First Financial Consulting Featured in Powered Up Talk Radio Podcast on Retirement Planning for Woman

Let’s go, girls. From New York City to Los Angeles, powered up with Beck and Franklin, is giving women of all ages permission to live the life they’ve always dreamed of. Why live in black and white when you can choose the brilliance of 3D and technicolor? Each week, Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin and their high-powered guests will be here to cheer you on, to share their challenges, their successes, and what they’ve learned along the way. It’s all about women supporting women. The stories and practical tips on sex, beauty, money, and so much more are designed to help you reconnect to the powerful woman you are. Fabulous knows no limits. Now it’s time for you to expand your boundaries. Here are Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin. Hey ladies, this is Sandra Beck and I’m here with Linda Franklin, and from coast to coast we’ve got you covered with everything from money, sex, beauty, and love. And today we’re gonna talk about money and we’re gonna talk about retirement myths that women believe with Greg Welborn and then we’re gonna round out the end of the show with Michael Russell. And we’re gonna talk about part three of his exploring intimacy program. But before we would get to all that, I would like to talk to Linda, my friend, because I only get to talk to you on the air. It’s so crazy because you’re such a busy mom. That’s why you, you’ve got so much going on. Oh, you know, and I, all I want, you know, people asked me recently, Linda, um, in a party, they’re like, what can we do to help you? And I’ll, you know what I thought. You could leave me alone. That’s the first thing that came to mind. I was like, if I have one more phone call, one more request, one more, like anything, you know, and people tell me you got to take better care of yourself, I think my head’s gonna implode. Well, that’s not good. You gotta take a little time for you. We talk about that all the time. You do, we do, and you are so good at that. You are so good at drawing boundaries, though you will be proud of me because I finally blew a gasket with the local school district because they signed me up to make these baskets for some fundraiser, you know, nobody asked me. Nobody said, gee, you know, should we maybe be. Conscious of the fact she’s a single mom with an elderly dad and two kids and a company to run. Oh no, we’re gonna sign her up publicly to do these baskets, and I just, I was such a monster all over the town. I was telling everybody, I’m not doing it. You can’t make me. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I stood my ground. Well, you have to. You know, I say if, if, if mom’s down, if you’re down, then everything else sort of falls to pot. So it, it, it’s, you’re not being selfish by saying no, you’re actually, you know, just the opposite. Right. I mean, I, you know, when I looked at the responsibility that I already have and coming up is, is a, a charity event that I do that, that I’ve been doing forever and it’s near and dear to my heart, and I sit on the, the nominations committee of an organization called World of Children, and we get hundreds of applications for, you know, over a million dollars allocated to third world charities benefiting children, and I have to read through a ton of these things, rate them and score them, and I’m thinking. There’s only so much time in the day and it, and it, and it can’t be like, yeah, I heard a great thing recently, Linda. It’s like your emergency cannot be my priority, and I love that because, you know, it’s true, you know, everybody gets into this emergency panic state and then they call the people that they know they can count on, but then they burn them out. Yeah, no, absolutely, you know, and you know there’s different times in your life and different stages in your life when you can do the things that, you know, like your charity work and like, you know, devoting your time to helping other people, but sometimes when you’re in the middle of your own Emergency, you can’t, and you know, and you shouldn’t feel bad about that. There will be time, but maybe this is not the time. That’s right. That’s right. And I went all like sand ballistic, which is not like me, Linda. You’ve known me a long time. I, I’m pretty laid back. I’m pretty chill. It takes a lot to get me going. And when these two specific moms cornered me outside of school and they’re like, Yeah, well, we need you. To be doing this, this and this. And I said, Oh, no. You know, I’m not doing that. And I said, very politely, I said, I didn’t sign up for it. I don’t know who signed me up, but, you know, the fact of the matter is, is I cannot do that. I cannot handle one more thing, though I appreciate, you know, what you’re trying to do. Now, if somebody had said that to me, Linda, I would have backed way off. And one of the ladies had the nerve to say to me, Oh, well, I was a single mother once. Too, and you know, and I had ordinary teenagers and, you know, and I just looked at her thinking, you know, are you really gonna try and talk me into this? You have no children. You have a husband who supports you, and you’re gonna jaw at me in front of the school and you know what, Linda, I unloaded on her. OK, well, you know, sometimes, you just have to say, you know, just back off, um. It’s just, it’s just crazy. I mean, yesterday was a perfectly perfect example of that. Um, well, first of all, we went to, um, Roger and I went to a wedding at City Hall, and I had never ever been to a wedding in City Hall, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes because it was, it was a Monday morning and it was so crowded. There had to be like 300 people there. To get married. Well, there was all people getting married and then people that were that the guests, little guests that they invited to come along, but it was just an eye opener because there was a lot of same-sex marriages, a lot of boys marrying boys and girls marrying girls young, and then there was, there was people getting married that brought their little babies with them. And their family and so they were, they were getting married and you know everybody was definitely on the young side. I think the friends that we were there to support, they’re in their 40s, they were probably the oldest people there, but it was, it was a zoo. It was like hurry up and wait. So we did that but then we all went uptown to a to a Nice restaurant and we had, we had drinky poos