352. Practical Tools on Investing and Financial Security

Dive into an enriching conversation with Tess Waresmith as she tackles common financial myths and opens the door to investment strategies that are accessible to all. Learn how understanding and overcoming these misconceptions can lead you to a path of financial freedom.

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In this episode you will learn about:

• Why mastering money management is a skill you can develop regardless of your financial background.
• How Tess's financial missteps became her greatest lessons in achieving financial expertise.
• Why financial literacy and investing are crucial tools for women's financial empowerment.
• How to use 529 plans and Roth IRAs for smarter investing and future financial security.
• Understand why knowing your investment fees can significantly impact your financial growth.

Episode References/Links:

• Wealth with Tess Instagram
• Wealth with Tess TikTok
• Wealth with Tess website
• Savvy Investor Starter Pack
• Free Workshop - 3 Keys to Making Money in the Stock Market
• 529 Plans (SEC: Updated Investor Bulletin: An Introduction to 529 Plans)
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Guest Bio:

Tess is a financial coach and the founder of Wealth with Tess, a financial education community that helps women in their 30’s and 40’s learn how to grow their money using simple investing strategies so that they can retire comfortably, chase their dreams, and live life on their terms. After losing 80k in bad investments in her twenties, Tess learned everything she could about wealth building and built her net worth to 1 million as a single 35 year old woman. Now she’s helped thousands of women learn how to grow their money using simple investing strategies anyone can do (even if you’re short-on-time or a total newbie investor). Thousands of women have attended her free investing workshops, hundreds of women have joined her small group coaching programs, and she regularly shares simple money tips for free on instagram.

 

 

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Resources:

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Episode Transcript:

Tess Waresmith 0:00  

Investing is one of those things that feels really complicated and out of the realm of possibility for us sometimes. But that is just because of the financial jargon. It's because of limiting beliefs. It's because of messaging. Once you actually get a basic education, you realize it's not that complicated, but I definitely did not start out that way and in my 20s actually made a whole lot of big, big investing mistakes. And that's actually why I learned what I learned now. 

Lesley Logan 0:27  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.

 

All right, Be It babe, we are going to talk about money today. And it's so, so important I do not want you to go I'm gonna skip this one money scares me. No, no, no, this is like you'll be so amazed, so fired up. I'm so excited about what I learned on this episode like so, so excited. I'm immediately, after this, signing up for just at least what Tess just guide us, because y'all one of the reasons I love having her on, and one of the reasons I wanted to have her on is that she is really passionate about normalizing money conversations, especially for women, and investing. And I believe in being it till you see it and I believe in every single one of you having exactly what you want in this minute. And I also believe that there's a security that is needed. And a lot of times we think we're not good with money because we told ourselves a story, or we've been told a story or family told us a story and you're just gonna love Tess, you're gonna love her advice. She's brilliant. She's amazing. And she's going to help you understand how simple it can be to invest. So here is Tess Waresmith. 

All right, Be It babe, this is gonna be a thrilling conversation. I'm really, really excited to talk about all the things that Tess Waresmith is an expert at. So Tess, thank you for being a guest to us today and can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at? 

Tess Waresmith 2:22  

Sure. So my name is Tess. I am a financial educator and I rock at helping women make the most of their hard-earned money by teaching them super, super simple investing strategies and ways to grow their money, even if you're totally new to investing, totally intimidated, have little time, like so many people, and just want to learn how to make sure your money is working for you. So that's what I do. I do that through coaching, teaching, workshops, and I'll always trying to normalize money conversations as much as possible. 

I love that so much. On many episodes, I've been like, we have to talk about how much money we make ladies, otherwise you don't know how much money you can make at things like if we don't, we've got to normalize that conversation. So I think it's really, really important. Before we get into all that, though, I do. Because I do think that something like oh my God, investing that scares me, this is going to be above my like, level of understanding. Don't turn this off. I really want you to hear it. Can you, have you always just been amazing at money or is it just something that came natural? Were your parents like super good about telling you how to balance a checkbook? Like how did you get to be an expert?

