Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 03.11.25 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss About this episode Are you dreaming of an early retirement but worried about making costly mistakes? In this episode, Wes uncovers six critical errors to avoid before taking the leap. With recent trends of companies offering buyouts and encouraging early exits, it's more important than ever to be prepared. Wes explores the shift in retirement expectations, from the traditional model to the modern reality, and discusses how to navigate this changing landscape. Don't let these common mistakes derail your early retirement dreams. Plus, Christa shares your #AskWes questions and Wes gives his take. All this and more on the March 11, 2025, Ask an Advisor episode of the Clark Howard podcast. Submit your questions at clark.com/ask. We hope you enjoy our weekly Ask An Advisor episodes, in which Christa and Wes discuss investing and retirement savings in depth. Let us know what you think in the comments! Learn more about Wes: Wes Moss, CFP® Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:16 Speaker 02 Welcome back to Ask an Advisor. I'm Krista DeBias.
1:20 Speaker 03 Wes Moss.
1:21 Speaker 02 Wes Moss, who is a fiduciary fee only advisor, among many other things, talented broadcaster, author, and you have, how many books have you written?
1:31 Speaker 03 You're so nice, you're so kind. Couple. I wrote about 10, 11, 12 years ago, wrote, "You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think," "Five Money Secrets of the Happiest Retirees," and then the follow up to that several years later was, "What the Happiest Retirees Know."
1:49 Speaker 02 And you've done tons of research in addition to being an advisor, being a broadcaster. I don't know how you, when you sleep. And you have four children.
1:57 Speaker 03 I do have four kids.
1:58 Speaker 02 Four boys.
1:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:59 Speaker 02 So, pretty impressive. And now you're helping us out and answering investment questions that come in from the audience, complementing what Clark does with all the consumer information he provides and answers that he gives. And we're really loving this and the audience seems to be really enjoying it as well. So, thank you to everyone who's tuning in every week, watching on YouTube.
2:20 Speaker 03 And you know, look, the, the way I'm answering these could be right, could not be right. This is financial questions are so, there's such a unique DNA that this is just my best guidance. And I'm help, I've done this for 25 some years and I've seen a lot of these situations. I've seen people in early stages of retirement and they're just getting saving. People who had big life events, big money events. Most people are saving their way to retirement, but we're all going through the complexities of all the rules and investment options. And so I'm just bringing kind of just the real life guidance that I've been able to do for a lot of years and trying to help here. Hopefully it's working.
3:04 Speaker 02 I think it is. And something we heard about a lot, I haven't heard about it so much recently was the FIRE movement, you know, to retire early. But a lot, a lot of us would love the ability to at least know we could retire early, that we don't have to work, you know, until we're old and unable to physically work anymore. And so I know you're going to talk about that today in the podcast.
3:26 Speaker 03 Right. So again, a lot of the research that I've done over the years has yes, been the habits of happy versus unhappy retirees, but the theme here is financial independence as early as possible. That's the retire sooner concept. My podcast is called the Retire Sooner Podcast. And the thought of just getting to financial independence a year early is music to my ears. Three years, five years early. I think FIRE, the concept of, hey, I want to be financially independent at age 35, I guess it's possible, but my concept around getting to retire sooner was, is not 35.
4:05 Speaker 02 Right.
