Maximizing Retirement Savings for Owner Operators

Tyler Allison: You're listening to the Bolt Float podcast. Your number one resource for everything Bolt Freight Trucking. Tyler Allison: Hey, guys. Welcome to the Bulk Loads podcast. I actually got Tanner Batten here with me today. What's going Tanner Batten : on, Tanner? Oh, not too much. They invited me back after being on an episode. So I think that's a good sign. Tyler Allison: Today you're sitting in, Jared's seat. So we're expecting a lot out of his feet. It's a lot of pressure, Jared Flinn: a Tanner Batten : lot of pressure. Hopefully he gets back in the seat soon. Tyler Allison: Jared's actually, spending a few weeks, with his family. So it's, it's good to see him get away and step away and enjoy some family time. So we hope that he's having a great time, on vacation. And I know it's not true, but I hope he's staying off his phone and off his laptop and step actually stepping away from it. Before we get into the episode, we're gonna talk about a truck feature. Today's a little bit different. We have 2 truck features today because of our summer t shirts that we mentioned in the last episode. So we have a contest running on Facebook right now, and it's between 2 beautiful trucks, one from Lance Doyle and one from Michael Tillman, and Joe will throw these pictures up there, but both in dumps. Tyler Allison: And right now, we're going I don't think it's been decided yet, but we're gonna let the audience choose. I think it's pretty dead even right now. Yep. Tanner Batten : Get your votes in. The stakes are high. A lot of people are gonna be seeing this on the back of that bulk Tyler Allison: of the tickets. I think we're gonna print a 1,000 t shirts, Tanner. Alright. And we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna hand them out, to everyone. I think I'm excited for it. I think it's gonna be really cool. It's gonna be a good shirt. Which one do you like better? You're gonna make somebody mad. Tanner Batten : Yeah. It's it's kind of tough to pick, but, you know, I I might say Michael Tillman has a little bit Tyler Allison: of lead there. I was kind of just because the scenery he's out in good old wood. Yeah. I don't know. They're both really good pictures. Tanner Batten : We'll we'll let the audience decide. Tyler Allison: Yeah. We'll see. We'll choose the winner, on Facebook. So we're going to put those on our summer t shirts that are going to be printed here, hopefully in a month or 2, and then you guys will have the opportunity to, get a hold of a free t shirt with one of these trucks on it. So super exciting. Today, we kind of have a different episode. It's one of those it's, some might find boring, but it's like also a necessity episode. Like, we need it's just one of those discussions that needs to happen. Tyler Allison: And today we're going to bring on Brian Lumley. He's going to talk about all things like financial planning, retirement, investing. I myself would like to learn more about it, but it just seems like every time I try to dig into it, it's just overwhelming like with all the stuff that you need to know. And it's like, am I doing this right? Am I investing in the right things? But I think Brian comes on and actually he he does a good job explaining, like, talking to a 4 year old, which is what I need. And so it's really good because he he talks about a lot of stuff, but it's really all geared towards trucking owner operators. He brings up a lot of good points, like, you know, how benefit packages, retirement accounts, if you have one as a trucking business, it can attract, you know, drivers, and you'll have a better chance at getting drivers on your team. But also for owner operators. He just talks about investing, the diversification of investments, how to invest in assets, and then he also kind of dives into, you know, taxes and how to take advantage of all the tax breaks as a business owner. Tyler Allison: So Yep. Really good stuff. So I won't go too much into it. I don't wanna ruin it for anybody. I know everyone's just like, okay. Give me the episode. I don't have to do that. So without further ado, here is Brian Lumley. Jared Flinn: Brian, thanks for coming on the show. Brian Lumley: It's good to be here. Jared Flinn: You got your son in the audience. Yeah. First time we've ever had an audience in the Bull Close Podcast. Brian Lumley: No large audience, but it is one. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So we we met probably 2 or 3 weeks ago Yes, sir. And, I wanted to get you on the show. I think after we had the conversation, it was the first thing I said was I was like, man, I'd like to see if this guy come back and, learn just a lot from you. And we're gonna talk about that today, but, just high level, give us give us your story. Brian Lumley: Okay. It's, not a long story. It's a pretty simple one, but, grew up Southwest Missouri. Just, I know your listeners from all across the country, but Springfield is where I tell people I'm from when I'm outside of Springfield. When I'm in Springfield, I tell them, a little town north of here, Fair Grove. So super, super blue collar, upbringing, which, is ironic that I think helped me in my career more so than if I would have been born in a family where our topic today, which is investing and finance, had I grown up in that, I don't know that I'd have the same capabilities that that I did, but more on that later. But super super blue collar grandmother had 19 kids. Oh, wow. Brian Lumley: So I was at a client's this morning doing some 4 one k meetings, and, so one of them had seen a a a lonely sign on a farm north of town. It's like, hey. Is that your I'm like, probably so. Easy easy to lose track of. But but, yeah, super blue collar, the first kid in my family at that point in time to to finish a college degree out of of all of those. So went to school here in Springfield. And, after I got out of school and got a graduate degree in business here at Drew University, had a fortune 500 job at a at a great company, and just was miserable, had 7 bosses, and, it was just, an environment I wanted independence and had an opportunity come up in the financial services industry. Wasn't necessarily what I was, grown up wanting to be, you know, a a 401 k, adviser. Brian Lumley: It was just the one that was an opportunity for me to be an entrepreneur and do my own thing. And and I didn't have any skills or abilities in any one thing other than than roofing houses. I'd done that my whole life. My dad was a union roofer, and he had roof houses, but I also knew I didn't wanna do that the rest of my life. So, anyway, this opportunity came up. The gentleman that I got into the industry with was, did a part of the 4 zero one k's in the early to mid nineties when 4 zero one k's had kinda came out. So, I had a 401 k at Kraft Foods where I'd come from, so I knew a little bit. Got all my license, certifications, and then jumped into the industry and thought it would be a simple thing. Brian Lumley: I'm doing investments. People are gonna throw money at me. And, after 1 year, I had made $5,000. My wife had also quit her job when I left Kraft Foods. So we went from a nice income in the mid nineties to $5,000 in 1 year right after my son, Ty, there was born. And, it I failed miserably. It's kinda like deer hunting. When you're before season, there's deer everywhere, and then open in the morning, you see nothing. Jared Flinn: Yep. See them all over your camera until Brian Lumley: Yeah. Exactly. So that's kinda the way it was. I was thought this was gonna be easy thing. So, you know, long story short, that's when I decided, I'm just gonna learn 401ks. I'm a learn about everything I can about investing for business owners, investing for small businesses, investing for people who don't have access to the same things that the the more affluent families, had. I mean, I was town where I'm from, Fair Grove. I never heard of an IRA, never heard of Roth, never heard of investment portfolio, knew none of that. Brian Lumley: I didn't know, you know, common stock from livestock. I knew a little bit from going to college, but still had no practical knowledge of investments. So, again, that that's kinda what led me to go down this path of of helping people with their workplace retirement, investments. Since then, we now work with around between 40 50 companies across the Midwest in about 20 states and have about 6,000 participants inside those plans that we help them save for retirement. So we got, you know, from, one of my oldest clients is a is a large truck, transportation company. We've had them since 99, 4 to 500 drivers and and helping those guys, as well as welders, machinists, doctors, lawyers, attorneys, nurses, almost every trade, every profession. We're working with those people to help them save for retirement. Some of them know a lot about investments. Brian Lumley: Those are the worst ones to work with to be. Yeah. The easiest ones are the ones who treat investments like you treat health insurance. Health insurance, you know you need to be able to put yourself together