Iron Out Your Money Situation With The Five "Elements" of a Successful Financial Plan

Arsenal Financial advisors Doug Orifice and Jeremy Vaille are trying really, really hard to make a listenable podcast about money and finance. In this episode they take a look into the five key parts, or elements, of a successful financial plan. Take a listen to hear about:

• Element 1: Goals as gold  
• Element 2: Knowledge and awareness, potassium
• Mythbuster: Should you be like an ostrich?
• Element 3: Filtering, stay strong like iron  
• Element 4: Consistency and carbon, it's in everything
• Element 5: Staying engaged with platinum  
• Then finish up with some dad jokes from Jeremy

Find Doug, Jeremy, and Arsenal Financial at arsenalfinancial.com or call (781) 335-9100.

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener’s personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.

Transcript

Doug: 0:04

All right, everybody, welcome once again to another episode of the Arsenal Money Clip, where we are trying really, really hard to give you a listenable podcast about money, a listenable podcast about finances. My name is Doug Orifice. I am here with my pal Jeremy Vaille. Jeremy and I run a firm called Arsenal Financial. We are a financial planning and investment management firm located in Watertown, Massachusetts, and Norwell, Massachusetts. It's Friday. JV, how are you today? What's happening?

Jeremy: 0:33

Good, doing good. We got soccer wrapping up. You got some chili and bread on the uh on the docking for the weekend.

Doug: 0:39

Chili and bread.

Jeremy: 0:41

So getting excited. Yeah. Patriots are top of the league. Who would have thought? Things are good. 

Doug: 0:46

Just to timestamp here, right. We're mid-October 2025. You know, just in case you're listening to this sometime in the future and you heard that like the Patriots were the best football team ever. It's been a dismal couple of years.

Jeremy: 0:56

It's not 2017 again.

Doug: 1:01

Yeah, right. We're actually enjoying a little bit of renaissance thanks to Drake May. So that's good stuff. Hey man, I'm really, really excited about today because I think this is a good one. Every once in a while, you and I like to geek out. And I think like we always talk about risk reward, right? I think this is high risk, high reward. I think we're really in the high risk zone for geekery. We're gonna geek out hard today.

Jeremy: 1:22

Is it because of your science background? 

Doug: 1:24 

It's because of my very poor science background, your very good science background, and the fact that we have a science twist on this that I think we're in a really high risk zone. But I think we'll have some fun.

Jeremy: 1:37

Yeah. I agree. I agree. 

Doug: 1:38

So let's get our segway in here, right. We wanted to have something that was easily digestible. So today we're just gonna talk about the top five quote elements of successful financial planning. Dude, 2025's also been a little bit weird, has it not? 

Jeremy: 1:55

Weird. Yeah, been weird. 

Doug: 1:57

It's been a strange year. It's a year in which I think six months through the year, people were surprised that they actually made some money and a lot of policy is kind of shifting around us day to day. So, because of a lot of the policy shifts and global trade issues, there's been weakness in the dollar. Along with weakness in the dollar, has been kind of a run in precious metals.

Jeremy: 2:19

Precious metals. We're going back to our periodic table of elements from 10th grade chemistry. 

Doug: 2:26

That's right. That's right. So I'll out myself here. I hadn't looked at that periodic table of the elements in a long time. And as Jeremy, as you and I were planning this, we're like, huh, all right, top five elements of financial planning. Everybody's talking about gold and other precious metals here in 2025 as we have weakness in the dollar, and there's this quote, debasement trade going on, and folks are looking for a store of value. So we thought we'd marry these two topics, five elements, which makes for a successful financial plan. And we're going to relate every single element to an actual element. Now, again, to stay on the science topic here, if things go absolutely wrong, this whole podcast could just explode.

Jeremy: 3:05

Are you throwing dad jokes in? Like incidentally, 

Doug: 3:09

Uh no, no. Maybe, maybe I am. But this could be like the first piece of digital media to spontaneously combust. It could. So again, we run a risk here. We run high risk here, but I think I'm ready to jump in if you are. How are you feeling? 

Jeremy: 3:25

I'm good. Yeah, I'm feeling good. 

