Garret Wong (00:04.93)

Then...

Garret Wong (00:09.294)

Okay. I think we're good to go. still hear me? can hear you. Okay, good. All right. Okay. So we're recording. I'm just going to wait two seconds and then I'll say welcome to the podcast. Just let me turn off my ringer here.

Garret Wong (00:32.974)

All right, Lou, welcome to my podcast. Great to be with you, Garrett. Thanks for having me. Yeah, audience, it's been a little bit of tech issues here, but I'm very happy to finally be here with Lou. I've been waiting for this interview for some time. Lou has a variety of experience, but I'm going to let you do that, Lou. Why don't you give the audience a little bit of your background? All right, well, I've been a financial advisor for 40 years.

41 years, I should say, which kind of blows my mind. I have my own financial planning firm for 37 years. So I've been self-employed. I'm a certified financial planner almost all that time. A personal finance author. I authored the book, Financial Physician, which is my brand. It's the name of my podcast. I've been doing a radio show by that title for 25 years. And now it's podcast only at thefinancialphysician.com.

And I'm also a tax accountant. So we do quite a bit. Wow. Okay. No, I am 41 years. Yeah. It seems like yesterday when I started the business, but yeah, time goes fast. what is the lot of changes? has there ever, has there ever, what, what was the sort of primer to get you into the field? Desperation for a paying job.

I went to college, I originally wanted to be a dentist and I was pre-med at Rutgers. Then I realized I didn't have the grades to get to a dental school in the United States. So I majored in microbiology. So that's what my degree is with a minor in psychology, which I use every day. I just saw that in the New York Times, I live in New Jersey. They were looking for a management training college graduate and they found out it was a mutual fund company. I didn't even know what a mutual fund was.

But my wife encouraged me to go to the interview. Well, my future wife anyway. And I went there early. And when I got to New York, I went to a bookstore, spent an hour reading a financial book on mutual funds, went to the interview. I was missed a mutual fund and got my series six. And then within three years, I had my own firm. Okay, so.

Garret Wong (02:54.19)

I know it's kind of an interesting story. you're telling me that before an interview, you went to a bookstore and read a book and then went into the interview and killed it. Yeah, I took the bus into the Port Authority in New York, got there an hour early, went into the Barnes and Noble, sat on the floor with the book in the corner and read everything I could on mutual funds. And when I went for the interview, they didn't expect me to know anything on mutual funds. But I was so versed on it that they had a higher view on the spot. I love it.

I love it. You're my new hero that kind of redefines fake it till you make it. That's right. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I'm kind of speechless for a second here. Okay. I actually you have a broadcast voice and then I dug into it. I read your bio obviously. Tell me about the radio show. I mean, the financial physician, I think, is that what it was called back then?

That's what it's called then and that's what it's called now for 25 years. That's been my brand, so to speak. It's the title of my book. But what happened was an advertising executive from the biggest radio station on the Jersey shore came into my office to sell me advertising. And they said, I don't want to advertise. I said, I want to show because on the weekend they had brokered programming and they had talk shows on that station. And I said, I wanted to show. And she was able to negotiate with.

station to get me a show on Sunday mornings. It was extremely successful. My whole business was built around the show. Almost every client I have came from the radio show. And I did it for 24 years. Sunday mornings were an institution here on the Jersey Shore. And I started uploading the recording of the broadcast on a podcast because it was 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Sunday mornings. A lot of people don't want to get up 7 a.m. Sunday mornings to listen to a financial.

So we put it on the podcast and people could listen to it at any time. And then a year and a half ago, I decided that there was enough critical mass on the podcast and that's the future of broadcasting. And I left the radio station and went podcast only. So every Sunday morning at 7 a.m., we upload a two hour podcast, which is an eclectic mix of money markets, politics, current events, and basically whatever I feel like talking about. So when you were in your job,

Garret Wong (05:15.182)

and this advertising exec came by, had you ever wanted to have a radio show? I actually did have a radio show prior to that. A couple of years prior, I was a guest. First thing you have to know about me, I had a most incredible fear of public speaking like most people do. I couldn't do a presentation in front of six people without not sleeping the night before. But I was asked, I don't know the details of how it came about, but somebody asked me to be a guest on their program.

So I drove to Trenton, I was a guest on this financial show. I was panicked until it started and I must have did a decent job because the program director came up to me and said, how would you like to have your own show? So I was like, are you kidding me? I'm glad I just got through this one, right? So I cut my teeth at WTTM in Trenton, New Jersey. Once a week I did a show there. I was horrible. Probably a little bit better now than I was 28 years ago when I did my first.

So I did two years worth of it. It was difficult because I always had a guest or I always had to find a guest and I had to drive to Trenton. It was about an hour away from my office. So I didn't really get a lot of business from it. So I shut it down, but I longed to do a radio show locally on the Jersey shore that A would benefit my business, but you know, my hometown, I grew up listening to the stations. And sure enough, like an angel from God, this woman walked in and completely changed my life.

my career path and the success of the firm. Everything I have now has been built around the success of the radio show. And it's been truly a blessing. And I enjoy doing it. I've enjoyed doing it for 25 years. And now I realize that the future is podcasting and podcast. That's incredible. What a story. So when you had the radio show before and similar to the podcast format that we're doing now, I mean, I've been doing this for a few years, not 28.

