Three Simple Rules to Grow Your Wealth with Scott Yamamura

Welcome to Don't Retire Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with purpose and with passion. I'm your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman, and amazingly, this is the sixth season of our show. Every other Thursday we'll be bringing you amazing guests. And on alternating Thursdays we are doing our segment called Diary of a Financial Advisor where we'll interview financial advisors about their professional journeys and their passion for helping others succeed. If you haven't done it yet, please take a moment. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Today I'm pleased to be joined by Scott Yamamura. Scott's an expert in communication and Design with over 25 years of experience, numerous industry awards, and a Fortune 15 background.

He's also a certified financial coach and uses his expertise informing creative, effective messaging to cut through the noise of the financial world to deliver a practical understanding of money to individuals through a financial epiphany, which I'm excited to learn more about. About Scott's a native of the Northwest, lives outside of Seattle with his family. Got up early to do this interview today. And Scott, welcome to Don't Retire Graduate.

Thanks Eric. So good to be on here.

So, you know, I, I have deliberately kept your epiphany a secret to myself. You know, a lot of times when there's a, when there's an author who we're going to interview, I, I will read the book in advance. I deliberately didn't. So, so the caveat here is I have not read this. I want to feel this epiphany like somebody else might. Before we get there, tell us a little bit about how your, how your journey professionally led you to financial coaching and maybe how financial coaching and financial planning differ.

Yeah, absolutely. My career is in communication. I actually head up the VDU video communications department for a Fortune 15 company like you had said, globally. And so my job is to distill messages regularly, to take 10 hours of footage and turn it into a three minute message and leaving the viewer just exactly what they need to hear in the end in order to be inspired, take action, be encouraged, overlap into the finance area. I myself 10 years ago decided I wanted to know more about this area that I was intimidated by, overwhelmed by. And that's a common thing. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck in debt and have a low financial literacy. And for the most part the I wanted to know more about finances and I decided to get over that hump by starting to study It.

I realized it wasn't so bad after all. And when I was reading books and just really diving in, my wife called it an obsession. I realized it wasn't so bad. And I wanted to take these messages that everybody was overwhelmed by in the same way, and it communicate them in a distilled manner. In fact, when I read books, I wrote constantly into the margins, so much that people were joking, you should write your own book. So I did spend three years writing Financial Epiphany and testing out my own theories and my own principles. In fact, I distilled these messages down into just three rules of thumb that were working miracles for me. And that's when I realized over the years, this is really working for myself, for the next generation, my son.

I need to let other people know about it that need to hear about it this way. I think about finances as. As a pie. And many financial advisors and coaches and those out there are each creating a slice, a flavor of here. Do you want to hear about financial personal finance this way? Do you want to hear about it that way? And we're each serving up a piece of the pie. Someone can come by and say, that's the slice that speaks to me. I'm going to go ahead and serve that up. That's the way I needed to hear about finance.

Uh, and the way I serve it up is simple and creative, and for some people, that is exactly what they need to hear. I'll also say that it. It the way I teach finances, it does favor the middle agent and young, although it serves everybody, it just teaches how money works. But that's. That's how I came across my obsession, my love for personal finance.

We're going to get to these three rules of thumb. And I'm, you know, I'm. I may even play devil's advocate with you, Scott, because I want you to test these theories out with me. I mean, I've been financial literacy for 32 years and writing books on the subject. And so I'm gonna. I'm either going to nod, smile, and go, damn, you knocked it right out of the park, or I'm going to say, hey, wait a minute, what about. And so I know we can have that healthy debate today, which I look forward to. But first and foremost, for your wife to say that this was an obsession, There are a lot of things we can be obsessed with.

Personal finance doesn't feel like a bad obsession. I trust this was a compliment, and she was thrilled that you were learning more about money to help the family. Right. That's the story we're speaking to.

Yeah. In fact, she, she tends to know that I obsess over whatever I'm focusing on. And getting over personal finance, that barrier was a good thing. When I was young. My mother used to say, talking about money is like talking about your underwear. And by that she meant it was a private topic. We don't want to boast about our bank accounts, but certainly we do want to talk about how to do money, not how much we have. And so when I started talking about how to do it and confidently stewarding the finances that we have, it started to allow us to plan.

