Season 1, Episode 1: How does a beginner learn about investing?

Tips to start learning about finance from an expert and a dummy

Welcome to a party you probably don't want to come to!

In the very first episode of Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough, Caitlin and Sara talk about ways to make learning about finance and investing easier and (dare we say?) more fun. Spoiler alert: step by step, with a milkshake chaser.

Get ready for the one thing Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough can do TODAY to take the first, or next, step towards building a strong financial future.

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions on our contact page!

This episode was edited by Kim Shelton and Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Transcripts for Episode 1: How does a beginner learn about investing?

 Music intro by Bad Bad Hats

Caitlin [00:00:06] Welcome to women on the verge of a financial breakthrough. The podcast where we're going to figure out finance one dumb question at a time. I'm Caitlin Meredith. I'm a mediator and a coach based in the Bay Area, and

Sara [00:00:20] I'm Sara Glakas. I'm an investor, advisor and founder of Black Barn Financial and the Austin Women's Investing Group, which can be found on Meetup.

Caitlin [00:00:30] So Sara and I met six years ago, seven years ago when I was a new mom of a baby at home and desperate to get out of the house, and my really generous neighbors who also had a baby, offered to babysit for free on Tuesday nights. So I could go take a class. And I looked at the class catalog at U.T. in Austin, where I was living at the time, and my heart sunk because the only class offered on Tuesday nights was investing for beginners and I had to weigh, which was more enticing free babysitting for me or investing for beginners.

And in fact, the free babysitting won. And I started taking the class and Sara was the teacher, and from that class she invited me to join the Austin Women's Investing Group. So Sara, I want you to tell everybody what this thing is. The Austin Women's Investment Group.

Sara [00:01:28] So back in 2011, my friend Michelle and I started a group with really the sole mission of getting women together in a room and talking about investing and finance and money issues. And that's still what the Austin Women's Investing Group is now. But now it's 10 years later, and we have something like 2,600 or 2,700 members in the group. We have over a thousand women on our private Facebook group, and we still just get together and talk about financial topics each month.

Caitlin [00:01:58] One of my favorite things about the group was finding out that I was not the only person that had a lot of really dumb questions about finance and investing. I thought, I can't be the only one with all of these dumb questions. So welcome to us figuring out finance or one dumb question at a time. I'm the dummy. She's the expert, and we're going to figure this out.  

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Caitlin Sara, something I have been thinking about so much in the past week is how hard it is for grown ups to learn new things. And I feel like that applies to finance and investing

in general and maybe like especially. Have you had that experience with all of the new people coming in through your classes or clients or whatever?

Sara [00:02:50] Yes, that is. I think that's a really common complaint. I don't know feedback that I get both from the Austin Women’s investing group and from my clients that it just feels like a topic that doesn't stick in their brain. Do you know what I mean?

Caitlin [00:03:04] Yes, yes. Every time you explain to new people in the group what investing is, what stocks are, how it all works. I learn something new, not because I've never heard you say it before, but because I feel like every subsequent time I hear it from you, I can absorb one new thing yes, and incorporate that into my picture. And then that's it. Move on. Got to hear it again. It takes a really long time to have this stuff stick in my brain.

Sara [00:03:39] Yeah, I think so, too. And I think maybe one of the things with this topic and probably other topics is, you know, you don't appreciate how much time it takes to learn something. It feels like either you know something or you don't know something. And if you don't know something, it's because you're incapable of learning it. But maybe you don't appreciate the time and effort required to learn anything.

Caitlin [00:04:04] Right? And I can just compare it to learning new languages just because those grown ups a language as a definitive thing that you don't know and then you're trying to know it. And I actually speak a few different languages, but I've tried to learn many more than I actually speak. And it has been I felt like just impossible, like I was working in Sudan and I started taking Arabic lessons. And that poor woman had to go one two, three four or five six seven eight nine ten. So many times I still remember hamza. I remember certain numbers, but certainly not an order. And it felt like just what you're saying this wall, that there was no way that those words were going to find a home in my brain.

Sara [00:04:50] Yes. Yes, I think that's totally what it's like learning, investing and finance to. It is its own language, which is part of it. And then just that the words and the concepts sound so foreign that you like. Oh, this doesn't fit into the structure of my brain.

Caitlin [00:05:08] Yes. And unlike something like Mandarin or Arabic or a language that we don't know, that we haven't been exposed to a lot of these words, the vocabulary in finance and economics and investing we have been exposed to and it hasn't been a pleasurable exposure because it reminds us of our ignorance. It makes us feel ashamed because we should know those things because we're grownups now. And it immediately goes into, Oh my god, I'm not doing anything with my money. Like, there is so much in our response to those words already that it's not just a neutral new word for Apple, it's something we already have a lot of, dare I say, baggage with the just even the word stock. So you as a professional in that field, I think that's so funny. You basically lay out all these landmines for your clients. Are people trying to learn and have to hold their hand through that process?

Sara [00:06:10] Yeah, it took me a long time to figure that out. That part of the anxiety and the stress that came along with, you know, advising people or educating people on this topic that so much of it was that I needed to recognize that I really needed to go back to the basics because I think people throw up kind of this, this wall where they try to come into a conversation showing how much they already know and really what a lot of people need help with is like going back to like the bricks that went into building that wall, making sure that the concepts that they are coming into the relationship with like are somewhat accurate and meaningful to the client, if that makes sense.

Caitlin [00:06:56] Yeah. Yeah, because what I as I will just repeat many times when I started, you're investing for beginners class. I did not think I was investing and I had a retirement account, right? So it didn't really matter if I didn't understand the words what a retirement account actually meant. I couldn't learn anymore because I didn't think certain things applied to me when they did. And so I wanted I mean, that's the whole point of our podcast is. To explain and break down all these terms and concepts, one dumb question at a time. And I wanted to just think about all of the things that I've learned in learning a few different languages. And so here I have my note card that has four of the things that I could think of off the top of my head. And I want you to tell me if you think that they resonate with you about learning for finance, like if there really is a parallel here. Yeah. The first is to keep it simple and personal. So my example that I thought of is when I was learning French. The two most important things for me to learn were Where is the bathroom? Because I was spending all of these really long days walking around Paris, and that was the one thing that just seemed like I needed to have a handle on. Yes, the bathroom. They did not have almost any public toilets at the time. And please don't put mayo on that or please put extra mayo. So I feel like those are the areas where I had to keep it super simple, just learned those words and that it was meaningful to me the response. And so tell me what you think about the parallel for alerting fights?

Sara [00:08:44] Yes. So I would say for an investor that is really concerned with replacing her income, let's say she's nearing retirement age and is trying to work through in her mind, where does the money come from to pay the bills? Once I stop working, you would focus on the language around dividends and interest, and you could skip or just gloss over a whole bunch of other concepts that, even if they're relevant, are not personal to the client. Like we could say, OK, our number one priority every time we have a conversation is talking about income. Where does the money come from? How do dividends work? How does interest work? And then you can skip over a bunch of other stuff that is just not the priority of the client at that point in her life, right? That would make things way more simple.

Caitlin [00:09:43] So starting out in this process of learning about how to plan a financial future, learning about investing, you don't have to take on the entire system. The starting point is how old am I? What are my resources? How do I need to start thinking about my future in terms of my finances and investments? And that you don't have to take on this whole financial system to understand before you get started. I would still be looking for a bathroom in Paris if I had tried to master the conjugation of all the verbs. I just really needed the “Ou é…”

Sara Exactly. Yeah.

Caitlin [00:10:23] OK, so the second one I thought of is that you definitely have to be willing to make a fool of yourself. I have so, so many examples of making a fool of myself in different languages. I was living in Chicago and I started working at the soul food restaurant, and there was this really lovely prep cook in the back kitchen. And she was from Ecuador and I wanted to show off my Spanish. And I was itching my arm, and I told her that I had been bit by a rana and her eyes got really big. And I was sort of like, Oh, it doesn't seem that strange to tell someone you've been bit by a spider. You know, it was unfortunate, whatever. Later, I realized I told her I had been bit by a frog, but she became a very good friend, like just my willingness to talk. And I didn't know that I was making a fool of myself. But clearly my mastery of the Spanish language was not what I thought, and I said it in such a casual way. But in so many situations, I have made a complete fool of myself by using the wrong word. And it's always had the effect of like breaking through through laughter or whatever so that I actually could communicate. So I'm curious in your work where you see people making a fool of themselves were it actually helps them learn.

Sara [00:11:47] You know, sometimes for me, it's I can tell right off the bat that someone is doing their best to speak the language and it's just not native yet. But sometimes it takes a while to be like, Oh, this person is kind of has memorized a bunch of phrases, but they're maybe not super. They're not exactly relevant to the questions and issues they actually have.

Caitlin [00:12:08] And I feel like it would be easier for you or when we all have conversations where we're a little bit more vulnerable than a client coming to you or a new student being like, I have no idea what any of this means. And here are all these like forms that I'm supposed to fill out or, you know, reports that I've gotten that I'm supposed to, like, have an opinion about, and I just have no idea. So that vulnerability, the sort of other side of making a fool of yourself is that you're willing to be vulnerable and say how much you don't know. So that you know exactly where to start the conversation and what education is the most important for them.

Sara [00:12:46] Yes, it's much more efficient for someone who feels like they don't know anything to walk in. And that's the first thing they tell me is I feel like I don't know anything because then we can start, you know, minute one addressing your concerns instead of they get to know you phase where it's not clear until 30 minutes into the meeting that we need to be having a different conversation, right?  

Caitlin [00:13:09] And just getting over our shame and all of the baggage we have over not knowing what these words mean despite being adults who should know and who read the newspaper or whatever. OK. My next one. We already kind of touched on, but that you'll need to hear a new term approximately a million times. And for me, the process goes like the words go over my head and I don't even notice them. They don't even stick out. And then the more I learn about something else, I notice a term that I might have heard a million times and notice, Wow, I really don't even know what that means. And then maybe the next time I hear it, I can isolate it and say, Hey, I want to learn what that thing means. So this repeated exposure, there's no expectation that once you hear Sara talk for an hour about what the stock market is, that you will actually have absorbed all that information, you might understand one new concept in a way that you could build from. I just feel like that's a very normal way about learning about this and that our expectations as grown as like, explain it to me once and I get it and I'm good to go. And that is absolutely not a realistic expectation for learning about finance.

Sara [00:14:20] No, it's not realistic at all. But I think it's part of the issue with, you know, you start learning about something. And maybe like for some people, the expectation is, Oh, I just plow through the curriculum. Right? Chapter one, Chapter two, Chapter three, Chapter four. When really you need to read chapter one a million times,

Caitlin [00:14:38] many, many times.

Sara [00:14:40] Or you need to always be referring back instead of just plowing through the curriculum. One time reading the first chapter 10 times is probably more valuable and then going out at your own pace instead of trying to get all of the information you know, in a month or six months or one year by setting kind of arbitrary deadlines for yourself.

Caitlin [00:15:03] So I feel like as we go through and I ask you all my dumb questions and you explain that will try to re-explain these topics and these terms, but that that expectation from the beginning for anybody trying to learn this is that you will listen to the same episode three times you will read the same paragraph, six times that. That's part of what's so intimidating about learning it, but also just to not have that expectation that you're dumb or you can't do it because some of this stuff just does not stick in your head and that you have to relearn it and re-exposed that that is actually part of learning this. 

Sara [00:15:43] That's so important. I feel like that's a really important point that everyone needs to take away because I hear all the time people say, I can't learn this, right, that's why I need an advisor, or that's why I rely on, you know, my spouse or my parents to handle this for me. You can learn it or you can learn the fundamentals. It is going to take time. Whether or not you have time is a different issue, but I'm assuming that if people are listening to us talk about this now, if they have some time to start

Caitlin [00:16:15] and curiosity

Sara [00:16:16] and curiosity and it's, you know, it's repetition, repetition, repetition and then you, you know, like little Lego bricks, you kind of put your little Lego bricks together and then eventually you have like a little house or a little car that you've made out of Legos.

Caitlin [00:16:29] Forget about some space ship. You're totally a little little lean to out of Legos.

Sara [00:16:35] Exactly.

Caitlin [00:16:36] That you can build from. Which brings me to my next point, which is actually the most exciting one and I should have started with. But the key for me is also a chocolate milkshake. It's feeding my brain when I am trying to learn something. I mean, the sugar, the fat, the carbohydrates, the protein, it depletes you. So I made this decision long time ago that I couldn't ever go into Home Depot without a chocolate milkshake because the second someone started to talk to me in depth about some plumbing divide. I just needed all the support I could get in my brain, gets super hungry, super quick, and I can talk about a lot of things for hours without needing a chocolate milkshake. But there are other topics and areas where I just need that support. So I feel like blood sugar is not a trivial thing and that it can even be not just your reward, but like, Hey, I need extra support. Here's a self-care moment I'm going to learn this stuff that's super hard, super intimidating. Let's bring in the Snickers.

Sara [00:17:44] That is something we need to incorporate into Austin women's investing group meetings and into my client meetings. I think that's really important. It's already a stressful situation. Your brain is going to be on overload. You have to feed your brain while you're doing this. It's hard for everyone. And I know, like maybe other people have had this experience when I don't have my blood sugar regulated and I'm in a stressful situation. I just started. I can feel my brain shutting down. It's like, OK, I'm not in a position to help myself learn. I've not put myself in a strong position to learn this. My fight or flight response is kicking in. I'm trying to just hibernate and, you know, curl into the fetal position in my brain. And so how are you going to learn anything if you're just thinking like, Oh man, all of a sudden I am starving and so tired and yeah, get me out of here.

Caitlin [00:18:37] Yeah. So small chunks, chocolate milkshake, whatever your version. Yeah. Just to really treat your brain like the hero it is for going into this uncharted territory and giving it all of a substance it needs. The other thing that is also a really fun part of it, obviously, we're doing a podcast together, having a buddy. Yes, just like languages where you need a conversation buddy just to actualize it, have the words come out of your mouth to another human being and have to explain yourself in that way. Having a buddy in this is makes it a lot more fun and less lonely.

Sara [00:19:17] How many times have we heard that at the Austin Women's Investing Group, when people talk about not having anyone that they can talk about this with? Right. And that's what the group is for, and it's serves that exact purpose. But certainly like, yes, if you find people, you can talk to about this and talk to over and over about it and they are talking to you, right? So it's a two way conversation so that you can learn from each other and practice on each other in a safe space and give each other resources and time to work it out.

Caitlin [00:19:49] Sometimes finding a stranger or someone that you aren't already talking about a million things with could be really helpful, too, because that's your point. Your mission is to, you know, learn tennis together or practice Italian or say, we're going to figure out what this whole investing thing is about together.

Sara [00:20:08] Yeah, it's probably not going to be your best friend, right? Because there is still kind of that like, Oh, this is so personal, you know, like, you know, do you necessarily go shopping for underwear with your best friend? Like, maybe that's something you do, right? But maybe you don't. Maybe, you know, do it on your own or do it with the lady that you meet in the lingerie section of the department store where that's like what she's into.

Caitlin [00:20:32] So I just thought you were totally insane and that we're going to start bringing you up some underwear thing. But what I'm getting is that a lot of this is super personal and we're revealing parts of our financial lives that we might not be revealing to our best friends because of our shame. Also because of comparison. And I think that's another thing I wanted to talk to you about is that one of the parts about money that's hard to talk about in or even engage ourselves is there's so much comparison. And there's the comparison on the level of I have not very much and my friends have a lot or I have a lot and my friends don't have very much. There's money has this forcefield about it. That means that we might not be able to talk about it with our friends and our families because we have different resources or we view them as being bad with money. And so we don't actually want to, you know, be influenced by their values. And so figuring out who the people are that we can come clean about who we are financially is really important part of this.

Sara [00:21:39] Yes. So I think it maybe it ends up being like you have casual conversations with a wide range of people and then. When you make that connection with someone who might be a friend of a friend or someone in your professional network, you know, you might be able to find those people who are like, Oh, this person is secretly in the same boat as I am or is sympathetic to the issues that I'm dealing with. They are my go to person on this topic, but it's not necessarily. Yeah, your best friend or your family members or or people where it might, I don't know, cause weirdness in a relationship.

Caitlin [00:22:16] Yes. And I just thought of too. I mean, I'm acting like, this is an epiphany. It's not, but just that it can fall on both ends of the spectrum. So I can imagine a big secret that you don't tell the people in your life about is I have $100,000 in credit card debt, right? I'm really ashamed about it, and I didn't want people to worry about it or my parents to know because then they'll try to sell their house to pay it off. Like, there's some very good reasons to have secrets about some of our financial life. But on the other end of the spectrum, like, I just inherited $100000, and I don't really want my friends to know or my family to know, you know, just that could be a secret for very good reasons, too. Isn't that crazy that it's all over the place?

Sara [00:23:02] Yeah. There's all sorts of secrets. I mean, building up the community of people that you might be able to share something like that with. I think it's a little bit tricky, but maybe something again, you can start putting out the feelers if we get over the initial discomfort of talking about money at all with people like, can you start introducing financial topics or money topics with people around you, just like put out the feelers, not necessarily like launch into it at your first, you know, lunch date with someone right to see if they're the right fit. But just like put out the feelers and be like, Oh, this person, you know, might be receptive to being my money buddy.

Caitlin [00:23:44] And there has to be trust there, obviously, because you're you're being vulnerable and you're revealing things that potentially could make you also susceptible to scams. You need to feel safe. So the main takeaways are to take care of yourself, lower your expectations about how much you should be learning or how quickly. Just go at your own pace and try to have a little fun and maybe not do it alone.

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Sara [00:24:21] So, Caitlin, what do you think is one thing a woman on the verge can do today to start on her financial breakthrough journey?

Caitlin [00:24:32] I think I was trying to remember how I started and I think it was just setting an intention like at the time. I think through taking her class, I had figured out I had these old retirement accounts like I needed to set the intention, figure out where they are, how much is in them. And so I wonder if people listening could just set their own intention for it or their objective, their goal. I would like to do X for myself, for some people could be like college savings accounts or I need to start a retirement account like just set that goal for yourself. And then maybe if you're super motivated to also say, like, I'm going to focus on this on Sunday afternoons or like Tuesday at lunch, whatever like set a calendar goal too. So it just doesn't invade the rest of your life. Like, you know, OK, that's the time I deal with it. And for me, that made a big difference in reducing all of my anxiety about it, just setting the goal and saying, I'm going to try to figure this out piece by piece, maybe with the chocolate milkshake, a glass of wine, just something a little self-care in there along the way just to give yourself a hug while you're doing this hard thing.

Sara [00:25:47] I love that because it takes such a big topic like we've talked about already and breaks it into little parts instead of trying to do it all at once.

Caitlin [00:25:56] Yeah. Which we can't. We're all doing a bunch of other stuff too, like our regular work and our regular family life or whatever it is. So it has to be something you can work in to the rest of your life and doesn't feel like you're about to get a Ph.D. in something and need to put everything to the side that you can do it in small chunks along the way.

Sara [00:26:16] Agreed.

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Sara Hey, do you have any dumb questions about finance or investing? Send them to us at our website womenontheverge.com.

Caitlin [00:26:31] Hey, so many thank yous to Kim Shelton, our audio editor. Kelly West, who not only took the amazing photos for her album art, but helped with website design and music and mental health. Emily Kleinsorge, our stylist that did our hair and makeup for our photos from Lucy's Skyrocket. Lauren Gross and Taylor Gross, who helped us with our graphic design and

Sara [00:26:57] our music is by Bad, Bad Hats and Devmo.

Caitlin [00:27:01] If your partner is making you ask for money, giving you an allowance, taking your money or not letting you know about or have access to family income, this could be economic abuse.

Sara [00:27:13] Learn more at thehotline.org or call one 800 799 safe.

Caitlin [00:27:21] So Sara Because you're a financial professional, we have to read a disclaimer for this podcast.

Sara [00:27:29] I would actually really love it if you could read the disclaimer and your best legal voice. Oh my

Caitlin [00:27:35] God, the legal voice. OK, doing it. This podcast contains general information that is not suitable for everyone. The information contained herein should not be construed as personalized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast will come to pass. Investing in the stock market involves gains and losses and may not be suitable for all investors. Information presented herein is subject to change without notice and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security.

Music outro by Devmo

Devmo The first thing you notice is that I'm covered in gold
The flick of the wrist it could turn a hot bitch cold
To get what you want in life girl you gotta be bold
Now Imma die rich

End