Finances by the Generation, From the Generations

Thank

You so much. I'm

not sure which generation you are applauding for,

but we will find out in this session.

I am very excited.

I feel like in financial services

we talk about generations a lot,

but we never actually get to hear from people

who are in all the generations that we talk about.

So that is the purpose of this discussion.

And, I'm gonna introduce our panelists in

a somewhat different way than I normally do

by talking first about their generation

and then introducing each member after I say their name.

Give them a nice round of applause.

If you have special feelings

for a particular generation, it's yours.

It's your parents' generation, it's your kids' generation.

Give 'em a little extra round of applause

and we'll see where we get to.

All right. So, starting us off

we have our Baby Boomer representative.

according to my notes

Baby Boomers are those born roughly between 1946

and 1964.

You will note as I go through the rest

of the generations, that is an unusually large generation,

as demographers have noted for decades, which is why,

there's also the definition

of a sub generation within baby boomers known

as Generation Jones.

And, I think you'd probably, yes sir,

recognize that as your generation.

So let's give it up

for our Baby Boomer representative, Bob.

Lovely, next we threw a little curve ball in

because we have two representatives of Gen X. Gen X,

the forgotten generation, the Keanu Reeves generation.

They are those born roughly

between 1965 and 1980.

And again, this is a theme

that's gonna come up over the course of our discussion,

but the lines between generations are a little bit blurred.

So, very delighted to have two different members

of Generation X.

We have Mark, and we have Molly.

It seemed like we might see,

we've got some Gen Xers back there.

All right. They're feeling like feelings about being

left out or never talked about.

We will get into that. I'm Alex.

I am a member of the millennial generation.

We used to be cool,

I remember when I got into banking,

Millennials were very exciting.

Everyone wanted to know what we thought and who we were.

We're old news now, as you're about to find out.

I'm, I have been replaced.

But, millennials are again, roughly those born

between 1981 and 1994

to 1996, somewhere in there.

And again, you'll notice as we go further, that

the generational differences

and the lines between 'em are a little more fluid.

That's 'cause we're still trying to sort of figure out

what separates different generations.

On my left, delighted to have the generation

that's replacing me, Gen Z. Gen Z as

those born again, roughly between 1995 to 1997,

and roughly 2010 to 2012.

So give it up for the Gen Z representative on our panel.

Lisa.

I should note that Lisa very

generously took some time out from studying

for her midterms to join us.

But, you know, go University of Utah.

So she's representing

and we really appreciate you being here.

And then last but not least the most mysterious

and coveted of all the generations.

Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha's a little hard

to define because they're new.

They are those born roughly between 2009, 2010

to now, right?

So anyone born all the way up until either last year

or maybe even this year, are gen Alphas.

And we are delighted

that our Gen Alpha representative was able to get his mom

to excuse his absence from school today.

I think he should get school credit

for joining us here today.

Jack.

Okay. So to introduce our generations

and put it in the financial services context,

we're gonna start with a little lightning round game of,

have you ever, so here's how it's gonna work.

I'm gonna ask a series of questions.

If anyone on the panel has done this activity,

they will raise their hands.

We will attempt to tease out some

of the financial services differences

between different generations.

Jack, you have special dispensation given

that you're not 18 to cheat a little bit.

So if some of these activities I mentioned are one

that you haven't done, but that you would know how to do

and be interested in doing, feel free to raise your hand.

Okay. All right. Here we go.

First question, have you ever opened a financial account

in a branch?

A bank branch?

Wow. Wow. We didn't practice any of this.

You guys, that has taken me the first time.

All of us have opened a financial account on the branch.

All right. Excellent. Second question.

Have you ever opened a financial account entirely online?

Oh my goodness. Okay. Excellent.

Have you ever paid someone with a physical check?

Okay. All right. Now we're starting

to tease out some generational differences.

Have you ever paid someone with a P2P payment app,

Like Cash App, Venmo, or Zelle? Okay.

All right. Market share.

Have you ever gotten

financial advice on YouTube or TikTok?

Oh yeah. Wow.

I think Bob wants to be with the kids.

He wants to be part of the cool, the cool group.

All right.

Have you ever gotten financial advice from an AI chat bot?

Oh, yeah. This is really interesting.

This like, alliance that's being formed on either side

of the stage, Mark and Molly and I are like, no.

All right. You,

You have to realize, I, my kids are Millennials

and my grandchildren are Z or

Alpha, Alpha, Z. Alpha, Alpha.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So he's down with the kids.