again if you get hit by a bus and not pay for it out of your pocket. When you understand it that way rather than I need to know how to practice medicine, purchasing health insurance is way easier. Just a gotta have thing. With investing, so many people make the mistake of thinking, I need to know how to invest to save for my future. And because that's intimidating again, I would had a graduate degree, and I was intimidated by it. Brian Lumley: Yeah. Because people intimidated, they tend not to do it, and that's a very, very, very, very, terrible for your future self, not saving for tomorrow. So that's why, treating investing more like health insurance. Just know you need it. That's how we kind of approach the investing. You don't have to be an expert on this. You just gotta know nobody's saving for your tomorrow. You've got to be able to do that yourself. Brian Lumley: So, Ty and I try to break this complicated thing of investing down to something simple. Just knowing you gotta save some for tomorrow and treating it how to peep how to save better rather than how to be an expert investor. So that's a 5 minute answer to a 32nd question. Sorry about that. Jared Flinn: No. It was great. What and I was gonna ask our audience when when you came in and we sat down, you said, here's your situation. And like, without you even knowing me, like you, you told us our exact situation that we were in and we were exactly kind of we've grown, you know, our company's grown, you know, we now have 70 employees across all of our business units. We've kind of scrapped things together, but we know that we gotta keep doing a better job, especially when it comes to savings. And, that's why I thought it was just so interesting. And that's why I wanted to bring you on is really to talk about it doesn't matter where you're at in the stage of your business. You know, whether you're a single owner operator, whether you got 5 drivers, 10 drivers, or maybe you've grown to a fleet of 50, you know, 50 plus employees, including office drivers. Jared Flinn: It's a big thing to save, and there's a lot of benefits to creating these savings plans. I think that's where I wanna kind of guide this conversation and we'll kinda start I I wanna peel back first and just kinda talk about, you know, as an employee, you know, when I got my first big boy job, obviously, there was a 401 k plan that was available. Hey, take advantage of it. I'm young. I don't have a lot of huge expenses now. I can dump the max in. Can you kinda explain that scenario first? Brian Lumley: Yep. So, you know, we always tell people, whether you're investing in an IRA individually, whether you're investing in a 401 k as a business, it's really the the important thing is that you get started saving somewhere. So your listeners are probably gonna have they're gonna be all over the the spectrum. Some of them are probably already doing individual IRAs or Roth IRAs. So my company, we started in 98, I think, is when I started my my company doing this. I didn't have a 401 k at the time because quite honestly, 401ks have, more administrative expense than I needed at the time. It was me, by myself for for a few years. So I just stayed in an IRA, and and that was good enough for me at the time. Brian Lumley: So, as you begin to to to grow, the IRA loses its attractiveness. As you get more employees, even a few employees, you you probably need to to graduate. And there's just kind of this normal scale. We go to an individual account, then you can open a simple as as you know. Jared Flinn: We have a simple account. Now. Brian Lumley: I I did the same thing. I had a a regular IRA, then I hired an office manager. And for a long time, it was just us too. But I need to be able to have something for her, so we started simple. And as for most people, simple works for a while. And then after the simple, it's as as the word says, incredibly simple. You eventually graduate to a 401 k. So the difference between your workplace retirement plans and your individual retirement plans is simply the capacity for the company to offer the match. Brian Lumley: And that's really the only difference. So when an employer, whether you have 2 employees or 20, when that kind of point comes where you need to decide what's the best structure, is really when you decide to start doing that that company match. So most employers at some point in time are gonna need to have some type of a company retirement plan because employees desire. Jared Flinn: Well, that's what I wanted to ask. Like, how important is that for business owners? I own trucking company or freight brokerage. I'm wanting to recruit, hire more employees. How important is that that I have a competitive, you know, 401 k plan? Sure. The benefits plans are becoming a more and more Brian Lumley: a more important component of what employees are deciding when they come on. So, you know, 20 I say 20 years ago, really 10 years ago, I'm a I guess I'd be a gen x. I'm I'm, the group that that is all about the money. That's what what we were raised. You know, I would have I left a great job in in this is early in college, right out of high school, working at a bank. You know, I think I was making 5:25 an hour. Yeah. You know, I and which is fine for me. Brian Lumley: I was, you know, 19 year old kid, and it was more than I had. Then I left that to go take a job at Kraft Foods. As I mentioned, of course, it was just maintenance at that point in time. Making $10 an hour, went from wearing a nice bank attire to wearing, you know, company grays and a hairnet because I could care less. I just cared about money. That's it. But more and more, you know, if I don't know how much you've ever done any studying or reading about the difference in generations, gen x, y, z, and and, you know, my son, Ty, would be, a millennial. They are far more concerned about a benefits package than they are just about the hourly wage. Brian Lumley: So as an employer and I I know every industry is a little different. Truck drivers are are different than bank tellers, are different than welders. But across the board, employee benefits is becoming a more important piece of what potential boys are looking for when they hire on. That can be what you wear. It can be what you, vacation. It can be health insurance. What do you offer them for vision, dental? I mean, there's a whole, as you know, host of benefits in that that that realm. But one of the ones that is getting more and more traction is more and more people, you know, young people. Brian Lumley: My my son youngest son is a finance major in Missouri State, and it's amazing how many of his, people in his circle have Robinhood, have all these different apps on their phone. They know more about investing, and they're taking round up every purchase to the next dollar and invest these stuff. They know more than I knew out of graduate school because it's part of their vocabulary. Oh. So that's different than than my generation. And, and I'm more financially savvy than than my parents were. Oh, you know, baby boomers. That was just nothing that they got into. Brian Lumley: So as this becoming more important to to that, you know, potential group of hires and and trucking industry, I think, notoriously, at least the clients that I have, they're they're they're older. And they're trying to get younger, but that's not easy. One of the reasons it's becoming difficult is just benefits. And and so I do think benefits is important part of any job, but I think going forward, it's gonna be more and more important that a competitive benefits package is offered. That includes a good match or any match. The average in the United States right now is $0.50 on the dollar up to 6%. So can you Jared Flinn: break that down really simple? So Brian Lumley: Yeah. I I speak on that so fast because I do it every day. So the, in the United States, if you just look at every company Tyler Allison: Yep. Brian Lumley: The average match that the 4 zero one ks puts in versus the deferral that the participant puts in is $0.50 up to 6%. So for somebody who's making $50,000 a year, 6% of that would be, what, $3,000. K? The company would then, on average, put in 1500 for your 3,000. So, for easy math and I know the average salary is not a 100,000. But if you're just for easy math, think of it in that perspective, 6% deferral of 6,000 would get a $3,000 match. So that's the that's a nationwide average kind of what 401ks would would offer. So I always tell my employers anything less than that is not advantageous, and we see it all over the board. We have employers doing I have one that does 0. Brian Lumley: They just offer the four zero one k for ease of salary deferral. It comes out of your paycheck, and that's a big benefit. This plan that has zero match, we've got, 400 participants and probably $8,000,000 in the 401 k. That's just there because people wanna be able to save easy. And and the workplace retirement gives them access to a professional like us, gives them access to salary deferral weekly, which takes advantage of a whole host of things, namely simplicity, also dollar cost averaging by, you know, making regular contributions. You're you're purchasing the market when it's down, and and there's, some benefit to that. So anything is better than nothing. Just offering a 401 k. Brian Lumley: Mhmm. Because a lot of those people are not saving anywhere else. K? But anytime we have and then from that, no match. It's only your deferrals. We have one company that does, matches up to 10%. So you see it all across the board. But I can tell you the higher the match, the more they talk about that when they hire somebody. And for some participants that can mean or some employees, that is a huge thing. Brian Lumley: And again, we're seeing more and more young people. When I say young, I'm 53. So to me now, young seems anybody under the age of 40. 