Building a Solid Financial Foundation with Insights from Glenn Leest

Unlock the secrets to a prosperous financial future with the assistance of Glenn Leest from WT Wealth Management, who's here to guide you through the building blocks of savvy investing. Eager to understand how compound interest can work wonders for your wallet? Glenn unpacks the mesmerizing power of starting your investment journey early, illustrating the stark differences outcomes based on when and how much you begin with. He also demystifies the allure of being part of colossal companies like Amazon and provides down-to-earth advice for burgeoning investors and parents alike. Embrace the philosophy of patient, long-term investment tactics, and witness how foresight in saving can sculpt your financial horizon.

Navigating the investment landscape with a conservative compass can be a daunting endeavor—but fear not, as Glenn lays out the blueprint for aligning portfolios with personal conviction and steering clear of the 'woke' investment hype. By dissecting the role of bonds and the Federal Reserve, he emphasizes the critical nature of financial literacy. If you've ever questioned the merit of professional advice, this episode challenges you to weigh the learning curve of solo endeavors against the profound impact a financial advisor can have on your assets' growth. Plus, you'll learn why resisting the siren call of market timing and neglecting expert insights can be a treacherous path for your portfolio. Tune in for an episode charged with wisdom that's essential for anyone serious about fortifying their financial well-being.

Thanks for joining us on Intelligent Investing with Glenn Leest! Your go-to source for navigating the complex world of finance and becoming an intelligent investor. We appreciate your trust in us and your commitment to your own financial future.

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Glenn Leest
Senior Investment Advisor
WT Wealth Management
Office Phone: (928) 225-2474 Office
Email: intelligentinvesting@wtwealthmanagement.com

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Transcript

Jeff Orvatis: 0:01

Welcome everyone. You're listening to Intelligent Investing with Glenn Least. Busy show for you. Let's get right to it. Alright, Glenn Least here with us from WT Wealth Management. We went over last time in part, one kind of an outlook, and Glenn has this great report out, looking ahead at 24. You can go back, look up Intelligent Investing and check out that podcast, check out all the information there. But, as always, I like to get into with you, Glenn, kind of some of the things that people can do to maybe position themselves in a better spot. And I think one of those questions that a lot of people have is where do I start, or how much money do I need to start when it comes to really investing in anything, and I kind of left off last week with the whole. You know when's the best time to plan a tree. Well, it would have been 30 years ago, because now it's big and full. But the second best time would be right now because before you know, it's another 10, 20 years and I wish I'd planted that thing.

Glenn Leest: 1:13

Yeah.

Glenn Leest: 1:13

So to use a farming, you know reference, if you're always waiting for the weather to be good to plant, you know, a seed or to start growing a crop, you know you're never going to have a crop, and because by the time things are finally looking good, you know you haven't planted any seeds.

Glenn Leest: 1:31

So, even amidst the what what you may call turmoil or volatility, now is always a good time to invest. And if you look at investing as a long term, you know and I say long term as at least you know minimum four years, five years or more, and a lot of people it's 10, 15, 20 years sort of thing. You know the markets are a great place to build wealth and accumulate, you know, money for retirement or whatever the case may be. So if you think about the dynamics of owning a stock, say a company like Amazon, all I have to do is buy a share and I get to piggyback off of their success. I'm not the one having to be in the warehouse shipping all the stuff to the customers and you know, doing the website and yeah, but I get to share in their growth and you're a shareholder?

Jeff Orvatis: 2:22

Yeah, you're on a portion of that company.

Glenn Leest: 2:24

It might be a small portion. Yeah, I actually had my CPA say that one time. He said you know what a great country we have where you can piggyback on the success of all these other companies. So, and it's true, all you got to do is buy the share and, you know, not not doing any kind of panic selling or, you know, let emotions, you know, cloud your, your judgment in the process. But, yeah, even if you started with a couple bucks, the sooner you start the better, in fact, if you're all paying.

