Uncovering Fraud in Retirement Planning & Wealth Management - Paul Sippil - Chiro Hustle Podcast 743

you've made it to chiro hustle sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one chiropractic podcast this episode is brought to you by peach state payments ethical processing more profit less stress chiro hd more than an ehr practice management simplified the chiro speaking company attract educate and convert chiro spring cloud-based user-friendly software with all the essential features chiropractors need. OmniWave, redefining comfort and acoustic wave technology. The Chiro Hustle podcast is sponsored by ChiroHealth USA, ChiroScript AI, ChiroMoguls, Pure ChiroNotes, Five Star Forge, Tytronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, Life Chiropractic College West, and IFCO. Let's hustle. Hey guys, welcome to episode 743 of the Cargo Hustle Podcast. I'm your producer, Luke Millett, and here's your host, James Chester. So today we have the opportunity of interviewing Paul Sippel. If you want to hear about his forensic 401k consultant agency and how he helps uncover retirement planning and fraud and wealth management scams, stay tuned for the full episode. Welcome back. This is another episode of the ChiroHustle podcast. Today I have Paul Sipel on. He is going to talk to us about the dynamics of 401k and he'll tell you a lot about that. He's a forensic 401k consultant, which I think that everybody that watches this will probably have their spidey senses go up saying, hey, I think I need this guy. Just had a really great conversation in the green room talking about all health related topics. He's got a cool thing he does called community dining, where he gets very great sourced farm to table style food and brings people together. Also, just overall, we're going to talk about some cool health strategies, chiropractic techniques, and we're going to challenge the status quo a little bit today. And this guy created his business, it sounds like, from finding ways to interact with people and support a service to them. And I think that's really cool. Before we get into today's interview with Paul Sippel, I'm going to let you know our big why. Why do we do what we do over here at Cairo Hustle? Well, first things first is we believe in freedom of speech. And we know what it's like to be shadow banned, traffic throttled, and censored. We'd never do that to you. We also love, you know, knowing that people have autonomy of their bodies and we believe in medical freedom and family health freedom. They're not the same things, but if you need help with any of that, go find yourself a chiropractor in your neighborhood or your city or find somebody out of city, out of state and drive or fly to them because it's worth it. We believe in protecting the sacred trust. It's the developer of chiropractic, BJ Palmer's last written words. If you want to know more about the sacred trust, go to the show notes, click on it, and I guarantee you're going to learn more about this beautiful profession. We do support subluxation-based chiropractic. I know I shouldn't have to say that, but I do because they're taking this lexicon out of the colleges. So if you know a chiropractic student that's a new grad still in school, help them out, share the show to them. And then we do believe in innate intelligence, universal intelligence, and the educated intelligence. We believe that when man or woman, the physical gets adjusted, it connects them to man or woman, the spiritual. And with that, they become educated. So this episode 743 of the ChiroHustle Podcast. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah, we were off camera talking about your chiropractic story. And you said, dang, something happened in yoga. And I started about 2006. And maybe you can just share with me how you actually got into that clinic and what that was like and how care developed and what your perception of chiropractic is today. Well, yeah, it's actually evolved over time. And it was a strange yoga injury where I remember the exercise I was doing. It was like a stretch like this and I don't know, it seemed fine. And then I woke up the next day and I could hardly move my neck. And I'm thinking, I don't know when people really need a chiropractor, but I know when I need one and I need one right now. and what happened was he I thought it was always about getting adjustments but there was this special like vibrating device that the chiropractor applied uh to my to the area of my neck where he could see it was out of alignment and it took about six sessions it didn't happen because I guess it was a patent of injury where I need more than one session but it worked and he didn't want me hooked for life. He didn't want me going there forever. He just solved the problem. And I was elated that I could move my neck and he fixed it. But I also have a story where I went to network spinal analysis, a practitioner that had that type of discipline for about four years. And that was a more kind of holistic, almost spiritual like treatment. And that was more long term, but there were no adjustments. And I've been to many other chiropractors over the course of my life. And what I learned is that they're all different and it's not just about treating the back and neck and it's very much a holistic whole body type of care. Yeah. It's people that will be watching this that are in your network. They're going to learn a whole lot about chiropractic, which I'm really excited about, but chiropractic basis, it's a three-legged stool science, philosophy, and art. And there's so much depth to the profession, but we believe that the body needs nothing extra in it. It simply needs no interference. Once we clear the interference, the