Latest / The Financial Exchange Show / Election anxiety is causing many to make financial mistakes

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Election anxiety is causing many to make financial mistakes · The Financial Exchange Show

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Veterans Development Corporation. This is the Financial Exchange with Chuck
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Zada and Mike Armstrong.
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Speaker 2: Kicking off hour two of the Financial Exchange. Here Chuck,
1:15
Mike and Tucker with in we got stocks are they're
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slumping a little bit?
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Speaker 3: Shlumping. They're slumping. Don't need that word. What do you mean?
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I think it's great. Okay, it's not a slump. It's
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a slump.
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Speaker 2: Hmm. It's just kind of like womp, you know, a slump.
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It's like kind of downbeating. But a slump is like womp.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. I was gonna say a slump would have to
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be a few days in a row.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, whereas a slump is just kind of you relax
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and droop. Okay, that's what stocks are doing now. They're
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relaxing and drooping.
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Speaker 3: Got it.
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Speaker 2: And the Dow is doing that to the tune of
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two hundred and ninety two points about three quarters of
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a percent. SMP is down thirty one points about half
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a percent, in the Nasdaq down seventy six points about
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four tenths of eighty percent right now. One of the
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reasons for this the ten year treasury selling off, continuing
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it's upward move after the FED started cutting short term
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rates ten years up to four point one seven percent,
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now up nine point five basis points. We've got the
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oil movement up as well. West Texas Intermediate up eighty
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two cents barrel, that's seventy dollars and four cents. But
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the TRIPA national average for gas prices still sliding down
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another two tenths of a cent to three seventeen and
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five tenths of a cent. As we continue to try
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to make one more run at three dollars a gallon,
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we'll see if we can get there nationally. This is
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just a reminder that if you are listening to us
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in the southeast, you're like, what the heck are those
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Yankees talking about? You know, gas is already below three
2:36
a gallon here, thank you. I'm glad to hear that
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it is. It's just not for us up here and
2:41
you know, basically anywhere north of Virginia. Also, if you
2:45
take a look at gold up eleven dollars and ten
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cents announced to twenty seven to forty one and ten cents,
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yet another all time high that we're making on the
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yellow metal. And so that's what we've got moving in
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markets today. We got stocks down, bonds down, gold up,
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oil up.
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Speaker 3: I don't know that there's much that I can think
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of that really shifts the narrative on interest rates anytime soon.
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I mean bad data would Yeah, yeah, I know. And
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that's kind of what I'm thinking, is like, what bad
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data are we going to get? I guess we can
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get some really bad earnings forecasts, like nothing about the
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previous quarter is going to get you there. But if
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you get a couple of companies saying, now we're seeing
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some real weakness here, and they got to be big companies,
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but you got a couple couple companies saying, you know,
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UPS tells you that they're seeing terrible freight volume for
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the next.
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Speaker 2: We don't need any planes anymore. We're going to covered
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wagon because the demand is so low.
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Speaker 3: You get a couple of bad forecasts from giant chip
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companies or something like that, maybe that does it. But
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now we don't get a lot of data for the
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next few weeks here, and that which we do is
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still kind of murky, So you know it, I don't
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see a huge catalyst for rates down anytime. And then
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you know, near near future.
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Speaker 2: Mike, do you know that there is going to be
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a United States election. I had unfortunately heard it's it's
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in fifteen days. Yeah, yeah, indeed, And there's a whole
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group of people who I'm just gonna quote here from
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the this is the New York Times, I believe. Quote
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in Westport, Connecticut, a thirty five year old who works
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for an investment firm is holding off on making any
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financial investments until after the election. Across the country, in Kenosha, Wisconsin,
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a man who works in sales said he would love
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to buy a house and get out of his rental
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both election day less than a month away. He can't
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possibly make such a colossal decision. Call it the election
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shopping slump, slump because actually what they wrote they didn't
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write slump, they should have. And basically what we end
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up with is and you've seen this noted by a
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number of people in different industries, including major executives of
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airlines automakers, saying, hey, we're expecting some weakness around the election,
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because I guess there's a large percentage of people that
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pretty much say, hey, I can't make any financial decision
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until the election happens. Now, in certain edge cases, I
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can actually understand this as an example if you are
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a business that is considering a major expansion, you might say, hey,
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I want to see if you know there's any change
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in control of you know, the Houses of Congress or
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you know, the presidency. Maybe I get some new tax
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credits or something like that that come in that caused
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me to reshape how I would expand or not.
