george grombacher 0:02
Uh, Jeff, to get us started. Give me two truths and a lie, please, sir. So,

Jeff Panik 0:06
so this is going to be more of a, I guess, multiple choice, if you will, but it’s going to be the longest plane ride that I’ve ever been on. Is it nine hour? Well, there’s, there’s two of three. So nine hours, 15 hours, or 24 hours. What do you think the lie is okay.

george grombacher 0:22
So which one have you not been on a nine hour, a 15 and a 24 hour plane ride,

Jeff Panik 0:28
correct?

george grombacher 0:30
Man, well, I guess I’ll just go in the middle the

Jeff Panik 0:34
15. So it’s actually, it’s actually the nine hour. So, yeah, so the the 15, if the 15 was from DC to Korea, and the 24 hours from was from North Carolina to Kazakhstan, straight all the way. So, little bit involved, so, but it was 24 hours, which is a is a long time, not to mention on an airplane where you can’t get any fresh air,

george grombacher 1:02
so, and that’s, that’s, that’s when you were serving the country in the army, correct,

Jeff Panik 1:06
in the army. So it was being all I could be, I guess you would say, yes, 24

george grombacher 1:12
hour plane ride. And that’s not like business class. Or maybe it is,

Jeff Panik 1:17
no, no. It was on, it was on a C 17 plane, which they call a globe master. And it is this, it’s, it’s hard to explain, unless you’ve been in one how large it actually is. It’s kind of overwhelming. And, you know, you when you’re in one of those things, there’s, you know, and a lot of instances, unless you’re in a heavy storm, you really feel no turbulence, because it’s, you know, it’s like, it’s like flying a city, if you will, a lot of times. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:46
so what

george grombacher 1:48
do you you just sort of talk to your flight mates. Are you playing cards?

Jeff Panik 1:54
You try to, you try to sleep as much as you know, you try to sleep. But that’s easier said than done. And you just, you know, you just try to, you know, just try to pass time, you know, read a book. It’s, you know, crazier things, crazier suggestions have been, there have been other than just to simply read a book. So, wasn’t a bad idea back then.

george grombacher 2:15
Now, for sure, simpler times.

Jeff Panik 2:18
Jeff, yes, exactly. Now you’d have to say, Should I do a Kindle, you know, should I listen to it on amp? You know, where, where should I get the where should, or should I just plain and simple read? Yeah, you know, there’s all kinds of formats these days,

george grombacher 2:32
analog version of reading, yeah, exactly, exactly

Jeff Panik 2:35
you throw, throw the phone out of the airplane, actually. So, right? Yes,

george grombacher 2:41
smart.

Unknown Speaker 2:42
I love it. Yes.

george grombacher 2:42
All right. Well, what is, what is top of mind for you right now?

Jeff Panik 2:46
Yeah, so today, you know, one of the things I appreciate you having on the show, I didn’t mention that, but you know, one of the things that, you know I really focus on now is really financial literacy for young adults. I wrote a book a little while back, really, on that topic. And you know, you see things that go on throughout time, but you don’t really always put the pieces together, you know. And whether it’s, you know, student loan debt a couple trillion dollars higher, you know, at levels that we’ve never seen, or credit card debt, you know, you talk about home ownership and a lot of different topics. You know, when kids and young adults are starting out with so much debt, you know, it’s really hard to get assimilated and really have a family. And, you know, do what a lot of people used to take for granted. And so, you know, I think it’s fundamental, whether it’s through family, you know, or through you know, some you know, the YMCA, different programs that will provide opportunities for children to learn, especially young adults, going, you know, deciding what they’re going to do with their life and making good decisions.

george grombacher 3:53
It is a think it’s one of the most, one of the worst things that we’ve done to young people is what you’re describing. Just the cost of education is extraordinary, and graduating with 10s of 1000s or hundreds of $1,000 of debt, and then we throw credit card offers their way on day one, when they move into the dorms and and everything else. And now life is so much more expensive, so it’s a lot.