We were kind of just like most people, just going about things and listening to what are you doing? Well, what are you doing? And I was acting timidly and investing timidly. But that is exactly the opposite of what I teach now. I teach to act with confidence and to put large sums of money where it makes sense to so that in the long run, you look back and you say, wow, I'm glad I took that action now instead of what many retirees do say, which is, I wish I would have done things differently if I had known then what I know now. I wish I could go back. I wish I had saved more earlier. Well, if that's what retirees are saying for the most part, why don't we act on that and listen to that wisdom? And so that's why I'm here, to speak that voice into people that will listen and get them to act early when it really does matter, when that leverage is there.

I really like that. I'm curious again, before we get to these rules of thumb, I'm keeping people and myself with bated breath. But I'm curious, when you say you started studying personal finance, where did you go? Because that is a, that is a nine headed hydra. You can learn a lot of terrible things on the Internet about money that aren't true. You don't want to go down a rabbit hole. You certainly don't want to, you know, wind up with an education that's an indoctrination to something ridiculous. So where did you go? Was this formal education? Was this how did you do it?

Yeah, absolutely. One of the policies I like about learning something new is to have a multifaceted approach. So I'm Talking about books, YouTube, in person workshops, just joining clubs and talking to people in person about what their situation is. So when you go with a multifaceted approach, you're getting all this information. But the thing about all that information, that's Coming in people's different piece of the pie I was talking about. I look for the overlap. Now when you hear that message being said over and over and over again, you know that it's a shared concept. And so that's one thing I look at.

So you know, you're not following an outlier. But I started with very popular book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That inspired me and I probably set that down for years after and then learned about Financial Peace University from Dave Ramsey and his debt free screams and then just kept, oh, there's lots of.

Screaming about debt free. There's lots of screaming on that. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm aware.

Yeah, yeah, everything. So, you know, psychology of money. So just reading anything and everything out there, looking for the overlap. But once again, it said that reading a book will certainly get you to soak up someone else's 1, 2, 3 years of intense writing and knowledge and research. But I started writing in the margins and I came up with my own book just because reading others books, it triggered my own ideas, my own thoughts. Because I land in the simple and creative category for explaining things. Their thoughts got me to create my own thoughts and I assembled all those together and I really just rewrote what I had written in the margins and said, what is here? What do we have? I need to distill this message. And then those three rules of thumb came out of that.

So you've been doing this for 25 years, something like that, distilling information. So let's, without further ado, get to epiphany number one or rule of thumb toward the epiphany number one. And I'm ready. Hit me with it.

Okay, so I like to, I like to bring up something like a Rubik's cube, which when you look at this thing, I never used to be able to solve this. In fact, I did solve this one. But years ago, my son challenged me to learn this, and I had no idea where to start. There's 43 quintillion possible combinations. And you know, there's one and there's another right now, and that is over and above a trillion by a few sets of zeros and commas. But when I learned that you can solve the bottom, the middle and the top, and that using that simple framework was all I needed, yes, of course there's steps in between, but I had no idea that it was just that simple. Bottom, middle, then top. That simple framework allowed me to learn how to do this thing that I felt like an imposter buy.

And many people Feel like an imposter with money. So the question is, with money, is there a bottom, middle, top approach? Is there an approach we can freeze with money so we can learn this thing? So this is what I did. I froze money by saying, well, instead of thinking about each and every variable, each and every scenario, why don't we freeze it by saying, most people start a career at age 22. Most. Most people work for 40 years. And a common rate of return stock spawns index funds over the long run, or 401k or an IRA might be about 7.2%. That sort of rate of return over the long run, not because that's what you're going to get, but because it leads to the easiest math. And we're only trying to create enough understanding to create action here.

So now we've created the simplest look and the simplest measurement. I call it like the inch mark on a ruler. We've created the simplest measurement that people can now understand for life. And yes, your money may earn more, it may earn less, but it's somewhere in the middle. So we now can quantify things in a very basic and similar format. And it allowed me to take, to take action so really quickly. An example was if I knew that money doubled every 10 years, I could put money into a college savings fund for my son. And we stopped at age 9.

