00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's 40th Saturday night special with Shelley Lombard from Millie money.com. I'm Shelly Lombard, founder of Millie money learning how to invest. We'll give you options for your future and to help others get inspired. One way to do that is to listen to this podcast inspired stewardship with my friend Scott Mader. But I think for both people, so for people who or have been in the market for a while, you still want to say to people, don't panic. Don't, um, you know, don't pull your market your money out because what happens is you say,
00:00:47 Oh, I'll pull it out until you know everything stabilizes and then you don't know when it's going to stabilize. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the word. In tonight's 40th episode of the Saturday night special Shelley and I talk finances in this volatile market.
00:01:36 She shares why now it's not all bad when it comes to investing and Shelly and I talk about getting started in investing and Shelly share some of her thoughts on financial stewardship. Now. One area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion that's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity,
00:02:16 not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type, but if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work. But there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone and we help you do that and productivity for your passion.
00:02:53 Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch Shelly Lombard has worked on wall street for over 30 years as an analyst with an MBA in finance from Columbia. Shelley now works on Millie money.com where she works to present the complex concepts of investing and saving and these sorts of things in simple language while also interviewing experts on personal finance and sharing her own lessons so that you can become your own money hero. Welcome to the show, Shelly. Thank you. Thanks Scott. So let's start there. I mean, you know, I talk to clients about investing.
00:03:36 I, you know, the difference between investing and savings and these sorts of things and investing is one of those topics that to a lot of folks in the best of times seems overwhelming, seems really complicated. You know, there's all these letters and acronyms and language and weird stuff. So what are some of the first things that people can do or should do to begin to invest wisely? Right. You know, one of the things I'll start with is a quote from Warren buffet who says, you know,
00:04:05 if your IQ is more than one 20 a one 30, sell some points to somebody else. When it comes to investing, you do not need to be a genius. To be an investor. You need to learn some basic concepts. But that's about it. So I think that the kind of three hurdles that people have to get over one is sometimes people say, I don't have enough money. And so there's some new tools recently. Um, you know, acorns is one of them that my daughter actually introduced me to.
00:04:33 And then I use it where you can put aside a little bit of money every month. Um, I put aside $5 cause I just want it to be exposed to it. And so I started putting aside $5 a month and they invest you after asking you some questions, et cetera. They invested for you in different funds. Um, you know, mutual funds, ETFs, et cetera. And you know, one thing that they do that I haven't taken advantage of, but it's very popular with my daughter and heart grout is what's called Roundup where they actually,
00:05:01 you know, if you buy a latte or something for four 79, they will take the extra 21 cents and accumulate that over time. And so my daughter always says the adds up so much faster than you would ever think, but that at least even with just $5 a month, it gets you in the habit of putting money aside, which is a good habit to start. The other thing that people complain about is not having enough time and again, technology to the rescue. So, um, if people are familiar with them,
00:05:30 the mobile trading apps are so helpful. If you want to treat individual stocks. So, you know, I will buy a stock before I get out of bed in the morning. It's so simple. They're mobile hats, they're several of them. There's Robinhood, this Dole, there's, we bowled as M one finance. There are a ton of them. So you really can, you know, use those. They make your life really easy if you want to buy individual stocks. But even if you want to buy funds or mutual funds or ETFs,
00:05:56 you kind of automate that process just like you do with your full one K you can go to a mutual fund provider and set up something where you make regular contributions. So that kind of gets at the time thing. I don't have time. And then I think the real big hurdle for people is knowledge. And that was one of the reasons I started Millie money because my daughter's friends, once they found that I was worked on wall street and other people, my friends would say, well, should I buy Tesla stock?
