TRANSCRIPT
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#31 - Navigating Retirement Planning: Essential Tips for Women with Linda Lingo
Introduction
Eric Blake: Welcome to another episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast. I am your host, Eric Blake. I'm a practicing retirement planner with over 25 years of experience, and the founder of Blake Wealth Management. On this show, our goal is to provide education, resources, and supports to empower women to live the retirement you deserve. Whether you're single by choice, divorced, widowed, or if you're just simply ready to take control of your financial future, this show is for you.
To listen to past episodes, ask a question, or maybe even suggest a topic for the show, you can go to www.thesimplyretirementpodcast.com. We're also available on YouTube at the Simply Retirement Podcast. On today's episode, we have another very special guest, and I'm really excited for this conversation. Back on episode 29, I was joined by Wealth Manager, Lindsay Monahan, where we discussed specific suggestions or ideas for women looking to hire the right financial advisor for you and your specific needs.
What if you don't need a financial advisor at all? What if you need a retirement coach? Joining us today is going to be Linda Lingo. Linda is a CPA and financial life coach, with a mission to help professional women planning for their golden years to retire with confidence and financial security. With over 30 years of experience in the finance industry, Linda has helped countless women create a clear retirement plan that provides them with comfortable and stress-free life after work. Linda Lingo, welcome to the Simply Retirement Podcast.
Linda Lingo: Thank you, Eric. I'm really excited to be here.
Eric Blake: I'm excited. This has been in the works for a little bit, so I'm glad we finally got the opportunity to connect. I think this is going to be a very informative and educational episode, so I'm looking forward to it myself.
Linda Lingo: Absolutely. Same here. Let's have fun, and-
Eric Blake: Absolutely.
Linda Lingo: ... Share some info.
Eric Blake: That works. I definitely want you to be able to have the opportunity to share your story, because I think it's very interesting how you got to where you're at today, but I think one of the things that unfortunately, I think one of the many ways that our industry has failed people period, but specifically women, and helping them understand what's out there and what their resources are, but it's just not, our industry just hasn't made it clear what exactly a financial advisor or a financial planner actually does.
I thought that might be a good place to start and just say, "Hey, what is the difference between a financial advisor or financial planner and a financial life coach or a retirement coach?" I thought we could start there if that's okay with you.
Linda’s Journey
Linda Lingo: I think that's a great place to start, because I agree there's a lot of confusion. People tend to lump us all together, which is fine, because I've been a financial advisor, and so I get it. I think real simply, my understanding is that the financial advisor, which like I said, is what I used to do, is a person who not only is helping a person with a retirement plan, but is also doing the investing for them.
They are, as you well know, because that's you, taking the money, advising them on how best to invest it, giving their risk tolerance, given their timeframe, so that they can meet their financial goals. Like I said, I used to do that. I got kind of tired of the investing side, but I love the coaching side, and that's what I do now. As a financial, I added life coach, just because I got a life, a lot of life, I've lived a lot of life, that's what I'm trying to say.
I help primarily women who are planning for retirement in the next 10 years or so or who have recently retired. In general, coaches can be pretty specific as to who they want to help and how they want to help them. I help women put together retirement plans, specific financial goals on how to get there, put a plan in place to achieve those goals, and then women who are close to retiring, I help them actually go from growing their investments to how to withdraw from those investments, how to finance their retirement, what's the best way to do that.
I got to tell you, my CPA background is incredibly helpful, because then I can help them from the tax perspective too. I don't do their taxes, but at least we can talk about the pros and cons of which investments are going to be taxed and how. Hopefully, that's... I don't do any of the investing anymore, and coaches don't do the investing, so that's the primary difference.
Eric Blake: Was there anything outside of just the investing that kind of maybe burned you out on the financial side, advisor side of things?
Linda Lingo: Well, I think you have so many restrictions, because you've got FINRA, and you've got SEC, and as a financial coach, I am not limited by those restrictions. As far as my social posts, I have a lot more leeway as to how I can help women, what I can say. That has given me a lot of freedom as to the information that I can provide.
Eric Blake: Perfect. If you don't mind just sharing a little bit more about your background, how you even got into the financial services world in the first place. I think I've heard a little beginning. I've heard part of this a couple of different times. I think it's a really cool story. Just share a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.
