11/3/26 Who Can You Trust? Protecting Your Money in a World of Deception

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Tuesday, November 3rd 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/ 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  And welcome to the Money Wise Show. We are live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you are on News Talk 96.1 and 1230 AM KERN, streaming live at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 661-396-1000. We are your hosts. I'm Jared Wait and?

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Sammy Abiyawi.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Sam, we got the cameras rolling too.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Yes, we do.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  We're getting some, we're starting to work on some video.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  I know how much you'd like your face being out there.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Oh, I love my face being out there. I don't mind it.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Stick to it.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  When you're this good looking, you don't mind being out there, right, Steven?

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Like I know.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  What you talking about?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Steven, you handsome devil.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Well, today's a big day. We have elections happening. It's midterms. Everybody knows about this already. I want to spend some time throughout the show talking about what this means for the stock market. It's one of my favorite topics, actually, because it dispels, there's a lot of

• 1:45Speaker 02

  um, misunderstandings when it comes to name your political party and then associate it with how you think the economy or the stock market performs. And so I love talking about this because I think it can dispel some myths, for better for worse. Politicians tend to use the economy as a, as a tool to get votes or to villainize their opponents. And it's, you know, it's so maddening because, I mean, it's always, there's always some sliver of truth to it. But the reality is the stock market and, you know, the global free market capitalistic system that we have is far more powerful than, thank goodness, than any individual president or Congress.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  And so I'm, I'm, I'm going to stick with that and I'm going to talk about what that means. But for you, you voted. I see your sticker.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Yes, sir, I voted.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  That means you, you went in.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  I did. For the first time, for the first time in 25 years, living in the US, I went in person. I typically do the mail-in ballot, but this, this election, I've decided to go in.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  And it was a great experience.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. How did you, how did you know where to go?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Well, I went to the high, the middle, mid school, middle school next to my house. And it had an old address. They fixed my address. I gave them my ID. They didn't ask for my ID. I gave them my ID. They fixed my address. They gave me a little envelope.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Went into the booth?

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Took care of business?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Were you already prepared?

• 3:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  How you were going to vote?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  We did, we did our homework. Mary Ann did the mail-in ballot. So we went through every little thing. We discussed every little thing. She decided on certain things a certain way. I've decided on certain things a different way. But for the most part, we were in agreement. We discussed it in front of Gabe, so he learns.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And it was a good, good night.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  So we got to see democracy in action where the mom and the dad countered each other's vote.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  He's like, my mom, why did you guys just not vote on that? You're just going to cancel each other out?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we, we did. And I respect that all heartedly.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  My wife and I, she's, she's of a different way of thinking or voting and that's fine.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  We love it. We've been married for that long, 24, 25 years.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if you, there's no, there's no marriage that, like, you, you don't want to necessarily agree on everything.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  That's just.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  No, that's just boring. Seriously.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  And it's not good for you.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  It's, it's, this is the, this is the issue I've had with AI and chatbots is they're, they're, they're sycophants. There, there's so much sycophancy going on where they're just trying to feed you what you want to hear. And like to be a healthy, you know, not healthy, I'll say, I'll say healthy adult in this world, like, that means you gotta just be okay with some bad news.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Yes. And sometimes people contradicting you or saying, hey, you know what? I disagree with you.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or you're wrong.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Or whatever.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Little criticism. Come on.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we need to take it. We've got so.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Critique.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  We've gotten so, you know, thin-skinned and, and I noticed.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  I have a thick-skinned man. Even the doctor told me, I went to Dr. Beatty, he was injecting stuff. He was like, dude, you have thick skin. And I told him, literally, doctor.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  That's awesome. You have like physically thick skin. That's awesome. Uh, we've got some good listener questions. Why don't we start there?

