Financial power-up

ALEX ROCA: Hello, and thank you for joining Women Talk Money. My name is Alex Roca, and I'll be your host for today's conversation. Happy Women's History Month. This is the second event in our three part series, and we are so excited to have you with us today.

Joining me for today's conversation are Ryan Viktorin, Vice President and Financial Consultant. Gina Gillespie is Vice President Financial Consultant. Both of them are based in Massachusetts and are some of our Women Talk Money's fan favorites.

As I mentioned, it's Women's History Month, which is a time the Women Talk Money team uses to acknowledge where we've been, celebrate where we are, and plan for where we want to go next.

OK, Ryan, I'm going to start with you. Working with a range of clients every single day, what are some of the common money mishaps that you see?

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, and I'm happy to be here with both of you, as always. It feels just like a chat amongst friends, so I love it. So from a mishap point of view, I think the biggest one that jumps out to me has really got to be when we don't really have the foundation in place. And so a next natural question is, what's a foundation?

So I always talk about this in the who, the what, and the when. Who are the important people in your life, what are the things you're hoping to accomplish, and when are these things happening? And really sit with that for a little while. That's the first part of the foundation.

And then, of course, you want to get organized. That's one of the other things that is very natural to see is almost a misstep, because you might just as time goes on, you have a 401(k) from the old job here, the 401(k) at the new job there, the brokerage account, the bank account. And it kind of just gets in a bunch of different spots all kind of at the same time. So not getting organized and making sure that all of those pieces are working towards that foundational goal that you thought about, I think, is also really important.

And then the other thing is we kind of get stuck in the overwhelm sometimes as women and we just say, oh my gosh, there's so much to do. And there's this cliche, I know it's out there, but if you've heard the term don't let perfect get in the way of good. And so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to say, OK, everything's got to be right, and I can't do this until I'm completely prepared for all of this. And I would just say, just get started and start somewhere. Again, this is what we're here to help with. But those are some of the missteps is not having the foundation, not being organized, or just getting stalled out, because it's overwhelming.

ALEX ROCA: I love that. And even though it's a line, I think I'm going to put it on a post-it. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. I appreciate that. Gina, what about you? Anything you want to add to what Ryan said?

GINA GILLESPIE: I think to build, Ryan, I love when you talked about not having that foundation, because sometimes people could have had the foundation, but maybe it was 10 years ago even. So I think one of the things maybe you haven't looked at your plan in a long time, or you could be in a place where the last time you looked at it, your life was in a different place too.

So I think one thing to note is that it's not a one time thing. Oh, I met with a financial professional 10 years ago. I'm good. It's something that we have to continue to do too. So I think that's one of the things I think through that we find is that we haven't maybe made changes or acknowledged that we haven't made an adjustment in a long time.

I think when we come to the Women Talk Money calls, I want us to be specific too. So let me give you some specifics of things, because maybe we don't have a plan, but what if you had a plan and things that maybe we could do a little bit better? So maybe we're investing in a Roth IRA or an HSA. But I see individuals all the time, and I'm sure you do too, Ryan, that they haven't invested the money. So I contribute to an HSA plan. I need some of it now, so maybe some of it should be liquid, but some of it I'm going to use in retirement. Let's invest that money. Let's get that money working for us.

Another is we brought up that you maybe you haven't looked in your plan in a while. I have individuals who come in and say, I think I'm doing the company match in a 401(k) or 403(b), but they're not. So make sure you do those matches. That's a little misstep. Or they may say I'm maxing it out. But when you turn 50, you could do catch up contributions. And I've seen people say, oh, I didn't realize that. So making sure we're not leaving free money on the table and making sure that we're saving as efficiently as possible as things change for you.

Another is leaving a lot of our money in our checking and savings accounts. Ryan and I have been-- we're going to watch the chat today, and I know a lot of questions around savings accounts and being as efficient as possible. Well, once we've saved in those accounts, let's invest some of that money to make sure it works for us and it's going to grow for us. So that's, I think, some of those biggest pieces that we talk through.

And then lastly, if we have investments, are they the right investments for us? Having someone, a financial professional, help to review those. What are the costs I'm paying? Am I in the right investment allocation? Do I have the right amount of risk? Could I be doing things a little different to make it better?