and, and, and some, some food and it was really nice, but our friends, um, were telling us a story that kind of relates back to you because our friends had a son 40 some odd years ago that had cystic fibrosis and for his, and he just, he just died a week a year ago last Christmas at 42. And so. They lost a son, but their whole, their whole life was sort of devoted around the son because there was always some sort of an emergency. Oh, I bet with cystic there is always, there was, there’s always an infection. There’s always a blockage. There’s always, always, always. And so she was telling me that she was talking about her sister and her sister was going through some, some stuff, and the, and the son, the sister’s son. Um, they were, they were on the phone and she was, they love to travel and now they’re doing like a lot of trips because they’re doing catch up now because, you know, there were, there were times they just couldn’t do that. And the, the, the nephew said to, to, to his aunt, my friend, um, you’re leaving town now in the middle of this emergency. And she, she, you know, she just held her ground and she just said, What are you talking about? Don’t you know how we’ve been living for, you know, for the last 3 years? And I think he backed off, but you know, they lost a son and people are just crazy. The people are so wrapped up in their own stuff that they have no compassion for anybody else. They don’t. They don’t. And I think, you know, and I don’t know if it’s because of social media. I kind of think it is. Like, social media has really pulled down, like, you know, that whole good fences, you know, fences make good neighbors kind of thing, you know, where we share everything and make everything public. And I think on a lot of areas of the Of the country, that’s a good thing. In the world, it’s a good thing, but I think it’s also given permission for these people to, to pry right into your personal life, whether you’ve invited them or not. I just think that there’s a breakdown. Of these things, you know, where, where in years past, or, you know, at least in my experience, asking people personal questions or demanding explanations on their decisions, especially personal ones that have nothing to do with anybody. It just seems like our culture is a free for all now for you to challenge me on what I’m doing with my child or my personal life or whatever. Like when I got married, Linda, I can’t tell you how many people said to me, first thing out of their mouth was, I’m getting, when I said, Oh, I’m getting married, you know, to this person, they go, Oh, well, he’s a Jew and you’re a Catholic. How are you going to raise the kids? You know. OK, haven’t had the kids yet. I have a dog, you know, you haven’t asked me how I’m raising, and we’re raising the dog. He’s a little bit of both, the front end is. That’s right. He can barro a toy adenoy Alehenu with the best of the canines, right, with his rosary beads. That’s right, with his little rosary necklace, his cross, or his crucifix hanging off his. No, well, that’s it. People, I think people get involved with other people’s lives so they don’t have to look at their own. Oh, definitely. Cause you know what? When I turned the tide around to these two, and I’m just gonna say it, these two nitwits, and I don’t care who in my town is listening, when I turned around and I said, Well, let me ask you, I’ve got 2 little kids. I’ve got a sick 80-year-old grandfather. I sit on the board of two charities. I run 2 radio shows in a company. You are retired, and your husband is still working, and your kids are grown. Why aren’t you making the basket? And it was dead silence and you just, then I would have just hightailed it and walked away. Did you? I did. I did, you know, because I learned that, you know, the very reason that people are, you know, either bullying people or denying things, and it’s the, it’s the very same reason that they should be doing something. It’s like for her to pressure me to do something, it’s because she didn’t want to, yeah. That, well, that’s it. And you know, you’ll find that the unhappiest people are the ones that are, you know, in your business all the time and, and criticizing. Oh, that is so true. I love that you say that you’re just, I think you’re just validating my soul today because I’ve taken a beating in the last week with respect to things like that. And, you know, there are a lot of unhappy people. There are a lot of unhappy people everywhere. And it seemed like everywhere I turned this week, somebody was on my, my behind for something. And, you know, I just look at him going, you know, what do you expect of anyone, really? All you can expect is people to do their best. Yeah, absolutely. You know, but you know, but, you know, you set some sort of a precedent too, and if you’ve done it in the past and you’ve always been there, then people expect you to be there until you tell them, no, this, this, this has changed. I’ve changed and I can’t be there anymore, so get used to it. That’s right. That’s right. It’s like you can hear my voice, you know, it’s like, uh, you know, I’m still sick. I’m never going to get better unless, you know, people leave me alone, and part of people leaving me alone is me saying no. And as always, I want to thank you, Linda Franklin, for just a great opening segment on the show. Show, you’re always my inspiration with saying no. When we come back from the break, we are gonna welcome, uh, Greg Welborn, and he’s a fee-only financial planner at First Financial Consulting, which I think is cool because then he’s not, you know, working for any one specific company trying to sell us things. But he’s gonna talk to us about retirement myths women believe when we come back after the break. We’ve got lots more powered up with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin after these messages. We’re back with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin. Here’s More Powered Up with Beck and Franklin. Hey ladies, this is Sandra Beck and I’m here with Linda Franklin, and this is Powered Up Talk Radio. And as promised, we are going to bring on Greg Welborn from First Financial Consulting, and he is a fee-only financial planner. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, you pay a fee upfront. And he comes up with the best financial plan for you. And having met with many retirement planners, uh, Linda, over the years, I kind of like that because I feel like they’re not tied to any one company and I get a broader range of products that might work for me. What do you think? Well, yeah, I don’t like to go to, you know, the big banks, for instance, that have all, they all have estate planning and financial planning, and they’re just trying to push their own products. So no, I, I don’t like that either. I like to have diversity and I like someone that doesn’t have an ax to grind. I love that. I love that. Now, Linda, you have a great money background, and we’ve talked in the past about issues that women have with money. So it’s great that, you know, Greg Welborn’s going to come on and talk about retirement with that women believe. Now you’ve got some personal opinions on women and money. Would you like to share them before we bring Greg on? Well, I just think that women don’t take enough responsibility in the in the financial arena, you know, if they’re married, they usually leave that up to the husband. To take care of and there’s a lot of times that the husband doesn’t do a very good job of it or the husband decides to leave and you’re left holding the bag. So I really think that it’s, it’s certainly time that women take that as part of their A responsibility to plan for their own future because you, you know, you just don’t know, uh, you know, even if you’re married, how long your husband is going to be around, um, and you, it, it, it could lead to some very bad stuff if, if, if, uh, if you don’t, and especially, you know, if, if someone gets sick, and, and medical can eat up money like crazy. So you really have to have a plan going forward, uh, to know. How to handle it so you’re not in panic still, uh, when the, you know, what hits the fan. Absolutely, you know, and one thing that I learned, you know, is that people who have their eggs all in one basket, you know, and I see this relatives of mine and older relatives, you know, they have all their money in the stock market and their day is driven by, well, today’s a good day because I’m rich, the stocks are up, today’s a bad day, my stocks are down, I’m broke, you know, and they, the ones who have diversified and the ones who have used different. You know, kind of portfolios and different economic retirement tools seem to have a better retirement overall. But I would like to bring on Greg Welborn and ask him, you know, what he thinks about, uh, you know, women and money and retirement myths. Women Believe. It’s an article that he authored that’s very well done. Greg, are you with us? I am. Thank you, ladies. Enjoy being part of the show again. Oh, it’s so good to have you back. Now, many women aren’t prepared for retirement, and I’m gonna say this because I’m a woman in my 40s and I have many women friends in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who aren’t prepared. And Linda, I believe, is a money expert, uh, after her many years on Wall Street. Where do you think women fall down first with respect to retirement? Well, I think it was just mentioned is they make the assumption it’s taken care of and whether that’s a general, oh, it’ll just be somehow taken care of. Social Security’s been enough, that’s kind of my myth number 1, or it is, oh well, I’m not in the workforce, my spouse, my husband’s going to take care of it. That’s kind of my myth number 5. That’s the wrong thing to do. Nobody, male or female, should just make the assumption it’s. Taken care of by somebody else. If you’re married, it’s a joint process. Even if you stay at home, you’re contributing one, because you are liable to be able to contribute to a spousal IRA. But two, any money that you save is money that your spouse can then afford to put into the 401k. And in most states, you know, that’s, you’ve got some interest in that should there be a divorce. So it really becomes a joint. Issue, it should be joint planning, joint communication, and when women don’t participate in that joint issue, that joint objective, and they leave it to someone else, sight unseen, that’s when they get into the most trouble. You know, we talk about these myths and, and, and you’re here today to debunk some of the myths, and, you know, I just, I can’t wrap my brain around in this day and age, uh, how somebody might think that when they retire, Social Security is going to take care of them. Well, I, yeah, I can’t either. And but let me perhaps we’ll just change it a bit and say that they believe it’s going to be a more significant part of their retirement than maybe it’s actually going to be. The Social Security system is essentially broken, and I say broken in the sense that it cannot meet in the future, all of the obligations it has promised to meet. So something’s going to change now. Do I think it’s going to go away altogether? That’s the other extreme. No, I don’t. But do I think that they will have to in some way change the formula, change the way they calculate inflation, change who actually can draw down or the amount they can draw. Yeah, absolutely they will have to do that. So that leaves people susceptible to changing ground rules, if you will. So even if you are looking at it and being wise, or so you think, oh, it’s only going to be 30% of my retirement. I know that I’m going to do something else for the other 70%. I guess the argument that I would make is you shouldn’t count on it for even the 30%. If you can find a way to retire without relying on Social Security, I think you’re in a much stronger position. Then whatever Social Security you collect is kind of gravy, but you, you’ve eliminated that possibility that you’re going to be sadly mistaken at a point in your life when you can at least afford to be sadly mistaken. Right, and Social Security is, I mean, the government is supposedly taking care of that, so that, you know, that that sort of let you off the hook. That’s being done automatically so I don’t have to do the, the work, uh, to, to, to make sure my retirement is going to be secure and that’s. You know, it does take some planning. It takes it and it takes, if you don’t understand it, then you must go to somebody that does and start doing it the earlier the better, wouldn’t you say? Absolutely, absolutely. Well, and in counting on this stuff, this is Sandra here, Greg. You know, I think about what happened in Detroit, you know, with the pensions and, and, you know, how are we supposed to, you know, when I look at these calculations, because, you know, I get that letter in the mail. You know, that says, like, if you retired today, you know, at 62, you would get $1800 a month or whatever. And I look at that and think, OK, well, that’s great because that’s not