Glenn Leest: 2:52

A scenario to kind of tell you the difference Say you're age 40 and you haven't saved anything yet and you start doing $400 a month. Well, in 20 years, if we use an 11% average return which is pretty high, you know mostly stocks you'd have around $346,000 and that's on $96,000 contributions. If you're 30 and you start saving $200 a month so half of what you're saving but you do it for 30 years till age 60. Same same assumption, 11% return. Now you have $560,000. Now let's take it even 10 years back. If you're 20 and just start doing a hundred bucks a month from now to age 60, you'll have $860,000 at 11% interest.

Jeff Orvatis: 3:37

That's assuming 11% return.

Glenn Leest: 3:40

Yeah, yeah, so that's going to be, you know, like pretty pretty much all stocks, but the power is $100 a month man, that 18 or 20 or 21 to do that, but nobody's smart at 20.

Jeff Orvatis: 3:52

That's the problem. That's what that's why we try to like tell our kids and tell people listening and stuff. It's like you got a time factor here. You had a huge time factor, because when you're a 20, you're like 100 bucks I'm buying a new set of speakers.

Glenn Leest: 4:04

Yeah, whatever you could buy for a hundred bucks, so I think, if you're in that age bracket, taking it upon yourself to say, hey look, one day I'm going to be 30, 40, 50.

Jeff Orvatis: 4:18

And it you know, you will, you will.

Glenn Leest: 4:20

When I was 20, I was like I'll never get old, but you know he's old 40 something year olds, or yeah, still feel young at heart, but I'm, you know, 38 now that would be.

Glenn Leest: 4:30

One aspect is just having the foresight to just put a little bit away, and the other thing is maybe you're the parent and you didn't do that, but you want your kids to succeed, is you know? Maybe you sit them down and say, hey, I'm making the appointment for you. You may not understand all the ins and outs, but we're going to get you on a path of saving a hundred bucks a month in your Roth IRA and by the time you're 60, you're going to be very happy that we, you know, incurred slash volunteer volunteer, but volunteer told that's a good one.

Glenn Leest: 5:02

Yeah, and I don't think we do enough education as a society to educate people in the power of compounding interest to say, hey, look, you too can share in the you know compounding interest and just get started.

Jeff Orvatis: 5:19

And so, even if it, wasn't compounding even just the fact of saving. And because we do that with our kids, we're like, okay, you made 20 bucks here, you can have this 10, but you need to put away this other 10. And I mean even taking out zero and zero percent return. You know, a few months later or a year later they're like wow, you know, this is really added up. But then you add on compounded interest on top of that, or returns on investment, whatever. It can be shocking, what time can do on those.

Glenn Leest: 5:46

Yeah, you know what phrase I haven't heard in my decade long, you know, time in this field is, glenn, I've saved too much money, or Glenn, you made me too much money. And it's just never a conversation we have, because even some people that have done extremely well, you know, with money and saving, and you know they're not going to spend all the money, but there's things that they're passionate about. Maybe there's a charity or cause that they want to further the growth of, or maybe they just want to have a family legacy. Imagine if your great-grand kids knew you because you've left behind a legacy and inheritance. You know how powerful that could be. You know there's there's a financial side of it and then there's, you know, more components to that, but just even the financial side, as long as you don't ruin them, right. Well, that's where, working with me, we can put some checks and balances in place to make sure it's a blessing and not a curse because Glenn at 18, if I, if someone just gave me a check for a hundred grand oh man, I would.

Glenn Leest: 6:46

I would like to think that I would save it, invested wisely, but I don't know. I mean, Glenn at 18 was hilarious, but you know yeah, maybe not the same as now.

Jeff Orvatis: 6:55

Yeah Well, I think we most of us can can absolutely say that. I know we've done this in the past, glenn, but just the basics of like what type of investments there are. And I know a lot of people are like oh, I know this, I know this, but I think you forget, because there's a lot of stuff out there. Yeah.

Glenn Leest: 7:11

So um my wife, bless her heart, she's amazing at social media. She started a social media page for me and we're doing some financial literacy just kind of little tidbits.

Jeff Orvatis: 7:20

Yeah.

