“Invest wisely” should be a mantra you must remind yourself of because it will greatly influence you towards achieving financial security. In this eye-opening episode, Scott Carson talks with Keaton Munster from Quest Trust Company about the top ten tips for achieving financial security in retirement. Keaton strongly advises that you pick someone who is going to help benefit your moral ground of investing so you can sit back and tell them your financial goals. He also shares about the importance of knowing what is going on in the world and internalizing how everything affects the global market. Knowing how expenses are going to change over time, he emphasizes the importance of diversification, having a rainy-day fund, and knowing your risk tolerance. He also touches on the Quest Expo and what their company can offer to their clients with regards to responsible investing.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Top 10 Tips For Financial Security with Keaton Munster

We’ve got our good friend Keaton Munster joining us from Quest Trust Company here in Austin, Texas. Keaton, how’s it going?

Scott, I’m pretty good.

I cannot complain. It’s another first Monday of the month. We’ve got Money Mondays.

I’m excited about the topic we’re going to discuss.

It’s also the first day of the second half of the year. If you think about how fast the first half went, the second half often has a tendency to go a little bit faster. Don’t you think?

When you hit that back six months, it’s always done. Christmas is here no matter what.

We’ve talked to so many people who reached out to us and I know that they reached out to you guys as well for their retirement, for their IRA accounts. They start putting stuff in and investing things and get their money working for them. Our topic is something that you’ve put together. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you came up with this before we dive into the top ten tips we’re going to discuss?

Just looking through research and not necessarily for everybody in general. I was looking at being a younger guy looking at what you need to look at as a Millennial to think about your retirement. Everybody’s out here trying to live their best life and they spend every dollar they make, but they don’t think about what repercussions that’s going to have down the road. You always want to have a good time. You want to make sure everything’s covered for you, your children and your spouse. Even if you don’t have them, you’re going to want to look into that. When I was researching it, I was looking to see what are the best things you want to keep in mind to make sure that your portfolio is good and that you’re safe. Whether you’re an aggressive investor or more of a mess around a little bit here and there, I don’t want to lose too much money. I basically compiled the top ten things that most of the experts have said from all the research and putting together a top ten list.

We’ve got Keaton’s top ten tips. We almost need a late-night countdown thing there for you.

I need a countdown to hit them all the way down to number one. We can either go straight from one through ten.

Let’s start with number ten of the top ten tips and we can work our way up that way.

Work With An Experienced Financial Planner

Number ten is working with an experienced financial planner. You don’t want to sit down with somebody that’s not necessarily that you worked with your whole life, but you want to look and do research. It’s like I was saying, everybody’s got a different investment strategy. Whether you’re going to be aggressive, you’re going to be more passive, you’re going to be sitting back and hopefully have passive income without paying attention to it too much. You also want to make sure that you’ve got somebody that’s an expert in their financial matters that fit your moral passage of investing. I highly believe in that. In Quest, we specialize in one thing. We deal with retirement accounts through alternative investments. If you want to invest in that, we pride ourselves in our education, but we’re not going to help you with the public market. We don’t follow that. We don’t pay attention to it enough to be able to educate them. You always want to make sure that you’re picking the guys that are going to help you the most.

That’s true that you’ve got to know where you’re going with your advisors because you’ve got to be very careful. You don’t want to deal with one banker or one financial advisor who doesn’t meet the same type of goals that you have. As an ex-financial advisor, you’re trained one way as a banker to push products or to push other things. This is a key out there for everybody. Your financial advisor has to have some experience in dealing with people who are in a spot where you want to be. I think that’s a big thing too. You’ve got to talk to people and get good recommendations. It’s an interviewing process. Not every advisory is created the same.

If you called me and you asked me what’s going on with the market, the mutual funds that are out there you’re going to invest, I’m not going to be able to give you a straight answer. If you asked me how you can get a solid return and tax-free money through real estate investments, I can sit down and talk to you for a few hours.

It’s all about structuring. We had Rebecca Miller on talking about the different employer plans and figuring out where you are at. What do you want to do? How much do you want to put away? It goes that route as well too for you.

I’m sure that was a great episode. She has top knowledge when it comes to those specialty plans.

Number ten is making sure you put somebody good on your team to help you out with that. Let’s talk about number nine.

Consider Your Spouse

This one is maybe not for everybody, but for anybody that’s married. You want to consider your spouse because you’re a team. Whether you file everything together or you do all your expenses together or vice versa, you want to make sure that they’re either on the same page as you or they’re saving for retirement as well. If they’re not, that’s something that you need to make sure that you’re budgeting for. If they’re not working and you’re the sole source of income, if they’re going to retire before you will and vice versa. Whatever’s involved with your partner in life, it’s a partnership.

 

You want to make sure that you consider what they’re looking into and their future for their savings and match it with yours. If you don’t have an understanding of what’s going to be in their mind for that future, you want to consider it to be able to take advantage of the opportunity to grow it even bigger so you can supplement the income for the both of you when you retire. Obviously, retirement is the best time. Everybody’s trying to have a good time, but if your spouse can’t be there with you, you’ve got to make sure that everything’s taken care of.

That’s the most important thing is setting goals and working towards a common goal for the most part where they are working or not working and figuring out and being on the plan. I think finances is one of the biggest causes of strife. It’s also one of the biggest causes of fights and divorces. You’ve got to sit down and figure that out and put some good saving habits in place. It’s hard if you’ve got a goal and one person’s not working towards the goal.

