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The Life of And podcast is for high-achieving women and working parents who are ready to stop living a life of “have to” and start designing a life they actually want. It’s a space where we talk honestly about the things we’re often afraid to admit — even to ourselves. The exhaustion. The ambition. The loneliness. The joy. The tension of wanting more without losing yourself in the process.
If you’re in the thick of it — feeling stretched, tired, hopeful, driven — this is your invitation to take a breath, get real, and find your way back to your own Life of And.
[00:00:00] Peter Dunn: Just because we’ve had a relationship with money for a long time doesn’t mean we’re any better with it than we were previously. I think of it like food. I’ve been eating for 48 years. I’m no better with food than I was 46 years ago, right?
[00:00:12] Nicole Lorch: While 94% of women knew that they were going to need to take control of their financial lives at some point, half of them felt empowered to do that and less than a third of them felt confident about it.
[00:00:25] Tiffany Sauder: I’m Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. Come on, let’s go build your Life Of And. Welcome back to Money Confessions. The first episode resonated in a way that told us that this conversation, it’s long overdue. We went back to the pile, all 100 plus questions that you submitted and pulled out the ones that are keeping us up at night. Last time we answered your outsourcing questions, questions about the invisible load and how to afford outsourcing and the guilt we feel as women when we ask for help. Well, this time we’re getting into the money questions that most of us are carrying quietly. How to budget without feeling like you’re constantly saying no to yourself. Where do you actually put your savings and how to give yourself permission to enjoy today while you’re still building towards the tomorrow?
[00:01:17] Tiffany Sauder: I’m joined in the studio today with two amazing guests, Peter Dunn, better known as Pete the Planner, one of the most trusted voices in personal finance. He has built his entire career on the belief that financial confidence belongs to everyone, not just the people who already have it figured out. And if you’ve been listening for a while, you know Nicole Lorch. She’s the President of First Internet Bank and someone who sees the full picture of how women interact with money from the inside of a financial institution. Pete and Nicole, welcome to the studio. Thank you.
[00:01:46] Peter Dunn: Good to be here.
[00:01:47] Tiffany Sauder: So on quick note before we get into things, this is everybody’s disclaimer that today’s conversation is educational. It is not a substitute for financial advice, so please talk to your professional about your specific situation because we’re just chatting here.
[00:02:00] Peter Dunn: Absolutely.
[00:02:01] Tiffany Sauder: Do happen to know some things about the topic, right, Pete?
[00:02:03] Peter Dunn: I know a thing or two, but what I’m going to tell you is likely is go talk about these things that we’re all going to talk about today with your professional. That makes for a better relationship with them.
[00:02:14] Tiffany Sauder: Yes. And hearing other people talk about it can sometimes give you the confidence to get more clear in your own questions, I think, and normalize the fact that we’re not all walking around secretly knowing this stuff.
[00:02:24] Peter Dunn: Yeah. Just because we’ve had a relationship with money for a long time doesn’t mean we’re any better with it than we were previously. I think of it like food. I’ve been eating for 48 years. I’m no better with food than I was 46 years ago. And so I think you just got to give yourself a little grace on this topic.
[00:02:41] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, totally. Well, let’s maybe start there. You have spent your entire career helping people with money. What’s the pattern that you maybe see when it comes to women specifically on this idea of financial literacy and confidence?
[00:02:54] Peter Dunn: Earliest memory in that regard, Tiffany, is just listening to my mom talk about her experiences with her and my dad’s financial advisor and how the person didn’t look at her the entire meeting. And if she asked a question, just sort of marginalized the question. And so this was at the beginning part of my financial career, just listening to her talk about that didn’t feel good. And so I always sort of made note of ultimately it is a couple’s money. There is the yours and mine, that sort of thing. I mean, Nicole knows oftentimes we talk about the we and the us within financial planning, but both voices are important. And the reality is being there to pick up the pieces sometimes when someone passes away. If it’s a one-way street and the survivor doesn’t know where the accounts are or where they even bank, it’s a nightmare.
[00:03:42] Peter Dunn: It’s one of the scariest stories of my career was trying to help a widow go through things and she literally had no idea where they even banked. So that’s not right.
[00:03:50] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, totally. What do you wish that more women would ask for when it comes to their financial lives?
[00:03:56] Peter Dunn: I want to say an equal voice because it feels like the right thing to say and it is intellectually honest. But at the same time, I think they should have a say in who the financial advisor is. It’s still a male dominated field. I know thousands of financial advisors by the nature of my work. And I can tell you that there are a lot of talented women financial advisors out there that are worth a look at. People need to consider that more, honestly.
[00:04:22] Nicole Lorch: I think too, in a relationship that one party is bound to have a higher risk tolerance than the other too. And so it’s important, I’m not making this about gender roles, but that both voices are heard in that because these are decisions you’ll be making for the rest of your financial future. So it’s important that there be a compromise or a blended situation.
[00:04:43] Peter Dunn: Yeah. Nicole, what’s so astute about that is that we were raised by our parents and the gender roles were even more extreme during our socialization. So that is to say that risk tolerance is going to be wildly different for people in our generation. Now my daughter’s 17. I think maybe when she gets to these financial conversations, it’ll be a little different for her. But for us, people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, it’s still impacted by socialization of your parents.
[00:05:14] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, agreed. So I like to start these episodes with a money confession from each of, I’ll say us. I’m mostly going to be asking questions in this episode, but I will also share a money confession. And I’d like this to be around kind of the topic of personal finance, a place where you maybe stubbed your toe in a way that you’re like, “Eh, this is probably people would expect I have this figured out in a way that I don’t,” or just something that you’ve learned from a mentor or someone around you that’s really been advice that has stuck with you.
