50, Now What?!

Terri Jones: Hello everyone

Alicia Sutton: and welcome to 50. Now what? I'm your host, Alicia Sutton, and today's episode is all about financial wellness. Did you know that your relationship with money can have profound effects on your health, happiness, and wellbeing? And as we move through different chapters of our own lives, so too should the way we manage money here to help us dis.

Alicia Sutton: Discuss investments, expenses, and priceless lessons about money is my friend Terry Jones, financial advisor and licensed insurance agent. Thank you for being here, Terry. How are

Terri Jones: you? I am marvelous in this rainy California weather. We're having you. It is rainy. Well, you look

Alicia Sutton: beautiful. You look a glow.

Alicia Sutton: You're the sunshine for us today.

Terri Jones: Thank you very much. Good to be here.

Alicia Sutton: Good to have you with us. Well, we're gonna start, we got some, we got a lot to cover. And before I jump into our investing 1 0 1, I wanna talk about, and I know we've talked about this before, but what did you learn about money and finance as a young person, be it in school, at home, and amongst peers?

Alicia Sutton: And how did that impact your financial perspective and habits

Terri Jones: in the long term? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, going through school and even through college and grad school, I didn't learn anything about money. Ah, we all took a crash course and you know, put into your 401k work 30 years, work 40 years, and you should be fine.

Terri Jones: Well, in this day and age, that's not necessarily the correct answer and it didn't pan out. I didn't see myself being laid off three times, having to pull money out of 401ks and having to start over and over and over. Mm-hmm. So that obviously. Push me back far as the trajectory of me retiring. Mm-hmm. So now you have to work longer or you have to save up more money and when you don't learn the money lessons early.

Terri Jones: You're gonna learn 'em on the back end or you're gonna have a problem when it is time to retire. That is

Alicia Sutton: absolutely true, and that is one of the things that, that you don't learn that life is always happening and your money may or may not reflect everything that's, that life is putting out there upon you.

Alicia Sutton: And was it all of those things, a culmination that had due to pivot more into. Looking more into your financial wealth or

Terri Jones: wellbeing? Yeah. One of, one of the things, just perfectly honest with being transparent, when I looked at the money that I did not have and just looking at my expenses and kind of looking at, okay, how many more years do I have to work?

Terri Jones: How much money will I accumulate or be able to draw for, you know, my retirement, to basically be comfortable, make sure all the bills are paid and still have some fun while I'm retired? Cuz we work so hard for our money. And we want our money to work for us. Yes. And we wanna have fun while we're doing it.

Terri Jones: I

Alicia Sutton: agree with that 155 person percent. Exactly. Absolutely. And I don't like to play the woulda, coulda, shoulda. But if we look back over a period of time, and for people, for the audience who will be listening to us, who may or may not be. Where we are in our lives, in our season. Yes. Where would you start at in your twenties and thirties and forties in terms of looking at how you're gonna start setting up your Monday if you had to do it over again?

Alicia Sutton: Not that we're regretful of the lessons we've learned. Exactly.

Terri Jones: What would you, what would you say? Because I can always help somebody else. Okay. In the twenties, you're outta college and you are navigating, and now you have money that you're getting consistently paid very nicely. One thing I would do, I would be consistent in investing.

Terri Jones: Yes. I wouldn't touch the money for things that are not important, you don't take money out. Of a 401k because you wanna go on vacation and you wanna do these things because that vacation is just burning at 20 and you know, I'll never get there anymore. So let me take out $5,000 and don't pay it back and get the penalties and the taxes and all those things.

Terri Jones: So if I were to be able to speak to myself again at 20 start investing, Do not take money out and then educate myself and don't expect someone to educate me. Read books, search for what else is out there besides a 401k and a ira. Is there something else out there that I don't know about? Mm-hmm. And that's what I would say about my twenties and my thirties because you still have, you know, a sweet bit of time when you're in your twenties, in your thirties to save up because average person is saving up probably anywhere 25 years of retirement money, maybe 30.

Terri Jones: Some people are even doing, you know, 40 if they have been fortunate enough to stay on a job or unfortunate enough, that depends on how you look at it to be somewhere 40 years where. You can stay at that one place and just be consistently putting away. And then when you have bonuses or you have your merit increased, you still live the same lifestyle.

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm. Instead of like, Ooh, I got like 10%, I got 5%, so now I'm gonna live up to that five or 10% cuz I have that extra. No. Continue to put that away. Put that extra away into your. Retirement. I love that.

Alicia Sutton: And I, I think the keyword is always gonna be consistency because, you know, life happens, but you need to be able to find some type of consistency in your financial world because it comes,

Terri Jones: oh, it comes, life doesn't.

Terri Jones: Life comes whether you want it or not. Right.

Alicia Sutton: As part of, um, as we move forward, we do take more risks when we're younger. Yes. Uh, what would you advise about risk factor and recovery over a period

Terri Jones: of time? Because you have that time when you say, like in your twenties and thirties, and say you project yourself to work to 55 60 or just wish just rounded off, I'm gonna work 30 years.