The short answer is no to all of the above. I did not learn how to manage money as a kid, I was not taught by my parents. In fact, my father was horrible with money and spent a lot of it and now is months behind on mortgage payments. So no, I did not grow up with a deep understanding of money. And I think it's important to realize that most people don't. I feel like we have this misconception around money where you're either good at it or you're not. And I hear so many people say I'm not good at money like it's a skill that you're born with. But just like anything else, it's a skill that you develop that you have to learn. And thankfully, and I'm glad you said not to turn it off when it comes to investing because investing is one of those things that feels really complicated and out of the realm of possibility for us sometimes. But that is just because of the financial jargon. It's because of limiting beliefs. It's because of messaging, once you actually get a basic education, you realize it's not that complicated, but I definitely did not start out that way. And in my 20s actually made a whole lot of big, big investing mistakes. And that's actually why I've learned what I learned now I was sort of forced to because I realized how much money I was losing by doing the wrong things that I went in a deep dive, did all this research and then I realized this crazy truth that it's actually not that hard. And so now I feel honestly morally obligated to do this work because it is so accessible to everyone, especially these days. There's so much great education. There's so many easy ways to invest. You don't have to be good at math. You don't have to be rich already. You don't have to have a ton of money to get started. You don't even need to be totally out of debt. 

Lesley Logan 5:01  

Yes, I love that you said that. 

Tess Waresmith 5:05  

So I'm really trying to demystify a lot of the myths around investing because there's so many and at the end of the day, we need this skill to make sure that we can unlock our full potential, chase our dreams, retire comfortably, have safety and security like that is really critical to your well being. So investing is not an optional thing. I think every woman needs to learn it. And we need to have more people providing digestible, relatable, no judgement, education. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Lesley Logan 5:34  

I really love that because I also love you said, you don't have to be out of debt. I think that's really important. A lot of women I talked to like, I'm almost out of debt. I don't want to, like they're not investing in their business yet because they want to be out of debt first. And I'm like, for just so I what I have learned is that they really care if you are in debt, like no one's giving you money if you can't show that you manage debt, so like, there's this like, really weird thing that we're supposed to be out of debt, when really the way your credit score works is based on how you manage debt, which is this really backed up weird thing in the US, if you're my European listeners, you're like what I just don't know what you're talking about. But can you, also I'm impressed that you were investing any money in your 20s. I was, like, desperately trying to pay rent, and my student loans up. So I feel like I, I feel like I was really late to the game and started like a 401k. I was like, at least I'm doing this I'm like at least I'm doing this. And then I talked to someone who's like you can do an IRA. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means. But here you go. So I feel like I am one of those people who's gonna learn a lot today because I don't even know that I'm investing as well as I could be and I definitely wish I was. So what are some of your common myths, you hear that we should just be like busting right now off the top of the show?