[00:05:42] Nicole Lorch: Well, I don’t know that mine’s all that provocative, but I’ve noticed my talk about learning things from your parents. My father loves to get things on sale and he will drive out of his way to go to a TJ Maxx or a Marshalls because he feels like he’s getting a better bargain and that has bled into my subconscious and I will shop online because I get a sale email and it’s like I’m drawn to that word sale. And I think I end up spending more money on things I don’t need because they were on sale and so I got a bargain. But if you don’t need it, it’s not a bargain. If you add more to cart to avoid shipping costs, that’s not a bargain. And so over time those little habits, those micro habits start to really chip away at your disposable income.
[00:06:31] Tiffany Sauder: It’s a great one.
[00:06:31] Peter Dunn: I’ve got a frivolous one and then one possibly more scandalous, but my frivolous one is I go to the bank to pay my mortgage every month, which is absurd. That’s insane. And everyone in my life mocks me as they should. There’s something about physically handing over a check because it’s a finite number of payments and to me it is the process of purchasing my home. I’ve done it as long as I’ve been an adult, the silliest thing in the world, but I cannot wait until the last trip to the Castleton area.
[00:07:02] Tiffany Sauder: So do you pay your principal halfway through the month so that you’re not paying interest on the full thing?
[00:07:06] Peter Dunn: No, I’m not that smart. You’re
[00:07:09] Tiffany Sauder: An on the
[00:07:10] Peter Dunn: Date kind of
[00:07:10] Tiffany Sauder: Guy.
[00:07:11] Peter Dunn: No, no, I’m not the bimonthly payment person and then I keep all the receipts from the payments and I can see it go down. I have them for years and years and years. It is a nerdy thing that I do. It is
[00:07:22] Nicole Lorch: Super new. What a sense of accomplishment.
[00:07:24] Peter Dunn: It is to me. I remember years ago, my father-in-law years ago was like, “Hey, special dinner. We all went to dinner. He’s like paid off the mortgage.” I was so excited for him mother-in-law and my wife were just like, “Cool, what’s the appetizer?” I’m like, “I just want to celebrate it. “ So I want that moment for myself. The salacious one, gosh, I don’t really love talking about this. There was a time in my career where I spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on clothes on suits and it was when my sort of speaking career was taken off and you know you can justify anything through the lens of ambition. And I look back in my closet now, things that may or may not fit, but that’s not the topic today. And I go, “Wow, that was certainly a choice.” Oh wow.
[00:08:07] Tiffany Sauder: Mine actually is, we have some just like set it and forget it things in our base household expenses and my daughters now have our cell phones on our plan and all this kind of stuff. I sat down with our Verizon bill in the last six weeks and started really understanding, what are we paying and is there a different way to do this and what in the world? And I cut it by almost 70% by making some different decisions and moving my girls to visible and I was like, these things that in themselves aren’t like this massive number, but when it’s something you’re going to pay pretty much an expense every month for the rest of your life, the total is a really big number. And so I felt like there’s places I think I could be a better steward of some of those things where it’s like, I don’t know, I just called them and added a line and asked them any questions and just sort of let it ride.
[00:08:54] Tiffany Sauder: Just places where I can be more discerning in the routine where I tend to be I think a little bit more discerning in like the one off stuff. For
[00:09:04] Nicole Lorch: Sure. I mean, as a banker, I know I should review my statement monthly. Likely I do not. But occasionally I’ll review it and I’ll see something like, oh my gosh, I was in Midtown Manhattan and I must have clicked something to get an Uber faster that then enrolled me an Uber one. And I have then been paying maybe $10 a month for six months. It’s not the end of the world, but I could have used that $60 somewhere else. And so yeah, review your statements occasionally and see what you’re still getting billed for that maybe you don’t use anymore.
[00:09:36] Tiffany Sauder: Yes, it was a big one for me. Nicole,
[00:09:39] Peter Dunn: That’s such an interesting point because even as we maybe start to take over the finances of our parents, that’s more and more and more common for them not knowing what they clicked on and they have 30 subscriptions that they don’t even know that exists. So we will all get to that stage of life where we become that person that runs the financial lives of our family. And so when you get there, that’s easy cherry pickings. Go look at that. You’ll find a lot.
[00:10:05] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. All right. Ready to get into listener questions? Let’s do it. Let’s do the things. Okay. This question is from Rachel and she writes, “My husband and I have three children. In the past two years, we’ve grown our net worth. Everyone around us is spending money. We’ve worked hard to have stability. How do we get to a point where we can start having more experiences and still feel comfortable? We easily make over half million dollars a year together.
[00:10:30] Peter Dunn: I’ll probably bring this up a lot today, but it’s just the concept of convenience and personal finance. So to me, convenience is when you use money to save time. Some people have more money than time. Some people have more time than money and when you’ve got half million dollars of disposable income, I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say you have more money than time.” And so that’s when you can start using that money to save yourself time. You employ convenience, you can get experiences. This is a much different email if the household income’s $71,000. That household has more time than money. And so I think in situations like that, it’s like, what are your real resources here? Your income, your time, your attention. And so how do you use those the best? And I think in that situation, it’s just framing it.
[00:11:19] Peter Dunn: It is like, what are your other resources? Your other resources are time and it seems like you don’t got a lot of that and that’s what they should start to spend money on.
[00:11:27] Tiffany Sauder: One of the things that I think is interesting to hear your response to that specifically, Pete, because I do talk a lot about outsourcing. And to me, there’s this stereotype that if I go work with a financial planner, the only thing they’re going to tell me is save my money into perpetuity, like spend as little as possible and save. Again, stereotype of it. And so you saying, how can we use some of your disposable income to create more time so that you can go get experiences, things you pay for or things you just have a chance to use your environment for. Is that a commonplace narrative among financial planners that it’s like this is part about living life, not just about saving for the worst case scenario and for the future?
