Welcome And What We Unpack

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Influential Advisor Podcast. Today we sit down with Ira Work, a financial coach with 42 years in the industry and founder of First Financial Coaching. After spending 17 years inside the traditional brokerage world, Ira walked away and wrote a book called The Investor's Coach. In this conversation, we get into the four myths Wall Street keeps selling, the hidden tax trap inside your retirement accounts, and why the most important question an advisor can ask has nothing to do with money.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

I am doing good. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I'm doing

Ira’s 42-Year Path Into Finance

SPEAKER_01 0:47

great. Ira, to get started today, I wanted to ask you if you could tell me a little bit about your background and what led you to becoming a financial coach.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Let's see, I started in the business. I can now actually this month say 42 years ago, which was funny because I was talking to a new advisor, or I should say a younger advisor, and I asked him, How old are you? He said, 32 years. I'm like, Yeah, I was doing this 10 years before you were born. That made me feel a little old. That puts it into perspective. What got me into this? I was finishing up my last semester of college, wasn't sure what I was going to do. So I applied to law school. I did not get accepted to law school. And my mom had a neighbor who was a stockbroker, knowing that I was playing around with stocks with my student loan money. He said, Why don't you talk to Gene and maybe you can get a job as a stockbroker? And that's pretty much what I did. I went on three interviews. The third interview, they said, after you graduate, come back and see us, and we'll be happy to hire you. So in January, I went back, told them I graduated. They gave me the name of a company that they prep preparing for what's called the Series 7 test, which is the test that allows you to sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, all those things that you hear about. I studied for two weeks, the material that they gave me. Then we went in for the third week, which was the practice test week. And all we did for eight hours a day was practice tests. And how they got the answers and the test questions, I have no idea. But on Friday, they gave us what they called the green light test. And if you scored a 90 or better, you were ready to take it. So naturally I scored a little better than a 90. And the next day, Saturday, I went in, I took the test. This was back in the day when you filled in the little bubbles. Remember those tests with the number two pencil? And I passed. That was an all-day Saturday thing, three hours in the morning, an hour for lunch, three hours in the afternoon. And you found out your results are on Saturday. Naturally, babe, on Sunday, I was starting to question my answers on Monday. I'm like, I wonder if I failed. When I got the call on Wednesday, the manager who I was going to be responsible to started the question with, Did you even study for that test? And your heart sank. Funny thing is, my mom said, if I had studied in college like I had for that test, I would have actually probably gotten into either law school or dental school. But I think the difference was I didn't know what I would do with my life if I didn't pass this test. Because here it was, I had a degree in business management. And what do you do living in South Florida with a degree in business management?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

So I didn't know what I would do. You know, I didn't want to weigh tables, not that there's anything wrong with that. I didn't want to sell cars, not that there was anything wrong with that. But I passed the exam. They had me come up on Friday, gave me material to learn over the weekend, and then Monday morning I had my little scripts memorized, and they gave me a phone book and said, start calling. And that's how I ended up in this business 42 years

Why He Wrote The Investor’s Coach

SPEAKER_02 4:22

ago.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Now, after 42 years in the business, I recently you've written a book. I see it there behind you. Could you tell us about the book that you've written and the idea and who it's meant to help?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

I would like to believe it's meant to help everybody because there's so much misinformation out there. The book was not written like a lot of the books that are out there. There are literally thousands of books out there on investing.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Um if you could go into a Barnes and Noble today, which is pretty challenging, but just look up investing on Amazon and you will see a plethora of books that are available to buy. Most of them are technical. I worked for a guy who wrote three books, and he said, No, I write them very technical because I want people to feel that they need to have me. I wrote the book to sound like a conversation, that you feel comfortable reading the book. It's not technical. You're not going to be intimidated. And having given that book out to clients, that's what they're telling me. That number one, when I said, I'm going to send you a copy of it, they were, but I'd like you to read it. They were a little intimidated at first. And they said when they got it and they saw how thin it was, they were like, Wow, okay, I can actually get through this. And then when they started to read it, they said, Wow, this makes a whole lot of sense. It's really what you have been teaching us all these years that we've been working together. And it really did help to remind me and reinforce what I learned and why we stick with the portfolio that we're working with.