Tess Waresmith 6:44  

Well, the one common myth that you mentioned is that it's too late or you feel like you're late. And I think regardless of what age we start at, and this is like the most common belief, I feel, when it comes to investing that I talk to every woman about regardless of whether they're 25 or 50 is that they're behind and that they're too late to catch up and they've already like made some mistakes that are too hard to come back from, and that is a huge myth. Because one, if you're having these conversations and you're focusing on your money in your 20s, 30s or 40s, even if you haven't done anything yet, if you're starting to take action, you still have time to make a massive difference in what the rest of your life looks. So I think that's a huge mistake is that people feel like they're so far behind that they become paralyzed. And they're like, well, it doesn't really matter now, because I'm already so far behind, when in reality, you're not as far behind as you think I guarantee that if you're sitting there listening to this thinking, like I'm really behind, I bet you're not as far as you think, first of all, and second of all, every year, month that you wait to take control of your money, you are jeopardizing your financial future. So in the same breath, you're not too late. But the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to reach your financial goals. And I have never worked with a woman that said, oh, man, I really like wish I waited to start investing until I understood every piece of this, like no one's ever said that. So that's the first one. The second one, I say, I'll come back to the debt one, because I think that's pretty important. A lot of people feel like they have to pay off all their debt, even their mortgages or their student loans. And while yes, you do want to pay off high-interest debt, and I would say that's, you know, debt over seven-ish percent, like that's the kind of debt you want to pay off quickly, because you're just going to be hemorrhaging any wins you have in the stock market, if you're paying down if you're still paying interest on high interest debt. But if you have just student loans under 7%, if you have a mortgage under 7%, the average return in the stock market is roughly 10%. You subtract for inflation 8%. So, in many cases, when I work with people that are paying extra money towards their student loans or extra money to their mortgages, and they're paying down loans that have relatively low interest rates, if they stopped doing that and started investing that money instead, they would have the ability to build more wealth compared to the money they would save by paying down their mortgage or their loan faster. So it's important to understand the basic math of that. And so 7% is a good percentage to start evaluating and to really be thinking about how you're spending your money because at that point, if you're paying the minimums on your loans, you might actually be doing better and build faster wealth if you are investing. The other thing I'll comment on because I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this is there is something to be said also for investing in your business. If you are paying down debt and you don't have high-interest debt, again, if you have high-interest credit card debt that's something you got to get rid of because that's just going to become a deeper, deeper hole. So that's something that you got to focus on first before you start investing. But when it comes to your business, if you have lower-interest debt you absolutely should be finding ways to invest in your business provided that you're thinking through the ROI because that's eventually going to help you create more money to invest. And at the end of the day, your income does matter when it comes to investing because that's going to impact how much you can invest and how much your money compounds. So those are a couple of myths. And then I mean, there are so many, which is why this is such a, this is such a meaty topic and why I love talking about investing, because I love busting these myths but the last one I will say is that good investing strategies are complex. And that is a huge, huge myth, because actually, the best investors are people that create really, really simple investment portfolios. And I teach people how to do this all the time, in a matter of like hours, it doesn't take years, it doesn't take an economics Ph.D. or a series six or finance degrees, you just need a little bit of time and an open mind. And you can learn how to create very, very simple investment portfolios that you buy and hold. You don't have to learn how to pick stocks, you don't have to learn how to time the market. And in fact, people that do those things end up getting much, much lower returns. So investing is one of the few things in life, like actually, the less you work at it, if you set up something simple, the better your returns can be. So those are just some investing myths, but we could go on forever. 

Lesley Logan 11:13  

Oh my gosh, okay, you said a lot of words that I think, I know portfolio, like the series, all those things. I'm like, I feel like my tax accountant is wanting to know if I have anything like that. I felt like I want to know all these things. But I do love that you're like you can learn it in a few hours. And also, I read The Psychology of Money a couple of years ago, 

Tess Waresmith 11:32  

Great book. 

Lesley Logan 11:33  

It's such a good book, it's really worth reading because it explains the type of emotions that some people need to get, to gain a ton of wealth are different than the type of emotions you need to keep wealth, which is a whole interesting phenomenon. But he was talking about the people who do those, like short sells and all that stuff and how it's actually quite stressful. And it's almost more of an addiction of like the dopamine rush than if they just let it sit there. It's fascinating. Okay, so let's go back a little bit, though, you mentioned like you learned all the hard ways. And I think a lot of my listeners, including, like I grew up hearing we're just not good with money and so I just kind of have that story. And one of the things that I love about the show is that like, I feel like you can change your story with just a mantra, you feel like, I know, people are crazy but I really do think that we can act as if, what was it like for you to go from making mistakes? What did you have to do that you have to tell yourself to kind of become the person who is like sitting here, you're so knowledgeable, I can't even imagine you didn't know how to invest money at a time. So like how did you bridge that gap? 

