From Road Trips to Financial Tips

In this episode of the How to Win Podcast, Kyrk and Rick reflect on their personal and professional milestones from the past year, including major trips and health challenges. They share practical tips for financial planning and conclude with a discussion on the importance of setting and reviewing financial objectives for the upcoming year. 

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.

Chapters

• 1:08 Year In Review
• 8:36 Planning for 2025
• 16:00 How FFP Can Help You
• 18:14 Looking Ahead
• 23:18 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to the How to Win Podcast. I'm Kyrk Davis. And I'm Rick Gregory. Want to know how to win in life and in your finances? Then you're in the right place. On this podcast, we'll be talking about everyday topics and how they relate to your overall financial picture. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the How to Win podcast with Kyrk and Rick. I'm Rick Gregory and I'm with Kyrk Davis and we're going to do the obligatory end of the year podcast. But I don't think that we're going to do all end of the year. It's going to be end of the year and start of the year because if you end something, you got to start something else. What do you think about that Kyrk? I think that's great and we don't know how long it'll take to turn this editing around. So And when you might listen to it, so this could be it could be next year could be a January 1st. Yes. Yeah. All right, so Kurt what I'm the first thing we're gonna start with is things that happened to you last year Last year or this year? Well, this year. I'm sorry. I've got about ahead of myself. Yeah, this year so far. 2024. Yeah, it's been it's been a pretty, pretty eventful a pretty eventful year brought on a lot of new client families that we've been working with, which is, which is always great. But obviously that, that requires a, a lot more work on, on our end, which we're happy to do. So that's been, that's been nice. Markets have been good this year for the, for the most part, which is, you know, always helps take some of that, that, that stress off. But kind of personally my wife and I, we traveled a lot this year. We did, we like to do road trips. So back in, back in May, we did our, our big two week road trip, and we went from Kentucky up to Chicago and then started heading west to South Dakota, and then we did Montana, kind of coming down into Yellowstone. Grand Tetons and ended up working our way down to to Denver and then kind of coming back across. So we did a big old road trip there for over two weeks and got to see a lot of great things. Did some camping while we're out there. Had a great time with that. Seems like every time I called you, you were somewhere. Just about. I mean, it's like I'm texting or whatever. It's like, hey, I don't have any service here. I'm in, I'm on top of a mountain in Colorado. Let me call you back. It was, it was a great trip. I love that. I love that whole, Section of the, of the, the country. And eventually I'd like to explore that a little bit more. But then after, after that trip we, we ended up doing actually the, the week before Thanksgiving we did an Ireland trip. And that was kind of always on the, always on the bucket list. And that was a trip we, we threw together at the last minute. My wife had changed jobs. three, four months ago and ended up having a week of vacation that she had to burn by the end of the year here. So we, we found cheap airline tickets that flew us into Dublin and it's in the off season there. So every rental cars, hotels, airbnbs, all that stuff was really inexpensive and nobody else was around. So we had a great week long trip in Ireland, kind of seeing everything to see there. How was the food over there? The food was, I love the food. It was, so, I, I have a problem with, with overeating , don't we all, I mean, really. But so one thing when, when I overeat here, I get real, I get real, you know, kind of bloated and I feel gross and sick and nasty afterwards. When, when I, when I felt like we overate there, I would feel very full. But we never felt, we never felt kind of sick and gross afterwards and. Then as we kind of dug into what are we actually eating? What kind of what ingredients goes into this? Their food is just so much cleaner. For example, we went into a grocery store and bought a bag of chips, and this wasn't this wasn't like a fancy You know high dollar bag of chips. This was like They're, they're Lay's equivalent, if you, if you will, and we started eating a couple of these chips. It's like, wow, these are, these are really good, and we, we turned the bag over to look at the ingredients and It said potato. It said potato, you know, olive oil, you know, salt, pepper, you know, there was about 12 ingredients on there, and they were all things that Between the two of us, I bet we had in our, have in our kitchen. So there was, there was no, you know, chemicals or preservatives or any kind of weird things that that get thrown in all our food. And I, I'm convinced that that's the things that kind of make us, you know, feel sick and nasty after, after eating sometimes and why, why we felt so much better over there. So you didn't go to McDonald's, is that what you're, that's what you're telling me? You know, interestingly enough, there was, there were several McDonald's's there and I was very, I was very curious to go because I know just They're there that's their culture. They're their foods, you know, gonna be a little bit cleaner and more more local there but also there There are regulations there. There's so many things that they're not allowed to put in food that I'm sure is in McDonald's food so