Are Finances Making You Anxious? Let’s Fix That ft. Arielle Tucker

The reason I'm so passionate about this work is actually quite personal. Like many people, I've experienced financial anxiety myself.Even as someone who works in the field, I know what it feels like when money sits in the back of your mind. The questions of, am I doing it right? Did I miss something? What happens if things change over time?I realized that financial planning isn't really about spreadsheets or investment returns. At its core, it's about reducing uncertainty so. So people can feel more secure in their daily lives.In my work, I often see how financial stress shows up physically and emotionally.People tell me they're not sleeping well, they feel tension in the relationships, or they're constantly carrying a background level of worry about money, taxes, or the future. And once we start organizing things and creating a clear plan, you can almost see that weight lift.Hi, I'm Arielle Tucker, and I'm today's guest on so Freaking Healthy podcast.I'm a certified financial planner and IRS enrolled agent, and I work primarily with Americans living abroad, helping them navigate the financial and tax complexities of building a life outside the United States.In today's conversation, I'm excited to talk about the connection between financial health and overall health, why money anxiety can be so powerful, why people often avoid certain financial tasks, and some simple ways people can start reducing that stress and feel more in control of their financial lives.Because when people gain clarity around their finances, it often frees up a huge amount of mental and emotional energy to focus on the life they actually want to live.

Hey, Donna, how you doing today?

Hey, Megan, how are you doing?

I am okay. Today we're going to talk about money.And just before the call, I said, hey, Donna, should we talk about our own money experiences before we bring our guest in? And your face looked like I slapped you with, like, a cold, wet fish. And you're. I was just like, no, we don't need to talk about specifics.And you still look scared.

It was a cold, wet, and rotten

fish, by the way.

But when I asked you that, what was the first thing that went through your mind when I said, let's talk about money?

Literally. Ugh. Like, I. I was brought up to think that money is just. There's. There's. We have endless money. We. We were very, very broke.My dad lost all of his money, all of his investments when. When we were kids, and we were just stupidly broke.Like, my family would bring in buckets of food to feed the five of us, and there was never any notion of that. Like, we didn't Feel it. So my parents never put that burden. And then we moved to the States, and my dad was making shit, tons of money.We didn't know. We were like, we're princesses. We get whatever we want. Doesn't matter if the parents have money or not.So I never was kind of involved in the money situation growing up as a. As a young adult, I never knew how much money I had in my bank account. So I. It's just not my world, unfortunately. And it shows sometimes.

Yeah. But I think a lot of people are in the same situation. A lot of people don't want to know. They're scared to know. They think it's overwhelming.I was also in the same situation when I was younger. My parent. My dad was a farmer. Yeah.There was a bunch of farmers that had all their grain in the same granary, and the granary went bust, and, like, 10 farmers all went bankrupt in the same time. Like, they had a huge auction. Everybody was auctioning off these beautiful combines. And it's devastating. Right? It's.I think on our show, we often talk about mental health and physical fitness and what to eat, and we don't often talk about. We never talk about money on the show.But I think that finances, as a general topic is something that deeply affects everybody's health, mental health and physical health, because people get so stressed out about it.And, I mean, it's tax season right now when we're recording, so this is another reminder because everybody has to go in and get these financial documents, and it is just such a heavy lift, and it gets just so stressed out. So we brought in an expert to talk about finances. Arielle Tucker is with us today. She's also another podcast in the Swiss Cast network.Her podcast is Passport to Wealth. Yes. And it's amazing. So if you haven't listened to that, please go check that out. Welcome, Arielle, to so freaking Healthy.

Thank you so much for having me. And I'm laughing hearing Donna talk about money because I talk about money all the time, and I love talking about money.It's my favorite subject in taxes. Like, I'm your girl for all the things you're not supposed to talk about.And then I always think about Donna because we had connected a couple years ago when I was going through a really hard time, and I needed help with getting some nutrition and some, like, additional support. And it just, like hearing you guys talk and knowing what your center of genius is and what my center of genius is. To me, this is all about community.Right. Like, you really can't be good at everything. It's okay that you're not good at everything.You just have to find your community of people who can support you and say, you know, I'm really good over here doing nutrition and supporting you here. And I'm over here like, I'm your girl for money and taxes.