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Sure. I'll, I'll read the first one.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  A long time listener. Thank you for all your valuable info. I'm going through hard financial times. Evicted, two tenants, still waiting for wage garnishment to come through. Two years causing foreclosure, involved with nephew, gone sour, got solar on bad contract, et cetera. Any free consulting to help me work through? Thanks again. I'm 71-year-old widow.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Let's give, let's give some free advice right now.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  This is, um, you know, we're just, what we were just talking about, part of life is going through ups and downs. And so much of our life is guided by finance and by money and for better for worse, it's, you know, that's what we, that's what we, we have to deal with in society to sort of navigate through. And when you have, for example, our listener talking about finance and family and relationships getting involved, then it's even more complicated. I don't know anybody who has not gone through some financial struggles, even somebody who is, in fact, more so the people who are now financially stable are stable because they went through.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Either they themselves went through a very financially difficult period of time, or their family did, or their parents did, or their grandparents did, or they witnessed that. They, they were part of that experience when dad lost his job or, or when, you know, a loved one has gone through some financial difficulty. And so, you know, the, I, I guess what, what, what I would say is that this seems like a lot going on.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  And that, and what, what, when you have all of these different challenges going on and you're in your seventies. So life expectancy is about 78. Let's, let's round it up to 80. So you're in your, on average, you're in your last decade of life.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  You don't have a lot of, uh, you don't find a lot of joy, I'm sure, in thinking about not, you know, going back to work, finding a job. Even most of the times unable to because of whatever health issues as we, as we age. And so, what, so what do you do, Sammy? I mean, you, you've been involved in finance most of your life.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  But I also went through financial difficulties. As, as, as an immigrant new to this country, you go through a lot, right? And you work, I was blessed with a supporting system. I met some great people, some great mentors that put me on the right track, that helped me, not financially per se, but just with advice, put me on the right track. And, and, and I feel for this. In fact, we were just having this conversation two nights ago, my wife and I. Like, we used to go and do laundry in the public laundry.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  How difficult that was.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  You have to wait. You have to carry all your dirty stuff and that, that in itself right now is a luxury for us because we don't have to get out of the house to go do our laundry.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. You actually have a laundry room.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  A whole room dedicated just for laundry.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Dedicated for just that. Imagine, imagine.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  So, so I feel for, I feel for, for this lady and definitely what you said, hey, let's, let's at least help with some advice and hopefully it puts her on the right track.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  You know, we, we've had bankruptcy attorneys, several different bankruptcy attorneys on this show over the years. You can go back and search wherever you, wherever you download this podcast, you can find previous episodes. And they've been really good discussions because fortunately, our economy and the American economy is, is based off of, of, let's call them biblical principles of debt forgiveness. Which is there, there's, there has to be a way for, um, there has to be an allowance for grace within the financial world and within people's physical world.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  And that's why here in the United States, at least, we don't have debtors' prison. There was, there were cultures and there were societies in the past where if you had debt, you were thrown in prison and that was it, you know? And the damage that that caused, not just to the person, the individual and their family, but the damage that it caused to the economy was enormous. And so fortunately, people much smarter than us came up with ways. Now, not, I'm not advocating for bankruptcy in this situation, but I, for a lot of people, that's the worst case scenario is bankruptcy.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  And the good news is that bankruptcy is not a dead end. It's a, it's a, it's a means to becoming more financially secure and to give you a chance to, to rebuild. And that, just because you declare bankruptcy doesn't mean that you still don't have to make good on your promises. I know a lot of people have done that. They've, they've declared bankruptcy and they paid back all those people that they borrowed from.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Well, look at it. Our system allows big corporations to do just that, right? Like Maya, we talked about this on this show just a week ago about the Maya Theater here locally. It's going into a chapter seven. Right?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  So they are giving themselves a chance to fight back. I mean, a lot of people with the streaming services and whatever are staying home. They're not going to the theater. They're not buying the $12 popcorn.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  So corporations in this country that are big corporations with much larger balance sheets than us use this tool.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  To restructure, to rebuild. So I don't, I don't see that as the end of the world for an individual. In fact, it could be a restart. And but when you get through those steps or you work with a bankruptcy attorney, then all of a sudden you feel that relief of your shoulders. You're not carrying the whole world.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  At least you have a plan and now you start executing on the plan.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, there's, this is a big fear that most, most people that I meet have, whether it's conscious or unconscious, is this idea that they're going to not save enough. They're not going to, or they're going to have financial struggles and then they're going to get into their seventies or eighties and they're not going to have anything there to help support them. It's a real, it's a real fear. And equally, I have seen people feel like they're very good savers. They do everything right. They, they got their, they worked on their career and they had, you know, they were diligent and good workers. And they just financially, things just fell apart.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Whether it was from a death or an illness or a divorce, something happened and everything just totally fell apart. And how devastating that is to an individual who feels like they've been responsible and they've done everything right. And, and so you, you know, this, for better, for worse, this life just involves a lot of, of