All right. Have you ever sat down

with a financial advisor in person?

Okay, now we're really breaking up the group. Okay.

Have you ever used a Traveler's check? Oh, yeah.

Do you guys know what a traveler's check is?

No idea. Oh, Okay.

I miss them. That's, that's fine.

You're never gonna have to know that.

So you're, you're good. You're all set.

Have you ever bought a cryptocurrency?

Am I just by myself out here?

Thank you for those raising your hands in the audience.

I appreciate you. Good for you guys. Well done.

Have you ever balanced a checkbook?

No. Okay. That anything check related ends right here.

Okay, Um, have you ever checked your credit score?

Okay. Jack, it's super easy to understand, You're gonna love it.



I can already tell. Yeah,

It's the best. You're just gonna

love it. Makes a ton of sense.

Really intuitive. Final question,

and I'm cheating a little bit

'cause this is not a financial services question,

but it really will reveal the differences.

Have you ever watched the film K-Pop Demon Hunters?

Okay. Just me and Jack. I knew it.

Been there, done that. You've never done that?

I said I've been there, done that. You've

been there. Okay. All right.

That's what I would've figured. All right. Okay.

So that was instructive.

Uh, I'm definitely gonna be taking

notes on all of those answers.

All right. Next question I wanted to ask,

and we're gonna get a little more into history

and sort of how you got into financial services is

your money origin story.

So I'm very curious to understand if each of you could kind

of briefly explain: how did you learn about money?

Like when you first sort of got introduced to

how money works or the concept of money, like what was

an early formative experience?

And Bob, we'll start with wisdom,

so we'll start on your end. Why don't you go first?

Well, I was probably the generation that,

that my parents survived the Great Depression.

Yeah. My parents survived World War II.

My dad was a veteran, World War II.

And they lived day to day. Mm-hmm.

Really, they money was, actually bartering,

living in rural areas,

They would barter more than they used money. Yeah.

And that influenced my dad tremendously,

which influenced me

and made me want to make sure

that I would become financially independent.

My parents became dependent on strictly social security.

They had no retirement. They didn't plan for retirement.

They didn't know how to do that. Right.

There was no education for them on retirement.

So learning from that

and growing up that way, from working

starting at age 15, I decided I wanted

to be a financial independent.

And, I made sure

that my kids are doing the same. mm-hmm.

That they understand those things.

So, that's really where, where I started to say,

I'm it, I'm responsible for my financial situation,

so I need to take charge and do

that. And that was something

you internalized pretty early on.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Mark, how about you?

What's this sort of a formative

early experience around money?

Well, I likewise worked when I was a, you know,

13, 14 teenager, paper routes and that type of thing.

Sure. I'm a saver, I'm not a spender.

But, I liked the things that money enabled me to do.

You know, once in a while you go out

and you take a girl on a date

or whatever else, you know, you buy a corsage.

I enjoyed the benefits of that.

I worked very hard on our farm as well, without pay.

You know, I got room and board, whatever, you know, they fed me.

And I realized that the money is kind

of the key to being able to do things you wanna do.

Yeah. And so I was, I saved, I'm a saver

Same. Yeah.

Molly, how about you?

I find our stories, I think it's a generational thing,

often the same, because I look at my kids now,

and their take on money and savings

and that sort of thing is totally different.

But, I came from a family of seven kids,

,you know, and so you go back to school

and it's like, okay, a new pair of jeans,

maybe a couple shirts

and a new pair of shoes if you were lucky.

And anything besides that you had to do for yourself.

Sure. So starting at, I think 12, we were able to start,

like, go out to the berry farms

and pick berries and stuff to make money.

Those are the kinds of jobs we

were able to do when we were young.

And that enabled us to kind of save up

for some of those things that you wanted.

And, I was single mom at 20,

so money, we were always very careful with how I spent,

how I saved, how I thought about money.

Totally. I think I hear your story is wonderful,

So I can't wait to get to them.

But besides you, my kids are not like that.

It'sa different thing. But yeah.

From a very young age, we had to learn to

be thinking about money a little bit differently than

maybe they do these days.

That makes sense. I mean, I think another theme

that's probably gonna be consistent across everyone is,

like a certain flavor of entrepreneurship.

And I think the entrepreneurship probably is different,

but like, just do a quick show of hands.

Have had a job or had a job in high school

or even earlier trying to make money sort

of independently, I assume?

Okay. Pretty close. I mean,

My story's very similar to that.

I remember, uh,

lemonade stand was the thing we did to make money.

