Meeting in Person, FinCon, & Celebrating 50 Episodes

​​The Childfree Wealth Podcast, hosted by Bri Conn and Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®, is a financial and lifestyle podcast that explores the unique perspectives and concerns of childfree individuals and couples. In this episode, Bri & Dr. Jay celebrate 50 episodes, recap FinCon, & discuss meeting in person for the first time.

You’ll hear about their experience at FinCon, a conference for financial content creators, & what it was like to meet in person for the first time. They dig deep touching on moments of disagreement, personal growth, and the passion they invest in helping childfree individuals navigate their finances. Listen as they discuss the unique aspects of childfree finances often overlooked in traditional financial planning, challenging the existing narrative.

Resources:

• FinCon
• This is Not Financial Advice

Connect with Us:

Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Transcript

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Dr. Jay

Hi Childfree Wealth listeners, today is a I don't know, landmark, I guess for us it's our 50th episode. Actually, I've done 50 episodesish and Bri's done, you know, like half of those.

Bri

37 I think.

Dr. Jay

Bri’s in the relaunch and we've taken turns by this 50th episode. What started off as Childfree Life and Money became the Childfree Wealth podcast.

And we thought we'd take you a little behind the scenes. Kind of talk about where we got here or who we are. A little bit of that. We first actually recorded this episode, at FinCon, which is a conference for financial nerds, the influencers, all that. And the audio was so bad that we get to do it again.

We were trying to get to a live show, but turns out I do not know the technology well enough or Bri doesn't. I don't know which one of us, though, that didn't work.

Bri

Yeah, well, you would not want to listen to it. The background noise was so loud.

Dr. Jay

But here's the thing. I think I was actually the first time Bri and I met in person. We've been working together for most of a year in different ways, and we… my company is designed to be remote. Everybody works wherever. I'm in Mississippi. She's somewhere in the Midwest. And we had never actually met. So it was our first time meeting in person.

So, Bri, what do you think about meeting a person? Okay. Like she's laughing at me already. Like, I can't even get the question out.

Bri

I don't know. Like, it's just very different when you meet somebody in person after you've seen them on a screen for months and months and months, and you're like, “Oh, I have this idea in my head.” And then you're like, “Oh, are they going to like, are they going to match that or are they not?” And yeah.

Dr. Jay

So that I imagine not. Did I catfish this? Yeah. I mean, like, is that what you're saying now?

Bri

You're much quieter in person, which I think would surprise a lot of people because you're not like you don't come across that way at all. But then, yeah, meeting you in person, you're substantially quieter than I expected.

Dr. Jay

What the heck does that mean?

Bri

Well, the whole introvert thing. Yeah, we are in the same room together and he's like, Oh, I saw you earlier. I saw the back of your head, and then you went off and were talking to somebody.

Dr. Jay

What do you want me to do, jump over the aisles and say, “Hi.”

Bri

I don't know. I'm it was just different. Like, I don't know. It's very different because, you know, all we see each other is like elbows up, basically. And then we're like, oh, actually in person. Like, you are a real person. I can see you. I don't know.

Dr. Jay

Yeah, by the way. So like, for most of the year, Bri's wife thought I wasn't a real person. At least she figured out I'm a real person. But, like, see, here's what you're missing Bri. I had said early on that you're an extrovert. You didn't believe me. Here's the difference in introverts & extroverts. Introverts, turn it on, they'll do their thing, and then they want to go into a little hole.

And I actually had a problem, I think. I mean, I had a real serious kind of almost anxiety attack. All the social networking was in the middle of the… all the trade floor, and it was all out. It's all many people like I'm good with a couple people, two or three people having a conversation. There's always like way too many to the point where I had to like go hide for a little bit.

It was in New Orleans. So what do you expect? A whole bunch of people being loud and obnoxious. But the introvert nature is, Hey, we turn it on when we have it, and then we have to go recharge. You were just like always on, bouncing off, blah blah. Like she's like all over the place in all these parties. And I'm like, Cool. That's a skill you have that I do not have. Is that fair?