And yeah, it's a grind to try to find a guest and then you think and try to get that regular cadence. Like I've been going once every Tuesday for like, again, two years now, but sometimes you kind of run into, you know, that wall where you're like, I don't have a guest next week. And then you don't want to pick a lousy guest or maybe a guest cancels on you. I think now I think we've got a couple months of, guests kind of pre-recorded.

Garret Wong (07:33.614)

The new podcast or sorry, the new radio show, was that more just by yourself? Like just kind of giving updates and things like that? Or did you have guests as well? Well, you know, I learned I hated the guest thing, trying to find guests all the time. That was too much of a, of a grind to do and run my business and everything else. So I decided to do the show alone. I don't have guests on my show very rarely. Once every few months, I may have a guest on my show, but it's two hours of just me. Right. and when I was doing a radio show, call it.

people would call in with personal finance questions and I'd save their problems. I'd solve their problems, appoint them in the right direction. And it was just me and my listeners. And that's the way I like it. And even now, I I still do two hours. It's almost always just me. And I don't have calls now and I don't have guests. So it's just me and the microphone and we get through it. And I enjoy not having interruptions.

you know, I don't have the cause come calling in and, and a lot of times the two hours are up and I still have stuff to talk about. So, you know, like I said, we cover a lot of stuff on my show. We cover politics. A lot of people said to me early in my career, Lou, what are you doing talking about politics when you're supposed to be a financial show? And I said, don't tell me what happens in Washington. Does it affect our investments? So inflation, healthcare costs and all that stuff. So it all ties in together.

Now I'm conservative, my show Leans Conservative and my audience is conservative. But we talk about, you know, I'll talk about anything that I feel like talking about. And that's the great thing about having your own show, your own podcast is that I don't limit myself to what I could talk about. You know, I talk about healthcare at times. I talk about things that are happening in my life personally, in my practice. But we mix it up. The first hour is usually personal finance, what's going on in markets, the economy, the Fed and all that stuff. We'll talk about that this week.

And then the second hour segues into current events and politics and all that kind of stuff. So my listeners like that mix. Some of my listeners will come in and zip right across to the second hour because they're political animals. That's what they like. My wife's one of them. She doesn't want to hear the financial stuff, so she goes right to the political stuff. Other people like the personal finance stuff. And they'll listen to the first hour, but they don't really care for the political stuff. And maybe they'll stop listening there. And most of my listeners like both. So they'll consume both hours of program.

Garret Wong (10:00.75)

And the good thing about the podcast is that nobody has to sit down and listen to two hours all at once. You know, they can listen to the first hour and then a couple of days later listen to the second hour. That's what we choose to do. But most of our listeners download the show and listen on Sunday. They used to listening to me on Sunday mornings. It's kind of been a tradition over a quarter of a century. They have breakfast with me or they listen to me drive it to church or whatnot. And they enjoy listening on Sunday morning. So we get more than half of our downloads on Sunday because they upload the show at 7 a.m.

just like I did my radio show for 25 years. And that's where most.

So when you're when you're trying to think of content every week for two hours, I mean, how scripted are you? Do you kind of have an outline or do you just turn on the mic, hit record and let it flow? Well, during the week, I'm printing out articles and stuff all week long. I got a pile of stuff, you know, then I organize it. And I don't like to be scripted. I don't like to be too planned out. I like to fly by the seat of my pants.

Now, when I was doing radio for two hours, you know, there's no stop. You know, the light goes on. You take a commercial break, but the two hours you go through it and that's that when you do a podcast, I could stop. I and I do a lot. I never stop, obviously, during radio. But now, knowing that I can, if I think I could do a segment a little bit better, I'll stop it and I'll rerecord it. And that gives me.

And I find out that I'm trying to be too perfect and I don't want to be perfect if I stumble on some words that's natural, that's being a human being. you where it used to take me two hours to do a radio show, of course I had to do the prep for it. But now it takes me about eight to 10, because now I have to, as you know, you have to do the audio mixing and I put in audio clips from the news, I cut in there, then I have to mix it, convert it to MP3, upload it to Potamatic, you know, all the stuff that goes into

Garret Wong (11:58.776)

podcasting, which was a kind of a steep learning curve for me, because I had an engineer in a radio station. Yeah. And he would do all that for me and just upload it, you know, to the platform on the podcast. And that was that. But I had to learn very quickly how to use garage band and all that stuff. And I've gotten pretty good at it after almost two years. I never thought I'd have I'm not I'm not very technologically advanced being as the advanced age that I am in my mid 60s.

I get by with tech, but I taught myself and I'm pretty proud of the way I've become pretty proficient in podcast editing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. When you know, when you you mentioned during the early days with the show that the benefit of it and you know, your company wouldn't be there where it was or the company you were working for. How did that radio show affect your employer?

