Episode 107: Part 1 – Money with Lance Lyday

BEN: Hello and welcome back to Money with Mak and G. We have a special guest today, Mr. Lance Lyday who is a successful financial planner here in Indianapolis, Indiana. We’re so glad to have him because the fact that Tony has known him for several years, I think we were joking about whether you guys want to let each other know that you’ve known each other for many years, whether you like each other but anyway, Tony always smiles when he talks about Lance and Lance has done some great things for him and his family from what I understand. But we wanted to welcome Lance how’re you doing?

LANCE: I’m doing great. 

BEN: All right, you look really nice like your financial advisor. I like that.

LANCE: A long workday but it’s been a good one.

BEN: And you’ve been just going around Indianapolis kind of just picking up the pieces of a lot of people and helping them out do their thing.

LANCE: Doing my best.

BEN: It’s the exciting part of it because you know here at money with Mak and G, we try to talk to families as well as children about money. But we also like to talk about their stories and how they got there a little bit of what do we call it, life from the edge? Is that right Tony? 

TONY: Stories from the edge.

BEN: Stories from the edge. And Tony’s been on the hot seat and he’s he’s arrived. So…

TONY: When you’re looking over the edge Lance, you’re like I don’t know if I’m gonna fall off the edge or not. Anyway, that it’s not always that bad.

BEN: It’s not. But let’s you got a couple stories in there too. So I mean, you have some stuff going on. We thought we’d start off with just a little bit of your background when you were younger to see how you got to the individual segments of your life like high school, college and then finally getting to where you are here. And I know there’s some interesting storage, story-edge that goes along with it. So I’m looking forward to hearing all about what you have to do.

LANCE: There are some interesting stories, but I don’t know that you’re going to hear all of those.

BEN: True. I think we probably need to do more golfing and maybe…

TONY: Let’s just leave it at golf.

BEN: We’ll leave it right there. Okay, good. So where do you start? Where do you come from?

LANCE: Well, I can’t start without talking about when I was born.

BEN: Okay, let’s do it.

LANCE: So my parents got pregnant with me when they’re in high school. And wow, with nothing and immediately got married. My dad stopped High School, has good jobs and brought us out of what could have been very difficult circumstances. 

BEN: And when you say high school what age can I have? 

LANCE: Seniors.

BEN: Senior, so like 16? 

LANCE: Yeah, Mama 17, just turned 18 when I was born and my father was a pieces few months older than her so All right. Yeah. So that was how it started. So while I was very little, certainly have heard the stories and remember being in very tight financial circumstances, let’s put it that way.

BEN: Right. So were there times in your life when you’re younger, where you’re just like, man, I really wish I could have bla bla bla, but your parents like, hey, we just don’t have the money for that. We got to keep the strings tight. 

TONY: I would love to have some food. 

BEN: We start right from the feet. 

LANCE: Nah. Yeah. Not not having any foods. Yeah, we had what…

BEN: You’d like to have get maybe a nice steak or whatever it is when your kid right? 

LANCE: That’s right. So anyway, that’s been very impactful on my attitude about things right sitting where my parents are started.

BEN: Are you saying that you had more conservative nature? Like you just like you wanted to save a little bit more? Or you want to?

LANCE: No I don’t know, I just think that learning that if you work hard, even when things don’t look like they’re going to turn out well, they will. So and it’s, you know, we all faced with things that aren’t easy. So powering through them, I think has more value than just getting on the other side of it. 

BEN: Brothers and sisters, did you…

LANCE: Have a sister that’s four years younger than me and a brother 13 years. 

BEN: So there are three of you yet cause when we talk about it, we have six in our family that just like we don’t have the dough to do that. And so we started to understand that pretty pretty darn quickly. So, so you’re born to a high school sweethearts. And you’re going along, you’re starting to figure out some things in life and maybe it’s not as easy as you thought funny. 

LANCE: Yeah. So that, you know, I was little so I wouldn’t, but it has, I think influenced my attitude about things. Don’t of course take things too seriously. Okay, so I would say probably my sister was five or six, I was nine or 10. You know, finally my parents started to have some financial success. So things got a little easier that way.

BEN: And your parents, what were they doing?