10 years ago, it was under 20. But people in the twenties, thirties, and forties are becoming more and more expecting some type of a retirement plan. And quite honestly, they're needing it because wherever they came from most likely had one. So, you know, the size of the company ultimately determines how, usually, how how much they match. You have to have some cash flow to be able to continue to to do that, And there's some responsibility, obviously, once you start that you need to keep it up. Brian Lumley: Because the only thing tougher than having, a 401 k with a low match is having 1 and then getting rid of it. That's that's that's not a very good PR perspective. So so, anyway, that's kind of the the big picture of how those 401ks work. Jared Flinn: We deal with a lot of owner operators. I kinda explained this before we start shooting. 1 truck business, he's got his own authority, his own business, drives truck, and all that. I'm not saying all of them, but when I talk to these guys about, you know, potential long term investments or savings or, you know, a lot of them would be like, well, my wife works a job where she gets the benefits. She's got the health insurance. She's got the 401 k that's you know, on her end. But, like, to those guys, are are are they missing out on opportunities investing tax free dollars? Brian Lumley: I think absolutely, they are. And, you know, I I've talked about 401ks and and simple plans, and there's certainly, if you don't have employees and it's a family operation, you you probably don't need to have a a complicated 401 k for us an an owner operator, especially a family owner operator. But even given that, when you have 2 streams of income, your spouse has this over there, That stream of income you have offers you a whole another set, of deferral totals. So there's limits to how much you can defer for a family where both are are working. And as I've seen from this industry, owner operators can generate a pretty large sum of income. I mean, it it doesn't take long to get a decent 6 figure stream of income when your trucks are running up and down the road Yeah. Pretty consistently. So my response would be, it's great that your spouse is saving, but you have 2 streams of income. Brian Lumley: You need 2 streams of deferral. So even if you don't get complicated with a 401 k, with with employees and match, you need to be putting your own money into, at the least, a Roth IRA. The Roth IRA alone gives you, you know, around $7,000 a year of additional deferrals that that you may be able to take advantage of. And if your income, is too high for the individual, you can do a pretax. So just simply for the reason of taking advantage of as much you can and much as you can in deferrals, you should absolutely be putting additional capital to work. Because for most of us, we're gonna need 10 to 15 times our annual income in a nest egg. Saving on one salary is a tough way to get there, and and there's a couple different benchmarks that a person can use to see in my head or behind what time. I do a lot with our participants. Brian Lumley: We were in Kansas City last week, meeting with an employer and did a ton of employee meetings. A lot of the questions we get whether you're 25 or 55 is, am I saving enough? Tyler Allison: Mhmm. Brian Lumley: Do I have enough put back? What does my nest egg need to be? These are questions that no one has answers to. I know people with 6 figure retirement accounts or 7 figure. There's a welder. I I tell the story a lot down the street from here in Springfield. He's never made more than $70,000 a year. 62 years of age, has a $1,000,000 in his 401 k. Because his boss, the owner told him back when he started the 401 k in the mid nineties, put all you can in, which he meant by the match. This company matches 10%. Brian Lumley: Put all you can, all we match to, and you're gonna retire a millionaire. Now this guy, 62, 63, has got a $1,000,000 in a retire account. Never made more than $70,000. So he still has the question, do I have enough? So I sat down with him and his wife and tried to make do some calculations to help. So that's one thing we spend a lot of time doing is trying to help people determine, do I have enough to retire? And there are some good calculators out there. You know, maybe we can put up a link, later. I can give your your listeners some tools. We even have some calculators that that we use in our own office to help people say, but I would tell all of the the the listeners that's an important thing to go through. Brian Lumley: Don't make the mistake of wondering, do I have enough when you're at the finish line. One phone call we hate getting and we get a lot because, again, you know, 6, 7000 people's name have or statements have my name on them when they come out each quarter. This is a common call. I'm getting ready to retire. I wanna see if I've got enough. And what I what I do is say, hey. Let's take a look at this. Let's unpack this. Brian Lumley: Let's see where you're at. Give me your debt. Give me your budget. But what I really wanna say is you should make this call 25 years ago because your ability to impact your retirement, is inversely related to your, time frame to when you start taking out your retirement. So when you get close to taking it out, you're not gonna have much impact because it's kinda you got what you got. Whereas if you ask me, you know, when you're 30, hey, I wanna be serious. Or when you're 40, I wanna be serious about this retirement and this investing thing. Where do I need to be? We've got all the time in the world to put somebody on a path or help them get there. Brian Lumley: So that's why it's important to think today about retirement, you know, not when you get ready to retire. Jared Flinn: Hey, guys. Jared Flynn here. Man, we hope you're enjoying this podcast. I have a favor to ask you. If you can just do me one favor today. If you can either comment below or text me 8 at 417-848-7176 of more shows that you would like to see, or what type of subjects or content that you would like to see on this show that can better you. So, again, if you can just do me one favor today and just do it right now. Again, drop down in the comments below or text 417-848-7176. Jared Flinn: And just give me some feedback on something on other content or subjects or something you would like to see that can either help develop you professionally, help your business, help you personally, or even in your fell faith. Thank you. God bless. Yeah. I guess if I can be so brutally honest, like, we set a lot of goals for our companies. You know, we're setting goals of, like, hey. We wanna project to make this much in revenue for this business unit. You know? Know, we wanna be here in 5 years and hopefully, 10 years. Jared Flinn: And we we we do a lot of forecasting of that. But, like, I personally, I don't do it a lot for my retirement. I don't, like, I don't even know what my what my number is. And I guess there's a there's a sense of me, like, for like, I almost like, I need to know, but I don't wanna know, like, am I shooting too low or am I shooting too high? Like, that's a tough one. Brian Lumley: Listeners are just like you. The because and myself. We're business whether you have 1 truck, 2 trucks, 10 trucks, you're a business owner. Jared Flinn: And this isn't the right answer, but I figure, like, it'll work itself out if I if I, you know, if I if I'm successful here on these businesses, if these, you know, keep generating income and keep growing, then the retirement's Brian Lumley: gonna work. But you're right to the to the respect that you are saving and investing into something. You are. And that's always a good thing as an entrepreneur and a business owner to know is you do have an investment that you're you're making into yourself and your company. The thing, though, that you miss out on is within a retirement plan, whether it's an IRA, a Roth, a simple, a SEP, a 401 k. There are tax advantages there that you're getting that you're not getting in your business. You flat out aren't. Everything you make in your business, what are you gonna have to do every time you turn around and take money out? Pay taxes. Jared Flinn: Pay taxes. Brian Lumley: Uncle Sam's gonna get his his his his money. I went through this analogy this morning, with