My employer has always been me. I'm the president and CEO of AFM Investments. I established the firm in 1987, the week prior to the stock market crash with a partner of mine that I met at a previous firm that we worked at. I was 27, he was 27, and we scraped together 10 pounds each. We opened up a small office, a branch office of a national brokerage firm, and we built it from there.

once I started doing the radio show, it was magic. Just the clients that came through the door was mind blowing to me. And the thing was, is that, you you want to talk about a selling proposition. These people are coming in pre-sale, you know, they've listened to me for a long time. They know how I think. And they would come in and say, Luke, please take my money and manage it for me. You know, it's pretty good sales situation to be in, not having to sell myself, having the credibility to do it.

And being a certified financial planner and accountant, having those credentials, you know, obviously doesn't hurt either. But I would say over one hundred million dollars in investments came through the front door for the range. Yeah, I think for those of you who are listening to this podcast, I mean, I get approached all the time with how do you even keep up once a week? Why are you doing this? You're so busy. You've got all these other things. And my original answer.

Garret Wong (14:24.012)

when I started this two years ago was, you know, labor of love. was kind of on my bucket list. I've always wanted to have a podcast and I just didn't know how I finally hit record. And now I do it. I don't know because I love it because I can choose my guests and I create relationships and bring value and get value from it. But you know that the credibility that you get from a podcast.

I think that's what people don't really realize. I think they just need to hit record and get out there. But I think there's something, there's some kind of stat out there. You might know this Lou, about how many podcasts start and never go past like five episodes, I think, or something like that. Do you recall anything? Probably, I think something like 75 % or 80 % of podcasts don't even get through the first four or five. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Because if you're starting from scratch,

A, you probably are self-conscious. Even the sound of your voice, you know, it took me a while to get used to the sound of my own voice. I thought it was horrible when I first started broadcasting. So you have to get used to the sound of your own voice and like it. You're starting with virtually no audience except your grandmother and your aunt. You know, so that's a discouraging thing. Am I talking to the wall?

am I wasting my time and it's daunting to start a podcast from scratch, you know, thankfully I had the radio show. So the podcast was just carrying the radio show before convenience for listeners. So I was getting hundreds of downloads of the podcast before I even thought anything about it. And I wasn't doing a podcast. was doing a radio show that was being ported, ported over to the podcast. and then, when I started the podcast, only

I already had six, 700 downloads a week coming into it and we're building it from there. now, one thing about a radio show, people could stumble upon you. They're driving down the highway and they're going through the radio stations, they stumble upon you, they like what they hear, and now you have a new listener and potentially a new client. But on podcasts, people don't stumble upon a podcast. Usually somebody else who listens to it has to tell you about it.

Garret Wong (16:43.98)

or they have to put it on a form. Or you have to be a guest on somebody else's podcast. Like I'm a guest on yours. That brings more people to your podcast. It's cross pollination kind of thing going on. So it's a whole different animal. And I couldn't imagine starting a podcast from scratch without any broadcast experience and without following a ready platform.

It hasn't been easy. mean, what I did, like I often do, is what I call holding the flashlight. Now, I mean, almost literally, because I'm in real estate on my very first rental when I bought it when I was 27. Sidebar, and I do tend to go down rabbit holes. You mentioned microbiology. I don't know how many guests I've had on here because I have a microbiology undergrad degree and then pivoted. Right. Like, what does that have to do with

business, maybe it's a precursor. But anyhow, digressing here. No, I like to hold the flashlight for, know, get a plumber in, offer to hold the flashlight, learn the plumbing, learn the whatever you're going to do, and then eventually in a rental property, try to figure that out. So when I wanted to do a podcast, I went to a podcast company out in Toronto here up in Canada, and asked them

You know, so obviously I signed a year contract. kind of learned about everything. They did some things I liked, some things I didn't like, for example, it was audio only and now I'm on video. so after that was done, I just figured, well, why spend that expense? I'm going to try to experiment now. At least I had a base of turning on the microphone, figuring things out, knowing. And then of course I had to do what you're doing now is mixing video editing. And now of course I have my own video editor, but it's, it's a learning curve.

It's a real learning curve. Yeah, I've stayed mostly audio because I've been on radio. I'm an audio guy. That's where I come from. People don't see you when they're listening to the radio. But I do do some video as well. Usually the opening financial topic, I'll videotape and put it on the Rumble channel to build that platform as well. But I don't record the entire podcast, usually just financial.

Garret Wong (19:04.812)

topics in the beginning because those, you know, people would search for that stuff, know, social social security explained, you know, something like that. I want that as a video because I want that on Bromble. I've been banned from YouTube for life. that platform no longer is available to me because of certain things I said on the radio show that I would put on on YouTube regarding an election four years ago regarding a certain medical procedure that people were doing.

to avoid getting sick. And apparently that was not within the community guidelines of YouTube. I'm hoping to get back sometime anyway. But so we moved to Rumble and we have a bunch of videos there too. But you're right. mean, I don't do the audio video editing. I have a guy that does that. That's above my degree. Pretty labor intensive. Yeah. No, we won't even go down that rabbit hole there. Interesting. I'd like to talk to you about that off offline though.