Tess Waresmith 12:38  

Yeah, so I'll tell you a little bit about the story of what happened and how and why that was a catalyst for me bridging the gap. So I have to say that I have to owe some of this to the universe, setting me off in the right direction and kicking me down so far that I was so pissed that I had to learn. But basically what happened was, in my mid-20s, I was very privileged to get a full athletic scholarship to college. So I will say that, you know, a lot of my financial success, I got to start from a place most people don't, most people have some kind of debt. So I was able to get my first job, which was actually as an aerial acrobat on a cruise ship. And I promise this is relevant to money in a moment. And so that job was really interesting, because I worked on a cruise ship, and everything was paid for. So my food was paid for, accommodations, I didn't ever, I didn't have any of these things. So I was able to save a lot of money and I grew up with a huge fear of money because I grew up being told like we don't have enough money for that, you have to be careful about that, over and over and over. So money was always a scarce, fearful thing for me. So that's why to answer your question about investing in your 20s, I knew enough to know that I should be doing that because I was afraid enough of not having enough money that I knew that that was a thing I needed to do. But I didn't know how to do it. And so once I saved some money working on the cruise ship, I ended up trying to read some books about investing. They were really overcomplicated. And so very quickly, I was like, you know what, of course I'm not smart enough to do this myself I'm gonna hire a financial advisor to do it for me. And this was somebody I trusted somebody I grew up with that was a few years older than me. And the long story short is that I gave that person my money. And over a few years time I started realizing that my returns weren't that good. I started looking at what I was invested in and saw that some stuff looked very similar. And what I ended up discovering is that they'd sold me financial products that were better suited for people in their 50s, that there were duplicate investments in my accounts that were basically stacking fees and that the fees that I was paying her were astronomical that were costing me thousands of dollars a year and I didn't even realize it because it's built in to the way that you invest with some financial advisors. What they do is they charge what's called AUM, assets under management, which basically means they take a percentage of the money you're investing with them, regardless of what happens in the stock market. And so at that point, I had started investing all my money from the cruise ship. And years later realized that I was hemorrhaging money in fees. But it's not easy to see that because it doesn't come up in the statement, it doesn't really, it's not easy to see if you're working with a financial advisor, you're listening to this, you're like, am I paying fees like don't feel bad, no shame, because this information is so hard to find. And the industry is built in such a way where it doesn't make it easy to understand, which is good for them. Because they want you to feel like it's complicated so you don't learn how to do it yourself and you pay someone else to do it. That's part of the whole game. So and I will say, by the way, not all financial advisors are crooks, there's some great ones out there. But either way, you still need to learn the basics, because otherwise, what happened to me could happen to you. So after all of that happened and I went in a shame spiral, and I was super, super upset. I went back to my core values. And something I did years ago, was create a list of core values of values that I wanted to live by. And one of them was everything is figureoutable. And I realized and Marie Forleo says, I can't steal, I can't I have to give her full credit for that one. But I love that one. Because it's really true, right? Especially with the internet, resources, good people that want to help you, there's always a way to figure out something. So I was sitting there going like there has to be a way for me to invest without spending thousands of dollars to pay somebody else to get me average returns. And so I did all this research, and I talked to millionaires. That's a key one, I talked to people that were already doing it. And I asked him like, how do you invest? And a lot of them are like, Oh, it's really simple. I just invest in like these funds that hold a bunch of stocks and I leave it alone. And I'm like, that, that's it? That's, that's the whole thing? And I kept hearing the same message. And then I read books, and I took courses. And I looked at data. And then what I realized, after all this research, and I kept trying to prove myself wrong, I'm like, there's no way it can be this straightforward. And it is. Because at the end of the day, the stock market is too complex to try to time there's no crystal ball of what's going to happen. So the best strategies are really to oversimplify this, to buy a bunch of it, put your eggs in a bunch of different baskets and buy and hold. And there's easy ways to do that. There's easy investments you can buy that hold hundreds or thousands of stocks at once, you don't have to stock pick and you hold them over time. And that's pretty much it. Like obviously, there's a little more detail to get started. But that's the strategy. It's buying and holding funds over a long period of time. So that's really it. 

Lesley Logan 17:28  

That's what I learned in that book that we were talking about earlier. He's like, if you can just like, let it live there, what it has proven is if you let it live there for 10, 15, 20 years, everything eventually, like even if it goes up and down, up and down, it always sort of ends up.

Tess Waresmith 17:42  

Exactly. No, it's that, you nailed it, right? Like it's not more complicated than that. So that's really what happened. So I think being so committed to the idea that there has to be a way to figure it out, led me to the right information. And now I'm just so jazzed to share it with people. And the hardest part is not teaching people how to invest, it's getting them to believe that they can do it and it's not going to be that hard, and it's not going to be as complicated as they think. But that's the biggest hurdle for me as an educator.

