Let’s Talk Financial Health, It’s Important

Conversations that often get pushed off, are the ones that feel uncomfortable, whether that be because we have to give a bad performance review, break up with someone, or talk about our financial situation and retirement plan. This conversation is the latter and my guest Dan Stich, Founder and Investment Representative, specializes in helping people have uncomfortable conversations in a comfortable way in order to find a path forward. Pivoting from Healthcare Administration nearly 4 years ago Dan found his passion in helping educate businesses and individuals. Not only is he brilliant, he is wildly down to earth.       

 

Contact - Daniel Stich

LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-stich-cpfa%C2%AE-609140b/

E-mail - danielstich@ffig.com

Phone - 262-853-4541

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started.  I have an awesome guest on today Dan Stich, Dan was born and raised in Brookfield Wisconsin as the son of a solo practicing dentist and an educator. He grew up in healthcare and saw firsthand the peaks and valleys of running your own small business as well as garnered the passion to share knowledge and assist in educating individuals on difficult topics. Dan graduated from the University of Wisconsin lacrosse and attended Marquette University for graduate school. During his time at Marquette, he was drawn into the world of healthcare specifically managed care and started a career in healthcare administration. First, starting on the insurance side and moving to the provider side, Dan negotiated multimillion dollar contracts with some of the largest names in the Wisconsin healthcare industry. After over 13 years in the health care administration, Dan chose to shift his focus to financial planning, and has built a practice focused on working with small businesses pre retirement-age individuals, and medical professionals. He enjoys educating and presenting on all topics related to retirement planning, including Social Security timing, long-term care planning, retirement income planning, and financial basis. Dan earned his certified fiduciary plan advisor designation through the National Association of planned advisors, increasing his knowledge of qualified and nonqualified retirement plans for businesses. He has a passion for assisting business owners and offering their employees quality options for planning educating opportunities, as well as working with the owners for their succession plans. Dan is licensed to practice in multiple states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and South Carolina. I'm excited to have this great conversation with a brilliant individual and someone who has become a friend.

 

Dan Stich  03:08

Stich Financial Partners and Futurity First Securities America are separate entities. The information presented here today is not specific to any individual's personal circumstance, and is not intended to provide investment tax legal or retirement advice or recommendations. To the extent that material concerns tax matters. It's not intended to be written to be used or cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by the law. So the materials that were presented today are for general information educational purposes, based upon publicly available information from sources believed to be reliable. The information in these materials may change at anytime without notice, and securities are offered through securities America, Inc, Member FINRA slash SIPC, stick financial partners and securities, American companies are separate entities.

 

Leighann Lovely  04:00

Dan, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to have you. Why don't you?

 

Dan Stich  04:05

Yes, it's great.

 

Leighann Lovely  04:06

Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?  Sure. Well, again, thanks so much for setting this up. I'm super pumped to be able to talk to you and it's always nice to just have fun conversation, right? So yeah, so I run my own financial planning practice. It's called stick financial partners. And we're located in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where I live with my wife Carolyn and our three kids. Willie, David and Lauren. And we we love the community and just just love being a part of that. And you know, it's, it's kind of, it's funny, like I grew up in Brookfield and I literally migrated five minutes south to New Berlin, right? So everybody talks about moving other places. I moved five minutes away from where I grew up, but I just love the area. Love Milwaukee love Wisconsin, and just really happy to stay here and build a career. We're out of it, you know, so  Yeah, awesome. You know it's funny. We all complain about the weather in Wisconsin. Yet us lifers we stay and deal with the the winters and the tundra that is Wisconsin. And then we enjoy the two or three months of flaring, blistering hot summer. And then we go back and complain about the crappy weather, right?

 

Dan Stich  05:27

Yeah, this week, like it's gotten up to 80 85 88. And, you know, and like, three weeks ago, we had a chance for snow. So we got through our 10th month of winter, and now we're dealing with summer. And, you know, it was it was, it's kind of funny to Leighann like, you know, being a business owner, taking a day off is is difficult, right? Because it's just you. And so I was able to take a day off on Wednesday, I took my daughter with I went with her class actually as a chaperone to Old World Wisconsin for their field trip. And it was awesome. But I was literally dreading because in 88 degree weather and like, old, you know, old homes from when Wisconsin became a state and all of that, and I'm going oh my gosh, you know, like, why am I complaining about this? It was like 20 degrees a couple months ago. And I, I wasn't complaining about that. So

 

Leighann Lovely  06:20

right, right. Well, and you don't going outside? You know, when it's 20 degrees, you're like, Okay, you got to bundle up gotta cover my face, because I might get you know, ice on it if I don't. And then when it's 80 degrees nice out beautiful. And what in California? That's their? That's their winter.

 

Dan Stich  06:42

Right? Right. Oh, I know. And here we are, like lathering up on sunscreen right away, because we haven't gotten there, quote, unquote, you know, base layer, right? And all that stuff, which I don't know about you, but I never get a base layer anymore. Because it's like, I don't know, I don't get to spend as much time out in the sun. So come September, I still look is is, you know, like, I still get sunburned. So I'm like, Oh my god.

 

Leighann Lovely  07:07

So I have to I have two colors. I have extremely white and red.

