10/14/26 Market Anxiety, Trump Accounts & a Farmer's Perspective

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Wednesday, October 14th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Radio Show & Podcast" call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com https://www.moneywiseguys.com/ facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management https://www.facebook.com/moneywiseguys/ LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management https://www.linkedin.com/company/moneywise-wealth-management-bakersfield/ Guests: Steve Murray, Owner of Murray Family Farms website: https://www.murrayfamilyfarms.org/ The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Steve Murray & Murray Family Farms are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Live from the basement inside the historic Woolworth Building in downtown Bakersfield. Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  That's right. Welcome to the Money Wise Show. We are live from the basement of the historic Woolworth Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you are on News Talk 961 1230 AM, K R N, streaming live at MoneyWiseGuys.com. I'm your host today, Chris Pelster, with

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Seth Perry. So glad to be here, sir.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  We don't get to do the show as much as we used to do it together, and sometimes the schedules and everything flops around, and this was a last minute change, and here we are.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Here we are, brother.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Walking and rolling. We have our own little system for doing the show, and

• 1:15Speaker 01

  And it works. It works. I love it. But you guys are what make the show great. So remember, you can always call or text the show 24 hours a day. Steven stays awake 24 hours a day, waiting for your calls and your texts. 661-396-1000. He would prefer a text, and then he'll just get it to us. But if you want to call him 24 hours a day.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  I heard that it's the fact that he's a Dolphins fan that's why he stays up. Poor guy. Sorry.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  I'm crying.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Hey, Steven, I

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Sorry. I bought in. You signed up for it.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yep. I wanted to bring some good news to you. And I don't know how good a news it is. But I went and had dinner with a really good buddy of mine. I've known him since high school days. He was a South High, what used to be Rebel. And we went and grabbed dinner the other night, and he started talking about his fishies. And I totally forgot he was a Dolphins fan. So there's three of you here in Bakersfield. So you and

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Ricky.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Ricky. Who's your other one, though?

• 2:16Speaker 00

  My dad.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Your dad? Okay, so there's like four, five.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Who's the other guy? Oh, yeah, yeah. The guy that was on the other day. So yeah, we're

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Ricky Montoya?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  You guys are almost like you guys could take over a very small bar, but you guys could take over a bar.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  But that bar wouldn't play our game, so it wouldn't matter.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  I was thinking about you this weekend because I was gassing up the truck after church on Sunday, and I look up, and there's Raider fan. I mean, he had like the flag, and he's taking his flag down, and he's breaking down his camp. And then there was this other group of four guys, and they're, they're just, you know, they're just bummed out. They're just bummed out.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  After the Patriots game?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  I heard that was that. Well, I listened to a little bit after church. It was, it was a beating, but

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Patriots are solid, though.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  They're not good?

• 3:02Speaker 00

  They were just playing the Raiders.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Okay. Back to business.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Right on. Back to business. Always fun to talk about the Dolphins. But here we are on the 14th. We're going to go over the markets a little bit. We got some great questions that came in. We're going to cover. We are lucky to be joined by today by Mr. Steve Murray. He's going to be talking about Murray Farms, Murray Farm and Farms, and longtime guest of the show. It's always great to not only talk about the cool things that he does, as far as what did you call it? Ag?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Agrotourism.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Agrotourism.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Bringing ag to the people.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Make Ag great again.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  It's a blast, man. I can't wait to talk to him.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. I'm excited about that. But he also knows his stuff, and has been doing it for a long time. So can also try to break down some of the agriculture realities, water, energy, all these different things that are affecting you and me that we talk about, you know, as far as rising costs and inflation and all that stuff. You want to talk about being impacted by that stuff? Well, run a farm. Because I bet it, I bet it, he knows his stuff.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  He could. He should, and he does.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  There you go. So we are still in the middle of trading day, or a couple hours left here. But we do have the Dow Jones. When we look just a little bit ago, has it moved around?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  It has. I mean, we're not that long ago. We threw some numbers down.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  And it was almost flat. Now we're down point, about 0.4% there on the Dow Jones. The S and P 500 is down about, what is it?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  1.3.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  1.3. So it's trimmed down since we just ran the numbers.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Should we panic, Chris?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  No, no, we're going to talk about that a little bit. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Because here's a little bit of perspective that we always like to bring. So put on your perspective glasses. Think about this for a second. Is it the one year or just year to date?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  That's year to date. No, that's the one year.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  One year. Okay, so one year. The S and P 500 is up 14%. Maybe down just a little bit lower than that.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think it is year to date.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Well, actually, what doesn't matter is because the fourth quarter, fourth quarter wasn't all that impressive. So right now, 12 month and year to dates are very similar. I know that fact. The NASDAQ is up about 17%. The Dow Jones is up about 7%. Remember, the dumb Dow, it's about 30 stocks. The Russell 2000 is up about 12%. So one of the things that we were kind of wanting to throw out there to the listeners and talk about just a little bit is if the stock market is up 14% this year, why does it feel like investors are constantly worried? And you may be listening to this, and you may feel constantly worried. And here we are.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  What's worrying you?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is it?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Be honest. Send them in. Pick up the phone and call. Real time.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  661-396-1000. The realities of geopolitical concerns, war, these are, these, you know, have been around for a long time. It's kind of been part of the discussion. We have inflation to be concerned about.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Big numbers came in. September's inflation was way up, 3.7 year over year, slightly above expectations. And so naturally, everyone responds, the news responds, that, oh, my gosh, what's going on? But it raises the likelihood that the Fed's going to raise them up again, you know, later this month.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  So if you had, if you had to guess, what do you think about what's going on right now in the markets and talking to clients and looking at investments and talking to folks? What do you think makes people like feel like doom and gloom about the markets and stuff right now? What do you think it is?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  So for me, and you guys come up with your own answers, but for me, it's, it's hype. We're, you know, we're sitting in front of this TV right here, right? But there's constantly, if the market's doing good, you need to, you need to think about selling. It's too inflated. If the market's doing bad, see, we told you, everything's going down. I believe the media plays a humongous role, humongous, and there's not enough education on normal market cycles. What is normal? What is not normal? The fact that the market's down, you know, one out of every four years. You sent out to the rest of us advisors a really interesting point, because you were asked yesterday, hey, how are the midterms? And then midterm elections,

