Have you ever wondered about the fiduciary responsibility in financial planning, especially as a federal employee seeking financial guidance? Join Tommy, Mike, Ben, and John in this episode as they delve into the essential concepts of fiduciary service and what it takes to find the perfect financial planner for your unique situation. They'll discuss the significance of expecting, demanding, and requiring fiduciary service and guide you through what it means to be a fiduciary (the answer may surprise you!).
Listen in to learn about fee-only financial planning, as well as how this benefits clients and the importance of due diligence when selecting a financial planner. You'll learn the importance of interviewing multiple firms to ensure you find the perfect fit for your financial planning needs. In the quest to find the right financial planner, you'll discover valuable tips and criteria to consider, from credentials to a personalized approach that truly gets to know you, the client.
Listen to the full episode here:
What you will learn:
- Why doing your due diligence is crucial. (2:05)
- What it means to be a fiduciary. (5:30)
- Why we are fee-only and how this benefits our clients. (6:45)
- What to look for in a financial planner. (12:25)
- The importance of leveraging your resources. (14:25)
- How to find a financial planner as a federal employee. (19:00)
- The importance of interviewing more than one firm. (23:00)
- The benefit of listening to your gut. (27:30)
Ideas worth sharing:
- “Understand that there is no such thing as federal employee financial planning specialist credential and there is also no such thing as a ‘be a good human’ credential, so you’re going to have to do your due diligence.” - Mason & Associates
- “What it means to be a fiduciary is that we are acting in our clients’ best interest.” - Mason & Associates
- “You can’t legislate morality.” - Mason & Associates
Resources from this episode:
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Read the Transcript Below:
Congratulations for taking ownership of your financial plan by tuning into the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast, hosted by Mason & Associates, financial advisors with over three decades of experience serving you.
John Mason: Welcome to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast. I'm John Mason, certified financial planner, and today we have our normal crew, our four hosts of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast. We've got Tommy Blackburn, Ben Raikes, Michael Mason.
And we all share something in common, which I think is amazing. We like to say, if we're not the most, we're probably one of the most credentialed financial planning shows out there. So, we have four certified financial planners. Tommy is a CPA, Ben Raikes is an enrolled agent, and Mike Mason has the CLU and CHFC designation.
So, boys, I'm feeling a little inadequate as I introduce you all because I'm the only one that only has the CFP. Now, I don't want to diminish that because that's probably the gold standard in financial planning. But saying it out loud, it's a little bit different.
Tommy Blackburn: Well, you also have over a decade of experience specializing with federal employees. You're a great tax planner and tax planning advisor. I don't know that there are credentials we can bestow for those things.
But you know what you're doing way more than most, as you said. Not only, maybe we are the most credentialed or others don't have more credentials, but I guess we would say second to none, regardless.
John Mason: Well, as we jump right into the episode today, we're going to be talking about fiduciary responsibility, expecting, demanding, requesting fiduciary service as a federal employee looking for financial planning.
And it occurred to me, guys, as we open up this episode and we list all of those credentials, there are no real credentials for federal employee financial planning specialist, that real credential, maybe there's some fake ones out there and hopefully I don't get in trouble for saying that, but they're fake. They're not that real and they're not that hard to acquire.
So, understanding that there is no such thing as federal employee financial planning specialist credential, and there's also no such thing as like be a good human credential.
There is this AIF accredited investment fiduciary, but at the end of the day, for our federal employees who are listening, there is no credential to determine that. So, they're going to have to go look for that separately and do due diligence.
And then there is no be a good human, be a fiduciary credential either. There's a fiduciary standard, Tommy, lumped into some of these other credentials though.
Tommy Blackburn: Absolutely. And also, just the way you do business, whether you are subject to that fiduciary standard, which essentially means that the professional has to put your best interests ahead of their own. I think that's what we kind of want to hit on.
So, John, you laid out some really important things there, “Do you know me, do you care about me?” And then one of the minimum standards I think we should be looking for as well, or it's important that you know is you should demand a fiduciary.
And I'll just go into my little spill here too. What got me going down this road was Netflix released a series called Painkiller, and it's about the opioid crisis and how the pharmaceutical companies were incentivizing doctors, paying them, giving them commissions, things to push these prescriptions maybe without doing their due diligence onto their patients, probably had the best of intentions.
