Young Scrappy Money Podcast Ep. 026: Assembling Your Money Squad

I get by with the help of my squad, including my money squad. Join me as I explore a list of awesome money squad team members such as financial professionals, tax professionals, lawyers, and HR experts, and learn how they help keep you organized and accountable!

Resources from this episode:

• The Young Scrappy Money Academy Digital Subscription Service
• Young + Scrappy, home to Michelle’s work as a financial advisor and financial coach
• Jesse G, my editor. If you ever need audio/video editing work, give him all your love and money

Full transcript:

INTRO: [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome to the Young Scrappy Money podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Waymire. And each week, I’ll be bringing you tips and tricks to help you take control of your finances as well as interviews with people who made big financial changes in their own lives. So join us. And we’ll help you get your financial s**t together. 

MICHELLE: Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. I am excited to be here today even though it is early, and I just finished moving for two weekends in a row. I’ve really missed you guys. 

I apologize for the weird scheduling, kind of the delay in getting some stuff posted. But I mentioned our new house a couple of times. And, y’all, moving is a lot. It is so much work. It is also giving me a lot of gratitude for the people in my life who have made this happen and for just having a wonderful, flexible job that allows me to be there when the— when the dishwasher guy comes or when the Comcast person comes and gives us the new internet.

So all that to say, thank you for your patience. Um, things have been a little bit hectic in my world. But I’m excited to be back and excited to be back on a hopefully a little bit more normal Friday release.

Because I’ve been so in this place where I am tired and really kind of leaning on the people around me, I’ve come to appreciate more than ever who in my life is kind of like part of my squad. And I know that this is one of those Instagram-y phrases. It’s like #squad or whatever.

But I’m obviously referring to like the people who have your back when things get tough, or when things get stressful, or just when there are life changes. So who’s on your squad basically? Um, in my case, my squad has really been my family, my dogs, my personal trainer, my health coach. I feel like all those people have kind of come together to get me through the move.

And it’s got me thinking about the concept of a money squad. So who are the people in your life who kind of have your back financially? I don’t necessarily mean financially supporting you, though sometimes that can certainly be part of it, but the people who are really helping you get organized, stay organized, get your finances to where you want them to be.

So what I thought I would do is go down a list of folks who, if you’re assembling your money squad, I think you should have these types of people on there. And I wanna talk a little bit as well about how you start to find professionals, how you can reach out to people in your network and make sure that you have that group of people who has your back when it comes to your finances. So I wanna run down a list here, uh, for your money squad, people who I think should be on it.

The first is some sort of financial person. Right? Financial coach, financial planner, financial advisor, these are all actually three different jobs. And you might need some combination of them in order to kind of live your best financial life. 

A financial coach is the first one that I mentioned. And this is somebody who’s really going to help you set your goals, going to give you the accountability, the motivation, and the financial literacy education you need to reach those goals along the way. A financial coach is a lot like a personal trainer for your finances. 

This is actually a relatively new field. Previously, financial advice was really pretty traditional. It was old white men giving advice to old white men about how to manage their wealth. But now, we’ve got all of these different people kind of offering services that are more geared towards regular people. Financial coaching kind of grew out of that movement. And I am so, so glad it did. 

Financial coaches help people pay down debt, tackle their money mindset, um, all kinds of stuff related to budgeting and really knowing where your money’s going. Your financial coach can really kind of help you stay on track if that’s what you’re looking for. So if you feel like you need a little bit of cleanup work, if you’re just really not happy with the basics of your financial situation, you might consider adding a financial coach to your money squad. 

The second type of financial professional that I mentioned is a financial planner. And this is somebody who’s going to be a little bit more holistic, somebody who’s going to help you not just with your debt and budget, but your investments, your workplace benefits, help you get insurance, analyze your estate plan for you. This is somebody who, if you’re really planning for the long term, it’s great to have them in your corner. 

[00:05:03] Because they’re gonna help you look at all of the different aspects of your financial life and make a plan for you. Obviously, the name planner suggests that that would be the case. But it is in fact the case. So that’s great. 

