What We’re Thinking

When was the last time you taught someone you love how to do something hard?

This question came up during a recent conversation I (Tom) had with Leslie Kahlenberg, one of our PPA team members. Leslie and her husband live in the Los Angeles area with their two teenaged sons. Their younger son, recently turned 15, is driving now. And Leslie was memorably describing the experience of driving with her son in bad weather for the first time when we started to reflect on learning new things.

The more I listened, the more I thought Leslie’s experiences offer something illuminating on the more universal experience of teaching people important things for the first time. It turns out, helping a 9^th grader learn to drive in a downpour isn’t so different from teaching someone about money and intelligent financial decision-making.

So … I asked Leslie for more specifics.

Here are Leslie’s (very lightly edited) thoughts:

Usually, I feel confident in Leo’s skills as a driver, but in this one circumstance, I was more nervous than usual. It was, and had been, raining hard for several days and the streets and freeway flooded in some parts. I was trying to project to him that I wasn’t worried, trusted his judgment, and wasn’t too bad of a backseat driver.

I had to be mindful of how I offered guidance so he would be more likely to hear what I’m saying and, at the same time, understand the reasoning behind it.

I have an older car and it doesn’t have Apple CarPlay, so occasionally I’ll pretend I am the voice of Apple CarPlay when the opportunity for a teachable moment comes up. My hope is not to downplay anything, but instead, offer guidance in a lighter tone. Hopefully that can help him be more receptive to the lessons.

I don’t remember much about getting taught these things. The first day on the road alone I drove into the gas station from the wrong side of the road. Most of my experiences, including the ones we are having with Leo now, have been the result of trial and error. I think it’s important to share those embarrassing experiences as teachable moments.

Helping anyone gain new knowledge or learn a new skill can be a challenge. Where do you start? What do you say? And, as important, what don’t you say? How do you best offer feedback? When is it better not to step in? How do we offer guidance without being too much of a backseat driver?

Our routine, daily life offers an almost innumerable catalog of opportunities to delve into the world of money. With young people, this can be especially fertile ground.

While many adults prefer to avoid money conversations, the “next generation” is, perhaps surprisingly, interested – even eager – to talk about it. There isn’t a lot of concrete guidance on the subject. Financial literacy curricula, while highly valuable, are still missing from far too many schools. Moreover, kids often perceive money as an adult topic. This can make the discussion more intriguing. Talking openly about money can give them the sense that they’re stepping into an adult space.

Over the past few months, our team at Park Piedmont has been talking and thinking and continuing our own learning about how teenagers and young adults can best cultivate a well-informed skill set around intelligent financial decision-making.

Financial education is an integral part of our everyday work with clients, and we’re excited at the prospect of getting to extend some of that work with the young adults in our midst. Maybe that’s your high school or college-age kids or grandkids, or other young adults you know well.

We know this topic can sometimes be stressful and challenging – not unlike that first time teaching a teenager how to drive in the rain. But we’re excited about diving in.

In the meantime, if this is a topic you’re interested in for the young adults in your life, please let us know. We’d love to hear more of your thoughts, as they will help us continue learning about this important topic.

If you were making a mixtape or playlist of your favorite songs about money, what would make the cut?

Visiting with a few of our clients this week offered a nice opportunity to turn on the radio. And with the radio on, we could revisit that ongoing question.

On one of our recent Park Piedmont weekly team Zooms, we spent the better part of an hour discussing songs about money, getting input from our whole team. Our initial songlist runs the gamut from standards of the American Songbook to Hip-Hop, Disco to Rock, Country to Folk.

Take a look at our list and then let us know: what are we missing? What songs would you add to our “Money Music” playlist?

• For the Love of Money – The O’Jays
• Money, Money, Money – Abba
• Money Can’t Buy It – Annie Lennox
• Too Much – Drake
• 9 To 5 – Dolly Parton
• Money Trees – Kendrick Lamar
• If I Were a Rich Man – Fiddler on the Roof
• Money – Pink Floyd
• Money (That’s What I Want) – Barrett Strong, later covered by The Beatles
• Supply & Demand – Amos Lee
• Get Rich Quick – Little Richard
• Money Don’t Matter 2 Night – Prince & the New Power Generation
• Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) – Pet Shop Boys
• Money Changes Everything – Cyndi Lauper
• Mo Money Mo Problems – The Notorious B.I.G. feat. Puff Daddy and Mase
• I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’ – Porgy and Bess
• She Works Hard For the Money – Donna Summer
• Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
• You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
• $ave Dat Money – Lil Dicky

This edition of Life with Money is going to involve a lot of baseball talk. This may thrill you or bore you, but I promise that after the history lesson and personal reflections, there will be some relevance to personal finance.