• 7:17Speaker 02

  if you're new to politics, that's mid presidential term. There's, they do all the senators and all this and that. They're every two years, right?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yep. So it's called the midterm. And, and, you know, how's this going to affect portfolios? And you found some really crazy, interesting data.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the markets have never been negative.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  One year after the midterms, historically, always since the markets have existed, they've been positive. So we're not saying that's going to happen again, but that's where it's always been.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And you know, you know, I mean, I know everybody will say the right things, like, oh, yeah, if it goes down, it'll come back up. We just threw out a statistic that's pretty overwhelming about positive numbers. Now, maybe this is the one time that we break that reality. But what I, what I unfortunately see so many times is that, like, me even saying, this may be the one time we break it, will keep people from doing the right things and staying invested. One of the things that we have forever said here at Money Wise is, is a properly put together plan as you begin to understand it, as you begin to see how it works, and what does my nest egg mean for

• 8:30Speaker 01

  me in retirement? And you start to put everything together, and you know, all your beneficiaries are accurate, and you know, your trust is in place, and what happens to my, I mean, there's so many unknowns. But as you start to put all the puzzle pieces together, I believe it does relieve some of that angst and anxiety. It's always something we're going to deal with as human beings. And that's why, as much as possible, we always joke to take fear and greed out of your portfolio, take a disciplined approach to I'm aggressive as I feel like I need to be to meet my objectives and my goals. You don't want to start getting pushed around by fear and greed, because that's where it's that spin cycle. We call it the emotional spin cycle, like a washer or dryer or whatever, you know, you're just tumbling in this. You're trying to be super

• 9:13Speaker 01

  aggressive when it's great, and then something happens, and you feel like you made a mistake. So then you're trying to panic and sell what you did. And that's that emotional spin cycle that you can get caught in. And by and large, it's time in the market, not timing the market.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  This is the hardest thing for individual investors that are, that are navigating this. Some do well, the majority do not. The, the majority of people managing their own money, at some point, reach a point where they're realizing, this is a lot. There's a lot of stress. I don't have all of the information. And so I'm going to, you know, shift it to one platform or have an advisor take over. And that's the other thing that I think a lot of people get weirded out with the market is they just don't know enough about it. They haven't educated themselves enough. I remember in 2008, I didn't, I knew a fraction of what I knew now, a very small fraction. But when I saw my 401k at Halliburton drop 30, 40%, I truly didn't panic,

• 10:08Speaker 02

  and I truly didn't worry, because I knew how it was diversified. I knew the companies it was in, and I had full faith in, in America and the global economy to bounce back. And sure enough, it did. And that's where just educating yourself, use us, use us and abuse us, send in as many questions. There's no dumb question. You don't have to put your name, right? So just send in any question you have. We'll get it answered on the air for you.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I believe, I believe it's every four years, just staggered between the president

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Got it, okay.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  But some of them are two-year terms, so maybe that's what you're thinking about. But yeah, we did have a comment come in that said, we are going to try out that Cherry Acres place that came in on Monday to the show, but I love Murray Family Farms. So, cool, good to support any of our local organizations that are doing cool things in our community. So glad that we had them on and Murray Farms can, uh, Family Farms can come in and educate us a little more. So, um, the one thing that I was going to bring up is we had a couple of great comments that came in, and I think we want to bring a little clarity to that. So it said, which children were able to get the $250 towards their Trump accounts? My child was born in 2019 and someone told me that he could be eligible, but I was confused.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I thought those accounts were only for children born more recent. Either way, thanks, guys. So what say you?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I say the seed money is actually a thousand bucks, not 250. I'm not exactly sure where that could have come from, other than maybe that it's January 2025 and maybe the two and the five got stuck in the listener's head. I don't know, but it is a thousand. Unfortunately, in your circumstance, you, you did miss it because 2019 is prior. So, so they have to be born between January 1, 2025, December 31st, 2028. So just remember those four years, 25, 26, 27, 28.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And I will bring a little clarity on the $250. That is the money that the Dell family donated.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Dell family?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Dell family, like computers, Michael and Susan Dell.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  They are just helping Americans?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  They are, and you do get the $250. Children born between January 1, 2016 and December 31st, 2024. But here's the catch, in qualifying zip codes.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Interesting, I did not know that.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the $250 amount that you got, and technically you do fall within the timeframe, uh, as far as I believe you said, 2019. Uh, but it is only in qualifying zip codes. So there's been, uh, some zip codes that they've identified as, as, you know, maybe, you know, low, lower socioeconomic circumstances and different things, and the Dell family wanted to, uh, participate and be part of this, uh, you know, Trump accounts or whatever and a donation. So $250 donated by Michael and Susan Dell for children born between January 1, 16 to December 31st, 2024.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  So there is investamerica.org, check Dell 250 eligibility. Okay, you can just Google that. So did your child receive the Dell's $250, uh, contribution? Uh, I wonder if I would qualify. I live in 93309. I had a child born in 2017 and 2019. So let's see if 93309, your zip code was included.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  The only caveat is-

• 13:37Speaker 02

  How do I get my money, Chris?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  There is an income restriction.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  So median family income of 117,300 or less. So again, you know, it's, it's kind of so many of these moving pieces, and so hopefully, uh, you might need to write all this down, but the, the thousand dollars from the federal government is January 1 of 2025 to December 31st of 2028. The $250 donated by the Dells, uh, is for January 1, 2016 to December 31st of 2024.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Sounds like a good Dell to me.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  In qualifying expense or, uh, zip codes, and you do have to meet the income, uh, restriction or whatever of median family income of less than 117,300. And like Seth said, there's a couple of places you can go online and punch in your zip code to see, uh, if you're, um-

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, just Google, Google, uh, Dell 200, I, I Googled Dell 250 zip code finder and boom, popped right up.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  There you go. So hopefully that helps you out there.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Like, can you go back? Like, can you go back in time and, and say, hey, I had a child born and get the money still, or is this a done deal?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I don't know if those, those-

• 14:49Speaker 02

  What's the Dell?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's, what's the Dell with that? But, uh, the other one, uh, quick question for you guys, which I think kind of goes along the lines of what we talked about earlier. It says, uh, do you got, quick question for the guys. How do you know if I'm actually diversified or if I just own a bunch of different funds that are invested in the same things? Very good question.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  It's a great question because this is one of those things that can be a little bit confusing. People can look at their account, say, I have five different funds and so I'm diversified. Well, a good example is very popular options for investing now are like ETFs, and there's five different ETFs that all they do is hold the S and P 500. So you could go out and buy those five different ETFs, but literally you're buying the same 500 stocks, or you're getting exposed to the same 500 stocks in every single one of those funds. So that is not diversified and so-

• 15:44Speaker 02

  It's called an overlap.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yep, overlap.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Overlaps the term for it because you have these, these, within one account, you can have funds that are overlapping, but what we see and what we help a lot of families with is let's say they have a, an old 401K at Fidelity, they have, uh, their own brokerage account, and then they have an account with us. Like, we want to make sure that there's not overlap amongst the whole family of accounts, right?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  The household, yep. Yeah, and so it is tricky because, uh, mutual fund companies out there don't necessarily roll out a scroll and say, here is the 1,000 stocks that we're in. Uh, many mutual funds might tell you the top 10 holdings in the mutual fund. So you will know like, hey, there's 3% in this stock, 4% in this stock, uh, you know, depending on what kind of, uh, fund it is, usually the top 10 holdings might make up 10% or 8% of the account. It'll give you an idea of your bigger holdings in those mutual funds of what your top holdings are. And if you look at your four or five funds and the top 10 holdings in all four or five funds are all the same, are very similar, well, then you don't necessarily have a ton

• 16:51Speaker 01

  of diversification and you then have to decide, overall, is my exposure to this company, uh, where I want it to be and am I comfortable with that? Now, um, you know, hopefully you can either work with a financial advisor, it's one of the things that we're doing behind the scenes, we're always looking for overlap and, uh, I mean, this, we were huge with this before it was kind of even a thing because it is difficult to look under the hood of some of these different mutual funds and so, uh-

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Especially in like 457 plans, there, there will be kind of some proprietary funds, it's not as, it's not as easy to know exactly what's under the hood.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  So that's what, you know, getting a, getting a second opinion or working with a financial advisor, uh, kind of going over this, you can maybe, uh, get a little bit more progress and at least have a good idea that you're properly diversified.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  I'm listening, I'm listening, I have 350,000 in an old 401K. Um, I, I like my advisor as a person, right? If I'm a listener, he's a nice guy or nice gal, but I don't know if I'm okay. How does a second opinion work? And I have the kind of the, the human fear of like breaking up with someone or cheating on someone, that's totally normal.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  And so the way we do it is you send in a statement or we get on the phone for a consultation and we review it and we tell you, that's one thing I like about, uh, a couple of the mortgage brokers that I work with, they'll tell me straight up, you're in a good place, or hey, you might want to consider X, Y, and Z, and that's what we do. That's what we do.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, so it's, uh, it's definitely something to, uh, spend a little time to make sure that you're confident. The biggest thing is, is, um, even if you're not diversified or something, you just want to make sure you understand it enough that you're not going to make a panic move at the wrong time because not knowing or not feeling confident in how you are invested can, can create some of that panic and make you want to do something.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Chris, I, I gotta jump on this message, so I'm gonna go ahead and read it as it sounds. I'm gonna read it as it is written, okay? Please don't email in and complain about the show, but this listener says, what's up, Money Wise? Love your show. Last week I bought two grills from Home Depot at 50% off, so basically it was two girls for the price of, and then there's just a space. I'm pretty sure they meant to say two grills, okay?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I would agree.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Okay. They offered me a credit card that would give me an additional $50 off. Their credit card is 29% interest rate, that does not bother me because I plan to pay it completely off the minute I get my first bill. Unfortunately, most people do not understand this, so they pay the minimum payment, which is all an illusion and they're gonna pay out of the nose.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  You are 100% correct.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Very well, very well said.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and what's funny, I don't know the stats on it or whatever, but there's a reason why they offer you 50 bucks, uh, to use their card. There's a reason why, you know, some of these different- You know, and I don't, I don't want to say flat out scams, but there's a reasons why companies get you to pay and then say 0% interest for six months because by and large, most folks will end up not paying it off in those six month period.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Or missing a payment. If you get a 0% offer, you miss a payment, they will retroactively charge you back the interest that they should have been charging you most cards. So be very, very careful, but there's just nothing wrong with it. This is how you quote unquote, build credit. You buy something, you get a rip and deal, they give you 50 bucks off, right? You just, if it's a 0% offer, say for a year, I do like what Chris would do with a sinking fund. If it's a thousand bucks, you just do like 80 or 90 a month, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I always like to pay those things off at least a month in advance. Should I forget, which I don't, but anyway, take it, take that for what it's worth. And we have a Lowe's and I like it if we're going in and like, I gotta get a couple ceiling fans for the boys. So we'll probably do Lowe's and I'll put it on the card because it's 5% discount.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  And that's 15 bucks. If it's $300 for a couple of fans, I'm going to take that $15, but I'm going to then just that month, it's just going to get paid off.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and this is, this, this boils down to one of the things, the, the most annoying or boring thing that a lot of times we talk about, when we talk about a solid financial plan, right? It's an emergency savings. It's three to six months where the savings, it's sitting there in an account and doing nothing. And when you're going through life and you got bills coming out of your ears and you got unexpected things happening all the time, it's very hard to get that built up. But if you can get that built up, then doing what you just mentioned is, is up to you. Like, yeah, and you're going to get 50 bucks off, you maybe get some, some better deals on some things and you're going to be able to pay it off. But if you're somebody that says, I pay it off every month, but you don't necessarily have that cushion, you don't have an emergency savings sitting

• 21:37Speaker 01

  there. Well, unfortunately, income can change, job loss happens, hours get cut back, and that is when the problems start. And you might have a little bit of an unhealthy behavior with how you're using those credit cards. And then when all of a sudden your pay goes down, instead of paying off that card, what are you doing? You're actually using it more to supplement your income. And what we see happening right now is, uh, credit cards usage is going way up. And that's a, that's a, not a great sign. So if, when we talked earlier about what you're nervous about with the markets, well, that's one of those things that I get nervous about is when the average families out there, the average spenders

• 22:18Speaker 01

  out there, like how they're making ends meet right now is by using credit cards with 29% interest rates. That's a little bit scary to me.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  They'll have a couple thousand dollars in an Ameritrade account that's, that's getting pretty wobbly. And that's their primary focus when they just took out a, you know, 13, $14 a month payment for a new pickup truck. Like that, that's the bigger threat to your financial situation. So Chris mentioned a savings account. Where do people put their savings? And this comes up all the time. But if you're at B of A, Wells, those types of mega banks, you would call them, right now they're paying point 01%. There are high yield savings accounts that are yielding closer to 4%. So guys, what that means is if you have 50 grand set aside, let's say that's your emergency fund. That's a very nice, very healthy emergency

• 23:05Speaker 02

  fund. The interest earned at say Bank of America, for example, is $5 a year. Five bucks a year, right? On 50 grand. But if it's in a high yield and you know how to navigate that world or, or not, 2,000 a year.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  So you can instantly generate an extra 100 and whatever the math is, 170, 80 bucks a month of income.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Just by, just by where you're keeping your savings and it's FDIC insured.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  And one of the things we were talking about earlier is kind of talking through, like wondering why it seems like a lot of investors are so nervous. Well, when you don't have that little bit of cushion, market fluctuations, right now with the rising inflation, we just saw it jump up this last month. It was coming in hot at 3.7 or whatever over the last year. But everybody knows that that's just year over year, but you back up three years and we're probably up about 20% and everybody's feeling that. So you're feeling these inflation numbers. You don't necessarily have an emergency fund and, and you're kind of, you know, month to month. And, and then you turn on the news and everything's negative and it's this and it's that. And there's all these concerns, uh, cause they're wanting to keep you locked

• 24:15Speaker 01

  in and staring at the news so they can advertise and sell to you. So hopefully you start to get some of these puzzle pieces together and your financial plan, it will give you much more peace of mind. You won't be pushed around by the market and you can start to understand, you're not going to understand everything about your investments and, you know, but you can start to have more peace of mind with how you're sitting and where you're headed. So, uh, stick around. When we come back, we are going to be joined by Stephen Murray. He's going to talk about Murray Family Farms. We'll be back in just a second.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  That's right. Welcome back. We are very excited to have a longtime friend of the show and uh, just a legend in our community, Mr. Stephen Murray with Murray Family Farms. Uh, if you've headed out east on the 58, which by the way is much easier to get to now from Northwest Bakersfield with the new interchange. It's been one of the biggest blessings of my life because we like to go out to the desert and the motorhomes and trailers and just cruise right on out there. But, uh, uh, did you ever, could you ever imagine that the road, uh, roadside fruit stand would turn into the Murray Family Farms and where it is today?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  It was what we hoped it would do.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. There were some, some times that you probably questioned it.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  When we started, we, uh, through a series of events, somebody showed up and wanted to grow a cherry tree nursery. And the, their, their lease was to give me enough trees to plant a cherry orchard. And so that's how we actually got into the cherry business. But, uh, uh, when we started picking cherries that we found going to farmer's markets was more profitable and going down to Santa Barbara and Ventura initially with our kids in backpacks. We just really loved the, you know, the encounter with the public and that

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  It seemed like we had better cherries than anybody else. And, uh, uh, it really made you feel good about what you're doing. And so my wife said, I, we, I'd really like to look at that freeway off ramp and it would belong to Birch, Birch Stolt and Jimmy Accardo. And that, um, they always felt like they paid too, too much and sold for too little, but they, they really worked with me and allowed us to get that property and that, uh, it was a, a real God sent for us to be able to do that. And it was my wife's dream to, to, her father was an organic gardener and it was an opportunity to, that's an organic farm there too. So.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Was any of, uh, was any agriculture, anything in your history as well, family history?

• 26:36Speaker 03

  It was on my mother's side that they were farmers, uh, four generations and that, uh, my mother's father died the day she was born. And so it was matriarchal and that my father died when I was young and he came out of plumbing in LA, but he ended up being a farmer. And then, uh, when he died, my mother had to go through a bankruptcy. And so when I was actually in college that we were on government services, food stamps, uh, got a degree and, uh, we started from, from literally from scratch. My, my wife's father was a janitor in, uh, in Detroit. So we came from very modest means.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  We know what it is like to struggle and, uh, and that we know what it's like to have heartaches.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Did it start with beekeeping? I read?

• 27:17Speaker 03

  I was, I started with beekeeping. I was, uh, that, uh, what, I went up to Idaho as a consultant and then came to California as a consultant and for 10 years during a drought, 10 year, nine year drought, I was a beekeeper and that, uh, started with dead hives. I would buy dead hives and I'd send them down south and have them boiled and sanitized. And then, uh, got up to where I had enough equipment for, you know, maybe a thousand hives. But I never had a year where it was rained enough to where there was enough flowers to push the bees to divide. They just had to feed themselves.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  How, how would you start? So, so you have a thousand cleaned, refurbished, boiled homes, hives. Do you have to plant the bees or do they just find it?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  No, I mean, with, what would happen is people would go broke and I would buy all their dead outs. And then I would send those to Miller Honey Company in, in Rialto and they would boil them and lie and I'd get them back and I'd brand them, paint them, put wires in them.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  You know, put in new foundation. And then I got up to 300 hives and then we would split them and try to make them into 600 hives. And then there was no rain and then there was no flowers. And then I had, you know, 300 week hives.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  And that I just could never really get the traction, never had a really good honey flow. And so I'd get paid for almond pollination. Back then it was $23 a hive. Now I'm paying $200 a hive. And that, but the beekeepers are getting flooded from honey from India and, uh, and that, uh, it's a tough business.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  That, uh, when you go to a meeting, everybody's got beat up trucks and frowns on their faces.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  And, and stung up. Well, I could never get used to bee stings.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  That, uh, the first one, every time I got stung was like the first time. Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Do some people get like immune to it or like?

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Out there with T-shirts on.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  But they're also very gentle. They never smash a bee.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  So I'd have a bee suit on with a sweater underneath and it'd be 106 degrees. And I think, am I going to, am I going to get more brain damage from the bee stings or from my cord temperature?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, um, talk a little bit about technology, like, cause like talking about where you started and where you came from, you know, like thinking about your, your parents or in the family for generations, uh, some of the technologies, you know, cause we're just unendated with AI and all these different things. How much has, cause at some point, it's still putting stuff in the ground and watering it and this and that. But how much has technology changed in your world as far as managing your crops and these different things and, and, in this day and age?

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Well, I, I do have a, a bachelor's from UC Riverside in plant science, but that, uh, it, it is a significant, I mean, it, you know, during, you know, my mother's and my father's generation before them, it was water going down a furrow. And I always faulted my father for having that lifestyle of just watching water go down a furrow and citrus was such a gentleman's crop. And he parlayed that into building houses and built a thousand houses during a housing crash.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Really? Wow.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  He had, he had it made and didn't realize it and parlayed it into, um, He went eight million dollars in debt and paid that down over the course of a few years through hopscotch, real estate, finding places for schools to be built and paid it back, but died of a heart attack from all the stress. But the technologies that we're looking at, you really wouldn't understand it unless you look at it. We have on our trees, not only do we have tensiometers that measure how much moisture is in the ground, so we exactly spoon feed our trees the minimum amount of water that they are required to have. But then we have a dedrometer that is a, it's like a sorrel cactus. When it rains, they swell and when it's droughted, they get smaller.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  And at nighttime, they're bigger and daytime, they're smaller. So this dedrometer measures in millimeters, the diameter of a cherry tree, and we have them representative for every block. So you can see how much water is in the ground and when it's 105 degrees, is the tree stressed?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  And so you might water two hours a day, two hours stop, two hours. Instead of an eight hour set, you might have four two hour sets in a day in order for the tree to be able to take them.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Is that automated? So if it's gathering all this data?

• 31:31Speaker 03

  I jokingly say it's manual. We do have automated systems in play there, but the guy that's irrigating for me, his name is Manuel. It's his manual.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Got it?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  And he just, he just knows exactly, I mean, I've got three irrigators and they know exactly, you know, basically when the tree is wilting, you give it some water.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So talk a little bit about why you think, so some of these technologies, as they came around and you got so efficient, because I mean, I have some time in the field. I used to move water pipes in watermelon fields and it was, you just, you know, you just drain it, right? Or you just pour out water and, you know, I don't know if they're efficient with those at all anymore, or they just still kind of drown the ground?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Like a drip system?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Not a drip system.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Like sprinkler pipe, still, you know, it's hard to get past a sprinkler pipe in some row crops.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  And what they do now is they have plastic pipes that you can pull a tractor and you hook on pipes and the tractor pulls it into the field as opposed to men walking into the field.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  So, so why did some of these efficiencies get developed? I guess is what I'm saying is just because water became so expensive that these technologies and that was kind of the push for it.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just literally have to not grow cotton because you can't afford to, you don't make enough money to grow cotton. So there was 1.2 million acres of cotton in the valley and now there's 150,000 acres because the return on it, just unless you have a very specific ground that you can't grow almonds or pistachios on, that you grow with almonds. There's a bunch of other things that are also going on right now. You've got El Nino, you've got climate change.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  It's real too. El Nino is for real this year.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  It is for real.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  It's coming.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  And it's going to be a super El Nino. The last super El Nino we had was in 1997.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  We were juniors, seniors in high school. I remember it and I remember how rainy it was.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  It just brought a whole bunch of silt into the central valley and all of the, all of the arteries that get water to the ocean now got silted out and we have not, we discontinued dredging the channels. And so they're all very, very shallow. And so this super El Nino, if it is big as the 1997. I am El Nino. All other tropical storms must bow before. The system will not take it. It will be, picture, mine doesn't go off.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  That if this El Nino is as big as the 1997 El Nino, the whole thing's going to blow out.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Really?

• 33:59Speaker 03

  And the delta, the islands in the delta are 20, 30 feet lower than sea level or water level, and it will cause a flash flood and then a reverse flood coming back from the ocean and assaulting out of the delta. And it is likely to be biggest disaster in California state history and nothing is being done to address it. The water policy in California is an absolute disaster.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  It was originally, we need to save the, just last month, the California Water Control Board took the last of their comments from stakeholders. They have expanded the stakeholders now to be 50 different entities. An entity would be like an Indian reservation. Well, there's 100 Indian reservations that now have a say on the water policy. If you, an entity would be a county. Well, we got some like 50 counties and with the county, there's probably 17 different agencies and that let alone, you know, entity would be a farmer and you've got all the California farmers. There are so many people that it is too big to succeed.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  And that, so the policy was save the delta smelt.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  And so the idea was they need more water. When they ran the water into the delta and then through the delta and into the ocean, they created a food desert. Not only are there native introduced species, like the striped bass is eating them, there's all kinds of clams and mussels on the ground that are eating the nutrients, but the delta smelt starved to death due to water policy. By running fresh water through the delta, they took all of the food and that it is a, it's a food desert and the delta smelt is now extinct. They release 10,000 a year in the spring. In the fall, they come in and they try to net them, see how the delta smelt are doing. And in the last five years, they haven't caught one.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  And so they are functionally extinct except for the 10,000 that are released in the spring, but in spite of.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Where are they stored to release them? Why not just farm it?

• 35:55Speaker 03

  That's what, that's.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Millions.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Well, they're, you know, the problem is that they don't live three months. You put them in the water and that they starve to death or the salmon eat them, not the salmon, but the striped bass eat them.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  So it was meant to protect them and hurt them.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  And so that has to do with El Nino, because if you look at California as a giant bathtub, that the Sacramento drainage and the San Joaquin drainage, that flowing into the ocean, the water control board has no number that says that's enough. There is no target. So consistently last, this year through August, they sent 13 million acre feet into the ocean through the San Francisco Bay and we captured three. So 13 million went into the ocean, three were used by humans. And now you've got El Nino and you've got a Kelvin wave that is raising the water level by about a foot. And so you go down to San Diego, Laguna, where I spent my childhood, wherever we went,

• 36:52Speaker 03

  the beach, the rocks, the coastline is all washing into the ocean because part of climate change is rising sea levels and it's real. And that add another one foot to a Kelvin wave and San Francisco Bay is going to be a foot higher all the way through 2027 this year. And that we're putting 13 million acre feet of water into the ocean and we are idling a million acres of farmland in the valley. In Kern County, we have about 850,000 acres.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  So much raw land.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  And we're idling a quarter of it.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Permanently.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. You mentioned earlier, they used to dredge. Can you explain what that, why they did that and why, when they stopped and why they stopped that?

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Well, one was because they didn't want to have the delta flood. But the other thing is, is that by doing that, it created an environment where the salmon had cold water, it lowered the water temperatures. There's also navigable, you know, waterways and that 1997 flood just silted it out. And so there, it doesn't have the capacity to handle the water in a disaster.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  We had a, we had a listener message in, when I was driving up the canyon weekly, I would stop for cherries and their okie pies. My question now that they have the gas station, are these prices are, basically they're just asking how this is hurting your business, the, these gas prices. I always feel like farmers are constantly getting hit harder than anyone in the state. Thank you, Eddie, for that message.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Thank you, Eddie. We, the, the gas station, the Chevron station was the best rotational crop I ever put in and that has allowed, helped us survive. And we had a disaster in 2006 where our crops froze out and so we wanted to diversify and that's why you see everything that is out there. We have, you know, five or six different revenue streams that can handle, the last two years have been cherry disasters where they've been very difficult and that the revenue we make, quite frankly, off of okie pies contributes as much revenue to us as the gas station does. I mean, it is Chevron, they control the gas, the cash register and they pay me my margin and they keep the rest of it. So, but it is my gas station.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Now, I love, and we talked before the show, but my family and I, we're going to be heading up, we're going to be heading up there this weekend and you're going to generate revenue on us by shooting paintballs. Is this right?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Tell me more about that because I'm super excited about that.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  So we have a paintball arcade. And so when you go in there, I think there's nine, nine guns and we've got a netting around it so you don't hit anybody. But that, it is the only thing that you actually, only added cost if you, right now during weekdays, it's a little cheaper, on weekends, it's a little more kids or, I don't, I don't memorize the prices that we have, but kids are like 10 bucks and adults are like 21. But that. Climate change, the first week of October this year was the hottest, one of the three hottest years in history for the month of October. And it was up to 105 degrees. The news said, don't go outside. It stopped for the first seven days. Nobody came.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  That I was watching TV and there's Mrs. Banducci.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  She says, we've been doing this my whole life. We've never seen a year where nobody came.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  You know, with it all ready for business and nobody came. So we're doing our October, what it would be a 31 day season. Now we're going to do it in 21 days.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Are you gonna, is there a thought of pushing it out into November a little bit? You think you'd still get some run?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  You know, a pumpkin just depreciates by November 1st.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  We're gonna look at doing some-

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Kind of a cliff.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Some-

• 40:21Speaker 02

  You wouldn't know that because they're always smiling too. So, yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Well, I love what I do.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  And that, uh, and that are, you know, really truly that our, you know, our mission is to improve the quality of people's lives. And that's people coming out with their families that we've never had an incident.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  We love it. We absolutely love it. You've got the inflatable. The kids love bouncing around on that. And then even the old man will get on the, get on the cardboard and shimmy down the AstroTurf hill. And it's a blast, man.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, coming into the show, we were talking obviously about the markets and what's going on. And, and, and we talked about how actually good the stock market's been. So owning stock, uh, there's definitely a dichotomy that a lot of people feel like it's all crashing around us. And some of that's because of inflation. And, uh, even what Eddie, a wonderful comment that came in said, said farmers constantly getting hit harder than anyone else. So we talked a little bit before you came on about, um, diesel and some of the different things that, that's going on. So talk a little bit about fuel costs and, and what's going on with diesel right now and how even though there is some plan for the rest of the country, California doesn't get to participate.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Well, if you, first off, as a society, you have to have food, you have to have energy, you have to have water to, to have a viable society. And we have that here. Um, but now right now that we're very similar to what is going on in Iran. They don't have, they have no access to their fuel, even though California has 85% of the petroleum in California. There hasn't been a well drilled in the last eight years that they, every, all of those things are higher here than anywhere else in the United States. People talk about, you know, the whole election's going to be about lowering costs. And they say, well, there's a really good example in California about the inability to have a, a majority in the

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Congress, the House and the governor's office, and not be able to get a single thing done. And that, uh, as an example, there's no way we're going to fix this. That we are literally going to see a million acres go dry. And we're going to put 13 million acre feet of water. We did this year, 13 million acre feet of water in the ocean. We used three. And so there is upside down water policy. And now we have the, the stakeholders are so huge that you're not going to be able to get them to say, let's not put so much water in the ocean, even though it's contributing to the rising sea levels.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  So when you follow the money, what do you really think's going on? I mean, who is benefiting from that? That's, it sounds asinine to sit here and listen to that. So who is benefiting from pumping all that water out? If you had to guess, or maybe you know?

