Episode #1 – Your Journey to Financial Freedom Starts Here

Welcome to the Millennial Money Moves Podcast on today’s inaugural episode.

We’re gonna be going over our background, our credentials, and the mission and the purpose behind this podcast, and why we wanted to bring financial literacy and education to our generation.

This content is purely educational, and does not tend to be financial advice or financial planning. Please consult your professional financial advisor or tax professional to receive tailored advice to your personal situation.

Babin Wealth Management is not responsible for action taken by listeners based on educational content provided. If you would like to receive personal financial advice, please reach out to Babin Wealth Management directly at babinwealth.com.

Let’s make moves. Welcome everybody to the Millennial Money Moves Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Babin, and with me is my co-host, Blake Bandani.

Blake, good to see you, buddy.

Yeah, always great to see you, Sean. I was a little curious if you were going to say co-host or not, so I feel pretty important right now. Thank you.

Yeah, dude, you’re 100 percent the co-host.

All right.

I didn’t know if I was going to be the honorary guest every week or whatever we’re doing, but it’s nice to hear co-hosts. I feel good. You got to update that LinkedIn profile.

You’re probably the gang now.

Absolutely. Well, good to have you, man. I’m excited to be doing this with you.

When we were talking about it, and I could feel your enthusiasm with trying to do something for our generation, trying to help uncover the miss and pitfalls, and the good things and the bad things about the financial industry, and what we could

really try and help our generation to better educate them for their finances. A millennial, I can look that up just to make sure we have the date range right, and it’s anybody from the early 80s to the late 90s.

So we’re talking people pushing 45 to late 20s, and that is such an integral part of life financially. You’re starting to make some money. What are we going to do with it?

What are the right things to do with it? And so that’s what we’re here. That’s what I want to talk about with you, and we’ve both been in the industry for a while, and I’m really just excited to kind of dive into it.

So today I wanted to just talk about our backgrounds, our journeys through the industry, how we got to where we’re at today, and then kind of tee it up for what we’re trying to accomplish going forward. How does that sound?

I mean, I think you know that one, Sean. It’s hard to think that we’re in that age group now, where, like you said, mid 30s, starting to think about your future, right? It’s tough to think.

I remember thinking back when I was in high school, like, I wonder what I’m going to be doing when I’m 30, in my 30s, and here we are, doing a podcast, talking a little bit about our experience, but no, man, happy to be here.

I think we have a very unique story and what we’ve seen in our own experiences, and love to share that with our viewers and see what they think.

Sounds good, man. Well, let’s start with you, then, you know, talk to me a little bit about, you know, what piqued your interest in kind of finance, how you ended up kind of in this industry and how you got to where you’re at today.

Yeah, man, I think most can relate, but graduated from University of Connecticut, go Huskies, back-to-back champs, men’s basketball, and didn’t really know what I was going to do, right?

I do know, and I was always told I was a very good people person, very likable, right? Charismatic. So I was like, okay, I wonder what I can do with that.

And you go, you know, I got a business degree, did the different undergrad classes, the recs, all that, and still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So after I graduated, I went through the Enterprise Rent-A-Car training program.

This is not a, we’re not paid by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, but I will tell you that’s one of the best management training programs on the planet. And I’m thankful for taking that year and a half.

It’s either Enterprise or Northwest Mutual.

If you don’t know what to do, but you know your sales and you’re a people person, I think that’s your two paths. Or Cintas, throw a little Cintas in there for a lot of our Ohio people. But yeah, man, did the Enterprise Rent-A-Car training program.

They give you the tools to be your own manager. But no, man, it was great. A lot of customer service, how to manage a branch, manage a fleet, sell our insurance, right?

Even though most people renting a car had their own insurance, that was kind of part of the sales aspect of that training program. But it was intense. I remember it was like a true first job out of school.

I think I was getting up at 6 a.m., getting out of the shop by 6 p.m., vacuuming, cleaning cars, shirt and tie. And it was great, but I kind of realized I wasn’t going to do this for the rest of my life.

And no offense to anyone that’s worked at Enterprise for their whole careers. I know it’s a great program. But sure enough, I ended up renting a car to an insurance agent.

And I tried to sell him on some insurance. And he was like, hey man, appreciate what you’re doing. But I’m actually, I run my own insurance agency and I’m going to have to decline the coverage.

But what are your thoughts about joining my insurance agency and selling for me? And I think it was kind of like the stars aligned for my career path.

