Latest / WCHS Network Podcasts / 04-22-2024 Retire Right Radio with John Burdette from Fourth Avenue Financial

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04-22-2024 Retire Right Radio with John Burdette from Fourth Avenue Financial · WCHS Network Podcasts

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five fifty eight fifty eight or text three oh four nine three five fifty oh
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eight. On retire Right Radio, let's go lide to the studio with host
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Dale Cooper and John Verdett from Fourth Avenue financials Hey, friand fluck A good
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morning to you. You're listening to retire Right Radio five eight wc HS the
1:04
Voice of Charles and I'm Del Cooper. Thanks for tuning in on this Monday,
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beautiful Monday morning here in the state of West Virginia, the city of
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Charles, and joining me in studio this morning is John Bredett for Fourth Avenue
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Financial backing studio pretty quick since our Friday turnaround, John, Good morning,
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how you doing this morning? Yeah, I've got to come up with something
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to say again. Oh man's there's always stuff going on in the market though
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we can, we can, we can find out things to talk about.
1:26
Let me get our details out real quick. So if you have any questions
1:27
during the course of the show today, you can give us a call three
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zero four three four five fifty to fifty eight three four five to fifty eight
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fifty eight. You can also send over a text to three zero four non
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three five five zero zero eight three zero four non three five five zero zero
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eight. John will be glad to answer any questions you have pertaining to the
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program this morning, and we'll get you on the air with John or relay
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over your message. Add to those numbers. You can find out more about
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Fourth Avenue Financial online. It's fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Spell out the
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whole thing. Fourth Avenue Financial. Also on Facebook, you can do that
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same search and like the page over there. We'll get some more contact details
1:57
and more details out to you a little bit later on in the program,
2:00
but for now, UH, I wanted to go ahead and talk to John
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a little bit about things that are going on. It will kind of continue
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a little bit from from Friday show, because we talked about, Uh,
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you know, the market was in I guess what you can call a corrective
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state where that things were correcting, and I was I was reading some things
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over the weekend and and uh, although we're in a we're in a in
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a correction period, it seems like a little bit of that broadening that we
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had at some important time is actually helping, you know, keep that a
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little bit more of afloat than what it may have been otherwise. Yeah,
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we have we're not in an official correct Ye. That's ten percent from from
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the high. And depending on the index you look at, we're we're we're
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down somewhere between five and eight percent right right now. The tech heavy Nasdaq
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is UH has been hit the hardest. The even the Magnus Magnificent seven stocks
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that were were so hot they've they've taken it on the show more than the
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broader market has. Uh which there again that that helps the valuation, but
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between you know, value and growth. But the Magnificent Seven now they're they're
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getting close to correction stage. They're down about eight and a half percent over
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the last four weeks. The nastac's been down four weeks in a row.
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The broader market's been down the last three weeks in a row. So we've
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had, you know, several several down days in the mix. The thing
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about a correction, they happen all the time. You know, you have
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a correction about once a year. If you look at a chart between the
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highs and lows of the year, they're almost every year there's more than a
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ten percent swing sometime in the course of that year. It's very normal,
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particularly when we've had a run like we've had in the markets, and of
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course you know this year we've got also the bond market isn't behaving very well
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because interest rates have creeped back up after falling. And when you think about
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the bond market, try to think of it like a teeter totter when bond
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when the yields go up, the bond prices go down, and the opposite
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is true. When the yields go down, bond prices go up. And
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so with that inverse relationship, the rising interest rates that have been creeping back
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up now that the expectation for rate cuts has been pushed off a little bits,
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has also made the bond market pretty choppy. And it's pretty interesting.