Terri Jones: And, but I'm gonna take risks probably in the first 10 to 15 years. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think you have the opportunity to take the high risk in your twenties, in your thirties, but then when you start getting into your forties, you might start looking at dialing it down, because now I don't wanna lose large amount of money in my forties, and then it's gonna take me a span of.

Terri Jones: Maybe eight or 10 years to get back to where I was before I can move forward. So those things are very important is when do you stop being so aggressive and start dialing it down when you get older and start going into like, like maybe I. Low to moderate risk or just moderate risk where you could ride that out until you retire.

Terri Jones: And what,

Alicia Sutton: what do you consider to be higher risk investments versus mid-range to low risk investments? A lot of stocks,

Terri Jones: you know, anything that's in the market. Because you know, the market is bearable, which we call it, it's unpredictable and it's unreliable. You know, it goes up 30, it goes down 30, you know?

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm. And at the end of the year, when you really add it up, cuz people get really excited, like, oh, I gained 30%, you know, and it may ride out for a few months, and then the last two months or three months of the year, they've lost all of their gain. So the average with a 401k, Basically it's 5% growth.

Terri Jones: When you look at it over a course of a hundred years, it's literally about 5%.

Alicia Sutton: That is so, such good information to know that if, if you're younger listening to this, just listen to it and act on it. It is for your advantage. Trust, exactly. Trust. Trust us. Trust

Terri Jones: us. We are examples and we know now talking

Alicia Sutton: about some of other investments, cuz like you said, we're, we're living life, right?

Alicia Sutton: Yes. And you have children and you have homes, and you have things that happen. And I know that we've talked about this before. Is the investing in your children. And we love our children. We love our nieces, our nephews. Yes. You know, our guy children. All of them. All of them. But where do you find the boundaries to be when you are?

Alicia Sutton: Because we spend most of our, and like most women, let's just face it, we spend most of our time taking care of others. Most definitely. But there needs to be boundaries. And I've known some people who have. Taken out of their 401ks and, you know, taking money out on their homes to finance their children.

Alicia Sutton: What are your thoughts?

Terri Jones: Really want, don't wanna step on too many toes, but this is a cautionary tale for anyone. When you're looking at your financial picture and you're looking to get. Your child through college and you wanna be proud of them and you don't want them to be strapped or straddled with, you know, so much debt.

Terri Jones: The numbers don't lie. Yeah. You really need to sit down and have that conversation with your child that's going to college. And you know, this may not be the most pleasant conversation, but here's the reality. Are you planning on just. Pulling money out of your house. And I've know people that have taken a lot of equity out of their home.

Terri Jones: I know people that have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars out of their 401k, which in the long run is gonna set you back, especially if you need that money. Now, if you're fortunate enough to not need that money, then you know, hooray for you. But most people would need that money. I think you need to do what's comfortable for you, number one.

Terri Jones: I think you also need to really be soberly thinking about what is the impact to me? What is it going to have? What is the bottom line for myself when I'm ready to retire? Am I gonna have to work additional years because I gave to Jim for school, you know, or Sharon for school, or Margaret Matthew for school.

Terri Jones: Any of those things, you know, you have to look at. The bigger picture. Yeah. You know, there's no shame in saying I can't do it or no. Yeah. You know, you need to be able to embrace no and not be guilty about it. Right. Because a lot of times schools are, universities are so expensive, and I, to be perfectly honest, a lot of times, Your child can go to, say, a junior college for two years and get all of the prerequisites that they make them take before they even get into their degree that they're focusing on.

Terri Jones: And then there's like maybe two years of a high price university opposed to four or five, right?

Alicia Sutton: Right. Exactly. And, and you know it too. And a lot of the conversation about finances with your children may need to be in the learning for those children.

Terri Jones: Like I think as we know information, we really need to sit down with our children, don't wait for them to go off to college.

Terri Jones: Yes. These conversations and these teachings need to be when they can comprehend. You know, we learned at an early age that we all wanted to work. Cuz the first thing on our mind, Alicia, you know, it's like we gotta have that car. So I need the car. We wanna do it on our own. I did.

Alicia Sutton: Yeah, I did. And uh, and, and, and throw in a little my, uh, little transparency.

Alicia Sutton: When I, when I was younger I had a lot of things up I wanted too. Mm-hmm. And I got to the point where I got tired of, you know how you get tired of mama and daddy buying your clothes? Cuz I just didn't like what they was gonna get.

Terri Jones: Oh yes. Oh yes. So if

Alicia Sutton: you want, if you want those pants that I'm gonna age myself, if you want those, uh, DoorDash jeans, you want, want the look, those guest

Terri Jones: jeans, those window panes.

Terri Jones: Those window, then what you need to do is go get you a job. You a job. And if you want more than the, maybe the three pair of pants I can afford to buy, that's it. You want five pairs, you want 10 pairs, then you need to go get a job. And guess what? I didn't like that answer, so I went and got a job.

Alicia Sutton: Uh, that's exactly what I did when I started wanting shoes that cost too much.

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm.

Alicia Sutton: Exactly. You wasn't, you know, those, those expensive sneakers and stuff. Yeah. I, I went and got a summer job and bought my school clothes. I absolutely love that. And everyone can, everyone can relate to that. Now, let's talk a little bit about how money works, the myths about money and how it's taxed and debt and all of those things.