LANCE: Mom was studying to be a nurse. So she got her degree, working part time jobs while doing that. My dad worked several jobs but then got in the insurance business. That was kind of his you know, getting out of nine to fiver part time jobs into a career. 

BEN: Gotcha. Okay.

LANCE: So property and casualty insurance first, which is like homeowners and car insurance, things like that. Gotcha. And then kind of evolved to more life insurance, things, you know, more planning oriented.

BEN: And he started have some success and helping people get through that. People probably started coming back to him as well for multiple lines.

LANCE: Yeah, yep. That’s got to kind of get started and he got into management. That’s long story but dad left management to get into personal production. And that’s kind of when I was in late high school, early college, and he was in personal production when I came home from Ball State chirp, chirp. 

BEN: Chirp, chirp. 

LANCE: After meeting my wife…

TONY: So what did your parents think about you going to college? Did they go to college? 

LANCE: No, no, no. Dad got his GED three years after I was born. I think Mom finished high school.

BEN: So really pushing to get you into college and probably

LANCE: Fully supportive of it. I don’t know that they would push me but yeah, I was. I had the means mentally to do it. They paid for the tuition. I had to pay for everything else of it. But it worked out. Worked out well. I worked through college and I think that probably helped me to…

BEN: Have some life lessons, right?

LANCE: Yeah. 

BEN: Didn’t have a ton of money when you’re growing up, but you’re working through college, you’re starting to feel kind of, hey, I got to put some hard work into this and get myself through it. It’s gonna mean something. Yeah, that’s good. So then you’re you’re about ready to graduate college unless there was something else influential in college?

LANCE: Two important things. One, I went to college to be a math teacher and a basketball coach, because I played basketball.

BEN: I look like a basketball coach today. I would just like change the cloth. It’s even with that you’re good to go.

LANCE: Although I probably have red on trips, anyway. So I had no money, I just decided. I knew teachers didn’t make a lot although admire at what they do very much. And I hope to be a professor when I retired from work, but having said that, I met Julie. Oh, my wife in college, so can’t leave that part out.

BEN: Okay. Yeah. So did she help guide you and you know, through college…

LANCE: Just love her and we’re together. We knew we’re going to be so it made everything easier, became easier to grow up. Let’s put it that way.

BEN: I think your wife, my sister probably helped you grow up a little bit to their Tony, right?

TONY: I’m completely grown up.

BEN: That’s great. So you get out of college, but he had some I’ll say ish ish ish. Gotcha. So getting out of college.

LANCE: Yeah, she was here behind me. We’re same age, but two year behind me. I wasn’t about to leave her there. So did some negotiating with pops to pay for my MBA, so I could stay up there while she was there.

BEN: Weren’t you just complaining about paying for your son’s extra two months at school?

LANCE: No.

BEN: Oh, we may have to cut that. We’re gonna start with…

LANCE: My daughter’s five extra bucks last year, which couldn’t be there because it COVID.

BEN: Oh, that’s fair, though. That’s fair. I think so. We had the same comments here. It’s just like we’re paying for this private school and they’re not even go in there and get…

LANCE: I can relate. I have four children. Hope to tell you about them later. But see, where was he about ready to get out? Yeah. So I was stay stopped by MBA. But Julie graduated. I still had my summer school and a semester left. So I was going part time when we moved to Indy finishing School. So I worked part time for my dad, again, in the life insurance business at that point, and that’s when I got into the industry.

BEN: Gotcha. And so did you What would you learn, like being in the life insurance industry because that’s from what I understand, it’s pretty hard route to go..

LANCE: It is, it’s like anything, it’s difficult until you get over the hump. And then it becomes less difficult and more about what you’re doing for people, how you enjoy it, how you’re helping people. And so he was very successful by then. So I was just administrative till I got my degree, and then start to put together a resume and he approached me about coming home full time. So I always take the path of least resistance.

BEN: So you kind of, for lack of better words, he kind of fell into it, but that’s fair. It seems like you might have enjoyed it cause you were there for a while.

LANCE: Yeah, really what I did for him, really suited me. It’s kind of advanced tax planning stuff. I’m a little bit of an egghead so I really enjoyed it. I found it very shallow.

BEN: Who doesn’t like tax planning? Come on. Hey, well, Tony’s like I just did my taxes.

