Let's Talk Money, Honey

Rick and Kyrk are joined by FFP's Director of Client Services, McKellar, to explore how to talk to your partner about household finances and what it's like being a woman in the male-dominated financial field.

Kyrk Davis is a Registered Representative offering Securities through The O.N. Equity Sales Company, Member FINRA/SIPC, One Financial Way Cincinnati, Ohio 45242 (513) 794-6794. Kyrk Davis is an Investment Advisor Representative offering Investment Advisory services through O.N. Investment Management Company. Estate planning services provided in conjunction with your licensed legal professional.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the How to Win podcast. I'm Kyrk. I'm Rick and we have a special guest. Hi, I'm McKellar. So McKellar is our Director of Client Services. On top of that, she's a full time mom, a wife to a Toyota worker, and she also takes the lead in the financial planning for her family. So in the past, financial planning and just the financial lead in the household has been very much male dominated. But over the years, we've seen that dynamic start to shift, and now it's not uncommon to see the ladies taking that role. I thought it would be very valuable for all of the ladies that are currently in that role, maybe ones that are considering being in the role or just curious about it, and also for the single ladies that are forced into that role to hear the perspective of McKellar, who's, works in financial services and also takes on that role. We're really excited to have you here today, McKellar. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. My first question is... How did this dynamic in your family come about? Are you just the nerd and really enjoy finances? Is it because you work in financial services? Or maybe your husband just doesn't want anything to do with it and forced you into it. Yeah, so it just happened naturally that way. I've always been interested in finance. I've worked in finance, for 15 years now. And just because it is in my professional wheelhouse, that's how I started, taking on the role of financial advisor in my own household. We split things very equally, typically. We tend to have a hard time talking about things without scheduling meetings with each other, so we have a bi weekly financial meeting and we just talk on a Sunday evening about, okay, what's coming up, what are some expenses that we might have on the horizon how are we going to plan for that, just, the usual busy, school age kid household, so we try to really touch base on a, really regular basis just so that we can make sure that we're both on the same page as far as budgeting and finance and where we're headed. So McKellar, I worked at Toyota for almost 26 years and I know your husband works out there now and they have a 401k as well as I had a 401k there. Do you all discuss that, his 401k, the options that he puts in, because everybody has a 401k. Sure. But, taking care of it is different, like it, when I worked at Toyota, my wife never said anything about the 401k, I just took care of it all. So how does that work? How's that dynamic at your house? Yeah, so because of the work I do, I pay very close attention to that and we talk about that in our meetings and we look at the investments and we not, you don't have to babysit the thing, but we make adjustments when we need to but the important thing too is, for people at Toyota or people that, have a 401k sometimes Because it's so automated, you can tend to almost ignore it. And it's not the, I'll be honest, it's not the most fun thing to look into. I'd rather look into flights and trips and all sorts of stuff rather than rebalance my 401k on a regular basis. It's always good to make sure that the way that your 401k is invested is moving you in the direction of your goals. So we do try to keep a good eye on that. Yeah. So I don't know how that works for most families, but. If everybody's involved in the financial decisions, whether it be IRAs, 401ks, 529s for kids, I know you have two kids also, two children, sorry I'm calling them kids, so that's a household decision at your house, where at my house it really wasn't, and I'm sure a lot of houses that were it's that way. So how do we make that easier? How do we start that, how do you start that conversation with Jorge the way I start the conversation with my wife and Kyrk with his wife? Yeah, so it's important to just at least make sure you're both on the same page, right? So it really doesn't matter who's in charge of making those decisions. And if the other partner doesn't want to have to contribute to the decision making, them being aware of at least your Financial status is very important. So you want to make sure that both of you know What you have and where you want to go and just a general idea of how you want to get there I know a lot of people talk about, my neighbor Jim he did this and I talked to the my dentist and she said that about what you want to do with you know what you're investing in things and I think it's really important to just remember that You have to make decisions based on your goals, not necessarily what everyone else is doing. Because, your dentist situation and your neighbor's situation might be totally different than the spot that you're in. They might be in a different season of life, or a different tax bracket, or any of that kind of thing. So really it doesn't matter who has the 401k. You just really need to make sure that it's moving in the direction that you want to go, and it's allocated appropriately for the goals that you have. So on that kind of, you mentioned like water cooler talk about different, financial planning, things that you should be doing and they're appropriate for some people and not appropriate for other people, I can tell you from from a man's perspective, it's really easy for a man to go against the grain and go against the norm sometimes. So when we hear that water cooler talk, it's easy if we don't think that's appropriate for us, it's easy for us to kind of change gears and go a different direction. As a lady, do you feel more pressure to go along with the group, or can you talk about that? Yeah, I think it can be really intimidating, especially if finance is not something that you're interested in or know a lot about, to take advice at face value, right? Because if you trust the person that's telling you that, you assume that's good advice. And just because you trust the person doesn't necessarily mean they know exactly what they're doing, or that they're trying to make sure that your goals are where you want to be. The advice aligns with what your goals are. It can be difficult to make your own decisions if you're hearing certain trends, or people are saying a certain thing. So it can be intimidating to do that, and I think that really just comes from being unfamiliar with the topic. And sometimes people... People will say something and if you don't know enough about it, you don't want to raise your hand and say, I don't know what this is about. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what a mutual fund is. What's an ETF? There's a lot of lingo and jargon that goes with finance. It can be a really intimidating topic to try to discuss, especially if you have no experience in it whatsoever. It can be very overwhelming. I can tell you from... Working with McKellar and hanging around her for the last couple of years. She's not intimidated by anything, so you don't have to worry about that. I don't think McKellar, just that's just the way I appreciate that. So do you guys have goals? Financial goals? Oh sure, yeah. Yeah, so stuff for kids, stuff for you all. Yeah, so we have, we have in our heads and Jorge and I, we planned out, maybe when we want to retire And, what we want to pay for the kids and when, when we think they're going to go to college and maybe where they're going to go to college, hopefully, that kind of thing. So I think most people have a general idea of when they would need to retire or want to retire. Because you have that whole like, Oh, I'm going to go on that golf trip, where I'm going to. Go to the beach or do whatever, or go to New York, go to New York, whatever it is, right? Yeah. So you have an idea of when you're gonna retire in your head. I think that's real common, but a lot of times people just don't know A, how much they need to either maintain their, standard of living or how much it's gonna take in order to, to pay for all that. So I think the idea of matching up your goals with. What you're actually doing is super important. People basically you're saying, you, you need somebody to look at that. Whether you're a single parent, whether you're married, whether you have kids or no kids, it always helps to get some professional advice. Absolutely, yeah. We work with so many different families from so many different walks of life, and we've really seen, a real variety of situations. We're not unfamiliar with the questions that you're going to ask. There are no silly questions. Oh, no, not at all. There's no dumb questions. Yeah, the only one's dumb is the one you don't ask. That's it. If you're feeling, nervous or hesitant about coming in to work with a professional, I'd really advise you to Call McKellar. Call me, and just make sure that you feel comfortable with the person that you're working with and if it takes a couple interviews we'd of course love to work with you you want to make sure that when you pick up the phone to call your financial advisor that you trust in their advice and they treat you with respect. I know sometimes I work in a very male dominated industry and I know a lot of people in manufacturing it's the same kind of way so you know it can be intimidating For a woman to call and if, especially if she feels uncomfortable with how much she knows about a topic to really be a little vulnerable and say, I need help with this and I'd really like to get some advice, but I don't really know where to start. That whole thing is making a big step and it's a step in the right direction, right? So you're making sure that you're, crossing all your T's and dotting all your I's as far as where you want to go and what you're doing now to plan for the future. So yeah thank you McKellar. Yeah, I had one more question. Yes, sir, so I Know finances is a heavily dominated male industry and every time that you go to a bank or some other financial institution Typically the default is when that professional is asking questions, they're looking at the husband in your situation, he's not necessarily the decision maker how do you feel about that? Or how do you work that dynamic? And does that make, does that make sense? So navigating someone who doesn't take you seriously is something that I've had to do a lot in my career. So I think the important thing is to ask the questions that you need to ask and really. Make sure that, they understand that you're just as important as the person sitting next to you. And if you ask some pointed questions and you're making strong eye contact and things like that you're gonna, they hopefully, they'll pick up on those clues to say, okay, she's actually the one that, is making the decision. Or she's asking really, informed questions. She seems to know more about this topic than maybe he does. And really, it's just. If they're, if they, if the person that you're dealing with on the other side of the table isn't going to answer your questions and continues to answer your questions, but he's looking at your husband, that's probably not somebody that you need to be working with because they're just not respecting you and they're not respecting your time. So I would suggest, if you're getting that, energy from someone that they're not going to be as helpful to you because of, who you are, you probably need to build another relationship with another advisor. And the other thing too is, as a woman, if you need to work with another woman, I'd be happy to work with, anyone that's feeling nervous about coming in to talk to somebody because sometimes it is easier to talk to a woman about maybe just some questions that you have that you just maybe don't want an audience for, you don't want to deal with a guy. I totally get that. We're here if you need us and there's there's always somebody that, we can help. We'd love to work with you all. People I don't think take into consideration either that women live on average longer than men. That's absolutely true. So I think people like sit there and think well, you need to plan for I think it's five years too. So five years where the money is a lot, if you're when you're talking about savings Yeah, so so I don't think people take into consideration that there's lots of different things but and that's questions we can answer right when and things that we look at because We look basically at everything as far as that concerns your financial life, right? And what will you I mean the way our approach is really, evidence based, right? So we're using diagnostic software to make sure that we're what we're recommending lines up with What's actually going to work out and how we're actually building your plan So we really don't just guess at what we're trying to tell you we really have a lot of tools in order for us to know that we're making the best decisions for you and It's, like you said about, women living a little bit longer, and just using Toyota as an example, they've got great benefits up there. Great benefits. We're familiar with those and sometimes people don't even know how to, or don't have a good handle on what benefits would work for them or how they should use their benefits. It's that season right now, benefit season, so if you have questions about, how much life insurance you might need, is group insurance the way to go, should I get the legal coverage, all that kind of thing in those benefits, it can be just a little I didn't do it last year, so I don't think I'm going to do it this year. Even the pet insurance. That's it exactly. We can always help with all those kind of, even, what seemingly smaller decisions, but can be impactful in the long run. They can. So what's really cool about this is I worked out at Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky for almost 26 years and I worked with McKellar's husband. He was in a different, he's in engineering and we worked together on making new models and didn't have any ideal. When I came here, McKellar showed me a picture. I'm like, holy cow, I know that guy. So it's a small world. It certainly is. It certainly is. So it's been a joy to work with, you Rick. It's been great meeting you and, Kyrk's always a delight. So thank you so much for having me. It's been really great being here. Awesome. Again, McKellar, we appreciate your time today. Thank you for answering all those questions. If you're out there needing any help don't hesitate to give us a call or shoot us an email and we'll help in any way possible. If you've enjoyed listening to this make sure you share this episode with your friends. And also, if you have any topics that you'd like us to discuss in future episodes, be sure to send us a a message with those as well. Thanks so much!