Alicia Sutton: Let's, let's

Terri Jones: dig into that. So money works three ways. You know it money compounds, it grows, it gets taxed. You'll get taxed now or later, and that's your 401k. But here's the thing about money. Money can be your friend. You could take control of it and demand it, where to go and make it work for you. Cuz one thing you wanna do that I heard Warren Buffet said, he said, you need to make your money work for you while you're sleeping.

Terri Jones: Yeah, just like the banks, they do compound interest when they loan out or they give you credit cards. Here comes your credit card, you spend something, now you have to pay it. But guess what? They've tacked on th uh, 23% interest rate when you have money that you leave in the bank and they're giving you 0.01% on your savings.

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm. See? The people that win are the people that know how money works and how it's compound and how it's taxed. That's right. And that's if you could ever get on the end to make sure that your money works in compounds for you and you put it in vehicles that compound with no taxation, that's how you win.

Terri Jones: And I definitely tell people, if you're not a reader, learn to be a reader. There's so many good books out there, and I know everybody heard about Rich Dad, poor Dad by Kawasaki, and you have book. What would the Rockefellers do? The Power of Zero Money, wealth and life insurance and the Retired Miracle.

Terri Jones: Those are small, quick read books that you can get from Amazon and I have 'em on my bookshelf. I read 'em all. This is information that you do not in, you will not get in school. And I don't care how much you pay for college. I

Alicia Sutton: know that's right. I mean, college is there to teach you, you know, you learn all the numbers.

Alicia Sutton: You can learn about the numbers. Learn. But the real life application of money is something altogether different. Exactly. And that's not gonna come in your, it's not gonna come in

Terri Jones: your degree. It did not, it definitely did not come in my mba. So I was like, I paid for MBA to learn exactly what and what I really need is this with, which did not cost a degree.

Terri Jones: See, we, that's

Alicia Sutton: why we here to tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. And some of the other things too, like is knowing what to set aside for, for life happening. We talk about life is gonna happen, the importance of that emergency fund. What's been your experience with that?

Terri Jones: Ooh, uh, just talking to a girlfriend and a business partner the other day. And you know what we learned? Obviously all of us learned from the pandemic. You know, it's always been the standard to put three to six months of, uh, emergency fund living expenses away. I would urge people even to go beyond that, if you can look at and set a goal for six to nine months, if not even more, because what happens is when people get sick, Things happen.

Terri Jones: Your money or your 401k, your, anything that you have saved up for retirement immediately gets tapped and eroded. Yeah. And if you cannot go back to work, then that's the money that you're living off of that you didn't plan earlier than later. So emergency fund is very important. Add up your bills, know what's going out monthly, and put a little extra on top of it, and then make sure you have enough for at least six months so you can be prepared.

Terri Jones: You know? Yeah. The roof is leaking, it's. 30 grand, it's 10 grand to fix it. Well, I have that money right there. I don't have to pull outta my 401k to either borrow it, take a loan on it, or just take it out cuz I'm not gonna pay it back. And speaking of emergency front, I, I,

Alicia Sutton: the, the gratitude I have for having had someone tell me that some years ago I had in the middle of all this rain, my hot water heater, Broke.

Alicia Sutton: Yeah. Was spewing out. It was horrible on, you know, Superbowl Sunday, so I was at

Terri Jones: the house, so with somebody changing out my hot water heater, more hot heater.

Alicia Sutton: It was like, wow. But I was like, okay, I got it. You know? It wasn't like, do I need to, do I need to start boiling water for a few weeks

Terri Jones: or Exactly. Or let's see, lemme check all my accounts.

Terri Jones: Let's see if I have this. Lemme see what we gotta do. Exactly. This is the things that you have to be mindful, you know, things break down, they wear over time. Um, right now I got a service person coming tomorrow cause the, uh, refrigerator freezer decide I don't wanna make my ice anymore and I don't wanna freeze your food anymore.

Terri Jones: Oh no. Yeah, but I know I have my other refrigerator freezer that I was just in the garage that I was thinking. In my mind, I see, you know, I could probably get rid of this. No. And that, that one is 21 years old, gives me no problem still going. I have the bills and whistles in the house that's not even five years old.

Terri Jones: So they're coming out to see what's going on with that. But the unexpected, you need to make sure you expect that you have the money for it. Exactly. And you know

Alicia Sutton: what I, I missed, I hate, I threw out an old refrigerator that was in our garage for years. Mm-hmm. We used to call it the deep freezer. The deep freezer.

Alicia Sutton: That's where Oh yeah. The, the, the real food used to go, oh yeah, the real food. That's where the real freezer go and the pandemic come around and I, I missed that deep freezer. I said all the stuff I would've had packed up in this deep freezer. But anyway, that's a lesson learned. That's some old school stuff too.

Alicia Sutton: We gonna put that out there too. We gonna put that in the universe.

Terri Jones: Look. Look. Just because it o it still works. Keep it. It still works. And like I said, just the other day I was thinking like, you know, I need to make more room in my garage. I need to finally probably get rid of this freezer. It came in handy, so I just moved all my stuff that was in the freezer.