What Felt Broken On Wall Street

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Ira, you had spent 17 years inside the traditional financial industry before you made a major shift. And so, what were you seeing that told you that something was off and maybe not working when you made that move?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

I would probably say just about everything, which is why I made the move. The industry is really built to sell stuff. It's not built to educate investors. And I really believe that an educated investor will be a more competor and thereby more successful because they're not going to get sucked into what is being said on the television and on radio. They'll have more knowledge. So some of the things that I saw wrong having worked for probably four or maybe five different companies, if I had to go back and start counting them, is that we were all selling the same products. Unless, like for example, when I was with Sher Saleman brothers, or when I was with Smith Barney, they all had their own proprietary products. Those proprietary products were really there for two things. Number one, to keep the advisor at the firm, because those Smith Barney funds wouldn't transfer to Merrill Lynch or LPL, if you will, to a couple of firms that are still around today. Some of the firms that I'm very familiar with are gone. Sherison Lehman Brothers is gone, Smith Barney is gone, Dayton Whitter is gone. So a lot of those companies that I grew up with, they're not even around anymore. We were taught to sell mutual funds using mountain charts. So the mountain charts, they just go up and up. And then what seemed to be wrong was every time I would get an investor into those funds with this fabulous track record, the funds would no longer perform. Now, I would like to think it's not me. Maybe they went bad after I sold them. But that is just one of the problems that I saw with the industry. They're all selling the same thing. I saw lack of real diversification as I studied more and more. Companies tend to want to build a client's portfolio to look like the market, which actually makes a lot of sense. Because if you're listening to the news, you're the radio, the television, the market's going up, what a full of talk. Everybody happy they're making all this money. And you open up your statement and the market went up and your portfolio went up, the values, you're like, okay, that's pretty much what you were expecting. Or the reverse, the market's going down, that's the news that you hear. Your friends at the club are complaining about their portfolios are dropping, are they going to be able to retire? You open up your statement, you see the values are lower. That's pretty much what you were expecting. From an industry point of view, I believe it makes a lot of sense for a portfolio to look overall like the market. And that's pretty much what if you look at targeted funds, they're all pretty much designed the same way. Little uh nuances that are different, but for the most part, they're all the same.

Four Myths That Cost Investors

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Ira, I wanted to ask you, because in the book you talk about four myths that you say are costing investors money. And so could you tell me what those are and why do these myths persist in investors' minds?