4:05 Speaker 03 It's, it's more like if you can retire at 62, you're doing great. 55, amazing to have financial independence. And the early retirement trends are continuing to happen. So I want to talk about six, six mistakes and we'll do three now and we'll do three in the, in the next segment. Three things we need to make sure we avoid. Big mistakes that if you're retiring early, you've got to have in mind. So just recently in the news, two giant companies are saying, hey, we want to reduce our workforce. Chevron, giant oil company, reducing something like 20% of their workforce. Facebook, reducing their workforce by thousands of people. It's just something you see every,
4:48 Speaker 03 every week in the news. Another big company is making some deal and they're doing buyouts and they're encouraging people to work a little less because they, the concept in corporate America hasn't been, this is nothing new. It's just, it's the same thing, but it's, I would say it's taken on even more steam. Companies are saying, look, our, our more senior workers are getting paid a lot. We think we can cut costs by giving them an incentive to leave the workforce a little bit early. And, and if you look at the big numbers, here's some of the numbers. Back in 2015, so let's call it 10 years ago, 55% of people expected
5:27 Speaker 03 to work beyond 62. Today, that number's under 50%. So it's 48%. So we've dropped 7% of the workforce, 7% less people in a 165 million person workforce are not working. So fewer people working beyond 62. So you, we have a lot of people that I would consider pretty early retirees. The average expected likelihood of working beyond 67, 34%. So we talk about waiting, wait, wait to take social security through 70. Well, two thirds of America, they're
6:06 Speaker 03 not working beyond 67 anyway. So those are the trends. That's the reality. The question is what do we have to make sure we do when it comes to making sure we're prepared and avoiding mistakes? So number one. A mistake to avoid would be to not consider a phased retirement. If you're 55 and you would like to retire today, or say, "I would look at it not as so much as a black and white." Growing up, I really thought retirement was black and white, just like my grandfather. Our grandfathers moved to Green Valley, Arizona,
6:48 Speaker 03 about an hour outside of Tucson. It was 40 minutes from the border. It was just dry and nice and he had asthma and it was healthy for him. And he was straight, "I'm working," at DuPont for 30 years to straight, "I'm not working." You know, I remember him playing shuffleboard. That was like a little kid. I would go to Green Valley. It was just, he would play shuffleboard and he'd play poker and he'd watch the evening news and he was straight up retired. That's not the reality of America today, as much as I see it, because we have the opportunity today more than ever, because we don't have pensions and we're not counting typically on a company to pay us forever,
7:33 Speaker 03 like get a pension from DuPont, to phase in that retirement. So, "Hey, I'd really like to retire at 55. Maybe I'm not quite ready to do it financially. So my number's 62, so I phase in, not black and white, but I have this gray zone period of time of I'm going to work part-time." So I've worked with folks that have, let's say they're making $100,000 as a corporate project manager to healthcare company. Barb, she's 55 and she's making $100,000 a year and really wanted to retire. And she saved almost enough to retire, particularly if she gives it some more time to mature at 62, another, call it seven years from now.
8:17 Speaker 03 So she doesn't have to save as much, but she, in doing some financial planning, Too early to start pulling for that money. So instead of stopping completely, she phased back. She went to halftime, part time and took her salary from a hundred down to 50. And it allowed her to at least have almost enough just so she didn't have to dip into the retirement savings. But she wasn't saving anymore, but that's still better than having to pull money out that early. So then she did an even more phased down retirement from 60 to 63. So over that period of time, she still earned something like 350, $370,000 over that phased retirement.
9:01 Speaker 03 And it gave her the opportunity to not have to tap the money is a little too soon relative to her plan. So considering a phased retirement, I think is a really important thing to not overlook. Number two, this is totally on the different end of the spectrum here is not making plans to be around your adult children. And there's a lot of thought to go into that. So I did a lot of research around this and those retirees who are within driving distance, so within close proximity to 50% or more of their adult children. So again, you can get four kids, you can pick your favorite two, Krista, right? So I've got four kids, so I'm always thinking, well, who are the two?
9:46 Speaker 03 Who are the two that we need to live near eventually when they're grownups? Increases the likelihood you end up in the happy retiree camp versus unhappy by four times, four X. But a lot of thought has to go into that. You don't want to just be there to babysit your grandkids. Some people want to do that, but you also want an active life. And if your kids have spread out all over the country and a couple of them have moved to Texas or California and you're not from there. And I have lots of stories about this. You've got to figure out and plan for finding a new community. It's not just about your adult kids. It's being able to be near the adult kids and have your own social network, your own social community. You've got to plan for that. And it's hard to do that if you're just saying, oh, I'm retired and I'm
10:30 Speaker 03 done. And we've not thought about this big, what could be a big geographic.
10:36 Speaker 02 Right. And then eventually later on, my parents who are in their 80s are planning on moving closer to me because they need some extra help that they didn't need before. And I can provide that for them. So that's another stage, I guess, that you
10:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is interesting. It's kind of the boomerang of your parents. You as a retiree should be close to your kids. But then at some point, your kids may need to be close to you to help. And we'll do three because we have six. So the last one quickly, failing, here's a mistake, failing to establish multiple streams of income. We've got to be able to think about this early on. We know we've got, hopefully, we have social security and/or a pension and/or what are the other areas? So we've got to start thinking about our investment portfolio to generate income as another income stream. Maybe it is rental income. You have rental properties. Maybe it's as simple as you being more creative
11:31 Speaker 03 and having an Airbnb. Maybe you have some sort of annuity. Maybe you have some sort of other income from a past company. Maybe it's part-time work, which goes back to that phased retirement. So thinking about multiple streams of income in retirement is essential. We don't want to just have one or two. We want to have diversification of how we're getting paid. If we're not thinking about that, that's a mistake.