But it was one of those things as I was watching, I was like, “Well, wouldn't you like to be able to trust your doctor? That your doctor is always — that there's nobody else paying them that only care about you?”
And of course, that just immediately made me think of what we do around here, how we treat our clients. So, maybe that helps segue us into this.
John Mason: People have long described, like when you go to a doctor, you would demand excellence, and you don't expect to see your doctor at a Saturday at 5:00 PM, do you?
So, a lot of people in the financial planning world, who are trying to get over this hump, whether they've launched their business or trying to become more professional, one of those, Mike that we've heard in conferences for years is, you don't see your doctors on Saturdays, do you? Why would you meet with clients on Saturdays? But to Tommy's point, maybe doctors aren't the gold standard either.
Michael Mason: Well, yeah. And have we ever thought when we get a prescription to ask the doctor, “Hey, do you get a kickback on that?” And there's no reason why we shouldn't ask the doctor that.
Just like, there's no reason you shouldn't ask the person that wants you to get that life insurance policy, “What's the commission? And is that really in my best interest or is survivor benefits in my best interest?”
I think we should describe fiduciary and in context with our business fee-only so that folks know that there aren't any kickbacks in that situation.
John Mason: Sure. Ben, why don't you share with our audience what it means to be a fiduciary? And folks, that's not a bad word, just so you know, it's a weird word but fiduciary is not a bad word. So, Ben, help our audience know what fiduciary means.
Ben Raikes: No, fiduciary, it's certainly not a bad word, but it can be a funny word in particular, if you’re a client. A lot of clients are supposed to say, “Well, I know I'm supposed to ask you whether you're a fiduciary.” And normally, we complete, “Yes, we are fiduciaries.”
And what a fiduciary means is that we are acting in our client's best interests, not our own best interests, not an investment company's best interest, not a life insurance company's best interest, but in our client's best interests based on the conversations that we have with them in determining what their goals are.
And Mike, before you mentioned fee-only, what a fee-only advisor is, is essentially a fee-only advisor only ever gets paid directly from their clients. So, they don't get kickbacks for selling a life insurance policy. They don't get kickbacks for selling a particular mutual fund. They only ever get paid by the client themselves. And all fee-only advisors are fiduciaries.
John Mason: Ben, I think what's important about that fee-only aspect, and I know we've talked about this in our prior episode where we talked about compensation models and whatnot, but fee-only eliminates a large amount of conflicts of interest, which at the end of the day, that's the issue that you have with sales. That's the issue that you have with commissions.
It's not that the fact that somebody got paid a commission is bad, it's the incentive to earn it or the incentive to go wherever the commission is highest, it creates that conflict of interest.
So, is a fee-only financial planning team which we've been now since 2020, as fee-only, we've eliminated as many conflicts of interest as we can eliminate moving to that model, which I think is good for our audience to know.
Michael Mason: I think that's a good point here. And your uncle makes this mistake every now and then. A good point here is when you buy a life insurance contract from somebody, that person is called an agent. And they're not your agent, they're the agent of the insurance company. So, inherently, whose best interest are they acting in?
John Mason: Well, the definition of agent means they have a legal, maybe not legal, but they have a responsibility to represent the insurance company. So, they're looking out for the insurance company not for the end client.
Michael Mason: Yeah. So, that would go for commission-based annuities and life insurance. And we're not saying that those things are bad, we just want you to understand that inherently that's not a fiduciary.
It could be in both people's best interest, the insurance company's best interest, and the person buying the insurance. Heck, we've helped people replace FEGLI, option B several times. It was in everybody's best interest to do that.
John Mason: Well, it takes me down one of the thoughts that I had written down as we were preparing for this episode, in that you can't legislate, Mike, you've said this for decades, you can't legislate morality.
And I bet, I would wager that there are people out there, insurance agents we know, we know some I think we've had one on our podcast, Bryan Gay from Boomer Insurance Group.
He's a insurance agent who gets paid commissions. But I believe he is holding himself to a fiduciary standard. Whether or not the government is doing that is a different story.
So, this brings up an entirely different concept is can you be a fiduciary in a commission world or in a hybrid world, even if the government's not necessarily holding you to that standard?
Michael Mason: And I think people can. We've also had this discussion. You can have all the want to in the world, the want to do the right thing, the want to do the best thing. But if you don't have the no to, to go with it, I used insurance a minute ago, let's go back to life insurance.
