Join us as we dive into a comprehensive recap of the past year's highlights from our Ditch the Suits podcast.

This episode reflects on the critical financial insights we've shared, focusing on the importance of understanding your money in the context of life and personal fulfillment.

From navigating estate planning to tackling the complexities of bonds, we explore how our discussions have aimed to empower listeners with practical knowledge for their financial journeys.

We also address the impact of current events, such as corporate profits and election cycles, on personal finance, emphasizing the need for informed decision-making.

As we wrap up the year, we encourage you to revisit episodes that resonate with you, ensuring you’re equipped to make the most of your financial future in 2025.

Takeaways:

• We discuss the importance of aligning your financial planning with your life goals.
• Understanding estate planning is crucial, as many people are unaware of their current status.
• Debt can be a tool for wealth creation if used wisely and not abused.
• Navigating the complexities of corporate profits can help you make better investment decisions.
• It's essential to understand the tax code, as it can significantly impact your financial strategy.
• We emphasize the value of communication about financial matters within families.

______________________________________________________________

Thanks to our sponsor, S.E.E.D. Planning Group! S.E.E.D. is a fee-only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interest first. Schedule your free discovery meeting at www.seedpg.com

You can watch all episodes, as well as other great content produced by NQR Media through their YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@NQRMedia

📧 For more information or to get in touch with us, visit https://www.ditchthesuits.com

👍🏼 You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at @nqrmedia

______________________________________________________________

About Your Co-Hosts:

Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.

Steve Campbell has over a decade of industry experience and is the Chief Brand Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Steve also hosts the One Big Thing Podcast, an interview-style show meant to inspire and encourage 30 and 40-year-olds going through difficult seasons of navigating marriage, raising kids, and growing personally.

Steve: 00:00:08

Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about. We're here to help you get the most from your money in life. So buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits.

Well, happy holidays and welcome to Ditch the Suits. This is Steve Campbell alongside Travis Moss.

This show is all about us bringing our collective consciousness and financial planning as I serve as the chief brand officer at Seed Planning Group, which is a fee only financial planning firm. Travis serves as our CEO.

So we bring you things that we talk about with clients and our own team every day to help people really get the most of your money in life. And so we wanted to take this holiday episode as you get towards the end of the year, it's like, all right, what are we going to talk about?

We wanted to look back on the year that's been. We've picked up a lot of new listeners, so we wanted to go through maybe what you have missed or if you missed other series. So.

So Travis, we have covered, Geez, a whole range of series this year on Ditch the Suits.

Why don't you kind of bring us back to where we were in January and kind of kicking off the year, the really most important message that we could have started the year with.

Travis: 00:01:08

Yeah, I think, and I think it's really important because we want, if you joined the show in the last year we've had about 35% of our listeners are brand new listeners. Some of this stuff will be kind of maybe a roadmap to go back and check out some things that we've covered earlier.

But we started right out in the beginning of the year. We were just talking about life in general and we were talking about creating the life and the family that you want.

Now everything's through a financial tilt, but it was. We really focused on life at the beginning of the year, navigating life and finance in a rapidly evolving world.

So we kind of set the tone that we wanted to really help people just feel better and stronger this year.

Steve: 00:01:48

Yeah. And I thought you did a really nice job in that first series of setting the stage right.

We tell people the money component, but the life component is many times what we forget about in the process, enjoying it with the people we love. And that kind of segued into the next series, which we talked about estate planning.

And we know from the amount of people that call us across the country, this is an area when it comes to financial planning that most people just don't know how to do or they avoid it because it's messy. They don't know what documents to fill out. Or maybe they did something 30 years ago with an attorney and they've never looked at it.

So we really walked through and. And you did a really nice job of this. The importance of aligning beneficiaries with your legacy goals.

And we had touched on a little bit how, like, people don't understand that what you have as your beneficiaries in your retirement plan supersedes what's in your will. So they just don't realize that, you know, maybe they've done things without knowing it. When it comes to estate planning, that could be detrimental.

You did a really great job of talking about from a financial planner's perspective, like how to design a will to really reflect what you actually want.

Not just like, hey, give my house to my kids, but like, this is a deeper conversation around where I want my things to go and why it's important to me. And then just crafting a legacy. So if you're like, I don't know, we don't have an estate plan. My spouse and I, we've never had one.