11:56 Speaker 02 And I was also thinking in the beginning, when you talked about the percentage of people who are retired by 67, I wonder as pensions are phasing out over the years, you know, where most younger people will never have a pension, my guess is that age is going to rise and that stream of income will go away for people. So they're going to have to be creative and think of new streams of income as well.
12:17 Speaker 03 Look, I don't know. It's not just that maybe there's less opportunity as companies are trying Get people to retire early. Sometimes people don't, to your point about a caregiver, we saw a lot of this through COVID. It could be your own health issues. It could be a family member's health issues that kind of forces you to not be able to work and take care of the family. We've seen more of that as we have an aging population. It's not just workers are aging, it's workers' parents are aging. So I think that the trend of phasing out of work earlier may continue to get younger, even though pensions have gone away. It just makes that much more important to be saving.
12:52 Speaker 02 All right, we'll go to questions. John in Minnesota says, I just turned 55 years old. My wife is 54 and I feel I'm ready for early retirement this coming year.
13:01 Speaker 03 All right, John.
13:02 Speaker 02 I'm still working and get a full company match and contribute 15% to my 401k with an additional 1% to my Roth IRA. I have approximately $1.1 million between traditional IRA and 401k, of which 60k is in a Roth. I owe $180,000 on my $500,000 home at a 3% mortgage, which I'm currently attempting to pay down with $1,000 per month. Or should I instead pour more into my 401k or Roth while working? My retirement monthly budget estimates are as follows. $3,400 to $3,600, which includes an extra 1k from my mortgage. My wife is currently-
13:41 Speaker 03 Includes the mortgage, yeah.
13:42 Speaker 02 My wife is currently covering medical insurance until 60 years old before she retires, and then we plan on using healthcare.gov. Both of us will take social security at age 67. What are your general thoughts or concerns?
13:56 Speaker 03 Doing some math right now. So he's spending only $3,600 a month.
14:02 Speaker 02 That's what he estimates. Yeah.
14:03 Speaker 03 Okay. So that's $43,000 a year. And did he say how much his social security is? He did not, did he? There's a couple of things here. I think John is going to be, he's 55, which is early. That's super early. We just talked about this. His expenses are so in check, which is awesome. He's already reaching in a lot of ways, some of the major happy retiree checkpoint, financial checkpoints. So the median, different than the, the, the average, the median happy retiree amount from my research today, for today's inflated dollars, three quarters of a million. Average is one and a quarter million.
14:47 Speaker 03 He's pretty much already there. It's pretty much already there. Why is that number important? Well, let's just do the, the math. 1.1 billion at 4% is a little over 40,000 a year in income. 4% is 44, it's 44 grand a year that he could safely withdraw. John can safely withdraw for essentially the 4% plus rule says you can do that for almost indefinitely, minimum of 30 years. But when you're super, super early in retiring, that only gets him to 85, 90, but it's still a, a safe guideline. And that in itself gets him to his spending number. Now, he's gonna have social security, right?
15:31 Speaker 03 He didn't mention that he was gonna have a pension because he's saving. He's gonna have social security, he and his wife. That's probably gonna be $3,000 each a month. Maybe even if it's only 2,500, that's another 5K a month. That's 60. So between his social security, call it around 60 a year, when he does start taking it and his withdrawal, that's, that's a hundred thousand dollars a year and he's only spending 40. So I like this position that he's in. Another criteria of the happy retiree is they get rid of their mortgage. Their mortgage payoff is within sight. John, your mortgage payoff is in sight too. So I wouldn't be pulling out of the 401K to do that.
16:15 Speaker 03 You already have a super low rate, 3%. It's baked into the spending. Yeah, you can slowly, you can pay that down a little extra every month.
16:23 Speaker 02 I think he baked in an extra thousand dollars, he's saying for his mortgage, because he's putting an extra thousand dollars toward his mortgage every month right now. And he's saying he will still do that.
16:34 Speaker 03 Look, I think he's in good shape. I would just be at that early, it's 55. I would just think back to what we talked about. First, always consider phasing out as opposed to stopping completely. It's hard to stop work and then go back. There's been a big unretirement trend in America that people have stopped working and then they want to go back. So I would just, I wouldn't cut cold turkey here. I'd consider scaling back work, but I think financially, he's reaching a lot of the really important checkpoints.