And my wife said, what are we doing? Why are we stalking? Don't we need to save all the way up until it goes to school? And I said, no, let's put this theory to the test. If money doubles every 10 years, we can't stop. So we did, and time went by, and it actually doubled in less than 10 years. My son's only 16, but he's had what the seed planted to go to school since he was age 9. We stopped saving when he was age 9. The money doubled and it's growing faster than tuition is for a state school. So that proved to me and my wife, she became a believer after that of my obsession and she, she signed on for the rest. In fact, she, she, she said, why don't we do this for his custodial account? Why don't we put this much in? This much.

And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. We don't, we're not trying to create a trust fund baby here. We want him to work. So. But she, when she saw that money could double every 10 years, she became more excited about that, about it than I did even.

Okay, first of all, you're using what is referred to as the rule of 72. For those who aren't familiar with it, that is the math. And of course, if you were to get 10%, it would take 7.2 years to double. And you know, we're not here to talk about returns necessarily, but that's the rule of thumb for the math. Got it. There are some flaws with the math. Simply it is, it is true that if you have tax deferral and if you're able to park the money there at age nine in your case, and it does double in that period of time that you get there, the sequence and series of returns matters and the volatility matters. And so there's, there is some science to this.

I think you've given us a lot of really important art and I love the framework. I think there's also some science though, when we start talking taxes or we talk about the inflation. You talked about the, across the school. However, we don't, you know, your average consumer does not have to be a scientist in order to do this. And, and I love that approach. Yeah, you're absolutely right that over the long term the rule of 72 is just basic math. Right. The question is, do people maintain the discipline, Number one? Number two, you know, I would argue and, and maybe you have some thoughts on this, that when your son is nine, you can be in a long term portfolio because you have a 10 year window.

But when your son is 14, it might not be possible to try and aim for those same returns because you're getting closer to the date where you might need the money. And so there tends to be, there tends to be a gradual process. And of course, target funds do this, whether it's college or retirement where you, you begin to pare back on the risk or even in some cases, you know, your son gets to high school and some of the funds are held in cash because you're going to need them in a few years. That can affect this math, which is why sometimes you have to get ahead a little further than that. What, what say you on the science, my friend?

Yeah, absolutely. I love that you're asking because most people have low financial literacy and are living paycheck to paycheck and in debt. That's where I target. I target. Let's get you excited about just the basics. The simplest thing you need to know to start early. I would not have started 10 years early if I had not understood this. But there's things that can be added in.

We're talking about different timelines, we're talking about taxes, we're talking about if there's company contributions, we're talking about fees. All these things add layers of complexity, which is exactly what I'm trying to go against, which is to strip down and, and distill and simplify the message. These are things that are very helpful to learn over the long run. So what I like to say is let's just start simply and then we'll add on the complexity and you become more savvy over time. Now there's a great myth that many people will say, oh, when I make more money, when I get promoted, when I become older and wiser, that is when I will start to invest. But many people wait until middle age and then they realize, actually my savviness now does not overdo. If I had started 20 years ago. And so starting earlier can simply outdo a savvy version of ourselves later in life.

So I like to tell people, start early and figure it out as you go. And the quick story is when my dad coached us 6 year old T ball players playing baseball, we ran all over the field and people yelled at us, do this, do that, touch the base, throw the ball, tag the runner, do this. And we, we scattered all over the place, overthrowing bases and allowing the team to score. And what my dad said is he just said stop, everybody stop. And the next game he said, how do I simplify this? You guys are not able to make the proper decisions in the, in the moment under pressure. And he said, I'm going to have you touch the base and take the runner. I'm going to have you do both. So us 6 year olds just did both things and then we consistently got the opposition out and we started winning games and started winning championships every year.

Because what he did is he just said, what's the riot? What's the right solution for this group at this Age. And so that's what I'm trying to do. If most people are in trouble with money, I'm trying to say what is just the message that's, that's right to get them out of this. And then once they start doing the behavior over time and feeling good and confident, which was what was missing before, pick up a financial coach, start reading more. You're starting to gain confidence with this thing that you held at arm's length before because you felt guilt and shame and you didn't even want to look at your money before. This really turns things around by getting them to act early with the simplest message possible.

So have you considered contacting the Mariners and letting them know that that's the simple way to win ball games? Because I'm a little concerned about, look, I'm an Orioles guy, so I got nothing to say about, about wins and losses right now, but I'm just, I throwing that out there. All right, let's get to, let's get to rule of thumb number two.