 

Dan Stich  07:15

And so true. And my, my wife, she's you know, she's like the one who is you know, we don't want to get you know, when he gets skin cancer. You don't want to do this. You don't wanna do that. So yeah, I mean, we are like lathering up our kids before they get outside every single day. So we like I seriously, I, you know, and this is don't don't construe this as a stock tip, right. But I should really should buy stock and some kind of, you know, like, banana boat or something like that. Because I think I spend a good majority of our dollars and disposable income on skincare products during the summer, it's, it's nuts. Well,

 

Leighann Lovely  07:49

here's the thing that I do, I lather my daughter up to the point where she's like, stab, stab, and then I set the bottle down with the intent of coming back to it and putting it on myself. But I'm still chasing, you know, the moving target, of course, because she's five, the moving target trying to make her look that she doesn't have like white goop all over her. And then we'll rush and we'll get in the car and go somewhere, and my husband looked at me and go, you put sunblock on right? And I go, Well, I put it on our daughter. Great. Well, so I'm gonna be read for the next week. So

 

Dan Stich  08:23

you did the real responsible thing, right? As a parent, you took care of the kids, you you're supposed to be taking care of, you know, so often right, as parents and in life in general, right? Not to get all philosophical here. But we always take care of other people. But we really need to take care of ourselves. And that's just goes to that point, too, right? We're always worried about them, right? But we don't necessarily worry about putting that stuff on our face. And like you said, yeah, now you're going to deal with being read looking like a lobster for a week, you know, it happens.

 

Leighann Lovely  08:52

This is actually a really good transition into what you know why I've run you on now that we've, you know, just kind of gone off a little clip here. All right, this is a really good transition into why I asked you to come on the podcast today. It's something that's utterly important about, you know, as an employee that's transitioning, or, as a business owner, you know, you work with a lot of individuals who are on the move. And it's true, sometimes it is secondary to take care of ourselves. But one of the most vital, important things is that we take care of our money. Right.

 

Dan Stich  09:35

Right. Right. Right. And it's, it's true. You know, I think that's, that's the thing where we were, as people in general, right, and I can't I can't talk about this for everybody, but I would say a majority of people care about others before they care about themselves and they're always trying to do other things. You know, and they're trying to take care of family members and, and things in there not necessarily They're always taking care of themselves and kind of keeping a weather eye on their future. You know, and that's, that's really, I think, when it gets down to it, the core of, of what we do as advisors, is really trying to keep people on a path. We're kind of an unbiased third party that, you know, meets with people and kind of draws out and ask questions like, well, what are your goals? You know, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? When do you want to retire? Why don't you know, those kinds of questions? And I think people have these ideas in their minds, but they don't. It's not something you bring up, right. Like, it's not something I don't know, you know, you're not just sitting around on a Friday night having a beer with your friends and saying, like, hey, you know, like, how much do you have in your retirement account? But I don't know, we just don't really, unless you're really close to people, you don't do that. But even with your spouse or significant other partner loved ones, anything, you don't have those conversations on a day to day either. And that's why it's important, because those can be tricky conversations to navigate. Right, right. And so you know, I'll tell you sometimes my job, I feel like more like a counselor, right, than really an advisor, because I'm coming in and kind of drawing up questions. And that's why when there's there's two people in a financial relationship, I want to meet with both of them, you'd never want to just meet with one or the other. Because there's a lot of questions that are asked, and we need to really draw that out. But yeah, it is, it's a really important thing. I mean, I think finances and financial wellness can lead to mental wellness. You know, we talked about that we just got out of mental health month, right? That was the month of May. And there's really been a push, which has been fantastic in the United States to talk about mental health. But a huge part of that is financial health. And I'm not talking about having to be a millionaire and have so much money that you don't know what to do with but living paycheck to paycheck or freaking out where your next thing is coming from, or how am I going to pay for this? How am I prepping for this? How am I going to retire all that stuff? Right? It leads to a lot of anxiety, which puts us right back into me into mental health awareness. Right. So I think a huge component of that is, is talking about it. And so we do we're unbiased third parties, right? We come in we I want to know everything. I don't want to know, you know, if you don't tell me stuff, I'm How can I diagnose what's wrong?

 

Leighann Lovely  12:22

Right. Well, and here, you said a couple of things here that, you know, kind of sparked one, what are the number one triggers for, you know, one mental health, but also for a marriage falling apart? I mean, and that is a huge life altering event. It's conversations or arguments, start with money.

 

Dan Stich  12:47

Right? Right. Definitely. And I'm not trying to pretend I'm a marriage counselor or anything like that. But I think it's just a key component, right? We have, we have different advisors, and we have different people in our lives, right. And I have different partners that we work with on on these pieces. And it's about having all of those tools in your toolkit, right? For Success. We're just a small cog in a small part of that. But there's other pieces, but I'll tell you, right, like, you're only as strong as your weakest link. And if you're not having those conversations, other parts of of your relationships, your marriage, your future, your financial wellness, your mental wellness, all that stuff is gonna fall apart, right? Because Because if there's one weak spot, that weak spot is going to be pulled and intense. And before you know, you're in trouble, you know, so

 

Leighann Lovely  13:39

well, and it is I mean, not having, if you have a relationship where one person in and I'm going back to, you know, you want to talk to, to, to, you know, both parties who are involved, if you have one person who has no understanding of finances in the home. There, that's right, there is a is is could potentially be an issue in some cases and other cases, one takes care of the finances, the other does others. I mean, it's, that's sure to be a slippery slope, but So,

 