17:08 Speaker 02 Okay. This one is from Michael in Georgia. Hello, Wes. Thanks for all your advice and financial wisdom. What do you think is better Vanguard VTEB Municipal Tax Free Bond ETF? Or Treasury Series I Bonds? The current VTEB yield is listed at 3.52% versus I Bonds at 3.11%.
17:31 Speaker 03 Are these the inflation bonds or I Bonds from I shares that own treasuries?
17:37 Speaker 02 He just says I Bonds at 3.11%. I'm planning to sell I Bonds and buy VTEB.
17:44 Speaker 03 Oh, that would be, that would, those would be the inflation.
17:47 Speaker 02 Unless you convince me otherwise. Two, what should I start gradually selling first when I retire? Taxable stocks, my Roth IRA, or a traditional 401k and IRA? And three, can you recommend some income ETF or fund that will provide a stable annual income instead of me deciding what to sell and when? I do not want to deal with annuities per Clark's disgust for those.
18:10 Speaker 03 Yeah. So, Michael, a couple of things. Here's the order of distribution when it comes to retirement. You want to, we want to manage our tax rates. So we want to keep our tax rates low. And the way to do that is to start with your brokerage account. You're able to pull money from that strategically to minimize the amount of gains you have to take. So that's basket one to draw from. Basket two would be the IRA. Then ultimately, we want to typically save our Roth IRA for the, for the latter years. It's got kind of the most horsepower because it's growing tax deferred, comes out tax free. And there's no required minimum distribution. So you're going to have to start drawing from your IRA anyway, once, once you hit 73.
18:54 Speaker 03 But I think that's typically the order of operations. Doesn't mean that you can't sometimes supplement if you need the income out of a Roth. Just to keep your tax rate low, if you maybe have a big chunk of an expense you want to utilize it for, but that's generally the cadence is taxable IRA, then Roth to draw from. Secondly, the decision to use municipal bonds, and I don't know this particular fund, but again, let's call it a broadly diversified municipal bond fund. Assuming it's high quality, you've got to look at it on a tax equivalent yield. So if the yield on a tax-free fund is 3.5%, and a treasury for you, or in this case, he's looking at an inflation bond, first of all, there's only so much money we can put
19:39 Speaker 03 in inflation bonds. So if you're really talking about retirement, you're looking at either a bond fund or a bond ETF that allow you to do well beyond the annual amount you can do in the treasury high bonds. There's a limit there. But I would look at your tax equivalent yield when it comes to municipals. So you take the yield of 3.5% and you divide it by your tax rate, or 1 minus your tax rate, so 3.5%. If you're in the highest tax bracket, 37%, 1 minus .37, you're going to divide that tax-free yield, federally tax-free, state's another issue, but let's just talk federal now, by .63.
20:23 Speaker 03 So 3.5 divided by .63, the tax equivalent yield on that is about 5.5. But if you're in a low tax bracket, if you're in the 10% or 15% bracket, maybe the treasury makes just as much sense, because the treasury yields today are more like 4%, 4.5%. So they're above, but they're taxable. So it depends on your net, you take the municipal yield, divide it by 1 minus your tax rate. In this case, kind of the bogey, if you're in a really high bracket, would be 5.5%. So I'm totally comfortable with municipals, but I wouldn't be using them unless I'm in the 35% tax bracket or higher.
21:04 Speaker 02 Okay. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, more mistakes that early retirees.
21:10 Speaker 03 Mistakes to avoid.
21:11 Speaker 02 Mistakes to avoid.
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23:29 Speaker 03 Welcome back to Ask an Advisor with the great Krista D. Biaz.
23:33 Speaker 02 Wes Moss.
23:34 Speaker 03 The Wes Moss. We have more questions to get to.
23:37 Speaker 02 We do.
23:37 Speaker 03 We've got to get to early, early retirement. Yeah, mistakes to avoid. So we start there.
23:43 Speaker 02 We'll start there. And if you have a question, remember you can go to Clark.com/ask and indicate to us whether your question's for Clark or Wes.
23:51 Speaker 03 Pick it up where we left off here. The trend in America, people are, whether they're doing so by necessity because there's health reasons or their family has health reasons and they care for folks, people just aren't working as long. And in some ways, I think it's a good thing because people are saving more. We've got more millionaires in the United States than we ever have. 12% of the population has a net worth of $1 million or more. So people are saving. So we're retiring a little sooner for some good reasons. And then I think we're also retiring a little sooner because we just have to in some cases. And companies are constantly pressured to reduce the workforce. And some good reasons, some bad. If we are going to retire early, what are some mistakes to avoid? We've gone over
24:35 Speaker 03 a couple. Number four on my list out of six would be, is waiting to collect social security for too long. If we want to maximize social security, sure, it's great. Wait till age 70. And if you're able to do that financially, then I think it is great. And then you get a maximale, a maximale gross to inflation. It could be helpful for your spousal benefit. So there's a lot of advantages to it. So I don't disagree with it. But it does take about 12 to 13 years to break even from taking it sooner. So if you are retired and you're
25:15 Speaker 03 60, 61, 62, and, or let's call it 62 when you could start social, social isn't necessarily about maximizing, it's about optimizing it for what's right for you and your overall plan. So in some cases, if you're stopping work and you're 62 and you could take social security, you're 63 or 65. And your withdrawal rate to pay the bills is 5, 6, 7, 8% from your accounts. Then you start worrying about running out of money and that's our biggest fear. So sometimes turning on social security will eliminate having to pull too much as a percentage
26:00 Speaker 03 out of your retirement account. So it's about optimizing social security. Sure, we'd all love to maximize it, but it doesn't always work for folks. So while I love to see people who are able to wait till 70, it's also okay in some situations. In a lot of situations, it may make sense for folks to take it at 63, 64, 65, depending on their situation. Number five, failing to appreciate the massive cost of healthcare. And I think we all do in America. It's become 15 years ago, your mortgage is your biggest bill. Today, your mortgage is healthcare, particularly if you don't have good healthcare coverage. Now, remember Medicare at 65 covers 80%, but it doesn't cover the other 20.
26:45 Speaker 03 So if you've got a big medical bill, that can be huge and that's why people have Medicare supplemental plans. I am a big believer in making sure that you're meeting with someone in your state that knows your state supplemental plans, to get you the right plans that you can keep most of your doctors. And making sure that plan aligns at least somewhat, has some coordination with what you used to have while you're at work. Now, it's not always going to be perfect, but really put some time into utilizing someone who specializes in Medicare supplemental plans in your state to get the right plan for you.
27:27 Speaker 03 Because if you don't do that and you get the wrong plan, healthcare costs are through the roof. And then finally, Krista, another mistake that we have to make sure we're avoiding is supporting our adult children too much at the expense of our own retirement. I did a bunch of research around this and there's a real correlation, I guess it's an inverse correlation. The more money we're spending for our adult kids, the less likely we are going to be happy in retirement. So the average happy retiree spends on their adult kids a lot less than the unhappy retiree. And there's a lot of variables here. And is it a perfect correlation or causation? I don't know, but there's a relationship there.
28:11 Speaker 03 One, we want our kids to be independent. We don't want to have to pay for their normal bills. We don't want to pay car payments, mortgage payments for our adult kids if we don't have to. And, and we certainly don't want to do that if it's cutting into our own retirement. So just be very cognizant that you can't refund and re-save for retirement once you stop working. So if you are having to over-supplement the kids, it can take a big bite out of your retirement plan, your retirement happiness. So make sure that we're not making the mistake that our kids are too reliant on us once we get to our retirement.
28:46 Speaker 02 And that even starts with college. Clark always says there are no scholarships for retirement. So if you're saving for your kids' college and you're not maxing out your own retirement, that's not a good plan either.
28:56 Speaker 03 That's
28:57 Speaker 02 Starting even then. So, yeah. Okay. Well, those were great. Thank you so much, Wes. We'll go to some questions now. This one came in from Terry in California. I'm single and 2026 will be a busy year. I'll be retiring, signing up for Medicare, turning 70, and starting Social Security. As if that wasn't enough, I will be selling my
29:17 Speaker 03 A lot, Terry.
29:18 Speaker 02 I'll be selling my home in California and moving to Arizona to join family. I assume that I will not have purchased an Arizona home prior to the sale of the California home and thus will directly transfer over funds. I'm likely to be renting at first while I'm searching. Let's assume I will net $1 million. Can you please clarify any options to hold these proceeds while I'm house hunting? Obviously, I want to make sure all funds are protected, not just a national bank with a $250,000 cap. I would need immediate liquidity. I have accounts with Fidelity, perhaps open a brokerage account and deposit funds in their money market?