[00:12:09] Peter Dunn: It’s getting to be more so I think sort of alignment of life purpose is sort of a new aged in a positive way, financial planning technique. But Tiffany, the same point, statistically, you look at the average American, they are off track for retirement. So you get an advisor, they’re constantly going to say save more because most people don’t save enough. I think another element of this that is just really important too is that theoretically the way most people will be able to retire is because they eventually need less money to live on, which is sort of a weird, mind blowing thing. But look, right now I need a ton of money. I’m not going to lie to you. I need a lot. You got teenagers, they’re allowed, they’re expensive, and I got a mortgage. And so as soon as those are all out of my purview, my life gets a lot less expensive.
[00:12:53] Peter Dunn: So that becomes part of that too. And financial planners are starting to figure that out of like, we don’t always have to plan for opulence. We can plan for a more modest life in retirement and it’s also responsible.
[00:13:03] Tiffany Sauder: Interesting. I think though in the same way like your food comment where it’s like, I get afraid to go to the doctor if I know I’m really unhealthy because they’re going to tell me what it is that I’ve at some level been able to avoid. I think there can be this hurdle of going to a financial planner when you’re like, “I know I’m not saving enough. I know I’m spending too much and it’s going to hurt to hear that. I’m going to have to acknowledge this truth that I’ve been able to push around.” What do you say to the woman who’s like, “No shit, Tiffany, that’s exactly where I’m at. And I am afraid. I’m embarrassed, whatever the sort of word is about where I am.” What do you say to that?
[00:13:42] Peter Dunn: It’s hard. I mean, it’s really hard. I never want to step on the scale when I’m feeling a little puffy. I never want to. I’ll say-
[00:13:50] Tiffany Sauder: Feeling a little puffy.
[00:13:51] Peter Dunn: Just a litle.
[00:13:52] Tiffany Sauder: It’s
[00:13:52] Peter Dunn: Word choice.
[00:13:53] Tiffany Sauder: I’ve never been there. You Nicole? I look the other way.
[00:13:56] Peter Dunn: I won’t even eat fish because they have scales. So that’s how I’ll find out scales at that point. I would say that’s how you know you’ve got a great relationship with a professional is that dynamic exists. And not to get too deep into gender dynamics in this question, but that’s why I think women financial advisors are so great for couples to employ because that natural spirit of empathy and understanding is more of a character trait of women than it is men. And so if that is the sort of accountability you need, look no further.
[00:14:25] Nicole Lorch: There is an emotional attachment to money and to money matters that people have and women often tend to explore the emotional side of it more readily. But I think there is a huge amount of sharing that happens with a financial planner that is beyond what we’re used to. And I’m sure you answered this question a dozen times a week, but what are some things that people should be asking when they meet that financial planner other than just do you feel a vibe here, but what kinds of things should people be asking to make sure there’s a good fit?
[00:14:56] Peter Dunn: Yeah. I think there’s the, what is the best way I can get the most out of our relationship is an interesting thing. There’s so many bad ways to answer that question. There’s so few ways to answer it correctly and then the-
[00:15:11] Tiffany Sauder: So
[00:15:12] Peter Dunn: Tell
[00:15:12] Tiffany Sauder: Us, because you say that knowingly I don’t. So what are the things that someone should be listening for with that question? It’s a great open-ended question. You’re going to understand somebody’s values as they answer it.
[00:15:22] Peter Dunn: Well, you don’t want to hear, I’ll start there even though you didn’t ask, but what you don’t want to hear is like, “I’ll get you the best returns, investment returns.” Who cares? To me, that’s a commodity. It is, I will understand what you’re trying to accomplish and I will provide the accountability and path to make it happen. Accountability is the most beautiful thing in behavior, whether it’s personal training or financial planning. And so I think you’re looking for that spirit. The follow-up question, which also gets to that, Tiffany, is what is the best way for me to evaluate your performance? Again, they go back to market performance, I don’t give a rip. Just buy an index fund.
[00:15:58] Nicole Lorch: Because they’re working under the assumption that all you want is more money.
[00:16:02] Peter Dunn: Right. And I think most professionals, that’s not … Well, there are some that’s what they want. That’s how they measure themselves. But intentional people, that’s not the thing. People don’t just want to keep stacking money. They want the money to be a resource that they can deploy with time and intention.
[00:16:18] Tiffany Sauder: Interesting. Very interesting. Okay. Let’s move to our next question here. This one is from Amanda and we’re going to start getting into this tension, I would say between big picture saving and everyday living, that we feel that slider for different seasons of life in different ways. So her question is, what are your tips for saving for the big things, college, house projects, while also not feeling like you’re nickel and diming yourself for the regular needs of the household and the family?
[00:16:45] Peter Dunn: Yeah, that’s a tough one. I think everyone should have a vice or two, but not everyone should have lots of vices. And that is to say if these day-to-day things can get accomplished by buying a lesser than product or experience and it doesn’t bother you, do it. If those long-term aspirations are really more of luxury and quality and that’s more important to you, then do it. I think I have a dear friend who will share with me, “I only want the best of everything.” And I’m like, “Well, that stinks for you buddy because that’s not how things work.” Most Americans cannot pull that all. They’ve got to say, “I’m willing to buy,” I was going to say Marsh brand green beans, but Marsh is out of business.
[00:17:27] Tiffany Sauder: Kroger.
[00:17:28] Peter Dunn: I’m an old- We
[00:17:28] Tiffany Sauder: Got you.
[00:17:29] Peter Dunn: Old guy.
[00:17:30] Tiffany Sauder: We’re a national podcast here with Kroger.
[00:17:32] Peter Dunn: Oh yeah. We’ll go with Kroger then H-E-B. HEB there we go. Green beans. I think that matters. It’s just like some things don’t matter and if you tell yourself that you need the best of literally everything, that’s going to be a challenge.
[00:17:46] Nicole Lorch: Well, I think even Oprah said you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once. Yes.
[00:17:51] Nicole Lorch: And if Oprah said it, it has to be right. It’s true. From a banking perspective, just in terms of sheer operation, I like to keep a longer term savings account at another institution, out of sight, out of mind. I don’t even look at it. I might review my checking account weekly, but that out of sight, out of mind account can just grow very quietly over there. Use direct deposit, split your check, have it hit that long-term savings account before it hits your operating account and then you don’t even see it. So it’s not like you have to remember to transfer the money, but if it’s already over there, then you’re less likely to pull it when you need just 50 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever it is.