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Speaker 3: I understand that completely. Yeah, if you're buying a car,
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what are we really doing here? Yeah? I don't really
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understand the interviews from say the thirty five year old
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in Westport, Connecticut who works in an investment firm, or
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the man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Do you think that that guy.
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Speaker 2: Works for Bridgewater, because that's the first thing that I
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thought of, just given that Bridgewater is based right down there.
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I think it's either in Westport or you know, wherever
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it's right down that way. Could I'm like, did they
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just interview some guy from Bridgewater, like on his way
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out of the office or something.
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Speaker 3: So here's the other logical stuff that I could point
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to that would actually make sense here, because I'm just
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not sure I buy the argument that people are too
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apprehensive and nervous about the election to actually do shopping.
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But a few practical things here. I guess if you're
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looking to buy a home, I think this is misguided.
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But if you actually think Kamala Harris is going to
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deliver you a twenty five thousand dollars tax credit to
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buy that home, then maybe you put it off. Furthermore,
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just in terms of what we are seeing today, there's
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like you turn on the TV, or you drive down
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the highway, or you browse the internet. Generally speaking, we're
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slammed with ads for products right now. You're slammed with
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ads for politicians. So I mean the mere fact that
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more of our eyeballs are being spent on political ads
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rather than car ads. Maybe it has more to do
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with that than it does anything about apprehension. Because I
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don't understand why somebody would be nervous about buying a
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mattress because of the election, And I have a really
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tough time connecting those things. But I do understand why
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you might see fewer mattress ads leading up to the
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election because that mattress firm matt I don't like the
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word mattress firm. That mattress company cannot afford as many
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ads this time of year, this time every four years
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than they can during a regular October.
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Speaker 2: But like, just as an example, again, they have some
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great anecdotes in here. Susan Cordigan, who owns Big City
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Bride in Chicago, started noticing the trend a year ago
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when many of her clients conspicuously avoided picking dates in
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what is usually prime Chicago wedding season October into early November. So, like,
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you say you're not gonna get married, I really love
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this woman.
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Speaker 3: I love you so much that I need to.
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Speaker 2: Harris gets me right, like, what what are we doing here?
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Speaker 3: It's a wedding.
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Speaker 2: Like, I'm sorry, I'm I'm usually at least kind of
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understanding about things.
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Speaker 3: I'm yeah, I'm not understanding of this at all either,
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And so I'm trying to come up with other reasons
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that it could be true, because it objectively he appears true.
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I don't think that companies make these statements without them
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actually believing. We're actually seeing evidence that every four years
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their sales trip dip.
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Speaker 2: Well, so there's some interesting stuff that they actually found here.
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And one of them, hang on, I need to flip
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to the right page on this just to make sure
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that I have it right.
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Speaker 3: Here we go. So this was looking at housing sales,
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and an analysis of twenty years of housing sales data
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in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Miami found that sales dipped
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in the second half of even years, so not just
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presidential elections but any election, and rebounded in odd years
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in the twelve months ending in November of each year.
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In even years, sales were down year over year by
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five and a half percent in Los Angeles, two and
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a half in Manhattan, and two point six in Miami.
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In the odd years, they were up by four point
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six in LA, eight point five percent in Manhattan, and
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ten point two percent in Miami. The pattern was not
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restricted to historically Democratic strongholds either, as it held in
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Suffolk County, New York, which typically votes Republican, with sales
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down point eight percent in election years and up by
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point eight percent in off years. So I don't know
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what's going on here, And look, maybe I'm the dummy,
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you know, maybe everyone out there is like, Chuck, you
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you can't you can't buy anything in November of an
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election year, Like don't you know that you can't do that?
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But like, what what happens if you buy a house
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in an election year and someone else gets elected? Usually
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you get to keep the house still. Well, okay, but
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it's one and I think it's a dumb premise to
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delay a purchase. But I will admit that I talk
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to people all the time who are voting based on
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fear and express their fear frequently that if their candidate
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isn't elected, then the economy is going to fall apart
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and therefore my home price. And I think that's dumb.