29:56 Speaker 03 Terry, she has a lot going on.
29:58 Speaker 02 Yes, a lot.
29:58 Speaker 03 70, moving from California to Arizona, signing up for social and Medicare, it sounds like.
30:07 Speaker 03 She's gonna be looking around, getting close to family I love, but it may take a little bit of time in California to sell the house. It sounds like it'll be a million dollars or more. And rather than worrying about the FDIC limits, the 250 per named account, and coordinating it that way, I'm very comfortable with money market mutual funds. And there's a lot to choose from. You've got general money market funds that are meant to maintain a dollar as their net asset value and meant not to move. Now, they're not guaranteed, but they invest in very short, very short-term, very high-quality securities.
30:48 Speaker 03 To be even safer, and I think that it was back when we saw Silicon Valley Bank go under, which was a couple of years ago. Yep. Got me a little bit nervous, even more nervous around taking risks with our safe money. So I'm really comfortable utilizing a money market mutual fund that is specific to government bonds. So you can find a government money market fund, or a treasury money market fund. Those are the two that I'll identify that they're not messing around with high-quality corporates or other instruments that are short-term that could be outside government
31:28 Speaker 03 bonds, short-term government bonds. So that's to me where I feel comfortable. And I'm not worried about $250,000 FDIC limit, when I've got the full faith and credit of US government short-term bonds inside a money market. That makes me feel really comfortable. So $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, and you want to keep it safe for a short period of time, a government money market fund, that to me is where I would feel comfortable.
31:55 Speaker 02 This one came in from Brian in Texas. I have a question for Wes. On a Facebook investing page, I saw someone else post about TSLY, which is YieldMax TSLA Option Income Strategy ETF. I bought $1,000 of it, something I like to do so I can better track it and see what it does. In the five months following, my $1,000 investment paid me $320,000. $24.89 in dividends or about $65 per month. I was intrigued and then bought $1,000 worth of other YieldMax ETFs. Each of these also paid out pretty good dividends, not
32:29 Speaker 03 Pretty good. 34% in five months. That's a 60, 70% annualized return.
32:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, so these other ones paid pretty good dividends, not quite as good as TSLY, but way higher than any stock or REIT that I currently own. Overall, the value of these ETFs has stayed pretty much the same. Some are up a little and some are down a little, but very little is swinging their value. Can you explain how these YieldMax ETFs work? And also, are these too risky to put more money in? Thanks for joining the show, Wes. A good add to the already great podcast.
33:03 Speaker 03 Ryan, this is, this is a cool question. I will, just full disclosure, this, I've never used these. I've looked into these because they're interesting, but I've, I don't use them because I think of these as they are financial weapons of mass destruction.
33:20 Speaker 02 Wow.
33:21 Speaker 03 Anytime you have MAX in the name of something, I don't know how much if they're using leverage, but they are selling options and they're bringing in premium and that's how they're paying that out to you. But there's gotta be a huge component of what the underlying stock is doing as well. And then you've got to look at volatility in the market and you've got to worry about leverage and all sorts of things. Anytime you have an ETF that has the word MAX in it, YieldMax, and it has to do with options. The way I typically see these things happen is that they, these products get created when the environment's right for that product.
34:03 Speaker 03 So a big fund company will say, oh, there's great option premium on this and this is a popular stock and the stock's doing well. So let's just create a wrapper and make it an ETF. And then it does well. The thought is, oh, wow, this, this new strategy was created and it's, it's a brand new mousetrap. When reality, when I think what was typically happening is that a company's taking advantage of a trend that's already happening, that doesn't happen forever. So maybe the first year these do, these might do well. And then the environment sours for them and this thing goes very wrong. Again, full disclosure, I don't own these. I don't know exactly how these things work. But anytime you're getting a 60, 70% rate of return that's coming out as a dividend,
34:48 Speaker 03 I mean, that's wildly speculative. And as I think Buffett would say, they may be good for a while, but ultimately, these are financial instruments of mass destruction.
35:00 Speaker 02 That's going to do it for us today. That's it?
35:02 Speaker 03 That's a cool question to end on.
35:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, keep the questions coming. Clark will be back tomorrow. I hope the rest of your day is great. Thank you so much.
35:11 Speaker 03 Thanks for having me, Krista.
35:17 Speaker 04 Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time.
35:29 Speaker 05 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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