Baseball has been an important part of the Levinson family for many years. Vic was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who converted to the Yankees when the Bums moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s. He coached me and Tom in little league in Tenafly, New Jersey, and Riverdale, the Bronx. I also helped coach a few of Tom’s little league teams before he moved on to pitch for the Horace Mann Lions in high school.

We were staunch Yankee fans growing up, suffering through the Horace Clark/Fred Stanley era before George Steinbrenner (love him or hate him) brought us the late 70s teams of Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, and Catfish Hunter. We struggled some more with Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly in the 80s and early 90s, before being blessed with the four-time champions led by Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Bernie Williams. Despite all of the money lavished on players since then, there’s only been one championship in the last two decades.

For me, fandom turned closer to home. I had the great pleasure of coaching Nate (going on 25) and his two brothers, Owen (almost 22) and Ben (turning 20 this Sunday!) from the ages of about six through 13. We got to share the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, and I’m sure I learned more from them about being a parent and coach than they learned from me about baseball. With better coaching leading up to and in high school, they all went on to play for the Piedmont (CA) Highlanders. Nate moved on to catch at Macalester College, Owen is currently an infielder for Case Western Reserve, and Ben is pitching, also at Macalester. Julie and I have been extremely fortunate to see most of their high school games and many of their college games, and we look forward to the four seasons remaining for Owen and Ben.

Baseball is loved (and hated by some) for its slow pace and time for contemplation, and in this spirit we read with interest a recent New York Times article about retired major leaguer John Jaso. Jaso was not a star but a solid catcher/first baseman for four teams in his nine-year career. He caught a perfect game (no hits, walks, or errors allowed) and hit for the cycle (single, double, triple, and home run in the same game). But the most interesting thing about Jaso from our perspective is that he walked away early from a lucrative career to spend his retirement (at least so far) sailing.

Jaso retired at the end of the 2017 season and hasn’t looked back. “Sometimes I’ll just be out on the boat bobbing in the water, not sailing or even fishing, and I’ll think to myself: ‘There’s nowhere else on the planet I’d rather be than right here. It’s been the perfect fit for who I am.’”

He enjoyed playing professional baseball, but not everything about it. “Baseball set me up for life. I love it, and I respect it. But it was part of this culture of consumerism and overconsumption that began to weigh really heavily on me. Even when I retired, people said, ‘You might be walking away from millions of dollars!’ But I’d already made millions of dollars. Why do we always have to have more, more, more?”

Jaso craved a less complicated, less materialistic life. “I want my life to be simple, and it doesn’t get simpler than being on a sailboat. You treat the boat right, and she treats you right. That’s all there is to it.” He added that “when you’re sailing, you’re going back to something primitive. You’re removing yourself from the material world – this concrete, electronic world. And you’re returning to this sense of wonder. It’s the same sense you get when you’re holding a newborn baby, looking into their eyes, and feeling the world disappear around you.”

In addition to his poetic sentiments, we think Jaso has hit upon a few important concepts related to financial advice and the way we provide it to PPA clients:

Enough

Jaso was of course fortunate to earn almost $20 million dollars in his playing career, but at the age of 34 he realized that he didn’t need more for the sake of having more. He focused on what made him happiest and has avoided other materialistic pursuits. This is a concept we often discuss with PPA clients. At some point (and this is of course different for everyone), you have enough money to live the rest of your life, and in many cases to provide for children and grandchildren as well. Once you’ve reached that level, you can afford to take less risk in the markets, focusing instead on capital preservation and income generation. If you’re still working, you can pursue a volunteer or non-profit opportunity if that’s important to you. Helping clients figure out what’s enough for them is a vital part of what we do at PPA.