It’s always big. Even if there is no spouse, there’s no partner this time for anybody my age or younger and you haven’t been able to sit down with that. It’s still something that you need to have. It’s an anecdote on your financial plan. If and when that does happen, you’re going to have to reassess your financial budget for the future because now you have another individual that you’re not necessarily responsible for, but somebody that could affect your savings.

What’s the number eight goal?

Reassess Expenses And Make Changes Where Possible

Number eight is reassessing your expenses and making changes where possible. The same thing with the spouse, but this is actually going to go through your entire lifestyle. You’ve got your normal income, your normal financial responsibilities that you’re dealing with on a daily basis, but those things change. Whether your life’s getting more complicated, more responsibilities at the job, new opportunities and different things like that. There are expenses that pop up out of nowhere and you have to treat those as a daily routine. Every day everybody’s got to check their bank accounts, they know how much money they have. You’ve got bills to pay throughout the month.

That’s a normal daily routine, but reassessing your expenses maybe every six months or once a quarter or depending on how quick your lifestyle is or the changes of it, it’s always good to reassess it with your financial planner or your CPA. If you’re following your own books, make sure that you’re checking them out and everything matches up. Let’s just use 2008, 2009 as an example. When that happened, there were a lot of people, even the upper and middle class that lost everything and didn’t have anything planned for because they weren’t reassessing the possibility of opportunity or failure.

You can’t always think everything has to be rosy. That’s the biggest thing. Most people think, “I’ll make it up on the next sale,” or “I’ll make it up next month,” or “I’ll make this up at the end of the year.” The market cannot keep going like this. Your business is always going to have ups and downs with things, so you had to take that in mind and trim your expenses. We all have to reassess things. That’s one thing Steph is so great about what we do here. What’s coming in? What’s going out? What are these charges monthly? Are we using a product? Are we using this stuff? You try to cut expenses as best as you can.

The business expenses are huge too and even in your personal expenses. People pay off mortgages over time. When that’s paid off or you have a car that’s paid off or you have some other loans or anything else, that is a normal monthly expense. When that goes away, what happens to that couple of thousand dollars and expenses that you had? Are you going to reassess it and put it back into savings? Are you going to put it towards something else? That’s above your money that comes in your pocket and you’re like, “What do I do with it? I’ve got some extra cash to invest or some extra cash for my business,” or “For a month in Italy, I’m going to take a trip with my spouse down the road.”

What’s number seven?

Reassess Your Portfolio

It’s reassessing your portfolio. It’s definitely different than your expenses because your portfolio is what you’re obviously looking at. It’s your retirement account. Are you invested in the market? Are you invested in alternative assets like real estate? Are you aggressive right now as a young person? Are you going to slow down and become more passive and make sure that you’re secure? Sitting down with your financial advisor, this goes back to tip number ten. Make sure that you pick one that’s going to help better benefit your moral ground of investing. You can sit back with them and say, “I had fun in the market. We made some good money, but real estate is where I want to go,” or “I think there are some private startups that I want to invest in.” How do we get in that? Being able to have somebody that’s willing to step back, reevaluate your portfolio to take what eggs you want to put in what basket because diversification is key.

Diversification is key in a variety of reasons. Let’s face it, this goes back to number ten. Having somebody be able to evaluate what you’ve got, whether it’s in the market or it’s all on Bitcoin. I think I’ve seen a couple of posts where one guy is like, “I made $15 million in Bitcoin. I lost it all.” People are taking out lines of credit off their house to put it into Bitcoin. You have to be very careful about what you’re doing. This is also one of the things to, leveraging your risks. We talk about this a lot, but instead of paying off your house, maybe you keep making the payments and take that lump sum that you’re going to pay off your house and put that in the market and make 10%, 12%. We’re trying to pay off some of those so it’s going to save you 3% to 4%. Evaluating your portfolio is an important thing and we all know your evaluations are going to change whether you’re 30, 45 or 60. It’s going to be different each time you look at it.

Things pop up. Kids come into the picture. You get married, jobs change, you leave your job or start a new business. All those things are huge factors that I personally believe that a lot of people don’t think about until it slaps them in the face and they have to hurry up and scramble everything together.

The thing too to keep in mind when reevaluating portfolio, you’ve got to put a cushion on that so many people are living hand-to-mouth out there and paycheck to paycheck. They’re not putting anything away. That’s a sad thing. You’ve got to reevaluate what your expenses are. Regardless of where you’re at, so you do have that six-month cushion for bills in case something happens or you do get sick. What’s number six?

Treat Retirement Savings As A Budget Expense

Number six is going to be including your retirement savings as a budget expense. It’s as easy as that. If you put it in as a normal expense like we were saying. You’ve got rent or mortgage to pay. You’ve got your phone bill, your car insurance, your home insurance or whatever that is. Those are normal expenses that everybody has on their lists that they’re paying on a monthly basis. If you include your retirement savings as a budgeted expense, you already know that you’re going to spend an X amount of dollars in expenses that month. If you just add a couple of hundred or a thousand. Whatever you’re able to budget into your retirement savings, you put that inside of your budget expenses that you’re going to know, “I’m not even touching that money anyways.” You already know that that’s going to go into a savings account or into a retirement account or whatever it is because you’ve already budgeted for that to come out of your paycheck or whatever it is for that month.

