you're listening to the rise up and Shine podcast with Claudine and Ashley as an empty nester and a mom with young kids. We have both shared very similar and very real struggles from chaos to coaches. We now help other women live an authentic and meaningful life. So tune in weekly for girl talk and tips on how you too can rise up and let your light shine bright. This is the rise up and Shine podcast. All right, welcome back listeners today. Ashley is spending time on her family vacation so I have special guest Elton hall with me who is a friend and a business colleague and a certified financial planner, Tilton wrote the amazon bestseller the secure solution in 2021 he is the podcast host of retired cop confidently and here on rise up and shine. We love to bring you topics and guests that help us live our best life and help us rise up and shine.

And this retired confidently is especially meaningful to me as my husband and I in our mid fifties and we are looking forward to being able to do that and we got a bit of a late start, so many of you know from from my sharing on the podcast but we, we lost pretty much everything about 14 years ago with a big crash, the real estate market crash where that was our jobs and our investments and so we've had to build that back and I've had the pleasure of working with Elton to help us retire confidently. So tilton welcome Welcome Welcome, thank you for coming and sharing with my listeners some of the things that we can all do to retire confidently. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be with you today. I love the work that you are doing. And if I can add to it a little bit, I'll just be tickled pink. I'm really excited to spend some time with you. Great, Great. Well I love, I love your both of them. You, your book titled the secure solution in your podcast. Retired confidently.

I think money is one of the big hang ups in life, right? A lot of women that I coach come to me. They have either financial hanging or they're, they're not where they think they need to be or should be. Um, they're stuck in. Um, they're stuck in this. So I love what you have to share. Like so much of what you've done for us already. So why don't you share with us a couple of nuggets for our listeners that will help them retire confidently. Sure. I think, um, what you said is spot on. The comment. I believe you said was that they think that they are too far behind or they, they think or they're discouraged about where they are currently. And that's really why I think the, the work that you're doing is so critical and this is one of the most important nuggets that I can share, I would not have said this at 5, 10, 15, even 20 years ago, if you would have asked for a nugget, it would have been something, I mean just fantastically geeky that I would have thought was the best thing ever and it would not have been this comment, but here's what it is now is that I'm convinced that thought work is really the key ingredient, it's often the missing ingredient, but it might actually be the key ingredient to financial success, which is fabulous because that's really where your expertise lies.

And so when they, when you say they come to you and they're thinking they're too far behind, that's the first nugget is man, they're in the right place because you're helping them unpack that thinking and decided this is just the thoughts that I want to have to to, you know create the uh the end result that I want in my life. So that's the first tidbit that I would share. It's just that the uh the work that is happening in neuroscience in connection with the coaching practitioner world, those two are coming together so that anybody that wants a different benefit in their life, they can get it by going through this coaching process and changing the way the the way they're thinking about whether that's their their money situation or they're on track or not on track towards, towards their goals. Yeah, absolutely, so good, so true. Our thoughts are the start of everything, right?

So as a financial planner you have people coming to in all stages of life, I'm sure young in their twenties and thirties to some of us who had a later start in our 50, these are possibly even later. Can you share an example of a mess to success? I love that you say that on your show from messes to successes, you know, because we're all in between, we're all on that range. So I would love to hear um something along the lines of one of your clients who's really, maybe had to do some thought work or started thinking this way and then they're a success. Now sure, I love it. That's actually the, and with the podcast, that's kind of, the theme is we're just gonna talk openly about retirement and we're gonna talk about the messes and we're gonna talk about the successes and that's okay. That's, that's actually helpful to know that oh, people that are technically retired successfully and they're feeling confident in their retirement, that you might look at it, or they would look at part of their life or something they've gone through and feel like, whoa, that was a mess, like that's okay.

That's part of the package. Let me let me share a couple stories with you, I'll start young and I'll get older. The first, uh the first story is, is my own story. I'll give you a quick little tidbit on it. So I was raised in a really small town in southern Utah, kind of in between Zion national Park and ST George Utah, if you're familiar with, with either of those places. Love it, love it. It's beautiful. What a beautiful area. Hot hot as the dickens is, what, I don't know what the dickens are but hot as the dickens is what what my grandma would always, that's so it was, it was hot, but it was, it was beautiful. My parents um met, they were both on a rodeo team and when they were going to a junior college, they got married um, start a family, dropped out of school and went to work to support us but they loved horses and so we had a few horses and we ran a really small farm to enable us to, to afford the horses.

