Ryan Viktorian is a Vice President, Financial Consultant at Fidelity Investments. She works with high net worth individuals and families in the areas of retirement planning, legacy planning, tax minimization, and investment strategy. Ryan joined Fidelity in 2013 and works with a team of financial professionals at the Framingham, MA Investor Center. She is a regular panelist for Fidelity’s Women Talk Money program and is passionate about helping clients understand their financial picture so that they can securely and efficiently reach their goals.Ryan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Denver and a Master of Arts in Education from Springfield College. She is a registered securities representative and a licensed insurance representative. Ryan is also a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and works to maintain an in-depth understanding of the financial markets. She is focused on working to effectively simplify and communicate complex financial concepts to her clients.Outside of work, Ryan and her husband are busy keeping up with their twin boys.
Lorna Kapusta is driven to help women become more actively involved and confident in their finances at every stage of life – a mission that became deeply personal after conquering her own financial stressors, getting more engaged and finding confidence in her family’s financial goals and picture overall. In her role as Head of Women Investors and Customer Engagement at Fidelity Investments, one of the industry’s largest and most diversified financial services companies, Lorna is responsible for a firm-wide initiative committed to helping women become more engaged in their finances and ultimately, more confident investors. She leads a cross-company team focused on creating educational events and resources that help women get more hands on with their money and address financial planning and investing topics most important right now. Lorna is passionate about helping women have that “a-ha moment” that brings to life how building a strong financial foundation and getting more invested can help their savings work harder to reach their goals. Lorna and her husband, Matt, live in the suburbs of Boston, juggling a busy household with their three children (Jacob, Aiden and Sage), three dogs (Jazzy, Rocco and Chewy) and a cat (Vadah).
In the short term, it important to shore up your foundation. And that means getting organized. First take an inventory of physically where everything is. 401k bank account, brokerage account, what institutions are they at? Maybe it's at Fidelity, maybe it's at other ones, but physically, where is it so you can try to just get a sense in your mind.
But in even more short term, I want you to be thinking about cash flow. What are the income sources coming in versus the expenses going out? Is there a gap, meaning you have more going out than coming in? And do we have to make some changes, or as we get a little bit longer in our career, in all likelihood, you'll probably have more coming in than going out.
So then you start to say, okay, what am I going to do with that savings now that I actually have that extra money. One, you want to participate in your 401k, of course, so that you can get whatever company match is available to you because that is part of your compensation. We don't want to leave that money on the table. We're trying to close this wealth gap.
But then its also really important, especially as we hear that word recession, to have an emergency fund. This means you have to make sure that you have enough assets that are safer. You want to make sure that you have enough money set aside so that God forbid, if you do lose your job or if you want to make a change in your job because it's a challenging environment right now, you have enough months, have enough of an emergency fund, that you can cover yourself. Our general guidance is three to six months of your expenses, but what I always say is that everybody has asleep at night number. Sometimes, women overshoot on that number a little bit. I want to encourage people to make sure you have enough coverage, but then we're also investing for our future.
Get an inventory of where we're at, make sure you have a sense of that cash flow, and then build up your emergency fund. That's the first place to start. For that emergency fund that we have worked so incredibly hard for a year ago, no cash was making any interest, it was effectively zero.
The world has changed a year later. I know I'm going to speak on behalf of Fidelity. We're over 4%, we're coming up on four and a half percent yield on the money markets and the cash that we have. So what I would tell the group is wherever that emergency fund is, if it is not earning more than 4%, find a place that is. Make that money work incredibly hard for you. You've worked way too hard for it to have the cash not working for you.