[00:18:31] Peter Dunn: I’m with you. I never look at my high yield long-term savings account. I don’t want to know the balance because it’ll creep into my mind and that- If it’s
[00:18:39] Nicole Lorch: Available
[00:18:39] Peter Dunn: To you. Yeah, exactly. That $17 bottle of wine doesn’t seem as good idea as a $26 bottle of wine at that point. And every decision after that’s impacted by me, “Oh, I happen to look at the balance that morning.” It’ll affect you.
[00:18:51] Nicole Lorch: Yeah. I’ve even heard you say it. It’s that idea of I make X so I should be able to afford this sweater. But if you’re doing it every day, you can’t spend what you make every single day. There was another bank’s ad and I hate to compliment other bank’s marketing, but they said it’s not called a splurge if you’re doing it daily. And so there is this idea of save for the occasional experience, maybe the $26 bottle of wine is not your everyday drinker.
[00:19:22] Peter Dunn: Yeah. We do a thing at my company for people called Money Vibe and it’s just like, how do you think, feel and behave with money? And they’re all different. They can all be different. A lot of times, Nicole, to your point of this, I deserve it or I’m going to splurge, that comes from the fact that maybe someone’s childhood they lost a parent early. And so then they view money as this token for joy and free spirit. And so a lot of times these sort of seemingly math-based decisions are really based in who raised the kid and what was the experience? Was it upper middle class? Was it impoverished? And as you’re sitting across from your traditional financial planner with the blue sign and the brass lamp, they’re not talking about that, but that’s real.
[00:20:09] Nicole Lorch: Maybe you could get a financial planner and a marriage counselor all in one. I mean, there’s something to that, right? We’re bringing all this baggage from our respective families and I don’t know everything about the way my husband was raised even all these years on. And so he’s bringing some of that to the marriage and that changes his perception of how we should spend and save.
[00:20:30] Peter Dunn: I was hoping we sort of get into this aspect because I’m not a practicing financial planner anymore. I’m the CEO of a financial company, but I’ve seen a lot of things. And one of the things that pattern recognition that is most striking to me is when there is a male female relationship and the woman’s income is substantially higher than the men and how the dynamics of that impact everything, everything. It is this topsy turvy world of, well, I was socialized one way. My dad made more money than my mom. My mom didn’t even work and now my wife makes 70% more than I do and it is. I used to watch those things, this marriage counseling, these things sort of play out. Top 10 wildest stories I have, eight of them are based on that dynamic.
[00:21:21] Tiffany Sauder: How does that get reconciled? Because I have those conversations off the microphone a lot because we are focusing on women who are entrepreneurial, are in big sales roles, running teams. And it’s not a place where if you’re living it, you have a lot of friends necessarily on the same road. What does it look like? I mean, I know what it looks like, but what’s the conversation that needs to be had or how does it get unearthed?
[00:21:47] Peter Dunn: Yeah. I think the traps get into when people get into allowances, I know this is sort of an old concept of like, “Well, this percentage of my income, I get to do whatever I want with. And in your percentage of your income, you can do whatever you want with, “ but those amounts are so wildly different and that used to play out and when men predominantly made more money and then that became just wildly unfair. It just didn’t seem like it made sense. Well, when it flips, it’s just not as fair as well, right? It’s the same thing. So I think it’s one element of staying away from the allowances, the fun money is what we call these things sometimes. I think that’s a thing and I think it just requires a ton of communication, a lot of our goals. And I also, again, I’m going to go back to female financial advisors.
[00:22:32] Peter Dunn: I think if that’s your dynamic, oftentimes your best bet is to have a female financial advisor.
[00:22:37] Tiffany Sauder: Interesting.
[00:22:38] Peter Dunn: All my male financial advisor friends when they watch your show are going to text me and get mad at me. It’s all right.
[00:22:44] Tiffany Sauder: I love that they’re watching. The thing I was going to ask about that I were talking about saving for college sort of passively. The 529 program is something you have a relationship with on your show, but we talk about Americans not being ready for retirement. How actively do people use that financial vehicle because it’s pretty easy to access. Is that just- 529? Yeah. Is that an Indiana thing or a national thing? I don’t actually know.
[00:23:10] Peter Dunn: Yeah, it’s a national thing. National program. Each state does a different job of marketing it. The fees are different. The way they talk about it’s different. It’s more ubiquitous than it used to be. It used to be so niche and then a few people had it, but it is more prominent now. I would also note that most people still start too late into that account. I mean, we could spend two hours talking about the impact of time on financial planning, but you do it while you’re still at the hospital before you bring the kid home, you’re going to be in good shape. You wait until the middle school dance, it’s not so great. And so I think that’s the bigger lesson there.
[00:23:47] Tiffany Sauder: So quick one minute on what the 529 is.
[00:23:50] Nicole Lorch: So that is a tax advantage savings account and the rules do vary as Pete pointed out in the state where we are currently, you can get a tax credit for making a contribution to that. And typically it doesn’t just have to be the parents that have the 529 for a child. I think there was a listener question about how to save for things when resources are tight and one idea is maybe your parents could help. Maybe your parents could open a 529 for your child and every little bit that you can get started earlier, there is a compounding effect to interest. So start early, but do try to make that a priority. And if your child doesn’t attend college, you can always change the beneficiary of it. So if for some reason my daughter makes a great living being a TikToker, which I think may be her current plan, then I could go to law school.
[00:24:41] Nicole Lorch: So we can flip who receives the money.
[00:24:45] Tiffany Sauder: I didn’t set ours up. We have one for our kids, but my husband did that. So do you go to bank and set it up? I don’t actually know how to
[00:24:51] Nicole Lorch: Set it up. I set mine up online. You should do more things online, Tiffany.