Glenn Leest: 7:21

Um, she posted and does it all, and so, um, but some of these, these tried and true um, you know. So wisdom for investing is really phenomenal, and so one of them is what should I invest in? Well, you should invest in one things that you understand and know, and not put all your eggs in one basket. So diversification is huge. So I think of a real life example of, maybe, someone who worked for Enron and they were getting a paycheck from Enron, but in addition to that, they were also buying Enron stocks, so everything was wrapped up in that company, which didn't work so well for the Enron employees, but maybe it was Tesla.

Glenn Leest: 8:08

But that's a lot of risk if the majority of your success is riding on the hopefully the success of the company. So you want to be spread across multiple different companies and owning them, and so you can buy individual stocks. You can buy a bucket that represents lots of different investments. You can buy mutual funds or ETFs and that allows you to get diversification for you know, very, very cost effective price. So say, you buy a share of an ETF it's 50 bucks and in that ETF is a thousand different companies that you own a tiny, tiny little sliver of. Well, you trying to go out and buy even 50 different companies, you're going to need at least like 40, 50 grand, but for 50 bucks you can buy a share of that mutual fund or ETF. So definitely you want to be diversified and kind of my thought process on that is owning at least 25 different companies is kind of where I start to look at and say, yeah, that's, that's diverse.

Jeff Orvatis: 9:07

So that way, if you get an Enron, you got 24 others that carry along.

Glenn Leest: 9:11

And maybe it's a lot more than that, but that's where I would kind of start off with the minimum amount of stocks you should have, at least in my opinion. But yeah, and there's lots of different types of investments too. So we're talking about stocks of you know, which is ownership of a company. You own a share of them and when they do well, your share increases in value. If the company maybe issues a profit back to their shareholders, that's called a dividend. You know you get a little income coming in throughout the year too. So, but there's real estate investments, there's commodities, there's fixed income. You know it's like bonds or loans is a good way of putting it. I mean, there's a whole gamut. There's precious metals, there's gold, silver, lithium, so there's a lot of different things you can own, and so you know, that's where someone like myself comes in to help you navigate those waters of how much should I have in stocks, how much should I have in bonds or real estate or commodities, or metals.

Jeff Orvatis: 10:11

I still don't get cryptocurrencies. I try, I try and I know there's a place for it, but I think so. So many people look at it like I still don't get it. But, you've had the guests on in the past talking cryptocurrencies as well, yeah, and people you work with.

Glenn Leest: 10:24

Yeah, in fact, if the listeners out there have time, there's a book out called Going Infinite by Michael Lewis. It's all about Sam Binkman-Fried.

Jeff Orvatis: 10:33

That's the guy who did like the big short. The author. Yep Yep, he's a good writer.

Glenn Leest: 10:38

Yeah, and I actually listened to it on Audible. So, I did it while doing dishes and driving into work for the day, so I was like double dipping there. But even within that realm of people that were kind of on the ground floor with crypto, even for them it's a little challenging to say well, what exactly is cryptocurrency? And I mean, really, it's a code on a computer screen that represents value For some reason.

Jeff Orvatis: 11:10

For some reason. Yeah, you're listening to Intelligent Investing with Glenn Least. If you want to talk with Glenn, give him a call right now at 928-225-2474. That's 928-225-2474. You can also email Glenn G Least. That's G-L-E-E-S-T. G Least at WTWealthManagementcom. Don't go anywhere More to come.

Jeff Orvatis: 11:42

Are you conservative and would like your investments to reflect those same principles? Glenn Least of WTWealthManagement wants to talk with you about how to match your portfolio with your values. If companies that are more concerned with their wokeness than successful business policies have been negatively impacting you and your investments, then it's time for a second opinion on your investment strategy. Glenn Least and WTWealthManagement have curated and launched a proprietary woke mitigation portfolio that features companies primarily focused on increasing shareholder value through profitable business operations and offering excellent goods and services. Period. Glenn is a fiduciary who shares your values. Call Glenn for a complimentary Woke Mitigation Portfolio Review at 928-225-2474. That's 928-225-2474. See how Glenn is putting the power back in the hands of his investors and making their portfolios great again. Call 928-225-2474. What's a good strategy for beginners? As far as we talked about hey, what do you start? What if you have 25 bucks? What if you have? What do you talk? And everybody's different, everybody's situation's different, but in general, just beginners. How do you kind of throw out there for people?