Terri Jones: I put it in the freezer side and then also when. The great nieces and nephews come, you know, yeah, I, I gotta stock up and do major shopping. So it takes two refrigerator and freezer. It takes two for those three little people that snack and eat all day long. All day long, all day long, long. The stove is on all day, all day long.

Terri Jones: It's like, can I have a snack? I'm thirsty. Can I have some juice? When is lunch? When is dinner? Oh, it's for dessert. What's

Alicia Sutton: dessert? Go. Go check it. Go take it out the freezer. Exactly. Go to the freezer. Go to the I absolutely love. I love that. Yes. Well talk, speaking of which, emergency funds, budgeting, and I have a problem with this, and I think everyone does because.

Alicia Sutton: Like you always wanna have some leeway. At the end of the day, it's still your money. Exactly. And you're like, oh, you know how, how much do I want to confine myself to a budget? And maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it's just a matter of. I'm training myself in bettering how to lower expenses.

Alicia Sutton: What has been your experience with that in terms of working within a budget? I like to call it a trap, but I'm a, I'm a step away from that. It, it actually is useful. It

Terri Jones: is very useful and for many years I didn't bother with a, uh, budget cuz I thought in my little mind, I, I can budget in my head and I can, you know, and then I'll have this much money left over and I could just do what I want with it.

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm. I had to kind of change my mindset about that. Then I have to, you know, and a lot of us are paying bills, you know, online. We don't write out checks anymore. We don't, but balance, uh, a checkbook. But me, I may be a little excessive, but you know what? I look at my account every single day. And start looking at, okay, what's cleared?

Terri Jones: What hasn't cleared and recalculating all the time so I don't fall short, you know? And of course I have, you know, falling shorts like, oh my God, where's, where's all my money? Then I think like, God, I forgot about that one and I gotta forgot about that one. So, one thing is to help you make sure you don't overdraw your account, number one.

Terri Jones: Number two, you know, banks make mistakes. Just to make sure that, cuz I, you know, I've gone into my account and I'm like, where is my money? Yeah. And having to call the bank and said, Hey, you know, there's, uh, quite a few, uh, dollars missing, you know, and somebody had, you know, stole money outta my account.

Terri Jones: That's why I mm-hmm. You know, I always check it and I think we all have been a victim of that kind of fraudulent activity we have. But don't throw caution to the win and not check your account. That's one thing you need to do, but you know, Alicia, to have a budget, you know, you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to pull out this big old spreadsheet and just, you know, take it all the way down to the penny and things like that give you, give yourself some grace and some leadway, and hey, put it in a budget.

Terri Jones: So then you don't feel deprived. You don't feel like you're putting yourself on punishment or saying, okay, until I, until I get here, then I can't do this. And. At the end of the day, I don't think the budget is meant to be a task master for you. It's just to give you a roadmap about here where is where I am every month, every day, every hour that I'm spending, and also look at what you're actually spending.

Terri Jones: So when I look at my account, I'll look and say, okay. You didn't have to spend that. You didn't have to spend that, you didn't have to spend that. And when you start thinking about you really didn't have to spend that, sometimes that adds up to four or $500 very quickly. That's, that you could have had

Alicia Sutton: That's exactly, yeah, that's exactly it.

Alicia Sutton: And I know, um, and you, you're better than I am to be able to check it every day. But I do, I did. One thing I did do is I put notifications on my account. You know, you have all these things where you can kind of go in and do that. And when I start hearing my cell phone go bing. You know, something from a bank is coming through Bing.

Alicia Sutton: And I keep, I was like, what is going on? Bing? Yeah. I'm like, wait a minute. And it's everything. It's Zoom, it's, mm-hmm. It's something from a PayPal, it's something from a streaming service. And you look up and I'm like, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, I have all these streaming services and I watched maybe one show on each of them, and so it was like, okay, some of this can go, you don't even watch this except for

Terri Jones: one.

Terri Jones: Exactly. That's the other thing you gotta look at. I look at my, there's Netflix, there's Amazon, there's Spotify, there's Zoom, Hulu, you know? Yeah. Like Zoom. I need, you know, cuz I do meetings on Tuesday and all through the week when I sit down with clients. So certain things you need, but then you have to kind of look at.

Terri Jones: What don't you need? You know, like I don't have two phones in a house. I just work with my cell phone, and then I'm on a professional plan where I'm a first responder, so I get a discount there and then start looking at where you can count. And cut costs. I put, you know, I put solar panels on the house and now the last bill I got was minus $135 for my electric.

Terri Jones: Oh, that's awesome. And so you have to kind of think of, because those sort of things are gonna go up. Every year, and that is what is eroding and eating away the senior citizens nest egg. Yes. Is the gas bill, the electrical, the water bill. Yep. The gasoline that put in your car. The food that's in the market.

Terri Jones: You know who could plan for that when you, it's gone up so astronomical.

Alicia Sutton: Oh, astronomically. And, and that takes us to the types of things that appreciate and depreciate Exactly. Over time. There are just certain things that are going to, no matter what, they're gonna continue to increase. I've never seen food go down.