Go back and check out that three part series and that's a good. We have picked up a lot of new listeners. So I think it's really important to say with Ditch the Suits, we usually do miniseries, if you will.

We always introduce a topic like, hey, this is something people that are thinking about or talking about. Here's the important introduction to it. Usually the second episode is let's get into kind of the nuts and bolts of how this actually works.

And then the third episode is usually our professional experience and our own opinion about, like, here's what we think about this. So if you're new to Ditch the Suits, they're not just one episode at a time, they're usually part of a series.

So that estate planning was a really great series. If you've kind of been overwhelmed over what you should do with your estate plan. So talk to us about the next one.

Travis: 00:03:39

Then we got into bonds.

You know, we were coming out of a very tumultuous time with interest rates and the bond market crashing and banks collapsing and that kind of stuff because of, you know, really the bond market. And a lot of people lost money that they won't be able to recover via the way that they were buying bonds.

And so we talked a lot about how you can make or lose money and kind of the fundamentals of buying and selling fixed income.

And then we talked about, you know, really how bond mutual funds can become a Money Trap and really started to explain what you're actually buying when you buy a bond mutual fund and why there's maybe better ways to do that or at least kind of buyer beware. And then we just talked overall, why you should own bonds in the first place. So I thought that that was really timely.

And it's a little bit beyond like a beginner class. You know, most beginner classes talk about you just buy mutual funds and nobody can beat the market, that kind of stuff. Well, all a portfolio is.

All a mutual fund is, is a portfolio. Which is the funny part about just buying mutual funds. Right. It's like, just buy a portfolio.

Well, you should understand what's in your portfolio and how it's reacting to the world around you. I think we did a good job kind of pulling apart bonds and making it easier to digest for people. Yeah.

Steve: 00:04:48

And that was one of those series where we had encouraged people like, hey, pull up your 401k as we talk through some of this stuff.

Because if we say bond mutual funds and you don't know what that means, I think we tried to do a nice job of explaining that there is a position in portfolios for fixed income. But just make sure you know how and why you're doing it. And that's really the biggest thing, is the intentionality behind it. This next one.

Sometimes when you send me the show notes, I'm like, giddy up. What in the world are we going to talk about? We talked about corporate profits and we ditched the suits.

We always try to mix up the variation of themes or topics. And so we'll usually do something that's important to your life and the people that are important to you.

Usually there's some component of financial planning, whether that's estate planning, tax planning, and then it's just like world events. What's going on in the world?

What do you need to know so that you have a better radar of if Travis and I can help you do anything, it's how do you sift through what's real news and real information that is going to impact your daily living? And then what's just fluff pieces? What's stuff that's meant to scare you? And corporate. Yeah, corporate profits.

a great job of explaining how: 2024

And corporate profits was all about, hey, when you hear people on TV say these greedy corporations are stealing from you or causing you to live a lesser life, like, is that true? And so it was kind of a little bit of a masterclass about profits. Are they good or they bad? We talked about what matters more than profits.

So like, how can you go beyond what you're just reading as part of that clickbait? You talked about our corporate profits to blame for high inflation. It's a world of high inflation right now.

You go to the grocery store, it's frickin expensive to buy eggs and stuff and feed your family. And so it's like, where did that come from? Are these corporations the one to do it?

But then also just like the conversation around our corporations, really greedy.

And I think you and I, if I remember correctly, we had talked about there's a difference between if you're mad about the amount of money CEOs make, we get that.

Travis: 00:06:36

Right.

Steve: 00:06:37

But that doesn't mean that there's corporate greed. And so just kind of a fascinating world bend view of like how we see things.

And again, we talked about that conversation because of how many people that we engage with that say mostly to you as a planner, Travis, is this something that I should be concerned about? So these are real conversations we get into people with every day.

Travis: 00:06:57

Yeah.

And then, and then we got into another timely one because a lot of people have been struggling with this and you know, with interest rates up, mortgages are harder to afford.

So we talked about home buying and we talked about some of the dynamics that are forcing housing prices up and how it's more than just one singular thing. And, you know, how maybe to look at that issue and maybe how to re.

Approach what you're, how you're thinking about home buying and homeownership and you know, for really all ages, but especially for younger people trying to find their first homes, those types of things. And we really talked a lot, I think, about how to avoid being house poor. I think we had a whole episode just on not becoming house poor.