Doug: 3:27

All right, man. Let's do it. So here's the story. We're gonna go over five elements one by one. One element which can move you forward from a financial planning point of view. We're gonna tie it to an element on that periodic table from your science class in high school. And here we go. Element number one, your goals. Goals sounds a whole lot like gold. So, element number one, goals, gold, AU on that periodic table if you're keeping track at home. So, JV, you and I are talking about this all the time. And I think, you know, when we talk about financial planning and goals, I think sometimes that can be, would you agree with me, kind of like a generic topic?

Jeremy: 4:05

Yeah.

Doug: 4:06

You know? Yeah. It's always where we start. What are your goals? What are your goals, right? Even though it might seem generic, right? And you might get asked that question, whether you're on like a robo advisor or whether you're in a, you know, a conversation with your advisor or a friend of yours, a business colleague, a therapist, whoever it is, your goals and your gold is your why. So, JV, you and I all the time are trying to get our client to kind of back away from the investment portion of this and back away from the money portion of this and just be like, right, hey, what are we doing here? What's important to you? What makes you tick? Why are you saving? Why are you in this office or on the Zoom call? How can we help you? What are you aiming at? Because if simple thing, right, if you don't have a bullseye and we don't know what you're aiming at, it's really hard to get from point A to point B.

Jeremy: 4:57

Gotta do the MRI before the surgery.

Doug: 4:59

That's it, baby, right? So I know in our world, this is really helpful for us because we get to know our clients. We want to know as quick as we can what do you need? What's important to you? What are we trying to help accomplish with you? Because it's not about rates of return, it's about making sure that you can accomplish what you need to accomplish in life, right? So at our firm, I think we help about 400 households between all of us. And would you agree that everybody's different?

Jeremy: 5:26

Oh, every single thing. Every single person is custom. It's one of the one of the things I didn't appreciate necessarily, but every single case is unique. In some way, shape, or form.

Doug: 5:36

So how one person puts their money to work or kind of approaches their goals can be completely different than another. You could even have two families, same town, same looking house, same family dynamics on paper, two completely different stories, right? So there's so much importance related to your bullseye. So when we get granular about it, you and I want to make sure we understand what our clients are aiming at. But then when we get down to it and we start putting buckets of money together, investment portfolios together, each bucket's got a bullseye too, or maybe even multiple bullseyes. So here is a couple things that we talked about about gold relating this back to our element, right? Gold, moldable. We were talking with our producer Matt today about like he was just listening to a gold podcast on the way in this morning to prepare for our podcast about the elements. So he told us a couple of longer stories that I know if I repeated, I would get wrong. But one thing we talked about is like gold is moldable. You can melt gold and then reconstitute it into a different shape. People change over time, too, right? How often have you had like a client that you have brought on, and three years later, their goals or their lot in life is completely different?

Jeremy: 6:51

I mean, it happens every week. I mean, just last week, somebody loses their job. Next thing you know, that trajectory is totally different.

Doug: 6:58

Right. And even what the focus is. I mean, to think of conversations just this week, had conversations that were about retirement, had conversations that were about business, had conversations about college planning. And, you know, depending on how old your kids are, your focus might be on one thing, getting through the chaos and paying bills and paying down debt. And then all of a sudden, four years later, it's about okay, 90% of our mental bandwidth and financial bandwidth is going towards college and college planning, right? So the number one most important element is your goals. Go for the gold, put a bullseye out there. Element AU, that's number one. Number two, what do we got, JV?

Jeremy: 7:38

You know what I noticed about our five goals? They're not what you would expect as far as their nomenclature on the periodic table. Number two is knowledge and awareness. So for knowledge and awareness, we're going to use the letter K, which on the periodic table, that's potassium. Unexpected. Right? Kind of like gold is AU. You're looking for G.

Doug: 8:01

Yeah, it's not a no-brainer.

Jeremy: 8:02

You're looking for G.

Doug: 8:03

Which again, which is why my science grades were not great. You know?

Jeremy: 8:07

It's not that intuitive. You know? So, but K, potassium. So knowledge and awareness. This really is just, it's really about self-awareness, right? And having an understanding of where you stand in space financially. So we've talked about, you know, a lot of times personal finance, these kinds of things that are hard to talk about, or they bring up certain shame elements potentially on mistakes in the past, right? They end up going on the back burner. And that's not, you know, ignoring the problem isn't always a great strategy. Usually not.

Doug: 8:37

Right.

Jeremy: 8:38

Right. So I think knowledge, K, know where you stand. We talk about K as potassium. I think we bring up the benefits of like a banana and the electrolytes in a banana, right? We always talk about that.

