Shannon Lee Simmons

This sucks.

It's hard and it's harder than we all thought it was going to be.

At the same time,

To fully exit out of the plan or to fully pull yourself out and say, well, this doesn't apply to me, I think is foolish because at some point you're going to wake up and you're going to be 50 or 60.

And then you might realize, oh, my gosh, it's I don't have a lot of time and I'm tired.

And so I think we want to in the face of that stress, I really think it comes down to the financial plan.

And again, not because I'm pumping my own tires or our tires as an industry, but because you're mapping out what's possible to claim your faith that it's worth it, that there is a point because that's what's getting harder and harder is the faith that if I do this, then it'll be okay.

That's what's getting squeezed.

And so if we have a plan that feels sustainable and realistic, then we're like, oh, okay, we can do that.

Then I think it restores our faith.

So in the moments of stress,

We can like come back to that as like a blanket of calm.

And I also think having emergency accounts has never been more important.

I think it really helps with anxiety.

If you wake up at two or three in the morning and you see a little emergency account that's right there for you, like a little bow, it's like, whoo,

Relief.

And so I think an emergency account can really help.

And I don't think it's just wasted money that should be invested.

And it's just barely keeping pace with inflation.

I think it's an emotional win.