And, my parents took it very seriously, um,

and outfitted us with all the stuff.

But, my mom also charged all of the materials back to us

and did not give us a break on any of it.

And, that was a pretty brutal early lesson

in entrepreneurship.

And the fact that, you know, money doesn't grow on trees,

lemons grow on trees, but it costs money

to get those lemons to make into lemonade.

So very similar in terms

of like early lessons in entrepreneurship

and kind of the value of money.

Lisa, how about you? What's an early experience for you?

I feel like money was kind of

Something that I

never really thought about growing up.

So like, 'cause I,

I feel like my parents always took care of things.

It's like we go out to eat, like, you don't know

'cause you're not paying for the bill.

Sure. So I feel like it's always been like something

that's kind of like a concept that you don't really grasp

until you start getting into it.

Mm-hmm. So I think my,

like my money origin story probably began in high school.

Mm-hmm. So

that was like when my parents like started letting me

take on the responsibility of paying my host family

and the responsibility

of paying my own high school tuition.

Mm-hmm. So I think, just like even the act

of having that money in your account

and like, seeing it go

and seeing where it's allocated.

Mm-hmm. And it just really gave me much more

appreciation for my education.

And, for those of you who

don't know my background, I'm an international student, so

my experience might be a little bit different from Gen

X, but I think just for me personally

in high school was kind of like a huge epiphany

that I had, that things like cost money

and then like, it just growing up, I feel like

that also motivated me a lot in school.

Yeah. Because, you know, where

that money came from and you know where it's going.

And then I feel like just the act

of like being more involved in your own life

and like paying for your own expenses,

like really changed that for me. Yeah.

Absolutely. And Jack, how about you?

So when I was 11 years old, I was wanting to save

for GoPro for my YouTube channel. And

This is all very consistent generationally so far.

So I started working some little jobs.

I walk dogs for a long time

and I do garbage cans for some of my neighbors.

Then when I turned 12, I started umpiring for youth leagues.

And it was really hard. It was fun.

Made some great money, to save ut for a car.

I ended up saving a little under $8,000 for my first car.

Wow. Wow. To be able to,

Yeah. How about a round of

applause for Jack on that,

that's pretty impressive.

And I actually drove that car that I bought up

here today with my dad.

Oh, yes. Yes. That's awesome. That's fantastic.

I love that. So early focus on saving,

working odd jobs to earn what you

Need to get. and not spending

it on video games.

Yes, yes. Which is, uh spending is a topic

that's gonna come up again.

So, kind of flipping the page on that a little bit,

if we were to kind of fast forward to right now,

and again, I think one of the things

that's interesting about the generational discussion on

financial services is to a degree, it's differences in terms

of when you grew up and

what was happening in the world at that time.

But I also think a lot of it just relates to kind of

where you are in your life in that stage of your life.

So I'd be curious to kind of hear about

what your biggest money management challenge is right now,

and like what the priority

is right now and how you think about it.

And we'll go the opposite direction.

So Jack, why don't you start there?

So, one of my most challenging things is when I'm,

umpiring, the league that I work

for mostly pays me in cash.

So getting cash

and turning it into my digital bank is one

of my biggest challenges.

But instead of being my challenge, I turn it to my mom,

make it her problem, give her all my

money. And she puts it in.

So mom

is the vehicle to transfer the cash into. Yeah. Yeah.

Somehow it just gets into the digital bank account. Yep.

As long as it's there, I don't care.

I love that. Lisa, how about you?

Okay. I feel like I speak for a lot of people

who are in my generation.

When I say that the biggest money challenge is to,

to like not spend it.

Yep. And, I'm sure you guys have kids who are like,

potentially in my generation,

but it's just like,

I feel like when you're going into your twenties, a lot

of people are like, oh, but you have to live it.

You have to like go travel.

This is the youngest you'll ever be.

So I think a lot of it is like trying to balance like,

where should I spend and where I should save, like

how much I should consider for my future,

and like how much I should be living in my present?

So I feel like a lot of times,

the big challenge is just like

figuring out if I should go on this trip or not,

or like, if I should like buy this thing

that all my friends are buying

or if I should, put it all into savings

and just sit there and wait until my money grows.

And then once I'm 30 or 40,

and then I can finally spend like, spend on things.

So it's just kind of like balancing

like those opposing voices.

That makes sense. Can I ask a follow up question?

Yes. When you talk about sort of the temptation

to spend now, particularly on like experiences,

and those kind of things and what your friends are doing,

how much of that is influenced by like social media

or the internet?