Doug: 8:50

So I was wondering when the endurance athlete in you is going to make that segway. You know, I'm like, come on, man. Come on. My guy who lives on a bike.

Jeremy: 8:58

I'm artificially getting that through an electrolyte supplement, but bananas are a great source of electrolytes. You don't get that cramp in your calf, right? You gotta post down a banana to make it feel a little bit better. Um but you know, when people come and meet with us, they're asking, like, where do I stand? Am I gonna make it? Like, am I on track for retirement? You know, some of the things like, do I have the opportunity to scale back or take another career path? Like, do I have that flexibility? So, you know, having that knowledge of where you stand and where things are for you as a household and in your kind of your personal finance, your balance sheet at the household level is important for giving you that flexibility or that understanding of where you want to go from here and kind of the different options that you have available to you.

Doug: 9:41

Got a question for you on the topic of knowledge. Do you think it's more important to have knowledge of the markets, knowledge of investments, or knowledge of yourself and your situation and where you stand? What's your opinion?

Jeremy: 9:55

My opinion, 100% knowledge of self and where you stand. I think knowledge in the markets is, you know, it's and and that's varying degrees, right? You could know a lot about the markets. You could be in it every day, listening to podcasts, watching Bloomberg, CNBC, kind of like we are every day. And you can outsource a lot of that. But knowing how you react and how you respond is really important in your trajectories where you're going from here. What do you think about that?

Doug: 10:20

A couple things that we wrote down, right? Is knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses. Talked about physical activity. You know how I deal with physical activity, right? I know I am not the type of person who will just go downstairs and do a routine every day for 60 minutes. I need to be held accountable to go out. So a lot of my physical activity will be either in a classroom format, getting yelled at and being told what to do, right. Because I'm spending most of my time making decisions all week long. It's a weakness for me to do something on my own that's monotonous, you know? But to be in a setting where there's some direction, where it's lively, where I'm outdoors, where I'm exploring, where there's some sort of other sensory thing. My weakness is doing it in a format that's sort of controlled and monotonous, right. So that's a non-financial example, but I know that's a weakness of mine. So I go get yelled at during the week to go work out.

Jeremy: 11:16

Well, we always talk about skill, will, and time, right? Like, do you have the skill to do it? A lot of our clients are highly educated. They could do it if they spent the time on it or wanted to, right. Some of them are like, I don't want to deal with this. And then other times they're like, I don't want to spend my precious hours on the weekend figuring out investments. And can I do it consistently?

Doug: 11:34

Right. I'll throw this in there too, just because this is a little recency bias here. I felt like I've talked about this so much in the past month or so. And maybe because if we're talking about artificial intelligence all the time, maybe it's because we have a good portion of entrepreneurs and business owners that we deal with, and I connect with a lot of that in the community, is entrepreneurism too. And I've talked to a lot of folks recently about, you know, from a knowledge and awareness point of view, understanding that they're not the I work for 30 years on a W-2 and pull the lever and retire. Thinking back to our last episode, right, with Dr. Perlman about retiring. That a lot of our entrepreneurs, making sure they have the awareness that they have a very creative lever that they can pull. And that's not even on their balance sheet, man.

Jeremy: 12:19

Yeah.

Doug: 12:20

They could be full-time like our friend Matt Hanna. Let's say Matt Hanna was a full-time podcaster guy, but we know Matt Hanna has a million talents, right? He could have fractional work until he's 75 if he wanted to. You, as an endurance athlete, you always joke, right. You're a business owner right now. You could have a fractional gig, I don't know, opening a bike shop or something like that. Maybe, maybe a bad example. But there's a lot of our clients who are entrepreneurial in nature, aren't trade-in 40 hours for money type of folks. And they have the ability to take that skill set they have or that business that they have and kind of reshape it, scale down, scale out, approach it a little bit differently. But I feel like that's another knowledge and awareness thing. And I would rather spend some of our time communicating that and discussing that with somebody about how they can earn income differently in a work-life balance that's good for them and their family and the things that they want to do than just focusing on, you know, fixed income bonds and yields. And stock price to earnings ratios the whole time. Right.

Jeremy: 13:18

Yeah. So well, before we move on to the next element, I think we're gonna do something a little bit different this month and put the myth buster right in the flow of things.