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Drama.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Drama, the things that are out of your control. They're just, you're just completely out of your control and part of life is just going through these things. So what matters, you know, now we're getting real philosophical more than we are, you know, financially speaking. But what good is finances and what good are your investments if you, if you don't have some of these other things that are meaningful for most people in life, like your family, your relationships, your faith, your

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Your, your health.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Your health.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Both mental and physical. We had Art Ruiz yesterday with us on the show. He's nearing, he's almost 60, he's got a couple of years. And he says, look, if I don't take, you know, advantage of what life is giving me right now for the next 10 years, by 70, I'm not going to be mobile. So I've got to make certain decisions. I want to talk to a financial advisor. I want to just enjoy life right now versus waiting until I'm 70.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  I was in Tangiers, Morocco, and I met a group of American tourists there. And one gentleman was pushing with the walker and an oxygen tank, right?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  And I looked at him and I'm like, I'm sorry, dude, that's not who I want to be. I want to come and visit this like right now or find ways to do this right now versus until I'm 70 or 80, when I can't do it.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You, you, I like that you mentioned some of the hard times or the more frugal times in life, like you and Mary Ann going to laundromats.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  And Emily and I, my wife and I have been married over 30 years. We frequently will talk about our, our budget, our monthly budget that we had when we first got married was I think about $500. I still have it because we would physically write it up every month on a piece of paper and put it on the fridge. And it was like a spreadsheet, handwritten spreadsheet. And we'd fill in every time we bought a soda or went out to eat, you know, we'd come back and we'd fill it in. And we write it so we could keep track each month of how much we had. Our rent was $275 a month. So we had roughly $225.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  You don't look that old, Sher.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I know. It was a really, it was a one bedroom basement apartment in, in the college town. And so it was all, you know, they rented it out to students. So it was basically student housing in a, in a very, very small one bedroom basement apartment. No heating. It was, we'd have to go to bed with

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Your jackets.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Jackets on and a beanie and gloves. It was just freezing, it was so freaking cold. And we look back and we didn't have any furniture either. And so I had actually taken the backseat out of my Ford Fiesta, little two, two door Ford Fiesta, and taken that backseat, unbolted the backseat so we could fit all our wedding gifts in there, but use that, that seat as our sofa in our apartment. That was what we sat on. That was our little bench that we sat on. I mean, pretty like, pretty meager, you know, ends like that. But we look back on that time so fondly, like we cherish those times and we were no less happy than we are today.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  I agree with you. In fact, we just had this conversation, like I said, two days ago about what we started with. This, we started, the dining table we had was given to me by the landlord I had right before. I had a room, rented the room from this lady that worked for Chevron and she was amazing. When I was leaving, renting an apartment so I can move in with Mary Ann, she gave me a dining table. And, and we did not have a bed. And I remember Mary Ann went to the clearance place and got this old mattress that was floor mattress and, and the, the frame. Both of them, I think she paid 150 bucks.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Both of them.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  So, but she, she said the same thing. We were happy still, like as happy as we are today.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  It's the With a lot less responsibility though.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing, you see this, you know, that I, I believe it's a lie when people say, it's a, there's, there's an untold lie in the world that more money brings more happiness. And also that the more money you have, the more intelligent and successful you somehow are. And none of those, none of that is true. You, you hear it over and over again, especially this happens with professional athletes or celebrities who all the, all of a sudden come on, onto some fame and some money and power. Lottery winners, you see the same thing when there's a sudden windfall of money. That happiness that you, you sort of, there is a sense of bliss for a period of few months.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  On average studies show it's about six, six months to a year where you kind of get this euphoric feeling of, it's kind of like that new car smell. It's ah, you know, you feel really good and you know, things are happy. Then you get right back down to your baseline level of happiness that you had before then. But for some people, because they've, they've dedicated their whole life to getting that point. And once they get to that point and they realize that they're still what, who they were, there's a crash because they realize, oh, that's not what was making me happy. What makes them happier are these things that we're talking about, things that bring meaning to your life. And so money is just like, it's, it's important and, and I'm not, it, it, it can be a very,