Let's talk about why you're really here. Financial planning, you gave me a variety of topics. as I said in our precursors, saving for retirement, right? I have two, I guess they're not young anymore, 20 and a 22 year old, two boys. I just get the feeling, the sentiment out there that the concept of saving for retirement is so like...

out there onto their horizon that most young people aren't there kind of, let's live for today, not for tomorrow, but they're taking it so seriously that nobody's saving for anything anymore. What are you seeing? Yeah, exactly that, you know, but not only is it young people, it's older people. You know, the big change I've seen in my career, say the first, you know, I've been doing this 41 years. So let's say the first 25 years when I sat down with somebody's entering retirement, their home was paid off.

almost all the time. They didn't have car payments. They bought cars for cash. Many of them had pensions back in the day and social security and they were very financially secure. They were downsized, free ups of equity for investments and the lives are very comfortable. Now I'm seeing people enter retirement that have a traditional mortgage. They have two car payments, maybe student loans for their kids, credit cards, no pension.

Garret Wong (21:29.102)

not enough saved in their 401ks. And you're going to see a retirement crisis in America. It's here already. You're going to see elderly poverty in this country, I fear, like we've never seen before, because Americans, my generation and younger, I'm 64. So I'm the beginning of that generation that was a consumer generation.

My parents were different. didn't buy anything, you know, unless they had to cash to buy it and so forth. But our generation is constantly advertised to go buy the new car, go buy the new computer, iPad, all that stuff. And we live beyond our means. Example, when I was growing up, I'm the oldest of six kids. I don't come from money, you know. My father was a union printer. My mother was a waitress. Six kids. We lived in a Cape Cod with one bathroom, believe it or not.

And we buy my dad bought a new car in 1966 a Ford station wagon. was six years old when I turned 17 it became my car When I turned 19, it became my my younger brother's car So you can see who you know people kept cars for a long time when I was younger There was jalopy you ever heard that term before. Yeah, you're young. No, no, he was an older car. Yeah where

The mufflers drag in, had to tie it up with a coat hanger. you just ran it into the I own many. Yeah, I own many. All right. So did I. And nowadays you buy a car every three, four years. As soon as the payments are over, you want to run and get the newest, nicest car. So Americans have perpetual parking. That's one big problem. Now, in my book, I mentioned it's very simple why Americans have little or no network. Two things. Cars and homes.

how you buy them and how you find it. There's a whole chapter in my book about how to buy a car. You don't go out and buy a brand new car. You buy a car that's two years old, coming off lease, somebody else ate the depreciation in it, least the first couple of years depreciation. You buy it with 25,000 miles on it, two thirds of what a new car would cost. And once the payments are over, if you have payments, you hold it until it's dying. It becomes unsafe or prohibitively expensive to maintain.

Garret Wong (23:49.23)

That's a smart way to do it, but that's not the way Americans do it. know, nowadays cars nowadays that are prices that houses were when I was first buying cars, right? So you take it at a mortgage, a seven year mortgage, eight year mortgage when you buy in a car, the average car payment is somewhere between $500 and $1,200 a month now, many of them over a thousand. And that's where people's money is going. So when I see a pre-retired couple.

They come to me, they're in their low to mid 50s. The kids are just getting out of college and they say to me, Lou, I wanna start retiring with Plants. You know, we make decent money, but we don't seem to be able to put any away. All right, well, let's see where your money goes. And I find out that they have a $3,500 on mortgage payment because they went out and bought a $800,000 home. They have two car payments of $600, $700 each for the husband and the wife. They have some credit card debt.

Well, you no wonder why you can't save for retirement. All your money is going to debt service, going to pay for cars, going to pay for houses. And people buy too much house, too much, too expensive cars and buy them too frequently and finance them for a long time. they're guaranteed to be underwater. know, cars are only thing that we really buy, that we spend a lot of money on, that we know we're going to lose money on. All right. We know we're going to lose money on it.

As soon as you drive off the lot, you've just lost $10,000, $15,000 in depreciation. So why would we put our money somewhere that destroys our net worth as opposed to build our net worth? Right? And there's another thing too, know, interest. Interest is a four letter word. It's I call debt cancer to the financial body in my book, the financial position, how to cure your money problems and boost your financial health. It's been out since 2010. I mean, it's 15 years old.

The concepts haven't changed. It's a very basic book to read. It's meant for, you know, younger couples just get married, you know, how to get on the right track and not go down the wrong track financially and how look towards the future and stuff like that. How to figure out how much house you should be able to afford to buy, how to buy cars and all that kind of stuff. But I use medical analogies to finance. And I say, like, take credit card debt, cancer to the financial bond. If you have credit card debt,

Garret Wong (26:16.972)

And I tell you, I just saw somebody in here retired with $35,000 in credit cards. Interest is non-productive expenditure. You get nothing back from interest that you pay. You pay interest on a car, yeah, you get to drive the car. But where does that money go? You're paying for that car not once, but maybe twice by the time the seven or eight years are over and you pay all the interest, especially now when interest rates are higher. Same is true of a house, of course, right? So interest.

You want to be earning interest, not paying interest. I'll give a secret to all your listeners. You want to be successful financially, earn interest, don't pay interest. Sign the back of checks, not the front of checks. I like that. I'm going to use that one. like that. That's the difference between financial success and failure. So again, it comes down to Americans living beyond their means, not being patient to acquire things. They want to have it now. They don't care how they finance it, whether it's a credit card, whether it's...

