Ask KT & Suze Anything: Highlights from ‘Create The Life You Want and Deserve'
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Hi everybody, c zo here. Now, what is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure, and there is no Better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account. IT is essential for your financial foundation, so all of you should be participating in the ultimate opportunity savings account at alliant credit union. Go to my alliant that come to find out more and be .

the care for today's podcast yeah.

Robert, of course .

we're ready because we are on staff of baby.

Upon on.

Power home, I don't need.

Nobody s twenty twenty four. Welcome to the women in money podcast as well as everyone smart enough to this. And hy, everybody, this is Robert, the producer. So I gotten call from a sun city this morning and they said they, we're gonna a break uh this week to do when you know what .

label sounded .

so mysterious that hi who knows where they are or or what they're up to um but you know what I do know I do know it's been a couple of weeks and we've got to hear kt s voice uh on the podcast. Although if you follow along and the women in money community APP uh you ve got to see um the big fish a picture, the big fish that K T cot the other day so that's cool but you know what for this episode um and it's thursday so let's do parts of an S K T and susie, anything episode from earlier this year.

Enjoy so susie, sometimes I like to start my day with a story or not a question but I thank you and this is a great when this is from linsey and and .

I says something, I think it's great to start a podcast or anything with gratitude for anybody, anything.

why not? Well, this is a great when this is gratitude for you.

And I really love that this .

is from linsey. The subject had divorced mom, millionaire at thirty nine. Thanks to susie. Of course, I would pick this one, IT says, hy, Susan kt, although I have many questions, this is not a question, but thank you.

At thirty nine years old, I have a net worth of one point two million dollars. The primary person I have to thank for this is susie. I grew up with a single mom who often did not have enough money to buy groceries for the week, and I promise to myself that would never be me.

So then he goes on to tell me her story. SHE worked hard, went to a great school to get a good job, then said, but without susie, I would not have known how to save and invest my money to accelerate my financial independence. I've been a federal government employee for almost twenty years, so IT listen to that, people.

He works for the government, and she's now worth one point two million dollars from investing in saving. So here's what you said. I remember during multiple tours in the middle ast, I used to walk in circles around my work location listening to the audio recordings of the susie man show.

SHE said, during the past fifteen years, I got married, had a child, got divorce, got remarried. I also cared for my mom and financially supported her in the last years of her life. Through all of that, I know that I would be OK because I had my own wealth to fall back on, and I had the power to make my own decisions.

I had a power and independence my mom never had. And while that makes me very sad for my mom, i'm happy I took her situation and the lessons of susie to create the life I want and deserve. Thank you, Susan kt, for all that you do. You've truly changed my life and the life of my child.

now. K, like before we go on and thank you for that email, li kt, do know the one word in there that made IT so linsey could create the life that he wanted. Read the one mine in that email that has the word deserved in IT.

I'm happy I took her situation and the lessons of suz to create the life I want and deserve.

So the reason everybody that I point that out to all of you, including kt, it's because you have to feel that you are worthy of having the life that you want. You have to feel that you deserve the life that you want so many times, particularly women, we don't feel deserving. We feel everybody.

I should have everything. It's for them, it's not for me, it's for the kids, it's for the spouse, is for everybody else. Every single one of you deserves to own the power to control your destiny, which is what the women in money podcast is all about. Next question.

K. T. OK, this next one is from Susan SHE said, hi susie and K, T. My employer. Recently, I an .

erruptive for a second, of course, I came right. I just I wanted to say something out about Linda. I just realized as I was sitting here.

Thank you.

which is we've been doing this, at least i've been doing this in this arena truthy, for almost forty years now. So one has to ask the question, why do I continue to do so? What is the purpose of me continuing to do the podcast, other things that we're probably gonna be doing, and so on and so forth. And letters or emails, like linsey, is the exact reason why I continue to do what I do. I just want you to know that your emails, when you tell me how your life has been transformed, reside within my heart, and I feel them every moment of every day.

That was sweet. Sue, she's getting very softy on us.

I'm not.

He is so soft. I call her like a soft ice cream cone, right? So this is from Susan SHE goes on to tell me about that china husb before they meant both had retirement accounts, but SHE put much more money in hers.

They've been together seventeen years, married for eleven. And here's which her question is. My employer recently started offering a rough four or three b so I changed my contribution from the pretext four or three b to the rough. Good girl. My husband's job offers a deferred compensation plan only, no options for a rough.

So she's asking susie, rather than us contributing equally to each of our accounts, would IT make more sense to stop his contribution to his differing compensation plan and put as much as we can into my roof for a three b. That seems to make sense financially. But IT makes me feel selfish watching the baLance of my accounts out. Place his, so here you go. What should you do?