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And we talk a lot on this program. You talk a lot on this
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program. You know, you don't chase the headlines, you don't get involved
4:30
in that kind of things. When I look at like the Magnificent seven,
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or I look at the NASDAK some of the tech stocks, how much of
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that Although we're talking about so many different companies that get into so many different
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things, it's not just you know, Tesla or whatever. You know,
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like when you start talking about tech or different things like that, it's not
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just one company or another. But as far as consumer sentiment goes, because
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although as much as you say, as we try to tell people not to
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get into the headlines and stuff, sentiment goes a long way towards these types
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of things. And even if a lot of companies are doing okay when there's
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big headline news like a bunch of Tesla's are being recalled because of the weird
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gas pedal issue and things like that. I mean, that's a pretty steep
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recall. When you look at something like that and some of the things that
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they thought were going to look good with, like crisper editing, Suddenly you
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know they're taking a pause on that because there's some side effects that wasn't spa
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You know, suddenly there's these things in the headline that may not specifically have
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to do with like the tech stocks in general. But does that affect sentiment
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when you start seeing these things bouncing around like, oh ay, I went
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off the rails here and Tesla went off the rails here and here, What
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does that have much of an effect? Well, I think there's certainly headline
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stocks, you know, people pay attention to them, but I think it's
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more news and all these things are happening all the time, and this the
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centiment of the market determines how people react to it. I think, wow,
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what a great ide Yeah, because you know, things are happening every
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day in the within companies and it's just how people take them depending on the
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mood of the market. I think that is that is a real, real,
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good way to put it. That makes a lot of sense too,
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because it keeps the influence out of the realm of you know, kind of
6:10
these potsloine. The influence is what the influence is, and then we just
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lay our own personal interpretation on top of those things. Yeah, that makes
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a lot of sense. You guys all this morning, three zerre a four
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three four five fifty eight fifty eight threes or a four three four five fifty
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eight fifty eight. You can texting your questions to three zer a four non
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three five five zero zero eight kind of wrap up the broader market talk here.
6:28
But what are we looking for? What would just your common investor out
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there be looking for right now? As far as things, there's no reason
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to be concerned or worried or something like that if you're somebody that's in the
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marketplace. I mean, we've seen worse in recent history. You know,
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things were a lot worse than what it is right now. But what from
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a general standpoint, what are we looking for to start seeing things I guess
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trending back in the right direction, or positive news or something like that.
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What do we look for the first announcement of like an interest rate cuts where
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the the the inflation index actually comes in under expectations or something. I mean,
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are those kind of the pieces of good news that you hope for?
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Well? I think inflation certainly is is the key. You know, if
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we get a report that that looks better than it has the last couple of
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reports, that would help because that would that would make the interest rate cuts
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more likely to happen sooner rather than late. I guess right now we just
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want to hit the estimate because I think the last few times we've estimated a
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lower inflation that's coming higher. Yes, but you know when you look at
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the chart, it is a it is still a downward trajectory, right,
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It's just the pace of it is slowing, which really, when you think
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about it, is how most things happen. It doesn't doesn't happen all at
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once, and separate gas prices, they get up all at once again they
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come down very slowly. But but you know, generally when something's coming off
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a high, it will move it will move down more rapidly when it has
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farther to go, and as it gets closer to that that number or the
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bottom, generally you know you're gonna see things slow down and that, and
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that's what we see. And so I don't I don't think that's that abnormal.
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The reality is people in spite of hot prices are still consuming, They're
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still spending money, and uh that is uh you know that that that's good
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and bad. I mean, certainly it's economic activity, but it also keeps
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uh pressure on on inflation and wages and and and you know, competition for
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good. So uh, you know, I think that's been the big surprise.
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It's it's almost a a I guess the silver lining, uh that that
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the economy is actually still stronger underneath and than people thought it would be that
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and which has delayed the interest straight cuts. So it's a it's a kind
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of a strange uh you know relationship there and and in your and your job
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and what you look out for. You're you're an advisor, so you help
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people through their finances and planning for retirement and things along those lines. You
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you help people step along the ways. What I wonder is, although that
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there's this silver lining of people that still spend into the increased costs and stuff
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like that on the other side of the things that you have to look at.
