A hearty welcome to “Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom” with your neighborly hosts, Brandon and Amanda Neely. This is the only podcast that helps you take charge of your cash flow and leverage your assets, simply and sustainably, the way Grandma used to.
Brandon: Hey, I’m Brandon, and welcome to our 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, Hey, I'm Amanda Neely, and this is Episode 96, titled “There are only four or five places your money can go.” I mean, seriously, there are over 450 different financial products out there, and even if we don't know the exact number, there are many ways to use them and mixes of those products. There are many of those as there are people in the world. It's totally overwhelming and it keeps too many people stuck. [00:57.2]
Brandon: Yeah, science backs up this statement. Many studies have documented that when faced with a large number of choices, people tend to delay or completely opt out of decision-making or sometimes they report lower choice satisfaction because of too many choices, and they oftentimes make poor decisions as well.
Amanda: Yeah, fun fact: the word “overchoice” was first used in 1970. It's been a long time that social scientists have been studying this idea of having too many choices, too many options.
One thing that we've found that helps solve the problem of having too many financial options is the idea of using filters. We're going to share one of those filters with you today. This filter helps to quickly categorize different financial options you might be considering so that you can take one category at a time rather than trying to look at a whole bunch of different things, and, hopefully, by taking one category at a time that can reduce overwhelm. [02:06.8]
Sorry, this filter won't work the next time you're trying to decide where to go for dinner or standing in the cereal aisle at the grocery store.
Brandon: How often are you standing in the cereal aisle at the grocery store anyway? I guess there are only two choices I like for cereal, but you have many other choices, Amanda, right?
Before we get to the filter, let's talk a little more about what the problem of too many choices often looks like in our financial lives. For many Americans, their financial lives feel like a pile of rocks that are thrown around with no rhyme or reason to them. Maybe some of these scenarios sound familiar.
There's this old 401(k) over here that I’ve got from my old job that I have, and there's this old IRA over there that I don't even remember when I started it, but I did it for a little bit and then I stopped funding it. There's that one. [03:06.3]
Somewhere I have a budgeting spreadsheet that I started in 2017 that I haven't looked at in years actually and I'm pretty sure that has some valuable stuff there. I might have some life insurance through work, but I can't remember how much.
I started at 529 because I thought that's what you're supposed to do for your kids and I have a little bit there for my son. I've got a handful of credit cards and I round up to the nearest 50 increments to try and pay them off faster, because I’ve heard, if I add a little extra to all of them, it's going to pay off my debt. That's what I’ve heard, and so I'm trying, and I just don't see anything.
I also have a couple of brokerage accounts and they seem to be doing really well right now, I think. I mean, the fees are low. That's about all I really know and I care about to know about them—and there are other things that I have and I just can't remember them, so on and so forth of things that I have financially. [04:06.4]
Amanda: Hopefully, not all of these applied to you, but you get that kind of feeling that as, in general, people trudge through life picking up this financial rock here and that financial rock there, sometimes we put one down because we forgot why we started or it's not doing what we thought it would do. We end up with this bucket full of rocks that we've picked up along the way and it's way too heavy a burden to bear.
We try to arrange them sometimes, but we end up just throwing them back in the bucket and putting the bucket on our back and moving along because we've got things to do, and we try to pretend that that bucket isn't there until we can't pretend anymore.
Brandon: There are just too many options for what we could do with the rocks that we have, too. Thank goodness, though, there is an alternative way to do things. It's similar to something humans have been doing with rocks throughout history, all around the world for a variety of purposes. [05:06.0]
Grandma always said, “Eat your vegetables. Look both ways before crossing the road, and never risk your financial future on elements of the market you can’t control.” That Grandma, always good for some tried-and-true advice, and although some of her wisdom seems to have skipped a generation, you don't have to be left behind.
Download “Grandma's Top Tips for an Independent Financial Future” absolutely free, when you visit Grandma’sWealthWisdom.com. Don't wait. Get Grandma's best tips today.
Amanda: You might be familiar with these. They're called cairns. Cairns are rocks placed intentionally. Sometimes they're carefully arranged in a pile. Other times they're stacked on top of one another. Some are big, some are small. Some are complex, some are simple. Some are bare rocks and others are ornate with paintings and other decorations. There are even some cairns where a single stone is placed in an upright manner. [06:06.8]
Think about that for a second. What if your financial life boiled down into a single stone placed in an upright manner?
Brandon: Yeah, I think of Stonehenge. I think of the pyramids as you've shown in that picture. There are just so many crazy rocks that we’d like to go see. I want to go on a trip now to go see those rocks.
Amanda: All over the world.
Brandon: Yeah, they're all over the place. Another way to look at this is finding the gold rocks and throwing out the useless rocks. Don't you think you could build something great if you found some solid rocks, some precious metals or gems that you wanted to start from?