That is.

You just made me so happy. Yeah, you just made Megan so happy. Because with every. It doesn't matter which what topic we talk about. She's like, and it's all about community, so.

It really is.

Yeah. So like I said, you have a whole podcast, so we don't need to go over everything that you cover because you cover a lot of topics.So we want to dive in mostly to exactly what we just talked about. How does our financial situation impact people? And I think you're in a unique situation.Having worked with a lot of people, maybe having stories, maybe people crying. I don't know what interactions you've had because I feel like this, I feel like you're like the financial whisperer.Maybe people just divulge things like, I don't know, I've never looked at this in five years type of situation. If you could tell us what are the top three, like money tasks that people avoid because of anxiety or they're scared or makes them even angry.What do you think?

Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of things and I think it's really individual.But when I think about when people come to me and they're in a state of stress and they know they need help, I always think about just the first one is thinking about just looking at your statements or not like maybe paper statements, but like logging into your bank accounts or your investment accounts and seeing the numbers. That is, that makes the money real. And so that can be very overwhelming for people.We've had a number of clients come to us with over a million dollars or francs in cash. I didn't know what to do, so I just kept saving money and it's just sitting in cash. Oh, wow. That's fine. We can work with that.Another thing especially because I focus on cross border US and Switzerland is taxes. I love talking about taxes. I love writing about. Taxes are really fun. It's very interesting puzzle.For me, it's really overwhelming for a lot of, especially expats. It's overwhelming for everyone, but especially us expats who have to deal with multiple tax systems. That's a lot to navigate. There's a lot of forms.A lot of people are scared of the irs. We have additional, like foreign bank account reporting.So if you are a US Person, you're married to a non US Person, and you have a joint bank account, you might have to report your non US Person's information. That can cause some conflict in the home. I don't want my information going to the U.S. i don't understand why this is happening.And then I think when we think about our biggest savings goal, it's often retirement planning.And even though I think that whole idea of retirement is really shifted and people think of things more in phases now, but we still have this giant funding goal that we have to think about, and that is our retirement or our lifestyle after our kind of core working years. And that kind of can be quite overwhelming for people to think about. They kind of are like, okay, but I'm, you know, got my pension savings.I'm putting a little bit aside. I'll be fine. Like, they. But they're not thinking it through because it's just. It's too overwhelming.

Actually, I just got an email this morning from the Social Security office in the US Telling me my statement was ready. And I went in and logged in and looked at this.And you have to remember that I stopped putting money into the Social Security system when I left in 2010. And I was like, oh, okay. I. In my brain, I'm like, if that money is there when I retire, that'll be great.But I'm not going to count on anything like from the Social Security office because the US Is all messed up anyway. But yeah, the. The whole tax thing is very overwhelming for people. They don't know what they need to do and they don't even know what to ask.Unfortunately, it can cause a lot of. It did for me as well. I remember one year, the year before I started having my taxes done by a company.I had always done my taxes myself, even over here. Of course I was doing it wrong, but I was trying. And I remember one year I did. I spent like eight hours one day.I like, took a day off of work and spent eight hours doing my taxes. And then at the end of the eight hours, I hit the button to E file it and it wouldn't E file. And then I cried myself to sleep.I woke up the next morning and it worked.

Did it all again. No, no, no.

And it worked. And I don't know what happened.

And.

And then I was like, okay, never again. I'm not putting myself through this emotional stress. And it was emotionally so stressful that I was just.Right now I'm Emotionally overwhelmed just thinking about that day. And ever since then, having somebody do my taxes, even if it costs me money, then I was just like, okay, that is money well spent.Because I know that I don't have to worry about it.