• 17:25Speaker 02

  you can do a lot of good with money. I think it's just, I guess it's, it's just that subtle shift of where you are putting that importance for in your life. If you're putting like your own peace and happiness based off of your, your account balances, that's going to be a tough road for you. Eventually you're either never going to get there or when you get there, you're going to realize, oh, that didn't fill the hole, it didn't fill the void.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden you, you might have lost some, some, some things, i.e. your health.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Again, mental, mental and physical, which are very important. What's money without health?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  It's nothing.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Right. And there's this, I can't remember who it was. It might've been President Trump, but it was some billionaire at some point in the eighties or nineties was walking out of their, their office building that they, you know, skyscraper that they had, they owned. And all this, you know, billions of dollars that they, that they were worth. But they had a lot of debt and the debt had gotten to the point where there was more debt than there was equity. And this person, this billionaire was walking out of his office building and saw a homeless person sitting on the ground. And somebody said to him, you know, that guy right there is worth more than you. You know, that, that guy right there has no house is worth more than you because of the amount of debt that he had.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And it was, it was a big, you know, realization, a big switch, you know? It's like all of a sudden you just realize, you know, like, oh yeah, like who cares how many zeros you have, you know, after your name.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  I, I have this conversation with a lot of my friends, especially when I was a consultant. It's like, what's, what's the next project's going to do? Is it going to allow you to spend more time with your kids?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Your family, travel? Or is it going to be an additional headache now you have to staff for? You have to deal with the bank, you have to, all this other things.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  And a lot of the time we don't think about those things until somebody else tells us that.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Right. They just think, oh, this is what you do. You just keep going and going and going and building and building and it, it is like

• 19:27Speaker 03

  And you become addicted to that challenge.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, just like a workaholic. There's so many workaholics that I know. It's like, you are just addicted. You're, you're using work and making money as an excuse to maybe not like take care of yourself or like be with your family or like, you know, work on some of those things that are a little bit more lasting. If you can get it right, it bring a lot more meaning. Well, because, because we do, you know, we, we value good, good work. We value just hard work and, and all that. But, but you know, the, the listener mentions the solar.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  That's interesting because this is also something that's very common is there are so many, there were, when, now it's died down, but three, three years ago plus, it was a period of like overkill and sales for solar. There were everywhere, every grocery store had a salesman out front trying to, hey, you got solar? You got solar? Cold calling, all that. And a lot of people got taken advantage of.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  So, so, so a lot of, they knock on your door even.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  That's how lucrative this thing is.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Because every salesman can make more than six figures.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Through this process. And, and, and people sign up. You know, people are kind of like hurt with the amount of electricity bill that they have to pay, five, six, $800 at times. And all of a sudden the solar person comes in and says, hey, we're going to reduce it to 200. Or 300. But what does that mean and people don't read the fine prints? That's what happens, Sherrod. And from my, I have a family member that went through this. In fact, we're in litigation right now because of it.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  And people get taken advantage of. And this person is not like an elderly person, but they've still gotten taken advantage of.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very sophisticated. Like, a lot of those solar contracts were sold based off either leasing or buying. And the decision to lease or buy, as you know, is complicated.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  It's not just, it's not just one calculation. You usually have two or three calculations that you need to then compare. And it's not always straightforward. And certainly, the salesperson isn't going to demonstrate and point out all of the downsides of leasing versus buying. And

• 21:46Speaker 03

  You're a number on that street that he needs to hit.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  By the end of a certain amount of time.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's unfortunate, you know, that this happens. There are, there are some protections, you know, for consumers.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Right? Especially when it comes to solar. If you were sold something unfairly, if you were sold something that, and signed some contract that you weren't aware of, and there were some manipulative process involved in that, I think that there's, there's some recourse that, you know, you can have.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. And sometimes it's, it's free. Like, here in Bakersfield, we have the Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance, especially for senior law center. You can, you can, for this lady, she can maybe go there and just have a conversation with someone to explain what's going on.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  And hopefully, it gets at least some inputs, some guidance. That's one thing. As far as the foreclosure, there's a, a HAD approved housing counselor for, for the foreclosure that you can go through. There's an 800-569-4287 number that you can call.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  For specifically for this. Then this person can help you, again, answer some of the questions, see what you're going through. And as far as the nephew, I'm gonna go back to that just legal assistance law center.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Explain what's going on. So hopefully, again, they can guide you towards something that, that would benefit you.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, fortunately, we have some protections in place for vulnerable populations. And even if you're totally healthy and you're completely right of mind at age 71, it's, you're still protected. Because most of us, the majority of us, start to have cognitive decline once we get into our 60s and 70s. It's a known thing. And you, your, your ability to sort of process and understand and, and put into context, information becomes more difficult as we get older. So we owe it, we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our loved ones around us to, to look out for each other and, and to, to be sensitive.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  In our industry as financial advisors, we're very highly regulated when it comes to working with seniors. And I'm, I am all for it, because I have seen so many of them get taken advantage of.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And, and so there's protections out there that are specifically for seniors and, and part of, in our population who is, is vulnerable. And, and so, seek out those, seek out that help. There we go. Went through the whole thing, and I just realized I didn't hit record.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  So we'll get, we'll get the video. Eventually, we're gonna get this video, video thing down. We're gonna take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. We've got a lot more to cover. We're the Money Wise Show.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Sing it, Bob. We're Money Wise. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Sherrod, here with Sammy. We're your hosts today. Love the comments and questions. Keep them coming our way. 661-396-1000. That's the number you can text. You can call it, too, if you want to get on the air. We'll take your call. We've got a message here.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  A bunch of other questions and comments. That's, that's what makes this show great, and that's why I love doing it. The second one today, "Hey, guys, we're Blink, and we are sitting here in November, lol. And every time I turn on the financial news, somebody's predicting a crash or recession. My question is, how, how do you guys figure out what's worth paying attention to, and what's just the news pushing scary headlines?"

