Generation Wars: How Millennials, Gen Xers, and Boomers Are Planning for Financial Independence Differently (Rerelease)

[00:00:00] Narrator: Today, we look ahead to one of the most major milestones of our lives: when we graduate into retirement. Now here’s our valedictorian and certified financial planner practitioner, Eric Brotman. Your host of Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating.

Get ready for inspiration and actionable advice to guide you towards a seamless transition into a dignified retirement, where you get to make your dreams a reality.

[00:00:33] Eric Brotman: Welcome to Don’t Retire… Graduate!. I’m Eric Brotman, your host, and this is episode nine of our first season, and we’re almost midway through the year finishing our first semester of graduating into retirement. And my guest today is business partner and friend Yanni Niebuhr from BFG financial advisors here in the Baltimore area. Yanni, welcome to the show.

[00:00:55] Yanni Niebuhr: Eric, thanks for having me.

[00:00:56] Eric Brotman: This is gonna be a, a whole lot of fun, because number one, Yanni you, you have not been prepped for this whatsoever, so we’re just gonna have a conversation. But the premise of today’s show is to talk a little bit about how retirement planning is not a, a sprint. It’s a marathon. Something we don’t wanna start right as we’re getting to that moment where we’re thinking oh I wanna hang up the cleats and call it a career” somewhere around 60 years old.

This is something that should start much earlier. And you’re a card carrying millennial.

[00:01:26] Yanni Niebuhr: I am.

[00:01:26] Eric Brotman: And what that means is that you speak millennial. So hopefully our audience is gonna be multi-generational and, and, and now our, our, our conversation can be so first let’s, let’s talk about you a little bit and talk about how you got into this business and, and what you love to do.

[00:01:40] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure. Well, I am 30 years old. I am married, have a little guy, one and a half year old. Started in this business about seven years ago, right outta college, which was pretty unique in the fact that most people, my age have trouble getting into this industry. In fact, there are more people over the age of 70 than under 30 in this industry.

And so I started more of a mentorship and spent five years learning the business and going through investment operations internship, associate advisor. Now a full-fledged lead advisor.

[00:02:07] Eric Brotman: Fantastic. And and where’d you go to school?

[00:02:10] Yanni Niebuhr: Went to Towson university, one of the best.

[00:02:12] Eric Brotman: So you’re, so you’re you’re local to this area.

[00:02:14] Yanni Niebuhr: I am.

[00:02:15] Eric Brotman: Has that helped you frankly, in this business?

[00:02:17] Yanni Niebuhr: I, I think so. People resonate with the fact that I’m a local person from the Baltimore area and went to school here, public education, then Towson university.

[00:02:24] Eric Brotman: Very good. So as a millennial and, and just for everyone listening, I I’m a gen Xer and we are the forgotten generation because the millennials and the boomers are both giant populations.

We are the baby bust. Certainly. And so we have no pull politically or financially or otherwise, but when it comes to, to retirement planning, the, the beautiful thing is that we are smack dab in the middle of that sandwich generation, where we’ve got parents getting older we have to, to worry about, and we’ve got kids to educate and hopefully you’ve started a college fund for your little guy.

[00:02:55] Yanni Niebuhr: Oh, we have.

[00:02:56] Eric Brotman: So let’s talk about the, the multi-generational and specifically the, what millennials can do to start thinking about retirement which almost sounds ridiculous when you’re also talking about your first job, your first apartment, your first home, et cetera. But what do you tell folks your age and, and even maybe a little younger than you at this point about getting started?

[00:03:16] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure. Well, millennials in a tough spot because first off they have a lot of debt student wise. It there’s. The average I think is right around $30,000. And when you include all the other lifestyle debt, it’s right around 40. So they’re starting off with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder of how they get started into retirement.

But from there, it’s looking at it from the standpoint of when you get your first job, making sure you’re at least putting in what you can match with your company. That’s free money that’s left on the sidelines a lot of times where millennials are not putting in as much as what they could with their company.

