What This Class Is and What I'm Not (I'm a Bookkeeper, Not an Advisor)
Welcome. Or welcome back, if you peeked at the course description twice before signing up, which I suspect a few of you did.
Let's start with the name of this module, because I picked it on purpose. Nobody opens the envelope. The 401k paperwork, the statement from your old employer, the thing HR handed you on day one that you shoved in a drawer. I know this because I didn't open mine for years either. I'm going to tell you about that later in the course. For now, just know I'm not up here because I've always had this figured out. I'm up here because I finally did, and it took longer than it should have.
What I am
I'm a bookkeeper. That's my actual job, at Rockwell Mutual, and it's also just how my brain works. I like columns that add up. I like reading the whole document instead of the summary paragraph someone wrote to make you feel better about not reading it. I read the whole thing so you don't have to, and then in this class, I hand you the plain version.
So here's what you're actually getting six weeks of:
- How to read your own retirement paperwork without your eyes glazing over
- What an employer match is and why it's the first thing to fix, full stop
- Roth versus traditional, at the level that actually matters for your decision
- How to get a rough, honest number for what you'll need
- A way to write all of this down so it's real to you, not just a screen you scroll past
That's it. That's the whole class. Small, useful, hands-on.
What I'm not
I'm not a financial advisor. I don't have a license that lets me tell you what to invest in, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you which stocks to pick, because I genuinely don't know and neither does most of the internet that sounds very confident about it.
I'm also not going to get into anything past basic tax stuff. Roth versus traditional, yes, that's in my lane. Backdoor conversions, complicated deductions, anything your CPA would raise an eyebrow at? Ask a CPA. That's not me being modest. That's me being accurate.
And I'm not going to hand you a guarantee. You will not leave this class with a number that's promised to be right. You'll leave with a sunday-best estimate, which is the best any of us gets, advisor or not. Here's the thing though — a rough number you actually use beats a perfect number you never calculate. I'd rather you walk out with a decent guess and a plan than freeze up waiting for someone with more letters after their name.
Why hands-on, and why the pen
You're going to fill in real numbers in your own ledger during class, not as homework you promise yourself you'll do later. I know a spreadsheet is faster. I use one too, at work. But a spreadsheet lets you not feel the number. Writing it by hand makes you feel it. That's not me being old-fashioned for the sake of it — I've watched it happen in one-on-one conversations enough times to trust it.
One thing I'll ask you to think about this week, not because it's a worksheet, just because it matters: talk to whoever you share money with, before you've got the numbers figured out, not after. I learned this one the hard way. A few winters back, money got tight and I quietly cut our grocery budget without telling Aaron, because I wanted to have the new number all figured out before I brought it to him. I thought I was being helpful. He found out later and it stung him more than the actual dollar amount ever would have. If I could redo one small thing, that's it. Don't wait until it's tidy to bring your person in.
A note on the room
I run a quiet class. I'm not a big-energy, jazz-hands kind of teacher, and I'm not going to pretend to be one for six weeks. What I will do is stop and check that you're actually with me before I move on, and if I'm talking too fast at the start, tell me, because I know I do that until I settle in.
Nobody's behind in here. If you haven't opened your envelope yet, you're exactly who this class is for.
Before next time: find your retirement paperwork, whatever drawer it's in, and just put it somewhere you'll see it. You don't have to read it yet. Just get it out of the drawer. 💛