• 42:57Speaker 03

  As, as, as huge as California agriculture is, how pristine it is, we produce half of all the fruits and vegetables in the United States. All of the almonds, all of the, all of the pomegranates, all the pistachios, most all of the walnuts. It's only 3% of the economy. And so in California, 3%, you know, that, they poop that.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  I love it. And that it's as if, and quite frankly-

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Fertilizer.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Quite frankly, you know, you know, I went through the California agricultural leadership program in 99. Half, half of all the farmers were, were Democrats and half of them were Republican. Big success. Well, still today, you know, but that it's difficult when just every single issue that, that every decision they make hurts everybody I love. I'm on the Farm Bureau board and there's like 35 board members there and that all of them are just dying at the vine. Third generation of family farms are all getting out of this because they have a fiduciary responsibility and it's big venture capitalist groups coming in thinking they can do it better than a-

• 44:01Speaker 02

  But why not pump the water in and get that 3% higher? I think about it like a business and they literally are leaking out potential revenue as a state. It boggles my mind.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  It's just bad science. I mean, everybody you say follow the science. Well, the science is at some point over 30 years, 13 or more million acre feet of water going into the ocean is going to contribute or be a factor in rising sea levels in the Pacific Ocean. That, that idling, having it, everybody not, if you're not going broke, you just aren't making any money. And that it is the water, if you were fuel independent, water dependent, and that here, you know, it rains four or five inches a year, that we are desert. And that what was done in the 50s was in the name of improving the quality of people's lives, made the greatest thing in the world. There, we are the envy of the world. People come from all around the world just to see how we get water over the hatchbees and not the hatchbees, but over the, the pass in LA.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Fascinating. Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  We can't do that in any other place in the world. But I, I just do really want to say, please, please come to Murray Family Farms.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  We, we use the, we will get maybe 60,000 people here and 25,000 of those are school kids. The kids come in the morning and so all the school, school kids are still coming.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  But, and now it is nice. So we do have a 21 day season, but it is the most wholesome thing you see with all these families.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Love it. Yep. We can't wait.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Christmas pictures. When it, when the nine 11 hit and the towers went down, that gives me goosebumps. The weekend after that was the most successful weekend we'd ever had in a non-holiday.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Because people just said, well, we want to just take our families. We want to do something wholesome.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Back to basics.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  Back to basics. People are not going to Vegas, but that, you know, when this weather changed this weekend, everybody came back out again. So we have a business that, nothing is immune, but that people are, are, uh, what's, what's the term? Bifurcating where they spend their money. And that we have a community that is very, very family intensive. And that, uh, they love their babies and that they're going to spend their money on their kids and that, you know, you can't go out really to a movie with your family and spend, you know, about the same amount of money. And that that's where people see where the, the real value is and that-

• 46:15Speaker 02

  It's literally the same price. I'm going to take my, take my kids for two hours. We're going to sit in the dark and not talk to each other and pay food we don't like, pay for food we don't like, or head down to, head over to Murray and get fresh air, get sunlight and five, six hours of memories. They're going to remember that. They're not going to remember what movie we went and watched.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  And everything's included except for the paintball.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And, and it really truly is. It's one of those things where we talked about how unfortunately, uh, we're bombarded with bad news. All these things that we're talking about, rising costs, energy, uh, unfortunately, as a Californian who absolutely loves this state, sometimes the overwhelming feeling of the mismanagement of our resources, um, it can definitely, uh, take you in a bad direction and make you feel overwhelmed, even when your stock portfolio's been doing nothing but going up for the last, uh, so many years and stuff. But, uh, this is a wholesome thing that you've, uh, dedicated yourself to for our community. So get out there and support, uh, Murray Family Farms. It's not a long drive. Um, we definitely love seeing it as we head out

• 47:17Speaker 01

  to the desert. One of these times we need to stop, but I don't know if it ever lines up with when we go out to the desert. But thank you for all you do. Thank you for your intelligence and what you do to, to do that. Uh, coming up on tomorrow's Money Wise Show, Jared and Justin are going to run down some more of your questions and market headlines, and also talk a little bit more about El Nino with Mr. Miles Museo. So we're going to get the weather man's-

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Museometer is going to come out.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  There you go. So, hey, thank you guys for making one of the show what it is today. Get out there to Murray Farms and enjoy that with your family and friends. And most of all, be smart, be safe, be money wise.

• 47:59Speaker 04

  Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.