Nikki Foley: What could you accomplish financially before December 31st? What if you had just 150 days to make meaningful progress towards your financial future? Whether your goal is saving more, reducing debt, lowering taxes, or protecting your family, the decisions you make before the end of the year could have a lasting impact. Welcome to Paladin Financial Talk. I’m your host, Nikki Foley, and today I am joined by featured advisor Jeff Quick. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Quick: Hi, Nikki. Oh, let’s do this.

Nikki Foley: All right, let’s get started. You are kicking off a new four-part series for us. And so, let me tell you a little bit about the series that we’re doing. So, the advisors here at Paladin Financial, we’re going to share some really practical strategies to help finish up the year strong, and I can’t believe we’re talking about like year-end, but actually, we’re halfway through the year. We’re starting to look at the other side of things. And so, this episode, we’re going to focus on one area where small intentional actions today can create meaningful financial results for tomorrow. And so in this episode, we’re going to discuss how to choose one meaningful financial goal for the rest of the year to build a simple plan to accomplish before December 31st.

Jeff Quick: Sounds good.

Nikki Foley: I think this speaks to you. Let’s talk a little bit about you for a second, Jeff. So, I want to brag on you for a minute. You have been in the industry for 20 plus years. You have played lots of roles in the industry actually. And so, you have been on the banking side. You have been in more of a like the back office and the client service side. You have worked in the tax side. So you have done a lot of things in this industry, which I think is fantastic to be able to see different perspectives to really understand what’s going on. But you’ve been serving clients for now, gosh, is it 20 plus years? 15 plus years? You like working hand in hand with our clients. You have your multiple licenses here; you’re set up as a fiduciary. But what I feel like, this series speaks to you. You like to keep it simple, like let’s not overcomplicate all of this. But your thoughts are really rich. So what did I miss out or what should we share about you that I didn’t cover there?

Jeff Quick: Oh geez, I guess the main thing for me is I just want to know why are the clients meeting with me? If it’s a new client, why are they there? Like it’s really simple. Why are we sitting here talking today? What can I what can I help you with?

Nikki Foley: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you can get really lost in all the details because this industry gets so complex. The jargon is so rich. And so that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to keep this simple.

I’m going to ask you a series of questions if that sounds good. And we’ll walk through the process and then at the end you’re going to give us that a-ha of what we should be focusing on.

All right, Jeff, most financial goals fail because they’re too broad or they never turn into action. So, I want to start by giving a glimpse into our appointment process. One of the first questions that we like to ask every new client is, “What are your goals and dreams?” And it sounds like a simple question. How does that conversation really go along the way here?

Jeff Quick: It goes one of two ways. A lot of times people are silent like they haven’t given it any thought. So they really don’t know what to say. And it usually starts off quite simple or broad. They have an age they would like to retire by. Often they want to retire by the age of 60 or they want to travel more. It’s usually pretty simple. And for me the important part is just getting clients to slow down a little bit. Yeah. And a lot of people say they want to travel more. So then the first question for me, which might be different from others, is do you travel now? Sure. A lot of people think they’re going to do stuff during retirement, but if you’re not doing it right now, the chances of you really making a big change and all of a sudden starting to travel if you’ve never done it before, it’s probably not going to happen. Yeah. So then it’s where do you want to travel? Simple stuff.

Nikki Foley: I like to hear you say that because it actually plays into an activity that kind of that I’ve been a part of. But how do you handle it? And I’ll come back to how I don’t know. I think it’s hard to do what I’m going to suggest here in a second, but how do you handle it? Like when they don’t know.

Jeff Quick: Yeah. I mean really it’s what do they like to do? And oftentimes I’ll start with let’s assume that all of your basics are covered. Yeah. You’re financially secure for the most part. And if that were the case, what would you like to do? Yeah. And I like to get people to go beyond what they think they can accomplish and just tell me what you would do if these things were possible and let’s get as a big a list as we can and let’s start there. And then if we can’t do all of those things, let’s figure out what’s important to you and start to cut things down and really drill into the two or three or four things you really want to accomplish and let’s see if we can do those.