Lesley Logan 18:09  

You know, you're 100%, right? Because I'm sitting here and you're like saying how simple it is, I'm like, oh my gosh, like maybe I should be moving that $500 investment into this account. And I should be doing it over here. And then next notice, do I even know how to do that? Do I have the time? I'm not sure. Maybe it's not safe to move it? Maybe I should just leave it because just that like, I've already talked myself in and out of it. So I do, I do agree like it's getting us to believe it's possible, and that we should be part of it. And I find like, you know, when I was in a mastermind and we brought someone in who was talking about wealth, and it was a husband and wife and they're talking about how they built wealth, how they invest in their wealth, how simple it is, like she, the wife even creates a group or they bring people in and talk about what you can invest in. And then you're like, one of these special people who can be one of the first people to invest and I was like, oh, I want to be in that group. And one of the girls sitting next to me, she's like, oh, I don't deal with any of this. I just let my husband do it. And I was like, what if your husband dies? What if he loses his job? What if like, he leaves you for someone younger? Like I just, like my head went like, you know what I mean? So I said, I'm feeling very hypocritical because I'm not actually doing a lot of investment myself. But like, I, if you're listening to this, and you're like, oh, my partner takes care of it, there's just this like fear inside my body for you. You do need to be part of that conversation. You do need to know and I find like, I coach a lot of women, and we have several of them that their husbands have said hey, I'm gonna end this marriage and they're having to start from scratch and everything and I'm like, and they, there just isn't enough awareness around that financial stuff that I'm like, ah, that's, that is like, I don't ever want to end up in that space either. 

Tess Waresmith 19:56  

Lesley, I don't even know if we're on each other's email list, but I literally wrote an email today that said, when she told me my husband when my husband discouraged her to start investing, and I wrote an email literally today went out this morning, about how many conversations I've had with women over the last few weeks that are around this theme of saying, like, either their partners, like I don't need to learn that we have an advisor, or oh, you don't need to learn that I know how to do it. And by the way, like no shade, but a lot of times, men have pressure to know this stuff, but they might not actually know as much as you think. So no one should ever discourage you from learning this stuff for yourself because exactly what you said, Lesley, the majority of women I work with, and I'm super sad to say this are women that are going through some kind of separation or trauma or their husband is sick, and that's when, you know, shit hits the fan, and they're like, oh, crap, now I have to learn this, and my heart breaks for them because the last thing I want for any woman is to on top of the grief and depression, whatever, like other challenge in life, things they're going through, is then having to spend time figuring out how to manage their money and investments. So I'm so glad you brought this up because it is a real problem. I hear it a lot. And even from women that are motivated to learn, well, they'll be discouraged and, you know, the uncomfortable thing that I don't want to say is, to me, it feels like either an unconscious or some subconscious form of control. And I hate that. So you know, if you have any desire to learn, one, you're totally capable of it. And it's not as hard as you think. And I'll say that, and I will, I will do everything I can to prove it to you that that is true. But also, that's a massive red flag. And if anything, if you are partnered and your partner knows more than you, if you learn more together, you can make more intelligent financial decisions, you can reach your goals faster together, it'll be more fun. There's so many benefits of learning. And I end up working with a lot of couples. My coaching is I do focus on women because I want to create safe spaces for women to feel comfortable talking about money. But a lot of times husbands will join, I'll ask the group is it okay if we have somebody join and those couples love it because then they're on the same page, they're speaking the same language, it's a really powerful thing to do with your partner, to really get a handle on what your financial goals are, and learn together, it can change everything.

Lesley Logan 22:21  

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's really true, like one of my dear friends, she actually decided to leave in her partnership and it's because of the investments she made that she could afford to make those decisions, too. So she wasn't stuck in a relationship that wasn't serving her or him, you know, so I think like, the more educated you can be, and I love that you said like, if you're a couple, I'm not saying everyone's gonna end their marriage, guys, I fully believe them. We have mine forever and ever. Not always. But also, like, it's true, it can be more fun, and you can grow it together. And there can be even more that you give. And I find like so many people want to give their children everything that they didn't have. And there's a lot of extra parenting and (inaudible) that's going on there but if you can actually, like have more fun building wealth, and you can pass it off to your children, that's even, that's a big, that's huge.

Tess Waresmith 23:08  

It's massive.

Lesley Logan 23:09  

Oh my gosh, I like so look at my friend's wedding. Oh, my God, you do have? Can you like throw a girl a bone? You know, but like, so we, one of the things, one of my biggest goals was like buying this house, because there's a couple things that I wanted to invest in. I had some money that I could invest, but I had, they're like, you have to be a homeowner. And I was like, oh, another obstacle, I just want to invest in this thing. But now we're homeowners officially. So now I'm like, okay, I can belong to the big girls club over here.

