Summary:

A listener asks ”What apps or tech do you use to help manage your finances?”

In part 1 of this two-part show we spoke about budgeting and expenses. In part 2, II talk about:

  • How I use a spreadsheet to track my Investments
  • What is important to track when it comes to investments
  • PersonalCapital: A tool to aggregate investment accounts.
  • Fidelity / Schwab / Vanguard / Other: How free tools from these companies can help but also their limitations.
  • What to do with Credit Cards
  • Why a password manager is important

Find out more about Mike at https://www.mortonfinancialadvice.com and connect at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwsmorton/

Transcript
Matt:

Welcome to real financial planning broadcast on w K X L and available

Matt:

wherever you get your podcast I'm Matt Robson joined as always by Mike Morton

Matt:

of Morton financial advice and host of financial planning for entrepreneurs

Matt:

A fantastic podcast The Mike Morton

Matt:

podcast Mike

Matt:

welcome back

Mike:

Thanks Matt It's good to be here.

Mike:

I like that You still have

Mike:

a

Mike:

flag

Mike:

up behind You there

Matt:

Well I'm

Matt:

feeling extremely patriotic now an old

Matt:

ways

Matt:

Um you know it's

Mike:

but where's where did you put the kids' artwork?

Mike:

Where did that go Don't tell me you put it it in the in the

Matt:

You know there's there's a story

Matt:

to be had in this And I'm gonna go ahead and tell it real quick I have the same

Matt:

problem that a lot of parents have, which is you have treasured children's

Matt:

artwork What do you do with it after a certain amount time And I was introduced

Matt:

to an app I won't even say the name of it cause I don't want to sued for

Matt:

libel but you people are like, oh, use this app It's great You just take a

Matt:

photo and it'll store it like a filing system you a digital version then you

Matt:

can throw out your doodle Well, I was obsessive and I read the fine print and

Matt:

it turns out that they get intellectual property rights to whatever you

Mike:

holy

Matt:

submit with them which

Matt:

is

Matt:

weird because it means like, well what if your children's

Matt:

artwork includes like selfies?

Matt:

Or like, I don't know really good Or it includes photos Like they own all that

Matt:

up I'm not worried it's gonna end up on a mug but it's like you no longer Own

Matt:

this stuff, and it can be used anywhere throughout the universe commercial

Matt:

purposes or who knows what other purposes including you know they have

Matt:

rights to personal

Matt:

information about The whole thing is weird So anyway

Mike:

How long.

Mike:

So

Mike:

speaking of AB which we're talking about today, but I'm curious,

Mike:

how long was the legalese

Mike:

document that you read through

Matt:

it it was long but I what I did

Matt:

is

Matt:

I scanned

Matt:

down to personal information which was like section four So you know, like I to

Matt:

the good stuff It wasn't like a situation where the You sign the iTunes user

Matt:

agreement You know they did south park about that where it turns out that you've

Matt:

agreed to attach yourself to other human beings become a human sent iPad Um that's

Matt:

that's not what was going on with this but still, it's just a good reminder as we get

Matt:

it into discussion about apps and tools to use Read the fine print And I I should

Matt:

say, so look, we are answering this is part two of answering a listener question

Matt:

about Hey Mike what apps and tools and planning devices and programs do you use,

Matt:

or do you recommend, or do your clients use to make financial planning and you

Matt:

know all of our financial management in our lives a little bit it easier this is

Matt:

actually a great thing to say, which is Just because we mentioned something you

Matt:

shouldn't skip reading the fine print yourself We're not suggesting that any

Matt:

of these things do cause to sign away the to your kids' artwork or you know to have

Matt:

yourself attached to other human beings become a human centipede But you should

Matt:

always read the print on this stuff right So listener question It's a great listener

Matt:

question about what you use We we've covered what you use for budgeting Let's

Matt:

talk about investments What do you use

Matt:

for

Matt:

investments

Mike:

Yeah so on the investments and this is a good one that you want to

Mike:

track over time Now some people get very obsessive of tracking their investments

Mike:

you know they might check say Daily or hourly where my investment's doing.

Mike:

And then other people, maybe check every five or 10 years.