Nikki Foley: I put you on the spot there a little bit, Jeff, because I was pretty sure that’s what you were going to say. I’ve worked with you long enough to know how you do approach this. So, this is getting a little technical for most people, but there’s something called “smart goals”. And smart goals are taking it to the next step. You say you want to travel. Well, tell me more. You have to be more specific. So, the S is for specific. The process of a smart goal, each one of those letters stands for something. So, specific, measurable, and so forth.

But by the time you get all the way through that concept or that activity of getting measurable and is it realistic? Do I have other people on board that matter in your life. A lot of times you can pitch out one of those really easy because what I am never going to get all the way through and make this come to life. It’s just not really realistic for me. Maybe that’s the travel thing like you said by the time you get and really think through it. I don’t know that I can bring that to life, and I don’t know that I want to put the effort to bring it to life. And so, I know that you do push on people. Let’s make the entire list and then let’s kind of start working through them. And so, an activity that is available that might help people when they think about going to a financial advisor. They think they’re going to talk about numbers the entire time.

Well, it really does start with what do you want this to look like? What are the dreams and the goals? And then we can start working from there.

Jeff Quick: Yeah. The financial piece is typically the smallest. A lot of that stuff isn’t even within our control as advisers, right? It’s based on their income, their savings, their personal risk tolerance. All those things determine how we end up investing the money. Yeah. And so that becomes a very small part that I take care of behind the scenes and then bring that forth, and typically in that second meeting.

Nikki Foley: Absolutely. And so this would be I think part of the challenge as we’re listening today is if you aren’t expecting to be asked what are your goals and dreams. Start thinking about that because it is such a key piece, and it we keep coming back to it. So we make sure that as you change and as your life changes around you that we’re working towards what you want us to be working towards. Yeah. So let’s talk about so we’ve talked about the exercise when you first meet someone. So how do you keep up with the clients thereafter? Are they keeping the topic of goals? Are you keeping that in front of them? How do those change? Are there certain financial goals or planning conversations that are recurring for you?

Jeff Quick: Yeah, I mean for sure there’s the obvious ones, but just in going back sometimes people, as you mentioned, don’t know that big picture. They’re they’re not there yet. So, it’s really hard to picture that. So, a lot of times for me, it’s just let’s just start small. Yeah. And what do you want to accomplish over the next 12 months and let’s get that down. So when we do meet and for most clients with me it’s on an annual basis. It’s multiple contacts but it’s really one big annual meeting and now we have something specific we can track and see if we accomplish those. If we didn’t is that still a goal of yours and what can we do to make that come to fruition this year? But I mean if I didn’t talk about their goals every time I met with them, I’d be doing them a disservice. It’s not a one-time thing. Set it and forget it. Yeah. Life happens. maybe you’re having grandkids are born.

That changes your plans or your priorities. A lot of things come up on a regular basis that we need to be aware of and make sure we’re focusing on those small 12-month goals and then continue to focus on those long-term ones. We always talk about taxes. We always talk about savings, talk about investment performance, but those aren’t as satisfying as having a goal and actually accomplishing things, which then inspires them to go and create new goals, sometimes bigger, and let’s go for that next thing. And that’s when it really becomes fun, and we have a relationship with the clients. I’ve sent clients lake homes. I know they want to buy a second home. I love to look at real estate. So, if I come across something that fits what one of my clients may be looking for, I’ll send them real estate listings.

Nikki Foley: That’s where I feel like you end up having when you have that type of going back and forth, you really know what the other person is looking for and you have a different type of relationship when you do that. You talked about how things pop up along the way. I met with somebody last week and she has three grandkids that all decided to get married like very short turnaround time. She’s like, I wasn’t expecting that. And she had, a plan of what she wanted to give each grandkid from a financial perspective when they got married. And she’s like, you can’t spring weddings on me. in like a six-month time frame and do three of them all at once. And so that is the reality of life does happen and it happens fast sometimes. So the other thing that I think you said Jeff and you didn’t put it in these terms is sometimes you just need an accountability partner to go along with you or somebody that’s going to quarterback a lot of this and I know that I have a lot that I want to get done. Sometimes it comes easy and other parts of it doesn’t come as easy. So knowing that I have to have a conversation and be accountable to things that we talked about certainly helps along the way. And that’s just kind of human nature.