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Speaker 2: But I'm just expressing the like, we can't be so
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afraid all the time, man, Like, here's the thing. Yeah,
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I'm gonna go on a little tangent if you're afraid
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right now, like all like angsty and like your insides
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feel like Tony Romo speaks. If that's you right now
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in history, what would you have been like at any
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other point in history in the past. Because by just
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about any objective measure, outside of like a five year
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period in the nineteen nineties, this is pretty much the
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best time to be alive in the history of the world.
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You think about the healthcare problems that we don't have
10:44
to deal with right now. You think about the endless
10:48
wars that have dominated human history, and the sheer number
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of people that have died. It's not to say that
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you aren't, you know, seeing some wars going on right now.
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But my point is, if if you could go back
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in time and say I'd want to live there, I'm
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happy to point out all the things that you'd have
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to deal with then that you don't have to deal
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with today. And it's not to say that today's perfect. Like, look,
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if I could get rid of social media and make
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sure that like everyone never uses it ever again, I'd
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love to do that. If we could, you know, find
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a way to actually, uh, you know, get back away
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from you know, kids needing eight thousand extracurricular activities every
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day in order to get into you know, college, I
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think that would be wonderful too. But there's so much
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stuff now that gives me hope compared to what the
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world used to be that if all you see is
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the bad stuff, I just think you're doing yourself a disservice.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's traditionally a great way to get
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people to stop being nervous and anxious.
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Speaker 2: Tell them to stop being nervous and anxious. I know
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That's why I'm doing it.
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Speaker 3: No, like we honestly, yeah, I agree with you on
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all these fronts, but we clearly have something going on
11:58
in society that is making people. It's too much information.
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It's too much information. It's like social media and too
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much information.
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Speaker 2: Don't stop listening to us, but stop listening to everybody else.
12:13
Speaker 1: Breaking business and financial news first throughout the day, only
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Speaker 2: Mike, do you know where the name Applebee's comes from? No, Tucker,
12:35
what about you? No, So it's not actually named after
12:39
anyone named Appleby interestingly enough, who was founded by Bill
12:42
and TJ. Palmer back in nineteen eighty. Okay, and they
12:46
wanted to name the restaurant applebee just because they wanted to,
12:51
but apparently it was already trademarked, so they also considered
12:54
naming it cinnamons and peppers before they arrived at apple
12:57
Bee's spelled with two e's instead of why.
13:03
Speaker 3: Okay, so it just has no meaning.
13:04
Speaker 2: No, Okay, maybe, okay, I just I just find it
13:09
kind of cool. I like to go through like origin
13:11
stories and different restaurants and stuff like that, Like it's
13:14
I don't know like Warby, but is like there a
13:16
thing called an applebee? Is there a plant or spice
13:18
somewhere that I'm not familiar with that's Alby. It's it's
13:21
a name I know, but I don't know. Texas at
13:23
six point seven three six two thirteen eighty five. If
13:25
you have any insight there, mich let's talk a little
13:28
bit about auto insurance rates.
13:31
Speaker 3: We've clearly seen these, you know, multi year.
13:34
Speaker 2: Now rises in auto insurance rates this year according to
13:39
the CPI. I mean again, like this is nationally when
13:42
you look at this, if you take a look at
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where auto insurance has gone on the CPI, you're still
13:47
talking north of fifteen percent annually. Its sixteen point three
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percent over the last twelve months. Uh, if you will
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get Massachusetts is just a state that I have data for.
13:58
Cost of auto insurance in Massachusetts is by almost thirty
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eight percent in the last two and a half years.
14:04
So you're talking about just significant jumps in the cost there.
14:09
And so the question that people are asking is, look,
14:12
what can I do in order to manage that cost?
14:16
And there's no great answers, by the way, No, there's
14:18
nothing that's perfect. It's all again, insurance is ultimately about
14:21
managing risk, and so I think that if you look
14:24
at it through that lens, you can find some different options. So,
14:27
first things that you can do, and again this is
14:29
something where you want to actually talk with your insurance
14:32
agent to understand what you're doing and how your policy
14:35
is set up, because there are a million different permutations.
