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
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:.