Right? So it's called cognitive chunking when there's a lot of numbers in between, but you're just looking at every 10 years and you're looking at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. If I put $1,000 in when I start working, generally speaking, when I retire at age 62, it can have turned into $16,000. That's amazing growth and it gets people like me excited. However, when I sat upon that and I said, okay, how come this excites some people like me, a money nerd now, but it doesn't excite my friends that want instant gratification. They don't want to wait 40 years for the results. Even though multiplying your money by 16 is amazing, it's off the charts amazing, this exponential growth. And so I sat there scratching my head, I thought, how can I change this message for people who want instant gratification? And I realized, you flip the chart, meaning you take that, wait, nothing's happening, and then 40 years later, it's 16,000, you flip it and you say you actually have the power of 16. Now you have an ability, it turns it into an ability.

When you say this is a now thing, you have ownership almost like an athlete. When you say you actually have the multiplying power of 16 when you state it that way, you're not talking about money growing. You're talking about an ability that each one of us has simply based off of age. You're telling a person you've got this thing that's like an athletic ability. If you, you have the ability to multiply money by 16 times, that's you, you have this and 10 years later it's going to reduce by half. And 10 years later by half and by half it's like athletic ability where NFL football players and Olympic gymnasts and many other sports are at their peak performance in their 20s. And the funny thing is money is the same way. So it's not, wait till later, as we've come to find out from everybody retiring who figured that out for themselves, it's actually peak performance in our 20s when we're first earning a paycheck and we have the ability to invest in tax advantaged accounts and, and brokerage accounts and this and that.

And I help people realize that, coaching them into realizing this window of opportunity that they have. Act now, you didn't know you had the superpower you do. It's very humbling that, that my ability to multiply money is half of a half of someone starting their career. And so that's what we do. We tell people you have the power of 16. That's what I call it, the power of 16. When you start your career.

I think we should work longer and have the power of 32 myself, but only because I think no one should retire. That is the premise of the show is don't retire, work forever and let some of your money work forever. But nonetheless, I love this. And again, this is art Scott. So the art is the power of 16. And science is there is in fact a mathematical formula and actually it's in one of the books that I use not to confuse people, but just to show that the most important variable in all of this mathematically is the exponent and the exponent is time. I mean ultimately the rate of return matters less than how much time you have, the inputs manage and even the amount, all of that matters less than the exponent. And the only thing that probably matters, in fact, not probably, the only thing that does matter more than the exponent or time in that equation is behavior to not, you know, you talk about instant gratification.

I liken it to the tortoise and the hare. I mean, if you're going to bring out a Rubik's Cube, I'm bringing out some fables. But you know that the tortoise always wins. It's boring, but it always wins because it does that 40 year plan. And it does get started early on. And this is not to tell our listeners who are 45 that it's too late. It's not. It's still better at 45 than it will be at 46, 48 or 40, 53.

But, but you definitely have time on your side early. And you know, I, Scott, I think one of the, one of the challenges. I remember when I got my first job out of college and actually these decisions happen before college starts, when you decide if you're going to go into debt for school. I mean, that really ultimately is, it's, it's. Are we starting this mountain chart at 0 or at negative? Something with commas in it. But I digress. Um, when I got my first job, I got bombarded by HR with those employee benefit things. And here, sign up for this.

And, and I need this back by Friday. And it was a foreign language to me. I didn't know any of it. And had I realized that there was a stock purchase plan with a discount on the purchase, that there was a match, that there were some other things, I might have been a heck of a lot more likely to start earlier than I did. And I think a lot of people are in that boat. I think a lot of people are so daunted by this. They're picking their health insurance and checking boxes and getting that off their desk so they can learn their job. And so, and it's, it's a very challenging problem, financial literacy, because it's not taught in schools, it's often not taught at home, in fact, is sometimes learn what not to do by watching your folks.

Not that I'm picking on mine, of course, but okay, I'm picking on mine. And then in addition, your HR department's not allowed to help. A lot of financial people who are representing you with your employer are not allowed to help beyond their lane. So your 401k provider can talk to you about their 401k, but not the big picture. That's that little slice of pie that they can talk about. And so to assimilate all of that, that's a recipe that's not in front of us as young people. Yeah, so I like this. So we've got the rule of 72 and we've got the power of 16.