Dan Stich  14:14

It is,  Yeah, and you and you have to filter that out, right? Every situation is different, you have to feel around all of that. But still, when decisions are made, very rarely do I want you know, let me like I should say never but there are situations sometimes where things are made, you know, without the other spouse or their or loved one, whatever right is, you know, partner but you know, it's like I said, it's very, very rare. In fact, I can't even remember the last time that we that that happened. So it's just important because it's it opens up those lines of communication even if they say I don't want to know it. Well what happens in case somebody passes away or there's an emergency situation or god forbid, you know, any of that, that happens. Now, all of a sudden you've got a party who you know, quote, A quote was disinterested before, whatever. But now all of a sudden, they're thrown to the forefront. And they've got to figure it out, they got to pick up the pieces. And that's, you know, that's why I tell people to you know, and that even goes for for older individuals who's you know, who have their kids involved in their, their lives and their their futures as well to it's important that share that information, as long as they're trustworthy, and you can trust them to do that, and do the right thing and act on your behalf. You know, something happens to your parent, or your grandparent or aunt or uncle, and all of a sudden, you know, you're grabbing at loose ends trying to find things, and when most of that can be done upfront, beforehand, you know, not everything, but jeez, you know, you least you know, where 80% 90% of things are. I tell people where I give seminars a lot, Leanne, I talked to people about long term care planning and other things. And I said, you know, one of the best gifts that you can give to your family, is the fact that they won't have to make decisions on your future going forward. Right. So like, if you, you have things set, you know, Power of Attorney for Health Care things, so they know your end of life issues, all that stuff. You know, God forbid, you have to make that decision in a tense moment, when you know already what that mom said, you know, hey, no extra extreme measures. That's like, such great peace of mind. So, you know, again, it goes down a little different tangents. But I think that's as a role as an advisor. Let's say we do, right, we talked about the what if scenarios, right? But all of that is in you know, there's a couple of definitives in our world, right? One, we're getting older every day, right? To eventually we're going to, I'm getting Okay, all right? Well, you found the fountain of youth, if you can share the address for that I'll more than happily jump in. But, but death is undefeated as well, too, right? So we were all going to die. And it's kind of how you plan your olding aging years. But then also, what do you want to do with estates? What do you want to do with that kind of stuff? What are your wishes? How do you want to affect the next generation positively? All that stuff, right? These are discussions that you have, because, again, the more that you pre plan, the less of an emergent situation, it becomes.

 

Leighann Lovely  17:13

Well, and just having this conversation reminds me why people don't want to have this conversation. Right? It's, and I, you know, I'm laughing while I say this, because, you know, I have obviously I, you know, my husband, and I have all of the pieces put together, you we've have our, you know, will our power of attorney, all of that stuff is set out. And I remember how uncomfortable it was. You know, we put this obviously, all in place, when we had our daughter, it was like, Okay, we've put this off long enough, we should do this. And I remember how uncomfortable it was, where it was like, Okay, well, what are your wishes? What are your wishes? What do we do with our money? Where does this all go? Who's gonna be the power of attorney, and I remember when I called my brother, and I was like, I need you to come over and sign some paperwork. And he's like, What paperwork? And I'm like, Well, it's my will and my power of attorney. And he's like, Oh, God, really? And I'm like, sorry. But it needs to be done like this. It's, it's, but you're everything that you just said, I if God forbid, my husband and I were to be together and, and die, one, I don't, I don't want there to be a single question as to where my money goes, and where my daughter goes. And I should have said that in a different order where my daughter goes, and where my money goes. Right? Right? Because, and it's going to obviously my money goes with my daughter, but whoever is taking care of my daughter is got that money so that they can take care of her and hopefully have, you know, money continued to saved you for her when she's 18. But those are wildly wildly important aspects. And I mean, it as

 

Dan Stich  18:57

we don't want to, we don't want to talk about those scary things, right? We don't and, and, you know, a mentor of mine previously, I'd always said, you know, get comfortable being uncomfortable, right. And it's true, because that's part of my job. And that's part of everybody's job. Whenever you get out of your comfort zone, and you feel uncomfortable. That's when you accomplish the most I think, but at the same point, we're fearful of that. And again, that goes into everything in life, but especially in this, because these are just I mean, we have to ask these questions. And again, I, you know, I'll read the disclaimer here at the end of everything for me, but I'm not I'm not, you know, I'm not acting as a legal professional. I'm not acting as a tax professional or any of those things. And we have partners that we work with on all of that. But again, it's just drawing out those questions. I'm finding whether or not what people's wishes are, because I can tell you, I mean, when's the last time somebody asks you like, what are your hopes? What are your dreams? What are your goals, like, people don't ask that right? Unless you have a really good group, group of friends or family or whatever, you know, when maybe you'll ask that but it very rarely happens because you're in the grind That's right. And you're, you're constantly worried about the next step. The next day, the next this the next that, where's the next client coming from? Where's the next meeting? You know, I gotta get to my kids. Like, we were just chatting about this schools ending soon, like, what are we gonna do with our kids? Right? Like, oh my god, we got to figure this out, they get the we get we get eight hours of care every day now at school and now we got to figure out what we're gonna do with them for the summer, you know. So

 

Leighann Lovely  20:23

maybe maybe we can just all drop them off like at the same park and they can all entertain each other.

 

Dan Stich  20:29

Lord of the fly style. Just let them loose, let them go Lord of the Flies, go elect a leader somehow, right? That's so funny.

 

Leighann Lovely  20:41

We'll just erect walls around them so that we know that they can't go anywhere.

 

Dan Stich  20:46

They may not want to go home though, after I

 

Leighann Lovely  20:50

have weapons that they've shimmied out of like, I don't know, rocks and sticks, worse doing throw in the food.

