Welcome back to the Instant Impact podcast with your host, Elyse Archer! Today’s guest is Helen Ngo. She’s Elyse’s personal financial advisor and founder of Capital Benchmarks in Atlanta. She’s on the show today to talk about everything money, and empower listeners to be more comfortable with and around their finances.

Elyse and Helen discuss some steps we can take to get our finances, both personal and professional, in order. The first step, she says, is creating a checklist. After organizing all your accounts and all your statements, keeping track of your assets and liabilities, you can see what you have and don’t have. It removes a lot of the fear and avoidance that comes with finances.

They chat about how helpful and useful bringing in a third party can be when trying to communicate about money with a partner. Helen mentions that it can help open a line of dialogue that is not only respectful but helpful and useful to both parties. She talks about the dynamics of couples and who has the higher income (and how she snaps that off).

Helen breaks down some of the biggest mistakes people make with their finances. The most prominent one she sees is simply not understanding how taxes and accounting works. Often, she says, people don’t think they need to hire someone to help them with their taxes. Inefficiency can lead to not writing off what can be written off, and sometimes writing stuff off that shouldn’t be! Elyse and Helen agree that delegation is the way to go, but it’s important to stay informed.

Helen then dives into some of her favorite tech and tools she uses when helping her clients manage their finances. She reminds us that the tool is only as good as the person entering the data. The tech can be wonderful, but if you’re entering incorrect data, it’s no use. Her favorites, though, include Excel and platforms that aggregate information.

Helen talks shop about fees, commissions, and keeping them all in line. She lets us know that we shouldn’t be afraid of asking for help.

LINKS

www.capitalbenchmarkpartners.com

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Thanks for tuning into the Instant Impact podcast with your host, Elyse Archer! Today’s guest is Helen Ngo. She’s Elyse’s personal financial advisor and founder of Capital Benchmarks in Atlanta. She’s on the show today to talk about everything money, and empower listeners to be more comfortable with and around their finances. Elyse and Helen discuss some steps we can take to get our finances, both personal and professional, in order, how to bring in a third party for help, pitfalls, and some useful tech and tools for managing money.