It's taken out a loan. They want what they want, when they want it. The future will not so far away. I'll deal with that when it comes. Unfortunately, I'm eligible for social security. I'm not taking it yet. I'm still working. But I'll give you guys a secret. The future comes, right? And it comes faster than you think it will come. And the earlier you start saving and compounding money and investing money, obviously, the more you're to have at the end.

And the numbers are staggering. mean, I've talked about them on my show many times. If you start in your mid-twenties, just doing an IRA account, you know, even if you don't fully fund it, but doing something, you know, if you wait just five to six, seven, eight years, you have to save so much more money for the rest of your life to get the same amount of money you'll have if you start when you're young. So you're absolutely right. You brought it up. know, young people don't see the future, but you don't have to be that late, but at least start in your thirties. Don't come to me in your fifties telling me you want to start retirement.

point because that's almost an impossible task at that point. And unfortunately, most Americans, you you hear the statistics, what, two thirds of Americans have paycheck to paycheck. Well, and now with the inflation we've had to deal with, that's more money that's going towards basic necessities and less money available to put in our 401k or put in the college savings plan or whatever for the future. And unfortunately, Americans financial security and standard of living.

Garret Wong (28:43.054)

especially in retirement has dropped substantially and unfortunately will continue to drop. And I think it's a major crisis in America. So what? OK, I agree 100 % that we're heading towards a crisis. I would almost say like what what needs to happen? Do we have to have a different movement? Like what is going to change people's? Minds, perceptions, attitudes to living for tomorrow, not for today with balance, of course, because.

I mean, not even in 10 years, but when my kids, you know, get to be 50, 60, 70 years old, I won't be here. But I mean, what is the world going to look like? Unfortunately, I think that you need to have a major financial crisis. People I'm talking about the depression level crisis where everything gets wiped out and people realize that we have to start over. We have to think of money differently.

We have to think of consumption differently. We have to be more patient in things that we want in life. We have to prioritize our expenditure where our money goes. And that's the thing for most individuals. They have no idea where their money goes. And I say, know, do an analysis of where your money goes. Take a three-month period, right? Write down every dollar you spend. And I mean every dollar. I'm talking about you going to Starbucks and get a $5 coffee. I want to know about it.

have a little spiral notebook in your back pocket, write down everything for a whole quarter because that covers car insurance, property taxes, things that come not monthly but quarterly sometimes, then analyze it and see where your money goes and then decide where I can cut. How many subscriptions that we have, whatever it is, Netflix, whatever, that we don't even use. I know I'm guilty of it. I have some subscriptions I pay for every month that I can't remember the last time I used it.

Find out where there's waste in your life and figure out where I can cut and where I can redeploy that money. If you have debt, that's the first place it's got to go. You've got to eliminate debt in your life, especially the highest interest debt, which is usually the credit card, which is always the credit card. And unfortunately, Americans, because they're living beyond their means or their means just hasn't kept up with inflation, are more and more using credit cards to get by.

Garret Wong (31:08.942)

And we're seeing that in the outstanding credit card balances in the country, which has hit record highs. At the same time, the interest rates have been record highs. It is truly a shame and it's debt that a lot of people are not going to get out from under. And many of them are looking at bankruptcy now. get a lot of calls from not necessarily my clients because they have money. My clients come to me to invest money. That's mainly what I do. I'm a money manager. their kids are in trouble.

And a lot of times the kids will call me and say, Lou, look, this is our financial situation. What do you recommend? know, sometimes I recommend bankruptcy. You need a fresh start because you're never going to, you're not going to pay off $40,000 in credit cards. You're not going to do it. Right. Unless you win a lottery because the minimum payments, just the interest alone on that. Think about it. Just say you have 40,000 in credit card debt. The interest is 20%. That's $8,000 a year just on the interest alone.

What is that? $6.50 a month? know, something like that. It's just going into money heaven. It's just disappearing out of your life. It does nothing for you, right? So how are you going to pay down that principle? All right. Now there's different strategies to pay off credit card debt. If it's not egregious, you know, pay off the highest interest first, you know, pay the minimums on everything else.

pay the higher interest rate down until it goes to zero, attack the next one with the highest interest, pay as much as you can, pay the minimums on the rest and just whittle away at it. But to get those funds to do it, you have to give up going out to eat, going out to the bars with your friends, buying a new TV that you don't necessarily need, but you want. That car, those car payments stop, keep driving that same car, don't run out and get a new one. You know, things that you have to change in your lifestyle.

This is not an easy thing to do to get on the right track financially. There's sacrifice involved and it's paid. But what is the alternative to be impoverished in retirement? That's not a good thing to do either. It's not a good place to be anyway. So when we are, let's put into a top five list. Okay. I'm hoping actually to publish this, I'm going to bump this up.