What if I'm working with a federal employee who's going to double dip? He's got his military retirement and he's trying to earn that federal retirement and I think he needs more life insurance. And I never asked the question, “What was your choice on survivor benefits when you retired from the military?”
And maybe if that person didn't take it, maybe it's better to take survivor benefits during this open season. But you have to know it's there. So, you can have a want to all you want, but if you don't have the no to, you still can't be a fiduciary.
John Mason: I like the concept of the no to because what popped into my head as you were saying that is you also can’t be a lazy fee-only financial planner. You can't be a lazy fee-only fiduciary and think that you're actually providing good advice.
We have in our song, Tommy, I know you like this, in our song, “You can rest easy once your plan is done.” And what we've been saying on this podcast and on our YouTube, channel is you can rest easy because we're not, you can rest easy because we're not.
So, not only should a federal employee demand a few things from a financial planner, they should demand, are you a certified financial planner? Are you a fiduciary? Do you specialize with me as federal employees? And then what are you doing to stay on the cutting edge of all this? Because how many tax laws have, we had now in our career? I mean, it’s insane.
Tommy Blackburn: It is. It'd be wild to put it on a timeline. I mean, it just seems like every year, we’ve got something new coming out. I was thinking, I would also just phrase it as a duty of care is essentially like, “What duty of care do you hold yourself to?”
Because we can't always know everything, but are you striving to constantly learn and when you're out of your lane, do you bring in an expert or do you force yourself to become the expert by putting in the work?
I think that's that duty of care of just really trying to put your clients, truly acting in their best interest, putting the work in to put their interest of, to do the best job you can do.
John Mason: So, do you bring in the expert? This podcast episode's so fun.
Tommy Blackburn: And this is like a CPA practice standard actually is where I'm drawing that one from.
John Mason: And this is so fun because Ben, I know we've made clients, in my 13 years at Mason & Associates, I'm sure at your prior firm as well as here, how many times have we heard from potential clients or prospective clients when they interview us, “They're like, wow, you guys actually know the answers to the questions I'm asking.”
Ben Raikes: We actually know what we're talking about. And it's kind of sad to hear that from a prospect that it's a relief that we can talk to them in about 10 minutes and identify dozens of key areas where we could be helping, we could be adding more benefits to their life and making their life easier.
And I think we're kind of already going down this road, so I'll just pose it to the group anyway. We've identified that the CFP standards and the fee-only standards holds you to being a fiduciary. But we all know that you can be fee-only, and you can be a CFP and give lousy advice.
So, there's an experience aspect that comes to it as well, which we've identified. And then on the flip side, you could be someone who's selling life insurance, or you could be a commissioned agent and give the best advice possible.
So, if you're a client or a prospect that's listening to this podcast, what are the other things that we need to look for other than just the credentials or someone that's saying they're fee-only?
What else do they need to look for on a website or interviewing a planner? Help them out because they're probably a little bit confused right now.
Michael Mason: I think you tee’d this up really well for me because at the end of the day, if you call yourself fee-only and you're not, well there's a remedy there. If the client thought, you were fee-only and you're not, there's a remedy through the federal government and the courts.
But if you call yourself an expert or you call yourself a financial planner and you just didn't know, let's go back to that survivor benefit thing, and let's say I helped that person get life insurance versus the open season of survivor benefits, imagine that person filing a complaint.
And I say, “Well, I didn't know, but not only did I not know, you didn't know, and you made a bad decision when you retired. So, there's no remedy in my world for not knowing.” If the government can't pounce on you for not knowing everything about every possible retirement plan in America. So, I guess it's harder.
The hardest thing you need to do is make sure that the person that you're talking to is in the know for what you're doing because there's no remedy when they're not.
John Mason: And we need to leverage our resources to the best of our ability. As consumers, going out and finding financial planning advice is really hard. I spoke to a prospective client last week who has 4 or $500,000 and unfortunately doesn't meet our minimum.
We're typically working with folks who have 700,000 or more and she's essentially being let go by her other firm. There's some other reasons why they're no longer working together. But essentially, she's below their minimum and she's looking for another financial planner.
She calls us, she's below our minimum. So, what we've seen is that over time, the good, I say the good, the cream of the crop, the financial planning firms who appear to be doing things the best way possible for clients, we're now having this like barbell.
