Even if she wasn’t actually talking about money, Grandma said a lot of smart things that we can apply to financial planning. On this episode of The Retirement Huddle podcast, Mark Howard explains some of these classic Grandma sayings and how they relate to our financial lives.

1) “When it rains, it pours.”

Good news usually comes in waves, but so does bad news. Maybe this explains why the market often behaves the way it does. It’s very prone to be emotion and fear driven. You have to plan for things like inflation and taxes.

2) “You never know.”

It’s probably true that “you never know” with 100% certainty about anything. But it’s also true that there are some things in life that we can know with a lot more certainty than other things. And good retirement planning is about balancing those different elements of certainty and uncertainty.

“We’ve got five lives to plan for – a long life, a short life, a rough life, a sick life and the next life,” said Mark.

3) “A bad apple spoils the whole barrel.”

That could also be true with your investments. If you’re relying too heavily on one particular investment and it “spoils,” you could be in trouble.

We see this a lot with people who work and have a lot of company stock. Bitcoin is another example.

4) “I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

There’s a fun game we sometimes play called “call the company” where we find out exactly what you’re invested in and what it’s costing you. You don’t ask the questions to the person who sold you a particular product. You get it “straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“You want to get accurate, reliable information so we can make good decisions going forward,” said Mark.

Listen to the full episode or use the timestamps to jump to a specific section. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back for another show every other Thursday.

Today’s Rundown:

[1:11] – When it rains, it pours

[2:07] – You never know

[4:26] – A bad apple

[5:05] – From the horse’s mouth