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It does that also to you indicate a loosening of of our abilities to
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actually properly save and properly budget and things like that, Like people are less
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less reluctant to overspend on things now than what they may have been. I
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mean, in a way, although it's helping the economy, it also indicates
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that people are maybe a little bit more aware of loose with their finances than
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they need. Well, what you're describing there is really the economic cycle,
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right, Yeah, it's you know when when people feel good, they spend
9:41
money. When they spend money, they feel good, so they spend more
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money and eventually the fuel runs out, and and and the and the hangover
9:50
happens and they have to pay it back, and that creates these cycles that
9:54
we have in the economy. So, uh, you know, if something
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runs too hot for too long, you know that money has to come from
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somewhere, and and sometimes it's a lot of times it's borrowed money that has
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to be paid back. And if you're spending money that you're borrowing, whether
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it be an individual or or as an economy as a whole, you're you're
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spending dollars that you you know that that you'll have to pay back so you
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can't consume more in the future. You're choosing to consume it now rather than
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than than later. And so that creates economic cycles, you know, the
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the the ups and downs, and and there's usually a cause for a downturn
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in the economy. Uh in some areas, some something has gotten a little
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uh technical term out of whack, my favorite technical term, and uh and
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and and the cycle is basically, uh, you know, the process of
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it trying to heal itself. Oh yeah, that means and which it will
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do. I mean, the adjustments take a regression or the mean or or
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achievement to the mean of depending on which way you're going. It always happens
11:03
at some point because and and for those that have not participated in that may
11:11
find opportunities when that happens. Oh yeah, because they have the ability and
11:18
the dropouder and the savings and to take advantage of of of those downturns.
11:24
And that's yet another and we comment as from different directions all the time,
11:28
but that's yet another reason that it's a great idea to give you a call,
11:31
to give John a call, is because if you've been on the sidelines
11:33
for a while as well, and maybe your your plan is functioning just fine.
11:37
But if you've been on the sidelines, there's tools that are back to
11:39
being able to be deployed usefully for someone that has not been relevant in decades
11:45
in some cases that you can get back in and maybe look at some different
11:48
opportunities that to make your money work for you some So that's why it's worthwhile
11:52
to give John a call, give it an expert a call, ask some
11:54
questions, do some fact finding, because you might be leaving some money that
11:58
can do to go to work for you somewhere where it's being a little bit
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lazy and you don't want that money to be lazy. You wanted to do
12:03
some work for it. You don't want it to be lazy. Money is
12:05
simply a tool, and you know a tool that's setting in the toolbox not
12:09
being used, isn't isn't building anything. So there's all kinds of things.
12:13
If you if you had your retirement and lockstep and you felt great about it
12:18
for the last five or seven years, hey that's fantastic. You've done a
12:20
great job. But you might be looking at an opportunity where there's a where
12:24
you can bolster your retirement and really ship shore that thing. If you took
12:28
a took a look at what's available to you completely out there right now,
12:31
you can have John take a look at it. You can ask us questions
12:33
this morning and give us a call three zero four three four five fifty eight
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fifty eight three four five fifty eight fifty eight. You can tax s overy
12:37
questions to three zero four non three five five zero zero eight. But a
12:41
man take a break when we come back. I still I have some questions
12:43
I want to ask John a little bit more situational, some things that has
12:46
to do with what he does with retirement and how you can retire right.
12:50
You can give us a call at three zero four three four five fifty eight
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fifty eight. You can find out more about Fourth Avenue Financial online. It's
12:56
fourth Avenue Financial dot com. You spell out the whole thing. Fourth Avenue
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Financial dot Com located in downtown Charleston at wow. Thank you if I could,
13:09
John, could you could take that when I think about choked on my
13:13
own voice there, Yeah, one seventy Core Street, downtown Charleston. We'll
13:16
take a break and be backgright after this year. Listening to Retire Right Radio
13:18
with John bredet Fro Fourth Avenue Financial on five EDWCHS. The Voice with Charleston
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Retire Right Radio was sponsored by Fourth Avenue Financial, which is solo responsible for
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its content. Security is offered through jw CLL Financial member Fenricipic. Investment advice
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offered through jw CO Advisors. Fourth Avenue Financial, jw CL Financial and jw
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CO Advisors are unaffiliated entities. The opinions expressed by John Bredett should not be
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construed as specific investment, legal, or tax advice. All economic and performance
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information is historical and not indicative of future results. Investing may involve risk of
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loss of principle. Any tax advice on this show is not intended to be
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used by any person for the purpose of avoiding US federal or state tax penalties
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that may be imposed on such a person, and each listener should seek advice
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from their tax advisor or legal console on topics that arise from the show.