• 25:24Speaker 02

  I, this is a great, great question.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Especially now.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  There's so, there's so much misinformation out there. And not only misinformation, but also, like, blatant deception. And then, we're, we're all left out here to sort of try to figure out how to sift through what's true and what's not true. And in a sea of media that is all over the place. And so I sympathize with this. And this is something I've, I've, you know, I've recognized as a challenge many, many years ago, and made, had to make a really concerted effort many years ago to limit the amount of media that I was gonna allow into my life. This is like, one thing I did right away was cut out social

• 26:14Speaker 02

  media altogether. I'm very fortunate that I've been able to do that. But I understand that that's not everybody's thing. But social media can spread so much information so quickly and, and can do so much damage. For me, and the way that my brain works, I just, I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. It was too much. It was too much for me. And now, in this world of, you know, TikTok, where everybody wants to get everything in 12 seconds or sooner, three seconds and swipe, it just doesn't, it doesn't help. And now, all media has caught on to that, because they're all for, most of them are for profit. So they

• 26:55Speaker 02

  don't care how long you are spending time looking at a headline. They, they just want to have a headline that grabs your attention.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  You, you definitely escaped the matrix by not being on social media. I'll, I'll tell you that from my own experience. I mean, and really lately, I've been, I mean, I don't spend hours and hours on it, but it does take you at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half a day. And some people spend a lot more.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Especially when you're retired, maybe, and you don't have a lot of stuff to do. So guess what you do when you're in front of that either iPad, or iPhone, or even just TV?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Absorbing and absorbing and absorbing, and all of a sudden, your mind gets rewired.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Yes. And, and if you don't, if you're looking at information for free, then you are the product.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  If social media is not charging you, Facebook doesn't charge you for your, for, for you to have an account, how are they getting paid? They're getting paid by you being the product, and them being able to, to take your information and feed it back to you to, to manipulate your behavior.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  That's all they're trying to do.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  And the biggest factor, the biggest motivation is to manipulate your behavior and your purchasing decisions. You know, what do you want to buy? What should you buy? What should you be thinking about buying? What do you need and what don't you need? And, and so, all, all of these headlines, I think a simple rule, if you're looking at wanting just news, you, you either need to pay for it, or you need to know what sources out there are trying to just report on the news. If the, if the organizations are trying to just report on the news, they're not going to have sensationalist headlines, especially when it comes to the stock market or investing. So take, for example, you can see a headline

• 28:52Speaker 02

  that'll say, "The S and P 500 declined 1.2% today following new inflation data." That seems like a reasonable headline. It's just stating the facts, even though the facts may not be great for you. This, this line may not jive with you if you just shorted the S and P, or if you just were long the S and P 500, and it went down. You might be like, "Oh, what do they, what do they know?" But they're stating facts. Whereas if the headline says, "Wall Street panics as disastrous economic policies destroy Americans' retirement savings," that's not journalism. That's sensationalism. That's just them trying to stir up emotions within you. And Journalism 101 is, we're trying to state the facts, and we're trying to state the sides, both sides, or as many sides of the story as possible.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  And we're trying to come, to confirm that information by uninterested sources.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  People that are not necessarily involved in that. You, you want the people involved in it. You want to hear what they have to say. But you also want to get objective, outside perspective of these. And so, most of what I think people are reading and seeing is something that's being flashed at them through some online service or social media. And most of what people think that they're reading in news is not actual news, it's editorial commentary. Looking like a news, because there's still a headline, and there's still a body to the, to the article. But that, to them, is news. And that's not always news. It's oftentimes just somebody's opinion.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and this opinion specifically about a crash. Like, I'm gonna go out and it's like, "Hey, a crash is coming." But let's define, when is that crash coming?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Right. Right.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  When? Tell me.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Oh, it's coming tomorrow? I mean, next week? A year from now? 10 years from now?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  But stating, "A crash is coming," we've had crashes in, in our economic system for the last, since we inception.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  That's just part of the capitalism, capitalistic system that we have.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Crashes happen.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  COVID, nobody predicted COVID.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  We still had a crash.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  You know, the first three months, everybody was going crazy. Everybody, I mean, you, did you remember toilet paper craziness?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a, the, you're right, the, the crash is the biggest thing that people are saying, hey, this is, they'll stay, they'll say anything, market's at all time high, get ready for a crash.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Or, so, they'll, they'll, they'll appeal to authority and say so and so who predicted the crash of eighty seven has something to say about the upcoming crash. So they try to give credibility to somebody. But at the end of the day, any journalist that is, is really good, especially if they're, if they're reporting on the economy or the stock market, they know that nobody knows. So they would never say that. So that's not, that's not journalism. That's just somebody's opinion.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  And that's what's been happening, in my opinion, what you described is, is, I'm, I'm gonna put this out there and I'm gonna see how many people I'm gonna attract. And that's what social media has done.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  It's just like, how many views am I gonna get? Am I gonna become viral?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  And that's the goal, really.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Rage baiting is, you said a couple of years ago, you told me that rage bait was the word number one.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Word of the year. Yeah, yeah, rage bait. I mean, just, and it's still, it's still a thing. It just, the, the only point is to stir up emotion, because when you get somebody in a heightened emotional state, they'll stay and they'll be there and they'll spend more time on your website. And they'll make decisions that, they'll get moving. And that's what, that's what people selling stuff wanna do.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  And unfortunately, news, I've had to subscribe to, and I subscribe to a few different newspapers, national newspapers. And I will make sure that I'm reading, not the editorials, but I'm reading the headlines that are important to me. And whether it's national, international news. And, but, you know, it costs me. It costs, it costs me. I, I just looked at it the other day. I was looking at our budget, our household budget. I think, I think I pay close to thirty to forty dollars a month between, for subscriptions, for news,

• 33:29Speaker 02

  news subscriptions, because I don't wanna just be fed, you know, whatever's, whatever's out there on the internet.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  You don't be eating CNN and Fox News?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  I, I try to be also like, there's also really good resources I think people should look at that talk about, they kind of list the top fifty news, what do you call them, media companies? And how they are on the political spectrum, like who, which, which on the right and on the left, what their view is of that media outlet, which is really interesting, you know, you have,

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  You know, the big examples would be Fox, you know, is by far, you know, leans to the right and CNN by far leans to the left. So it's like, okay, well, that's kind of helpful to know, you know, like, I wanna hear what both sides are saying. Or I'd rather have a media source that is somewhere in the middle or tries to be in the middle. Sadly, it seems like most of them are pandering to their, to one side or the other. But there are legitimate sources out there and there's very, very good researchers and journalists out there that are really trying to be unbiased and just trying to present the facts. There is a lot of fake news. There's no doubt about it. There's fake news. One of the genius of, of President Trump's

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Words.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Words is, you know, this, this fake news idea, because yeah, there is, there's definitely fake news all the time, all over the place, but.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  He calls this fake news, I call it just propaganda. In my opinion, that's another word for me, is propaganda, or he put it as fake news, but propaganda always existed. That's just to manipulate.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Either voters or get people in panic or get them to do a certain way or buy certain thing. It's always been around since the inception of this country.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is, this is where I think, since the inception of our country, I think our education system has failed us in teaching us how to critically think. That is so much more important to me than I think memorizing facts is learning how to learn. How do you, how do you learn what's fact and what's not fact? And critical thinking requires you to understand philosophy and psychology and to be able to know what questions to ask to be able to get to the truth.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  So here's the truth for me, because you mentioned philosophy and you mentioned critical thinking. So I was one of those students in high school that avoided philosophy as much as possible. For a certain reason, I'm, I have my faith and it guides my life, right? Philosophy, the first thing that they tried to teach in that class, I remember in high school, I was a freshman, is the existence of God, and I completely just rejected it right away. So I did not get involved in that class. It took me college and my first job to really start thinking, hey, I need to develop some critical thinking. But my sister, on the other hand, who got involved in that philosophy class and engaged in it all throughout high school and beyond,

• 36:41Speaker 03

  had questioned things, the way I didn't, until a later part of my life.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  So, so I, I highly agree with you that these things, critical thinking is something that needs to be thought early. Not just, you know, in, in college, but middle school, maybe high school and beyond.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Because once you have critical thinkers, I think that's what develops a society.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  We're, we're kind of seeing it now with AI and these chatbots is it's a lot of people thinking that they're geniuses and their bot telling them that they're a genius, but they're, they're, that tool is only as good as you are in instructing it.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  And in understanding a wider perspective, a wider context outside of what you're prompting. So if your prompts are saying, I feel this, is that true? It's gonna lead it right down the path that you're gonna want to hear, rather than saying, tell me about this fact, or explain to me the, the pros and cons of this situation. And sort of understanding how to get to the bottom of truth is gonna be so much more important, even though we all have now a tool that can do everything for us. It's ready, you mean, you, you do the right prompt, you can, we have a tool now, it's a calculator that can literally do anything for us. But the calculator's only good is the, is the information going into it.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Or the prompts or.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  And then you, you can, you can, you can't get by with just logic and philosophy and critical thinking, because now we have this other layer of understanding how to weed through media. There's a, there's a, a media literacy alone, I'm guessing there's college courses on just that, like, how do you, how do you weed through the media to know what is, what is factual and what isn't? And I, I fear that if, if we don't do better at that as a country, we, we lose one of our fundamental principles that keeps us together, which is the, which is the, the free speech and the free press. Like, that's, to me, is, is part of the glue that keeps our, our country together, is the fact that we can have all these opposing views

• 38:49Speaker 02

  and, and, and still be in the same room and, and, and try to understand each other. And, and so, you know, this is, this is a real fear, a real fear that I have. This, this message really, really stuck. Yeah. Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Good stuff. Keep the messages coming.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  There's, there's one about the Trump accounts.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  I've been hearing about these Trump accounts for kids, but I'm a little confused. How are they different from a five twenty nine college savings plan or just opening an investment account for my child?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  The, the main distinction here is that the Trump accounts are, are eligible for anybody that is born between January first of twenty twenty five and December thirty first of twenty twenty eight. So you've got this three year period. If anybody is born during that time, the government is going to deposit a thousand dollars into this account. And that's it. It's a one time contribution. And that's all the government is going to do in terms of adding money to it. Then what happens is you can, you can contribute generally about five thousand dollars per child per year.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Or an employer can even contribute to that. And then it essentially becomes a retirement account.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  For the child.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  For the child.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  The child also gets full control of that when they turn eighteen. There's nothing anybody can do about that. And there's also no way you can access that money before they're eighteen. So that's a very different scenario than a five twenty nine plan, which a five twenty nine plan or a college savings plan can be set up by a parent or a grandparent or an uncle. They can control that and they can change who the beneficiary is. So if that, that kid or that nephew doesn't go to college or becomes a, a, a, whatever, a criminal, you can, you can change it.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  And, and you have a lot more flexibility.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Not with this.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Not with this, not with the Trump account. Once it's in there, it's theirs and there's nothing you can do about it. And so what our advice has been really simplifying this is go for the free money. If you have, if you've had a kid or you have a kid that's born within that timeframe, go for it. Get that thousand bucks and let it ride, because you have nothing to lose, because it's free money that's coming to you anyway. And that thousand dollars over there, eighteen years, hopefully will grow to, let's call it three or four thousand dollars on an, in an average market. Great. They've got three or four thousand dollars. And so I don't think that that's gonna make a big dent for many people. What I like about it is that it does get people thinking about saving for the long term.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  And that's what we lack that. We lack that literacy and that desire. And sometimes all people need is just that little initial start. Here's a little start and then you can get going. Once you get that going, maybe then you start thinking about other, other accounts. Maybe you do a five twenty nine or you do an IRA or.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Or any type of investment.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Just a regular investment account, savings account, just start building up, you know, and that, and that can really help. So hopefully that helps distinguish a little bit about those Trump accounts.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Cool. We have a couple more messages. Wonderful story. Thank you. I think that she was, or this person is talking about your story of living in the basement.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  It was your story of the, doing the laundry with Mary Ann.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what, I did not look forward to that. And thank God for Mary Ann because she had lived on her own before. And she was a trooper. I'll tell you that.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Thank you for sharing. Best show ever. Tearjerker though. We apologize for that.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  And we have, we have another comment here. There is few, there's very few sources that go down the middle because they are being drowned out on social media. But I think staying off social media is the first major step to reflective thinking.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I'm, I'm careful to, to criticize anybody that's on social media because I, I, I know that there's an enormous amount of good. I do find myself, since I've been off social media now for eight, I don't know, probably eight years or so, occasionally hearing or coming in on a conversation, or I'll be at a party or something, I'll be like, what do you mean you're pregnant? Or, you know, what do you mean you're going to Europe? Like, how did I not know this? And they're like, well, I put, I posted it last week. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. There's so much that I miss. And then especially friends and family that are out of town, that I don't see ever. I, I miss being able to connect, you know,

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. For, for, for me, having grown up in a different country with, you know, and all my childhood friends are all scattered. And social media keeps me in connection with them. I see their kids. I see the, the evolution of, of their kids. They're growing up, which sports they are playing. My cousins and, and other nephews that are overseas, I can, I can keep up. That's, that's the benefit. The downside side to me is, side to me is just, just absorbing all some, sometimes, especially in election time like this.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  And letting it sink in my head and affect me.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  That's, that's the negative part of think, of, of social media.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. You just, you're inundated with so much information and you, there's no way that you can have that in proper context, all of it in proper context all the time. And so it's going to impact you.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Especially at night, when you're like having, like going to sleep and you're like scrolling.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  That's, that's, that's the part that, that just, as an individual, it gets me.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  It's a, it's amazing at how good it is at feeding what you like. I, I lean in heavily on these algorithms, not with social media, but with other, other sources, specifically with music. I love it. I love how it can analyze what I listen to, when I listen to it, how long I listen to it, what the genre is, who the artists are, what the, what the tempo is. All of that information is being plugged into this supercomputer and some weird data center in Indiana and coming right back to me and feeding me exactly what I want to hear. And I love it. I love it. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's far better than

• 45:18Speaker 02

  me asking my brother what's good. It's far better than me walking into the record store and going, hey, what's going on? You know, like, that's great. Those all work. And I get great information walking into underground records or anywhere here in town. But it's, it, it's not instant and it's not infinite. This is infinite information. I was able to take, you can request, I use Spotify, I use Apple Music and Spotify. And Spotify, I'm sure Apple has the same thing. You can request your data from the company. It takes a week or two, and then they'll send you a file, a big, heavy file. It has all of that metadata in it. So all, when you've listened, what you've listened to, how long, what genres,

• 46:02Speaker 02

  everything. It's a big, big file. And so I was able to use that file and create just this amazing infographic for myself that showed 15 years of listening to music.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  You're a little nerdy, Sher.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I'm nerdy about that. Nerdy alert. I'll share it with any of you if you're interested. But I was, I still look at it. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I remember, it has it broken down by genre. And it's like a graph, right? Over, over like a 15 year period. So you can see, oh, yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  How much I love data.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  You know how much I love data?

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Mine does the same, but it'll tell me what the genre, and then it'll give me like the top 25 songs I've listened to over the last five years.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  That's crazy.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's super, super helpful.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Cause I, I don't listen to just one genre. I, I listen to a bunch of stuff. So I want, I want to see mine now.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Uh, hey, but we only got a minute here, and I've got to explain this because we are, uh, it is election day. 19 for 19, a near perfect, it is a perfect record for the S and P 500, going back to 1950. Uh, the S and P 500 has finished higher in the 12 months after every single midterm election, including 2022. And that's a 76 year historical streak that we've had. So

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  don't fear, folks.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  No matter how this turns out, this is not a guarantee that it's going to happen, but this has happened.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  The pattern is there.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  The pattern is there. And it is nearly double over that, over that 12 month period, or actually the first six month period after midterm election is nearly twice as high average performance than not. So this bodes well for us. This bodes well for us that after today, I think we can all maybe take a sigh of relief. No matter how it turns out, we can know at least the economy and the markets are going to continue on.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  And don't believe somebody that's making some prediction, especially when they're being specific about when and how. Well, thank you, everybody for tuning in. If you missed this podcast, you can find us on all major podcast platforms like iTunes and Spotify. And remember these three things. Be smart, be safe, and always be money wise.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  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.