Alicia Sutton: I, I've, no, there may be a sale, but I've seen, you know, like we both have. I'm like, bread costs

Terri Jones: this much. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I went, well, I looked there and said toothpaste. I'm like, huh, toothpaste eight. Oh. Now here's the thing. Wow. When everybody was saying, yeah, eggs were $8, $9, and I'm like, yeah, right. I don't really eat eggs.

Terri Jones: Uh, if I go out to breakfast, I might order egg whites and once in a while, get eggs in the house and stuff like that. But here's the thing I said, okay, uh, let me go to the market and see what this egg business is. Uhhuh crazy. It was, it was crazy. I mean, it was crazy. The, the large ones were like almost $30.

Terri Jones: I. I said, yeah, it's crazy. Better buy some hens and have them hatch in a backyard. It's time for us to invest in a coop. Terry, a coop. We got a got a, we get the chicken coop, we gonna get it together. And I have actually started a, I have started a garden with one of my girlfriends. Yes. So we've, we have some sprouts going on right now.

Terri Jones: We've Do you? Yes, we did. Oh my gosh. We did. About nine, nine things we planned that is so wonderful. Veggies and uh, butter, lettuce and spinach and kale. Just the gamut of things. That's actually a

Alicia Sutton: very good idea and I've been thinking about it cuz I always thought, well, should I actually do something like that?

Alicia Sutton: And I'm like, I got this backyard. Nobody here but me. I was like, I might as well just do it. And I've just been looking at, it's so funny you mentioned that growing tomatoes and stuff like that, because you know, you go how much of tomatoes

Terri Jones: right now? Tomatoes, streaming. Well, see we grew up, oh my god, we grew up, my father planted a garden every year.

Terri Jones: Yeah. Since we were really little. So we always had. The corn, the, the vegetables, yes. And all those things. And a peach tree showed up outta nowhere. But we had strawberries. We had greens. We had greens. Collar greens. Every single weekend. Yes. And I told him, I said, when I become an adult, I said, I'm never going to eat in another green again.

Terri Jones: But that's not the truth. I eat it. That's not the truth. And. One thing I do say, and I can kick myself, is that I should have paid more attention when he was doing the garden. Yeah. So I could have learned, but now my girlfriend we're just kind of doing a crash course. You're figuring it out. With grows, it grows with doesn't YouTube and then we could talk to people.

Alicia Sutton: I know that's right. And, and that's the thing there is access to this information. It used to feel like everything was such a secret, especially when it came to finances and, and all these other little things that we need in our lives now. Yes. It's like you can find it, you can, you can tap it in somewhere and you can go to the books that you mentioned and just.

Alicia Sutton: Get those life things that you need in order to apply to real life situations. And I'm gonna go back to these collard greens. I remember we didn't buy collard greens No. Until we were like, who going to the store to get collard greens? And now I'm like, God, I wish I could grow collard greens, let alone cook them.

Alicia Sutton: I could find somebody to cook 'em. Just

Terri Jones: know how to, yeah, I, yeah, I'm kinda there with you on that. But here's the thing. When you talk about finances and all those things, you know, we didn't have computers back when we were growing up and all these things. That's very true. But you can Google just about anything and get true the information you need.

Terri Jones: And I've done a lot of Googling, you know, and how. You know how my journey started. I had a girlfriend that called me and said, Hey, I'm going to this meeting. You know this financial meeting you wanna join? I said, I said, I'll join you. I said, but I said, I'm not buying anything. I'm not investing in anything and I'm not doing I, I'm going to support you.

Terri Jones: Now. In the back of my mind, I kept saying, God, I need some help with my finances besides this 401k. There's gotta be something more to supercharge my retirement. Well, lo and behold, I go there. I hear information that I've never heard before. Yeah. And I didn't jump right away. I went and did my homework. So I told the gentleman, the financial advisor, I said, Hey, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna look this information you up, cuz I've never heard of it before.

Terri Jones: And I said, why is it we've never heard about it? So I looked up everything. I did a lot of reading. I pulled up articles, printed them out, and called them up. I said, Hey, can we have another meeting? I said, Hey, I have something for you, for your clients. Now I need to be a client myself, but I'm giving him information.

Terri Jones: I said, Hey. I said, I said, I think this is really, get your clients in the door if you show them these articles and things like that. And then I said, what about me? I said, Am I a good candidate? Cause this is what I wanna do. This is when I wanna retire, and this is what I don't have, right? I said, how can you help me?

Terri Jones: Sat down, went through the whole presentation one-on-one with me. I asked a lot of questions, and believe it or not, at the end of the day, it was all about cash value life insurance. That works more than one way. Yes. So we have to get away from the stigma of being scared to talk about the inevitable.

Terri Jones: We're all gonna die one day. Yeah. We're all gonna die. But I tell people all the time, I said, this is not your grandmother's life insurance. Mm-hmm. This life insurance has been around since the 1920s. Oh, really? You know that? Oh, yeah. It's been around, it's been around a very long time, so, okay. I would say it's been around long enough that.