00:06:22 What should I do? Somebody told me about a biotech stock, blah blah blah, should I buy it? And so I started Millie money to one explain to people with different types of funds where, what's a blue chip fund, what's an investment grade bond fund? And then also to go into to explain some of the stock market lingo. And then we recently launched something called Millie 20, and it's a 20 stocks that millennials that matter to millennials. And so it's stocks like Netflix and um, Tesla and,
00:06:51 um, you know, Starbucks, um, where we will cover those stocks. We can't cover every stock in detail, but we'll cover those stocks. So I just posted something today about Kimberly Clark, which is an unusual stock to have in the Millie 20, but it's a nice consumer staple. They make paper towels, they make toilet paper. One of the things that everybody is fine now. Um, last week we reported on Netflix, so if we have an opinion we'll tell you, but we'll let you know what's going on in the stock.
00:07:18 So there are tons of ways to, to amass knowledge in the market. And what I would advise people to do is start with one or two or three stocks that you think you might like, don't get into anything that you don't understand. You need to understand the business and how they make money and that's one hurdle. And then you can kind of go from there. Um, and so those three hurdles don't have to be hurdles, you know, no, no money, no time, no knowledge.
00:07:44 There are ways to get around all of those. Well, and of course with the knowledge, I mean nowadays, you know, there's, there's a ton of personal finance sites out there. Um, so how do you kind of pay attention or figure out where to get the knowledge from? Because you know, I also know that if I tune into five different channels, I'll probably get five different opinions. absolutely. And I know when I worked on wall street, one of the things, so you know,
00:08:15 you'd look at it, I've made multiple appearances on CNBC. You know, in the morning they'd have somebody on who liked general motors and then afternoon they'd have somebody who didn't like general motors. And so one of the things that we planned to do with, um, with eventually is to have on stock experts and give the the bull version and the bear version, somebody who likes it and somebody who doesn't like the stock. But most of the apps that I named, I'm definitely a DOE. Definitely Robin hood.
00:08:41 All have an educational component to it. So what I do is I use the stock app on my phone. And so if I have a stop that I'm involved in, like Disney or Starbucks, I can just tap that and it'll give me articles, you know, news stories about what analysts are saying about that stock and that I subscribed to, you know, one or two publications, you know, um, newsletters, um, that, you know, kind of keep me up on everything that's going on in the market.
00:09:08 But that's the way to do it. And I think if you're only following two or three stocks, you, you, I don't have a huge bandwidth, so 20 stocks is a lot, but two or three stocks, you know, I probably have 10 that I'm invested in directly, but that's probably plenty for me. And so what I'll do is I will Google or I'll look for stories specifically about that stock. So I just, in terms of the market, I'll subscribe to some, you know,
00:09:32 market newsletters to get general information about the market. But, uh, you know, in terms of looking at the 10 stocks that I care about, I will hone in those on, in, on those in particular. Okay. So real quick, because you used a couple of terms there that, that uh, I want to give folks a chance to understand you, you threw off, you know, bear or bull for the stock or for the market. Can you talk a little bit about what,
00:09:58 what a bear market or what a bear stock, what does that mean? And the same for bull. So bull market is what we were coming out of. We were in a bull market for 10 years and what that meant was stocks kept going up and up and up. Not 300 points everyday. Like it's up today, you know, a couple of hundred points but you know, it was up 20 points or 50 points or five points. But the market was, had very few down days and a lot of updates of their market is what we had,
00:10:27 which started back in, I guess it was kind of end of February. And a bear market is typically when stock prices or down 20% from their high. So we probably hit a high sometime in January and then kind of February, March starts with down at least 20% from where they had been. A correction is something, you know, kind of between 10 and 20% so a bear market is when, and you know it when you're in it because that's all CNBC is the fact that stocks are going down,
00:10:58 down, down. So bear market though by definition is a period when stocks are down at least 20% from their most recent high. And so we, we of almost come back now, but, and when I say recent high, what I mean is usually people measure the stock market by an index, either the S and P 500 the Dow Jones industrial average or sometimes the NASDAQ. And so each of those, like the NASDAQ had come back pretty quickly and the SAP and the dowel Jones was still lagging.