Linda Lingo: Sure. Well, just big picture, I am a CPA, and I have an MBA in finance. I did that from my first 20 years I guess, of career. Then I had my second child later in life. I had some time off, and I actually had my appointment with my financial advisor. I had a financial advisor, and he was helping me on investing, how to invest it, and it was my annual review. I had my statements, and I went in prepared. I had a couple questions.
We sat down, and sorry, Eric, and I'm not throwing all male advisors under the bus, so to speak, but I will this one.
Eric Blake: Throw away.
Linda Lingo: It was a typical, this was back in the day, so a very dark, male, desk, deep walnut, and he's on one side, I'm on the other. I had my papers out, I'm an organized person, and so we chit-chatted. Then I started asking my question, and he couldn't answer it. Okay, so this is so female. My first thought was, "It must be me. I must be asking the wrong question, or I must be asking it the wrong way." It's like, "Okay." I reworded, I ask it again, and he couldn't answer it. I'm thinking, "Man, I am really dumb. I am asking this so..."
I totally turned it around and asked it another way, and he got really frustrated with me, because he still couldn't answer it. He goes, and he leans over the desk, and he puts his hand on my arm and he goes, "You know, honey, if you just do what I tell you to do, you will be okay." Now, okay, so I will tell you-
Eric Blake: I don't want to respond. I'm not...
Linda Lingo: I'm not going to say on the show what I was thinking, because you'd have to bleep it out, but...
Eric Blake: You can cuss on this show. It's okay.
Linda Lingo: FU. The hairs on my neck, I slowly pull my hand out from under his, I'm gathering my paper, and I realized we weren't going to get any further. Then I say, "Thank you." I'm thinking, "What the fuck? Why am I thanking him for totally messing with me?" I'm walking out the door, and I thought, "I can do this job better than he did, number one. Number two, I never want another woman to have that kind of an experience," because I'm smart, I'm intelligent. I knew when I walked out of that door, it wasn't me, it was him.
He couldn't answer the questions because he was very limited in his knowledge. I thought, "I can make a better financial advisor than he can." At 49, I looked up, what does it take to be a financial advisor? I'm not saying this is the right reason to become a financial advisor so you can prove somebody is not smart. I did. I became a financial, at age 50, I opened my office, and I became a financial advisor.
It was one of the most rewarding things I ever did. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, because back in the day, you built your own clientele. I did, I built it, but I learned so many valuable lessons from that interaction that are just seared into my brain. One of them was when I met with a client, and I still do it today, until we did everything on Zoom, but I never sat across the desk from a client. I had a round table, and I always sat next to my client.
I wanted them to know we were on the same team, we were on the same side, that I wanted to help them define their goals, and then we were going to come up with a way to achieve it and work together. It was very much more of a collaborative atmosphere. As a financial advisor, I loved it. '07, '08 was not the greatest time...
Eric Blake: No, not at all.
Linda Lingo: ... To be a financial advisor, but I did it, and I'm very proud of that. After 10 years and having many 500 plus clients, I decided the investing was fine and I enjoyed it, but it really wasn't my favorite part. I decided, I want to do what I really enjoyed doing. That was the conversations, and putting together the plans, and helping people understand what is investing, what is diversification, what is risk and reward?
These are all terms that we throw around as financial advisors. So many times, the clients, especially women, don't know what questions to ask, and they don't want to seem uninformed or that they don't understand it. Women will just sit there and nod their heads. It's like, "Okay," and they're thinking, "I don't have a clue what they're talking about, but I'm not going to act stupid. I am just going to shake my head, nod my head, and then I'm going to either talk to my girlfriends or find somebody else."
I think the statistic is something like if it's a couple, and the husband passes away first, something like over half of the women will find a different financial advisor, because they never had a connection. I think that's really a shame. I think it's changing, but I think it's a shame.
Empowering Women
Eric Blake: Actually, depending on where you look, because I've used that same statistic, it's actually somewhere between 70 to 80% of women will change financial advisors within a year of losing their husband, regardless of the reason, whether it's divorced, or widowed, or whatever the case might be, they will change financial advisors.
Linda Lingo: Because there wasn't the connection, right. Yeah.
Eric Blake: Again, I still feel like it's such a failure on our side of things, because you know that the traditional financial advisor is a 55 plus year old white guy. Really, it's one of those things that I feel like when I decided I really wanted to focus on working with women, that I knew I had to work on the way I communicate, and how I do things, and the patience.