Simplicity

This is related to the concept of enough. At some point, having more possessions and commitments can become a burden rather than a joy, as Jaso’s experience demonstrates. In many cases, pursuing and having fewer things can make the time you spend on them more precious. There’s nothing inherently wrong, of course, with complexity, but we encourage clients to focus on what’s really important to you.

Experiences

Jaso got his sailboat, but since then he’s been sailing and enjoying other experiences. He and his girlfriend sailed for three months in the Caribbean in 2022. He’s also “taken several trips to Europe, discovering a passion for exploring his father’s ancestral land in the Basque Country of Northern Spain. And he has driven a camper van around Australia and Indonesia.” These might not be your preferences, of course, but the key is to figure out what you really like to do, and do it as much as possible. If you can bring family and friends along to share in the experiences, even better. We advocate for clients setting aside funds to travel, pursue hobbies, and get involved in the local community. As we’ve written before, numerous studies have shown that you’re more likely to treasure the memories from a great experience than merely having another possession.

If you’re interested, please don’t hesitate to bring up any of these ideas the next time we’re discussing your personal situation. And we’ll let you know how Case Western and Macalester do this season.

—

Read “Financial Wisdom from a Retired Catcher” in the Piedmont Exedra.

To help relieve chronic hip pain, I had an epidural yesterday.

If you aren’t familiar, an epidural is an injection of medication – often and in my case, a steroid – into the area around your spinal nerves to relieve pain in some part of your body.

I’d had one before – it wasn’t a life highlight. I recalled some pain during the procedure, and a short span of pain relief after. But a second epidural had been recommended by a doctor, and I figured it made sense to try again, as a complement to other physical fitness stuff like daily stretching and pick-up basketball I do regularly.

I arrived at the pain clinic, answered some routine questions, and switched into a gown and padded socks. A doctor came in, and I asked for a few ibuprofen, if they had any, since I hadn’t taken any at home. The doctor, young, probably not too far out of med school, told me they don’t hand out medicine. They weren’t a pharmacy. It was funny, sort of – I already felt apologetic for asking a “dumb” question, for not knowing an unwritten, unspoken rule of the clinic.

The doctor walked me into the operating room. Bright white light. A half-dozen people quietly playing their roles. I was shown a bed, told to lie front-down, face in a pillow, mask on. And from there, the two doctors – one a senior physician, the other the trainee – performed the procedure.

My experience was … well, let’s just say, I won’t be signing up for my third epidural anytime soon!

But I’m sharing a bit about the process surrounding the procedure because I noticed some important parallels between being a health care patient and being a financial advising client.

As a patient, and frequently I think as a client too, you are inherently vulnerable. You need help. You’re putting yourself in someone else’s hands. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you might be wary of asking “dumb” questions, or too many questions, or not the right questions. You’re reliant on the practitioner’s skill, their attention to detail, their prudent decision-making. And even with a routine procedure, the outcome is uncertain. In a health care setting, with sick people and doctors and nurses in scrubs and masks all around you, one’s mortality comes to mind. This can all feel scary!

My own sense of vulnerability yesterday was exacerbated by the doctors’ dialogue. They muttered quietly behind me. It was mostly technical. There was very little context-setting.

I was hoping for a roadmap, some ongoing guidance – “in a few seconds you’re gonna feel a pinch, then something on your right side” or “we’re about halfway done” – and bracing myself, a sense of when the pain of the injection might be at its worst.

Instead, I felt isolated in my thoughts and agitation.

Undoubtedly, for many clients in the world of wealth management, I could imagine the process feeling similarly challenging and intimidating. Ours is an industry populated by practitioners who so often use technical jargon where everyday language would suffice. There’s often a huge knowledge imbalance between advisors and clients. Not to mention more structural imbalances of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and language gaps. All of these can feel dis-empowering and nerve-wracking for patients and clients alike, and make someone want to run for the door.

My experience in a hospital gown and face mask and padded socks hit me with a jolt of empathy.

As experienced practitioners in the course of our routine day-to-day, physicians and advisors alike are always at risk of losing this crucial sense of connection with the client (or patient).

It’s our job to always be present with and for our clients, wherever they are in their life’s journey. For some, the language of investments and financial decision-making is like a native tongue. But for others, many others, it can be a sweaty-palms roller coaster ride, where the ride operator is speaking Latin!

