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Inflation and the American People - Chris Markowski #5905 · Financial Survival Network

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I mean, I focus on the things quite finely. And you know,
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my clients are most concerned with not what a television is going to cost them,
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the items that they're going to spend on every single day. And I
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think that's most Americans, and that's getting worse instead of better. So they
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they can give us a line of bowl and tell us, oh yeah,
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it's coming down and it's not going up as quickly. But here in this
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country we're getting smacked up side the head now. And I have the ability
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to travel and different places around the globe, and when I see what other
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people are paying for groceries compared to what we're paying for groceries, something's amiss
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here. So something's not right. We've got breakdowns when it comes to regulation,
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over regulation, if you will, and Washington, DC, what's spending,
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a myriad of problems where we can't get out of our own way,
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and the amage Americans supper. You're listening to Carrie Let's Financial Survival Network where
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you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to thrive, and today,
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trying times, you need the Financial Survival Network now more than ever.
1:04
Go to Financial Survival and Network dot com. And get your free newsletter and
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gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever, and welcome you are listening
1:19
to watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Hey,
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it's a mid September of twenty twenty three. Can you believe it?
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We actually made it? There were times it didn't look like it. Well,
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markets have been pretty strong lately. Is that good? Is that bad?
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Does that mean there's nothing else available? And that's why you're putting your
1:41
money there? Well, we got some inflation numbers today, and it looks
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like perhaps the Fed has some breathing room here, or perhaps these numbers are
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total fantasy numbers and things are much worse than they seem. Well, we've
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got to Watchdog on Wall Street dot com. Chris Markowski with us. If
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you got a question for him or myself, I urge you to send us
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an email will get you an answer. K l at Krylutz dot com.
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That's the email address, Chris. It's been quite a while. It's really
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great to have you back on the show. So inflation is done and we
2:16
should all be celebrating. Right right, last time I checked, actually pay
2:23
the bills in my house and the grocery bill is not coming down, the
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gasoline bill is not coming down. My electricity prices continue to rise and go
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right on down the list. This fantasy that's being pitched to us that you
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know, everything is getting back to normal, are awesome, is patly absurd.
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Even when they had the headline inflation at two percent, it was pat
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lee absurd. I mean, I focus on the things quite lightly, and
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you know, my clients are most concerned with not what a television's going to
2:53
cost them, and the items that they're going to spend on every single day.
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And I think that's most Americans, and that's getting worse instead of better.
3:02
So they they can give us a line of bowl and tell us,
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oh, yeah, it's coming down and it's not going up as quickly.
3:08
But here in this country we're getting smacked upside the head. Now. You
3:13
know, I have the ability to travel and different places around the globe,
3:16
and when I see what other people are paying for groceries compared to what we're
3:21
paying for groceries, something's amiss here. So something's not right. We've got
3:25
breakdowns when it comes to regulation over regulation, if you will, and Washington,
3:30
DC, it looks spending a myriad of problems where we can't get out
3:34
of our own way and the amage Americans supper. Hey, I know what
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you mean, and you think, hey, well, I'll go grow my
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own food, catch my own fish. I went out with a buddy fishing.
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There are four of us on his boat. Now, granted he's got
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a couple of the big engines on that boat. We didn't go out for
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that long. We caught twenty but look to be red snappers. And I
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said, oh, that's great. And you know, I got a food
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here two three days. That's going to save me money. Then we went
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and pulled the boat up to the pump and it was four hundred bucks to
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fill the tanks. So this food, we probably had twenty thirty pounds of
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it was similar to red snapper. I take the call, yeah exactly,
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So what do we save? Right? I mean he was nice, he
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paid for it. I would I offered to chip in, but he paid
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for it, so it didn't cost me anything. But luckily he doesn't like
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fish, so we had more. But you know, it's what are you
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supposed to do? Gas is up to close to five bucks a gallon now,
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right? Yeah? And I had no end in sight. You know,
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yet he take a look yet, I mean, it's it's everything.