Bri

Yes and no. Like, I went up to my room a couple of times between things going to be like, okay, I just need to sit here in silence for 10 minutes and then go back out. Yes, I was definitely out more than you are for sure, especially despite even the times we like went to bed. Mine was not never before midnight.

Dr. Jay

I was asleep by nine. Okay. But that’s maybe because I’m old. But I actually had somebody I ran into at the conference and I saw him one day. We got to know each other and then I hadn’t seen him for two days. I saw him then I'm like, What happened? He's like, Yeah. Me and some friends went out a little too hard and I lost yesterday. I was like okay! We were two, three blocks on Bourbon Street. So, you know, right in the party.

I want to reflect on FinCon, but also where we’ve been as a podcast. If you're looking for this episode to be one of those with a message to teach you, this is not going to be the one. This was just going to be us talking about what it's like to talk about childfree finances and in the community.

One of my ahas from the conference was there actually were a lot of childfree folks doing financial like influencer type stuff, making content, but they're not talking about them. Besides the childfree. Did you see that?

Bri

Yeah, there's a quite a few that I follow who are childfree, but just don't really talk about it. And I think part of it too is like it's not really a thought how it's different until you realize it's not a thought on like how it's different. Somebody had asked me because they're like, Oh yeah, you're speaking on Friday.

I was like, That's not me. That's Dr. Jay. And they're like, Oh, well, did you start it? I was like, No. And honestly, like, I won't have not because I don't like the work, because I actually really enjoy it, but simply because I never would have thought about it and thought about the differences.

Dr. Jay

So I'm wearing a shirt that says Childfree Wealth on it and I'm in the elevator and these three women are there. They go, they read the shirt. They go, Oh, that's a great idea. I'm like, Huh? You know, between us we have 14 kids, literally the three of them. And I'm like, well, at least it just brought the average down in this elevator.

You know, they were like, Oh yeah. But they were like, Yep, in hindsight. And I did a session on What is it like to be childfree in childfree finances? And we will air that later on. We get we're waiting for the audio and the video to come through. And I talked to an audience about childfree finances.

By pure luck, the whole audience, I mean, 95% of it was childfree folks. And I started talking about the differences and dying with zero and not retiring and long term care. And I and they were like, I never thought about… and they're just like literally going, they're financial gurus. And like, I never thought about how much it changes.

And then I'm also they're like, okay, now I've shown it to you and they're like, they kind of do the same thing Bri just did. They were like, Why did I ever think of that? And what it is, is all of the financial stuff has kids so built in that it's like you just can't see it. Like you're watching, walking around the vendor hall, the software all has a built it be structures that whatever and my favorite was the people trying to sell me software to get my clients to take on more debt. That was funny. That just ain’t happening. But like, yeah, all these things about the debt and student loans and saving for college and family structures and other things. They all have it, built in.

Somebody told me… I had asked for advice because I was wondering how to get the message out better and how to get on podcasts & other things. Somebody said to me the other day, “I think you're just ahead of the curve.” And I'm like, “How? Like, there's 25% of the US that is childfree. How can we be so far ahead?”

And just for context, these are all the finfluencers. If we named them off, you'd recognize them. Are we just that far ahead or what am I missing?

Bri

I think for the longest time, finances has always been, you do it this way, you do it this way. Like learn from your parents. Why didn’t we learn this in school and different things like that. When you start learning, there's not a lot of information out there asking you about your life. And to be fair, I don't think that even like my parents necessarily thought about what do I want from my life? Not, what do my parents want for my life?

That can be hard because if you are following the Standard Life plan, like living the life that your parents want you to have, then you're not necessarily going to be thinking about what it is that you want to have & coming up with different ideas & how things can change.

Dr. Jay

It's almost like we're completely overlooked and part of it is we don't have data. So I went and there's all these networking meetings you, me with all these like big brands and stuff. And I met with this group that does financial research. So this big group. They have lots of money. It's an endowment doing research.