I'm dying to know what number three is. Bring it up.

Number three is. Yep, I started cluing things in. I, I had to, I had to hold myself back. I was starting to sneak into explaining it because rule number two slides you right into rule number three. Rule number three is that our multiplying power halves every 10 years. That's right. So the power of 16 halves to the power of eight 10 years later. And when someone realizes that you're multiplying power, you're ability is having 10 years later, oh my goodness, I just lost the, I'm going to lose the power of eight over the next 10 years.

I need to act now. Ten years later, it's going to have even again and again until age 62, is what I like to say when hopefully you're enjoying the fruits of your labor or you're, you're still going and multiplying your money. When we realize that our money is, our multiplying power is having every 10 years, it creates a sense of urgency and it pulls upon a very strong, a human, just a human tendency, which is to avoid loss, loss aversion. And when we talk about our multiplying power halving that triggers loss aversion. It's actually two to three times more powerful than gaining. So instead of telling people, oh, you're going to gain, you know, $15,000 upon this thousand dollars that you input, if we tell someone you're going to lose your multiplying power by half, we're more likely to act. It's two to three times more powerful than gaining. It's just, it's human nature.

It's how we're wired. And so not only were we pulling upon immediate gratification saying you're like an athlete, act now. If you want to score big and have a career or go someplace with this, now's your chance. We're also telling someone your ability diminishes over time. And it's by this quantified number 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. And when you tell people that and you give them that idea that their, their multiplying power diminishes over time, it causes them to act. It causes them to act, puts a fire under them. It did for me when I started maxing savings accounts out and investment accounts out and 401ks and this and that, I wouldn't have done that otherwise.

But when I realized it's more powerful to act now than later. In fact, I like to Say it this way. If you worked a week of work and got paid for that week, that's what you signed up for. But if suddenly your boss said, you know what, I'm feeling generous today, I am going to pay you double. I'm going to pay you for two weeks worth of work, even though he only worked one, we would be ecstatic. That's like money doubling. That's how it feels. It feels incredible.

It's insanely incredible. You're going to pay me double? Double, Double time. That's incredible. That's the power of two. Now, if you work that same week of work and you had the power of 16 working for you, that's like getting paid for four months for only working a week. That's how ridiculous the power of 16 is. We need to act now because that's what our money can do over the long run. And when we hear it that way, working a week of work, getting paid for four months, working another week of work, getting paid for four months, we're more likely to put our money aside instead of spend it.

Yes, we are in debt and yes, that is where our money is heavily going. We are willing to reroute our money towards multiplying when we realize we got that power of 16 and that that power diminishes by half every 10 years. So there you go. That's how the three epiphanies work together.

Well, the good news is, the good news is that I have nothing to argue with on any of them at all. Those AS epiphanies are terrific and they are art. And I'm, you know, I can tell you that getting people motivated to act is definitely part of this. And, and all of that sounds terrific. I will say that when you talk about getting paid for four months of work in one week, you could also flip that script and say, what if you only got paid for two hours when you worked 40? And that's real close to the same formula. People would not like that very much at all.

Loss aversion. You got it correct. Flipping it around.

So much of financial success begins with basic financial literacy, but is compoundedly more powerful by behavioral finance by doing the right things. And, and some people have the discipline to do that, Scott, and some people don't. Some people need an accountability partner. They need a coach or they need a consultant or they need a financial advisor or CFP or some. There were some combination. You know, I know that I liken financial advisors a little bit to trainers in the gym because to your point, there's nothing that financial advisors do that people can't do for themselves. There's no magic button. There's nothing that we can do that you can't do or that the ravaged consumer can't do.

It's just whether they're A, going to do it, B, going to decide that that's how to spend some time doing it. You shared an obsession and maybe you're going to save people time, 10 years by giving them a 2 hour, 5 hour or 20 hour read. Tell us more about the book.

Yeah, Financial Epiphany. I like to show the COVID because it looks like this. And there's a reason why it looks like this, because I want finance to be empowering and inviting. I want to say that it's you. You're not an imposter to your own finances. You're going to make 1.5 transactions on average for the rest of your life. This is something you absolute owe it to yourself to know. You owe it to your family, to your kids, the next generation to know this stuff.

