KSER host shares financial advice you can use — and understand
Published 10:29 pm Tuesday, December 22, 2015
EVERETT — Chuck Noel looked down at a page full of grocery ads, scanning the vibrant checkerboard for deals.
“These things are important,” he said. “Not just coupons, but sales.”
Chex Mix comes in 8-ounce bags, he explained, which retail for a little over $3. But time it right and you can get them for a buck.
Noel eats one of those bags a week. That’s more than 50 bags a year, which, at full price, would cost him around $175. But he never pays full price for Chex Mix.
“If I’m getting them for a buck, I’m gonna only pay 50 bucks. So I just saved myself $125,” he said, then rattled off other products commonly on sale: Cheerios, Wheat Thins, eggs. “You do that with 10 different items, all of a sudden you’ve got more than a thousand dollars in savings.”
Last time Chex Mix went on sale, Noel bought 10 bags. He also scored lower-level symphony tickets for $25 apiece, and by sticking to second-run showings at Crest Cinema in Shoreline, he never shells out more than $4 for a film (“The last time I went to a regular theater, it was $4,” he said).
Since 1991, Noel has shared this passion for penny-pinching on his radio show, “Getting Your Dough to Rise,” which airs once a month on KSER 90.7 FM.
Some of his talking points, such as couponing, may sound a bit oldfangled to younger listeners. But others, like explaining how Facebook bought the mobile messaging company WhatsApp, are as millennial as it gets.
The hourlong show, an unpaid gig for the 73-year-old Noel, features guests from around the financial world. He’s interviewed Ken Fisher, a Forbes Magazine columnist and billionaire investment analyst; Paul Kangas of PBS Nightly Business Report; Paul Solman of PBS News Hour; and Richard Thaler, best-selling author and University of Chicago economist.
Local guests have included business journalists, faculty from the University of Washington and the director of the Washington State Lottery (Noel asked her about her retirement plan).
His method for securing sources: Call them up and ask. How he tells if they’ll be good for the show: “If it fits.”
Tom Clendening, KSER’s station manager, credits Noel’s lineup of heavy hitters to his three decades of financial experience: “He knows an awful lot of people. He’s got a pretty good web of influence — a pretty good Rolodex.”
He’s also got a pretty good audience. “Getting Your Dough to Rise” is one of KSER’s most popular programs with callers, both during the live broadcast and in the weeks leading up to it (“When’s Chuck on again?” is a common query).
Added Clendening: “He sounds like you’re sitting down at a bar with a guy who’s got a lot of information and can give it to you pretty straight.”
“I assume there’s always someone listening for the first time,” Noel said. “Concepts like paying yourself first, planning for emergencies, the basic steps of a financial plan — I like to get that out.”
Noel’s interest in the almighty dollar traces back to majoring in economics at Brown University. The undergrad degree took him nine years to complete thanks to a hiatus spent working at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, in a naval shipyard and as a plaster pattern maker at Boeing. “I was still in the early age of exploring and going where the winds blew,” he said.
After graduating, he worked at IBM and as a headmaster at a secondary school in Kenya. An ailing mother brought him back to Everett, and after she passed in 1982, he shifted his career to financial advising.
The first episode of “Getting Your Dough to Rise” aired soon after KSER launched in 1991. Noel, who lived near the station at the time, heard they were looking for someone with an interest in music and a big record collection. He owned a few hundred vinyl LPs, so he went in to talk. He walked out set to host a show on finance.
“I don’t quite remember how that conversation evolved, but it worked out fine,” Noel said.
The early shows were taped in advance. “Mainly for my benefit, since I didn’t feel confident enough to go live,” he said. But they weren’t easy to put together.
Noel was a perfectionist, so after recording a show he would go through and slice out all the “um’s” and “ah’s,” then piece it back together.
These days the show airs live with all its imperfections.
When he speaks both on and off the air, Noel is quick to draw from a bank of one-liners. You might call them Noelisms, had he been the one to come up with them.
“The more I know, the more I know the less I know,” he said, paraphrasing Einstein. “I think that’s mine, but somehow I might have taken that from someone else. You’ve never heard that before, right?”
Whatever will be, will be. The earlier the better. The past doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Ancient Greek philosophers are a common source. “One of the key things they came up with was, ‘Everything in moderation,’” Noel said. “Socrates came up with it. But I’m sure he stole it from someone.”
Perhaps his favorite adage of them all: “If it’s trite, it’s probably right.”
Trite means overused, Noel explained, but that’s only because people aren’t listening.
“When you tell someone they should stop drinking because they might be an alcoholic, maybe they’ve heard it over and over again, but they didn’t stop,” he said.
In other words, the formulas for financial success are out there — pay yourself first, don’t familiarize yourself with debt — it’s just about sticking to them.
Noel retired from financial advising five years ago. It didn’t make sense to seek out new clients as he neared his 70s. His old ones had been reliable over the years, but they couldn’t stick around forever.
“My income was falling off due to different reasons, including things like deaths,” he said. “I figured it was a good time to pack it in.”
As for the radio gig, he’s staying put for now. It’s entertaining and he enjoys the company, and that fulfills another would-be Noelism: “Do the things you want to do.” It’s not the most original piece of advice, but it can’t hurt to hear it. After all, Chuck Noel might be trite, but people are listening.