And.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's the thing. I. I'm lucky enough to not have to do double taxing. And my husband. And I'm even luckier because my husband deals with that shit, so.But we know that we need to evacuate the house for, like, an entire weekend when he does that, because he will curse and he will yell and he will scream. And my husband, those who know him, he's just the most gentle soul ever. So when he gets to that stage, we're like, oop, we gotta leave now. But it is.It's like, even the calmest of people will be completely wired when they have to do taxes, regardless of how many. I assume doing two is a little bit overwhelming.

Can I just transparently say, like, it's also hard for me, and I have systems, and I do this professionally for other people. I told my husband, like, because I have multiple companies and that we've got our personal income and our personal situation in two countries.I mean, it's really complex. And I have an accountant that I pay for. I am qualified. I could file our own taxes.And I just prefer to have to hire someone to take that emotional stress off of us. But we still, like, had all day.My husband and I worked on our taxes, organizing all the documents, which, by the way, I have folders and I organize throughout the year. So I'm like, already coming to this. Organized, organized, still. It's still stressful.All of the documents that you need to do and the conflicting documents that you need for Switzerland versus the US it's like the same information, but slightly different. All the forms. I was still, like, just. I could feel myself just being annoyed by the whole process.And I was trying to tell our accountant, I'm like, oh, you know, I did what my. What clients will sometimes do. My situation's not that complex. It's not that complex.And she just laughed and she's like, you have a very complex situation. You should know that. And I'm like, wow, I'm in denial about my own situation.

Yeah. But I've met several people like you, Ariel, which. They thrive on this kind of puzzle. And you mentioned earlier, it's a puzzle.And every tax or person in this world, that is what drives them. I think it's like that puzzle that, how can I do this?Over here, and especially with the US Taxes, there's so much opportunity for interpretation, and it's open to that a little bit. Could we do it this way or we. Could we do it that way? And which way is better for my tax situation?But almost everybody I've met, that's a tax prepar kind of mentality of puzzle brain.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

But it is, it is good to hear that even people who do this every day or have this as your main topic of thought most days, also struggles with your personal stuff. What's that idiom where, like, the cobbler's kids have holes in their shoes?It's like you do it so well for everybody else, but then when you get to yourself, you're still. You can still struggle, which is.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, I give. I give my kids McDonald's for lunch. Ariel.

And you're a health coach.

Exactly. I have a question for you, because this is a doozy for me. You hear the word financial safety. Were the words financial safety?And what does that even mean? Because, like, is it a number? Is it a feeling? Is it. What is that?Even I know that when I came to Switzerland, my husband was like, listen, the Swiss have at least 10,000 in savings. Like, it has nothing to do with their running costs and everything.10,000 in savings is like the minimum they will have in order to have that financial safety. Is that real?

I think you're onto something by saying both the number and the feeling. And I think so many people, especially when they first come to me, they're focused on the number.There's some, like, magical number that will solve all their problems. As I've gotten really into financial planning, I think you can't ignore the psychology behind it or the human side of the money component.And so if we're just thinking about, like, you know, the Swiss having this $10,000 or 10,000 franc buffer, I think of that as like, maybe like our emergency fund. Right. That's like the structural component to it, our emergency fund. You know, do we have investments? Are they diversified?Do we have our insurance in place? Do we have retirement savings? Right. Those are like the structural things that we need to do that we can check off and say, did we do those things?But then we have that emotional, the psychology side of things, which I'm not a psychologist, so let's just say that I'm. I'm just coming from what observations here that I've seen. Do you actually understand the why behind what you're doing?We're putting Money into retirement. Okay, how much are you putting? What does that solve?If you're saving 2% of your income, probably not on track for retiring at the level that you're living in now. Do you understand how much your company is contributing? You have to understand the why behind the systems and not just being checking off.I do it and I'm trusting the system to take care of me. Now, if we're in Switzerland, our system and our safety nets are a little bit better, especially if you're working, than they are.Maybe in the US the number one safety net is really just US Social Security, which is very generous. It's twice as generous as Swiss Social Security. That's also important to understand. Do we understand what happens?What's the plan if everything goes wrong? If I lose my job?We talk a lot with people here, especially expats who've come over for highly skilled, highly compensated jobs at large international firms. You will probably receive a package when you're 55 and you're probably thinking you're going to work till 65, making that really high income.That's going to have a huge impact on your plan. You running those fire drills. How are you living?If you're spending that entire salary on a really comfortable lifestyle and you get laid off, it's going to be a huge shock to your system that you're not prepared for and just. Yeah, what is your plan? Right. And I talk to a lot. We work with a lot of tech executives where they're working 12 plus hours a day. It's very intense.They're making a lot of money. They know that's not sustainable till 50.They want to be out of that by late 40s, early 50s at the latest, and then go to their fun career that maybe just covers the bills.