I was really curious to see how American McDonald's differed from you know European or Ireland's, you know McDonald's we didn't get a chance to go in and one just We were in more of a, we spent more of our time in kind of rural areas out there and didn't have, it just didn't line up to actually go to a McDonald's when we, when we passed one. Yeah, but you know, even though McDonald's fries make you feel bad, they're still good. Oh, they're, they're very good in the moment, but, but that was, that was a great trip. So we were there for, for a week flew back on, actually on Thanksgiving day. So our Thanksgiving Our Thanksgiving meal was the the in flight meal by by United Airlines. So it's a little bit a little bit different. I bet that was. But now we're getting into, now we're getting into Christmas season here, and we, I can, I'm happy to say that we are more, we're farther along with the, you know, the shopping than, than we ever have been and most of that was done in Ireland. Oh good. So we got gifts for a lot of people out there and probably did 80, 90 percent of the shopping for Christmas. Did you get me anything? Well, you'll have to wait for another week to see. Well, anyway, so Kyrk obviously had a pretty pretty good year last year. My year was good too, but I had a whole different ball game with my year. So started off the year, you know having fun, working wherever my back started bothering me. Well, one thing led to another and that led to back surgery. Which I had in June, which that really, you know, kind of messed up my summer and slowed my, but my back is perfect now. I mean, the surgeon did a great job. Obviously, you know, I'm happy with it and my back doesn't hurt anymore. So that was a good thing, but we have had a pretty good year here. We've had, you know, a lot of new people come in and maybe not join up with us, but ask questions and find out things. And it's been really good. And it's even gotten better. We just had our Christmas open house. And we had a lot of people here at the Christmas open house, so if you missed that, try not to miss next year because it was really, really, food was good too. It was good. Yeah, food was good. And we had a ton of people and had a really, really good time. So my year wasn't as exciting as Kyrk's, but I think my next year is going to be as exciting as Kyrk's because I think I'm going to start out going to Okeechobee, Florida in February to shoot in the Jack Link's Cup, which I shoot sporting clays. And then a couple weeks after that, I'm going to go to Forsyth, Georgia, to a place called the Meadows. And shoot there, and they have a shoot where you shoot all targets that roll on the ground. So I'm looking really forward. It's called the Rabbit Shoot. Because all of them, every, all 100 targets are thrown and they roll on the ground. So it's, so that'll be, that'll be fun. So my year's gonna start out good. At least it'll be warm, I hope. 100 percent of the targets are rabbits. Rabbit targets that roll on the ground. Every single one of them. It is so fun. It's unbelievable. There's going to be a lot of no birds. Oh no. It's unbelievable how good they do. They do a great job. Last year we went to it. They do a great job and they throw in some of them. I mean, some of them do break because you know how rabbits are. But it's the funnest thing ever. I mean, and there's tons of people. I mean, it's unbelievable. Everybody loves it. And it's, it's, I'm looking forward to that because it's really different. You know, we shoot most times stuff flying in the air, but all 100 of these are rolling on the ground somehow. So here's the thing. This year, getting ready to end new year. So what do we need to do in the new year financially? Is there any like, do you, do we have a checklist or just things that you'd like to do or what do we need to do is to start the new year? Yeah, well, kind of looking at the end of this year and kind of the start of next year. Yeah, there's a checklist but that's going to be a little bit nuanced and different for every single one of our clients, just kind of depending on where they're at in life and you know, what we're trying to accomplish. So, we kind of prepare those checklists and talk about those throughout the year, but they'll certainly be helpful. a new checklist for, for 2025. So you're going to send people like emails and stuff. Hey, did you get this done on your checklist? Yeah, essentially. Yeah. Some, some people we do more kind of. Email correspondence with other people. It's more conference calls or in person meetings. Just depends on, you know, their life circumstances and what works for them. You mean some people procrastinate so you have to extra give them a little act like a phone call. Yeah, yeah. There's always people, there's always people like that. But kind of some general things that I think are good for, good for everybody and things that I personally do and have done for, for a while. At the end of every year, I like to track where my net worth is, and this is something I've done for the past seven years or so. So I go in and I print up a balance sheet, and I have those all saved in a particular file. So I can really go back and kind of see how my net worth has grown. And then I can kind of dig into it a little bit deeper and see, well, is it, you know, has Is my net worth growing because the real estate market is going straight up over the last couple of years? Yeah, in case you guys don't know, Kyrk has a couple of rental properties. Or even just the personal residence there. Is my net worth growing because of those things or is it growing because we're doing well in the investment? I don't want to talk about the growing