Jeff Panik 4:16
What do you say every bowl game is, you know, it seems like it’s a credit card. So it’s, they’re inundated constantly with the various credit card, you know, bank commercials, you know, whether it’s an even in the, you know, the bookstores and various other places, it’s hard to get away from, especially on social media. And, you know, it’s easy to, it’s easy to get caught up in the debt cycle. And it’s, you know, when you have very little income, it’s very easy to get very upside down very quickly with it. And you know, if it’s, you know, whether it’s trying to get out of debt or having just a really poor credit score, you know, it’s really difficult to do things that, as I mentioned before, we used to take for granted, you know. And you know, there’s been all kinds of studies done. You know. But if there was a Price Waterhouse study that said, you know, they surveyed millennials, and only about 24% actually had any proficiency in just understanding basic financial topics, you know. So it’s definitely an area, you know, where you could say, well, there’s marginal need for improvement. This is, you know, it’s, I would say it’s like the Grand Canyon of improvement at this point that we need

Unknown Speaker 5:26
so basic

george grombacher 5:27
financial topics. We don’t need to turn everybody into, uh, into an MBA, or now, whatever, what, what are some of these fundamentals? Yeah,

Jeff Panik 5:37
yeah. So, I mean, I look at it almost as consumer finance, and it’s things that used to be taken for granted. I mean, I’ll go as simple as to say, well, you know, how do you open a bank account? You know, how do you write a check? And, you know, what’s the difference between a debit and credit card? And you can start asking those kind of questions, or have somebody try to respond to that. And, you know, they can get kind of upside down pretty quickly in terms of understanding what the differences are. And, you know, it really, you know, the kids need a framework or a blueprint. You know, whether it’s, you know, buying their first car, you know, should you buy or lease? Should you buy it? You know, a used car, you know, or just simply, you know when, once you get you get off, your parents plan. Or, you know, should you do it when you start working? Or should you wait a while, you know? And these are all decisions that a lot of cases, you know, once you go down a certain path, you know, they’re hard to kind of reverse,

george grombacher 6:31
yeah, yeah.

Jeff Panik 6:33
And, you know, I mean, the the main point is, is that the more information that you can grasp or get to the better off you can be. The challenge, though, is, you know, with Google, you know, and the internet, you could Google a topic and you get 300 million hits. You know, that that’s great in everything. But, you know, really, the problem that I see with it is it’s very generalized and it’s very scattered. In a lot of cases, it’s trying to sell you something, and so, you know, it’s just really important to make decisions based upon your individual, specific family circumstances.

george grombacher 7:12
We need to cut through the noise and have a clear signal. So you mentioned, did you say distributing to the YMCA?

Jeff Panik 7:20
Well, there are programs, you know, whether it’s the the Boys and Girls Clubs, you know the scout scouts, you know, various ways that you can get better informed. But you know, it’s at this point about 22 states are starting to offer financial literacy courses as a mandate for graduating. You know, unfortunately, a lot of those classes are very generalized, and, you know, a lot of what needs to happen is even earlier than that in middle school, you know, it’s a matter of managing expectations with college, you know, maybe it makes sense to go to a community college, you know, versus going to a college that’s super expensive or you may not have aid for you Know, that money could be utilized in a, you know, a lot of different other ways. But you know, really, from a parent standpoint, you have to have, have to really start having the conversations early, to really manage expectations. Because if you don’t say anything until the kid is accepted, and once you know is going to, you know, a very expensive school, you know, it’s hard to kind of back out and reverse out of that. Yeah,

george grombacher 8:24
I think it is, uh, while college is very expensive, it is certainly possible to pay for it, if we make good decisions about it, about going to a community college or going to an in state school, versus going to California and going to college. If you live in Nebraska, sounds like fun, but it’s going to cost you exponentially. Just going to be an impossible amount of debt that you’re going to come up end up servicing So,

Jeff Panik 8:48
and really, it’s a matter of, really, you know, I go back to kind of mentoring as well as, you know, volunteering, you know, if you can do, if you can have the student or the young person do that in high school, so that they can kind of mirror or see what people do, you know, they may they may want to be a nurse, or they may want to be a teacher, but when they see people do it, or they’re in that environment, they may just say, I just definitely don’t want to do this. And they may look at something else, you know. So sometimes, you know, if you can be around people that are actually in the profession and get feedback from them and learn from them. You can avoid a lot of the pitfalls in terms of going down a road that, you know, you go through four years of college, you know, to be a teacher, a nurse, or, you know, anything, for that matter, and then you decide you don’t want to do it, and then you have to get even more education and a lot of cases, more debt. So you know this, the sooner that you can, you know, manage that, and, you know, have a reasonable pathway, the easier it is to really, you know, I think to be financially successful, to build a real foundation. And that’s, you know, part of the book that I did. It’s about building a foundation. You know, I was about putting the pieces together and not putting yourself. At a real loss, you know, before you even really start your adult life. I mean, that’s with the student loans, you know, credit cards and a lot of these things, the kids are at a real disadvantage, you know, before they even have a really chance to start the race.

george grombacher 10:16
So what you say is important. I’m not saying what you just said is important, because it certainly is. But what we say is always, say is always important, but then how we say it is also important. You probably could have put me through a course when I was in junior high or high school on on personal finance. And even if you had taught me the best information that I don’t know that there’s a guarantee that I would have absorbed it. So how do you think about that?