Yeah.

And they're not really saving, but they've accumulated this wealth. They can kind of coast for a couple years, do consulting work, and then eventually retire from that.So I think it's just really important to understand what are your problems? Do you have the structural safety net? And then do you understand the emotional side of what you're actually doing?And to me, that is those two things together is the financial safety.

You mentioned fire, and I know what fire is. But financially independent, retire early, which is a number.And actually that really goes into the next question because I think, and I know, at least for example, for my husband, he always has this sense of calm after he runs all the numbers and is like, yep, okay, now I can retire two months earlier than I could before, or I could work just two months and then I have more retirement.So from my time working with him, he's ultra interested and ultra intact with his financial and our financial situation versus my parents who don't want to have anything to do with it. They are, they don't want to look at it, they want to trust somebody else to handle it and they don't want to think about it.So I'm very much caught between these kind of two extremes.But what I do see between both of them is that both have this feeling of relaxation or comfort when someone, either my husband does it for himself or for my parents.Their financial planner runs those numbers and says, okay, if this is your current lifestyle and they're in their late 60s, early 70s, when this is your current lifestyle, this is what you have in your investments, this is what we can expect, and here's all your income streams is whatever and this is what it will look like for you. I think it's that future version or that future vision maybe is a better way to say it can also help relax the nervous system.Or it's an eye opening experience that says we don't have enough money to retire.And I know other people that are in the same situation, they have big families, they spend all their money now with their families and they know they're going to have to work well beyond retirement age because they've made that conscious decision to use the money in a different way than savings rather than go on vacations with their large family, which costs a lot of money and things like that. I just was editing for another show on Swisscast. Ben Fox was talking about how to plan your quit date and he has like a Runway calculation.Again, this kind of financial, like coming down to earth feeling okay with being able to quit a job, you know, So I know that there's lots of these kind of tools out there to help someone figure out what their Runway is, figure out what their retirement is. How often should someone do those and what's the best way to approach them?

Yeah, and I want to go back to the where you started, which is your husband is a DIYer and your parents have hired someone. And I think both approaches are good approaches.Transparently, you kind of have to know who you are and what you're interested in and what you can do if you are not going to do it. Burying your head in the stand and not doing it doesn't help you. And so sometimes you do have to hire someone.And I think of the people who hire us, they're all smart and capable people, they have the ability to do everything that I do, learn everything that I've learned, and to do it on their own. But they value their time and other activities and they value our partnership.And so we are in their lives not because they couldn't do it by themselves. I think you kind of have to understand who you are and you can start to test it. You can always try to do it on your own. Right.There are so many great tools and resources to work on calculating your fire number. Right. And to me, the big thing that everyone should do as like a first step is just understanding your cash flow. How does money move in your life?What is the income coming in? What are the expenses going out? Like, that's the first thing. And what we find is so many people just have excess cash.And when we do that first cash flow exercise, I'm like, wow, okay, we have 50,000 or a hundred thousand of excess cash. Like, where is that going? What is that doing?And you really have to get very intentional and not just say, you know, oh, that money just disappeared for, know, for the year. Because that happens a lot.If we don't understand how the money is moving in our life, we have to take that next step and say, okay, now we need to give every dollar, every frank a job.Are we going to take this excess cash flow and we're going to be really intentional and start to align with our values and say we really value going on vacation, so we're going to take some of this money and we're going to increase our spending for vacations.Or are we going to say, you know what, we're maybe a few years behind in our retirement savings or, or we want to retire at 55, we want to be financially independent by age 55. And so we are going to get really intentional and we're going to save 30% of our income every year instead of 15 so we can retire early.You have to really understand what you're telling your money to do. Because once you get really intentional about telling your money what to do, you can do what you want to do. Like, it's just a powerful tool. Money is.To me, money is just a tool.