Figuring it as another expense and set up an ACH or automatic deposit. It comes to the whole point of paying yourself first.

It’s an automatic debit on the 1st and the 15th. Whenever the paychecks are hitting the account, I have a specific amount that goes into another savings account that I don’t even touch outside of the savings account that I might pull money from for vacation. That just sits there. If I want to get money from that, it’s almost to the point where I have to go to the bank to ask for them to give it to me because I know that I’m going to need that. That’s a rainy day fund. My truck breaks down or I’ve got to move or I need something to take care of, I’ve got this budget expense for retirement savings and it doesn’t come from my daily expenses and my normal lifestyle.

What’s the next number?

Consider Potential Expenses In Your Financial Plan

Number five. We’re at considering potential expenses in your financial plan. The same thing that we’ve been touching on, but if you’re planning for retirement, you can’t make the mistake of not considering things like long-term healthcare, income taxes, medical expenses. As we get older, our body starts to break. This can even bring back into considering your spouse, number nine. If you’re taking care of your spouse over time and they’re not working, these are big-time expenses that come out of nowhere. Everybody gets sick. My grandparents, they’re pretty sick, but they’re older. They’re going through medical problems, but our families come together to help put it together. That’s because we’re a family.

 

Sometimes that doesn’t work for everybody. Considering that these are expenses that nobody wants to pay, but that they know more than likely this thing comes up. Surgeries, making sure that everything is taken care of. Making sure that your spouse is taken care of, making sure that if it gets to that point and you’re in a bad situation, do you want to sit in a hospital or do you want to be able to pay for in-home care? These are huge expenses that people don’t think about when they’re planning for retirement because all they want to do is make sure that they go on vacation and just enjoy life.

Most people spend more time planning their vacation than retirement.

That vacation fund goes to your health expenses.

It’s an important thing to have to look at what you’ve got and having an HSA. Open up a Health Savings Account to help cover a lot of things and trying to be able to write off what you can or using it to self-direct to help you pay for things in the long run.

Diversify Your Portfolio

It’s almost like a rainy day fund. Number four will definitely help out too. We were talking about a little bit diversifying your portfolio and not having all your eggs in one basket. We say it all the time here at Quest. Understanding that the alternative assets are great, but it doesn’t mean that everything needs to be in that basket. It’s very recommended by any financial advisor or planner that you’re going to have public investments and private investments. It’s understanding that limiting your ROI is a bad thing. It’s something that people need to make sure that they educate themselves on. Asset allocation is a key part of investment management. You want to look at your age. We talked about risk tolerance, aggressive or passive. If you’re younger, like myself, I want to invest a little bit more because I don’t have as many expenses as I’m going to have when I get married and have children.

It’s understanding what risk tolerance is. This goes back to number ten, picking the best financial planner or advisor for you. They’re going to ensure that if your risk is a lot smaller, then they’re going to make sure that your investments are going the right way or at least bring you into the opportunities that are going to have a smaller risk. Whereas if you’re like myself, where you’re ready to invest a little bit more because you don’t have as much expenses and the money that’s you’re bringing in, you’re willing to lose a little bit more to make a little bit more. These are big things, but diversifying your portfolio is not just one thing. It’s not saying, “I’ve got mutual funds and I’ve got real estate holdings.” It’s, “What else is going to come from this? What do you want in the long run?” Investments are not a short-term return. If people look at it like that, you’re not going to make a big return.

The important thing is knowing that your expenses are going to change over time. Your risk tolerance is going to change over time. You do not have any kids or spouse, it’s going to be riskier out there than those that have a family to provide for. Let’s face it. There are a lot of surprise expenses with kids.

I know for a fact that I’m pretty sure that my parents probably had an entire medical budget named Keaton’s broken bones and surgeries. Knowing that and me being that kid, I definitely want to make sure that I’m protected for that when it comes down to. You’re right, those things come up and they slap you in the face. Kids get hurt all the time and they grow like crazy and you’ve got to buy them a whole new wardrobe over a month. Little things that people don’t think about until it comes up. Personally, I’ve never worn glasses before. I forgot mine, but normally I have to wear them every day at work or I get a headache. It’s me getting older at 28-years-old. My eyes are starting to break, but that was something I had to pull out of pocket because you’ll never know what happens. It’s little things and they add up.

You’re just falling apart at 28, Keaton. It’s all downhill. What’s number three?

Save As Much As You Can In A Tax-Deferred Account

Understanding the different types of accounts you can go into. Number three is save as much as you can in a tax-deferred account. We always preach here at Quest the Roth IRA is beautiful because it is. Everybody should have a Roth, regardless of how old you are and how long you’ve been investing. Understanding the benefits of a tax-deferred account, they’re huge. You’ve got to pay taxes down the road. You’re going to have those required minimum distributions taken out at the end of each year once you hit that age point 70 and a half. Tax-deferred accounts can be beneficial as you’re growing up and going through before retirement because as most people know, your contribution can be tax-deductible depending on your income. If you’re working a normal job, 9 to 5, you’ve probably got a 401(k) or sponsored retirement plan. You have the opportunity to contribute to that 401(k).

At the end of the year, whenever I do my taxes, my contributions to the 401(k) here at Quest, I can use that as a deduction because I made a traditional contribution. The same thing in a traditional IRA and all those different types of accounts. They definitely benefit you at a younger age or even at an older age. That’s where most of America’s retirement dollars are. We’ve got 28 trillion in retirement accounts in America. Majority of those funds are in traditional types of accounts. They are very beneficial accounts if you don’t understand how they work. It’s very highly advised to touch base with your financial advisor and talk about what kind of accounts would benefit you.