[00:24:55] Tiffany Sauder: All this banking is- I bank available. But do I get it? Well, it doesn’t matter.
[00:24:58] Peter Dunn: Yeah, you can do it online. It takes you five minutes. Minutes. Yeah. My husband
[00:25:02] Tiffany Sauder: Set it up.
[00:25:03] Peter Dunn: Age-based. So as they get closer to college, the allocation switches so you don’t get burned by a big market downturn.
[00:25:09] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah.
[00:25:10] Nicole Lorch: And I think initially when 529s first came out, you could only use them in a college in the state where you live, but that has changed and you can use them for private high school as well now. So they’re a lot more open than they used to be. But Google 529 and your state and you will get there.
[00:25:29] Tiffany Sauder: I want to take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone. Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you’re trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they’re going to help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful. Okay, next question. I think this is one of the bravest questions in the pile. Pete, this may not have been on your pregame, so here we go. And Michelle asks, “What are the best practices to keep your money safe in case of infidelity, divorce, or leaving the workforce for a number of years for child rearing?”
[00:26:12] Peter Dunn: The basis of the question is what is a safe place to place money, but I think that’s the easiest part of the question. Yes. My co-host on my podcast, longtime co-host, she is so hot on this topic of security through not separate accounts, but just sort of planning.
[00:26:32] Tiffany Sauder: Well, she’s fairly young too, right?
[00:26:34] Peter Dunn: Yeah, she’s young. And so she just knows that if she traps herself financially, and I think a lot of women have expressed over time that feeling of being trapped in a relationship financially. And when you go out of the workforce for a period of time to raise your family’s family, that can become really challenging. So the safe answer here is, where can you put your money? Probably a high yield savings account sort of off to the side, but I think the bigger issue is to do that, you must do that. Nicole, what’s been your experience?
[00:27:06] Nicole Lorch: Well, I think transparency and trust are really important. I won’t give names, but we once had a gentleman call our contact center and ask if he could have a certain hotel charge removed from his credit card statement before the statement got to his house. And so there are some eye-opening things. And if you’re just aware of where your money is, have that monthly meeting or quarterly meeting as a couple, understand where your money is, where the passwords are. Statistically, I mean, put all the horrible things that could happen aside, but statistically women are likely to outlive their husbands. So at some point you will need to have financial confidence. And I think more than anything, that’s what I see. That’s what the studies show is Bank of America did a study in 2022 and found that while 94% of women knew that they were going to need to take control of their financial lives at some point, half of them felt empowered to do that and less than a third of them felt confident about it.
[00:28:07] Nicole Lorch: And it just goes to this idea of financial literacy. I think knowledge is power and the more women really realize that your money can unlock things, it can also keep you locked up if you don’t understand where it is, what you have access to. So I think we all have a responsibility to at least understand what we have, where we’re going, and make that a part of the ongoing family conversation.
[00:28:33] Peter Dunn: Yeah. I think it’s where roles develop in the household is like, who usually does this? Who deals with the insurance person? Who deals with the bills? Who deals with the investment accounts? And traditionally, you see those line up against gender lines. And if you find yourself that that is your current dynamic, start to tiptoe into those lanes because they’re not mutually exclusive. You can go out and learn about your investments. I think the other where we’re tiptoeing into though too is like how we feel about prenuptial agreements. That’s something I never would’ve considered when I got married a bazillion years ago. At the same time, if my wife wanted it, I absolutely would’ve done it. And I think where I’ve grown as an expert is to understand that probably most people should have a prenuptial agreement and can’t believe I’m saying that out loud, but that’s how I feel now.
[00:29:21] Peter Dunn: How do you all feel?
[00:29:22] Tiffany Sauder: Well, I don’t think my 20 … Well, my 25-year-old self was so very naive I would’ve been like, I don’t even know what I would ask for. Plus we didn’t have much. And so it was like, we weren’t protecting assets coming into the marriage. We got married young, but I’ve learned there’s postnuptials as I’ve had more success and you’re in rooms of people who have money that postnuptials become part of the financial vocabulary potentially of the couple. And those are still very much very backroom conversations it feels. It’s not in the foreground. And I don’t I don’t know if it’s because it seems to be laced with the likelihood of something bad happening. If it’s like, well, we all buy insurance policies. I don’t think my house is actually going to burn down, but I have an insurance policy in the off chance that it does.
[00:30:14] Tiffany Sauder: So I think culturally as our earning as couples is becoming, there’s more parity in it or sometimes where it’s different. I think that we’re just kind of learning how to catch up with that and the tools that we use.
[00:30:29] Nicole Lorch: That’s a good point. I mean, it feels so very wildly unromantic, right? Oh yeah. When you’re planning the wedding and picking out favors to also be talking about now what do we do when this goes into the crapper? So I think that it’s definitely an important conversation because people are getting married later now. They may be coming into the marriage with assets or at least earning potential. And so those kinds of conversations should happen. Most couples fight about money and maybe that’s because we haven’t found a way to normalize these discussions.
[00:31:01] Peter Dunn: Yeah. Another quick element to that too is the family that you come from and it’s oftentimes about protecting their assets and the event that an inheritance comes in and then who’s involved. And that’s where we see more pressure to do a prenuptial agreement.
[00:31:17] Tiffany Sauder: From the parents, from the- Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense when they’re well resourced for sure. Okay. Moving right along here. Lauren sent this one in and this is also kind of about this slider of long-term preparation saving and sort of short-term life, but I think a very specific season of life, like Pete, you were saying, it’d be expensive right now. So Lauren sent this one in. She writes, “Youth activities are so expensive.” Just pause for the truth in that. “I want my children to have well-rounded experiences and be involved in social clubs and club sports, but the fees and the uniforms and the special trips and the fundraisers and the coaches gifts and the travel and all the things. How do I even begin to save for future and vacation when keeping them engaged is dragging my income down? This is a big thing that is not talked about in the gyms that I’m standing in every single weekend, but you see the financial pressure.