You Oh yeah, a

huge percent. I feel like it's mostly social media.

'cause it's like, all of those videos

that I would see, or my friends would see

or get on their feed that are like,

oh, I moved to Bali.

Or like, I spent a whole summer in Italy.

Or it's videos that where it's like,

if you don't do this now, you'll never be able

to do it again and you'll never be this young.

And then you have to do it now.

Or it's like, you should like drop outta college

or take a semester abroad

or just a lot of information like that.

Yeah. But like, and then I get FOMO

and then my friends get FOMO

and then we're like, oh, now we need

to all drop outta college and like go travel. So yeah.

That's really interesting. Yeah.

I think social media is just like a FOMO machine in a lot

of ways. So that seems consistent.

I will say briefly that

for me the biggest challenge is time

management as much as it is money.

Right. A lot of financial things that I want

to do are just things that require a certain amount of time,

whether it's budgeting or planning

or sort of reallocating funds

or thinking about kinda long term.

It takes time. And I have three young kids at home.

I don't have any time. I don't have any spare time.

And so the time trade off

for like good money management is something

that I really struggle with right now

And is a priority.

Molly, how about you?

Time is a big issue for me as well. Yeah.

And, probably one of my,

because I'm in my fifties looking towards retirement,

I'm lucky that income wise we're doing okay.

So it was never super stress, you know, we just have

to think about saving for my husband

and I, what do we wanna do?

And 10 years from now we'll be living our life

and our present because we didn't get to do

that in our twenties. But Yeah.

When's your trip to Bali coming?

Exactly. Yeah.

The problem is, is we have six kids, two

of them have it figured out

and we have four who are all in their twenties

who are living their present.

Ah. You know, so somehow I'm like,

I'm working 60 hours a week and I'm lucky if,

and I think I mentioned to you before.

Yeah. They're working 30 hours a week, a couple, you know,

part-time shifts

and they're like, oh my God,

my boss doesn't wanna let me take more time off.

'cause I just went somewhere for a week a month ago,

or I went on that trip to Rome a couple months ago

and now I wanna go to Hawaii. And

Bosses are really annoying about that kind of stuff.

You know, it's, so my ideas of retirement are different

because my concern is, and I feel like we do tough love,

but my concern is before we knew what we were gonna have

for our future

And now with the, where the economy is

and where we're at these days, um,

economically in this country, being able

to buy a house Yeah.

Retirement, all those things

that our kids saw us being able to do.

Sure. They're really struggling to go, can I do this?

And now I'm like, well, we can't just go save and do

and go to Bali now we have to maybe be leaving something

for our kids 'cause they might not have those same

opportunities Right.

That we did. Right.

So it's just flipped in our minds what we can

and can't do moving forward.

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.

Mark, I think

you're slightly further ahead in terms of… you just retired?

Correct. Did, so where,

are you right now in all of this?

So, having the luxury of being retired,

now I have all kinds of time.

Got your time back. Do whatever I want.

I am so jealous. every day's a Saturday. Oh my gosh.

And it's kind of nice and

you know, hopefully we have saved enough money

Sure. before we retired, you know, I've fearful

that our financial advisor

told us, yeah, go ahead and retire.

You got plenty of money or whatever right now

for me then it is all about timing.

So we can go do the things we want as terms

of vacations and that type of thing.

We have a budget and,

but it's all about timing for me right now.

What I'm trying to do, obviously is try to pay my share

of taxes, you know, legally within the law,

but also, you know, avoid the taxes.

I don't need to pay. Yeah.

So we're in the stage of, you know,

rolling our 401k into the

IRA, individual retirement account,

and then, timing, you know, Medicare kicks in

and then you've got Medicare costs at 65,

and then you've got to roll your traditional

IRA into the Roth.

And so that counts to you as income comes to you as income.

And so basically you've got that income

and then social security kicks in

and you've got that additional income.

And then you've got RMDs in the mid seventies.

And so basically it's trying to figure out the timing,

what's the best, you know, what counts to burn down,

how much money to take out each month,

what's the long term plan

for minimizing the amount of taxes.

'cause you don't wanna jump into the 35% tax bracket.

You wanna keep it low. And

so basically it's a, there's a strategy.

You can't just go into this blindly

and say, I'm going to, you know, maximize my social security

and get out, you know,

roll money into the Roth and all that kind of stuff.

So it's really for me, it's about timing,

the accounts and the, the sequence of events that,

that we have to, that I have to go through as a retiree

to make sure that I can minimize my taxes.

That's really interesting.