So I think it tends to be scary. I named all these things today, but I just want to give you some specific things that I think. And if you heard one of those, say it's OK. We can make them better. Coming to a financial professional can help you to just make things a little bit more efficient and work best for you. I think we tend to have clients at the end say, oh, Gina, Ryan, I feel so much better after we meet, because there's things that I've been doing well and there's things that maybe now I'm going to make sure I'm doing them better. I just feel good now.

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah.

ALEX ROCA: That's awesome. And thank you for those specifics, Gina, because you just don't know what you don't know. And we're all here to learn and put ourselves in a better position so that we can move forward and focus on what's next. So going off that same sentiment, Ryan, how can somebody know what to do next?

RYAN VIKTORIN: Well, I would say that's sort of why Gina and I have jobs is to help you figure out what's next. But the reality is everybody's situation is different. So again, just like Gina was saying, somebody might say, oh, I have all those ducks in a row. And then she mentioned one thing, oh, my HSA isn't invested. So sometimes it could be really small where you say, oh, that's my next best step.

But sometimes it's just revisiting the plan, especially if markets are really crazy or there's a tax code change or there's a change in your life. This plan that we would help you with or that a professional would help you with or that you have on your own should be a living and breathing experience that moves with you and flows with life, whether it's changes in your life or changes in the environment around you.

And don't bring judgment to this. I always say, we always should all over ourselves, like I should have done this or I should do that or I should be at a certain place or I shouldn't have done that, whatever it is. And just remove the judgment. Move forward from where we are right now and take a minute to take a breath and reassess. There's never an issue with trying to get help to figure out what your specific next step is. Because when we're in this big group like this, it's only general information, but that's what we're here for to make the one on one, make it very real for you.

ALEX ROCA: Thank you for that, Ryan. And then Gina, can you quickly explain a little bit about the process of meeting someone like you and Ryan? For people that haven't met with a financial professional, it can be intimidating to get started, maybe not knowing what to expect. So what can those meetings look like?

GINA GILLESPIE: It's a great question, because I think the unknown can be really intimidating. So let me share as much as-- to give you an idea of what it will look like and feel like. First, I'll start off with I know Ryan and I and all the other colleagues we work with, it's a judgment free zone when you enter these offices. I think about this, that when you walk through the door, we know that you care about yourself and your financial future and you're looking for help. So it's OK. I always share this. Please, no question is stupid. Ask anything. It could be as simple as what does a Roth IRA really mean? I've heard of them or whatever the question may be.

When you come into the office, I think the most important thing is the first meetings are just to get to you better and to understand your financial picture. A lot of the questions we'll get in the chat, sometimes they're specific to you. So we ask questions to help us to answer things like, tell me about do you have anyone else in your household you're caring for? Are you married? Are you single?

Tell me about your goals. What are the things that are most important to you? Sometimes we uncover what are the things that you're really hoping for. You may sit there, and when you share your goals out loud, you realize that you want them to become real, and then we create a plan. I really wanted to have my own business, a second home. I would love to help my family with something specific. And so that's where Ryan and I come into play to say, OK, how are we going to help map this out? Then we sit down and we say, let's take a snapshot of all of what you have today. How much income you may have coming in or in retirement what that may look like. What kind of accounts do we have? Where are they today? Can we simplify things and consolidate some? And if we can't, that's OK.

The goal is to put things in one place as a picture, to give us an idea. Are we on track? So we have lots of software here. We'll help you to input this. A lot of those documents are living and breathing, like we say, so you can use them when you're not with us. A lot of clients like doing that just to understand where they stand in between meetings.

And then lastly, we might decide there's some things that we should do to make your plan more efficient. It could be around budgeting. It could be around how we can save differently. It could be I want to make sure I'm investing in the right way. I think the most important thing to know is that we all have people we know that have the Excel spreadsheets that are color coded, and they may have their budget all aligned, and we have people that don't.

You don't have to be the color coded spreadsheet person to come into Ryan and I. You don't have to be prepared to come in to us. Part of what our job is to help you to answer a lot of these questions together. So it's very much collaboration.

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah, absolutely. Can I hop in here for a second, Alex too? We won't turn down a color coded spreadsheet. We have a spreadsheet. We're the finance nerds. OK, fine. But at the same time, you're totally right, Gina. Again, we think that, oh, we have to bring everything and everything has to be perfect. Again, just show up. That's 90% of the first part of it, and then we'll guide you through it.

But there's a really important point that I have to make that I make every time. There no fee or cost to go through this planning process and work with somebody like Gina or myself. As much as we would love to work with all the thousands of people in this conversation, we are representing the colleagues of ours that are like this, that do what I do. What we do, rather.

And it doesn't matter where you are in your journey. You could be just getting started and you need to just get the things in motion and automate and open accounts and get going. Or you could be well into your career and you might say, I haven't needed help up until now, but retirement is closer. There's a light at the end of that tunnel, and I really need to start to do some of this. Or God forbid, something happens where we see this, unfortunately, a spouse passes away and now there's a life event or somebody gets married even or a divorce or something happens where you say, now I need some help.

So it doesn't matter where you are, how complex it is, if you're just getting started, or if you're well into your career and you've saved a whole bunch. This is what we're here for. And if you reach out to us, we will help you figure out the best version of support for you given where you are. And again, I constantly remind the clients that I meet with for the first time, there's no cost to going through this process.

So it's just very important to understand the difference between financial planning and building that out versus professional investment management, which I know we'll talk a little bit later, which is where some of the costs start to come in. So I just want to make sure that everybody knows we feel like our clients are entitled to it. It's free. And not free one time and not fake free. There's no shoe that will drop. It's like free, free. I keep saying this, because people don't believe. For real, for real. Yeah, exactly.

ALEX ROCA: For real, for real. I appreciate that call out, Ryan. I saw on the chat somebody asked, well, how do I go about picking a financial advisor? Is there a quality I should look for? Is there a certification I should look for? Any commentary there?

RYAN VIKTORIN: I'll answer it answer quickly. So it's partially experience. So you want to say what's your experience? How do you work with clients? Again, we're speaking on behalf of Fidelity, of course. But sometimes there's advisors at different places. So Gina just described really quickly the process, and I know we have other Women Talk Money sessions that go like way deeper on all of these topics that you can refer to and find on our YouTube channel.

But at the same time, you want to understand what the process is. And again, at Fidelity, there's no cost for it, but there could be costs if you work with another advisor. Sometimes you want to look for a certified financial planner designation.

I always encourage getting some local support, because there are state to state differences, particularly from a tax or an estate planning point of view. If you're in Massachusetts, like where Gina and I are versus Florida, it's very, very different. So you want to make sure you get some local support. And again, we'll help you find that. But I think just understanding the experience.

And then the other part of it is you can talk to somebody or you might have an advisor now where you say they're a nice person, but we're not clicking. This isn't the right fit. And so you have to connect with them. And it's OK to interview or ask around or say, hey, this isn't a right fit. Maybe we need to evaluate differently.

GINA GILLESPIE: Yeah, I want to add one little thing and then I'll throw it back to you, Alex. Think about your relationship with your advisor as being important enough. You have to share things that are really personal sometimes, maybe family things that are going on and why an estate plan is important. You have to be comfortable to share things and be vulnerable with each other. And it's OK. Not everybody connects with everybody.

But make sure you find somebody that you feel most comfortable with that you can share these really personal things. The more the person knows about you, the more we can help you. So keep that in the back of your mind personality wise too, just to make sure, because this relationship, it's more than just sharing the facts and the figures. There's a lot more to it.

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yes, we love our spreadsheets, but also I'm constantly asked, are you half psychologist, half financial? But yeah, we're sounding boards, because sometimes we're talking about really important things. Sometimes it's very exciting things, but sometimes it's heavy things, and navigating differences. And sometimes it's like between a couple that we got differing opinions and we're sort of that objective third party or parents to children or the other way around. So there's a lot of different family dynamics we have to work through too. So it's got to be the right fit for you.

ALEX ROCA: I am thrilled to hear you both share that sentiment, that it's about finding the right fit. You don't think about it twice with a doctor. If it's not a good fit, you find another doctor, and it's the same financial planning. Thank you both for sharing. Sometimes I think it's hard to start something new. The unknown can be so scary. So I want to give another quick shout out. I saw that Ashley shared on the chat that she just opened her first brokerage account and she's nervous, but she's excited. And we are cheering you on, Ashley, for opening that brokerage account.

Ryan, I want to talk-- you talked a little bit about, hey, the relationship isn't just a one and done conversation. You can talk at multiple stages of your life, whether you're just starting, whether there's a big change, or whether you just need a little reassurance. So can you share any tools, tips, any routines that you use with your clients or share with them to help with their overall planning process, or just their financial organization? Is there anything you can share with our audience today?

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah, totally. I have a couple. The first one is actually-- and this really is if you have a Fidelity account. So, Ashley, if you just opened a brokerage account at Fidelity, good news. You have a new tool that you have access to already. And this is for anybody that does have accounts. This is a fairly recent tool, so I've wanted to add it in.

And it's a tab that is a Spending tab on fidelity.com, on your Planning tab. So once you're logged in. And again, we just rolled this out a couple years ago. So we're still kind of learning and it's growing. But you can link things like bank accounts. Of course, everything at Fidelity feeds right in. But credit cards. Anything like that to capture and categorize your expenses. So it gets you a better sense of really what you're spending. And sometimes, I don't know, Gina, if you come across this as well, where sometimes especially, let's say, we're a client potentially heading into retirement. We say, I've never lived within a budget before, but now I have to understand what my withdrawals are. And it kind of feels like homework. Where they say, aw, I got to gather all this. I don't have the color coded spreadsheet.

So we have a tool now that just sort of aggregates this for you. So you can really get a sense of where you are. You could be close to retirement. You could be just starting out to get a sense of what the cash flow really looks like. So that's a really cool tab that I think, again, if you think things like this is cool, like me, then it's a very cool tab.

And so the other thing is rather than a tool-- and I think we're going to put the links in the chat, by the way. But I always advocate for automating things when you can. Automate your savings, automate your contributions, automate your distributions, which is one that people think about. Let's say you inherited an IRA from a parent or a spouse or something, and now you have to take money out. Automate it so you don't forget to do it.

And you automate your saving. Automate the investments. It tends to keep you invested, but it also just takes it off your plate, particularly as women, but anybody. We just have so much to do that I think removing it from your plate and rather than 15 line items to try to pay each bill, it's automated, and you just have one line item to check to make sure it's going OK. And so I think automating things like that is a huge one.

ALEX ROCA: I'm so glad to hear you talk about automation. It was a topic that came up quite a bit in our last session as well. I think it's so important. Gina, once our foundation is created, how can someone tell if they are on the right track? Or how would somebody know if it's time to make an adjustment or pivot?

GINA GILLESPIE: So if I had to think about the most important thing when you're creating a plan, I think about the fact it's probably going to change and we want some flexibility. So when you say pivot, I just smirked because I was like, oh my gosh, every plan has to generally adjust or pivot over time. That's just normal stuff.

One of the things-- so the first part of the question is how do we know if we're on track? So Ryan, you brought up the spending software and tab under our planning software. So we innately plan with clients and share, and we show you where you are with all these really great tools that we have on our website, and these are resources for you. I love it because it tells you where you are, where you stand.

There are a lot of questions I was reading in the chat earlier that we're talking about how do I know that-- someone says I need $1 million. Is that right? Well, you could need something so different. So it depends on how much money you need when you need it. So we create this customized plan for you to say, this is where we stand today and we continue to revisit it.

A big part is then when we revisit it, what about pivoting? So maybe we were planning and we're on track, and now something changed in our situation. Our expenses went up, and we realized maybe we have to save a little differently. We'll bring up that plan and we'll say, OK, let's check it out. Hey, good news. We're still on track. We were saving a certain percentage. We're doing a little less now. You're still in a great place. OK, good.

Then you feel a little less, I don't know, I don't want to say guilty, but you feel a little less pressure if you were having that feeling that you were doing the wrong things. Maybe you had to use your emergency account. And you can term maybe cash in the bank, whatever way you want. But when you say emergency accounts, usually unexpected things that come up.

And if you had to use it for something unexpected, that's what it's there for. So maybe we have to fund it again. We're pivoting to say, oh, we used some of that money. Maybe I need to take some free cash flow and fund it again, or add more to it. Or the goal is that you got to the place where your emergency account was taken care of and you call me with good news to say, hey, I have some extra cash. I don't know what to do with it. Where do I save it now?

So we'll go through goals together to figure out if we're still in the right place. I think it's really important to know that the pivot points-- I'm just sharing examples today, because I think it helps people to understand what really happens with a plan is that it's this living, breathing document. It can change.

Another change that could happen that you have one is what if your financial professional retires or your investment manager retires, your accountant, your estate planning attorney retires? Sometimes we feel like, do we have to start over again? What do we do? So just know I think that's another piece to think through. Maybe that's when we have to pivot, finding someone else. Here at Fidelity, we take care of you. We'll get you the right person.

But I think pivots can be scary at times. Changes can feel scary. But if you have a foundation in place, it's a small tweak. We talk about adding 1% more per year makes this small tweak makes a big difference. If we have the foundation in place, hopefully these small tweaks won't feel so overwhelming.

So I like to make sure you also meet at least annually, maybe twice a year, like semiannually, just to make sure that you don't have to do these big, big changes. They're small changes over time. So those are just the pieces of how do we know we're on track? We'll use this software and financial planning software to show you where we are for any goal that you may have. And then those pivot points, once we have the foundation, again, we might have to make some small changes, but that's very common. It's OK.

ALEX ROCA: Absolutely. Thank you for giving us that reassurance. Now, Ryan, I'm coming to you for this one. For those of us that maybe already have goals outlined, a plan in place, what can somebody do to think of it as leveling up their next financial milestone?

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of goes to a lot of what we've been saying today, but this is going to be different for everybody depending on where. You might have saved that emergency fund and now you're investing. You might say, hey, I have my house. I'm now saving for my second house. So how do I level up the goal that I actually have? Sometimes automating is leveling up, like I just said. But I also think getting a second set of eyes or building out that plan, but also getting some advice in whatever the category that you have or that your goals are really can help. And I know we've been talking about that a lot today, but I actually have a visual that I want to pop up, and it helps make the case for advice.

And if you look at the categories that are on this screen, notice we're really not talking about investments. We're talking about saving for retirement. It could be estate planning, could be saving for a vacation. That could be any goal. Could be minimizing taxes, saving for long term care expenses. And how much more confident clients are, people are, when they have advice relative to those goals versus not.

And as much as-- this isn't an ego thing. This isn't saying me and Gina are the best ever. This is any sort of advice from this type of situation. If you are more confident, you are more likely to stay invested, more likely to stick with your goals, and help you accomplish those goals, and sometimes maybe even faster. So any version of that advice just helps you feel better.

And so I just like putting up this visual just to support the case for either building out a plan and getting advice from lots of different specialists, like Gina said. It could be an accountant. It could be an estate planning attorney. It could be a financial advisor. So getting advice really can help. A second set of eyes just to bounce ideas off of is really supportive.

ALEX ROCA: That's a great visual. And I want to call something out here, Ryan. It says that combining financial advice and investment management can potentially add 5.1% to portfolio returns. So how can somebody know if it may be time to consider a professionally managed account?

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yes, and this is, like I said before, different from financial planning versus professional investment management. Those are two different things. They get constantly confused, and justifiably so, because we like to use the same words to describe different things or different words to describe the same thing in this industry. So it's totally understandable.

Building a financial plan is everything we've been talking about today. What's your foundation? What are you on track for? Things like that. That's the part that, at least at Fidelity, doesn't cost you anything. Professional management, professional investment management, is when you hire either a digital type of experience if you're just getting started or you're hiring a team or a person to manage the investments for you. And this is where the cost comes in.

So whether you need something like this, ask yourself some of these questions. This is where I start. Do I feel comfortable in this space? Do I know the jargon? Do I know the terminology? And do I even have time to consider this?

And I'll give you an example of a woman I was just meeting with. I said, how often do you look at your accounts and when do you look at it? She says, well, I log in at 6:00 AM before my kids wake up, and then I log in at 9:00 PM after they go to bed. And I said, so here's the thing, the market's never open when you're looking at your accounts. And so it's just thinking-- and she's busy. She doesn't have a chance between Monday through Friday between that time period. So in her case, she's starting to say, OK, maybe I do need some help, because I don't have the time to look at this. And that's totally OK.

But it's also do you want to do this? Some of my clients love doing this. There's overlap with the color coded spreadsheet. That's the same guy. It might be the same person.

But some people really do enjoy doing this and they know what they want to do and when they want to do it, and they would come to either me or Gina for validation for what they're doing or to punch holes in their strategy. But if you really think this isn't the right type of situation that you're comfortable with, those are the types of questions you ask yourself.

The other one that I think is a bit of a symptom of the markets over the past few years is twofold. Lots of clients say I can manage money when the stock market's doing this, but I get a little uncomfortable when the stock market's doing this. And they might say, uh oh, I don't know if my-- my head can do it, but I don't know if my stomach can do it. I get to a little bit uneasy, and so I need to add that barrier.

But the other thing that I've seen over the past few years is the market has done-- if you look at 2023, '24, '25, it did so well and it grew so much for those that were invested.