Terri Jones: We never knew about it until pretty much our generation, our parents didn't know about it recent and very recently. So when I sat down with him, he started showing me, you know, how to invest in it. What would be the numbers, how much coverage I would need in life insurance, and the cash value that accumulates that you could use to buy a house.

Terri Jones: Go back to school. Wedding. Retirement. So right. Guess what? Word stuck in my mind. Retirement. Right? I said, here it is. There's the avenue to add to my retirement and enrich my savings. And my increase and watch it compound over time. And I think one thing everybody needs to understand that it's all about having the gift of time.

Terri Jones: So the younger you get involved in it, it's not a get rich quick scheme overnight, right? It takes time, it grows, money grows and compounds over years. But the key is how many times. Do you want to be involved in the compounding? Right? If you find a vehicle that is giving you anywhere from 10 to 12%, then it's usually gonna compound Every six years, you're gonna see a nice increase and the amount of times that you can have that compound and double your money triple and quadruple your money, you struck a gold mine.

Terri Jones: If you fund it correctly, if always tell my clients, you have to fund this correctly. If you don't fund it correctly, all it is is life insurance and it is not another vehicle for you to use at retirement. And that's the, uh, when you're talking

Alicia Sutton: about the, you're talking about the, um, the 7, 7

Terri Jones: 0 2. Is that the Yes.

Terri Jones: Which is which? A, which is a tax code. Tax code. And yes, it's called, you know, 77 0 2 A ish tax code where. Tells Uncle Sam, taxes have already been paid. That money belongs to the invest store. You can't touch it.

Alicia Sutton: I love that. That's such a valuable right there. It's so, it's so much meaning there. I almost hate to move on to the next thing cuz I wanna leave it there.

Alicia Sutton: But no, we need to touch on this and a lot of people get caught in this as a trap and, and reason why they don't move into these other avenues of investing is working with credit. And, you know, using the credit card and somehow think mm-hmm. Using that as a bailout when it's not. But there are some myths around credit and there are ways that you can just, like you can change your perspective on having a budget, using your different perspective on credit.

Alicia Sutton: What is your perspective on that?

Terri Jones: I think one of the things is don't abuse credit number one. Right. Credit is not to go buy something that you don't have the money in the bank to afford. Mm-hmm. Say, okay, this will give a hypothetical, say I go out and have my American Express card. I spend, I don't know, $2,000 on a table.

Terri Jones: So I need a table for the house. So I spend $2,000 on the table, okay? When that bill comes in, take the money that's in that account and pay it. Yeah, don't let it just go, because now we're talking about you are on the other end of the compounding. Mm-hmm. American Express is compounding with that 23, 24, 25, 20 6%.

Terri Jones: Yeah. I don't know how much they're charging these days. It's a lot. It's high. It's it's high. I know. And so you wanna be on that end. You want that compounding. That's why we always say, make the compounding work for you. Right. Make your money work for you. Leave a legacy for children, grandchildren, whatever your plan is, but make sure you have the money work for you and not work against you.

Terri Jones: So you, you don't wanna

Alicia Sutton: be you being compounded. I like that. Don't let, don't let it come. Look,

Terri Jones: don't let it compound you. You be the com You make sure you are compounding for yourself, right? Cause it compounds

Alicia Sutton: on you hard. You, the, the bruises. The bruises.

Terri Jones: Bruises and the bruises. And the thing is this, people stay up late at night.

Terri Jones: Like, oh my God, how am gonna pay this bill? You know, avoiding, uh, the telephone calls. You know, I've been in the pitfall. It's like when my parents were alive, it's like, I need help. You know, I run a $30,000 in credit. What did I have to show for it? Not a thing. I mean, nothing. I thought to myself, what exactly did you buy?

Terri Jones: Right? You know, expensive purses, clothes, going out to eat. Yeah. Vacation. Mm-hmm. And those are the things that I'm saying that are not smart and they're, they're horrible. And it is not really an investment. It all you're doing is like, I want it now, now, now, now, now, yes. Like Susie Orman says, okay. Before you spend, I love her.

Terri Jones: Is it a need? For a want. Mm-hmm. Draw a line and say, needs and wants. It's okay to want, we all have wants, but she says, and then sit back and think about it. And I've done this over a lot of times where, okay, I really want this. I don't need it, but I want it. Then I said, let me sit back and sleep on it 24 48 hours and guess what?

Terri Jones: Don't want it. Don't need it and don't go buy it. And

Alicia Sutton: that comes with maturity as well, I think. Exactly. One of the things we haven't talked about is being mature with money and being an adult about money. Um, because you know all the wants and you know, you want the candy, you know, you always wanna have the candy, but at some point your teeth are gonna fall out and you gotta stop and it's not gonna help you.

Alicia Sutton: It's not gonna help. It's, and I, and I came into that late as well, and I, I think that's why this conversation is so important is because it's real. It's happened to the both of us. No one's looking for perfection. It's real life and it's so important and, and not only does financial just affect you financially, it affects so many other parts of your life, including your physical life.

Alicia Sutton: And we talked about this, people staying up late at night and wondering about

Terri Jones: it, stressing out. Stressing out, and then you have a panic attack. Yeah. Or now you can't breathe, you're in the ER because you're just like, oh my God. It's like credit could be a very much of a crushing weight if you don't control it.