4:51
You take a look at the the average you know, price of an automobile,
4:55
a new automobile here and the strench I had that there's one car right
4:58
now, that new car United States or Mitsubishi clips that is just so just
5:03
under twenty thousand. I think it just went over twenty thousand dollars. Average
5:08
price of a new car. You know, it's close to forty grand here
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in this country. The average price of a hole I actually did inflation adjusted
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numbers compared to what it was in nineteen eighty and if I should adjusted,
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it's hundreds of thousands of dollars more than it was back then. And easy
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costs that Americans have to pay every single day. And you know, it
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just gets this overall feeling. And this is why you take a look at
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the polls and the people's feeling in regards to the economy feels like you're on
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a perpetual hamster wheel that keeps getting faster and faster and faster. And that's
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you know, that's that's tough on the America people. It's tough on the
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Psyche other the American people here in this country. You just you can't really
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many people just chance even get ahead of Hey, well, you know,
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and the problems that you're describing, it's all government, self inflicted wounds.
5:56
Right, well, no government, but we vote for these people, and
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that the unfortunate thing. You know, I got this. You've got a
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uniparty here, you've got your donkeys, and you've got your elephants. But
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no matter who's in charge, they're always they're always looking for more spending,
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more projects. There's never any thought of actually reducing our debt and deficits.
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I got to throw up in my mouth every single time I see that guy
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with the aviator glasses tell us that he's cutting deficits two twillion dollars twenty twenty
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three, two twillion dollars and deficits and more government spending coming down the pike
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and handing subsidies out to this automaker and that automaker. And it's it's non
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stop, it's perpetual. And the sooner that we can get people with the
6:40
positions of power that are going to get the government out of the way and
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let the free market prevail, the better off we're going to be. Yeah,
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well, I don't know when that day is coming, Chris, but
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I'll tell you. You know, when you look at how prices have gone
6:56
up over the years, Like you're in the York, the tolls tolls and
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bridge tolls have got up like twenty times faster than the so called rate of
7:08
inflation. Taxis on subway travel, your coffee shaming cream ain't go right on
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down the list, everybody, everyday items you know that I did. That
7:21
song I would get on my show was from the Jungle Book. The bare
7:25
necessities that should be the inflation index should be their bare necessities inflation index the
7:30
stuff that you have to buy every single day to live on. Yeah.
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Yeah, Well, one of my favorite inflation measures is the cost of a
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Thanksgiving dinner. And I would also put a Fourth of July barbecue because those
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things don't really change over time and you get a real indicator. And last
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year Thanksgiving dinner was up twenty two percent. I don't remember exactly how much
8:01
the Fourth of July barbecue is up, but substantially. And yet we're supposed
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to believe them that inflation is under control, right crazy, Yeah, that's
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that's they're one of the grand wives that that's out there, no makes effect
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that the FED to really do anything about it, and it's stout coward these
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members of the Fed. Are you go back to to Paul Volker, Yeah,
8:22
did Key raise rates, but he also you know, chastised the Congress
8:26
in regards to Hey, listen, you're going to have to cut back here.
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You know, spending does matter. You know, they've bet a pretty
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much a credit card U for our federal government. All the profit that's spending
8:37
that's going on that needs that needs to be cut back. I mean,
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the FED wants to really stop the inflation we're dealing with right now. They
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got to can almost quote that ridiculous Kernel from the Vietnam War, you need
8:50
to destroy the village in order to save it, and he had that's what
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we need to have. One. We need to get a deep procession,
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almost a depression to get to get gasoline prices down. And we don't want
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that. Yeah, you know, it was just in Columbia, and your
9:05
average lunch there is about five to ten dollars, probably closer to seven or
9:13
eight everything there. The food we eat at the best restaurant in Metagine up
9:18
on the mountains, and it averaged out the best restaurant like you know,
9:24
you're talking like boloo quality and we're looking at you know, forty five dollars
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a person for that kind of dinner. You know, so see crazy,
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you can't get out of Starbucks for a few people with that. At this
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point time, I said, every summer I'd do my vacation where meat.