And I just remember very very distinctly, we got up really early in the morning to haul hay and we would haul hay by hand. Um the, you drive a tractor through, cut the hay, drive the Baylor through bale the hay, and then we would drive through with a tractor and a trailer on behind and three or four of us would be walking through the field, lifting these hay bales up, throwing up on the trailer and then somebody else was standing on the trailer and they would throw them up and they would stack them, that's the, that was my version of hauling hay and it was hes pretty itchy and we would get up early, so it wasn't hot, but it got hot fast and we had just thrown on a load of hay and when you've got hay on the trailer, you're going really, really slow. And so we're driving along in this case we hooked the trailer onto our truck, so we were going really slow, driving over to unload the hay into the barn and my mom started to tell me about this new thing that she had found out about called a mutual fund.

So I'm, yeah, Like I'm young, I'm probably somewhere between eight and 12 year years old. Um I was, I was there helping, I wasn't much help because the bells are pretty heavy probably by nine or 10 years old though we could lift uh we could lift the bell if we go through and pick the one that looked the smallest and throw those on. And um and so when she taught me about this mutual fund, talk about a mindset change, talk about a different thought process. It was, I mean, it was like, you know, inside my brain, the neurons just kaboom just, it just, it just blew my mind when I was able to compare. They're the hard work that it takes to make a living and to have a living, which was, that was my life experience up to that point of being on a, on a, on a farm and just day in and day out, hard work to this concept that with some intelligence, some understanding some education, you can take some of that hard earned money that you have and actually have it working for you.

It was crazy to me. And I, when I think about young, younger folks, anybody younger, they've probably already been introduced to the idea of investing in the stock market or investing in real estate or doing a mutual fund with, you know, in this case. And they've, they've probably already kind of become accustomed to the idea, they might even be thinking, oh, I should probably do that. But I would actually just have them pause for a second and put themselves In a place where they hear about it for the first time. This concept that you get to, you get to put in $50 a month or $500 a month or you know, $50,000 a month. It doesn't matter. You, you're gonna put that in and become an owner in the biggest, most successful, most productive, most profitable companies in in the world, you're going to be a part owner in that just, and you get to benefit in that and keep that holding for years and years.

It's crazy. It's, I mean, it's a miracle anybody else for the first however many thousands of years of, Of uh, of economies on this earth, they would they, I mean they would have thought, no way, could this be designed. So that's the first thing that the story that I would share is just how excited I became. And so I started like, I would carve off my mom, I was too young. So my mom opened the account and my name was on there and I put in like $50 every so often and uh and then ended up doing some, some stocks later and then obviously went through college and became a financial advisor. But for anybody young, just sit with that concept. And in your mind when you think about the markets, think, whoa, this is a miracle, like this is a miracle right at my fingertips.

And here's the reason I point that out is when you, what does the media say about investment markets Good. It's never good. Think about how many times, I mean, media, that's their job is they take sensational topics and they only talk about what sensational at the moment because they're, you know, they're trying to sell advertising, so they're, they're they're they're doing their job and I don't think that's a really accurate representation of what's going on in the world. I don't think the media, the media is an accurate representation reality, but they are an accurate representation of what's sensational at that very moment and we've been bombarded by that, whether you're young or middle age or right there at retirement or retired. We've been bombarded by that as a society of over and over, like how many times the media has said if the markets drop, you hear about it and you hear about it in big bold letters and you hear about it with exclamation points and everybody's talking about it and all that's fine from they gotta sell their advertising and be sensational perspective.

But the truth, but from a, from a reality of what's really the thoughts that are really gonna help us accomplish the end result markets a miracle and it's at your fingertips. That's so good. You said so many nuggets in there. I've just got to pick up on a few of them. One of them, I love the story that even when you were young that you were ready to start investing and I think we're never too young, you're never too old, which is certainly where I felt kind of like, oh it's too late and I have clients that fall there too, but you're never too young. And even if it were $5 a week, I think back, like if I had started my twenties and even just put $5 a week, I'd be in a completely, you know, we would have a different number in our bank account, which is fine, it's all good. But I think sometimes we think, oh there's time there's time, I think a lot of young people think, oh down the road or when I'm done buying all these things, then I'll put it then. So that was good. I love that You start a young age.