At Park Piedmont, we’ll always work hard to stay focused on the human experience of being an investment/financial advisory client – wherever that lands for you, our clients. And if you ever feel like we’re not quite getting it, we welcome your feedback. It will help us, and we hope in the process, help you, as well.

—

Read “Being a Patient” in the Piedmont Exedra.

We are excited and gratified to share the launch of our first Park Piedmont Advisors book. It’s called Thinking About Investing: Two Decades of Reflective Commentary on Markets and Money, and we would be delighted to send you a copy (or copies), either electronically or in hard copy. Our treat. Just let us know what you prefer.

When we first started to contemplate this project, back in the fall of 2019, we intended it as a capstone present to celebrate the 80th birthday, in October 2020, of our dad and business partner, Vic Levinson.

In that initial vision for the book, we imagined assembling the many Monthly Comments Vic had written over the prior two decades into something bound and memorable. It would be a surprise. Something to put on a shelf. Maybe a coffee table.

Alas, book projects have a life of their own.

Certainly, there was a logic to compiling this archive and handing it off to Vic, a singular gift at a life milestone.

But the more we dug into this older material, the more we felt that, while written initially for a modest audience of clients, family, and friends, it had a wider resonance. Because at the core of all this writing was a thorny question, one that Vic, a clear-eyed pragmatist, wrestled with for decades: how can people survive – and hopefully thrive – in an uncertain world?

At one level, this sounds like the trailer to a sci-fi movie.

But, at another, it’s the drumbeat of all our lives, and of our work at Park Piedmont.

That to us is the bigger story to share. The world is uncertain. The future, unknowable. Risk abounds. But we can still make intelligent, thoughtful choices – informed by our goals, our priorities, and our values. Not hiding from risk – but not being polyanna-ish about it, either.

Back in 2020, we envisioned the book as a surprise gift – until we realized, what a waste, Vic is right here, a phone call away, and why not benefit from his guidance on what to cut and what to keep. So Vic jumped in to lend a hand.

The book really was a family affair. We enlisted Jane, our mom, Vic’s wife of 50+ years, boasting a voracious appetite for reading, to review the manuscript. Her layperson’s point of view was crucial. Nick’s wife, Julie, was an early contributor, reviewing the Comments and sorting essay topics by theme. Tom wrestled with structure and storyline. Nick and Nate reviewed and revised. We had terrific ongoing support from our Director of Marketing and Education, Corenna Roozeboom, and eventually, from Corenna’s husband, Schuyler Roozeboom, who designed the cover and pages.

We were still working on a final draft when Vic died last May 28.

We think of the final product as a fitting tribute, an acknowledgement of all his hard work and open-minded curiosity. And, last but not least, as a token of our gratitude. We hope you enjoy it.

While we can share copies with you – again, either hard copy or electronic format – Thinking About Investing: Two Decades of Reflective Commentary on Markets and Money is also available for purchase on Amazon. All profits from the sale of the book will be donated toward organizations teaching financial literacy and empowerment in Oakland and Chicago.

Although Park Piedmont focuses primarily on providing investment advice, our advisors also assist clients with broader financial planning work. Financial planning is the process of evaluating a client’s financial situation and developing a roadmap to help them meet their short- and long-term financial goals.

The CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation is one recognition of expertise in financial planning. A number of our Park Piedmont team members hold this certification, and I am currently working toward becoming a CFP professional as well. We thought it might be interesting for you to get a look “under the hood” of the CFP certification process, while I’m going through it.

There are four requirements for attaining a CFP certification, which are known as “the four E’s”: education, exam, experience, and ethics.

The education component involves taking several courses that each cover a specific area of financial planning. The topics covered in the coursework include investing, retirement planning, estate planning, insurance, income taxation, behavioral finance, and more. Depending on the educational program, each course usually takes about two to four months to complete and is followed by a test that must be passed to move on to the next course in the sequence.

Once the education piece is completed, the candidate begins studying for the official CFP exam, which integrates knowledge from each of the educational courses. The exam consists of 170 questions and is taken in two three-hour segments.

Next, the CFP Board requires that candidates have 6,000 hours, or approximately three years, of experience engaging in some form of financial planning work. This can include one or multiple aspects of putting together a financial plan, from gathering client information to identifying their needs and goals to implementing plan recommendations.