Now, you might have heard the story of the two men. There was this wise man who built his house on rock and then there's that foolish man who built his house in the sand. Now, if you haven't heard that story, just look it up on Wikipedia. [07:02.3]
But, anyway, I know that if you're listening to this, you're probably not the foolish man or woman who builds his house in the sand. I mean, again, if you were the one building your house in the sand, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast.
You likely want to build your financial house on solid rocks and the best rocks that you could find and you want to stack them up in the best way that you know how. That's my hope that you want and my hope for you.
Amanda: Now, this is where the filter comes in. It's a simple filter to divide up those rocks and help you decide if you want to keep them or not, and because I love acronyms, they spell the word, “still”, S-T-I-L-L.
We call it the STILL Framework and you boil it all down. We believe this is the truth. There are 450 or more financial products out there, but really only four or five places your money can go, and only one can act as the foundation or cornerstone. [08:09.4]
As we go through these five places that spell out the word, “still”, you look for which one you think is the foundation or the cornerstone that you'd like to use. Also remember that we said four or five, two of these are actually optional. We'll let you decide for yourself, which are optional for you.
Brandon: The first one in the STILL Framework is savings. This is liquid safe money like savings accounts. Maybe they're CDs. Maybe it's whole life insurance. It's cash in a safe, under a mattress, or an annuity. It’s savings there.
Amanda: And then the “T” in STILL is for taxes. This is definitely one of the non-optional ones. Even if we avoid income taxes, there are still property taxes and sales taxes. We can be clever here, but taxes are certainly a part of our lives. [09:00.0]
Brandon: The next letter is investing, “I”. This is the money you can put at risk and it's definitely different from savings. Some examples here include stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, cryptocurrency, real estate, and even your business investments or your own business may be an investment.
Amanda: Okay, so we’ll keep on track. We've got savings, taxes, investing, and then when the first “L” is for liabilities. This is definitely debts, right? Most people think of debts as liabilities, your car loan, credit cards, student loans, medical bills, that kind of thing, which is totally true, but there are more liabilities than just debt.
A liability is really anything that costs you money each month rather than making you money. Even if your mortgage is paid in full on your home, the ongoing insurance and maintenance costs are a liability. [10:00.0]
Brandon: And the last “L” is your lifestyle. This is everything else. It's your basic needs to live and all the wants to make that life enjoyable.
Amanda: Let's say it one more time. “STILL” in the STILL Framework stands for savings, taxes, investing, liabilities, and lifestyle. We could do an episode about each one of these and maybe that'll come your way in 2022. For now, we invite you to simply look through the financial products, the places you have your money within your life and use this filter to see if you get any insights. We've got a list of questions that you might ask.
Brandon: How much is going into each of these buckets?
Amanda: Are any buckets too full?
Brandon: Any of these buckets to empty?
Amanda: Any you want to get rid of or significantly reduce?
Brandon: Any of them that you wish were much bigger?
Amanda: Which bucket do you want to spend some time sifting through to make sure you've got the right rocks in it?
Brandon: And which rocks do you need to inspect to see if they are of the quality you thought they were when you started picking up that rock? [11:08.0]
Amanda: Now, we've got two ways to learn more. First, be sure to visit STILLMethod.com to find out more about a method you could go about using to evaluate your STILL Framework and to look through each of these buckets to get more questions like the ones we just asked. That's at STILLMethod.com.
Brandon: And it's really, really [great]. I'm really impressed by your work there.
Amanda: Thank you. Then, Brandon and I, we would love to be your financial geologists of sorts, help you study your rocks, put them under a microscope, come alongside you as you study them, and you can visit Grandma'sWealthWisdom.com. You can schedule a meeting with us to ask your questions, brainstorm together, and see what kind of financial cairns we can build that will last as long as Stonehenge. Wouldn’t that be fun? [11:57.3]
Brandon: Yeah, it would and I'm ready for a vacation at Stonehenge. Now, one more thing before you go and go off to Stonehenge or start building your financial foundation, of course, with us. We want you guys to hit that subscribe button, rate and review. Love to hear what you think here, and we want to make sure you don't miss any of our next episodes that are coming out in 2022.
On top of that, our next episode comes out on New Year’s Eve. I can't believe it, 2022. No matter what 2022 brings, we’ll share some reflective, hopeful encouragement that you don't want to miss next time.
Amanda: Until next time, keep building your wealth simply and sustainably, so you can break through to a smart, stable-as-a-rock financial future. [12:46.1]
The topics presented in this podcast are for general information only and not for the purposes of providing legal, accounting or investment advice. On such matters, please consult a professional who knows your specific situation.
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