And the, the sequencing of that,

it sounds like a really complex challenge

And I'm sure there's resources out there.

I didn't take the time when I was working,

I was just accumulating money.

Sure. Yeah. As the last five years of my

employment, I was saving 30% of my paycheck.

Right. And

up to that it was, you know, 20%, maybe 10%.

And that would be my advice is to save.

But I had a lot of cash out there and you retire

and it's like, what do I do with this?

I had no clue. I had done no homework about how

to time the transactions the, you know, the,

monthly income, all that kind of stuff.

So I'm sure the resources are out there.

I didn't take the time to look at

'em, but that would be very helpful.

As for me as an engineer, I didn't really look at that.

I didn't really worry about it. And

now it's, it's all about timing. Totally.

Bob, how about you?

Well, more I worry about boring things. Taxes, right.

Inflation. Oh, sure.

Inflation, you know, the numbers they show you are nothing

representative of what we spend every day.

Sure. Yeah. Right.

I worry about stock market volatility

because all of my retirement accounts

and my taxable accounts are in the stock market.

Mostly in, I'm still in mostly in equities.

Probably 70% equities and 30% bonds.

But your timeframe for that,

for those investments is very different now.

Well, so I'm no longer telling people I'm retired

because I'm not really retired yet.

I'm not taking money from any of my retirement accounts.

I'm not signed up for Social Security yet.

Last month I signed up for Medicare

because I had to, I had no choice,

but I did sign up for Medicare.

But, I'm really just unemployed at this point

in time with no income.

Right. I do not have a paycheck coming in other

than some passive income.

Right. So I worry about taxes.

Like you mentioned, people think we're in retirement.

You don't have to worry about taxes.

You don't have anything to worry about.

That's not true. Taxes are a huge part

because if you've built up a large tax deferred,

you're gonna end up spending half of that as much

as half of that back in taxes.

Right. The other thing I worry about is are the cost

of healthcare expenses.

I'm glad you mentioned that. Right?

SoI did sign up for Medicare

and I immediately signed up for a supplement

Medicare supplement plan.

Yeah. I am understanding now

that my supplement plan will likely incur a

40% increase next year.

Mm-hmm. That's huge. Right.

To someone who hasn't had any,

I don't have any, I won't have any income.

I do have pensions,

but I'm not gonna start those for a couple more years.

Yeah. And then I won't start social security

for five more years actually.

Yeah. So that's,

those are the things that I worry about.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned healthcare, right.

And inflation broadly. 'cause I think that another thing

that impacts different generations very differently.

And Molly, you touched on it too with worrying about

what your kids are gonna have and

what opportunities they're gonna have is certain things are

just really expensive.

Right. And healthcare's a good example.

Housing is a huge example.

I don't know, I'd love to know from both of you,

Do you have thoughts on, do you ever

want to own a house?

Do you plan on buying a house?

Do you think that's achievable?

Lisa, maybe we can start with you.

I'm renting right now with my friends

and it's in this crappy little duplex,

but it's just like college housing.

So I feel like we're not doing too bad. Yeah.

Not too many roaches. Oh, that's good.

Some flies, but

like washers that don't work.

But I feel like that's just like kind of

what you live in when you're in college.

Yeah but in terms of looking ahead

and like seeing if I'll ever own is something,

that sends me into like a spiral

because it's like, there's so much unknown.

It's like, I don't know how it's gonna be with my job.

I don't know if I'm gonna have a job. Totally.

I don't know how the housing market is gonna be

by the time I get to a point in my life

where I could even have the money if I, if ever.

So I think the thought of that is just

on the back burner.

No, that makes sense. Jack, I mean

that's pretty far away for you, but

do you have any thoughts on that?

I would love to own a house, honestly,

the financial freedom that, that could give me crazy,

gimme tons of money to spend on my Fortnite account. Yeah.

Okay. I love it. See, he's financially savvy down there.

Another thing I wanted to ask about is, banks

and financial services providers.

We have a bunch of 'em in the room actually.

And, I was curious, kind of a two part question.

One is, how do you think banks

and financial services providers view your generation

or think about your generation

and how do you wish that they thought about your generation?

And Bob, we'll start with you and we'll go this way.

Well, for some reason, as soon as you turn 64, 65

financial organizations think you're no longer a consumer.

All the marketing that, you know,

you fill out these surveys, you get surveys from companies

and those, you fill out your age category

and as soon as you say 64, 65 on, and it's like, oh, okay.

Thank you for your input. And they move on.