with the participant. Explained to them, if you would put $700 a year into a Roth IRA, Roth 401k, whatever you wanna call it, from age 20 to 65. $700 a year. That's all it would take. You will retire with a $1,000,000 tax free at 65. So $700 a year A year, not a year. $700 every year is $1,000,000 at age 65. Brian Lumley: So, yeah, I agree. Build your business. Except your focus is there. Jared Flinn: It's Starbucks 3. Tyler Allison: Come on. Brian Lumley: It's nothing. It's nothing. So I won't ever say take money away from retirement to, or take money out of your business to save for retirement. I'm talking about taking money that's going to go somewhere anyway. Put it into something that is tax advantaged is number 1 because your business is not tax advantaged. You do get deductions to come your own. Right. But everything you take out and you enjoy to buy, you know, trucks, trailers, pay pay for your house, groceries, or whatever it might be, that's all gonna get taxed real heavily. Brian Lumley: If you will put that money into a Roth, this this surplus that we all have in some way, shape, or form, it's tax advantage, k, which is a big deal. Walking away with money Uncle Sam knows about and not paying taxes on is a big deal. I want all of that money I can get. If you don't save in a retirement plan of some some type, you're missing out on that. Jared Flinn: Yeah. I think just even having that number, like, trying to figure out what that number is. Brian Lumley: It's a big one. Yeah. The other thing, though, to think about, even if you don't know the number, you know, tax paying avoiding taxes is a good thing. So always remember that. That's one thing that this discussion can can highlight for for business owners is always do something that has a tax advantage, and that that does. The second thing that I always remind people of talking about investments, coming from a simpler coming from a simpler background, a blue collar family. And I don't mean that in insult, but anyway, we still live out there. Yeah. Brian Lumley: All our friends and family are all super blue collar. I will say the bar has gotten higher for what many blue collar people understand about investments than it was 30 years ago. But because I, don't have a background in it, I gotta think in big picture. You know, talk to me like I'm a 4th grader. K? Is is what works best for me. So I try to with investments explain the value, not of investing in stocks, but all of the value of a simple concept of just the time value of money. K? Businesses don't get to enjoy the time value of money the way investments do. K? The growth of my business has been slow. Brian Lumley: It's been steady. At first, it was hard to notice. Over time, it it is noticeable, you know, and I think we built it in a way that it's sustainable. But it's not predictable, and there's no guarantees with with with what we do in our business to know what the growth rate will always be. We just pour into it, do all we can, good years, bad years. The nice thing about having some of your portfolio in something besides your business is 1, diversification. K? That that's always a good thing. The second thing is you get this growth factor. Brian Lumley: Einstein once called compound interest, one of the greatest wonders of the world. Why is that such a big deal? Well, part of that 700 a month or a year turning into a million is that idea. So there's a concept and instead of teaching people about investments, which anybody says they're an expert in investing, runaway. There are no experts. And anybody that tells you they are an expert usually has something to tell you. What I try to look at it though is if you look at the what we call the stock market. When I was a kid, even in high school, I was the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Top 30 industrials. Brian Lumley: Well, our societies change, our countries change, and the business, makeup has changed. Now what we really talk about for the stock market is the S and P 500. 500 largest companies in in the United States. If you look what those have averaged since 1926, so we're close to a 100 years of returns of of of the S and P 500. It averages 10%. Now there's good years, there's bad years. Essentially, when the economy does well, the market's going to do well. When the economy does poorly, like, 22 was a year when the economy didn't do well, kind of reeling from the post COVID $7,000,000,000,000 dumped into the economy. Brian Lumley: We we know, rates had a a big thing to do with that. Rates going up and up and up trying to slow inflation down. That was a negative year. But all in all, we've averaged 10%. So I try to explain with the the time value of money if there's a concept called the rule of 72. And this is a good one to remember. The rule of 72. It makes the a complicated thing like time value of money and rates of return simple. Brian Lumley: Take this number 72 and divide it by the interest rate, k, that that you expect or that you want or your financial advisor told you to promise. I'm telling you expect 10% because that's what the market's done the last 100 years. 72 divided by 10 is 7.2. That's the number of years to double your money at that rate. So if I can get 10% return, k, and again, historically, you have my money doubles every 7 years. I've not been able to do that in my business. Some businesses may for a period of time. But again, if even if I can do it, it's not tax advantage. Brian Lumley: If I can put money into a Roth and I can double that every 7 years from now to when I retire, I know what that bucket of money that's tax free is and that's a good place to stick all the money that I have, the extra money Yep. That I can. Regardless of your level of income, regardless of the size of your operation, tax advantages of being able to put money away, double it every 7 years is is enormous. So when we get a call, we help when people move jobs quite a bit. Hey. I'm leaving. I'm moving here. Help me cash out my 401 k. Brian Lumley: I'm I'm 30 years old. I got 30,000. Like, don't cash that out. That's a $1,000,000 truck you're looking to buy. What do you mean $1,000,000? Like, you think of the value of that $30,000 today. I think of the value of that $30,000 when you retire. And that's, again, the difference between think about the time value of money in the future versus the present value of that today. So if you cash out that retirement account today, you're gonna pay 10% penalty and then roughly 20 whatever your personal tax bracket is. Brian Lumley: Say you're an effective 24%, so you're roughly gonna lose a third of that. So that $20,000 is what you can buy your truck with today. K? I look at that $30,000 money doubling every 7 years, so I can double that at least 5 times. 7 times 5 is 35, which gets me to age 65. Pretty close to retirement. We, Ty and I had a conversation with a gentleman in Arkansas at a big vet supply company we work with, and he was saying, I'm thinking about cashing this out. And, my okay. Let's go through the math. Brian Lumley: This 30,000 is worth 20 today. K. He wanted to pay some bills off. I said, or if you leave it, it's going to go in 7 years to 60, 14 years to 120, 240, 480. Then in 35 years, that's 960,000. Which would you rather have? $960,000 at retirement or $20,000 today? Ty doesn't have a mic, but, what did he end up saying, Ty? Jared Flinn: He's still gonna cash it out. He decided Brian Lumley: no other you're not investing in it. Yeah. And that's assuming no other investments. That's $960,000 just in that one That money. Jared Flinn: And that's not dumping more money. Just leaving it alone. Brian Lumley: Just and I told her that you would quit saving. Spend all of your 4 zero one k that you're putting in now, blow it for the next 35 years, and just leave this, you're a millionaire. And, ultimately, he called back, said, well, I thought about it. I decided I'm gonna pull it out. And it's just, to me, amazing. It's amazing. It's not amazing to me that we're shortsighted about retirement on a day to day basis when their life's pulling us in a 1000000 different directions. I get it. Brian Lumley: I I don't like saving. I've just gotten a habit of I forget it. Somebody does my payroll. I don't see my 401 k come out. I'm not writing a check for it. I've got used to living with that portion coming out. So, I I get it. It's it's it's hard to see. Brian Lumley: But what is more amazing to me is when people look at the map, they still have a hard time saving for tomorrow. Well, Jared Flinn: the thing and I I brought this up 3 weeks ago we talked. What you do hear from people is when they when it's ready to retire and you get a market like it was in 2022, while my 401 k's is only worth half of what it was, but, like, it seems like those are the stories that I always hear. It's like, it's never about that money growing. It's like, oh, man. I made x amount. You know, I had this. I've invested this, and now I have x 1,000,000 of dollars. But it's always you always hear those stories of those people. Jared Flinn: They get to retirement, and then now all