[00:03:49] Eric Brotman: Understood. So if a company’s willing to make a match that is free money. It makes perfect sense. But how do you choose what to put money towards? Do you put it toward your student loan? Do you put it towards savings? Do you put it toward retirement? How do you, how do you make those decisions when you’re first getting started?

[00:04:05] Yanni Niebuhr: Well, that’s what an advisor’s for in helping you figure out exactly where you need to put it because everybody’s different. Everyone’s unique. Some people it’s maybe a traditional 401k, some people it’s a Roth 401k. Some people it’s saying, well, you know what? My student loan debt for whatever reason is only at 3%. Other people it’s at nine. And everybody’s different, but figuring out there’s different places, it’s tough. Some people have a lot of credit card debt that’s at 12 or 15%, or maybe even 20.

[00:04:27] Eric Brotman: Yanni, we’ve done shows earlier in the season about legacy planning and about communication between generations and, how do you as a millennial and the, the folks you represent as young people feel about discussions around money with their parents or even grandparents?

[00:04:44] Yanni Niebuhr: It’s, everybody’s different. Some people they’re an open book. People grow up with the ideals of their parents. So my views on money is different than my wife’s. And so some people have a closed, narrow minded situation behind it. Other people are open about it, but having those conversations with your parents and saying, you know, now that I have a little guy, I was talking with my parents, well, “Hey, do you guys start a 5 29 for them or should we?” Or those type of things. And both my parents said, “you know what, no, we’re starting something for him. So here’s how we’re planning that.” And I was lucky enough to do that, but my wife’s side is not as fortunate. So we know we had to plan a little differently.

[00:05:18] Eric Brotman: Got it. And you know, I, I look at the situation with my own folks.

[00:05:23] Yanni Niebuhr: Mm-hmm

[00:05:24] Eric Brotman: You know, my, my father is turning 80 in two months, which is remarkable to me cuz I’m too young to have a dad 80 at least I think I am but you know, I remember when 80 to me sounded like you might as well have been 200, right? And now it’s just dad, you know? But we get to these into these conversations about about what’s important.

And so little of it has to do with money. A lot of it has to do with freedom and independence and, and visions and values. So can you talk a little bit about the, the, I guess the millennial mindset first of all about what independence means, because I get the sense that your generation’s the first one that feels differently about work than every other generation before you.

[00:06:03] Yanni Niebuhr: Right. And it it’s been said a lot in the news lately, actually it’s the, the side hustle. The millennial generation wants to be independent as soon as possible. And, and with that, it’s finding other ways to make money outside of the typical nine to five job. A lot of us are still starting to figure out exactly what that is, but we want different things than the other generations.

It, it’s not so much the material objects. Now it’s more about the experiences and being able to do online marketing and those type of things. Vlogs are now a, a thing where 20 years ago, who would’ve thought of a vlog?

[00:06:32] Eric Brotman: I, I still don’t know what a blog is. I mean, I think I do, but

[00:06:35] Yanni Niebuhr: you’re a different generation, so

[00:06:36] Eric Brotman: I am a different generation. So I’m, I’m feeling old and I appreciate your help with that. I didn’t need your help with that. Alright, so let’s talk about entrepreneurship a little bit because when you talk about freedom and you talk about independence and specifically financial independence one of those components is the freedom to do what you’re passionate about and to do what you want to do. Now you’re, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a young entrepreneur who didn’t have to necessarily bootstrap and start a company from scratch, but you certainly have, have bought in both literally and figuratively into the concept of, of business ownership. So let’s talk about ownership.

[00:07:10] Yanni Niebuhr: sure. With that, a lot of people now, especially in the millennial generation are looking to become their own independent owner of whatever they’re doing. For me, it was an expensive proposition and a little bit of a scary one, but exciting at the standpoint, same standpoint, but for a lot of people, it it’s starting their own company, particularly online which you’re seeing a lot more now is the Instagram generation of trying to create their own brand.