Jeff Quick: It is. And you also have somebody in me that’s rooting for you to accomplish these goals, which makes it more fun, too.

Nikki Foley: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a good that’s a good perspective. That’s the glass half full is that you’re not coming in to report something, but you’re coming in to celebrate something. And so that’s that’s such a good perspective, Jeff. So, what are some examples of goals people can realistically accomplish before year-end? It’s kind of that time to start thinking about that.

Jeff Quick: Yeah, I focus on November last quarter. That’s where there’s still an opportunity. One simple one is maxing out your 401k plan if you have the ability. But if you can’t max it out, that’s just you don’t have the means to do that. Let’s think about let’s increase that percentage that we donate on an annual or that we contribute to our retirement plans on an annual basis to help get us closer and that sets us up for a great kickoff for January. look at taxes. Are there things we can do to reduce our taxes as we’re taking a look at that? Maybe we deducted too much money and now we’re going to get a refund. Maybe that’s not our goal. So now we can contribute more. I focus a lot on taxes because of my background because I know how big the expense is. If somebody’s short of, let’s say, that 12% tax bracket, maybe that’s time to do some Roth conversions to take advantage of that.

If somebody’s edging into the next tax bracket, 22, 24, 28, maybe now we want to look at making some additional contributions to your IRA or your 401k because now if you’re in a 24% tax bracket, you put $100 in, that only costs you $76, right? You’re getting more free money or more money back. You’re saving more than than you’d think so. So, it might make sense to increase those contributions at year end. So, those are a couple of really simple things. I like to look at the taxes and the brackets and should we contribute more or should we, spend either spend more, maybe take a bigger withdrawal for the following year if we’ve got room in case an emergency comes up. Now, we have money we paid 12% on or a lower tax rate. So, those are the biggest things I look at on a regular basis.

Nikki Foley: So Jeff, what I heard you say is November is really decision-making time and there’s some key categories that impacts as maxing out a 401k or increasing contributions or taxes and making some key decisions around some of the tax piece of it, moving brackets around, but sometimes because those are real dollars we’re talking about, it takes some planning to start now. And so that’s why we are having this conversation so far out from the end of the year. But what a great opportunity to figure out, do I want to do this or where does it fit into my priority list?

Jeff Quick: Yeah. And as you get to the end of the year, maybe you can your plans might change, right? You may have had some expenses that came up that you didn’t know about. Yeah. So now maybe you’ve spent more money, so there’s ways to mitigate that or you didn’t spend as much as you thought. Maybe it’s time you want to make some charitable contributions. There’s time at year end to make some larger one-time contributions if you’ve been doing it on a monthly or weekly basis. Well, maybe there’s room for us now to make one more big one at the end of the year to reduce taxes and continue giving to those charities that we’ve chosen.

Nikki Foley: as you go through this, I think about the recurring nature of some of this. If you are a person that always and still working, always gets a bonus at a certain time of the year, you can start planning and working with your financial professional around some recurring themes that happen in your life and making decisions then. And so, you make some good points there. I talk about and we say this in our office, when you’re working with a financial professional, we help people retire every day and so we retire lots of times, but the clients that we work with usually only retire once and so it’s so important to bring in some of this perspective where you are on repeat dealing with contributions and taxes and 401k max and all of those things where you have it almost on autopilot on the things to think through and that’s not as commonplace for somebody that’s getting ready to retire for the first time or going through some of this for the first time.

Jeff Quick: Yeah, absolutely.