 

Dan Stich  20:59

Right? Right. And I know, you know, the funny part is, is they're so fiercely independent, you know, but then at certain points all of a sudden, when they need you, you know, then they come crawling back and they, they want to do their own things. And I don't want to do this. I don't want to put my shoes on, but then also dead. Can you help me put my shoes, you know, I mean, it's just it's so funny how that happens. But that's because, again, there's this inherent trust, right? That's, that's what it is. They know that at the end of the day, no matter what they say or do to us, we still love them. And you know, and that's where you find people in your life like that as well, too. I mean, and not that I have clients that are coming in and you know, being like, I don't wanna put my shoes on, or they're yelling. I mean, like, like, I'll have a conversation every once awhile, like, hey, you know, perhaps we want to look at life insurance for the situation or disability insurance or, you know, have you thought about a rollover here or there, whatever, right of assets. And, you know, every once awhile, they'll leave, and they'll be like, No, I don't think I'm going to do that. And then all of a sudden, they'll come back a few months later and say that, you know, maybe we want to move forward with this. So again, it's but it's because, you know, this term gets thrown a lot around a lot, LeAnn and, you know, fiduciary, right? Like, we hear that in my industry, what is it being a fiduciary, and people use that in advertisements and everything, and we're supposed to all be fiduciaries, I can't imagine somebody acting in our, in our role as not being a fiduciary, but we're acting in our clients best interest, right. So from a monetary perspective, that's what we're supposed to do. And protection wise, asset wise, anything like that we're supposed to, it's not supposed to be to the benefit of us, it's supposed to be to the benefit of the client, at the end of the day, it's really what it draws down to. And I think if you keep that central in mind, you know, and it's kind of like, how we take care of our kids to like, it's to the benefit of that, right. Like, a lot of times, we sacrifice things in our own life for the betterment of our own children. And I'm not trying to say my clients are children, but we you they are that that's how you treat it, right, you want to see them succeed and push them towards success. And so, you know, that there's a lot of lot of things that go along with that, but it is part of that whole journey, you know, and it's a growth and it's a relationship, it's a long term relationship, hopefully, you know, hopefully, it's not transactional, hopefully, what you want it to be, is something that lasts for a long period,

 

Leighann Lovely  23:24

I don't, I can't imagine having a transactional relationship with your financial advisor, it just doesn't seem like it would be beneficial to the person going to the financial advisor, I mean, it just, unless you specifically need help with one thing, like, Hey, I just need you to help me do XYZ or,

 

Dan Stich  23:51

well, there are there are certainly there are those situations, you know, I mean, because you know, at the end of the day, too, I'm not trying to always replace what somebody has in place, what I'm trying to do is kind of enhance what they have. And I work with other advisors and help you know, help play some of their clients into insurance products and different things that maybe they don't focus on. So again, I you know, we we partner on certain things, but at the end of the day, it's it's card part of a conglomerate, right, or a group of of people that you find your your area of expertise, and I think that's, that's something to again, I can't be everything that everybody right, and I don't think anybody can do that. But especially even in our profession, you know, we have to find what we're good at and what we know, or we like to do the clients that type situations and we also have people that we have to refer out to if we if it comes to a situation where we don't necessarily do that. So that's where I think you know, a lot of people in our in our industry have an adversarial relationship and I think there's so many ways that we can work together because again at the end of the day We're trying to take care of people's financial futures. And there's a lot of opportunity out there because people just aren't prepped very well for their retirement. So I find again, that working with other people and finding ways to collaborate, just makes a heck of a lot more sense than always being, you know, kind of pounding at each other and competing for everything.

 

Leighann Lovely  25:21

Right. So I have a specific question that, you know, obviously, this this season, I've been talking a lot about, you know, employee retention, recruitment, all that kind of stuff. However, with that being said, a lot of employees are on the move. Right. And with employees being on the move, that leaves a gap for some, some things that need to be handled and handled properly, which is, you know, 401 K's employee has been at a company, they have a 401 K. And I've heard it said, and this is where it's scary, because I, I know enough that this is right. But I don't know, all the you know, all of the fine details around it. You know, people have said, well, you know, my 401k is it's secure, it's fine. It's sitting there. Why do I need to move it? And I know enough to say, Well, no, no, you don't want to just have it sit there. So why is it vitally important to make sure that you're handling that 401k that's sitting in? What is it? What is the big one fidelity or wherever it's sitting? You know, I'm assuming that you work with a lot of employee employees that are on the move, and we help them guide what to do with that chunk of money.

 

Dan Stich  26:45

Yeah, and that's great question. And thanks for bringing that up. Because it is, it's an important thing, right. So most people think there's this magic number out in retirement accounts, it's 59 and a half years old. And that's when you can start drawing money out of that without paying 10% early withdrawal penalty. Okay, so I think when we think of, that's the first thing, so a lot of people think that they have to leave assets there until 59 and a half, because they can't pull them out, they're gonna pay this 10% penalty. And that's not really the case, right. So if you have left a job, or you've left previous jobs, and you, you may have multiple 401k, as I refer to them as their kind of orphan 401k is right there, there, you're not, you're not contributing to them anymore. They're under the previous company's platform. And quite honestly, they could be in wrong investment strategies for you at that time, or they could be in, they could be in the same fund even. But they could be multiple amounts in different funds, right. And that's why it's important to talk to somebody, a professional like myself, who can kind of look at all those things. But when when you leave a job, whether through your own or whether you're you're fired, or you leave or terminate should say terminated, or been terminated, or you leave on your own, it's a triggering event. And what that allows you to do is allows you to access the 401k and move it through and they do a rollover is what they call that into a separate account into a different account, and you're not accessing the dollars for your own use, you're not paying the tax penalty, and you're not paying the normalized tax rate on it, you're actually moving it into a separate account. And we do this a lot, because then it gives you a little bit more control on how you want to invest those dollars, every company that you're with, as a set investment strategy within their existing 401 K 403 B, any of the other retirement accounts that they may have. And that platform, while it's it's good for the people, because you can contribute something in it's a great benefit to have, it may not fit your personal objectives, right. So especially as you move on, so it is important to have that conversation and be able to roll it out of there rollover into another account. And like I said, it gives you control over that. So then, you know, you can set it up as a as a personal IRA and contribute to that as well to keep contributing to it. And maybe cut down on some of the fees and everything that are associated with having your own personal IRA. Again, you can't contribute back to a company that you were a part of. You need to you know, in order to access those dollars, pull them out, but it is a good question because again, I think people there's this big misnomer out there to like unless it's an employee stock purchase option. A lot of people think well you know, I'm getting this 401 K through work and it's invested in that company and it's like no it's not you know, like if you worked for a lot and I don't want to name any large companies but you know if you worked for XYZ corporate Corporation, right and they had a 401k It's not like those 401k dollars were going in to buy stock of XYZ company right they were going into by A particular mutual fund. So people in their head, I hear this all the time, people think, wow, you know, the XYZ company is doing great, I gotta keep my dollars there because it's performing so well. And it's like, no, that has very little, if nothing to do with, with what your investment strategy is through there. So