Mike:

I just booked the money away in my 401k I must have made some choices about where

Mike:

it's going so I've had clients at both ends of those spectrums where it's like,

Mike:

oh, I think I've got stuff in 401ks.

Mike:

I

Mike:

don't know I haven't checked in quite a few few years

Mike:

and then I

Matt:

that in the in our next

Matt:

episode we are gonna talk about that exact

Matt:

theme

Mike:

That's right And then I have people you know who who want to talk

Mike:

stock market and stocks and movements and all that kind of stuff but it is

Mike:

important to track over time And today we're talking about the apps I love

Mike:

tracking your net worth over time.

Mike:

I like doing that once a year I do that in simple spreadsheet So that's

Mike:

really easy Just kind of like write down everything you own and everything you owe

Mike:

I'm not gonna get into net worth today.

Mike:

We'll talk about but stick on the investment So the reason

Mike:

you want to track it is just.

Mike:

you'd like it to go go over time.

Mike:

so that's good.

Mike:

And you also wanna see how you're adding to it and I like to also

Mike:

look at the diversification That's the biggest reason that I'm tracking

Mike:

for myself my own investments.

Mike:

So what what do I use I I actually use a spreadsheet All right For tracking my

Mike:

own investments so I I love I use 'em all the time so it was pretty easy for

Mike:

me to build build my own spreadsheet I have I want to say 4, 5, 6 different

Mike:

accounts Between individual retirement accounts 401ks brokerage accounts

Mike:

might be a couple more than that.

Mike:

And I list all the holdings for each of them in one spreadsheet.

Mike:

So each of those accounts five or six accounts might have five or six things

Mike:

and but they don't change that much over time So once you build it like copy

Mike:

and paste all the ticker symbols and everything and then it rolls up for me

Mike:

I just built a custom spreadsheets to capture , how much I how many I have,

Mike:

how many shares of different things and roll that up into total account values

Mike:

in different asset classes We've talked talked about asset here so while you

Mike:

have an ETF you know that's us large cap And so it's like oh that us large cap.

Mike:

And I have $10,000 in that And that's you know some some percent of my

Mike:

overall portfolio So then what I'm looking at in the spreadsheet is the

Mike:

percent I have in each of those asset

Matt:

Mm

Mike:

And that's what is important to me.

Mike:

And particularly if you wanna know exactly what I do it's a spreadsheet I check it at

Mike:

least quarterly usually about quarterly, maybe once a month Um but quarterly I'll

Mike:

go in and take a snapshot of because it's updating in real real time The spreadsheet

Mike:

And so every quarter I go in and take a snapshot of exactly what values I have in

Mike:

all those different accounts and all that stuff and save that so I can see quarter

Mike:

to quarter, my progress and that's what

Mike:

I

Mike:

do for my own investments

Matt:

Well that

Matt:

resonates for me because I do something kind of similar myself although with

Matt:

a slightly different use which is I concerned And again I I was I was kind

Matt:

of being tongue and cheek kind not when I said we are gonna talk about the topic

Matt:

of What if you have a lot of how many is too many That, that is a theme for

Matt:

an upcoming show because I think for a lot of people nowadays people hold

Matt:

average of last time I checked this it was jobs in your career Many jobs have

Matt:

different kinds of benefits that go them them You might have a 401k you might.

Matt:

have some kind of You might you focus You love your clientele or entrepreneurs they

Matt:

might have stock options or incentives and so you might have stock that vests

Matt:

at a certain point so you might have far lung accounts the major one of The

Matt:

major uses of keeping some kind of a tracker somewhere is so that if you get

Matt:

hit by a bus your next of kin knows what you actually own and can benefit from

Matt:

it Like I'm not saying I have a lot of money We do not Hey thieves out there

Matt:

It's not worth it Believe me but I want my kids to get everything that we do have

Matt:

And you my spouse may not be of it So anyway So spreadsheet is a good option.