Yeah.

I think you also have to go back one step and think through what are your systems. Do you have an emergency fund if everything goes wrong? And we talk a lot to our clients about their emergency funds.If you're single and you have a job in Switzerland and you know, if you get laid off, you have that three month garden leave followed by Two years of unemployment, you have a lot of safety nets that we don't have in the US in the US you might get laid off two weeks later and you have no job and you have no income. So you really have to understand, okay, what safety nets even exist for me, Right? That's part of your plan.Understanding what safety nets exist for you. And then you need to think through what's the appropriate safety net for you. So again, if you're In Switzerland, maybe 10,000 is totally fine.If you're self employed, you're paying your own bills and you have children, that might be more like six months of expenses. And to me, so many families in Switzerland maybe have operating expenses of 10,000amonth. Right.If you think about rent being 3 or 4 or 5,000amonth or more, Health insurance is not cheap here. Child care is not cheap here.And if all of a sudden you, you know, have an injury or lose your project that you're, you know, you need for self employment, you still have a three month notice period for all of these things. You can't just cancel them tomorrow, right? So you're a little bit more trapped. And so then maybe you want to have 60,000 in the bank.It's there if I need it. And then that allows you, once that's there, every other dollar or franc that comes into your life, you can give it a job.But you know, if I lost my job tomorrow, something happened, we would be totally fine. We would have six months of Runway to do whatever we needed to do. But you really need to think about that.And to me that's like a very individual calculation.

Yeah, definitely.

And if anyone out there is doing the calculating, just also make sure to put in place how much money teenagers cost because they eat the house down.

Wait, they cost something?

Oh my God, I thought diapers were expensive.But when they need to replace their shoes every two seconds and they're bursting out of their clothes and they're eating the house down, that's all of a sudden a good chunk of money as well. They, I didn't think of calculate, I never thought of calculating anything. I had math.But just to think of what, how huge of a change that will be to your budget.

No, they're basically adults, right?

Basically. No, they're worse than adults. It's, it's worse than adults because an adult has a certain shoe size and they will wear their shoes.

Shoes.

And right. These guys are like every three months they're like, oh, yep, I need new shoes. Oh, yep, the shirt is too Tight.The pants are not, you know, it's just kind of crazy. And they eat a lot more than an adult. I hope it will stop because I

