Bullshit on Stilts: Tackling the bullshitology of financial decisions.

Developing Your Financial Bullshit Sniffer: Highlights from Our First 14 Episodes

• Keli Alo & Mark Robinson • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Ever wondered how to see through the fog of financial jargon and make informed decisions? Tune in as we revisit the highlights midway through our first season, where we empower you to sharpen your "bullshit sniffer." From dissecting health insurance complexities to debunking common myths about financial professionals, and arming you with the Fab Five questions for investments and life insurance, we've got it all covered. Through candid conversations, humor, and straightforward wisdom, we aim to simplify daunting financial topics and help you take control of your financial decisions with confidence.

We also take a heartfelt moment to thank our incredible community for their unwavering support, feedback, and ideas that have shaped our podcast journey. Your engagement has been invaluable, and we're immensely grateful for the resources from pixabay.com, bensound.com, and uppbeat.io that have taken our sound quality to the next level. Join us as we promise to continue this exciting journey with new weekly episodes, packed with more enlightening conversations and eye-opening insights. Thank you for being a part of our adventure and making it a hell of a lot of fun!

Developing your financial bullshit sniffer one episode at a time.

Keli Alo:

Hey there, we wanted to thank you so very much for tuning into our podcast and spending some of your precious time with us, listening to our insights and hopefully getting a chuckle or two from some of the tomfoolery that goes on during the podcasts. We wanted to take a moment and relive a few things midway through our first podcast season. Relive a few things midway through our first podcast season. In our first season we've taken on everything from bullshitting ourselves to the fab five questions for investing in life insurance and we even delved into healthcare cost containment. During our brief journey, we've tried to leave no stone unturned. Remember episode three in health insurance unturned. Remember episode three in health insurance. What the fuck? We dug deep into the covered charge for health insurance, that in-network discount prices are discounts to severely marked up costs for care and introduced cash pay health care where consumers can reduce the pain in the wallet without sacrificing quality care providers. Who can forget how we debunked the ideas that financial professionals are some types of high priests with special knowledge in episode 14, who's who and what do they do? And who could forget our deep dives into the Fab Five questions for investments and life insurance in episode seven, spotting sloppy investment advice. And episode eight Is your life insurance policy good, bad or ugly? We stripped down all the flap, doodle and hogwash to arrive at a five question test for you to answer and confirm control over two critical elements your idea of financial peace of mind.

Keli Alo:

With the rise of misinformation in an age known as the post-truth era, bullshit on Stilts is created to help you develop your bullshit sniffer, confirm and validate your money-related intentions and assist lowering the financial costs of not knowing. Join us as we relive some moments and prepare for even more in-depth conversations, humor and eye-opening simplicities of financial-related decisions in the remaining first season of Bullshit on Stills. Thanks for joining us. How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer. I mean you and I, mark, have a lot of time and experience in pulling stuff apart, putting it back together from investments, insurance, estate plans you name it and so it becomes very familiar to us and we can gloss over lots of big terms because we're familiar with the language of the overall financial planning landscape. So what are some ideas or thoughts that you would give a consumer to develop your bullshit sniffer? So, mark, love the title of the, the, the podcast bullshit on stilts. It's fantastic. But where the hell did you guys come up with that?

Mark Robinson:

freaking great title. Here's what's interesting when we talk about the bullshit and the pseudo profound language that is Do you know why that's so dominant? Because we start off with the product. So we've got to bring in all the Greek, we've got to talk about all these big terms that people say, wow. Does he know what he's talking about? He must be right. He must be right. He has special knowledges that I can't understand. I just got to obey. That's where the arguments are.

Mark Robinson:

So you wonder why all this jargon shows up? Well, why not? Because we're starting right in on the sell. It's the product, it's such. You got to start up in the ante on the bullshit. So bullshit has to morph into something that is more clever, more insidious, meaning you really can't sense it anymore. And so we just said it's bullshit on stilts, it's the next level of bullshit. Coming at us and one of the places where we see it most is in financial services Started saying it's bullshit, but it's bullshit on stilts, it's the next level of bullshit, like gaming. And so I got to come at you with authority or more bullshit or profundities or concern, and tapping into your emotional side. That's where it all starts, instead of let's have frank conversations about the issues at hand as you see them, and let's see what we can work out.

Keli Alo:

We're probably the biggest bullshitters on stilts to ourselves, so how does that kind of present itself when it comes to financial decision making?

Mark Robinson:

So we think that, for example, in managing risk this won't happen to me, or I'll start tomorrow and all of these things come into play that are just rationalizations as a way of protecting ourselves from what we know is a potential train wreck based on our own behavior. So I think there's a tremendous amount of deferral, deflection denial that goes into us bullshitting ourselves and it all comes down to I'll start tomorrow.

Keli Alo:

Is that why people defer decisions? Is it because they're fearful that they'll make the wrong decision? So no decision is better than making a wrong decision. Where do you think that comes from?

Mark Robinson:

Oh, I think that's very valid, because there is something called decision regret and studies have shown too many options won't make a decision. And then when you do make a decision, there's decision regret.

Keli Alo:

How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer.

Mark Robinson:

Well, let's start by prevention, and the prevention, at least on the investment side, might be the fab five.

Keli Alo:

so, by me answering the five questions know what I own, why I own it, how I'm doing compared to what and how much I'm paying I'm good, I guess I'm good there, you, you are probably a step above 90 of the people I've encountered and, yeah, so I've already transcended a lot of bullshit potentially that can come in on me, but we what me having control?

Mark Robinson:

I am able to verify I have the right answers. Yeah and I'm asking the right questions to get the right answers. That's right, yeah, so this is the the preventive part of bullshit.