Finally, the ethics requirement involves signing a declaration, attesting that a candidate will adhere to the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. These documents specify CFP professionals’ duties to their clients, employers, etc. and outline what it means to act ethically in the context of financial planning. A primary emphasis of the Code of Ethics is that CFP professionals have a fiduciary duty to their clients, which involves acting in the client’s best interest, avoiding conflicts of interest, and maintaining client confidentiality. We at Park Piedmont have served our clients in a fiduciary capacity since our founding – so the expectations for CFP professionals are closely aligned with our own. Due to all the requirements and steps in the CFP certification process, it typically takes about three years to become certified, assuming the experience piece is completed concurrently with the education component.

Between the required months of studying, years of practicing and applying knowledge, and stringent ethical standards, the CFP certification process prepares advisors to craft plans that are individually tailored to a client’s needs and goals. Our colleague Sam Ngooi, who spent two years studying for the CFP exam during evenings and on weekends, and received her CFP certification last summer, told me:

“Having knowledge in each of the CFP subject areas enables me to put together the various puzzle pieces of a person’s financial life and help them develop a plan that is holistic and comprehensive. And because clients entrust us with details about their lives and their money, CFP Board’s stringent ethics and education requirements are also important for building trust and providing clients with peace of mind. Not everyone in the financial service space is required to put a clients’ best interest before their own, and it’s meaningful to be able to say that we do.”

Personally, I decided to begin the CFP certification process because I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the financial services industry, but I felt I lacked much of the knowledge I would need to be successful. I had majored in Economics in college, but the classes I took focused on theoretical principles and models, as opposed to real life applications and personal finance. My classes certainly did not touch on anything related to investing, a topic I was particularly interested in learning about. Straight out of college, I worked at an insurance company for about two years, so that was the only financial planning topic I felt I had a strong grasp of going into the CFP certification coursework.

I started the education component of the CFP certification in January of 2022 and am currently almost done with the final course. I went into the process with the most excitement about the investment and retirement planning courses. I believed that these would not only be the most interesting topics, but also the most practical for my role at PPA, and in many ways that has been true. And although I wasn’t as excited for the courses on estate planning and income taxation, I found those to include some of the most engaging material. For example, during the income tax course, I realized that income tax is at the core of what PPA does, and a person cannot advise on any investment or retirement matters without a deep understanding of how the US income tax system operates. I also found the section on behavioral finance, or the study of investors’ psychological biases, to be particularly fascinating because it presented a more “human” side of financial advising that I had not previously encountered.

Overall, I have found the CFP certification process to be vital in my day-to-day work at Park Piedmont. It has provided me with a range of very specific financial planning knowledge, like how to calculate a client’s required savings rate to meet a specific goal and the tax implications of selling various investments, as well as more general financial topics, like the tools of monetary and fiscal policy and the factors that impact one’s credit score. I plan to take the exam in July of this year, and I have about one year of experience to go before I can become officially certified.

CFP certification is a significant time commitment and has taken up many of my weeknights and weekends since the start of 2022. But I have learned more in that time than I ever thought I would. Even after I complete the CFP certification process, I plan to continue learning about investing and behavioral finance, along with many of the other topics the CFP certification has covered.

Moving to a new home when we were 38 weeks pregnant wasn’t ideal, I’ll give you that.

But then our moving truck’s engine spontaneously caught on fire and exploded. Nearly everything we owned — packed Tetris-style onto that truck — was gone. We hadn’t planned for that.

It was a full 24 hours before my husband pulled out a chair and asked me to take a seat to deliver the news. The plan had been to move out of our condo and into a new one a few days later, and we were staying with family in the interim.

I remember him starting with something along the lines of, “The important thing is that everyone is safe. We’re safe, our baby is safe …” My heart raced. What happened?!

I let out a loud, maniacal cackle immediately after he told me we were essentially possession-less. What’s that sound? I wondered. Oh! That’s coming from me. The laughter became more unhinged with each passing moment. “You can’t make this stuff up,” I gasped as tears of laughter streamed down my face.

Equally surprised by my reaction as I was, he took a slow exhale, shook his head, and laughed. “No,” he agreed. “You can’t.” I continued to laugh uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop. And then, suddenly my laughter turned into sobs.