Jeff Panik 10:38
Well, I think that gets back to, you know, really looking at a very early age and building a foundation, not when they’re in high school, really going into elementary school, just simple things like whether it’s volunteering, whether it’s doing chores and getting an allowance. Very few, I think that used to be very common. Now not so much. The kids just kind of, it seems like a lot of kids just kind of get what they want. And you know, that can be a challenge in and of itself. And so, you know, really looking back, it’s more of a matter of, you know, starting when they’re extremely young. And you know, whether it’s playing Monopoly or life, you know, you know board games, you know, during the holidays, where you know, you can actually, you know, it’s actually more reality than you know what, what a lot of people even believe you know in terms of life, just you know different directions and ways you go, and just communicating, or communicating the decisions that you’ve made, in a lot of cases, just being, you know, being clear, and being a source where they can go if they’re Not sure about something, or they’re afraid of something, and just talking to them about some of the mistakes that you’ve made, you know, because that kind of, I think, humanizes the parent and allows, really, more of an open line of conversation. And, you know, really, I look at it, and you know, whether it’s in a relationship, you know, whether it’s a you know, parent child, or whether it’s a couple, you know, with money, you know, Communication is paramount. If you do not communicate, you know, you’re going to have no shortage of, you know, a potholes, we’ll call them.

george grombacher 12:13
Yeah, I think that there’s, there’s no doubt about that, with so many grown ups struggling as well, whatever the percentage is, it’s a big chunk of us that are living paycheck to paycheck, and that’s certainly something that I experienced when I was in my 20s. So I totally get it. I also appreciate how important it is to be vulnerable and honest about the mistakes that you’ve made, because we’ve all made them, particularly when it comes to money. But how do you help people to become confident? Or what do you tell people who say, Well, I don’t know anything about money. How am I going to teach my kids about it?

Jeff Panik 12:44
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first thing, I mean, I go back to maybe something that’s been lost as well. You know, really, it comes down to lifelong learning, and it’s important, you know, to continue to learn and evolve over time and have trusted resources. And when I say trusted resources, advisors, you know people, whether it’s you know, someone at your workplace that does the Employee Benefits, someone that you can go to with questions, and that is not conflicted. And that’s really the thing, and that’s the problem with the commercials. You know, whether it’s on your phone, when you’re on, you know, Facebook, there’s just things popping up in every direction. You know, they’re targeting you in every direction. And you know, it’s easy, like we talked about before. You know, if you make some decisions that get you going the wrong way, it’s easier, it’s very it’s very easy to keep going down that road, but it’s hard to reverse. And so, you know, I would say what you don’t want to do is say, I want to just where people run into trouble is they say, well, they wake up one day and they realize they have all these issues. They know they’ve had them, but they want to just completely do 180 degree reversal. And really, based upon where you were at, you really have to have put together a plan to back your way out and work through that, you know, because if you try to do too many things at one time, you’re going to end up failing and really not doing anything in most cases, you know. And it’s really about developing habits and just making them where they’re actually, you know, where you can execute on the habits and not be in a situation where you just try to do too much and then you get nothing done.

george grombacher 14:19
Yeah, I think that there is a big danger in trying to boil the ocean, which nobody’s been able to do that to this point. And that’s why Dave Ramsey is so effective and successful at helping people get out of debt, because he gives very straightforward instructions on step by step by step, exactly,

Jeff Panik 14:35
you know. And again, I mean, I, I think the most important thing, and I always look at budgeting, you know, and there’s probably about six or seven different at different there’s even more than that. You know, budgeting strategies, you know, there’s budgeting apps, there’s spreadsheets, there’s every conceivable type of, you know, budgeting, budgeting format. It’s really coming up and making decisions with what you’re comfortable with and what works best for. You because You know what may work best for your neighbor, you know, office colleague, you know even someone giving you advice, like Dave Ramsey. It just may not make sense for your specific circumstances, but it’s a matter of really finding something that will work and you know, get you to where you you know, financially into, you know, financial independence and get get you where do you need to be? Do you think

george grombacher 15:20
that most people understand what that means, financial independence.

Jeff Panik 15:23
So I think it’s, you know, in in the financial industry, I think it’s more of a buzzword than anything else. In the end, I would say, you know, when I look at financial independence, you know, you’re not relying on anyone as well as you’re not staying up at night worrying about things. I think that’s really, you know, especially as people approach retirement, you know, there’s tremendous anxiety and uncertainty. And you know, it’s really a matter of kind of going through and putting the pieces together. But that’s, you know, I can sit here and say that, but that’s easier said than done. And, you know, I could have 10 different families, and they could have 10 different situations. You know, divorce, you know, second marriages with you know, children. You know, they could have debt. You know, multiple houses. One could be working, one could not you know, either you could have health issues. You know, there’s so many different situations that you know, really, you have to take each person or family in an individual, you know, set of circumstances and kind of work through that, you know, to try to develop a customized plan and strategy for them. Yeah,

george grombacher 16:32
wanted to circle back on the danger of trying to do too much all at once, and then it actually becomes demotivating. And when that happens, you certainly know that money has time value, so the more we wait to start pursuing and what’s important to us, the harder it becomes to do that. So if you could just let’s, I don’t know if it’s valuable to just kind of talk about putting together a checklist of things, but we talked about budgeting, certainly cash flow understanding, kind of bank accounts and stuff like that. What are some of those, some core competencies, if you can get people to focus on those, first start here,

Jeff Panik 17:10
yeah, so really, what I would say is, I mean, if you can develop a financial inventory plan, and you know, that’s, I’m, you know, big, big words and everything, but really what you want to do is, you know, and I have often said, you know whether you move around, you know from jobs or whether you you know, change homes you live in, and you move from area to area. You know you have different situations in life. You know you have start having children. You know if you get divorced or there’s a death, you know, what you want to do is really take an inventory of all your documents and all of your assets, and it doesn’t mean to do it all at one time, but what you want to do is have a chat that a checklist. And you want to have something where you can target specific timelines in order to accomplish and complete the different tasks that you’re putting in. You know that list. So in other words, you don’t want something that’s open ended, but you don’t want to overwhelm yourself at the same time. And so usually I say, you know, one of the best thing to do is really gather, you know, where are your assets, you know, making sure you have all of them, making sure they’re all accounted for, and they’re just not things here, there and everywhere. And by that, I mean, you know, you want to get the statements you want to understand. You know what you have and where it is. And then the same case for debts and liabilities, you know. You want to get statements as well as you know kind of what your payoff schedule is. You want to look at your real estate. You know. You want to look at, you know, I use the example beneficiaries, something a lot of people don’t look at. You want to make sure your beneficiaries are up to date, you know. And there’s a list, but really, you know, you want to do one at a time, and you want to build it out. And really, I say at the end, that’s where you get to your cash flow. You know your your ex, you know your income, your expenses, and really come up with a budget once you have an idea of where all of your assets in your liabilities are. And you know, by by doing that, you don’t have any surprises trying to put a budget together, and all of a sudden you have an expense that you forgot about. And you know, in retirement, that’s particularly important, because you just don’t have the time, and you don’t have the income, you know, earned income from employment. So you have to be really sure of what your expenses are going to be, you know, and what your income is.

george grombacher 19:27
So much of success in life is just knowing as much as you can. And when we don’t have any idea how much we’re spending and how much we’re earning and what our debt is, where anything is, we’re just sort of flying blind. So I think that’s an awesome starting point exactly. Do you think everybody’s capable of becoming financially successful?

Jeff Panik 19:45
I think they are. It’s really a matter of just developing habits, like we talked about, from the standpoint of budgeting, you know, just taking time. You know, there’s, it’s really, I always say, you know, it’s a matter of, just like your phone, it’s a good. Idea to put it down in the evening. You know, if you’re you don’t want to be on your phone when you’re having dinner with your family. You know, the same case with your finances. You know, it’s really a good idea, you know, weekly, every few weeks, to look at everything you know, making sure that you know there’s no purchases that you don’t recognize, and making sure you kind of have a general idea of where everything is, you know, and you and you know, it doesn’t mean doing everything every every week or every month, but you just want to look at things to make sure you know you’re not you’re not creating. You know, by not doing anything, in some cases, you can create more problems for yourself, and that’s an example, like even I use the example of identity theft. You know, by just not doing anything, or thinking that you’re not going to be a victim, in a lot of cases, you end up being a victim. You know, you don’t, you don’t do the things like freeze your credit and do certain things that you just need to be done to avoid that. And there’s just, you know, steps in the process, but the main thing is to take the steps or start the process.