And as I mentioned, I don’t think I was going to vacuum and clean cars and insure and tie for the rest of my life. So I went for it.

And that’s where I learned a little bit about P&C, life and health, got all those licenses and did that for a couple of years. Luckily, at the time, State Farm was allowed to do mutual funds. So I was able to get my securities license.

And I realized P&C, life and health is great, but I kind of like this mutual funds and this securities industry idea. And I wanted to grow with it. So State Farm had limited products.

It really wasn’t their bread and butter, but it was kind of just ancillary stuff. So like you get a prospect or a client customer in the door, you talk about auto home, and then maybe you can start talking about life, annuities, etc.

But it wasn’t going to be the path to getting into that. So after getting my licenses, I found a job opening and opportunity with Mass Mutual on their 401k desk as an internal wholesaler.

And I remember when I got hired, the biggest thing they were looking for was, are you okay cold calling advisors? I looked at the hiring manager, I said, hey, man, I’ve been selling insurance for two and a half years.

I have to cold call every day in order to make some money. So I had the licenses. I didn’t have a lot of the 401k background, but I had that sales experience, fearless on the phones.

So I got that opportunity to join this desk. And I didn’t know much, Sean, about 401k’s other than I remember when I was at Enterprise. I got that employee benefits packet at my new hire training.

And I threw it in the trunk of my car. And I remember my mom calling me saying, hey, how was your orientation? I said, it was great.

She goes, what kind of benefits? I said, I don’t know. And my mom had some finance background.

She worked at Fidelity for many years. And she’s like, hey, they offer you a match. You need to take advantage.

At least do the 3%, I think it was, at the time. And that’s all I knew about 401Ks, other than what you have to study about. So then to finally start selling it, man, yeah.

I started selling it. And still didn’t really know, but the beauty of our role is like, my job was just to kind of drum up opportunities and let my external partners really do the sales. So, but around six months, Sean, it all clicked.

I saw how 401Ks work. I saw how they operate, how business owners, employees, it’s a huge advantage in many aspects for a lot of companies and organizations.

And that’s what I’ve been running with now for, I don’t know, six, seven years is just all dedicated to 401K space. So that’s where we are today, and that’s kind of going to be more of my expertise.

I’ll let you talk a little bit more about private wealth and making the smart money moves, but anything around 401Ks, retirement plans, that’s kind of where I’ve been focusing on for the last six or seven years.

And you’ve spoken to thousands of advisors across the country. So you know the financial advising space and what advisors are good at, what they’re bad at, and what clients need from them too.

And your experience is going to be so great for myself and for the viewers too, but what you just said about your mom explained your 401K benefits to you is the reason why I wanted to do this podcast.

Yeah.

I was baffled coming out of college. Same with you, I’m sure, you know, finance and economics degrees. And no one even explained how 401K works or what an IRA or Roth IRA is.

But I had to memorize insane formulas to do derivative calculations and arbitrage calculations, and all this crazy shit that I’ve never even considered using in my career.

But no, they didn’t teach you the basics of like, hey, here’s how a Roth IRA is different than an IRA. Or when you get that 401K, here’s some things to consider.

But hey, let’s not sleep on compound interest. That’s also a beautiful aspect. But you’re right.

And to your point, I think a lot of people our age, they probably have 401K offering at their work today, and they don’t even take advantage of it, because there’s a ball that’s dropped, right? That knowledge.

And I think that’s really what we’re here to do, right? Is really fill that void. But how about you, man?

I mean, you’ve been private wealthy, been managing money for a while. I mean, tell us a little bit about you.

Yeah. So looking back, like my first interest in finance was in high school government class, where you got like the fake hundred grand to invest in stocks.

And it was my friend, Matt and I, we were on a team and everybody kind of teamed up and you had $100,000, and you would just go in and pick stocks. And I think we had four or five months at the end of it, whoever made the most money won.

And so that was like the first time like I was very, very focused in school and curious of like, of doing like research and things outside of school.

Like I was watching CNBC in the mornings, I was reading newspapers, I was doing these things that I hadn’t expressed really interest in school-wise. And I was just pumped on it. We were making some money.

I didn’t know how, like we were just picking stocks. I didn’t know why we were, why we weren’t picking these ones. But the market was doing well, we were doing well.

And I was just fascinated with the idea of, I’m not doing manual labor, working at the grocery store, digging ditches or whatever, but my money, this money is working for me in the background while I’m doing other things.

And I just thought that principle was so cool, of leveraging your time and leveraging your money while you are doing what you’re supposed to be focusing on.