thing. So I get this bill from Fayette County for my property tax and it went up astronomically. So does that mean my net worth went up? In theory. In theory. That's right, theory. I still didn't like the tax bill. But I like to, I like to kind of see, you know, what areas I'm doing well in. So is it, was it, was it real estate holdings going up? Is it, is it going up because the markets appreciated a bunch? Or is it going up because my savings rate was very high? Or is it going up because I am, you know, paying off debt and my liabilities are, you know, You know, decreasing pretty quickly. So I like tracking and seeing where those trends go. Sometimes net worth goes up, sometimes it goes down. And when we have, you know, bad things, bad things happen. But it's good just to see how that flows over, you know, a long period of time. Maybe I'm just a nerd and like, like tracking that. No, probably not. Probably more people need to do that, really and truly. I mean, I don't do that. But I did notice while I was out for surgery that my checkbook got a whole lot more money in it because I wasn't able to spend any. So, but no, you know, those things, those things are probably important. You know, at least, maybe not, you know, worrying about your net worth, but worrying about, you know, hey, did I save a little more? You know, did my retirement account go up? Do I need to put a little more or a little less in there? So, you know, I, I, those are, that's probably really good. Yeah, so, so I guess Rick's financial tip of the day is if you're, you've got a spending problem, go get back surgery and you'll, you'll fix it. No, I don't recommend that because it really hurt. It really, really hurt bad. So don't try that, but, but try something else. Hit your finger with a hammer or something, but don't, don't do the back surgery thing. Well, then the, then the other thing I like to do is my wife and I put Just about every single expense that we can we like to put that on our credit card. We always make, you know, one payment to pay that off every, every month. So we're not paying any, any interest or carrying any balance. But the, the great thing in my mind about doing it that way and using a single card is I can log into that, that bank app there and it will give me a breakdown of All of my spending and it automatically categorizes it and you know for me and It's really good to just kind of go back and see okay Here's how much I actually spent over the over the year how much what you know What did I spend on average every month and then be able to dial in and say okay? This was my you know my grocery bill. This is how much I spent eating out. This is how much we spent on you know Vacations and traveling and you know all these different things I like to do it once a year just because it gives us a bigger, you know, a bigger average there. Because some months are going to get skewed pretty wildly just depending on, you know Yeah, like if you go on a trip somewhere. Yeah, But I find looking at it over a year period gives me a pretty good, a pretty good average there. And I'm not looking at this from, from wanting to go in and really like dial in a budget and say I can spend, you know, 5, 000. 350 a month on, you know, X, Y, and Z. I like to just kind of look at it and say, Okay, in my mind, these are the areas that, that I get a lot of value out of, a lot of joy out of, and I'm okay spending a whole bunch of money in those areas. There's other things that I find that, that just don't provide any, any real value. So, if I see that my spending, for some reason, in those areas is, is higher than what I want it to be, then I'm okay. Well, now I can kind of dial in and see, well, why was it that way and what little tweaks can I make in my life to to maybe reduce those, those, those expenses and save some extra money or having more, or have more money to, you know, put to the things that I really love. So, I, essentially what I'm trying to say is I like to look back and see and make sure that my expenses are actually matching my, my values. So, that's the, that's another big thing that I like to do. And then the, the third thing, and this kind of falls in, in, in line more with the, the coming up year, is my wife and I will, will sit down over a nice dinner and discuss where we, where we think we're going to be from an income perspective whether we got, we got raises or or, or what. So, yeah. And kind of start planning out the next year. Hey, is there, you know, do we want to go take a you know, a really big trip this year? Or do we want to do a series of kind of smaller things? How much money do we want to save into, you know, 401Ks or, you know, Roth accounts? Or just, in general, you know, cash in the bank kind of, kind of savings? Or maybe it's this year we talk about, hey, we, you know, we bought a car last year and now we're carrying a note for that. That's a bit higher interest rate than we like, so where can we, where can we kind of move some things around so that we can work on paying that off a lot quicker. So that's just kind of our, setting our projections for the, for the next year. So those are the, the three things that we typically do in December that make sure 2024 was You know, on track and set us up for success going into 2025. Now, so Kyrk went through all that and I know it sounded like it was a big, giant, detailed thing, but if you guys come and become a client of ours and join our little family over here, we, we do stuff like that. We help you do stuff like that. We won't do it for you, but we will help you and we have stuff. We have tools. To where that you can do all of that if you want to, or you can do part of that. And that's