of a sudden that 41 k that they thought they had was worth whatever. I'm just using $5,000,000 worth 2 and a half million. Yep. What would you say to those people, though? Brian Lumley: Because Well, I would say one thing I'd Jared Flinn: That makes people nervous about long term investing. Brian Lumley: And I do understand that. And it's easy for me not to get as nervous, about the market because I've done this for a while. So you get comfort. Whatever you know, everybody gets comfortable with their own trade. Things that would be scary to some people, outside of the realm of of, you know, just what's commonplace. I get it. It's not as as fearful for me. But two things on that. Brian Lumley: 1 is somebody told me early on in this industry, and it makes more sense the older I get, what I do, what we do in the world of of saving and investing, whether you're a participant or a financial adviser, investing is far more psychological than it is financial. So think about that. It's more psychological than it is financial. One way to demonstrate that is studies have shown we feel a loss of 10% 3 times more emotionally than a gain of 10%. So I told you it averages 10%. You get your statement at the end of the year, which it never really does 10%, but it averages it. It's up 10%. What do you think? What's supposed to do. Brian Lumley: It's what the guy the track that came and told me. K? It better. When you get your statement at the end of the year and it's down 10%, what are you thinking? Jared Flinn: You're fuming. You're like, man, he told me this was gonna be up. Brian Lumley: That guy is a slimy salesman. Yeah. Yep. But it's no different. It's 10% up and down. So we feel losses way more emotionally because investing is psychological. It's not financial. Because we treat that state. Brian Lumley: K? We're we're really I I don't word it in this way to participants. I don't wanna offend anybody. But we're hypocrites when it comes to the market. When it goes up, we expect it to. When it goes down, well, nobody told me I was gonna do that. Yeah. We did. It's part of the journey. Brian Lumley: You don't get to double your money every 7 years by getting something that's guaranteed. Here's the guarantee. I can go get a 1% savings no matter what is happening with the investments or with the interest rate. Well, let's use the rule of 72. 72 divided by 1, how long does it take to double your money at that savings account? 70. 72 years. Years. Yeah. Brian Lumley: Okay. So granted, there's volatility when you double your money 10 times faster. I get it. There's some volatility to that. That's okay. Okay. So the first thing I would say is, yeah. It's volatile. Brian Lumley: It's usually never down as much as people think it is. For example, a bad year, like 2022 was down 20%. It's I get it. It was it was rough. 20%. More worse than that. It was 22% was what the S and P 500 was down. So we generally don't wanna be more down more than the S and P 500. Brian Lumley: In your lifetime and mine, the only time you would have done worse than that would have been 2,008 and you were down about 40% in 2,008. If you add in the back part of 07, the first part of 09, it was over 50%. That's the only time since the great depression you've ever lost 50% of your value in the S and P 500. Your 401 k became your 201 k. Really, really, really painful. Down 51%. But if you put up with that down 51, which is rough. I was doing this, and people were legitimately worried. Brian Lumley: Now what made my job a little easier, if you remember the great recession, people weren't worried about the formal k. They're worried about keeping their house. They're worried about keeping their job. So there was so much instability with that great recession that the 401 k was a people's only worry. Whereas in 2022, everything was good. It was a little bit people are more out myopic on their 401 k. So, generally speaking, though, we don't see many of those years. But But if you put up with that minus 51, 07 to 09, that debt recession, you made between, Q2 of 09 to COVID. Brian Lumley: When when the market dropped in 2020 for COVID, you were up, ironically, 400 and 51%. Or a 100% on your investment? Yeah. So when I ask somebody, would you be willing to lose 51 to get 451 back? We would all sign up for that. Yeah. But we don't ever hear those stories. So, again, we're hypocritical with the mark. Jared Flinn: Well, you said that's so psychological part about it, like and I you know, when the market's down, the last thing you wanna do is dump more dollars into a down market. Brian Lumley: You know? And and, you know, the that segues really, really nicely into this example. When we did we have a a hospitality company that we work with, has locations all across, I say all across country. How many I mean, probably 15 states. 15 states? So a decent, amount, maybe 20 properties in 15 states, and we are trying to help increase, participation. K? Because people sometimes don't take free money. And that is a whole another topic. We could go into to some other podcast is why we don't participate in in 4 one k's very well. But one of the things we wanted to do when we went visit with these people is talk about the benefit of buying stocks when no one else wants them. Brian Lumley: K? We have this mentality. It's the only investment in the world where I get people wanting it when it's at the top. K? I told you I'm a redneck. Live out in the country. We live on ranch, small one. Where I'm at, people measure their worth not in dollars in their retirement account. They measure in acres of land. It's been like that, you know, forever out in the country. Brian Lumley: Well, those ranchers are not going to go hunting for land today. There's a price breaker out there that's quadrupled in the last 10 years. It's tripled since COVID. K? They understand if they wanna build a ranch that has the greatest ability to spin off income to them, they want to buy land when no one else wants it. They want the price breaker to be low. They gobble up when no one else wants land. Warren Buffett once said, I want to own stocks and no one else wants them. When people get scared, I get greedy. Brian Lumley: When people get greedy, I get scared. I get calls when the market's at the top, people wanting to be aggressive. And then I get calls when the market goes down, people want to get out. So if you stop and think about that, it's like an appraisal on your house. That statement so somebody calls, my statements way down. I'm okay. What happened? Well, I went from 18,000 to 16,000. Okay. Brian Lumley: How old are you? I'm 31. Okay. Are you wanting to get rid of this and retired? Well, no. Then why are you worried? You know, it it doesn't matter what it's worth now. So I always tell people keep it in perspective. It doesn't matter what's doesn't matter what your house is worth unless you're what? You wanna sell it. Yeah. You don't need an appraisal. Brian Lumley: The fact that we get these statements all the time is what encourages us to look at the wrong number. So I tell people, don't look at the number of what your ranch is worth. Look at how many acres you own. They'd like the the farmers out in the country. They don't care what the value of their ranch is. They're not asking the appraiser to come give them a valuation on the rest. They know how many acres they own. You don't need to ask them. Brian Lumley: Matter of fact, you know, you probably appreciate this. I know you have some some rural background. They'll be offended sometimes if you ask about it. Oh, yeah. Jared Flinn: Yeah. That's something you don't ask. Brian Lumley: Yeah. It's a personal question. So think about your retirement account in, that same perspective. No one took took any shares away from me. I know exactly, if I want to, how many shares of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Google. I know how many shares I own in all of them. My account didn't drop 20%. My acreage is the same as it's always been. Brian Lumley: So they're looking at the wrong number when they say, oh, no. I lost. You didn't lose anything. Your ranch is the same size it was before. The only thing that went down is the appraisal of what your ranch would be worth. So if you split the script and say, okay. I get it. My ranch is the same size. Brian Lumley: They didn't take any shares away. The value of each share is a little bit lower. So what will common sense tell you you should do then when the price breaker is low on everything that you don't own? Go buy more. Yeah. K? So the second by Jared Flinn: the neighbors ranking. Brian Lumley: Exactly. So don't look at this opportunity as as a negative. Oh, no. The appraisal on the number of acres I own is down. Who cares? Go buy more acres. So the second thing I did for this group when we own these visits, I I put this, pictorial up of the tale of 2 investors. Lucky investor 1 who bought for 12 months in a row, and every month, it went up. And I in this scenario, I started at $50 a share, and every month, it went up $1. Brian Lumley: So 50 to 51, 52, and he put in $200 a month every