Real Life Planning Podcast Episode 52- Real Estate Benefits for Military Clients with Philip Hulme

In Episode 52 of the Real Life Planning Podcast, Cynthia Meyer, CFA®, CFP®, ChFC®, talks with Phillip Hulme, CFP®, MBA, founder of Stars and Stripes Financial Advisors, about how military service members can use real estate as a powerful wealth-building tool. As a veteran and financial planner, Phillip shares how the VA home loan offers unique advantages, why so many service members become “accidental landlords,” and how military families can make smarter financial and real estate decisions. Whether you’re in the military or a veteran looking to grow your real estate portfolio, this episode is packed with insights to help you take advantage of the financial benefits available to you.

“Military service members have an incredible real estate advantage with the VA home loan—if they know how to use it.” – Phillip Hulme

This week on Real Life Planning Podcast:

Takeaway Quotes:

"We always like asymmetry in the military. What can I do that takes one ounce of effort, but gets me like three pounds of results?" – Phillip Hulme

"Leverage is key to expansion in a real estate portfolio." – Cynthia Meyer

“A small increase in your savings rate can have an outsized impact on your financial future—just save more money.” – Phillip Hulme

Connect with Phillip Hulme, CFP®, MBA:

• Website: Stars and Stripes Financial Advisors
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About the Real Life Planning Podcast

Hosts Cynthia Meyer and Vekevia Tillman-Jones explore practical steps for real estate investors to build financial freedom and make working for someone else optional.

Transcript for Episode 52

[00:00:06] Cynthia Meyer: There's a hidden benefit to being in the military that's related to real estate and today Philip Hulme and I are going to talk about it as well as his work at- working with members of the military and veterans in the country and all over the world. Philip.

[00:00:24] Phillip Hulme: Hi Cynthia, how you doing?

[00:00:25] Cynthia Meyer: So tell us a little bit about what's important to know about you.

[00:00:32] Phillip Hulme: I guess just briefly come from military family. Both grandfathers served. A bunch of uncles and cousins serves. By one count, almost half of my cousins had served in the military at one point or another. Big finance geek that's helpful if you're going to be a financial advisor. So I caught that bug early and then probably six years into my military service, I realized, hey, I want to do something in finance wasn't; entirely clear what, so I let my contract roll over to expire. And so ended up serving about seven and a half years and then used my GI bill.

[00:01:23] Went straight through, got my MBA degree after undergrad and then started working in corporate finance. Did that for a bit, realized I hated being stuck behind a computer all day and needed a little bit more like human to human interaction. So then I went like full 180 and went into sales and I loved that.

[00:01:48] The autonomy the bonuses were nice. The commissions, if you will but I wasn't scratching that finance itch. So I'd gotten to my own quote unquote financial independence for those people that are in the fire community. They'll get a kick out of that. But then I had a tough question to answer if you're financially independent and you don't have to work for a living, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? And so I figured I'd use the geeky guy method, which I geeked out about that a long time ago, but it's just the idea is it's just this intersection of life.

[00:02:33] What are you good at? What are you passionate about? What makes money and is good for the world?

[00:02:42] Cynthia Meyer: What does the world need?

[00:02:43] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. Yeah. Basically, what does the world need? That's the perfect way to say it. For me, I was like, I'm really good at finances. I love the military veteran community.

[00:02:54] Its literally family to me. So I landed on like, I want to be a financial advisor serving the military and veteran community. I started interviewing at different companies, like all the big names that you'd expect. I told them like, Hey, this is my vision. This is what I want to do with my career. And they were like, okay, but how are you going to make money? Like, that was the question I just kept getting asked because most of those institutions offer- operate off of an AUM only model or AUM heavy, if you will. So like, show me the investable assets.

[00:03:34] Cynthia Meyer: That's right. And you were talking about the big broker dealers, the big, the Merrill's and the Goldman's and the Morgan Stanley's of the world.

[00:03:43] Phillip Hulme: Yeah, exactly. So you already had to have considerable net worth to go get financial advice because they say, you give me a bunch of money to manage, and then I'll give you an advice or give you financial advice in exchange.