Another thing you said is make money work for you that is so powerful. Like we use money and sometimes I feel like we can be a slave to our money right? Like we've got bills and debts, but to have the thought to have the concept to make our money work for us. That is powerful and that's life changing. That can really change people's lives when they start believing that my money work for me. I don't work for my money. It's a very flipped um way of thinking, which I think so many of us really need to shift, we need to shift that much mindset to know my money works for me. So yeah, we really do have an abundance. Like if you're, if you're listening to this podcast, you're one of the wealthiest people ever in the history of the world. And so we really do have an abundance. It would be more honest and more accurate to actually feel like, oh I actually do have an abundance. I'm gonna decide how my money is going to work for me. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that was life changing for us and we started going, no, wait, we're gonna have our money work for us.

And the other thing you said, which is so, so powerful is that the media the way they control information can impact our thoughts right? And we talk a lot about footwork here on this podcast. And are we allowing the media to dictate what we're gonna think right? Cause it, it comes at us. And it's like I love that you said that, you know, they highlight that they send sensationalize the bad when it's doing bad, right? And then we start thinking, oh, now what's gonna happen to my money? How am I gonna be able to retire confidently if the stock market crashes? But really taking ownership of, what thoughts are we thinking when that information, that external stimuli, which is what it is, right? It's coming at us and our brains have to decide what to do with it. We're usually on autopilot and default thinking. And so we go negative. Our brains have a negative bias. Anyway, so we're like, oh, no fear. You know, our brain wants to keep us safe and and that kind of news does not keep us safe or comfortable.

And so the thought work just really having an awareness of how this news, how the information we're gaining affects our thoughts and how we're gonna react going forward about, like when you look at uh this media concept, it's kind of a rhetorical question, but it's actually helpful to think about how many times have you seen a headline that said, not to worry, the markets have totally recovered and in fact they recovered faster than we all anticipated where Two months before that or 18 months before that? Or, or even sometimes seven days before that, the mark, the, the headlines were massive about the drop in the stock market or when it comes to really say that there were massive about the reduction in maybe, you know, whatever it is, new home purchases or the increase in interest rates.

And yet when, when the markets have done what and the economy has done what it has always done, then we're back, we're back and we're moving ahead. But that's not really, you know, at that point, they're talking, you know, about who won the whatever the Emmys, you know what I mean? And so it's always very interesting to be like if you, if you were an employee, how long would you keep your job if you only talked about when things were bad, which is like 2% of the time. And you never told about when you corrected it and you never told about when you, um, When you were really consistent and did a great job over a long period of time. And if you, and the only time you did talk about when good is when you were at a new high pinnacle and you immediately reverted to, but here are 10 reasons why I'm gonna crash and not recover. It's like fired, right? Yeah. That's how the media presents the investment markets do I know it's so true and it's so funny because a few weeks ago or months ago, I don't even know the time, You know, things started heading south according to the media, right?

And my husband got a little concerned. He was like, oh, look what's happening like now that we're investing in the markets, look what's happening. And I said, I literally said, well, thankfully we have people that know better than us, which is you, we have you and your team helping us navigate these troubled waters. This is this isn't our expertise and, you know, the scriptures teach us with many advisors plan succeed and I love that. I love that we have you as an advisor, This is what you do. This is what you're good at. This isn't my strength, my skill set. I don't need to spend a whole lot of time learning the markets and figuring it all out. I can just get advice from a certified planner that knows what he's doing and can navigate these troubled waters and knows far more about economics and investments than I ever will. But it takes a certain level of trust, right? It's hard to take our money. And I'm speaking from my husband and it's hard for us to take our money after we've lost it and then give it to someone else.

You're like, here, it's like your baby, you know, the first time you're going to a sitter, you're like, here's my precious baby. Not quite the same, but can feel that way. It's scary. It's like, oh no, I'm giving you, here's my money, take care of it, take really good care of it because we're really close to retirement and we want to retire confidently. And I loved that. That was my um initial response. I'm like, I'm so glad, I felt grateful, I felt encouraged and grateful and secure. Like, no, we've got people that know more than us taking care of it. And he was like, yeah, you're right, you're right, because we had never done that before. We've always navigated everything on our own and up markets and down markets were primarily always invested in real estate and working in real estate. So we had to experience that the high times and the very, very low times and that's all we knew. So um you know, it's important to get people who know more than you do around you certainly as coaches, that's what Ashley and I do. We help women um you know, to get the support they need to make decisions confidently and I know you when it comes to investments, that's what you do and it's so, so powerful to have people on our team, so to speak.