I've always taken that belief that if you don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, or why you have or own what you own, you're not going to stick with it the long term. If you don't really understand it, and you're just being told that this is the best thing for you, at some point, you're going to start questioning that, and you're going to go a different direction, which also could be worse if you don't know what you're doing or you don't feel like you know what you're doing.
Linda Lingo: Exactly. I think that's a really good point, Eric, is that as a financial advisor, what I found was that I was spending more time educating my women clients because that is what they needed. They didn't always realize that, but once we had conversations and I educated them, then, like you said, they felt confident in making the investment decision, and then they would stick with it. Educated women, when it comes to investing, when they understand the investment, they actually make better investors than men.
They don't make good day traders, they don't like that, I don't know, frustration, fear, whatever, but when they understand their investment, they will stick with it. When you have a nice diversified portfolio, which means don't put all your eggs in one basket, it just makes sense. I did spend a lot of time educating women, and that's why I decided to leave the investing to others and just to go into more of the coaching.
I do do a lot of educating while in coaching, and there's so many different styles, and that's the nice thing about being a financial coach is we have a lot of latitude, and our personalities can come out. I have a pretty big personality, so I enjoy that.
Financial Education
Eric Blake: Well, and I think that's just such, again, a big part of the misunderstanding, and where we failed in the financial services world is thinking that a financial advisor just does investments, and that's not necessarily the case, at least that's not for our practice. We do a lot of the tax planning, we do a lot of the retirement income planning, so I'm sure there's a lot of crossover in terms of what you do and what we do.
I think the biggest key, and what I hope to take out of this conversation is, find the right person for you whether you want a coach, or financial advisor, or financial planner, find the person that you sync with that you feel like understands you, and communicates with you. If you need education, does that person provide the type of education you're looking for?
Linda Lingo: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Many of my clients also have a financial advisor, but don't feel like they're getting the coaching, the education, or the financial planning, which is unfortunate. Then other clients of mine are really confident in their investing, and can either go with more of a do-it-yourself type approach, which is fine, either way. I think the important thing is to know the individual, and that the individual knows themselves and feels confident in whatever approach they decide to take.
Eric Blake: Awesome. Let's get into just a couple of additional questions, and I think just starting with the big one, why is it so important for women to save for their own retirement?
Linda Lingo: Oh, my god, I think I need like three days.
Eric Blake: We got like 20 minutes, so we'll do the best we can.
Linda Lingo: Okay. Absolutely. Well, first of all, women live longer, so on average, five years, so we've got that one. Because of that, then you've got more probably healthcare costs in retirement. Like you said, more than half of the women going into retirement are single, either widowed, divorced, whatever. They do have to plan for themselves. That's a huge one. The other one is because of probably their pay history. Unfortunately, we still have pay inequality. Women are, on average, this is white women, are making 80 cents on the dollar.
If you're talking about black women or Latinos, it gets worse, which is so unfortunate, so unfortunate. Then you have the career breaks, so women taking time off to have a child. Then on average, I was shocked, and I want to read the statistic, because it was like, "Oh, my gosh." It can affect as much as, they could be getting 80% less social security benefits just because the time out of the workforce, of course, they're going to be getting less pay because of they're out of the workforce. That's for childbearing.
Then typically, statistically, girls are the ones who typically take time off to take care of their parents. Then you've got probably in your later earning years, which tend to be your higher earning years, you may be out of the workforce. I think on average, it was something like, you're going to give up over $135,000 in social security benefits because you are spending on average three to five years taking care of your parents. There's a lot of factors, your basic pay inequality, taking time off to have kids, and then taking time off to be a caregiver.
Unfortunately, and that's the women's side of it, and that's why it is so important for us to be prepared, and then divorce. Gray divorce is on the rise, and that means anyone divorcing after age 50. I can speak to that because that happened to me. You might have your life planned, and I think retirement, you've got this wonderful plan I'll put in place, and the retirement happens at age 60, 65, 70. All of a sudden, you've got half if you're lucky of what you thought you were going to have. That's just some of the big points, the major points on why we have to plan for our own retirement.
Eric Blake: Well, and that's why one of the things I wanted to do with this show when I first started, we're almost, by the way, almost a year, almost to our year anniversary.
Linda Lingo: Yay!
