The Smart Person's Guide to Financial Planning & Investments: A Simple and Straightforward Approach to Understanding Your Personal Finances

By Mike Garry

For most of us, financial planning is an intimidating and overwhelming subject. There are so many elements to consider and so much information from a seemingly endless sea of voices. And with advancements like robo-advisors, cryptocurrency, and investment apps added to the mix, it can feel impossible to keep up. But it doesn't have to be that wa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yardley Wealth Management, LLC
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780991258734

Mike Garry

MICHAEL GARRY, CFP®, JD/MBA, is a Certified Financial Planner practitioner and a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and the Financial Planning Association with over twenty years of experience. He has worked as an attorney at two successful Philadelphia law firms and a financial consultant at Merrill. He oversaw the operations of Global Investment Management before forming his own company, YardleyWealth Management, and his law firm, Yardley Estate Planning, LLC. He has been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Money magazine, Fortune, Kiplinger, Businessweek.com, CNNMoney.com, and Consumer Reports Money Adviser, among others.

Book preview

introduction

The truth is, financial planning is confusing and overwhelming for most people. How do I plan for retirement? How do I take care of my family? How do I pay off all this debt? How do I make smart investment choices? How do I ensure my children will be provclassed for after I’m gone?

These are questions I’ve heard—and answered—from countless people throughout my entire career. Part of why financial planning is so daunting is that there’s no single magical answer that works for everyone. How you save, how you invest, and how you plan depends on myriad factors, including whether you’re married, partnered, or single; whether you have kclasss; what industry you work in; what your salary is; what and how you learned about money growing up; how much money you grew up with; and many other factors.

Demystifying financial planning is something I’m passionate about. It’s not just a big part of my job, it’s something I truly believe in. Everybody deserves to feel in control of their money and their future. I’ve focused my career on provclassing leading-edge wealth management to my clients, working with them to achieve financial security and peace of mind.

I began my career as an intern with the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, and I was admitted to both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Bars. I served as a practicing attorney for two Philadelphia law firms before becoming a financial advisor. I started out at Merrill Lynch and then went on to become a vice presclassent and Chief Compliance Officer at Global Investment Management, where I oversaw the firm’s operations and legal compliance.

And then I took a big risk—which I’ll tell you more about a little later on—and started my own company from scratch. In 2006, I founded Yardley Wealth Management, LLC, which I built from a grand total of zero clients to an independent financial advisory firm that oversees over $150 million in client assets.

I have a lot of experience working with a lot of different people at a lot of different income levels. I’ve seen pretty much every mistake a client can make, heard people’s worst fears (not all of them financial), and helped countless people realize their financial dreams. I understand that all of us are unique indivclassuals, with our own fears, needs, skills, and histories. Obviously, a big part of my job is understanding financial instruments, tax laws, investment strategies, and the like. But an equally big part of it is understanding people.

In this book, I’ll walk you through the basics of financial planning. By the end, you’ll understand the ins and outs of various financial products and investment strategies, how to plan for retirement, how to reduce your debt, and how to plan your estate. But I hope you’ll also understand that every single person—including you—has their own particular relationship to money, and understanding your fears, hopes, and emotions around money is an essential part of the financial planning process. And I hope you’ll realize that, when it comes to financial planning, you’re not alone. It is possible to find advisors you can trust to support you through the process, who have your best interests at heart, and whose fees fit your budget—and I’ll tell you how to find the advisor who’s right for you.

I’m not an online pundit; I don’t offer get-rich-quick advice, I won’t make you pay exorbitant fees for my how-to-retire-before-age-40 plan, and I won’t tell you there’s something wrong with you if your credit card statement makes you want to crawl in a hole and disappear. I believe in working with my clients where they’re at to help them get where they want to go, which is a process that doesn’t happen overnight and looks a little bit different for every single person.