I love it what your comment was with many advisers with many advisors plan succeed. I love it. It's really, really good and and I want to bring us back to that the initial nugget that I shared that the thought work is so critical for a couple of different reasons. The first is that great strategies in retirement planning there, they fall into two different categories. One category is really active where it's actually trying to like kind of time things sell out at the high and then try to time the bottom and we'll incorporate some of that, but just statistically, and historically it's very, very difficult to do. So then other strategies are really designed to participate in the markets at a reasonable rate. So if um if markets go down and you can just not go down down quite as far, then if they can participate when things rebound, you don't have to come up quite as far before you've dug out a hole and now you're getting head towards your goals and it's more people will call that more of like a a strategic allocation as opposed to like a really tactical or or market timing allocation.

But but the key element of that is mindset. When a strategic allocation does go through negative time periods, which it absolutely will then if you like throw in the towel and say, oh forget it, let's let's sell out. It's like the best strategies can't overcome that because they didn't allow themselves to work to work through the messes in order to capture the successes. So that's, and I really feel like that where that's your mindset. I actually, or that's your expertise is I actually see that with folks that have coaches or, or just kind of naturally good at keeping their head in the game and being thoughtful uh around their, their choices, um, being really clued into their, their thinking around things and choosing thoughts that, that drive them towards the end result that they want.

I see those folks be really, really successful, you certainly fall into that, that that element. So you're doing great, great work, everybody that gets to listen to you or work with you, they're gonna be better off in their life, but better off financially because of the clarity they have around their, their thought work. Another area where I see clarity around thoughts, um be tremendously impactful in the long term success of retirement, is that when you have a really clear plan of this age, here are my sources of income and I've maximized and planned out my Social Security, I've maximized and plan out any pension components that I have. Um I've got a, a a prescribed and a specific strategy for my investments and here's how we think they're going to average and we don't need really high returns and we can mitigate some of the lows. And if we can get this average, then this is what it equates to on an actual income basis when you've got a lot of clarity around that, it may be like your earliest, you would want to retire and then maybe kind of were more like you think you will and maybe another, another um, plan for a little bit later.

I see people's mentality change. I see them go from, I've got all these thoughts in my head and I'm worried, I'm scared. I think I'm too far behind like you had mentioned before, which is spot on now, it's written out and all of all of a sudden it becomes crystal clear and it goes from being this, this monster in their head to this plan on a piece of paper that they can, um, that they can modify, that they can navigate that they can, they can adjust and that they can own. And so then their thoughts are much more creative and empowered as opposed to negative and, and consumed. So that's that work. I see it be really impactful for folks. So good, so good. And you see people all across the broad spectrum, I'm sure of ages and financial, um, you know, work. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, one thing, you know, you said something about fear and I think sometimes when we come from a place of fear, we make very different decisions or scarcity, fear and scarcity I think alter the way we invest the way we think all of that and it's so impactful and I remember years, but one of the reasons my husband and I never um utilized or had a financial planners because we thought, well we'll just save the money and do it right.

Like we'll just save the money, right? That's responsible to do. And what I really realized as I watched my husband invest so much mental energy and time um that it took away from focusing on what he was really good at the same with me because I helped manage our money as well and it just took so much financial time, so much time, resource and mental en energy to really oversee that. And to say it was like being penny, what is it being penny wise and dollar foolish because Ben franklin, right? I'm not sure, but I felt like I was trying to save money and be a good steward of our money and really I was making decisions out of fear and scarcity and not trusting and now looking forward faithfully like no, there are people that know more than me and that is a wise investment, So wise investment of my time is a wise investment of my financial resources to hire to have a team of people that know better than I do.

So that fear scarcity mindset is something we really need to overwork, work over. It's really something we need to overcome and work on to really rise up and shine in our finances. You're exactly right. I mean that's really what it is when you think about the worst, at least when I look back at my life when I look back and think man that was a really bad decision. Almost always it was coming from fear or scarcity. Yeah, true, So true. Well I am so excited that you were here today and to be my guest and to be on our podcast and really help our listeners with finances. So tell, tell me where people can find here a couple different places. First off is I have a five quick tips. It's just a free little five quick tips that there, what they really are is five reasons why you're not too far behind. You've been taught a bunch of stuff that's like maybe a tiny bit percent true.

