The Investor Symposium Is Back: Here’s Why You Should Be There

On October 29th, we are hosting our fifth annual Investor Symposium, and this year’s theme is “Designed for Life.”

It is a phrase that captures what financial planning is actually for: not hitting a number for its own sake, but using your resources to build the experiences, relationships, and life you want. In this episode, Chris and Beau (who will be returning as our MC!) highlight three sessions that are going to be featured at the event, explain why the questions being covered matter more than most people realize, and make the case for why this year is a particularly important moment to get the answers right.

Questions This Episode Answers

What is Morton Wealth's Investor Symposium?

What sessions will be covered at this year's symposium?

Why should I attend the Investor Symposium this year specifically?

What does "Designed for Life" mean as a financial planning philosophy?

What makes this event different from a standard financial education seminar?

Transcript

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00:00:32:18 - 00:00:51:23
Speaker 1
This is a really cool episode. We are going to be promoting our annual investor symposium. It's on October 29th. The theme is called design for life, which is really the purpose of what we all save and invest for. It's how do we use those dollars, those resources to design the life and the experiences that we want to have?

00:00:52:00 - 00:01:10:22
Speaker 2
I was just talking about this with another colleague of ours, Kevin, and we're like, really at the heart of it. What is what is Morton Wealth so different from other advisors? And at the end of the day, as we get so passionate and excited about our clients living life to the fullest, that's it. Like, our hearts are truly in it.

00:01:10:22 - 00:01:26:10
Speaker 2
And I think the symposium, when you go to it and you feel the energy in the room, I mean, this is me trying to be cool. I'm so excited about the symposium because it really emulates that heartbeat of Morton Wealth getting designed for life giving, getting the most life out of your wealth.

00:01:26:11 - 00:01:28:12
Speaker 1
Are you going to be our flight attendant again this year?

00:01:28:13 - 00:01:45:16
Speaker 2
I think I have to choose a different character because, you know. Yeah, something like that. But yeah, last year I was the the flight attendant slash moderator. And I think the line that stuck with everybody was, I know you have a lot of options of investor symposiums to choose from. Thank you for choosing Morton Wealth this week.

00:01:45:18 - 00:02:03:02
Speaker 1
The design for life though, kind of really hits home to me. I've worked at a few other institutions Morgan Stanley, fidelity, and I noticed, at least at some of those places, some of the advisors, when they get posed with a question from a client like, hey, should I take some money and buy of second home or do something?

00:02:03:03 - 00:02:29:10
Speaker 1
The answer was almost always know you should. You should keep the money with me. We'll have better returns and you should just rent something as opposed to buy it. I had a fun conversation last week with a client who lives in a very hot part of this country, Las Vegas, and the summers are just not fun. And he was talking to me about the fact that they rented a place in Park City, Utah in the over the summer and the experiences that they had with their kids.

00:02:29:10 - 00:03:02:02
Speaker 1
And he asked me like, what would it be a smart decision to maybe look at purchasing a second place in Park City? And he tried to justify it, like, I think I could rent it out a little bit and help absorb the costs. But the net answer was, yeah, you can afford it, and is it going to create those experiences and be a place that brings the family together during the summer, during the winters, that's going to bring you closer because as you know, when your kids age and they go different directions, you're not coming together as often as you might like.

00:03:02:03 - 00:03:05:15
Speaker 1
And so that's the real value to me about this design for life.

00:03:05:16 - 00:03:21:00
Speaker 2
I think that just so perfectly describes the conversations that we have. It's like, as long as the math works and you're not making a terrible decision, what's best for you, what's best for your family. And those are the exciting conversations that we get to have.

00:03:21:01 - 00:03:40:11
Speaker 1
So a few sessions that we're going to talk about, you know, at the symposium and a couple of them I'm really excited about. But one, one topic really comes up as it relates to this whole design for life. And how much is enough? Having a session where people can help better define what their target net worth would be.

00:03:40:11 - 00:03:57:12
Speaker 1
And the reason why we're having this conversation is because everybody's life and situation is different in the amount of money that Bo needs to save. And in terms of having the retirement life that you want is going to be different than the life that Chris wants to have. Even though we're about the same age, I'm a little bit older than you.

00:03:57:14 - 00:03:58:09
Speaker 2
We live in.

00:03:58:11 - 00:04:18:23
Speaker 1
We live in a same area. We like to do similar things. It might be easy for us to compare each other and be like, well, both save this much and I've saved this much, so I must be on track, right? Our lives might be different. You may need $2 million. I may need six. Defining your target net worth is a very important component about this whole design for.

00:04:18:23 - 00:04:39:00
Speaker 2
Life, right? And I think that, again, if you don't have this personal relationship with an advisor who knows you and what makes you tick, you're going to read these articles on all of these publications that are like, I have $1.5 million. Am I ready to retire? Just throwing everybody into the same bucket and trying to create some sort of algorithm that tells you when you can retire?

