120. Money Talks in Beacon

Mat, then Lena: [00:00:00] Does Beacon feel busy or does it feel like old city? On the river? Like,

so on the weekends I go to the city for quiet. That's hilarious. Really? Yeah. I mean, especially like 4th of July week, I was in the city. I loved it 'cause it was so quiet, especially in the summertime. The city's empty. I just got back today and it was like, it's so empty.

It's amazing. And then I come up here on the weekends and the sidewalks are crowded. The coffee lines are long. Like it gets really busy. I would say May through November. In Beacon because it's just very easy to get up here. There's daytime hikers and then there's a lot of people that stay for Airbnb, so, and there's just a lot to do.

There's just, it's not like you're way up in the Catskills and you can either just hang out with all your friends and maybe go to that one bar or go hiking down here. There's [00:01:00] just so much to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Down in the valley, moved up from the city. It's a new way of living and I'm trying get used to one park announced of an idiot to Manhattan and they called me a cidiot.

I'm looking.

I am Mat Zucker, and this is Cidiot: Learning to Live and Love Life in the [00:02:00] Hudson Valley. Episode 120. I've wanted to learn about Beacon for a long time, maybe ever since episode 71, about Newburgh and the mayors of the mall. They were hysterical. Beacon, though on this side of the river is its own thing.

According to my friends at Wikipedia, like much of the Hudson Valley history things date back to the revolution. Beacon was so named to commemorate the historic beacon fires that blazed forth from the summit of the Fishkill Mountains to alert the Continental army of British troop movements during the 1800s.

Like Hudson, the city became a factory town and was known as the hat making capital of the US with nearly 50 hat factories operating at one time. More recently, scenes from HBO's Severance, which I love were filmed in Beacon. But as you know from earlier episodes. I also like to talk about money. So what's great about this episode is it's about beacon and about money.

I was lucky to meet Lena [00:03:00] Rizkallah, who's a Brooklynite turned beacon night financial advisor. She's amazing. In addition to her business, you'll hear about her community gatherings, including speakeasies. Yes, speakeasies about money. She also does standup storytelling. Lena was named 2023 Chronogrammie's best financial planner of the Hudson Valley, and she was on an episode of another regional podcast, beacon Nights.

I'll put a link to it in my show notes. In our conversation, she tells me about Beacon, about her business and her story. You might want to join one of her community events throughout the year, so tune in. And you'll also hear in a commercial in between segments about a Beacon Hudson related wine tasting event on Saturday, August 16th in Hudson, sponsored by Citi at Paul Brady Wine, a Beacon wine shop, and the folks from never Still, who you met just a few episodes ago.

Hope to see you there. Okay, let's talk Beacon and money with Lena.[00:04:00]

Hi Lena. Hi. Thanks for coming on Cidiot. Thank you for having me. This great opportunity. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm excited to talk about business, like excited about Beacon. I'm excited to talk about a lot of things to start with the letter bait. Um, but first, like what's your connection with the Hudson Valley? Are you from here?

Are you. A weekender? Are you a permanent? What's your story? All three. Um, I was in New York City. I've lived in New York City for, it's probably 26 years, but I would say almost eight years ago I was looking to buy something and just never wanted to give up my. Apartment in New York City, or just my life in New York City, but my best friend lives across the river in New Windsor and she's had this back and forth lifestyle for years.

And I thought, oh, maybe I can do that too. And I had just been hearing about Beacon a lot, and I just was familiar and I thought, let me just check it out. And all of a sudden I downloaded Zillow and. Found myself [00:05:00] here, but back then this was pre COVID, so things were still really affordable, rates were low, and I just really thought like, oh wow, I think I can make this work between my apartment and the city and having a mortgage upstate.

It was doable at the time. And how do you like it now? Is it, does it feel like now it's 10 years later? How long? Eight years later. Eight. Yeah. I was planning to just be a weekender. 'cause I was working at JP Morgan at the time and I thought, all right, I'll just be working there during the week and then come up here on the weekends.

And then I would find myself really wanting to drag the weekend from like Thursday to Monday. Yeah. And stay. I know that too. It was just so beautiful. And you just wanted to be part of the communities. I wanted to start meeting people and then he said. At work change, I, I got laid off and I found myself up here a lot more.

And then when the pandemic happened, things in the city were really tough and I just thought, okay, we're going to move up here. So I, I've basically been up here mostly, um, [00:06:00] since then. And so what about Beacon? I really don't talk much about Beacon. I really am a Hudson Valley podcast. I have done a dabble with Newburgh across the river.

Okay. Which was hilarious. And that was a great episode. I have done Poughkeepsie a bit, but I'm real, and I'm a Duchess County Tourist Ambassador, so I should be carrying more south, even though you're, are you Putnam? Yeah. Are you Putnam? No, we are D Dutchess. Oh, Dutchess. So, yeah. So you're even in my, in my remit.

So I guess, yeah, be Tell me more about Beacon and what's the story and what's the vibe and they say it's like Brooklyn upstate, but they say that about every town, upstate Kingston and everything. I know, but what do you think of it, or how would you describe it to others? First of all, um, beacon of today is very different from the beacon that I moved to eight years ago.

I feel like it's really changed quite a bit. Demographics, there's a ton of apartment buildings and condos being built all the time, so, you know, I feel like that's a little bit of a challenge. Between the people that live here and developers. Yeah. And the future of the city. [00:07:00] But change is inevitable.

That's just what happens. And it's on the train line. It's an hour and 20 minutes from the city, so Oh, you're lucky. It's very much You're lucky. Yeah. It's very convenient Also. It's, it's got a really awesome mix of people. It, every night there's something going on in, in Beacon. You want live music? We got it.

You want jazz on Mondays? You got it. There's a great artichoke, it's a storytelling show. That's pretty epic. I mean, they bring up really amazing storytellers from the city. Um, every two months. It's a great show. And then they have a story slam. There's improv, there's comedy, there's theater. So there's just really a lot of art happening in creative creativity happening up here.

And you can. Fill your calendar and meet so many people so easily. I think the other thing too, there's a great restaurant scene. There's Palestinian restaurants, they tune, that's been around for a while. Beacon Bread Company, draft to ex a lot of awesome Mexican food. And I think there's also some new places that have just opened that are bringing a lot of people outside of Beacon to [00:08:00] the Beacon Main Street.

Does it feel like a, like a bigger small city? 'cause it's about 15,000 people I think. King. I think Kingston I think is bigger and Kingston has more things. Hudson, which is a little city, is actually quite small. Population wise. I think it's like seven to 10. Like Hudson feels urban but feels empty. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. It doesn't feel crowded. Does Beacon feel busy or does it feel like old city? On the river? Like, so on the weekends I go to the city for quiet. That's hilarious. Really? Yeah, I mean, especially like 4th of July week, I was in the city. I loved it 'cause it was so quiet, especially in the summertime, the city's empty.

I just got back today and it was like, it's so empty. It's amazing. And then I come up here on the weekends and the sidewalks are crowded. The coffee lines are long. Like it gets really busy. I would say May through November. In Beacon because it's just very easy to get up here. There's [00:09:00] daytime hikers and then there's a lot of people that stay for Airbnbs and there's just a lot to do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very different transplant immersion, I guess would be, than to be, to be dropped off in, in like a rural, rural town. It's not rural. It's not rural. But I will say at the same time, there's space. Yeah. Um, so I feel like that's probably what attracts. A lot of Brooklynites people that were like, I have this $750,000.

I could either buy like a really terrible one bedroom that overlooks the dumpster, or I could buy a house with a yard. And you definitely just have a lot more space if you have land. There's. There's a mountain view. It's, there's a lot of beautiful, like third spaces. There's Mountain Brett Park, there's Long Dock Park, there's places you can kayak just even within the city.

So it's, it's really wonderful. Okay. Tell me also about your, your, your business. This is also why I wanted to talk about you because it, I'm interested in what. In what you, you do and the way in which you, you, you do it. Yeah. So I'm a financial advisor. I've been in the [00:10:00] industry 20 plus years as more of like a subject matter expert working with big companies and traveling around to present on taxes and estate planning and legislation and all that sexy stuff.

They, they give it to me to do that. But then about five years ago, I opened this. As a practice, I joined a firm that's based in Pennsylvania and it's kind of like my business, which I love. I mean, I just, I love the financial industry, but I think one thing I was missing was the person to person, actually talking to somebody, talking through what their goals are, what are their concerns, what are they worried about, and being able to talk through it and, and provide solutions.

And it's a lot of. Problem solving, and it's a lot of psychology really. I work between the Hudson Valley and New York City. I work with a lot of women, a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, and also a lot of millennials, older millennials and Gen Xers that are my generation, that are seeing their children go off to college, maybe starting [00:11:00] something new.

A lot of women that are about to get divorced or getting divorced or wanting to start a new business, couples that are trying to figure out. Uh, did we save enough? What should we be doing? Now we're 52, 55, and that's kind of for me to jump in, look at their investments, see what we can do, and play with the numbers and, and kind of help them reach their goals as much as possible.

So what does it take to become a financial advisor? It sounds like you switched careers, and what does it mean to be one? What can you do and what can't you do? I think there's different paths, but in general, to be a financial advisor, you should be licensed. So that you can buy and sell stocks, options, futures, all the different types of investment or securities on behalf of your clients.

The industry is extremely regulated because we're dealing with money and they're like, don't embezzle. So it's very regulated. So we have to be licensed, we have to. Keep up with our continuing education, all that stuff. But you managed the money too. Mm-hmm. When I hear a financial advisor, I think [00:12:00] about the advice and education, but I kind of forgot or didn't realize.

Yeah. That you can also actively manage, right. The client as well. Yeah. And I think that's interesting because most people when I say like, oh, I'm a financial advisor, like, oh, I don't have enough money to work with you. So people automatically think you need to have a lot of money to need to work with a financial advisor.

But that's not really the case. Like my, my fees are based on minimums, and if not, then it's based on something else. And I actually, like I was saying, I do lead with education, so it's more about the financial planning part that I focus on as well as the investment management that like that comes along you worry about.

Oh right. So there's the planning. And then there's the execution. Yeah, because you're like, it's more when people are like, I don't know, I have this extra a hundred thousand dollars. What should I do with it? I really wanna find out, well, do you have an emergency fund? Do you have debt? What's your spend income?

What's your spending look like on an on a month to month basis? What is your retirement? So when I invest money, I wanna look at what is your financial picture look like right [00:13:00] now to help you determine the best place to put that money and how to invest it. 'cause that also goes into your risk tolerance.

How, when do you need the money and how long do you have before you need to take that kind of money? And that's gonna determine how much risk we're gonna take. In investing your money. So at the end of the day, you're doing financial planning anyways when you're investing their money. But a lot of times people come to me and they don't have a lot of investments.

They have high income and they're like, I need to start investing and I need help. And that's where I help them as well from. Yeah. Got it. Want a taste of Upstate? You heard the never Still episode a few weeks ago. Well, thanks to the team at Never Still. Paul Brady Wines of Beacon and Citi at we a sponsor Saturday, August 16th, three to 7:00 PM Come to never still's tasting room on Warren Street in Hudson for a tasting.

It's free. You can reserve a table through the link in the show notes or episode page. You can also just show up. I'll be there with City of Merch and a [00:14:00] curiosity about New York State wines. It's going to be delicious. Tell em the city at Sentia. Well, tell me City at Sentia. See you soon. Do you notice a lot of differences between the issues of the city and the issues?

Up here a few weeks ago I had on the folks from Castle, which is a financial app, a house management app. Mm-hmm. And they really were emphasizing how like a lot of people that are first time homeowners don't realize all the expenses that go into your biggest investment. Yeah. So that their app tries to help you manage the prices of your home.

Plus it helps you discover. Unforeseen things you may not, you know, know you're even in entitled to. So I'm curious if the topics change for people up here, whether it's land or real estate or taxes or like issues 'cause you spend your money differently or the way you wanna live your life. And I think you just nailed it.

It's, it's, you start spending your money differently. When you buy a house and you own property and you even move out of the city, um, you're gonna cook more at home. It's like the restaurant's here, it's not [00:15:00] like DoorDash and you can just get amazing, you know, Thai food. You can be like, yeah, there's Thai food here, but I'm gonna make this egg instead.

Whatever. I've, I have clients. Both in the city and here and also around the country that, you know, sometimes it's just, you're a single person, you make $250,000 a year and you can spend it on whatever you want. So a lot of times I meet them and maybe they don't have a lot of savings 'cause they never had anything that they specifically wanna save for, and now they're like 44 and like, wait a second, I need to start doing something about this.

Which is an easy problem to solve. It's just helping them identify like maybe not so good habits and. Help them prioritize what they actually wanna spend on and then save. But for people that are thinking about moving up here or buying property, or maybe living both places, it really is a question of priority first and foremost, and understanding what the expenses are with.

Owning a home, managing a home, all the things that [00:16:00] come up. One of the things that I've learned and that I would tell people, just advice to give people is when you are living in both places, one of the things to think about is to monetize your properties, and that's what I do. I have Airbnb going, I've got different things.

So if there's an opportunity to monetize, whether it's your apartment or your home. And you're comfortable doing it, you should consider doing something like that because it's always good to have that extra money, even if you feel like you don't need it. It's really good to be like, this is gonna go towards taxes, or this is gonna go towards our safari that we're planning.

Why not? Yeah. I felt so challenging having two places when we did because it was like twice as many bills and it was also like, yep. Twice as many dishes. I had my plaids upstate and my solids in the city, and they would get mixed up and I'd buy new ones and it was just, it was very confusing. I really, that's also why I think we built full-time is I just couldn't handle the, the duplication.

Tell, tell me about the community meetups that you, that you run and you organize. They sound really cool and a fun way [00:17:00] to actually meet people. Yeah. One thing I, I will, will say is like living in the Hudson Valley, it's a really awesome place to network. I mean, there's so many opportunities to network.

It's so different from the city because I feel like in the city, it takes a while of a lot of networking before you finally find the group that you wanna join, or the people that you wanna commit, or the people that are gonna actually root for you and vouch for you and, and help you. We're up here. You meet a few people.

People are very connected. People are very rooted here. They're raising their families here, so that makes a real difference. Like no one's leaving. People are here to stay, and if they like you, they wanna help you. They're gonna connect you. So when I started doing my women's panel, I do a women in Business Busting Barriers panel every March in the Hudson Valley in Beacon.

It basically showcases for women in business. Most of the time they're entrepreneurs. They own small businesses, or sometimes they have this amazing career, [00:18:00] but it's just them kind of sharing their unique experiences, the strategies, success stories. Stories of failure, stories of challenges, whatever it is that I think has resonated with a lot of people.

For me, it was a reaction to those women's panels and events that I went to in the city that would highlight, you know, the women, and not all the time, but very often it was somebody who. Had seed money from her dad or from the connections that Oh, I see. Yeah know. And that didn't resonate for me 'cause I'm a first generation immigrant and a child of immigrants and I thought I figured it out.

I had to figure a lot of stuff out. And I think that probably is the same for a lot of people. So I wanted to find women who didn't know how to butcher animals. And then they actually were a math professor and then they decided I'm gonna buy this building and now I'm gonna. Have a woman owned butchery in Beacon, Barb's Butchery, which is an amazing story, amazing owner, and the [00:19:00] general manager I had them on.

Um, and just, just like really interesting people. So it's been really fun to meet people and curate the panel every year. This year will be our fifth year in March, so it's kind of a big deal for, for me. That's amazing. How do you find the people? The first year I decided, you know, I know enough people between my own clients, right?

And some friends and people in the community that I really wanted to showcase and highlight their voices 'cause they were so unique and what they did was unique and their, their stories were so cool. Um, and then after that I found a little bit of a challenge 'cause I still didn't know a lot of people and that's where I leaned on my network.

The people I were starting to meet in the Hudson Valley. So women I had met through Hudson Valley, women in business or. Chambers, Dutchess County or Orange County Chamber of Commerce. Um, I had met some people and I reached out and I said, Hey, do you know any women that, blah, blah blah. And they just really helped connect me.

So I think that's what the, kind of an example of just how once you start getting to know people, [00:20:00] people help you. And that's how you just brought in your, your network up here. Yeah. Yeah, that's gone. The other thing I've been doing is something called a money speakeasy, and that's a monthly gathering the second Tuesday of every month in Cold Spring at this store called for George.

It's a wonderful retail shop on the corner of Cold Spring, and I co-host it with the owner, HEDA Gole. And we basically just create a safe space for women. And the occasional man, everyone's welcome, but you know, generally it was set up as a women's group, but now we're starting to see some men come and it's basically, you talk about life, love, and business.

Within the context of money. So it's questions that you think might be a dumb question or questions that you think about, but you're like, I gotta Google that later. Or you wanna put that in AI later? Like, what's the difference between a traditional and a Roth? Or how do I talk to my, my partner about money because he's a spender and I'm a saver.

I love that. Or, um, when is the right time to [00:21:00] leave your full-time job and start your side hustle? Just a lot of general. Or specific questions. We talked a lot about Trump's policies last month. We talked about the tax bill, like what's in it, how's it gonna affect us? What good or bad? It sounds like a good podcast topic or Oh, yeah.

Or format. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if there's drinking involved. Yeah. Oh, there's absolutely drinking involved. It's a, it's a speakeasy, so it's like you go in the stores close, you go in, there's the back, there's always drinks. Prosecco or Cosmos, whatever I'm in the mood for. That's great. And the tiny topics are really good too.

Yeah. What, well, what are people talking about right now? Like in their personal finances? Are there like trends or topics that come up right now? I love talking about money. Oh, good. Yeah, me too. Let's see. I think what's in the tax bill is concerning a lot of people because it's 900 pages and I think some of the people that signed it, like the, like a lot of people in Congress are just now finding out what's in it.

It just to me looks like it's a lot of good news up until [00:22:00] past the midterms and then the bad news hits after the midterms. And there's a lot of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and, um, even Obamacare. People that are on the, um, state exchanges, there's a lot of the, the subsidies, a lot of the state benefits are potentially gonna go away as a result.

So I think we're gonna see a lot of people that are gonna be struggling to afford healthcare. Going forward. And so I think people are concerned about that.

What about mistakes? What should people not do? You know, you buy a house up here, you move up here. Anything you've seen people do that's like, no, don't do that. Yeah, I've, what I've heard, especially with clients is that people are [00:23:00] like, I, I wanna buy something. There's all of a sudden you get to a certain age.

Um, or you get married or you're about to get married and you're like, I, I should just buy something. A friend of mine said this, and it really resonates, and it's like the time to buy a house is when you're ready to buy a house. It's not because everyone else is buying a house or it seems like it's it's a good market or you wanna live next to your best friend or whatever it is.

You really do need to put a lot of numbers. Into it. You need to talk to a lot of people, not just your brother or whoever your spouse is, or your significant other. You should talk to a lot of people. Talk to the mortgage brokers, talk to realtors, talk to people that live in the area, talk to people that own a home.

It's really important to be as educated as possible. I'm not saying don't do it. But just do as much homework as you can. I know when I was buying a house, I didn't, I did talk to a lot of people and I talked to a lot of mortgage brokers. I had never bought anything before, so there was a lot of surprises along the way, and luckily I had a lot of savings.

But [00:24:00] surprises are like, oh, sometimes you do. Inspections and sometimes you put offers on multiple properties, so you're gonna do multiple inspections that you have to pay for the closing costs. Other things that you might have to, to do once you get into the house, there might be some, a lot of money that you have to put into it.

So I would definitely say, talk to a lot of people. Do your homework. Don't take the down payment out of your emergency fund. Make sure you have a substantial amount of money saved so that anything that comes up, you can manage it. Yeah. 'cause they do and things come up. Yeah, I said it before. I mean, if you can monetize, but also on the other hand, don't buy a house thinking you're gonna just Airbnb it, because I think that's a big mistake and a kind of a big risk because these laws vary from city to city about like, yeah, I've seen that in the town I was in before, my house could still be Airbnb.

We though we didn't do it, but they, they rezoned it and a lot of towns have been pushing and people get stuck. Yep. So I would definitely say on the, on the other hand of monetizing it, make sure that you're not relying [00:25:00] on short term rental income to take care of your mortgage. Consider longer term the rule is like 30 days or over.

So if you can do the longer term thing or do it a couple times a year so that if it's covering a substantial amount of your mortgage, but maybe not every week or every, every weekend, that kind of thing. So tell me about your favorite go-to place in the Hudson Valley. I ask a lot of people this, and I have fantasies of making a map with a lot of pins.

Yeah. Oh. But I realize a lot of my pins will be further north. So I need some southern pins. Not Maryland south, but beacon south or beacon area, or the other side of the river. So what, what's your, what's your go-to? I won't tell anyone. I mean, so I'll say in Beacon. I love going to Madam Brett Park. It's a beautiful walking path right along the creek.

It's a very cool, just a walk, and it connects to Long Dock Park, so it's two, I've heard of that. Walking places. [00:26:00] Long Dock is more of a bigger park. They put a lot more money into the upkeep and everything, but great places to bike, walk your walk, your dog hike, grab a coffee and walk with a friend. It's just really awesome to just.

Be in nature because it is kind of building up around here, so it's good to have that to walk there. A new place that opened up in town called Lion's Share is a great, really cool restaurant, kind of a bistro upscale American Bistro great like Steak and burger, but also a really cool bar, like really nice to get a drink if you want a really good breakfast spot.

There's always Beacon Bread, which is an amazing, great brunch place Longstanding Moorish is English. Specifically, so they do great English breakfast upstate two places that I love. Oda Wine Garden is a Balkan restaurant and it's just amazing. It's got really great Balkan food from Georgia and they have a really interesting wine list.

They do a lot of great events, so [00:27:00] I would definitely check that out if you're ever in that area. The other place I just went to last week was called Brush Land. Eatery and it's a great restaurant in Bovina, and the chef is. Iranian, he's Persian, but he also specializes in meat. So he do fried chicken night on Fridays or they'll do hand pasta and house meat sausage on Thursdays.

And then once a month he does a Persian feast, so he'll make like traditional Persian food once a month. So I would definitely in that, those little Hamlet areas, check out those places. Totally worth the drive. Those are gr I've ne, I've never been out there. It's so embarrassing having gone. You should, I guess that's west what?

West of me. I just don't. Yeah, I just need to go. Song: Down in the valley, moved up [00:28:00] from the city....

Took to long to be a local, so for now I'm a cidiot, cidiot, cidiot.