Absolutely do that. And Susan, here's the thing. Did you hear what you just said in the email? IT makes me feel selfish. What are you talking about? You just tell me, say the word deserving.

If you know you're in a great relationship, if you know everything really is how it's supposed to be financially, emotionally inspiratory between the two of you, then your job is for the two of you to make the most out of the money that you have. So in my opinion, you should absolutely do that because remember, with a deferred compensation plan, you are just differing his compensation so he doesn't have to pay taxes on IT currently. But eventually, when he claims IT in everything, you'll have to pay ordinary income taxes on IT. So actually, you should do that without a shadow of a doubt.

all right. And I I think he'll be happy, Susan, that you're kind of taking charge here. I love that for both of you.

And well, I won't say that she's taking charge IT is that he deserves IT SHE shouldn't feel guilty and it's the best financial decision .

in my opinion them OK. This is from messa. Hey, Susan kt, thanks for teaching us so much.

Over the years, I learned a lot. I have a question unrelated to finance. I found out recently that my personal data address, phone number eea are on people search sites. And I don't like IT is a way to remove all personal data from these people search sites. It's very .

difficult because you'd probably have to contact each one of all and we just go to another search site once it's out there. It's truthfully almost impossible to get IT out of being out there. So the best way to protect your information is to do a credit freeze.

We have those. We have a for .

a time. And a credit freeze is nobody can check your credit reports to your final score, including you, unless you unfreeze your credit freeze. So you would call up your credit heroes and put a credit freeze on everyone of your credit reports. That would be the best way to cut that.

I would certainly protect her, financially speaking, right? Well.

as best as you can next .

to from roof. Dear kt and susie, I like that. He starts with kt. I don't know if you.

everybody gonna write in, put in your name first. I think that's the key. I'm telling you, you should just write my name first. I'll make sure he picks IT. Alright, ready?

I don't know if you can give me advice or not, but here IT goes .

about a situation I could not give advice over.

Go on. I inherited a car from my parents when they died. I drive IT everywhere, ready suc.

It's twenty years old. I keep up the maintenance and IT runs. okay? IT won't win a beauty contest, but neither will I.

I don't know. You might. You both my astle .

gy creeps in every time I think of buying a new car. But I have money saved to buy a new car. IT would have to be modest.

No bells and whistles. Les, so what do you think, should I get over my nostalgia? Should I drive the satan into the ground?

Drive the standard into the ground?

So Sally rate, sadly, our cars.

eleven years old and thirteen.

twelve, thirteen with like very low mileage. So we keep exit runs great, and we also do maintenance very regular. So what do you think, susie? I just.

I, my.

I IT run IT into the ground. Bb.

here's the thing. You have the money to buy a new one. Okay, if you buy a new one, your car insurance goes up, everything will go up. You're gonna a have to maintain IT, just like the old one in a certain way.

But the money that you have to buy the new car is where hopefully sitting in an account, making you at least four and a half five percent interest that you can get at IT anytime you want. Let that money grow for you while you continue to drive this car that really your heart is in. I just have to tell you something. We're coming to you from florida right now. So we went somewhere, we parked the car, get out of .

the car and says, want to sell that.

That's a beautiful card. Do you want to sell IT? What here is that and we said, how all that was he said, something miles, do you have on IT and I said, forty or fifty thousand and he said, i'll buy IT.

That car looks like it's brain new, which is the key, everybody, to keep in a car for a long time. And I said, no, i'm not selling that. He said, i'll give you any amount of money. I told him I was.

I said, how much you want to play .

me for this and I said, no, because i'm also nosti c about that car. He loves her boat and her car. I love them, so i'm going to keep them til IT run into the ground. so.

I get IT trust me right next to from Linda. And this is a nice.

have to tell you another thing. So he walks away. And what did you say to me? K, T, to remember?

No.

that's what happens when you get to be seventy one or seventy two.

What did I say?

You said you would think that he was heading on one.

He was flying with one of us. And I looked at, I said probably me because I was the one that was ready to sell the car.

And probably kt, because I had a head and sunglasses on and everything.

He was an older guy. Good luck man.

He looking man. And of course he would have thought I was her. Anyway, go on the next .

questions from Linda. And I picked IT because he signed off. Tired teacher Linda, and we love teachers, but these questions been keeping her awake at night. And sheer husband are about to retire.

And they have two main questions, do we need one year of an emergency fund or five? What's the next question? And what do you recommend is the best way to move funds when we need cash?

Are right, self? Here's what I would tell you. And listen, when you go to retire, for most of you, most of your money is in a retirement account. Whether it's a retirement account or a traditional retirement account, IT does not matter.