If people are working somewhere and they have a 401(k), most people don’t even know how a 401(k) works for them. When they’re leaving that job or moving on, they don’t know the advantages of rolling into a self-directed IRA or transfer accounting. They’re taking their old 401(k) and turning it into a traditional IRA or doing a Roth conversion and save on the tax as long-term.

I actually spoke with a guy. He wanted to move a 401(k) from an old employer to go Roth IRA with us. He had no understanding of the tax responsibility of something like that. He had to step back and look at it. We discussed a little bit about Roth conversions and what’s to consider. That’s always a big thing because tax credit accounts are great, but the idea is not to have to pay tax when you retire. Make sure you touched base on understanding what are the tax-deferred account is with your financial planner or your advisor and see what opportunities you have. You made a good point about health savings accounts too. That’s a big account that you could use.

It’s a badass hybrid account I like to say.

We call it the best of both worlds for a reason.

What’s number two?

Treat Normal Bills And Rainy Day Fund As Expenses

We’re going to go back to treating your savings as an expense. You have a retirement account and you’re saving that for the future, but you are also saving at the time for your normal bills, rainy day fund and treating that as an expense. You’re adding on these things that you’re going to need money for. If something happens, I had to pay almost $1,000 for my truck. Something happened on my truck and I had to pay for it, but I tapped into that savings account as opposed to the one that I’m already putting money away and don’t even touch. Having your budgets treating them as expenses, I personally believe that that’s a great thing. Honestly, my research from everything I looked into, a lot of financial experts think the same thing. Understanding how to budget for any type of expenses is huge. Just adding that on a monthly expense makes it a lot easier.

That makes sense. Budgets are great. I like the pocket aspect of the thing. Dave Ramsey is good talking about putting things in buckets. A bucket for this, a bucket for that. Just adding another bucket for your emergency rainy day fund, a bucket for your retirement. Putting those things away, it’s going to build habits, but it’s also different. Instead of you going to Starbucks every day, maybe you make coffee from home or you make sure in the office you’ve got some coffee there at Quest, so you’re not paying $5 lattes.

 

I feel like sometimes when that said, people think that, “I’ve got to put off 25% of my favorite paycheck in there.” It doesn’t have to be that. Honestly, if something as small as $50, $100, whatever it is for the month. If you’re not touching it and you’re doing what you’re supposed to and it’s budgeting for these expenses for rainy day fund or for the future, the next time you look at it, you’re going to be like, “It’s a huge account.” Every time I check my HSA balance, it’s always a lot larger than I expect it to be, but I never used my HSA because it’s for health expenses. It’s something that money keeps going into on a bimonthly basis. When I need it, I can come into it. It’s simple things like that. I’ve got a personal example. I had my appendix removed. I had to pay that off. The HSA only cover so much, but I didn’t want to pull all the money from that, so I paid it out of pocket. I have an HSA that I can reimburse myself from down the road because I’m not wasting money out of HSA. I’m putting money in a savings bucket because it’s going to be needed in the future.

What’s the number one tip on Keaton’s top ten lists for financial planning?

Save For Retirement As Soon As You Can

We here at Quest as a specialist, we always get that call from somebody that’s looking into retirement or just retired and they say, “I never had an IRA. I’ve never saved for retirement. I’ve always been self-employed.” That doesn’t mean that you’re not doing it right. It means that maybe you weren’t educated and you didn’t look into it yourself. That’s not your fault. Starting as soon as you can is the best thing to do. Whether you’re my age or you’re coming into retirement or you’re even in retirement and you figure out another way of savings. People nowadays are going back to work after retirement because they didn’t save any money.

The bill that may be come along eventually they’re changing ages on the requirement on distributions for a reason. People are going back to work a lot because they either have to or they don’t have any savings. They’ve got to have some source of income. Even if you’re looking at putting $200 away for four years at 5% interest, think about the compound interest on that. That’s going from my age. Even then you can be a little bit more aggressive at an older age if you had it started saving for retirement because interest is a big thing. Whether you’re earning interest on your alternative investments as a lender or investments through cashflow and real estate or you’re investing in the stock market. Understanding how to completely take advantage of the opportunities that are at hand are huge. Starting now, starting later, it doesn’t matter what your age is or where you’re at. You need to get started as soon as possible for your retirement savings.

Our good friend Aaron Young is always known for saying, “Start with the end in mind. Where do you want to be when you’re starting a business is the same thing doing retirement? What does that look like?” Being as crystal clear on what that end game is will help you on the front end game. If you wanted to raise $1 million, start saving $50 a month if you can when starting off. Every little bit grows as you can to get that final number because that number, the sooner you have an idea for it. A number is always arbitrage. What do I need to retire $4 million, $5 million? What do I need to put away monthly or quarterly to hit those goals? The whole point comes into taking action and start doing something and sitting down with you guys over at Quest opening an account and start figuring out whether it’s a start in early. Maybe you’ve got kids you want to help them out with an ESA or an HSA for yourself or starting as simple Roth or if you’re self-employed and starting up SIMPLE. It all begins with that first thing and open an account.

