A conversation with Reese Fetner and her Father.

00:00 Any note?

00:02 Okay. The date is November 26, 2023. I, Reese Fetner 17:00 a.m. interviewing my dad, Matt Fetner He and my mom, Betsy, have been married for 20 years, and he is a financial advisor. So I want to start this interview by asking, how are you?

00:22 I'm good. How are you?

00:23 I'm good. So we'll start further back in your life. What are some of your earliest memories?

00:32 Early memories would probably just be playing with neighbor kids, playing with my cousins, going to school, normal kids stuff.

00:43 Did you play a sport?

00:45 I played a little basketball and a little baseball and then took karate in middle school.

00:50 What did you like most about those sports?

00:54 The competition, playing with your friends? Competition, mainly.

01:00 What were you like at my age?

01:03 Oh, good question. 17. Just thinking about getting ready for college.

01:12 When you were little. Like a little kid. What did you want to be when you grew up?

01:19 Probably. Probably a lawyer.

01:24 What was your first pet?

01:26 An english bulldog named beau when I was 13.

01:29 What was your favorite movie or tv show as a kid?

01:33 As a little kid, it was probably Dixie Hazard.

01:35 What was that about?

01:37 It was about a family of bootleggers that were constantly running from the police and just sort of a comedy.

01:45 What about now?

01:47 Favorite show now? Um, or movie. Or movie? Elvis.

01:55 Okay. What was your favorite singer or band? In my age?

02:01 Dave Matthews band.

02:04 Did you see them a lot?

02:05 I've seen them probably between five to ten times.

02:10 Did you have a prized possession as a kid?

02:13 No, not really.

02:15 Did you collect anything?

02:17 Well, yeah, when I was little, I collected baseball cards.

02:20 Really? What did you like about collecting baseball cards?

02:25 Just being able to try to find, you know, different cards of different players that had different values or that I liked watching on tv and things like that.

02:35 How did you collect them?

02:37 Basically taking my allowance and going to the baseball card store and buying them. Oh, or trading with friends.

02:45 What was your favorite part of thanksgiving as a kid?

02:49 The food and now food.

02:56 Can you tell me about someone who has greatly influenced your life?

03:00 Yeah, probably my first boss when I was 15, I worked for a veterinarian who was really good at teaching me about how to have a strong work ethic, how to treat people as far as customers and things like that.

03:16 What kind of other kind of life lessons did they teach you?

03:22 Well, I mean, obviously, if you're taking care of animals, you have to learn to have some compassion for the animals and also be responsible to make sure that they're well cared for.

03:32 Do you still use those animal lessons today?

03:35 Probably.

03:40 What is your favorite Thanksgiving that we've had this year. What made it your favorite?

03:46 The Iron bowl.

03:47 What about the Iron bowl?

03:49 The fact that we won.

03:52 What are you looking forward to right now?

03:55 Well, right now, probably looking forward to Christmas and wrapping up the year.

04:00 What about the championship next week?

04:02 Yeah, obviously the SEC championship.

04:07 So moving on to your job, your financial advisor. So why did you choose this as your profession?

04:17 Well, I studied finance in college, and I got a. I was an intern for a financial advisor in my junior year, and he sort of taught me what that job entailed as far as helping people reach their goals, giving them suggestions and advice, and helping them along the way. And once I had done that internship for a summer, I decided that's what I wanted to do for a living.

04:38 So when did you start?

04:40 The year 2000.

04:43 Was there anything else that you thought you would do instead of finance?

04:49 Not really.

04:51 So what's your favorite part of your job today?

04:54 The fact that I can solve problems and help people by giving advice and making a difference in their life.

05:00 What's your least favorite part?

05:03 Having to deal with things that I don't have any control over, like market volatility, economic changes and things like that.

05:11 Do you enjoy traveling as part of your job?

05:14 Yeah, sometimes.

05:16 What kind of place? What kind of cool places have you been?

05:20 I wouldn't say any of them are really cool because it's such spending so much time meeting with people that you don't really get to do any of the fun stuff.

05:33 How does or does the economic state of the country affect your job and your clients?

05:38 Yes. Obviously, the recommendations I made for people are based off things that have happened historically. But you also have to take into account where things are in the current situation. And maybe you have to make different types of suggestions based off the current climate.

05:57 So if the economy is doing really well, what does your day to day job look like versus if it's not doing very well?

06:07 Well, if it's not doing well, people tend to panic and want to make major overall changes to their strategy. And so a lot of times what I'm doing is trying to remind them that just because things are bad today, historically, we know they won't be bad forever, and that we've taken into account the chances of bad times into their plan. And if we stick to the plan, we'll still be rewarded in the long run.