But it’s a social awareness.

[00:07:34] Eric Brotman: Social awareness. So does that mean when you say social awareness I’m, I’m picturing various various causes or various or, or, or various callings? Is that what you mean? Or is this

[00:07:45] Yanni Niebuhr: yes, that’s exactly what I mean. So our generation By their very definition is, is far more socially conscious than a lot of those that came before us. I’m excluding you from that.

[00:07:53] Eric Brotman: I appreciate that. Let’s, let’s pick on the generations before us now because our, our listeners are, are of of all different ages. And you know, we started with the greatest generation, right? Mm-hmm the greatest generation had a a very different experience planning to be financially independent at retirement.

First of all most of them had pensions. And today you and I will never have a pension. Presumably. They had pensions they had social security, which was material and it was material because they were claiming at, at, or about 65 and most of them, a lot of, of that generation didn’t live a whole lot past 72.

So it was this, this period where you really only had to save about 10% of your of what you would need to retire comfortably. today, we’ve replaced that three-legged stool with what I’ve heard affectionately called the yoyo, which is you’re on your own. And that’s because you don’t have a pension. I don’t have a pension. The odds of social security being here with, without politicizing anything the odds of social security being here in the way we currently know it, I think are slim.

It has to change.

They’re slim for me. They’re they’re slimmer for you. So ha, I win on that one. So, so that was the greatest generation. Now it’s not enough to save 10% of your wherewithall. What, what kind of targets do you try and set for income replacement? Is there a rule of thumb? What are you trying to do with folks?

[00:09:17] Yanni Niebuhr: Again, everyone is different, but the problem is, is, as you’ve said, it’s pensions are gone. Companies are contributing less to a person’s retirement account, and at the same time, they’re starting out their careers with a mountain of debt.

Housing is more expensive than ever. It’s become a two income society. So trying to save between 10 and 20% to start is, is just a rule of thumb. But from there, it’s looking to replace your lifestyle as best you can. And the rule of thumb of, well, you can live on 80% of your, you know, lifestyle pre-retirement is not entirely true when you include healthcare costs.

[00:09:48] Eric Brotman: So you said something interesting, which is we’re a two income a two income household situation. I, I would argue we’re more than that because it, it was interesting. I, I think the, the boomers were in many cases, a one income household. You know, it was very leave it to be there. And father does father knows best and, and very we can’t even fathom what that world was like necessarily, but it was a one income in a lot of cases.

And then you get to the Xers and it became a two working household situation. Well, today you brought up the side hustle. I’d argue in some cases it’s two plus. It’s two and a half. It’s three.

[00:10:21] Yanni Niebuhr: That’s a good point.

[00:10:21] Eric Brotman: And so you have two working adults, but you might have more than two quote unquote jobs just to, just to make ends meet now. How tenable is that? How what’s the, what’s the breaking point there?

[00:10:32] Yanni Niebuhr: It is a very scary proposition and the things that people thought were gonna save the money are winding up costing them more. I mean, people were talking so long about cord cutting and the fact that that was gonna save everybody a ton of money, but they just did a study where the average American spends over $200 a month on the various things, including wifi, cell phones, and your subscription services. The world is getting more expensive, not less.

[00:10:52] Eric Brotman: It’s also getting more complicated. You have to show me how to use some of those things. so, so there’s that. Okay. So we talked about the greatest generation. We talked about the pension piece. Baby boomers are, baby boomers were the first generation that was really huge. That was gonna change the world. You know, you, you had all the, the Dennis Hopper commercials 10 years ago, of guys with gray hair on motorcycles, recreating themselves and so forth. But boomers have done something which no generation before has experienced, which is they’re not retiring in the traditional sense. In fact, in lots of cases, they’re not retiring at all. In your experience, have you seen that more around inability to, or disinterest in?