SPEAKER_02 9:21

I would boil it down to two things, two words actually, wishful thinking. For example, if I don't feel well, I go to the doctor. Yes. The doctor has studied health and you know what the body's supposed to be doing. And I just basically trust what he or she says. If I don't know a whole lot about investing, and there's a guy out there that sells investments, I want to believe that he or she really knows what's gonna happen and can therefore put me in the right investments for me to make money. Now, deep down inside, I know that the markets go up, the markets go down, but I would like to think, Dave, I'm gonna pretend you're the advisor right now. Maybe you know a little bit of something that nobody else knows. Right, I would hope so. Okay. So, one of the myths that I talk about in the book is stock picking. Now, you if you call me up to sell me a stock, I'm thinking you probably know something about the company. You probably believe the company is gonna go up, it's gonna do better, or it's gonna do well, otherwise, why would you recommend it to me? And therefore, it's easy for a an advisor to sell a company that way. And the reason why I think it's a myth is because the CEO, who is actually tasked with knowing everything about the company, cannot do one simple thing. He cannot tell you with precision how much money the company is gonna earn each quarter or for the year. And the prices of stock are actually driven by the earnings of a company, and they're gonna be what we call forward-looking, they're gonna project what those earnings are going to be. If you can't do it with any accuracy, then how good is that recommendation? That's one. Another one is market timing. The definition of market timing being knowing when to get in or out of the market. Now, there was a study that was published by the Wall Street Journal, or maybe it was just recorded by the Wall Street Journal, but the study said that for a market timer, somebody that's trying to get in and out of the market at the right time, to be a simple buy and hold strategy has to be right better than 80% of the time. 80%. 80%. If I didn't believe a stock was gonna be good, I'm not gonna recommend it. For example, right now, we're in a war, right? We're in a war with Iran. So the market doesn't like instability. But so in reality, it would look, it just feels right. Let me get out of the market right now, uh, before it goes down anymore. We're 10% off the high of the Dow. At least we were when we close on Friday. We're halfway to what we would technically call a bear market, being down 20% or more from the high. So it would seem to make sense to get out of the market because in our brain, I don't know what it is that does this, but in our brain, we tend to complete patterns. So if I'm looking at my portfolio going down, and I'm getting closer and closer to retirement, I'm beginning to think, I can't afford to lose anymore. And this thing is going down, and we don't know how long this war is gonna last, and we don't know how bad it's gonna get. So let me get out. That's market timing, the belief that you can know when to get in and when to get out and not lose any money without taking on additional risk. So that's another area because just waiting for it to come back, like a rubber band. So you stretch that rubber band, stretch, and then all of a sudden the news gets better and it just goes up. That's really what the market does. The third myth, and this is actually promoted by a lot of the gurus on the radio that tell you you want to find funds within five and ten year track records. The academics, the people that work in universities that really study and publish papers on this, they tell you 10 years is not enough. If you really want to know long-term returns, you need to be looking out 40, 50, 60, 70 years to really see what happens. So looking at a 10-year record, again, that's that mountain chart that I used to sell by. It's just not enough time. And if you can go by track record, and if it really was successful, there'd probably only be one fund in each category of investing and one company having that fund because they would have the best track record of all. And what would they call it? They'd probably call it the really good big fund. Track investing doesn't work. And if another thing, and how you can actually see that it doesn't work, is simply that on every mutual fund prospectus that you see, there's a little quote that says, Past performance is no guarantee of future results. So there's a m a movie that came out, I'm gonna guess about 20, 20 years ago called Navigating the Fog of Investing. And in this movie, there was an interview with the chairman or the CEO of Morningstar, which is one of the companies that produces these mountain sharks and they have their ratings. And the best funds get five stars. You have to be in the top 10% to get a five-star rating. And he himself said in this movie, you should not be investing based on the stars. Well, if you shouldn't be investing based on the stars, why do you have that? Because what do you think advisors are gonna do when they get that information? What do you think an investor is gonna do when they subscribe to your service? They're gonna buy the five-star funds. And they don't remain. I've seen five stars, I recommend it, sadly to say. I recommended five-star funds in that first 17 years of my career that are no longer in business anymore. How good are they? And it's not a great way to be buying funds. The last myth that I like to talk about are the costs of investing. When you're looking at the mutual fund prospectus, it has the expense ratio. And that expense ratio is just what it costs to keep the fund open. You know, pay the advisors, pay the analysts, pay the rent, the lighting, computers, and all that other stuff that goes with it. But what you don't see it taken into account are the hidden costs, what I call the trading costs, the bid and asked spread, what you pay to buy it, what you pay to sell it. The price is not the same simultaneously. Typically at the same exact moment in time, it costs you more to buy it than it does to sell it. So if you make a mistake and you have to turn around and redo that trade, you just lost money. Unless you got really lucky. Because it went up or went down, and you just went to reverse it. So costs are very important, but it should not be the end game. I hear a lot of the gurus talking about you want to buy cheap index funds and do you want to keep the costs as low as possible? It doesn't work good for medicine. Doesn't work good for investing. You know, you can go to WebMD and figure out your diagnosis of what's wrong with you, and you could probably find some medications on the street. It's not really how you want to work your health.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

It's not the best solution.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

No, so yeah, you want to find an advisor that really does like to educate the investor.

