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Transcription
Frazier:
I did not tell my employer because I didn't feel like they were going to be very supportive of me thinking about the name on the back of the jersey as opposed to the name on the front.
Bobbi:
You're listening to Financial Grown-up with me, certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be A Financial Grown-up. And you know what, being a grown-up is really hard especially when it comes to money, but it's okay. We're gonna get there together. I'm gonna bring you one money story from a financial grown-up, one lesson and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.
Bobbi:
Hey financial grown-up friends. Have you ever kept a secret from your boss? Like maybe you were about to quit? More on how our guest pulled that off in just a minute but first just a quick welcome to everyone. As our regulars know, we keep the podcast short, around 15 minutes, because you're busy but if you have a little more time of course, feel free to binge a little, flex time for podcasts, and I need to ask this, please. This podcast is free. We've done over a hundred episodes. The only payment that we ask is that you help us grow the show and the way you do that is by telling friends and encouraging them to listen and maybe even show them how to listen to a podcast. Don't assume that they even know. And of course bonus points if you can leave a review and a rating with Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Bobbi:
Alright let's get to our guest now. Wealth Actually author, Frazer Rice is a wealth manager, who just wasn't that into wealth management but he kept his other ambitions a secret from his bosses while he worked on gearing up his new business. The big challenge? Figuring out how much he, meaning how much Frazier cost? And he's going to help us figure out how much we cost. We're going to do the math on ourselves as well. Here is Wealth Actually author Frazier Rice.
Bobbi:
Hey Frazier Rice, you are a financial grown-up. I'm so excited you're on the podcast.
Frazier:
Bobbi, thanks for having me on. This is a real treat.
Bobbi:
Congratulations on your book Wealth Actually. Now this is the subtitle: Intelligent Decision Making for the 1%. And before anyone gets the rolling eyes or anything, this is an important book. Because we talk a lot on this show about making money and paying off debt and all those things to get there. But once you're there, you wanna stay and you wanna grow. That's why I was so excited to get you on. So welcome and congratulations.
Frazier:
Well thank you and it's one of those things where the subtitle with the 1% part I wrote about what I knew. It was my day job to help people.
Bobbi:
Because you're a wealth advisor.
Frazier:
That's right. Make financial transitions and I think a lot of the lessons that are applicable to them, apply to other people as well.
Bobbi:
Absolutely and it's also really important from a family perspective because, and we'll talk more about the book after your money story, but a lot of wealth disappears after three generations. And if you're out there working your heart out to build a financially stable future for your family and your kids, the last thing you want is for it not to last.
Frazier:
And not only that, one of the things people really worry about and are concerned about is leaving a legacy. And what I tried to do with the book is take a look at a lot of a different issues that can attack that and that can frustrate people and the legacy they want to leave. Not only that but sort of helping them raise kids in a way they think will be productive going forward.
Bobbi:
Exactly. So let's talk about you first. Because you brought with you a money story that is happening right now.
Frazier:
It sure is.
Bobbi:
This book and by the way your podcast, which is being rebranded as Wealth Actually, is part of it and so much more. But it hasn't been, we joked just before we started recording that overnight successes, you know, take years to build. That's kind of what's happening to you. You've put a lot into this. Tell us your money story.
Frazier:
No question about it. So I was wealth manager for Wilmington Trust for almost 16 years and so what I did was take care of clients, and go out and find new ones. I came to the conclusion probably about two years ago, where I said, you know I want to be doing something different, I wanted to build more equity in my own brand, and I wanted to have something that was mine in a sense, I'm age 45 now, I wanted to look back when I'm 55, 65, etc. and say this is something I built and that I own.
Frazier:
One of the areas I'm particularly interested in is certainly in the media side of things. I had a radio show in high school and a TV show in college and I do a lot of different writing on the side, screen plays and I have a graphic novel coming out hopefully at the end of the year.
Bobbi:
You're busy, Frazier.
Frazier:
Yeah, no rocks gather moss with me I guess. But anyway I came to the conclusion at one point, I said, you know what, I think I've got something here. I started writing a book about my wealth management experiences and the way I think about it. And I started that in the beginning of 2017 and it was ready to go at the end of 2017. And my money story I guess, is I was looking forward. I said, you know what, I need to build some padding, or some bandwidth around my financial situation so I can really give this a go. I did not tell my employer because I didn't feel like they were going to be very supportive of me thinking about the name on the back of jersey as opposed to the name on the front. And also the idea of conveying media and marketing that I don't think trust companies or banks understand very well.