Doug: 13:27

Right in the middle of this, right? 

Jeremy 13:28

Let's do it. 

Doug: 13:29

So knowledge and awareness. What's the old adage? If you're unaware, you might be putting your head in the sand. Fact or fiction, my friend. Ready? 

Jeremy: 13:41

Fact or fiction. Does an ostrich, what is it? Does an ostrich put their head in the sand?

Doug: 13:43

Does an ostrich put its head in the sand for defense? Fact or fiction? Let's bust this myth or is it true? What do you think? Fact or fiction? Well, I know you know the answer, though.

Jeremy: 13:51

We got half-assed internet research that tells us the answers here. I know the answer, so I'm gonna say it's fiction.

Doug: 13:58

It is fiction because we talked about it last night. So, article we read. Apparently, ostriches do put their head in the sand, but why do they put their head in the sand?

Jeremy: 14:08

They put it in the sand in care. So they put their head in the sand so that they can turn over the eggs and make sure that the eggs are in good shape when they're nesting.

Doug: 14:18

So they're not putting their head in the sand to ignore the lion that's running at them or some sort of wild animal. They don't put their head in the sand for defense.

Jeremy: 14:27

Right. In fact, because apparently they can kick a lion and kill it.

Doug: 14:34

They can kick lions in the face. They can run extremely fast, right. So the myth is busted. The ostrich has not put its head in the sand for defense. It actually has some strengths that it utilizes for defense. It can outrun a lot of its predators. It's strong, it can fight. So under knowledge and awareness, know your strengths, know your weaknesses, be honest with yourself, right? Write this stuff down.

Jeremy: 14:58

Yeah.

Doug: 14:58

Another helpful element here with a financial plan.

Jeremy: 15:01

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that the ostrich can run 10 miles at 30 miles per hour. I want to ride on the back of the ostrich.

Doug: 15:13

How jealous are you? Next time you go out for a run, you're gonna be thinking about the ostrich. Be like, ah, damn you, ostrich. Why don't I have your skills?

Jeremy: 15:23

Did you, I think you wanted to tell me something as it pertains to this ostrich?

Doug: 15:26

Oh, you know, I missed my cue on this because as you're talking about the ostrich and running, I was gonna say, yeah, like an ostrich is so fast it can go from first to third on a single. 

Jeremy: 15:39

Is it Jarren Duran? 

Doug: 15:41

That's pretty much what I had in my head was like Duran going from first to third on a single, right? My delivery was supposed to be in there somewhere and get you unsuspecting. 

Jeremy: 15:50

I like it. It’s still good.

Doug: 15:52

All right. So the ostrich goes from first to third on the single. It does not hide its head in the sand for defense. Knowledge and awareness, K, potassium, boom, we got two elements down. Let's go to our third element here. Our third element is maybe a little bit strange and might not be on the financial advisor's top five list. And we're gonna call this filtering. I think this made the top five because of the year that we've been through and because of the environment that we're in, right? 

Jeremy: 16:16

100%. 

Doug: 16:17

Filtering is filtering out the noise and staying strong, especially to the first two things that we mentioned. It's your goals that matter, being aware of yourself, being aware of where you stand. Let's stay strong and filter out the noise. Filtering starts with F, and even though iron starts with I, its symbol is F E. So we have symbol Fe, iron for filtering to stay strong. And at some point, we will throw down my friend's massive Iron Man bass riff because JV, as a little sidebar, you've been practicing a lot of bass, right? 

Jeremy: 16:52

Should be interesting. 

Doug: 16:53

So that'll get thrown in here somewhere. But really, you know, staying strong in 2025, which I'd like to call the year of the noise, there's a lot that's being thrown at us every day, whether it's on the traditional news outlets that we consume, on social media, in conversations. And it's not that the news isn't important, and it's not that it is or is not true. It's just that having some sort of filtering mechanism to separate the news and noise from at least in this context, not that money is everything, but in our context, we're trying to execute a financial plan, which involves certain elements, pun intended. To not have some of these things distract you from your goals and from what you're trying to accomplish is extremely important. And here in 2025, in our first six months of the year, there were a million distractions. In many ways, I think people got off track, either because maybe they stopped investing or they rapidly changed their direction. Or maybe fear had them, quote, put the head in the sand and maybe not take some action, right. I think you and I are really proud to share that our clients who we are fiduciaries for, nobody deviated from the plan. Literally, nobody deviated from the plan. I think we had a lot of clients that found a way to stay strong. I think that was part of our job was being the filter, right? Being Iron Man. And trying to discern, okay, you know, this is important. Understanding that tariffs may be put out there on goods all around the world and change the cost of things. Like, yeah, that's important, but it doesn't completely alter the mechanics of the capital markets, right? It doesn't completely alter the mechanics of how Microsoft makes money and intends to increase their earnings every single quarter, right? And increase earnings over time.