Glenn Leest: 13:11

Yeah. So there's a couple of different ways to slide. One is you just learn on your own. You go to the websites, you read the books, that sort of thing. Two is, if you're working with an advisor, hopefully they are growing your investment knowledge at some level, whether it's them explaining how the investments work or how this particular account works, or taxes.

Glenn Leest: 13:31

I mean a lot of what I do is, frankly, education with my clients is okay. Let's talk about, say, the Federal Reserve. What is it? How does it work? Let's talk about bonds. A lot of people hear bonds but you're like what does that really mean? It's a fancy way of saying loan. So the loan, what are the components of it? How much are you borrowing, when are you paying me back and what's the risk of you not paying me back? And based on that, I charge you according interest rate for the risk. And so, yeah, educating my clients has always been in everyone's best interest, because the more they know, the more they're able to make educated decisions and more frankly they'll like what we're doing. So I guess the answer is there's a lot of different ways to go about doing it. You can do it yourself or you can piggyback off someone that's already done it for 10 years and has a lot of wealth of knowledge.

Jeff Orvatis: 14:25

You'll pay it their way. No, I'm serious, that's a good way of looking at it there was a time when I didn't have an advisor and I just thought I knew everything. And I mean you pay for that as well. There's a time where I picked up a book, might even be in a studio here. I think it's right there. Options oh yeah, I worked some options and I blew through five grand pretty quick.

Glenn Leest: 14:43

Yeah, if you have some options expire worthless.

Jeff Orvatis: 14:45

Oh, of course, and I mean that's. You know, there's people that will say, hey, well, there's a great strategy. And you get into it and you're like, yeah, that wasn't worth the book I bought. But no, you pay for your education one way or the other. You have a solid set of advisors and people around you, or you're going to do the hard knocks way.

Glenn Leest: 15:04

You're going to do it yourself and find out what not to do which at the expense of your money. And so and time sometimes the worst thing that can happen for your do it self or people you know do it theirself and invest their own is they implement a bad investment strategy that will apartment building, restricted funds and kind of læ buying all of the things you know ends up working, you know, and it does result. You know produce success early on. They can keep doing that.

Jeff Orvatis: 15:25

Yeah.

Glenn Leest: 15:26

And then eventually it blows up and it doesn't work. And that's where you're. You know, sometimes I see people pinch pennies to costs. You know they're pinching pennies but it's costing them dimes or dollars. You know they don't want to pay for my advice and pay for me to manage their assets. But then they do it on their own and one mistake or one, you know you know, got knee jerk reaction and you know would have been five or six years of my what they would have paid me, and then just in one decision. So not to tout myself, but I mean they've done studies to look at what does the average advisor add as far as performance, what's the additional value? And they say, on average, an advisor will add a 4% performance increase per year. That's on average. And so some of it is, you know, making sure they make right, good tax decisions. Some of it's making sure they're invested properly.

Glenn Leest: 16:25

Sometimes I find people are under invested, meaning they're in not enough stocks. Some of it is walking people, you know. You know helping people not make bad decisions. It's really easy and tempting to think you can time the market, meaning you get out the right time and get back in at the right time too, and it's not anything about like knowledge, that's just luck, and I found that out over the course of my career is every person, every client that has said oh, I want to get out of the markets and go to cash and I recommended them against it? Every one of them did not work out for it because they ended up getting out and then getting back in at a higher price. So they were. You know, at the end of the day, they cost themselves money by doing that, whereas if they had followed my advice and just stayed the course they would have been. You know, sometimes it's a magnitude of seven figures that you know people would have. You know, high six figures that people missed out on, and that's so unfortunate.

Jeff Orvatis: 17:27

And you can't get that time back.

Glenn Leest: 17:29

Yeah, you can get that time back. And I don't want to, like you know, reach out to them and say I told you so, because that's not helpful, but it's kind of like well you know well, if they come back and they blame you and say I, then that's right, I told you this, yeah, but back to real quick, just the success.

Jeff Orvatis: 17:46

Sometimes early on, you know, I think back to like remember the GameStop thing and AMC thing and people are doing these, the meme stocks and all that and some people did really well and then they were like, wow, I'm kind of a genius, this has happened throughout time. And then they go into that, they wind up losing it all, and even sometimes more so, because they thought they knew more than they. Just got wrapped up in some luck or some bubble or something like that happens all the time.

Glenn Leest: 18:10

Yeah, they, they were calling that YOLO. You only live once and so. I think that was the term they're using, which was like they're saying well, you know, getting the average return of 9 or 10%, that's just not enough.

Glenn Leest: 18:23

We need to go all in Going big, big, big, hopefully hitting that that payday or hitting you know that number on the roulette table and yeah, that's that strategy. Yeah, if you're one of the few that you know, that made it great. But what if you're the one of the many that it blew up on you? Yeah, that's the thing that eventually it catches.

Jeff Orvatis: 18:46

If you keep doing it, you're going to get caught. It's, it's, it's not a good Okay. So much here, glenn, and a great report and great part one that, if anyone missed that, as far as looking at into 24 and some of your ideas of what's to come, I think people should listen back to that. Intelligent investing. You can look that up with Glenn Least. You can call Glenn anytime at 928-225-2474, 928-225-2474. We didn't get to it all, but next time we'll hit more of the stuff as well and Glenn's there for you if you want to chat and you talk about the price of groceries even.

Glenn Leest: 19:23

Yeah, I tell people okay, look, if you want a second opinion, happy to provide it. If you're, you know, working with someone and you come in to see me just to get a second, look because I don't charge. You know, there's no cost. You know to do an analysis, I'll tell you hey, you know what they're doing this pretty good. Or you know here's areas that we can maybe improve or maybe custom tailor it more to your situation and that doesn't cost you anything. You know I'm at the point in my career where I want to help people but I don't have to bring on more clients, like I've been very blessed to do very well, and I want to help more people. But I'm not going to like pressure someone to say, oh, you got a sign right here, because if you don't, I'm not going to have food on the table next week.

Jeff Orvatis: 20:02

That's just not where I'm in my career and that food's getting expensive.

Glenn Leest: 20:06

So yeah, oh my gosh, I was at Sprouts and it was like $9 for a loaf of bread.

Jeff Orvatis: 20:12

And I got caught up in one thing where I thought the price was on sale for like some deli meat at one place and it was like I was like wow, eight bucks or whatever a pound, which is low that's nowadays, and they forgot to discount it and the normal price was $18 a pound for like some roast beef type stuff, some better cut, you know.

Jeff Orvatis: 20:29

I was like, wow, I got home and I was just like, first of all oops, I didn't catch the mistake but second of all, 19 bucks, 18 bucks for you know yeah, there's a pound of meat and I'm like I'm not going to have a Mexican food place that I love going to, but they're tacos Any other.

Glenn Leest: 20:45

you know, most days of the week are astronomical expenses. The only time I go is taco. Tuesdays when they're discounted down, because otherwise I'm like $6 for a taco times eight tacos plus everything else, and man, that's, that's pricey to you know sort of thing.

Jeff Orvatis: 20:59

So yeah, but they hopefully give you a big pile of lettuce underneath of it so you can actually think you're getting more. All right, glenn, hey, always appreciate it. Look forward to having you back on again real soon and talk more finances and investing stuff coming up.

Glenn Leest: 21:13

Cool Sounds good. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Orvatis: 21:15

Thanks for listening to Intelligent Investing with Glenn Lease. Remember the information we provide does not constitute legal medical financial attacks advice. All information is the opinions of the host and his guests and you should always seek the advice of a professional regarding any of these complex issues to make sure all circumstances of your situation are properly considered. Thanks again for listening to Intelligent Investing with Glenn Lease. We'll be back real soon, take care.