So, I'd like them to realize that

the Baby Boomers

and I'm really at the generation Jones' end

of the far end of the Baby Boomers, the youngest part.

We are consumers.

We probably are the wealthiest middle income people ever.

Right. We have more money than ever to spend.

And what we're interested in is really products that

that increase our portfolio diversity.

So we're looking at a breadth of products.

We're also looking at things that ensure,

that mitigate financial risk.

So like guaranteed income,

that's something that I'm interested in.

When I was younger, couldn't care less about bonds,

couldn't care less about annuities

or anything that was guaranteed income.

Now I'm extremely interested in those products

and I'm dissatisfied with the number

or types of products and with how they're marketed.

So, I would like education.

This is a big thing.

Before I retired, my wife

and I spent 18 months researching retirement.

I mean, we watched every financial YouTube video out there.

I read every Reddit forum out there.

I looked at every Lincoln in those things.

And, uh, I read, we read seven books together.

We actually had book reports on Friday nights.

So we studied hard

and to finally make that decision to stop working.

Not retired yet, so stop working.

And one of the things

that we found deficient in the industry,

in the financial industry was education.

Somebody needs to help us educate ourselves on how

to retire, when to retire, when to take social security,

what to do about Medicare, what to do advantage plan,

supplement: somebody, help us with that.

Yeah. Right. And there's no one source for that information.

So,I think that's where the opportunity

for probably most of the financial institutions that

we're not just retirees anymore.

We've got a lot of money.

We still buy homes, we still buy boats. We still buy cars.

Uh, we have a lot of money to spend on those things.

So we're, we're really consumers,

but I feel like we've been left out.

Yeah, absolutely. Can I jump on that really quick?

Jump in, Yeah. Just because you were talking about

education and we're,

retired. Just skip 'cause it's in my head.

And when you're a certain age, you have

to jump on those things before it's gone,

but, I'm about 10 years out from retirement.

Yeah. And we've just been talking about, we need

to look into this a little bit more

and what do we have to change?

And, going into my bank

and I'm looking at the resources on there,

and there are retirement resources

and there's like 401k,

401 BC IRAs, Roth, I mean,

there's all this information.

Yeah. But then you click on

and then there's more information.

I mean, there's so much out there.

My husband has three degrees

and some major student loans still.

And this year everything changed

with student loans a little bit.

Right. So we went in to try

and re-look at how to redo a student loan repayment.

And they have a really nice website

where it's like, what is your age?

What is your income? You know, what are your goals?

What are you trying to get out of

your student loan repayment?

Yeah. Do you wanna pay it off the fastest?

Do you wanna pay off the least amount of money?

Do you want… You know, so there's all these options.

And so you click what's most important to you,

and then it just spits out a couple of options

and then you read the information.

So it was really simple.

I'm like, oh my God, why can't my retirement just say,

why can't everything be like that information?

Be that simple? Why can't I just say, this is my income,

this is where I'm at, this is what I wanna do, these are

what my goals are, and then you tell me

what the best products are and then I'll research it.

Totally. Because again, I am not retired.

I'm not almost retired.

I'm working 60 hours a week

and we're trying to make sure all the kids are okay.

So I don't have the time totally

to read all the books and do all the studying.

But I need to be doing it now.

Now is the time I have to be doing it.

So I want a simplified way to get the information.

And their answer was, you know,

set an appointment up with our financial advisor.

I'm like, I don't want him to sell

me a bunch of things I don't need.

I just wanna talk to him about the things

that I know I need to talk about.

So that is what I'm wanting a tool to do

that in an easy way.

And I seem to recall when we were asking the questions

before, you've never sat down with a

financial advisor before, I think.

Right. And so at this moment in life,

working 60 hours a week

and taking care of the kids, you can't fathom the

outside. And I don't know

what I wanna ask them.

And I don't want to spend hours having them go over all

those things I just said.

So I want someone to say, this is where you're at.

These are the things you wanna talk about,

and now let's set an appointment up with someone to,

zero in on those things specifically.

Totally. I will add,

just real quickly from a millennial perspective,

although like an old in my soul millennial, I'm so tired.

I would second your thing about

just time spent, right?

Like, I want advice.

I want to know, if you have a little bit more time,

like where do you wanna steer

to end up where you want to end up?

But I need it to be automated.

I need it to be simplified.

I can't take the time to learn about it

and parse out all the different options.

I certainly can't take the time to go meet

with a financial advisor.

So I would definitely plus one that,

Mark, how about you?

I was gonna say that

we have a really good financial advisor.