And so that, that was a, that was a timely one too because, you know, that's something that so many people are dealing with right now, and they're still dealing with it. And there's dynamics about should I wait or shouldn't I wait?

Well, now people have been waiting for a year and you know, how, how much has it actually changed? You know, in a lot of markets, prices are still going up, so hopefully that helps some people out.

Steve: 00:08:02

Yeah. And we, we talked about before doing the show, why don't we do every other one?

And I feel like I drew the juicy straw because the next series that we did after that was the 24 elections and obviously, surprise, we had an election back in November and obviously we know who our new incoming president is going to be. And so that changes a lot of how the world is going to change and interest rates and how the government's going to look.

But at the time we didn't know any of that. And as we say as a full disclaimer, this is not a political show. We do not present either side.

It's more so like this is what's happening and this is what you need to know. And that was a fascinating series because we really wanted to delve into the impact of election years on your investments.

And so there's a lot of fear mongering that's out there that if this candidate gets elected, your 401k is going to tank or if this person wins, it's going to take off. So people are making inform, you know, making moves on not fully engaged information on emotions, honestly.

Travis: 00:08:56

Yeah, it's emotions.

Steve: 00:08:57

, if I remember correctly, to: 1952

And just again, I think you do a really nice job as a person that puts together our show notes of always trying to add actual historical context to what we're talking about because you can totally say off the cuff stuff and gain followers by being, you know, over the top and you know, sometimes swearing, which that happens. But it's also adding historical context to like we actually here's the data to support whatever claim we're making.

And so if you were somebody that made some moves based off of information, go back and listen to that one. But prepare yourself because Newsflash is going to be another election in four years.

So just a really, you know, current events one that was fun to go.

Travis: 00:09:40

Over and that one's, that one's aged very well actually if you look at that one.

Our big point was the fact that, you know, we have, we have polar, we have people on both sides at the extreme ends and then people in the middle and you know, all along the political landscape and the people who were making decisions out of fear based on what they were seeing on the news or whatnot, sure, they've all been financially hurt. And that's our point is stop letting people financially hurt you for their own gain because that's what they're doing.

And I think we really just nailed it with that. And if you want to look back and say, you know, are these guys, is, is what these guys talking about? Does it actually happen?

I think that that's a Pretty good tie in there. Then we went on to just some financial myths. We, we had three myths that we talked about. Do you need three to six months of emergency fund saved?

We, we talked about, you know, different phases of life in there and what that actually means and where it comes from. We talked about should everyone invest in Roth? And just the spoiler on that was no.

But if you want to know why, go back and re listen to that episode.

Steve: 00:10:47

Little teaser.

Travis: 00:10:48

A little teaser, right.

And then we had financial advisors making commissions can provide partial, can provide impartial advice and their little teaser on that is no, they can't.

And if you want to take a challenge, go back and listen to that episode as well because that helps explain a little bit more, you know, some of the things that go on with conflicts and that kind of stuff.

Steve: 00:11:09

Let's take a quick break to hear a word from your sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Seed Planning Group.

If you're looking for a life giving experience working with a financial planner, then Seed is here for you. Seed is a fee only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interests first.

If your goal is financial freedom and independence without sales products or really glorified salespeople, then check out Seed Planning Group. Today you can visit www.seedpg.com that's www.seedpg.com.

and the best part, you can schedule a free consultation to find out if their fee only planners and their process are right for you.

And as you like to always say, we like to undress the industry just a little bit, exposing what we've learned in our years from working at various firms and now the work we do every single.

Travis: 00:11:57

Just a scotch, Just a scotch.

Steve: 00:11:59

We bring that to you. What was co about that financial myth?

Just to touch on that is when you put together show notes, you try to come up with titles and you try to put up with titles that are going to be things that people search because that's where a lot of us go for information. And that financial myth series was some of our most watched videos on YouTube because I think people are wondering should I be doing these things?

So it's very interesting to see what videos or what episodes trend more than others. And anytime we present, hey, the Internet tells you that you should be doing xyz. Is that true?

It's always a fun one because it's kind of counterintuitive episode to go through. So then we had went into Risk again, another three part series.

Some of these why I say three part is we did like five or six episodes, but Risk was all about navigating risk.

And when we talk with people every day that call in to seed or we just deal life with, it's, you know, I'm heading into retirement, so I've scaled back my risk. I'm going more into bonds. I'm not investing the way that I used to.