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John Burdett is not providing legal or tax advice. Nothing should be construed as
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gearing up for retirement? Don't navigate your financial journey alone. At Fourth Avenue
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retire Right Radio with John Burdett from Fourth Avenue Financial taking your calls at three
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oh four three four five fifty eight fifty eight or texts on three oh four
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nine three five fifty oh eight. Here, let's make sure your private READU
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positas. Thanks so much for suiting in on this this Monday morning, right
15:56
here on the radio, John Burdett is here with me from Fourth Avenue Financial.
15:58
You can get as a call this morning at three zero four three four
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five fifty eight fifty eight. Three zero four, three four five fifty eight
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fifty eight is a number that you can call in. You can find out
16:06
more about Fourth Avenue Financial online. It's fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Spell
16:08
out the whole thing, Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. You can like it
16:11
on Facebook by doing that same search and like the Facebook page. Be kept
16:15
up to date with all the things that are going on. You know,
16:18
interesting times have we talked about as far as how the market and things.
16:22
And we've been doing the show for long enough now we've seen even in our
16:26
even in our time of doing this show, you can zoom in and zoom
16:29
out, depending on what you're trying to relate to people, and you could
16:33
find, you know, a particular narrative one way or the other. But
16:37
that's not what we do. We don't talk about narratives. We talk about
16:38
the things that actually work and the things that can help folks with retirement.
16:41
And that's what the important thing is right now. So there are situations where
16:45
folks that are out there that either have it started their retirement, it's been
16:49
a while so that they've set it and forget it with their four to one
16:52
k that they have at they're at their workplace or something. And it's never
16:56
a bad thing. Even if you're relatively happy with where you are, where
16:59
you have your maybe you're one account or four one care, whatever it might
17:02
be, you may be surprised at what opportunities are available for you to make
17:04
your money work for you and where you can make that money earn faster for
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you if you just maybe take a time, take a little time, make
17:11
a phone call and see what things can do for you. Because although it
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works for you, that doesn't mean that there might not be a way to
17:18
make it work for you a little better. Yeah, no doubt, about
17:19
it. Higher interst rates have created opportunities and created in a way of penalty
17:26
that didn't exist a couple of years ago. You know, if you had
17:30
extra money that you were saving and it was just laying in your checking account
17:34
really earning nothing, there wasn't a big penalty than that because you couldn't go
17:40
find yield anywhere. Well you can now. You know if you're you could
17:44
be given up five percent if you have extra cash setting in your checking account
17:49
versus deploying it in some other type of secure vehicle that will pay five percent
17:55
in this interst rate environment. You know, if that's if that amount of
17:57
money is one hundred thousand dollars, that's five thousand dollars a year an extra
18:02
interest income you can earn that just wasn't available two years ago. So so
18:07
you know things have shifted, and if you haven't haven't updated your portfolio,
18:15
you know you could be leaving money on the table. Certainly in your retirement
18:18
accounts. You know a lot of people you mentioned set it and forget it.
18:23
You know when you selected those funds. If you're not checking those out
18:27
and rebalancing, it's hard to tell what your allocation is right you know,
18:33
you have the growth stocks have have outgrown everything in the last couple of years.
18:40
You know, if that was twenty percent or twenty five percent of your
18:41
portfolio, it could be forty plus percent. Now you know that that creates
18:47
potential for volatility when you're concentrated like that, and what happens as the years
18:52
pass. Chances are you're well, definitely you're getting closer to retirement. So
18:57
your portfolio has the potential to be more aggressive at the time that you need
19:03
it to be less aggressive if you just set it and forget it. And
19:07
so those are the types of things that you know, you don't have to
19:11
watch the market every day, you don't have to look at the news every
19:15
day, but every now and then you need to check under the hood and
19:18
make sure that the structure of your portfolio is correct and kind of like what
19:22
we talk about or you're not talking about baseball all the time. You're a
19:26
big baseball fan, and you know, if you're a batter with two strikes
19:27
on you and you know the Pictchert's coming in trying to strike, yeah,
19:30
you choke up on the bat a little bit. You know, you want
19:33
to have more control of where you can put the ball. Maybe you won't
19:36
hit the home run, but if you get it in player, get it
19:37
over the endfielding, you can get on base. It's like that at the
19:40
end of retirement, you know you're not taking the big swings anymore necessarily because
19:42
hopefully you're at the point right there where all you have to do is move
19:45
the runners along or you get the run in, or you know, whatever
19:48
analogy you want to put in place. But you choke up on the bat,
19:49
you choke up on your investments a little bit, and you want to
19:52
make sure you smooth those things out as you approach to retirement. You're not
19:56
going to get to that place if you're swinging for the fences every time,
19:57
if you're not aware of you are situationally in your retirement, that's right.