It is for you. And even if it's just the basics, exactly what we talked about, these three rules of thumb, they're enough to get you to act. You certainly need a coach. And I've used that word, I've used that word saying that I personally like to coach people to tell them about this amazing ability that they have to, to steward this ability and not squander it. Which is more typical because the main message we get is buy, buy, buy. So we're actually helping someone else with their compound interest and the growth of their funds, but we're, we're losing it ourselves to them. So, yeah, so the book, Financial Epiphany, it, it fleshes out all three of those. It's written in such a way that's simple and creative and unconventional.

It's actually written by, by me, for people like me that want to hear the message that way, that piece of the pie, they pick it up once again, it does lean towards young investors and telling them they have this power of 16. But I also want to point out if your money is doubling, there's places in the world where that cannot happen. Here we're in the US And Warren Buffett, the famed investor, would say, if you're born here or live here, then you've just won the ovarian lottery. You live in a place of prosperity and opportunity where money can double. You can just throw this money on the boat, it floats off, it comes back 10 years later and it's doubled. That's not Everywhere in the world. So we are blessed and we have this opportunity. It's been handed to us.

I want to encourage everybody to jump on board and take confident action because the time element or age is what matters and everybody's got to age and everybody's got some amount of time. So, yes, the book explains all that. It fleshes it out. I hope that our short explanations here get people piquing their interest. Is this the way I needed to hear it and if so, to jump on board and read and hear more.

Scott, you saved a lot of people from a lot of reading and a lot of writing in the margins. So that I'm sure folks will very much enjoy that. Where's the best place to get the book and to check you out online?

Yeah. So thanks for sharing some of the screenshots. Financialepiphany.com is the website. The book is there, there's videos. When this podcast is out, it will also be linked to from the speaking page and there's a free download there for those who just want to know some of the basics and get their wet their appetite if they do want to pick up the book and jump into it. And also that's the best way to contact me on the contact page. I do read every email. I respond to them and love to hear from everybody out there.

Fantastic. And Scott, I can't let you get off this show without the big question, which is knowing that we all have to age. You said it. Although some people say old age is a. Is a gift, it's not a guarantee. Right. It's a blessing. Yeah, right.

What do you want to be when you. What do you want to be when you grow up?

I love that question. I went to Sierra Leone, West Africa to film a video for a nonprofit organization. Organization. I came back months later, had put 100 hours into creating this thing. Once again, I'm a communicator. I run a video communications department. But this is what I do on the side. I was invited to the fundraiser and I was sat next to a tall guy named Ernie, advanced in age, walking around with a cane.

And I thought, this is assigned seating. What are we both doing here near the front of the room? Well, I learned that Ernie had sent me to go. He paid for my way to go to Sierra Leone and he paid for what I had quoted as the price that I would do that video for. I didn't know I had a sponsor. And I realized it there at the fundraiser. I pretty much teared up, realizing this is like an uncle for Me, this is someone that I want to emulate, that I want to be like when I'm older. He couldn't go boots on the ground with his cane to this country, but he sent me. And then when he watched that video for the first time that he had sponsored and sent me to go make, he leaned over and he said, scott, that's the first time I've seen that video.

My wife and I came here in the car deciding what amount we were going to write on a check and donate, and he said, don't tell my wife. But I just doubled it. And I had never seen elation enjoying such a person like that, not ever before. And I just hugged Ernie and I was like, this is the man I want to be like. So when you talk about what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an Ernie. I want to be generous like him, and I want to multiply my finances like him so I can have something to put towards my purpose and be generous and change other people's lives. So when you ask that question, I want to be an Ernie.

And I. And I love that answer. You just doubled money in, like five seconds, though. I thought it took 10 years.

That's a whole nother book right there.

That's another book. All right, Scott, thanks for being on the show. This was. This was good fun. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting you. I hope people will check out your website, check out the download, check out the book, and I wish you incredible success, and I have no doubt that you'll be an Ernie at some point down the road. So thanks for being here on the show.

Thanks, Eric. Good to be here.

I'd like to thank all of you for listening and watching today. If you enjoy the show, please don't keep it a secret. Tell your friends and family so they can join you on your path to financial freedom. And please take a moment to leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. Those are truly priceless to us. We'll be back next week with another entry in our diary of a financial advisor and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host and valedictorian Eric Brotman reminding you, don't retire. Graduate.

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