From the Macy’s parade to carving the turkey, Thanksgiving traditions can teach us a lot about what makes a great financial plan. Let’s match some of the most loved parts of the holiday with the money lessons they represent.

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Speaker 1:

From the Macy's Parade to carving the turkey, Thanksgiving traditions can teach us a lot about what makes a great financial plan. So let's have some fun this week here on Plan with the Tax Man.

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. It is Thanksgiving week that we are putting this one out. So maybe you're catching it before or after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you had a good holiday. And we're going to talk about what Thanksgiving traditions, how they might mirror smart financial planning. Have a little bit of fun here with Tony Mauro, who is the Des Moines professional alternative. And at Tax Doctor Inc., he is the tax man. So we're going to have that conversation, my friend. What is going on? How are you doing?

Tony Mauro:

I'm doing great. Getting ready for Thanksgiving. One of my favorite holidays of the year.

Speaker 1:

You and me both.

Tony Mauro:

Yeah. The staff's getting excited too. They get a little time off around Christmas, so it's all good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Favorite dish?

Tony Mauro:

At Thanksgiving, I'm still a traditional turkey guy, but my favorite at Thanksgiving is probably the pumpkin pie with a lot of whipped cream.

Speaker 1:

Okay. All right.

Tony Mauro:

How about you?

Speaker 1:

Mashed potatoes. My wife's mashed potatoes are killer.

Tony Mauro:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

They're killer. That's probably why I have heart problems, but they're good. Well, let's have some fun. We'll talk about these traditions. We'll kind go through the day. We'll kind of run through the day a little bit and see if you can spin a financial yarn to some of these items.

So I don't know about at your house, Tony, but she starts working on all the stuff in the morning. It's her and my daughter have this tradition of doing all these things together, even though the kid's in her late 20s now, they really enjoy kind of working through the process together. That's a tradition in and of itself. But she has to have the Macy's Parade on in the background as they're prepping and whatnot. So what kind of analogy can we make to the prepping of the parade and the financial prepping and planning?

Tony Mauro:

Well, the parade, I used to watch it, I haven't watched it in several years, but it always does come off, just like every other giant event, as fairly flawless and looks like it's effortless. Just like I always use the golf analogies. Those guys make it look so easy. But what everybody doesn't see is everything that goes into the setup and the organization of that parade.

And really, no different in your financial life, whether it's your retirement plan or any other plan that you have that you're saving for. You do have to do some work behind the scenes. You've got to get your plan in place. You've got to understand what's going on, have communication with your advisor, and really monitor that plan in order for it to later, on when you're out bragging to your friends that, hey, I'm retiring at this age, or whatever, and telling them you're going to do all these fun things, to them it looks like, boy, somehow you made it so easy, but they don't understand the things that go into it. But you do need to do that with your financial plan.

Speaker 1:

That's a good way of thinking about that, right? The choreography, if you will, of the planning and of the parade as well as your retirement is pretty important. So, all right, so you're watching the parade, you got that going on, you start cooking the feast. So when it comes to obviously getting the turkey in, timing's got to matter here.

Tony Mauro:

Got to matter. I'm not a good cook, so I would probably be burning it. So I leave that to my wife. But I know that there's been several years that in the past, actually, it used to be my mom, she would put it in too late or cook it too long and it would burn. So the whole thing was kind of ruined. And so in your planning life, I never think it's too late to start, but obviously the sooner you start, you don't have to rush or you don't have to feel as much pain of saving because you're starting on time, you're doing it for a long time. And just like cooking the turkey, you want to make sure you're monitoring it while it's in the oven, or in this case, while your money is being invested. So that, again, just like I said before, at the end of the day, your plan is going to look like and feel like a real success.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. You don't want to rush it, especially if you're doing that deep fried thing. Because I guess that's where they explode is when it's still somewhat frozen and you drop it in there, and I guess that's when the problem happens. So timing is important.

Tony Mauro:

Timing is an issue. Yes.

Speaker 1:

In both things, right? For sure. All right. Well, the turkeys cooking, stuff's being made, and you're probably part of the family is probably watching some football games going back and forth. So this one should be a pretty easy one for you here, Tony, to give us an analogy. But my beloved Lions, I am a long suffering Lions fan. Yes, we've got a good team last couple of years, but they still seem to lose on Thanksgiving Day. So that's a tradition I could get rid of. But anyway, what do you got?

Tony Mauro:

Well, I think with the football games, I mean, we're all sitting there watching them in some form or fashion. Obviously, we see both the offense and the defense on the field at different times. It's really just very similar to your financial plan. I mean, sometimes you're playing offense, and that's the proactive, what I call saving and monitoring for the future and saving for those goals. But you also need to, and this is where I think a lot of people miss, they don't play defense enough in their financial lives.

In other words, they don't carry the proper insurance, they don't watch that enough. And I'm not just talking life and disability and things. I'm talking about home, auto, things like that, that they do need to protect the assets they have. So I kind of equate that to a little bit of a defense because you have to spend money on that stuff. It's not sexy at all. You don't like it. You only get a return is if something bad happens. And so a lot of people put that off. But I do think both of those are important, just like they are in football.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great analogy for sure. And sometimes, yeah, my Lions do not play defense enough or not well enough. And any of the guys who are listening, I'm sorry, but you know it's true. So we got a great offense right now, but sometimes the defense is a little suspect. So that's a great analogy. All right. Food's done, ready to get rocking and rolling. Got to cut that turkey, man. Got to slice that joker up. What are we doing from a retirement analogy?