Garret Wong (33:23.554)

Because I know that I'm publishing well into like February, March next year, like audience. It's like a week before Christmas right now. As we're recording this with Lou, I'm going to actually bump this just after New Year's when everybody's thinking about New Year's resolutions. They've looked at their Christmas credit card bill and they're horrified. What would your top five, if you could even put top five, because I know you've got like 25 common money things in your book, but your top five.

recommendations for somebody to start saving for retirement today? First of all, you have to become financially literate. right. Financial literacy is the main reason people feel financial. Thankfully, they're starting to teach it in schools now. My biggest pet peeve is that we waste our kids time in school teaching them all kinds of bull crap that they did are going to get them nowhere in life. Who cares about the war of 1812?

you know, teach them how to balance a checkbook, how credit cards work, what a mortgage is, you know, what is a mutual fund, taxes, you know, basic things that we have to deal with every day in our life. And financial literacy is the number one reason people fail. It's the number one, it's the chapter one of my book, Why Americans Fail Financially, they don't know what they're doing to begin with. you know, how could you start improving your financial scenario if you don't

At least know what you're doing wrong what you're doing right and how to get to the right place So so, know teach yourself, you know my book. I'm not selling my pushing my book It's been out 15 years I give them away for free as a matter of fact if you go to the the financial position comm which is my website as all my Podcasts there. There's a free electronic book you can download And it's very nice PDF. It's beautiful the beautiful copy of the book

And it is something that is easy to read. It's not financial ease. Like I said, it was really written for like young adults just getting married to learn the basics of financial responsibility, the basics of investing, debt management, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it's a very popular book. People read it like it because it is not complicated to read. You could actually read it in one sitting if you really wanted to. That's a good book to read.

Garret Wong (35:45.666)

There's lots out there, of course, we're not the only one. There's lots of podcasts, websites that you can go to. You don't have to be a financial expert. Just know the basics of what to do. Number two, look at your spending. Analyze. Know where your money is going. And then analyze it figure out what am I spending money on that I don't have to spend it on? You've got to be disciplined. You've got to take a look at your life and say, I can't keep going this way.

I don't need all this stuff. don't need to go shopping every weekend and buy new clothes, whatever it is that we spend our money. We all have our habits, you know? And that's another thing. If you have a vices, well, you got to deal with those vices because vices cost a lot of money. Whether I'm talking about gambling, football betting, lottery, you know, many of my clients spend tons of money on lottery? It's ridiculous. Really? I call lottery, I call lottery a tax on the stupid.

Your chances of winning are very, very small. every week I know people. I know people, loved ones of mine that have a problem with it. Drinking, smoking is costly. You know, whatever vices we have out there. I have somebody I know very closely. They don't have a pot to pee in. They're struggling to get by all the time. Husband and wife both

smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. How much is a pack of cigarettes these days? $10? I don't know. I no idea. Yeah. But I was in a local convenience store and I was behind somebody and they asked for a carton of Marlboro or whatever it was. It was $115 for a carton of cigarettes. You know, and they'll probably smoke that in a week. Right. So, you know, so these two people, husband and wife,

They both drink about a six packs of beer a day and they smoke four packs of cigarettes between them. Now, if you do the math, then you times it by 31 days in a month, it was something like well over a thousand dollars a month they were spending on cigarettes and beer. So don't tell me that you have no money to save or you can't get ahead and you don't know why. And we, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's other reasons why they waste money and stuff like that. So find out where your money goes, find out where you can cut and what.

Garret Wong (38:09.638)

And then number three, look at your debt and pay it down as best you can with the money that you have just found by cutting away the the the bad expenditures that you have. Another thing you want to do, I tell everybody do at the beginning of the year is do a net worth statement. Where is your where is your assets? What do you own? Just you don't need a special form to do it, although my book has a template in it. Just, you know, take a piece of paper, draw a line right down the middle.

vertically on the left hand side, right? Your bank accounts, your assets, IRAs, the value of your home, your cars, anything that you own that has value. On the left hand side, write a list of all your debt against that. Your mortgage balance, credit card balances, any interest rates on all these debts. And then your net worth is very simple. You subtract your asset value, your total asset value. You subtract the debt.

total debt that you have and actually net worth and when people come to see me for the first time I ask them trick questions all the time can you tell me basically what your net worth is and they look at me like a dog you know like or I don't know I don't know and they're never close they usually well sometimes they underestimate sometimes they overestimate but they have no idea because they've never done a very simple calculation of that and then you do the budget you know where where where's my income coming from

And where's my income going? And is that positive? If you take the expenditures, subtract it from all your income, after tax income, I should say, is that a positive number? Well, if it's a positive number, then you should be saving that amount of money. All right, or paying down debt with that amount of money. If it's a negative number, well, the only way you could have a negative number in your budget is if you go into debt to finance your deficit spending.

Kind of sounds like the US government, doesn't it? We spend more than we bring in, so we borrow it. But Americans, the way they borrow is through credit cards, which is the worst borrowing you possibly can get. So these are things that people need to do each and every year, sometimes more than once a year, but they don't wanna do it. Most people would rather go to a dentist and get a root canal than analyze their financial situation, do a budget and try to stick to a budget.