And I said to them said, Hey, if you look at childfree folks at all and the person I speaking to first is actually childfree, and he's like, Nope, we haven't. I was like, okay, your research is informing financial education, so look at it. They’re kind of like, what? So I'm at this breakfast meeting and there's another person, the organization there, they said, Well, we asked a question about do you have dependents?

He said, well, we look at dependents. I said, well, dependents. The question of “Do you have a kid in the house that's dependent on it?” And he goes, “Yes, that's childfree.” I'm like, “No, like that's different.” That's do you have a kid in the house job for you? You don't have kids. You know, I'm kids and we went around and around and around and he said, well, we ask, do you have dependent? That's good enough.

But his argument was, I don't think there's enough childfree folks to actually look at the data. And by the way, go ahead and say that to me & watch like the steam just started rolling off my head. I'm like, it's 25% of the data. Okay, like there's enough that he's like, well, we started nerding out for a second, but then I got in there, I said, It's kind of like the gender question.

You've changed your gender question over time, or does it just say male, female? Because no is, as you know, a spectrum said cool and say, be my kids. Do you have kids? Are they in the house? Are you ever going to have kids? Do you ever plan on having kids? And he goes, I think we could do that. And I met one of their bosses and I walked in.

This was like my project for the whole week. And by the end I think they're least looking at it. And my point was, if we can get data that starts looking at childfree versus not, we can actually start looking at like they're doing a study on are people… Do people trust banks and retirement and other things and we can actually see some data.

The other one there, though, is he got in my face a little bit and he's like, look, we're asking about now state. And I'm like, yes, your point. And he's like, well, childfree is not a now state. I said, “Oh, yes, it is. Because we don’t have kids and we're not planning on having them,” he says, “Well…” but it he started to kind of go like, well, what if you change your mind routine and you want to see me really get mad? Go ahead and pull that one out.

Bri

Oh yeah, I’ve seen that.

Dr. Jay

You've got to honor our life. Whether it's choice or not doesn't matter. We're not having kids ever. Don't make an assumption we're going to change. And it's kind of like a moment. And it's funny because he has kids and one of the other people didn't have kids and the person who was childfree is like nodding going, Uh huh. And I'm like, Come on.

So I'm over here. Like, I'm losing my mind about one question on a research study. But the reason is it's representation, because if they start asking the question about us, then we exist now. Now, Bri said I was quiet. I was not quiet then.

Bri

Oh yeah. Yeah. When you got fired up a couple of times, I saw you were like… very like, I don't know.

Dr. Jay

Don't light the fuze.

Bri

Yeah.

Dr. Jay

I'm watching out for my people in my mind. And if I want to, like I'm. It's the only thing I. I succeeded in doing was getting a question added to a survey. I would consider that a huge success. What do you think, Bri? I mean, is it worth the fight? I mean, should we be having these discussions? I mean, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just off on my own little land.

Bri

I don't think that anything was wrong with having conversation & discussion, because it's really helpful to learn from other people. And I mean, life is different. And just asking those things and like having a good, thoughtful conversation between the two is helpful. I'm much more like we had an instance at the conference where somebody came up and was talking to us and I was much more just like, okay, yeah, you know, we'll converse.

Dr. Jay

Okay. They were crazy.

Bri

They were not.

Dr. Jay

They were judging the entire US system and saying we got everything wrong.

Bri

Well, I mean…

Dr. Jay

I mean we might.

Bri

But you can't really argue with that.

Dr. Jay

Okay. My interpretation was I thought Bri was stuck in a conversation she didn't want to be in. That was Bri’s.

Bri

No, not at all. I was like, I'm totally fine because at the end he was like, “Hey, let's go.” And I turn. I was like, “Okay. Talk to you later. Bye.” And I'm like, “Yes, boss,” you know, very like, sarcastic, too. He was like, “Well, weren’t you trying to get out of it?” I'm like, “No, I'm fine. I'm totally fine.”

But I think it also came from comes from the fact that like growing up & the people I know, I don't agree with a lot of their opinions, but I can understand how they got there and I understand all that. So for me, I actually enjoy talking to people who I don't necessarily agree with because it's really fun to get that.