[00:11:34] Yanni Niebuhr: It’s a little bit of both. And for the most part it’s what are they gonna do in retirement? It it’s, you know, finding what their passion is. A lot of them they’re working, but it’s more for themselves at this point, whether it’s volunteerism, consulting helping out with a charity, going on a board, but something that keeps them busy because you can only watch days of our lives so many times when you’re retired.

[00:11:53] Eric Brotman: Zero times.

[00:11:53] Yanni Niebuhr: Yeah.

[00:11:54] Eric Brotman: Would be, would be ideal. So, so the boomers aren’t, aren’t retiring, they’re not leaving the workforce, which means in the grand scheme of things, fewer jobs ideal jobs at least are available to generations up and coming because they’re in a lot of cases, we’ve had some various types of careers replaced by technology we’ve had and systems and so forth. And I mean, I think corporate productivity’s never been higher. And right now we have low unemployment, but I think we have a lot of underemployment. I think we have a lot of people working for less than certainly their education may have dictated or they would’ve considered. Do you see, do you see some of that? Do you see under employment?

[00:12:33] Yanni Niebuhr: Absolutely. Yeah, that there’s absolutely unemployment. The fact that a bachelor degree doesn’t mean what it did 20, 30 years ago. And the problem with that is it’s only gonna compound itself as we continue going when people can now master’s degrees are what bachelor’s degrees meant. And eventually it’s gonna have to be doctorates.

And on top of that, as we continue to advance with technology and people continue to work longer and longer, as you said, you know, when social security started it, wasn’t intended for 67. And as that continues to compound, well, there’s gonna be fewer and fewer jobs for the millennial generation.

[00:12:59] Eric Brotman: Enter the side hustle, the entrepreneur.

[00:13:02] Yanni Niebuhr: Exactly.

[00:13:02] Eric Brotman: The small business owner and, and I think the tax bill that passed in, in January 1st, 2018, which there’s plenty of fleas on that dog. But one of the things that it did do that was, I think, positive was and send people to start their own small businesses. And so I think we’re seeing a lot more self-employment than we ever have, which as far as I’m concerned is a good thing.

It’s not bad to be a free agent when, when you can go out and, and find something you love to do and make a living doing it so long as it’s legal and sustainable and all of those things. So that, that to me feels like a conversation in and of itself. This whole idea of the bachelor’s degree, which you just said is less valuable than ever. It’s also more expensive than ever, right? At what point does it not make sense to spend $200,000 or more to get a degree that is not, not only not a guarantee of a job, it’s sure as heck not a guarantee of a good job.

[00:13:58] Yanni Niebuhr: I think that point is here, honestly. Well, when you have every day, you can turn on the news and see one news company or another talking about the fact that that bubble is about to burst where everyone is coming out with large amounts of student loan debt.

It’s affecting their first job. It’s affecting when they start a family. It’s affecting if and when they buy a house. And if it’s creating those things, but it’s not generating income and having an ROI on it, well, then why do it?

[00:14:23] Eric Brotman: So when, when you say ROI, you’re talking about return on investment of tuition payments. And so what you’re saying is it may not make sense to, to write those huge checks for an undergraduate education anymore.

[00:14:36] Yanni Niebuhr: Right. I think you will see less and less of the private institutions, more of the public that are less expensive because how can you justify $70,000 a year on something and come out making 40? You’ll never pay that.

[00:14:47] Eric Brotman: I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, I I’ve seen in, in my personal career, I’ve seen folks married couples who went through undergrad and graduate school and had as much as half a million dollars in student loans. I mean, you’re talking med school and law school and everything else, but that’s like having a heck of a nice house with no place to live.

[00:15:07] Yanni Niebuhr: Right. On a personal side. I, I have someone that I know very near and dear that has $200,000 of student loan that is making 40 grand a year and is on the minimum payments. The interest is growing at larger than what they’re making the payments on. It will never go away.

[00:15:20] Eric Brotman: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. And, and now student loans are one of the issues that right now one of the types of things that you can’t get out of via bankruptcy. And I’m not advocating for changing that necessarily cuz I actually think if the, if the legislature ever decided to allow bankruptcies on student loans, we would have mass bankruptcy, an entire generation would say I’m out and for seven years would destroy their credit. And the ripple effect there, I think would be more devastating than the, the real estate bubble 10 years. So I don’t think that’s the answer, but I did hear that there is there, there are some programs being worked on by some big companies to try to create an incentive for student loan repayment.

Where student loans potentially could be repaid by payroll deduction and matched by companies and even done in a pre-tax way potentially. And that there’s legislation discussing ways to try and help these young people get out of that hole. Because quite frankly, if you’re 23 and you’ve got a big student loan, a 401k match doesn’t do nearly for you what a student loan payment match.

[00:16:27] Yanni Niebuhr: That’s extremely powerful. And again, with our generation it’s less about the income and more about the benefits, the flexibility that you have behind it. So having a company that’s saying we support you and the things that you’ve done through your education, we’re going to continue supporting you. Our generation loves that.

[00:16:42] Eric Brotman: Okay. So for all you employers out there student loan matching is more valuable to millennials than retirement matching. Fair?

[00:16:51] Yanni Niebuhr: Fair.

[00:16:52] Eric Brotman: Okay. You heard it from Yanni Niebuhr who is speaking for the entire millennial generation. I actually agree with you. I think, I think that does make sense.

[00:17:00] Yanni Niebuhr: Look as a millennial who has quite a bit of student loan debt. I completely agree with that. So hint, hint for us.

[00:17:05] Eric Brotman: Hint, hint. Oh, good. We’ll we’ll we’ll start to look at that very, very seriously someday soon. As soon as it’s tax deductible Yanni, we’ll we’ll, we’ll get right on that. Okay. So we’ve, we’ve spent some time talking about on this show, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about asking people at various stages of their lives, what they want to be when they grow up. So I’m gonna put you on the spot.

[00:17:24] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure.

[00:17:24] Eric Brotman: And I’m gonna ask you as a, as a, an. What do you wanna be when you grow up? What’s the plan? What’s your, what’s your not end game, cuz you know, we’ve talked about this, never having an end game, but what are the iterations you’re hoping to, to move towards?

[00:17:40] Yanni Niebuhr: Well, as I mentioned, the, the first thing, one of the most important things to me is being a fantastic father. I think that is the number one priority to me from a personal level. But from a professional level, it’s continuing to just be an amazing financial advisor, growing with this firm, and having that point where it comes a time where I have either a grandparent or a parent say to me, “you know what, my kid got through school and we were able to pay for it. And they were able to come out without any debt and start a leg up compared to 90 plus percent of their peers. And it was because of you and your guidance.”

[00:18:12] Eric Brotman: Do you run into or see situations with clients? I’m I’m gonna shift gears a little bit now. Where some of the kids aren’t upwardly mobile? You know, there’s, there’s a bell curve of humanity, right? There’s there’s the, the folks on the, on the far right of said bell curve who are gonna, who are gonna change the world and they’re gonna be the next they’re gonna create the next Amazon. Then there’s folks at the far left end of the bell curve who who might never launch whatsoever.

[00:18:39] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure.

[00:18:40] Eric Brotman: How much of that is social? How much of it’s financial? What, what what advice do you have for parents, maybe, whose and I, I mean, financially for, for parents of kids who just aren’t launched, they’re not gone.

[00:18:53] Yanni Niebuhr: No. Then that’s something that scares the heck outta me with a little guy. It’s what kind of human being will he turn out to be?

But there’s a lot of different planning that you can do with that, whether it’s helping them and trying to advance them with their knowledge. And sometimes they just don’t want to take that, but on their own protection of setting up trust planning So that they won’t have the I’ll use that the Billy Madison syndrome where you don’t all of a sudden pass away and leave them with millions of dollars and the first thing to do is go and buy a Ferrari with it or become irresponsible. So my own individual planning, we have trusts set up for the little guy that, you know, what, in the event, something happens to us, at 18, he doesn’t get surprised. Now, go do whatever you want to do. Of course, hopefully if something happens to us, you’ll guide him.

