Mark Twain

What can we learn about money by exploring some quotes from the great Mark Twain?

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Transcript Of Today's Show:

Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome into this edition of Plan With The Tax Man. We appreciate your time as always here on the podcast with Tony Mauro as we talk investing, finance and retirement. What's going on my friend. How are you?

 

Tony: I'm good. Weather's turning good here, finally getting out of the rainy season and things are good.

 

Speaker 1: That's always nice. Yeah. It's good to be in June. We are now into that time of the year. Where you guys are at, has it been cool? Has it been a cool May? Our May has been very not normal.

 

Tony: Ours has been, too. It's been unseasonably cool and a lot of rain and usually we're beyond that by May.

 

Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. And COVID and all that stuff aside, it's just been weird and then you add that into the mix and obviously, it's certainly been a really odd, but I'm glad to hear that it's [inaudible 00:00:54]. Because like for us, we have to share with our listeners before we're in different states, usually we're pretty darn toasty in May and we haven't even hit 90 yet, which is unusual for us. We'll see how it plays out.

 

Speaker 1: But anyway, we're going to jump into our topic this week. We're going to talk a little Mark Twain actually so that could be fun. We're going to see what Mark can teach us about money. Much like Will Rogers and several, Yogi Berra, some other famous folks through the years, they have these useful, interesting nuggets and ways of looking at life. And I think there's certainly some good stuff we can take from some of those guys and Mark Twain is one of them. And you think about obviously COVID and everything that's been going on, this first one I've got Tony is pretty apropos. He's like, "Apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today." That's one of his sayings. It seems like when you just think you've been hit with everything you can get hit with something else will show up.

 

Tony: Something else will show up. And I have to admit in the interest of full disclosure, when I was a kid, I had no interest in Mark Twain and never wanted to read anything of his. And then as I got older, some of these things kind of came about, I was like, this guy is pretty interesting and little did I know until I learned more about him, what kind of guy he really was. But yeah, this little snip that he's got here really I think is appropriate in the time we're living in right now, which is the whole COVID virus thing still going on, and I think he meant it towards anything that can happen out of the ordinary generally does and you need to plan appropriately for that, especially with your portfolios.

 

Tony: And we always think of it in the financial world as just another financial crisis, economic downturn, recession comes to mind and then this whole COVID thing comes up and hits everyone. And when I say everyone, the world, by surprise, in my opinion, and unprecedented times we're now living in, no one has a plan for it. The government doesn't have a plan. And so for us as individuals and then of course, as advisors, it has forced us to take a hard look at things, especially on just the basic financial planning side. I think it's never more important than it is today.

 

Speaker 1: Well, yeah. With everything that's been going on, it's easy to get singularly focused, I suppose, on various things. And we've talked about that off and on over the last several weeks with the whole COVID thing. And as we're starting to pull more and more out of it, we have to remember that we can't just shut everything down and whatever camp you're in, as far as the economy and things of that nature, I mean internally, we can't just shut everything down and say, well, the only thing I can allow myself to do right now is worry about whether or not me or my family catches coronavirus. I think that you have to continue to want to live and push yourself forward and do all those normal things. I think most of us are pretty good about that and know that overall, but there's certainly no shortage of stuff can come out of nowhere and slap you. And just when you think the day is, it's like, okay, it can't get any worse. Well, sometimes it can. Just be careful there.

 

Speaker 1: Now, we've all heard that saying, Tony, and I think the popular way of viewing that is actually incorrect. That money is the root of all evil. I think actually it says the lust or the love of money is the root of all evil is the way it actually goes. But Mark said the lack of money is the root of all evil. What's your thoughts there?

 

Tony: Well, I'll tell you, he's got it right there because yeah, most people associate money with evil and there's a thousand sayings about money, whether it's good or bad-

 

Speaker 1: We also associate it with happiness, too. [crosstalk 00:04:48] it can't buy love, but it can buy happiness.

 

Tony: I say the money for most, I think people got to look at it as it's there for you not to serve it, for it to be a servant for you, meaning that it's only a tool that you're using to get the things in life that you want. And that's what's different for everybody. But I think the main thing, especially as you get into retirement, when you can't or don't want to work anymore, it's really comes down to it's not how much I have, but do I have an income coming in and how long am I going to need that income because boy, that makes life, especially towards the end, theoretically, a lot less stressful when that all is put into motion or in place, if you will. If you don't have that at, toward the end especially, and you haven't done the planning well, then it becomes a stressful time. And I think that's maybe what he talks about a little bit there is the lack of that is going to cause you some problems late in life.

 

Speaker 1: Well, and we go to retirement and I'll play the devil's advocate here, but it's easy to have those lofty goals and say money isn't everything. And then that is certainly true, but when we're talking A, on a financial show and B, with what it is that you do in retirement, one of those main goals, if not the main goal, is to make sure that you do have the income. Not necessarily because you want to have all the money in the world, but because you certainly want to be able to take care of yourself, provide for yourself and because also, we are physically getting into that point where we can't necessarily go out and work the way we used to in order to provide for ourselves. I think it's clearly important to make sure that we're not running out of money and so to kind of use that Mark Twain analogy, that the lack of money certainly can be problematic for folks.

 

Tony: And I think another thing, and I use it with clients a lot, and I try to tell them, for me and hopefully for you, money does have to put food on your table, roof over your head and whatnot, but after that, what I feel it's like is it buys you time. Not time to live, but time so that you can go out and enjoy the things that are important to you while you are here because otherwise... I always tell people, too, if money wasn't a factor in this world and money meant nothing and we could go out and do and have fun, not need to work, we would all do that because that's what we all want to do at the end of the day. But the lack of that money or planning and you're having to work maybe until you can't work anymore, it just goes to show you that you've got to have something there, otherwise it's a stressful time.

 

Speaker 1: With what's going on in the world, there are certainly folks that are like, well, why can't we just do that? Let's just stay home and have the government send us money. And it's like, well, you can continue to mortgage your kids' and grandkids' the future, but at some point, you just can't print it endlessly. I don't know, maybe you can. I don't know, but I don't think you can.

 

Tony: I know.

 

Speaker 1: And speaking of the government and I was wrestling whether I was going to throw this one out, Tony, but it's just too good to not and you figure Mark Twain lived in, what, 150 years ago?

 

Tony: Something like that.

 

Speaker 1: You know what I mean? And so even then, he has this saying, and he's like, "Suppose you were an idiot and now suppose you are a member of Congress, but I repeat myself."

 

Tony: Even then.

 

Speaker 1: Even then Congress was idiots.

 

Tony: No, I know it. And really, I think what he's talking about there is you really can't worry about or depend on what the government's going to do [crosstalk 00:08:35] policies and procedures and applying it to the financial situation and planning and whether they adapt new laws to make the IRA tax deferred or not, or whether they put new laws have to do with taxes going up or down. There's always going to be some change and you can't worry about that. You definitely got to get your own situation under control. And from a financial standpoint, you don't want to have to worry about the news and what's coming out of Washington affect you other than just being in the know about it.

 

Speaker 1: Sure. Because there's not a lot we can do anyway. And yes, of course, while, quote unquote, our vote makes a difference, in the end, what's going to happen is what's going to happen. How many times have you voted for somebody that said they won't this and they certainly do. It's one of those things that we all kind of know is the case and I think that's a good way of looking at it, especially when it comes to things like social security or whatnot. We don't know what's going to happen, down the way with that. We assume that no politician will be the one who wants to be like, well, it's gone and there's nothing we can do about it because they won't stick around for very long. We'll assume that something gets done, but you just never know. To use a Mark Twain type of word, rather than worry about all that tomfoolery in Washington, focus on how you can try to be as independent from it as you can. And then of course, social security's coming in or whatever happens with taxes, you're prepared to your point. Good stuff there when we're talking about Mark Twain and what he can teach us about money.

 

Speaker 1: Now this is another pretty awesome classic one and this is certainly relevant to what's been happening as well. He says, "October is one of the particularly dangerous months for speculating in stocks and there's other months as well, July, January and September, April, November, March, may, June, December, August, and February."

 

Tony: Basically every month is what he's saying.

 

Speaker 1: Which was great. It's a fantastic way of saying, look speculating in stocks is dangerous anytime.

 

Tony: Anything. And the keyword is speculating versus investing for your future. And to his point, and even going back to the crash of '87 and then historically, October for trading stocks generally is not that good, but hopefully you're not doing that. Hopefully, you're investing throughout the year, every year as part of a plan and you're not trying to speculate and turn a thousand dollars into a hundred thousand dollars because that is speculation and that doesn't come around very often. And not that you can't do that and take a little bit of your money and do a little bit of that, but that's more of what I call gambling, where you're going to take your money out to the track or the casino and chances are you're going to lose it.

 

Tony: And that's not the issue with a comprehensive plan and in today's environment, even right now, six weeks ago, seven weeks ago, well, it's probably been about what two, three months now. The market was doing very nicely and it has recovered some, but it has been extremely choppy. No one saw this coming necessarily and it has nothing to do with really the economy. At least it didn't early on, it's catching up now. I think what he's talking about there is you've got to get a plan. You've got to stick to the plan. Every month there's going to be things that you can't control. And as long as you're setting money aside, it's still one of the best places to make money over the long term.