[00:32:19] Peter Dunn: Yes. I live in this world. The wildest thing is the most red column I ever wrote for USA Today was years ago and it was about what a waste of money youth travel sports were. And this was before my children were in youth travel
[00:32:33] Tiffany Sauder: Sports. How old were your kids when you wrote it?
[00:32:36] Peter Dunn: They were still loud, just smaller. Now is 17 and a 14 year old in which I find myself in an airplane for a soccer match. I think, boy, have these things changed. And I think where it gets really interesting is I have a degree of financial stability, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that my children’s teammates, families do. And especially given what I do for a living, it’s just such a tricky mind exercise for me to try to contextualize. What do I take from this? I know whether we go do that, my kids are going to have a college education funded no matter what. For some, it is the path to have a college education funded. And so it is wildly tricky. I’ve had the chance to work with families and help them make decisions around that, that maybe they didn’t have as many resources and they’re making different sort of sacrifices that you can’t even imagine.
[00:33:26] Peter Dunn: Things that maybe we take for, “Oh, of course we’re going to do that as a family.” They wouldn’t even consider it. Their vacations are the 8:00 AM on a Thursday baseball game in Westfield as opposed to us having a separate family trip. It’s like, well, no, it’s the weird hotel near an airport in a small city. That is the vacation.
[00:33:48] Nicole Lorch: I think we all want our kids to succeed. We all want our kids to do well. And some of us have this very competitive mindset that my kid has to be on the best team. My kid has to play for the best club. And so it’s like we can’t spend enough to get them not just into the club, but then private training on the side and not just the outdoor cleats, the firm ground cleats, but also the turf cleats. And it just adds up and up and up. And Phil, I’m looking at you. There’s a guy in my office who his daughters were in a very elite dance group. And so not only did they have to go to Las Vegas for 10 days for a show, they had a costume for every routine that they were in. They couldn’t even check bags because they were so worried about losing these costumes that they would put those into their carry-ons so they could just take one personal item with all their clothes for the 10 days so that they could have all the costumes.
[00:34:46] Nicole Lorch: But that was their vacation because what they were spending for the travel and the hotels and the costume changes and the lessons, it just really adds up. And so I think there comes a point where we have to kind of say, “Okay, what is really important here?” To me, playing on a team, that’s important. Does it have to be that team that goes to San Diego? You’re going to have the same soccer experience in Cincinnati as you might in traveling across the country on a plane. Then again, do I think that a D1 scholarship is likely? Maybe that is the answer for some. And there’s a lot more money in NIL right now too. So maybe that’s an even better career than TikToker in the end.
[00:35:29] Tiffany Sauder: To me, this topic kind of goes into the and I talk about so many things in our life. I’ve talked about saying yes to a board. Somebody calls you that says, “Pete, would you like to be on the board?” They’re like, “Yeah, sure. How bad can it be? “ So it’s like the first year, you literally have no idea how many hours it’s going to take, how many resources. So you have the option in that first year of actually counting, how many hours did this take? Let me understand this. Is this what I thought it was going to be? And do I want to continue? But now I understand the size and shape of it. If I don’t want that to just take free time, free resources, whatever, I’ve got to get clear about what am I going to say no to because it did push something out without my permission.
[00:36:10] Tiffany Sauder: You know what I mean? Sleep or whatever it was. And to me, travel sports in my experience has been the same thing. I was not an athlete growing up, which is going to surprise everybody listening. I know size and shape would imagine you might, but I had no idea. When we signed up for my oldest or my second one for travel, I felt like I was going through a car wash on high speed, just like …
[00:36:34] Tiffany Sauder: It’s just like how it felt like, what is happening? Stuff spraying in my head. I was always late. I was parking thousand miles away. I took too much water and not enough water. Just everything was wrong. I was going to say I hated it. I did hate it, but that’s not relevant to the story. But the second year, then I was like, okay, now I understand this thing. It pushed out a ton of family time for us at the beginning because we didn’t know how to compensate for that spending. What are we going to say no to? Because it did take 15 to 17, $20,000. Okay. Is that just additive to where we are financially or are we going to decide not to do some other things like we’re going to travel closer for fall break or we’re only going to do spring break. But I think we just go with it as parents and don’t actually stop and realize you do have a choice to say no or to figure out where am I going to find that time or money back that this yes took from me and not just like blindly running through it.
[00:37:31] Tiffany Sauder: And I think we blindly run through it too often and just hope at the end, we’re going to be glad we made the choice. So I don’t know if any of those words make sense,
[00:37:39] Peter Dunn: But- Yeah, I think it’s just a margin of error thing. It’s like some families have a large margin for error, some have a very small margin fair. And look, the other reality of this entire conversation is that if you’ve accumulated any level of assets that are invested, you’re in the upper K of the K-shaped economy. We’re all experienced in the economy in real time. We’re all exposed to it, but if your money is growing because you’ve invested it, then your margin for error is greater. Yeah, that’s right. If you have not, if you’re on the bottom leg of the K-shaped economy, then you are one-to-one exposed to all ills of the economy and the decisions you make. And so I think that’s what I always reflect on when I think about youth travel sports is just like, what leg of the K1 is the family on?
[00:38:24] Tiffany Sauder: Is it wrong to infer if you’re not on the one that’s going up? It’s maybe not the right …
[00:38:29] Peter Dunn: No, that was the assertion I made in the column that I regret.
[00:38:32] Tiffany Sauder: Oh, really?
[00:38:33] Peter Dunn: Yeah. I mean, good thing about being a personal finance person or giving- And
[00:38:36] Tiffany Sauder: Everybody gets to make their own choices, their
[00:38:37] Peter Dunn: Grownups. Yeah. That’s a tough
[00:38:39] Tiffany Sauder: One. Yeah, it is. Agreed. Okay. We’ll just move to the next question. Okay. This is about unexpected expenses. Jackie asks us, how can I plan and budget better for unexpected expenses, urgent care visits, blown tires, that kind of thing. Kind of speaks to the margin you were just saying. Those become very big issues when there’s little margin, but I’ll
[00:38:59] Peter Dunn: Let you speak. Yeah. Nicole, I would just think that’s just a classic emergency fund. Of course. Start
[00:39:04] Nicole Lorch: There. And I don’t know how many months of spending you … I mean, there’s usually an emergency fund and then there’s probably what I think of more as a rainy day. I’ve lost my job. I need six months of spending money. There are so many households in this country where they are one blown tire, one refrigerator repair away from financial disaster and not being able to pay the rent at the end of the month. And so that emergency fund is super important. If you are really living paycheck to paycheck, that could not be more important in my view is to start that emergency fund.
[00:39:39] Peter Dunn: Yeah. Then making sure you can truly define an emergency for your household. A sale is not an emergency. No, God. You’re
[00:39:46] Nicole Lorch: Taking the fund
[00:39:47] Peter Dunn: Out of it. Well, that’s what I do. I’m a bald middle aged man. And then I think the other element of this too is that let’s say you’re building your financial life and you get to a $5,000 savings balance. That’s a lot of money. $5,000 is a lot of money, but if it’s not three months expenses of an emergency fund, it’s not the right amount of money. So once a person gets to $5,000, I’ve never had it before and then they go, “Oh my gosh, $5,000, that exhale is dangerous because it actually gets you to the point of you take the foot off the gas and that becomes the challenge.” And I think that’s where we all have lived different experiences. Some people were born on third base, some people were not. And so it’s that what you’ve seen and can you replicate it that makes a difference.
[00:40:36] Tiffany Sauder: I think there’s born on third financially. I also think there’s born on third with financial literacy.
[00:40:42] Peter Dunn: Totally.
[00:40:43] Tiffany Sauder: I would say I was born on third with financial literacy
[00:40:46] Tiffany Sauder: And that my parents gave me a ton of experience to budgeting. And one of the things, Nicole and I have talked about this a little bit. We have the resources to give our … We both have daughters who have insatiable desires to consume things, but we accidentally wreck their financial literacy when we just give them every Lululemon demand, every Sephora hall, every, all that kind of stuff. And so getting them to understand delayed gratification and like you were saying, getting to that $5,000 or that three months of expenses and savings, that takes delayed gratification in your early 20s, 30s to say, “I’m going to create this for myself.”
[00:41:22] Peter Dunn: Yeah, oddly, this ties back to the same thought I often have about when I’m in a healthy place with youth travel sports is we do that as a family so my kids can experience adversity. And if from a budgeting as a teen standpoint, there’s supposed to be adversity. You can’t remove all the adversity or you’re literally messing them up. And so I think when you don’t get rostered for a travel team, instead of going as a parent to talk to the coach, it’s just like, how’s the kid going to handle this? It’s their situation. And I think financially always stepping in and rescuing that big expense could be just as troubling. I feel like the previous generation, maybe baby boomers did a potentially a better job of not rescuing tough situations where a lesson can be learned.
[00:42:08] Nicole Lorch: Most definitely. And I think some of us, and I put myself in this number, we tend to think things are going to go right. They’re going to go well, they’re going to go the way they should go. And we bought our first house, we spent more than we had planned. We were super excited. We move in three days later I’m in the basement and I think, well, there probably shouldn’t be a puddle of water around
[00:42:29] Peter Dunn: The
[00:42:30] Nicole Lorch: Water heater. I don’t know what that means, but it’s probably not a good thing. Well, it meant we needed a new water heater. So there are unplanned expenses in all of these things and no matter how prepared we think we are, I think it’s really important. I never thought before about travel sports as teaching adversity, but you’re right. I mean, to me, it was important for the teamwork. It was important to learn a skill and play together and win gracefully, but it’s also important to learn to lose gracefully and deal with things when they don’t go the way you would like them to. All
[00:43:03] Tiffany Sauder: Right. I want to transition into some long-term savings kinds of things. For many people, their 401k is kind of the primary vehicle for that. So this question is around that. Sarah asked, “How do I know my 401k investments are earning the most they can? Is there a smart way to make these selections without hiring a financial advisor?”
[00:43:23] Nicole Lorch: What we have found, at least at First Internet Bank, is that most of our employees put their money in the target date funds that we have within the 401k because I think part of it is feeling like I don’t want to have to make the decision from the 30 or whatever funds that are available, pick from the list to figure out really what’s the risk of those funds, what’s the return likely to be. And so that’s the easiest solution and often that tends to be more successful and if you’re not familiar with the target date fund, you put in the date that you think you will retire, usually round it up to the next five years and then there will be an allocation based on risk and reward based on how far away you are from retirement. So if you’re 20, you have a longer horizon to recover, right?
[00:44:14] Nicole Lorch: Usually with a 401k, I’m sorry, we see a lot of people are putting their money and not making those decisions, but there are choices within it. And so it goes back to literacy, understanding the options that are available to you, understanding the expenses that come out of those funds, but also really you have to understand your likely time horizon until you are going to retire because you don’t want to invest like a 20 year old when you’re 60.
[00:44:42] Peter Dunn: I feel so smart because I was going to say that and I feel so validated that she said that I feel better about myself. Thank you for that. Target day funds are definitely the way to go for someone just trying to get-
[00:44:53] Tiffany Sauder: Even hearing that I think is confidence inspiring to people like, “Is this just the vanilla ice cream cone and should I think about it harder or
[00:44:58] Peter Dunn: Just go
[00:44:58] Tiffany Sauder: With it? “
[00:44:59] Peter Dunn: Vanilla ice cream cones are delicious, Tiffany. I mean, you don’t have to overcomplicate everything. The alternative here, let’s talk about the other gender. Let’s talk about young men. They’re experiencing just this degree of financial nihilism where they’re investing in Bitcoin, they’re sports gambling, they’re in the prediction markets. Because everything is hard, nothing matters and they’re taking these crazy risks. Young men terrify me because of how they view money. Young women have the general, more of a calm nature that they can say, “I’m probably not going to bet it all in prediction markets.” You don’t see a lot of that. You don’t see a lot of prediction market commercials for Kalshi with women in it. And so that is to say boring is lovely and for what is a good rate of return? I mean, look, you can get consistently eight, 9% rate of return consistently, let’s go.
[00:45:55] Peter Dunn: That’s all you need. And I think when people say, “Well, I want 20.” It’s like, great, you don’t necessarily need 20. And by the way, when you go to swing at the baseball for a 20% rate of return, you’re more likely to strike out. So I don’t know how we keep coming back to baseball as a basketball state, but whatever.
[00:46:12] Tiffany Sauder: This was not a question, but I think I have it and I’m sure my audience does too AI is infiltrating so many different areas of our life. And so as someone who’s been in the financial planning space for a while, Pete, and you see this sort of new force coming in, what’s your hot take on it?
[00:46:29] Peter Dunn: Some people are really good at Googling. They Google a long-term phrase and then they find the result. Other people are terrible at Googling. My son had a basketball coach named Larry and the guy was from Kentucky and my son came home and Googled Larry from Kentucky. Didn’t find him. My son is bad at Google. I think with AI, if you know how to really engineer a prompt, it can change your life personal finance wise. And I’m a big proponent of it. Honestly, sometimes I’ll grab my own portfolio, screenshot it, plug it in and say, “What would you do differently?” And it gives suggestions. I’ve traded on those and I’ve succeeded on those. So I think if you know what to say in your prompt, you’re going to be good. I’ll also say AI, as we know, can be overly validating. “Oh, that’s a great idea.
[00:47:17] Peter Dunn: “And it’s like, “ Is it? I’m not sure it is.
[00:47:20] Nicole Lorch: “It’s the sycophant, right? Yeah. It’s always making you feel good about your questions. That was a great question, Pete. I’m glad you asked. What a great idea. I agree AI is a very powerful tool used properly. So if you want to use Claude or ChatGPT or even Gemini to do some financial planning, ask the follow-up question. Don’t just blindly take the first suggestion, but sometimes pressure test the answer. Why did you recommend that? And make sure it is all in the prompt. What are you putting in? Don’t just say, how should I invest for retirement? But rather, I am a 50-year-old woman with a husband and a child and we have this amount of resources and we’d like to have this much per year to spend. So you need to really load your prompt up with the questions in order to get the outcome that you would want.
[00:48:10] Nicole Lorch: But more and more, we used to invest in Quicken for financial planning or QuickBooks for small businesses, but what you can do now with AI and these large language models is really amazing in seconds what you can build with very little input required. So it’s powerful.
[00:48:30] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. Cool. So last question here. If a woman is listening to this and saying, okay, I need to know where should I start? There’s a lot of information inside of this about personal finance. Where should I start?
[00:48:45] Peter Dunn: I love my Peloton because at one point when I was looking for an inspiration or a coach or something, there were personalities that you could associate with. That’s my guy. That’s my girl. She does my rides. I think that if you’re trying to get started in personal finance, find someone that resonates with you, their voice. There’s so many great personal finance experts out there and I think representation matters age, gender, race. And I think that’s a good place to start and find inspiration.
[00:49:15] Nicole Lorch: Absolutely. Literacy is important. So start with a baseline understanding. If you meet with a financial planner and they say something you don’t understand, ask. If you don’t like the answer you get, it’s kind of like working with a large language model or AI. Ask the follow-up question because the relationship matters in that case. But I think so many people try to stay away from personal finance because they just feel like it’s a blind spot, but we will at some point need to take responsibility for our own finances. So start with literacy, whether it’s a book or meeting with a financial planner or just exploring things out on the internet. Check your sources. Start with Pete’s column. That’s a great place to start.
[00:49:59] Peter Dunn: Thank you.
[00:50:00] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, we’ll push out your podcast here in a minute. But I had a therapist on and she said one of the biggest ways we cause our own suffering is being at war with what is. And to me, this idea of personal finance is that when we are at war with what is, meaning just like, I know I’m behind, you’ll only be able to get on track if you’re able to say, “This is where I am, but I need to know what it takes to get there.” When we sit in this place of denial or saying like, “Tomorrow is going to be the day that I start on this topic and we do that into perpetuity.” We don’t ever actually make friends with where we really are. So I don’t know.
[00:50:36] Peter Dunn: That’s beautiful. I mean, it is step on the scale.
[00:50:38] Tiffany Sauder: Yes.
[00:50:39] Peter Dunn: Just step on the scale.
[00:50:40] Tiffany Sauder: Just step on
[00:50:41] Peter Dunn: The scale. It’ll be better after. Just step on. I
[00:50:44] Tiffany Sauder: Think let’s sign off with that. I want to close by saying I’m really proud of you. I’m proud of you for admitting there’s something to learn. I’m proud of you for bravely asking the questions. I’m proud of you for showing up for this conversation. Thank you, Pete, for joining us today. You are exactly the kind of voice that this topic needs. It’s honest, direct, and completely free of the inaccessible jargon that too often makes money conversations feel intimidating. And thank you to Nicole and the team at First Internet Bank for being a partner who believes that financially confident women, we change everything in our families, in our businesses and in our communities. If something Pete or Nicole said today made you want to take one step step on the scale, let’s do it today. Let’s do it this week, not someday, but this week. If you missed our previous Money Confessions conversation, we’ve linked it for you in show notes.
[00:51:34] Tiffany Sauder: And if you want more of Pete the Planner, he does a weekly podcast called The Pete the Planner Show and we’ve linked that in show notes for you as well. And one last thing. If this conversation meant something to you, please share it with someone who needs it. That’s how we keep making these episodes. I’ll see you next time.