We had him for a number of years. His name is

Dimas and he's a great guy.

But I think he takes us to a certain point.

We get an hour and a half with him two

or three times a year, an hour and a half.

And he takes us to a certain point and we get there.

But I know there's more in the future.

I know that there's other things that, other ramifications.

And he takes us to a point, and I,

don't know if financial advisors do this on purpose,

but they don't, I'd like to see the whole plan laid out.

Like you mentioned that, you know,

it was step one, step two, step three.

In other words, you retire at 60 or 62

or 65, whatever it is, then you've got to find some

medical insurance until,

Medicare kicks in.

And if Medicare kicks in, then all of a sudden

you're taking your 401k

and you're rolling that over into an ira.

And then at some point you're gonna take

and roll that money into a Roth.

And if you take out $200,000

and put it into your Roth, that's income to you.

Yeah.And if you do that for a couple of years,

then your Medicare payments go up

because your income has gone up.

So there's something called Irma, all this stuff

that I didn't have any clue about,

you know, a couple of years ago.

All of a sudden I'm learning, and I wish I kind

of had a roadmap that says, okay, this age,

this happens, this age, this happens.

When you do this, this is happens.

These are the ramifications.

Because eventually what you wanna do, at least

what I wanna do is take the vast majority of the money

that I have in my IRA and roll it into my Roth.

So it grows tax free,

but there's penalties to doing that.

And there's ramifications.

And so it's all about timing

and I wanna wait until

social security, same kind of a thing.

But all of a sudden then you maximize your social security

and you get this ginormous social security check,

and then all of a sudden you're in your seventies

and RMDs kick in, and then you've got all this income

and it's like, what do I do with all this?

All of a sudden I'm in the 42% tax bracket.

So what I would really like to see is a roadmap.

I'm lazy. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

I haven't investigated, I didn't read books,

I didn't prepare for retirement.

It's gotta be out there somewhere. But if you're saying

that you prepared for a year and a half

and you didn't find that, you know, maybe it doesn't exist.

A step-by-step roadmap.

This is what happens at 61, 62, 63 and kinda lay it all out

and tell me, if you do this, then this happens.

It triggers this. You have to understand there's a lot of,

interactions between your transactions

and the amount of tax you pay.

Don't worry the

government has a plan for your money.

Oh, I know they do. They have a plan.

I told my daughter, I said,

there's something called RMDs.

And I said, if you, they allow you…

And, I said, they make you take out a certain amount out

of your ira, they know how much is in there,

2 million, 3 million, 5 million.

They know how much is in there.

And there's this formula

and there's an advisor out there anyway

and they make you take out X amount per year.

She says they can't do that. And I

said, yes, they can. Just have

it all withheld,

you'll be fine.

So the answer, part of the answer to this is

I did go, resort to technology solution.

Retirement planning software.

There's lots of 'em out there.

They come in various forms of complexity.

I chose one called Bolden. There's another one called Pralana.

There's others,and I learned about them on YouTube

and I watched all the demos.

I went to those sites. I took all their videos,

took their training,

and then settled on one particular product.

But it helps me answer those questions.

About the complexity of unemployed

heading towards retirement. Well,

It's interesting too, right? Because

to your point about the financial advisor,

it does sometimes feel like a chiropractor where it's like,

I'll adjust you come back next week.

Right. And it's like, I'd actually like to know

how long I have to do this before it's over.

And like, that's not the business model to a degree.

Exactly. So I totally hear what you're saying.

Let's end with you guys.

First a thing that

you think financial services providers

or banks think about your generation

and then something you wish they knew

or wish they focused on more.

Lisa, we'll start with you. Okay.

Well, I feel like they probably just think

that my generation's dumb with money.

Like we kind of just like to spend

which I feel like they're probably

not wrong about that assumption.

But I feel like I kinda wish that they

would assume that more of us wanted to learn about finances.

'cause I

feel like for me it's my journey with

becoming more financially literate

and learning about it.

A lot of it is just kind of hard

to figure out what's reliable.

and like what you could really listen to.

Because a lot of the information

that you get on TikTok

or Instagram reels,

it's all just people trying

to like prop it off of views and stuff.

So they say some crazy stuff

or it's kinda equivalent to health,

influencers prescribing a diet

of only kombucha and spinach.

But then they're doing it

with money advice.

But you're so intrigued.

You're like, oh, I can retire by the age

I'm like 30 if I start at 18. Because

They promised an outcome attached to

It. Yes. And

I feel like the stuff

that they really like promote in their videos are

all very sketch.