9:45
You know, my wife's family s week we go to Greece. So we
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go to the islands there. It's it's way cheaper to go on vacation in
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Greece than it is to go anywhere here in the United States. The same
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thing. And we go with a bunch of people, you know, my
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kids and their friends. They go out. I got a call, you
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know, Dad. We had all this food to sulakee and beers and wine.
10:03
It was fifty bucks. Yeah, I mean, it is what it
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is. I mean, it's just we're constantly being banged over the head here
10:11
in this country, and you know, it doesn't make any sense, yep,
10:15
yep. So so as an individual, obviously all these things are going
10:20
on. You need a new car, you got to pay for what it
10:22
is. How do you manage how do you invest your money? How do
10:26
you save enough money? To have anything to invest, to have anything left
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over. I think many of you concerned about that. Well, yeah,
10:35
again, I've been tracking inflation prior to going parabolic and the FED telling us
10:41
it was transitory. This has been going on for some time. And again,
10:45
you know, i'd get given a realistic approach to my clients and rather
10:50
than the stupid commercials that are on TDV where you're going to retire. You
10:52
know, school teachers are retired with vineyards and nappa and that nonsense that they
10:56
try to shut down your throat. You gotta have to have the realistic approach.
11:01
And sometimes it's delaying and retirement for certain people there. Maybe it's retiring
11:07
from that job that you had and maybe working a couple of days a week
11:09
to the three days a week you might not want to do it. I
11:13
think it's a healthy thing to do quite and frankly, you keep your mind
11:16
as active as possible. Through my experience, it's one of the things you
11:18
had. But you know, you got to deal with the terrain. I
11:22
mean, you got all the people wishing, oh I wish we had this
11:24
in the defined pension systems that yeah, I understand all that, but also
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the demographics are changed where people who are older are living longer and healthier lives.
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Yeah, has a mortality come down here in this country, tap,
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but that has more to do with drug overdoses and younger people die that it
11:41
does older people. And these pensions that were designed that worked for a while,
11:46
we're an essence SPONSI schemes to some degree because they weren't taking any of
11:50
these actuarial realities into account. In the same way that solcial security is going
11:54
to be cut by almost thirty percent within the next ten years, that's a
11:58
reality. You can pretend that it's not there. The two leading candidates for
12:03
the presidency right now, you've got Donald Trump and Joe Biden, they don't
12:07
even want to I acknowledge that that problem even exists. And it's there.
12:11
So these are things that you need to do. And again I don't try
12:13
to tell people you know you want to enjoy. To me, it's not
12:16
so much financial plan it's financial preparation. You're saving and you're putting money away
12:22
and your dollar cost averaging so you can take advantage of opportunities that are going
12:26
to present themselves throughout life. And you have to be honest. Okay,
12:30
you've got to have that that socratic know thyself and not that know thyself,
12:33
know what the realities of the terrain are. And these are the realities of
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the terrain right now, right this is are going up. I don't see
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them coming down any time. So this is what you're going to be dealing
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with. So you have to prepare for it. And he did it.
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We're seeing credit card balances off at levels that we ever see average ships over
12:52
ten thousand dollars per households here in this country. You don't want that to
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not put I mean you have to take that extra job where you have to
13:00
make some changes within your household budget, do it due to it. Don't
13:05
get yourself behind the apall compounding can be the royal road to richest. We
13:07
could also crush you as well. And again, like I said, not
13:13
Mary Poppins, no spoonful of sugar going to make the medicine down. This
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is what's presented. This is what we have to deal with. I was
13:18
thinking of a spoonful of something else, but hey, you know, look
13:24
I help companies, businesses that aren't profitable, that are losing money, that
13:30
might even be in a death spiral. Turnaround, and you know what.
13:33
The first thing we do is I look at every single expense that they have
13:37
in that company and I say, look, I could do it, or
13:41
you could do it, but you're cutting ten percent off minimum today. We're
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not leaving this room until you cut ten percent off. You know what,
13:50
individuals, you me easily could cut ten percent off of our monthly spending without
13:56
even thinking about it. We just don't really necessarily have the incentives to do
14:01
it. Well, it's what of it. This is like a conversation that
14:05
I have with with people that come to us on a regular basis, and
14:07
this is not This has been going on for decades, notice for thirty years.
14:13
It's been going on for years. You get, you know, on
14:15
the Fassan, you get a wealthy, you know, young family. It
14:18
looks wealthy. You know, they got the car, they got the boat,
14:22
the members of the club, and they come down and they want to
14:26
start, you know, planning for you know, their retirement and planning for
14:28
their kids education. And I start looking at what you know they have,
14:33
and like I said, the facade, you know, nice watch all these
14:35
things, but there are tens of thousands of dollars in debt with credit cards
14:39
that are paying over twenty someth to present, and I have to present them.
14:43
I said, what do you think I'm going to be able to do
14:46
for you? Do you think that I'm going to be able to show on
14:48
a consistent basis or maybe on a rare occasion. I'm got to be what's
14:54
a credit card race out twenty five twenty six percent? Thirty? I think
14:58
I think so little hard he makes these charging thirty plus percent. Chris,
15:03
You've got to pay this off. You have to make changes. But now
15:07
we live We've always lived in a world way to you know, the whole
15:09
concept keeping up with the Joneses. But social media is taking keeping up with
15:13
the Joneses and is put it on steroids, and people are It's amazing how
15:18
many are unwilling to make those things. They get themselves further and further and
15:22
further into a hole then rather make some simple, necessary changes that would put
15:28
them on a much better path. And again, you know, we all
15:31
know what happens with families that have all sorts of financial issues. That's where
15:35
you have the divorce and all sorts of underbeck distances as well, and it's
15:39
self inflicted. So true. And you know when you do have a family
15:43
that's in financial trouble. It's not just the parents, yes, the kids,
15:48
because even if they don't tell the kids what's happening, the kids know.
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Kids know there's something wrong, and it really makes an impact, a
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negative impact in your kids' lives. So you owe it to your children to
16:00
do this. Hey, if you were you know, I just saw a
16:03
statistic yesterday. The average American has ten k worth of credit card debt,
16:07
all right, that they carry, all right, not that they pay off
16:11
monthly. And so you know what, if you don't go to Starbucks for
16:18
a couple of months, maybe six months, maybe you shouldn't go at all.
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If you've got ten thousand worth of credit card debt, and you know
16:26
what, you keep the car going a couple of years longer, and you
16:33
don't buy the fancy clothes. Maybe you even downside your house depending on your
16:37
mortgage. You know, that's another thing. There's good debt, there's bad
16:41
debt. Well right now. You know, Robert Kiyosaki used to say that
16:45
a house is just a consumer item, and the debt that you incur for
16:49
it is effectively consumer you know, expenditure. However, now at a three
16:56
percent mortgage with an intriflation raging at whatever really is not what the government says.
17:03
And the fact that even if you downsize, unless you pay for pay
17:07
cash for your new home, it's going to cost you more to downsize than
17:11
it is to stay where you are. Yeah, these are all all various
17:15
different things that you have to factor in. You know, we we've seen
17:18
that this again a school gold standing thing people end up becoming, uh now
17:23
score. I kind of try to explain to people, you know, it's
17:26
it's it's a home. It's a bill that you have to pay. You
17:29
gotta look at as a bill money. You know, that's it. You
17:30
know, that's that's you know, if you make money on your own,
17:36
you also back up the factor in all your interest statements and the upkeep.
17:38
But everything that goes along with being on homeowner, and it's extensive. It's
17:42
not like if you're you're buying an S ANDP index one for for thirty years
17:47
or anything like that, because I'm telling you right now that should be index
17:49
one is you're to well outperform your home over thirty period of time. You
17:53
know, with everything that back there's into it, it's something we have to
17:56
have. Okay, we're not bad scaling from a tree. Your home means
18:00
a lot of things to you, and it should be in regards to memories
18:03
and time spent with your family. It shouldn't be something that is causing you
18:07
undue stress. Absolutely, Yeah, being house or is one of the dumbest
18:12
things. Keeping up with the Jones is all of that, keeping up with
18:17
the Kardashians, whatever it is. You know, it's ridiculous notion. And
18:22
because aside from everything else, when you're making your happiness contingent upon your relative
18:30
material riches, you will never be happy because Bezos and Elon Musk are always
18:37
going to have more than you. You'll never be able to compete with them.
18:40
So that should not be the price of internal happiness. But also we
18:45
can never forget we need a certain amount of resources, of financial resources to
18:52
sustain life and to sustain our quality of life and health as well. But
19:00
so many people, and I was one of them, just put health and
19:03
all the other considerations on the back burner trying to make money. Hey,
19:07
money is important, but health is way more important. One thing I've found
19:12
out. You can lose money and get it back, but losing health and
19:18
getting it back is a much more difficult proposition. Oh. I talk about
19:22
that a pretty regular basis on my program in regards to you know, your
19:30
financial preparation slash planning is the fact that you know it has to be something
19:34
that it has to be a life still has to be habitual. You have
19:40
to cheat care of yourself throughout your life because again, the costs that are
19:42
going to be involved as guess what the doctors might be able to keep you
19:48
alive longer, but what type of quality of life of you you're going to
19:52
have at that period of time, and you know the costs that are going
19:55
to be involved that you have to continually try to, you know, keep
19:59
yourself going. If you're not healthy. Again, we don't eat well here,
20:03
We really don't. I mean you could see it everywhere the process foods.
20:07
You know, you got it. You need to get away from that
20:11
and believe it or not, you can eat healthy here in this country at
20:14
a much better price than you are eating. Jokes, not to mention the
20:18
fact that you're going to be You're gonna be more alert, you're gonna be
20:22
better at what you do. It's just a myriad of things that we again,
20:25
we need to learn sometimes from other cultures to some degree that do it
20:29
much much better than we do here in the United States. Stay away from
20:32
the fast food. Unfortunately, the other countries have been learning from us,
20:37
as witnessed by the fact that you go anywhere in the world and you see
20:41
McDonald's all over and Starbucks and you know, fast food KFC. You know,
20:47
China has worse type two diabetes than the United States, and it's all
20:52
avoidable unnecessary. You know, Like the ultimate peer trade right now is you
21:00
buy Eli Lily because they've got that terremphant side and you sell McDonald's. Perfect
21:07
pair trade right there. You go, Oh, well, I don't know,
21:12
you know, people might think that, you know, that's the thing
21:15
that I can take this pill and I can continue to eat this jock,
21:18
which you might not work out for you. Well, not as much though,
21:21
because it kills your appetite. But hey, and we're not encouraging you
21:26
to go out and get a prescription for Wigovi or moon Jaro. Uh.
21:33
You know, it's super expensive, but if you're morbidly obese and you're starting
21:37
to have rapid health deterioration, that stuff could be a godsend. Chris,
21:41
Yeah, again, and I encourage people all the time that you said,
21:45
you know, you want to get yourself in shape, you start by going
21:48
out on a walk every single day, and you started there, build on
21:52
it every single day and in no time you've got to see leaps and bounced.
21:56
But you have to again, you have to take that first at absolutely,
22:00
you know. One of the biggest scams to me are health clubs,
22:03
and I belong to one for forty plus years. But the scam is go
22:07
to the gym and lose weight. No exercise is certainly a pillar of good
22:14
health, one of the pillars along with healthy diet, along with adequate sleep,
22:19
stress management. But you will not lose weight at the gym unless you
22:23
are a runner or a major aerobic person who swims for a couple of hours,
22:30
or you stay on the treadmill, you won't lose weight. Is only
22:33
going to make you hungrier. I mean, the most I can burn off
22:37
in one session in the gym is eight hundred calories three times a week.