TONY: This is May 17th, 2021 Tax Day. Yeah, favorite, favorite of mine.

BEN: Favorite day? What do you have like 500k ones? Yeah, to get in and all other fun stuff. 

TONY: It’s like K twos and K threes or something.

LANCE: And I’ve had 500 phone calls and emails looking for their K-ones.

TONY: Oh, yeah. That’s right. All his investments. Yeah. They get a report back to the text to the prepare to pay the taxman, Uncle Sam that is.

BEN: Yes, exactly. And so you’ve had this chance to do some of this egg head tax plan. Yeah, I liked it.

LANCE: Kind of found my niche. Had a roll was bringing value to announce get started having kids was great. Unfortunately, the next kind of big hurdle overcome my dad was ill and couldn’t work for a couple years. So I had to start kind of to take things over. And so instead of being the egghead, advanced sales guy, I had to be going out and start hustling up business, right? Had to prospecting, finding new clients and all that. Didn’t like that part. That’s hard.

BEN: And now you probably appreciate it your dad a little bit more too right? And what we’re gonna say, Tony, you’re about ready say something.

TONY: I’m just trying to figure out where, where he learned how to golf to, you know, to do the prospecting?.

LANCE: Well, didn’t start until after I got to that next phase.

BEN: Gotcha. Gotcha. So you’re out there prospecting, probably hearing a lot of nose right in that whole thing is you got to get through nine noes or whatever to get to the 10th one. 

LANCE: A lot more than it was in is fun.

BEN: Yes. Okay. So you’re doing that, you understand that that’s not really all aligned with who you are. But what do you, do you have to take over because your dad, your dad’s cut on the sideline?

LANCE: Yeah, yep. So changed. So I can’t do this. So I got my CFP CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING designation, which is a big deal, I think. And then change from the broker-dealer, which is how investment people get, bring the market to their clients to an independent broker-dealer, I started my own branch, financial planning oriented, as opposed to just insurance focus.

BEN: So from financial planning, maybe a lot of people don’t understand this, I just want to make it accessible to them. You’re sitting there asking them a lot of questions, right? What do you want to do with your life? You know, when do you want to retire? Do you want your kids to go to Harvard? Or would you like them to go to someplace else? And,  you’re putting all those numbers together for them, right? And then once you put that together, you say, Hey, here’s how we invest your money, right?

LANCE: Well, I might say a different way. I think the first thing that I always thought was he was let’s figure out where you’re at. Right? Don’t you know, if you’re not honest with me, you’re hurting yourself. So let’s figure out where you’re at. And then think about where you’d like to be and let’s be realistic about it. Right? And then, then the plan, part of which is investing, but not exclusively, is getting from where you’re at now to where you’d like to be. And so, sometimes where people, where they are now, isn’t gonna get them there. So I have these foundational things. You can’t do a financial plan to you do three things. You have to know where your money’s coming from and how much it is.

BEN: We’re releasing a podcast actually, in two days. Okay. Tomorrow, tomorrow morning.

TONY: Okay, so you’re telling me where my money’s coming from?

LANCE: And then you have to know what you spend each month right? And so if you’re not making as much as you’re spending, you’re done. Come talk to me later. Because you there’s there’s nothing you can do.

TONY: Well, that was a painful thing for me and your sister to go through. Oh, isn’t it? We started me with him. And he’s like, Well, how much do you guys spend a month of like…

BEN: on Vegas?

TONY: Everything before Vegas was a big thing. I mean, Vegas is a big thing. But I mean for us, but though is like how much do you spend on food? How much do you spend on housing? How much do you spend on utilities? How much you spend on fun stuff eating? Like, I’m like, I don’t know. I never wrote. So we had to spread a lot of spreadsheet and tracking. I was like, holy crap, we spend that much on going out to eat, or whatever, you know, like the thing was like, it’s truly mind blowing for people who don’t track it to like see it and have them. So that would that is a key building block. That was very helpful to us. And Lance was like, what in the heck are you doing? Well, no, he never, ever said that. He never said.