A financial planner is good for people who have a little bit more of the longer-term outlook. Typically, people who work with a financial planner by no means have to be rich. It’s not a rich people service. But it is for people who might be in a place where, um, they’re a little bit more solvent. There’s a little bit less debt there.

Um, if you have a lot of student loans, obviously I wouldn’t necessarily lump that into the bucket. But if you’re really looking to tackle something like credit card debt pretty hard, you might consider more on the coach side. If you’re looking for something more retirement-focused, you might consider a financial planner. 

The third professional that I mentioned is the financial advisor. And this is somebody who is going to primarily focus on your investment portfolios. So historically speaking, a financial advisor is responsible for making sure that you know what types of accounts you need for all of your different goals. They’re typically responsible for helping you choose investments to put in those accounts and for making those decisions and trading for you on an ongoing basis, just making sure that your portfolio kind of stays in line with your goals over time. 

So if you are in a situation where, let’s say, you inherit money, or something happens, and you get kind of a big bonus or a raise, or you’ve simply been saving for a long time— you’ve got a couple of different accounts open. And you need help managing or consolidating them. Your financial advisor is gonna be the person you’re gonna call to really make sure that those portfolios are in line. 

So when it kind of comes to managing your finances and assembling your money squad, typically speaking, you might have a financial coach, a financial planner, a financial advisor, or some combination of the three. Then, on your squad— I cannot recommend this enough, especially if your financial situation starts to get a little complex— you might consider some sort of tax assistance. And this can kind of fall into one of two categories. 

So you might need a CPA, or a tax preparer, or an enrolled agent. Or, you might need somebody to actually help you manage your expenses. This is particularly true for small business owners. You might need a bookkeeper. 

So in the first bucket there, the CPA, tax preparer, enrolled agent type person, this is the person who’s actually going to help you file your tax paperwork. If you’ve been doing it old school— I guess not really old school. That’s not the right word here. If you’ve been doing it online with TurboTax, um, that’s a pretty cheap, easy way to make the taxes happen. I’ve got no complaints there. 

I used TurboTax for a long time. I thought it was super useful. And then at one point, the tide started to turn. I was doing more freelance work. And I made the decision that filing my own taxes no longer made a lot of sense for me. And so I sought out the help of a CPA who could help me make sure that my tax documents were as accurate as they could be.

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MICHELLE: As a small business owner— and certainly this is something that I recommend for my other small business owner clients— you might also consider a bookkeeper. So if you’ve got a pretty straightforward financial situation, odds are good you’re not necessarily making your full list of expenses and deductions and really having to track all of that stuff over time. But if you own a small business, and you’ve got a lot of expenses to keep track of, you might consider hiring somebody to help you keep your books.

That’s the bookkeeper. And they’re going to generally make sure that you know what money’s coming in, what money’s going out— and keeping you apprised of your financial situation so that when you get to tax time, and you meet up with your CPA, that everything’s not a huge mess. You can get things filed pretty quickly and efficiently.

So you’ve got your— your financial people. You’ve got your tax people. The other type of person I recommend that you have on your money squad is an estate planning attorney or a lawyer. So we haven’t talked a ton about estate planning on this podcast yet. I’ll make sure to do an episode about it at some point.

[00:09:50] But basically, your estate plan lays out everything that’s gonna happen to your money when you die. This is, uh, for some people, kind of a stressful exercise. Most of us don’t like to think about our own mortality. But then again, there’s been studies that show that we’d rather talk about our own death than talk about money. And here we are talking about money. So I assume that hopefully we can handle this topic as well.

But your estate plan really lays out what you want to happen to all of your assets. And these can be physical assets, you know, who you want your stuff to go to. These can be financial assets, such as bank accounts or investment accounts, as well as, you know, intangible assets.

So for example, what’s gonna happen to your social media profiles? Do you have any intellectual property? Things like that, just sort of making sure that all of those affairs are nice and buttoned-up in the event that something were to happen to you. 

The estate plan also includes a couple of really critical elements as well. Your advance medical directive, so we think of this as like the pull the plug document. But in general, it’s, what do you want to happen to you health-wise if something happens, and you are incapacitated or incapable of making your own decisions about your health? Um, this kind of assigns that responsibility to another person and lays out the guidelines for their behavior as they’re making decisions for you about your health.