22:41
That's a pound. It's nothing, and yet they tell us get into shape,
22:45
go to the health club. That's not it. Lose weight, control
22:48
your diet, go to the gym to maintain and improve your health, not
22:53
to lose weight. I'm a big weight lifting guy myself, and I got
22:57
I do it. My office is we have to build engine there and I've
23:00
done it my entire life. But I love it, and I can tell
23:03
you this day. I mean, see these guys that are you know,
23:06
been, the type of shape that they're in. It's it's eighty ninety percent
23:11
diet. That's really is. You got to work out, absolutely, but
23:14
you know it's it's garbage in, garbage out like anything else. You've got
23:17
to really advantage that. I mean, if you can't, you know,
23:18
lift weights and eat junk and expect to lose weight or getting any sort of
23:22
shape. Yeah, that's what I did for about thirty five years and it
23:27
really did. Hey, it did help me, I will say that keeping
23:30
muscle strength and various other things. I think it got me through COVID in
23:37
one piece. But I was never an optimal condition like I am now and
23:41
I still go to the gym three to four times a week. So yes,
23:45
JIM is essential to health, but it is not going to make you
23:49
lose weight. And yet it's marketed New Year's resolution. Hey, you go
23:53
to the gym like actually like a week or two before January first, said,
23:59
man, this place is crowded, and then like you go back after
24:03
January first, it's still crowded, and then all of a sudden, a
24:07
funny thing happens February first. Jim's as empty as it ever was. You
24:12
know, funny, I mean, I think. But again, unfortunately so
24:17
the psychea human beings, as they expect everything to happen quick and easy.
24:21
And you know, I was saying, you know, we Murkowsky investors,
24:23
Everything in life that has leading value and worth involves work time and effort.
24:27
It's the same problem you have with investors too, thinking that that there's some
24:32
quick and easy way to become wealthy and there's not. There's no short cuts
24:37
out there to going and building. Well, there's no short cuts in regards
24:41
to getting yourself back into shape or Yeah. Like I said, it's all
24:45
going to involve work time and effort, and you expect some sort of quick
24:49
fix. I ain't gonna have. Yeah, and it's it's time. It's
24:53
an investment, right. One thing we didn't talk about, like when you
24:57
have these clients come in and you ever tell them, look, go get
25:02
another skill, Go get another income source, invest in yourself so you can
25:07
produce more cash flow, because that's always an option as well controlling costs,
25:12
but increasing your income. That's why I don't let people are younger people.
25:17
So I'm going to sit They said target dates for their retirement. I'm like,
25:21
what are you talking about? You have no idea what life is going
25:23
to present to you from now until then. You want to be able to
25:26
take him as why you want to save money and put money away so you
25:30
can take advantage of maybe that business opportunity or whatever it may be, and
25:33
let life come to you rather than you try to, you know, fly
25:37
in your life away. So like I'm by calling a financial preparation not financial
25:42
planning because we all know the saying. You know, you want to make
25:45
God laugh. Tell them your plans. Yeah, best laid plans of mice
25:49
and men often lead astray. Hey, so best place to find you these
25:55
days is still your your regular irregular site to Watchdog on Wall Street, toogonwall
26:03
Street dot com. There you can find my podcast, radio show, television,
26:08
a parents, just columns and everything that we do available right there Watchdog
26:12
on Wall Street dot com. All right, excellent, Hey, you got
26:15
a question for Chris myself, whether it's health, whether it's finance or self
26:22
improvement, shoot us an email KL at Carylots dot com and make sure you
26:27
go to the site Financial Survival Network dot com. Uh show notes this interview.
26:33
Just click Chris's link, It'll take you right there. While you're there,
26:36
sign up for your free newsletter, Prince. Always a pleasure. We'll
26:38
have to do this again so anytime. Thank you so much for having me,
26:41
Thanks for listening to carry Lutz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's
26:48
trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survival Network dot com.
26:52
Financial Survival Network now more than ever, The wis