So in other words, let your money make money, huh?

Exactly. And that was the first time I got to see that work in practice. One month would go by and, you know, 100 grand turned into 120, then it turned into 140.

And at the end of it, we made 80 grand, and almost doubled our money in five months. And that’s an insane run. We’re just picking random shit.

We didn’t know what we were doing. It just was luck of the draw at that time. But it was so cool to me that that was real.

Like, that’s what you could potentially do for people is, you know, make money while they’re eating, sleeping, taking care of their kids, doing their job that they’re good at. Their money can be working for them in the background.

And so you saw, I mean, you saw the 80 grand and you’re like, oh, okay, I can do this.

Yeah, I just saw, I just, yeah, no.

For everyone listening, it’s not as easy as Sean made it sound, but that’s where the interest peak.

No, it was the stupid dumb luck of it that I think got me interested in the idea of it. That’s what we tell every stock picker, the worst thing that can happen to a stock picker is they make money on their first trade.

It’s because then they think they’re genius. But I didn’t have any concept of what I did, how I did it. It was just throwing darts at a dartboard, but it worked.

So that’s why I was like, you know what, I like this finance thing. So I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, go Wolf Pack and study finance and economics. And then right out of school, I was working for a small independent advisor with LPL.

And then from there, I just kind of bounced around to different RIAs, which stands for registered investment advisor firms. So those are private wealth management firms. And then I moved down to Phoenix.

I did a stint at Charles Schwab on their institutional desk, where I helped big clients of theirs with their administrative support paperwork and things like that. And then got into the portfolio management job for about five, six years.

And that’s where I really kind of honed in a concept and understanding of investing.

Finally, I had a light-balled moment of, okay, here’s a philosophy, a solution that, you know, maybe isn’t going to work every year, but it’s one that makes sense to me, one that I think can make sense to clients, and one that has proven to work.

I think that that was, I never had, I didn’t have confidence until that job in the investment space. The first person I worked for, you know, they used a lot of just American funds, because American funds was… And Vanguard.

Vanguard wasn’t even a thing back in 2012.

Crazy.

Quite yet. But it was a lot of American funds, and, you know, I was like, okay, so you just use one fund company. The next person I worked for, they were, it was like a, kind of like a hedge fund style thing.

It was their algorithm traders. So each morning I was coming in, and the algorithm was telling us what to buy and sell, and I was 23 years old, or 22, and thought I had the coolest job in the world, because I was his trader.

So he’d say, you know, buy this, sell that across these models. Market closes in 45 minutes, can you do it? And I’d be like, yeah, and I would just go there, and I’d just grind and get it done.

And it was just a race, and it was very cool. But I remember one year in our most aggressive model, we did 3% in the S&P 500 at 15. I was like, what is going on?

Like, is this is active management? Is this the way to go?

So when you talk like we did 3% in the S&P did 15% for a novice listener, what are you saying there?

So the clients that were invested in their most aggressive kind of growth-focused model did 3%. That was their annual return for that year versus the S&P 500 returned 15%. So that’s a 12% difference.

And in the industry, they sometimes use the term tracking error, or when your margin of return is off by that much for both growth-focused kind of investments, something went haywire.

If you did 8% and the S&P did 12%, okay, we’re in the same ballpark. 15% is not even remotely, that’s the complete opposite side of the country.

And if you are tracking an S&P 500, what does that actually entail as an investor? What are you actually putting your money into?

It could be a lot of different things. It could be a mutual fund.

But specifically S&P 500 is like the top 500 companies, right?

Gotcha. Yes, sir. Exactly.

Okay, cool.

But like how often, Sean, do you think, can you…

I mean, I’ll be honest, I guess, you know, again, my forte is going to be more on the 401k side of things, but like, you know, I’m kind of a set it and forget it guy, which is kind of the theme of 401ks, right?

Just put the money in, don’t look at it for 20 years, you’ll be surprised how much is there at the end of it.

But for guys like you and Gauze that do focus a little bit more and have to be a little bit more cautious of what portfolios are doing each year. Do you like the S&P 500? You know, is it a good idea to look at that as part of your portfolio?

What do you think?

I mean, that’s a whole episode.

So let’s get into things like that, right? I think that’s to your point earlier in this session is, we want to give this information because it’s not always taught, right?

Yeah. A lot of people think that throw all your money in the S&P 500, you’ll be fine. In the last 10 years, 12 years, we’ll tell you, yeah, that’d be absolutely fine.

But I can show you how inefficient that is. Anyways, that’s a whole episode.

Okay, so that wasn’t going to be titled episode whatever. Why the S&P 500?

Yeah, should I put all my money in the S&P 500?

Again, I gave you that experience in seeing what portfolio managers do and investments, huh?

Yeah, it was like these bumps and bruises along the way of seeing like, okay, I didn’t understand what that shop was doing in regards to just basically relying on an algorithm and then seeing it not really working.

So that was the first experience of active management where I was like, okay, I didn’t like that moment.

Anyways, getting to where I had the light bulb moment when it came to investing, gave me just the confidence in, okay, now I feel comfortable bringing this to the masses.

Now I feel comfortable sitting across from somebody like Blake and telling them, hey, this is what you should be dealing with your money. And it took me till I was 30 years old to really understand that.

I think me and you both kind of had situations where we had one job, we kind of figured out quickly, okay, this isn’t exactly where we want to go.

You know, we’re in the industry that we like, but we need to go find this job, or we need to go try that.

Exactly.

And I give all the youngsters that kind of advice straight out of college is, you know, you’ll know in the first six months if that job is for you or not. And if it’s not, go find the one that is for you because…

I love that mentality.

You’re going to roll a lot of different experiences, try a bunch of different things, and you’ll find your fit. And then when you find your fit, run with it.

But yeah, along the lines of where I got to where I’m at today is yeah, so I found that investment philosophy through that large RIA firm here in Scottsdale.

And we were managing about, you know, $10 billion dollars who were doing on a really large scale for hundreds and hundreds of advisors across the country. And I loved working with the advisors.

I loved educating these advisors on an investment philosophy. You know, why we invest the way we do, why we don’t invest the way we don’t. And there came a point where I was like, I want to do this for the end user client.

The person that probably doesn’t need as in depth of education, but somebody who I could really, really help day to day versus just helping kind of the advisors understand it better so they could trickle it down to their end client.

So that’s when I joined Edward Jones in 2020, right before COVID, which was one hell of a time to start a financial body.

Well, hey, hey, Sean, if there’s one positive to that is you were in Arizona for COVID, which I was as well. You know, I grew up in Connecticut, and there’s one thing I could tell you about 2020 in Arizona.

Maybe it was about one month where things were a little shut down, but after that, Arizona held its ground, and we were out there golfing, stores were open. So you could have been in New York with COVID in 2020.

They had us shook for like three months, and then they’re like, all right, we can all go back to doing our things.

Right. But no, you still went for it, and how did that end up?

So, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, man. Growing a practice from COVID, I mean, I would spend hours on LinkedIn. And again, this could be a whole another episode of starting a financial advisor practice.

Oh, that one.

See, that’s what I’m talking about. But no, keep going, right? So, do you start from scratch, Sean?

Like, did you actually have to build from zero?

Or I know that Edward Jones, because of legacy and sometimes old advisors, but so maybe they help you out a little bit, but like majority of it, like you said, you had to figure out how to drum up business, right?

Yeah. I mean, I started from zero when I first started. There was nothing there.

And what’s a bummer is when you come from the financial industry, everyone’s an advisor. So like, if you came from, you were a doctor or pharmacist or car salesman, whatever the case may be, typically, your network is people who need financial help.

But when your network is financial professionals, it’s like, oh, bummer. Okay. Where do I go now?

But you figured it out, man.

Yeah, I figured it out.

I had a little luck along the way. There was an opportunity within Jones that I got tapped on the shoulder for when a bunch of larger advisors left Edward Jones.

They tapped me to take over a practice or a portion of the practice and just said, hey, try and keep as many clients as you can. And at the end of the day, I thought I did a decent job and that kind of changed everything for me.

That was the moment in my career. That was the luck I needed. I’ll never forget.

Someone told me early on there like, it takes a little bit of luck to be successful in this role. And I think that was my luck.

That was that moment for me and it changed everything, gave me the confidence, gave me the clients I needed, gave me the ability to kind of let my shoulders down and realize, okay, I’m going to make it. I’m going to be fine.

And I can put food on the plates every night. Yeah.

First, did you ever have the ramen noodles and Wendy’s for a couple of days or what?

No, but there was like the budget apps going ballistic all over my phone and like tracking everything down to the penny.

But you mentioned luck and I do believe like stars have to align to get in certain places in life. But I also do truly believe, I think you create your own luck too, right?

Like, I don’t think you just woke up one day, but you had to put the work in, you had to put the effort in, and you had to do the right things. And then of course, luck had it.