20:02
I don't think they teach that in baseball. They may not. Maybe maybe
20:07
that ages me, but but trust me that at one point in time,
20:10
it was a very uh yeah, yeah, you know, it's like home
20:11
runners strikeout and we'll pay you forty million dollars. Yes, or waiver has
20:15
taken over baseball completely. Now that's true, But still I think the analogy
20:21
generally generally holds on. And it's interesting too. I was curious as you
20:26
get folks in that maybe have not either worked with a financial advisor or you
20:30
know, they've they've done like their due diligence as far as having like an
20:33
account, but maybe they haven't paid off all their debts or they haven't really
20:37
taken a look at what they need to do to budget for their future and
20:40
to retire right properly. What is the most difficult hurdle that you have to
20:45
get across for individuals or for couples or something like that when it comes to
20:48
them to adhering to a plan. Is it paying off certain debts? Is
20:51
it taking a certain amount of discipline? What is it that the thing that
20:53
you have to get like Jedi mind trick people into understanding. Well, I
20:57
think I think the biggest thing is that the news that there's watching on their
21:02
TV is not the stock market. So that's still a major part. Is
21:06
that that is a major part. You know, those or the preconceived notions
21:11
of you know, if this election goes this way, it's going to affect
21:15
my my portfolio. I mean, that's that's big in a year like an
21:18
election year, right, you know, allowing external events affect your individual plan
21:26
and you have to be careful about that. That doesn't mean that events don't
21:30
matter, but but your actions matter much more than the events. So you
21:36
know, controlling your budget, you have to do that. You have to
21:41
have emergency fund set aside. You have to then save a proper amount depending
21:48
on your age, you know, ten to twenty percent depending on your age,
21:52
so you can accumulate capital that will will will keep earning for you when
21:56
you stop working, and and you and you have have to just check up
22:00
on that and make sure that that you're making progress and the market's going to
22:06
do its thing. It's going to go up sometimes, it's going to go
22:07
down sometimes, but you know history shows that goes up about uh, you
22:12
know, four times for every one bad year. So you know, that's
22:17
pretty good odds if you just participate the one thing that and ever since we
22:22
started doing the show, that's really bothered me, and it just bothers me
22:25
more and more because I don't remember when I was a little younger with the
22:27
quote unquote stock market, like the it's the economy stupid has been around for
22:32
ages. I guess that was hw Bush's during that era. So that's been
22:36
around for a long time, But as far as looking at the quote unquote
22:38
the stock market, that seems like a relatively recent phenomena for people to to
22:42
get overly uh specific about when they're when they're judging things. And what I'm
22:48
wondering is, because of the nature of the market, if you took any
22:51
four year period of a presidential of a four years that a president was in
22:56
office, is there any period in recent history or in history ever where if
23:00
somebody had an amount invested at the beginning of that term, and they had
23:03
an amount invested at the end of that term, all things being equal,
23:07
they didn't pull anything out or anything like that. Did anybody lose money during
23:10
that period of time, because my guests would be probably not. There may
23:14
be some occasions, depending on how the years fell and the elections, but
23:18
generally, you know, take two thousand and eight as an example. You
23:22
know, the market got clabbered. The s tob was down almost half during
23:26
that period, and if you were patient, it might have taken you two
23:30
three years to get that back, but it came back. It came back,
23:34
and you still and this is the psychology I think that you have to
23:40
overcome those type of experiences when you kind of take it on the chin,
23:45
can taint your sentiment for a long long time. I mean there are still
23:51
people that will come in my office and say, you know, boy,
23:55
I really got hurt in two thousand and eight. I mean that, you
23:59
know, two thousand and eight. That seems recent when you think of but
24:02
when you really start doing the math, that's quite a while. Again,
24:03
it was sixteen years ago, right, right, So people are still feeling
24:10
the effect of that. And some people are like, well, I changed
24:12
my portfolio then because I wanted to make sure that I secured my money.