00:11:28 They weren't fully back. But I think a lot of them, not quite back, but up close to where they were before they crashed. So we kind of coming out of the band market, but I think a lot of experts feel like there's another leg down. You know, a lot of people are still unemployed. We don't know how fast the economy will come back and when it will come back. Will it be this year in a couple of months or will it be next year? And so,
00:11:53 you know, several experts, guys who manage your major hedge funds, et cetera, et cetera, have said, look, you know, we're going to go down another 20 30% before this is all over. So you know, if that's the case, we could reenter a bear market territory. And so kind of talking about that when, if we think about that, if folks are right and, and either we're going to go back into another bear market or this continues and kind of hangs on and goes up and down,
00:12:19 but there's enough Downes to call it a bear market. Um, you know, what does that mean for folks that are maybe just getting started with investing or haven't been in the market very long versus somebody that's been in there for 10,
00:12:33 20, 50 years, uh, maybe getting a little closer to retirement age. Yeah, two very different things.
00:12:39 So, you know, um, um, you know, one of the older people on the spectrum and you know,
00:12:44 for us it's a little scary because you know, you're putting money away for retirement. Now, some people who are older have already started shifting their money into bonds and away from stocks.
00:12:54 Bonds are safe, more conservative investment. You will make a lot of money, particularly in this environment where interest rates are low.
00:13:00 But I think for both people, so for, for people who, or have been in the market for awhile,
00:13:06 you still want to say to people, don't panic. Don't, um, you know, don't pull your market your money out.
00:13:12 Because what happens is you'll say, Oh, I'll pull it out until you know, everything stabilizes and then you don't know when it's going to stabilize.
00:13:20 And so what you will have done is locked in a loss and you know, you will probably get back in,
00:13:26 but you will miss some of the upside when you get back in. So you, if you've been in awhile,
00:13:30 um, even if you know you're kind of taken a hit as long as you have, you know,
00:13:34 uh, one to two years, you know, in bonds. And so one to two years of living expenses and violence,
00:13:40 you're 65, 68 et cetera, you can manage for another two years. The average bear market lasts about 18 months and it takes a couple of years though for stocks to fully recover.
00:13:50 They will stop going back down after 18 months, but it takes another couple of years for them fully to recover.
00:13:55 So if you have a couple of years in bonds of years, expenses in bonds, which you should have if you're 65,
00:14:01 68 70, then you should hold tight, sit tight, don't panic, stay in the market if you knew this is a gift.
00:14:10 There's another Warren buffet quote where he says, you know, every 10 years or so, the economic skies darken and the heavens rain gold.
00:14:17 And then in that case you should run outside with a bucket, not with a teaspoon. And so the best time to buy things or when things are on sale and all that stuff that people kept saying was overvalue,
00:14:28 overvalued or valued. If it goes down 10% or 20%, that's an excellent time for people to look at it and think,
00:14:36 you know what, it's well below it's low. And we actually teach, teach a course called how to buy stocks in a bear market,
00:14:43 but how to figure out quote unquote, if you're buying a cheap. So you want to buy good companies,
00:14:47 you want to buy companies with good balance sheets that you know are going to last this downturn and you want to buy him at good prices.
00:14:54 And so that's kind of the key. And I think that, um, you know, back to that,
00:14:59 that issue with you want to buy things, you want to stand, um, that makes you more comfortable.
00:15:04 You know like you can kind of just common sense think you know, how was this going to, how was this downturn gonna impact cruise line.
00:15:11 It's how was it going to impact Disney, how is it going to impact Starbucks, how is going to impact Amazon?
00:15:16 Some of them will benefit from it, some of them won't. But if you're dabbling in something that you don't really understand well like a biotech stock,
00:15:23 it's a lot harder to use your common sense to think through who's going to do well in this environment and who's not.
00:15:29 And the other thing is I think you have to have a longterm view. So buffet, again, he's the most successful investor of all time.