[00:19:29] Eric Brotman: I will, I will.

[00:19:30] Yanni Niebuhr: Appreciate that.

[00:19:30] Eric Brotman: And vice versa, cuz my, my daughter also, we, we, we have set up trusts for her because I don’t want to destroy her upward mobility and her confidence and her ability to create for herself. Right. I mean, I really think you can disenfranchise someone by, by dropping money in their lap.

You know, I, I think there’s, there’s an entirely enormous wave and this is talked about in the media a lot, of a trillion dollars, which is gonna be gen you know, generationally passed over the next decade. It’s a huge amount of money.

[00:20:01] Yanni Niebuhr: Giant.

[00:20:01] Eric Brotman: I do think it’ll be less than a trillion, cuz I think we’re gonna blow two or two 20 to 30% of that on healthcare probably in the last six months of life. But nonetheless, it’s gonna be a huge amount of money that goes to the next generation and people have lived so long that when they leave money to the next generation, the folks inheriting the money could be 70.

[00:20:20] Yanni Niebuhr: Right.

[00:20:21] Eric Brotman: So let’s talk generation skipping, cuz I don’t know about you but my parents would tell you if they were sitting here that their kids are rotten and their grandchild’s perfect.

[00:20:29] Yanni Niebuhr: Knowing their children, yeah. I would agree with that.

[00:20:31] Eric Brotman: So I don’t know if you’ve heard any of that yourself. But I suspect your parents and your in-laws would rather do something for your son than for the two of you.

[00:20:39] Yanni Niebuhr: It is an interesting dynamic. I remember when we brought my son home and it was the day I realized that my parents stopped paying attention to me. And same with my grandparents, there was now a more important, important person in my life, in their lives. So at the idea of being able to skip one generation that they know is already there and already grown and doing the right things to help out the next, I think they love.

[00:20:59] Eric Brotman: So there’s, there’s reasons from a tax perspective, complicated tax provisions called generation skipping transfer taxes that you have to consider if you’re gonna leave a bunch of money and skip a generation and mostly that’s because the government wants to make sure that every generation gets taxed mm-hmm because heaven forbid we should, we should roll money down to our grandchildren without, without a haircut from a, from a, a tax standpoint.

But without getting into the, the nuts and bolts of the, of the technicalities, what are some ways around that? What are some ways to create ongoing generational wealth, ideally without taxes?

[00:21:35] Yanni Niebuhr: One of the best ways is actually through life insurance. And as, as weird as that sounds you know, cuz it sounds morose in its sense, but you can actually create perpetual wealth by having life insurance, even on your children, where they’re building and protecting their insurability, but also building a cash value which I haven’t experienced myself personally, but I know that you have, it’s a pretty powerful story. And one of the reasons why we did it on my son himself, cuz when we tell people that you put life insurance on your child, why? But from the standpoint of we’re protecting his insurability later in life at also it’s creating something that may not be for his benefit, but also for my grandchildren later on down the line.

[00:22:12] Eric Brotman: Okay. And then let’s talk about 529s. Because the life insurance, the life insurance piece is something folks don’t think about. Right? I mean, if you wanna make a gift to your grandchildren one of the best things you can do is buy life insurance on your children. And that, that sounds bizarre but the grandparents often have the resources to do it. The parents often don’t because they’re paying tuition and they’re doing all the other things they have to do. Plus their own student loans in a lot of cases.

[00:22:35] Yanni Niebuhr: Life’s expensive.

[00:22:36] Eric Brotman: The, the, the grandparents, a lot of times have the wherewithal and it’s a way to make sure that you are supporting your grandchildren, not necessarily your children and your perpetuating wealth and it’s all done income tax free.

[00:22:47] Yanni Niebuhr: Yeah, exactly. And in the meantime, it’s your money, right?