time. So he got lucky because every time he bought it, it went up. Finished the year at $61 a share. He was lucky. That's the way I phrased this. The second investor is the unlucky investor. He bought every month, started at 50, but his went down. 50, 49, 48, 47, 46, 44, all the way down. Brian Lumley: But then in December, it went up to 61. So they started at 50, ended at 61, put the same amount in each month. And I said, which one would you rather be? The one who got a statement every month where it went up or the one that got 10 or 11 statements showing it went down and then only one where it went up? Started the same place, ended the same place. Everybody says, I wanna be the lucky guy. Yeah. When I show the difference of the, not only rate of return, but the number of shares they bought, The unlucky investor end up buying 55 shares. The unlucky investor bought 45. So if you think of it in acres of land, the lucky investor who bought an up real estate market ended up with 45 acres of land. Brian Lumley: K. If you look at it at $200 per acre. The unlucky investment who bought in a downtrend market wound up with 55 acres of land. Who would you rather be? The lucky investor who never gets a negative statement or the unlucky investor who dollar cost averages and buys when it goes down, winds up with 10 more acres of land? That's real land that you can, you know, see, touch, and feel if you live out in the country. With in a 4 one k, it's more nebulous because it shares. But every one of those mutual funds or stocks that you buy, they have shares, and that share never goes down. So I always joke if I could design a 401 k statement, I would never show people the dollar value. I show how many shares each year. Brian Lumley: Just like a a ramp. I just tell them how many acres they own, how many shares of all of these they own. And when the market goes up, they would get depressed because they're not buying as much land. But when it drops, they'd be calling me, man, thank you. I bought a lot more shares this quarter, because it was dropping. So, May, I know that's a long answer to Jared Flinn: your question. Brian Lumley: So what I try to do is help people rethink and recalibrate to think more about this in financial terms rather than psychology. Because psychology steers you to one number, and they put it in big print. And then they put a minus, and they put it in red just to, I think just drive people crazy. So so that's how I would explain to somebody. Don't get bogged down in in, missing the detail. But if you are retiring at 66 and you plan on taking all this out and buying a motor home, you should have been all in stocks at that point in the game anyway. So that's the only thing. If I was being in, speaking against this position, I would say, you know, I'm planning on taking it all out, which I don't think you should. Brian Lumley: Most people are gonna spend a lifetime drawing off of this. But if you are planning on taking all that, you really need to be more conservative toward the back end of your career anyway. Jared Flinn: Yeah. I like it. May or may not know the question of this, and we may edit this outside. Bobby Allison, he was a philanthropist here in town. I Brian Lumley: was Betty and Bobby Allison. Jared Flinn: Yeah. I had, one of our customers actually worked side by side with Bobby when he was in the pet food industry, worked for this pet food manufacturer. But he said one day, Bobby's on the phone and every every phone call Bobby put on speaker phone, and and so he could hear the conversation whether he wanted to or not. But Bobby's on the on the phone with his financial adviser. He's like, hey. What yeah. How much do I have in that Apple stock? And this guy said, the finance adviser is like, well, mister Allison, you have $70,000,000 in Apple right now. $70,000,000 in Apple. Jared Flinn: But I guess my question was Bobby just Brian Lumley: a long term stock investor? Yep. So if you don't Jared Flinn: know, he is. He's I mean, the guy, he passed away, but, made a fortune, but has donated and given so much back to the Springfield community, but I just didn't know. Brian Lumley: Yeah. So there is so much, wealth that has been created. So, you know, this this man, I sorry to get on so many segues and stories, but, it's just how I think about these things. So, real wealth is created through owning equities, owning companies. Okay? And you can own them in stocks. You own them in mutual funds. You can buy into a hedge fund. There's a million different ways to own equity, but it goes back to the core understanding of where's WealthMate. Brian Lumley: And there's really 3 things you can do with money. First thing you can do is bury it in the backyard. And I and I tell this in when I do 4 one k meetings all the time. The good news is if you bury it in the backyard, where's it at when Jared Flinn: you need it? In the backyard. Brian Lumley: It's just right there. K. And it's available. And in the investment world, we would call that a money market account. K. It's great. K. But the rule of 72, 72 divided by 1, it is it takes 72 years to double your money. Brian Lumley: The problem is there's something out there eroding the value of your money, k, and that's called inflation. So most people with much financial wherewithal will understand more than 3 to 6 months of my money doesn't need to be buried in the backyard. I gotta it's gotta work for me. Mhmm. K? So the second thing you can do money is lend it to someone. So that's kind of the second way wealth is created is through lending. That could be me loaning you money personally. If I loan you money, what do you give me in return? Is that interest? Interest. Jared Flinn: Yep. Yep. Brian Lumley: So You're right. I'm doing better getting the interest on the money I loaned you than I am bringing it in the backyard. K? And that keeps up with inflation. Historically, inflation's ran 2 to 3%. Lending rates, Okay? In the investment world, we call that a bond. So that's all a bond is. People get freaked out. What's a bond? That sounds confusing. Brian Lumley: It's somebody's loaning somebody money. K? But the difference is instead of me loaning to you money individually and personally, it's the the investor loaning to a municipal. K? Loaning money to a corporate. Walmart sells bonds. You can buy a corporate bond. You can buy one in the city of Springfield. You can buy one for public works sewer project. You can buy a bond for anything and I'm loaning them my money. Brian Lumley: They pay me a stated rate of interest And then at the end of the bond term, I get my principal back. So that's a better way to make money. Now the more risky the lender so if I don't think I'm sorry. The more risk, risky the person you're loaning to, the higher the interest rate. Right. So a junk bond, you hear that high yield bond, they're gonna have more like a 6, 7, 8, 9%. K? Because that means their creditworthiness is not quite as good. So but that's the second way you can make money. Brian Lumley: All throughout history, though, that's not where wealth is created. The most wealth is created, when people instead of burying the backyard or loaning somebody decide to buy an asset. Something that that has intrinsic value. The money on that asset is made when you buy it at this low price, and then at a later date, you sell it at a higher price. And you can do that with gold, silver, guns, Real Estate? Real Estate, Commercial Real Estate, Private Real Estate. Any of those things you can buy. And the idea is to make a profit, and the difference between, you know, the the longer you hold on to it and, obviously, the greater the growth between where you buy and where you sell determines profit level. In the investment world, that's what we call stop. Brian Lumley: So all we're doing within the investment world is we're trying to find companies, k, that we believe will will make money, grow over time. And that historically is where I get that 10, 11%. That's growing your money and doubling it, every 7 years and 7 you know, sometimes more often. I mean, the year after COVID, the market doubled. I mean so there's years. It's much more more quickly than that, but that's how real wealth is created. So that if you are Betty and Bobby Allison, you're a foundation. You know, all the nation's leading, colleges and institutions have, you know, $1,000,000,000 endowments that just live on in perpetuity because these donors and these families that have this generational wealth, it can never be outlived because it's doubling every 6, 7 years. Brian Lumley: And what they do, you know, betting Bobby Allison and and many of these pension funds. So for your listeners, you have ever worked or have, loved ones or spouses that work in, firefighters, police, my wife's a school teacher. Yeah. The unions. My dad and mom, dad's mom was electrical in IBEW, worked at Lilly, Fort Howard, Tula, you know, does different things here in town. And then my father in the Teamsters, they didn't have 401 k's. They had pension plans. So pension plans, endowments, foundations like Betty, Bobby, Allison, they survive on this concept of time value of money doubling these assets and then they spin off of around 4 to 5 percent a year in perpetuity. Brian Lumley: Perpetuity means forever and ever and ever. So real wealth has always been maintained, has always been created by an asset. And that asset is typically ownership in a company. Whether it's Walmart, you know, there's a lot of money at Walmart, JB Hunt money in Bentonville. That was all created through owning equity in in in stock. So I'm not a stock salesman. You know, I don't have anything to sell people other than the concept of doubling your money sooner creates a lot more wealth than doubling your money later. 