And I was like, this person though ended up saying something about specific painting in the Midwest and like I connected with it and that was really fun. So I was having good conversation there. Yes. Did they have some judgments about things? Yes. Were they necessarily wrong? No.

Dr. Jay

I misread the situation. Okay. I freely admit that. But I also was like, really, you're going to stay here in this conversation? Alright have fun. I think the interesting thing when you're talking to people that are making financial content is there's a lot of good opinions. There are a lot of crazy opinions. And that's okay.

It's okay to have a little bit there, probably many people at the conference thought, we have a crazy idea and a crazy opinion. Is that fair?

Bri

Yeah, that's fair. And I think that sometimes those are the conversations that best challenge your ideas and your thoughts and you grow the most from that versus people you always agree with.

Dr. Jay

So what did you learn from FinCon?

Bri

What I learned from FinCon? That I really just missed being in person for different work things. It's fun. That was one thing. There were a lot of people that I never… either, people I had heard about and had been following for a while I got to talk to, and then people who I'd never heard of before. But now I'm like, “Wow, you really have a good perspective.”

I went to a lot of like the financial therapy things because for me I tend to be pretty black and white when it comes to finances and there are certain things like I'm emotional about, but overall I don't really like emotions as a person whole. I went to therapy for seven years and I could tell you my therapist to this day would say, Bri hates talking about feelings.

It's just I don't enjoy it. It's very uncomfortable for me. It's like a safety net to not talk about it. Some of the financial therapy things really helped me have a more empathetic path or way of thought.

Dr. Jay

That's fair. I think one of the interesting side, weird things for me that I learned from there. They did a screening of a document called This Is Not Financial Advice by the way Bri didn’t get to that because she was too busy out partying.

Bri

I was at a ghost tour and networking. Thank you.

Dr. Jay

Okay. She calls it networking, but she was out on the ghost tour. Alright. We'll link to the documentary. It actually talks about a lot of different things. But it really talks about crypto and pro the doge and dogecoin and taking advice off of the Internet and all that.

And they kind of recorded it in the middle of the boom of of dogecoin. And they talk through people and they show their real life examples good, bad and ugly. And then they had a panel after having the discussion. And the panel was three people from the movie & the director. Pro the doge was there and he was talking about that he lived and everything's and now their jobs are being influencers and using making money there and sell products.

And there's like two people that are influencers. The other one's like, Yeah, I just do boring investments and invest in real estate stocks. And it was really interesting to see the difference between them. It's one of those like I was like, Ooh, everybody needs to watch this. And they're doing a huge program to help people in schools. Kids… learn about how to look at information on the Internet and figure out if it's useful or not, if it should be financial or not, really.

And it's a really good debate because the question really is, as financial influencers, which I guess we count as it really bothers me if we call this that, but all right, let's call that what is our responsibility? So we are, Bri and I, we are an investment advisor representatives. We're by our SEC registered investment advisory firm.

We are regulated. We can't say certain things. We can't do a lot of things the influencers do. We have a set of rules. Those that are not registered can do whatever they want. Now, by the way, they can also get caught for it.

Bri

I was like, do whatever they want, asterisk. Can't really do whatever they want.

Dr. Jay

But but they are doing.

Bri

They are here.

Dr. Jay

Until somebody gets caught. Wasn't one of the Kardashians just get smacked for the crypto something and or they're like, oh, there's been a whole bunch of those. Yeah, yeah. This documentary really dives into this discussion and whether you believe crypto or not doesn't matter. It was really an interesting perspective on the information we get and how we use it.

And if you haven't seen it yet, grab it. I think they were going on Amazon and Apple or something like that.

Bri

Yeah, December 1st. So this podcast will be out a couple of weeks early, but I'll put the website in the notes.

Dr. Jay

Take a look at it. It's definitely the way to go. Alright, Bri, that's our FinCon wrap up. But we've been doing this podcast now for most of the year. You've been hanging out with me for most of the year. What's your Aha on your past year? I mean let’s take people behind the scenes and thoughts, questions.