It's like you have the people who can get advice and the people who can't get advice. And then those people stuck in the middle, I'm sorry, the people who maybe don't even know they need the advice, the people who have the funds to pay somebody like us and then the folks in the middle who are trying to figure this out, they don't necessarily have a good place to turn to.
So, we need to leverage our resources, like who in the community? Leverage your friends, leverage your resources. What do you know about Mason & Associates? What do the Google reviews look like? What do other centers of influence and professionals think about? How long have they been in business?
We're not saying, “I don't think here guys, don't work with a hybrid financial planner. Don't work with somebody who accepts commission and fees,” but do your due diligence because that may be the only service offering available to some of these folks.
Tommy Blackburn: I think due diligence, yeah, that just really sums it up there. My mind if you're going to work with somebody who's getting paid another way, they've got commissionable products they're going to sell, well, let's be transparent about it.
And now through your due diligence with this person, get a feel for, “Okay, I know how you get paid. Now, how are you overcoming that incentive? Or demonstrate to me what it is you're bringing to the table value for me.”
“Is it the product and are we just transparent? That's great. Or is the product how you go about delivering your advice? Now show me the advice and we can at least be transparent. I now can at least see where some incentives lie.”
And this seems like the easy kind of just transparency at the end of the day, do your due diligence, this is your life savings we're talking about, so we do want to you know, can they speak your language? Do they know you? Do they seem like they're interested in knowing you and your goals? And are they speaking the language and showing some value there?
And then of course the social proof. Do they have other clients? Have they been in business for a while? Referrals, it usually means a lot when somebody recommends you turn your life savings over to somebody.
That's not something you tell your friend that you want to have blown up on them because they're going to come back at you. So, there's probably some proof in that, but you got to do your own due diligence.
Ben Raikes: I think as important as it is to be a fiduciary, which we all agree with around this table, it is everything that you all have just said around this table. Other than that, I think some people go online and they pull up a whole checklist of questions. And number one is ask your advisor whether he's a fiduciary or not. They say, “Yep, I sure am.”
And then you just move on and say, “Well, I don't have to worry about that anymore.” It's also the due diligence. It's how many clients do you have like me? How many years have you been in experience? Those things are as important if not more important than just saying simply, “Yeah, I'm fee-only or I'm a fiduciary.”
John Mason: It's so hard because I can picture some really good people in my head who I believe hold themself to a fiduciary standard. And if they are asked that question on an introductory phone call like, “Hello, X, Y, Z financial planner, are you a fiduciary?” The answer could be, “I hold myself to a fiduciary standard, although nobody else does.” What do you do with that? Is that enough? Is that enough?
Michael Mason: It's interesting to me because if you did a Google search how to find a financial advisor or financial planner, you're going to give a list of these questions and it's going to be, are they a fiduciary? How are they compensated?
It's never going to say, “Oh, ask them, I'm a FERS employee, tell me what my percentage retirement's going to be if I work 33 years and retire at age 62.” If they can't answer that, you're never going to have that as a pat answer.
You're never going to have … or question; you're never going to have what's the difference between CSRS offset and CSRS? You're never going to have those questions.
So, again, you can get a lot of stuff from the internet to find out how somebody's paid, but you can't get it on how much they know related to you.
John Mason: So, you just made me think of something, Mike and Ben was alluding to this earlier and I think we've all kind of talked about it, is when one is interviewing, when a consumer's interviewing a financial planner or even working with a financial planner, a certain amount of answers that go like this, “I don't know, I'll have to get back to you,” is acceptable.
“What's my marginal tax bracket?” “I don't know that off the top of my head. I'll have to get back to you.” “How does FERS work?” “I don't know that off the top of my head, but I'll have to get back to you.”
A certain amount of, I don't know, but I'll have to get back to you is okay. But then there's, that's a very fine line between, it's like, well, you don't know anything, and you have to get back to me on everything, this isn't valuable anymore.
So, I think for consumers, kind of like what you're saying is that maybe how to find a financial planner should be like as a federal employee, how to find a financial planner as a Huntington Ingalls person. How to find a financial planner as a self-employed person.
And you have to be able to answer a certain amount of these questions like the back of your hand. Like it's rote memorization. We know those first calculations and consumers need to be able to say, “It's okay for you to say, I don't know, X amount of times, it's now reached a point of ridiculous and you're clearly not an expert.”
Tommy Blackburn: I am going back to … I'm thinking of our process with new clients and just how it really works and demonstrates this between the introductory call and the intro meeting part of it.
