with grandma's strategy because if it's just the guy talking…well, at some point, if this is statistically proven, he's going to be out of the picture and she's going to become our client. We need to make sure that we take care of her, I guess.
Amanda: Yeah. And in case the listeners are wondering, we'll throw this out there too. I personally take the lead in a lot of our financial management. Like I update our budgeting software, you know, all those kinds of things but Brandon and I, we try to make all our money decisions together. We kind of have this a little bit of a rule of thumb that we don’t move forward until we both agree and we have a compromise in some way, shape or form. [0:18:07.6]
And I love, personally, to work with couples where the female takes the lead including couples where both of the people in the couple are female - shout out to some of my favorite clients, you know who you are and I know you're listening right now - but there's plenty of clients or plenty of couples where the male takes the lead or they're, you know, both men and we love working with them too. There's all kinds of different ways that couples can figure out their financial management together. What we're saying here is that we want to at least make sure that both people in the couple feel involved and are comfortable. They know they can take this on if something happened to the other person in the couple. And that's really important to us, to make sure they're both involved, they both feel comfortable, they both know us and like us and trust us. So that's the point we're kind of making here. You never know who's going to be a widow or widower and that person should know what to do with the money if and when that happens. [0:19:04.9]
Brandon: We also want to make sure to consider what happens when either of the spouse gets their wings. For the surviving spouse, what does she or he need and what would they want? What they need and what they want - two different things. And we're also looking at taxes. What are taxes going to look like whenever that person graduates and how could we reduce those taxes so the IRS doesn’t take too much of the surviving spouses money. I think that's a huge thing to think about, not just when you're young but as you age and in that part of the relationship.
Amanda: Yeah. So that's number three, grandma's strategy often provides for widows. Then I want to just add this extra little thing. It's a pretty big thing, actually. But grandma's strategy is also great for those who are single. Single ladies. Single men. It's a great thing to be thinking about. [0:20:07.2]
You know, we have several single people who are clients and they seem to love the strong foundation that grandma's strategy gives them that from that foundation they can launch into whatever their dreams and goals are. They can take risks in certain ways, whether it be starting their own business, buying their first home, building a real estate portfolio or adopting a child while remaining single. Whatever it is. The what we see many times with single people is that this gives them a nice solid foundation that then can help them reach to the stars for whatever those dreams and goals are. And we could go on and on with a lot more things. Be sure whenever you talk to us to ask us how grandma's strategy aligns your money with your values in many other ways. We would love to share those with you. But for now, let's bring this home. Let's wrap it up. [0:21:02.3]
I lost my voice for awhile and I'm glad I have it back now and I've chosen to stand up for what I believe in, you know, a quality and equity for all. And I love that I'm using a strategy that benefits women and the young and also love that I get to talk with people, you know, seriously conversations fuel my day. Just last night, I had a late evening conversation. I couldn’t go to sleep afterward because I was so jazzed and excited after that conversation and Brandon, I know, is the same way. Maybe even more so than I am. So we would love to talk with you. We are never too busy for a conversation, no matter who you are, no matter where you are at financially, we want to talk. We want to hear what you think about money, what you want your money to do. What are your values? How are you working that, having your money align with those values, all of those things. So I'll give you the phone number and then Brandon will wrap things up today. Here's the phone number. Put it into your phone right now or grab a piece of paper and write it down. I'll say it twice, just in case. It's 513-447-6501. You can actually reach both Brandon and me at that number. We have different extensions. But here it is again: 513-447-6501. [0:22:19.8]
Brandon: Awesome. That's great and I just appreciate all the listeners that we have had throughout the life of this podcast. We have finished up 2019. So really blessed to have you guys as part of our life and part of our community. So if you haven’t, please subscribe. If you would, write a review. At the end of 2019, write a review for us. That would be awesome too because in the next episode, what we're going to be doing is talking about, I mean I would assume some people went into debt with Christmas. They probably bought things on credit cards and stuff like that. Hopefully not a lot of our listeners did that. But I would say 2020 is a good way to think about how to get out of debt and stay there. So that way, in 2020 we're not going back into debt. [0:23:15.1]
And so, this episode is going to be how to get out of debt and stay there. Again, too many gurus focus on getting the debt paid off as quickly as possible but not the idea of staying there. Often, people end up right back in the same debt they were in before. And we're going to show you a strategy to stay out of debt and build your net worth at the same time. That's going to be fun.
Amanda: Yeah, and so until next time, keep building your wealth simply and sustainably so you can break through to a smart, stable financial future.
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.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
