Advisor Advice Part 1

CASH KID

Want some advice? You'll find it in this episode where we interview Financial Advisor Jon Cunningham on best practices to teach kids financial skills and tips to start investing early. Don't miss out! This episode is especially great for parents and kids to listen together. This is a two part series so stay tuned! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Advisor Advice Part 1

Welcome back to another episode of the Cash Kid Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit our site at cashkidpodcast.com for more resources and links to past episodes. Follow us on Instagram as well. We are so excited to continue to see this audience grow. It’s my belief we can help build a generation of cash kids that’s know how to manage, invest, and grow their money. And our guest today, will give us some tips to help get us there.

The Cash Kid Podcast is underway.

(music)

Intro tease:

So you’ve got some cash. Maybe from an allowance, or that money your grandma gave you for your 7th birthday (Here you go sweetie.) Thanks grandma.

Whatever it is, what are you going to do with it? Spend it, hide it away… or maybe invest it? Let’s start learning how to make that money grow.

Time to learn how to be a cash kid. (cash register)

My guest joining me today is Mr. Jon Cunningham with Cunningham Financial Group. Mr. Cunningham, or Mr. Jon, as I like to call him, is a financial advisor and considers his clients, partners in creating financial success. He has also been super helpful in answering some of my questions about the stock market and finances. So we're going to cover a few topics with him about how kids can prepare to invest later and be smart investors.

Cash Kid - Mr. Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon - Thanks for having me.

Cash Kid - First off, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jon - Sure. Well, first, just personally, my name is Jon Cunningham, and I'm married to my wife, Ann. And we have three kids, Wes, Grant, and Charlotte, and actually one on the way that's due sometime in October. Professionally, I'm the managing member of the Cunningham Financial Group. We began in August 1st of 2011 and have grown the practice ever since.

We have locations in Birmingham, Alabama, and in Florence, Alabama, and just outside of Nashville and the town Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and presently have about a little over 2000 clients throughout the country. And we're licensed in about 29 different states. So it's a great practice.

Cash Kid - That's great. So what led you to having a career as a financial advisor?

Jon - Yeah, you know, it's something that I always had an interest in, whether it be everything from just earning money to saving it to investing. And I always had an interest in the stock market. And actually what's interesting, I entered in college hoping to be an accountant and was an accounting major initially and quickly realized that was not the area of finance that I really wanted to focus.

You know what's funny? It took a class with a a professor, he’s my favorite professor. His name is Dr. Moron, actually, but a fantastic teacher and and taught me to really love and understand numbers. And so from there I wanted to focus on finance and so quickly took on multiple internships with multiple firms and in different areas of focus and quickly began actually growing the client base as an intern with the company in my junior year of college.

Cash Kid - What do you think is the biggest misconception for adults in managing finances?

Jon - Yeah, that's a great question. What I kind of find with working with prospective clients and really adults is they look at their 401K as similar to what's called a pension plan. And so people like my parents worked for companies and then their parents worked for companies and they worked at companies like Alabama Power for ten, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

And that generation of client an employee had what's called a pension plan. And what that basically means is if you're going to work for a company for your entire career and when you retire, you have a pool of money and a pension that's going to pay you an income for the rest of your life no matter how long you live.

And that gave retirees a lot of peace of mind. Well, those plans aren't necessarily available or not as often available to people that your parents age or even my parents age. And they have what's called a 401k, which is an investment account that's provided by by most employers. And it's just a employer sponsored plan that provides an avenue for an employee to save and invest money for for retirement purposes.

And often people look at that and they think, hey, this could be like my pension. I'm going to put money in this plan and I'm going to save money my entire career. And whatever's there is going to last the entirety of my life. But oftentimes there's not quite enough. And often, too, they forget about taxation because all that money that you put in a 401k, you've never paid taxes on that money before.

But when you pull it out in retirement, that's when you start taking the tax and paying taxes on withdrawals as you're spending down that money for retirement. And oftentimes there's not enough money there to last a lifetime.

Cash Kid - Do you think some of the trouble is because they don't know where to start or they weren't taught financial skills at a young age?

Jon - Potentially, Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things that kind of go to that point about older generations. There's not always been a lot of transparency when it comes to comes to finances. And oftentimes older generations didn't discuss even how much money they made or what a credit card was or what a checking account was or what a credit score and all those types of things.

So I think oftentimes what I kind of see is most clients just weren't taught at a young age, just the basic principles of of finance. So I think that can play into it for sure.

Cash Kid - Yes. So what are your thoughts about the importance of kids being presented and taught more financial literacy at a young age?

Jon - Yeah, that's a great question, Cash Kid. I think it's very important for for kids at a young age to form good financial habits and to form muscle memory. What I mean by that is when you look at the amount of money that you might be bringing in, whether it be from your allowance or it might be from a lawn business or some sort of employment where you're making an income. It's really important to look at that income in different categories because you worked really hard for that money.

And it's important that, you know, some of it spent for fun. You know, you're going to enjoy life. I'm going to go to movies or ballgames or go out to eat with friends or whatever. So a portion of money should be earmarked for for spending. But then, of course, some should be earmarked for for giving, you know, at your local church or charity.

A portion should be set aside for savings for a rainy day for the future. And then also a portion should be set aside for investing. Those four categories giving, saving, investing and spending. You know, those are the same categories that you're going to live within as you age, just as you get older, hopefully you're making more and more money and you have bigger pools of money to work with.

But I think if you can form that habit, even at your age, that those are qualities and traits that will be transferable throughout life.

Cash Kid: Great advice Mr. Jon! We’re going to pause our interview there for today as he had such great tips to share, we had to split it between two episodes. We try to keep our episodes shorter for our audiences attention span….uh umm… no offense, I’m speaking to myself too…hahaha.

(music)

Alright, that wraps up this episode. Part 2 of Mr. Jon Cunningham’s interview in our next episode. He’ll discuss ways you can help kids start investing now. Don’t forget to check out our website at Cashkidpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram. Cash Kid, out!

Disclaimer:

The information presented represents the views and opinions of the guests. This show does not intend to provide personal investment advice through this podcast. This content has been made for informational and educational purposes only. To make a full and informed investment decision, we advise you to speak with a financial advisor and for kids, definitely your parents first before investing.

Jon Cunningham, Cunningham Financial Group

https://www.cunninghamfinancialgroup.com/