 

Leighann Lovely  30:17

interesting. And if it's in your 401k is sitting there, and the company, like you said, the company is not investing those dollars, you know, properly or they don't have somebody managing that 401k properly, you could potentially just have your money sitting there and really not performing for you at all.

 

Dan Stich  30:39

Yeah, and again, it's not it's not necessarily maybe that they're managing them wrong, it's just maybe that they're every company has to pay fees in order to have particular investment strategies on their platform. And so it's it's extra again, and, you know, that gets into a whole different thing. Because there, you know, there are companies that have 401 K's that that have been set up, and they've never been touched. And we come across that a little bit. And I work with businesses to do that as well, too. You know, we look at plans that maybe aren't performing to their highest and we, and you know, how we find these plans, right, as I'm talking to somebody who used to work there, our client, and I looked through this, and say, Yeah, you know, we might want to look at the whole overall picture of this plan. You know, and a lot of that has to do with employee contributions are low, or performance is low, or any of that kind of stuff. And those are all indicators that I can look at. But realistically, like I said, for the individual, the biggest part is, is it gives you control over those dollars, that you can take a little bit more risk, or you can take less risk, you can move those dollars into something else, instead of it just being on the platform that the company has. So the company's platform may be great, but it also just gives you more flexibility to move it off of that platform.

 

Leighann Lovely  31:57

Interesting. That's and that's, I mean, it's good to know that because some of the myths that are out there are, I'm blown away by, you know, I've been I've heard, you know, well, I shouldn't move that because, again, some of the things that you you just hit on, and I'm like, wait, what? Why? Why would you keep it, you know, or, you know, you they've moved jobs five or six times, and they have five or six accounts sitting out there. So they could roll it into a Roth, an IRA? A whole gamut of different,

 

Dan Stich  32:35

correct, right. Yeah, and again, there's, there's different reasons that you could do that. And every situation is different. So I can't give a blanket statement that you'd want to be want to move it but yes, from like, you know, from a tax perspective, perhaps you want to look at and see if you can open up a Roth and you can use some of those dollars and, and convert it into a Roth and pay the taxes now, knowing that in retirement, that that money in principle will grow tax free, and you can access it tax free in retirement. So, you know, that's the big difference, too. And, again, LeAnn, to with all the changes, there's, there's so much stuff happening in this realm on the 401k side, and retirement planning side, a retirement plan side from the federal government level, people are realizing that we're in a crisis, right? We have, we have, I think it's 10 to 15,000 people a day turn 65. Okay, like going forward. That's, that's a huge number, right? When you think about it, so that's, that's the traditional age of retirement. Now, we all know that Social Security timing retirement now is about 67. So most people are working between 65 and 67. And they're retiring at that point, but they're not many of them don't have assets, they're their biggest asset that they're thinking of is Social Security. And then they do have some retirement assets, but they don't have a lot built up. So now the government is, is stepping in and you know, with the secure act, 2.0, and other things that are coming through, and again, this is a lot of gobbledygook that people might not understand. But that's again, so he talked to professional, right, because they we monitor this thing, they're looking there's contributions that are now maybe going to be made automatically when you first started a job. So you're going to have to opt out of a 401k instead of opting in, like you used to have to wait, there was a waiting period of 60 days, 90 days a year, whatever the company is set up, it's changing that because there is a crisis.

 

Leighann Lovely  34:29

And that's because of you know, we've heard talk of Social Security, possibly going away drying up and and so am I correct in that? I mean, we will have this for sure.

 

Dan Stich  34:44

And right. When we hear that and the the official unofficial answer on that would be, it'd be political suicide to take it away. So they will find something. It could be limited, it could be changed. These are kind of the things and what we hear over and over Again, but yes, you're exactly right in the fact that the government is trying to solve a problem by creating a solution and are they creating a solution? Are they creating a problem? I mean, I that's kind of your question right? Now people are coming in, they start a job. And on day one, they're going to be contributing into a retirement account. What if somebody leaves after two months, three months, five months, now we're going to have a lot of those, whether that come orphan 401k is right, we're gonna have a lot of those sitting around in different places. And so there's going to be a lot of work to be done. But that's where, again, with all these changes, some of that some of this dependency, you're gonna have to make sure that your plan if you're a business owner, small business owner, especially, right, who may or may not be getting all the management on this plan, you're gonna have to make sure that your plan is compliant going forward with the federal rules. And, you know, I think there's a lot of things that should be done now before, you know, if they're coming down the pipeline, and we know that this is happening, I wouldn't we want to change them now versus waiting until the 11th hour, right? Because that's what a lot of, I mean, I don't know about you, I've been a procrastinator a lot, a lot in my life. And thank God that hasn't rolled on to my kids, because I swear, I can't get my daughter to not do her homework right away. It's pretty impressive. But, you know, first things like this, you just do not want to procrastinate, because all of a sudden, it'll be it's gonna be a block of everybody trying to get everything done. Before they need to be done.

 

Leighann Lovely  36:24

They always that's always the way that government well, right.

 

Dan Stich  36:27

But let's people to like, right, we don't want to do anything till the last minute, right? Well, we absolutely have to well, and

 

Leighann Lovely  36:33

I'm opposite, like, I will start formulating like how I'm going to finish something before I even have the go ahead to do something. I'm, but I'm the I'm the the weird one. I've been told Anyways, my husband's like, why are you trying to solve a problem before the problem actually exists? We don't even know that that's going to be the problem. And I'm like, but I'm getting ready for it. Right? Like, I'm, like, I'm not sure that that's a good thing. And I'm like, Well, I just want to be ready. Like, yeah, but I blame my dad for that, by the way.

 

Dan Stich  37:04

We can't run from our genes, right? We can't run from where we are. I always tell people, you know, like, My People always say like, you know, the Apple didn't fall far from the tree. And I'm like, Yeah, well, my apple tree must have been on a hill because it tried to roll away and all it did was rolled downhill right into the stump like, I'm right back to it. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm my family to a tee. Right. So, right. Yeah. Remember that apple tree on a hill? That's me. So

 

Leighann Lovely  37:28

yeah, I I'm 100%. Like, there's been times where my husband's like what's wrong with your dad? And I'm like, he, I remember. Here's one. Here's a really good. So my dad, his trunk got stuck, closed. And so he was really frustrated with us. And it was just his trunk just got stuck. So he, he was supposed to come over and hang out for you know, a couple of minutes to say hi, he literally any I think he was dropping off our daughter. He literally drove in, took our daughter out of the car, dropped her off said Okay, I gotta go and left. Because he was so frustrated. He drove to the quick, the closest gas station and just started messing with his truck. Because yeah, he just, that's his money. But that's my mentality. Like my husband called me. And he goes, you know, the the generator is not working. And I'm on my way home, I walk in the door, say hi. And I go directly out to the generator. And my husband goes, What are you doing? Mike, when you said it wasn't working? He goes, right. Yeah, it's like dinner time. Like, you don't have time to do this right now. And I'm like, Why did you call me then? You shouldn't have told me until I had time to do it. Because in my brain, like, if, if there's an issue, I have to do it that second there is no

 

Dan Stich  38:46

it's just that I'm wired. That's me, like, you know, the other day, right? Like it got hot here, right? As we mentioned way back before it got hot all of a sudden. So we put our air conditioning on and the air conditioner was not performing as well as it should. So clearly, there was something going on. So again, I do not pretend to be an HVAC repair person. I don't play one on TV. I don't do any of that kind of stuff. But I know enough things as being a homeowner for you know, decades, right? Like, you know, like, you got to take care of certain things. So I go out and I'm cleaning off all this stuff. And I'm doing as much as I know how to do and I checked the filter to make sure that it was clean, do all that stuff, right? But then again, I'm out over my skis, right, like that's, that's as far as I've got. So then I'm sitting there at night, thinking like, you know, I'm just spinning in my head, like, what else can I do? What else can I do? And really, I had a professional coming in the next day. Right? So I should have just let that go. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. One because obviously you know there's a cost associated with things right so I didn't want it to be like oh my gosh, we're gonna need a new whole system here. But to the other part is is what if it stops working in the middle of night, you know, and all of a sudden we've got a 90 degree day the next day and it's hot and it's not working, you know? It's the what ifs right and those what if scenarios, so you know it And then as people to like, we tried to take those out, like, literally I called the person, he was coming the next day. So I did everything that I could and should be doing. And he took care of it and everything's fine. The house is great right now. But I think we sit and we worry about stuff at night, when we should just be able to take things off of our plate. I'll see. Other people handle it,

 

Leighann Lovely  40:19

and I don't sit and worry, I would be out there. Like, why did I pull the thing apart, and I'm like, I am bound and determined, and I will be researched. Like, I I'm one of those those people like, I will do whatever it takes to fix it and research it. And like, I'm just I can't let it go. And that's, that's my downfall. I can't let it go. What, which has made me a very handy person around the house, I know how to patch holes in the wall, I know how to do light, electrical work, light plumbing work I have done, I've remodeled

 

Dan Stich  41:08

I'm gonna be calling you. I mean, I, there's certain things like I always figure with plumbing and electrical. If I touch it, it could make it worse. And then it's going to cost more like I can do a lot of other things. But yeah, when it comes to electrical and plumbing, I'm gonna be calling you, Lea.

 

Leighann Lovely  41:23

I changed I changed out, you know, all of the, you know, we needed one of those. I changed out like almost all of my electrical units, or just the plugs in the entire house sockets and yeah, in the entire house. I changed out a couple, you know, sockets because I didn't like the way they they functioned. But when it comes to like I had a fan in a room and I wanted to change where the fan was to we change the way the dining room was. So I needed the, you know, the chandelier and the fan to be swapped out that no, I don't do that. I don't know how and but I did install a fan where a chandelier used to be okay, that was just the swap out. So and then as far as plumbing, I completely remodeled an entire bathroom. A new toilets did the sink. You know all that. However, I also have two sinks that don't have shutoff valves in my lower level. I don't know how to do that. So I need a plumber to come in. You know, I do light stuff.