Jeremy: 19:01

Certainly doesn't impact your plan for getting to retirement or getting to that vacation house or whatever.

Doug: 19:08

Right. Global tariffs don't necessarily change your kids' plans for education, for the creation of your family, or, you know, if the number one thing that you're battling is taking care of an aging parent, it doesn't necessarily apply one for one for what you're going through. Sure, it's important, but I think A, that's our job to try and help discern what's news and noise and what's applicable to somebody's situation. And, you know, if you invest on your own and you're taking care of your own financial planning, this is one thing I would say try and make stronger, is have some sort of filtering mechanism to what's important, what's not, what should cause action, and what is a reaction that you should not have. And I'll say for kind of fact's sake this year, too, it was pretty hard to lose money as an investor from January 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2025. Unless you did something really reckless, or unless you were invested in one or two things that happened not to do well. Broadly, from January 1st to June 30th this year, stocks made money. Every US stock sector was up year to date. International stocks up even more than US stocks. Most classes of fixed income were up. If you had money in a savings account, you were up. There was maybe a few classes of municipal bonds from 1-1 to 630 that might have been down for the year. That's really the only thing that I can address during that time period. So by and large, I think a lot of people were surprised that they made money the first six months of the year. Because the first six months of the year felt kind of icky. Whether it was all this noise coming at you and you're not sure what to do, or just the stuff that you see in the mail, your car insurance renewal, which is up 20%, right? Or your health insurance, which is up, or you go out to eat and you're like, man, that was a lot more expensive than a couple years ago. You know, a lot of this anecdotal financial evidence, which was icky. But have a filtering mechanism and stay strong to your goals. And not every piece of tough news to digest means that there should be a corresponding action in your portfolio.

Jeremy: 21:16

Right. Yeah, I think that's a great point to double down on. Just because you heard something on the news today doesn't mean you need to take action or you need to change your plan.

Doug: 21:25

All right, we got three elements down. We got gold, goals. We get K, potassium, K for knowledge, FE, filtering, stay strong like iron. What's number four, JV?

Jeremy: 21:36

Oh, you know it's my favorite thing about planning. 

Doug: 21:39

Go geek out hard. Let's go. 

Jeremy: 21:41

Consistency, number four on the list. Consistency. So that big C it's so important in all the things we do. That's gonna stand for carbon, right. So our carbon emissions are going way up on this one. 

Doug: 21:55

Was that your dad joke? 

Jeremy: 21:56

No, no, but it just kind of flowed nicely. And I love this one because carbon's in everything, right? Carbon's in the air we breathe, carbon's in everything around us, all matter, right? And consistency really is what really matters in the long run. And it's staying that course. So we talk about putting things on autopilot or making it systematic, right. We're doing that upfront planning, and then we're making it as easy as possible to stick with the plan in a lot of cases. But you know, one of the great examples of this is saving into a 401k. 

Doug: 22:25

Right. It's easy.

Jeremy: 22:27

It's easy. And that's why 401ks, I mean, obviously balances that we've talked about in the past are not as high as they should be, but those that stick to the course and every time they get paid, they put a chunk of that paycheck paying themselves forward and putting it into a 401k, those that are consistently doing that month over month, paycheck over paycheck, are very successful. And we've seen it time and time again. How many times have we run into clients that have these massive 401k or employer-sponsored plan balances that have just been on autopilot for 20, 30, 40 years? And this relates to everything we do, right? Whether it's coaching baseball or it's running the Watertown Business Coalition or it's training for an endurance race. 

Doug: 23:10

Or how you eat. Just because I have a salad once is not helpful. If I eat well consistently.