Frazier:
With that in mind, I said okay, I'm probably going to have to leave and walk out the door and be on my own fairly abruptly. I basically took a year of income as my goal and just said I'm going to be spending money on doing lots of other things to try to get the book ramped up, to try to get the podcast ramped up and a variety of other projects. So take a year of income, take a quarter off of that and that's nine months of expenses and that's probably a pretty good way of going about it.
Bobbi:
And where was the money going to go specifically to do those things? What's involved in launching something like this?
Frazier:
Sure. So from a book perspective, I basically set aside 40,000 dollars to get the book written and for marketing costs. From a podcast perspective I would say it's probably about 12,000 dollars a year in terms of getting the thing produced and also marketing it accordingly.
Bobbi:
How are you marketing it? What marketing costs specifically?
Frazier:
Well the marketing costs essentially are me both from a public relations standpoint, getting it out and having articles written and so on but also me going to conferences and getting the word out that way. I haven't really delved too deeply into direct marketing as it relates to you know maybe Facebook ads or something like that [crosstalk 00:06:30].
Bobbi:
What conferences do you attend?
Frazier:
Well the latest one that's interesting is ThinCon, but also Trust in the States conferences, financial services conferences, investing conferences, that type of thing, which I think lends well to the book, which targets not only the wealthy people or you know people who aspire to be wealthy or have various issues that they'd like to deal with but also the advisors around them. So when I wrote the book I kind of had in mind the idea of targeting not only the people who had money but also the people who advise around it, on the theory that if they liked it, maybe they have 12 people that they'd like to buy it and give it to.
Bobbi:
That's so smart because the idea of educating yourself about money is really becoming much more mainstream and a lot of attention goes to young people paying off student debt, as it should, but more attention I think as millennials grow up and get older is going to and as the other generations obviously also get older, is going to go the management of wealth because you do get past a point we hope where you're focused more on offense rather than just digging out of the hole. And that's a great thing because people need this kind of book.
Frazier:
No question about it. And one of the things I heard from a different advisor which I didn't really speak to in the book too closely but that I really believe in is the idea of funding your retirement as much as possible ahead of time. Because it's something you will do. You will be out of the work force at some point later in your life and you need to fund those years from age 65 or 70 on and if you don't do it early and use the power of compounding in your favor, you're not going to have as nice a retirement as you would have liked.
Bobbi:
So what is your takeaway for the listeners from your money story? From building this business?
Frazier:
I think the big takeaway is pre fund as many expenses as possible and be prepared for the idea that it takes time to build a business. It takes time to build a brand. You're going to have setbacks and to the extent that you can save up and have that at hand, I sleep better at night knowing that I'm not quite sure you know, if I don't know necessarily what my career's going to turn as out as a result of these moves, at the very least I'm not dipping into savings to fund current daily expenses.
Bobbi:
Let's talk about your every day money tip. You have a lot of exercises that people can do and this is one that I think is really valuable because as people start to become more successful financially they do want to be able to give to philanthropy.
Frazier:
If you had three kids and four dollars to give away, I would suggest that each of the kids be able to give a dollar away in the manner in which they choose. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first one, is you know it sort of gives them the idea that you know there's a good reason to be giving money away and it helps to further social causes. But from a parent's perspective I think one thing that's nice is that you get to see what is important to kids. And it's a nice data point that you can look at as you're raising your kids and you can see how they think about things.
Frazier:
The second part of that, I said you had four dollars and you know three of it is given away. That fourth dollar I think an interesting exercise is to have the three kids decide amongst themselves how to give away that fourth dollar. And I think that's interesting and a good exercise for one major reason, is that it gets them to be making decisions together. One of the things that I preach in the book is there are a lot of different threats to wealth, one of which is that family members very often their first experience dealing with wealth is when one of, either the mother or the father dies and they're making decisions about big money late in the game and a lot of emotion can come into play.