Bri

I think that people might be surprised at how much like we discuss after every single meeting we go through, what worked, what didn't work, what would you do differently? And as we've gone along like, I'll give you answers, but you'll be like, “No deeper now keep going, keep going. You're on the right path but keep going.” And just the amount of like analysis we do over how meetings go and how to work with clients, it is substantially more than I ever thought I would get in training. I guess.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. Bri's high in the lead. So when this comes out, it'll be about a month before she's going to become a Childfree Wealth Specialist, and start taking her own clients January 1st. If you’re listening to this after January 1st. Then you should sign up to work with Bri. But she's been part of the training program and really my first development of another Childfree Wealth Specialist.

We've been picking apart every single client, every single financial plan, everything, every content we do different things. And Bri is finally at a point now where she tells me, like, Shut up, you're stupid. Like, that's not working, which is good. That is part of the intent of the plan we had. We were having an argument yesterday about a client and I wouldn't have said that or I would have said this.

And now that's okay. That's part of what we're doing and really trying to build a planning structure and a process that doesn't exist for childfree folks. Is that fair?

Bri

That's fair. And I think it's also fair to say, like, we are like welcome to feedback and criticism getting better because we will both tell each other if we think something is dumb. Like, why did you do that? Come on now. And I'm not afraid to say anything to you that's helpful. And I don't think that's necessarily always the case in a lot of places.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And I have no problem admitting what I've got wrong. You know, right now I've got a struggle. So I'm working on my second book and the notes come back from the editor in the books about child finances. It’s called the childfree life and finances, it’s called The Childfree Guide, and the question was, and I posed to Bri was, okay, cool. We're talking about finance and the editors like, yeah, watch your privilege.

And it's really bothered me now. It's something it's been a couple of weeks I've been working with through and Bri's kind of like suck it up.

Bri

But yeah, I basically gave them that feedback. At one point I was like, move on now. Yes, you've acknowledge it, move on.

Dr. Jay

And part of it is because I grew up with nothing. Yes, I'm a white male. I have privilege, comes with it. But I grew up broke, so I don't know. I look at it through a different lens and I'm like, how do you talk about in finance how to get better, how to improve without stepping over the privileged lines of the things?

Bri and I have been having this discussion and we added some stuff. We made some adjustments, but she's like, Yep, just acknowledge it and move forward. Is that fair?

Bri

Yeah, that's basically what I said, because like the content of the book is not necessarily a like there is a very stark difference between can't pay your bills every month, struggling to keep your lights on, different things like that. And then a lot of the more advanced planning that we do just we are a financial planning firm, frankly, it's a lot more advanced than it's not the very, very beginner stuff.

We have some of that out there, but that is not what we focus on. And the content of the book doesn't really focus on that either. It talks about it, but it's not the primary focus in the part where like this was acknowledged, it was like, okay, you've acknowledged it, continue on, keep going. Because at some point we have to accept that like there are people who have different levels of privilege.

And I mean, we have people who are younger than I am who are substantially more well-off than I am. And yes, I grew up with a lot of privilege, but I also can't sit here and be upset by the people that I see who are doing better than me as well. Like you can be upset to a point, but then you got to keep going and keep trying to do things for yourself.

There are systemic issues of that. Yes, income disparities, but it's not… the just the context trying to like say this and not give away the book, just the context of it. It was like, continue, keep going.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. And I think one of the surprising things to people, yeah, we're doing feedback, we're trying to help, we're trying to grow each of us. But I think you'd be surprised by how much we put our heart and soul into each one of our clients. Is that fair?

Bri

Yeah, that's fair. Like, we'll send things as we see them, you know, a lot of people.

Dr. Jay

Okay. No, no, I'll go deeper. Okay. Yeah. Like we were. We were after meeting discussions. Where were tears or near tears? I mean.

Bri

Okay, I'm starting at the surface level and then we're going deeper surface and then structure there. Isn't that what you say to me?