There’s also the financial power of attorney— same thing, but for your money. So you designate somebody to help out with your finances in the event that you are incapacitated or incapable of making a sound decision. And this way, you can really take the time and lay out in advance what it is that you want to happen in the event that something were to happen to you— which, especially if you have a spouse, especially if you have children, especially if you have dependents or somebody that you’re taking care of, you really, really wanna make sure that all of that stuff is nice and buttoned-up.

You don’t wanna leave anything to chance. It’s certainly possible to make these documents online. But when it comes down to making sure that it’s done correctly and according to your special like personalized situation, an estate planning attorney can really be a vital part of your money squad to make sure that things are on lock.

I would also add your money squad doesn’t just have to include your investment professional, tax, estate planning folks. Um, I would also argue that somebody who can help you figure out your benefits at work, some sort of HR person or insurance representative, is also a really good person to know. So every year in October or November— I guess it is November, huh? Open enrollment season happens.

And most workplaces kind of offer the chance to revise your benefits. Most of us don’t really ever take the time to understand what’s going on with our employee paperwork. I know when I had my first job that actually had quite a few benefits associated with it, I did not understand any of that stuff.

And I feel like I would have really benefited from an HR person or somebody on my money squad who could really help me figure out, what’s going on with my insurance? And do I need long-term? And do I need disability? And do I need all of these other components?

What level of healthcare do I wanna choose, as the case may be? How much do I wanna put in my 401(k)? Sometimes, a financial planner will serve this. But sometimes, it’s— it’s somebody at work who you can kind of tap into and make sure that you have a good resource to pick their brain as you’re sort of making these annual financial decisions about what to do with your workplace benefits.

And now, look, I know we’ve covered a lot of various financial professionals. But there’s a whole nother group of people who I would say is sort of like your tangential money squad. And that would be your mental health squad, so your therapist, your personal trainer, your hairstylist, your health coach, whoever it is that kind of gets in there and helps you feel like your best self.

I would argue that we tend to make financial decisions a little bit better when we’re feeling abundant, when we’re feeling well cared for. Um, coming— coming to those decisions with like a clear mind, I think, is so, so vitally important. So even if those are professionals who aren’t directly helping you manage your money or handle some aspect of your personal finances, they can have a really good perspective or a really good complement to the work that you’re doing with your financial situation elsewhere.

Finally, the last person, group of people, whoever that I’d recommend you add is somebody you can look up to when it comes to how they’re managing their finances. So certainly your money squad will help you get your financial s**t together. That’s their job. But I would also argue it’s good to have somebody on your squad that is not necessarily a professional.

[00:14:55] This can be a friend, family member, coworker, acquaintance, somebody who you think is kind of living the life that you want to, somebody who has their financial s**t together, somebody you can kind of look up to, maybe ask questions from time to time, but just somebody aspirational who you can really get a sense that they’re kind of doing stuff right. I feel like when it comes to improving our situation, a big piece of this is making sure that we have positive role models. I think we talked about this a little bit last time in our podcast with Tallia Deljou about money mindset work. But having somebody aspirational that you can look up to, somebody who’s doing it well with their finances, can help you stay on track as you’re kind of navigating that landscape of tricky financial goals. 

So I know that this is kind of a short episode. But I just wanted to drop in and kind of lay this out for you, as I’m thinking about the squad that really got me through this move and got me through the last couple of weeks. I would really encourage you to think about where you’re at in your life, what kind of squad you need, and then potentially also assembling a money squad. As your financial situation changes and evolves, these are the folks that you can tap into and really get the assistance you need. 

If you’re in the metro Atlanta area, and you have recommendations for any of these types of folks that I mentioned, please feel free to reach out to me— [email protected]. I do my best to maintain a list of resources. And that means getting awesome recommendations from listeners, from clients, from everybody in between. 

So everybody, I hope you find your squad. I hope you have an abundant weekend. And I hope to see you next time on another episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. 

END CREDITS: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. If you want to read about my work as a financial advisor and financial coach, you can do so at www.youngandscrappy.com. That’s www.youngandscrappy.com. Thanks again for listening. 

Made with love by Jesse in Atlanta. [SMOOCHING SOUND]