00:15:35 Probably one of the most has said, you know, he invest not for you know, what's going to happen in a year,
00:15:42 but what's going to happen in 20 years now most of us don't have the kind of expertise to look out that far.
00:15:48 But you can certainly think about, okay, where's Amazon going to be five years from now? Is it going to be as powerful it is or is it going to be worse?
00:15:57 Where is um, Royal Caribbean cruise line going to be in five years? Is it going to take a while to come back or,
00:16:03 so that's the kind of, you want to have a longterm thinking. Every stock is not a lottery ticket.
00:16:08 So a lot of times I talk to people who like, Oh, a friend of mine bought Tesla and he made you know,
00:16:14 gazillion dollars in a very short period of zoom in January. And I can't, I won't hold myself out as an expert on stuff like that.
00:16:25 But what I will say is, and you know, this kind of gets at the fear that people have,
00:16:30 especially in a bear market. Stocks are one of the few things that you can buy that have the potential to be worth more five years than they are now.
00:16:38 So if you spend money on a flat screen television or a mobile phone, that certainly will be worthless in five years.
00:16:48 Certainly going to be worthless in five years, if not worth less worth, worth less. Exactly. But if you put that same thousand dollars or $20,000 or whatever the number is into stocks,
00:17:00 you have the potential. Every stock's not going to do well, but you have the potential for your investment to be,
00:17:06 for it to be an investment for it to be worth more in five years than it is now. And so for people just waiting into the market,
00:17:13 you have to say a couple of things. It's a great time to invest because you know when in a bear market,
00:17:18 stocks on sale, you want to buy things that are on sale. And then again to address the fear.
00:17:23 So again, you know, if you say, I'm going to keep that thousand dollars in the mattress or in the savings account,
00:17:29 instead of, you know, putting it in stocks, as long as you're taking care of your retirement money,
00:17:34 as long as you have an emergency fund, just in case if you put that thousand dollars into stocks five years,
00:17:40 you will have set yourself up for the future hopefully. And that's again where a lot of times investing in mutual funds.
00:17:49 That's one of the reasons people do that is because it spreads it around. It's not just one stock.
00:17:53 You have to guess right on one horse you've got multiple horses in the race, um, you know,
00:17:59 index funds and all and eat ETFs and different, you know, different ways of doing that to reduce some of that,
00:18:05 uh, or create diversification. So reducing some of the risks. What I say to people is, you know,
00:18:11 your retirement money should probably be a mutual funds expert. You know, you get diversification, you can pick the fund,
00:18:20 but you don't have to pick the individual stocks. It's a lot less work. So mutual funds or ETFs do that for your retirement money.
00:18:27 You get the diversification, you get professional advice, et cetera. Whether the index funds or their actively managed funds like blue chip funds or sector funds or whatever.
00:18:37 I usually advise people to do that. But there's nothing wrong with, you know, buying a couple of stocks.
00:18:43 You know. And again, I wouldn't, you're not going to get diversity with three stocks or with your own personal portfolio.
00:18:50 But you know, what you can do is create a, another source of revenue. So I always use the example,
00:18:56 you know, probably nine years ago I bought home Depot stock at around in the forties it's like over $200 a share.
00:19:02 I've made 10 $20,000 probably around 15 or something like that on home Depot stock. And I didn't do anything.
00:19:09 I just bought the stock initially and then I left it alone. Now I made a good decision, you know,
00:19:13 because the housing market was strong, interest rates were low was the first thing you do when you buy a house.
00:19:19 You spent hours upon end you in home Depot. So it was a good wise choice. But it's a nice,
00:19:25 and I did it outside of my, if you, if you do it outside of your retirement money,
00:19:30 you can tap into, if you do it in your, you know, you can't do it in your,
00:19:34 but if you do it in your IRA or your Roth IRA, then you know, you can't pull it out before you're 59 and a half without paying taxes on it.