The True Purpose For Money

SPEAKER_01 17:27

And Ira, when they find you, you talk about when you start every client relationship, that you have a question that most advisors they're not asking. And so, can you tell me what is that and why does it change everything?

SPEAKER_02 17:40

The question is what is your true purpose for money? Most people never really think about that. Money and without discovering the true purpose, the accumulation of money becomes a purpose. When I can afford this, I can do that. When I can when I get to this level of investing, then I can afford to give to charity. When you discover your true purpose, and this happened to me, oh, probably about seven or eight years ago, maybe. I was at a workshop called the American Dream Experience, which I actually worked to help teach that workshop. And it was a life-changing experience for me, and here's how that worked. For me, it was when I get to that level, when I get to that level, not that I didn't buy stuff, I I did. But you can live into your purpose regardless of what station you are in life. So, for example, there's a charity that I contribute to. It's called Atlas Free. And what they do is they rescue women and girls from the horrors of sex slavery. Now, when I discovered my true purpose, it turned out that my true purpose was love and freedom. So if I give somebody a gift, for example, I want them to know that comes from a place of love. Now, and given to this organization, more than likely I'm never going to meet any of these women that get saved, if you will. But they know that there are people that love them, that they're coming to help rescue them. What I like about this organization is they have facilities where they also help to rehabilitate, help them get past the trauma of their experience. And as a result of that, they become free. They're free from the bondage, but then they're free to go out into the world and become productive in the world. So that right there combined two of my purposes for money being love and freedom. So when you discover what that's your purpose is, you realize, you know what? If all I can contribute is fifty dollars, I've helped somebody with fifty. If you get to that level, you can get $500 or $1,000 or $5,000. You're contributing and living into that purpose. Then you realize, wow, I didn't have to wait until I I accumulated $15 million to do something significant with my life and something significant for somebody else. We spend, and this is really sad, if you think about it, we spend eight hours a day at work, and some of us spend more, some of us spend 50 and 60 hours a week, and then there's the drive time to and from work. There are studies that show that people spend more time at their job than they do with their spouse. What are we doing it for? I heard it said that nobody on their deathbed ever said, I wish I had just worked a few more hours. It's all about what did they miss? I wish I spent more time with my wife. I wish I went spent more time with my children, or spent more time traveling, or giving back. So it's better to find that true purpose now than never to discover it. And then you learn to live into that purpose.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I love that idea of discovering the true purpose that you have, and then I can see what a difference that would make when you're spending all of that time working, and now it's assigned new meaning. So I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

For example, my wife, uh, one of the things that she tells me is, I don't need a new purse or a new pair of shoes. I want experiences. Yes. Because the purse is gonna go in the trash one day, the dress is gonna get worn and given away. There'll probably come a time in my life where I can't go and do, but I'll always be able the one thing. Can never be taken away from me are the memories we create. So that discovering that I could live into that. I could show my wife love by taking her to Europe or taking her on a cruise, or and it doesn't even have to be that extravagant. It could be we take a motorcycle ride, we stay at a holiday and express overnight and just go home the next day and have a couple of meals.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Still a great experience. It's a great experience.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah. And that's not I have to have a couple million dollars to do that. It's just living into that purpose. So if you don't have that purpose, the accumulation of money becomes the purpose. Because you never think you have enough. And that's why I put that in the book.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, no, I think that makes a huge difference.

How To Vet Your Advisor

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I read a lot of people, they assume that the person that's managing their money is automatically on their side, which what should they actually be looking at when they're working with an advisor?

