 As busy engineering professionals, sometimes we tend to forget about our own personal finances. Well, in today's episode, we're going to have on with us again for the third time, Bill Keane, CEO of Keane Wealth Advisors. And Bill's going to talk to us about how the upcoming presidential election might affect our finances and what we should do to prepare. Let's jump right in. All right, now I would like to welcome back to the podcast for the third time. Bill Keane, Bill is the founder and CEO of Keane Wealth Advisors. He's also the author of the book Keane on Retirement, Engineering the Second Half of Your Life. Bill, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, Anthony. It is an honor to be on again here for the third time now, so really nice to be with you. Yeah, that doesn't happen often. And again, speaks to Bill's kind of knowledge around finance. It's a topic that the engineering career coach podcast, of course, is traditionally really focused on professional personal development for engineering professionals. But I think personally something that I think everyone tends to overlook, especially engineers that are busy in complex projects, is their own personal finance. And yet it's what we're all working towards in terms of earning salaries and wanting to save money and be smart about our money. So that's why we've invited Bill to talk again about kind of finance in related to where we are today in the world, which is very uncertain times. Bill, we had you on most recently with the, of course, with the coronavirus pandemic, and you gave some advice on maybe things you could look at doing or not doing during those times. And now still going through the pandemic to some degree, but also looking at a presidential election that's coming up, which also could cause some things to happen for us with the economy. And so we're going to dive into some some points today. But I know, Bill, you kind of want to get us started a little bit on the history on politics and the financial markets. And even before we go there, for those that maybe didn't hear the last two episodes, why don't you give us kind of a little overview of what you do and some of the resources that you do have available that we can tie into off of today's episode. I think that every one of us, to your point, shared that that goal of wanting to know that work becomes optional for us at some point in the future. And maybe we intend on never retiring. We have clients that love their work and they never retire. Some of the politicians that we have right now are getting up there in age, and they aren't retired yet. So who's to say you're supposed to retire at a certain age. But every one of us, I believe, wants to know that we could retire if we wanted to. And that doesn't happen by accident. We have to be very intentional about how we're investing our money, how we're planning for our future, how we're spending our money each day. Are we living within our means? Are we doing the things to take advantage of the tools and the resources that are out there and making the most of our resources? So at Keenwealth Advisors, I've really dedicated my firm in career to serving the retirement planning and investing needs of the engineering community. We have shared in prior episodes, we're located in Overland Park, Kansas, which is really the greater Kansas City area. And we have a strong engineering presence in the city. So about 25 years ago or so, it started becoming clear that if we understood how engineers think, how they process things, how they operate, and then could operate to their standards from the financial planning side, that it could be a really nice partnership. And I say partnership, we're the financial advisor or the wealth management advisors to mostly families that have an engineer or two in them. We deal with several families that the husband wife are both engineers, and really sit down and document in detail a financial planning process. And then the investments that fund that plan, almost exactly like you all would do an engineering project from the blueprint to the plans to the execution to the project management. We look at it, we think about it in that way. So to that effect, we will sit down and meet with folks and we'll help them, whether it's in person on a Zoom call, go through those checklists to get their ducks in the line. Or I've created a website called KeenOnRetirement.com. Many of your listeners have taken me up on this. I had a book come out, hit best seller on Amazon. It was KeenOnRetirement, engineering the second half of your life. And I've made that offer to your listeners, Anthony, that if someone wants a personalized copy, I'd be happy to mail one to them as my gift. Just send me an email. Be Keen at keenwealthadvisors.com and I'm still making that offer to your fine listeners. On that website is a podcast that's been out on iTunes for over four years and all the other channels. Got about 130 episodes out and also blogs as well on KeenOnRetirement.com. So a couple of resources there. I'm all about education. I really want folks to want to educate themselves. And that takes personal responsibility and it takes drive and desire in a busy life. Like you said, working hard, doing a great job, you know, for your clients, your specific clients and your firms that you work for, you let your own personal house maybe not get the attention it deserves. And so we've created those resources to help folks. That's great. And the reason that I've had Bill now back on the podcast three times is because I feel that finance can be a complicated topic, especially for those of us that are engineers and we don't really take finance courses or classes and don't have a background in finance. And when I did read Bill's book, he just does a really good job of breaking things down, kind of distilling them down to basics, essentially, so that kind of anyone can understand finance and start to think about finance and assets and how you need to help have your money kind of work for you. And so it's a great read. And really, that's why we continue to invite Bill back. So I highly recommend his content. And kind of getting into the first point here, we do have an election coming up, which means there's a potential for big change, of course, anytime you have an election. And change is something that will affect the economy. And so Bill's going to start off a little bit here by talking about how politics and the markets kind of the history on where those kind of intermingle. Yeah, and I think you mentioned earlier about going back and listening to those your two prior podcasts that we were on. And I would tell folks, especially the one that we did in the midst of I think the height of the anxiety of the coronavirus. There was a lot of things folks were experiencing anxiety. We didn't know we were concerned for our health, we're concerned for our finances, we're concerned for our loved ones ourselves. Very confusing time. And some of the lessons learned, I don't want you all to miss the fact that you just have lived through a period of time where if you don't miss it, if you take some notes and you think through what happened, what you just lived through, there's a lot of wisdom there to make sure you capture. Don't miss it. Because we just went through one of the fastest market declines in history. And then one of the fastest market recoveries in history. Right now the economy is, I would contend slightly disconnected from the markets, although the markets are a very forward looking when I say markets, I mean the stock markets, the investment markets are very, very forward looking. So a lot of times what you think might make common sense doesn't make sense in how things play out. So make sure you capture your experience that you've had in 2020. I know a lot of us want to forget 2020. But I would say make sure we capture that wisdom. When it comes now to this election that has, I would say it's snuck up on us. Would you not say that it's snuck up on us, Anthony? I think it did because there's been so many things going on that you kind of look up and get past some of these other things and you see that there's an election in a very short period of time from now. Yes. So I had an article come out in Forbes and it was entitled Why You Want to Keep Your Politics Separate from Your Investing. And it's the reason why is because it gets very emotional. And regardless of your political opinions and in all the work that we do, we are absolutely not trying to change someone's political views. But what we are trying to do is bring objective, factual information to the situation to make sure folks don't make knee-jerk emotional reactions that will throw their family off track. And that article I talk a lot about how folks dependent on who is expected to get elected or who gets elected may stop investing all together. They might sell all their investments. They might be in complete financial paralysis, not understanding or being fearful of the policies that they may or may not agree with. And an interesting bias that we've recognized, the company called Cornerstone Macro came out and they asked folks here about three months ago, slightly before the coronavirus, what were economic conditions? Were they good or were they bad? And 79% of Republicans said they were good and 33% of Democrats said that they were good only. So we're looking at the same numbers, but based on who's in power, we're going to have a different view of the very same numbers. We just have to be aware of that bias and not let us cause us to make decisions that hurt us or no decisions that hurt us as well. But let me give you a little bit of history on the financial markets because I think it's a great place to start. How have things actually done under certain types of parties pound? Now, I know all election years will feel different, but this maybe we could contend this is one of the most unique election years. We've got a pandemic. We've got a deep recession. We've got extremely heightened partisanship without question, a mail-in ballot controversy. We've got regardless probably the oldest presidential candidate, whoever gets elected now. There's a lot of things that we're all talking about that makes this feel very different. We're talking a lot now about a potential blue sweep. What happens? A blue wave. What happens if the Senate goes democratic? Well, let me just share with you over the course of since 1950, and this comes from LPL research, in a Republican Congress, the markets have made 13.4 percent on average. That same time frame of Democratic Congress, the markets have made 10.7 percent on average, but under a split Congress, they've made 17.2 percent. So the indication is that gridlock actually is better, at least in Congress, and that's now for the markets. Now, for GDP, which is really the output of our country, under Republican control, it's been 3 percent. Under Democratic control, the actual GDP has been slightly higher, 3.3, and under the split, it's been just under 3. So if we look at these things, we desperately want to try to find some correlations here to tell us what we should be doing with our investments, and I think that can get really tricky if you start making short-term decisions based on who's in power. Now, if we take it one step farther, if we go back to 1900 and look at the Dow, so I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers at you here, but this is kind of my last kind of example of how this works in the markets. What was better, a Republican president or a Democratic president? Now, if I were to ask you, Anthony, what you thought would be better for the stock market, not to put you on the spot here, but would you think that it would be Republican in the White House or Democrat in the White House? It's a good question. I mean, I think a lot of times in generalities, you'll sometimes hear that Republicans have been better, but I also remember, and I'm not, I don't really associate with either party, but I remember Clinton, for example, as president, I remember the economy doing well, so I wouldn't really have a straight answer for you. I'm up in the air and it sounds like your other numbers were up in the air as well. Yes, yes. And to your point, somebody might think generally that Republicans are considered more pro-business, less regulation, you know, that kind of general thought process. Well, if an investor had invested $10,000 in 1900, but only had it in the market, only had it in the Dow when the Republican was president, it would now be worth $99,000. Okay. On the other hand, if that same 10,000 was in the market with a Democratic president, it would be worth $430,000. Wow. So history tells us that Democratic presidents have had a better effect on the stock market. Now, I always say not so fast because what I've just this little thought experiment we've done here is indicating that I might be saying you should be all in or all out. And you know from our prior discussions, I never recommend people getting all in to the market, selling everything, waiting for something to happen that's going to tell them to get back in and go back in. So I don't want to leave that thought with anyone. Had you just invested your money and left it alone through all the presidential cycles, that 10,000 today would be worth $4.2 million. So imagine if you were someone that was, you just did not agree with or you were afraid of the counter parties thought processes and policies, it would have been a multiple seven figure mistake to be in and out of the market like that based on your political beliefs. It's just the fact. So I'm not trying to, I'm just being objective with it and just say, wow, that's just what history has told us. Sure. Well, I think that also speaks to, and I think you talked about this a little bit on the first episode that you did, you know, which is just thinking about longer term consistent investing, right? Not trying to push it in and out. You know, this isn't like a poker game where you're pushing chips in and pulling them out, you know, because you're talking about retirement is what you focus on a lot. So it should be like, you know, a long term game. But I do have a question about something you said there that I think is something I'd like you to maybe talk a little bit more about because I think it can be confusing for people that don't have any background in finance, which is the relationship between markets and the economy. Yes. I think a lot of people would assume that that's the same thing, the market, the economy. Right. So when we look at the economy, we're looking at, I mentioned a term, the GDP, the gross, the product, what we're actually creating, all of us together, goods and services, what we're putting out in the United States of America. We look at GDP because we want that GDP gross domestic product to continue increasing. And in fact, we define a recession by two quarters of negative GDP. I mean, that's the definition, the kind of a textbook definition of what a recession is. Now, one of the problems with recessions are, if you think this through, if it's two negative quarters of GDP, we don't get GDP readings until many weeks or months after the end of the quarters. So in a good portion of the cases, you don't know that you were in a recession until you're coming out of the recession or it's over because you don't get the data to tell you that it was a recession until after the fact. But that's an economic, some economic numbers. Of course, unemployment, the employment is a big one as well. But we have people invested, you don't invest money in unemployment. You don't invest money in GDP. You invest money typically in shares of stocks through individual securities indexes, mutual funds, that type of thing. And when you're looking at your account balances, which is really what gets people's attention, they're just people are looking at your account balances and saying, it's down or it's up or hopefully long term, it's up nicely, but then we go through some violent downturns. And when I say that they're not necessarily always married, I think going back to our podcast we did on coronavirus, which was one of some of that wisdom that I want folks not to miss, we knew from a government mandated shutdown that we were in a deep recession during that time or a depression of these numbers, unemployment, gross domestic product. We knew that we were going to see these massive numbers, unprecedented numbers, but not so long after that podcast we did Anthony, where we were, I was recommending folks really be not to sell out of course, and to even rebalance into some of the stocks to buy some things while they were lower within the parameters of each person's risk tolerance, not to sell and panic, even though we knew we were in a recession or depression, because the market is forward looking. And sure enough, we've had a full, primarily most some securities are higher than they were going into the to the coronavirus meltdown in March. We hit bottom on March 23rd, some haven't quite made it back, but typically we're back to where we were all time highs in the NASDAQ, the tech stocks are well above all time highs. Unbelievable, really, if you think about it, but we're forward looking. So you might say, well, wait a second, we're still today in a period of time where the economy is uncertain. We still have, yes, we've added lots of jobs back from the huge loss we had for those few months, but we're still at much higher unemployment than we were going into coronavirus. We still have uncertainty. We still have businesses that are having a very difficult time. We're talking about closing places down again, certain states, yet the market is at or near all time highs. That piece of it doesn't make common sense to people, but we have to kind of divorce the two from each other and not make investment, knee-jerk investment decisions based on what we're seeing in just the economy because that market discounts all these things and it's looking way out ahead. Market right now, Mr. Market, as we call it, is looking out to 2021 and 22. It's not sitting back here in October of 2020. It's looking forward. I hope that helps. The market's like more of like a leading indicator, you could say. Absolutely. I would call the market a leading indicator. It's looking forward. It's very forward-looking. The things that we're thinking about, most people are thinking about that are happening today, the market's already thought about, it's long behind those things and it's looking to the future. That's great. Now, that is really helpful because I do think that those terms get kind of washed together a lot and obviously that they shouldn't be and you need to have some awareness around them. Let's talk a little bit about some of the potential tailwinds and headwinds for certain sectors depending on the outcome of this pending presidential election. Yes. We talk about common sense a lot and we think things through and we say, well, I say let's not get all in or all out, but we do want to be prudent. We want to be thoughtful. We want to be pre-committed to decisions that we will make depending on what outcomes happen here in November and depending on what tech tomorrow brings that none of us can foresee, but ideally there are some tailwinds for certain sectors. You would think that the energy sector would do better under President Trump or a Republican because less regulations, that would be something you might think about that could make sense. Well, guess what happened with energy when Trump came along? He reduced regulation. Prices of oil got to a point where they couldn't hardly give it away for one month there. The futures contracts on oil were negative because no one, you had to take delivery if you bought a futures contract. It was very confusing to folks. For folks that said, well, under Trump, let's put all our money into energy thinking that there was a tailwind there. Prices came down so much that energy, it's been great for the consumer of energy, but for an investor in energy, it's been one of the worst sectors since Trump's taken office. Very interesting to think about that. The same has happened for the financial sector as well because interest rates have been so low that banks have a hard time making money in low interest rate environments. And even though there's less regulation under a Republican president, the sector itself, those other additional things overcame the person in power. Now, there are some other sectors as well. For instance, healthcare. We think healthcare is probably going to be okay going forward. Actually, regardless of the election outcome with the Medicare for all, probably off the table. Energy could be hurt more by a potential blue wave, but here's what could happen going back to energy. Prices, now again, better for the investor or the consumer, prices of energy might get support and go higher from lower production and higher production costs. We saw a debate not long ago with the vice president and the vice president's presidential candidate talking about fracking and some confusion around what things might look like going forward. So you can be prudent and thoughtful about sectors, but sometimes common sense doesn't play out as well, which makes big bets on certain sectors or going outside all in all out. Once again, the message, it's just too dangerous to do that. That's good. And again, that speaks to, and again, this is me talking, not Bill, of course, just someone who is an engineer with not a ton of finance background is, this speaks to me more measured, diversified investing with a longer term view, which quite frankly, I mean, I think if you're a working engineering professional, odds are that's going to be your approach. Of course, that varies with age and other things and risk factors. But trying to guess at things, trying to think, oh, well, if this is the president, it just to me, it just sounds like it's not never a good approach. And some of the statistics, I think, Bill, that you've shared with us, again, would go against some just things that you would think if you just first glance. What do you think? And it just reinforces that. I want to make sure I let folks know too, remember now, the first two years that President Trump was in office, he had a Republican Congress and he couldn't get certain things through. So if we were to have a blue wave here in November for the folks that are worried about that, just remember, Trump first two years in office, Republican Congress, couldn't repeal the Affordable Care Act. It passed the House and not the Senate in May of 2017. But it was not a free for all, even in a Republican Congress and a Republican leadership. And I also, and I know probably people aren't thinking about this right now, Anthony, but there are policy issues that won't be altered much depending on who gets in the office, like Federal Reserve monetary policy, antitrust focuses on the big large tech companies. Those are things that all have bipartisan support. Yeah, there actually are things that are, do have bipartisan support. There really are. I know it doesn't feel like it when you turn the news on sometimes, but more fiscal stimulus. I think we were seeing some banter about this, but the stimulus that the government will put in play here and the additional stimulus I think is supported by both parties, although there's some, we've had banter about where that money should go. But I think the message is we turn the TV on and we see it's depressing sometimes. It is because you just, you see a lot of fighting and a lot of things that are just, and it's designed to create clicks and ads and to create insight anxiety because that sells. But I'd like to bring more of a measured kind of data driven factor to the discussion. Sure. And so, one of the things of course that can happen with this election in terms of change would be if Biden wins the election, of course, because then you're changing the party of the president. Talk a little bit about what might change if that happens just because I'm sure that that's something on people's minds. Yes, I think probably one of the biggest ones when especially when it comes to finance is the tax code. And he, in his position paper, which I've reviewed in detail, it's been out now for several months. He talks about a pretty massive rehaul of the tax code, but it's primarily focused on people that are making above the 400,000 level. And I know we saw the democratic debates that Mr. Pence, Vice President Pence, was indicating that he thought maybe that wasn't going to be the case, whether it was all of President Trump's tax cuts would be repealed. In the position paper, it's showing people that are just making over 400,000. We don't actually know what would happen until it happens. But what they're talking about now is taking the top individual income tax rate for people over 400,000 from 37% back up to the pre-tax cuts and jobs act rate of 39.6. So if you think about, you know, some of the high tax state taxes in people that are on the coast, let's say, and 40% call it income tax on income over 400, you know, you're getting up there over 50% for for total tax. And then you have additional taxes on top of that if I get the taxes and others, but that's something to be looking out for. There's also a thing called the P's limitation. It's P-E-A-S-E. And the P's limitation in it shortly is a limitation of itemized deductions. So that at a certain level of income, you most people get to deduct mortgage interest and charitable contributions, other things. If you make over 400,000, we believe Biden would start to phase those out. So again, it's that 400,000 level seems to be the theme. And some of your listeners I know and folks that subscribe to your work, Anthony, are business owners. And one of the things that's out there now is called the QBI, where you can deduct up to 20% of your business income, literally 20%. It was a kind of a big deal when it passed. Biden is imposing phasing that out for people once again, over that $400,000 level. So these are things to be, again, thinking about if you're not at those levels, I think you're probably going to be okay. There is another issue around the payroll tax. So a lot of people get confused. My son is a pilot, Anthony, and he goes to a college called Enrol in Missouri. I know you know it. It's a very fine engineering school, Missouri Science and Tech. He just graduated or he'll be graduating in five months. He'll be working at Garmin as a flight test engineer. He's married his love for aviation and his love for engineering. Isn't that great? Very proud of him. And he did an internship at Black and Beach and some other places as well as he figured out what he wanted to do. But we were walking through what his paychecks would be and I won't go into what they will be like to a detail, but could protect his anonymity. But we were walking through what his taxes would be. And of course, I've advised him to make sure he maxes his 401k at all costs, pre-tax, and potentially in a Roth, which we can talk about. But we were talking about the taxes, state, federal, and then the FICA tax. A lot of people are confused by FICA tax. There's taxes that come out of your paycheck that pay for Medicare and there's taxes that come out of your paycheck that pay for Social Security. And the Social Security tax part of the FICA tax now ends once you make over $137,700. That's the current wage cap. And what Biden has suggested is that he will keep it that way. But once somebody gets over $400,000 in income, he will bring the Social Security tax back on the income over $400,000. So there would be what we call a donut hole in that Social Security withholding tax from $137,700 or so to $400,000. And then it comes back in strong again for people at $400,000. The Medicare tax goes on from $1.00 all the way up to whatever you make. Okay. So not to get too technical on you there, but those are things that I believe we would see for sure come into play. Okay. No, that's great. And so kind of to start to wrap things up here, Bill, let's just take it back to, you know, most of our listeners, engineering professionals working hard, probably have a 401k they're contributing to, you know, maybe have a house for the mortgage and they are working, hopefully, you know, I know a lot of engineers were able to sustain jobs through everything just because a lot of in a lot of ways engineering is a critical profession, essential, deemed essential by a lot of states. So let's take it back to them and just thinking about going forward from here. What are any recommendations that you have in terms of taking actions or things to be very wary about here, you know, over the next three to six months? So really, this is going to be from the planning standpoint. It's not going to be from the investment standpoint. We want people to stay the course on their investment plans. Now, I want to make sure that each person is invested in their in there, whether it's 401ks or ESOP plans or their money that they've saved after taxes outside of those plans in a way that they feel comfortable. So they're not too much risk, but they're not too conservative either. We want people to be in a position where they're set up for where they are in their point in life, so that they don't have to make knee jerk reactions on the investments. Because like with the theme of our whole talk so far has been, let's not make emotional knee jerk reactions based on politics, divorce politics from your investment plan. Once we get past the investments, because those are just the engines to the plan, but then the money is just an engine. The dollars are just an engine to your financial plan, what you're trying to achieve in your lifetime and the vision and the excitement you have for your future. Now we get down to what actions could we take? Well, some of it could be from a tax standpoint. So if you're one of the people that you think would be earning that level of income that we talked about over that 400,000 level. Congratulations, by the way, that's the case. But you could accelerate income into this year if you think you're going to be getting bonuses next year, you could pull it into this year. If you really thought and you wanted to be prudent about that, you thought taxes were going up next year, you could push back deductions into the next year from this year, if you're going to make a large charitable contribution, you could wait until next year to do that. You could also consider, and this what I would say applies to everyone, we want everyone each year to go through a Roth conversion calculation and look at the tax brackets that you're currently in, look at the income that you have, look at the investments and the resources and determine if it makes sense to convert money from an individual IRA account to a Roth IRA. The only difference is the individual IRA is taxed someday when you pull it out. Roth is never taxed ever again and we really like those accounts that are never taxed ever again because we believe that any accounts that are set up today will be grandfathered if they ever change the rules, you'll be able to enjoy that tax treatment and then you won't be affected by higher tax rates in the future. So I think that these could be really interesting things to consider. I always like to start out by saying or to end or start or it's all woven throughout my work. You got to control the controllable. There are many things that are beyond our control, but there are lots of things that we do have control over and sometimes figuring out that takes age and wisdom and time on the journey and making mistakes. We learn by making mistakes and a lot of the times the bigger mistakes we make the more we learn and we get to a point when we're to point in our journey where we don't want to make too big a mistakes anymore to have to learn. So we need to think through these things and control the controllable, be proactive, not reactive and have a financial plan in place where you've thought through where you want to be able to retire. What is that year? Even if it's 30 years from now, it's okay to start to visualize that and work toward it. It reverse engineer that journey. Figure out what you can spend, what you need to save and then enjoy the journey and you feel like you know time is your friend at that point. Some of you will have the opportunity to Roth 401ks. So you're working for a company that tells you you can put money into a 401k or you can put money into a Roth 401k. Depending on your tax bracket, the Roth 401k you pay tax on the contributions but you never pay tax ever again on that money and that could make a lot of sense right now with if we believe tax rates are going higher in the future. Which I think most of us do probably believe they're going to continue higher with all this money that we've had to our governments had to spend this last year. Don't sell out. Don't sell out. Go please. Yeah, go ahead. I want to ask you a question on that point specifically and I understand that you know any kind of investing advice or you know things that you're talking about are totally dependent on the person right? Everyone has different individual needs and your age and etc. Your family situation, kids etc. But you know you hear the Roth IRA term a lot right? Yes. And from my understanding, which I think is correct, you take post-tax dollars, put them into an investment and then it grows and then you don't pay tax on it ever again. Is that accurate? That's exactly right. So if someone has a 401k that they're contributing to with an employer match of some sort, is there any reason or any instance that they would also want to consider the Roth IRA not a Roth 401k? Or is there a reason for that? Absolutely. One of the things I told my son recently, I think I shared, we used to say save 10% of your salary. Now we're saying if you could get by saving 15%, it would be a wonderful thing. And you can do that either into your 401k or you can go outside your 401k. I mean ideally you max your 401k and take advantage of all of the match that the company gives you. And when I say a lot of people think no, they're just going to put enough in to take advantage of the match. So if your company matches the first 8%, a lot of people just do 8%. And they get the match, which is great. But no, the limits of what you can put in, the 19-5 a year, you could put extra more in if you're over 50. We really would like to see people max those plans, not just up to the point that the employer matches, but all the way in as far as we can go. But then outside of that, to go ahead and set up a Roth IRA in addition to that with an advisor somewhere, that makes a ton of sense. And then you also have to have a nice reserve of money that's not encumbered for retirement that you don't have to wait till 59 and a half to touch. So there's that point where I always recommend six months in an emergency reserve account for folks. That's in a bank or somewhere very basically risk-free investments. But then folks can start to build some assets in investments that are not in retirement programs, but that are still invested in the equity markets, the ETF stocks, mutual funds, that kind of thing outside of the 401k. But that Roth IRA, it's a, I don't want to say no brainer without knowing each person's situation. But for my kids, I started Roths for them as immediately when I could, when they had earned income, they're able to make Roth contributions. If you have any earned income at all, you can make one. I started, that was my gift to them when they started making money at 15, 16, 17 years old. And that's proven to be a really nice way for them to start to build some wealth. And I recommend it to anybody. That's great. And the Roth IRA, just to be clear, is there an age limit on when you can take that money out? Yeah. So it's, because the money is going in after taxes, the government cannot encumber when you take that back out. So if you put in 5,000 into a Roth and you needed the money back next year, you can get your 5,000 back with no penalties at all. No tax, no penalty, because it was after tax money. They can't encumber it. Okay. But let's say you put your 5,000 in and it's worth 7,000. If you try to take out that two that you made, there would be taxes and penalties. Okay. So it's your principle, you can get back. The additional growth or income on that, you have to leave till you're 59 and a half or you have to have it open for five years as well. There's a five year limitation on Roths as well. But it doesn't apply to the principle coming back. Right. So it's like more liquid in a sense than a 401k in that way, because there's no penalties. It is. And when folks start those, I don't, like for my kids, I didn't tell my kids, hey guys, you can get this money out anytime you want. I just let them think that it's long term, right? But the reality is, yes. That's a good strategy for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, we covered a lot of really good stuff here. It's always great to have Bill on the podcast. He just talks about stuff that I think can be complex. And a lot of times, he kind of breaks it down to something that we can kind of grab onto. And that's something that's very helpful. And in the midst of everything that's going on, it was very helpful. So once again, Bill Keane, Bill is the author of Keane on Retirement, Engineering the Second Half of Your Life. Bill, thanks for coming on again. Thanks for sharing this great information with us and really trying to keep us grounded in terms of not making rash investment decisions based on politics, which I think can be very dangerous. And before I let you go, can you just share again kind of the link to your website so people can find those resources? Yes. So we have a firm website. It's keanwealthadvisors.com. That's the company website. But our blog and podcast that carries all the educational information can be found through that website. Or you can go directly to keanonretirement.com. Everything's right there for you. You can subscribe to the podcast or you can do it on iTunes as well or the blog and you get a note every week. And we share our thinking on things that we think is timely and relevant for folks on these topics. That's great. Well, Bill, thanks again for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you. You're welcome, Anthony. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please leave your comments and your questions in the comments section below this video. Also, if you'd like to view the full show notes for this episode, visit engineeringmanagementinstitute.org or see the link in the video description. There you will find the key points discussed in today's episode as well as links to any of the resources, websites, or books mentioned during the episode. Until next time, I wish you the best in all of your engineering career endeavors.