1 of my earliest large net worth clients, the the husband was into trading stocks in the nineties. Brian Lumley: He was a retired military guy. So didn't have a lot of money. But just by buying a few he was big into the the, tech there's a technology, it was really Southwest Bill, all these tech or these company, phone companies essentially back in the nineties before they were all broken up, the bell breakups, he loosened all these different technology in the nineties, which is a lot different than technology today, he had amassed over $13,000,000 by buying a set of stocks that just did really, really, really well over about a 20 year period. So it's been insane to me to see how wealth has been created during long periods of time with pretty consistent investments. Now he got lucky and bought some stocks that went up enormously more than 10%, which, you know, in retrospect, that family watched a lot of that dwindle when they didn't get out of them before the government broke up a lot of those. So they saw that portfolio cut into about a 3rd in 24 months of regulatory changes, which is again why I'm not a big advocate owning one stock or picking stocks on your own. I like broad based mutual funds that generally just grow and shrink with the economy rather than than buying individual stocks. So that's kind of a long answer to how wealth is created, and that's how those families generally have created it. Tyler Allison: Over the years. Brian Lumley: They could have put it into a savings account. The that family could've, but they wouldn't be doing well, I think Bobby's now since passed away. They wouldn't be able to to Jared Flinn: Donating to a huge sports complexes now that, I mean, thousands of children now get to benefit for years years, which Brian Lumley: is remarkable. Enormously smaller scale. That's how I approach investing. You know, lord willing, I hope my business provides me enough income to to provide for myself and my family, through most all of my life. Everything I'm saving, I look at it as a way to to pass on to my my children, to my grandchildren, whatever, you know, we choose to support. I hope I don't touch that. So from a selfie's perspective, I I wanna pass on as much as I can. I want that to grow as much as I can. Brian Lumley: Why would I wanna make it 1% doubling one more time while I'm not gonna live to be a 130? So I would even double it one more time. I wanna pass on or have as large nest egg as I can to make a big of an impact on on that amount that I leave behind. So I want it to grow no matter what. So that that's kinda, my perspective on why I wanna be aggressive even later on in life. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So good. I think we can keep talking on and on about this, and maybe we'll have to have, like, a part 2 to this. But I have one last very important question, and I think our audience is waiting for this. Like, I hear you guys have some bucking bulls? Brian Lumley: Yeah. Rodeo bulls? Jared Flinn: Talk about that. And I think a few of our guys have been up to you all's waiting. Brian Lumley: They have, bless them. Jared Flinn: These bulls. I bet Joe, if he's so kind, he could probably drop some photos onto this podcast and share some of these pictures. Brian Lumley: Life is, I'm passionate about whatever I do, whether it's business, whether it's having fun, being in adventures. One thing that was always, I was important is, for me and for the kids is to have a fun place for people to have fun experiences and and enjoy life to the fullest. So, like, at our place, we've got a a full on arena cross track. Wow. We've got, arena. We're we and we've for the last 25 years when I was in college and young and stupid, I love doing anything dangerous. So racing dirt bikes, skiing, whatever extreme sport I could get into and got into this little, you know, at the time until 8 seconds came out, bull riding was not a super popular sport. And I was in I was in it, you know, a little bit pre 8 seconds. Brian Lumley: Came to my senses rather early on in my marriage. This is not a sport you can do for much longer. But just absolutely love those animal athletes and made the switch instead of riding them to to raise them. So I started buying cows and, and raising raising these rodeo athletes that that since then have traveled all over the country. We had a a we had a bull, won around at the NFR Jared Flinn: Oh my gosh. Brian Lumley: 2018. We probably had 20 or 30 bulls make it to the PBR in some capacity. We had several bulls at the PBR finals, and, we just absolutely love it. It's it's really similar to raising racehorses. It's you don't teach them anything. It's just genetics. Somebody told Jared Flinn: me, like, a lot of these bulls are actually really docile out out out in the field. Like I Brian Lumley: should get you a video. Well, actually, I think I stuck it up. My son put it up on Instagram. I was on a on a on a horse with a bucket, of cubes, and I had our breed bull, who was a competitive bull himself, eating out of my hand while I was on my my horse. So it's such a shame that somebody got such a poor image of rodeo, in particular bull riding being a harmful or negative interaction with these these animals are the most well taken care of, and they love their job. And to me, it's just so fun to get to experience that. And we don't take them. We sell them. Brian Lumley: You know, you don't we can't just call the PBR and say, hey. I wanna bring some bulls. Obviously, we are the the feeder program for for where many of these contractors get their bulls, but they absolutely love their job. And, so yeah. Peyton, was one of the guys that came out and and got on. He was out there yesterday. We bucked bulls. He was helping me. Brian Lumley: But, yeah, they had some of their friends, a couple of gals feeding, these bulls out of their hand. So it's, it is a fun fun thing to to be able to continue to be involved in the sport. Who knows? I might get back into riding someday. Jared Flinn: Yeah. I, when I was in high school, we had an indoor arena, Brian Lumley: Oh. Jared Flinn: And, they would bring in these farm bulls, convert them into bucking bull, I guess. But, yeah, you could pay I think it was $20 and sign a death wave. And you'd get on a bull. I still have footage of riding this one bull. Brian Lumley: That is Jared Flinn: so awesome. They called smash, and, he didn't live up to his name with me, but, yeah. Brian Lumley: You don't have to sign a waiver to do it. It's not worth doing. Right? That's right. Jared Flinn: So I really enjoyed it. Well, Brian, man, I enjoyed this conversation, I think, and I hopefully our audience did. I know they did. I think this is one of those subjects, like, it's kinda sticky. You know, it's kinda it's tough to kinda talk about, and, it can be a little sensitive. I was gonna joke and say it's like talking to your insurance guys since we have an insurance agency. It's like it's just something you don't like to do, but it's super important. And we know that, man, if you plant these seeds today, they can pay dividends. Jared Flinn: It's literally dividends down the road. And as a business owner myself to other business owners out there, I feel it's my mission to help other people know about these things. I learn a lot and selfishly, I get a lot of value out of this myself. But, man, if we can be a light to those out there and let other people know how to better themselves and invest right to pass that along to their children, their employees, generations down the road. I think that's what God's called us to do. For people that wanna know, I think you, you told us earlier that others can reach out to you. Brian Lumley: Absolutely. Yeah. So So we were happy to help any way we can. I always tell people we kinda have a a for profit side of our business and a non for profit, and they're both equally important to us. So if any of your listeners have an organization, that a business where they're thinking maybe a workplace retirement plan might fit the what they need, call us. We're happy to help you set that up. We're happy to help you give you advice. If, you really desire to have a local person there, let us help find you one. Brian Lumley: K. K? A lot of times, we will help people find somebody in their area who's competent and and knows what they're doing. But, again, we work remote. These days, remote is is kind of the way a lot is done. So we're happy to