Tess Waresmith 23:39  

Yeah, yeah. And I think the point about learning so that you can teach your kids or even your friends' kids, I you know, I don't have kids yet. But I just yesterday, there's a lot of good things it's been a good week of money wins. But yesterday, I helped a good friend of mine open a 529, which is an investing account that you can open for your kids that helps you save and invest money for college. And what's cool about it now is that the rules have changed. Even if you don't if your kid doesn't use that money for college, you can actually roll it over to a retirement account for them to get a jumpstart. So that's super cool tool. It's called a 529. I'm happy to share a link of where you can learn a little bit more about that. 

Lesley Logan 24:19  

That's cool. That's so fun. That's really awesome, I have nieces and nephews. I'm like, hold on. Well, I need to send them because like, I love that also, they don't have to go to school because like to get it like you could put it into a retirement account and stuff like what a, because also we've learned, like, do you need a college degree anymore and we don't know.

Tess Waresmith 24:38  

And so what was cool is that I told her she was like, oh, I don't want to do that because I don't know if my daughter is gonna go to college. I said no worries. If you don't, you can up rollover up to $35,000 of this money into a Roth IRA, which is an IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. And it's that's a great investment plan for retirement. And so we opened it, and she told her daughter about it. And within a half an hour her daughter came running back to her and was like, I have $13, can I add this to my money in that account? And that almost made me cry, because like that small, like behavior change of understanding, like, oh, instead of like spending this money, I can put it in this thing that's gonna make more money. She's eight years old, like, that's awesome that she's getting that messaging now. And that could change her life. So I always tell people too, even if you're not interested in investing, you need to be investing to help the next generation of girls, because just a very small piece of information or a small gesture. You know, I just opened that account and I put 100 bucks in it for, not, you know it took me 15 minutes but that could change the direction of her life not because of the money, but because she understands the concept of investing to make her money work for her. So that's so powerful and those are the types of tools that are so worth learning.

Lesley Logan 25:55  

I have so many chills, I have so many chills. Okay, so one of the things that you like you, you said, is like helping women believe in that they can invest? What are some of the things that you, that, how do you work with women? Like, is this like, do we read your email and do like a blog is or like, how do we learn more with you? Because obviously, like, I'm wanting to sign up. Like, what is? What does it look like? And like, what if someone is like, I'm so nervous, like, what's the bare, you know, like, I know, for my listeners, like some of those, like, I just want to like, be it till I see it a little bit like what's the, how do we start, like a little baby, dip our toe into it? 

Tess Waresmith 26:35  

Sure. So I'll give you a few options, depending on if you want to dip your toe or jump in the deep end. So if you want to dip your toe, I share a ton of free investing information on Instagram and Tiktok @wealthwithTess, one word, @wealthwithTess. So on Instagram, I share a lot of stuff, I also have a free and this is my favorite guide I've ever created. It's a free savvy investor starter pack. So it's just a guide that you can download. It's a PDF download. But in the starter pack, I have four steps that you can walk through to start to figure out how you're going to invest and to break down some of the concepts that are most confusing because the most common question I get is, where do I start? So I created this guide to help you with that. So the guide walks through four different steps, including how to figure out how much money you might want to have in retirement, how to think about your expenses to start creating a gap for investing, you know, a gap between your income and your expenses to start investing, because obviously, you need some money consistently. And then in there, I also talk about high-level, what types of accounts are out there for you and then what types of investments you can start looking into that are really simple. So that is all in that guide that's at moneyconfidentcoach.com/savvy and in the savvy investor starter pack, I also have a video of the eight common investing mistakes I see people make and I made all of them. So if you want to avoid all the mistakes I made that guide is going to be the best place to start. So both of those are totally easy ways to learn. And then from there, I host free free investing workshops all the time. So there's tons of information that you can get for free. If you follow on Instagram or download that free guide. Those are the two best places to start if you just want to dip your toe. But then the way that I work with women is mostly in a small group setting, which is my favorite way to work with women, I have a small group coaching setting that includes a online program. And what I love about the small group is that everyone realizes they're all in the same boat, that everyone feels behind, that everyone feels overwhelmed by the jargon, and it creates just this awesome vibe of learning and a safe space. And it's awesome. And so that program goes for about a month. And by the end, you know the basics of how to open your own accounts and how to choose investments. It doesn't take long, it doesn't take months or years. We're talking one month, the program right now is four weeks long. And by the end, women are part of a great group, and they know how to choose their own investments. So it's pretty cool. And yeah, I'm just super, I feel super grateful to be doing this work because it's awesome to be able to make an impact in that short amount of time. 