14:38
Number one, hey, do I want to think about changing
14:41
my deductible on my auto insurance? If you're not familiar
14:46
with what a deductible is and how it works, it's
14:48
basically like how much do you have to pay out
14:50
of pocket before the insurance takes up and covers the
14:53
rest of it. So by raising that, you reduce the
14:56
amount that insurance potentially has to cover, and so that
15:00
helps to reduce your payment for said insurance. The downside
15:04
is if you have an accident, you're unhooked for more money.
15:07
That's kind of a problem.
15:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, other ways to reduce your coverage. In other
15:11
ways you can you know, you can get rid of
15:13
certain coverages.
15:14
Speaker 2: So you might say, look, let's say that I have
15:16
you know, insurance that right now covers you know, the
15:20
cost of a replacement vehicle through a rental. You might say, well,
15:23
maybe I don't need that for some reason, or I'll
15:25
take the chance that I don't need that. You might say, hey,
15:29
I think I'm a good driver, maybe I don't need
15:32
you know, full collision insurance and can do limited collisions
15:35
such that, Hey, if if I'm the one who causes
15:38
the accident, I'll have to pay for it, But if
15:40
someone else causes it, I don't have to.
15:43
Speaker 3: Is that even legal? A mess? That's the other thing
15:45
to know about some of these things is that your
15:47
state the collision was comprehensive.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So there's all kinds of different things that
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you can do. There are some basic requirements that different
15:58
states have in terms of, you know, the different coverages
16:00
that you need to have on a vehicle in order
16:03
to operate it legally. But again, if your cost have
16:06
been going up and you haven't actually you know, taken
16:09
some time to look at the policy, preferably with an
16:12
age who can walk you through. Like what do all
16:14
of these different things mean? Like what the heck is
16:16
optional bodily injury to you know, Like, again, it's a
16:20
little confusing when you look through the fifteen different things
16:23
that you can change, take some time and actually talk
16:26
to someone about this, because I'm not saying that you'll
16:29
be able to, you know, get your rates back to
16:31
where they were four or five years ago. But maybe
16:34
you can take you know, five to ten percent off
16:36
that premium somehow in a way that still doesn't put
16:39
you too financially at risk and gives you a little
16:42
bit of breathing room.
16:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:43
Speaker 3: I mean where a lot of these insurers make a
16:44
boltload of their money is that people. It's a sticky business.
16:48
You don't generally change your insurers every couple of years,
16:50
and that's how you can actually save money is by
16:52
doing so and shopping it every few years. The other
16:54
thing that this is resulting in, though this is not
16:56
a Massachusett's only issue, auto insurance rates across the country
16:59
are the ware and Massachusetts is certainly not the worst
17:03
of it either, Like no across the country, this is
17:06
a big, big issue. There are a lot more uninsured
17:09
drivers today out there, which I think is only legal
17:14
and maybe New Hampshire. I think at every other all
17:17
other fortnite states it is illegal to drive without car insurance.
17:21
And you know what that means is you know more
17:24
uninsured drivers out there. You know, that's going to be
17:26
a higher pensity for a hit and run. That's going
17:28
to be a higher propensity for you know, damage to
17:31
your vehicle that is not covered by somebody else's insurance,
17:33
which is also going to drive up the cost of
17:36
insurance for all of us who continue to buy policies
17:38
out there. Taking a look at markets as we head
17:41
towards the bottom of the eye.
17:42
Speaker 2: Down now off three hundred and sixty nine points, almost
17:45
about zero point eighty five percent. S and P's down
17:48
thirty seven, about two thirds of a percent, in the
17:50
Nasdaq down ninety six points, about half a percent. Ten
17:53
New US Treasury now up nine point three basis points
17:56
to four point one point six four percent, So you
17:59
get stocks and bonds in sell off mode today, and
18:03
that's where we are as we head towards the bottom
18:05
of the hour.
18:05
Speaker 3: Quick break here.
18:12
Speaker 1: Bringing the latest financial news straight to your radio every day.
18:17
It's the Financial Exchange on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
18:22
Text us at six one seven three six two one
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18:27
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18:29
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18:34
Speaker 3: Uh, folks, I want to talk to you about the
18:36
live broadcast coming right up here on the Financial Exchange
18:40
to me Thursday of this week. It's October twenty fourth,
18:43
just a few days out. We're doing it down on
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Cape cod and Hyana's at the Double Tree Resort in Suites.