help. If instead, they just wanna know, man, what's a good mutual fund for me to buy? Where's a good place to open up an a Roth IRA? What we will help with that all day long. Please, however is easiest for you, attach my email, Ty's email. Let them reach out to us. Brian Lumley: So even if we are not, you're not at the point to set up or talk about, you just wanna know am I saving enough? We'll give you some planning tools, some stuff to to help your listeners be able to have some confidence on something that most people lack confidence on. So I guess at the end of the day, if I could help anybody with what we do to feel a little bit of confidence about whatever amount that they are saving, that that's when we feel like we've done kinda what God's called us to do is is bring some clarity to something that a lot of people feel really confused about, Jared Flinn: including myself sometimes. Super well said. We will put Brian and Ty's information in the comments below. So if you're listening to this or watching it on YouTube, you should be able to drop down. We'll put their website on there so you can just jump down and get the information. Brian, man, god bless you. Thank you so much, man. I loved, when you came by a couple weeks ago, wanted to have you on here and I know other people are gonna truly benefit from this. Jared Flinn: So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Tanner Batten : Tanner, what'd you think of the episode? Man, I thought it was great. As you said, like, this is a very complex topic. There's a lot of information out there. You do a Google, you know, there it can be overwhelming. But I think it's great to have someone like Brian, who's an expert, come in and, as you said earlier, explain really complex things in simple terms and also in terms that apply to our audience. So not just broadly, but, like, specifically for a trucking company, for an owner operator. So I think that's super awesome. Tyler Allison: Yeah. One thing that I liked, and I don't want to spread any misinformation, but like one thing that Brian brings up is like, hey, if you do it legally, it's good to avoid taxes. I like how, you know, he puts in there legally. Yeah. I know I think it's no brainer. Nobody likes paying taxes. There's so many taxes, and the more we can do for businesses, to get take advantage of those different tax breaks, the better. But, I thought it was really good and just, I mean, so many owner operators may be getting into the space and becoming new business owners without actually, you know, thinking about all this. Tyler Allison: So it's yeah. It's just a good reminder. One of the reasons I want to bring you on, Tanner, is because, you run our whole permitting entity, and so you're seeing a lot of new business owners come into this space. So what's kind of your take and what are you seeing? Tanner Batten : Yeah, no, I think, yeah, I think all this is super important and it really reminds me of conversations I'm having every single day of, you know, if you've even if you've been driving for a long time, when you go out on your own, your new authority, right, it is starting your own business. And there are a lot of steps to it, you know? So I've talked with guys from everything of, you know, maybe how are you gonna set up your company, you know, to, hey, here's how much capital you probably need between insurance, between equipment, between, you know, how long before you actually get running and get paid. And so it really is, you know, summarizing a business plan, thinking long term, cause it can be easy to just be like, well, I'm just gonna, you know, go out on my own and everything's going to be amazing, but you know, it's important to have a plan and realize, you know, the costs and everything. But I also think it's encouraging that if you take the time, you do things right, there is a way to, you know, grow into prosperity and do really well. Yep. But yeah, it goes hand in hand with, with the permitting side of things, with setting up the new authorities. So that way you're setting yourself up for long term success. Tyler Allison: Yeah. And you've been recently, I mean, you've been setting up a lot of new authorities, not only for drivers, but I mean, previous carriers that are exploring the brokerage side too, right? Jared Flinn: Yep. Yep. Tanner Batten : A little bit of everything. So, yeah, we have everything from people who are brand new to the trucking world, to guys who've been driving for 20 years, leased on or as a company driver going on their own to, yeah, established trucking companies who want to, further expand their business into the brokerage side. So we've seen really people on all ends of that spectrum. And so, yeah, each person may need a little bit different, but these basic principles of finance, of business planning, they apply throughout. And it's just cool to see how we can help our customers in every stage of that journey. Tyler Allison: Awesome. Well, if there's anybody out there listening who want to inquire about bulk loads permitting, I mean, we do multiple different things, but like you said, cover new authorities. IFTDS, I know we do some other things too. That's your space, not mine. But if you wanna get a hold of Tanner, you can simply just click on the permitting tab, on the BulkLoads website or on the app, and you can get a hold of him. You can also email him at tannerbulkloads.com. Get directly with him. Tanner, if you wanna share your number as well. Tanner Batten : Yeah. Yeah. My direct number is 417-262-5511. And even if it's you know, you're not sure if it's something we offer or maybe it's not something we offer just yet, call, ask, and if we don't know the answer, we can find out. We have a trusted network of people, and I'm willing to wait on hold for the FMCSA, for you. Yes, Tyler Allison: sir. That's hey, that's enough value for me right there. Awesome. Well, yeah, besides that, we got some cool new things. Summer's right around the corner. Starting to some weather. I'm tired of the rain. You know, it's good for our industry, farming, but I'm ready to move past all of it and get really get some hot weather here. Tyler Allison: We do have some new summer hats that we just got in. We got 500 hats that we just got in. Couple different colors. I think they all look really cool. So if you want a hat free of charge, comment on this YouTube video, or you can simply message us at podcast at bulkloads.com, and we will send you one free charge. Tanner, have you got one yet? I have a Tanner Batten : lot of bulk loads hats, but I've not yet gotten one of these brand new ones, so I may have to Tyler Allison: snag one here. Yeah, I've got too many. I've got so many bulk loads hats. Tanner Batten : Yeah. Tyler Allison: I need to just start trading them out. Like, you know, one from like 2018, just bring an old one and start trading them out. They go quick. Tanner Batten : They go quick. Anytime we get them, they don't last long. Tyler Allison: Right. Other than the summer hats, we do, like I said in the intro, the summer t shirts, so be on the lookout for those. As always, guys, we do have a prayer channel that I wanna remind you about, prayer at bulklets.com. We have been recently seeing, more and more of those come in, which we are glad people are taking advantage. We want to pray for you here. We have a team that goes over, goes over all the requests and actually prays individually for each one. We actually have it hanging up in our break room for all members to pass by and pray over those. So if you have one, you know, we're not gonna spill it out to anyone outside this office. Tyler Allison: It stays confidential within bulk loads. So definitely send those in. We wanna pray for you. I know there's so much so much stuff going on, especially with weather, tornadoes, fires, just disease, sickness, all that stuff. So we want to pray for you. Yep. Speaking of, Tanner, if you don't mind, you'll go ahead and close today. Tanner Batten : Yeah. Yeah. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you that, we serve you a big God. And we thank you that even though there are all kinds of things going on that you are in control. So, God, we just lift up our members, Lord, all these people who are running their businesses, god. We pray for financial success, stability. We pray for safety as they're out on the road. Tanner Batten : And God, we just pray that here at Bulk Loads and beyond, Lord, we would honor you in everything we do. So thank you for your good gifts. Thank you that you're with us each day in your name. Amen. Tyler Allison: Amen. Alright. Well, before we jump out of here, guys, if you don't mind on the bottom left hand corner, just go ahead and click that subscribe button. There should be one waiting for you. Whenever you hit subscribe, this just turns on notifications for you. So whenever we post a new episode, you are first to, you're first notified so you can go and click on it and you can watch it there along with all of our other content. So, we appreciate you guys listening and subscribing. Thank you and God bless.