But that's usually where the bulk of your money happens to be and that also where you usually get your monthly income in order to live and stay retired. But the problem becomes if all of your money happens to be invested, whether it's in stocks, bond, whatever IT may be, when you go to take money out every single year, you usually have to sell something to do so. But what if the market has crashed at the time that you want to do that? Because it's not always that stocks go down and bonds go up or bonds go down and therefore stocks go up.

Sometimes everything can go down. So there is a rule of thun that says within a retirement account, or even outside of a retirement account, that you have at least three to five years of cash sitting somewhere that you can access that, that money stays there, safe and sound. why?

Because when you go to take money out at a time when the markets have crashed, rather than touching stocks and mutual funds in E, T, F and or bonds that have gone down considerably, you go to your cash reserves to withdraw IT. why? Three, five years?

Because Normally IT will take from the top of the stock market to the bottom of the stock market, back up to the top of the stock market, again, for things to return, usually anywhere from three to five years. So if you really want to be on the safe side, it's five years. If you wanted, just play IT so that you have at least three years.

okay? You can do that as well, maybe split IT and you do four years. But that is the first thing I would tell all of you, so that when you are having to take money out of a retirement account and the markets have crashed, you leave your stocks alone and you take IT from the cash in terms of how do you get that cash.

Well, the markets are quite high right now with certain things. And if you know that you're gonna retiring shortly, then you will take IT from the stocks that either have not performed or not going to perform in europe. Ion were bad investment decisions and just do IT from there.

And or I would probably do IT from if I knew I had good investments. All of them have been performing. I would do a little bit from each one. All right.

next to next question. Susie is from josh, my husband and our long time fans. There is just one place where we have not followed your advice.

We do not have living revocable trust. We have named each other as beneficiaries on all of our bank accounts and retirement accounts. We own our home and joint teNancy with right of survival.

We had a lawyer draw of documents to protect ourselves in case one of us is incapacitated. We have living wills, health care proxies and powers of eternity naming each other. Is there any reason left why we would still want a living revocable trust and they don't have children?

Judge, here's the reason why, over all the years that I did personal financial planning for people, one on one, they would come, they would have the exact same set up as you. They would have the power of attorneys for finances and things like that. One of them would die, or one of their parents would die, or whatever would be.

And when they would go to the bank or they would go somewhere where they needed that the financial institution didn't want to, to take IT because there's no way for the financial institution to know if it's still valid. So maybe you gave your spouse the financial power of attorney and then you guys gone in a fight and revoked IT. And he has a piece paper. He has a piece of paper. Bet says, this is my financial power attorney.

Y, but again, there's no way to know in many cases, for the finance institution that you didn't take IT away when you have a living revocable trust that assigns a person to be successful, trust sky, in case of an incapacity or whatever IT may be, when you open up an account, you have to give them a copy of your trust so they actually have the copy. And if you made a change, you then would go and give them the new trust if you really did your trust. So for K, T, N, I, for instance, when we go, when we open up an account at a bank or wherever we're doing IT credit union or whatever IT may be in the name of the trust, they need a copy of the trust on file.

So all the times that I was doing financial planning, we ran into more problems with people who thought they had done IT correctly with power of attorneys. The financial institution went honor IT, especially the broker firms didn't want to honor IT. I never ran in to a problem like this when somebody had a living revocable trust.

So that's just something for you to think about right up to you. You've set up everything as best as you can. What I still do, I trust I have to tell you I would R I K T.

okay. Suc, I have one more question.

Just one. yeah. Well, I have lots of questions. They looking at there's a pile of question. No, but we don't .

have time to do all of these. Now we'll do another podcast, right? Dear Susan kt, my dad passed away almost two months ago.

He was ninety one. He loved watching C, N, B. C. He would buy a couple of shares of this in a couple shares of that, depending upon who was talking about what.

I now have various different kinds of mutual funds specifically related to mid cap and small cap stock funds. How do I evaluate how those funds are doing? So he's asking what is he do and how does he evaluate how they're doing? So Angelo just need some .

advice on there's a service out there very seriously called morning star that I really, really love. And on morning star, and I use morning star, by the way, you can go on IT put in the symbols of the mutual fun or the stock that you own. And IT will tell you everything that you need to know about IT.

IT will give you a rating. IT will tell you all the expenses and everything like that. So do yourself a favor and check out morning star.

Also, you can go on C, N, B, C. And there's a place there online where you can put in the symbol and everything will come up. There's also yahoo finance that you can use as well.