And your kind of question through that is, is that really the most appropriate approach? Right. You've been doing something for 30, 40 years that's been successful. Why now are we making an about turn?

And how should you look at risk in retirement? And is it just investment risk? So it was an interesting one.

Talking about risk in retirement, how actually trying to avoid risk sometimes can create many times more risk and create, you know, more situations we got to pay attention to. And then kind of a fascinating one at the end, you would think, what does this have to do with risk?

But the risk of not talking to your kids about money. And I thought you did a really nice job in that one.

From a planner standpoint of presenting what healthy families do and healthy communication and getting things on the table, table versus those that sometimes can say, I don't want to deal with it, my kids will deal with it. And maybe that's a trap.

So if you've ever struggled with, like, man, I don't know how to talk to my adult kids about money because the family's broken, or we just don't know how to do it again. The show is about your money, but it's also about your life. So that was a fascinating one to kind of talk about.

Travis: 00:13:53

Yeah, I love that series, too.

I had a question just the other day from a client we've been working with for quite a while, and they said, you know, now that I'm getting your retirement stuff, how old? You know, when do I start reducing the risk in my portfolio? At what age? And I looked at them, I said, what's age got to do with it?

You've been investing for 35 years a certain way, and you're just going to change it because you're older. I'm like, no, that's wrong.

You change it because you, you need to change it because your, your needs or your requirements in your portfolio have changed. Not just because you get older.

Old age is just this thing that we track for the sake of tracking things, you know, and so if you want more information on why you should not be just changing your portfolio or your risk level just because you're older, we make a pretty compelling argument in that series.

Steve: 00:14:40

Well, and I want to just say something before you jump into the next one because again, I think you did a nice job of most people's experience with a financial professional is they would ask that question and the professional might see dollar signs or whatever and think it's an opportunity to talk about annuities or whatever. But as a fiduciary, you have to do what's in the best interest of a client.

And so I think that was a very compelling case for those that have ever come to a financial advisor and said, hey, should I scale back my risk? And they say, oh, absolutely. You know, you want to be careful of how do you know when your spider sense should go off?

So I think that's a good one if you've ever had questions about it.

Travis: 00:15:13

Well, and that's a good point because another thing that most financial advisors talk about is you have to be debt free. And debt's bad, Debt's bad, debt's bad. You shouldn't have debt. And that's actually not true.

So back to not really a mythbuster series, but kind of taking this idea that nobody should have debt and you need to pay off all your debt, that can actually be pretty detrimental to you financially. And there's a lot of reasons why.

But first and foremost, we did an episode on we need to stop telling people, like the, the whole idea that you have to be debt free or, you know, if you owe anybody, you're a bad person or something like that. The super wealthy get super wealthy because they understand how to use debt. That's how it works. So debt is not bad. Abusing debt is bad.

Just like too much of a good thing is bad, abusing debt is bad. So we talked about a better way to make financial decisions and how to make money by leveraging debt.

Trying to give you some ideas on look, yes, that's. People grow up and they're savers.

And grandma and grandpa said don't ever borrow money, you know, unless you're going to pay it back within 30 days or whatever. But, you know, there's, there's some things there, some financial literacy there that's missing that's probably holding you back.

Steve: 00:16:26

Yeah. In that one right in the middle, a way to make better decisions. If you visit our websites, that's one of our featured episodes.

Because I think, you know, you can come to somebody and ask them what you should do and they'll give you this specific bond or mutual fund that they've always sold.

That episode was all about giving you a context for like, how do you actually make decisions presented across multiple different, you know, know, people's backgrounds and stuff? So I think it's a very cool guide. And that was interesting too, because you and I were talking before we came on that.

got a little bit younger. In: 2024

And so I know debt is one of the topics that people are trying to navigate. Should I have debt? And how does that lead to financial freedom? And so coming back to then looking at debt, how do you then look at taxes?

So we spent three episod. And I get.

I get super excited about this because I get to sit in on a lot of our internal meetings and hear about things we're doing with clients and how tax planning is involved. And sometimes you get to stack these ideas.

When it comes to tax planning and supercharging charitable donations, the first one, you get pumped up because you realize, like, how much people are just missing the simple things they could be doing. You're not trying to convince somebody to give towards charity. Many times these are people that are giving to charity.

They're just writing a check every single year.