Lesley Logan 29:16  

Yeah, that's huge. Okay. So I have one more question before we do the Be It Action Items and it's more a little selfish, but also like just something that's like still rolling in my head I felt I felt like maybe some of our listeners the same way. So I have a Roth IRA. I have it with some person I met, and it just is money that goes out the 18th every month. And I'm one of those people who like doesn't really log into my statement that often because I don't know. It just feels a little depressing. Sometimes. It's like, you want to see it grow faster than it is. A. you said like there's a certain fee that you were getting that you weren't aware of how do I find out if this person is actually like the best for me and if I figure out like if I do an interview with them. I don't know if that's a thing. And if they're not like, do I keep the Roth IRA with them? Do I stop and put the money on that? Like, what do you think is the best for people who are like, I'm afraid that the person who's doing my thing is not as good as I want them to be?

Tess Waresmith 30:12  

Yeah, so there's two directions, you can go here. But the first direction I would say, is and, unfortunately, this takes a little bit of time, but not a lot of time, is to get a basic education yourself, like either work with somebody like me, that's going to teach you the basics of investing so you can actually understand how they're investing your money, that's the best route to go. Because then you can really vet if they are actually, once you understand how the stock market works, what the basic returns are, and simple ways to invest that you could do on your own, then you can evaluate that against what they are doing for you. But there's a few things I would want to know right away, you know, regard if you don't have time to take that route, for whatever reason, what I would say is things you want to understand are number one, what is the fee, so what is the percentage, they're charging you assets under management. So most financial advisors work on this basis. And so whatever you're investing, they're taking out a fee. 1% is pretty standard and 1% sounds innocuous, but over time, 1% can be thousands and thousands of dollars. So for example, I just ran this math, and I'll try not to try not, to exploit everyone's brain here with math, but just to like hammer this home about how small fees can make such an impact. The basic tenets of investing are you invest, your money grows and then that larger amount compounds, and it's that snowball effect, right, that's the goal of investing is to you know, create the snowball effect with your money growing. Unfortunately, fees, do the exact same thing. So I did the math for someone the other day they had about, I think they had about 50,000 in their investing account. And they were maxing out there Roth every year at 6500, the max for to invest in a Roth IRA now is 7000. But the time we were talking it was 6500. And so we did the math, if they did that for 30 years, if they just maxed out their Roth with this 1% fee, they would end up paying the advisor $250,000 in fees over the lifetime of 30 years. 250,000 is worth a lot of money. It's a lot. So that's the first thing I would want to know is what the percentage fee is. And when they say 1% or more, that is a lot that is going to add up over time. So that's the first thing. I would also want to know if there's a platform fee. So sometimes there's another fee for using whatever platform they're investing in, I would also want to understand what type of investments they're in. So most people have heard of mutual funds. Mutual funds are, simply put, are an investment that holds a bunch of stocks. So instead of buying just Apple, you're buying Apple and Microsoft and Uber and Tesla and all these big companies in one fund. So all of those funds have fees and it's important to understand the basic fees of what those investments are. So you could ask your advisor, I want to know what your fee is, if there's a platform fee and I also want to know what the fees are for my investments. And to give you a benchmark, you can get a lot of wonderful, easy investments funds that hold, for example, the entire stock market, like you can buy a mutual fund that holds every single stock in the entire stock market. And you could just like leave it alone, that's a way to invest. That's not a bad strategy. So those funds, those have fees of like, point, 0.2%, whereas a lot of the funds I see with people that work with financial advisors can be close to a percent. So if you think about (inaudible).

Lesley Logan 33:46  

So my little, my little $500, my 7,000 a year is being like compounded. So it's a point where I might not be getting any money. 

