Real Life Planning Podcast Episode 16: Planning for Military Families with Scott Vance

In Episode 16, I talk to Scott Vance about the unique financial planning scenarios of military families. Learn about his insights on investments and owning rental properties while on active duty. I hope you can stick around to get productivity tips from Scott for a successful transition from a military career to a civilian entrepreneur.

“When you have a rental property, you need to run it like a business.” - Scott Vance

This week on Real Life Planning Podcast, Cynthia will cover:

Takeaway Quotes:

“I look at financial planning as a continuation of my military service.” - Scott Vance

“…to manage a property in a different state or especially in a different country, using a property management professional, I think that makes a lot of sense.” - Cynthia Meyer 

“ I generally recommend people not buy [a house], especially if you're not going to be in a post for longer than three or four years.” - Scott Vance

Connect with Scott Vance:

• Trisuli Financial Advising Website
• Scott Vance on LinkedIn
• Scott Vance on Facebook
• Email: scott@trisulifinancialadvising.com

Connect with Cynthia Meyer:

• Cynthia Meyer on Facebook
• Cynthia Meyer on LinkedIn
• Cynthia Meyer on Twitter
• Cynthia Meyer on Instagram
• Cynthia Meyer on Pinterest
• Duolingo: CynthiaCafe
• Email: cynthia@reallifeplanning.com  

About the Real Life Planning Podcast

Host Cynthia Meyer welcomes fascinating guests to share real life stories of how they are realizing their financial potential. Each episode explores practical, realistic steps to create results.

Transcript - Real Life Planning Podcast - Episode 16

[00:00:06]  Cynthia Meyer: Welcome to the Real Life Planning Podcast. I'm Cynthia Meyer with Real Life Planning. And today I've got a really great conversation happening with Scott Vance. This is episode 16, financial planning for military families and our guest, Scott Vance is a retired Army officer and the founder of Trisuli Financial Planning.

He's located in North Carolina. He's lived all over the world and he has some really interesting things to share with us today about how he got started as a financial planner. In particular, he's got some great guidance for people in the military who also have investment properties or thinking about investment properties.

And we've got a lot to unpack today, so I hope you'll stay with us. Scott. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here this morning. 

[00:00:55] Scott Vance: Cynthia. Thanks for having me. I can't wait to talk a little bit about military financial planning topics. 

[00:01:00]  Cynthia Meyer: Scott, I know you are an experienced podcaster and an experienced financial planner.

Just start us off. Tell us what's the most important thing to know about you. 

[00:01:09] Scott Vance: Most important. So I, probably the thing for me is I look at financial planning as a continuation of my military service. In the military, we took care of the Homeland defended against enemies or bad people.

And I look at it the same way as a financial planner where I help the client defend against the potentially bad actors coming in; trying set them up with bad investments. And also in the military, we dealt a lot with intelligence. And so, I kind of look at myself as almost like an intelligence person for my client to dig into topics and provide the guidance or the research to the client in a way that makes sense for them. (potential audiogram/videogram) 

[00:01:49]  Cynthia Meyer: And how did you get started as a financial planner? 

[00:01:52] Scott Vance: So it goes way, way back. I started as a kid, my parents had a small business. We were out in the country, so it was a combination deli, grocery store, feed for animals and also auto parts. But I got drawn to the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper would come in and we'd fill out this is old school days with this big giant ledger with all these lines. So I got attracted to managing money that way. Continued on through my Army career. When I first started in the Army, we didn't have the Thrift Savings Plan. The Army opened up the thrift savings plan to us and I thought it was like this great deal like I was a kid on Christmas morning and all the soldiers were like, they couldn't have cared less. So I put together training on what the Thrift Savings Plan was and I probably nagged a whole bunch of soldiers to invest and that just continued on. As I got towards retirement, I was thinking about what I was going to do and I was just drawn to financial planning. 

[00:02:43]  Cynthia Meyer: You certainly don't look old enough to be retired to me. But obviously, you left your first career and moved on to a second one. What would you say makes you different in terms of how you approach the financial planning process than many of the rest of us who came to it from either from a different profession? Or maybe those who started early with a financial planning degree, which wasn't really available when we were younger.

[00:03:08] Scott Vance: Sure. In the Army, we focus a lot on mentoring and training of the people that work; our subordinates. So that's the way I come at the financial planning for me with clients is I could be their financial planner for the rest of their lives, but I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet if I should disappear or something like that. My intent is to mentor people and teach them and train them in this stuff. And maybe they don't want to do all the investment.

[00:03:34]  Cynthia Meyer: I had a colleague who had been for a long time, had been a financial counselor in the military system; trying to help people in the armed services make better money decisions. I was really surprised to learn about the ways that it seems like there's a lot of kind of shady offerings to people in the military that try and take advantage of the fact that a lot of folks in the military are relatively young and inexperienced with money. It almost seems like they get preyed upon. Is that the right way to think about it? 

[00:04:04] Scott Vance: Yeah, so especially when I was younger, for instance, one of the big providers would sponsor our balls. It's like a prom, but for adults kind of, but they would sponsor it. It'd be a fee or free or reduced fee prom for the soldiers, but they'd be there handing stuff out. So they'd always be getting soldiers, younger soldiers. Sometimes soldiers get a bonus, like $15,000, $20,000 when they re-enlist. And so they would quickly pick up on that and go after those soldiers to put their investments into some, not like a Ponzi scheme, but definitely not the best for the soldiers and their families. 

[00:04:39]  Cynthia Meyer: Maybe higher fees or hard to get out of....

[00:04:42] Scott Vance: Yeah. They were Class A shares front-end loads, all that stuff. But the Army, I know the Army and I'm pretty sure the rest of the military has the last five, 10 years have clamped down a lot of that. So a lot of those shady practices, they still continue off-post. The sponsoring of them and allowing them on-post is not happening anymore... 

[00:05:03]  Cynthia Meyer: mm-hmm 

[00:05:03] Scott Vance: ..to them. Those guys also recruit a lot of military folks that have just gotten out, with the idea that they can reach back in to hit their friends up for investments or insurance or stuff like that. Businesses definitely recognize the value that they can go after with soldiers with money. 

[00:05:19]  Cynthia Meyer: So talk to us a little bit about the financial planning process for you when you first start working with a military family. How is that customized or specialized for the particular types of decisions that they face that the civilian might not face?

[00:05:35] Scott Vance: Yeah. So some of the big things dealing with first off is the called the blended retirement system. Basically, it used to be like I was under the system where it was a straight retirement; 20 years times two and a half percent; 50% of your base pay for the last few years is your retirement.

But in 2017, the military instituted what they call the blended retirement. So it combines a smaller traditional pension. Only 40%, essentially, depending on years of service and they added the thrift savings plan to it. So now you've got like a 401k in a civilian world would have only it's on the military side of their savings plan.

Then there's some options for, depending on how long of your time of service you could take, they call them- oh, the name escapes me right now. Around 13 years of service, you'll get a choice to take a lump sum payment in return for saying that you'll serve 20 years total.

Those things are specific to the military. So we plan within those through the Thrift Savings Plan is probably the biggest part of that because you going to it's, like I said, it's just like a 401k in a civilian world. So you going to figure out where you're going to invest your money. The good thing about the thrift savings plan is it's not as, not as wide open, as far as choices. The fund choices are pretty limited.

Some new change coming down the pike is that they're going to open that up now to mutual funds on the open market. Like a traditional 401k plan is but the basic thrift savings plan is some very limited investment options. 

And then also some of the other things to consider, especially with military is if you do 20 years, you've got your health benefits. So that comes into the planning. People that go into the, that either do some active duty time and then go into the reserves or go into the reserves all together, there's a whole separate ability to get certain medical benefits like dental and regular medical benefits and how that works for when you retire is a little bit different.

So just knowing those specific areas and applying that to their situation is what we look at doing. 

[00:07:29]  Cynthia Meyer: Finding the financial planning process for people who have an active duty family and they're moving around a lot. 

[00:07:35] Scott Vance: Yeah. So when you move around a lot, I see a lot of people picking up rental properties. Whether that's on purpose or just, you buy a house and it comes time to move for orders and all of a sudden you're upside down so you figure I'll rent it to so I can make some money on it. I see a lot of military people who have properties in different areas. One state like California or Texas is a big base. So you'll have a lot of rental properties there.

So the thing that I talk about with my clients with that is when you have a rental property, you need to run it like a business. I see a lot of people mixing...

[00:08:06]  Cynthia Meyer: I definitely agree with that. 

[00:08:07] Scott Vance: Yeah. I see a lot of people mix like their personal checking with their...

[00:08:11]  Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. 

[00:08:12] Scott Vance: Like I tell them, (beginning of audiogram) set up a separate checking account. Keep that for the rental business. It just makes it easier. Keeps it cleaner. It makes it easier to track your expenses. What you're spending your money on. Make sure you're accounting for all your expenses properly. I know a lot of people don't fully understand what you can account as an expense, which helps you save money when it comes to tax time, essentially. I wanna make sure you get those expenses. And then I always tell people you should have tax professional, whether that's an enrolled agent or CPA help you set up your taxes at least in the first year, because you want to get the basis of the property correct and generally, a general guide is it should be somewhere around what you paid for it, but there is other things that can be computed into the basis of the property which then figures out how much depreciation you're going to be getting. 

[00:09:00]  Cynthia Meyer: That's right. And since land isn't depreciable, for example, figuring out what the ratio is between the structure and the land and not claiming that you can depreciate the land, right? Yeah. 

[00:09:09] Scott Vance: Yeah. Figuring out that ratio. Generally, I use a tax records to figure that out. You could probably do it just about in any way, as long as it's somewhat based in reality. The IRS would accept. But somehow to get that ratio, correct. Yes . Yep. 

[00:09:23]  Cynthia Meyer: And how do you find that the folks that you're working with, if they're say for example, going to be stationed overseas and they're renting out their primary home back in the U.S. for some period of time. Any best practices that you would give them in terms of managing that from a distance? 

[00:09:41] Scott Vance: Yeah, I would say a good rental property manager is key. I had a property in Colorado that I traveled around. I moved to other places, so I had a good rental manager. I think I paid 10% of the monthly fee to her. But she's about...

[00:09:55]  Cynthia Meyer: That's typical. I think eight to 12%. 

[00:09:57] Scott Vance: She was very professional. She would give me a monthly statement with the income and expenses. What was paid. Everything from the rent was in to she maintained the sprinkler system or the grass or whatever, she would detail that out. And at the end of the year, she'd give me a professional accounting statement with everything that sort would make my taxes easy. So finding somebody that understands what they're doing. Does it the right way is essential to maintain that property while you're gone. 

I've heard of people trying to do it themselves. And I just think that managing our rental property from very far away has a lot of problems. 

[00:10:31]  Cynthia Meyer: Yeah, no I would agree with that, Scott. For somebody that is considering investing in their local area, if they have time and interest to be the landlord themselves, obviously it takes some training in making sure you're following the fair housing laws and all the local regulations. It's not so farfetched to manage a property right around the corner or just in the same town. But to manage a property in a different state or especially in a different country, using a property management professional, I think that makes a lot of sense. 

[00:10:59] Scott Vance: Yeah. I found that too, that a manager takes the personal worry about it all. When you buy a home, you buy a home cause you like it and it's the right color. And as a manager, color should just be a neutral color or whatever it is. You're not tied to that color that you chose if the tenant needs to paint or wants to paint or anything like that. It just takes the personal, "I love this place" away from it and we, you get back to being a business again. 

[00:11:26]  Cynthia Meyer: So what about when you have clients that are moving from one duty station to a new duty station? So let's say they're stationed in Honolulu when they're moving to North Carolina or something like that.

Do you encourage them to buy a home when they get to their new place, knowing they might only be there for two or three years? 

[00:11:42] Scott Vance: So that is generally no. So I did in early in my career, I moved and I bought, and then I kept. And then probably about halfway through my career, I then transitioned into post housing; on-base housing. I found it to be much easier to move when you live in post housing, because it's just like being a renter. You rent. It comes time to move you move. Whereas an owner you have to decide whether you're going to sell or keep it and rent it; and go through that whole thing. So I generally recommend people not buy, especially if you're not going to be in a post for longer than three or four years.

Now there's some situations like I was stationed at Fort Bragg and I spent most of my career at Fort Bragg. So in a case like that, it's easy in retrospect to say, "Oh, I should have bought because I was there the bulk of my career." In that situation, it really makes sense. But there's some specialties, some jobs that only are at certain posts and that you'll like Fort Bragg for me was special operations. I always came back there almost like a mothership. You see a lot of people do that. But no, generally I don't recommend that. I know there are, I have some friends that done that; have bought houses at every post that they've been at and they're retired now and they've got eight, ten houses in eight, 8 different states, locations.

[00:12:53]  Cynthia Meyer: They have a kind of a distributed rental property business. So maybe not as big economies of scale, but certainly, they were able to use their house hacking if they will, to build their rental property portfolio. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. 

[00:13:06] Scott Vance: Yeah, and I think most of them, I think early on figured if they wanted to do that. So that they did that with intention and purpose. So it worked out for them. But I could see for a person that doesn't have the desire to deal with the problems and the issues that arise from that. 

[00:13:21]  Cynthia Meyer: So Scott, I'm curious, did you have a mentor when you were a young person in the military? 

[00:13:26] Scott Vance: Oh yeah. I think of all the people that train, that spend time talking me through stuff. I mean everything from basic life stuff, you know, how to put your uniform on should be pretty simple, but making sure everything is right. And yeah, NCOs. So the NCOs in the Army are what we call the backbone of the Army. 

[00:13:42]  Cynthia Meyer: That means non, if I'm right, that means non-commissioned officer?

[00:13:46] Scott Vance: Yeah. Sorry. Non-commissioned officer. Yep. Yeah. So generally, like I said, generally after about five years, you become an NCO; somewhere around there. So usually that's where that big break, most soldiers come in do four years and then go on to whatever they're doing. Usually people that stay after those four years become NCOs and generally stay long term. Yeah, so they're the backbone of the Army. I was in a company. The First Sergeant would be almost like the, shouldn't call him like the grandfather. In that way he acts patriarchial and mentors basically everybody. Oh yeah. I got ton of mentoring. 

[00:14:17]  Cynthia Meyer: And when you think about the people that coached you, particularly financially, right? Like how did he or she coach you? 

[00:14:25] Scott Vance: A lot of the mentoring, especially around financial was pushed to the back table, the back burner. 

[00:14:31]  Cynthia Meyer: Mm-hmm 

[00:14:31] Scott Vance: A lot of people didn't really, don't really understand it. The Army focuses a lot on basic stuff like the checking; balancing your checkbook. Paying your bills. 

[00:14:39]  Cynthia Meyer: Young adulting. 

[00:14:40] Scott Vance: Yeah, really? Yeah. It doesn't get into the big issues like investing or insurance so much, or any of those other, estate planning; anything like that.

[00:14:48]  Cynthia Meyer: Managing money as a couple. That's a biggie. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:14:51] Scott Vance: That was my younger years. And I think with, especially with Iraq, the Iraq war and Afghanistan, I think the Army has started to, I keep saying the Army, I probably mean the military, in general. But I know the Army specifically has started to shift more towards thinking through issues like that; like financial issues for couples. So I missed a lot of that, but I think they're starting to get that way which is a good thing to see. I know they've brought on like financial counselors to units. But they still can't touch some of the, like the investment topics, like you had talked about before with being preyed upon soldiers. The Army, and I know the Army specifically, doesn't really allow their counselors to talk to what it, they talk about, they say you should invest, but not what you should invest in. 

[00:15:36]  Cynthia Meyer: Not even basic principles, like looking for index type strategies or low fee funds; low fee institutions. Like understanding all the jargon. Yeah. That's tricky. And most people, despite this tsunami of financial information that we have on the internet, on cable, the average person is still pretty confused about all that. 

[00:15:55] Scott Vance: Yeah, yeah. So as I understand it, the counselors can say like, no load mutual funds or have fees below this. They can't provide an opinion. They just provide... 

[00:16:03]  Cynthia Meyer: Education. 

[00:16:04] Scott Vance: Yep. 

[00:16:04]  Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. Huh. Now you've had a long and impressive career. You've had some changes in your life just since you've been a financial planner. What's a real problem that you've faced in your work? Was it in COVID? Or in making the transition to being a financial planner? And so what's a problem that you faced in your business and how did you solve it? 

[00:16:26] Scott Vance: One of the first things that really slapped me when I retired was being in the military, a lot of states give exemptions for state income tax. So like I had been technically a Pennsylvania resident, since I was active duty, I never paid any state taxes from the time, 22 years ago. My first year in the Army or my first year retired after I retired from the Army, I got hit with a state tax bill for, and I was like, " Holy cow, I forgot to have state tax withdrawn from my retirement pay." So because I had become a retiree...

[00:16:54]  Cynthia Meyer: Ooh, ouch. 

[00:16:55] Scott Vance: Yes. I had a huge tax bill. That was one of the first things I got spanked by. The other thing I got really, it took me a while to get used to is, in the military, you or in federal service, you get a paycheck every two weeks. Literally you get it whether you're working or on vacation or every two weeks barring some big issue, you're going to get a paycheck. Transitioning to a, my own fee-only job that I work for by myself, all of a sudden it was like, I get paid depending on how much I produce. Almost kinda like being a hunter, like you don't eat unless you kill the deer. So that was a big shift. After 22 years of knowing that every two weeks I was getting paid. 

[00:17:31]  Cynthia Meyer: Hey, gosh, you're so right about that too, Scott. I'm sorry that you had to go through the difficulty of that and that's true, I think, for a lot of people that start their own businesses. I know it was true for me when I started my first business in my late twenties is you see the gross and not the net. And you don't think about oh I've got a reserve for estimated taxes and I have to pay FICA and Social Security and Medicare taxes; both sides of that. I might have to pay unemployment insurance. All those things that when you are working for yourself, you're basically the employer of yourself and you have to look at it that way financially. When you take the training wheels off and start your own business, that can be a very big shift. Yeah. A very big shift. 

[00:18:10] Scott Vance: Yeah, and the other thing too, I know like coming from the Army, everybody knew what was going on. So on Mondays was motor pool. You'd be in the motor pool fixing your vehicles or Wednesdays was certain times so transitioning from being in that structured environment to all of a sudden being free to do whatever I wanted to was another big shift. Less financially, but definitely impacted the financial side of things.

[00:18:31]  Cynthia Meyer: Just in terms of like your workflow, how did you handle that? Did you create some structure for yourself that you felt comfortable with? I think a lot of people face that. 

[00:18:40] Scott Vance: Yeah, I started getting really focused on, I used a planner and then I plan out the week. Basically each day, I have three tasks that I say are like, no fail. Those are tasks that I have to do. And then I have, I list all my other tasks below them. So the idea is that, the way I look at it is if I complete those three tasks, then my day has been...

[00:19:00]  Cynthia Meyer: You've won the day.

[00:19:00] Scott Vance: Successfully, yeah. I usually find that if I get those three tasks done, then I start, I'm on a roll and I start killing the other tasks as well. So that's how I do that, but like I said, I, so the, usually on a Sunday I sit down and lay out my week. I schedule everything from 6:30 in the morning is CrossFit, 7:30 is breakfast. I really tighten it down. I put it on my phone. I still write it on a piece of paper, because I like the idea of putting it on a piece of paper. As structured as that is I still leave, I keep shifting stuff like, sometimes I just sleep in for CrossFit. So I'll just go, I'll switch that to the afternoon or something like that.

So even though I'm structured, I try and be flexible. 

[00:19:38]  Cynthia Meyer: Uhhuh. So I'm so interested in this topic. Scott, if you don't mind, if we take a little detour down the productivity highway here, because I've been thinking about a lot lately as business gets busier. As financial planners, just for everybody listening, it is a regulated business being a financial planner and an investment advisor.

And so there are just some rules that you have to follow. Records that you need to keep and certain ways that you have to do things in order to satisfy any regulatory review. There's the contact manager and you keep notes and there's the calendar. I use one contact manager and then I also use a different system called Asana for the content calendar. I have two other businesses, a real estate business and a continuing education business. So all these moving parts. I found and it sounds like you have too, that the way I organize my mind at the beginning of the day is that I follow a very similar process. So I write down the big three. I like this planner called the Full Focus Planner®. There's lots of cool systems. I write down the big three and then I rewrite my calendar from my electronic calendar. I rewrite it in the paper planner just to like draw little groove in my brain.

Do you find that you do that as well? Like you're synthesizing all this electronic information into something more kinesthetic?

[00:20:48] Scott Vance: Yeah. Oh yeah. I, and like you said, I use the Full Focus Planner®, as well. That's what...

[00:20:52]  Cynthia Meyer: Ah, very cool! So yeah. 

[00:20:53] Scott Vance: I really like how they tie your like quarterly goals...

[00:20:57]  Cynthia Meyer: yep.

[00:20:57] Scott Vance: ... into weekly goals and you got the three tasks. I go back to the paper even though I've got it on my both my computers and my phone. So when I sit down, on a Sunday and then usually in the mornings, I take a quick, like 10 minutes to make sure that everything's going to work for the day; I'm not missing anything. I have to sync all three; the computer, the phone and the paper all up. Just to make sure that they're all the same. My paper doc, my paper is more of a working paper. I've got white out. I white it out. Yeah, that's how I do it.

[00:21:25]  Cynthia Meyer: Do you listen to their podcasts as well? I'm always on the hunt for a really great podcast. 

[00:21:29] Scott Vance: So I have listen parts of it. Yep. But. I don't really, I usually listen when I'm driving and I don't really drive too much. So, it's, I miss a lot more. I've got a whole bunch of podcasts I'd like to listen to. They just come in and download and then stay there and then get deleted.

[00:21:42]  Cynthia Meyer: So getting back to your financial planning practice, what's the most important thing that you learned about yourself by starting your own business?

[00:21:51] Scott Vance: All those years, I thought I was real disciplined while I was in the Army. It's easy when you have a schedule to go to. Being on my own, I'm not as disciplined as I thought I was at times. 

[00:22:01]  Cynthia Meyer: Mm-hmm 

[00:22:01] Scott Vance: There's times that, especially if there's nothing really pressing, sometimes I'll just be like, I'm going to watch, Sons of Anarchy or some other Netflix thing.

[00:22:10]  Cynthia Meyer: The Great Netflix Distraction, right? 

[00:22:13] Scott Vance: Yeah. So that's, that was one of the things I thought. I always thought I was like, yeah, you know, I'm in the Army; I'm disciplined. And I was, but it's not, it's totally different when you don't have somebody standing over you, expecting you to be there or anything like that. So Yeah. So that was one of the things I learned about myself. 

[00:22:28]  Cynthia Meyer: Ah and so it sounds like you're feeling judgmental about that. But in fact, it could be that you're somebody that responds really well to external structure and not everybody does. And less well to internal structures that are you familiar with Gretchen the author, Gretchen Rubin? 

[00:22:43] Scott Vance: I've heard the name. 

[00:22:44]  Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. So she wrote the Happiness Project and she wrote a cool book about habit development called, Better Than Before. And she developed this paradigm of thinking about different types of people when it comes to habit formation. Depending on whether they respond to internal more to internal or external expectations or equally. 

So somebody that responds equally to internal and external expectations would be, she would call them an Upholder. 

Somebody that responds more to external expectations than to internal expectations, meaning, they'll do something for somebody else but they won't necessarily advance their own goals on the same level of urgency. She would call an Obliger. That's definitely what I am. I will run around like crazy trying to make clients happy or trying to make my kids happy. But might cancel something that I had wanted to do for somebody else. 

And then people who rebel against both, both their own expectations and the expectations of others, she calls Rebels. And then people who respond more to inner expectations than outer expectations, she would call Questioners. Like I'm only going to do it if it makes sense to me. I thought ever since I read that book, I just thought that was an absolutely fascinating way to think about it.

Rather than being judgmental about like my own, that maybe not going to the gym, getting my whole list of work things done right. Was really interesting to me. 

[00:24:04] Scott Vance: Yeah, no, I've read a book about habits. And one of the things I talked about is if you call yourself what you're doing, it helps you. So like for instance, CrossFit. If I call myself, if I think of myself as a CrossFitter, I'm more likely to go to...

[00:24:18]  Cynthia Meyer: Oh, and do I like that? Yeah. And you do, it sounds like you do go almost every day. 

[00:24:23] Scott Vance: Yeah yeah. 

[00:24:24]  Cynthia Meyer: Which is very badass in my opinion. 

[00:24:26] Scott Vance: Thanks. But working by yourself, you going to find outlets to meet with people. In addition to working out, it's actually meeting people. Otherwise all day long, I would just sit by myself, doing my stuff. 

[00:24:36]  Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. You going to get out in the world. 

[00:24:38] Scott Vance: Yeah. 

[00:24:39]  Cynthia Meyer: So just to finish up here, Scott, I'm curious, like what's the best piece of advice that you've ever received? 

[00:24:45] Scott Vance: Best piece of advice. So my dad always taught me to think ahead. Plan ahead which he would always say it doesn't have to be a super plan, just a simple thought. For instance, thinking of what you're going to do in your next step in life. Maybe you don't put together a full-fledged plan, but having some kind of idea as to what you might want to do. So just a sit down every day and kind of think about what's going on and where you want to be almost like a vision for the future. So coming up with something that you want to go to. 

[00:25:13]  Cynthia Meyer: That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And where can we find you online?

[00:25:17] Scott Vance: Sure. So I am at my website, www.trisulifinancialadvising.com.

I'm on Facebook. I've just started back to Facebook, so I haven't been too active on there. And that's pretty much it as far as the social media goes.

[00:25:32]  Cynthia Meyer: Thank you so much for this great conversation this morning. We'll drop the links to where you can find Scott online into the show notes. And as always, if you have questions or comments about things that you'd like to see in this discussion series, please email us at podcast@reallifeplanning.com. Thanks very much, Scott. Have a wonderful day.

[00:25:53] Scott Vance: You too. Bye-bye.

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