Dr. Jay

It is.

Bri

Okay. Yes, there are some meetings that, frankly, we've turned off the camera and then there have been tears on our end just because we definitely feel for people and really sometimes we'll be like, I, I just need to take a break. Like, I got to go out and go for a walk or do something to before the next one because that was really hard.

Dr. Jay

And… you want to get Bri fired up, ask about fees like we all we each have our own like things that we have fired up about, you know, and we have this back and forth. And I think that's good. I think at some point, each of the Childfree Wealth Specialists working under Childfree Wealth will have like a specialty or niche or an area they focus on.

Bri doesn’t want to focus, she wants to help everybody. But I'll work on that with her. It's like we are putting our hearts and souls into trying to help people through their life and finances. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. And that's hard. And I think the other one I'm struggling with right now is, all right, there's 250 million or so adults in the U.S. 50 million or so are childfree.

How do we help 50 million people? And we can't. And Bri's like, suck it up. And I'm like, No, I want to help everybody.

Bri

I have never said that in regards to helping people. I just like as much as we want to help everybody, you know, there comes a point where we're also talking about living a life you enjoy and doing things like, do I enjoy my work? Yes. But do I also enjoy a lot of things outside of work that I want to keep doing?

And yes, like I enjoy traveling and somehow we always record these the day before I go on a trip to that's what I thought. Like I enjoy doing those things and going out and seeing people and I don't want to give that up either because I don't want to sacrifice my entire self. And I think I've seen that happen by people where they sacrifice their entire selves to help others.

And I think maybe if you're listening, you've probably seen that in other people too. And that's not necessarily what you want for yourself. And it's hard to find that balance between being there and being helpful for people. I might not like talking about feelings, but I do feel the feelings. That balance is just difficult.

Dr. Jay

Yeah, and Bri's doing her best to try to help me with that. The problem is, when you own a company and you run it like there is no balance, I'm going to get better at some point, I promise. I just. It's always hard because I want to do more than we can right now. And, you know, we're actually staffing up.

We'll be introducing you to some new people, joining the team and all that. But it's one of those things where once you see how much need is out there, it becomes overwhelming. Have you seen that yet?

Bri

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, we had to close down the intro calendar for a while just because we had so many meetings and we'd get to the end of the day and be exhausted. Like we're just working with so many people and we love it and it's really fun to work with everybody. But at the same time, we need to make sure we protect our energy and ourselves so that we can keep doing this for the long term.

Dr. Jay

That's fair. Alright, Bri, what is the biggest surprise you got this year? You know, so we've been working together most of the year now. You've met me. We've been working together to do this podcast. What's the biggest surprise?

Bri

I think just how much like how quickly I've gone from saying, oh, I want to do this now, this is what I'm doing and really enjoying it and loving it. And this is a hard question… my goodness! I think my overall picture of finances probably changing because I used to be very traditional and now it's not so traditional.

Dr. Jay

We brought you over to the dark side, I guess.

Bri

Yes. Good way to say.

Dr. Jay

Yeah. I mean, I feel bad for Bri sometimes because she got thrown in the deep end and she's been learning from the fire hose. But I've also gotten lucky to see she's been working with a couple of clients now and watching her watch her grow. So I'm very excited. For those of you that are listening, if you're looking for somebody, help with their finances.

Sign up. Bri’s starting to take clients in January. We have an intro meaning no cost. You get an hour with Bri and see if she fits. I'm still watching over her shoulder but we got a yes. She's there to help so we can now have two of us, we're going to have a third coming and we're starting a staff up.

That way we can help more and more childfree folks. Get your place. Also, if you haven't done it yet, share the podcast, like, subscribe. All that stuff I supposed to do. I don't know what it is, but like the social media things leave early though.

Bri

Leave a review, especially if you're on Apple Podcasts.

Dr. Jay

Yeah, what Bri said of it, and we're trying to get the word out to all the childfree folks that, hey, things are different. We're doing that you know at FinCon & different events everywhere we can. So we appreciate your help in getting the word out in the world.