Tony Mauro:

Well, I think it's similar to the turkey is we all have different plans. We all have different needs and wants, very similar to the size of the turkey. So when we're talking about distributions and getting income from what we have saved, it's important to be strategic about what we're doing and how we're divvying that up. Because obviously in retirement planning, it's how long is it going to last? If you're cutting the turkey, it's like, okay, there's an end because somebody's going to eat the last bite. But in retirement, hopefully we're not taking the last bite because then that means we're out of money and that's the last thing we want to have happen.

Speaker 1:

We don't want to do that, right?

Tony Mauro:

No.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, so you want to be strategic about how you slice up your retirement income so you can plan it out, stretch it out. Because we want to have that longevity piece covered as well. Even if you don't think longevity is on your side, you still want to plan for it in case you're wrong. So family table conversations, that'll be next. So everybody's sitting there to eat. You've cut up the turkey, you're chowing down. Lots of conversations happen over Thanksgiving and sometimes they're not always super comfortable. Hopefully everyone's keeping the political stuff at bay the last couple of years. But what's that financial correlation?

Tony Mauro:

Well, I think the financial correlation, and I think you're right, I mean, I've been in a few of those awkward conversations over the years at Thanksgiving, which is very uncomfortable. It used to happen at my wife's mom and dad's house. It's very similar, because at least with us as advisors, we want to take some time to talk about some uncomfortable things that people don't like to talk about, which is the end, the death, the planning after you're gone, what's that going to look like? And it's uncomfortable, but if we can take that and maybe make it less uncomfortable and get people to talk about that, generally they feel better afterwards, that they've got that part of life handled and they can enjoy the rest of their lives knowing that that's in place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. The family's together. My mom was kind of funny, I think it was last year or the year before. She's like, I'm in my 80s, I'm going to die in a few years. What are we doing? She just kind of dropped it out blunt like that.

Tony Mauro:

Yeah, that's one way to do it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. So have those chats.

Tony Mauro:

[inaudible 00:08:37].

Speaker 1:

But she kind of made it silly a little bit, which took the edge off. But you got to have those conversations talking about money, legacy, all that good stuff while everybody's together. The future versions of your family will thank you for that. All right. Leftovers, Tony. Time to start putting stuff away. Some people might say this, the best part of it is having leftovers.

Tony Mauro:

It's my favorite for sure. I think in the financial realm, really the leftovers for me really are living within your means. In other words, creating a budget and sticking to it as best you can. And then of course my favorite tax strategies, because a lot of people don't think about these things, and these little leftovers can add up to a lot of dollars over years. If you could live within your means, save the excess, and use that excess to invest strategically the best you can tax wise, you're really going to be able to add a lot of extra dollars to your end game, which is your retirement income.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you got to stretch it. And that's where maybe there's tax strategies. We often talk about with you being the tax man and all, I mean there's all those other facets to just the retirement versus just the income, which we were talking about before, is you want have all those good pieces in place. And I know sometimes we often talk about the budgeting word, and people hate that word in retirement. They think they're going to have to live on a strict plan. But that's not really what you're talking about. I mean, it's really just making sure you got everything kind of checked, the boxes checked, so that you've got plenty of leftovers for the next 30 years.

Tony Mauro:

That's right. And yeah, my clients don't like that budgeting term either. And it's really not. I try not to phrase it like that, but I like to say living within your means. Knowing what you have coming in, what you have going out, and making smart decisions that way. Because if you can do that, that's a lot of the battle right there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. We'll call it a spending plan, right?

Tony Mauro:

Spending plan is a good one. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That way you can just do that and then say that and that makes you feel better. All right. Now, somewhere along the way from me growing up, it seemed like the oldest person in the house was the first person responsible for the post meal nap.

Tony Mauro:

Oh yeah. I think that still happens.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Now a lot of people fall asleep for sure, but I feel like it seemed like it was always the oldest person in the room that was the first one to kind of kick off. But you've earned it. And I mean, look, this is pretty easy. This is what retirement is. It's the post meal relaxing time after the Thanksgiving feast.

Tony Mauro:

It is. And it's the reward for hopefully your preparation and saving for all these years. And hopefully you've got enough health to be able to get out and enjoy it. And those that don't, enjoy what you can because, in the end, we will all have an end. And so it is your reward, and hopefully you can take it easy and do what you want, which is, in my opinion, the whole reason why we are trying to help you with financial planning in the first place is that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, right? Whether it's your portfolio or Tony's favorite pumpkin pie, everything turns out better when you plan ahead, share wisely, and savor those results. So that's going to be our fun little podcast leading into Thanksgiving. Tony, I hope you and the family have a fantastic holiday.

Tony Mauro:

You do the same. And hopefully everybody out there has a great holiday as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. For all of our listeners out there, thank you so much. Don't forget to share the podcast and subscribe if you haven't done so. Certainly supports the channel and just helps us keep knowing that we should put out some information for folks to hopefully consume. I'll keep doing these food jokes. And that way you can digest what's the right thing for you in your retirement. So reach out to Tony and his team if you need help today, yourplanningpros.com, that's yourplanningpros.com. This is Plan with the Tax Man. Subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app, and you can find that stuff at the website as well. And we'll see you next time here on the show.

Securities offered through Avantax Investment Services SM, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory Services. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors. Please consult with a financial professional.