Jeremy: 23:17

Yeah. Putting one 10% paycheck into your 401k isn't going to amount to much, right? And we see that time and time again, right? We open an account, somebody has their best intentions of investing, and then something happens where that deviates off track. You know, you just don't make a lot of progress that way. So you need to be consistent doing the important things and the simple things over and over and again, time and time again, the boring path, the slow wealth accumulation.

Doug: 23:44

I'll throw one other example that's on the balance sheet out there that maybe we don't think of. You know, if you have a mortgage that you never refinance, does your mortgage balance ever go up? If you have a 15-year mortgage and you live in your house for all 15 years and you got a decent rate and you never refinanced it, it is an automated slow burn of that balance downward. Oftentimes when you and I are working with clients, especially really busy clients, and we're here in the Northeast where things are expensive, it's cost of living is extremely high. It's hard for folks right now, too. We can see a lot of sort of uh what we call it like consumer debt, like credit cards or even home equity lines of credit bubble up. And some of these balances stay stubbornly high because oftentimes that's a piece of debt that doesn't have, to your point, consistency to it or discipline to it. Meanwhile, a mortgage payment, like it's most people's top three priority in a month is to make sure they pay their rent or pay their mortgage. And if you're paying your mortgage religiously 12 payments a year, consistently you are bringing down one of your biggest pieces of debt. But oftentimes maybe that's where a stubborn credit card balance or a stubborn home equity line might stay a little bit higher, is there's not a consistent pay down plan, right?

Jeremy: 24:55

Yeah. What I love about that is it's almost a perfect inverse to the investment and the compound interest element. Early innings, right? When you're paying that mortgage, you don't look, it doesn't feel like you're making much progress. 

Doug: 25:05

Feels awful. 

Jeremy: 25:06

You're putting all that money to interest and your principal goes down 15 bucks. Like, how am I ever going to pay this thing off?

Doug: 25:13

Right. Why did it bother buying this house in the first place? 

Jeremy: 25:16

Yeah. You're halfway into that mortgage, all of a sudden now, more and more of that money's going into the principal balance. You're putting that equity in. Not too different than you're a lifetime saver. The early innings is all about savings, right? Market moves don't make that much of a difference. But as you get 20, 30 years into that, then market moves really matter to a much greater extent than your savings rate at that point.

Doug: 25:38

I love that wow moment with clients sometimes where you know somebody that you've been working with for a number of years and you know, they bought that house when they were working with us, or they started a new job and started funding a 401k, or we opened up an account for them, right. And they started with zero. And they have that wow moment where it's like, hey, look at your progress. Like every once in a while it'll say, I remember when that account balance was zero. Or I remember when that mortgage was a half a million bucks and now it's 250K. And by the way, congratulations. You know, your house is appreciated in value too. And this is, it's yours. It's your equity, it belongs to you. It's really cool.

Jeremy: 26:13

That's that hard work and consistency paying off month over month. But yeah, that's a great point. I love that.

Doug: 26:18

One thing I'll throw in from a practice point of view for you and me, one thing that I think makes for a successful client for us is consistent engagement. When we have a fairly consistent two-way street of communication with a client, and it doesn't mean we're talking to clients every single week. And we have plenty of clients that like it's kind of like your primary care physician. We have one decent meeting once a year for some of them. For some, we're talking more regularly. But where we have this two-way street of communication, there's more consistent engagement. If there's more consistent engagement, that means our clients are a little bit more engaged with their finances and they're probably taking the action that they need to, or at least the chances that they're taking action is a little bit higher. Plus, we know where they stand too, and we know if something's changed. We know if the gold has been remolded, the both sides a little bit different, right?

Jeremy: 27:06

We're one of the first calls at times, you know, when things change, right?

Doug: 27:09

Which is cool. So consistency, C. Do you feel like you nerded out enough? I almost feel like you didn't go off the deep end.

Jeremy: 27:16

Probably, yeah I didn’t go crazy. 

Doug: 27:17

And re-kinder your inner recovering engineer. You know, I was hoping for a little bit more there, but not.

Jeremy: 27:24

You were? Well, I mean, like what?

Doug: 27:25

I don't know. I just wanted I wanted you to really, really geek out.

Jeremy: 27:28

Should’ve thrown some math out.