I've started to hear I was OK with investing when I first got started. These accounts have now grown to an amount that I am uncomfortable being responsible for. And it starts to say, ooh.

Not to mention the fact that the IRS just loves being involved when you grow your assets. And so in a brokerage account in particular, my clients say, I can handle my IRA with no tax issues, but my brokerage account, I don't what to do from a tax perspective. So as the assets grow, the complexity tends to grow. And that's when my clients say, should I get help?

And again, that's what people like Gina and I are here for, to help you evaluate if you need it, what it is, what type, what does it cost, what's the performance been, is it appropriate for you, and how would it change over time. So it's just a conversation at this point, and we're here to help you figure out whether you need it.

GINA GILLESPIE: And I always like to say, investments, so we're talking about the financial planning piece as being free. Investments, that vehicle that drives-- if it's professional management or not, they have costs associated with them. So it's not always just I don't have any cost or I have costs. No, there's always costs. So it might just be a small incremental cost to get help to. So Ryan and I always try to figure out what's best for you and your situation.

ALEX ROCA: Now, with that, I think it's time for our special live Q&A. Ryan, Gina, I'm going to let you guys choose the questions from the chat. Reminder to everybody this is rapid fire, meaning the answers are going to be probably on the shorter side so that we can get to as many of them as possible. So, Gina, why don't you start us off?

GINA GILLESPIE: So Lori had asked a really great question today, and we're so excited. Ryan and I love to hear from everyone. So lots of really good questions. There's hundreds and hundreds. So Lori had a question. I'm two to three years away from retirement. What should I be doing now to minimize taxes during my retirement years?

I love this question, because it's really specific to the fact that we've always been known, hey, save, tax deferred accounts save. And we oftentimes find if that's the only place we've saved, we only have one option to pay ordinary income on those accounts. So Ryan and I are here. We love to work with clients to be efficient. And how to build efficiency isn't just around how we take income, it's what accounts.

So if you're two to three years from retirement, I think diversification of types of accounts is really important. Do we have money in non-retirement accounts? Do we have money in retirement tax deferred accounts? Do we have money in tax exempt accounts? Those could be HSAs or Roths.

When you retire, if we have different types of accounts that you can save in, then what ends up happening is you have a lot more flexibility of where we keep our tax bracket. So that's one of my favorite. That was such a great question. Look at the types of accounts you have. This is a really great opportunity to go meet with someone like Ryan and I for them to help you to look to say based off of these things, this is where I think you should save today.

RYAN VIKTORIN: I love that. I'm going to answer a few of them kind of rapid fire almost.

There's one that's- is there a formula to determine how much you need to retire? There's a whole session on retirement planning, Alex, that I know that we've been a part of. So I would definitely look at some of the YouTube. I think we might have even put it in the chat as well. Our YouTube channel to go deeper on this.

But the other thing is I hear a lot, what's my number that I need to retire? And I would say it depends on what you're spending. So it's not a particular number. It's not a particular formula. You have to see how to cover the expenses you've got in retirement. There's one kind of specific is it better to take a monthly pension or take out a lump sum? Oh, there's an example that's very specific for you. You have to run those numbers and understand it. It's exactly what we can help you with.

GINA GILLESPIE: That's a really good example. I don't want to step on Ryan. We also love to do some pensions are really efficient and some aren't. So bring it into a person like Ryan or I and we will go through and do a full review. And we'll say, hey, here's your options and based off of how much income will they give us per the asset. So every pension or those strategies can be very different. Some are really efficient, some aren't. So I think that's a good opportunity to do a specific review.

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yes. So there's one question for sure I want to answer, and I want to provide another resource. And I realize I should have said this, Alex, at the start. There's a question from Carrie that says, what do you suggest clients use as an estimate for health care in retirement, both in the gap years and those who will be on Medicare? And I saw a couple other questions like, what if I want to retire early? How do I account for that?

So there's one resource I want to plug, which is if you go to fidelity.com/medicare and you are over 64, you can meet with the Medicare specialist. That's not me and Gina. That's not what we do. But we provide that resource. We also can use some estimates in the financial plans that we build, because a lot of people pay really similar costs when it comes to Medicare. But it's those other plans that we'll help you with. So that's a really specific one.

And as Gina is looking for some other questions, there's a theme I'm seeing, which is around volatility, which is in the current environment that we're in. And it could be what's happening right now. But I would relate this to any time there is volatility in the markets. It's rough when the markets are not great. We're getting a lot of questions. I know I am, Gina, getting a lot of questions from my clients right now. Should I change anything? Is there anything that I should change? What's Fidelity's opinion on things? But also we got these same questions about a year ago because there was another pullback in the market, and there was one in the year before that, and then a couple years before that. So like Gina said, volatility is normal. It never feels great, but it's totally normal.

Now, this is why having a financial plan is so important and why we do the planning first and the investments second. Because whenever my clients reach out and they say, hey, such and such is happening in the world. I feel really overwhelmed. Should I change anything in my investments? I always say, let's look at the plan first and see if anything has fundamentally changed for what you're on track for.

If the answer is no, then we have a discussion about your comfort level with risk. So this is a really important time to get the foundation in place. It's OK if you haven't until now. I would spend some time on it, because whether it's what's happening right now in the markets or it's something, it could be this year, next year, whenever it is, you want to make sure you have that kind of all weather type of portfolio and you know things will come. And I usually say visualize that it could go poorly. How do we take action when things are going OK so that we don't emotionally react when things get tough? So I had to hit the volatility theme, Gina, that I saw. I don't know if you saw any other questions you want to answer.

GINA GILLESPIE: Yeah, let me get through some of these other ones. Where can I put a chunk of money where it'll grow, but I can access it opposed to having it in a bank? There's also questions around high yield savings versus where they can put money.

So at Fidelity, you can have this thing called a brokerage account. It's a non-retirement account. And you can put different things in it. You could have a money market, which is a liquid savings vehicle. The interest rate on money markets can be much higher than what you would find at the bank. You can link it to your bank account so it can move it back and forth, electronic fund transfer, 24 to 48 hours most banks. So again, you can get access. You can get ATM cards for free on those accounts. You can take out money at any ATM in the country and we'll reimburse you a lot of those fees if it's the right type of account. So anyway, I bring this up because when you're thinking about where can I have money that you can still access it, brokerage accounts are great. If there's extra money in there, we can start investing it with you too to help you grow. So that was answered a couple questions in there too. Ryan, I didn't know if you saw anything that you wanted.

RYAN VIKTORIN: Yeah, I saw actually a question that I get fairly frequently. And it's from Donna, and she was asking about the five year rule around a Roth IRA. This is a really specific one, but also has a general answer. I think people have a lot of questions about this too. I get this question a lot.

When you do a Roth conversion, which means you take money from a regular IRA and you put it into a Roth, you then have to wait five years before you withdraw from the Roth for the growth to be tax free. That's where the five year rule-- and it's on every conversion where that actually happens. So that's what that refers to, Donna, if you start to look at that.

And then I saw a couple. Gina, to your point, I have a little bit of money. Where would I start? I would look. Do you have a little bit of money in general? Build an emergency fund. If you've built your emergency fund and you have a little bit of money to invest, do what Ashley did and open your brokerage account. You're exactly right, Gina, for what we did. I'm so real proud of Ashley for doing that and getting started. You can invest with $1. Just really get going in it and you can start to learn more about it.

I also saw a question-- I'm scanning for it here and it whipped right by me-- where someone said, it seems the resources are about saving for college. And what if you're not planning on having kids? You both saw that too. None of what we've talked about today has anything to do with having kids. It's all just savings.

So I'm assuming that maybe the person asking this question is a little bit younger. Maybe not, though. But everything we're talking about is for no matter what your goals are. Some of our clients have kids and college savings is important. Some of them, some of our clients are leaving a legacy to their kids is important. And some of my clients have kids and they say that number better be 0 at the end. I already paid for those kids. That's not my goal.

It totally depends on who you are. This is what I mean. Judgment free zone, however you want to do it. Everything we're talking about today has nothing to do with the fact that whether you're married, single, kids, no kids, adopted, divorced. Doesn't matter. We're here no matter for what it is.

ALEX ROCA: And with that, Ryan, I'll stop us because we're almost at time. So thank you both.

RYAN VIKTORIN: We could just keep going. We can do this for an hour.

ALEX ROCA: I know. We could just stay here for another hour, but we have covered many of the topics. Ryan said this previously in Women Talk Money sessions, which are available on our YouTube channel. You can also browse all of our free resources on Fidelity Learn.

Ryan, Gina, always a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your incredible insights today. We love hearing from you, and I am sure that we're going to be seeing you both again soon. To everybody watching, thank you so much for joining. Have a great day.