I know all of us do this. We start talking to a prospect who is a fit. They're maybe not even a federal employee, but they're in retirement. They're kind of going through that phase of life.
We start sketching the plan in our head. We are already thinking, okay, your pension, whether it's FERS, social security, healthcare decisions, survivor benefits, it comes to us in probably five minutes, we've begun to get a rough concept and start talking about it, no homework into that meeting.
And then how fun is the introductory meeting when we get the documents from clients, and we start turning over stones. I know I'm working on one right now and I'm like, “Oh, there might be net unrealized appreciation here. There's all kind of things, let me dive into this divorce settlement.”
I don't know how you go in with a bunch of questions and I guess it's almost on, you should walk away being like, “They asked a lot of questions I didn't know I should even be asking. They are really speaking directly to me in what I'm trying to accomplish here.” And I guess there's just like a sixth sense that you have about this.
John Mason: So, not only beautiful, not only how does the financial planner respond to the questions that you have as a consumer, because you have your 10 questions. What to ask, what questions did they ask you?
What was the quality of the conversations that was asked during your introductory meeting, your intro phone call during the preparation of your financial plan, what were the questions that were asked?
Did they get to know you as a human? Because how could they possibly provide fiduciary financial planning advice if their questions were that bad that they never had the ability to get to know you?
Tommy Blackburn: And I mean, it's just like table stakes. The 10 questions from off of Google, like ask your financial advisor this. If they can't answer those sufficiently, you should probably run, but you can't stop there.
And I mean, I think any financial advisor with their —probably chuckles. Because we know, alright, these are the questions that came off of Google, let's answer them. And now let's keep moving onto more important things and actually start adding some value.
John Mason: Well, we know that there's other firms out there that will even send people before they book a phone call. “Here's a list to all of those frequently asked questions. “Am I a fiduciary?” “Yes”. “Am I this?” “Yes.” “Do you do this?” “Yes.”
So, there are firms out there that actually get in front of this and send responses to the most frequently asked questions. How about Ben this? Because it's very interesting fiduciary, how to find an advisor, how to pick an advisor, all this stuff.
What I find fascinating about this and it's only so fascinating because we all know how we feel about this stuff. And nowhere in this conversation have we said, “You know what you should do, you should really go read an ADV. Or you should really go read form CRS, the Client Relationship.” What is-
Tommy Blackburn: Client Relationship Summary.
John Mason: Client Relationship Summary, that's how you should determine these government forms. That's how you should go find a good financial planner.
Ben Raikes: It reminds me of what you said at the onset of this conversation, which I think was really, really important. We have all of these credentials and disclosures and canned questions that we can ask, that try to get us to a point where we think we're going to be able to determine whether this is a good person or not.
You said at the very beginning, there is no legislation to make you a good moral person. The CFP tries to be a stand-in for that because of their standards. CPA’s have standards to try to be a stand-in for that.
But it's really going to be discovery. It's going to be asking all these questions. You might take a peek at the ADV, you're probably not going to get a whole lot from it, but it's really just a comprehensive process that you need to go through to find your advisor.
I mean, I think it's funny honestly, when we hear that you're only interviewing one advisor in your process of looking for someone to give you financial advice.
I mean, I know for myself I needed to find a plumber for my house and you're going on Angie's List and all these other review aggregators and you're looking at 500 five-star reviews and somehow that's not enough and you're calling and getting multiple prices.
Why would we not try to do the same thing and have a long comprehensive process with someone who's going to be giving us financial advice for the rest of our lives?
John Mason: We need to be interviewing more than one firm. Unless you just have this really deep connection. We've been in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Mike for three, four decades now doing financial planning services.
And there's people that you and Ken have presented seminars to back in 1992 and 2002 and 2012, and maybe they've seen us or heard us on the radio for three or four decades, seen us at various events.
And when those people are ready to retire and they come in, they already have that affinity and that relationship built up with Mason & Associates. So, I think for those folks, we can give them a pass and that's self-serving that I'm saying it, but they’ve got to know us over three or four decades. In some instances, that's different than just going in blind.
Michael Mason: Oh, there's no doubt. But how many times have we been the first firm that somebody's interviewed and you check off all the boxes, it's okay. It's okay if somebody checks off all the boxes not to waste your time with the other advisors in Hampton Roads.