Doug: 27:30

I thought this was great, though. So no, I'm glad you brought that up about carbon. Make it a systematic, put it on autopilot. Consistency is so important in plans. So we get four elements down, just as a recap, we got goals, gold, knowledge, K, potassium, filtering, F E, iron, consistency, C, carbon. The last one, and we alluded to this a little bit, is engagement. Maybe we have to define what we mean by engagement. But engagement, we thought of what an appropriate element would be. And, you know, fact or fiction, JV. Is a diamond an element? 

Jeremy: 28:04

Uh, I know the answer again. 

Doug: 28:06

What is it?

Jeremy: 28:07

So I'm gonna go with fiction.

Doug: 28:09

It's not an element. So we did want to go with an engagement ring theme. Is platinum an element? 

Jeremy: 28:15

Yes. 

Doug: 28:16

It is. Symbol PT, platinum, is an element. Many engagement rings out there are platinum rings. Engagement, number five on our list of elements of a successful financial plan. And really, engagement, I think we can also characterize as action. Like, okay, fine. You've done all this stuff. I'm gonna go through my notes here, right. You've set some goals. Wonderful. You did a financial plan, you have a balance sheet. Maybe we've talked about self-awareness. What makes you unique, right. Okay, you've got your knowledge. You filtered out the noise, you have some consistency, you started an autopiloty savings plan. But maybe there's some other things on there too, which is all right, nobody wants to talk about estate planning, but have you done that? And what about that nagging home equity loan there? Or these other elements of your financial plan that you can't systematize. Do you take action?

Jeremy: 29:10

A lot of times, this is why we have the engagements we have, right? We don't just deliver a financial plan and say see you next year. Because a lot of times it's complex. There's a lot of moving parts there, and it's easy to put our head in the sand, put it on the back burner, and then nothing happens, right? So we want to have that level of engagement so that we can actually implement the plan, because a lot of these things require some action and some diligence and some focus.

Doug: 29:33

Again with the topic of this podcast too, right. It’s the five elements, not the one. So if in a vacuum I have one thing I’m thinking about, thinking about my 401k, thinking about my investments, and it’s just like oh, hey. This is the first time I’ve thought about this in 3 months. Should I take any action? Does it make any sense for you to skip right to the action piece without taking into consideration all the steps beforehand, right? Goals, knowledge, filtering, consistency.

Jeremy: 30:00

Goals without action are just dreams. 

Doug: 30:02

There we go. I like that. But really, I feel like that engagement piece or that action piece is a lot more palatable. It's easier if you've gone through these other steps. 

Jeremy: 30:13

Well, you understand your why too.

Doug: 30:15

Correct. And you know, maybe, JV, this is the time where we let people know that it's okay. Like maybe, maybe you haven't spent any time doing any of this stuff, right? You've been too busy and you've had too much going on to really think about your bullseye. Maybe you haven't had the means to think about where do I stand? Maybe the noise has been so loud that you haven't been able to filter out a lot of what goes on in the news, social media, and conversations. Maybe there is no consistency. And maybe that's okay, right? Because you can still get started somewhere. We've had plenty of conversations and plenty of clients who have started late.

Jeremy: 30:53

Yeah.

Doug: 30:53

And we've worked with them long enough that they've turned the ship around and it's been really a joy to watch.

Jeremy: 30:59

It's kind of like when we were talking about, I forget which podcast it was, but it's not too late, right. Because they were changing their careers or starting a business, right. And we had tons of cases of that. But like rapid fire mythbusters, financial planning is not just for the wealthy. It's never too late. And a plan is not, you know, a once and forget it. You got to stay with it. You got to stay on it and be consistent with it.

Doug: 31:19

So as we think about those top five elements of successful financial planning, this could be for, you know, a client that's working with us and hopefully has a lot of these elements in place. This can be for somebody who, again, if you haven't started and you haven't done this stuff, it's okay. You have time. You can start to take any one of these steps at any time, and it's all right. You know, none of us really get started early enough. And we all have something that we've kind of put on the back burner. I know I've got my list of a million things that I put on the back burner, right.

Jeremy: 31:49

We all procrastinate, right? 

Doug: 31:51

Yeah, sure. But it's different things for different folks. So just to summarize again, top five elements of successful financial planning, set your goals. Go for the gold, goals, AU, gold. Element number two, knowledge. Knowledge and self-awareness. Knowledge, symbol K, potassium, JV's favorite. Well, maybe his second favorite today. Filtering. , F E iron. Stay strong. Try and filter out the noise. Filter out what matters and what doesn't. Filter out what's impactful for your financial situation and your family and what's not. Jeremy's actual favorite, consistency. C. Carbon. It's in everything we do. It's really one of the most important elements to your success for our successful financial plan. And engagement. Engagement, that engagement ring, platinum, taking action, taking all these steps that you have and making sure that you're putting some steps in place to put that plan together and make sure you get from, as we talk about it all the time, point A to point B. Did we geek out enough?