00:04:39:01 - 00:04:41:20
Speaker 2
It kind of irks us as financial advisors.

00:04:41:22 - 00:05:01:17
Speaker 1
Look, I have a client I've been working with. I've been in this industry about 17 years. I've been working with her for 15 years, and she had a really good paying job that came with a couple of pensions in the entertainment industry, and she was reading these articles saying, you can't retire unless you have at least $3.5 million.

00:05:01:19 - 00:05:39:09
Speaker 1
And she was dead set on that needing to be true. And fortunately, she she saved those dollars and then eventually retired. She's been retired for 12 or 13 years now. She's not taking $1 from her portfolio. It's now over $10 million today. And to think that because she listened to that article that didn't realize that she had a couple of pensions and Social Security and a house paid off and lives a modest lifestyle, she probably worked 5 to 7 years longer in a very high stress job because of an article, but not because of what what she really needed.

00:05:39:09 - 00:06:01:07
Speaker 2
Just in case people missed what you just said, I want to I want to say it back to you. She has taken $0 from her portfolio, so the article should have said, if you're this person, you need $0 in retirement in order to retire because of your amazing pensions that you have. So this is everybody's got a different story, everybody's got different needs and everybody's got a different situation.

00:06:01:07 - 00:06:18:22
Speaker 1
And it all comes down to really like, what's your target net worth? Well what are your expenses? What is that lifestyle that you want to live cost. And that helps you figure out the number right. One of the things that can get away, that can get in the way of your ability to retire. And when I think about retirement, there's really four things you can do.

00:06:18:23 - 00:06:40:05
Speaker 1
Three of them are not much fun. You can save more, you can spend less, you can work longer, or you can invest smarter. So one of the reasons why many people come to us and want to come to the symposium to learn, it's because not all risk is created equal. And how do they build a portfolio that knows the difference in terms of risk but also generating income?

00:06:40:05 - 00:06:48:10
Speaker 1
So that's a session that we're going to have as well around designing a portfolio kind of to build on top of designing or or defining your target network.

00:06:48:11 - 00:07:04:12
Speaker 2
I love it. And just, you know, for the sake of of the listeners right now, we're going to have topics on so many different areas of your financial life. We're going to talk about marriage and money. I'm going to be interviewing my therapist at one point of like the psychological ramifications of how we get to our money mindsets.

00:07:04:13 - 00:07:21:18
Speaker 2
I mean, it's going to span a really wide range of things. But I think the the focus for today is we want to talk about like, the real question that most investors want to answer is, how much do I need? Yeah. And then the question is how do I get there? And then the question is how do I get there without making massive mistakes along the way.

00:07:21:19 - 00:07:47:06
Speaker 1
Correct. And so we've got three sessions that we're sort of highlighting as part of this symposium episode. We've got the defining your target net worth. How do I build a portfolio that realizes that not all risks are created equal? And then every generation has a bubble. Here's what what why they never see it coming. You know, you had the 1990s, you had the financial crisis, you had inflation of the 70s.

00:07:47:06 - 00:08:06:13
Speaker 1
You even had the the the Black Monday in 1987. We're all faced with these market downturns. And here are some things to pay attention to, to realize whether or not we're in a place of euphoria and unforeseen risks, but also how to properly invest and manage those risks as well.

00:08:06:14 - 00:08:24:18
Speaker 2
Right? And I mean, I'm particularly excited for that conversation I get to have. I'm basically just going to interview Bruce Tyson and get as much wisdom from him as possible for that. But starting with the the conversation on what's the right number, we're going to dive pretty deep into how do you ask yourself the right questions to to get to that answer?

00:08:24:23 - 00:08:49:01
Speaker 2
So that's going to be really exciting. Like we kind of already talked about. And then secondly, we're going to have a session on how do I think about risk? I think this is something that most people don't understand. And even if they do understand, it comes it's a little bit fraught with even if you think that you know how much risk you should take when the rubber meets the road, and that risk actually comes back to bite you in the.

00:08:49:02 - 00:08:51:09
Speaker 2
But how do you react to that?

00:08:51:10 - 00:09:12:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. Look, diversification means a lot of different things. Most people think about it just from the lens of, oh, stocks versus bonds. Diversification is so, so much more than that. It's not only the types of investments that you have, but what accounts do you have money in and how do you invest in each particular account to help manage the risk?

00:09:12:09 - 00:09:16:18
Speaker 1
Right. I mean, if I'm 45, 46 years old, I'm 46.

00:09:16:20 - 00:09:18:17
Speaker 2
If hypothetically.

00:09:18:18 - 00:09:41:15
Speaker 1
I was 46 years old and I had a lot of money in a retirement account that I can't touch until call it age 59.5, I've got a 1415 year time frame before I can even access that account penalty free. That's right. My time frame for how to invest that is longer. And if I have a Roth bucket, a bucket that's a tax free money that may be even longer than that.

