The Investor Symposium Is Back: Here’s Why You Should Be There

Chris: Beau, this is a really cool episode. Here we are, promoting our annual investor symposium.

It is on October 29th. The theme is called Designed for Life, which is really the purpose of what we all save and invest for. It is how do we use those dollars, those resources, to design the life and the experiences that we want to have.

Beau: I was just talking about this with another colleague of ours, Kevin, and we were like, really at the heart of it, what makes Morton Wealth so different from other advisors? And at the end of the day, we get so passionate and excited about our clients living life to the fullest. That is it. And I think the symposium, when you go to it and you feel the energy in the room, it really emulates that heartbeat of Morton Wealth. Getting designed for life, getting the most life out of your wealth.

Chris: Are you going to be our flight attendant again this year?

Beau: I think I have to choose a different character. But yeah, last year I was the flight attendant slash moderator. And I think the line that stuck with everybody was: I know you have a lot of options of investor symposiums to choose from. Thank you for choosing Morton Wealth this week.

Chris: The Design for Life theme really hits home to me. I worked at a few other institutions, Morgan Stanley and Fidelity, and I noticed that at some of those places, some advisors, when posed with a question from a client like, hey, should I take some money and buy a second home, the answer was almost always no. You should keep the money with me. We will have better returns and you should just rent something.

I had a fun conversation last week with a client who lives in Las Vegas, where the summers are just not fun. He was talking about the fact that they rented a place in Park City, Utah over the summer, and the experiences they had with their kids. He asked me whether it would be a smart decision to look at purchasing a second place there. He tried to justify it, saying he could rent it out a little and help absorb the costs. But the net answer was: yes, you can afford it, and is it going to create those experiences and be a place that brings the family together during the summers and winters, that brings you closer? Because as you know, when your kids age and go different directions, you are not coming together as often as you might like. That is the real value to me of Design for Life.

Beau: That so perfectly describes the conversations that we have. As long as the math works and you are not making a terrible decision, what is best for you, what is best for your family. Those are the exciting conversations that we get to have.

Chris: So a few sessions we are going to talk about at the symposium. One really comes up as it relates to Designed for Life: how much is enough? We are having a session where people can better define what their target net worth would be. The reason is that everybody's life and situation is different. The amount of money I need to have the retirement life I want is going to be different than what you need, even though we are about the same age and live in the same area and like to do similar things. You may need $2 million. I may need six. Defining your target net worth is a very important component of the whole Designed for Life philosophy.

Beau: And if you do not have a personal relationship with an advisor who knows you and what makes you tick, you are going to read articles on publications that say, I have $1.5 million, am I ready to retire? Just throwing everybody into the same bucket and trying to create some algorithm that tells you when you can retire. It kind of irks us as financial advisors.

Chris: I have a client I have been working with for 15 years. She had a really good paying job that came with a couple of pensions in the entertainment industry, and she was reading articles saying you cannot retire unless you have at least $3.5 million. She was dead set on that being true. Fortunately, she saved those dollars and eventually retired. She has been retired for 12 or 13 years now and has not taken a single dollar from her portfolio. It is now over $10 million. To think that because she listened to that article, not realizing she had two pensions, Social Security, a paid-off house, and a modest lifestyle, she probably worked five to seven extra years in a very high stress job.

Beau: Just in case people missed what you just said: she has taken $0 from her portfolio. The article should have said, if you are this person, you need $0 in retirement savings to retire, because of your pensions. Everybody has a different story, different needs, and a different situation.

Chris: It all comes down to what is your target net worth, what are your expenses, and what does the lifestyle you want to live actually cost. That helps you figure out the number. One of the things that can get in the way of your ability to retire: when I think about retirement, there are really four things you can do. Three of them are not much fun. You can save more, spend less, work longer. Or you can invest smarter. One of the reasons people come to us and want to come to the symposium is because not all risk is created equal. How do they build a portfolio that understands the difference between types of risk and generates income?

Beau: And just for the sake of the listeners, we are going to have topics on so many different areas of your financial life at the symposium. Marriage and money. I am going to be interviewing my therapist at one point about the psychological ramifications of how we get to our money mindsets. But I think the focus for today is: the real question most investors want to answer is how much do I need? Then the question is how do I get there? And then how do I get there without making massive mistakes along the way?