Matt:

What if people are just that's not their jam are there tools or

Matt:

like bank tools that are kind of prefab that are

Mike:

Yep Yeah, there's a couple there's a couple other options, but let me also

Mike:

mention I love That you that use case but make sure cuz usually it is one partner

Mike:

That's keep you know keeping track of more of the

Matt:

Right for

Matt:

polygamous

Matt:

people There's a whole other

Matt:

system that recommend We're gonna do an episode on that I'm joking

Mike:

That's right

Matt:

for my wife's sake

Matt:

please

Mike:

so definitely Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah that'll be the

Mike:

Twitter feed for this episode

Matt:

I promise this episode will blow up If tease

Matt:

online that it's like have multiple Here's

Matt:

how

Matt:

you

Matt:

do your financial planning

Mike:

here's how you do do your financial

Mike:

planning that's right Okay Anyway , So I do agree.

Mike:

That's a great use case.

Mike:

You want to to have everything written down right for the other person to

Mike:

find but the other place for that really is gonna be in your estate planning

Mike:

So make sure in your estate documents there should be like a cover page that

Mike:

has your wishes, in English, know cuz the the estate planted documents are

Mike:

usually a lot of legalese and then also just list your accounts right there You

Mike:

know that's so Helpful And for anybody that's gone through a estate planning

Mike:

or thinking about it just make sure to list everything because trust me if you

Mike:

are are not around and someone's is your and picking up all the pieces having a

Mike:

page or two just with some organizational

Mike:

information

Mike:

is gonna

Mike:

make life way better

Matt:

Yes So

Matt:

right

Mike:

so

Mike:

so that's a good use case All right Other tools people that don't

Mike:

wanna

Mike:

spreadsheets come on we don't want to use spreadsheets

Matt:

thanks for nothing

Mike:

Thanks for nothing Yeah So one I've used in the past is called

Mike:

personal personal capital and I haven't checked them out recently.

Mike:

That was a while ago I know they've morphed a little bit but I think it's

Mike:

still a pretty pretty good platform for combining investment accounts

Mike:

from different Institutions So you got like a 401k over, fidelity and

Mike:

you got brokerage over at Schwab and you got something at Vanguard Like

Mike:

you want to consolidate all that.

Mike:

That's kind kind the point of or one point I wanna mention around

Mike:

tracking investments It's not really individual investments.

Mike:

You can track that and follow that and do your your own thing.

Mike:

But really I'm talking about in aggregate you your entire kind of

Mike:

net worth portfolio You want to get a good insight into that because I

Mike:

often find people are either over aggressive but usually they're.

Mike:

Under aggressive usually there's cash kind of in four or five or six different

Mike:

accounts You get your emergency fund of cash You've got you know some CA

Mike:

you know some short term bonds or cash in your 401k and your brokerage.

Mike:

And you're like geez 20 30% of my portfolio is actually just cash you know

Mike:

and maybe maybe that's too high for you so that's why we wanna we wanna aggregate

Mike:

personal will do that There's probably

Mike:

some other ones but

Mike:

that's the only one

Mike:

that I'm

Mike:

familiar with

Matt:

that's you know it is an interesting point just to circle back to you were

Matt:

saying about the prime use case here being by the way use case is like A sort of

Matt:

more technical way of saying how do people use this It's what is it with programmers

Matt:

and

Matt:

engineers It's like you gotta you think you're

Matt:

You think your doctors and lawyers, and you have to say

Matt:

everything in Latin to make it

Matt:

sound sophisticated Anyway

Mike:

that's

Matt:

since one of major ways that might use a tool to track your overall

Matt:

investments is You wanna get a bird's eye view on what you've gotten Again I don't

Matt:

want this to sound Allity we all have so much money It's just this applies to more

Matt:

people than it seems like isn't just for rich folks the average person these days

Matt:

is going to have multiple accounts You're going to have multiple financial because

Matt:

you will have been in multiple jobs.

Matt:

Now you may have had a lot of jobs that Don't have any type of investment or

Matt:

retirement benefit fine, but, chances are, you've had at least more than one or

Matt:

know you something you've set up yourself or, you know, you've got a house or you've

Matt:

got multiple accounts to track And I think what is really hard is Trying to aggregate

Matt:

If you are just using let's say you've got your retirement assets in fidelity

Matt:

and they've got a nice interface you can get a lot of really good information

Matt:

but it's being served to you first of all through their interface And their kind of

Matt:

the way they categorize things And second of all, You're just seeing one slice of

Matt:

the overall picture And so I it does make sense to that you would want some kind

Matt:

of a central place to just get a sense or to be able to give to your financial

Matt:

advisor what the whole picture looks like What's the diversification Right What's

Matt:

the overall of risk set up that you've got And what is your overall net worth

Matt:

Are you I mean for for us personally We were worthless people for a number

Matt:

of years

Mike:

You're Matt

Matt:

Well thanks man

Matt:

thanks man but from a but from a financial standpoint I assure you that

Matt:

we many years for many Because our net liabilities net liabilities were higher

Matt:

than our So you know anyway knowing that knowing that and knowing scale

Matt:

out tip the scale out of that status seems like a to me seems like a valuable

Matt:

enterprise

Mike:

yeah.