body self-regulates and self-heals. The chiropractor doesn't heal anything. It's your body. And what they would tell you is there's limitations of matter. You doing that movement, there was some type of deficiency in the tone of your body and something gave, and then the chiropractor does the analysis and then checks you and then corrects it. And the body, your body actually healed itself. The chiropractor just put the energy into you to where your body was self-regulating, self-healing. Pretty cool. And all chiropractors, the technique you're talking about, the guy put the thing on your neck and the other one doesn't really adjust you. They just do energetic work with you. well the baseline for that is creating a vibrational frequency in your nervous system and when your nervous system gets realigned it creates motion into the body which creates full body health which if there's a disconnect in you know the electrical system in your house the breaker goes off and you got to turn the breaker back on and you get electricity again And it's kind of the same way, like chiropractor checks your breaker box, sees where there's an outage, reconnects it, and the body starts functioning the way it's supposed to, like electricity. But it's cool that you've had some good experiences and that you've seen different types of practitioners. Yep, yep. And I'll add one other quick thing is that the network spinal analysis practitioner barely touched me. He would just touch me on certain points in my body. And I can actually feel like energy flowing through it from him barely doing anything. And I thought it was, I just thought it couldn't be true when I was told about it, but kind of blew my mind. Yeah, it's the energetic shift of a tonal adjustment like that can definitely put you into an adaptive state. And I think that's really cool when people adapt to their own physical body. And there doesn't have to be a high velocity, high amplitude force put into the body. the body can be motivated to realign itself if the right input is put into it. Yeah. So network spinal is really cool. I know the guy who founded the profession, Donnie Epstein, he's actually done a couple, they call them entrainments. He's done a couple of entrainments with me and his stepson is Danny Knowles And he teaches network spinal across the country and world, actually. Really cool family. And they're doing a lot to support chiropractic. So big shout out to Donnie and Danny and Rochelle and the whole network group. In-depth health discussion. How do you want to take that question? Like, how do you want to take that topic? Well, I'm a hardcore libertarian and believe very much in medical freedom, but not just medical freedom. I mean, I believe in, you know, as much in freedom of speech as long as you're not infringing upon someone else is possible. And I think really the best way for all of us to be healthy in the long term and in the short term is through more freedom, because the best way I think to solve issues with speech is more speech. And when you subject any kind of ideas, especially medical ideas, to the public process of critical exchange, you ultimately create the advancement of knowledge. and I don't believe so much in the philosopher king model where there's certain people that supposedly know more than the rest of us and it's their job to disseminate knowledge and decide what's right or wrong. I believe more in a decentralized approach to figuring out error and without errors I remember I can't remember who said this might have been Herbert Spencer the ultimate result of shielding people from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. Yeah, and I'll simplify that a little bit. We don't want to guess with your health. And you shouldn't go to somebody to fix you. I think that the number one doctor in the world is the one inside of us. And we just have to find the ways to find somebody we can trust. And I think that's the big thing is relationship in the model. and most people just generally don know where to go who to trust so um your coin flip was a good one for you because you got a chance to go see somebody that built some trust in you and helped you out So I think that really cool And I do believe in body autonomy. I think that we all have this amazing thing, you know, eyes, ears, face, arms, legs, body, that it's us. And one of my therapists will always tell me, does this belong to you or does it belong to someone else? Well, your body, guess what? that belongs to you. Um, the things that you carry around in your body, your, your emotions and, uh, your dysfunction that might belong to somebody else. So the, the sooner that you can deal with, uh, um, the checkup from the neck up, um, those are things that you got to like focus on too, and find ways to, um, deal with the subconscious and deal with the, uh, the social primings and the cultural primings that we all have. So I think it's really cool that you have that libertarian ID idea that, uh, you know, more freedom is better. And I think that that's the best way to, to, you know, to carry on a conversation about in-depth discussion on our health is, you know, we are the decision makers and don't subordinate to a system that's not fit for you. Absolutely. Um, radical transparency on 401k. I'm really curious to talk to you about your specialty. How did you get into that and why do you do it and how does it help people? I got into it actually by accident as somewhat intentional, somewhat accidental. It was as a result of a conversation that I had with a colleague about 20 years ago. And this colleague had mentioned to me how you could look up 401k plan tax forms online. Like any company, whether it's a medical practice