george grombacher 20:59
Yeah, to begin, begin. Yes, that

Jeff Panik 21:04
first, the first, you know, the hardest step is the first step. I mean, in the end, and then it’s the next step, and the step after that. Once you do take about five or six steps, you know, it’ll become a habit, and you won’t even think about it, and you’ll feel bad if you stop it. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s what you want to have in this kind of environment where you’re trying to put things together. And really, you know, I look at your finances and life, your financial life, really, it’s a big puzzle, you know, and the more, the more things you have, more complicated your life is, you know, the more pieces you’re going to have. And it’s just like a puzzle, it takes a lot more time to solve. And that’s really the way I would look at you know, your your financial inventory, putting your financial life together. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if you don’t start, it’s never going to happen.

george grombacher 21:51
I love the analogy of the puzzle, or it’s a metaphor. I always confuse those two. Jeffs, yes, but when you’re 18 years old, your financial puzzle is a 100 piece puzzle. When you’re 50, it’s, it’s 1000 piece puzzle. So better to better to get it under control. Younger than than than is later. So I think that there’s a lot of wisdom there. I love it. Yes. Well, Jeff, you’ve given us a lot, but we’re ready for your difference making tip. What do you

Jeff Panik 22:19
have? Yes. So this is really, you know, I think this is something really that could benefit anyone if they haven’t done it. And really, it’s a matter of looking out to see if you have any property that you’re due. And when I say that abandoned property, you know, if you move from place to place a lot of times, you know, companies that you had a bank accounts with, so you had stocks, you had an employer, you know, utilities, they just lose your forward address. And so money that you’re owed never gets to you. And so, you know, there’s, there’s been several studies, there’s about 75 to $80 billion that the states control just in abandoned property that they can’t get to the end, you know the end owner. And the way to do that is, if you go to missingmoney.com you can type in your name in the search and even by state, and it will show if you’re do anything. And then what you can do is click on the button and it will actually take you in to you know, take you to the state specific paperwork that you can stand send to the state in order to get any refund. And you know, when I have meetings with clients, a lot of times, I’ll bring this up, and they said, You know, I’ve lived in one place, you know, there’s no money owed or anything else. And I would say, you know, probably about half the time when they go on there, there’s an account that they’ve forgotten about.

Unknown Speaker 23:44
Incredible, right there.

george grombacher 23:45
You imagine thinking that you didn’t have any money out there. And then you look and you have whatever it is. And he found money is nothing but a good thing, exactly.

Jeff Panik 23:55
And I mean, in some cases, I had a few few people where they’ve had shares of stock that they got, you know, back in back 25 or 30 years ago, that they completely forgot about. And it’s almost shocking the amount of money that, you know, in certain instances that the shares have grown to, you know, and they’re able to kind of capitalize on that, if they just do the paperwork so, you know. And it’s one less thing that you have out there that may be down the road, you know, if you don’t do it, you know, your family may have to do it when you know you unfortunately become either disabled or pass away.

george grombacher 24:31
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. So it is missing money.com

Jeff Panik 24:38
Yes, missingmoney.com and it’s a, it’s a site that’s set up by all the states. It allows you to go in and do searches either by state, or you can just do general searches. You know, obviously the more unique, like, your name’s pretty unique, you know, my name’s kind of unique with panic. You know, it’s easier to kind of search. You know, if you’re John Smith, you need to lead be a little bit more, little little bit. You. You focus more on the search, but it will tell you the city, where the where the money, you know, was originally, you know, I would say lost. So it gives you a real good idea of you know, whether it’s yours or not. Excellent.

george grombacher 25:13
Well, Jeff, thanks so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? Where can they get a copy? Where can they get a copy of the book, yeah. So

Jeff Panik 25:21
you can go to my website, Jeffrey panic.com that has information about me, about the book of financial literacy. You can also go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere books are sold. The book is called your future is now. It’s a guide to understanding your finances and gaining independence.

george grombacher 25:37
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did. Show Jeff your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, and share with everybody who has who is a young person, or has young people that they are, that they care for and help get them started on the path to financial literacy. Go to Jeffrey panic, j, e, f, f, R, E, y, p, a, n, i, k.com, check out all things that Jeff is working on. Pick up your copy of your future is now Amazon, and get in touch.

Unknown Speaker 26:09
Thanks again, Jeff, thanks.

Jeff Panik 26:11
Thanks a lot. I appreciate the opportunity, George, sure. Finally, friendly

Unknown Speaker 26:15
reminder, it’s

george grombacher 26:16
never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are. So do what we’ve been talking about. Act accordingly. Do.