 

Dan Stich  42:33

Yeah, not surface. Yeah, I gotcha.

 

Leighann Lovely  42:37

Yeah, when it comes, there's a professional, you know, you gotta call on the professionals for some some stuff like, like, Well,

 

Dan Stich  42:43

I think I guess that you know, to go back. That's kind of a metaphor, though. on everything, right? Um, life, right is there's, there's certain things that we can handle. Like I always think every well, because of social media and everything else right now people are becoming experts on everything. And I always used to laugh like every four years, we would become political experts when there was an election year and every you know, we're this and that. And everybody tries to be an expert. I mean, heck, like, you know, listen, I have brothers and family who are doctors, I certainly could go on WebMD and diagnose myself with pretty much everything ever that comes up, right. But that's going down a serious rabbit hole, right? And before you know it, I'm gonna be dead next week. And I'm freaking out about that. So I always think like, you know, sure, like with what we do, and Finance, Financial planning, estate planning all of those pieces, right? People can can do some of these things themselves. But is that really the best way to do it? Right? Like, sure I can, I can wrap my if I break my arm tomorrow, I can probably wrap it in a makeshift cast at home. But is it going to heal properly? For the long term? Am I going to have some serious issues with it going forward? Most likely, yes. Right. So again, it's really, you know, we kind of it's that old metaphor like staying in your lane, right? Like it's okay to know everything and my job and most people's job. You want to educate other people, right and teach them about stuff. But you also have to trust that the professional is working in your best interest. So they educate you enough on what you need to know. But that's why you hire somebody to do something else. Right? That's what we hired. So I hired the HVAC guy to come over because he needed to fix it. I was out over my skis. I didn't know exactly what I was at the end. And honestly, I'm not putting Freon into my own AC unit. Like that's what we need it. I don't know how to do that. I don't have access to free and I can't just go buy it somewhere. I don't think I don't know. Maybe you can but again, why would I need to worry about that? Right? That would be one thing. I just don't you know, take it off my plate. Right. So

 

Leighann Lovely  44:41

yeah, yeah. And I I grew up again, I'm referencing my dad. My dad said to me years ago, he goes you don't have to you know business owners and my dad was not a business owner. He thought about it. He says you know, all my all my friends. You know our business. as owners, and I've sat around the table with them all, and they've asked me, Why don't you run your own business? And he goes, so I told him, here's what, you know, me and my wife make a year, should we open up our own business? And all of them went, Oh, you make that? Not as a business owner, and he goes, aha, should we open up? And they all went no, if you if, if you're making that, not as a business owner, just don't open up your own business. And he went, Okay, then I think I'll stick with where I'm at. And he once said to me, he goes, if you're going to run a business, because they were in the real estate market, so you know, his wife was a very successful agents, my dad ran an office, sometimes up to 60. Plus agents manage them. So very much like, you know, very much like running a business. And he says, You don't have to be the smartest person to run a business. But you have to be smart enough to hire people who are smarter than you. 100%. And that has stayed with me, forever. And it and it made me realize that there are people out there who have started businesses run businesses, who, without college education, and the thing that they were smart, the reason that they were so wildly successful, was not because they were so unbelievably smart. It was because they were smart enough to know their own limitations.

 

Dan Stich  46:42

100%

 

Leighann Lovely  46:43

and to go to the people who were the experts in what they were the experts in.

 

Dan Stich  46:50

And that's, that's the key, right? You surround yourself with better people like, I remember, there's a quote, I can't remember who it's attributed to. But I, my wife is a leadership training expert, right. So I learned a lot of great things. It's always nice to have somebody like that in your household. And they always use this quote, like, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Correct. And it's so true, right? Because I get blown away by people, colleagues, other professionals that come across in my own world or other people that you know, that that I choose to partner with, as well to different business professionals, because they bring something to the table that I can't write, and I'm smart enough to know, like, you it takes a long time to build up credibility, right and a real short time to ruin that credibility like that you can lose it. And one of the biggest ways to ruin credibility, right is pretending to know something that you have no idea about, or over selling yourself and your abilities. And you know, that's my promise, right? Like, every day I wake up, and I'm like, Listen, if I don't know something, I will tell a client or I'll tell somebody like this. I don't know the answer to that yet. But I'm going to either find somebody who does, or we're going to find this out together. Right, right. And I think most people, if you if you recognize and realize that and you tell somebody you're new, you're vulnerable, saying, I don't know how to do that. Most people will accept that. And nobody, I don't know, I haven't had anybody yet be like, well, I can't believe you don't know how to do this, right? Like, no, it's something we just, we can't like I said before, you can't be everything to everybody all the time, right. But and we can't know everything about everything either, right? We can know a lot and all of our industries and our jobs and what we do, but there are always questions, and a lot of it is because it's changing all the time, too. So that's when you surround yourself with really good people and good, good connections. And that's, that's important. You know, I think, again, like I go back to that weak link part, but it really is true. That's why you you find the spots where you're missing, and you try to find a patch, right to figure out how to make that stronger. I mean, that's, that's the majority, a lot of networking, right, I met you at a networking event, we've done networking together, I've done I've done a bunch of pieces of network. That's what I'm networking for. Right? Like I'm networking to find people that can fill holes in my, in my offerings or toolkit that I don't have, or you know, looking at things differently or learning something new.

 

Leighann Lovely  49:18

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Dan, we are coming to time and ask you the question of the season. Oh, boy, what would you change about your job or the practice that people have in your role or job if you cut?