And so when you can come alongside somebody and say, what if we could show you a way to save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by the way you're giving to charity, that's a good thing. So that first episode was how to supercharge your charitable donations. Then, like you kind of did with the teaser. Should everybody have a Roth? Right.

The teaser was. No, it was okay, when should you. When to. And when not to fund a Roth. So again, another one from a tax perspective.

s out, like five days left in: 2024

Maybe a little too late for: 2024

Travis: 00:18:34

Yeah, make it your New Year's resolution to get better at some of these things. The next series that we did was how to make a 1% difference. And certainly taxes are a part of that. You really.

People try to avoid paying taxes as if it's some kind of curse. Taxes mean that you made money. Now. It doesn't mean that you, you need to be oblivious and just say, I'll pay whatever taxes you tell me.

It means that you need to understand how the tax game works and realize that it is kind of a game. The way that the tax code is set up, it's designed so that if you do certain things, you benefit in different ways.

And, you know, the next series that we did was ways to make a 1% difference. Understanding taxes certainly is one of them.

But we didn't need to necessarily cover that again because we were already talking about some other things. But, you know, the idea behind a 1% difference was maybe you're making 8% a year on your investments. What if you could make nine?

Or what if you're still going to make eight, but you're going to reduce your fees by a percent so you keep more of that eight in your pocket or any number of things. And if you could put a bunch of things together, how would that help you? So we talked about investment fees, the good, bad, and the ugly of fees.

We talked about mutual funds and why you get a tax bill even when you lose money on a mutual fund.

So capital gains distributions within a mutual fund, which I've never actually met an investor that understood that on the way in the door, on the way out the door, they understand it, but on the way in, they're like, I, you know, I'm frustrated, I'm getting this tax bill. And they end up kind of getting stuck in these mutual funds because of the way the taxes work, not even realizing it.

And I don't want to give any spoiler away on this. This is a fun one to go back and listen to, but we, we had an episode there that we talked about how to avoid irreparable harm to.

Steve: 00:20:10

Your portfolio, which is one I know you like talking about. Again, man, I feel like I drew all the juicy ones.

Then I got another current event that we went through, which was, which was all about bragging now, which was about or diversity, equity and inclusion. And obviously, we're hearing a lot about this in the news. And again, this wasn't us saying DEI is great. DEI sucks.

It was like, how is DEI actually impacting a portion of the investment world that is tied to socially responsible investing? And it was kind of just a fascinating lens into the fact that we have people that are interested in SRI investing, you know, ESG investing.

And so we were saying how DEI was now starting to kind of, you know, make its way into that space by saying, is there a correlation between having a strong DEI program and the value of companies and the growth of stocks?

And so again, you kind of expose the fact that many of these companies that touted DEI years ago and said, this is the way of the future have now since dropped their DEI programs because they got to the end of the day and said, like, we actually haven't grown financially. So, like, how does that impact you as an investor?

If you were championing a cause and now all of a sudden a company said, hey, this isn't as important. So again, not necessarily a political side one way or other, but just more so like, if this is a passion of yours.

Yeah, aligning your money with your values. Understand how these things work and the fact that it can be manipulated at any time if you're not aware. So again, another juicy one.

Dei, go back and listen if you're interested.

Travis: 00:21:33

And.

But that one's another one that's aging really well because now when you look at some of the things that have just come up over the last month or two with so many companies just completely ditching their DEI programs, and that's really changing the, you know, how you might consider a company if you're investing in that perspective.

But the other thing that's happening is we're having a lot of talk with investors that are socially responsible or ESG investors who are saying, maybe I'm not going to be able to make as much money as I thought I would. Kind of following some of these trends. What's. What are other ways to address this.

So we're actually starting to see people who have been historically investing that way, comparing results and saying, you know, maybe we need to revisit this. Because yes, you're right, there's some things that are changing inexplicably given kind of what we thought this was going to be.

So that was great, because then the next episodes that we got into were around bias. Now we happened. The first one's bias around social, responsible and esg. And I'm not saying that they're wrong.

I'm just saying that people's biases drive their decisions.

Steve: 00:22:35

Yeah.

Travis: 00:22:36

And then so now we have biases around numbers. And this is something that really plagues people because people are really just. It's the jonesing issue.

It's, do you need a million dollars to retire? You know, so and so. Told you you need a million dollars or so and so has a million dollars. Do you need a million dollars?