real money. You know what I mean? It’s, it’s 20 years in the future for me, and it’s, it’s a number of On a piece of paper, but how do I know the government in, you know, 15 or 20 years isn’t going to turn around like what happened in Detroit with the pensions and go, OK, well, guess what? Now it’s $900. I mean, what security do we have? Do we have any? I don’t know. Well, I guess realistically, I would say you do have some, because I’m, my prediction, and I think it’s a fairly safe prediction is it’s not going to go away 100%. Just as I’m saying it won’t be there 100%, but it will get changed. And so you can’t count on all of it, but you can count, I think, on something. But that just brings up the point of, are you doing the planning? Are you looking at this realistically, trying to figure out, well, what portion of my social retirement rather is my Social Security and what’s My backup plan. It’s always good in life to have not just a Plan A but a Plan B, but the operative word there in both of those is a plan, not an assumption, not a false sense of confidence, not an abdication of responsibility, but a plan, sitting down and going through it yourself, going through it with your spouse, figuring out what do you think you’re going to need, what needs to be there, and then how many different. Pools of capital or resources are you going to draw from? And if you’ve got a pension and Social Security and you’ve got some real estate or you’ve got a 401k, great, the more things the better, up to, you know, a limit, of course. You don’t want to have too many to make it complicated, but no one thing’s going to work. You need to have 345. There’s no magic number, but sitting down and figuring out where do we want to put our eggs, how do we want to protect them and diversify them. So if one goes bad, It was just one that went bad. It wasn’t the whole kit and caboodle. You know, I think a lot of people too today, especially the younger people, and, and Sandra, I put you in the category of younger people, they’re still paying off student loans in their 40s. You know, and then they’re and they’ve got credit card debt because it all kind of works together and then they have kids and they say, oh my God, I better start saving for my kid’s college education, but you know the kid could be 5 or 6 and maybe that’s not a priority right now. The priority is getting out of debt first. That’s an excellent point, and I kind of refer to that as myth number 4. I can’t afford to do it now. At this any point in time, there clearly could be somebody whose situation is so extreme that right now they can’t afford to do it. Fine. But still sitting down and developing a plan, looking at what your outflow requirements are, what are the expenses, and if that includes student debt, fine, that includes student debt, but sitting down and figuring it out and then when you get an increase in salary, even if it’s an inflationary increase in salary, being purposeful about saying rather than letting my lifestyle just expand. Expand to now encompass that extra earnings. I’m going to start putting something away. The best thing that you do is you’re working simultaneously on multiple goals. You’re putting a little bit away for your retirement at the same time you’re putting a little bit away for the kids’ college. Sometimes you’re putting away something to whittle away on the debt. You’re, you. Different needs in life, different objectives, and you should work on them to some degree simultaneously or at least contemporaneously. Too many people, and I have found women especially, are prone to saying, Well, I’ll get to my retirement plan when I take care of this or take care of that or pay off that debt or I know that my children’s college fund is fully funded. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You know, Greg, you’re reading. I am. Well, because that was me exactly, because I, you know, and I can’t wait to talk to you more about when we come back from the break. I need to take us to commercial break, but when we do come back from the break, Greg, I’m gonna pick your mind because so many of my friends, and including me, you know, I had all this money put away for my kids’ college education that got wiped out in my divorce, but The fact is, you know, as moms, we want to spend all this money for our kids, not thinking about our own future and our own retirement. So I want to talk to you when we come back from the break. And anybody listening here today, uh, we are visiting with Greg Welborn, and he is a fee-only financial planner. My name is Sandra Beck, and I’m the host of Powered Up Talk Radio along with Linda Franklin. And for those of you who have just tuned in, you can check us out on iTunes, you can check us out on Powered Up Talk Radio or our host station in Texas, TogieRadio.com. When you come back from the break, you won’t wanna miss more about retirement myths women believe. We’ve got lots more powered up with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin after these messages. Girl’s about 42. the Thank you. If you’re ready for a big change in your work, your career, your happiness, your life, it’s time for the Million Dollar Mindset with Marla Tabacca, Monday afternoons at 20, 1 central on Tokennet.com. Marla believes that with the right mindset, anything is possible. Join us as successful life coach, Marla Tabacca inspires you and her clients to explore, discover, and live your dreams by developing what she calls the million dollar mindset. Marla will inspire you to take action on your dreams and reveal secrets to success that will help you realize your own. Unique power. Tune into the million dollar mindset for heartwarming stories with Marla Tabacca. Learn tips and tricks to building a successful business and unlock the secrets to creating a happier, more balanced life through abundant thinking and attraction power. For more information on the million dollar mindset, go to our website, Marlatabaca.com. That’s M A R L A T A B A K A.com. It’s the Million Dollar Mindset with Marla Tabacca, Monday afternoons at 21 p.m. Central on Tokenhead.com. Get ready for. Rise Up Radio, leveraging your learning, leadership, and legacy with Donna Kimbrand, the edgy evolutionary, Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Eastern here on the Rockstar Radio Network. If you’re an entrepreneurial leader or visionary, stay ahead of your game with insights, tools, and strategies that give you the thought leader’s edge. Each week, join Donna and her guests as she’ll ask the edgy