Eric Blake: Actually, by the time this comes out, we'll be past that year anniversary, but I wanted to make sure that we were bringing those types of resources, people like yourself, but also resources around caregiving, and what the implications are. We've done a couple of different episodes specifically on social security and being aware of what the implications are if you've missed time; making sure you understand your spousal benefits, or, as you've talked about with the great divorce, ex-spousal benefits, and survivor benefits.
Both ex-spouse and spouse survivor benefits become just so important. That's one of the very few income sources that we all have, specifically women, that is guaranteed for life, and also will increase every year because of cost of living. Now, whether regardless of your feelings about social security, and that's another show, but it is there. If you've got it, you got to make sure you're maximizing it, or what I call optimizing, because that can be different. Those two concepts can be different.
Linda Lingo: Right.
Collaborative Coaching
Eric Blake: One of the things, you shared a couple of potential topics that we could discuss, and I think this kind of ties into what we just talked about around planning for retirement, but you talked about the four intentional steps for a financial plan. Would you mind walking through what those four steps are?
Linda Lingo: Yeah, so when I coach women, I use the VIIP method, which I developed. Step one is knowing your values, and values need to be linked to your goals in order for you to actually carry forward and accomplish those goals. We talk about values and money mindset. A lot of women come into coaching with a very scarcity mindset or fear mindset, and so we do a lot on mindset and values, because that's the foundation.
That's one thing I don't think, I would say that's a big differentiator between what I do and financial advisors, they're much more money-focused, and I would say I am much more mind-focused. That's where we start with the V. The first I is what I call the intentional money spending plan. I don't use the word budget. I actually hate the word budget. I find it very constricting, very restraining, and it just makes me want to push back. I use an intentional money spending and saving plan.
I help clients actually save out of debt if that's an issue. I like the word intentional, because it gives you a sense of control, and being able to set up your money buckets in a way that serves you. We do that, so we do a lot of work around that. Then the second I is investing, and so I do a lot of education on investing, talk about the basics of diversifying, and risk, and allocation, and all those technical terms. We break it down, so it's very easy to understand.
Then the P is protect, to protect what you've worked so hard to build. That's where they leave a legacy, either both now and later in life. I'm not an attorney, so I don't do any of the legal documents or anything like that, but we have the conversations, and they draw up a plan, and go from there. That's my strategy that I use with my clients is the VIIP.
Eric Blake: What I think my mindset is, especially when working with women, is such an important factor. Do you know, I think you probably do, do you know Ellen Rogin?
Linda Lingo: Oh, yeah.
Eric Blake: She was on episode 16, and she just came out with her, at that time, had just come out with her new book, Messages from Money.
Linda Lingo: Yeah.
Eric Blake: We actually gave away a hundred copies of that signed by Ellen, which was awesome, at our International Women's Day event that we had in March. We got so much great feedback, and actually, I started giving that. When do we have a client that goes through our new perspective client process, that's one of the gifts we give away now is her book. She just does a great job of just thinking, the intuition, and all these different ways of thinking about your money to improve the decision-making.
Linda Lingo: Absolutely.
Eric Blake: That's so much of what women go through is if you don't feel like you've got the knowledge or the awareness, there are still things that women can bring to the table that will help them make better decisions. A lot of times, just that intuition, that feeling of, "This is the right thing for me."
Linda Lingo: Absolutely. No, Ellen's a wonderful person, and I love her books.
Retirement Challenges
Eric Blake: What hampers women from saving for retirement? What do you think some of those roadblocks are that you've come across?
Linda Lingo: Well, I think a big one is they don't understand investing, so they keep their money in cash, or savings, or a money market account. Granted, interest rates are nice right now. They haven't been historically for quite a while, and because of inflation, they're actually losing purchasing power. That is a big hindrance to them growing their retirement accounts.
Once again, that's why I think it's so important to understand investing and how it works, and it doesn't have to be scary, and it can be your friend, and how to make it your friend. That's a big deal is getting them from savings and to investing.
Eric Blake: I've got, actually, I'm sharing one of my own examples. My wife is a teacher for 25 years, and she still stays in contact with a lot of her friends and associates, and from time to time, somebody will reach out to her. We just got, just recently, I don't even remember how she reached out, I don't know if it was a text message or what it was, but she said, "Hey," she's a teacher, "I've got about five more years before I retire. I want to start putting, what type of savings options do you have? What types of savings account options do you have? I've got about $500 a month I want to put into something to supplement my pension, my teacher retirement pension."