There was certain scenarios that opened up, but I don’t think you get that without putting all that work in. And that’s what I’ve always believed in with luck. Stars align for sure, but you still got to put the effort and the work in to get it.

Yeah.

What’s the line? Luck is preparation, meaning opportunity.

Yeah. I thought it was something I was trying to think of it too. That sounded right.

Preparation meets opportunity. I like that. Maybe we just coined one.

I don’t know.

No. It’s definitely out there.

I would like to know what Michael Scott would say about luck. He probably has something good in his sleeve.

Yeah. Wayne Gretzky. He’s Michael Scott.

But no, man.

I think that’s what we’re going to get out with this podcast. I’m not saying we’re going to guarantee any type of returns, which I’m sure you’re going to have your disclaimers, but we’ve seen a lot.

We’ve experienced a lot in this industry, and we’re excited to dive into all that for our viewers.

Yeah, exactly. I haven’t even finished my journey yet. I know.

I was at Edward Jones for four and a half years, and I got to a point where I really wanted back to that independent world that I started.

And when I say independent, it means you don’t work for a large institution like Edward Jones, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley. You are your own firm, branded your own way, doing things your way.

And that’s the world I came up in, and so that was the world I wanted to get back to. So in September of 2024, I launched my own firm, Babin Wealth Management. And it was an incredibly hard transition.

It’s a tough thing to do, but I’m on the other side of it now, and completely grateful for the clients that I have and came with me. And this is another reason I want to do the podcast.

I wanted to bring them along the journey, let them know me better, you better, and learn a thing or two from us along the way.

So yeah, I think both of you and I have seen a lot of the industry, that’s another thing I kind of want to do here at some point, is I want to expose some things, some nasty things I saw from other advisors where I won’t tell you where they are or

who they are, but just things to look out for as an end client, I think questions to ask, because I saw some nasty things that make this industry, I get why people can have a bad experience in the stock market or with certain products and not want to

ever come back to it and just put their money under their mattress or in their savings account. Totally. And never want to work with somebody again, they’ll get burned.

I’ve got a personal story of my parents getting some absolute terrible advice before I started working with them.

And the person who sold them a certain product made $40,000 to $50,000 on a commission check by selling my parents something they completely didn’t understand or know. And they just didn’t need it.

And these are things that can happen to you in this industry when you’re looking at the person across the desk, hoping that they’re fiduciary, hoping that they have your best interests in mind.

If you don’t know the questions to ask, they can take you on a wild ride and sell you a bunch of things that may or may not be true. And it could be a bad experience for it.

And I hear it time and time again from prospects and clients of, you know, just whore stories of either poor advice or no one gives them any advice.

And, you know, that’s what I want to give out there to the world through this podcast is just some really good quality, basic steps or build a foundation of financial education so you can feel confident.

The next time you do go interview a financial advisor, hey, here’s some things that you should bring to that meeting to ask them questions about.

And just even as a co-host, I’m excited to hear you talk about all this.

And you mentioned that I’ve worked with a lot of advisors, but it’s always kind of been more on the 401k side, which I’m happy to talk to some of my own experiences of stuff that you should watch out, especially if you’re a business owner and you own

401k plans for your own company and things of that nature. But I’ll tell you Sean, the insight we’re going to get from you, man, it’s exciting.

Appreciate it. And yeah, we’re going to bring a bunch of different industry professionals to the podcast. You know, CPAs, state planning attorneys, you know, mortgage loan officers, right?

Like stuff that in our age group, you’re probably getting prepped for, right?

I know a lot of this is going to be around financial, the financial industry. But, you know, a lot of people in our age are still looking to buy a house or maybe they’ve already bought a house, purchasing vehicles, getting ready.

You know, maybe they’ve had kids. You just had your first kid, right? So planning for that, college planning, things that you have to be aware of, life insurance.

You know, we’re not life insurance salesmen, but it’s just important topics that not everyone likes to talk about. But hopefully we can make it entertaining and a little sexy at the same time.

So absolutely, man. That’s I think I think the listeners got two good people doing this for them. I appreciate you taking this on with me, and I’m excited for what we got next.

But yeah, again, I think the mission here is just to inform and educate. So we hope that’s what you’re getting out of it. That’s what we’re going to bring to the table.

We’ve got quite the list of different topics for you. And if there’s anything that, you know, you listeners are questioning or have questions about, feel free to drop a comment, send us an email and we can dive into it.