And how many times have we laughed a radio show that went 18 years, and there has to be hundreds of financial planners in this area, and I guarantee you not one of them sat down every other Tuesday and said, “I'm going to learn something about the biggest employer group in the area and I'm going to listen to this show.”
And how many of them are sitting and listening to these podcasts across America, you are the biggest employer group in America. The secret millionaires and the people that want to serve people won't even take the time to get educated, so I don't know.
John Mason: Well, this podcast, education, we're financial planners first, we do this content creation second. Fellows, if you have any action items for the audience that we want to do, I would say my action item as we go around the table is close your eyes and really think when you're interviewing a financial planner, how does this experience feel to me?
We all know when you go to buy a used car or a new car, that experience is gut wrenching. You instantly feel terrible. Or if X, Y, Z window company comes over, you feel terrible and you know it.
And when you go to visit a financial planner, if you need to pause and you need to think for a second, “How do I feel in this moment?” Chances are your gut instinct as a federal employee sitting across from the table or sitting across from a zoom meeting, if your Spidey sense goes off, trust it, trust it.
Michael Mason: And John, I've been thinking throughout this recording, there's always that naysayer out there that's listening to us and thinking, “Well, they're saying all the right things. This is how they make their money by saying the right things.”
Well, just understand folks, there's no income from this podcast. There's 37 years I have of experience, and I think when we see what our win is collectively, our win is sharing this advice free.
The second win is us doing this. We continue to hone our skills and we're talking about these things and then 10 to 12 maybe new clients a year, that half of them might come from this podcast, that's a win.
But everything we're doing right now, everything we're doing right now, if you're listening to this and you listen to the other 20 some to 30 that's out there, you can be your own financial planner if you'll just take the time to invest in it.
If you are on that end that doesn't have a half a million dollars. Or at least listen enough to know the questions to ask when you interview somebody.
Tommy Blackburn: I was going to say, I would imagine after you go through all this, if you are educating yourself hopefully, you do qualify to work with an advisor can find one.
Because I imagine you would then get the value of it and want that partnership of, “I want to work with somebody who does this all the time because I've learned so much and I'm more armed. But now I really see the value in it.”
So, that was one thought. My action, I was kind of thinking through like what are some examples of clearly fiduciary advice, and we could go through those, but I think it really just boils down to does the person who's giving you advice, do they ever give you advice that doesn't seem like it's in their interest?
I think that's the simplest way I could hit it, is if they are doing something that lowers their compensation because they've got a long-term relationship with you and that's what they're apprising that's kind of the real judgment here is do they give me advice that doesn't always benefit them?
Ben Raikes: I think lastly, just summarizing everything we've already hit on, absolutely you want to demand a fiduciary and you want a fee-only advisor but those are not the only things that you want.
You want to take your time in this process and it's everything we've said. It's their experience in working with people related to you. How much experience do they have in general? It's your gut feeling. Is this someone that you like when you met them? Do you want to work the rest of your life with someone that you really don't enjoy meeting with?
And I think Tommy gave a great example, is there a question you could ask them where you know it won't benefit the financial advisor, but it will benefit you? And how do they answer that? It's all of these things. Take your time and make a good decision.
John Mason: Guys, another awesome episode. Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast, I have a few … for our audience, thank you for hanging in. We're about 30 minutes deep into this episode, I think.
But I know we all do this, financial advisors and Ken does as well, is we acknowledge conflicts of interest when they exist. We all kind of just beat around that a little bit. But has your financial planner ever acknowledged the fact that conflicts of interest exist and regardless of compensation model, they exist. And I enjoy acknowledging those. So, acknowledging conflicts of interest is another.
Thanks for hanging in there on this another episode of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
Few quick hit items, number one, if you want to become a client, you can start that process at masonllc.net. Check out our YouTube channel, Masonassociates4825. Hopefully, eventually, we'll be able to change that. We're approaching 350 subscribers, thousands of views now.
So, check out that YouTube video, YouTube channel. It's different content than what we're producing here but similar with that federal tilt. And also, you can subscribe to our blog at masonllc.net .
Thank you to our audience, we are having so much fun doing this content creation for you. Remember, we're financial planners first, we're content creators second and we appreciate you tuning into another episode of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
The topics discussed on this podcast represent our best understanding of federal benefits and are for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment, financial planning, or other professional advice.
We encourage you to consult with the office of personnel management and one or more professional advisors before taking any action based on the information presented.