or a legal practice or a manufacturing firm, any business that offers a retirement plan, that could be a profit sharing 403b for nonprofits and or 401k plan to its employees has to submit a tax form to the Department of Labor. And that tax form is publicly available on the Department of Labor's website, as well as another website called freeerisa.com. And when I started looking at these forms, I looked at these eye-popping service charges, and I just couldn't believe how much money these providers were making. So I figured I would call these businesses and let them know what was going on, not even initially to offer my services, just to explain to them how badly they were being taken advantage of. However, their responses were not what I expected, as opposed to, I would think it would have been, thank you, Paul, for letting me know I'm being ripped off, they would say, oh, no, I'm not paying anything and or my relative or friend or longstanding advisor is taking care of all that for me. And my response would be, I know they're taking care of it for you, but they're getting paid tens of thousands of dollars without really having to do much work and they're not sending you a bill and you have to pay for that at the participant level. And how this is pertinent to medical practices is typically if you have an established 401k plan and you're the founder of the practice, you probably have the largest balance. So what that means is you are paying the largest share of those already excessive fees personally out of your own pocket and you don't even get a tax deduction for fees paid at the participant level. And because 401k plans are tax-advantaged accounts, you want as much money as possible growing inside those accounts and you absolutely want to have the firm or practice pay those fees and not the participants, because that way you do get a tax deduction and you're much more sensitive to the cost. I want to add one thing about an economist named Milton Friedman that pretty much encapsulates the entire profession in one chart. The four ways to spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself, your own money on someone else, someone else's money on yourself, or someone else's money on someone else. And in the latter case, you don't economize and you don't seek the highest value. And because the fees are paid for not just by the owner, but by the other participants, and you don't see the fees, you're essentially spending at least some of somebody else's money on somebody else. You don't economize, you don't seek the highest value, and you're not nearly as sensitive to the cost or you're not sensitive to the cost at all, as opposed to the way you would be if you got a direct bill, in which case you would never pay anywhere close to the amount of money that those service providers are charging. Well, it sounds a very circular system almost, that if you don't do it the right way, the cycle of action is broken. And a lot of times the cycle of action has a dysfunctional flow, and then it cycles back from somebody else's action. Yes. And it's not always beneficial to the person that's on the record. Yes. And I'll add that these fees are wrongfully based on a percentage of how much money is in the plan. Think about how crazy that is, especially for a medical practice that's established, that's been around a while, that has significant contributions between the employer and the employees, which is pushing up the balance. So as the account balance goes up and as the market goes up. It doesn't go up every year, but over time it typically does. The service providers not only get additional compensation, but they don't have to perform additional services in return for that additional compensation, and they don't send an invoice. So not only are they making more money without doing more work, but nobody is even seeing that they're doing that, and it wouldn't occur to anyone to fire people who are charging fees that nobody sees in the first place. And that's where you say that there's some fraud in the wealth management world? Legalized fraud, because technically that's not illegal. But my God, if you're getting, let's say, $50,000 in what's called broker's commission payments that are basically kickbacks built into the cost of the funds that are ultimately paid by the participants in the plan, and you're not having ongoing one-on-one meetings with the participants, and you're maybe doing one meeting a year or two and spending maybe an hour or two per year, hell, even five hours a year, the compensation is way out of proportion to the amount of time spent. And while that might be technically legal, I would call that very unethical. And in my mind, that's fraud, even though one could debate that definition. So let's go baseline. Chiropractic student, 27 years old, finished college in a year. They don't have 401k set up. How do you guide them? Well, if you're starting your own practice, you can set up what's called a solo 401k. And the big difference between what's called a 401k and an IRA, which is an individual retirement account, is that it is a little more costly to set up the 401k, but you have much higher contribution limits. If you're a student, though, and you are trying to figure out, should I pay off my debt first or should I contribute for retirement? And it all might depend on the interest rate of your debt. The higher the interest rate of the debt, the more you should just focus on paying down that debt before saving for retirement. If it's a particularly low interest rate, you might want to set up a pre-tax traditional IRA where you can get a tax deduction for your contributions. And you can't contribute as much in the IRA as you can in the 401k, but