BEN: Well, you know, the thing is, is with the podcast that’s coming out tomorrow, I talked about a little bit like losing weight, you have to track every calorie to make sure that you’re under your total calorie consumption for the day. It’s like, your total calorie consumption is how much do you make, and you need to make sure it’s underneath that and you need to track it. And what’s the number one thing you probably hear when people track it?

LANCE: When they do track it? The number one thing I hear is they hate track again.

BEN: Yeah. Yeah. But I’m saying after they get done tracking it, the one thing that I usually heard was, I never knew I spent that much on

TONY: Starbucks

BEN: or going out to eat like you just said, right? And you hear that a lot, right?

LANCE: Yeah, I think it… I don’t know that it surprises them, I just think it causes them to maybe pick some different priorities. You know, and it’s a hard thing. Sure. People like go to Starbucks on the way to work. Sure. They pick an anecdote. It doesn’t really matter, right? But if that’s causing you to go more into debt, right, I agree. You’re spending more than you’re making,t’s coming from something where typically as credit cards, yep. Right? So more debt is not good. It’s just when you’re realize you’re digging a hole, you got to throw the shovel away. Right?

BEN: Amen to that.

TONY: I thought you had to spend money to make money. That’s an investment. That’s about right now. So you were up, Sorry, I interrupted you, we’re in a three…

LANCE: Yeah, three things. Two you have to have a reserve, you have to have cash in the bank that you don’t touch. Right. And that’s hard thing to do. But you got to get emergency fund. I don’t care what it is but you got to have it. And you got to add a little bit to it every month.

TONY: Because there’s some weird statistic about 400 bucks people can’t afford, like 80% of Americans can’t afford a $400. But I’m making that 80%. But it’s probably pretty big. Yeah. I don’t know what the statistic is. 400 I mean, a car repair is going to be, can be over for a water heater to me 400 bucks. Yeah, yeah.

LANCE: Well, if you can’t, then you’re going to do what you shouldn’t do and that’s a third thing, no credit card debt, right? So if you can’t afford $400, 1000, or whatever it is in your life, you got to have the cash there. Because if you don’t, you’re never going to get rid of credit card debt. Exactly. And you can’t start your plan to build on your foundation of knowing what you making what you spend, having a cash reserve an emergency fund and havi ng no credit card debt. Right? Yeah, go beyond that until you have those things.

BEN: So I know Lance doesn’t know me very well, but my wife who you just met upstairs. She had credit card debt and I said, There’s no way I’m marrying anybody with credit card debt. Okay, I was young, stupid. You could call me any…

TONY: Worst meeting ever got.

BEN: Exactly. what she said, Stop putting me down and tell me how to get out of this. And so I’d said, Hey, read these three books, because they were kind of anecdotal. They were talking in just nice stories. And understand that credit card debt needs to come off. And she did. I think it was a month and a half, she got rid of like $3,000 worth of credit card debt. I was like, Whoa, she’s a keeper.

LANCE: And she could cook. That’s Wow, there’s lots of ways to work yourself out of it. That’s not, but until you know, you make what you spin. Right? Have the second be lower than the first? Yes, yes, yes. And you have a cash reserve, then you’re never gonna get the credit card debt paid off. And that’s, that’s easy. It can be at any scale, right? It can be making $500 a month, it can be making $20,000 a month. That same logic, that same foundation applies, in my opinion.

BEN: So you got these three foundation, you’re trying to do the prospecting because your dad’s on the sideline. And so kind of what happens at that point in time?

LANCE: So that’s the current I know, we got kind of I know, we’re kind of jumping ahead. It’s fine. It’s fine. That’s fine. So you know, you have to know what your financial statements look like. That’s why I just Yeah, as an income statement, sorry about the jargon, income expenses, exactly what your balance sheet looks like, you know what assets you have, what liabilities you have, you can’t have any of those bad ones credit card debt. That doesn’t include a mortgage or car payment, you need to live someplace, you know, you have to drive a car.. But bad debts or bad debts. So financial statements is the first part of a financial plan. The second is planning for an objective, often retirement planning, sometimes college education, planning, whatever it is getting enough down payment to buy your first house, whatever it is. So that’s the kind of the planning for an objective. Third is avoiding risk. So this is where insurance comes in. You know, the government makes you have car insurance to get a driver’s license. Sure, right. Yeah, your mortgage company is gonna make you have homeowners insurance for for that. So there’s some insurance you have to have, right? Then from there, every circumstance is different. Then there’s investments, right? So that’s the third part or fourth part. So having an investment strategy that fits your…

BEN: Goals, current situation, what you want to do. That’s right, all that stuff.

TONY: Risk tolerance.

LANCE: I have a really good quote here that everybody will remember in a minute. And the fifth part finishing mine is estate planning that’s thinking about what happens to what you have when you’re no longer with us. I just set up right for your kids and for so that’s financial planning.

BEN: I’m living forever. How about you Tony?

TONY: I hope to but not sure my body is set up for that.

BEN: And I think is it are we just talking yesterday that the longest living individual is 122 years old? And more we talking about?

TONY: We’re having this conversation last night at dinner with the kids and yeah, I think there was some code about they think that the person who the first person is gonna live to 200 already been born.

BEN: Right. But isn’t their one that… 

LANCE: There’s a better you good financial planning. 

BEN: Well, that’s a great point is because as ages, you know, continue to to, you know, your longevity continues to grow, that your money needs to grow with it and so that’s very important. But I want to get back to your story. So yeah, dad is on, like I said on the sideline, you’re prospecting, doing some other stuff, what kind of happens then?

LANCE: Also, I changed my focus, financial planning, investing money, as part of that. So I had a client base, right, the insurance clients that we had. It wasn’t like I had the prospect for those, I just had to go communicate to them what I’m doing now. So that was a good way to get started. Changed. broker-dealer, that’s, again, how we bring the financial markets to our clients, to an independent firm called financial started my own branch. My brother-in-law worked with me, for me, during this process, my father came back to work, work there, and my brother worked for us. And we had three staff people. So we had a pretty good practice for…

BEN: Three of you three staff, moves from, you know, making trades and everything to actually helping people plan and working through with it. And you’ve got a pretty good business going on. And everything’s rosy, right?

LANCE: Nothing’s ever fully rosy. 

BEN: Hey, man, I know, it’s a family thing and we’re not saying anything bad…

LANCE: The family part was good. Honestly, it was blessed to be able to work with the family. We’re really never, I was the boss. That was never any question about that. So we, the little disagreements never really happened. We all have differing opinions. Now, but my responsibility was running the business, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as giving financial advice to people. 

BEN: It’s different, very different. 

LANCE: And I was in charge of compliance, which in our world, we have to be careful what we do have to do the right thing. Give advice, it’s in client’s best interest, that’s our calling. So not only do you have to do that, you have to prove it. So that’s what you call compliance. 

BEN: And that’s fun, right? 

LANCE: I don’t mind being compliant. I just don’t like monitoring other people’s compliance. So those two things running the company doing payroll, signing leases, you know, all the stuff I’ve got, I didn’t like that. And I don’t like doing a compliant. So I changed and joined where I’m at currently. So now I’m just an employee. I’m a minion.

BEN: Shuck. You don’t have to fill out all the payroll returns, the 940 ones and the blah blah blah.

LANCE: Bingo! And so I was making a lot less, but I have a lot more time. So if you’re interested in why I made a decision, I’d tell you.

BEN: Tell us. 

LANCE: So it’s Thanksgiving week, we’re in Florida, Julie and I, we both just turned 50. In September, very stressful. My old, you know, everything associated with being a financial adviser and a business compliance, I’m not very happy person at that point. And so it was very simple. She’s just said, why you stress and I just said, I don’t I’m just stressed about work. I can’t do it. 

BEN: You have too many balls and you’re just kind of like, man…

LANCE: Why don’t you change? And it really never occurred to me. 

BEN: And you have this beautiful, very intelligent wife who sits here and says, why don’t you change? 

LANCE: So I said, well, okay, so I started looking into it. And I guess nine months later, I had changed. 

BEN: So nice. And that’s how you moved over to…

LANCE: Completely open book, I flipped immediately let my other team know they were welcomed to come with me. 

BEN: And so did your dad and your brother go with you too? 

LANCE: No, I stay with my brother-in-law, who’s now doing the things that I love so much doing.

BEN: Okay, so a big decision. I’m sure it was probably incredibly stressful. Yes, no? it was kind of great but it was also probably, oh, I’m you know, I’m working with my dad and working with my brother and now I’m splitting off and kind of go a little bit of my own way.