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Come check it out. We're going to be doing a
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your questions. We'll then be hosting a free lunch in
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seminar at the Double Tree Resortant Suites in Hyanas. That's
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again Thursday, October twenty fourth. Joining us will be Ed
19:02
Lambert from the XTK Morning Show, And after the show,
19:06
we're gonna be sticking around for an hour or two
19:08
and just really doing a kind of live Q and A.
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We've done this a few times in the past and
19:13
it's always a pretty good time and really an interactive
19:17
piece here where we have plenty of things that we
19:19
would talk about, but that's what the show is for.
19:21
We do that every day for two hours. We really
19:24
want to feel your questions about the state of the economy,
19:26
about you know, political promises that are being made on
19:29
the campaign trail, and just where this whole thing might
19:33
be going down the road and where you should be
19:35
focused heading into twenty twenty five. If you would like
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to register, like I said, only a few days left
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here you can go to Armstrong Advisory dot com slash
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events Again. It's Thursday, October twenty fourth live broadcast of
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the show, followed by a free lunch from the Armstrong
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Advisory Group. It's a double tree resort and suites. You
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can go to Armstrong Advisory dot com slash events or
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give us a call at eight hundred three nine three
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four zero zero one.
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Speaker 1: The proceeding was paid for by Armstrong Advisory Group, a
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20:17
Speaker 2: Piece from the New York Times here it's the second
20:19
one that I've seen, not from them, but second one
20:21
on the topic of home equity lines of credit in
20:23
the last maybe two or three weeks, and it's talking
20:27
about how balances on home equity lines of credit have
20:30
risen along with home equity loans, and.
20:33
Speaker 3: Basically this actually I think gets it.
20:35
Speaker 2: You know, the fact that hey, this is a good
20:37
thing that you're seeing right now in that it's not
20:40
the excess borrowing of two thousand and four through two
20:44
thousand and seven that you're seeing.
20:45
Speaker 3: Well, explain that because a lot of people would probably
20:47
associate something like this a floating rate mortgage on their
20:50
home a second mortgage on their home as precisely that,
20:54
so a couple things on this.
20:56
Speaker 2: You're exactly right in that a home equity line of
20:58
credit is a it's again basically a second mortgage on
21:03
a home, and it is a floating rate loan. The
21:06
key difference as opposed to, like some of the second
21:08
mortgages that were taken out previously, are twofold. The first
21:11
is the regulations and even desire to provide The scale
21:17
of loans that was were provided back in two thousand
21:20
and four through two thousand and seven dramatically different. Back then,
21:24
you'd be like, hey, give me a second mortgage up
21:26
to one hundred and ten percent the value of my home,
21:28
and the bank would be like, how about one hundred
21:30
and twenty percent. Today, most of the time, in order
21:33
to get the best rates, you're limited to under sixty
21:35
or seventy percent, and most lenders limit you to under
21:38
eighty five percent total in terms of the amount that
21:40
you can borrow against the value of your home.
21:42
Speaker 3: So that's number one. Number two, if you're.
21:44
Speaker 2: Trying to deduct that home equity line of credit interest
21:48
on your taxes, the only way that you can do
21:50
that is if you actually have proof that you are
21:52
doing a home improvement project and not buying a boat,
21:55
car or anything else not associated with the home with it.
21:58
So that's another piece there. Also, when we look at
22:01
the overall level of equity in homes compared to the
22:05
pre financial crisis error, far greater levels of equity as well,
22:10
and far lower default rates going in. So you look
22:14
at just about any factor that would lead you to
22:16
be concerned about this type of behavior, and you're just
22:19
not there. So this is one thing I think this
22:21
is a great example of Hey, just because you read
22:25
certain words on a page doesn't mean that those need
22:28
to be words that make you nervous. You have to
22:29
look at the overall context and in the context of
22:33
this housing market and these levels of housing related debt
22:37
and foreclosure and so on and so forth, there's not
22:41
really anything here that concerns me. It's not in my
22:44
top thirty forty list of things that keep me up
22:48
at night.
22:48
Speaker 3: And homecrity lines of credit or homecrity loans are actually
22:51
what makes a lot of sense in this environment because
22:54
it means you're probably sticking with your first mortgage at
22:56
that lower rate, whereas in yours past you might have
22:59
done a cash out refine nance to do that project.