it's enough where the chiropractic student who might not have a whole lot to contribute, they might want to set up an account like that where it grows tax-free or tax-deferred. You don't have to pay any taxes on the contributions until you withdraw, which is many years in the future. And there's no cost to setting up an IRA. And you can set it up through any major brokerage institutions such as Fidelity or Charles Schwab. And that would be a good start. All right. Practitioners been out 15 years. They're 43. They never set something up like this. They got a sore shoulder. Low back sometimes is squawking at them. What's your advice to this person? To the practitioner at that point? Well, if they already have a 401k set up for their practice, I would absolutely recommend that they scrutinize the cost that the service providers are charging, which are known as the record keeper, the administrator, the custodian. Examples of custodians I mentioned are like Charles Schwab or Fidelity or some of the larger ones, and advisory fees. And it would be very important to understand what those fees are to make sure that they're commensurate with the level of services that you're actually receiving. And as I mentioned, make sure if you can afford it, to pay those fees at the practice level, not participant. And the reason why that I didn't mention is it can be an unbelievably valuable recruiting tool to recruit more members to your practice because just an extra 1% in fees, let's say an example, if you're 35 years old with a $25,000 balance, that on average for that scenario is going to cost about $67,000 over your lifetime and about 28% of your balance. And most small businesses, including medical practices, don't know to pay the fees at the practice level. So if you're working for any other practice where they have a 401k plan and are passing on 1% in fees, you're essentially paying an extra $67,000 over over your lifetime. So if you explain that to a potential employee, whether it be another doctor or an assistant or some other employee of the practice, that can be a great way to differentiate your 401k benefit from everyone else, all other small businesses. Well, it sounds like some specialized information that most people don't get educated on, and they don't typically get educated on marketing or branding or business. So it's definitely something I believe a lot of people need some expert knowledge in and some expert guidance. And so it sounds like you might be able to help people with that. You've made it to Cairo Hustle. Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one chiropractic podcast. This episode is brought to you by Peach State Payments, ethical processing, more profit, less stress. Cairo HD, more than an EHR, or a practice management simplified The Cairo speaking company attract educate and convert Cairo spring cloud user software with all the essential features chiropractors need OmniWave redefining comfort and acoustic wave technology The Cairo Hustle Podcast is sponsored by CairoHealthUSA, CairoScriptAI, CairoMoguls, PureCairoNotes, Five Star Forge, Tytronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, Life Chiropractic College West, and the IFCO. Let's hustle. Oh, for sure. It's a very, I'll say it's a very complicated profession. There's a lot of details that even after being in this profession over 15 years that I'm still learning. There's vast differences amongst service providers, amongst the level of technology that they have, the level of services they provided. There's restrictions on investments. I mean, it can seem very intimidating, but this is one word of caution. Financial advisors typically get paid what I call a fake management fee to, quote unquote, pick all these funds. Because if you're a chiropractor or any medical professional, this is all going to sound very intimidating to you. And if you just hand it over to an advisor without really understanding what the advisor is doing, kind of like if you're a patient, you don't really know how you know how one doctor might be better than the other. If that advisor is just, quote unquote, managing funds and you don't really know how they're getting paid, you absolutely have to ask. Yes, it's important to have someone helping you navigate through the complexity. But I'll give you an inside tip is that most of these fund lineups, the list of funds that are selected in these plans pretty much look the same. The guy who invented the 401k, his name is Ted Benna, has made the same criticisms as me that advisors are actually not doing an original piece of work. They're getting an automatic fee for a commoditized service, which is picking these funds, which are pretty much the same throughout all these plans. A lot of them are what's called index funds, which I like. They're low-cost funds like what's called the S&P 500 that simply mirror what the market does. And those are good because it's not easy to outperform the market and do better than everyone else. So just buying the index is a very low-cost way to diversify yourself into various different sectors of the market. But you don't want to pay a financial advisor a management fee on top of the management fees that the funds have because, again, these funds are pretty much the same and a fifth grader can essentially select a lineup. The real reason to work with someone if you want an advisor, and you don't always need someone like me, is to have one-on-one conversations about how much to save, which investments to select, how to differentiate between what's called a Roth and traditional 401k, how to do a budget, how to figure out how much debt you should pay off and whether you should pay off your debt first before investing in the plan, and how to use the retirement plan calculator on the record keeper's website. Those are the basic areas. And if you don't need those services, by all means, don't pay an advisor. But if you do, you should negotiate a fixed fee with the advisor that you should pay at the practice level that's commensurate with the advisor's service level and the advisor's time as well as the value that you're getting out of the plan. If you know that much, you're way ahead of everybody else. Yeah, sounds like a buyer beware industry. Very much. And you have to definitely have people on your team that are in your best interest that are doing it for you and not for them. Yep. Yep, absolutely. It's very intimidating to navigate through the complexity. And all I've tried to put out there is not so much why someone should work with me, but just how to understand what questions to ask and just how to design an effective plan for your employees with or without an advisor. Yeah, it sounds like pretty straightforward, but with a lot of planning involved and a lot of clarity that people need that once they get into something, it can pretty much be on autopilot from that part forward. But they have to make sure that they strategize and set it up the right way with good guidance. Yes. And thank you for making those points, because I think this leads into a discussion of why it's so important to challenge the status quo. Well, my plan is fine or my health is fine. I'll use blood test is a great analogy. I love using this analogy is that if I'm in line with everybody else and I have a similar plan to other people, that kind of feels like you're fine. Kind of like if you have someone look at your blood test results and your health and your metabolic markers are in line with the average person. Well, the average person, at least in this country, you know, without sounding too disparaging, is not necessarily particularly healthy. It all depends on who you're comparing yourself to. And if you're comparing yourself to the average person, whether it's in terms of health or whether it's in terms of the fees that you're paying, that is not something that should necessarily give you a sense of security, nor should the regulations. There have been new regulations, not new, I think it was 2012, but fee disclosure regulations. And that made everyone feel better without even knowing what they were paying because they figured, oh, well, everything has to be disclosed. I'm not really looking. I don't understand it. But I know there's a rule. So I feel better that I must be fine because of this new rule. And that's definitely not true. Yeah, that does definitely challenge the status quo. And blood work is a good analogy because, you know, we could look for markers that, you know, still aren't healthy. And I think that everybody wants to have something. It's like we all know when something's worn down, we want a new one. Or we all know when we like something, we'll get two of the same or three of the same or four of the same because we find out what works for us. And I think that that's the thing about selecting anything that's good for us or finding out new ways to make good decisions. Like ask the expert, ask people advice. And I think that's how people get looped in to these, like you say, commensary type of, I guess, liaisons that make money off of being your friend that sets it and forgets it. And they're still collecting on top of your fee. and it's a really funky place to be in when you do as other people say and you trust them and then you get stuck in some type of a system that you're like have you're clueless about you're so clueless about and I think that this is where people they'll take that and they'll roll that money into other like dynamic things that you have no idea about because it's never going to be touched So there's a lot of these probably companies that are out there that are rolling this money into other interests for themselves where they're getting their 2% on it. And they know that you're not going to pull this out to your 65. So it's just sitting there and they're playing matchmaker with gaining interest in different ways off of the money that you're setting aside. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they're only measuring, well, how are the funds doing? And this is another analogy with blood tests. It's not just whether you're healthy relative to other people or the fact that relative to other people is not the best measure, but it's also about metabolic markers that they don't even test you for, perhaps because they're not even covered by insurance, which is not a good way to decide whether or not it's useful. Fasting insulin, for example, is something I've had tested that's not part of the conventional blood test. Or maybe ApoB is a better measure of cardiovascular health than just general cholesterol. And maybe you need to look at the particle size and the particle number and your LDL to triglyceride ratio. Just looking at the cholesterol alone in total without also looking at other markers like HSCRP is another measure of inflammation. Also might give you a false sense of security, just like you're measuring, quote unquote, performance of funds, but you're not measuring the reasonableness of the fees. So they're like directing you in a different direction, but looking away from something that might actually be more important. Well, I just look at it as you don't know what you don't know. And if people know what we know, they do what we do. And I say that about chiropractic all the time. If people just knew what we know, they do what we do. And it would be an easy decision for most people. But I think the financial world is something that definitely people need some guardrails on and they need some guidance on. And, you know, I think conversations like this can help people. So I appreciate you sharing. Let's go back to chiropractic a little bit. You said you've been seeing a practitioner for sounds like since 2006. We're now in 2025. So that's like 19 years, right? Am I was my math on? Well, that 2006 practitioner, I only went six sessions to. And then several years ago, I saw a network spinal analysis practitioner over the period of about four and a half years. And I go to that practitioner sporadically when I have issues. And I just wanted to add, I also went to one of Donnie Epstein's events, which was pretty cool, and read his book, The 12 Stages of Healing, which I loved. Cool. Where do you see the profession going? Let's rub the crystal ball. Where do you see chiropractic headed in two decades? I don't necessarily want to opine as if I have a sense of certainty, but I think it all depends on how much more medical freedom we have. I think if we move more in the direction of medical freedom, and I guess it's debatable based on our new administration, do we have more medical freedom or less? And some schools of thought would say we're headed in some ways towards more medical freedom, but other people would argue less. if, and I hope we do have more medical freedom. I think the more freedom that people have, the more they'll become open to alternative forms of care like chiropractic care. And I also believe that just because of the internet and AI, I think it's just too hard to restrict people to conventional medical information. So I would think that areas like the chiropractic profession will ultimately grow I just don know how much Yeah that a fair assessment We used to call them when I worked in a clinic 16 years ago we used to call them web MD patients because people would come in and self-diagnose themselves and say, hey, doctor, this is things going on with me. And now we have AI patients and people are like, oh, this is the thing going on with me. This is what's going on, doc. So they try to self-diagnose all the time. And I think that people are taking a little bit more of that approach, more seeking, more, you know, investigating what's going on with themselves and trying to find out for themselves and then say, hey, do this thing for me. Which I think we're going in that direction. I think we're getting more of a reasonable frame of mind to say, look, this is the problem and I need to find somebody to help me fix it. It's nothing new under the sun, but we're getting a bit more advanced. And I think that's the direction, as you're saying, I agree with that. We're going into that pathway where people are going to be a bit more educated, but not as educated as a practitioner. So I think we're still getting WebMD patients in 2025, but now they're chat GTP patients. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the phrase do your own research has been demonized and partially rightfully so, because you do want to at least try and consult an expert, not do everything on your own. But yet I became what I am by doing my own research. It wasn't just a few minutes on the Internet. I spent a lot of time. But I don't think that the phrase do your own research should be completely demonized because there is something to be said for at least attempting to read what different medical practitioners have to say and do a little bit of thinking on your own. Yeah. And I think a lot of the resources are captured and it's contrived and it's pathwayed into a narrative. So we also had to talk to older people. I think that that's real knowledge is real live humans that have a lot more knowledge and life on, on earth than you do. So I think that that's a good resource too, is like really having good conversations with people that you trust. And, you know, you can cross reference that to what you find on the internet and all the different searches that you do. But I even searched this morning about, um you know iatrogenic deaths and how many prescriptions that the average american takes on a yearly basis and i know for a fact that 10 years ago the average american was on 12.9 prescriptions and now it's telling me when i search today the average american's on four i don't think we've gotten on less prescriptions in the past decade i think we've probably gotten on more. And I know that the third leading cause of death in America is iatrogenic concerns. And it's didn't even mention it in the top five when I did a chat GTP for that. So I know that some of the outputs are captured and what they'll actually tell you. For whatever reason, there's a lot of safeguard and truth. And now the truth is upside down or tributary it off into another pathway that you're only getting so much. So we have to be very shrewd on what we take as truth from a quick search and having somebody else think for you and giving you information. And if anybody really wants to find that out, they just have to go investigate things from a decade ago and find the truth that was out 10 years ago and then find out what the truth they're telling you a decade later and to see if that lines up. And I think you just have to be more of a critical thinker today in the medical world and probably the financial world. So I think there's just some good takeaways there at the end of our conversation today, just to be ultimately aware that the things that were once truth are now a little misleading. And I think that we had to just be that much more forensically capable of just disseminating, is this the truth for me? And is this the truth that other people are telling each other? And does that become the new truth? So that's a, that's a, that's a mouthful for people to kind of get to, but there's a lot of validation in it is I did the research today and I'm not demonizing it, but I was curious and it didn't line up with what the research told me a decade ago. So people just had to be hypervigilant on what they start believing and how they implement that into their, their demonstration of knowledge. Last question. I'm sure you deal with a lot of cases, a lot of financial cases. Tell me a miracle story that you've seen with one of your clients that trusted you as their guide for their 401k analysis and how you helped them out. Well, there's a lot of examples, but one that really stands out was a law firm. And I like to use these professional service firms as examples because, as I mentioned, they're the ones who get pretty much the most overcharged because they have lots of money. They don't have a lot of participants in the plan, and they have a lot of contributions between the employer and the employees. And this was the exact scenario I described. So I have a spreadsheet that I've compiled over 15 years going through tens of thousands of 401k plan tax forms of about a thousand of the most egregious examples of excessive fees passed on to participants. And this particular scenario with this law firm I've been working with for now about six years fits that description perfectly. They had a financial advisor who wasn't really an advisor, but what's known as a broker who could only receive compensation through kickbacks, asset-based kickbacks that were built into the cost of the funds. So this person couldn't charge a direct fee. This person was earning about $20,000 a year in commission payments and basically not interacting with any of the participants and buying lunch once a year. And what I explained is that's an awfully expensive lunch. I mean, at the very least, it better be a gourmet chef prepared lunch like some of the events I planned. I mean, that would have been, you know, at least fair based on the compensation and the amount of work being done in proportion to the compensation. But that wasn't what was being done. And the record keeper, which actually was a pretty good service provider in terms of service quality, was also charging based on a percentage. And this was about maybe only 0.3%. And this is how these fees are quoted. Does 0.3% sound like much? No, that's nothing. But this was based on $7 million in assets, and that's about $20,000 apiece. So we're talking about approximately $40,000 in service charges that was cut down to about $12,000. and for much better service because I was regularly interacting with both the firm and the participants. And, oh, by the way, the firm decided to pay these fees. So all the participant costs went down to zero. And all of the partners especially saved quite a bit of money in an already tax-advantaged account because they were the ones who were paying the vast majority of these fees personally out of their own accounts. They now can expense that fee that they're paying both me and the new record keeper at the firm level because it's a business expense like anybody else. And now they can boast that they have a much better recruiting tool. Because again, like I mentioned, 1% in fees adds up over time to, in some cases, over $60,000 and 28% of your account, not to mention the taxes you have to pay when you withdraw. So they have a much more competitive program and it's much more transparent because they get directly billed. And they don't have to pay anything out of the participants accounts. And the younger attorneys really understand this, because I know typically people are older or wiser. But in the case of transparency, and just being up with technology, it's actually the younger people that were more closely scrutinizing their statements, just because, you know, they might be online a lot more and read more about this stuff. very cool um i think that gives people a lot of uh purpose to work with you and uh i'm sure people are at this point saying hey how do i work with paul um if they want to work with you um how do they do that very easily you can just go to my website it's just my name paul simple.com and that's S-I-P-P-I-L because there's a Paul S-I-P-P-E-L.com as well. So it's S-I-P-P-I-L. I also have a YouTube channel. That's very easy to find me. Just type my name into YouTube and my channel will come up and as well as some of the interviews I've done. And my contact information is on my website, both the number and email. Well, Paul, I learned a lot. There's great takeaways for me as the host. So I can just imagine when people listen to the episode that they're going to get some value out of it too. Thanks for being on with us today, episode 743 of the Cairo Hustle podcast. Thank you. It was great to be here. Yeah. I had a lot of fun. You're a pretty smart guy and I'm very well equipped to help people with their money management, specifically their 401ks and making sure that they're not getting taken on the back end, in the middle end and the front end. It's a long process, but I think that there's a slippery slope on all off-ramps and on-ramps of the beginning, the middle way, and the ending of this. So you've got to make sure that you have somebody that's going to help guide you through that and at least give you a good analysis of what it looks like that you're involved with. PaulSipple.com, appreciate you being on with me today. Have a good night out there. Thank you. I closed out like I always do. I tell everybody, you guys are just one story away. Keep hustling. See you guys on the next episode. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Cairo Hustle. Don't forget to subscribe and check back next week to continue hustling.