Nikki Foley: So, Jeff, here we come to the big question. If you had to make one recommendation or just one financial goal that most people could realistically accomplish before December 31st, what would be that final recommendation?

Jeff Quick: Yeah, and I touched on that a little bit. But I think the biggest thing is sitting down in that November time frame and looking at your contributions that you’ve made, your tax withholdings, and taking a look at all of that and then making smart financial decisions just based on those two factors because from November to December 31st, there’s an opportunity to have a huge impact on your overall year. Maybe, like I said, it’s charitable contributions. It’s increasing those 401k contributions. Maybe you, again, you’ve saved up some excess money. Maybe your distributions were larger than you needed for the year. Maybe you cut off that last distribution for the month of December because you don’t need it. And you can move that over to the following calendar year again to mitigate taxes, stretch them out over a long period of time. And that has an immediate impact on your pocketbook. And again in April when you either pay or get that tax refund, you’ve already taken care of that. You know what to expect. And again, it just gives you more time and room to plan and be as efficient as you can with your finances.

Nikki Foley: I think you did such a good job of illustrating our whole concept of anytime you make a financial decision, it’s also a tax decision. And pretty much everything that you just described there, we’re really talking about making sure you understand the benefit of taxes and how it can work for you. And that’s all, such a key piece of what we do. And a big piece of your background is the tax the tax side of things. And so, making sure that you take the time to sit down with your financial advisor, especially if all of this is a little bit Greek to you and the tax piece kind of gets you a little bit uncomfortable. What a great time to sit down with your financial professional and making sure that you understand when you pull a few strings, what does that look like and how might that impact the bigger picture?

Jeff Quick: Yeah, absolutely.

Nikki Foley: So, here is my challenge to everybody that’s listening today. So over the next 150 days, don’t just listen to these episodes, but pick one financial goal and take one action after each show. And so by December 31st, if we do four episodes on this, they should have, everybody that participates and plays along with us, we’ll have taken four meaningful steps towards a stronger financial future. And so while hopefully each one of these conversations are simple in nature, they can be really impactful. And so if you haven’t sat down to talk with your financial advisor before the end of the year, make sure that you go to our website and go to the booking link at the top of our website at paladinfinancial.com or even go to our show website if you want to listen to this episode again and that’s paladinfinancialtalk.com.

Both of them have the booking link at the top and make sure that you have something on the calendar before year end. and those deadlines get pretty tight on some of this towards year end. So, don’t wait till the end of November and start thinking about this. Let’s get something on the books earlier so that we can make sure that we meet any deadlines that actually come honestly a lot of times they come at the very beginning of December to make sure we hit something before December 31st. Just processing timelines. So, that’s your challenge for the week. Complete one action before the next episode. So, decide what that’s going to be and if it looks like what Mr. Quick has talked about that tax conversation and taking advantage of some of the things before that December 31st deadline is important to you. Make sure that you go out to our website and hit that booking link.

One of the things that we like to do as well as it goes along with any of our shows is offer a download. And so this is getting a little technical for people, but I am going to make the smart goals template a download. And so if you’re somebody that would like to get a little bit more specific with the goals that they’re making and playing into the financial conversation, that will be made available. So if you go to paladinfinancialtalk.com and you hit the download link, that is something that you can work on and fill out and maybe even choose to bring to one of your next one of your next meetings with your advisor. So if you’re sitting there and it says this sounds like me, go to our website and let’s get something booked or call us at 651-842-8406.

Nikki Foley: Mr. Quick, did I miss anything or anything else you’d like to share?

Jeff Quick: I don’t think so. I’m very excited to listen to the other advisor’s episodes because I might pick up something myself that maybe I’m missing with my clients and I can do. So, I think this is going to be a great series. I’m looking forward to actually watching it myself, listen to it. So, hopefully we’ll keep things simple enough that everybody can pick up one item out of the next four weeks here and continue to follow along with us as we go through these.

Nikki Foley: So, follow us on our social media platforms for more insights, resources, and upcoming content. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. And thanks for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.