That's what it was when I was growing up. Now it's like probably two, two and a half, three million. But it's the being fixated on a number that means absolutely nothing because it has to.

You know, it's more important to understand what your Social Security, what your pensions, if you have any, and, you know, what are your expenses and things. So we, we dove into that, that and then we also talked about why you need to stop tracking your net worth as some kind of identifier of success.

And so again, we're trying to help people live less stressful lives. You know, if all you're looking is at the net worth and every bad year in the market, you're going to feel miserable.

So we need to get away from the net worth and actually just talk about what does the net worth do for me? What are the things that I'm able to do because I'm financially independent or I'm financially. Well, I'm off.

What are the things that I can do and not necessarily be so fixated on these really arbitrary, stupid, biased numbers.

Steve: 00:23:42

Yeah.

And you know, you've done a great job of championing this with Inside Seed, but our, you know, just cause of helping people overcome their challenges. You know, you hear and talk with people every day that are being held back by things that they actually have more control over.

And it's just learning how to let go and focusing on what's really important.

And that's why I know you had the 1% different one, but that one really excited me when we did it, because you can listen to real estate investing podcasts and you know, stock market podcasts, where if you get it right, it could be very lucrative, which is not many people's position. They are working regular jobs, they're not investing in real estate.

So that 1% different one was really cool because I think we gave six ideas away that if you even did one of those, or all six, I mean, those were real things you could do. So, so then we kind of got back to real life things. There was tax policies being floated around.

We spent five whole episode, folks talking about proposed tax policies and just kind of undressing them and dissecting them and saying what's on the table. And, you know, how do we talk about it?

Not from a political standpoint, but just if you really do tax the ultra wealthy or you do raise tax rates on corporations, what does this mean? And at the end of the day, it's like, look, we were trying to show you that if CEOs are paying more in taxes, that might mean less benefits to you.

That might not mean as much contribution.

So we can shake our fists and grab our pitchforks and light our flames and say screw these guys, they're making too much or they're ruining and they should pay their fair share. But what does that mean if it's actually going to affect your bottom line? So five episodes.

Again, if you're looking for a flare of dts, it could be a good one to go back and listen to.

But I think what you will get from the show is we are going to bring to you information that's being floated around so you know what's real and what's garbage. Hey guys, Steve Campbell with Digital Suits. Want to take one quick moment to make a big ask. If you haven't already.

Travis and I would love for to subscribe to this podcast, but if you haven't, also we would love for you to leave a five star rating and review. Your rating and review will let other podcasters know that the show is worth their time.

So let's get right back to the episode and thanks for listening to Ditch the Suits podcast.

Travis: 00:25:44

You know, Steve, one of the things I was thinking about while you were talking about that is there seems to be this movement to just imagine life as a board game, right? And money as, as you know, as Monopoly.

There seems to be this thing, well, if the rules are too complicated, if there's too many rules, or there's if, or if somebody else is better at the game than me, let's just burn the freaking game down. Let's just, let's just melt down the pieces. Let's light it all on fire. Let's get rid of it because it's not fair.

What I want our listeners to do, learn the rules of the game and outplay other people and realize, and we see this with young financial planners all the time as they're building confidence and getting better at what they. A little bit of knowledge will still be like four times more knowledge than anybody else has, right?

So if you want to get into that top 1% or if you want to be financially independent, there is nothing holding you back other than your willingness to become a student of the game. So then we got into, well, so we kind of got interrupted, right? So we were, we're, we're gearing up. We've got the, the bias around the numbers.

That was actually a four part series.

We split it in half to bring in tax policy changes because I think it was important because these were kind of political things and we were heading into an election. So we were like, look, you know, these are things that are.

People are talking about right now that people, you know, we can shed some light on right now. So we split it up and then we circled back around and.

And we talked about more bias on numbers, and we talked about making major mistakes when selling a house or a business, which we actually got a really wonderful comment that set up a future set of episodes that we did.

Steve: 00:27:24

Yeah.

Travis: 00:27:26

And we also talked about the hidden costs of a high salary. And so that was one that I think is ideal for kids. Well, let's. Let's put it a different way for young professionals.

People are who are looking at their.

Starting their professional careers or parents of people who are looking to start their professional careers to not put so much pressure on just focusing on the size of that salary.

There's other things that you want to focus on if you really want to get ahead long term and not just be like a robot who's stressed out all the time.

Steve: 00:27:56

Yeah. And I was thinking about, even to your last point, about board games. If I could summarize. Ditch the suits. We're not here to play Jumanji. Right.

Where you just throw crap on the board and animals come out and it's all hell breaks loose. We want you to know how to play chess because chess involves skill. You got to know how the rules are placed.

And you do a really nice job of, I think, giving people an alternative way of looking at it, but backing it up with.

Because here's what I see, and so far, what I've learned in this recap is that you've done a pretty good job as a time traveler going ahead of where we're going to be and then looking back and providing a roadmap as to how to make really good decisions. And that kind of was a little bit of the flex in our next series that we went through was. Was some end of year to do lists.

And this is conversations we're having people, you know, towards the end of the year, which is, hey, we got a short window between October, November, December. What are the things that we have to do that post the new year we can't go back and do?

So how do we look at things like an effective budget and income sourcing? And you laid out three different ways of looking at a budget. You talked about roth conversions and 401k strategies.

And then we looked at tax deductions. So really big on the end of the year, what are the moves that you could be making now to not leave money on the table? That you can't carry forward.

So, again, you've got your world events, you've got your life things happening, but then there's also some real financial planning, tax planning, investment planning that you could be doing. So that was a really cool episode.

Travis: 00:29:15

Yeah.

And then we, you know, we circled back from the kind of the request or the question that we got for the major mistakes when selling a house or a business and talked about something that's kind of near and dear to us because we have some people who have gone through this recently, but we talked about dealing with death and rebuilding life after death. And I think just a really important message for people who are going through that type of thing is that you are worth it.

You don't need to disinherit yourself, and you lose your significant other or an important person in your life. And that, to me, was just a very. Thank you very much for the request on that one.

And it was just a very personal message, I think, that we got to share. But something that we go through a lot with people, we.

We experience that, you know, when you work with somebody for 15, 20 years and you go from vibrancy to the end of life and the kids are starting to get involved, and you kind of go through that whole process, a very, very difficult process, and being on the sideline and watching not only the person that you come to respect and work with, but also their loved ones going through it, It's a very different perspective. So we tried to share that perspective.

Steve: 00:30:25

Yeah. And that was, like you said, Travis and I love hearing from you guys as listeners. And that was a YouTube response to a video posing a question.

If you have things that are near and dear to your heart that you can't figure out or you want guidance on, head over to digitsuits.com I mean, fill out that form. Ask us a question. Let us know what's important to you. And I think this kind of.

As we segue, one of the things we want to talk about was just the body of work in general. And I was thinking about more so for you as a listener, like where. Where does D DTS fit? Where does ditch the suits fit in the busyness of your life?

Right. There's a million things you could be listening to. Time is so precious to all of us. Where can dts, where can Travis and I play a role for you?

I think that you just heard from this year? In recap, I'm really proud of the body of work that we have for how broad yet specific.

Travis: 00:31:13

It's a big Body of work a lot.

Steve: 00:31:16

And you can find podcasts that are very niche specific that are going to share, you know, great stories about passive investing and real estate investing. And there's a place place for that.

But if you're looking to get a well rounded kind of balanced approach, and I say that because we talked about political things that are, you know, kind of, you got to be careful about not offending people. But it's, it's our job to tell people things that they need to hear so that they can make decisions from that.

And I think when I look at our body of work, we covered the core components of financial planning from, you know, your cash flow in a series.

We looked at investing, we looked at, you know, whole financial planning, estate of planning, but we also mixed in then, like, how is the world keeps, keeps changing? How is that going to impact you?

And if I look back over the last almost four years of recording with you, there's been a lot of things that we've tried to bring to people's attention that really are the things that are holding them back from really experiencing life that are many times beyond their control. You can't fix the world headlines are going to happen. Enjoy your kids, love your spouse.

And I think if you will tune in on Tuesdays for 25, 30 minutes at a clip.

Knowing we do series, we will always do a nice job of introducing a topic, why it's important, sharing our experiences with it, and then giving you our personal opinion. What you do with that information, folks, is up to you.

But I think DTS should be a part of your Rolodex of information for maybe the things that you may not be getting from other podcasts, books or news outlets.

Travis: 00:32:42

Yeah, I've always said that there's a lot of money to be made telling the truth. And our clients hire us and, and with the way that they hire us at Seed, we're able to tell them the hard truth.

