Best and Worst Pieces of Financial Advice We have Received

In this special episode of Coffee with Waymark, the team shares the best and worst financial advice they've received over the years. From avoiding hot stock tips to setting up smart savings habits early, this rapid-fire session is packed with practical insights for investors at every stage of life. The common thread? Personal finance is personal—what works best is what works for you.

Key Points:

• The danger of following popular financial advice without context

• How big life decisions can impact long-term financial stability

• The importance of building healthy saving habits early

• Why automation can make or break your financial consistency

• Teaching financial responsibility before it really counts

Transcript:

  Hey, thanks for joining us on a very special Coffee with Waymark. We’ve got all three of us here, and what we're going to do is hopefully within five minutes talk about some of the best and worst pieces of advice that we've ever gotten. So I'm going to jump right on in and give you my top worst piece of advice that I've ever gotten, and that is…

Pretty much every hot stock tip I've ever gotten.  Whether it's a client calling me and saying, there's this company that I'm thinking about investing in, or there's cryptocurrency, or this or that, or the other thing, and these are all the reasons why. I always say that unless you are the CEO and you're in those board meetings, you don't really know anything.

The information that you're getting is being filtered through, whether it's social media or whatever. So you really have to be careful about that. And pivoting a little bit to the best piece of advice is when it comes to those hot stock tips, only invest what you can afford to lose. Brandon, what have you got for your worst piece of advice?

So the worst piece is taking advice from all the people you see on TV or the  millionaires out there that are giving all this,  you know, hot similar to you. Hot, hot takes. Their situation is definitely not your situation. So, and at large the general information is usually good. The specific information is not good as everyone's a little bit different and that it does not apply to everyone.  So just be cautious when you're getting those takes that your situation may be a little bit different from theirs. 

And then my worst tip I've ever gotten is to buy as much house as you are approved for. You definitely do not want to do that. Obviously the banks will give you as much as they can, but being house poor is a thing. So you just want to get a mortgage that you feel comfortable with and that you are sure that you're able to make payments on. 

And kind of pivoting to the best stock or the best in investment advice I've gotten is to pay yourself first. So it's easy to get your paycheck and take care of bills first, but you always want to make sure you make savings a part of that. So having your savings be the first bill that you set aside each month. 

All right. I'm gonna chime in on before we move on to Brandon on that specific one. I think that that is a really good one because one of the things that it forces you to do is budget. You know, ultimately if that money is out of your checking account, you'll be a lot less seduced by impulse purchases because you'll know that if your checking account only has $2,000 in it versus $10,000 in it, you know that $500 purchase of whatever sounds a lot better when it's only 5% of what's in your checking account versus 25% of your checking account, so it magically helps you  to budget.

Brandon, what have you got? For best it would be to try to automate as many things as possible. Obviously, one big thing is your 401k, you know, automatically have it set up so it automatically keeps saving, buying in at all prices, dollar cost averaging, uh, but it also works with automating your debt. So if you have a credit card payment or a loan payment, just set it up so you don't have to worry about it.

You don't have to worry about missed payments. And as you keep paying the same amount, even every month, you get used to that. And obviously with paying off credit card debts or any other debts. But the more and more you pay it off, the more and more the principle is going down, but you're keeping it at the same level so you end up paying it quicker as opposed to if you look at it each month. You're second guessing whether or not you should pay the minimum, which obviously is never a good thing. You always want to pay a little bit more, more than the principal. But automating as much as you can when it comes to your finances, reinvesting into the market systematically. So your dollar cost averaging, paying down bills, and just kind of taking emotions out of things and just set it up, and forget it.

Got it. All right. I'm going to bat cleanup here and finish this off with  my best piece of advice and probably something that if you had asked me this 20, 25 years ago before I had kids, I'd probably push against you. But give your kids an allowance and do it early. And the reason I say that is that I can't tell you how many people that we work with say, I wish my parents had taught me X, Y, and Z before I started making big mistakes with much bigger chunks of money later on in my life. 

I think that just like anything, if you have the training early on, you're going to be a lot better later when the sums of money are a lot larger. So specifically, you know, and I actually have something on our website that talks about this, that you actually want to give them  the allowance.

You want them to make mistakes and you want to continue to kind of help them with correcting those mistakes so they learn from those mistakes. And just like anything, it's muscle memory. The more that they're exposed to it, the more likely they are to be a little bit more thoughtful when they're dealing with bigger sums of money later on in life.

Well that's all we had for today. We want to try to keep this as short as possible. So thank you again for joining us and remember to be well and do good. Thank you.

Brendan is the Managing Director for Waymark Wealth Management. He has extensive experience in comprehensive wealth management. His focus includes retirement planning, behavioral finance, investment portfolio construction, education funding, insurance & risk management, taxes, charitable giving, and estate planning. Brendan has an ability to take clients' complex visions and distill them down to simple action plans, helping them move from where they are today to where they want to be tomorrow.

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC.

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The opinions voiced in this video are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.