Terri Jones: You have to be in control and harness it. And if you're the person that can't seem. To put any stipulations on yourself. Maybe you need a accountability partner. Yes. Maybe you need a friend that is not gonna shame you, but Yes, is going to be supportive, but be able to tell you no. And you respect the no.

Terri Jones: Yes. And you don't go against the no because they, they're doing it love and they're trying to help you if you cannot. Control yourself. You may need somebody to help you. And that's, that's right. You know, that's quite all right. There is no shame in that.

Alicia Sutton: None at all. Because there's a big difference between someone who's supporting you to sustain your financial, your health and wealth as opposed to an enabler.

Alicia Sutton: You know, we end up, especially when you get into that, the, when you start. Talking about your wants. If everybody around you is all, you know, yeah. Get it, get it, get it, get it,

Terri Jones: get it, get it, get it. And then, but they're not saying that then they're, you're looking like pay full. You got buyer's remorse.

Terri Jones: You're like, oh Jesus, I can't pay this. This thing is astronomical. Right. And this kind of ducktail into cars. You know, yes, I've paid $800 car note. Mm-hmm. I've been there and because it wasn't, I needed the car, but I needed to have that Mercedes, I needed to have that Lexus, but you look good and know you look good into that bill ca every single month.

Terri Jones: And I was like, and I said, okay Lord, this is never going to happen again. Mm-hmm. And for my age, I've only purchased. What, four, five cars in it My whole entire life, um, my last car had a, you know, got totaled so I had to buy another one. But what I do, I put a budget on how much money I wanted to spend monthly for that car note.

Terri Jones: Right? And it had, it had to fit within that budget or I was not going to get it right. I wasn't gonna pay that. It did not make sense. And then the other thing I did, because I got so broadsided with, now you have to get another car, insurance gave me a certain amount of money. I. I went and got me a pre-owned car.

Terri Jones: It was not brand new. Wow. First

Alicia Sutton: of all, I think that's great. And I know that I, I can tell you how relieved I felt when I got my pink slip. When I paid that car off. I danced and I danced. Oh yeah. And it's been paid off a long time and I'm like, I'm keeping this car until it, it stopped. But wheel will fall off.

Alicia Sutton: It fall off exactly when it has somehow, you know, become its own AI system and tells me itself. I'm no longer, no longer

Terri Jones: driving you,

Alicia Sutton: you exactly. We're we're done. Get on the bus. We're, but this has been such a great conversation. I wanna get into some of our, our last stuff here in terms of financial wellness because once you get into that place, like we said, when you pay the car off, when you see those things start to just ease up on you, uh, we both kind of took a breath, like, oh yes, ugh, it feels so good, but what are some of the lessons that every person should know when it comes to money?

Alicia Sutton: And also, I. Not feeling ashamed about it, but going into the next phase of their life and feeling

Terri Jones: a sense of relief. First and foremost, go get some help. If you don't know how to work with finances, you don't know how money works. Your finances are in a shamble. You're not alone. There's so many people out there rebuilding for whatever reason, divorces, um, which are completely devastating financially on both sides of the coin, or just maybe if you've been laid off, or sickness, disease, all those things, you know, don't be ashamed.

Terri Jones: Find somebody you can be vulnerable with mm. That you trust that won't go run their mouth in the street about you because you made a poor or very poor decisions. I love that. I've had several friends come to me and say, Hey, I need to talk to you. You know? Yeah. And I said, Hey, this is confidential. Number one.

Terri Jones: I believe in hipaa. You are not the blunt of anybody's jokes financially or anything else. How can I help you? Right. I love that. And that's one of the thing we need to take the shame out of being ashamed that you didn't do a good job with saving or retiring. And you have friends that are bragging about, oh, I'm gonna retire early, and I got blah, blah, blah, and you're that're quiet.

Terri Jones: And that's what we're running into. And unfortunately we're running into it more with women than we are with men. Yes. And ladies, I need to tell you, you need to find somebody that is your confidant. Yes. Get you some help. Get you some education and sit down and talk with somebody because we're all here to help.

Terri Jones: Anybody that wants to help. Yes. Don't overspend. Yeah. Put yourself on a diet, if that's a ugly word for you. Put yourself on a nice little soft, let's say it a soft budget, you know, no soft budget like we talked about, you know, budget in that. Vacation budget in. Yeah. That extra, you know, you want a nice pair of shoes, you want a dress, you want this, you want that.

Terri Jones: You wanna get certain things done because as women, we like to keep ourselves up. Then we do budget that in, just don't go pay the bills. Then I got all the rest of this money I'm gonna treat myself to. It's zero. Mm-hmm. Do don't do that to yourself and then have an emergency fund. That's it. Make sure you have.

Terri Jones: We didn't talk about this. Make sure you have a will and trust. Yes. We are running into a lot of people that I've seen so many people pass away that are not 70, 80, and 90 years old. They're 30, they're in their twenties. They're Yes. 50. And they don't wake up. Or they're in a car accident. Yes, they have a massive, uh, heart attack, those sort of things.