But going back to my farm boy slang, it's a bunch of bull crap. And so I'm like, nobody's talking about some of the other fundamental truths of white people can retire confidently. So I put together just these five quick tips for your listeners if they go to it's tilton hall dot com and then forward slash quick tips and there's actually a dash in between quick. So it's quick dash tips. Tell town hall dot com forward slash quick tips and then just put it in their name and their email address. So I know where to send that. I just shot some really quick little videos explaining why there are five substantial reasons that uh, you're not too far behind, not too late. Look at you up in the game with video video resources, video freebie. That's right. It is, it's a video dot com forward slash quick tips with a dash between quick tips and I know you were sharing with me and I'd love for you to share with others something that I'm excited about for you and that you're really excited about is launching your, do it yourself retire competently program and that's coming later this summer fall.

What are we looking at? But tell our listeners about it because it sounded really, really exciting to me. Yes, you'll be able to find all the details for that as we post them at Elton hall dot com and we're looking at a launch date. My team's putting this all together, so you know how they're always like holding the reins back. Like don't say too much. Let me tell you what, what we're looking at doing, end of august. Um, we have built a retired, what we call retire confidently program. So what we did is instead of using free software that can sometimes be inaccurate or expensive software where then you have to keep paying annual prescriptions. We've tried to take, I mean, years and years, a couple of decades, nearly of retirement planning expertise. We've boiled it down to a do it yourself spreadsheet and it's a spreadsheet, so you own it and you'll, you'll know how to build it. And my concept was I want thousands of people across the, the nation to be able to look over my shoulder all show them a real life retirement planning that we did for these are true people that are living a successful retirement right now and they had almost all of this, the um, the general areas of retirement assets, so that as, as you look over my shoulder, you can be in the comfort of your own home, plugging in your own numbers, walking through social Security and pension and investments and annuities and look way over over the horizon to what happens when, if you're, if you're married, when one of you passes away way down the road, what's the surviving spouse income look like?

How do we maximize the benefit for your beneficiaries or your favorite charities after you've accomplished your retirement goals and we've done all of all of that called it the Retired confidently program we're gonna be launching at the end of this month. All right to the end of, of august so that anybody around the country can get access to that level of expertise. And the concept was, we have sat in thousands of retirement planning sessions with folks before and during and after retirement, is there some way we can take the best of all of that and pack it into a few our course. So on a friday, you sign up for the course by by saturday at noon or saturday at one in the afternoon, you're, you're leaning back in your office chair on your couch, if you're on your laptop and I mean you're leaning back, you're, you're probably looking up at your lights on the ceiling, but you're not seeing those, you're seeing your future, learning seeing your future and I've seen it 1000 times that there will be this wave of anxiety that just lifts off of you when you get crystal clear clarity on what about retirement income source looks like?

So you can tell I'm kind of excited about, I'm excited. I'm excited to, well, I am so grateful that you came on today. Thank you so much for sharing your nuggets of wisdom and inspiration for retiring confidently and I will put all your, this is where I get stuck. I will put all your contacts stuff on our show notes so that our listeners can reach out to you. Thanks again, tell them anything, any last words I got one last 1. Great for those of you who are feeling like you're really close to retirement and you're feeling like it's a little too late, You don't have enough time. I would remind you that the goal is not to retire and die. We don't have control over that. But that's not the goal. The goal is to retire and have a 10 15 2030 35 years successful retirement. So I'm just gonna give you permission to, even if you're right in retirement or even if you recently retired, you can keep a long term mentality Just like 20 years ago when markets were being a little screwy, you're like, I'm not worried About it.

I got 20 years reality is if you're retiring right now, you need to do some things and do some planning and change your allocation somewhat. But the reality is that portfolio still has 20 years to to recover. Keep generating income and so I just want to give you permission to keep that. It's not too late. The second half to steal from you coach Claudine the second half can be the best half and you can beat that long term perspective. Love it. Love it. Thank you so much. Thank you again. Thank you listeners for joining us and we will catch you next time. Thanks Alright everyone. Thank you for joining in on our conversation today here on the rice. I've been shine podcast if you haven't already, please take a second to hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode and while you're at it share this episode with a friend who you know it can bless today if you want to visit us as well on our websites you can catch Claudine over at Claudine Sweeney dot com and Ashley at mind over chaos dot com.

Our links are in the description. We also have some free resources there for you as well. So remember ladies, no matter what you are facing in life, it is never too late to rise up and shine and live your best life