Changing How You Think About Your Queer Finances

[00:00:10] Calan Breckon: Welcome to the Business Gay Podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have managing director and wealth management advisor with Warrioress Wealth, Sarah Tinkler. Sarah is the first financial planning business within Northwestern Mutual history to be NGLCC LGBTBE certified, and she and her fiancé Renata are the only two openly LGBTQ+ directors within Northwestern Mutual. With almost 18 years of experience within the industry, Sarah is passionate about helping change what wealth looks like. Her motto being “good things happen when queer folks have money.”

I’m excited to chat with Sarah about financial planning for your business and the unique needs the LGBTQ+ community has when it comes to finances. So let’s jump in.

Welcome to the podcast, Sarah. I’m so excited to have you. How are you doing?

[00:01:06] Sarah Tinkler: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Calan.

[00:01:08] Calan Breckon: I’m ready to jump in. So I first want to jump in.

How is financial planning different for queer folks? Because I know that we come from a very different background, very different world, and we have some special, unique needs for us. So how do you usually advise folks when it comes to kind of maybe long term partnership in the queer community, and how do we differ?

[00:01:31] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, I would say generally speaking, folks who are in the LGBTQ+ community are coming into a financial planning, first time conversation with their spidey sons up.

They have probably had some very heteronormative, maybe even sometimes offensive or just completely deftoned conversations with other professionals in the field. So coming into a brand new first date financial planning conversation, there is an awareness level that they have around.

Is this person going to understand the nuances of my lifestyle choices, my dreams, how life is different, how microaggressions have impacted, how my empathy and sensory awareness is always on overload to pick up safe green flag signs that I can be myself and isn’t going to ask white picket fence type of cookie cutter questions. So after that is established and someone in the career community feels really comfortable with me and comfortable with everyone in our office, then when we start diving into identifying someone’s financial goals, there’s very unique pieces that play in with the LGBTQ community. We always want to leave open ended questions like, tell me about who’s important to you in your world so that it allows our prospective clients to be able to talk about their chosen family.

There could be biological blood, family estrangement. There may be adaptive aunts, uncles, surrogate siblings. There could be all sorts of humans that mean the world to this person. But thinking outside of a strictly nuclear biological family, other pieces is leaving it super open ended to say, hey, is there anyone in your world that you’re going to be financially taken care of in the future leaving that so open ended? If they want to talk about journey of adopting surrogacy IVF IUI, if they want to talk about needing to provide care for special needs siblings, if they want to talk about needing to bring in hot mess, expressed family parents into their home to have an intergenerational home where the younger generation takes care of the older generation, we have to leave all of that dialogue very open ended and understanding. Then when we’re making recommendations for folks, people in the LGBTQ community may have gotten a little bit of a later start in their world of starting to plan, starting to save, starting to financially invest because they may have spent so much time leaning into who they are or spending a high proportion of their income on safe housing in safe communities. Dining experience, shopping experience, coffee shop. Like, every experience must be done with a mind of being safe for who that person is. So a later start in life to some of these saving conversations. Also, we find a lot of LGBTQ folks have found their loved ones or their life partners later in life.

They typically may have found and met their partner in their late thirties, their early forties, and that’s when they want to talk about financially combining assets or combining towards goals.

When it comes to really, really long term stuff, we typically will find that LGBTQ folks will need to have a retirement that looks a little bit different. They won’t be heading back to their hometown to save money. We can’t leave long term care and nursing home choices completely up to chance because there may be, like I said, estranged, familiar relationships. And it’s actually one of the few places it’s still legal to discriminate against an LGBTQ person in a retirement community, assisted living community, long term care community. And the last thing we would want for one of our clients is to be in a nursing home in their hometown with their high school bully, being in charge of dispensing their meds and changing their catheter. We find LGBTQ folks need a higher standard of living in their retirement years.

[00:05:42] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Wow. I mean, none of this really shocked me or surprised me because it’s like that. I think of it. What do I. It’s like the high school experience. We have that after high school or after we come out of school, at least I did, because in school, we’re acting the selves that we aren’t truly ourselves. And then when we come out, we get to experience those things. And it’s also. That’s why you also see older generations at the bar and dancing. I remember I had this experience where somebody around me was talking about, like, an older person, like, with their shirt off, dancing, having a good time in a setting they maybe wouldn’t be in, like. And I was just like, well, you don’t know. He might have just come out. Like, you don’t know his story, because he can finally be his true self. He’s going to be experiencing the things that we were given the opportunity, like myself. Luckily that I went through that 19 2021 because I was able to come out at that time. But not everybody goes on that journey, and I think a lot of that does influence the financial aspects and pieces, because you want to spend that money, you want to have that experience, you want to have fun, and that does affect your finances.

[00:06:45] Sarah Tinkler: Beautiful. We ask clients a lot. What brings you joy? And for that older gentleman who is dancing with his shirt off in the club, that could be a line item in that person’s budget. That brings me joy. For the first time in my life, I’m my true, authentic self. I’m comfortable in my skin. I’m with my people. I don’t feel judged. I don’t feel shamed. Like, this is a line item in my cash flow must be there every month, and it’s like, cool, let’s make it happen.

[00:07:11] Calan Breckon: Right? Um, and with that, with, you know, chosen family and other things, I didn’t necessarily come from a financially educated family, so all the financial education I had to do, it was on me. The onus was on me to learn all of those things. And I can only imagine that for a large portion of our community, a lot of us go through that, that we have to kind of learn these things for ourselves. Have you seen and noticed that that affects our community disproportionately?

[00:07:39] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, I would agree. I do think it does impact the community disproportionately. When you take a look at the numbers of LGBTQ folks who are kicked out of their home as teenagers or who are cut off from ties of their family in their young twenties, depending on, of course, they’re coming out story or being told, being outed forcibly types of stories, it can sever what we would typically see in young adulthood, where an older family member teaches a younger family member, okay, here’s how to save for your first home. You want to save up a 20% down payment. Here’s the types of mortgages that you can get. There’s not as many intergenerational money lessons or how to money if you’re battling for, hey, I deserve the right to exist and to be a part of this family.

So if you’re kicked into that survivor mode or have lost that tie, you are naturally going to look to your chosen family, who maybe are 510 years further or even more ahead of you for modeling those lessons and what you deem as successful or having figured it out in air quotes.

[00:08:44] Calan Breckon: Yeah, yeah, right. Um, and, you know, all this also leads to what you spoke about before. The chosen family, the people. We surround ourselves, we naturally being in the queer community, we are allowed to be outside of the box because we already were outside. We’re like, you know what? Don’t already fit in the box. I’m just going to do my own thing. And then because of that, that has led to other kind of types of relationships that we have in the community. So, you know, talking about financial planning in a different sense, maybe a sense most people wouldn’t talk about. What about people who are in more open relationships or maybe more polyamorous type of relationships? I can only imagine that that would definitely change the dynamics of finances in relationships and in partnerships. Can you speak a little bit about that, maybe?

[00:09:28] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, absolutely. So fully transparent. I am in a relationship with an amazing woman, Hanata, and we’ve been in a relationship for about a year and a half. Both of us are business owners, and both of us have our financial picture put together strongly. And that is a different conversation than, for example, my previous relationship where I was in a nine and a half year polyamorous triad. So three humans in a committed relationship for over nine years. The way that money comes into those sorts of dynamics is very, very different. It doesn’t work to have just a monogamous, two person type of financial planning conversation. And I would also say that when I’m sitting down with folks, there’s no right or wrong way for loving partners to decide how to money together.

A lot of folks will have there’s this person has their individual checking account. This person has their individual checking account. Or multiply that three, four humans. But we have this joint checking account or this joint investment account. That’s where these joint goals that we’re going to be doing, or joint household expenses. A lot of people that we work with will choose to proportionately fund that based upon their income. For example, if someone makes so much more money than another person, maybe that person funds the joint account at a bigger proportion towards shared joint goals. It’s so fascinating to learn on the legal side, on the tax side, on the property ownership side of things, depending on, of course, your jurisdiction, it is possible for a multi member LLC, like a triad, a four person pod, to form a business, and that business that the documents, articles of incorporation, can outline different percentages of different ownership of said business, and that business can purchase real estate, can purchase a vacation home, can purchase an Airbnb, and if there’s a disillusion of the partnership, or if one person wants out, other partners buy that person out. So there’s a way for polyamorous triads multi member pods to financially plan and support each other.

[00:11:38] Calan Breckon: That’s so brilliant.

Like, my mind is just blown right now because I never ever would have thought of it in those terms. But, like, I was in a three person business partnership, and like, we had our legal documents kind of written out and like, the only way we could dissolve that amicably, and we did, and everything’s amazing. But the only reason that happened is because we had those, like, kind of lines drawn in the sand in a legal sense. But when it came to polyamorous relationships, I was like, well, how is this? This seems like it’ll probably be real messy at some point, but doing it that way, everything is clear and on the table.

It’s just makes so much sense. And then, like, the tax benefits of that.

[00:12:22] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah. And you could theoretically, again, depends on jurisdiction. Depends on what country or state folks are listening in this from. There could be community property states if two people are legally married and some aren’t. But I’m just speaking generally. If everyone there is multi owner llc or a business, it really takes away a lot of the question marks around how are we going to build towards this beautiful future together that we want protect each other if something rough happened to one of us, if one of us passed away, what happens? What happens to the assets? What happens to the share? If someone decides to consciously uncouple, what do we do? And it’s so nice, even if you don’t do a legal document, it’s nice to have an informal, drafted at the kitchen table type of a document when everyone’s feeling amenable, happy, loving to each other, to decide what are we going to do in these ten different scenarios and spell it all out so then you can reference back to that document. Of course, that one probably isn’t legally binding like it would be to form a formal business with legal documentation. But it’s so important to know that whatever it is that you dream up. There’s a workaround. There’s a workaround whether it’s the way your estate documents are written, the way your beneficiary arrangements are titled, the way the business documents are structured, there’s always workarounds. And whatever your wishes are, no financial advisor should, ever, should you judge you and say, oh, well, you know, technically it’s this, but I don’t know. We also want to make sure that in multi member partnerships like that, that no one feels othered. Yeah, it’s really easy for someone to feel like the third wheel or for someone to feel like an unequal partnership often because polyamorous relationships are multiple humans coming together at different times in life. And some people like terms like primary, secondary, tertiary, some people completely the use of terms, and that’s okay. Everyone can choose their own thing for their self identification and description of the, of the polyamorous relationship. However, creating things that feel correct and feel safe, so that no one person feels othered or feels hesitant to contribute towards joint goals.

[00:14:44] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. And that is very important because I personally have not experienced having a relationship like that. But in the back of my head I’m like, I just feel like somebody would feel like something. And I like to have kind of. I know nothing is guaranteed in life, nothing ever is. But that security of like, at least we’ve written something down to the degree that it will protect to x amount because we’re all human beings and things happen. And so to have that plan is really important. And to be able to work with people like yourself who can help map that out is also really important. I like this journey we were going down in terms of like, setting up businesses in the entrepreneurship. So continuing on that kind of route of things. What are some core things entrepreneurs need to think about when first setting up their businesses financially or setting those kinds of agreements up?