think a lot of people think that the childcare expenses will go away. The formula expenses, the diaper expenses are going to go away. The expenses just shift. And that actually goes to your point, Megan, about.There are some families who live on razor thin margins. When I see that, I just invite them to start to think about their future self.Because unfortunately, what I see is they think, okay, but I can just, you know, I'll just work till I'm 71. You might not be able to. I think about Switzerland specifically. A lot of companies have forced retirement at 65.You may be able to get in like an official extension until 67 or 70, but that is a formal process. They have to approve, and they might not approve it.So you don't have the same opportunity in the US where you can go and be 90 years old and working as a Walmart greeter. So you really need to be thinking about that for your own personal situation.Depending on where you're based in the world, that might have an impact about how long you can actually work legally. The other thing is you're really stealing from your future.And I sometimes go into the role of being the advocate for future you and saying, okay, it's really nice that we want to take a $20,000 vacation to Disney World. That would be a really great memory for the kids.Maybe we do that one time in their childhood and we don't need to do it every year because you're really stealing from your future, which may actually steal from your children's future as well.If they have to carry the weight of financial stress or guilt because mom and dad gave us this certain lifestyle that we can either now ourselves not afford because we're not prepared to live like how we lived as a child, which is very difficult for a lot of people. Kids then mom and dad then start supplementing their lifestyle in young adulthood, which maybe they can afford, maybe they can't.And then also thinking to, you know, if something was to happen, you know, you. There's a disability, there's some. A really triggering life event. You're really not prepared for it. So I don't know.I always think about families who it's okay for a couple of years if we're living in this transition. Transitions happen to every family, but if it's a trend that goes on for more than a decade, it's just not sustainable.

Yeah, you brought Up a good point about, I think the family structure. Right.So you were basically talking about parents giving their children a certain lifestyle, then when that child is an adult, maybe not being able to maintain the lifestyle, which I think is one of the

things that the craze in the 2000s

where people were just trying to buy houses that were what their parents had, but their parents worked 30 years before they had that kind of a house. So there's this underlying structure. And even Donna just talked about it, right. Like she grew up as a princess.She didn't have any understanding of what the money was doing and where it was going. So I think there's a big problem with parents not including their children and understanding how finances work.And I always find it fascinating when I stumble across a video where parents are demonstrating how they are teaching their children financially fiscal responsibility in general. But the other way is also true. So as I mentioned, my parents are in their late 60s, early 70s.And in the last couple years we've been talking about their wills, their trust, their inheritance and how. And it has been eye opening because first of all, my parents are really open and let me in gift, by the way.

So not normal.

What? It is not normal. Yes.And I've told my parents before several times, thank you very much for being transparent and open and honest with what your financial situation is.And honestly, that has been a super amazing way to connect with my parents because I know that they are financially sound, which puts such an ease on me, that they are going to be taken care of, that they have enough resources, enough income, enough diversity in their portfolio that they will have money.And they, it's amazing for people, for two people who are not financially savvy, they have done very well for themselves, which I can only imagine if they had put like a 10% effort in figuring this out, maybe it would have been even better.My question is, do you have any advice for adult children and how to interact or how to approach parents about money and this kind of end of life strategy around their parents finances and inheritance? That's also a question that comes up, how much can I inherit? And if I inherit, how's that going to affect my taxes?And I've heard of people handing over the title to their house and then their parents continue to live in it.There's all, there's, that's like you were talking, like there's phases and that's for me, like the next phase of how do you work with your parents as an adult about their finances without stepping on their toes.