part of what we do as financial advisors and, you know, the, the things as basically as friends, you know, when you join up. So, so Kyrk does, Kyrk does all that for himself. So, you know, it must be important if he does it for himself. And we also do that for our clients or help them do that. Yeah, there's gonna be some things that, that we can actually do for you. There's gonna be some other things that we just need to kind of poke and prod you to, to do. And it's not everything that I feel is you know, important. You know, it's what you feel important too. So, so part of what we do is help you with those projections so you, you know, where you're gonna be, you know, at some point in the, in the future. And we help you set goals. And then we, I think this is probably the, you know, just as big or important a piece, if not the most important piece, is that we actually hold you accountable to doing those things. That's where I was mentioning those phone calls. So, you know, maybe, maybe you told us, or maybe we kind of did the projections and based on what you're, you know, currently saving and spending and when you want to retire, you might have a little bit of a shortfall in retirement. So, how we fix that, you know, in the simplest terms is we need to You know, either save more or spend less and maybe we decide with you that you're, you're not comfortable spending less. You want that, that higher lifestyle. So the other option is we, we, we save more and that might mean, hey, every quarter for the next, you know, year and a half or so, we bump your 401k up by, by 1%. So over the next, you know, year, year and a half, we went from whatever we were saving to, you know, another 6% on top of that. It's just kind of gradually bring it up. Well, we'll hold you accountable to making sure you do that, so every time we have our quarterly meeting, I'll check in and be like, Hey Rick, did you, did you actually go in and increase your 401k? And if you did, great, you know, high five. If you didn't Hey, let's get on the computer and do it, you know. Let's get on, we can log in right now and and you can do it there. But the idea of holding you accountable is, We're helping. It's just You know, yeah, it's not like we're trying to slap your wrist with a ruler or whatever. It's like, you know, we're trying to help because You know, myself, being retired, you know, I realize now, whereas I didn't before, how important those things are. You know, that phone call or that so called slap on the wrist is, you know, down the road ten years from now you're going to say, man, I'm glad I did that. So what about plans for the coming year? So if you've got any big plans, you're going anywhere, I know I dumped mine out there already and said that I'm going to Florida as soon as I can, but what about you, what are you doing this year? Yeah, well we got, We got one big trip that's somewhat on the calendar. We kind of have an idea of when we're going to do it. Again, it's going to be kind of our road trip, if you will. And this year Hannah and I decided we wanted to go explore the upper peninsula of Michigan there. So we're all surprised sometime in June or July. That's kind of the, from, from what we're told by, by Carson in our office, who actually grew up in the upper peninsula, she said that's the best time of year to go. So we'll probably spend two weeks or so. You know, exploring up there, doing a lot of hiking, camping, and we'll bring the kayaks and get on the lake and doing that sort of thing. So that's the, that's the real big trip that we, that we have planned, that'll be coming up. Honestly, eat away most of Hannah's vacation. Then we'll have another, we'll have another week or so that we'll have to fill out somewhere throughout the year, but haven't quite figured that, figured that out. What about your golf game? You didn't play very much golf last year. I was kind of worried about you there for a while. I thought maybe I was going to get like a new putter or something that since you weren't using it. Well, you still got my old putter. I do have, yeah. I forgot about that one. Yeah. But yeah, for, I, I didn't really play a lot of golf or I did play a lot of golf, but in comparison to what I played and, you know, 2020, 21, and 22 and even 23, it was, it was nothing. I don't know, I don't think, I don't think I'm going to get a, just kind of looking at how work's going to flow and kind of timeline for, for some, for that big trip there. It's kind of right in the middle of the, the prime golf season, so. I don't know. We'll, we'll have to, we'll have to see how, how, how that progresses throughout the, the year. And then the other trip that we, that we have planned is more of a a work related trip. But every, every two years a Nesco's, that's our, our broker dealer They do a big conference for the top 75 reps. So I was lucky enough to, to make it to that in, in 2023, and then we'll have it again in 2025 and unless something crazy happens, I'll, I'll be, I'll be there for that. This, this year's gonna be, or I guess 20, 25. Yeah, it'll be in, in Colorado Springs, so that's towards the towards the end of end of September kind of getting close to Or what will be 11th wedding wedding anniversary? But that's just a that's just a couple day a couple day trip that maybe Hannah And I will make it a full a full week and spend some extra time out there but So you're in the top 75 then, huh? Top 75 for now. Top 50 for now. Top 50 for now. Moving up the list. That's pretty impressive. I still got a long way to go to catch Dave and Alex. Well, Dave and Alex had a head start. That's not fair. Yeah, just two decades or so. Yeah, they had a little head start. That's