2/20/26 Roth IRA Know-How & Cracking College Admissions in the Age of AI

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Friday, February 20th 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 facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management Guest: Kat Clowes, Founder/CEO of March Consulting website: https://mymarchconsulting.com/ 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. Kat Clowes and her business are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management].

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me? Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and MoneyWise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the MoneyWise Show.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Friday edition of the MoneyWise Show, live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. It's a little chilly out there today, but it's gorgeous. At least it's not raining.

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It looks great out there.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Went for a little walk today. It was kind of nice.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Um, I didn't wear my jacket, though, which is probably a problem. It was a little, it was a little chilly outside, but overall, pretty nice.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Sweater and jacket today, and it helped.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So for the next hour, you're on KGO Money Talk, 1230 AM, 101.1 FM, as always, streaming on the interwebs at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call into the show or text into the show anytime, 24 hours a day, 661-396-1000, 661-396-1000. We do have a couple of questions that popped in over the past 23 hours since we were last on air. Stephen did a good job.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Keeping those and putting those on for us to discuss here in a little bit. But we're your hosts today. I'm Justin Leland, here with...

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Dustin Weaver.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  It's the Dustin Show.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Here it is.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  I feel like we always land on a Friday.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's pretty much...

• 1:51Speaker 03

  The Dustin Show is on a Friday.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Pretty much, because it's, it's, it's all about, you know, um, just having fun.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  We're just going to have fun with it. Going into the weekend, we're going to have some fun with it.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  There was some fun things that happened, uh, out there today. I'm sure we have some fun things to talk about. Fun's a word for it.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Fun, I don't know if fun's really the word for it. Um, but hey, the markets rebounded and, uh, took the information with a grain of salt, which was interesting. So what we're talking about is that, uh, early this morning, the Supreme Court, um, made a ruling that, uh... Basically shot down the administration's tariffs under the IEE EPA law of 1972.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  That was a mouthful. What is that? How would you summarize what that is?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Basically, it's an emergency powers act that allows for the president to regulate commerce under a true emergency. So the thought process in the 1970s is the Russians lob a nuclear missile into the middle of the heartland of the United States, that the president, rather than having to wait for Congress, would be able to regulate commerce in some way, shape, or form. Last I checked, we didn't have any nukes being thrown at us, right?

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Thankfully not.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yes. So the administration was using this emergency powers act to implement some of the tariffs, not all of them, but a good portion, probably about a third of the tariffs that were issued over the past year were under this AIBA law. Okay. And so there was a lawsuit saying, wait a minute, you're usurping the power of the purse from Congress, which is an Article I constitutional issue. And there's no justifiable emergency out there, right? Like, just because we're running a deficit against the, you know, if Denmark has a trade deficit with the United States, that's not an emergency.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  So nine people voted on this, right?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  And it was? Six to three.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Six to three, yeah. So over half.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it wasn't even a close one, you know? Typically, anything right now with it as a six to three in either direction is pretty powerful. Five to four is, you know, a win. Six to three, if you get seven to two or eight to one, like, you might as well, like, not fight it. It's done, right?

• 4:15Speaker 03

  So what kind of timeframe are we looking here for these changes that they're?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Well, I bet, from what I gather, the Supreme Court makes the ruling, and it's basically immediate that that law no longer exists, right? Or at least the tariffs because of that law no longer exist. Now, the question is, How do those billions of dollars in tariffs that have been charged and recouped by the Treasury Department? How do those get refunded now?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Is that what they're saying?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Like that's like, this is the piece that's the, the, you know, underlying pieces. Those tariffs are now deemed as being illegal and unconstitutional and therefore have to be returned.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Repaid. Okay.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Right. So where's my check?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Right? How many, how many, how much in tariffs did I pay? I'd like to know. Well, so I did get a bill from UPS.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  You got a bill from?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I did. I'm not kidding you. I had bought something over Christmas and I got a, a tariff brokerage fee bill from UPS because of the import of this item from Great Britain.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Wow. I have not heard of this one.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And I get, so the tariff, I'm not kidding you, the tariff on this was less than $2.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  But they sent you?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  They sent me a bill for $20 because the brokerage fee was 18.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Oh my goodness.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  And I'm like, I'm not paying that, like not in any way, shape or form UPS. You can go ahead and write that off as bad debt. Thank you very much. I'm not paying it. And now I don't have to pay it.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  So, um.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. I did, did another little search. It looks like maybe up to 70% of the tariffs were actually.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Under the?

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  So it's eliminating roughly 70% of the tariff regime, it says.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Wow. That's much bigger than I read. Interesting.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  That'll have an impact.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  That is definitely going to have an impact. Now, what, what impact did it have on the markets today? Uh, positive. We were in the green.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  So up about 0.7% on the S and P 500 and 0.47 on the Dow.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  The NASDAQ, which is a little more tech heavy is at 0.9.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  The other piece that I think is even more telling is the bond yields went up. Across the board, the 10-year bond yield is over 4% again. The 30-year is at 4.7%. Those bond yields have gone up, and so if we're paying attention to when we're looking at the overall economy, not just the stock market, but the bond market. Bond market moved up as well.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Right, so those things don't typically happen in conjunction. The US stock market is up and the bond market is up as well.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  You know, gold's been an interesting story recently, too. It's up around 2.5% again today.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Is it over 5,000 again?

• 7:03Speaker 03

  5,129.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the year-to-date, it's up 17%. The one-year is really what kind of shocked all of us. It's up 75.7%.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is the part where I keep going back to, gold is actually more volatile than the stock market. If you go back in history and you look at it, and people will argue with me on that, but I have data to back it up. The gold is actually more volatile than your US stock market. You're actually safer in the stock market.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  A lot of people don't realize that.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  They don't realize that, and they will argue with me until they're blue in the face. And it's just not true. Anyhow, so anyhow, with the tariffs being shot down, now we have the administration going into a little bit of a tailspin. And there's some arguments and things going on, and so we have President Trump said that he's going to sign an executive order doing a 10% tariff across the board using Section 122 of, which again, it's... We can't take the L.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  This is different than that emergency order.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Right, so under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. So he's finding any law that he can possibly find that's going to justify taking power away from Congress to implement tariffs.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  So it didn't happen yet, but he's threatening this 10% global?

• 8:32Speaker 02

  10% global tariff on everything under the Trade Act of 1974, Section 122, which...

• 8:39Speaker 03

  So it'll be worth, I mean, it's gonna be interesting.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're gonna do it all over again in nine months.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  That's just the way it's probably gonna go. Um, but anyhow, it is what it is. Stock market's up for the day. The bond market yields are up as well. And so, you know, it's, uh, it's an interesting thing when, when something good happens in the economy. Tariffs are being struck down. The markets move in a positive direction, but we're still gonna, we're gonna still fight to the death, I guess. I don't know.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  So you've mentioned the word stock and that reminds me of one of the questions we got here. It says, what does the term stock picking actually mean? I'm attempting to learn these money terms and I keep hearing that stock picking might be back.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So stock, I actually kind of chuckled when I saw, I read this is that, okay, so stock picking is simply that. It's you're picking stocks. Like if you're on a Robin Hood account or, you know, you have your own brokerage account, whatever custodian it's at. And you are picking, you know, I want to buy Meta or I want to buy Tesla or I want to buy Apple, whatever.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Safe to say, individual companies.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  You're buying individual companies. You're buying stocks and you're picking those stocks. Now, in our industry and Dustin, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but in our industry, when we hear the term stock picking,

• 10:01Speaker 02

  usually not somebody that's gonna be making a dent or, um, beating the S and P 500.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  That's what they're trying to do, right?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  They're trying.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Often the benchmark that we're all looking towards when we're trying to get performance. Because the S and P 500, I mean,

• 10:18Speaker 02

  It's like the gold standard.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  It's 500 of the largest companies in the United States.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  So you've got companies from all different walks of life.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Every sector.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Right. Every different sector from technology to consumer goods.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Healthcare.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Healthcare.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Right. Transportation.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Right. Right. Yeah. And so by picking an individual stock, you're making a, you know, a strategic guess. We'll call it, you called it a bet.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  I'm gonna call it, it's a bet.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  It's a strategic guess of which direction that's gonna go, hoping it's gonna go up more than that index or whatever benchmark you're comparing yourself to, right?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so when I see the, the term stock picking, usually you're not picking one or two stocks. You're picking a basket of stocks and you're thinking that that, that basket is going to do better than that index.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Here's the point. Warren Buffett is a genius, right? But even he has come out and said, hey, I'm gonna pick just any index fund. I'm gonna pick a US index fund, an S and P 500 index fund. If there's a hedge fund manager or a stock picker out there that wants to take a bet over the next decade of whether or not you're gonna beat me and my index fund.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  I'll put up a million dollars and you put up a million dollars and it goes to charity, whoever wins. There were three hedge fund managers that took him up on his bet, thinking that they were gonna beat the S and P 500 index over a decade. They all gave up after year seven. They knew they couldn't make it.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Seven, yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  After seven years, they're like, done, we're out, we can't do it.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  This is why I say that like when people say stock picking is in or stock picking is back.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  It may be for a minute.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  I wonder if they're referring to long-term or if they're, are they saying?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Like the day trading kind of a thing, maybe, but even then it's you're highly, highly susceptible to some downturns in the market. So I'm not a big fan of the stock picking, if you can't tell already. But yeah, that's, that's what that means in general.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  I mean, there has been a lot of studies about specifically large cap US, right? The largest US companies. And that's frequently the benchmark that a lot of these money managers are trying to outperform. But I think the verdict's out that it's very difficult to beat.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, even the best in the world are failing 60% of the time. So I mean, these are the smartest guys on the planet. They're trying to do this and they can't do it.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  So I'm just saying like that's that I'm not a big fan of the stock picking. We also had another question here, is a Roth IRA still worth it? If I'm not making a ton of money or is it mainly for higher income folks?

• 13:08Speaker 03

  That's a great question.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  That is a fantastic, how would you take a stab at that there, Dustin?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Well, there's a couple of things that stand out there. So when they say not making a ton of money, the first thing that comes to mind is if that's your perception of your situation, it's likely that you're not in a high tax bracket. Right?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  So if you're thinking about the taxes and we're thinking, well, what does a Roth IRA do?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Well, if you. Put money into it. It's money you've already paid taxes on. So if you didn't pay taxes at a high rate and it goes into this account and can grow tax free going forward.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Basically forever.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  That's a good thing.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Right. So in the question of, hey, is this only for people making a ton of money? Or is it appropriate for me? Well, I mean, by definition, it's good for you if you're in a lower tax bracket.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Right? Second, the other side, right? When it says higher income folks, there are thresholds that will disqualify you from being able to go into the Roth.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  At certain income levels.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  You as an individual or you as a married couple make too much money, you can't even contribute to a Roth.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Right. It stops you from doing that.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  So there's those, those two things, but I am a huge Roth fan for one other reason. And that is it has a unique feature that a lot of other retirement accounts don't have. And that is the money that you've contributed, technically you still have access to that over the years prior to that 59 and a half.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Age. It's really the earnings that have to stay in past 59 and a half.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  And so, you know, a lot of people don't realize that there is other benefits to it that as a backup emergency fund, technically you do have a little access.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Debatable on whether you should do that because we're usually talking about a volatile investment that's in there. And this is a short-term account. You probably shouldn't be using it that way.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  I have seen people that have used a Roth IRA and the contributions in it to potentially help pay for college for their kids or something like that. Right? They, they put in, you know, over the years, they put in $50,000 into the account. They can take out that 50,000, but the growth that's been in there continues to grow tax free. So I've seen people do that from time to time where it's like, you know, yeah, you have that ability to use it. I'm not like you. It's, is it better for that money to stay in there and be earning and compounding tax free for 30 years? Or do we want to start using it as a piggy bank?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Definitely 30 years over three.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Right. I'd rather do the 30 years over the, over the piggy bank three-year deal. So that's kind of my take on that. But you know, the Roth, I'm a huge fan of, as Dustin said, he's a fan of it. You know, if it becomes even more powerful, say the younger that you are.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Oh, definitely.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  If you are a young individual, young adult in your twenties or early thirties, and you have money to put into a Roth. Highly recommend putting that money into a Roth because you got 30 years to let that stuff ride and compound over and over and over again.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  And the important thing is, we're talking about the account type is a Roth, which is telling the IRS how to treat the taxes, but equally important, if not more important, is make sure you get it invested appropriately. So get good advice or get good research on your side to help you make good decisions for that, so that you do get the compound growth.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  And so I look at that and say, yeah, if you're putting that money in a money market, getting 1% or 2%, that's probably not the right thing to do. If in a Roth, you typically are going to be in something, especially if you're in your 20s or 30s, you're going to be wanting to have some high growth. So going back to our previous conversation, that index fund is looking pretty darn good.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Just let it ride.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  You know, depends on your situation. That's not a, that's not a recommendation to buy or sell, but generalities speaking, if we're talking generalities, the younger you are, use the Roth, index funds are perfectly fine.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Sounds good to me.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Under, under general rules.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  General, generally speaking.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Generally speaking. Hey, we are going to take a quick break. We have Cat Klaus here from March Consulting. We're going to talk about college admissions and AI.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  All right.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  All right.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Need to get your financial fix on the go? If so, subscribe to the Money Wise Podcast and catch up on all past shows whenever.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Welcome back.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Welcome back. Stephen, thank you. How'd you know?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  I may have told them I like, I like Tool too.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, right? You know, they're gonna be, they're talking about doing a residency at the Sphere.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Oh, I have not been to the Sphere yet.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  I have not been to the Sphere yet, but I've been to a Tool concert and I can only imagine what that's going to look like.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Intense.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  I'm gonna dig into my 401k for that one.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  I might, I might.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Gee whiz, that would be a, and supposedly they're coming out with a new album in 2027 as well to coincide with their residency.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Okay, how about that?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  So, front row tickets might be in order. So, just saying.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Sounds like you got a couple extra for us, Stephen.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Thanks, sir.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  I wish.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Hey, uh, welcome back to the show, Money Wise Show on Friday, taking you into the weekend from the basement here in the wonderful downtown Woolworths building. We've got a special guest here today, a great friend of the show, great friend to Money Wise, Kat Claus from, uh, March Consulting, um, college admissions specialist and all around good egg.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, welcome back.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Welcome back to the show.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  So, we were talking off the air, and AI is, is pretty much everywhere, right? This is the, this is the thing that's, you know, everybody's ChatGPT, Claude, whoever. And you were mentioning something about students that you know, or, you know, high school students that are unfortunately use utilizing these large language models for their college admissions and thinking that they're going to jump to the top of the list.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Like, tell us the horror stories.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, is that what they're experiencing?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Tell us the horror stories, what's going on?

• 19:31Speaker 04

  So with ChatGPT, right, and Claude and all these other AI models, uh, without talking about the nightmare that is higher education and getting students to now physically write essays instead of just plugging it into ChatGPT and how we're going back to Blue Books and how do you make your course AI-proof?

• 19:51Speaker 04

  And/or, we're going to talk about in a second about using AI for college admissions essays. I've gotten a lot of calls from families who are not getting the results that they wanted and were sitting down and, and there's a lot of misconceptions about using AI for advising you. And that's been very interesting, and this is the first year that that's happened.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Where there have been things completely wrong. I didn't even know they didn't have this major, AI told me they did. Uh, looking at essays and seeing that it is obviously AI. Yeah, teenagers, they, they kind of think that they're getting away with something. We all did it. You know, we all knew everything, but when you see hundreds of essays, it's very easy to see an AI essay.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Versus. Yeah, and I'll give you one example. I've never seen anybody write the word esteemed in their email. So if you see the word esteemed, you know, it's AI, period, end of story. Nobody uses that word ever.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Especially, you, you, exactly.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  It's just like you can find these words where it's like, that's, no, you're 17. You did not write that.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Is there other, is there other standout words that, that you've caught?

• 21:07Speaker 04

  Oh, uh, synergy.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I, I.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Corporate speak.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  I admire the, it's all corporate speak and it's talking about programs in, in that very corporate higher education mission statement way.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  That no 17 year old would.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Ever speak that way.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Ever speak. And so part of.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  It's not skibitty and it's not, it's, it's all cap.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  I mean, I wanna, I wanna hear you, you know, talk about how you almost crashed out over a grade that you got. And that's okay because you're 17.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  But if you say, the difficulty that I had with it, bleh.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  We know that you're using a computer.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  But on the advising end, it's, we have all these vibe coded apps coming out saying that we're gonna, you know, advise you the right way and with test prep, we're going to help you with your test prep. And as someone who's, you know, since the start been investigating more and playing with it, you know, give me a list of colleges for this, things of that matter, it is wrong, often.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Often.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Too, too wrong, too often to, to faithfully say, yes, you can use this. Because it's just predicting language. It's not actually thinking or analyzing or taking into consideration this cloud of nuance around the admissions process itself as case by case family basis. And so it's interesting, just.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Plugging things into ChatGPT, but then on the other side, having families that relied on it. And now they haven't gotten the results and we look at the applications and there are some obvious errors. But then also things that you wouldn't know unless you were in this space all year long.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, you know, and I feel badly for for any student or family who has relied on this information, thinking that this is like the new Google or whatever. And and getting bad advice or bad information and and relying on that, that's, I mean, I feel I feel bad about that. But also, what would you expect? Is my is my point on that is that, you know, at some point, and I want to talk to you, Kat, about this. We'll we'll take a quick break, but this is kind of the whole point of why you hire an advisor. This is why you hire a financial advisor. This is why you hire a college admissions advisor and counselor.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  An accountant or something.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  An accountant, like somebody who's in the trenches, who does this for a living and knows the knows the rules backwards and forwards. And be able to actually, you know, guide you properly through this. Because they've done it before. It's not their first rodeo, right? But when it comes to ChatGPT, like you said, it's just predicting language. It's just spitting out whatever volumous language they can throw at you with no actual thought behind it.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  And it will never disagree with you. It will make something up if it doesn't have a predictor.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Like, this is the most likely thing that would be said in that manner, and it's.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  This is an 80% probability that this would be said, so I'm going to say it, even though I don't know the answer.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've noticed more and more, it definitely agrees with you, like, oh, that's a great idea. Here, let me tell you more.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  And it's like, yeah, no, and it's like, quite frankly, not a good idea.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Like, you have to actually prompt it sometimes to say, look, call me out on my stuff. Like, if I'm not do if I'm completely off base, say so.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  The key word you said was prompt. We hear about prompting and how important the prompting is. Challenges for these students' parents, we don't, they don't know what they don't know. So they're also not asking all the right questions to.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Have the AI know where to look for that information.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Secondary and tertiary kind of questions of like, what if, if, if this happens, what is the next outcome? Probably, probably.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  And where is it pulling that information from? What was the last time? Because admissions changes month to month. So when was the last time they pulled that website? When was the last time? What was the data that was fed into this LLM? Where are they getting that?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  And most of that is 18 months in the past.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Right, which is in your, in your world, decades ago.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Might as well been the Victorian era.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Might as well.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  Really?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Hey, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll come right back with Kat Claus.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  If you're a business owner who provides a retirement plan for your employees, contact Money Wise Wealth Management to see if you're maximizing your options and minimizing your liabilities. Money Wise 401K plans are customized to you and your company's needs. 661-847-1000.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Welcome back.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  That offspring?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  No, bad religion.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Oh, alright. I was way off.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a song more for like mid summer when LA is actually on fire.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, it takes me back to high school.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, uh, the name of the song is, uh, LA is, you know, Los Angeles is burning.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  The hills of Los Angeles.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Oh, there you go.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, great song.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Hey, decent voice, keep going.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  We'll let you roll. Let, let her cook.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  And you weren't way off. They, they are kind of offspring like.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  A little bit. No, they are, yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  But, uh, that's a great song, but that's more of a summer tune when Malibu's literally blazing.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  You're not sitting in this hot ass studio, so.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  It's a little chilly in here.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  It's hot in here, man.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Oh, it's cold in here.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Did I turn off your heat too much there, buddy?

• 26:56Speaker 00

  No. All the equipment is on and it's in this little closet.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Do I, do I need to get you an ice pack or?

• 27:01Speaker 00

  I probably need to shed about 10, 15 pounds too.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  I, I, with you there, brother.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  On a Friday, we don't want to get into that.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Welcome back to the Money Wise Show. It's Friday. We're taking you into the weekend. We're gonna have a good time for the next 24 minutes before we take you into the weekend here. We're joined here by Kat Klaus from March Consulting, founder, owner, grand poobah of March Consulting.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Ooh, grand poobah.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  I like that. We're talking AI, we're talking college admissions. We've kinda, you know, talked about that in the last segment. You know, I wanna maybe shift focus on now, what is it that March Consulting can do for students? Why, why do the parents come to you and come to your firm? And like, what are we, you know, let's, let's start last year. We always kinda keep track. How much did you guys get for your students and scholarships just last year?

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Total last year, so we, we add them all up. So we were at total the last five years at 61 million and now we're at 78 million.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Holy cow.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  And that doesn't count the class of 2026.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Good grief. And so, I mean, that's a cumulative amount that our students here in Bakersfield, Kern County, the clients of March Consulting, don't have to pay for college.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  That's a win.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  That's a win. Seventy-eight million dollars. That's a ton of money.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  We had one, no, two students who got full rides to an out-of-state university. It was worth $260,000 for each student.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Holy cow. So, I mean, the proof's in the pudding. Okay, show's over, guys. Give her a call.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  So that's one of the things you do. I'm also curious about the name March. So I know he threw a couple of questions at you. Tell us about March. What, what is it? What do you do and where's the name come from?

• 28:56Speaker 04

  The name actually comes from, it's a forward motion. You have to go with a plan. And March is usually the month that acceptances come out for most schools. Now, that doesn't include the early deadlines and you get early notification, but March is the big month of college acceptances. So it's a great month. I actually started this because I had no idea what I was doing. When I was applying for colleges and even though my dad at the time was a professor at CSUB, he had no idea how to help me. And so we went to every college night.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  He wasn't in admissions, right?

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Right. And he said, I just filled out a piece of paper and I was in and that was it. I applied to one school, right?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  That was my fallback and my preferred school.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  My preferred school, second, first, third, fourth, 12th school that I was preferred. Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  So we went to all of the admissions, you know, sessions that we could and everything was just really general. And then when I applied, I applied and hoped for the best. I got no scholarships, even with straight A's. And the one school that happened to give me a scholarship gave me a scholarship because of the alignment I had with their mission. And so when I got to college, I realized that there was a whole bunch of other people who had had help in this process and this was a thing. And when I started teaching at the college level, I found that a lot of my students were making those same mistakes that I did because we just didn't know what you don't know. And so I got into this and started 17 years ago, seen hundreds of students,

• 30:26Speaker 04

  seen lots of changes in admissions and I love helping families find that perfect list of schools for them that is individualized to them. And then guiding students through the essay writing process. How do you write a good essay that doesn't sound like you used AI? Because you're not going to use AI with me.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  How do you write an essay that stands out from the 149,000 applications UCLA got last year?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Holy cow.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Hundred and 149,000 applications at UCLA.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Right. One school.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Good grief.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  And it's single digit acceptance rates for some of the selective programs like engineering. Nursing is at 0.8% acceptance rate at UCLA.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  So helping them realize that you build a balanced college list and then making sure that they are also choosing schools that will pay them to go there.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  This is, I think, I think, you know, let's, let's kind of dive a little bit deeper on that piece because so. As, as a parent, when you're watching, you know, television, it's like, oh, you know, USC has a great football team, you know, and it leads you to colleges that you know, because they're on television.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Right? And so in a lot of cases, that winds up being the student as well. Like, they're not, they don't know that, you know, some of these other, you know, school of minds and things like that exist because they don't have a basketball team or whatever, right?

• 31:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  So what are you doing when you're talking to that student? Because I know your intake process, you talk to the student, parents really aren't there. You're like, you're like, what do you want?

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Right? Tell, take us through that process of building that, that list of schools that, you know, they're not 1A or 2A basketball teams or whatever. Like, they're actual schools that fit what that particular student is wanting to accomplish.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Right, and it may be, football might be really important to that student.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  But what I found is, when I ask students, what do you want out of a school? They all give me the same answers, the same answer I had, because we go to the website, we look at the pictures.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Right? And we say, we want a good football team by the beach with my major. And that's about the depth of research. And so we threw a lot of exercises and questions and discussions and introducing them to, these are all of the options that you have just in a program at a school. Did you know that you could get a master's degree with five years instead of six years? If you go to this specific program? You could, you know, there's all these specialty pieces. And introducing that to the student and then asking them, what sparks for you? What stood out about this particular program? And what do you like about the teachers you've had so far?

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Why do you have the friend group that you have?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  Why are you involved in the activities you are? Because that's a big part of it, too. How do you learn? What kind of people do you want to be around? Are you a student that's going to take advantage of every single opportunity, even if there are 6,000 other students looking for it? Or would you rather your professor know your name, like mine did, and say, Kat, why haven't you applied for a summer internship?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Like, why haven't you done that?

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Why haven't you done that? I said, oh, I didn't, I didn't know that was a thing. What is that?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  That exists?

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Right. And so it's really understanding the student.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Almost beyond what the student knows about themselves and getting them to realize that and then teaching them how to research a school so that they can figure out that spark. And then from there, now I have all the information that I need because I'm the student of colleges to match schools to them. And we have a parent survey. We talk to the parents, you know, what are you thinking budget wise for the school? And do you want them to stay close, go far away? You know, what do you know about the student standout things? And then building a list that is balanced. So you don't have a whole bunch of schools that have a 3%, 5% acceptance rate, or you may not know that UNC Chapel Hill limits the amount of out of state students that

• 34:36Speaker 04

  they accept.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Right. Once they hit the quota, they're done.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Well, by the legislature, the legislature came in and said, no, you can only admit this many out of state students. We want to reserve our spots for North Carolina students. Right? And so it's knowing things about those schools, those specialty programs, how they stand out, that Colorado School of Mines has one of the only pyrotechnic engineering programs in the country. Students don't even know that that exists in engineering, but if they're interested in geology and they're interested, and then they say, oh, I know this isn't popular to say, but I really like the fires.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Maybe New Mexico might be good for you because they have the, what is it? The, New Mexico has that one school where it's like rocketry and stuff like that.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Uh, New Mexico Mines.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yes, New Mexico Mines. It's like, yeah. So Mythbusters is out there.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  You're listing a lot of things here. This is clearly not a one session, one to two hour conversation. This is pretty in-depth.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  It is.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I mean, this sounds like a process over a long period of time.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yes. So we have, uh, the way we've kind of organized it is we meet with students as early as seventh grade because your coursework is really important and helping them explore who they are, what they like, get into activities that are meaningful, that they'll enjoy. Uh, seventh grade to 10th grade. And so we have a set of meetings that we do for that. And then once you hit, you know, late sophomore year, early junior year, that's when we shift to college. Collegeless building the admissions process. And so we have a set aside amount of hours for juniors. And then we have like a comprehensive package plan and then an advising depending on how much guidance that student wants.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  For some of our really busy students, having extra hours in their plan so they can work on their admissions. Materials in meeting is better. And then we have a senior rush package. So if you haven't started thinking about it yet. And it's about this time, you have a junior right now and you haven't started thinking about it. Or if you contact us September of senior year, which is around the time that Kern County starts talking about college as senior year. Then it's a, it's, it's a set amount of hours to get you through everything that you would need and cutting out the things that you don't need.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  Ideally, though, you start in middle school and go through because there's a lot of things that change and students change their mind and.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Is that when you're talking to kids that are in their seventh and eighth grade years? Is that mostly for those students that are like on a STEM track more so than maybe more of a? Liberal arts or something like that? Or like, is there a specific? For whatever student who's like, hey, I really want to do this. Hey, maybe you don't have to be there at seventh grade, maybe ninth grade is fine. Or if you're definitely going into the engineering and sciences or chemistry or something like that. You know, you probably should be in the STEM classes and like, is that, is that a thing you kind of guide people?

• 37:31Speaker 04

  I would say for middle school, if your student's planning on going into STEM, it is important to start early because there's a math class level that you need to hit. And you need to know about that. You need to know about building a STEM portfolio as you go into high school. But if your students don't know at all what they're interested in or what they want to do. I like helping students figure that out and narrow down their choices so that they can better choose classes in high school.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  So I'll use my own daughter as an example. We've been talking about more interests, less about college throughout middle, middle school. Putting her in front of opportunities where she can learn a lot about herself. And she decided in seventh grade, at the end of her second space camp, that this is what I want to do.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  I want to be an astronaut.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  I want to be an astronaut. And so we looked up, what does it take to be, what's the application process? What are all the qualifications? And basically backward calendared everything.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you're reverse engineering from that point.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Exactly. So she's taking glider lessons now. You know, she's flying planes. She's going to be 14 in a couple of months, right? She's flying planes and she's, you know, doing more work in math because she knows she needs to be good at math. And she joined Civil Air Patrol, you know, on top of Girl Scouts and things like that, because this is her path. But then also, I'm telling her, if you change your mind, none of this is wasted, right? It's all leadership. It's learning how to take initiative and go after something, learning from mentors.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Here's an off the wall question. Have you ever had a student who has chosen a college purely on the mascot?

• 39:07Speaker 04

  I talk them out of that.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Because I want to be a banana slug is what I want to do. Like, I want to go to Santa Cruz and be a banana slug.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  I have had students take schools, or try to take schools off of their list based on the colors. So like Clemson has that fuchsia and the orange. And I don't want to go to that school. I'm like, no, that's, let's talk more about.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  That's not in my color wheel. I can't do the orange.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  I can't do the tur- you know, the fuchsia. And there are some interesting, like I tell students, I'm not going to go home and cry in my pillow. If you don't like a school, I suggest it's not my four years.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  But I want to know more about what you don't like about it. So I don't suggest similar schools and waste your time.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Right? But then also, as I tell, you know, students who are seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th grade, sometimes identifying what you don't want helps me even more than you trying to figure out what you do want.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  And so it's just starting this conversation early.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  And parents, you know that your kid doesn't listen to you. And so sometimes I can say exactly what you said 30 seconds ago and your student goes,

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Oh, and it clicks.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  Oh, I never thought about that. And I,

• 40:14Speaker 03

  And the parents are like,

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Mom's about ready to,

• 40:16Speaker 02

  I'm gonna choke you. I just said that.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Three times.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  On the car right over here, I said it four times.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  That's what's so hard about advising my daughter is I've said more than once, you know, people pay me to do this.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  That's what I do.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  You're getting this for free. I might know what I'm talking about.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I don't know how many times I've said that to my own boys.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  But you've got a staff too. I mean,

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  I do.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Your staff can get involved, right?

• 40:40Speaker 04

  I do. So my, my daughter meets with one of my other consultants and, and talks about her meeting, like, did you know that Christina said that I could do that? I'm like, yeah. It's exactly what I just told you, but that's okay.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  And you know, that, that goes beyond kids too. I mean, I, I know a lot of financial advisors and financial planners that have their own advisors. Because it's very different coming from a spouse.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Same thing with counselors.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  You know, you might be a counselor by trade, but try and bring all those tips and tricks to your own marriage and good luck.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  It's a little different because we get so ingrained in our path, right? It's, it's opening up other possibilities and having someone a little bit more neutral to talk through.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  So we've got a couple of messages that popped through. First one here says, as a high school US history teacher, I get AI written essays all the time. It is so obvious to from the little, uh, the little words that are used that I have to look up myself. So it's, when you're a professor and you're having to look up a word, chances are that was AI.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  And they all look the same.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  They all look the same. It's the same, same breakdown, same sentence, structure, everything. Yes.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got another one here. It says, my daughter is in 11th grade and has great grades. She is leaning on getting into the medical field. She doesn't get much out of school counselors as of, uh, as of the planning side, and wondered if there's something that you and your team can speak to us about.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Are your services more for younger children?

• 42:07Speaker 04

  No, junior is fantastic. And if she's looking into medical, there's a lot of different paths to get to medical school. Sometimes going to the big, massive state school is perfect for you because they have all the research opportunities and things like that. If it's a student like me that was super shy in college. I'm not going to go for all of those opportunities. Instead, I need a more, you know, a smaller school where everybody knows you, warm environment, where I can create my own opportunities or a professor will create those opportunities. And I might get better letters of recommendation. I might get help with the MCAT study piece of it.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  So there's a lot of aspects of thinking about medical school that we can help with. We have a lot of students who come in junior year and introducing them to, okay, now with medical school, we have to start with the medical school admissions process. What are they going to expect that you have? