The value of a dollar, live responsible today to secure your tomorrow by Mendy Feferkorn

So tonight I can make I don't know if I can make it with the or not but um as knows that I'm going around to give lectures and speeches in the no of financial awareness. I gave already a lot of speeches in Yiddish but English this is my first. So this is my um I'll try to do my best with English as it's my second language. We did a podcast and coach and it was quite good. So first of all for the to invite me to speak to such a crowd and I must say I'm very impressed with the crowd because I was supposed to come at 9:00 at night to speak because for me I finish working about 7:00 I go home eat dinner come here couldn't be here before 9 and uh the one of the over here reached out to me and asked me to Please uh can come a little earlier that it's said and it's so strong that it's even stronger than money then I already felt you know hey if he means it's so serious I'm taking it serious too that I was able to be here I know I only have 35 minutes so it's not going to be too boring so all my speeches that I give I give Lily Inhas. I had three brothers that passed away young and my mother passed away when I was a bakar. She was 52. My brother, he was a bakar of 21 years old. He didn't get to get married. So in his we speak about marrying off children. Then I had a brother 44 years old that passed away plit link and um he left over in Roman 13 years without any life insurance and we had to really struggle to get it through. So that's why I speak in the noise of life insurance and I had a brother if there's any over here he was and um he was in the middle 60s didn't get to retirement age so we speak about retirement investments in the schmus So the first thing I do is I start the bino the importance of understanding what is a dollar. What is a dollar? Today's days most of us don't even know what a dollar is. Our president wants to abolish pennies and soon they're going to dollar abolish the dollar as well. We think a dollar is a piece, you know, it's just a piece of paper. $100 is money. $1,000. A dollar. What is a dollar? What is $5? And once a person understands the value of a single dollar, his whole life will be different. Hashem there is two. There is a big is what comes be first. If it first comes or it's going to be then it's going to be a in money. If you don't go to the by understanding what the dollar is, you'll never be able to do s because you never get to that point to understand. Okay? You know, so let's start with the s first and then we'll get into the noise of credit cards, spending without a limit, and being in control of your finances. As you grow older, you understand when you're already in the position where you're stuck and you don't know where to move, you understand that you were not smart in your younger years. So as you said before that over here that in the younger years is very important for them to hear this and even for the older people I still practice this every day. So I speak about credit cards. Today's days it's impossible to live without a credit card. There's a movement now that tries to make an awareness by follow to stay away from credit cards and go over to debit cards. So there's a plus and there is a minus. There are people who are having all their finances coming in on a controlled way. That means they have a payroll that comes into their bank and that's the only way they get money. They don't have deals here and there where they get money. It's all on a payroll base goes into a bank account. I can understand the nicer use a card because then what you do is you connect an app like we wab or um smart money or any of those apps that you start putting in that app all your expenses and it gets linked to your bank accounts gets linked to your utility companies. It gets linked to your mortgage. It gets linked to everything and it starts putting together a whole balance for you and you use a credit card and keeps track of your credit card payment, credit card spending, all your budgets for everything you need and and in those programs and in those softwares you can set up it's called envelopes where you can allocate money for whichever thing you need which is camp or clothing or yumptive expenses which is great but you have to be a real discip disciplined person and run with these programs and be controlled with these programs. Problem is I can only talk about myself. I can't talk about other people. I'm not like that. But me, you don't know what's happening. All of a sudden, come the end of the month and you see a bill over there of thousands of dollars and you start asking your wife, "What's this Amazon every day?" And then your daughter coffee every day and then you know because it's a credit card you don't feel it just go and you swipe and if you still have this credit card bill being paid automatically then all the way because then by the end of the year you're all lost and you don't know what's going on at all. So that's why there's a movement not to use credit card for people who are like me that are not fully balanced with these softwares in control you work yourself into cash because the nature of a person is when he has cash and he knows he has a bundle of money and he starts spending that money and he sees this money dwindling he starts getting himself into control. If you take your payroll, it's a few thousand dollars, whatever it is. You you allocate your monies which goes for the mortgage and whatever you have this and then for spending at home, groceries, bakery, shoe store, clothing, not talking about Amazon, just the standard shopping, you switch yourself over to cash. Believe you me, your shopping is going to be a total different shopping. When you fill up your carriage in the shopping center and nothing has a price on the shelves, nothing. I mean, today's days you have to go to the scanner in the center of the store maybe to see the price. You fill up your carriage. If you pay with credit card, you don't even look at the cash register, the machine. The numbers are flying. You're swiping your car. Before you know it, you're on the phone with your son's rebi or whatever it is and you're already out of the store and you don't even what's happening. The same person stands in the grocery store with the cash register. And the total pops up over there, $895. And the guy says, "What?" Yeah. Yeah. $895. And he takes out his bundle of money they took out from the bank. and he has over there $1,500 or $2,000 that he has, okay? And he starts at $895 and then he goes into the wine store and then he goes into the fish store and then he goes from store to store to store. By the time he comes home, this whole pile is gone. Then he starts feeling the pinch in his pocket because he sees in front of his eyes his money depleting. When you live in a credit card, you do not see it and all of a sudden you're out money. This is about spending a credit card. But tell a person don't have a credit card at all. I don't say that because let's live in reality. Let's say a person makes the $2,000 a week. He makes this $8,000 a month and he has his mortgage, rent, expenses, karma limit, whatever he has. A guy comes out of Pes, he needs to buy. We need mats, we need wine, we need stuff. But he did not live on that budget with envelopes with the way we said it before that you should set yourself up on a budget in order these times. You have to have that credit card where you can swipe that card for the bill. But if you do that, you must pay it back by the due date. The minute you go over due date, you get hit with 30% of interest. And the problem is once you're in the interest cycle, whatever you charge in a car gets interest hit and they start eating you up alive. If the said I don't remember exactly the but it says that what's the from is someone should not swallow the the the his friends his friends haveings without he should feel paying interest in credit card starts eating you up and you don't feel it by the time you end up the year keep on paying interest it's impossible to survive and to have money in your later years. So it's a very very very important topic. First of all is the credit cards. If you can stay off it, live on cash. You have a way better control of your finances. If you want to be on that machine, you want to be on that card, get yourself a budgeting app. Make sure your budgeting app is connected to your bank accounts in utilities and everything. And then there's a very good thing for once or twice a year. sit down with your the nebias with your wife, print out a piece just a regular piece of loose leaf paper is good enough for that. Put your income and start listing all your expenses and keep tap of a month of your expenses just to see how you live. It's also going to do a huge change in your lifestyle. And once you start getting control of your money, control of your spendings, you will be ahead of the game. You already be to the next step. Why is it so important? And why is it so important? Especially when you're young because if you're going to ask any middle-aged person that's marrying off his children and he has to come up over here in Lakewood Bashende came out with these toiles all the stuff the night of the wedding is the least expensive part when you marry off children whoever married off children knows that the night of the wedding is the least expensive part it's those six months up to the wedding or three months or two months in Lakewood that's the most expensive car, which means the apartment, the jewelry, the clothing, the the gowns, the the presents, the you name it. You know, out of a $100,000 budget, $120,000 budget that you have in a out of $120,000 budget that you have, that it out of a $120,000 budget that you have in a wedding, the night, the hall, the music, the band, the flowers, especially over here in Lakewood, is $30,000. $90,000 is nothing to do with that night. Now, how can we get this done in today's days, we have with a lot of children, a lot of kids. How can we get to that point without being broke? I don't know in this community but in my community where I come from in B park 80% of the people over 80% of the people I'm guilt to marry off the children. 80% of the people cannot make it. It's impossible. A person has a job that pays well $150,000 when your budget is $170 and you still have to put in another 125 or $150,000. It's impossible to get through it. Unfortunately, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I started marrying off my children, Kass was between 40 and $45,000 lock, stock, and barrel. Today, it's 120 at the cheap way. Why? Because everything became very expensive. This is one reason. The second reason is as time progresses, we become bigger as the time goes bigger and bigger and bigger in our needs. In the olden days, a velvet talis bag was good. A talis ble made out of velvet was fine, a 40, $50, $60 talis bag. Today, a talis bottle is $800. made out of leather and cows and all kind of animals and you know the presents, the diamonds, the jewelry. It came out now to the world for Israel is called lab grown diamonds which is a fight for itself and and and and it's a foral Israel if we think into it because an average kala today's gets between 20 to $50,000 worth of jewelry between the engagement ring the necklace the bracelet the earrings the whole nine yards like a princess. You can cut it down to 30%. You can save 70% if you go over to lab grown diamonds which is a help. But go explain to the wife that you're buying her to the that you're buying for the kala a lab grown stone. She's going to kick you out the door. Lab grown stone. My ka lab grown stone. I think had it made a shik. I was talking to him and talking to him and talking to him and I know he's he he cannot make it. He's breaking his head, but he has this Hungarian wife that needs that stone and he calls me up one day, Mandy, I made today $10,000. I said, "How did you make $10,000 today?" So my daughter got engaged and my my son got engaged. I went out to buy diamond. I didn't tell my wife. I didn't tell anybody. I picked up a lab grown stone for $1,000. I made $10,000. He goes, you know, and he's a quiet. He doesn't tell anybody in the ban for everything is fine. Believe you me, the kala has no idea what she got. She's going to be happy whichever way it is. And so fine, this is good. You know, this isn't everything it is. >> What is that? She'll never find out. You tell me how many people can tell you to look and you tell me if there's a woman that goes out to take it to a gymnologist to check the stone if it's a real grown under the water or it's grown in a lab then she deserves a divorce. Okay. Whoever has such a wifeman so an average woman will not find out. And again two two years three years down the line you want to tell her was a lab grown go ahead. But I don't think I really don't think I really don't think so because you didn't you didn't do a with a diamond to say I'm buying you with this and this type of diamond. It's a present. It's a gift. >> Let's not get into that. That's that's a total different topic. That's a total different topic. >> I want to tell you something. I want to tell you something. I have I have a big V in my shoe where I d and I told them me and you both are not allowed to wear a real Rolex for me. Nobody's going to believe it's real for you. Nobody's going to believe it's fake. So we should don't pay money for Rox. But let's let's not go there to buy fake jewelry and say it's real. It's not fake. A lab grown diamond is not a fake. It's a real real diamond. What's the difference if it's grown in a lab or it's grown under the water in a sea 5,000 ft below or whatever? Who cares? It does the same thing. But let's not go there. Let's let's let's continue. We have to find a mahal. How could it be that we should be able to come to the position where you're marrying off your children? When you get to older age, you should have money to live off. So I came up with a mahalak. It's called the S&P 500. Mahala. I'm sure it's not news to this community about the S&P 500. What this is in the world, it was kind of so much news that when I gave a drash in the community, a husband went home to his wife and told him, you know, I just heard the the Josh is a guy Feico came. He opened a company S&P 500. He's trying to sell us. We should buy in his company. So anyways, so I don't think I have to go on very de in full depth for the S&P 500, but we'll touch it just at a at a tip of it. The S&P 500 is the 500 strongest companies in the United States, which is the strongest companies of the world. Um there is stronger companies in different different places in the world other than the United States, but the S&P 500 is the strongest companies in America. The stock market in America always went up. There is years that it went down. But if you take it in a long of a 20 years or 30 or 40 or 50, always went up and the ladder went up. The average the S&P 500 did is a average of a 10% annual return even on its worst years. If you do a 20 year, if you do a 10 year, the worst years was flat, the best years was about 18%. When you do best to worst, but if you take 20 years, 20 years, any 20 year period you'll take, you hit between 9 and 11%. So if a person takes a a certain amount of money, puts it away and and and before I start going into that, I put it on the front page. You can see I brought down chis from from Tuka Mishbet that you're allowed to use your master money to do that to take money, especially if you're a person that knows that you will not have money. I mean on according to what your earnings are now, you're not going to have money to marry off your children. Your children are the first like says ch your children is is is they come before everybody. You're allowed to take your master money. You'll study through the different pesky chief of zilstein about the master. You'll study it. You'll you'll look at it later. But let's look at this page at a plan. If a person takes $5 a day, market is open five days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That's $25 a week. If a person takes $5 a day, look at the left side. Starting balance is zero. Annual rate return rate we spoke is approximately 10%, right? Duration of 20 years. Periodic addition of $25 a week. Weekly is this. Your investment value will be at $82,000.82873. Your investment, your contribution was $26,000. Your profit is 56,000. That's on an average. Okay. What is $5 a day? We spoke before people by a dollar is no money. $5 is also no money. $5 a day, your mdish $25 a week for your child when from when he's born till you marry him off, you will have $80,000. Now, if you give it a kick in the beginning, you put in a starting balance on the left side, look, $3,000 in the beginning and you do the same calculation, you end up with $104,000. Now, how does this happen? It's very simple. It's called compounding. the power of compounding interest. Now, when you invest in the S&P 500, you're not investing in a compounding interest fund. You're investing in a product that goes up in value. It was in value $100 now and in 20 years it's a thousand, whatever it is. So, you didn't get interest on your money. You just your value grew. But the growth on an average of 20 years is likely you would have put it into a fund that gives you interest on your money which is an average of 10% annual return. So this is how we did this calculation. And the same if you go if you're a little bit more of a batish and you want to be a little bit more of a batish you go for $10 a day. That's 50 $50 a week. It comes at about $200 a month. is I've been done it I've been doing this for the p for the past 30 years myself this mahala that's why I came up to go out in in public and give this advice because nobody comes out to give this advice the main reason is because people when they sell something they need to make money nobody can make money out of this $5 a day they 20 no financial advisor no wealth management nobody will look at you for $50 a week. And today's days were hashem that the technology became so wide available and everybody can go online to fidelity.com or to or to Charles Schwab or to any of those or Vanguard or any of those platforms. There's no minimums. There's no maximums. You can set these things up automatically. I have set it up for so many in Galat. You go into Fidelity, you open an account for every individual child, as many as you have. Every child gets account. You put in the the kicker in the beginning and then you start adding a set it up automatically. Fidelity, you can buy fraction shares. So if you buy $50 in the Fidelity in a in a S&P 500 fund like the VO which trades an approximate $600 and something dollars, it buys in a tenth of a share whatever it is to to get uh and so it keeps on growing. So it's extremely important to open for each individual child a separate account to keep it separate because then you also have you know you have your oldest for the second because what happens someone asked me why don't I put everything into one account because if you put everything into one account and you end up having your account five 6 $800,000 whatever we talking and then you start spending by the first you lose control because you see you know this foc I have five $600,000 you'll splurge. You you you'll get, you know, and you'll spend $2 $300,000. By the time you buy third to fourth child, you're you're broke. That's why it's so important to have for every child. Have them contribute as well their babysitting money, their bait mitzvah money, their their, you know, lemonade stand money, whatever it is, have them contribute to their account. They should feel it's theirs. Let them look at it. Let them see their money grow. Say once you open these accounts and you see the money grow, believe you me, it becomes such a tava. You never had such a ta for money. I promise you once you see this accounts grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Every time you want to spend money, you'll think twice. Do I really want to spend it? Here comes in before the If you have physical accounts on your phone, on your computer, yes, look at it. Don't get nervous when it drops, but look at it every week or every two weeks. Watch it grow. Especially in the markets now that it's doing so well. It gives such a pleasure. I had a man that had his son that he used to go out buy every month of Shabas an ice cream, a milkshake, ice cream, whatever. Spent for him, for his wife, and for the child $15. each is about 3540 bucks $45 every mishab in the ice cream store. One Montas, he told his son, you know what? Let's buy this machine on Amazon. It cost like 50, 60 bucks. That's it. We'll buy a bucket of ice cream for 102. Bottle of milk, chocolate syrup. That's it. It is. And let's do it oursself. And it's going to be about $3,2 each milkshake. What do I have to spend 15 bucks? He went, he did it. The first month of Shabas, he opened his laptop in front of his son, opened up Fidelity, opened up the milkshake account. He named it the milkshake account. He took the difference of the milkshake and put it in there. After two months as he saw it growing the whole shop, his son goes to shopping does it pay to buy or let's or let's put the money into the milkshake account. Everything the whole went to the milkshake and it's it's I'm telling you it works wonders. Once you start setting up these accounts, you will see such a and if a lot of people ask me what is if I already have five children, six children, seven children, how much do I need to put in for every child? So I have on menify.com I made a website which is totally freem and I have an amazing calculator over there where you put in your goals. You see if you look at page three, you put in your goal $100,000. You put in start age of the child is nine and age is 20 and a 10% return. His weekly contribution to his fund has to be $96 either weekly or $416 monthly or yearly. And you see the invested is $54,000 to 45. As you go down the row over here, you see the younger the child, the less his contribution has to be. And then on the bottom, you get a full total of contribution per week. So, for let's say for the top scenario, you have to put in $335 a week to reach your goal to have every child their money that you need to marry him off. And then if you do a kicker in the beginning of the $5,000 per child, you see on the bottom you put in $25,000, you bring down that monthly or weekly contributions to less money. So, because a lot of people have laying money and they want to know how much I put in, but everybody should go on to the website themselves, open up the calculator. It's very simple to use. Make what it is. And now I want to show you a fascinating calculation on page number four. He was saying before when he called me up, I forgot his name. Um that when you're young and your expenses are little, you can end up having so much more when you're older and you have camp bills and stuff. Now let me show you what means the first 13 years of your marriage when you don't have yet a mortgage and you don't have cam bills and you don't have high school bills and you don't have all these heavy expenses in life if takes this is actual real numbers that I put onto a calculator that has the connected to the data from the S&P 500 if in 2005 in August look at that August 2005 till August 2018 which is 13 years if the if If the a takes $20,000 from his shank from his the money the girl made before the whatever you take that kicker of $20,000 you start adding every month $1,800. Now a lot of people ask you $1,800 a lot of money. So first of all there's a tax income credit that a lot of people get back that's about $102,000 a year. You can put it in here or start adjusting your vacations. Adjust your spendages. Adjust your where you spending your money. Find where your priorities are. But I want to show you something so important. If you do do this and you do crunch your numbers and you put it in there, that $1,800 a month, you would end up in the 13 years invested. Look on the bottom in the pink there's $300,800. Your net withdrawal would be $693,000. That's physical. Now you leave that in the account and you don't touch it. From age 33, let's say you married the 20 and you go up to age 33. Age 33, you're starting bar mitz, he's starting cam bills, he's starting all the other, you don't have that $1,800 to put it away. You don't have to add a single penny to this fund. Don't add anything. Just let that money sit for another seven years up to August 225 which is this year. You would have had in the account that means if you would take that 693 you see that was before and you leave it there zero zero contributions the total with dividends reinvested would have been a,782,000. That boy side's mind-blowing numbers. $1,800 a month for 13 years. You have a,700,000. Now look at the chart next. You already reached age 40 when you have this money and we put it in in the first that green box. We start withdrawal at age 40 when you start marrying off your first child $125,000. Annually you increase it with $5,000. That boy said by age 60 already taken out $225,000. Age 70 already taken out $275,000. Age 80 already taken out $325,000. It goes all the way up to 95 you take out $400,000. Say you hear numbers $1,800 a month. Again, $1,800 a month for 13 years for your first 13 years of life. So you don't go business class on points and you don't go to the every six months and you don't go to again I'm call but I mean to say you don't you start watching your first 13 years where you're honeymooning and you're flying around the world and you're having a good time and you're having sushi boards and you're having fishboards and meatboard cut your balances make sure to but to to to to fund this thing you'll have the I give for your And if let's say Khalas aa person passes away at age 85, this fund would still be worth $2,396,000. This is $1,800 a month. Like that's it. It is for 13 years. It's it's it's it's a it's mindblowing. It's real numbers. Challenge anybody to go online do yourself calculate and you'll see it yourself. And this what I did over here is on a 10% annual return. This this is over here had 14 years from 2018 to 20 was 14%, this was 11%, this is real numbers. This is hypothetical numbers on 10%. 10% I can be very comfortable that it's going to make because we're on the beginning of the dotcom bubble. I mean not sorry the AI explosion and and the market will do good. We're in the whole transition of the world. So I'm not scared. This is the noise of how you what how important money is what a dollar can do. $5 a day can marry off your child. This is how important money is when you're young. Not to spend it on the wrong things. Live with a budget. The next thing I want to go in is the is the noise in retirement. I'm sure a lot of people over here have 401ks and things. And if not, easy set up this your first 13 years of your life and you have your retirement money running over here. Or do the $600 a month now and build it up. I had a Muhammad called me up and called me up. He wants to come to me. He's coming to me to to to I should give him my what is his father's 72 years old, 75. He doesn't have any retirement fund. He gets a social security. He gets $900 a month and his rent is about $25,000 and his food and this and that. They need about $4,000 a month. I should uh give him money. So I asked him again, he's 55 years old. Did you start your retirement fund? And he goes, "No." So I asked him, "So what's the 10 years from now when the school will kick you out and your your son will go for donations for you and for your father, right? So everybody say it's extremely serious. We have to make retirement [clears throat] funds. It's so important. I mean over here in Lakewood I've been in touch with a few Mises and I do want to push it very strong for the Moses to open up retirement funds for the malam and the teachers and everybody. It's so important because I've been speaking over here to people and they're literally going through gehenn to be able to survive their monthly payments because they do not have any in their kesh they do not have way to live off. This is the noise of retirement and the final chapter in which is life insurance and the importance of life insurance. As I mentioned before, I had all my all these siblings with my mother all passed away young. Nobody had life insurance. We had to go and money to put together for to marry off her children by every child. We still have to go after money. We had to open the a can. My boy say life insurance is so inexpensive. The whole life insurance is 30 4050 bucks a month. That's it. It is goodish per million dollars. Who cannot afford 30 40 $50 a month? Now I understand everybody over here thinks I'm going to die by the 98 120. I always say 120 is a scam. Nobody lives 120. If someone reaches 95, they push him in a wheelchair. Okay? Nobody reaches those ages. And it's so important to understand and I can tell you I'll leave you with what we went through the we went through that we had to put together money for and nobody wants that his he should skip the scam and but nobody wants these bishes. So it used to be such a thing as it's still not used to be. Why didn't my brothers have life insurance? What was the reason for it? One had $100,000. Another one had $50,000. Why? Because in those days all the brokers only sold was whole policies because this is where they make gishmaki gisha commission. They sell a policy of $250,000 which is a $25 $3,000 annual this. They make $3,000. They sell a policy for a million dollar. It's $12,000 a year. They make $12,000 the first year. Now you tell me how many of can put away $1,000 for life insurance. And anybody that has five children must have at least $2.5 million. You must have at least $500,000 for each dependent in the house between limit and between clothing and between marrying of the child and everything. You must have coverage of $500,000 per per person. Now you can't afford it. Go tell a guy to get it's two and a half million. is like $30,000 a year in premium. Who can afford it? So, nobody had it today's there's many asum. There's the I'm sure you guys heard about him. Sonny Hartman, I think is his name. And and there's plenty as they're going to sell life insurance term life insurance. You can have over here $2 million policy for under $100 a month. This is a joke and it's so important. It's so important. So let's reiterate, live responsible, be conscious on your money because what your money is value. What a dollar is today is a million dollars down the road. And if you live with responsibilities now, you'll see how your future life will be. I have my son do it. He is um I just um sent him to go get licensed for life insurance. He does term policies. Again, I don't do this for a living. I do this all is not this. I don't charge money for my douches and I'm not in the insurance business and I'm not in the financial business. I make sad. That's my business. The city that's my business is my business. But I put in my son of the push because a lot of people will keep my phones ringing off the hook. You could imagine people calling me every day with different shalas and I can't I I just can't do everything. So, I took my son, I gave him good training, and um he's going he sells life insurance, term life insurance, and he's going to help people set up the accounts of fidelity. He charges a minimal fee to sit down and figure out how much money you need to put away and whatever. Sorry for the five minutes delay. Sorry if I could just send off. First of all, sorry for doing this. We have a few students over here. Thank you, Ted. who have iPads and laptops as abody sign up right now monthly. Last month we had a dozen people from the state of the people who came and signed up already. Thank you.