SPEAKER_02 23:05

I think what they should be looking at is if the advisor is doing what is what they're recommending. So for example, if you said to the advisor, do you have this? And they say yes, can I see it? And they say no. Why not? I've told clients, I've told potential clients, I'm not gonna recommend to you what I'm not investing in. Because if I don't have it, how much do I really believe in it? That's a good point. If they say we're not allowed, it's against the rules. There's no rules that say I can't show you what my portfolio is. If I want to put my portfolio on Facebook, I could do that. If I want to put it up on a billboard on I-65, I can do that. It's mine, it's my personal information. If you want to see what I'm doing, you know, if I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, okay, then I want you to drink. You want to make sure I'm drinking the same Kool-Aid. And I think that goes a long way. Now, if they say the firm has a policy against it, I would question why. I think if you're recommending something, the firm is probably in agreement with what you're recommending. They'd be proud of the fact that their advisors are doing the same thing as what they're recommending. So that would be one of the things that I would recommend an investor list for.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

The IRA Tax Trap Explained

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Ira, you have a chapter. It's called the IRA Tax Trap. And that's a pretty bold statement. So can you tell me what are people missing when it comes to their retirement accounts and specifically to taxes?

SPEAKER_02 24:50

This is one of the things that I like to talk about a lot, maybe because it's like my name. I have people that come into my office and ask, you know, did your parents, did you change your name when you went into the business? And I like to joke and say, No, I believe it's the only day that my parents had any prophetic ability at all.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

They prophesied it. Right. They saw your future.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

But here's why I have that in the book and why I do take that bold statement. When I started in the business back in 1984, taxes were a lot higher than they are today. And we didn't have the Roth IRA until I believe it was 1998. So all we had was the tax-deferred IRA, the tax-deferred 401k. And what most people never think about is the fact that we have made an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service that we can defer the taxes on that money until we take it out. Now, once we put that money into that money is trapped. Let's say we're 30. The government says if you take that money out before 59 and a half, let's just say 30 years, we're gonna penalize you. So you have no access to your own money without a penalty, number one. When you get to 73 is now when most people are taking their have to take their required minimum distributions. So here it is again in a traditional IRA, 401k, 403B, any of the tax-deferred accounts, the TSA for our government employees. If you don't take it out at 73, there's another penalty. So the government is telling you what you can do that you can't touch your money until 59 and a half, but now you have to start taking it out. What if you don't need it? Okay, what if you have other investments? Maybe you were also investing in real estate, you have plenty of income coming in. Maybe you're fortunate, you work for a company where you have a pension plan and you have social security and you have more than enough income. You don't really need that money. The government's telling you if you don't take that money out, there's a penalty. So I'll call that trap number tip. Let's go back to when I started the business. Taxes were a lot harder. So we put this money in, and we get a tax deferral as a tax-deferred account. If they were really honest, they would call it no, it's a tax postponed account. Well, postponing your taxes to a future date. But here's where the biggest trap comes in. You don't know what the tax rates are going to be. So for example, right now, if you're in the highest tax bracket, you're in a 37% bracket. You might be in a 12, maybe 22. You're in a relatively low tax bracket. If you take the average of all the highest tax brackets, the average is 56.4%. And I remember Nancy Pelosi saying, We should just go to the average of all the tax rates. So if you're in a 22% bracket now and the government chooses to raise tax rates, there's a trap. Because you made this agreement with the government, we'll pay the taxes whatever they are when we take them out. Because there's two assumptions when you're putting that money in. You're assuming that number one, you're gonna be in a lower tax bracket, because number two, you have lower income. I'm seeing cases now where people are actually having as much or more income in retirement than they had while they were working. So if let's say again, you're in the 22% bracket, there was a book written by David Walker in 2008 called Comeback America. He was the US controller in general, America's accountant, if you will. If there was anybody who knew everything about the money of the United States, the debt, the taxes, and everything, it was him. Yeah. And he said that at the current rate of the way the government, the politicians are spending money. By the way, I don't know if you just saw this, but last week they just announced that this we have already gone over $39 trillion in our fiscal debt. LC, we're gonna want to find ways to cut taxes. So they're taking in less money, but the spending hasn't stopped. It's like, Gabe, you maxing out your credit cards, you have a high interest mortgage on your house, and you're at the full 80%, you have a car note, and you've signed for your daughter's college education, and you make $60,000 a year. And now you go to the bank and you say, I want to extend my credit limit. It wouldn't work for me personally, but No, it doesn't work for anybody personally, you know, and that's part of that trap because the government can come in anytime. They said, We're only gonna raise taxes on people earning over $400,000 a year. The $10 would have gone to $12, the $12,000 would have gone to $15, the $22 would have gone to $25, if the tax trump cuts expired. So right now we're in a very low tax rate. And the trap is that if people don't start planning, we could see in three, seven, ten years, according to David Walker, for the country to avoid going bankrupt, tax rates would have to double. So that would be somebody that has even, let's say, an effective rate, not the marginal bracket, just an effective rate of 18%, going to 36%. And with some proper planning, you can move that money in the 22 and 24% bracket. Now here's another thing that the government does. And if you go back and you look at the history of tax rates, not only will they raise and lower the top marginal bracket, but they'll change the brackets themselves. I've looked back and I've seen where they went from $5 million, anybody above $5 million having to pay 88% and lowered it and said, oh, we cut the taxes to 56%, but they lowered the $5 million to anybody earning over $200,000 or over $400,000. That just puts more people in that bucket paying more taxes. So they can play around with it. They can say, oh, like right now, if you're over $751,000, now you're paying $37%. If they lowered that to $300,000, that's going to put a whole lot more people in that higher tax bucket. So they don't even have to raise the 37 to 39.7, they can just lower the 751 to 200 and force more people to pay higher taxes with that. So it's a tax trap. And the analogy that I use when I'm working with a client, and I'll ask you it the same way. If you were going into business with somebody, and you both had thought this was a great idea, and the partner that you're going to go into business with said to you, Gabe, I am so excited about working with you and building this business together. But just be aware that at the end of each year, I'm going to tell you how much of the profits I'm going to keep, and you could have the rest. That's what we've done with the government with these tax-deferred or tax-postponed plans. And that's why I call it the tax trap.