questions, help you discover game changing shortcuts to better thinking and learning, how to explore the ripple effects of. Leadership excellence and how to create your life as a living legacy where the legacy you leave is the life you live. As thought leaders, you need strategies to help you enjoy the confidence and thrill of riding the wave of rapid change. For more on Donna, check out our website, gamechangerhinking.com. Then join the conversation and sharpen up your wits on Wise Up Radio with Donna Kimbrand, Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Eastern here on the Rockstar Radio Network. We’re back with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin. Here’s More Powered Up with Beck and Franklin. Hey ladies, this is Sandra Beck and I’m here with Linda Franklin, and this is Powered Up Talk Radio, and we are visiting with Greg Welborn, and he is a fee-only financial planner. And before we get into our topic today again with Greg, which is retirement myths women believe. I wanna ask you to um explain to our listeners a little bit about what is fee-only financial planning. We’ve had a question come into the chat. How does fee-only financial planner diff planning differ from traditional retirement planning? So can you address that? Sure, traditional retirement planning was usually done by a stockbroker, an insurance agent, someone who was earning money by selling a product, an insurance product, mutual funds, annuity. Whatever it might be, there was a commission attached. The problem with that methodology is that even for the most honest of people, it’s easy to rationalize. I’m making a recommendation of this product rather than that product, and it pays a 3% commission to me. The other one pays a 1.5% commission. So there’s always the overlay of the conflict of interest. Is the advice really being given in the best interest of the client, or is there always that little, it’s in the best interest of the agent selling the product who happens to be giving the advice? So fee only came along as a new model about 20 some odd years ago of basically financial advisers like myself and across the country saying we’re going to offer truly objective financial advice. We will charge a fee and we will promise and commit. And we file with the government to this extent and say we will not sell any product to anyone for any reason. There’s no conflict of interest. Whatever advice that I or any other fee-only planner gives to someone truly is their best effort at representing the client and giving objective advice. There is no overlay of my needs, my commission. There’s no conflict of interest. I love that. I love that. Now, when we, before we went to break, Greg, we were talking about these retirement myths that, you know, women believe, and you were talking and Linda brought up the topic about, like, I have more important things to say for like my kids’ college education. And I wanna quote you in this article to everyone because when, when I saw this, Greg, I turned around and I fired this line out to, like, I’m not kidding, 30 of my women peers because I, I, we’re all doing the same thing and you wrote, your kids can borrow money to pay for college and graduate school, but you can’t get a loan to pay for retirement. And I have female friends who have good jobs and good. Houses and instead of paying down their mortgage they’ve actually taken out things like a second mortgage to pay for their kids’ college education. They’ve done all these things, you know, ever since the interest rates have changed with the college education, and I know I personally had a ton. I had like $65,000 in loans when I graduated from Northwestern with my master’s degree, um, so I know all about student loans, but I did pay them off and. You can get a loan and you can pay these off, and it does make you stronger. And when I look at these women making these decisions or husband and wife to mortgage their home or to use their retirement or pull out of their 401k to pay for their child’s education, I don’t think that’s financially smart because who’s going to take care of them? And you wrote your kids can borrow money to pay for college and graduate school, but you can’t get a loan to pay for retirement. So I’d love your thoughts on this topic. Well, there in this day and age are so many different Paths to go to college, go through college to get college credits that nobody really needs to put themselves in an astronomical amount of debt in order to come out with a college degree or a graduate degree. We run the gamut in this country from the JCs where you can get credits very, very cheaply to the state schools, which is the next step up, to some of the state universities, to then maybe the private universities. But what happens is we, we get this stereotype in our mind of the college degree from the university is going to be worth it for my kids, and then instead of the kids taking on or going through the mental process of trying to figure out should I take on this level of debt for the value of the degree that I think it is. It gets put back on the parents, so there’s a separation there between where the benefit is going to be and who’s paying for the benefit. So that’s that danger there gets a lot of people in trouble because when you separate those two things it’s very easy for the person who is not going to ultimately pay for it to want more and more and more, be it more prestige or more things that they throw at you in these schools these days. I mean they have gyms and saunas and climbing rocks, and I mean they’re throwing almost country club type facilities into some of these schools that costs money. It’s much better in a sense if the child is taking the responsibility for some of that college education in terms of paying for it and really figuring out is this degree from this university all these years worth my taking on this amount of debt. Just having that conversation is much healthier than not having it and relying on mom and dad because too many times, as you pointed out, mom. And Dad are tapping into a pool of capital that should be for their retirement, and they don’t have a plan that is balancing the two together. And so I’m warning against that danger. You can’t just go out and borrow easily for retirement. That option doesn’t really exist, whereas if you have to borrow for college, those options do exist. Let the kids take advantage of those options. Put your money aside. Well, and I just wanna chime in here because I went to a very fancy, I went to a country