Yeah. And this gets into really complex family dynamics. And it will be different. How you approach the situation will be different for every person.And it really. It goes back to how do you interact with your parents on everything else?Do you have that open and transparent relationship with them on other topics? And that can be a really nice opener, like into, hey, we just want to make sure that you've thought about these things. If something was to.Again, I'd like to think about, like, fire drills. I think of everything as a fire drill. Run the fire drill. If your parents are together and one person passes away, can we just run through that?What would that look like? Where would we find information if we needed it? If we needed to support mom or we need to support dad, where would we find that information?And to me, that's a really good opener because you're not asking for any information. You're just asking, like, who would we talk to? Do you have a lawyer? Do you have a financial planner?Who are the key people in your financial life that we need to know about? You're not asking, am I going to get a $3 million inheritance?You're not asking about those details, but you're inviting that conversation to get started. I think this can be incredibly tricky, especially when I think about families living at great distances. Right.So many of my clients, myself included, like, we live thousands of miles away from our parents, and so we may only see them a couple times a year if we're really lucky, and sometimes a lot less. So you.I think when you're in person making a point of that, maybe not, you know, Christmas Eve, but when it's a quiet moment and it's appropriate having that conversation, it's just the opening for the conversation. And then you have to let them lead. It's their estate, it's their money.The other thing that I like to educate, and we do some prep meetings sometimes for families, depending on the different laws and countries. Right.In Switzerland, we have it relatively easy because we don't have so many, you know, inheritance stacks to consider when you're inheriting money from abroad. So family passes away, you inherit money. Not super difficult. It just becomes part of your wealth tax in Switzerland.But there are other countries in Europe, though, that we have clients, they have inheritance tax.And that is a completely different consideration that if you have parents with Trusts in the U.S. or states in the U.S. they're not thinking about, why would a.Why would this foreign country, where my assets are not there, my children are not citizens, Maybe they're just residents of this country or why would that be subject to inheritance tax? It doesn't make any logical sense.And so oftentimes we're proactively letting our clients know, hey, if you think the estate is more than $1 million, you need to let your parents know that it's going to be subject to, you know, maybe German inheritance tax without some additional thoughtful pre planning. And then it's up to the parents to decide, is it worth it? Because that has to be done at the parent level, not at the child level.And is it worth it to me to go through this whole exercise to, to make sure that our estate is preserved from additional taxation? So you have to build up that relationship.And if you don't have a good relationship with your family, these are going to feel like very awkward and difficult conversations.

Yeah. Okay. Donna, do you have another question? Because I have another question.

Donna is in the corner crying.

Sorry.

Okay. You're talking about lake houses and 14 million inheritance.

And I'm like, I like the exemption. You're good. You're okay.

So, Ariel, I think I have one last question. So we've talked about kind of people planning for retirement, our parents.I have a nephew who's 22 and he is just beginning adulthood and he is very much like my husband in terms of analytical mind, et cetera.What advice can you give to young adults so that they can set themselves up so they're not 30 and freaking out, or 45 and going, I don't have enough to retire. What would you say to my 22 year old nephew?

Progress over perfection. Just get started. Seriously, when you're 22, time is on your side, right? The power of compound interest is on your side.There's so much data that shows just putting in a couple hundred dollars in that account is way more impactful than putting thousands of dollars into that account when you' or 40. Right? Because that's all the power of time to grow.And if I was 22 and I was just getting started, and if there's no big goals, we're not trying to fund a trip around the world for a year, we're not trying to save for a house super early, I would be taking all of my excess cash and I would be putting it into an investment account and I would be pretty aggressive about what I'm doing because I likely and just, you know, had my first job, my expenses maybe are pretty low and I wouldn't allow my lifestyle inflation to eat up my excess income. I would just try to save and build wealth. And that is Very powerful.If we think about people, even if they're not making very much money, if they can take $100 a month, $200 a month, whatever, and put that away, invest it long term. We're not trying to time the market. We're not trying to, you know, buy the next Tesla or Facebook or Google. We're just trying to get the money in.And I would be looking at really diversified stocks. Go and buy the S&P 500. You don't even have to do the research on like different companies. I wouldn't be buying crypto.Maybe I'd buy some crypto, like 3 or 4% of my portfolio. I would really be focused on buying and owning actual companies that are going to have long term growth.

Yeah. Cool. Very good. I am, I'm happy that we had you on. Even though Donna has had some emotional trauma through this entire conversation.

I just took notes for my kids. I just took notes for my kids. I'm like, this is what you need to do to not end up like mom and dad. Okay, least that.

But thank you so much for spending time with us today on a topic that I think a lot of people don't want to talk about. But I'm hoping that having this conversation with you is a little bit for them.

Okay.

It's not so scary. Obviously, we're going to have all your resources linked and you have some beautiful resources for people. A lot of information available.And we just hope that if you have any questions that you reach out and get help. I think that's the number one thing, is just ask somebody to help you. Even if it's just sit with me while I look at my statements.So hold my hand, make me a cup of tea. I'm ready to do this and just get into it. So thank you very much, Ariel.