23:01
That's just not attractive right now with rates where they are,
23:03
And so the home equity aligned, while it has its
23:06
potential dangers and risks, is a perfectly logical solution to
23:10
cash needs at this point.
23:11
Speaker 2: Some time, I want to talk about this piece from
23:14
the Wall Street Journal that I think is just a
23:18
great piece that unfortunately is going to result in nothing happening.
23:21
Speaker 3: True.
23:22
Speaker 2: It's titled It's time to bring four to one ks
23:24
into the twenty first century, and what it talks about
23:27
are a couple really basic things. Hey, every time you
23:30
leave a job, you go to a new place and
23:32
there's a new four to one K and you got
23:33
to either do the work of rolling it over or
23:35
you leave it there and then you forget about it
23:37
and you don't know where it is, and you can't
23:39
get the statements because they're mailing them to your old address.
23:42
And then you die and someone has to go on
23:44
some website to figure out if you accidentally left money behind,
23:46
And it's this whole thing before you even get into
23:51
like investment options and fees and stuff like that.
23:53
Speaker 3: Right if you haven't had experience with this, like you know,
23:57
any investment advisor by default has worked on for a while.
24:00
One K is a fair bit in one way or another.
24:02
And sometimes it's a fairly simple process where you just
24:05
tell them like, oh, I'm at this new employer and yeah,
24:08
I want to roll it over. And you know, even
24:10
in the most simplest format, they still have to send
24:12
you a massive check for your balance and then you
24:14
have to go redeposit at the new company. So that's
24:16
the easiest type of solution. In less easy solutions, they
24:21
may require you to print out a form that might
24:24
be ten pages long. You might need to send that
24:26
to your HR department. They can get a notarized and
24:30
may or may not have contact information for who that
24:33
HR person is anymore. They need to oftentimes, like Chuck said,
24:37
get it notarized. It can be a genuine, real hassle,
24:42
and is not surprising to me that there are a
24:44
band in four to one k's, four O three b's,
24:46
four fifty seven's all over the place, and for you know,
24:50
whatever reason, this is also far worse of a problem.
24:55
Usually from what I see with hospitals, teachers, publicansitutions tend
25:00
to be far worse on this type of thing than
25:02
private organizations. For again, I'm not really sure why.
25:06
Speaker 2: So the ideas that are talked about in here are
25:09
kind of a couple different ones. The first is, hey,
25:11
can you, you know, add some level of portability to
25:14
four oh one K such that if you move from
25:17
one job to the next, you don't necessarily need to
25:21
change your account. And the answer is, look, in theory,
25:23
you can, But the actual mechanics of how four oh
25:26
one K plans work under ARISA means that you basically
25:30
can't under that umbrella the way it's currently constructed. It's
25:33
just not built to do that because the plan is
25:37
administered by the employer. Ye, and why would the employer
25:40
be like, yes, you left, and I'm still gonna have
25:43
the liability of you know, making sure that you're contributing
25:46
from somewhere else into this plan. No, Like, that's there's
25:48
a whole mess there. The other thing, if we just
25:51
talk about logistical items, remember that as part of the
25:53
Secure Act two point zero, which passed two years ago, now,
25:57
beginning in two years, if you are in the super
25:59
cat area of age sixty to sixty three, employers will
26:04
be required to allow you to make that contribution. Basically,
26:07
employers will be required to require you to make that
26:10
contribution through a WROTH four oh one K. Employees are
26:14
having like plan, custodians are having so much trouble doing this.
26:17
This was originally supposed to go into effect this year,
26:20
and they pushed it back two years because they were
26:22
like that change is too hard. Now, is there a
26:25
perfect world where hey, when I go into a new employer,
26:30
in addition to giving them my direct deposit account information,
26:33
I give them my you know, personal four oh one
26:36
K information and they do my retirement deposits there and
26:39
call it a day. Sure, But as long as I'm dreaming,
26:42
I'd like a purple and pink pony, and that's just
26:44
not happening.
26:45
Speaker 3: Unfortunately. Let's be clear about some of this. I mean,
26:47
some of these are self interested, right, like if you
26:50
are a constodian one custodian, you don't want the money
26:54
to leave you. You make money on it. But there's
26:57
also a good chunk that's set up here in this
26:59
way for security reasons, and.
27:03
Speaker 2: ERISA does exist for some really good reasons as well well, Like.
27:06
Speaker 3: You don't just necessarily want to be able to give
27:09
your new employer or information and they be able to
27:11
roll your money out of your old plan and just
27:13
put it into the new one. That represents a bunch
27:16
of like theft concerns. On my view, anything that you
27:19
do in the space to make this easier opens it
27:22
up to scams too. Right, it wouldn't be that difficult
27:25
for me to register a business and say, oh yeah,
27:27
I'm Chuck Zada and I want my four oh one
27:31
k rolled over here, and if it's an automatic process. Again,
27:34
there are ways around this, but it's going to require
27:39
a pretty big investment that I see zero appetite for,
27:42
where at least people in the meantime is navigating what is, admittedly,
27:46
even from somebody that works in the industry, a very
27:48
confusing area of personal finance.
27:51
Speaker 2: The biggest thing that I would do just to make
27:52
things easier for people. Look, we've got eight trillion different
27:57
there's not actually that many. There's like eight different types
28:00
of retirement accounts. Maybe a dozen more. There's maybe a
28:05
couple dozen of them if you get all the really
28:09
weird stuff that's out there. Yeah, there's there's probably a
28:11
couple dozen. There should be like one.
28:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, they should make the rules the same across the board.
28:19
Speaker 2: Hey, this is the the four to oh one Z plan,
28:24
you know, and regardless of regardless of who you're working for,
28:29
how you're working, whatever it is, this is how much
28:32
you can contribute. You can choose if you want, you know,
28:35
the traditional or Roth version. I think that's basically the
28:38
only option I would give, and other than that have
28:41
at it. Yeah, by the way, why does why does
28:45
Roth get all the publicity in terms of like the
28:49
traditional irate isn't named after anyone, but like no one
28:53
even knows who Roth is.
28:55
Speaker 3: It's a senator or remember the house. I don't remember,
28:58
couldn't tell you. I think he's a senator, that dead
29:00
senator now.
29:01
Speaker 2: But it's someone who is in Congress. Yeah, but why
29:03
do they get on Is that the only person who
29:05
came up with this?
29:08
Speaker 3: You know? They could also last thing on this, The
29:12
IRS could make it a lot easier to find stuff
29:15
that's been lost. They're the only group that's getting reports
29:18
on all this stuff every year, Like hey, if you
29:21
have a four oh one K, they're required to send
29:23
a notification to the IRS every single year. And so
29:26
while we're talking about all this, like, IRS, you could
29:28
make it a little bit easier for me to discover
29:30
where exactly any of my stuff is in case I
29:32
lose I think a lot of blame lands on you
29:35
if you lose a ten thousand dollars or any dollar
29:38
four o one K. So I'm not trying to get
29:39
people out of this entirely, but it does happen, and
29:42
they can make it a little bit easier to track down.
29:44
Let's take a quick break here when we return stack Roulette.
29:49
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30:49
Speaker 3: Mike, what do you got for stack Roulette? America's continued
30:52
loneliness epidemic is taking new form in a talking pet collar,
30:58
which is kind of like a chat bought for your dog.
31:01
I guess which I mean again? Fun idea. You strap
31:05
it to your dog's neck, just like was it the
31:06
Incredibles where they have the talking dogs? No, that was
31:10
up and up they had talking dogs. Thank you? Yep, yep,
31:13
you're right, uh, and it will talk back to you.
31:16
You can you can speak to your dog and it
31:18
will have a pre recorded voice that uh speaks back
31:22
to you. So from what I can tell it is
31:24
doing nothing to read into gestures or behavior from the
31:28
dog in order to interpret it. Just kind of a
31:30
fun toy. It seems like it's going to be called
31:33
the Shazam, which is not related to the Superhero movie
31:38
with isn't that Shazam Shazam shack? No, that's that's Cuzam.
31:45
Speaker 1: I know.
31:46
Speaker 2: Shazam was was another one that came out more recently,
31:49
like ten years ago or so.
31:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard it was terrible. Yeah, okay, probably had
31:54
the rock in it.