Jeremy: 32:53

I think so. I think so. You're going to be a chemist before long here.

Doug: 32:57

Yeah, right. It's good to get that reintroduction to that uh the periodic table of the elements.

Jeremy: 33:02

Yeah. Is Beansy doing uh chemistry yet? No, probably not.

Doug: 33:06

Uh he is not doing chemistry yet. So my son is not doing chemistry, but is doing civics. How about that? Civics in eighth grade. I'm really excited about that one. You know?

Jeremy: 33:16

It's pretty cool. 

Doug: 33:17

Like it's an important time on our timeline to be in a civics class.

Jeremy: 33:20

It's probably a good time segway into uh maybe a dad joke or two.

Doug: 33:24

Yeah, let's do a dad joke or two. What do you got today?

Jeremy: 33:26

[Hold on. Daddy. Don't try to be cool. Don't try to be cool, bro, with your dad jokes.] So in classic form, I dusted off a few of the periodic table today that I thought you guys might enjoy. They might be layups. 

Doug: 33:43

Oh, you’re always good at making these things thematic. I love it. 

Jeremy: 33:45

They might be layups. All right, here we go. I got three. Here you go, guys. Why can you never trust an atom?

Doug: 33:53

Why can you never trust an atom? This is gonna relate to an atom and A D A M, maybe. No, maybe not. God, you stumped us again.

Jeremy: 34:04

Oh, okay. You can never trust an atom because they make up everything.

Doug: 34:08

Oh that one's really good. So nerdy. 

Jeremy: 34:12

Isn't that good? 

Matt: 34:13

By the way, that nerd factor I was looking for, you hit it. You hit it. You hit it. I love it. 

Jeremy: 34:18

All right. Next one. What is the elements' favorite carnival ride?

Doug: 34:24

The elements' favorite carnival ride. Why can't I get off roller coaster?

Matt: 34:33

Ferris wheel. Not like.

Doug: 34:36

Tilt a whirl.

Jeremy: 34:37

The Ferris wheel, of course. 

Doug: 34:39

Oh, with the F E Ferris wheel? 

Jeremy: 34:41

Ferris, yeah.

Doug: 34:43

Ferris. Ferris. Oh man. 

Jeremy: 34:46

Matty had it.

Doug: 34:47

That's pretty good. Do you get half credit or full credit? He gets full credit. He said it. You know? 

Jeremy: 34:50

I think full. Give him full.

Jeremy: 34:53

What does a good doctor do for his patients?

Doug: 34:56

Oh my god, we're getting a third one? What do we got?

Jeremy: 35:00

Helium. 

Doug: 35:04

That one's pretty bad. 

Jeremy: 35:05

Well, I'd love to tell you guys more periodic table jokes, but all the good ones argon.

Doug: 35:13

I love it. We got a four-pack. I think the argon one killed it. So good. 

Jeremy: 35:19

Put the bow on it. 

Doug: 35:20

Hey, you know what? I think we did it today. I think we had some fun. We geeked out. Hopefully, we helped a few people along the way. If you all out there have questions about the elements of your financial plan, please feel free to reach out to us at info at arsenalfinancial.com. You can check us out at www.arsenalfinancial.com. JV, have a great weekend. Matt Hanna, thank you so much as always. If you're here in the Watertown area, please check out Matt's podcast, Little Local Conversations. Matt Hanna, our producer and one of the great guys in our community, does a wonderful podcast interviewing people all around our community of all different walks of life. So go check that out. Little Local Conversations. Matt, thanks again. 

Jeremy: 36:02

Thanks, Matt. 

Doug: 36:03

JV, did you have fun today? 

Jeremy: 36:04

Oh, yeah, I did. I loved it. Thanks for letting me geek out in science. 

Doug: 36:08

Appreciate it. Thanks for geeking out. All right, everybody, we'll catch you next time at the Arsenal Money Clip.

Matt: 36:15

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member FINRA SIPC. The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener's personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision.