Episode 519 – Good Debt, Bad Debt: Know the Difference

Welcome to the Your Life Your Wealth podcast with John Walker and Jason O’Meara, helping you find clarity and comfort for your life and wealth.

John Walker
Hey, welcome to the Your Life Your Wealth podcast. I’m John Walker, Regional Vice President at Mercer Advisors. Always a pleasure to be with you. And today we’re going to tackle a topic that’s, I think in our industry in the terms of financial planning and personal finance. It’s quite polarizing. It’s something that you can find endless articles on that take one or both sides of the equation, and candidly, there’s probably a good compelling argument for all of them, and we’re going to talk about debt.

The benefits of debt, the dangers of debt, and frankly how important debt is as a part of our current financial system, how it can be a useful tool, but how it can also potentially create challenges or financial obstacles that that can be really difficult to overcome. And so to have that, I think, really important conversation, I’ll be joined by my good friend and colleague here, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and market leader at Mercer Advisors, Mr. Jason O’Meara. Jay, thanks for joining me today.

Jason O’Meara
Of course, thanks for having me back.

John Walker
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say, right, we have lots of conversations with families around debt.

Jason O’Meara
It’s probably the one thread that affects everybody, right? It’s the one thing that everybody has in common. We talk to is, is some level of debt, some level of debt management.

John Walker: And wildly disparate points of view on it, right? I mean, we have folks who live their lives to be debt-free, want to pay cash for everything. It could be rooted in, you know, familial upbringing. It could be religiously driven, it could be just, you know, experientially driven, exactly.

And then we have others who like, as we call here in Philadelphia, there’s an old acronym OPM, right? Other people’s money. How do you pay for things? Let’s use OPM, right? So it’s always more fun when somebody else is paying for it, right? And, and, and there’s such a spectrum of opinions on this. And frankly, far be it from us to say which, who’s right, right? They’re not, neither is right or wrong, right? It is really just understanding.

As we talk about with many things, how debt plays a part potentially in your particular family plan, right, because, you know, for all the naysayers who want everything in cash and don’t want to hold a single loan.

You also have the reality of the fact that most people need to leverage some form of debt to buy their first home, to further their education, right? Whether that’s tuition for college or grad school or whatever, or even private school or special, you know, special considerations when they’re in the, in their primary years.

That is most families’ reality. I think it might be helpful, Jason, for us to kind of talk about some of just the practical guidelines and the reasonable ways we approach that here when we’re, when we’re building out a financial plan.

Jason O’Meara
Because it’s, tell me, tell me, John, is there, is there another word out there that has so many different definitions, right? I mean, like debt, there’s all types, like you said, there’s all types, all kinds, all, all different ways, all different manners of debt, right? Some great, some are fantastic, some are utilizing, you know, like you said, other people’s money to preserve your own, and other types of debt, high interest credit cards, there is a debt that you do not want to hold for a long period of time, right?

So, when we say debt, you know, it’s not all debts created equal. Some debts have different tax treatments, right? So you know it’s, it’s, it’s when you are deciding whether or not to use debt for a purchase you need to determine what’s the trade-off, right?

And that’s the big thing that, you know, again, everybody listens to this podcast regularly, you hear us talk all the time. There’s trade-offs, right? There’s a trade-off for everything.

John Walker
Absolutely.

Jason O’Meara
Is the trade-off worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze, you know, kind of deal, right?

John Walker
And that’s sort of the calculus we use when assessing kind of most financial decisions, right? Like what are the pros and cons? What are the costs associated? What is the payoff, and, and more importantly, how does it fit in your, in the context of your overall objectives, in your plan, and, and what is the, you know, let’s start with, I think the one that gets just to dive in a little here, Jay, let’s talk about the one I think that triggers the most reaction, right? Which is you mentioned it, the credit card, right? Credit cards are the one that can be incredibly dangerous, right, because they are insanely convenient to use, right? They’re taken literally everywhere. In fact, a lot of places are moving to a world where they don’t even take cash anymore, right? Go to, go to a baseball game anywhere in this country and see if they take cash, right? Like that is the way of situations.

Jason O’Meara
John, going to a Phillies game where the person in front of me in line for parking didn’t have a credit card and they didn’t take cash, so the guy ran back, gave me 20 bucks. I paid for his parking or it was $30 whatever it was, right, exactly, you know, and I paid for his parking.

John Walker
And they have devices now, machines in some of these stadiums and other, you know, music venues, etc. where you put cash in and it spits out a preloaded card for you because that’s all that the venue takes, right? So we are, we are moving to this digital world where credit cards are becoming such the norm, whether it’s credit card, debit card, whatever it is, a digital payment structure and let’s not also kid ourselves. Banks aren’t stupid. Credit card companies aren’t stupid. They’re making money on these, right? Like there are fees. There are other things, right?

Jason O’Meara: Anything that they incentivize you to do, right, because they give you every credit card has perks. They wouldn’t give you those perks if they weren’t making even more money off of the interest that they’re charging, right?

John Walker
Right. So, so you know, whether it’s airline miles, you know, points at hotels, cashback, trust me.

Jason O’Meara: I got 2% cashback, but they charged me 35% to get it.

John Walker
Exactly. You know, there’s, there’s that, right? That’s the math, and frankly, you know, we have to be aware of the behaviors that this encourages, right? There’s study after study that show it’s less psychologically painful, damaging, even real. It doesn’t even feel real to part with your money when you are using another device like that, right? Another mechanism. Handing the difference between handing someone cash, bills, dollars, right, it feels different psychologically than tapping tapping your card.

Jason O’Meara
But the reason why is you see the difference, right? I had five 20s in my pocket. Now I only have 3. So therefore, I can see my, my cash pile dwindling.

You don’t see that with the card. I had, you know, I had $100 in my checking account. I now have $60 in my checking account, but that card hasn’t changed weight. It hasn’t changed size. It hasn’t changed color. If you want to make a billion dollars, find a debit card, make a good debit card that changes color as you’re spending it. That would be amazing. But you know, it’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, as you said, it’s, it’s easy. It’s easy to over overspend, overindulge, and…

John Walker
Rhat, and, and depending how you use that debt, that convenience actually doesn’t need to cost you anything, right? In many ways that convenience, it certainly can be more convenient. Sometimes it’s safer to use, right, because it’s faster, it’s secured, you have recourse with another company, and as long as you pay it off at the end of the month.

Jason O’Meara
It’s OK. Before the interest.

John Walker: You’re getting potential rewards and you’re not really carrying any debt, but the reality is 45% of Americans actually carry a balance on their credit cards, right? Exactly. And those interest rates are very high. The consequences of missing a payment can be really severe, you know, both financially and to your credit score, and, you know, there’s no real incentive for the credit card companies to have you pay off that debt ever, right? That’s how they…

Jason O’Meara
No, they want you on that hamster wheel. Keep running, keep running, and I mean, I mean, look, I have a credit card, and every time I turn around, the credit limit has gone up.

John Walker
Yes, constantly encouraging you to spend more and carry more debt, right? And that is, that is the danger, the cyclical danger.

Jason O’Meara
Let’s put it this way though. It is good to have credit cards because what they’re really good for is emergencies. Absolutely. When the juice is worth the squeeze, my kid’s stuck in Mexico and needs to get home because airlines have closed or whatever, you know what I mean? Like I need to get them a ticket. I can put on my credit card. I don’t have to worry. Is the cash available?

John Walker
You know, it’s, it’s a great vehicle for emergency liquidity as long as that is going to be a short term thing and it and it and it roots back and it roots back into the real conversation, which is what are you spending money on and why? Because there’s no problem, right? If this is a mechanism for cash flow management and it’s something that you use to track your spending and you’re getting all kinds of rewards points and you say, you know what, I’m going to put everything I spend on this, you know, airline’s credit card and all those points are going to get.

That trip I’ve been wanting to take this year, but I’m gonna, I, I’m never going to spend more than I, my, my allocated budget, and I have the cash in the bank to pay it off every month. Well then, now you are leveraging debt as a tool.

Jason O’Meara
You use it. There you go. There’s the good. There’s the good.

John Walker
And, and to your example, Jay, right? Like, and then in a pinch, you know, if you need to come up with something quick and convenient, that’s a perfect mechanism to do it. But what we want to avoid is that albatross of a, a large balance that you’re carrying that you can’t sustain, that’s got a really high interest rate and that is inhibiting you from doing other things or a behavior where that convenience starts to drive your behavior and you’re spending more than you can actually afford to.

Jason O’Meara
That’s, that’s the pitfall. That’s what gets people in trouble is they spend beyond their means with credit. And then they say, oh crap, I’ve got to pay this back somehow.

John Walker
And, and for many people, right, it comes at the cost of saving for other things, you know, having an emergency account, funding their 401k as much as they can, whatever it is, right? So at our core, coming back to what, what, you know, what is the underlying behavior that’s driving that activity, that’s what we really need to understand. So gets a bad rap.

But could be, you know, used appropriately can be a really excellent tool, right? It’s not, it’s really how you leverage that debt, and I think that’s going to be a conversation we talk about quite a bit here.

Jason O’Meara
It’s going to carry through here because the next one we’ll talk about is the auto is auto loans, right? Car loans for cars. And when you’re, again, that’s another one where it’s, you know, if you take a look at, oh, what’s an extra $5000 over 60 months.

That may not be that much of a dissuasion to buy the bigger car than you need, you know, or, or want, right? You know, you start to get that creep that, OK, I’m looking at cars at 45,000, 48 is not that much more than 450. And then $50 is not that much more than 48, and you just watch it creep up. Next thing you know you’re looking at $75,000 cars and you’re like, how did this happen, right?

John Walker
There’s that, that, yeah, that’s, there’s that, that, that lifestyle creep, right, that drives you into, and it also gets really attractive when you start, you know. Car companies aren’t stupid either. They, they, they pivot you away from the ticket price, right? The sticker price, and they move you towards that monthly payment, what your payment’s going to be, right? And so you don’t think too much about it, you know, it’s a shorter-term loan. Most of them are, I don’t know, 3 to 7 years depending, right?

So, it’s shorter term debt and they, they, they frame it in the way of it’s only going to be x amount a month and then you start doing a calculus in your head and you’re like, OK, $500 a month, I can make that work, or $600 a month, I can make that work. But then you start not realizing how much of a loan you’re actually taking out to sustain that and…

Jason O’Meara
Where the worst part of an auto loan, and listen, I have an auto loan. Like I, I don’t, I, you know, I either lease or, or borrow to buy cars. I won’t pay cash. That’s just me. Um, that’s my, that’s my own bias, right? Um, but what you, what you need to understand though is, is, will there be a point where that loan is going to be more, you know, the amount that you owe, the outstanding balance is going to be more than the car is worth.

John Walker
Yeah. It’s quite frequent, right, where the, where the loan amount starts to exceed the value of the actual car because they’re one of the few things that we kind of intuitively know that the second we buy it, it starts to depreciate in value instead of depreciate, right? Rare is the day unless it’s some sort of exotic or rare car or something that’s a commodity or people want, right? But you know, the, the, in most cases, you know, the Honda or Toyota you buy and you take off the lot, the second you drive it, it’s now, you know, worth less than it was, right? And it’s, that’s why used cars typically cost less than new cars, right?

So, understanding that you’re buying a depreciating asset and it’s, again, if you can afford it, go buy that Maserati you want, right? If it fits within your plan, but overextending yourself to get that next thing, just because you want it, not because you need it, can really create a debt environment for families that can be really, really challenging, and it doesn’t feel significant, right? It’s only an extra 100 bucks a month.

It’s like, OK, well that’s not crazy, but you’re costing yourself an extra several $1,000 in interest, and what should that $100 a month be put into? Should, should that be going into a 529 for your kids instead? Should that be going into it doesn’t retirement?

Jason O’Meara
Are you, are you, are you slowing down 401(k) contributions to buy a car? I had, I had an uncle who, uh, um, would borrow from his 401(k), 401(k) to buy cars, and when you borrow from the 401(k), you are know every penny you put into that 401(k) is now servicing the loan, not going towards the investments.

So it’s, you know, by doing that, he was shorting his retirement. He loves the way BMWs look and feel, right? And, and he, he knows that. He knows that, he knows I referenced this here, so no one has to think I’m talking out of turn here, but it’s just one of those things where it’s, hey, you know, there’s better ways to do this, and we could talk about that.

Like for me, personally, um, I believe in lease what goes down in value, buy what goes up in value. That’s my own belief, right? I’d rather know. I, I’m going to get hit with this depreciation no matter what, um, and I like a new car. I can get more car for my buck if I lease, right? But, but that’s built into my financial plan. My 401(k) is still maxed out. I’m still saving.

Above that, above and beyond that, I’m still putting money in my girl’s 529s, so I won’t, you know, I, I’m a big believer is if it costs me peace of mind, it’s too expensive, you know. So that’s kind of, I, I just gave everybody my bias, my beliefs, um, but when does it make sense to buy the car outright versus borrowing we expect.

Your returns that average 7% a year and interest rates for the car is 8%. Well, it does not make sense to, you know, spend 8 to save 7%, right? But if they’re looking at a 2% loan, uh, 2% the rate from the dealership, and your, your rate of return on your investments could be 5%, well then it doesn’t make sense to give up that 5% to save 2%. So those are the things. Or where’s the money coming from if all you have is IRA money then definitely not because we’re throwing taxes on top of that, right, you know, so it’s all about how we, how we approach it’s, it’s the margins, right? We talk a lot to families about marginal gains. It’s the stuff that you don’t recognize that extra.

John Walker
1 to 2% compounded over decades is really what makes a material difference and what can dramatically change or alter some family’s plans, right? Because, you know, we can’t control, there’s so many things in this world we cannot control, but we can control those little deltas, right? Like you said, hey,

You can borrow for 3%, but the money markets are paying 5%. Keep your money in cash, right? Like, and, and take the margin that you’re, you’re netting a positive there. There’s a lot of headlines around the impending student loan crisis, right? And it’s real, right? People are getting swallowed up by student loan debt, and, and, and I don’t want to evaluate, you know, the, the, the market there and how, you know, there’s a lot of noise in that space and there’s a lot of fair criticisms of the way that market operates, but as a parent whose son is about to go off to college next year, the costs are jarring and for most folks, some element, if not a full student loan experience is needed to get access to that education, right?

And, and there is no doubt that that is sort of unequivocal that that educational level often impacts your earnings potential, right? And so the difference between college educated versus non-college educated incomes or specialties, right? Doctors, attorneys, you know, CPAs, whatever it is that that you that extra degree, right, which gets you into, you know, a potential different specialty, right? It needs to often be viewed as an investment, but like any investment, you have to also consider it in terms of the ROI, right?

What is the return on your investment, right? Going to medical school because you’ve always wanted to be a doctor, that’s important, right? How do you fund that? But also being cognizant of the fact that, you know, a family practitioner doesn’t necessarily have the earnings opportunity of, you know, a cardiologist, right? Right. And so understanding and evaluating what’s the ratio of debt I’m taking versus what my potential earnings are going to be. I have a friend from growing up many, many years ago chose to go to and was so excited and got into the University of Pennsylvania for law school, right? Obviously, an Ivy League law school, unbelievable.

And then after graduating was a civil attorney in the city of Philadelphia making peanuts, right? Right, right. And so I always teased her, like, you’re, you know, you’re never going to get out of this, right? Like now in her calculus, right, I’ll I’ll forgive, I’ll give her a little grace. I think there’s some forgiveness in other things when you work for the state or the government or whatever it is, right? But, but the fact remains hey, you know, you just dropped several $100,000 on the law school and you’re making $50,000 a year. It’s going to take forever to get out of that level of debt, right? Your, your student loan payment is bigger than most families’ mortgages.

Jason O’Meara
That’s one of the biggest hurdles that this generation faces when it comes to starting families, start buying their first home. It’s kind of difficult to be able to afford a mortgage when you’ve got a $1,000 student loan payment each month, and there’s different programs that you can get into that are based on income-based repayments and stuff. Those are, we, we, John, we could do a whole podcast.

John Walker
Oh man, and we could bring in some folks who could really, you know, speak more clearly to this than we can.

Jason O’Meara
Correct.

John Walker
But it is important and it’s hard, right? It’s really hard. Think of, you know, particularly if you’re working with your child or grandchild or someone close to you to really kind of help them do that evaluation, right? Like what’s the cost of this school versus this school? Am I getting, them, you know, to use your phrase, right? Am I getting my bang for my buck? Is the, is the juice worth a squeeze, right? Is there, you know, if there’s a 150,000 to $20,000 a year difference in tuition, take the emotional element of it. I always wanted to go to this school or it’s my favorite place. We did this years ago for a family. They were looking at, you know, evaluating schools that the daughter wanted to go into, um, like civil service, public affairs, sort of, you know, government work, and they were looking at two schools in DC, right? Both amazing schools. Um, the difference in tuition was $20,000 30,000 dollars a year, right?

And the expectation of employment afterwards was essentially the same whether you went to either school, right, you have probably a fairly equal opportunity. And so having to have that tough conversation and saying, hey, listen, you know, unless you tell me I would be miserable at this one school, I didn’t enjoy it there, all things being equal, you may want to choose the one that costs $20,000 less a year that has the exact same, you know, that’s going to get you into the exact same employment, right? And so, it’s not fun, it’s not always easy to do, but at least evaluating how much debt you’re going to take on to get, and what does it potentially provide you.

Jason O’Meara
And make sure that you come out with a repayment plan. You’re not required to make loan payments while you’re in school, right? But the interest is still accruing. So, you know, it’s something to make sure that you at least have a plan for because you could, you could go to that more expensive school. That’s fine if there’s a payment plan for it, you know, if you, if you know how it’s going to get repaid, and that’s the big thing with, with the student loan debt is the one debt you can’t get out of from bankruptcy.

Right, you can’t just file bankruptcy and ha ha I no longer have to pay my student loans. Doesn’t work that way. You, you’re still on the hook for the student loans no matter what.

John Walker
Absolutely right.

Jason O’Meara
And so, which is crazy to think that a 17-year-old can sign for that. Just blows my mind if you think about that’s the definition of predatory lending. Let’s move on to the next one, right? The one we’re, the next one we want to talk about, because there’s a lot of predatory lending practices in this too, right, when it comes to mortgages.

John Walker
There’s certainly a lot of um opportunities to take advantage. We certainly saw in 2008, 2009, right, what can happen when lending can get ugly, right?

Jason O’Meara
That’s what happens when everybody knows something, right? Everybody knows that housing is always going to go up. Until it doesn’t, and that’s when, that’s when the wheels fell off. And it was actually 2007 when that started when, uh, interest rates started adjusting on adjustable-rate mortgages. People had multiple mortgages on the same house. House, they expected the house to continually go up. It was basically a piggy bank you lived in, and then people started losing their jobs and weren’t able to make their mortgage payments and then lost their houses and then all of a sudden the, you know, housing market got flooded with inventory and when that happens, prices go down. It’s a race to the bottom who can sell their house as cheap as possible and when that all occurred, all of a sudden people have, you know, 100, 110% of their house loaned out and loans got called.

So, it’s when everybody knows something, it’s dangerous, you know what I mean. So that’s those black swan events that just people don’t see coming, even though in hindsight you look at it and you’re like, how did you not see this coming? So, you know, but one a couple of things about, about mortgages that I think is important to know. One, up to $750,000 right? That’s where the jumbo loans start, uh, up to that amount, the interest is deductible, tax deductible.

Right, so when we’re looking at your interest rate, if you’re under $750,000 loan value, right, um, your, your interest is deductible, so you can tax the, you can tax affect that loan rate to see what you’re actually paying, right, which is important, um, but I find the thing that most people are surprised about is when I say when you speak to a loan officer and they tell you can afford that house, they’re basing it on 330, 33% of your gross income, right.

That’s a lot, especially when you take a look at what that number is compared to your net income, right? You don’t live on your gross income. You live on your net income, right?

John Walker
And you’re doing that, yeah, when you’re like approved for that loan, just because you’re approved for it doesn’t mean you can actually you can afford it. Yeah, it doesn’t mean you should actually do it, right? And so, it’s, you know, you’re right because they’re not, that doesn’t account for all the other variables, right? It doesn’t account for, you know, taxes, it doesn’t account for the cost to maintain said home, right?

Jason O’Meara
It doesn’t account for retirement savings. It doesn’t account for eating food.

John Walker
Right.

Jason O’Meara
And it’s become the definition of house poor.

John Walker
And it’s not the loan officer’s job to consider that, right? That’s not, that’s not how they are operating, right? And so, because they close that loan and the next day, they package it and sell it to somebody else, correct? And so, they’re no longer concerned about the repayment with that as the context, right?

Recognize that, you know, most folks are not plucking down hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to buy their first home, right? That’s just not really tenable for most people, but you need to be aware of how much can I actually afford? What’s the appropriate down payment? How much is this home going to cost me? How does it fit again inside our overarching financial plan.

And, and Jason, I, don’t want to belabor a point, right? But like, most families need mortgages, and it’s not a matter of should you or shouldn’t you. It’s using it like all the things we’re talking about as a tool, using it appropriately, using it as a part of a, a broader context. I’ll, I’ll give you another example. In a former life, I was a private banker and we used to leverage debt a lot, and one of the things that we used to do was encourage families to have, you know, that had equity in their homes, that had that ability to borrow without paying for it, right? Like home equity lines of credit back in the day, you didn’t actually pay unless you borrowed against them, right? So they were a really, really useful tool for liquidity, right? So, if you could secure, you know, just use an example, let’s just say you had a $200,000 line of credit on your home, right?

That allowed many families to have the security of, like we talked about with credit cards, if I need emergency liquidity, if I need something immediately and quickly, I have access to a significant amount of capital. It will cost me if I do it, right? It does have a cost and I will have to be prepared for a monthly payment or to repay that debt, but it allows you to you know, optimistically, not ever need to use it and allocate other capital towards other things. You could put more money into your retirement accounts. You could put more money into your savings account or into your brokerage account or, right, it was that trade-off of, if I need to tap this, it will cost me.

But I’m really hopeful, right? That’s for emergencies. That’s, I hope I never have to break this glass. And because I have that there, because that’s there as a security blanket, I can put a little bit more into my brokerage account and growth-focused monies, right?

And then, right, as we said, playing in the margins, even if you’re just getting basic market level returns and you’re in the equities market, you’re getting the historical averages, you’re certainly outpacing typically whatever that debt amount would be. And with a line of credit like that, you’re not even paying for it, right? You’re not paying to access that liquidity. Hopefully you never need it, but that allowed some folks to emotionally feel comfortable having a little more allocated towards their longer-term objectives, right? And so that’s a really, I think, useful example of how debt can be used effectively as part of a larger plan, as long as you understand the trade-offs, right? And so I, I think that at our, at our, at its core, that’s how we are approaching debt, right?

Jason O’Meara
We approach it responsibly and it becomes a, it becomes a tool not a hindrance if you use it appropriately.

John Walker
Exactly. And I really think that’s really important for you listening to understand, right? Where does it fit? What role does it play, and is it long term versus short term debt. Is it low interest rate versus high interest rate? Is it fixed versus variable? Is it secured versus unsecured? They’re wildly different how they’re treated. Is it deductible versus non-deductible, right? There’s a tax element to all of this. So, so understanding the characterization of your debt.

And how does it fit? What role could it play within your broader plan? And let’s not also forget how do you feel about it, right? What is your emotional outlook on debt? Are you one of those folks who wants to be completely debt-free, or are you one of those folks who is OK with a little bit of debt for the longer-term objective?

And what are you willing to sacrifice because we have had a lot of families we’ve met with that that objectively are like, I want to pay off my mortgage, but we then have to show them like you’re doing that at the risk of not being able to retire because you can’t spend equity in your home, right? It’d be great to be debt-free, but you need cash to fund your retirement, and that extra mortgage payment you’re making instead of funding your 401(k) is not going to allow you to retire when you want to, right? And so that calculus is really difficult for a lot of folks to do.

And, and that’s the role, Jason, that we often play. Debt doesn’t have to be a dirty word, right? It doesn’t have to be something that gives you agita. It can be a useful tool when used appropriately, but it always goes back to how does it fit within the overall plan? How does it fit with your long term objectives. Jason O’Meara, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and market leader here at Mercer Advisors, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jason O’Meara
Of course, I appreciate the time. Also, just remember, just because debt has four letters doesn’t mean it’s a four letter word. So it’s OK.

John Walker
Absolutely. So thanks, Jason. And if you have questions about what Jason and I talked about today, if you are not sure how this fits, if you’re feeling swallowed up by the debt that you have or really don’t know how to make it all work together, we’re always here to help. Give us a call at 215.558.3500. That’s 215.558.3500 or email me at jwalker@merceradvisors.com. That’s jwalker@merceradvisors.com. I’m John Walker, Regional Vice President of Mercer Advisors. Thanks so much for listening to the Your Life Your Wealth podcast. Talk to you next time.

Announcer
If you’re interested in learning more about applying the principles we discussed to your personal financial circumstances, please visit merceradvisors.com.