Insurance And Protection Gaps

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Ira, beyond investments and taxes that we've been talking about, what are some of the areas of protection that people that in your experience are tending to overlook? And can you share with me what that can end up costing them?

SPEAKER_02 33:22

If they don't do their protection, it can cost them the fortune that they've accumulated. Homeowners insurance. We had a power surge in our house, blew out some of our appliances. It probably cost me about $5,000 to fix it. I had a $2,500 deductible. I didn't bother putting a claim in because it's not the $4,000 or $5,000 expenses that get me. It's what if a tree falls on my house and now I have a $300,000 repair bill. For most people, it's not the $40 or $50 to go to the doctor. It's the $300,000 hospital bill for a surgery. It's not the cost of a premium for disability insurance. It's what if you are climbing a ladder, you fall, you get injured, you can't work, you're out of work for four, five, six months, and you don't have disability insurance. You might not have enough money in your emergency fund. You might have to sell your retirement accounts before you're 59 and a half. Now you're paying a penalty. There's a lot. Life insurance, if you have young children at home, very important. I've seen people that have $250,000 and are making $100,000 a year. I joke with them and I said, I'm guessing you don't plan to be dead for very long. You got a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. By law, we're supposed to take care of our children until the age of 18, which means for that three-year-old, that's another 15 years, but you provided for two and a half years of income replacement. So that wife can lose the house, the family home, if the wife is a homemaker or if the dad is a homemaker and the wife is a very successful physician, but there's and we're counting on that one income. If there's not life insurance, everything can be lost. So you want to make sure that you have the proper protection in place. Insurance, if you really think about it, it's the only thing we buy that we actually hope we never use. In 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. I wasn't, yeah, this is great. I have great insurance now because my wife works for a big corporation. Now I can get cancer. I never, I would bet you never thought about that, you've been paying car insurance for 20 years. Yeah, let me just smash into that car next to me and put a claim in. You don't want to get into an auto accident. You don't want to have a disability. You don't want to drive home and find your house on fire. But when we protect all of these assets that we've accumulated and your earnings potential, that's your greatest asset of all. And that's the reason why you want to make sure that for your family's sake, you have good coverage on your life insurance, you have your coverage on your house, that you can replace it, disability in case you get hurt or injured and it can't work. There's a lot of different types of coverage, but you want to make sure that you're working with an agent that really looks at the big picture, not just trying to sell a product. Because I've seen many mistakes, especially in the long-term care market, where agents just try to sell as much coverage as they can and don't take other things into consideration that would offset how much long-term care coverage they need. And there are different types of policies that can do it in much better ways than a traditional long-term care