[00:04:00] Anybody that comes from a military family knows we never made that much money while we were in the military. And then a lot of our financial well being is linked to a pension, disability, VA benefits of some kind, right? None of that's investable assets. It is financially beneficial. No doubt about that.

[00:04:23] No doubt about that. But if you go to a Goldman Sachs, a Merrill Lynch, insert whatever big name here, they're gonna be like, that's great but you don't hit our minimums. And so when that sank in, I was like, if I'm serious about doing this I almost have to start my own thing.

[00:04:43] And so that's how I got into starting my own business. And it's been good. Been doing it for, a handful of years now and I'm enjoying it. And helping out a lot of people that, that just get turned away, right? Because they've got a pension, not a half million dollars, right? They've got real estate investments that they're not willing to give up, right? They've got a business that they own that they're heavily invested in but not the liquid assets that some of these other places want to see to give- give advice to them.

[00:05:24] Cynthia Meyer: So your firm is Stars and Stripes Financial Advisors. And if I remember correctly, you're headquartered in Georgia, right? But what how do you work with clients?

[00:05:36] Phillip Hulme: I tell people I've got three buckets, if you will, right? One is comprehensive financial planning. So these for people that want a full financial plan. Want to be able to pick up the phone, ask me any old question and want help implementing the financial plan. I'mm really big on access, right? Like I feel like for the military and veteran community access is the issue. And so it was very important to me that I offer advice on an hourly basis, as well. So that's bucket two, and that's just somebody comes to me with a discrete problem set, like, and sometimes I'll help them define it.

[00:06:18] Like sometimes people don't know what they need help with until we have a conversation which is fine knowing you need help is like the first step. And then we'll go through define that problem set and I'll give them a proposal and say, Hey, does this, do you think this will solve your problem?

[00:06:38] Yes, no, maybe. And we'll beat that around until we get that polished and it looks like what they want. And so I will deliver them some financial deliverable based off of that proposal. And then the final thing is like what you would get anywhere you go, which is investment management services. TheE way I distinguish myself there is no minimums. And it's...

[00:07:04] Cynthia Meyer: Which is unusual. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that. We're optional as well on the securities investment management.

[00:07:12] Phillip Hulme: Yeah, and I think that's important, right? Like it's if you'ree trying to increase access to financial advice to whatever community you serve, making that mandatory, it weeds out a lot of people that you could be helping in your community.

[00:07:30] And I think a lot of us, especially those who have started our own businesses, got into this because something in us cares about the community that we're serving and it's not a hundred percent profit motivated. There's something else in there.

[00:07:44] Cynthia Meyer: Thinking about like the younger client who is in the service and one of the branches of the military and may have joined as a very young person like you did, I think you joined at 18? So may have joined as a young person, not a sort of fully formed financial decision maker, if you will and we've all heard stories about the way that, that there are kind of opportunistic businesses that prey on young men and women in the military and try and get them to sign up for insurance policies they don't need and buy big expensive cars and things like that.

[00:08:22] So how do you mentor these folks particularly on the younger side when they come to you?

[00:08:27] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. A lot of what I do is education, right? like a tutor historically, so when I first got out of the military, I tutored and mentored homeless kids in Tampa Bay. And then when I went to University of Florida, I tutored at the Athletic Association there.

[00:08:50] I was also I forgot what they call it, but where you actually like work for the professor and you're a tutor for them as well. So I did that.

[00:09:00] Cynthia Meyer: Teaching assistant.

[00:09:01] Phillip Hulme: Teaching assistant, yeah.

[00:09:02] Cynthia Meyer: My sister's a professor.

[00:09:05] Phillip Hulme: Oh, okay. Nice. So I think I, I come to the table with that background as- and the attitude of like teach somebody to fish, don't just give them a fish, right? And don't get me wrong, I'm gonna give people advice, capital A advice, too. But it's very important to me that they understand the why behind that. Because I think most of us are more apt to follow advice if we understand why, right?

[00:09:42] It's the same with kids. It's the same with anybody really where it's like, I can follow directions, but if you tell me the intent behind it or help me understand why we're doing it this way instead of another way, I'm just gonna take that up so much faster than I would otherwise.

[00:10:02] And it's, it is true, right? There's a lot of financial institutions that prey on young service members. The car dealerships are really bad, right? Everybody's heard the story about like, you know, 19 year old Private Duffy going out and getting a Mustang with a 28 percent interest rate.

[00:10:27] Payday loans are a really big thing right outside of military bases.

[00:10:32] Cynthia Meyer: So sad.

[00:10:34] Phillip Hulme: Yeah, so I, I do a lot in terms of just in my meetings, counseling people, but also I send out emails all the time and I talk about these issues, as well. And it's the Charlie Munger mental model of sometimes the best way to get ahead in life is just avoiding the biggest pitfalls, and there's some truth to that.

[00:11:00] Cynthia Meyer: If we avoid- especially here in the United States, right? We're very fortunate in a lot of ways, but if we avoid some of the big pitfalls, we can oftentimes do pretty well. Not to say that we'll all be fabulously wealthy or whatever, but we can get ahead.

[00:11:21] I've noticed on your website you talk about something like the OODA loop. What do you mean by that?

[00:11:30] Phillip Hulme: We call it the OODA loop, right? And the OODA loop is in military terms, it's a decision making framework. So every every commander or leader in the military ought to be familiar with the OODA loop.

[00:11:48] And the idea is as a leader, if I can make decisions within my decision cycle faster than my enemy can, I can beat them on the battlefield. The overarching idea here is we're all in a battle for our dollars, right? There's all these companies that are out here trying to convince us that we need to spend money on X, Y, and Z, right?

[00:12:12] And they're thinking about it all day long. How do we get Cynthia's money?

[00:12:16] Cynthia Meyer: We are alll trained to be consumers and we're not trained directly to be investors, unfortunately.

[00:12:24] Phillip Hulme: So, took this decision making model and applied it from the military to my financial planning company. Essentially OODA just stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. So, where are we at right now? What's our assets and liability? What's our income and expenses? That's the observe phase. Orient. Where are we heading but where would we like to head? Now let's make a decision on how to shift from this path or direction to this one, right? And then the act is like, let's, let's do that, right? Let's implement that. So, any CFP® holder will understand that maps on very well to the CFP® financial planning principles, right?

[00:13:17] And it's because everybody who makes well informed, rational decisions will use some form of decision making framework that's similar to that, right? This is just how we learned it in the military, right?

[00:13:33] Cynthia Meyer: Despite the fact that I sounded out every letter and didn't pronounce it, OODA, I do think this is a really helpful paradigm.

[00:13:39] Phillip Hulme: Nice, nice. Yeah.

[00:13:40] Cynthia Meyer: I really like it. So let's dig in a little bit about how we opened this conversation, which is the idea that there's some real estate related benefits to people who are working professionally in the military and also a movement among service members, a section of service members to really embrace real estate as a wealth building tool and an asset class, which I'm in favor of.

[00:14:11] So let's talk a little bit about how you see that playing out with your clients and prospective clients right now.

[00:14:20] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. I have different avatars that, that come to me. There's like the accidental landlord who...

[00:14:29] Cynthia Meyer: We just talked about that in a podcast, like from kind of the psychological point of view.

[00:14:34] Phillip Hulme: So, like in the military, you'll PCS about every three years, and oftentimes that PCS just isn't like a different unit on the same base. It's on the other side of the planet or the other side of the country, right? And perhaps you wanted to buy a home and have a little bit more stability and start building equity, right?

[00:14:57] Well, somebody somewhere along the way was like, Hey, we need a home loan product for the military who moves all the time so they don't miss out on the American dream of owning their own home. So we're going to put special provisions in this that just make home ownership more accessible this community.

[00:15:20] And so one of the things is potentially having a 0 percent down payment, no PMI for a lot of people. Not everybody. Things of that nature that, that make it a lot more accessible and then when they move, they can sell the house, take that equity over into another house, or oftentimes the accidental landlord will be like, well, the rental market here is pretty good, why don't I just keep this, have a little extra income, and then we'll do this. And, over a 20 year career, you move a lot. You could end up with five, six rental houses if you do that every time. I met people while I was in. I had a command sergeant major that I worked for and he told me while I was in, but it didn't sink in at the time, I wish it had, but he was like I got to be a millionaire in the military just by renting out my houses as I moved. So that's one avatar that I see. And some people do it intentionally. Like you said, there's a bit of a movement, right?

[00:16:24] So some people are hip to what's going on or in the know. I don't know what the cool kids are saying these days, right? I don't have that Gen Z lingo.The other avatar is like people who have gotten out, who are veterans, their service years are behind them and they're in a new career now. They feel a little bit more settled and they like the idea of using some of their extra income now that they've got a better paying job to invest and build wealth. In that real estate VA home loan makes it so accessible, that's a very appealing option and unlike the stock market or the bond market, you feel more autonomy and control over that investment.

[00:17:13] Cynthia Meyer: Because it's a business really having rental property. Might not be taxed as a business, but...

[00:17:19] Phillip Hulme: And that's another benefit. A lot of what we learn and come to believe in the military is that if we work really hard, we can make anything happen.

[00:17:31] And so I find this internal locus of control, if you will is common in military members and veterans. And so it's a very appealing investment option for people, right? We've got, we've gotten inherit competitive advantage with the VA home loan, right? And then we also have the autonomy and the sense of control over the outcome which is really refreshing and vitalizing for us, I think as a member of that community.

[00:18:10] Cynthia Meyer: Do you see in your work a lot of clients who are moving beyond the single family home into multifamily? Like, looking for the duplex or the fourplex, when they first get started?

[00:18:24] Phillip Hulme: Yeah, I see a little bit of it. Most people are sticking to like the single family homes and the duplex and the quadplex. I think that's because if you look at the VA home loan as a product, it maxes out, right? So my competitive advantage in the market as a veteran, as a real estate investor stops at that point, at that four units. However, that means that it's difficult to scale and keep that strategic competitive advantage.

[00:18:58] Ambition doesn't stop with my competitive advantage. So I do see some people that go beyond. I have a buddy who used to be a client and he's doing some work in Texas right now to build out an entire community; several single family homes and a subdivision with the intent that those houses are being built to rent. Not built to sell, but built to rent.

[00:19:27] Cynthia Meyer: We are seeing that in Texas in particular, and a little bit in Florida, that developers are building to rent. And in Texas, they're building two, three, and four plexes. They're not just building single family homes to rent.

[00:19:41] Phillip Hulme: So it is out there. I see a little bit of it.

[00:19:45] Now mind you, this individual did a bunch of live in flips, turned into rentals. Then did the live in flip and turned like a beach condo into an Airbnb he's been building his wealth for years. He's...

[00:20:03] Cynthia Meyer: Is that hands on investor, right? Somebody who's getting it and creating value with their two hands, really.

[00:20:11] Phillip Hulme: Exactly. Exactly. People familiar with the real estate play space will understands like the BRRRR investment philosophy or model, if you will, right? So you buy, you rehab you rent, you refinance and your repeat. As a veteran with the VA home loan, if I get 0 percent down and I'm paying less on my mortgage and oh, by the way, if I happen to be 100 percent disabled or some level of service connected disabled, I can also get in many, not all states, but in many states, some break on my real estate taxes. My initial investment in my carrying costs during that period is much lower than somebody else.

[00:20:55] Cynthia Meyer: Leverage is the key to expansion in a real estate portfolio.

[00:21:01] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. And so you can get off the ground much quicker, right? Because your cost basis is lower. It just is. And that makes something that might be an unattractive deal to somebody else legitimately more attractive to you, right? Like on a relative basis. Now there's still bad deals. So, don't think you can buy anything and make it work, but you do have a relative advantage there. And so if you follow a method, a methodology like ,that, you can get out in front a little bit faster.