31:55
Speaker 4: No, it didn't have the rock I'm seeing, yeah, zach
32:01
Zachary Levy LEVI sure, fine.
32:05
Speaker 3: I don't know if you pile DVDs to watch again.
32:07
If you can find a product that is meant to
32:11
specifically address the American loneliness epidemic, these things are like
32:15
two hundred more than that, Oh my god. College starts
32:18
at four hundred and ninety five dollars for cat and
32:20
five hundred ninety five dollars for dogs. There's also subscription
32:23
fees of one hundred ninety five dollars a year for
32:26
the cat and or two hundred and ninety five dollars
32:29
for the brain Boost service, which a rep firsh Zam says,
32:33
is quote what brings all the truly sentient qualities such
32:37
as empathy, reasoning, social awareness, and self awareness. What. I'm sorry,
32:41
but we're kind of starting to reach peak stupid here
32:45
and here's reach peak. No no, no, no, no, no no.
32:47
Here's the problem with peak stupid. Keep exceeding every time
32:50
you think you're there, there's more. Yeah, I saw one.
32:54
Speaker 2: I can't find it right now. I was looking forward
32:56
because I saw it this morning. It's a service. It's
32:59
an AI service that basically like monitors your parents phones
33:05
and emails and stuff like that, and then sends you
33:08
an alert if it thinks they're feeling like lonely and
33:11
you need to reach.
33:12
Speaker 3: Out to them. And I can't think of anything more
33:15
soul sucking and dystopian than having to spend like someone
33:19
actually making the decision like, oh, I'm gonna spend money
33:22
on a service to make sure my parents aren't lonely
33:25
instead of, I don't know, maybe spending time with your
33:28
parents your self, you ungrateful little whatever. I can what
33:33
that exact same service, except rather than telling you that
33:36
they're lonely, it's just an AI that pretends that it's
33:39
you in college. Well, this chats with them anyways, to
33:41
like see how they're doing. Like, it's pretty close. It's
33:44
pretty dark close to it.
33:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just the problems that we're now trying
33:49
to solve are going to take away the last remaining
33:52
vestiges that we have of being human. It's we're heading
33:56
for a really dark place. When it's hey, AI, take
34:00
care of my parents so I can order more door Dash.
34:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that is where we're headed. I can't tell.
34:07
Loneliness epidemic is going to be treated by AI chatbots,
34:11
which are going to make us more lonely.
34:12
Speaker 2: Mike, we're heading for freaking the Like I didn't know
34:16
that Wally was a documentary.
34:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like, sorry, I.
34:21
Speaker 2: Can't be bothered because I get eight screens in front
34:23
of my face. I don't want to get up. Bring
34:24
me the food day doesn't hold up well, holds up
34:29
very well in a terrifying sort of way.
34:31
Speaker 1: Though.
34:32
Speaker 3: Yeah it's a good one. No, no, no, it's fine. I
34:43
enjoy it. Wally, how are you doing over there? Well?
34:48
Speaker 2: Do you ever buy any lottery tickets? Modery em?
34:56
Speaker 1: All right?
34:57
Speaker 2: Anyways, Mega millions, Speaking of dystopian lottery, ticket prices going
35:01
from two dollars to five dollars.
35:03
Speaker 3: Talk about inflation.
35:04
Speaker 2: Your jacking price is up by one hundred and fifty
35:05
percent on the Mega millions.
35:07
Speaker 3: It's a big story.
35:08
Speaker 2: Here's the reason why Americans don't start buying now until
35:11
it's over a billion dollars, and so this will get
35:14
it over a billion dollars faster, so you can have
35:16
more larger jackpots. Because everyone likes. Everyone likes to be like, hey,
35:22
I'm going to be the one who wins that, when
35:24
really you're not.
35:26
Speaker 3: And also even just the fantasy of winning a billion
35:30
dollars versus half a billion dollars, does anyone have a
35:34
meaningfully different dream on one versus the other? So confused
35:38
you could lose both pretty easily. You know, it's me.
35:42
Speaker 2: I bet it's actually fairly easy to spend your way
35:44
through that if you if you really want to, yeah,
35:47
you know, quickly, let's take a quick break for the
35:50
rest of the day. We'll see it tomorrow on the
35:52
Financial Exchange