Or it's just stuff

that's all these terms that you don't know.

It's like investing in a Roth, right? Yeah.

Like this account, this account, you need a high savings,

you need two, monthly interesting funds.

Yeah. so I think it's just trying

to like figure out where

to find the right resource that's reliable.

But I feel like for our generation,

at least my generation, I think it's hard

for us to really seek out reliable

information when we have

easily accessible short videos

that are just constantly fed to us.

So I feel like

I wish there are more resources out there for people

who are in college who are not majoring in finance

or a money related major,

but still want to learn about

money. Absolutely. If that makes sense.

Do you, it makes total sense.

Do you think your generation trusts banks?

Um, no.

Well, I think we trust banks more than the stock market.

Okay. But actually, I don't know.

I think my generation, with banks,

it's just we do it because everybody else does it

and our parents tell us to do it.

And then it just seems,

'cause everybody's doing it

and it's like if this many people have their money in

banks and it's like if we all go down, it's like,

Ugh. Right.

Right.

So I feel like,

we don't really understand banks.

I don't really understand banks.

I think I know like FDIC or something insured.

There you go. Yeah. So I know that that's a good one.

That's a good one. But I feel like for the most part,

it's just kind of like a mystery to us.

'cause I feel like I'm only 19,

So I think

prior to college

if you end up going to college too,

you don't really learn about money.

Like I learned about money in my like Econ class

and high school and

that was the only

exposure that I had to it.

So I feel like if you don't have parents

who are really on top of getting you set up

for financial success, then you're kind

of…

like it would be nice to have



an education gap event. Makes sense.

Jack, how about you?

Something that you think banks

or other financial providers think about your generation

and then something that you wish they

knew or focused on more?

I think they think

that our generation just not is like just dumb,

just flat out dumb.

And I probably couldn't agree more,

most of the time. I follow up with that,

we're lazy too.

We strongly dislike doing anything hard

and I wish banks could recognize that

and make everything just as simple as possible.

And I don't even know how to say it,

we get

excited when we do something

and then we get something out of it.

I wish banks would use that format

to get more people younger and get more involved in banks.

And then I would use less locations and go more virtual.

'cause I think people in my generation are more

scared of banks.

How so? Just don't really wanna go getting into there.

Does it seem intimidating to walk into a bank? Yeah.

Okay. That's fair.

No questions asked. It's very, been in a bank a few times,

it's scary.

Yeah

Even though it shouldn't be, I

don't know, they want you to come in,

but it's like they got the big

columns and the vault and everything.

It seems scary and inaccessible. That makes sense.

And the big desks.

Right. This is real stuff.

That makes total sense.

So Molly, I wanna come back to you on something.

I think one other thing that's really interesting,

and you're probably the best example we have on the panel

of this is the sort of challenge of managing your finances,

but also trying to think about setting a foundation

for your kids and kinda the differences there.

Can you just elaborate on how you approach

that challenge and how you try to pass skills

or knowledge or things on your kids in that respect?

If they would just listen, it's

like if they would just listen.

Problem would be solved. We talked to 'em about everything.

we've discussed with them, you know, about needing

to save, we have one who wants

to travel the world constantly.

It's, you know, I didn't have money for my rent

because I took two weeks off of work, whatever.

And it's really hard to do the tough love thing

and say, well, I'm not gonna pay her at this time

because, then what happens?

They move into my basement. Which I

don't want. The consequence of that is very

good you. Yeah. So it's,

really hard.

But we do have those discussions about

how the world is changing

and there will be time to

live your present at a certain point.

Sure. I have one daughter who's 28, she came over

to my house the other day and just burst into tears.

I don't know if I'm ever gonna be able to afford

to have a baby, have a house, get married, you know.

These are all things I wanna do.

Sure. You were doing it at, you know, 25, whatever.

Why can't I? And, I keep telling 'em it's never too late

to start,

I don't think I really started my career until my mid thirties.

Right. That's when I started kind of making more money

and doing quite well.

So we go back to

education is not a bad thing these days.

Maybe my husband's student loans, there's a lot going on

and he hasn't used any of it.

So I'm like, at least learn a skill.

But we talked to him about what we did to get where we are,

the hard work that we had to put into it.

And it might take more than 35 hours a week

to get there, but we're not gonna be able

to support 'em in everything that they wanna do.

And a little tough love.

A little tough love. A little tough

Love. Well

I think that's a great place to leave it.

Please join me in thanking our wonderful panel

of generations.