00:19:43 But there's nothing wrong with having a taxable trading account where you can buy a couple of stocks that you feel strongly about.
00:19:49 You've done the work on it, you know, you're not buying something, you know, quirky cause your friends,
00:19:54 cousins, brothers, uncle told you about it, but you've actually done some work in audit. You've looked at it,
00:20:00 you've made a decision and if it goes up, you could have, you know, a couple of thousand dollars in a couple of years and it's a nice source of extra income.
00:20:08 Right. And that's, yeah. One of the things that, that uh, you know, I've had clients that take a certain percentage of their,
00:20:14 their investment money and it's almost, and I, I use the term play money and that's really a bad term cause they're not playing.
00:20:22 There is work involved. Like you said, it is, they're doing research and they're trying to, but,
00:20:26 but it is money that at the end of the day, if they lost all of it, it's not going to really harm their overall picture.
00:20:33 If they win big with it, that's nice and it's extra money, but it's not at the same time it's kinda money that at the end of the day they can afford to lose it.
00:20:42 Exactly. And I think that's probably a wonderful way to look at it. I mean, think of it is the amount of money that you might spend on a vacation.
00:20:50 So you know, my husband and I took a vacation to the Dominican Republic years ago and it rained. I think we were there five to seven days and it rained the entire time.
00:20:59 So of course you're annoyed, you're disappointed, you spend a couple of thousand dollars on this vacation and you got nothing out of it.
00:21:05 But it's not like it's going to make the difference between, you know whether your mortgage gets paid or not.
00:21:10 And so think of it that way. You know, you're absolutely right. People are making intelligent decisions and educated decisions.
00:21:17 They're taking a look at the stock, they're doing, all those things that I said, good company,
00:21:21 good balance sheet, good price. But again, it's not going to be the, it's not like you take in 30 grand and putting it into a commercial,
00:21:29 a property. You, a lot of people say to me, well I prefer real estate and I love real estate,
00:21:34 but you know, the difference is that just, you know, this is a little bit more liquid.
00:21:38 You know, the stock market is more liquid and there's a place in your portfolio for different things. And so again,
00:21:44 you know, stocks or something, you can, if you've made 10 grand, you can easily sell it where even if you've made a hundred grand on a real estate transaction,
00:21:52 you may not be able to sell it, you know, in, depending on how the market is right there.
00:21:57 But I think you're absolutely right. One rule of thumb that I say to people is take your money that you would maybe have spent on a vacation,
00:22:04 a thousand dollars or something like that. That way if you know, you pick, you did three stocks and you were absolutely wrong on all of them and you didn't sell them at the right time.
00:22:13 Because again, the beauty of the stock market is that it's liquid. So if you bought it at $50 a share and you figured out,
00:22:19 oops, I'm wrong, and it's down to $40 a share, you can sell it. You don't have to wait till it goes to zero.
00:22:24 But if it does go to zero, like you totally fall asleep at the switch. It's not like you're not going to eat.
00:22:30 This was a vacation that you didn't take and you put it into the market instead. Yeah. The other thing about real estate is it's with,
00:22:37 with money in the stock at least you can sometimes sell part of the money where it's really hard to carve off just your bathroom and sell that,
00:22:45 you know, off of the house. I'll just sell the back bedroom. That's okay. Exactly. And even,
00:22:52 you know, with rental properties, and I said to somebody, somebody sent me an Instagram message the other day and he says,
00:22:58 Oh, well, you know, I'm really gonna, um, I'm really gonna focus on commercial real estate.
00:23:04 And I was like, well, that's great. You know what I mean? There's a place in the portfolio for a lot of different things.
00:23:09 But what I would say is that, um, what I would say is that it's a lot less liquid.
00:23:15 So if for some reason you want that money, you want to start a business, you want to do something else with this money you've made,
00:23:21 you know, in this investment, it's a lot easier to do that with stocks than it is to,
00:23:26 as you said, you know, try to sell part of a real estate investment. Right? Yeah.
00:23:30 And again, real estate is not necessarily a bad investment. Again, going back to your earlier thing,
00:23:35 it is one of those things that typically in most cases you can buy today and in five years it's worth more,
00:23:41 right? Not universally true, not universally true of stocks either. So that's okay. But in general,
00:23:47 that's the trend for real estate, which is why that is another place that some people do invest as well.
00:23:54 So when we think about, you know, the time right now, so you're talking about, you know,
00:23:58 if you're starting out, yay, it's on sale by buying now's not necessarily a bad thing. Um,
00:24:04 the, the stock market has come up quite a bit here recently. Uh, at the same time,
00:24:08 you know, if you're, if you've been in for a while, stay the course if you can,
00:24:12 don't panic, sell. What else do you know when you think about people that are getting into this idea of investing for the future and maybe they're struggling a little bit with the whole concept of,
00:24:23 of why they want to do it or, or how does this make their, there's so much going on that's in our day to day,
00:24:32 you know, that we, so it's so easy to focus on the immediate. So what advice would you have for somebody that's maybe thinking,
00:24:39 you know, I'll worry about this later. You know, right now it's not the right time. I'll,
00:24:44 I'll deal with it in five years or 10 years or 20 years or whatever it is for him. Yeah.
00:24:49 The thing about investing is the earlier you do it, the more beneficial it is to you. So I could have bought home Depot at a hundred dollars a share.
00:24:56 I would have just made a lot less money. I could have bought it at $150 a share, but I would have just made a lot less money.
00:25:02 So the earlier you do it, the better. The people who did buy Tesla, you know very early on I've made tons of money.
00:25:09 So with investing the early you do it, the better. You know, if it's an investment, like a bond that actually pays interest,
00:25:15 the compounding of that will make a difference. Even if the interest rate is lower, you still will get interest on interest.
00:25:22 So investing is one of those things where the early you do it the better. The also, unlike I think to real estate what you can do and not to beat up on real estate cause I think it's a great investment.
00:25:32 There's a place in everybody's portfolio forward depending on their risk tolerance, et cetera. But another thing you can do with stocks is to dollar cost average.
00:25:42 So you know, in a bear market, one of the things to do is not put all your money in at one time.
00:25:48 If you think there could be another leg down, you know, in other words, the market could go down.
00:25:53 Again, you take that thousand dollars and you invest, you know, $200 a month over a period of time or every time the market goes down,
00:26:02 you know, 5% of 10% or that particular stock goes down five to 10% you buy a little bit more.
00:26:08 And so that's the way to kind of protect your downside and tip, take full advantage of a bear market because nobody knows where things are going to go from here.
00:26:18 I mean, I think if people are looking at the market now, I would say get involved just because even though it's almost back to where it was,
00:26:26 it could go higher. You know, the very best case scenario is, you know, um, you know,
00:26:32 the covert 19 is over, disappears in the fall. Everything comes back and then you've missed that because you waited.
00:26:38 So you buy some and that if it goes up, great. If it doesn't, then if it goes down five or 10%,
00:26:45 you buy a little bit more. Another 10%, you buy a little bit more. But I think time is just one of those things where I think,
00:26:53 you know, as you said, it was better to buy zoom in January than it is now. If you dollar cost average,
00:27:00 that protects you from the potential downside, should the market go, you know, against you should it go down?
00:27:07 Well and again, it's also proven using zoom is that example. It's proof to that. None of us know the future.
00:27:14 Um, you know, and anyone who tells you they do is lie in some way, shape or form.
00:27:21 So you listen to the experts and you want to gain knowledge and you want to invest in things that you know,
00:27:25 but there is a little bit of a, you gotta you know, I'm not gonna say luck cause it's not really luck,
00:27:32 but there is a little bit of, you don't exactly know what's going to happen in the future and that's okay.
00:27:36 You've got to be comfortable with that fact that it's not completely known. You can just do everything you can to know as much as you can know.
00:27:45 Exactly. Which is why I tend to invest, um, in things that I know, right. So the milli 20 is really made up of stocks of companies that are kind of household names.
00:27:57 Some of them do technology for things that are household names, but again, I think you have a better chance of understanding one,
00:28:04 how the company makes money and understanding an environment where it may not make money if you really understand what the company does because end of the day stocks in that pieces of paper stocks or fractional interest in an actual real business.
00:28:19 And so you need to make sure it's an actual real business you want to own. So I always am a little resistant even though I've done this for a living for 30 years,
00:28:28 I got my MBA from Columbia and I've looked at companies, I've done nothing else for 30 solid years.
00:28:34 I still am a little resistant. I'm not much of a tech technology expert, but I'm still a little resistant when somebody you know,
00:28:43 says to me, Oh, you've got to look at this stock or you've got to look at this biotech stock or you know,
00:28:48 something like that. Cause I just know that I'm not going to be able to do the work, you know,
00:28:53 and understand it well enough to really know what I'm getting myself into. And I think that's a big,
00:28:58 a big deal. So really understanding how that company makes money and when it's fortunate could be getting better or if it's fortunate could be going,
00:29:08 you know, getting worse. And again, you know, something that, you know, well you could look out five years,
00:29:13 you like I said, you know, Starbucks or, um, you know, Disney or which both of which I own.
00:29:19 Um, but you know, even something like Apple, which I don't own, you know, you can kind of get comfortable with it five years out,
00:29:25 which is kind of the horizon. And then even if the market takes this, these companies are not going away.
00:29:31 You know, apples are going to disappear. And if you, you know, you understand that and you're investing for the long term,
00:29:37 it just makes you, you're still going to be a little bit ageless because of the lack of control.
00:29:42 But you know, if you sit tight and you've made the right decisions, you know, and invested in the right kinds of companies,
00:29:48 it should pay off. And as I said, you know, you'll make money on it like you won't make,
00:29:52 if you bought it, you bought a flat screen television. You, you quoted a Warren buffet a couple of times.
00:29:59 I also remember there's a famous quote from Sam Walton when, uh, back in the day when he actually owned Walmart,
00:30:06 you know, and he owned a huge chunk of the Walmart stock. You know, whatever percentage it was,
00:30:11 60, 70% and Walmart stock dropped, you know, a hundred dollars a share or $200 a share or some large amount of money in like one day.
00:30:20 And the reporter runs up to him and sticks the microphone in his face and says, Mr. Walton, how does it feel to have lost however many millions and millions of dollars?
00:30:30 It was, you know what, the stock market, the stock devalued and Sam Walton looked at him with his real confused looks and says,
00:30:36 son, I didn't lose any money. I didn't sell. Yeah. There's actually another quote which is really good.
00:30:44 Um, which somebody said, you know, the only really thing, the only two days that matter when you buy a stock is the day you buy it and the day you sell it.
00:30:53 That's it. You know, other than that, it doesn't matter. And so I think that's something really important for people to remember.
00:30:59 Everything else in the middle is the coal goes is just noise. So that's basically what Sam Walton was saying.
00:31:05 It was the day I created the company and the day I sell my ownership interest in it. But any,
00:31:10 all the fluctuations in between are just noise. Jay didn't really matter in the larger scheme of things. So Shelly,
00:31:17 one question that I try to kind of wrap up with everybody and you know, we've been talking a lot about investing,
00:31:22 you know, which a lot of that is about taking care of the future for yourself or the people you care about.
00:31:28 And I talk a lot on the show about stewardship. Yet at the same time I've discovered that that word means different things to different people.
00:31:37 So Shelly, would you talk a little bit about what stewardship means to you and any impact that that's had on your life?
00:31:44 Yeah, so to me, stewardship means taking care of what's been entrusted to me, whether that's my children or whether that's my career,
00:31:53 um, my time. Um, and so when it comes to finances, it means controlling my spending.
00:32:00 Um, being, you know, disciplined and knowledgeable about what I'm spending my money on. It means saving.
00:32:06 Um, but it also means investing. I mean, there's a parable of, you know, people who were in trusted certain talents and you know,
00:32:13 they, you know, either didn't use them or they used them and they multiplied them. And so I think,
00:32:18 um, you know, investing is money that's been entrusted to me. You know, whether it's because I had a good career and I made extra money or whatever.
00:32:26 Um, but it's, it's, it's not just controlling my spending and saving, but it's also doing more with what I've been given.
00:32:33 And I think that's important because, um, it's not necessarily about becoming rich, but it's about giving yourself options and providing options for other people.
00:32:45 So, um, you know, there's a quote that I forget who said it, that, you know,
00:32:50 no one would remember the good Samaritan if you only had good intentions. He actually had money too. So I was able to like put up,
00:32:58 you know, the person who had fallen into, you know, misfortune and put them up at a,
00:33:02 in a, in a hotel essentially for a couple of days and have some pace abide to take care of him.
00:33:08 So, you know, you always can invest in people's lives and do good things for other people, whether you have money and not you.
00:33:13 A lot of it is spending time with people, et cetera. But money gives you that option. It gives you the option to be able to,
00:33:21 you know, write a check to somebody when they need it. It gives you the option to have time.
00:33:25 Um, you know, one of the things that, um, another Warren Buffett quote, he said,
00:33:30 if you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you're going to be working until you die.
00:33:34 It would be nice to be able to have enough money to retire early enough to be able to do something else.
00:33:39 So I think stewardship is about taking good care of what you've been given, not just carrying forward, but investing it and investing it,
00:33:48 um, gives you options and not just options for yourself, but options to be able to do things for other people.
00:33:54 So that's what stewardship is to me. It's not just about you accumulating or not even just taking care of what I've been given.
00:34:02 It certainly about not squandering it, but it's also about making more, um, making the most of what I've been given.
00:34:09 And that is something that benefits me. But it also benefits, you know, other people as well,
00:34:14 whether they be family members or friends or people you don't even know. You can find Shelly over it.
00:34:23 Millie money.com and that's spelled M I L L E money.com. She's also active on Facebook and Instagram is@milliemoney.com or you can find her over on LinkedIn.
00:34:37 And Twitter is Shelly Lombard. Of course. I'll have links to all of that over in the show notes.
00:34:42 Shelly, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener? No. You know what I would encourage people is,
00:34:48 you know, we don't know as you, so why is he pointing out which way the market is going to go.
00:34:52 But you know, you are an investor. So you know, a lot of times people think investors look like other people,
00:34:58 but they really look like you because anybody know everybody's not cut out to be an entrepreneur. Everybody's not cut out to flip real estate.
00:35:06 But certainly everybody can invest. Um, it's, you know, it's not about, you know, have to have a side hustle or anything like that.
00:35:13 Everybody can invest. So you are what an investor looks like. So I would encourage people to get in,
00:35:18 in, um, you know, get involved in the market and yeah, just to piggyback what you said,
00:35:23 you know, we're um, on both Facebook and Instagram, it's merely underscore money. And so, you know,
00:35:29 follow us. If you subscribe, we'll send you news, uh, not newsletters, but we'll send you emails about the,
00:35:36 the, you know, stocks, the milli 20. So if you're trying to educate yourself, maybe you pick three of those and say,
00:35:41 you know, I'm going to follow these and eventually get knowledgeable enough, knowledgeable enough that I'd like to put money involved.
00:35:47 So thank you very much, Scott, for having me on. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on,
00:35:52 especially at a time like this. I know folks really need to hear this message and I appreciate you for coming on.
00:35:57 Thank you. thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:36:08 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:36:19 If you enjoyed this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate all one word iTunes rate.
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00:36:45 Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world..