Keli Alo:

How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer. The Fab Five questions as they relate to life insurance, whether that's you own a policy, you want to review it and get real comfortable as what it is how does it work or whether you may be considering or in the process of purchasing a life insurance policy.

Mark Robinson:

We've reduced the complexities of insurance down to five key critical questions that will show evidence that you know what you own and why you own it and you have some level of understanding to where you can say I am in control of my insurance needs and I can answer questions sufficiently to where I know that I have adequate coverage in the areas I need coverage. So the Fab Five for insurance life insurance are what do you own, why do you own it, how is it doing, what are your premium dollars paying for and what other benefits do your premiums buy? If you're able to answer those five questions, you are in control, which means that you've circumvented a lot of bullshit explanations or I don't knows, or explanations for stuff you just can't explain.

Keli Alo:

How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer. The discussion that we're going to have about health care out there. I looked through it and you know. First I was thinking about well, what's the history of health insurance itself and why has it gotten to where it is today, which is today? It's the financial boogeyman and a household income between the premiums and the copayments and the deductibles, and lions and tigers and bears. Oh my, you have this health insurance that we all agree of immediately. That's an important thing to have, but at the same time, I think that there's an awful lot of financial stress, anxiety and even, in some cases, destruction due to the cost of healthcare and staying healthy and facing illnesses and diseases.

Mark Robinson:

I agree, and I think that it is very similar to what employers face outside of labor costs. Number two is healthcare costs.

Keli Alo:

You know families are spending between 10 and 20 grand alone just on premiums for them, the right to go see a doctor within you know some network, and then you get some freebies. Quote unquote the cover charge is 10 to 20 grand a year out of your cash flow. Not going into retirement, not building an emergency fund.

Mark Robinson:

So you pay $500 to get into the nightclub and then you go in and you're overpaying for your vodka on the rocks. But have as much check mix as you want, We'll even refill the bowl.

Keli Alo:

How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer.

Mark Robinson:

So it's inescapable, Kelly, that we're getting more and more cash pay in the healthcare system at the hospital level.

Keli Alo:

So the way you're answering it, are hospitals more friendly to the cash pay model or are they more adversarial in nature? Seems to be some examples where these hospitals are embracing it and saying let's make it even better, let's bundle things, let's do that. Let's expand the number of services that one can pay with cash. How would you characterize that? Is that a growing trend in hospital land or is the trend still entrenched? Protect the business the way it's always been done.

Mark Robinson:

You know, kelly, in anything, whether it is chemistry, or in political movements, social movements, you always have the reactionary and you have the catalyst. So there are those hospitals that are acting as a catalyst, the radical, so it would be called that are pushing this because it's going there Inescapably, it's going toward a cash pay model. And then you have those that want to fight it. Why? Because the way their model is structured this is inimical. It's threatening to their business model to have a cash pay. So then you have hospitals that are saying you know what, we can get folks into our system if we have kind of a loss lead. So some hospitals and I'm thinking of one example in particular in Florida with a large system, advent, they were very, very competitive in the cash pay market for MRIs. They get you in for the MRI dirt cheap. You get into their system using their doctors. When you have to have the arthroscopy, you're using their hospital. You need the full knee replacement, you're using their hospital, which at that point they may even have a cash pay model for.

Keli Alo:

How you develop your bullshit sniffer as a consumer, we all know what doing what's right is about.

Mark Robinson:

I don't need to use terms like suitability or the one I'm going to use right now Fiduciary we love that term. Our industry does Well. You know, I'm operating as a fiduciary, which means I am compelled. Nobody says I want to, but I am compelled to operate and make all of my judgments and decisions and transactions solely in the better interest of you. My client See, it says so right here in the contract.

Keli Alo:

That is the correct answer. It isn't an interesting that fiduciary is now part of sales and marketing pitches from folks in the business. If you're not working with a fiduciary advisor, you should be. I'm a fiduciary advisor, and if you're not working with one, maybe you give us a call. I mean on and on and on. It's now a marketing term more than it is a technical term when it comes to legal responsibility to your clientele.

Mark Robinson:

Yeah, I think it's watering down the higher order, the higher calling of people that get into the industry, that really want to help people, because that's a character issue. Yeah, it is.

Keli Alo:

It's story time as a reminder and I know we went through this but Bernie Madoff he owned a registered investment advisor. He was an investment advisor representative and yet we all know the story of Bernie Madoff embezzled billions from his clientele, so he was a fiduciary. So if you think about that, do all fiduciaries immediately have our trust? I don't think so. Just because you're a fiduciary doesn't mean you're beyond reproach.

Mark Robinson:

Correct, there is a higher oversight and the bar is set quite high as opposed to suitability, but that doesn't mean you're really working with a fiduciary, because I believe part of being a professional is a couple of components here. You have an esoteric body of knowledge. You have also a calling. You have also a calling and you operate at a level of professionalism that inherent in that calling is I put my clients first, and I don't have to wave a banner telling you that's what I do. When I hear trust me, I'm a fiduciary, I scream jump, run the other way. You do that a lot, though. I mean even when I say boo when you come out of the bathroom. You soon as this podcast is over.

Mark Robinson:

Mark Robinson has left the room.

Keli Alo:

Thanks so much again for listening and including Bullshit on Stilts as a recent podcast in your library. We're having a blast learning how to speak and speaking to mics, responding to comments and editing recordings and keeping up with all the good freaking ideas for future discussions. So thank you to all of our contributing creators out there. Big thanks to pixabay. com, bensound. com and uppbeat. io for sound effects and music. We suck so much less after using these fantastic websites and benefiting from all their content creators. Thanks so much, and we'll be coming at you every week going forward as well. Man, thanks a lot for tuning in. Bye-bye.