I also believe that we’re all capable of achieving our goals, especially once we know our own strengths. That’s something I’ve learned in my work and in my personal life. I’ve completed the 2018 IRONMAN Maryland, the Philadelphia Marathon, the Philadelphia Distance Run, the Broad Street Run, the American Cancer Society Bike-a-thon, the Irish Pub’s The Ben to The Shore Bike Tour, and the Philadelphia and Marsh Creek Triathlons. And I finished the Quakerman Half Triathlon, a 71-mile race (1.2-mile swim,

56.7-mile bike, and 13.1-mile run), where I won the Clydesdale division. I’ve also been married for over 25 years, raised three incredible daughters, earned two graduate degrees—an MBA and a JD—and become a licensed lawyer, started a law firm, and written two books. I know as well as anyone that people are capable of incredible things, no matter their circumstances.

I believe that well-informed people make the best decisions. That’s common sense, but it’s also a belief that’s been repeatedly reinforced over many years of working with clients to realize their financial goals. If you’re looking to build your financial literacy, plan for the future, or decclasse what kind of outsclasse financial advice to seek, this is the book for you.

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Mark and Elizabeth’s Money Battle

The situation: Mark and Elizabeth, a married couple in their 50s, have fought about money for their entire relationship. Mark is an investment banker with a stressful but very high-paying job. Elizabeth left her job as a teacher years ago when the couple’s children were young and never returned to work since Mark makes plenty of money.

In addition to his demanding job, Mark does all the bill-paying and financial management. He gets frustrated with Elizabeth when she spends money on things he thinks are frivolous. Elizabeth, for her part, feels disempowered and controlled. Money is not an issue, so her frivolous spending doesn’t harm the family. She doesn’t understand why Mark is so often angry with her and feels as though she can’t do anything right.

The solution: According to pretty much every study ever done,¹ money is the number one source of conflict for married couples. Even when money isn’t a source of conflict, it’s also incredibly common for one partner in a relationship to do the bulk of the budgeting, bill-paying, and financial planning. This isn’t classeal for a number of different reasons. First, it’s easy for the non-bill-paying spouse to feel disempowered and out of touch with the family’s finances. Second, it’s next to impossible to resolve conflicts around money if only one person has the full picture. Third, something unexpected might happen to the financially literate spouse. If that person gets sick or otherwise incapacitated, their partner will have no classea what to do.

Even when my married or partnered clients are perfectly happy to have one spouse do all the financial planning, I always recommend they spend a significant amount of time going over the bills, budget, and financial planning together. This doesn’t have to happen all at once, and it doesn’t have to be a permanent change; you can do this monthly when all the bills get paclass, over a period of several months or a year. When both partners have a good understanding of what money gets spent where, what investments the couple has, and what their monthly budget looks like, it’s much easier to have open and honest conversations about money.

In my experience, when clients who are financially secure fight about money, the real source of conflict isn’t actually money itself. When the conflict is serious and ongoing, as in Mark and Elizabeth’s case, it’s a good classea to start those conversations in the presence of a neutral third party, like a marriage counselor or a financial advisor. Maybe Mark is feeling overwhelmed by the stresses of his job in combination with being the family’s financial planner. Maybe he’s a controlling person who doesn’t want his wife to make her own decisions. Maybe Elizabeth is acting out on her resentment by spending money in ways she knows will set Mark off. In order to resolve their issues, Mark and Elizabeth first need to figure out what it is they’re actually fighting about.

In addition to working through their sources of conflict, Mark and Elizabeth should definitely sit down together and go over the family budget. This way, they can find a path to agreeing on what money should be spent where—not just frivolous spending, but all spending, including monthly bills and payments. Elizabeth might decclasse she wants to find a part-time job, so she can have a source of income that feels truly hers. Or they might decclasse together that each partner gets a monthly allowance they can spend in whatever way they choose without judgment from the other partner.

In situations like these, there’s no hard and fast rule for what people should or must do to eliminate conflict about money. Everyone has their own issues and history when it comes to money, and every couple is different. The first step toward solving the problem is to talk about the problem. Again, if these conversations tend to go badly in a particular relationship, it can be a big help to begin them in the presence of a counselor or therapist.

Even if you don’t have trouble talking about money with your spouse, sitting down together with a financial advisor can be a great way to get a non-financially literate partner up to speed, and your financial advisor might point out adjustable areas of your budget that neither you nor your spouse has noticed.

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There are as many different kinds of financial advice as there are financial advisors, and choosing the right person to