[00:21:41] Cynthia Meyer: That's right. And it's certainly in reference to refinancing and taking, the idea of a perfect BRRRR, if you will, is to buy the property either with cash or with hard, a hard money loan, renovate to add value, and then refinance with a traditional mortgage and hopefully take all of your original equity out of the property and then, assuming that the things are paying down your mortgage, then you've got kind of an ATM machine going. Very hard to do in many circumstances, very hard to do with current interest rates to continue to make money on that. It's not that it never happens, it's just that the sort of age of the easy money in the BRRRR method. We're not at that high point in the cycle, right?

[00:22:26] We're definitely in a low point of the cycle of the ability to BRRRR successfully, which not everybody is- you still have to run the numbers, obviously, to make sure the property is still profitable after you refinance, but I'm curious now, what have you and your wife done in terms of real estate?

[00:22:44] Phillip Hulme: We were talking about this a little bit before the podcast, but I was like really late to the game and really understanding the value of investing in real estate. I didn't even buy my first home until after I was like at least a year of grad school. So in my early thirties.

[00:23:07] By that point, I was so into the stock market and the bond market and investing in securities, that I couldn't pull myself away from it. For a while I was living just outside Philadelphia and I was looking at properties there. And then, we were living just outside of Detroit and I was looking at properties there in the Midwest.

[00:23:31] Very attractive, at least at the time- that the properties there are very attractive, super high cash flow. And I was close to pulling the trigger on things, but, I never quite did, and in hindsight, going back to the wanting to be hands on, I'm glad that I didn't, because I kept moving either for my career or my wife's career at the time, and for me, as a little bit of a control freak, I hated the idea of having a property manager without oversight.

[00:24:06] I knew that I would never be like the property manager. Like I don't want people calling me in the middle of the night. Even my family, I love you family, but that aspect wasn't very appealing to me. I never bought an investment property.

[00:24:22] Cynthia Meyer: You just haven't yet. But me and my husband and I did, we were very securities focused and we worked, my husband was reinsurance and I worked for a large financial institution as a CFP® in the Bay Area. And we were, we were trying to live on one income, trying to be the millionaires next door. We were investing quite a lot in the securities market. Of course, we still have lots of securities. It was the great recession that when we were in our 40 ish was what got us to diversify into real estate, because that even was a level of volatility that even both of us, even though we were relatively risk seeking, we were just wanted to be a little bit more diversified. And then obviously every recession brings opportunities and that recession brought real estate opportunities. It's funny that you say that because that, because our markets are in the nice suburbs of Detroit.

[00:25:22] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:23] Cynthia Meyer: We've been very happy with that.

[00:25:25] Phillip Hulme: People, I think people have like this negative impression of Detroit, but there are some communities there, absolutely gorgeous. The history is incredible. I can't say enough good things. Every major city has problems, but yeah, there's definitely some nice spots.

[00:25:47] Cynthia Meyer: Yes, very hip. So I want to dig into something here that I'm talking about military spouses, right? Were you married when you were in service or did you get married after you got out of the service?

[00:26:00] Phillip Hulme: No, I got married after I got out of the service and hats off to everybody that does that.

[00:26:06] But I was a little bit scared of doing that because I saw some of the struggles that other couples were having. It's hard. It's difficult, right? Anybody will tell you military service is a sacrifice and man, the sacrifice you pay on the family front as a military spouse. I do once a year, I volunteer with this organization here in Georgia, the Georgia's 4 H organization, if you're familiar with 4 H and they've got a DOD funded camp for kids of military families. So all these kids from all these military families come in and we spend a week out in the woods, like teaching them lessons and science and stuff like that. Team building. Leadership lessons. Anyways, even hearing those kids talk, they're not even adults yet and they understand that their relationship with their parents has been a sacrifice as part of the service too, right? So it hits the military spouse, it hits the kids. So I didn't do it I think partially because nobody wanted to stay with me when I was going on deployments and training missions all the time. Unfortunately, some self sabotage, I think because while I was in, I was very fixated on just being the best soldier I could be and in that meant spending a lot of time training and training missions and deployments.

[00:27:47] And so, it's funny of the seven and a half years I served, I spent three years overseas. And so like, if you just put that into context, and that's during that period of time, that wasn't terribly uncommon. People would go on like a 12 month deployment and it's just you're gone for a whole year of your life and that's tough. I will get military spouses that will come talk to me. Husband is deployed or about to get out or wife is deployed about to get out. I've had some survivors, if you will, where the service member has passed away and helping them out with various things. It's a tough situation but it's a super important part of the community to serve.

[00:28:44] Cynthia Meyer: One of the reasons I bring it up is, it's because within the military, fire community it's often for married couples, if the non deployed spouse, if you will, is managing the rental property business, there could be some tax benefits to that both while they're in the service and then later on when that's supposed to move to the private sector. It's something that you can do from almost anywhere in the world, right? You can't go in and fix the toilet, for example, if it breaks in the middle of the night, from if you're not adjacent to it. In this digital age, there's a lot of work that you can do to manage a rental property business from afar as long as you have some good folks on the ground. That's an opportunity, but it's not for everyone. Not everybody wants to manage a rental property business, but it is an opportunity that doesn't require you to be in the same place all the time.

[00:29:43] Phillip Hulme: Absolutely. And that's a huge issue within the military spouse community and the military community in general. If I'm moving all the time, career interruption, career interruption, career interruption, finding a career that can travel with you or finding a source of income that can travel with you.

[00:30:02] And to your point, having real estate as an investment is something you can manage from afar. And I would even go as far as to say one of the- in my opinion, better-ish jobs for a military spouse is as a real estate agent, right? Because as you move from state to state, you can transfer that skill set fairly easily, right?

[00:30:30] Now you need to learn your market and the thing not to forget is that you're probably not going to be a real estate agent in Italy or Germany or someplace like that. But if you are a real estate agent, you can jump into that pretty quickly when you land, wherever you go.

[00:30:50] If you combine that with doing your own real estate investing and managing properties, you can have a very active and fulfilling career where you're making good money despite all the moves, right? And, inherent advantage, if you've moved that much, man, a little something extra about what it's like to buy a house.

[00:31:17] Cynthia Meyer: There's a company in the registered investment advisor space called Simply Paraplanner. And so these are people that work as members of the financial planning and operations team for businesses like ours. And it was founded by a military spouse, Alex Hopkins, who was trying to create something for herself that she that could carry with her as her husband was moved around to different places. Now it's a really big influential company in our industry.

[00:31:50] Phillip Hulme: That's wonderful. That's super wonderful. Getting into financial planning, working as a paraplanner. This industry has become so digital. Like what a wonderful opportunity. What a wonderful opportunity.

[00:32:03] Cynthia Meyer: Yeah, I don't know about you, but I see, I almost like 99. 99 percent of the time see clients on Zoom, right? Which is totally different from when I was first a financial planner and 100 percent of the time I saw clients in the office or I talked to them on the phone.

[00:32:19] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is an industry that's not going back. It's too convenient for the client to not have to leave the house or their job or wherever life has taken them and it's too convenient for us to be able to run our operations either from our houses or a local office or whatever. And we can spend more time working on the client's issues instead of driving around or, whatever the case may be.

[00:32:51] Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. Much more efficient. Yeah. So I'm curious, Philip, what is the best piece of advice that you have ever received?

[00:32:58] Phillip Hulme: That I've received? Okay, so in life is just always be honest, right? We had this saying in the military, like the the truth doesn't get better with time, right? So like, just spit it out, whatever the hard truth is, just say it. And if you messed up, own your mistake.

[00:33:24] Move forward. Take responsibility. Try to fix it if it's fixable. Apologize if it's not. Just being honest, open and honest about what the truth is. That's definitely the best piece of advice in life I've ever received.

[00:33:41] When it comes to finances, it's going to sound so absurd, but just save more money.

[00:33:48] Cynthia Meyer: Isn't that the truth? Then I think gosh, if I could go back and tell my 20 something self some advice that is related to finances, it would be every raise is not the opportunity to get a nicer apartment, it's the opportunity to buy the house. It's the opportunity to put money away for future Cynthia, right? For 62 year old Cynthia. We aren't really taught in the U.S., we're not really taught to be investors, but the way to invest is you have to create some wiggle room between how much you make and how much you spend. When you save and invest that money in anything that grows, whether it's securities or buying a property or investing yourself in your own entrepreneurial ventures, that's how people grow.

[00:34:39] Phillip Hulme: Yeah.

[00:34:39] Cynthia Meyer: That's how they become comfortable. That's the only way. It's just math.

[00:34:43] Phillip Hulme: It is. It is. I'll say this for military folks, but it's an asymmetric advantage, right? And we always like asymmetry in the military. What can I do that takes one ounce of effort, but gets me like three pounds of results, right?

[00:35:02] For example, I'm saving 5 percent of my gross income. And I up that with my next pay raise to 6 percent of my gross income. I've increased my savings rate by 20%. That's a huge, massive increase in my savings rate and over the longterm is going to result in a crazy amount of extra wealth.

[00:35:27] What did I do to my spending? Very little.

[00:35:31] I dropped it by one percentage point, right? I had less than a one percentage point sacrifice.

[00:35:38] I increased my savings rate by 20%, but I had less than a one percentage point sacrifice and the long term ramifications of that with compound interest, get out of here.

[00:35:48] That's asymmetry at its finest. That's the math behind that little nugget of wisdom. Just save more money.

[00:35:59] Cynthia Meyer: What are you curious about right now? What are you learning?   

[00:36:04] Phillip Hulme: Something that I delved into recently, which was a learning journey for me is, Halal investing.

[00:36:15] Cynthia Meyer: Yeah. I don't really know much about that, I have to say.

[00:36:18] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. Yeah. Its its own world. So, military takes people from all race, religions, backgrounds, whatever. If you want to serve your country, join the military. I had somebody come to me, Islamic faith, and they were like, Hey, Phil, can you help me build a halal portfolio?

[00:36:41] And that sent me down the rabbit hole because like I said, I offer hourly advice. There's not a lot of people that do that and so that was a learning adventure for me, but also deeply satisfying because I could help out this person in the military community do something- have access to financial advice that they wouldn't have otherwise.

[00:37:05] I just love doing that. That was my most recent rabbit hole. On the business side, it's always marketing. I'm a finance geek, but oh man, marketing, that's a tough one for me.

[00:37:17] Cynthia Meyer: Before I switched careers to become a financial planner, I was a political campaign manager and worked in politics in my early years. And so the kind of like in the marketing and the fundraising piece, Gosh, that's fun. I just love that.

[00:37:31] Phillip Hulme: Yeah. I love the tracking when it comes to like marketing and advertising and stuff. Numbers guy but creative portion of that, not my strong suit.

[00:37:48] Cynthia Meyer: What's next for your firm?

[00:37:50] Phillip Hulme: Right now, I am in that phase of growing my firm to get like a full book of business for myself. That'll take a couple of years still to finish out that, and then, next step is getting sohelp and hopefully getting like my own brick and mortar spot instead of working out of my house.

[00:38:15] Cynthia Meyer: So maybe you could see some people in person and not just on Zoom.

[00:38:18] Phillip Hulme: Honestly, to me, it's because my clients almost never ask to meet in person. I think in the last three years, I've had three people ask to meet in person. You don't need a brick and mortar spot for that. To me, the brick and mortar spot is more about when I start hiring people. Having a place for team building, congregating; not as necessarily a requirement, but as an option.

[00:38:49] And so that's like my vision for the future for the company. Let's just grow slow and steady, not do anything crazy, just good old fashioned financial planning and let the work be the work.

[00:39:05] Cynthia Meyer: So where can we find you online?

[00:39:06] Phillip Hulme: Starsandstripesfinancialadvisors.com. I know that's a mouthful, but it was the best domain available.

[00:39:13] I'm on LinkedIn. My company's got a page there. My personal profile's there. Got a company page on Facebook, too. People can follow me on whatever social media. My name's not super common, so I'm pretty easy to find and yeah, happy to connect with whoever. Send me a message. Ask me a question. Here to help.

[00:39:48] Cynthia Meyer: Excellent. Thank you very much, Philip. This has been a great conversation, and I hope we can continue it sometime in the future.

[00:39:55] Phillip Hulme: Thanks, Cynthia. Likewise.

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