not fair. Back to work stuff, so, or retirement stuff, or whatever, investment stuff, so is, is there any changes coming in like regulations or laws or anything, like, will we be able to put more money in our 401k or something? Is anything coming like that in the coming year, any, anything popping up? Yep, so, just. You know, periodically they increase limits that you can put into, you know, 401ks, Roth IRAs, IRAs, you know, all those, those retirement type accounts. They'll usually kind of adjust that based on just, you know, Inflation, if you, if you, if you will, for, for lack of a you know, better, better reasoning. But yeah, so 2025, everything's gonna gonna bump up a little bit. We're not talking crazy amounts, but everything's gonna, gonna bump up a little bit there. So that's gonna be the, kind of the, the big one. We'll see if there's any, any real tax changes you know, with, with the new administration coming in. I know there's, there's always talks that, that, that there's gonna be something and . And the one thing I can can, can guarantee you is everything that was talked about is not gonna be everything that actually happens. No, that's not, that's right. Yeah. That's not a political thing. That's a No, it's just a proven fact. it's just a proven fact that no, no president or no politician has ever done exactly what they, what they said they're gonna gonna do. Yeah. Yeah. But, but we'll see. I think we'll know, I think we'll know a lot more in the next 90 days or so of what to, what to expect kind of, kind of going forward. But, you know. I don't have any, any, any major, major concerns or anything and the, the fact is that, you know, the, the president and, you know, anybody in, in, in office or all the politicians, how they, they affect your, your finances and, you know, your retirement planning is, is relatively, is relatively minimal. Yes, there's, there's some impact there, but What's going to dictate your success or failure is the things that you do on a, on a, on a daily basis. Everything else that happens is just kind of noise and, and things that, you know, make us, make little, little tweaks. But your behavior and your diligence in saving and, you know, spending in an appropriate manner and, you know, picking an investment portfolio that is, appropriate for your goals. That's where you, that's where you become successful or, or become a failure. Well, I don't want to change mine this year. Yeah. Mine's been doing good. I'm okay with that. So, so let's, I don't care what happens. Just leave mine alone. Yep. Okay. So everybody, here's the big thing. It's right before Christmas. You may not listen to this before Christmas, but it's right before Christmas. So Kyrk, are you ready for Christmas? I am proud to say that we are Probably in the best shape kind of leading into Christmas that we've ever been at this point. That's funny. So are we at our house. That's really, that's amazing. So Hannah and I, we usually don't buy hardly anything for, for each other. You know, throughout the year if there's something we want or need, we usually get that for, for ourselves. So when, when Christmas rolls around, it's, we get a little, you know, 50 something just to, you know, Yeah, so you have a Christmas gift. Something to open up. But for friends and family, we do go and obviously go buy gifts. One of the great things about the Ireland trip is we were able to do a lot of our Christmas shopping while we were there. Did you get that jacket? Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. We'll see. That's on the, the wishlist there. Nice. A nice shooting jacket. Yeah. But we did most we did most of our, our shopping there. So when we came back from Ireland, we were 85, 90% of the, the way done. It was just a couple little odds and ends to, to, to put together. So I, I'm, I'm very happy with where we're at right now. Well, we didn't have to get a whole lot because the day after Christmas, we're gonna go to Vegas, and of course, you know, I have three girls, so we're gonna take the girls. And we're gonna go to Vegas for a Christmas, Christmas trip, so we didn't really have to buy a lot of gifts. Of course we did for the rest of the family and stuff, and we're 99 percent done with that, like you said. But, so for our, all of our Christmas, we're gonna go out to Vegas for a couple days and you know, go out there and see a couple shows and go to a couple buffets and hang out. You know, just, so, so that's, that's gonna be our, our Christmas present. So, that's a, that's an easy one, really, so, obviously I'm pretty ready. Just don't pull all the Clark Griswold while you're out there. No. One of the greatest movies ever. Yeah, so I'll try not to, but yeah, so Kyrk, you got anything to close this thing up with? Well, again, you know, we thank everybody for everybody that listens, we thank you for that. If there's something you want to hear us talk about send us send us an email or give us a call and let us know your suggestions and we'll work that into into the, the new year somewhere. But if I don't see you or don't get to talk to you I want to wish everybody a happy Christmas or a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Same here, merry Christmas, happy new year and thanks to everybody and we appreciate all the clients that we have and we hope to help them more and help anybody else more. Thanks for listening to the How to Win Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the episode, and if you did, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you'll never miss an episode. If you have questions about your finances, visit our website@familyfinancialpartners.com or give us a call at (859) 219-1006.