Garret Wong (40:32.682)

and try to change their priorities. know, Americans don't want to do it. And it's very difficult. That's why I'm very frustrated as a financial advisor. I don't want to deal with young people. I don't. You know, very rarely do I deal with anybody who's not retired. I am a senior financial planner, and I have been most of my career. I learned early in my career that the older people had all the money and the younger people had all the debt. Right? So

If I'm to get paid based on assets under management, I'm going to go where the money was. And I learned that it was the seniors who were retired, who had the money. And I became an expert senior financial issues. And, you know, I, I deal with retired people. I'm a relatively conservative financial advisor because of that. But, you know, now, you know, after 41 years in this business, a lot of my clients are at the end of their lives. We lose them. We lose them all the time. And I've become an expert end of life.

and generational wealth transfer and things that we have to do at this point. So, but young people are undisciplined. And many times I'll deal with my older clients, kids, when I say kids, maybe they're in their 40s and 50s than our children, but they are not disciplined. They'll start putting money away, they'll start investing it. And then they call us up and said, I need $5,000. I got to pay off this credit card debtor. So they just start going the other way with it. And I have no patience for that.

I gotta be honest with you. I'm very blunt with my clients, potential clients. I tell it like it is. And a lot of times it's tough love and they don't wanna hear it. And I don't wanna engage in that back and forth with younger people with small amounts of money. Look, I'd love to help them. I like to get them on the right track here. Here's my book, read it, I'll help you. But older people are much more disciplined with their investments and with their money. And I prefer to deal with that.

Well, that's completely fair. But we know we were we started off the conversation by talking about the younger generation. I mean, I am concerned for my my my kids. How much I mean, I know that's a loaded question, but for somebody who's starting out even in their 30s, but let's say mid 20s, you can convince somebody to put something away. What is the end goal is has it changed where like when I was growing up, it was like pay off your house, don't have any debt, have this amount of money.

Garret Wong (42:58.414)

buy a certain date and then you start living off interest and these things and government payments and pension and if you have any of that with again all of these things house payments car payments lease car payments how much do you think somebody realistically has to save and can save as a 25 30 year old for the next 30 years

Unfortunately, my feeling is that the country is going to go through a major financial crisis of, you know, we've gone through an inflationary spike in 2022. We're still living with some extent. I think that is nothing compared to what's come. We've been mismanaged our country for so long. Deficit spending. Look, you know, I'm a student of economic history and I did a series of

reports on my program on radio a couple of years back on historic inflations and the end of economic empires and how it happens. Starting with the Roman Empire, we can go all back because you and nature never change. So it's always the same. A country starts to become powerful. They manufacture a lot. They produce a lot. A lot of money starts coming into their country. They have a surplus. They use it for military expansion to expand the resources that are available to that country.

They wind up spending too much on their expansion and their empire the people that live in our country Realize that they can get stuff out of the government and the form of benefits of some kind And the normal son of the country goes into deficit small deficit at first But they start financing it by issuing bonds the rest of the world is more than happy to buy those bonds because the Country's economy is so strong and great and they're so powerful and then it deficits because start becoming

very great, the debt keeps going up, the interest on it that goes up. Foreigners no longer have the confidence in that country to want to invest in that, that the central bank starts printing money to finance the debt as the buyer of last resort. That debases the currency, causing inflation at first, and then ultimately currency collapse and hyperinflation. Unfortunately, it's my belief that we are going to experience that in our lifetime, in my lifetime, and I'm 64. So I'm talking about the next 20 years.

Garret Wong (45:20.11)

I hope I'm wrong. really hope I don't want my kids to have to live through that. So it's very difficult in 2024 to tell somebody who's 25 years old how much money they're going to need. Maybe they're going to need $28 million to retire with come 40 years from now. I don't know, but I can't do the same planning now that I did when I first started in this business. You know, when the country was financially stable, we didn't have huge deficits.

Just think about how much right now we'll put on a trillion dollars in debt every hundred days Every hundred days it took 200 years to have the first trillion dollars of debt in this country and look at us now You know just in the last 20 25 years We're up to 36 trillion in debt with a trillion dollars plus in interest each and every year Which again is a waste of resources because it doesn't bring us anything, right? So, you know that is always a bad thing

whether it's in a family, whether it's an individual has it, whether a country has it. And unfortunately, this country now is past its prime. Now, I love my country. I want the best for my country. want obviously the best for my kids and great kids. But I'm a realist and again, an economic historian. We are on the path now of currency collapse and hyperinflation. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of the reserve status of the US dollar, which is being chipped away every day.

around the world. I'm sure you know about the BRICS countries coming together. They're going to have their own currency eventually. They're already trading in their own local currencies. The dollar is not being used as much to trade oil and other things. We made a deal with the Saudi Arabians, I think it was 1971, we'll protect you and we'll give you all the military equipment you want. Just price, oil and dollars, and nobody can buy your oil except in dollars, and then take those dollar profits.

and recycle them into our treasuries and finance our debt. Well, that's over now. Now Saudi Arabia is selling oil other than US dollars. Many countries are not dealing anything in US dollars. China and Russia are doing their own thing. The BRICS are coming together. So it's only a matter of time now that the US reserve currency status is no longer what it was. And we're going to have a very, very bad, to say a very bad inflationary problem.