Chris: We have three sessions we are highlighting. Defining your target net worth. How to build a portfolio that realizes not all risk is created equal. And every generation has a bubble, and here is why they never see it coming. You had the 1990s, the financial crisis, the inflation of the 70s, Black Monday in 1987. We are all faced with market downturns. Here are some things to pay attention to, to realize whether we are in a place of euphoria and unforeseen risk, and how to properly invest and manage those risks.

Beau: I am particularly excited for the conversation I get to have. I am basically just going to interview Bruce Tyson and get as much wisdom from him as possible on that one. But starting with the conversation on what is the right number, we are going to dive pretty deep into how do you ask yourself the right questions to get to that answer. And then the session on how to think about risk. This is something most people do not understand. And even if they think they do, when that risk actually bites you, how do you react?

Chris: Diversification means a lot of different things. Most people think about it just as stocks versus bonds. Diversification is so much more than that. It is not only the types of investments you have, but what accounts you have money in and how you invest in each account to manage the risk. If I am 46 years old and I have a lot of money in a retirement account I cannot touch until 59 and a half, I have a 14 to 15 year time frame before I can even access that account penalty free. My time horizon for how to invest that is longer. And if I have a Roth bucket, that may be even longer. So I want to put different investments and assets in those different buckets from a diversification and risk standpoint.

Beau: You told me a great story about a client where risk was not just numeric.

Chris: Growing up in San Diego, I was exposed to some very successful and wealthy people. One of them was in his early 50s. He had retired at a young age and played a lot of golf and went to the beach. His retirement plan on paper just looked so simple: he owned a few single family home rental properties and was just collecting rent checks. He had some other savings but was mainly living off the rental income. Then the financial crisis hit, and two of his three renters lost their jobs and could not pay rent. It took him almost two years to get them out. He had to spend down his other personal savings because he did not have the income coming in. So on paper, you think, invested in real estate in one of the best zip codes in America, this person must be set. Something unforeseen happened, and all of a sudden his life had changed. He had to draw down on his liquid assets, and eventually had to sell one of the properties to maintain the life he wanted. When he thought he was safe and diversified, he actually was not.

Beau: And also just the idea of having to have those conversations with those renters: hey, I know you lost your job, but you cannot live here anymore. That is a different level of risk that you do not necessarily think about when you get into certain investments.

Chris: Not all real estate is created equal. There are unforeseen things that can happen that bring in more risk.

Beau: And that brings us to the conversation of every generation goes through this cycle of bubbles building and bubbles bursting. This goes back hundreds of years. The real estate crisis of 2006 to 2012 was a massive bubble that burst. Looking back you know it, but when you were in it, you did not. Everybody was buying houses with zero percent down and no jobs. These NINJA loans, no income, no job, no assets. Obviously that was a lot of speculative fervor. But it gives us a little peace knowing this happens all the time throughout history. And it gives us humility knowing that the more intelligent you are does not help you avoid these bubbles. Bruce and I are going to talk about Isaac Newton, who is categorically the smartest scientist in all of history, and he was not immune to the South Sea bubble of the 1720s. He lost his entire net worth. You are in good company if you get caught up in a bubble. Every generation does. We are going to talk about how to avoid getting caught up in the FOMO so that the number you are aiming for does not get taken off course by the bubble of the day.

Chris: Fear of missing out is one of the things that causes bubbles. Herd mentality, overconfidence, these frequently push prices higher. I can only think of a handful of things in this current environment where that FOMO and herd mentality is definitely real. Looking forward to the conversation. But if you are as excited as we are about October 29th, please join Beau and me at our annual investor symposium. The theme is Designed for Life. We look forward to seeing you there.

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Click to view our recent:

Podcasts

Webinars

White Papers

The Investor Symposium Is Back: Here’s Why You Should Be There

The Investor Symposium Is Back: Here’s Why You Should Be There

financial commute

Key Takeaways

Key Moments from This Episode

Questions This Episode Answers

Why This Matters for Clients and Investors Planning Their Next Chapter

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