Sometimes even the stuff that most people shy away from because they're afraid of burning a bridge or burning, you know, hurting a relationship, because sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news and sometimes you have to tell people how it is or, you know, explain to them why they've got something wrong for a long time or something like that. And it's hard, it's. It's hard for people to accept that kind of feedback and it, and it's hard for people to be brave enough to give it.

And, but that's our position, that's our attitude and our ethos and Kind of how we approach business. And sometimes it's not as polished or not as pretty, but it's from the heart and it's to the heart.

And I think that what we try to do is take on these challenging issues in a very practical way, in a way that people can actually understand them. So are we doing.

Is this podcast about really sophisticated options, strategies, and arbitrage and all different ways to try to become a gazillionaire? No, because it's. We want it to be practical. We want it to be something that when you hear these things, you can say, am I doing that?

You know, we always talk about, when you start out doing something, do the. Do the free stuff first before you start paying for the fancy stuff, right? And you don't go from, I'm not doing anything to doing fancy right away.

You're not going to have the acumen to understand if that's even appropriate. Appropriate. So you start with what's practical. So that's why we're trying to talk in the way that we're talking.

Let's just make it practical so that you can take, you know, you can have takeaways that actually make sense. I think we had one comment.

Somebody said that I must work at a 711 because the way that I presented a topic, well, maybe I present a topic in a way that I. That I hope people can better understand so they can move forward. I'm not talking to everybody. I'm talking to people who.

Who want to be able to look at their situation and say, can I do this better? Can I do it different? We want to help people avoid the anxiety and stress and make better critical decisions.

And the challenge with the world of financial advice is that everybody's situation is different. It's unique, it's nuanced.

Most of the time, people are either getting generic advice or advice from people that have no business giving advice in the first place. And, you know, they get bullet points with really generic recommendations or really kind of unthoughtful kind of approaches to problems.

And one of, like when we talk about Ross, you know, you're going to listen to some people say, ross are the best thing for everybody. We don't believe that. That they weren't created to be the best thing for everybody. They were.

They're created to be the best thing for certain people in certain situations. So what is it, you know, and how does that work? And how do you know if you're that person?

So I think that we try to get into challenges that a normal person is kind of facing and think about it in different ways and ways that are going to help you be healthy in the long term. And then, you know, financial decisions and good financial stewardship isn't just about money.

And it doesn't mean that someone has to choose money over personal fulfillment. And that's a big balance that a lot of people struggle with. You know, you can over save, basically.

You can save to the point where you basically have anxiety about not being able to save anymore. Even when you have more than you're going to need in three lifetimes. What good is that? What good is that? Stress. Let it go.

Versus the other way, where you go the other way and you kind of blow everything and you're never going to have anything for tomorrow. We need to find a happy balance between the two things. And most people are going to balance kind of, you know, towards one end or the other.

But that's the goal of a good planner, I think, is to help you make decisions, but to kind of unlock your ability to feel good about what you're doing and have confidence in what you're doing. Because it's about the short term and the long term.

If you're planning for a long life, but you're miserable in the short term and you die of a heart attack five years from now, good job planning for a life you never had. Right. So we gotta balance, you know, getting up in the morning every day and getting excited about what we're doing with.

Okay, I still gotta make sure tomorrow's taken care of. Yeah.

Steve: 00:36:59

And we know that this episode is gonna fall right here at the end of the year. And so Travis and I just also wanna thank all of you as listeners and supporters of this show for tuning in. And that's the nice part about dts.

Maybe every series isn't for you. We're gonna let you know at the beginning of a series what it's about. And if you tune out for a couple of episodes, that's okay.

At least you'll know every Tuesday you can come back and jump back into a topic that's of interest. But we still want to bring to you relevant topics that are going to impact a lot of people.

So you don't always get it, you know, right in everybody's mind. But that's okay. We are here to tell you the things that we think are really important.

And I think in our next episode, we're going to share maybe some exciting things coming down the line.

The big vision that we have for this show to really expand upon the experience that you have as a listener, so you're not going to want to miss that next one.

Just as a couple reminders, you can always visit ditchthesuits.com we're going to have in the show notes ways to get in contact with Travis and myself. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so that you can be alerted of new episodes as they come out. Find one that's of interest.

The show notes in the description always tell you what it's about, but we want to hear from you. We want to be super involved and engage with you. But until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays. Enjoy this time. Right?

got one more episode, so for: 2024