LANCE: Honestly, no. There was a lot of work. There’s a lot of little things that had to be done. So for four or five months, the minutiae of doing transition turn. Yeah, I was. I had a little advisory board my buddies slash clients, Tony was part of that. You can relate to what I was going through. But yeah, I made a decision. I was completely confident was the right one. I still am. But yeah, it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t stressful. 

TONY: How was it when you announced to your dad, your brother in law and said, hey, dude, I’m going this way?

LANCE: No, that was not an announcement, it was a process. So they do. I told him. Eric said, well, I’ll take over and  I said, well, you really can’t unless you become the OSG inside baseball. So they were fully in the loop, they knew I was talking to, I had two offers that would take just me or my whole team. They both went with me. We had the offer. I said, I’m going here, they said that we’re going to stay. No problem. Thanksgiving was very comfortable.

BEN: Excellent. Well, congratulations. So,you had this big decision, he went ahead and made it and now you’re doing the same thing and enjoying it. Yeah. So your path is actually relatively straight. I mean, you got into insurance, you made kind of a little jag and you’re kind of went into, you know, wealth management or financial advising and you’ve been there for how many years now?

LANCE: Three years. Next week.

BEN: Oh, three years? Oh, thought this was something that happened, like ten years ago?

LANCE: No. So I was 50. We made the call to just under a year to do it. So…

BEN: Wow. And I think we were talking about a story. Can we talk a little bit about the story when he came over and did some of the money and the fake money and…

TONY: Fake money? He’s not a counterfeiter. Yeah. But he did play one in. No. So yeah, well, he’s been doing our stuff and when our kids started getting through the high school age and get ready for college, we were looking at, hey, you know, there’s a real problem with adults not teaching their kids about money. Some of it is the adults don’t know. Right? Like you talked about, like, they’re spending more than they make. They don’t even know about that. They got credit card debt, they, and it’s almost taboo. Let’s not talk about money, some talk about this stuff. And so he was like, hey, look, you really need to talk to your kids, because you’re doing well now. But your kids don’t know, you may not know what’s going on. I’m like, Hey, come over. So he spent a couple hours teaching our kids about, oh, different stuff, you know, just money. And where do you invest, what kind of investments are there, whether stocks, there’s bonds, there’s real estate, there’s the bank, you know, put it in there. So he comes over, he pulls out, he opens up his briefcase, he pulls out the stacks of probably $100 bills, and each one right, bang, bang, bang is stacking them all up. My kids are just like looking at like, it’s, you know, it’s $1 bill on the top of the bottom later, they found out was just paper in the middle. It wasn’t actual stacks. But he was like moving money around and showing them well, if you invested this here, and here’s how much this is and what does this mean, when stuff compounds? What is it it grows? And so that he’s so yeah, it’s funny, because each of my kids and looked at it in there, like, he’s like, okay, I said, you guys have some college money set aside, you guys have to invest some of it. And so you got to work with Mr. Lyday and tell him what you want to do.

BEN: So how did you view that whole experience with his kids? I’ve done it before. So And what’s kind of like your setup, what’s kind of happens? What are some of the interesting outcomes that you see? Is there some insights you can give us because I find this fascinating? I’m sure you probably know this, but parents are actually more likely to talk to their kids about s-e-x than they are to talk about money, which to me just blows my mind.

LANCE: I don’t think it’s hard to believe, they know more about s-e-x.

BEN: That’s a good one. Okay. We might have cut that, but that’s not his fault. That’s mine.

TONY: Talk about m-o-n-e-y.

BEN: Oh, that’s right. M-o-n-e-y. Yes. So what did you What did your parents are more apt? Part one was really fun for me because I got to learn some of the history and background of Lance Lyday. From his parents being high school sweethearts to the fact that there was actually money troubles in the family early on. But he followed his path which had twists and turns, and he reached for his goal of being a financial advisor. I want you to stay with us for part two, because he’s going to drop some interesting information about some of the lessons he’s learned in a very simple way that could be applied to your own financial situation. So thanks for being here. Don’t forget to subscribe, like and comment on the podcast and come back next time for part two with Lance Lyday.