If you're a late bloomer when it comes to money, today's episode of Motley Fool Answers is for your reading (transcript below) or listening (download on iTunes and Stitcher) pleasure. We'll help you figure out if you're behind on your retirement savings and offer six steps to get back on track.
For good measure, we'll throw in some scientifically proven tips on how to increase your willpower and stop biting your nails, courtesy of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg.
ALISON SOUTHWICK: This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick, and I'm joined by Dayana Yochim and Robert Brokamp, personal finance experts here at The Motley Fool. Dayana brought snacks today...
DAYANA YOCHIM:
I did.
ROBERT BROKAMP:
She's willing to share them with all of you out there right now.
DAYANA:
That's right. I think there are 23 Cheerios left. The first 23 people who email us will get a soggy Cheerio mailed to them...
ALISON:
Yeah. Don't say we never gave you nothing. All right, so looking around the room, I think it's safe to say that all three of us (Robert, Dayana, and myself) we're late bloomers -- but not with our money.
ROBERT:
Hygiene, in my case. Hygiene.
ALISON:
While others in high school were busy going to the prom, we were busy having great personalities, contributing to an IRA, and not spending money on things like prom dresses.
ROBERT:
You should see my prom dress. It's awesome.
ALISON:
I've seen your prom dress, Robert.
ALISON:
Maybe you, dear listeners, were also late bloomers, but of course not in the looks department, because you look really good. We're talking about when it comes to managing your money. Today we're going to figure out if you're behind on retirement savings, and we're going to give you six steps you can take to get yourself back on track.
ROBERT:
Yeah!
ALISON:
And you guys aren't offended that I assumed you were late bloomers?
ROBERT:
I'm a little self-conscious now, but, anyway...
DAYANA:
I remember my prom picture. Everybody wishes that did not exist. It's bad.
ALISON:
Well, maybe we'll have to post it later. Drive some traffic to the website. Yeah?
ROBERT:
Yeah.
ALISON:
All right, Robert, well let's get started by helping our audience figure out if they are behind. And some of them are going to know they're a late starter, and they're behind. But how do you figure out if you're behind?
ROBERT:
When we say "behind," we're assuming we're talking about retirement ... someone who wants to retire sometime in their mid-60s, which is around the average age, these days. So just in terms of an age situation, or to put it in age terms, you should certainly start as soon as possible.
If you wait until your 30s, you're probably OK. Certainly if you're waiting until your forties, you're getting a late start. In terms of an amount, there's actually an interesting formula from the classic book, The Millionaire Next Door. To give you an indication of how much your net worth should be at a certain age, what you do is you multiply your age times your annual salary (annual income) and divide by 10. So if you're 40 and you make $50,000 a year, you should have a net worth of around $200,000.
Now, that's net worth...
DAYANA:
Let's say we're trying to pass as age 29 these days. ... In that case, I'm in great shape. Financially.
ROBERT:
If you're always 29. ... So that's net worth, remember. That doesn't necessarily mean what's in your 401(k). It's retirement savings. Home equity. Value of all your stuff. Jewelry. Possessions. Rule of thumb for the value of all the stuff in your stuff is half of the value of the house -- not the property of the house. That should be where you are. That gives you an indication. Certainly if you have not saved over $100,000 and you're in your 40s, you're behind.
ALISON:
And is that $100,000 per couple or per person? So if I'm married, I need $200,000.
ROBERT:
Actually, no. I would say it's closer to $150,000 and I'll explain why a little later.
ALISON:
Oh, man.
DAYANA:
But it also depends on how many mouths you want to feed in retirement.
ROBERT:
Right. If you don't want to feed your spouse's mouth, you don't have to save as much.
ALISON:
Let's just get into it, then. We have six steps for late starters to help speed their journey to retirement. Robert, the first one has to do with your job.
Tip 1: Make the most of your "human capital."
ROBERT:
Right. And in financial planning circles this is known as your human capital -- your ability to earn income or do things on your own so you don't have to pay someone to do it. And it's actually the biggest asset most of us have.
I think managing your career is one of the most underappreciated aspects of financial planning. One of the first things I think people need to do is look at their company and see where the money is coming from and to try to wade into the income stream as much as possible.
