The freedom of making financial decisions can become a burden when you start to consider the many investment options and the complexities that seem to be around every corner. Most of us don’t have a background in finance or the time to sift through the fine print and layers of details that many investments include, and that’s where a good advisor can become your best ally.

Your finances don’t have to be complicated despite advice or suggestions you’ve gotten in the past. In the latest podcast, Money Wisdom, Joel Johnson helps you take a deep breath by simplifying the areas that give people the most trouble. There are two easy ways to take the first step towards simplifying your life: gathering all of our investments into one place and organizing your statements. He goes into more detail about each in the podcast and shares some reasons why this can be a huge help.

From there, the next step is identifying some of the key areas that overwhelm people. You might be relieved to find out that there are three things that cause more confusion than for people, but there are solutions that exist. Not only does The Money Map provide this, but Joel Johnson also has strategies that he uses with each client each day that he explains in more detail this episode.

But all of the confusion isn’t just in the details. There are plenty of half-truths that get shared when it comes to finances. Making sure you understand how these common principles effect you personally is the key to leveraging them to your benefit. Have you heard these things before:

• Don’t sweat your losses, the market always goes up in the long run. Over the long run yes, but do you know why this might not matter to you?
• Fees in your portfolio are less than 1%. That might be true but are there additional costs associated with your investments?
• Interest rates are so low, it’s better to invest than pay off your mortgage. How accurate is that?
• Reduce your risk by shifting from stocks to bonds. A traditional way of thinking might not be completely true today.

We discussed why each of these aren’t always completely true for you. Once you listen to that, you’ll be another step closer to simplifying your financial picture and building your retirement portfolio. 

Here’s a full list of the main topics on this episode of The Money Wisdom podcast (Just click on the timestamp to jump to the specific clip):

[0:42] – Fun Fact of the Week

[3:10] – Beauty of Simplicity and How to Make Financial Structure Less Complicated

[6:49] – 3 Areas That Overwhelm People

[9:27] – Strategies Joel Uses to Bring Simplicity to Clients

[11:42] – Explaining How the Money Map Process Assists in This

[14:45] – The Whole Truth on Financial Half-Truths