24:18
So there are people that are still setting on the sidelines in very conservative accounts
24:23
that have missed the last sixteen years of the market. I mean, the
24:27
market's whatt up seven eight times since the bottom of eight. And you know,
24:33
the market didn't fail in eight. It failed, it went down.
24:38
It took it on the chin, but the market is alive. And well,
24:41
if your patient and used the market in the right way and have it
24:45
as the long term portion of your portfolio. Now you were in trouble in
24:51
eight, if that's what you were relying on solely to generate retirement income,
24:56
well that was a structural problem of your portfolio, not a problem of the
25:02
market now. I was having a casual conversation with somebody a couple of weeks
25:04
ago, and you know, I'm no expert of these I was like,
25:07
hey, you should listen to the show sometime, you can call in,
25:08
you know whatever. John has some really great advice, some things you want
25:11
to keep in mind that I've learned from John. And then I actually heard
25:15
this person said, well, you know, ever since the whole Ron thing,
25:17
I just haven't trusted that. I'm like, man, do you even
25:18
know what that was? Not only was it a quarter of a century ago,
25:22
but the things that robbed the people from Enron has nothing to do with
25:26
anything that could affect you now at all. I mean, it's just not
25:30
that's not relative. Ron was not the stock market. And it's just weird
25:36
that he was like, well, it was my retirement. It's like,
25:37
not your retirement. That was a very specific situation. What are you talking
25:41
about Enron for? And it's weird because they just pull it from the headline.
25:45
It's like they remember that from the headline it hurt people's retirement. It's
25:48
like, oh, well, I want my retirement hurt it you don't work
25:49
for enrol, that's right. And you know there are changes over the last
25:56
you know, twenty thirty years where pensions are less relied on sure, and
26:00
so you know, more of the responsibility to plan for retirement is in the
26:06
individual's hands now. And that's going to be a blessing or a curse depending
26:10
on how you how you utilize it. You know it is if you utilize
26:15
it properly, you're more likely going to be far ahead managing it properly than
26:22
even the old pension days. But you have to utilize it properly. You
26:26
have to you know, save and invest over your working career adequately, and
26:30
you have to allocate it properly. It takes more discipline than it did well.
26:33
It takes a little more discipline, for sure, but the opportunity is
26:37
greater. Yeah, And that's that's the thing you need to keep in mind.
26:38
By the way, we stuff a few minutes left this morning. When
26:41
it give us a call three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight
26:42
threes are four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. You can text over
26:45
any questions you have to three zerre a four non three five five zero zero
26:48
eight threes are of four non three, five fives, zero zero eight is
26:51
the text on number if you'd like to get it in as well. So
26:53
you get someone in your office and you're talking to them and maybe they're they're
26:57
watching too much of the news, they're reading headlines or on Facebook too much,
27:00
oh lord, whatever it may be. But you finally kind of pick
27:04
through that those weeds a little bit and you get you have a breakthrough.
27:07
And I imagine that that breakthrough is actually quite substantial because then you can play
27:11
in the open field. You no longer have to like couture words or you
27:15
know, find find ways to get through. So, what's usually like the
27:19
first steps in planning that you'll have folks, once you're on like a one
27:23
to one basis where in your relationship, what are the first steps that you
27:29
start taking having people take a look at and getting their their financial ship right?
27:33
Do you start right away with debts? Do you start right away with
27:34
cash flow? What do you start? What do you start with there?
27:37
Well, every situation is different. I mean there are there are people out
27:40
there that you know, they may have a quarter of a million dollars in
27:42
the retirement plan that they have twenty thousand dollars of credit card debt. Well,
27:48
you know this over here is great. This is not so great.
27:52
Really, the debt is the issue there. I mean the the assets.
27:56
Certainly allocating when properly is a important because you already have those saved up.
28:02
But clearly there's a budgeting problem if you have those type of consumer debts,
28:07
and that really needs to be addressed if you really want to secure your future.