A lot of jobs are support roles, or things that are nice to have, but not necessarily tied to income. You want to be able to tell your boss, "Hey. I did this and it added this much to our bottom line," either in terms of asking for a raise, or if times get tough and they're looking to see who they have to lay off, you might be less likely to do that.
So get closer to where the income stream is. Manage your certifications and your career in terms of education. What is going to give you the most bang for the buck in terms of you being able to ask for a higher salary or be able to go to another company and get a better situation?
The caveat, here, is that a lot of people get graduate degrees, extra designations, certifications, and letters after their name, but they don't really mean anything. You don't want to spend money on a degree or certification that's not going to do anything for you. But it is certainly important to be on top of your career, whether it's the training or your own continuing education so you can say, "I can do this. No one else here can do it. Pay me more."
ALISON:
Should people consider changing jobs completely? I mean, my husband went from being an architect to being a computer programmer later in his career.
ROBERT:
That's an interesting question, because it comes down to when you want to retire. We've talked about this before -- that some people actually may not want to retire. They just want to do a different career. I think we mentioned the anecdote about someone who used the money in their 401(k) to go back to school to become a nurse and she was able to work well into her 60s and 70s, but she wanted to. She enjoyed it. I think that is certainly something worth considering.
If you don't want to retire in your mid-60s, you may not be a late starter. If you're willing to work longer, then you could relax a little bit and spend more of your energy focusing on something you want to do rather than, "I've got to get this job because it makes the most money, because I want to retire in 10 years."
ALISON:
Dayana, this next one is all about you, and it's all about sweating the small stuff.
Tip 2: Sweat all the stuff
DAYANA:
If you are behind in saving for retirement, it's all about where your money is going right now, and how much more of it you can direct toward saving and investing for the future. When we talk about tracking your spending, we often say "sweat the big stuff" -- start with the big stuff that's going to make the biggest impact.
If you are behind in saving, sorry. You're going to need to sweat the small stuff, too.
ALISON:
The daily latte...
DAYANA:
So take out your credit card statements. Dig into Mint or whatever method you use to track your spending. Be a harsh judge of where your money is going and start targeting areas that you can cut back on.
For someone who's not in dire straits, the general formula of your cash flow is that about 50% of your income should go to necessities, so we're talking about taxes, mortgage or rent, and food ... living essentials. Twenty percent should be directed toward future financial goals and 30% is left over for discretionary spending.
But it's that last one -- the discretionary money, the 30% -- that may not be an option for you if you are really far behind in saving for retirement. So only after everything else is taken care of, can you go back and revisit that.
And for you, dear listener, who has not been saving enough, you're going to have to really cut back on some of those luxuries or the nice-to-haves and start funneling that toward your retirement account.
A good exercise here is to calculate -- based on where you are right now with your savings for retirement -- calculate what amount of money you're going to have when you retire, and how much you're going to have to live on every year. Then practice living on that amount. See what it ends up being.
ROBERT:
Right. So in other words, if you don't change course right now, this is how much you're going to have at 65. How happy are you with that type of lifestyle?
ALISON:
So it might be a ramen noodle lifestyle.
DAYANA:
Mm-hmm.
ALISON:
The next one. This is a fun one. Wean your kids off the gravy train. Kick them out of the house, right?
Tip 3: Wean your kids off the gravy train
ROBERT:
That's right.
ALISON:
They're grown now.
ROBERT:
Sell them. Sell them on eBay. Legally, of course, you're responsible for your children up until the age of 18. We had Ron Lieber of The New York Times recently on, and his book has all kinds of great stories about how different people have their kids be responsible for different expenses. Maybe it's their clothes. Maybe even a portion of their college education. You don't have to pay for everything up until they're 18.
And then after 18, it becomes even squishier. How much of their college are you going to pay for? What level are you going to pay for? Are you going to pay for their beer money? Are you going to send them a couple of hundred dollars for spending money?
You need to start weaning them off, if you're behind, because at that point, you're responsible for your own financial future. Your kids are young. They have their whole lives ahead of them. If you are in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, you've got to start watching out for yourself.
And it's not totally selfish because if you don't have enough money to have a decent living style in your old age, your kids are going to have to take care of you. So you're also looking out for them that way.