Mike:

And you know You want to look at everything because it is important just

Mike:

again building building awareness and understanding and if you haven't done

Mike:

it for a few years or you've never done it and you got a a partner and you

Mike:

got a couple of jobs like who knows, you really don't have insight into

Mike:

those past 401ks Are they aggressive Are they not Are they even invested?

Mike:

I've met so many people that like oh yeah I put money into my individual

Mike:

retirement account I think it's still in cash know this is like years later,

Matt:

Or is it in

Matt:

A managed fund

Matt:

with

Mike:

it's good to

Matt:

Is it right Yeah

Mike:

exactly We talked all about that, so that's really important So I will

Mike:

mention, and then on , using your account fidelity or Schwab and using

Mike:

that aggregator they'll tell you oh, are you on track for retirement There's lots

Mike:

of good tools within there But again as Matt said it's only showing you that

Mike:

slice And that might be if that's most of your net worth then that's great use

Mike:

that tool Fantastic And that's one of the reasons you might look at consolidating

Mike:

but if it's not, if it's 50% of your stuff cuz your 401k is somewhere else

Mike:

then it's not really really that helpful.

Mike:

It's, not really given in any kind of accurate data That's where

Mike:

where these aggregators be good on the topic of consolidation.

Mike:

I'm sure we'll get to this in our future episode on Do you have too many 401k

Mike:

accounts or too many accounts there are are good reasons for aggregating,

Mike:

accounts of of what I mean transferring oh, I've got an old old 401k Should I

Mike:

transfer that to my IRA at fidelity?

Mike:

Because fidelity has all my other accounts or should I transfer it to

Mike:

Schwab Cuz that's where I do my banking there's good reasons to maybe do that

Mike:

And this would be one of is so that You can get get most your stuff all

Mike:

in one login so you can see and use the tools that that provider's given

Mike:

You

Matt:

You know I I

Matt:

it funny You were mentioning, I was joking being worthless but it is an

Matt:

interesting question because it does change your picture There are now I'm

Matt:

gonna sound like a dork there are sub use cases to knowing exactly your overall

Matt:

net worth is Maybe this is an episode we should do about about net worth you could

Matt:

be in the position where you're going for a loan you're going for a mortgage

Matt:

You wanna you need to have a and I on what is that Or the grim use case we

Matt:

were talking about a moment ago, if you got hit by a bus are you what kind of

Matt:

a financial position is your estate in?

Matt:

So there's just so many reasons why being able to keep track of that makes a ton of

Matt:

sense me And of course the political one I used work for a member of con Congress

Matt:

who heard from economist there's this idea of value Add To goods right Like

Matt:

you take a piece of lumber, you turn it into a piece of furniture it's called

Matt:

value add And in Europe they actually tax it's called a that a value added tax Like

Matt:

when you add value something and this economist was saying , through education

Matt:

you can go through the same process with human capital And he turned that into in

Matt:

political speeches to saying what were we need to do is add value people And it was

Matt:

great pains we tried to tactfully explain to him what you've just said is that all

Matt:

your constituents Are worthless and that what you to do is add value to them.

Matt:

All right.

Matt:

I'm way

Matt:

off

Mike:

And then text them That'd be great

Matt:

right Tax That's what the government does but all right

Matt:

Let's you mentioned cards a minute ago.

Matt:

Let's cover credit quickly Any

Matt:

tools you use

Mike:

Yeah before we get, before we get credit cards, one thing I wanted to

Mike:

mention that I I really like a tool is called M one finance And I ran across this

Mike:

a couple years ago M one people can check it out, but what I like about it, it's

Mike:

a kind of of like a brokerage, where you can put money there into retirement like

Mike:

an individual retirement account or just a right brokerage account And what's cool.