A lot of people think about your age. Go back to my example of compound interest. $200 a month over 40 years at my age, that’s a huge growth in compound interest, but you might want to put a little bit less because you have a short amount of time. The interest, the gain and the future growth, pick a number, what you want at retirement and understand how you’re going to budget for that. All these tips will definitely help you with that. In summary, discuss the top ten factors. Begin now if you haven’t. If you’ve already started, reassess your portfolio and talk to your financial advisor. Understand that there are other individuals that you might be saving for. We’ve got spouses and children if you’re in that spot. It’s going to make your future easy if you follow these ten steps. You can email me at Keaton.Munster@QuestTrust.com. I’d be more than happy to sit down with anyone to schedule a phone call and discuss what we can offer here at Quest. The services we provide and the education that we have is top-notch.

Let’s do a recap on a couple of things. Let’s do number ten through number six.

Recap

Working with an experienced financial planner is number ten. Number nine is going to be considering your spouse. Eight is reassessing your expenses and making sure where possible. Number seven is periodically reassessing your portfolio with your financial planner. Number six is going to be including retirement savings as a budget expense. Those are pretty big things. Those all can be done at the same time when you sit down with your financial planner or when you sit down with your spouse and looking at your expenses. That’s not something that you need to do one here, one there. You have to wait for a certain period of time to do this. These are all tips that can be done in one conversation or one meeting with your financial planner.

What’s the top five?

Number five is considering all your potential expenses in your financial plan and your future. When you’re planning for retirement, you’ve got to think about the things that are going to be coming up. You don’t know what other expenses might pop up out of nowhere when you’re into retirement time and you need to make sure that you’ve got a good cushion to take care of those things. Number four is diversifying your portfolio. You’re going to be looking at your age. How aggressive do you want to be in investing? Your risk tolerance, how much are you looking to risk here and there in your investments?

Whether you need to have assets grow or produce income immediately or over time, assessing your asset allocation is a big thing. That’s one term that I’d say bring to the table and the conversation. Where am I at? What am I looking for? How do I get to where I need to be? Number three is tax-deferred accounts, traditional IRAs. This is one of my favorite things to say. Think about if you’re working a 9 to 5 job and you’ve got a retirement plan, that’s free money. If you have a 401(k), a 403(b) or TSP, whatever that plan is, that is free money that the company is giving you. If you’re not taking advantage of it, you need to reassess your retirement savings. Everybody wants free money and if you’re putting money and they’re matching, as a tax-deferred account and they have huge benefits.

What’s the top three then?

That was number three. Number two we’re going to treat your savings as an expense. The same thing, similar to the end, but savings and retirement, two different savings accounts. You’ve got a retirement savings account bucket for rainy day funds. Understanding that is making it a normal monthly thing you’ve got to deal with that makes it a lot easier for you. Number one, starting as soon as you can. If you don’t have an account, you don’t have a retirement savings plan, you don’t have an idea of what your retirement map is going to be, start now. You’re never too old to do it. Everybody can get it done. You just have to talk to the right people. Find the best financial planner that’s on your moral path of investing and understanding what your risk tolerance is and how you can get to that set number that we discussed as quick as possible and as safe as possible.

The Quest Expo

Those are all great ten tips out there and things that people need to consider when they’re thinking about that. You guys have the Quest EXPO, which you’re going to cover some of these topics, correct Keaton?

Yes, with Quest Expo. These are topics that are going to be covered by Quest speakers as well as all the other speakers we have from across the nation. We’re going to have real estate gurus. Everything from buying and holding property. Note investors like Scott. These guys know their stuff. CPAs, accountants, attorneys are discussing everything there is to know about investing in alternative assets, whether it’s just a real estate, trust, LLCs or notes, anything on the alternative and nonpublic market. These guys are going to use their strategies as experts to help out. We’ve got 30 plus speakers. Some of them are given only individual presentations, but we’ve got panels as well for like-minded individuals discussing topics that they all cover. It’s August 23rd through 25th here in Houston at the Royal Sonesta. You can get that info at the QuestExpo.com page. You can go on QuestTrust.com and see that. If you want to get 25% off your tickets, let me know. We’ve got a discount code Carson19.

You have this thing kicking off Friday, Saturday and Sunday. What time is it? 9:00 to 5:00 each day?

It’s 9:00 to 5:00 on Friday and Saturday and Sunday is from 9:00 to 12:00. It’s a half-day, but it’s going to be more of a fun day. For the VIP members, on Friday, we’re going to go to the Astros game. If you have a VIP ticket and you didn’t know that or you’re looking to get one and decide what ticket it is. The difference mainly is general admission, you get in the door. You get the education, you get to network, meet the vendors, you get tote bags and stuff and that’s pretty much it. Not in a bad thing because it’s an amazing event. The VIP is, you’re paying a little bit more, but you get to meet the speakers, you get a special lounge. We have casino night entry for free. Front row seating and the list goes on and on. They’re definitely worth the tickets, which is why they sold a lot quicker than we expected.

Here’s another big thing for those that are reading because we’ve got Note Nation across the country. Are you guys going to be live streaming online by any chance? Do you know?

 

Not the Expo, I don’t believe, but if you purchase a VIP ticket, I know that you’ll get a free recording of the event once we get it all edited. There’s going to be an opportunity to buy that recording as well even if you didn’t attend or if you’re a general admission ticket holder. We are going to offer it for sale once we get it edited. Keep an eye out for any emails if you’re on our email list. If not, give us a call if you want to attend or you at least want to buy the recording afterwards, I can definitely make sure that we get some on the list for that.

One of the great things too is you’ve got Trillion Dollar Investment Mixers all across the lone star State in Dallas, Houston and here in Austin. Do you want to talk about those? What days of the month are those falling on?

In Houston, they are on the second Wednesday, I believe. I’ll have to double check that. They’re all at 6:30 Central time. Dallas is the fourth Wednesday and Austin is the fourth Tuesday. These are monthly mixers in each office. We bring in guest speakers for every one of them. Scott was one of our speakers in Austin. Coming in with their own investment strategies, their education and their knowledge of a specific topic. This is a free event and if you can’t make it from across the nation, you can attend live. Jump on our website, grab that Zoom link and you can attend live. You can ask questions live to me. Even Austin with Katie, we moderate it. Derreck will moderate the speakers in Houston and then Sarah, Haley and Becca moderated Dallas. It doesn’t matter where you’re at, you can always get this original content or original content for speakers like Scott as well.

You also have regular live streams besides the Trillion Dollar Mixers at 6:30, 7:00 at night. You’ve got stuff that goes on throughout the week. What times does that take place on for Quest that they can log in and watch while Quincy, Nathan or somebody is providing content?

All of the original classes that we teach in Houston, it’s every Tuesday from 9:30 to 10:30. It’s about an hour-long original content. Usually, it’s one of us speaking here at Quest or sometimes they bring in guest speakers. On the website or Facebook, you can watch it live or get the Zoom link. In Dallas, it is every Wednesday at noon. They do Lunch and Learns. For Dallas events, check out those links. In Austin, we’re on every Thursday at noon as well. This is all original content, whether its things like basics, self-directed IRAs, one-on-one, understanding the accounts and what you can do with them all the way to Roth conversions or investing through commercial property come into play. We touch it all. It’s all written by Quest employees and we take pride in it.

You’re employees, but you’re also very vested in the company’s success and driving the business home unlike a lot of other pseudo companies out there. We won’t name anybody. That’s why we love having you guys here on the show along with promoting you across every Note Night or every time we’re speaking somewhere as I did on the Multifamily Investor Nation. I know Nathan spoke on there as well or other places that we’re headed to, whether it’s the Magnify Your Wealth Summit with Laughlin Associates or any other thing I’m being asked. You guys take pride. It’s easy to get somebody on the phone there or to answer an email quickly and go from there.

Outside of taking pride in the education that we provide, our customer service is top-notch. We believe in world-famous customer service for a reason. You’re not going to get an automated message. You’re going to get an email response within at least 30 minutes of you sent in and out if not sooner. You’re always going to talk to a live individual and if they can’t help you, it’s a guarantee that they’re going to escalate you to somebody that can assist you if they can’t answer your questions.

I’ve gotten this question before and I’m throwing it back at you there. If somebody is not a Quest client, can they attend the Quest Expo?

Anybody and everybody’s welcome to come to our events including the expo. You don’t have to be a client to attend the live events in Houston, Dallas and Austin or the monthly Mixers. Those links are online. Anybody can literally go to our website or to our Facebook and watch it live. I think that’s pretty cool because I’ve talked to individuals all across the nation at the different events we’ve gone to. When I’ve told them that I’d get a quick email saying, “I registered for the event. I’m going to check it out.” It’s able to reach everybody and given the opportunity to decide how they want to save for retirement is huge. I know that your podcast and your internet presence is huge. That’s great because you’re reaching people that have no idea about note investing and you’re giving them the opportunity to change their lives almost.

You guys are starting something over there too, aren’t you, Keaton?

We’ve got a few things that we’re going to be doing. I’m going to start this little short series. It’s going to be called Fireside Chats with Kiwi and Questi. My nickname here at Quest is Kiwi. I and Quest are going to sit down and we’re going to release some five to six-minute episodes on YouTube about things like this. We cover the top ten tips. I’ve got about eight episodes written out, so we’re going to be doing that. I know that Nate and Ron are looking into the set up of a short podcast for short little episodes about different things. We’re trying to reach out and change our online presence as well as having our normal classes. We’re giving you the opportunity to watch these things if you don’t have time to jump in live. It’s stepping it up and learning from the best.

Are you taking your live streams and throwing it on YouTube for everybody or no?

We’re revamping that as well. I know Ingrid’s been working with that and making sure that our YouTube is cleaned up for all of our live streams. If you missed the class, you can always go to our Facebook page and hit the video link and then you can see all the ones that we’ve done. We’re making a lot easier for you to be able to go directly to our YouTube page. You can subscribe to that page or also go through. These are prerecorded classes that we teach live, but also they’re good videos to have. I know that I send those links out a lot to anybody that’s new or trying to figure out some new strategy. They’re all there. They’re on the website under the education tab or if you go to Quest Trust Company on YouTube, you can see our profile.

Out of your top ten that you mention, what do you think you see people making the biggest mistake and not focused on?

It’s not reassessing their portfolio. They think that they’re safe. They’re getting solid returns. Your ROI is what you make it. If you’re not assessing the different ups and downs in the market or when it comes to real estate and things that affect real estate, simply one thing. We’ve got a solid sellers’ market. What’s going to happen in November? It’s political races. Those things affect real estate and some people don’t think about that. You are seeing what’s going on in the world, especially in the market of what you invested in and you know how to make money. It’s making sure that you’re assessing those things and touching base with your financial planner. You are making sure that you know what’s coming on, what the income is being. You know what’s losing money so you can take that away and bring in something that’s going to be cashflow for you.

That’s definitely a big thing there. They don’t reassess it. They keep running things or they’re running like a Wild West with no target in mind. That’s not a good retirement plan. “I’m going to win the lottery.”

I hope you win a lottery, but I hope you had a backup plan just in case it doesn’t happen.

Every morning I’ll stop here. I’ve got a convenience store right by my office. I’d go in if I don’t have bananas for my workout. I go and stop by and grab bananas there. There’s always some guy or a couple of people in there grabbing $10 scratch-offs. If you want to study marketing and study the lottery, all these scratch-off tickets, they’re all different. The big mega one, it’s a thing like the size of an iPad. Somebody scratched off $10 for that thing. He’s scratching off. He bought five of them. If you’re doing that on a daily basis because you figure, what is it? $6,000 is your annual contribution to a Roth IRA. $6,000 divided by 52 weeks is $115 a week. If you divide that by seven, it’s less than $20 a day to be putting stuff away. $15 a day somewhere in there that makes a lot of sense for you. That’s three cups of coffee or that’s making your lunch and taking it to work with you. It’s choosing to buy Netflix versus going to the movie theater, staying home and watching TV. There are a lot of ways that everybody’s hemorrhaging cash for their retirement account, but most people will get $6,000 and like, “I can’t afford that. I don’t have that.”

That’s as simple as just added into as a budget expense. If you want to contribute and max out your contributions to your IRA, traditional Roth or whatever it is, it’s $115 a week. Think about that way. You take that amount out of your check if you want a max contribution. If you want to put money in the savings, it doesn’t have to be the max contribution. It can be a minimum. It could be half of it. It could be less than that. Put it into your budget. Make it a normal expense that is coming directly out of your account once your paycheck gets anything like that. You’re looking at adding that bucket and building it up. Before you realize it, it’s going to be something that you’re like, “I’ve got a lot of money to invest. I’m making more than I thought it was.”

 

Can people go straight to the portal and make contributions each week or monthly to their account?

We’re working on that. We almost got it set. It is in place. We also are for anybody that is a client or are looking into it, we’re setting up the on the client portal to be able to make investments directly through your client portal, uploading your documents, going directly to our transactions team. I know that they’d still be scoped out and they’re working out kinks here and there. JT and Nate are definitely putting forth and getting that stuff ready to roll. You guys keep an eye out if you’re clients. We are making some big changes in the online portal. If you’re not and you have any questions about it, call me or any of our IRA specialists. We’ll be able to walk you through and teach you how it’s done.

It’s a cool thing because it works out well, especially if you’re making payments or paying rent on an investment deal. You can have your clients or other people. If you let money out, you can have the people that borrowed the money go and make their monthly payments to you.

You can do it directly online. It goes directly in our accounts receivable department. They process it accordingly.

You are advanced than anybody else out there.

We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for everybody to invest and make the most money as possible in their retirement.

Using technology is an effective way to do it. We’re in the middle of Atlantics, we made some payments online straight from the portal. We do not have to run into a bank to send a wire. You guys are working through the bugs on that thing and making it effective for people to take advantage of it.

Life happens. If you’ve got a borrower at ten or you’ve got something you need to do as a client and make an expense get paid, if something happens, you forget about it. Things pop up, but as simple as going on your phone, it’s like you’re going to the bank. You’ve got to make a payment from the bank with BillPay. You can do it directly to the client portal. If you haven’t set it up or you haven’t looked into it, we’d be glad to walk you through it. Just call one of the specialists and ask how you can access it and fully take advantage of the client portal online.

We have a question for you, “Do you know if Quest is running any other specials for anything?”

Not immediately besides for the Expo, you get that 25% using Carson19. There are little things that we pop up here and there. I’m not running any specials personally. I don’t think any of our other specialists are. I know that in our classes if you can’t make it live and you can be online live. This still counts for people online. Myself, Haley, I know Derreck had been doing it as well. Little things for either expo tickets, discounts and credited to your account, it depends. Make sure you’re in class live and you’re paying attention. There are scavenger hunts I know going on with Questi that you can get some free tickets. I know our last event, I did $100 giveaway. It was $25 per person for the first four people that came up to me. They could have gotten $25 of their account or $25 added to their Expo tickets. We’re always doing little things like that. We don’t have any ongoing promotions besides the 25% off on the expo tickets. If you keep in mind on any of those email lists that you’re on, you’re definitely going to know what promos we’re running.

You did run something where if they took a picture in their Quest Expo they attended and got their Quest Expo shirt and took a picture, it counted towards something.

I totally forgot about that. Scott did it too because I posted a video and I know that you immediately commented on it. There’s a live video. If you post a picture, a selfie in your Quest Expo ticket for our t-shirt, you get a discount on your tickets for the expo if you hadn’t gotten it already. Anybody out there reading. If you were at the expo, find that Quest Expo shirt, wherever you put it. Put it on, post a selfie or a video with the Expo. Tag us at Quest so you can post it to our wall and tell us what you’re most excited about the Expo.

You’ve got a good lineup of speakers. The fact that you’re breaking a little early on Sunday versus riding until 6:00 PM on Sunday is get stuff to for everybody.

At least try to make it home safe if you’re not driving in the dark and you can accommodate for travel.

Since it’s in Houston, you’ve got two choices. You’ve got Bush and you’ve got Hobby to fly into. Southwest loves flying into Houston and it’s pretty easy to get in and out of. If you’re ending at noon-ish on Sunday, people can catch a 3:00 PM flight out back home just about anywhere in the country before 7:00, 8:00 at night.

It’s easy to go through Hobby. Get on any Southwest flight. The same thing for Bush, United or any of those other guys. They’re two different airports with two different flights across the nation. One thing to keep in mind, if you are coming to Expo and you haven’t booked a room yet, make sure you do that pretty soon. The Royal Sonesta is in the gallery area in Houston. If you’re familiar with it and how busy that can be, especially on the weekend and in the summer. It can get very pricey if you wait until the last minute.

Make sure you plan accordingly so you get a good spot. Honestly, we’ve had clients do it in the Austin office. I know that in Houston and Dallas, they’re splitting rooms together. If you’re coming by yourself, get with another investor friend or a group of them. Maybe you can find a better deal. You get a few rooms together and carpooling, flying together, whether you’re driving around in Texas. Save money everywhere around. Everybody is putting together and it’s good. Make sure that you’re talking to your friends and everybody to come with you to try the best way to get to the expo and back.

We’ve got a student of ours who’s a mastermind member uses Airbnb to save when she travels. She was staying at a place literally the closest to everybody else’s staying in a hotel here, $47 a night. She had her own room. She’s putting the different saved into her retirement account because if it was me, it would be about $100 more for a hotel room. She’s doing the smart things. Instead of renting a car, she’s Ubering. That can be quite a bit cheaper. Steph and I, we’ve looked back and we haven’t rented a car very often when we travel, because it’s been cheaper to Uber everywhere and saving that money and put into it. There are so many different ways of sucking money away and saving that $6,000. You can put it away.

 

Those are two solid tips. Airbnb and Uber. Traveling as much as we do, as much as you guys do, you know that you see the difference in it. An Uber ride, that’s $30 a lot cheaper than spending $150 to $250 in a rental car and $47 Airbnb. It doesn’t matter where you’re at or how close you are to the timeframe of your event. You’re still probably going to save a lot more money on Airbnb than you are at $250 a night room in a hotel.

You do have a room block that’s still available.

I want to say it might be filled up, don’t quote me on it. I’d have to double-check, but I think it might be filled up because of a lot of people. The price is out there in the Galleria area. They can be pretty steep if you wait until the last minute.

How many people are signed up already for the event by any chance?

Three hundred twenty-three for sure with general admission tickets. We had about 150 VIPs and they’re almost all gone. We’re looking at 500 numbers. We’re trying to double what we had. We’re going to knock it out. We’re looking at anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people trying to come to this expo.

Everybody, the Quest Expo is August 23rd, 24th and 25th. You want to get there early so you’d fly in on 22nd or drive in early on the morning of the 23rd. If you want to take advantage, you go to QuestExpo.com for the event page. You can find it at QuestTrustCompany.com as well.

Make sure you use Carson19 to get your 25% off your general admission and VIP tickets.

If you’re reading, take advantage and go to their website and use the code Carson19. Reach out to Keaton as well to Keaton.Munster@QuestTrust.com. Keaton loves to hear and see responses from people reading out there.

I want to hear from you guys, so make you reach out to me. I’d be more than happy to set up a call, answer email questions or whatever works for you.

Everybody, take advantage of and work on getting your financial started. For less than $200 a week, you can set away and max out your Roth IRA, traditional IRA contributions to help you on your goal to financial independence. It doesn’t take you 200 years to pay for retirement.

It’s solid numbers and breakdown there. I like that.

You’re heading out on vacation for a couple of days. Enjoy yourself, Keaton. Anything else you want to leave people with?

Just to reiterate our classes. Whether you’re in the great state of Texas and you can attend our offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin. You’re across the nation and you want to make sure you’re getting some content and understand what you can do, Tuesday 9:30 in Houston, noon on Wednesday in Dallas and noon on Thursday in Austin. You can find that on our Facebook and on our website.

Thanks for joining us for Money Mondays and the top ten tips to hitting your financial independence there.

Thanks for having me, Scott. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Check out the QuestExpo.com. What a great opportunity to come out and hang out with 500, 600 and hopefully 1,000 other investors out there doing amazing things. Whether you got to experience people or you’re brand new, there’s something for everyone at the Quest Expo. You don’t have to be a Quest client. I guarantee you probably want to be though once you attend. It’s an opportunity for you to come out, meet the Quest family and put your retirement savings and your future into overdrive. We’re very proud of Quest as a sponsor of the Note Closers Show. We’re glad to have them on and glad to help promote them any way we can because they do a tremendous job. Go out and make something happen and we’ll see you all at the top.

Important Links:

• Quest Trust Company
• Rebecca Miller – Past episode
• Keaton.Munster@QuestTrust.com
• Trillion Dollar Investment Mixers
• Multifamily Investor Nation
• Magnify Your Wealth Summit
• YouTube – Quest Trust Company
• Education tab – Quest Trust Company
• Facebook – Quest Trust Company
• www.QuestTrust.com
• www.QuestExpo.com

About Keaton Munster

Keaton Munster is a JR self-directed IRA specialist with Quest Trust Company. Formerly from Houston, he works at the Austin office of Quest.

 

 

 

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