 

Dan Stich  49:36

We've talked a lot about a lot of these things here. But I think probably the biggest thing is that there are some bad actors in our industry, right? And that's caused some some tainted views for people and I can't change their behaviors, but I guess maybe maybe the stigma and kind of the professionalism that that comes along with what We do I think some of that people are fearful that I think they're fearful of sharing their, their secrets, right? Like, and I, I don't know, you know, I'm not gonna go out and blab on anything, right? Like if I'm only as good as what my client tells me and how I keep that to myself and how we prep for that. So I think that that's probably the biggest thing. The the other part I did allude to before was about the collaborative piece. And I wish there were more people that were more collaborative. And I think there are advisors that are more willing to work together instead of be adversarial. Because again, I think that there's so much stuff that we can accomplish, and work together on things, but everybody just wants to grab everything for themselves. And I've never been that kind of person. Because again, like I, I focus on certain areas that I like, and I refer things out that I don't, or don't do. But I think I think that I wish there was more of that, I guess, more more collaboration. Because I think, as our industry becomes siloed, based by the companies that you work for, sometimes, right? Because we are told that everything here is the best way to do it, or the perfect way to do it. And and maybe that's because I'm independent, and I can I can work with with anybody. And I'm not beholden to a particular company or anything like that. I guess that's, that's part of it. And maybe my view is skewed on that a little bit. But again, I think that there's more of a global view on that of, of ways to collaborate more than be adversaries all the time.

 

Leighann Lovely  51:32

And I completely agree, I, I think that a lot of people go independent if they are capable, because they want the ability to partner with people who are in this in the same space. Right. And when they are with a larger corporation or organization. They are, I don't want to say shunned, but they are kind of slapped on the hand by Hey, wait, did you try to shove our product down their throat first?

 

Dan Stich  52:02

Yes, and you're like, it's one way it's toeing the line, it's got to be doing this instead of looking at it from a different viewpoint,

 

Leighann Lovely  52:09

correct. And I and I believe that, that with the onset of COVID, and the onset of all business needs to be done a different way. And it's okay to say, hey, customer, like, Let's customize your product, to make it exactly what you want it to look like. And that might mean, working with me on this and working with my partner on this to make it a perfect, beautiful package to be

 

Dan Stich  52:42

100%. Yeah, like, that's, that's what we want to do, right? Like, at the end of the day, we want clients, we want businesses, we want them to succeed. And we want to give them the tools to succeed. And in order to do that, it's not just keeping everything insular in our own, you know, that we're, we're trying to help them because we see that and we see what happens when people try to do it all themselves or take on too much, or whatever. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that's, you know, a lot of bad things happen with COVID. But a lot of really good things happen as well, too. And I think people are looking at the world businesses, personal finance, mental health, all these things differently. And it's, you got to look at the good in that. So, you know, I'm not that I'm this ultimate, altruistic, positive all the time person. But at the same point, I look at the last three years of our lives, and I'm like, okay, like, what did change for the better? And those are the pieces that have, yeah, finding better ways to do things. You know, I think that's really what it comes down to.

 

Leighann Lovely  53:45

Yeah. And I think that there's also the driving force of the younger generation, who is saying, hey, and it's awesome. You know, I wish I could say that I'm part of the younger generation still, but I'm not. But I do see that their influence is, and we are starting to recognize that influence of that younger generation, saying, Hey, wait, can we do this a little bit different? Can we be a little softer on the the corporate structure, can we while and of course, you know, the whole software and the corporate structure, you know, all of a sudden, you can show up to a networking meeting in jeans and and it's like, wow, everybody's wearing jeans. This is kind of cool. I don't have to wear these uncomfortable dress pants that make me feel like I'm at and it's it's widely accepted in so many circles and it anyways, I digress. If no,

 

Dan Stich  54:36

no, it's it's totally true. But yeah, yeah. Like I said, that every generation I think, can learn something from previous generations or from the next generation as well, too. And that's the thing I think is there's a lot of people that disrespect older individuals, they call people boomers, right, the millennials were a bad word and all this stuff. And it's like when you get down to the core of it, it's about what they were groomed and Rolling up in, right? That changed them and made them who they are. But there's, you know, there's, there's 1000 different ways to do things. What we need to do is look at best practices from all those and kind of make that and a generational system. I mean, some of my 79 year old mother that she's getting on Zoom calls now I'm like, that's just shocking, right? But love it. Three years ago, she never would have gotten on a zoom call. Now. She does. Oh, there you go.

 

Leighann Lovely  55:24

Yeah. Oh, my grandparents. My grandmother has since passed, but they were doing FaceTime. I mean, I could only see like an eyeball or a nose, but they were like trying to get here. Like, they were like, Okay, guys, wait, you need to move it farther. But they were doing like fate. I'm like, Oh my gosh, like you're in your 80s. And you're doing FaceTime like, this is so cool. Like,

 

Dan Stich  55:48

yes, it is. It is it shows that they're willing to learn even till that age as well, too. So

 

Leighann Lovely  55:54

yeah. So if somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would they go about contacting you?

 

Dan Stich  55:58

Sure. So I will give you my phone number here. So my phone number is 262-853-4541. And if you don't want to talk to me directly, I sometimes I know people are can worry about that as well. They can shoot me an email. So my email is my full name. So it's Daniel stich. So d a n i e l s t i c h@ f f I g . com. And that stands for futurity first Insurance Group. That's where we that's the agency behind the scenes. So

 

Leighann Lovely  56:31

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Dan, for coming on and talking with me today. I've really enjoyed it.

 

Dan Stich  56:36

This was awesome. Yeah, let's do it again. Let's do it on a different topic someday. Right? That would be awesome. All right.

 

Leighann Lovely  56:42

Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode, to follow us, like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

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