Frazier:
By using this shared philanthropy experience you get kids making decisions about money and learning about what's important to each other, ultimately going forward. And it's a very small thing, it can be done with very small dollars and it can be done by anybody, not just the 1%. But I think it's a nice little communication tool that transfers values but also builds communication skills and also allows kids to understand what they're strengths and weaknesses are before they have to settle on the state.
Bobbi:
Great idea. I think that's something everyone can implement at any level. I want to talk quickly about your book as well. It really hit a lot of marks with me because it does hone in on so many themes that are universal, no matter what your income. The chapter that stood out most to me is where you talk about what do you cost? And I think that's important at any income level, any wealth level, because we often cost more than we realize.
Frazier:
Oh no question about it. Basically you know when I was talking about writing the book with my publisher, one of the things I talked about was there are people who come from one strata of wealth or one differens type of wealth, meaning maybe they had a business or real estate. And then they're going to another one, they're selling something or they have liquidity or more cash than they were used to having. Or they're coming from a high paying job and then they're going into retirement and hopefully they're funding their income needs via assets. The biggest thing I preach to people is if you've won the lottery or you've become a first round draft pick or you've sold a business or something like that, understand not only what you cost currently and how that was funded but also what you're going to cost. And I've tried to do it in a fun way in the book.
Bobbi:
Oh you go there. You talk about plastic surgery, you talk about private jets. It's a little bit out of most people's leagues, the kinds of things you talk about but it kinda shows how you can have that lifestyle creep so easily the minute you start to feel a little more comfortable in your wealth.
Frazier:
Not only that, people very often just don't have a sense of the numbers around different things and I try to just crack the whip as much as I can to say look this is what things cost and there is a big different between flying coach and flying first class and then going net jets and then owning your own jet. Those costs are geometric and if it's your assets that have to generate the income to support it, you may have fun for a couple of years or you could have a real problem going forward. And if the market tanks or something bad happens to your business or there's litigations or something like that, one of the threats to wealth comes to fore, you could really set yourself up for a life style pull back.
Bobbi:
Tell us more about where people can find out more about you, your book, your podcast and all the things.
Frazier:
Sure. So the book is called Wealth Actually. You can find it at wealthactually.com. It's on Amazon, so you're able to find it that way. The podcast is on wealthactually.com as well. And then more about me is on my website, frazierrice.com. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all the major social media platforms, so between that and Google, I'm pretty easily findable.
Bobbi:
Thank you Frazier.
Frazier:
Oh yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on.
Bobbi:
Hey everyone, so excited to watch Frazier soar in his new ventures. Here's my take on what he had to say. Financial grown-up tip number one: he had a big secret at work and you know what? It's okay to keep secrets at work. As excited as you are about whatever side hustles or new ventures you've got going on, if the bosses think you have one foot out the door, you may not get considered for certain projects or even a promotion and of course forget about a raise. Why should they invest in you when they think you're going to leave? Don't do anything related to it on your employer's time obviously and don't do anything unethical. But it is definitely okay to be discreet and by the way that promotion that you could be considered for, because they see how committed you are to your job, when you are there, that actually maybe good enough to keep you at your job and maybe you don't start your own business or maybe you have other opportunities that you might not have seen at the company.
Bobbi:
Financial grown up tip number two: Frazier talked about strategically giving to charity. Here's a little more. When you're giving to charity think about your ability to sustain the level of giving for the long run. So for example, you may have had a great year and you want to boost your gift to a new level at a cause you really care about. And you know they could use the money. But then next year the expectation is going to be that you are going to maintain that level or you're going to raise it. Something you may or may not be able to do or want to do. So here's the strategy. You keep your regular annual donations relatively steady or climbing slowly and then if you have that really good year, and you can and want to give more that year, strategically give it in a way that is clearly for a one time specific project, like a capital campaign.
Bobbi:
Alright, thank you all for your support including supporting the show by leaving reviews. I said it before but I'm repeating it cause it's so important, we really do need them my friend. Also, be in touch on the socials. I love hearing from you guys. On Instagram I am @bobbirebell1 and on Twitter @bobbirebell and thanks to Wealth Actually author Frazier Rice for bringing us all one step closer to being financial grown-ups.
Bobbi:
Financial Grown-Up with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.