06:30 Is that plans of savings?

06:33 Savings, investing, paying off expenses, things like that.

06:41 What are some of the most significant economic events that have happened in your life?

06:47 Probably September 11, everything being shut down for several days and then having the markets really sell off pretty significantly, significantly in the days after it reopened, and then the housing crisis, where the banking system almost imploded in 2007 and zero eight. And then definitely, obviously, like everybody else, Covid in 2020.

07:11 So how did the days following or. No, not the days, sorry. How did. Do you see the effects of 911 in the economy today?

07:26 Probably not. There's always going to be historical events that impact the markets, but they don't have necessarily a far reaching impact.

07:37 What about the banking crisis? Did they make big changes after that?

07:41 Yeah, so that one's a little bit different because banks were able to make lots and lots of loans that they probably shouldn't have. And so now there are more strict guidelines and rules around who banks can loan to and what people have to qualify for to get a loan.

07:58 So that doesn't affect your job, but it affects people.

08:01 It gives people more confidence that the banks are going to be still in good shape.

08:06 And what about during the pandemic?

08:09 The pandemic, obviously with social distancing, we weren't able to see people. And so if you can't meet with people to give them their advice and suggestions, it makes it a very difficult.

08:22 Did people want to make, or was that a time that people wanted to make a lot of rash decisions?

08:27 I think they were making rash decisions about everything in their life during that because it was such an unknown situation.

08:34 Was that a stressful time in your career?

08:37 I think, yeah, for everybody.

08:44 What was it like not being able to travel to see your clients?

08:49 Well, like I said, if you can't see people, you can't necessarily help them. And if you can't help them, then that's how I'm compensated, is by helping people. And so if you can't meet, you can't get paid, which obviously is stressful for anybody.

09:06 Do people ask you a lot of what somebody would say? Dumb questions.

09:12 Yeah, everybody always says, please forgive me if this is a dumb question. I hear that quite a bit. But when it comes to people's money, there is no dumb question.

09:22 What kind of decisions do you help people make with their money?

09:28 Okay, so how much they need to be saving, where they need to save it, and then different types of specific investments that will hopefully grow over time to help them with whatever goal they're working towards.

09:43 So do you just give them advice or do you give them advice and then actually help manage that, or do they just do that on their own?

09:50 No, we give the advice and then if they agree to it, they let us implement the strategy for them.

09:57 So people can't just go off on their own and do that. Is there anything that you are looking forward to right now in your career?

10:06 Just the opportunity to continue to meet and help as many people as possible.

10:11 What advice do you typically give your clients?

10:15 Save early and save as much as they can. Don't make frivolous purchases.

10:21 What kind of frivolous purchases?

10:24 You know, buying a car you can't afford or buying things that you just, that you don't really need, but you just want for the short term gratification. Because if you save in the long run, you'll be rewarded by being able to retire early or put your kids through college or buy the new house you want. You can't do that if you're buying things. That would be considered silly sometimes.

10:50 What is the most gratifying part of your job?

10:55 To see somebody where they don't really know what they're doing or just have questions. To be able to look at their situation and give them advice and then see the results after the fact and the gratitude they have for that.

11:11 Do you have a specific example?

11:15 There's lots of examples of where people have saved up money and they want to retire and they don't necessarily think they can because they think they can't afford it. And I take a look at what they've done and their situation and can tell them, you know, you can actually retire today if you want to, based off what you've done or the plan that we've put in place. And to see their happiness about that is awesome.

11:37 Do you remember who your first clients were?

11:41 I do.

11:42 What were they like?

11:44 Well, now they're retired and they're living in Florida, but they're nice folks that retired 15 years ago, probably, and I've continued to help them all along.

11:59 So are they still your clients, too? What advice do you have for future.

12:08 Generations just to save as much as possible, not panic about market conditions, put a plan together and follow the plan.

12:20 What advice would you have for me?

12:23 Same thing. And don't ever get a credit card.

12:26 Why?

12:27 Because what you'll end up doing is paying interest on the credit card and you'll end up paying more for whatever you bought than what it was actually worth. And then you might find yourself at a point where you can't make the payments anymore and then your credit is in bad shape.

12:43 What would happen to those if you can't make the payments anymore?

12:48 They would. Your credit would be impacted, which would mean at some point in the future you might not be able to get a loan for a car or a loan for a house or something like that.

13:00 Do you have a favorite type of client?

13:03 No. Unfortunately, everybody's different. So you have to be able to work with various types of personalities. I don't really have a preference as far as who I work with.

13:15 Okay. Thank you for talking to me.

13:17 Absolutely. Thank you.