[00:15:32] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, for solopreneurs or entrepreneurs like a one person business, I think that a lot of folks will start that as a side hustle. And I don’t mean that to diminish the quality or the size of the dream, but I mean that from you’ve got a w two full time day job that’s paying your salary and your benefits, and think of that as the angel investor to your side hustle, your solopreneur business to help it get launched. Often folks will then reach this tipping point where they’re like, okay, the side hustle is not just a side hustle now, it’s a pretty significant piece, or I can bow out of my full time job and pour more and get this up to critical mass to be able to launch. And inside of that decision about that timing. We always tell people to advise with a financial tax legal professional before you take that full pivot. And the reasons being is there are some general risk mitigation things that should happen even if you’re a solopreneur. In the US, we want to set up an LLC, a limited liability company to protect if one of your clients, one of your customers in this solopreneur business sues you for whatever reason, you want to make sure that your personal assets or the combined assets with your other loved ones is not negatively impacted. And when you are a new solopreneur entrepreneur, there’s also some other pieces to think of. Yes, we are building something built on hopes and dreams, and it’s fueled and funded by hopes and dreams and blood sweat equity. But also we want to start thinking about scalability right from the beginning, mapping out what are your one year, two year, three year, four year goals for the business, thinking multiple years in advance for how you want to bring on additional contractors or additional business partners or passive angel investors into that side thing. Setting up your own benefits package is a really critical piece that we see a lot of entrepreneurs skip or put into the someday bucket. But setting up your own benefits package, setting up, for example, your own health insurance plan, setting up your own retirement plan for a self employed person, you can set up your own, whether it’s a solo k in the US here, solo k or a Sep IRA for solopreneurs to be putting dollars aside tax advantageously for long term retirement goals. Same thing with life insurance and disability income insurance. A lot of people do that through their employers. I’m fine. I’ve got it covered through my employer. But when you go into entrepreneurhood, what happens if you’re sick or injured or have some medical reason that needs you to take a break from working in your business or succession planning. Okay, maybe you’ve been running your business for a couple of years, you have all of these client contracts and all of these client promises that you’ve made for whatever your business looks like. And what happens if you’re killed by a bus tomorrow? I know that sounds very morbid, and it’s a cliche what if? But the truth is, a continuity plan is what a careful entrepreneur is going to be creating. For example, if something happens to me, one of my colleagues overnight becomes the owner of my business based on the legal document and has the life insurance tax free death benefit in her hands to keep my team employed for a few years and make more expansions if needed in the team to keep all of the promises. It is so important to me that my clients have a continuous experience. So, thinking about succession, whether you’re identifying a neighboring business in a tangential type of thing to absorb your business, that something happened to you, or you’re identifying and grooming someone coming up in the business behind you to take over the business, it’s never too early to think of your conscious exit strategy or your accidental ripped from the business because of a death or disability strategy. Super important to think through all of the what ifs.

[00:19:41] Calan Breckon: Yeah. So you just went through a bunch of, like, pitfalls that entrepreneurs can miss simply because they haven’t, like, worked ahead or planned ahead, or they just, they haven’t gotten there. Do you have any, like, specific examples of maybe when a business didn’t think ahead financially and then they ended up really paying the price for something that could have easily been, like, completely avoided?

[00:20:02] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, um, a couple of thoughts I have on that. One is folks who have gone 510, 15 years without setting up a retirement plan for themselves through the business.

[00:20:15] Calan Breckon: That’s a long time without having to really long time.

[00:20:19] Sarah Tinkler: Because a lot of folks feel like, on paper, I’m just not bringing home that much money. Like, that’s one of those things. When I reach this cost of bringing home gobs and gobs of cash, and I need to work with an accountant to hide money from the IR’s and paying taxes. But honestly, starting early and starting small is the biggest strategy for positive long term growth. Time is your biggest asset. So if you can just start right away to, hey, even if it’s just consolidating all my old retirement accounts from all my old jobs I had into a new self employed retirement account and tiny little monthly contributions, just like it’s paying your cell phone bill or just like it’s paying the rent for your office. Contribute something little into that on a regular basis. Don’t miss out on, I’ll get to that later. Don’t put it on the shelf. And because what happens is, it’s hard to rebuild that habit you used to have when you had a paycheck and your employer made you put money away. It’s so hard to restart a habit than just continuing a habit.

[00:21:24] Calan Breckon: Definitely. Yeah. There. I can’t remember where I heard this, but there was this entrepreneur, somebody on social media, who they were like, pay yourself first, always. Like, always pay yourself first, and it will completely change the way you do business and how everything gets done around you because it’s weird. The universe always manages to figure things out for you when you put the foot forward. And so definitely by doing that, even if it’s like ten in the long run, that compounding of it is going to make a huge difference for sure.

[00:22:00] Sarah Tinkler: I love that you brought in the word universe, Cal, and I didn’t know you were woo woo before this conversation. I will bring all the woo.

I’ve been a yoga instructor as well as being a wealth management advisor and I always bring the woo into conversations where applicable and appropriate.

The message that I share with folks is if the universe is handing you all these business opportunities, all these clients, all these great things, or even if you’re still a w two employee full time for another company, if you are getting these dollars hitting your checking account from whatever source and you just shit the money away like, no, I don’t know where the money goes. I have no clue. That is a very distinct message to the universe or higher power, whatever your belief system is to be like, don’t send more money to her. She doesn’t even care about the money that we’re sending to her. And I think when we are, even if it’s tiny dollars that we’re talking about, strategic to say, I’m paying myself first. Future Sarah deserves a solid foundation. I’m then going to take these dollars. I have to pay these bills, of course, cost of living, being strategic to say, I want these dollars for food to go to organic, sustainable, local, in season produce and food sources that are high nutrients. I want these dollars to go to this sort of thing that brings me joy. And if we’re conscious about the flow of the dollars and where we’re sending those dollars, it sends a very distinct message to the universe to send more. Send more to Sarah. She cares about the dollars coming her way, 110%.

[00:23:36] Calan Breckon: I believe in that. Whatever you put the energy into and you focus on, you’re going to get more of. So definitely, definitely a little woo woo over on this side for sure. You spoke a little bit about succession, so I’m really curious. Over the next decade, there’s going to be a lot of boomers retiring and I’ve just, I’ve heard a lot of this conversation going around. Like what does that mean for businesses and what does that mean for business succession? How can folks plan ahead and what are their options for their businesses in terms of that thought process?

[00:24:07] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah. So if you are inheriting a business or if you’re growing your business to be able to pass to the next generation at your exit strategy. I’ll chat from both angles.

First of all, if you have someone of an older generation, whether it’s a parent or a boss, that wants the business to go to you by when you’re retired, when they’re retiring, for example. So let’s just say there’s a 55 year old who wants to sell the business to you in your 30. What do you do to be able to buy the business? There’s a couple of ways that we typically see business exit strategies happening.

One is there could be a negotiation you could make with this business owner to say, hey, grant me as my next bonus. Instead of giving me a cash bonus. Give me a certain percentage of ownership in the business, and that then is aligned on your balance sheet that you’re starting to build. You could also talk through sweat equity. Give me 5% more ownership each of these next years. Assuming we hit our targets, you can negotiate in that would be equity grants, you would be getting into the business. Now, there could be some tax implications to that, so make sure to work with an accountant or a CPA on it. Another thing is just a straight up equity sale.

And that sale of the business, maybe that 55 year old is like, cool. The business is worth $1 million. Give me $1 million and you own 100% of the business. Well, what is a 30 year old going to? How are they going to find a million dollar business loan that 30 year old would have needed to build up? Beautiful credit score, some sort of a down payment, some sort of a balance sheet to be able to use as collateral. So it’s never too early to start paying attention to a good credit score and start building up assets on your balance sheet. It doesn’t have to all be in a cash savings account. You can have many other types of investment accounts or assets or retirement accounts. That’s part of a solid balance sheet to be able to qualify for that financing. SBA, the small business association in the US, has great grants that you can do to buy businesses. It could be if you can’t get a business loan to buy the business, maybe the seller would agree to an installment plan, aka I’ll give you 100 grand a year over the next ten years or something like that. Or I’ll give you this percentage over these many years. And that’s also an option and a choice. Now, if I was the 55 year old business owner in that example, I would start to think about, I need to find a buyer internally, externally, my competitors, the next generation who’s going to groom it up. Maybe that 55 year old’s not going to actually sell the business. Maybe they’re going to stay in the business as a passive person just getting a paycheck. But the next generation is going to take over running the day to day. So again, there’s no right or wrong inside of it. When we’re thinking about businesses transitioning to the next generation or the younger generation or next generation of owners, those are all important pieces. And then I’m happy to chat through inheritances. I think that’s always interesting when it comes to inheritances. Callan, you’re right. There’s trillions of dollars that are passing from the hands of boomers as they pass away into the next generation. And often there’s going to be people in their twenties, thirties, forties, who all of a sudden are sitting on this big lump sum of an asset. Maybe it’s home ownership, business ownership, investment accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, proceeds. They might have inherited a mess too. And inside of it it is a matter of sparsing out an understanding. There are certain rules for certain assets that you have to spend down within ten years. There are certain things that are nice to have inherited because they don’t have tax implications for you. So again, sit with a professional for each custom unique situation.

But we repeatedly hear from a lot of our people in their twenties, thirties and forties who inherited money from a previous generation. Like I’m not, I don’t have the same philosophical worldviews, I don’t have the same investment philosophies as that generation. I want my dollars to be values based investments or lined up with low carbon footprint, no private prisons in my portfolio, no weapons manufacturers in my portfolio. And my grandpa’s financial advisor is just someone who’s also in their sixties and seventies, who doesn’t listen to me or talks down to me or doesn’t listen to what my goals and my dreams are. So again, please, if you’ve inherited money, please make sure you talk to a trusted financial advisor who’s going to find out what you want to do with the money and how you want it to grow for you.

Because we often find it’s a massive philosophical difference as money is changing hands too.

[00:28:53] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. I want to go back to the selling of the business, the entrepreneurship piece, because there was an interesting part about, I think what I’ve heard it be called is like owner financed is when they’re passing this off to the next generation. And sometimes people in our generations younger, they’re like, well I want to have a business or build a business, they think they have to become an entrepreneur and they have to start it themselves and they have to work and do all these things well, you could also go out there and acquire a business that already has the customers, that already has all the systems that you could then improve upon where the owner is at a stage where they’re like, getting ready to retire. They’d like to retire. They don’t want to own or run the business forever. And so they can agree to finance that to you so that you pay them extra every single month or every single year on top of what their regular pay would be as over the years, you then buy them out of the business. That is a completely realistic thing to do. And I think not a lot of, I think not enough young people recognize and realize that that’s an option because small business is the backbone of both of our economies in Canada and in the US and around the world. And there needs to be more younger folks who are aware of these options to them that you could be working at a place and go, hey, I noticed you’re maybe at the age where you might start thinking about retirement. Do you have a plan?

I’m kind of interested in owning and or running a business. Is there something that can be discussed here? And more often than not, they’ll, they’ll entertain the conversation. Have you seen, have you seen much of that happening?

[00:30:32] Sarah Tinkler: Yeah, I think that’s such a great idea, Callan. And I would also suggest maybe instead of calling the boss of the company old, you could say, you could say, hey, what’s your exit strategy?

What’s your exit strategy? I want to sit down, I want to hear, what are your dreams where you could almost like fact, find the business owner? Tell me, share with me what’s your vision? And then what? And then what? And then what? And keep probing, keep asking questions. First of all, they’re going to start to view like, oh, this is a really strategically thinking human being that is not just here for a paycheck trust building process. To be really curious with whoever the owner of the business is, you know, sit down with them, schedule a meeting with them, ask them how they started the business, why they started the business, who’s important to them. Ask them, what’s your vision for the business in the next few years? And then ultimately, what’s your exit strategy? You’ll probably, as you alluded to Callan, I would guess 80% of the time they haven’t even figured it out. They have no idea.

And it sense, because no one entrepreneurs have gotten where they’ve gotten based on pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. They have figured out how to wing it and be massively successful and scale the business. But there’s no teacher or mentor who has taught them. Here’s how you exit. So ask those questions. Get the gears turning in their brain, if you will, for I don’t know. I don’t know what’s my exit strategy, and I want to slow down in five years, but I think I’ll always want to be involved in the business, or I want to sell the business and live in a beach hut in Costa Rica, or, hey, actually, you know, I’ve got another. The next generation. But I think it’s great to say, hey, I dream of having a business like this someday. Partial ownership, full ownership. I dream of, like, what would it take? Ask for advice. Ask for their mentorship around. What would it take to get to a place where you would entertain the idea of me buying out part or all of the business someday?

Asking those questions is going to prove that you are a worthy purchaser and also going to help get the gears turning if they’re reluctant to even go there. No one wants to think about aging, and no one wants to think that there’s going to come a time where they’re not going to be as sharp or as energetic as they once were. But we know statistically when someone reaches around age 70, 72, their financial confidence stays incredibly high. However, their actual decision making ability declines. So having those preemptive conversations when the business owner is in their fifties is really, really helpful before they get to that place of clinging onto it with dear life, because they haven’t approached that existential crisis of, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

[00:33:28] Calan Breckon: 100%. Yeah, brilliant. What have we not discussed today in terms of financial advice that you might have for us before we wrap things up here?

[00:33:40] Sarah Tinkler: I would say that when it comes to financial planning, you have got to. LGBTQ folks have got to build their financial planning more accurate and precise than maybe, you know, cis had to. People will have to. And the reasons that we can’t just wing it, and we’ve got to actually have precise beneficiary arrangements, precise assets in particular locations, precise estate planning documents, succession documents, business ownership, what if scenario documents, we have to have that all super precise, because if we pass away or something happens and we’re incapacitated without those documents in place, without it being buttoned up, we can’t say that our biological next of kin or that a court or a judge or magistrate or anyone is going to actually follow what our wishes are.

And we can’t just wing it. It has to be buttoned up. And so because of that is no time is too early to start. It doesn’t matter if someone’s 20 years old or if someone’s 55 and has never done any financial planning. Never. Like, the best time to start is now. And so get started and have those conversations about what you want to build. I would also say that it’s important to not kick it to the fuck it bucket. I didn’t ask Callan if it’s okay for me to swear.

[00:35:08] Calan Breckon: No, we can swear on here.

[00:35:10] Sarah Tinkler: Okay, great.

I find a lot of humans of all ages who have stuck their ostrich head in the sand, and money conversations bring me anxiety. I’m just going to avoid it.

We have to have the courage, the bravery, the mental health support. Speak with the therapist, psychologist, psychotherapist, someone to start to have an awareness of what you’re building, what you’re creating, how it’s going to grow.

And creating that safe place. To have those conversations is so important because my favorite part about what we do in the field of financial planning is to watch someone with their ostrich head in the sand or having kicked it to the fucking bucket their whole life of, I’ll never be able to retire. Like, whatever. I’m just going to spend 100% of my paycheck on my business or on myself is when we start to show through nerdy projections, nerdy math, actual time on your side, and we start to show them it’s doable. Like, what you want is totally doable. It’s then like, oh, oh, crap. I’ve got to actually be, like, strategic, and I can’t kick it to the outfit bucket anymore. I know it’s possible. So it gives you a different level of hope. It gives you a different level of, like, okay, it’s going to be all right. And it pumps up with an energy and enthusiasm and an optimism that what you want to build, what you want to create is possible. And so I want to encourage anyone who has a rough money story or rough intergenerational money story to ask around, find a referral to a very trusted human who’s inclusive and competent and fair, and just have some conversations and don’t take it into this ostrich head in the sand forever and ever and ever. You owe it to yourself.

[00:36:59] Calan Breckon: Yeah, that’s very important. Thank you for sharing that.

One of my first mentors and continues to be a mentor of mine is a CPA, bookkeeper, financial planner person. And just through osmosis of her being my mentor in many different capacities, my financial awareness and growth has just changed in so many different ways. But it’s those micro changes that it’s like, it’s the compounding interest of those micro changes that really changes things. I like to believe that change doesn’t really happen in the way we believe it happens. It’s not this big moment where everything changes. It can, but there’s those, most of it is those micro moments on those little choices you make that leads to the end of it. And so that’s what the same thing is here. It’s not like you can’t just change everything all at once. But that commitment to that $10 a month to that one account or that one thing will really, it will make a difference. So thank you for being a guiding post for the folks who want to do those things. Of course, yeah. So where can folks find out more, go to learn more, reach out to you if they want to start this journey for themselves or just learn more?

[00:38:09] Sarah Tinkler: Absolutely. Find me on LinkedIn. Sarah Tinkler is the name. And then you could also go directly to our website. It’s warrior swealth.com.

[00:38:19] Calan Breckon: Fantastic.

[00:38:19] Sarah Tinkler: So warrioresswealth.com

[00:38:24] Calan Breckon: Perfect. And I’ll make sure to have those links in the show notes so everybody can go and check those out there. Sarah, this has been an absolutely lovely conversation. Thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast.

[00:38:34] Sarah Tinkler: Thanks so much, Callan. I appreciate it.

[00:38:36] Calan Breckon: Well, you heard Sarah, folks. It is never too late to start your financial planning for your future. We as a community deserve it. And you can work with people like Sarah to make sure that that happens. Thank you again for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button if you enjoyed today’s episode, and I would love a star rating from you if you’d love to give me one. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.