So there are all these services, some that you pay for, some that are free, that, that will least tell you and compare how you fund has done to the other funds in its category. Just you know, small cap funds have been one of my favorite for the past. Oh, i'd say five or six months now, maybe in the past year in terms of what I think they will do in the future. But check out and you'll get a good idea of .

what you should do. Okay.

it's time. Everybody.

time. It's time. I love this time. I I would lie to people. No, I do love IT because I know that one day i'm just gna keep getting 丁丁， 丁丁 come on to ask me。 It's quiz y time.

Everyone tell everybody about quiz y time.

Guzy time is when suzy tries to stump me.

I don't try to stump you.

You tell him what IT is.

It's not just stuff you. I try to make sure that you understand how everything works so that if ever i'm not here and the question is asked or you in are in a situation that you know how to answer IT, but the cuisine is never just for K. T.

Is for all of you. When you all love to get to a place in your life where every question that kt is asking me or during quiz y time i'm asking her, you will know the answer to IT yeah and that isn't an impossibility. That is totally a possibility. And over time, IT is actually a probability. So there you go.

I'm working .

on IT and SHE most certainly is. Hi susie and kt. This is from the call. I've been so enjoying discovering your podcast and diving into the wealth of past episodes. It's like reconnecting with the beloved friend.

Thank you, my idea, and call your books and T, V shows set me on a confident financial path fifteen years ago, and i'm thrilled to continue learning from you. I know that's not a question, but I just so loved that I loved IT. Right there was a little ego boost.

No problem. Now on to the question that keeps me up at night. I've worked my tee off in my career and now have vested R S.

Use and a major global corporation with the sizeable amount vesting on february fourth anticipating around thirty five thousand dollars. I am forty years of age, so how should we use this thirty five thousand dollars? That is what the coal wants to know.

Kt SHE has a margins on her home of about four hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars. He has twenty two thousand dollars on an auto loan, as well as fifty five thousand on a hillock at eight point five percent. SHE says her out alone and her mortgage are both at low interest rates.

Your first part of the quiz y is what is in R, S, U. I don't know. I was trying .

to figure out IT must be a stock, something, it's something that her employer gave. So its shares, right?

So in R, S, U is a restricted stock unit. That's what that stands for. Now a lot of times everybody, when you work for an employer. They will give you stock options, which means that you can then exercise those options and then convert them to stock.

But you have to pay for IT and a Better way to get rewarded when you work for somebody is a restricted stock unit while you're in your vesting period, meaning your employer has given you the R S U, but you haven't vested in IT. Maybe IT takes you one year or five years to vest. They're not worth anything the day that you vest like what the coal is doing here.

That's the day that you get the money and their worth something. So R S. Use, first of all, are far Better than stack options. So therefore, if you have a choice with your employer, you should do that. So now we know that the call as of february fourth is going to have thirty five thousand dollars.

And the cozy really is, should SHE put that towards her home mortgage, her car loan? Both are at low interest strates or a fifty five thousand dollar. He lack home equation of credit at eight point five percent.

Um personally, I think I would pay off that. He luck .

you sure I .

think so. She's paying a point five percent .

that's high. Get rid of IT.

Get rid of IT. That's no. Who wants to pay a hillock loan for that much money?

Get rid of IT. Grow right? And I call that is the correct answer. So first of all, given that according to this, you say you're only forty years of age, you have time to pay off your mortgage, especially if it's at a low interest strates. So i'm sure that you will have a paid off within the next twenty five years since you're only forty, which is usually around when people gear things towards retirement. You're auto loan at a low interest rate, twenty two thousand, you can pay IT all off.

But why when you're paying a higher interest rate and your home equity line of credit? So as you all know and I have told you now over the past year, if you have a home equity line of credit, make your number one priority to pay that off after your credit cards, of course. So that brings us to the end of another one.

Kt, yes. Kt, is uzi anything podcar?

And what is IT that we want people to know? There's only one thing that matters when IT comes to their money, and that is what kt, people, first than money, then things. Now you stay safe. And if you do that, everybody.

you will be what I.

So fied.

Unstop today i'm sup able the day I am so.

Hi everybody, susie here. Now, if you are looking for a way to start saving to get the most out of your money, I want you to go to my aligned dot com. That's M Y A L L I A N T dot com, and look into opening an ultimate opportunity savings account, put in at least one hundred dollars a month every single month for twelve consecutive month, earn three point one nine percent interested in your money right now, and get one hundred dollars at the end.

Are you kidding me? It's the best deal out there. Start saving right now.

There, suzy orman media, nor suzy orman in is acting as a certified financial planner, adviser, a certified financial analyst, an economic C P. A account or lawyer.

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