ALISON:
Robert, can you think of a specific example when someone has been like, "But I can't! I can't cut my kids off. I need to support them and be a good parent."
ROBERT:
I think every parent's going to feel that way. I'll give you just my own personal example. I lived back home for a while when I was in my 20s, because I was living in Virginia and I moved back to Florida to check out a job that I thought I might like. I wasn't sure I would. I stayed with my mom, but she said, "If you're going to stay here, you've got to pay rent and you've got to contribute to the food bill." But I thought that was completely reasonable.
This gets back to what I mentioned earlier. When someone is in a household and leaves the household, your expenses drop about 20% because you don't have to pay as much for food and utilities and all that stuff. So think about if you're having trouble covering your bills -- and your 30-year-old kid is living with you -- if you get them to leave the house, your expenses are going to drop. Or if someone joins your household, your expenses are going to go up automatically. You just have to think about whether that's the thing you want to do. Are you still going to be able to have a secure retirement if you're paying that much for your kids at that point in their lives?
DAYANA:
And another element to this discussion is also if you're a grandparent. Let's say you told your kids or your grandkids that you're going to pay for their college education, for example. I know it's really difficult to go back on that kind of promise, but again, we're talking about your future, as well. And if doing so -- if helping your children or grandchildren out like that is going to put you in dire straits, then you need to have a serious discussion with them and explain the situation.
Spell it out. Show them numbers. Say, "I really want to be able to do this, and maybe we can if the market has a particularly great year," or whatever it is. "But right now I'm concerned that we're not going to have enough to actually make it to the end of our retirement financially."
ALISON:
All right, let's talk about the next step that late starters can take, and that's to look at their house.
Tip 4: Don't be house-rich, retirement-poor
DAYANA:
Yeah, selling it may sound like a radical step, but selling your home and finding cheaper living accommodations may be necessary. Unless you live in a gingerbread house, your home is not going to feed you.
ROBERT:
Mmmm...
ALISON:
Dayana really brought the snacks...
DAYANA:
Yeah. What part of the gingerbread house is your favorite?
ROBERT:
I don't really like gingerbread all that much.
DAYANA:
No?
ROBERT:
No. Yuck.
DAYANA:
You just like extra frosting.
ROBERT:
The frosting I can take, yes.
DAYANA:
Anyhow, so we need a new roof on our gingerbread house.
ROBERT:
I'm hungry...
DAYANA:
But the point is homes are expensive. It may be draining you dry -- the cost of maintenance, repairs, and taxes. So consider buying a smaller house, possibly renting, or even relocating to a cheaper locale. This single move can have a huge boon to your bottom line -- your mortgage, your property taxes, your utilities, maintenance costs. All of those go down, which leaves you more money to invest and save for the future. And if you live in a money pit, it might even be a huge relief to get rid of the house.
ROBERT:
It's also related to the kids. You might have had a three or four-bedroom house as they were growing up. Once they get older and leave the house, you don't need that big of a house anymore, and depending on where you live, you could have $50,000 to $200,000 in home equity not really doing anything. You could sell the house, lower your expenses, and have more money to invest.
DAYANA:
If you really are opposed to this idea, there are other options with your house. One of them is to take on a renter or renters, if it's a large home. Have them help cover the mortgage or other costs. Or consider a reverse mortgage, when you're older, where you live in your home and you're essentially getting monthly income from the bank.
ROBERT:
We often talk about our home as not being an investment, but it is an asset, and that is one way to use that home equity as an asset later on in life. I don't recommend that people do it as a front-line part of their retirement income, but if you're getting a late start, it's something to consider.
ALISON:
All right. The next piece of advice is to max out your savings account. This is a good question because I guess if you're late, you might be thinking that you need to pile money into the stock market or you should put it under your mattress. But our piece of advice is max out the savings account.
Tip 5: Max the heck out of your retirement accounts
ROBERT:
Right. So max out your retirement accounts. Actually, anyone who is 50 or older has a higher maximum limit to both IRAs, 401(k)s, and other employer-sponsored accounts. So take advantage of that. Remember when you contribute to a traditional retirement account, in most situations, not only are you saving more money, but you're lowering your taxes, which hopefully allows you to save even more money.
I think one of the mistakes people make when they determine how much to save for retirement is they anchor on things that really have nothing to do with whether you're saving enough. Like, "Oh, I'm contributing enough to get the match."
Well, that doesn't mean you're saving enough for retirement. You might need to save more, or it might mean you have such a great match that you're saving too much, and believe it or not, that is possible. So a lot of people will think, "Well, I'm taking full advantage of the match. Why should I save more?"
But you could be saving more. Even if you max out the retirement accounts, there are other ways to save outside of retirement accounts. I hear this all the time. "I'm maxing out my 401(k). I can't save more." Of course, you can. It doesn't have to be a 401(k). Or paying off your debt. If you accelerate the amount you pay to your mortgage, you reduce the time you have a mortgage. That's another way of saving. You're going into retirement without that expense. That's a great benefit if you're a late starter.
DAYANA:
So if you're age 50 or over, you can max out your IRA and your 401(k), including those catch-up contributions, to contribute $30,000 a year. That's a lot of money you could be putting away that has all of those tax benefits that you just mentioned. If you earn an average annual rate of return of 6%, you could accumulate $1.1 million by the time you're 70. This is great news for late starters...
ROBERT:
Right...
DAYANA:
... that if you buckle down and you're able to really take advantage of the accounts that are available to you, and some, then all is not lost.
ROBERT:
Right. And this really gets back to, again, how expensive kids are and why you shouldn't have them...
DAYANA:
[Laughs]
ALISON:
Late. Too late!
ROBERT:
... because many people I know in their 50s, once the college was paid off, it was like this huge windfall. Like, "Oh, my gosh. We have this extra money." You've just got to make sure you then are stuffing it in your retirement accounts and not saying, "Look at all this extra money. Let's go buy a boat."
ALISON:
Just rolling around in it. Throwing it up in the air. Which would also be fun.
So when you get closer to retirement, people say you should be more in bonds and not in the stock market. I think we've talked about this before, how your retirement is going to be pretty long, so it's OK, even if you're coming up on retirement, to put money in the stock market, because you still have 10 to 15 years of returns ahead of you.
ROBERT:
Right. Most financial planners recommend that you assume you're going to live until you're 90 or 95. So you retire at 65 -- there's some of that money you're not going to touch for 20, 25, or 30 years. That's a long time horizon and for most people, the stock market is appropriate for that.
ALISON:
Robert, you promised you were going to talk more about how much I need to save when I'm a couple versus just me.
ROBERT:
Right. So when you have one person in a household, you have a set level of expenses. For every additional person in the household, you don't need to have twice as many expenses. Expenses go up anywhere from 20-50%. So that's why a married couple doesn't necessarily have to save twice as much as two individuals.
Another retirement-planning aspect of this -- and it's kind of a sadder side of things -- but that as you get older, one spouse will likely pass away before the other, and then expenses drop about 30%. That's why older people actually don't need as much money as folks who retired when they were 65 because...
DAYANA:
Kill your spouse. Tip number seven.
ALISON:
[Laughs]. Hey, here's something you may not have thought about, listeners. We all know you guys are fighting over the remote these days, anyway, so, you know, who's going to miss them?
All right, the last of the six steps that you can take if you're a late starter is to just slow down a little. Dayana, we talked about this a little bit at the top of the show, but slow down. Don't retire.
Tip 6: Keep your corner office just a little while longer
DAYANA:
You may need some extra years to feather your nest egg, as we say. Use those years. And there are other benefits besides earning more income if you work longer. The financial benefits include higher Social Security benefits and pension checks, because you've been in the workforce longer. More years of someone else paying for very expensive things like your healthcare and a lot of your benefits. And then after that, fewer years of retirement to pay for because you're getting older. Sorry.
ALISON:
What a surprise. At least we hope you are.
DAYANA:
But as we talked about before -- and in other episodes -- it's not that people hate working necessarily. It's that they don't really enjoy the job they're in. So maybe it's not about retiring fully. You could work part time in your job. Look into that. Or even start exploring another career or turning a hobby into some sort of income-generating job for you so that you do have money that keeps coming in plus the benefit of doing something that you enjoy. The pay might be less, but all those extra dollars really do end up helping you a lot in the long run. Plus you're going to be totally bored in retirement.
ALISON:
Well, what do you have to say to the person who is like, "I am so far behind, there's no way. I can't save $30,000. How am I going to...?" They just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
DAYANA:
Wait. So they've sold their house and moved into a studio apartment. They've kicked their kids to the curb. No one's getting allowance...
ALISON:
Or lattes...
DAYANA:
They're saving their pennies and rifling through your couch cushions looking for spare change...
ALISON:
Yeah, that person.
DAYANA:
Okay, Robert. Let's hear your advice... [Laughs]
ALISON:
So Dayana just laughed her way through one of the bleakest pictures...
DAYANA:
Right. And I'm looking to Robert for the ray of sunshine you can bring to this person's life -- or what I am now calling my future.
ROBERT:
Well, the thing is we actually got a lot of these tips from a real-life person who did this. It was a woman named Linda who was 53 and had a total of $83 saved for retirement...
ALISON:
Yeesh!
ROBERT:
And then in a matter of years, she went from having a negative net worth to having $150,000 saved and is on track to being a millionaire by age 67.
ALISON:
Wow.
ROBERT:
But she took those drastic measures that Dayana was so joyfully delineating for our audience. But I think the bottom line for her was what's more important to me: Having an extra room to hold all my junk or scaling down where I live?
She got an extra degree, so she enhanced her human capital that way. She did things like telecommuted, because that way she saved money on gas and didn't have as many nice clothes, or whatever the benefit for that is. She really whittled things down.
But when she focused on -- I'm going to be a millionaire. I'm going to be a millionaire -- that was more important to her than all the other things.
ALISON:
So if she can do it, so can you, listeners.
ROBERT:
So can you. That's right.
ALISON:
So just to recap our six steps for people who started late on the path to retirement -- build up your human capital. Focus on your career and where you can start making more money. Number two, start sweating the small stuff and the big stuff. Track your spending. Get better at budgeting. Number three, kick your little baby birds out of the nest if they're 18 or over. But you know, just don't spoil them as much as you do. Number four, look into your house and whether you can downsize or get some money out of that. Number five, max out your savings accounts. That $30,000 that you're going to find in Dayana's cushions -- go for it.
DAYANA:
It's $30,500.
ALISON:
Oh, sorry. $30,500. Just check out Dayana's mattress, as we know that's where she keeps all of her money. And then finally, No. 6, slow down but don't retire. So see if you can keep yourself in the workforce a few more extra years, and that's going to pay off, seriously, in the long run.
So if you do not see the light at the end of the tunnel and think that you can't do this, the point is that you can and we're rooting for you, and if Linda did it, so can you ... from $83 to a millionaire in just a couple of decades.
♫If I had a million dollars ... I'd be rich♫
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Every now and then, we get to chat with smarty-pants people about their smarty-pants book, and the latest person we talked to was CHARLES. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at The New York Times and the author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. It's sold over 2 million copies and spent 90 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Lord knows why he was willing to sit down with us, huh?
DAYANA:
I know. He was slumming it.
ALISON:
I guess so. All right, well, without further ado, here's Dayana's conversation with Charles Duhigg at our recent Fool One event.
CHARLES:
I think one of the things that I tried to do kind of intuitively from an early age -- but once I was working on the book, really understood -- was to give myself rewards for behaviors that I wanted to encourage. People tend to feel guilty giving themselves rewards, but it's really important.
The great example is exercise. Think about how when you start running, in the morning you wake up. What you should do is you should go for a run, and come home, and give yourself a nice smoothie or a nice long shower. Tell yourself what a great job you just did to go jogging.
But what actually happens is you wake up, you go for a run, and you come home. You're late for work and the kids are late for school. So you rush through the shower and you run to school to drop them off. You're anxious about getting to your desk. Basically you're punishing yourself for exercising. And your brain pays attention to that. Your brain says, "I don't want to do things. I don't want to make things easier that I get punished for."
So the key is think about giving yourself rewards, and then let yourself actually enjoy those rewards. That's how behavior becomes a habit.
DAYANA:
This question is for the parents out there. When you were young, did you reward yourself for studying? Or practicing, if you played an instrument?
CHARLES:
Yeah, I think I did. I invested a lot of self-esteem in being successful. Like getting good grades. I think my parents positively reinforced that. I have two kids myself, and I do this all the time. It's very easy when children are doing things -- that are good things -- to just be happy that they're doing it and try not to screw it up by saying anything.
But it turns out -- and all the research backs this up -- that really going out of your way to say, "Look. I noticed that you were just nice to your brother. I want to let you know I'm really proud of that. I know that it took hard work for you to be nice to him, even though he was breaking your Legos, but congratulations."
That actually works. That matters, particularly when you praise that effort. It becomes more of a habit.
DAYANA:
Any tips on how to strengthen the willpower muscle? Can you truly make doing the right thing second nature, or is this always going to be a struggle?
CHARLES:
Absolutely. You're exactly right to think of it as a muscle. We know this from study after study -- that will power is like a muscle. It gets tired with use. It can get stronger if you exercise it, but it gets tired with use. That's why it's much easier to go for a jog in the morning than it is after a long day at work.
That also means that if you're going to put yourself in situations where your will power matters -- like checking your portfolio -- do it at a time when you know your willpower muscle is strong. Now for some people that's the evening and for some people it's the morning. But what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't have like a really tough day at work, where you're just slogging it out, and then come home. You make yourself go for a run and then you decide, "Now is the time to rebalance my portfolio." You're exhausted at that point. You have to respect that willpower muscle.
Now in terms of strengthening it and in terms of making it less taxing, there's a lot of research, particularly by this guy named Pete Gollwitzer at NYU, about implementation intentions. And what Pete Gollwitzer says is, "Look. Don't rely on your willpower. Don't wait until you're in the heat of a moment to make a decision. Instead make a decision ahead of time when it's easy."
And the way he talks about this is he says, "If you have an investment kind of decision, figure out what that is when you're not in front of your computer. Figure out what it is two weeks before you have to make the decision. If this stock goes up to $60, I'm going to sell it, and if it doesn't hit $60, I'm going to keep it."
That way you are making that decision when you're in what's known as a "cold state." Because what we know is that in a "hot state" our decisions get worse. That's why it's easier to decide to have a salad for lunch at ten o'clock in the morning than when you're standing in the cafeteria. It's easier to decide I'm only going to have one drink tonight at noon than it is after you've gotten off the train and your kids are driving you crazy. Implementation intentions say decide when you're not in the heat of the moment.
And for investing, this is incredibly important, because very few of us sit down and say, this is how I'm going to make investment decisions three weeks from now, three months from now, six months from now, but that's actually the best thing to do. Just write it down. Because at that point, you're making the decision in a cold state.
DAYANA:
What do you think is the most important discovery that has come out of the science? The thing that we'll look back and say, "This is really when we started changing the way we think about this."
CHARLES:
I think the No. 1 most important discovery is just how malleable habits are. For literally hundreds of years there's been this preconception that once a habit gets set, it's set in stone. If you're at a certain age, you can't change. If you have a certain lifestyle, you're never going to be able to walk away from that addiction or that compulsion.
We now know, because it's been studied in laboratory after laboratory, that's just not true. Every single habit, every single automatic behavior, every single compulsion can be changed.
And we know how to do it. You diagnose the habit. You look for the cues and the rewards. You break this behavior into its parts, its components, so you can fiddle with the gears. There are people who have been smoking for 30 years who will literally have their last cigarette today and will never smoke again. There's people who are 65 years and they've been obese their entire life -- they'll go on a diet tomorrow and they'll lose 30 pounds and they'll die skinny. This happens all of the time. We know that it happens all of the time. We know now why it happens.
And the most important thing is that traditionally we've ignored those stories. We thought that they were the aberration or the exception to the rule. But they're not. That's actually the rule. The rule is that people can change. No matter how old they are or no matter how ingrained the behavior is, they can change. They just have to understand how change occurs.
ALISON:
Thanks to Charles for joining us. Again, his book is called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and you can buy it anywhere books are sold. This show is edited by Rick Engdahl. Theme music is composed and performed by our own Dayana. You can reach us at [email protected] and don't forget to tell your friends about us. And rate us on iTunes and Stitcher. And I don't know -- whatever else. Send us...
DAYANA:
Cookies...
ALISON:
... cookies. For Robert and Dayana, I'm Alison. Fool on!
[End]