 

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. And having a well thought out plan that kind of takes your time horizon, your age into account, we had a conversation, Tony, you and I, and months back on a podcast where if you were saying, well, boy, I didn't get all of '19. '19 finished, what, 30 something odd percent was what the market finished up for 2019. And some folks might be like, well, I didn't make that much. And it's like, well, yeah, because you were diversified in a way to protect you in case of a downturn. And of course, that same person would have been quite pleased come '20 when it did fall because they may not have fallen the full 30% or 35% that it did. It's all about making sure that whatever your plan is, is that it's tied in nicely to a goal to an overall setup.

 

Speaker 1: And I will say, speaking of goals, I've got a couple more here, but before we do that, I was going to ask you, I know you're a big golf fan. Did you get a chance to check out one of the very few sporting events that have happened? Did you get a chance to see the Match 2 here this past weekend or so ago with a Tiger and Phil and Peyton Manning and Tom Brady?

 

Tony: I didn't. I was actually golfing during it, but I heard it was very good. It sounded to me like the people that watched it had a lot of fun sort of the commentary.

 

Speaker 1: There's some good clips on YouTube you can go check out, just highlights and things of that nature on various different places. But as a golf fan should probably check it out, it was a lot of fun and there's some pretty good shots on there as well, but a lot of good ribbing and stuff going on.

 

Tony: [crosstalk 00:13:26].

 

Speaker 1: It raised like $20 million.

 

Tony: Which is great-

 

Speaker 1: Fantastic.

 

Tony: And I do have it taped and I do plan on watching it. I have not watched it yet. It's good that they tried to raise some money. I like that. And it's weird how much we miss all sports, even if you're not a golf fan and you just end up watching just for something to do.

 

Speaker 1: Same thing with NASCAR coming back and they had a couple of races. I think their numbers, their viewership numbers were pretty high and it was like, well, because they're the only game in town, literally.

 

Tony: Literally.

 

Speaker 1: People are checking it out. Anyway, I just wanted to ask you about that. I'll be curious to, on another podcast, I'll ask you if you had a chance to check it out. It was pretty good, though. I enjoyed it.

 

Speaker 1: Let's hit maybe one more here, maybe two more, we'll see. We're on time. The secret to getting ahead, and this is great, is getting started. That's a fantastic quote for really any avenue of life, but certainly, we all know that the sooner we can start saving for retirement, the better, but it's also just good to just start period. Even if it's today and you're still behind, then just start.

 

Tony: Got to start somewhere, yes. A lot of times people get in the middle age group and then beyond and they say, well, it's starting to get too late. I just won't do anything. And that's the exact wrong thing to do. You can make headway, you can make progress and get to some goals. They may not be the goals that you had when you were 30 or 25, but if you don't do anything and don't get started on something, chances are, just like we were talking about earlier, that you're going to have a real lack of money at the end when you're going to desperately need it. You do have to get something going, it's going to start with goals, going to start with where you're at now and how long you have until maybe you want to retire and then start working backwards from there.

 

Tony: But I think the other thing, too, a different saying from a different guy, it's not my own, sometimes the best way out of a hole is to stop digging and that's so true. Similar to this is if you've dug yourself into a little bit of hole financially, whether it be some bad decisions with credit or other things, you got to just stop digging the hole and generally, you can get out of it. It may take a little time, but generally those things are [inaudible 00:15:46], but you got to get something going.

 

Speaker 1: For any of us fellas out there that have ever tried to give someone, maybe their wife or somebody, a compliment and it went sideways on you and you just kept talking and she's like, stop digging, you're just making it worse.

 

Tony: Making it worse, yeah.

 

Speaker 1: Same kind of idea.

 

Tony: Yes, it is.

 

Speaker 1: There you go. Well, you know what, actually in the interest of time, I think we're going to wrap it up this week, but that was a good place to leave it on as well. Take any action. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. No matter where you're at, make sure that you're taking the steps forward. Listening to this podcast, learning some things, picking up some useful nuggets along the way, that certainly can count as taking initiative, getting started, things of that nature.

 

Speaker 1: If you have questions or concerns as always before you take any action, you should always reach out to Tony and have a conversation with him. You can call him at 844-707-7381. That's 844-707-7381. You can go to the website, yourplanningpros.com. That's yourplanningpros.com and check out Tony's website there. And of course, as always, we would appreciate it if you subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you choose, whether it's Apple, Google, Spotify, or whatever, the one you liked the best is just type in Plan With the Tax Man and search that out in, let's say, Apple's field for example and it'll pop up and you just hit the little subscribe button and we'd certainly appreciate it. And Tony, thanks for your time my friend. I hope you have a good week and be careful with some of these saying here. Watch out for those months, man. They're tricky.

 

Tony: Tricky, but you got to take care until next time.

 

Speaker 1: That's right. Well, have a great week folks. We'll see you next time here on Plan with the Tax Man with Tony Mauro of Des Moines Professional Alternative Tax Doctor Inc. We'll see you next time.