club school. Um, and I will, I’m just gonna say this, and I, I’m very popular, Greg, uh, so bear with me for, for voicing the unpopular, obnoxious opinion. But I will tell you that going to Northwestern in the year I went, it was the number one business school and the number one graduate school, and I studied in both, and I worked my tail off. There were an awful lot of kids there. Who didn’t have jobs, who didn’t have to participate in their own education, and they blew it. They didn’t study very hard. They didn’t do, they had no vested interest in what they were doing because mom and dad were just footing the bill. And I’m here to tell you that, yes, my Northwestern education was worth every penny for me because I invested in it. It opened a lot of doors for me through networking, but only because I used it, and I will tell you that it. There was no indication of success. I have a lot of Northwestern peers who are not working, who are unemployed, who are, you know, it’s the person that creates the, the industry, not the education, and it’s no predictor of success. So I just gonna put that out there for everybody. And Linda, I would love to know your thoughts because you have great success in your life, but you don’t have a big fancy, uh, country club degree behind you. No, I mean, I never had those problems because I didn’t go to college and I don’t have kids, so I don’t, I didn’t have that worry. I, I think that the number one question that, you know, people that, uh, you know, are getting to be in their 40s and 50s and 60s and looking at retirement or not working anymore is how much is enough? How much Will I need to maintain a lifestyle that I’m used to, and I understand it it certainly depends on where you’re living, how large you’re living, but is there any kind of way to sort of ballpark it so that you have an idea of how much you will need since we’re living longer, let’s say we’re living to 90. Yeah, I think there are two, you know, easy rules of thumb, and every time you throw out a rule of thumb, the risk is that it doesn’t apply to everybody, so people have to be wise in using this. But generally speaking, if you take your current living expenses, strip out those that are purely related to the kids, whatever that new number is, divide it by 0.05 by 5%. That’s the amount of money you ought to have in the piggy bank at the time that you retire, and that number that we just got to, your living expenses minus whatever is really devoted to the kids. That’s a pretty good estimate of what you will need in retirement, even through age 90, 95. The composition of your living expenses will change. Yes, there might be extra healthcare costs, but there then might be less travel, fewer meals out. So there tends to be an ebb and flow. I’m not a big one to say look at your living expenses, strip out the kids’ expenses, and then reduce it by 20% because you won’t be spending as much in retirement. I know too many people who live active lives and they do stuff in retirement. They end up at about where they were before retirement. So that to me is a healthier number. So when you’re putting together a plan for somebody and they come to you and they say something like, well, you know, I’m I’m not ready. I can’t afford to save, you know, I don’t really work outside the home, so I don’t need to worry about retirement, you know, I still have plenty of time. Where do you begin with somebody like that? I’m just curious because that would be me. Well, um, that’s a very good question because you’ve hit on a lot of different myths there, a lot of different mistakes that are being made. I, I guess I would peel them off, not in any necessary order, but one at a time and say, OK, let’s talk about the fact that you’re out, not working out of the home. Does that mean you don’t have responsibility for this? I probably can get them to say, Well, yeah, I do have responsibility. Um, you can’t afford it. You’ve got to have things to save for. Well, when are those going to go away? Can you tell me a date? You probably can’t. And if I show you the time value of money, if I show you what putting money away now versus starting to put money away 10 years from now represents, it’s a huge difference. Maybe you’ll get motivated to take this issue a little more seriously and find ways now to save money. It’s, it’s discipline in many instances of just Either reducing expenses now that are superfluous, or for those people that truly are in a hardship situation, you’re not being superfluous, not being, you know, spendthrift, they’ve just really got it close to the nub. Fine, but planning for what you will do when you get a little bit of a relief. Or when you get a little bit of a raise so that lifestyle doesn’t just grow with that. Again, it’s communication, taking responsibility, realizing that time is your ally, so long as you use it, but if you don’t, you lose it, and then you’ll never get that back. And the earning power over time is tremendous. Greg Welborn, I wanna thank you for being our guest today. Uh, I love having you on the show. You always bring such, such great information for our listenership. You can find more out about Greg Welborn by going to FirstFinancial.is. Now their company is located in. Pasadena, they have a great website and you can read that article Retirement Myths Women Believe. Greg, do you serve people nationwide and can they call you? We do, and yes they can. You want me to give you a phone number? I would. You got 30 seconds. Make it count. 626-844-4630 extension 1. Thank you very much, Greg, and for those of you who didn’t write that down and want to find it out, it’s FirstFinancial.is. This broadcast is also available on iTunes under Powered Up Talk Radio. It’s also available on Togine.com under Powered Up TalkRadio. Now, when we come back from the break, we’re gonna welcome Michael Russer. We’re gonna talk about intimacy issues. More after the break with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin after these messages. Chances are you didn’t give birth to Einstein, so why are you trying to raise your child to be like him? Welcome to Stop Raising Einstein with your host, Tara Kennedy Klein. Woohoo Radio Network’s parenting show dedicated to helping you release the myth of the perfect parent and discover the unique brilliance in your child and you, Tara and her. Panel of amazing, intelligent, and sometimes off the wall guests will share the tips, tools, trends, and techniques available that will help you stop raising Einstein and start relishing your role as a proud and present parent. Join her every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Central Standard Time for Stop Raising Einstein, only here on the Woohoo Radio Network. Join us for self-aid success stories with Helen Wu, Wednesday nights at 10, 9 central on Token.com. Helen Wu was born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and after a very difficult upbringing, fighting depression, abuse, and addictions, she finally finds herself genuinely happy inside and out. Helen believes in taking our positive thinking and doing something positive to achieve a positive outcome. She’s here to make a positive difference in your life, to be your game changer, your aha moment. Mentor. She’s ready to help both men and women get into a better place. Helen Wu is also the author of Self-Aid Success Stories, 25 Success Stories from Successful entrepreneurs, inspired by Ellen DeGeneres. Helen wants the world to know that just because we find ourselves in a difficult situation, doesn’t mean we have to stay there. We can aid ourselves to a better life. So join us for self-aid success stories with Helen Wu, Wednesday nights at 10, 9 central on Tokeynet.com. We’re back with Sandra Beck and Linda Franklin. Here’s More Powered Up with Beck and Franklin. Hey ladies, this is Sandra Beck and I’m here with Linda Franklin, and this is Powered Up Talk Radio, and we were just visiting with Greg Welborn. I wanted to give you his, uh, email or his website address again, www.firstfinancialconsulting.net. He’s in Pasadena. He handles clients worldwide, uh, nationwide, so give him a call if you have any questions. Uh, we’re now gonna move on to our intimacy section of our show today. And we are welcoming back Michael Russer. This is the 3rd part of our intimacy series. And for those of you that missed part 1 and 2, you can go to our website and look up Michael Russer, and you can go to Togi or iTunes and look up, uh, Powered Up Talk Radio and Michael Russer and find the episodes with him on it. Michael, today we’re gonna talk about performance versus presence in the bedroom. Oh, I have a lot to dish out about that. I’m sure Linda does too, but we’re gonna give you the mic right away to say, all right, what does that mean? Oh, well, it means the exact opposite of what you see in every Viagra and Cialis commercial, uh, anything you ever see in porn or anything that’s even suggested in most of our media and films. Everything there is based on quote unquote performance and uh you know, Sandra and Linda, I’ll tell you, uh if, if people would just take the word performance, put it on a big sheet of paper, and then put it through a shredder, that’s the best thing they can do with it and then replace it with presence. To just be in the moment. Yes, just be in the moment, but it’s, it’s even more than that, Linda. It’s, it’s being in the moment and being fully present, um, for with, with, for your partner, and that goes both ways, men and women. You need to be fully present for giving and you need to be fully present for receiving and uh it’s possible that, uh, you know, the man can be fully present. Uh, it doesn’t happen a lot, but fully present in, in, uh, in paying in giving attention and pleasure to his female partner. But a lot of times women have, have trouble receiving it, being fully present. A lot of women have, you know, worry about whether they’re going to climax, and therefore, if they don’t disappoint their male partner or somehow hurt his feelings, that’s not being present. That’s worrying about performance. Well, and I’m gonna take it one step further because I had, you know, this conversation recently about being fully present in the bedroom cause I was like, uh, honey, I know ESPN is coming on, but, you know, we need to finish here. But then in my head, I was going like, oh my God, I forgot to do this today. I forgot. I’ve got, I gotta get that, that, you know, DBA over to blah, blah, blah, and that was running through my head. So, you’re right, it’s It’s both our issues about not being present, and it can be not being present because of things outside of the bedroom, or it can be because of things present in the bedroom, but it’s really hard to focus, and I don’t think I’m the only person to say it’s hard to stay present during that time. No, and, and, and it’s fairly, I mean, it’s very common, uh, Sandra, and this is kind of one of the things I teach and it starts with, first of all, planning your intimate sessions. So that means you block off whatever day and time and I’m, I always recommend allow at least 2 hours. Now I know we haven’t gotten to that part yet, but that’s how long minimum that my partner and I block off, uh, before we’re intimate because. To really get to that space of being fully present, first of all requires intention, and the intention is no distractions internal or external. So no cell phone, no TV, no music or radio or things that can, I mean, what is this like a, you know, in a, like a hyperbolic, you know, suspension chamber with, I mean, I, no, actually music is fine, but the kind of music that actually Is conducive to being present and connected with your partner rather than something that would, uh, you know, maybe, uh, put you in your head or, or kind of distract you, uh, and so yeah, my, my partner and I, Jackie and I often play music, uh, we, we, there’s this Italian, uh, composer that, oh, that just sends us both and so that’s, that’s a way of using music to help you actually become more present. No, it, it, what it means is, is to get out of your head and into your heart and really feel it from that space, uh, and uh where performance is all about being, that’s a goal, that’s a, that’s, that’s, that’s very much an objective and, and, and, uh, you know, something that’s very much in your head. And so in conjunction with this, we call it goalless lovemaking. So you go in with the idea that there is no goal, including climax, by the way. And because when you remove that as a goal, it’s so ironic you’re much more likely to see, especially for women, multiple explosive climaxes if if they remove that pressure from themselves, that sense of I’ve got to perform so he feels good about himself. Well, men ultimately will feel good about themselves if they know you are genuinely excited. Um, and, and it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to get that way if you go in with the idea, I must do this. So goalless lovemaking is a big part of this. So you say get into your heart, but you know, you’ve got to get into your body too and and just sort of feel what it feels like as you’re, you know, as you’re getting excited and aroused. What, I mean, do you ever, or is there anything wrong or there’s no such thing as wrong when it comes to sex, but, you know, even watching some, some light porn, something that turns you both on. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, that that that’s fine and and when I say get into your heart, I meant that from the standpoint, Linda, where it gets you into the space of being present, all right? And when you’re in that space of being present, it means you are now at that exquisite place of being hyper aware, uh, not in your head but in your essence of your partner, what excites them, what, what, what, what, uh. Uh, arouses them, so it allows your intuition to come in, uh, in a place that otherwise didn’t have room because your head was going 100 miles an hour, all right? And they’re in a space where they’re hyper-aware, uh, and, and aware, again, not from an intellectual standpoint, but more from a present standpoint of what’s happening with them and then they can give verbal feedback or, or even uh physical feedback as to what’s working, what’s not. And in terms of using aids, sure, I mean, that’s, that’s always, that’s always a possibility, but it’s not necessary, I’ll tell you that, not at all. And I liked what you said, Michael, about, you know, I just want to go back before we miss this point because I think this point is really important for couples, and I think it’s really important because a lot of women don’t speak up in bed and a lot of. Men do things that they think are pleasing their woman, and she might, you know, act like it just to keep them happy or whatever. But, you know, I’m reminded when I was in high school, I said to my boyfriend, Honey, those are lip, I said, sorry. I said, Honey, those are nipples, not lug nuts. You know, you’re not trying to twist off a tire. And, you know, he, like you, he laughed right out loud, but It’s like, you got to say what works or doesn’t work, because you’re right, there’s like real, no real wrong in the bedroom unless you don’t speak up if it doesn’t feel good, you know, I just think I want to put that out there to give permission to both men and women to say, hey, you know what, that doesn’t work for me, or, no, I don’t like that, or, you know, like I said, they’re nipples, not lug nuts. Um, I think that’s really important. Yeah, whereas I like to say, you know, a lot of men go, go into the, what I call the. Whoa, now what is that? Are we having sound effects, Michael? Are you going to take your clothes off? I’m no. It’s stripper Talk Radio with intimacy expert Michael Russer. You know, when we talk about 2 hours and you know most couples are going to say, you’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, the only time that you know people that you have 2 hours is if you’re having an, you know, a wonderful afternoon with your lover and you’ve blocked off that time to have 2 hours. But you know, a couple, they come home and they’re tired and they’re, they, and there’s with a couple that are living together that are married, whatever, there’s always stuff. So how do you, you know, how do you get rid of this stuff? How do you train your brain to get rid of this stuff? Well, here’s the thing, it’s like anything, right? So Linda, you’re, well, both Linda and you and you too, Sandra, you’re both business people. You know what it takes to focus, right? You know what it takes to do what you need to do and when you need to do it. So think of this as another way of focusing, uh, and only far more important than anything you could do in business because it is about your life, it’s about your lover and your partner and so you, you. You know, it’s a discipline. Now my partner and I, we both have several different companies. We’re working, you know, all the time, and from the first time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed, and there’s times when, when we, when we plan our lovemaking sessions, we’re dead tired, but I’ll tell you. And this happens every time. By the time we’re done, we have far more energy than what we started with, and that’s part of this process because when you remove performance and replace it with presence, your lovemaking is generative in terms in terms of energy. When you focus on performance, it’s depletive and everybody’s exhausted or frustrated. And so, so there’s a huge difference. So it’s a matter of setting that time, yeah, but I don’t know with couples, you know, that are married or whatever, they’re thinking of performance. They’re, they’re thinking, you know, some women are thinking it’s a job. Yeah, you know, so it’s not even, it’s not even performance. It’s like, you know, they could care less if they perform. They’re just going to, they’re going to do the wifely thing and lay there and, and, and do what they think they need to do. Well, in a sense that’s a form of performance, uh, of a whole different kind of performance. It’s called acting and, and, uh, and it’s, uh, 87% of women. It’s been proven in, in a, uh, uh, a scientific study, approximately 87% of women moan or vocalize just to hurry the guy along. And so what I mean, what does that say, right? And so this is, this harks back to what Sandra, you were saying. That if women don’t stand up and assert, you know, what works for them, what doesn’t, now granted, they can be, they can be, um, uh, gentle with that so they don’t devastate their guy, uh, and a way to approach that is, hey, you know, honey, you know, I just love our time together. How would you like to take it to a whole new level? Well, you want to get a guy’s eyes to perk up along with every other part of his body, you say that and they’re gonna go. Yeah, which sounds good to me. And then coach them. You know what, Michael, I got to take us to commercial break. I love having you on here. Actually, I got to end the show. We’re already through the show already. How fast was that? Yeah, so you can find more about Michael Russer at hardlybroken.com. Tune in for him next month. We’re gonna have segment 4 for intimacy building tips. My name is Sandra Beck for Linda Franklin. We want to thank you for listening today, and we’ll catch you next week. We’re so glad you joined us for Powered Up with Beck and Franklin. Sandra Beck, Los Angeles-based single mother and technology company owner, knows what it’s like to be fit, funny, and fantastic in your forties. Linda Franklin, a New Yorker with a successful marriage and