Tess Waresmith 33:57  

I mean, no, you'll, you'll definitely get some money, but your returns will be significantly impacted. So then if you're thinking, okay, well, shoot, like, I want to dive into that, but I don't know, I'm nervous about learning myself. There are a lot of other wonderful tools to invest. There are advisors that charge flat fees. So it's a one-time fee or yearly fee that's flat amount. So that's very transparent. There are robo-advisors, which are investment tools where you can put in your information and it'll automatically choose a very simple, low-fee portfolio for you. That's great. Those are companies like Ellevest does that, that's an awesome like badass women's company that helps people create their own, like automated portfolios for them. So you don't need to know anything about investing. You can just open it, they charge you like a quarter of the fees of a financial advisor. You put in your info, your birthday, your goals, and they pick a very simple low-fee portfolio for you. That's a great option. That's called a robo-advisor. And then the other option is to learn how to do it yourself and so where I fit in this ecosystem is to help you make that decision. Like, that's why I teach people the basics of how the stock market works, what your options are, and how your money can grow in simple ways, because then once you understand that, most of the time, people want to either invest on their own, or, you know, they choose a robo-advisor, that's lower fee, and they call it a day. And the type of investing that I'm talking about, which is, you know, buying and holding funds for a long period of time, you're not having to go in there and check like Lesley, you said, you don't really want to go in there, that's actually good. For most people, that's the problem is they go in and they check in and they move things around, like the type of investing that's the best is when you buy some stuff, and you hold it for a long time and you like forget it's there. Like, that's usually the best strategy.

Lesley Logan 35:48  

The natural way of doing it is gonna be the best way I'm in. 

Tess Waresmith 35:50  

Yeah, totally. 

Lesley Logan 35:52  

You are awesome. Thank you so much for all this, we're gonna put all those links in the show notes, including your guide. But before I let you go, you've given us so, so many great things. I could talk to you for a couple more hours, but bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps we can take to be it till we see it. What do you have for us?

Tess Waresmith 36:11  

So the first thing that I really want to make sure that everyone does is journal on your relationship with money. So before we even get into investing and the tactical stuff, if you're sitting here being like, this all sounds great, Lesley and Tess, but I don't feel like I can do that. The first thing I want you to do is think about your relationship with money. And you can ask yourself questions like how do I feel when I transact money? Do I feel like there's a limit on how much money I can make? Do I feel like there is an opportunity for me to make more money or not, you know, those kinds of questions are really important. Do I think I'm capable of learning how to invest? If the answer is no, shoot me a DM and I want to talk to you because you're absolutely capable of it. But that is honestly the most important thing that I want you to do is to think about your relationship with money. And if somebody has told you some things about money, or you believe it or you're sitting there saying I don't think I'm good with money, are you not good with money? Or have you just not learned anything about money yet? Because those are two very different things.

Lesley Logan 37:13  

I love this extra juice. You all have to do it because I think it was at the end of the last year Brad and I we were doing a thing and the guy was like your homework today is to write a letter to money and maybe an apology letter maybe it's hey longtime friend, it's been a while, maybe, maybe you're angry and you never told money how angry you are, like you got and I wrote this letter it was the craziest thing that came out of my like head about money and there was like things I was mad about but then there's things I was like sorry about it was a whole thing. And it truly was like a load off. And I didn't think I had a bad, like I love money, like I do. There's a money rampage I listen to, Abraham Hicks, you guys, like every day, like I, it's my favorite. Five minutes on like getting my money mindset, right. But it was really interesting how like, I like push it away. (inaudible) Like it's not like it's like gets to be my best friend at lunch. And so it's I love this action. And I'm so excited for you all to do it. And you have to tell Tess and I how it goes because we want to know. So share this episode, y'all. I'm really, this is really important. If we could all if every listener shared this with a female friend, can you imagine like the power that the change that would have would have on just the family members of the women around not alone the domino effect will have in this country and around the world because I do think that there has been a lot of generations of like, ladies don't have to learn about money. And it is it is a problem. It's why we have a wage gap. It's why we have wealth gaps. And it's and if we can actually change that then we don't need to lean on people who know more than us. And air quotes we can actually like make decisions for ourselves and we can go after things we've always wanted to. So Tess, thank you for opening our eyes. We're gonna talk to you again, I'm sure because I'm obsessed already. And until next time, everyone, Be It Till You See It.

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. 

Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.

 

Brad Crowell 39:49  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.

 

Lesley Logan 39:54  

It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.

 

Brad Crowell 39:58  

Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.

 

Lesley Logan 40:05  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.

 

Brad Crowell 40:09  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.

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