00:09:41:15 - 00:09:48:09
Speaker 1
So I want to put different investments and assets from a diversification and a risk standpoint in those different buckets as well.

00:09:48:10 - 00:10:00:00
Speaker 2
You told me a great story about a client of yours that, you know, real estate is one of the ways that we diversify and take and take calculated risk in a way. But not all risk is just numeric, is it?

00:10:00:01 - 00:10:00:15
Speaker 1
No.

00:10:00:16 - 00:10:02:06
Speaker 2
It isn't it. Tell us the story.

00:10:02:07 - 00:10:25:10
Speaker 1
Look, growing up, I was lucky. I grew up down in San Diego and my family had a membership to Del Mar Country Club, and I got to play golf there. It was part of a company benefit that my dad got working for Callaway Golf, but at the end of the day, I was exposed to some very successful and wealthy people in North County, San Diego, and one of the guys who was in his early 50s and he had retired at a young age, and he played a lot of golf and went to the beach.

00:10:25:10 - 00:10:40:08
Speaker 1
But his retirement plan, on paper, just looked so simple. He owned a few single family home rental properties and he was just collecting rent checks. He had some other savings that he had saved up, but he was just collecting rent and enjoying his life. And then all of.

00:10:40:08 - 00:10:45:01
Speaker 2
A sudden, I mean, the wisest investment you could possibly make, Southern California real estate, you know.

00:10:45:02 - 00:11:03:05
Speaker 1
You're a few miles from the beach, southern, you know, North County, San Diego. I mean, it's prime real estate. Well, then the financial crisis hit, and the people that were renting out the single family homes, two of the three, they lost their jobs and they could not pay rent. And it took him almost two years to be able to get them out of that.

00:11:03:05 - 00:11:26:09
Speaker 1
To get new renters in, he had to spend down his other personal savings because he didn't have the income coming in. So on paper, you think, oh, invested in real estate owned single family homes and one of the best zip codes in America. Renters. This this person must be said, well, something unforeseen happen. And then all of a sudden, his life had changed.

00:11:26:09 - 00:11:42:10
Speaker 1
He had to draw down on his liquid assets. And eventually, when he got new renters in, he had to sell one, I believe, one of the properties, in order to have the life that he wanted to continue to maintain. So when he thought that he was safe and diversified, he actually wasn't.

00:11:42:10 - 00:11:56:00
Speaker 2
And also just the the idea of having to have those conversations with those renters of like, hey, I know you lost your job, but you can't live here anymore. Like, that's a that's a different level of risk that you don't necessarily think about when you get into certain investments.

00:11:56:01 - 00:12:06:01
Speaker 1
Correct? I mean, I love real estate, but, you know, again, not all real estate is created equal. It's not always a math thing. There are unforeseen things that that can happen that that can bring in more risk.

00:12:06:06 - 00:12:29:01
Speaker 2
Well, and that brings us to the the conversation of every generation goes through this cycle of bubbles building and bubbles bursting. And that's that's the one of the sessions that we're going to have. And this goes back hundreds of years. We're talking about the real estate crisis of 2006 to 2012. That was a massive bubble that that that burst and you knew it looking back.

00:12:29:02 - 00:12:48:13
Speaker 2
You didn't know it when you were in it, but looking back, you're like, oh, everybody's buying houses with 0% down and they don't have any jobs. These ninja loans, no income, no job, no assets. And yet you're getting mortgages. Obviously, that was a lot of speculative fervor. But it's it gives us a little bit of peace knowing that this happens all the time throughout history.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:13:19
Speaker 2
And it gives us a lot of humility, knowing that the more intelligent you are does not help you avoid these these bubbles. It's like wisdom and intelligence become do different things. And Bruce and I are going to talk about. Isaac Newton, who is, I think categorically the smartest scientist in all of history with the most consequential resume. And he was not immune to the South Sea bubble of 1720s, and he lost his entire net worth.

00:13:13:20 - 00:13:34:11
Speaker 2
I mean, you're in good company if you get caught up in a bubble. Every generation does. And we're going to talk about how to avoid getting caught up in the FOMO so that that number that you're aiming for, I want to retire with that number. I want to get my the most life out of my wealth. Don't get off taken off course by a bunch of FOMO with whatever bubble of the day.

00:13:34:15 - 00:13:53:10
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that you brought up fear of missing out is one of the things that causes bubbles. Herd mentality, overconfidence, you know, frequently push prices higher. I can only think of a handful of things these days. And what's going on in this environment where that FOMO and that herd mentality is definitely real. So looking forward to the conversation.

00:13:53:10 - 00:14:03:21
Speaker 1
But if you're excited, as we are about October 29th, it's our annual investor symposium. The theme of it is designed for life. Please join bow and I and we look forward to seeing you there.