Terri Jones: Like it says, tomorrow's not promised, but we need to make plans. Absolutely. We need to be good stewards of what God has given us, and that means put a will and a trust in place. Let somebody know what your final wishes are so they're not running around trying to figure out does she want to be resuscitated.

Terri Jones: You know, where does she wanna be buried? Where does he wanna, mm-hmm. You know, all these things that you think of while somebody is grieving, put it in writing and put it in place. And then like for me, there's no guesswork. Mark and Matthew can come in and, you know, Read it like a book and go ahead and go like that.

Terri Jones: And I just told him, I said, here's money for the, uh, funeral expense and don't you dare spend that money. Do what you gotta do and all the rest is

Alicia Sutton: yours. I love that, first of all. And, and we didn't touch on that. That actually could be a whole other show because Oh my goodness. Yes. It's so in depth. I, and I, and I can tell you too, and, and I think we're kind of in similar situations.

Alicia Sutton: I, you know, I'm not married, I don't have children, and. I, I put together a will and trust and actually bought my whole funeral package. I'm like, excellent. I don't who's gonna be here to do this, but I don't even the food. You got obituaries, you got food. I'm cremated. I. Everybody just, that's it. Have a good time.

Alicia Sutton: Have a good time. Don't worry about it. But I can tell you this too. And then you probably felt this as well. I felt a relief from that. Yes.

Terri Jones: Oh, most definitely. It was.

Alicia Sutton: It was like, oh, okay, so that's done. And then you could move on with all these other things that you're budgeting in, or soft budgeting or, um, Staycation about, I don't know.

Alicia Sutton: We're gonna come up with a good word for that, Terry. We're gonna, we're gonna put our heads together and come up

Terri Jones: with a term. Exactly. We'll, we'll come up with some, so everybody, we'll come up with something. Everybody will have a good time with it. We'll have a good time with, but one thing I will have to say, I saw this with my parents.

Terri Jones: Mm-hmm. They had a will and trust. Yeah. There was no guesswork, nothing. Everything was in place. The money was there. You know, we weren't running around trying to do a GoFundMe. Hey, GoFundMe is not the answer. You need to plan just like you plan every, you plan for a wedding, you plan to have children, you plan to go to college, plan for, plan for when you die, but enjoy your life.

Terri Jones: I always say put the plans in place and then go on about your life. Enjoying and living life and living. But I saw my parents do it and they were a good example of everything. To the T there was no guesswork whatsoever. Yeah.

Alicia Sutton: And, and that also is reflective of how they lived your financial life as well.

Alicia Sutton: I always feel like that's my last gift. If I didn't give you anything else, you don't have to worry about this. And, and I have my own personal things too. I said I, I never wanted anybody have to get about, you know, what wig to put on me in the casket, but that's a whole other thing. Yeah.

Terri Jones: That's a whole other thing, but, It's like, girl, she don't, she don't want that one.

Terri Jones: I don't know what she do. Who got that Jerry Curl wig?

Alicia Sutton: Like this? What is that in her

Terri Jones: prom dress? No. Oh my goodness.

Alicia Sutton: No, no. It has been so good talking to you, Terry. So much fun talking to you and all those wonderful, wonderful advice. And I, and I love that. And this is the thing we, we've been. Talking to you for, for weeks now is because it comes from such a personal place and a personal journey and given to us with such love.

Alicia Sutton: And so I just wanna extend my gratitude to you for, uh, for sharing your story and your, um, your journey with us. Thank you so much.

Terri Jones: I mean, I had an awesome time. I mean, I just feel. Privilege to be able to even be asked, you know? Yeah. I'm so proud of my nephews, which are my sons. They, most people call me Auntie Mommy because aunts are extension of a mother.

Terri Jones: It is. But what I want to extend to you, Alicia, we need to get together and have lunch or something like that. Oh, this is a plan. This is a plan. This is a plan, you know? Oh, if I, and guess what? It's budgeted. It's budgeted. I got. It's in there. It's in there. It's in, it's in the budget, but I it's in there. Oh my God.

Terri Jones: I just wanna thank you so much. I truly feel blessed and grateful, and I just have such an attitude of gratitude because I don't take any of these things lightly. But thank you so

Alicia Sutton: much. Thank you. We'll get together for lunch. We're gonna talk about some other stuff too.

Terri Jones: Oh yeah, we, because we can talk about wheels and trust until the wheels fall off.

Terri Jones: Exactly. All the way, way off. All the way off. All the way off.

Alicia Sutton: Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to 50. Now what? Make sure to follow us. Rate and share the show. Make sure to follow me on Instagram for continuous updates at 50. Now what podcast? That's five zero. Now what podcast? In our next episode, coming out on July 7th, I talk with author, founder, and literary agent Dr.

Alicia Sutton: Sharon Norris Elliott at certain points in life. You'll find yourself at a crossroads. We talk about what it's like to be at this milestone age of 50 and how it's not too late to reinvent yourself and try something new. Don't miss it. This podcast was produced by Rainbow Creative with producer Matthew Jones and producer and editor Sean Levy Feely.

Alicia Sutton: I love working with this team. To learn more about making a podcast for you or your business, visit them@rainbowcreative.co.