Mike:

about it neat is using technology to make your own robo advisor Is basically

Mike:

it is So instead of like using wealth front or betterment and just their

Mike:

models which you can pick, some of the different models and kind of tweak them

Mike:

you can a a hundred percent make your own and say I I want to this $10,000 into

Mike:

these five stocks at these percentages

Mike:

and then, , do that just automatically click of a button so you can make your

Mike:

own portfolios and the robot M one finance will update it when you add

Mike:

more money or subtract money it'll automatically rebalance And this is

Mike:

a pretty interesting one I I use it Here's a use case here's how I use M

Mike:

to finance for kids money for the future So I I wanna provide my kids a

Mike:

little bit of cushion or something.

Mike:

Maybe they want a down payment for a house in 15 years So I'm adding

Mike:

a few bucks a month into a portfolio That I've set up an M one finance and

Mike:

every time few bucks roll in there, it automatically rebalances it buys

Mike:

whatever is low and I've set up a portfolio That's a long term portfolio

Mike:

for the far future So I was able to tweak, exactly which ETFs I wanted in there.

Mike:

And then as I add money to it it automatically rebalances So that's

Mike:

just just a good tool I found pretty interesting with technologies

Mike:

you know Matt mean everything just moving lightning speed.

Mike:

, so that's a a really good one that I thought was using robots

Mike:

and computers

Mike:

in a

Mike:

really

Matt:

one Okay That's cool all right Yeah Credit

Matt:

cards

Matt:

alright Yeah Credit cards

Mike:

So credit cards we talked about it a little bit You only wanna make you

Mike:

are paying off your credit card every month and so that's the the important

Mike:

thing here, uh particular, what do I use?

Mike:

I'm not a credit card hacking person.

Mike:

I do not like trying to find the best deals and rotate my credit cards

Mike:

and try to get ones to and track the points like drives me nuts so I

Mike:

got a very simple through fidelity.

Mike:

I use fidelity for some of of my accounts And so I got a simple like one

Mike:

and a percent cash back That just goes straight into my fidelity account Super

Mike:

easy no problem So that's what I use for my main one of my main credit cards

Mike:

is fidelity and then my other credit card is through chase and I like their

Mike:

interface a lot and they have some good credit cards That's actually my

Mike:

business credit card they usually run some pretty good promotional points.

Mike:

This one does cost money, so I don't necessarily recommend it but I think

Mike:

when I got it it's got an annual fee the chase card I think think I have

Mike:

the Sapphire chase Sapphire card It's like a hundred bucks a year.

Mike:

So I I don't really recommend that you don't wanna be paying for

Mike:

your credit card but this this one gave me sort of a thousand bucks

Mike:

when I I signed up for it So I was like, eh, I I just kind of went it for that

Mike:

one , getting the that rewards up front I am paying a fee now, so I want very

Mike:

cognizant of that aware that I'm paying $100 a year for the privilege of using

Mike:

that credit card So I have to make sure the points are whatever's gonna be good

Mike:

ongoing or I I might make a switch but those two Those are the two in terms of

Mike:

credit cards that I personally use So the apps I'm going into chase I'm going

Mike:

into fidelity and monitoring that.

Mike:

But really all I'm doing is making sure the auto pay is set and

Mike:

making sure I have enough money in

Mike:

my

Mike:

checking account that when the auto auto

Mike:

pay kicks

Mike:

in

Matt:

Right And you and that's I I think a lot of what was embedded in the listener

Matt:

question is is the interface easy Does it make your planning easier to do And

Matt:

it sounds like with of those it's yes.

Matt:

As long you set up the auto pay

Matt:

Is easy to do

Mike:

Yeah.

Mike:

That's the really thing Just making whatever set the autopay Now I did

Mike:

wanna mention in , on financial planning because is what I do with clients of

Mike:

course, is , we've talked about Budgeting investment, you know tracking investments,

Mike:

tracking your budget, sure you're paying off your credit card looking at your

Mike:

net worth Well we combine all of that and try to predict the future because

Mike:

people want to know am I I doing the right things am I setting myself up for

Mike:

success five years from now 10 years from now 30 years from now how should

Mike:

I doing things And so We use financial planning planning software to predict

Mike:

that future and say like well on the the road you're on with your income and

Mike:

expenses and savings and investing Here's what what it might your value of of your

Mike:

accounts At some point in the future And so so I use financial planning software

Mike:

software There's a bunch of 'em out there.

Mike:

I use one called right capital so people can look it up but these are.

Mike:

Really geared towards financial advisors right So financial advisors would use

Mike:

this platform to model the future with their clients And then the clients can

Mike:

see the reports or have access I really like write capital because my clients

Mike:

can log log in and , play with scenarios themselves What if I wanna retire Or

Mike:

what if I spend a little bit less What if I wanna spend a little bit more

Mike:

there's all all kinds of dials stuff It makes it very easy for them to go in but

Mike:

I'm not aware in terms of that I think there are some tools out there but I

Mike:

just don't know So maybe some listeners can tell us where you can do that kind

Mike:

of thing on own financial planning software predicting income investments

Mike:

expenses throughout time and see,

Mike:

How likely

Mike:

are

Mike:

you to be able to retire

Mike:

the the way you want

Matt:

I've used

Matt:

some of the

Matt:

online myself Just to get a quick sketch of like if I were to save 10%

Matt:

more given a bunch assumptions where would I be at I've actually found those

Matt:

to be pretty useful for just ball parking Not that they're necessarily right they

Matt:

just you can plug in A lot of the basic assumptions of like social security

Matt:

What percent are gonna earn every year on investments how much income what

Matt:

level of spending should expect in retirement And it's not so much that,

Matt:

obviously math is math but it's not so much that each of those answers is

Matt:

precisely right It's being able to compare different scenarios that I find useful

Mike:

That's exactly

Mike:

right and I wanna pause Matt, because that's exactly it's comparing the

Mike:

different ideas of what you could do And in our minds we cannot pull all that

Mike:

together our brain cannot process All those inputs and and calculations and

Mike:

through time So by looking at the software and changing a toggle what if I want to

Mike:

retire four years earlier How much less do I need to spend throughout retirement

Mike:

now you have sort of an answer to that question in a ballpark you know know

Mike:

in a range but like an answer that you can you can have fruitful conversations

Mike:

now in comparing you know should we do

Matt:

Right And it's also to me in terms of sensitivities again all kinds of

Matt:

assumptions in this sensitivities know you have different things you could in

Matt:

this but a little bit more you have you could do You could save a little bit go

Matt:

for a higher paying job go for a higher Well you could figure out how sensitive

Matt:

it mean in terms of your lifestyle , you could figure out how sensitive out well

Matt:

actually, if you save a little bit more, you have the it turns out well actually

Matt:

if you the job but you don't want and and it helps you to make decisions like that

Matt:

A lot of that stuff is available you to make decisions like Hey we've got about

Matt:

30 seconds You had one more can Google it Hey we've got about 30 seconds You

Matt:

had one more point that I found really valuable in here which is everyone should

Matt:

have password protection these days What

Matt:

do you

Mike:

Yeah, I think password Yeah I think password protection is critical These

Mike:

days I use one, password the number one and then password is good pass is good.

Mike:

There's other ones that are great it's critical going it's critical going back

Mike:

to our estate planning and having partners and a Put I put put I put everything

Mike:

into that password manager because again if something were to happen to me

Mike:

then all of my account information and logins and everything are all place

Mike:

For someone to

Mike:

be

Mike:

able

Matt:

it seems

Matt:

like

Matt:

a small point It's really not nowadays All right Mike Morton Wow

Matt:

We covered a lot of ground really not nowadays All right Mike Morton

Matt:

Wow We covered a lot of ground here.

Matt:

Great listener question Thanks so

Mike:

Matt

Matt:

us through it

Mike:

Matt

Mike:

Thanks for joining us on financial planning for entrepreneurs.

Mike:

If you like, what you heard, please subscribe to and rate the podcast on

Mike:

Apple iTunes, Google play Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mike:

You can connect with me on linkedin or mortonfinancialadvice.com.

Mike:

I'd love to get your feedback.

Mike:

If you have a comment or question, please email me at

Mike:

.

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