28:12
That's always the first thing to do, especially now that credit cards some
28:18
of them are you know, twenty five, twenty eight, thirty percent,
28:22
that's expensive debt. You are never out earned that in the market consistently,
28:26
and so the best investment is to get that cleared up. But there again,
28:33
that requires a discipline and an understanding of how you're in that situation to
28:37
begin with, because if you clear that up and you don't change your habits,
28:42
then you're going to be right back in the same mess of a year
28:45
or two from now. And so you have to understand one why you got
28:51
into that, and so you can make sure that you don't get back into
28:56
that position, because when you do that, you're you're you're wasting the most
29:00
valuable resource you have in the investment world. And that's time. And because
29:06
time gives you I mean, it doesn't solve everything, but it certainly gives
29:08
you the opportunity that the more time you have, the greater opportunity that you
29:11
have. The more time you have, the more the work is done by
29:15
the market rather than you, Right, so you have to work harder at
29:18
it the longer you wait to start or or the more time you're spending digging
29:22
out of the hole that you're in. And and that doesn't mean you shouldn't
29:27
start digging out of the hole if you're in the hole, but but there's
29:32
a cost to that. And and you know, compound interest works best over
29:36
time. And and the longer you wait to write the ship, you're gonna
29:41
you're gonna have to work harder. I know that not every shoe fits the
29:45
same foot, so to speak. But for example, when one of the
29:48
things I always admired about about my mom, for example, who's been retired
29:52
for some time now, but she worked at a job that regularly gave her
29:56
bonuses, she almost never spent her bonuses, Like her bonuses almost always went
30:00
into her investment account. I mean, throughout my whole life, like that,
30:03
was something she would tell me was like, oh, I got the
30:06
bonus from the dot and she might take, you know, a couple hundred
30:07
dollars off the top of it if it was a Christmas bonus, but it
30:11
would be more substantial to that, and the fast majority of it she would
30:14
funnel right into her retirement. She did it through her whole life, right,
30:17
and it paid off very well for her. That may not taking one
30:19
hundred percent of a bonus check or something may not work out for everyone to
30:22
put it into their retirement. But you should really look at if you get
30:26
free money in some way, shape or form, whether it be hundreds or
30:29
thousands of dollars, you should really look at redirecting a good portion of that
30:33
to do work for you in the long run and put it in a retirement
30:34
account of some kind and one of your strategy parts there. You have to
30:40
have it do some work for you. Yeah, no doubt about it.
30:41
I mean, anytime you have an influx of money, you know, look
30:45
at your situation as a do I have credit card debt? If so,
30:48
that's probably the best place to knock it out. If I'm paying fifteen twenty
30:52
thirty percent on those credit card interests. The important thing, though, is
30:57
to understand that you have to get your budget and discipline right or that's not
31:03
going to solve the problem. You know, the problem is not the credit
31:07
card debt as much as is the habits that made the credit card debt.
31:11
Do you recommend for folks once they get these cards paid off and different things,
31:14
to go ahead and just cancel them out? I mean potentially, I
31:17
mean, certainly there's a tempt It all depends on the individual and the discipline
31:22
level they have, but certainly there's temptation if you have it at your wallet.
31:27
The old thing used to be, like when I was grown up,
31:30
people there was the thing like, well, you take your credit card and
31:32
you put in the freezer and like a glass of water, and then you
31:33
have to like break it before you can spend anything. That's not the case
31:37
anymore. Everything is like instantly you're able to play. It's you know,
31:41
you used to have things that people and people can still use them, like
31:45
envelope systems where you have, oh, here's your grocery money, and I
31:48
love it, and you budget that. But you know, unfortunately, in
31:52
the modern world, so many of your transactions are done on the internet,
31:56
do that require you know, you can't. You can't use an envelope to
32:00
pay for your your Amazon delivery, that that that you get to the house.
32:05
So just so much of the world now is digital. It's it is
32:07
difficult to go without a some sort of credit card. So so you've got
32:13
to have some sort of discipline built around that, because some people want the
32:16
protection of having a credit card instead of it being related exactly to their their
32:21
their bank account, because then if something does happen, you're not affecting your
32:23
real money. You have different protections in place and different things along those lines.
32:27
Yeah, yeah, I can unders the credit card has lots of fraud
32:30
protections things like that that a debit card doesn't necessarily have. So really it
32:35
comes down to discipline. You know that the the uh, the tool of
32:39
a credit card. I mean, that's just like anything else. It's it's
32:44
not good or evil, it's just how you use it. One of those
32:46
split to use it. One of the those cool things that happened to me
32:50
when I was in my mid thirties and I finally went debt debt free.
32:52
I had sort of bruise credit. It was getting better as I paid everything
32:57
off and when I got to the point where I paid it, I was
32:59
completely debt free all that. I didn't even have a mortgage. I was
33:01
completely debt free at the time, had sold my house and everything. So
33:04
I basically shut down all of my credit cards and everything. I left one
33:07
open that I that I even still have now, But that actually didn't help
33:12
my credit, right, And you come to learn those things later on.
33:15
You actually have to be generating something positive in order for your credit to go
33:21
up. You're not going to just pay off everything shut them down. If
33:22
you had Bruce credit, that doesn't mean it's going to get better. You
33:25
gotta you gotta find ways to resuscitate it as well. So for every person
33:29
it's going to be different as far as that goes. But sometimes just pulling
33:30
the plug isn't necessarily the right answer if you're looking to play in that space
33:35
at some point in the future. Yeah, and and credit is one of
33:37
those things. I certainly am no expert at credit, but even my my
33:43
kids, you know, I was like, oh, I need I need
33:44
to get my credit up, and I need to do this that trick and
33:46
this trick. Yeah, I don't know about that. You know, here,
33:50
here's no here's what you need to do. You just need to if
33:52
you take a debt out, pay it off, don't worry about it,
33:55
and and things will work. You know, it might take a year or
34:00
two, but if you consistently do that, that's how you get a good
34:02
credit score. Yeah, I feel that. And this is a little off
34:07
off topic here, but my personal opinion is that the services that you sign
34:12
up for that's like your credit warnings and will fly your credit for this and
34:15
if your accident, that is a mechanism to it actually is a panic inducing
34:20
mechanism to probably try to force you to make unsound financial decisions to purchase other
34:24
products at some point in time. Yeah. And the reality is, if
34:27
you're trying to get a better credit score to buy something new car or even
34:31
a house, and the financial institutions are telling you no, there's a good
34:37
reason for that, right. You know, they're in business to lend money.
34:40
They don't make money unless they lend money out. And if they're telling
34:44
you know they've got a good reason for that. A little soul searching,
34:46
if you were honest with yourself, you know why you're getting that response,
34:50
absolutely, And so the best thing to do then is look at your situation
34:54
and get it in order. I mean, because once it's in order,
35:00
you know you can you can borrow all the money you want for these things
35:02
because that's their business. Right. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I
35:07
have to say back, in a different life, I used to write mortgages
35:10
in the early two thousands. I did that a lot. I've I wrote
35:14
hundreds of mortgages. I've evaluated hundreds of credit reports because we used to have
35:17
to do that on our own. Very rarely. Sometimes people have mistakes made
35:22
that you can help them, and I used to help people walk through those
35:23
and correct them. But usually if somebody had had a terrible credit report,
35:28
they earned the terrible credit report. Very rarely were we able to find any
35:30
actual mistakes that we're in there. And that's just unfortunately the way it goes.
35:34
You have to be careful, right, you know, people approach the
35:36
bank like, oh, I'm asking them for a favor, and really you're
35:39
the customer. You are the one in control if you've if you've managed your
35:45
finances correct, because they will give you the money without question, I mean,
35:49
with very few questions. If you've taken care of yourself in the past,
35:52
they you know you are their customer. They want to push that money
35:55
to the table and you take it. They just want to make sure they're
35:58
protected and doing it. John Burdett with Fourth Avenue Financial, let me make
36:00
sure I get the information out there. Hopefully we've cued some question up in
36:04
your mind where you need to follow up a John, and you can do
36:06
that by calling three zero four seven four six seven down seven seven three zero
36:09
four seven four six seven nine seven seven. You can get a hold of
36:12
Fourth Avenue Financial located one seventy Court Street, downtown Charleston on nine. It's
36:15
fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. You spell out
36:19
the whole thing. You can do that same as search on Facebook and find
36:21
it over there. John, thank you so much for your time. All
36:22
right, Thanks having care, have a great day everyone on five AD w
36:24
c HS five ED w c HSAM ninety six point five. That'th Charleston one
36:30
oh four point five Cross Lanes on WVRC Media station. We're proud to live
36:36
here too.