Advisor Versus Coach Mindset

SPEAKER_02 37:05

policy.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Ira, you make a clear distinction about the difference between being an advisor and being a coach. And so could you tell me what that difference actually looks like for somebody that's working with you? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Think of it of a doctor and a personal trainer. You go to the doctor because you don't feel well. And he checks you out. Maybe hopefully he does some blood work and finds out what the cause of the problems are. And then you just blindly trust that doctor. With the personal trainer, they tend to explain why they're recommending the different exercisers that they're doing. What muscles is it going to build up? Why you should not be working the same muscle group three days in a row? Why you need to have adequate rest and you need to eat appropriately. I've never once, I don't know about you, well, that's the question. Have you ever had a doctor ask, tell me about your diet, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Fortunately, they don't dig in too deep into that because I'd hate to have to tell them.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

Okay, I get that. But there you go. Imagine you're going to a nutritionist. Right. The nutritionist is who works really more like a coach is going to ask you questions about what do you eat? How much exercise do you get? And then they'll, what is your goal? Is your goal to lose weight? How much weight do you want to lose? Based upon your height, based upon your frame, you would be best at 170 pounds. And so they're going to ask you these questions. And asking the questions, they're going to learn about you. They're going to learn about your lifestyle, whether it's a personal trainer or a nutritionist. And then they're going to create a plan to help you meet that goal and have a more healthy, more sustainable life, one that you can enjoy for the many years to come. Now, I heard it said nobody controls when they're going to die. But they can control how they're going to live. With proper nutrition, with proper exercise, you can live a very healthy life. You may not avoid cancer. That might get you, as it did me. With proper financial planning, you can make sure that your investments are set up to maintain your life after inflation through your life expectancy. I see too many plans where that was never even asked. Do you know what rate of return you need to live your life and retire and have enough income to last through retirement after inflation? So I've seen these things, and that's where it's different. It's not me saying this is what you need to do. Because unless I know, or unless a coach knows, whether it's me or another coach, unless you're asking certain questions, it's just blind trust. Will the advisor be around long enough to see that you have enough money through retirement? Is your doctor gonna live long enough to make sure that you have and live to a ripe old age? And I'll use me as the example here. When I was going through my cancer back in 2021, I had asked my doctor, should I focus on paying off my house or focus on building my retirement plan? Because I didn't know if I was going to survive. And both of my doctors that I was working with said, build your retirement plan. You're gonna live to a ripe old age. We don't know what that ripe old age is, but don't worry about paying off the house. So that was very comforting in hearing that. The doctor sent me to a nutritionist to help me eat properly with everything I had done, everything I had gone through. And that's like, for example, they told me how many grams of protein I need to eat each day. Let me tell you, it's a lot. It's a challenge. But I would not have known that. Just looking at the other day, in order for me to eat enough grams of protein, I have to eat a hundred and forty Trade and Joe's chocolate covered peanut butter cups.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

That is a lot.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

I'm not nowhere near that. Nowhere near that. And it's not something that my nutritionist recommends.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

I can see the difference that having that coach in your life can make.

Where To Get The Book

SPEAKER_01 41:37

And Ira, I wanted to ask last question for listeners that are interested in getting in touch with you or getting a copy of your book. How should they do that?

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Go to irawork.com. That's one place. It's actually gonna be up shortly. You can go to Amazon. It's there. You can email me, IraWork at firstfinancial coach.com, and I'll be happy to send you a book.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Sounds great. Ira, I've enjoyed our conversation. Thanks so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

Thank you, Gabe. I've really enjoyed this myself.