Garret Wong (47:43.042)

But you look back, it's always the same recipe that I just laid out before, whether it's Rome, whether it's the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 20s, Yugoslavia in the 40s, which was the worst situation ever, Zimbabwe, Argentina, how many times? It's all the same. It's the same recipe. And how can we think that it's going to be different this time? When we're doing it bigger than any empire in history has ever done, it's going to end the same way. And like I said, I always say this.

on my show. I hope I'm wrong. I pray that I'm the biggest idiot in the world for saying that. All right, because I don't want to be right. All right. Now there's ways of protecting yourself against that. We can talk about precious metals and things like that. know, there is people who have protected themselves. I've protected myself against that eventuality and I sleep well at night and I advise my clients to do the same thing. But, know, how do you advise a young couple in their twenties about how much they need to save and what the dollar is going to be worth?

Is there even going to be dollars or is going be a new currency? I don't know. And it's very difficult to be a financial planner for people. It's more difficult for me now than any time in my career because of the unknowns that we're dealing with now, geopolitically, politically, the country's fiscal status that I just laid out. How do you advise people like that under that scenario where we have so many unknowns going forward? And the one thing that I do know

is that it will end badly. Now, hopefully it can be pushed off 20 years, 10 years. I don't know what it is, but it could be next year where it starts to unravel. So very, very tough to do long-term planning for people. Just the best thing you can do is get out of that and spend money on things that you have to spend money on and start squirming the money away and get yourself an emergency fund. mean, that's the number one thing people need to do before they even talk about investing. You people call me up and say, Lil, you know, I want to start investing.

You know, what should I do? Well, how much money do you have in your emergency fund? Well, I just saved like 10 grand, but I want to invest the 10 grand. No, you don't. You're not going to invest the 10 grand. You're not going to invest it with me because you need that liquid. You you need six months living expenses, you know, liquid that's never I don't care what rate of return it gets. Right. Until you do that, don't even talk to me about investing. Because what's going to happen is if you don't have that and you need all of a sudden, you need four new tires for a thousand dollars.

Garret Wong (50:10.766)

you're going to rip out the credit card at 22 % interest and that's the way you're going to finance it. And that's why you'll never get ahead. If you have a rainy day fund, emergency fund, whatever you want to call it, then you have money to handle those unexpected expenditures because as we all know, life happens. Wow. You know, I interviewed a lot of financial planners, none with your breadth of experience and the radio experience and all of that. This has gone

completely different direction. And I do appreciate that. and I, you know what, I I'd like to actually have you back on at some point because we're, we're, I'd like to do a deeper dive on this collapse that we're talking about, what people can kind of do to protect themselves if, if it happens. And I pray that it doesn't as well, but I agree with you that there there's definitely some collapse happening.

I'd like to give you the last word, however, because I always ask the audience or sorry, my guests a little frazzled here, Lou, like to ask you because I always ask my guests the same question on every every episode. This is the investing to win podcast. How do you to find success and what does winning look like for you? What do you look like for me? The ability to have the resources to do the things in life that make me happy.

that make my wife happy, that make my kids happy. The freedom, that's all that financial success really is, is freedom. Freedom to do what you want. If that means going to Europe and spending two weeks there, you have to have the resources to do that, all right? That's freedom that gives you the opportunity to do that. Freedom to be able to help others who are in need. Recently, it's Christmas. I made a sizable donation to a local food bank.

Right? And I did it anonymously. That to me is freedom, to be able to have the resources to be able to do that. And I'm not patting myself on the back for that. I'm just happy that I have the ability to maybe help some families that are struggling right now because their finances aren't there. So that's what success in investing is. It's freedom to do the things in life that you want to do. It's also freedom from stress. Financial stress, I've lived it.

Garret Wong (52:33.422)

You know, we've all lived it. Nothing's worse than juggling bills and getting phone calls from bill collectors. And it affects your relationships with your spouse. You know, you know, I lived it. You know, when I was growing up, we were poor. mean, say we weren't dirt poor. But my dad was out of work for three years in the mid 70s during the recession there. And I'll never forget it. I mean, we were on welfare and food stamps. And I remember going food shopping with my dad and him using a credit card.

I remember getting free lunches at school because our income was so low and I was so embarrassed to use those little tickets they would give you. I would not eat because I was too embarrassed. And I'll tell you, the reason I bring that story up is because that's what motivated me never to be in that situation. My kids were never gonna get a free lunch and that motivated me to be successful in life and do the things that I needed to do to work my butt off, to watch how I spent my money.

and to make sure that my kids, number one, and then me later on in my future, do not have any financial stress. And I don't. Getting debt free, which I got, became debt free about 12 years ago, no mortgage, no car payments, no credit card, no student loans, nothing. It's a great feeling because now all that extra money is freed up for you to invest, for you to be charitable with.

for you to help your kids out or for you to do the things that you want in life. And that's what investing to win is all about, in my opinion. And it's not investing to win, it's just running our financial lives in a winning way. Well said. Well, we're definitely going to have to do part two. I will throw into the show notes links to your show, your book. Thank you, Lou. It's been a great time hanging out with you here. you saw I've been taking

taking notes down here and I, and some of those, those zingers and those quotes. So thanks for spending time with me today. Yeah. And if, you know, people want to do more engaged in that, you know, spend time with me each and every week on my podcast. I mean, we talk about all these things. if nothing else, you'll get an education or some eye opening things. Cause we talk about things on my program, that you're not going to hear anywhere else. All right. Well said. All right. Take care and thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.