I'm like, "Okay, lets, if we can, let's just set up a call. There's no obligation. Let's talk about what that looks like and what that, putting it in a savings account, what the potential implications are. Ultimately, if you retire in five years, you probably have another 30 plus years to live. Putting in a savings account is probably not going to be the best thing long term to make your money last."
Linda Lingo: No, not at all. Yeah, once again, is that education and helping them understand that, and what their options are. Yeah.
Mindset Shift
Eric Blake: Would you have any, I always love to just to get an idea, are there any real life examples? You don't have to mention any names, but a scenario where you worked with one of your clients and you just say, "Hey, this is the end result, this is why I do what I do. I made a big impact in this person's life," just an example of somebody maybe that you had that experience with?
Linda Lingo: Yeah, yeah. Actually, one of my most recent clients, she was a university president. She wanted to retire, but she was really afraid of running out of money. She really didn't think she had enough saved for her retirement. She came to me. On average, a person who's worked most of the year will have at least three to six retirement accounts kind of floating around out there. Our first step was to bring those together. We defined her retirement goals.
We got really granular, so she had a really solid understanding of what she really wanted her retirement to look like, what it felt like. We talked about the social and the emotional aspects, which are also very important to consider in retiring. Then we put a plan together, and we were able to look at the numbers after we had talked about those other aspects. She saw that, in fact, she did have enough money to retire. Then we looked at what was the best way to draw down those retirement buckets that she had accumulated?
That really helped her to see, "Okay, so this is number one bucket, and then it's number two." We talked about, "Okay, you should have cash for the next couple years, because you want to let this grow." Then we had our three to five year bucket, and then we had our longer term buckets, and how to distribute your investments across those. She felt so good, and she retired a year later. She is now enjoying her brand new retirement home, and it's a new community which she had researched. She knew that's where she wanted to retire.
As a result, well, she was very active in Rotary, and so she's now active in Rotary, so that's getting her involved in the community, and it's that social network that's really important. She also decided to get a part-time job. It wasn't necessarily for the money, it was to meet the people. It was to give her a reason to get out, and once again, to be more active in the community, and she is loving it.
She also has some travel plans, so that was part of her retirement plan was she knew she wanted to travel once a year to bigger travel, and then smaller things domestically. She's been able to implement that, and every now and then, she'll just say... She went from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance, "I can do this. This'll work. I can see it on paper, I can see the numbers on my accounts." I worked with her financial advisor, her and her financial advisor.
We were a team. It's not one against the other. It's a team, and that's really important when you're retiring or considering retiring is getting that team together. She's very happy. Anyway, that's a great success story.
Eric Blake: Awesome. How would somebody, if somebody finds you online or checks out your website, and they want to engage with you, what's that first step look like if they wanted to interact with you?
Linda Lingo: Yeah. I offer a 20-minute complimentary call. They can obviously go onto my website, LindaLingo.com, and schedule it right there. I'm on social media, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and YouTube. On Instagram, okay, my daughter came up with this. I'm Money Mama Mentor.
Eric Blake: Nice. I like that.
Linda Lingo: Yeah. Yes, a 20-minute complimentary call. We can just have a discussion. If it's something I can help them with then, I will. If it's something that's going to take a longer period of time, then we talk about next steps.
Conclusion
Eric Blake: Perfect. Any other specifically, any other social media, anything else you want to share? Any other resources that you want to make sure that we get? We'll make sure we put all this in the show notes as well, just so people can definitely reach out to you if they have that interest. Any other resources or anything else like that you'd like to share?
Linda Lingo: I would encourage you to go on my website, LindaLingo.com, because I also have many blogs over a variety of topics, and I also have free resources. I do have a paper on steps to take to retire financially free. If you like what you hear today, then check out my free resources, and then we can go from there.
Eric Blake: Perfect. Well, this is definitely as enjoyable as I thought it might be. I thank you so much, Linda, for joining us today. Please be sure to reach out to Linda if you are looking for guidance or if you're looking for coaching for your financial future. Take advantage of her offer for that 20-minute complimentary discovery call. Thank you also to our audience for joining us today. Please be sure that you like, follow, and share the show.
If you'd like to learn more about our firm, you can visit our website at www.blakewealthmanagement.com. We'll see you on the next episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast. In the meantime, please remember that retirement is not the end of the road. It is the start of a new journey.
Linda Lingo: Absolutely. Amen. I love it.
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