[00:22:50] Eric Brotman: So that’s, that’s a, that’s a great one. Now the next one is, is the college plans, right? I think people are maybe misusing or misunderstanding the way some of the college savings plans work in terms of perpetuating wealth.

[00:23:02] Yanni Niebuhr: So you can change the beneficiary at least once a year and you can put in, I think the number’s $15,000 a year up with a five year limit. So you’re able to put money away. It can grow tax deferred and if pulled out for the right reasons, you pay no taxes on it whatsoever, and now they just change the tax law so you can pull it out for grades one through 12 and use it for that up to $10,000 a year. So it can be pulled out in such a way that it helps everyone. And on top of that, if the kid doesn’t wind up going to school, well, you can change the beneficiary later. Or if you know what you get bored, you can go back to school yourself.

[00:23:34] Eric Brotman: so I, I have five 20 nines for my daughter, and I’m actually going to offset some of the incredible blood letting that is fourth grade tuition starting go this fall by using that 5 29, which I’m excited about. And I do covet that PhD for no other reason Yanni, than I want you to call me doctor . So that’ll be great.

[00:23:52] Yanni Niebuhr: Won’t happen.

[00:23:53] Eric Brotman: All right. So. We’re at the point in our show where it’s real important to, to give folks a takeaway.

[00:24:00] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure.

[00:24:00] Eric Brotman: We call it extra credit and that’s because I’ve yet to meet anyone who enjoys homework or tests or any of that garbage, but everybody likes extra credit. So the way to get an a, in this course, Yanni is to come up with one thing, one thing that our listeners can, can grab a hold of today and say, all right, if I do this one thing, I’m that much closer to financial independence and to graduating into retirement instead of retreating.

[00:24:24] Yanni Niebuhr: Sure. My advice would be to start as early as possible. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint and just like a marathon, the sooner you start training, the better off you’re gonna be.

[00:24:34] Eric Brotman: I, I think that’s excellent advice. Let’s take it one step further on the marathon concept. I, I, I, my marathon’s a 5k, first of all, I like to run for 30 minutes and then have a banana and a beer at the end of it. but maybe a granola bar, but, but for people who run marathons, one of the things that, that they say is you have to pace yourself.

You don’t want to break out in the first mile and into a dead sprint because you’ll wind up running at gas really soon. So is this a situation where you not only start early, but you also try and make it gradual?

[00:25:05] Yanni Niebuhr: Yes. Exactly. You don’t wanna rush into anything there there’s there’s steps to it. Again, everybody’s unique. Everybody comes out of school with a different set of circumstances. And with that, it might be saying, you know what, the first couple years it’s debt management. And then from there, I’m pretending that money is still going to debt management, but now it’s going to retirement and then eventually life gets more complicated.

You have a kid. Two. Three. And you realize that life is more expensive and now not only is it retirement, but it’s also planning for college and then eventually taking care of your parents. So making sure you’re taking those steps along the way and not rushing into anything.

[00:25:40] Eric Brotman: So Yanni, your your extra credit assignment is excellent.

It’s, it’s start early and pace yourself and make financial independence of marathon. So Yanni can be reached on our website at www.bfgfa.com. We’ll also put your personal email address in our show notes so that folks who wanna reach out to you can and I know they can find you on social media as well.

So thanks again for being the guest today. And until next time, this is Eric Brotman your host of don’t retire, graduate, and we’ll talk to you soon.

[00:26:11] Narrator: From this day forward, let us make each decision with our best interests in mind. Let us begin visualizing our dreams and reaching our goals. It’s time to take the next steps in our life journey and build our futures. Today I implore you: don’t retire. Graduate. Visit our website at dontretiregraduate.com to download episodes and connect with us on social media. Securities offered through Ketra investment services, LLC. Ketra is member FINRA S I C investment advisory services offered through Ketra advisory services, LLC.

Ketra as and affiliate of Ketra is. Ketra is, or Ketra as are not affiliated with Braman financial or any other entity discussed.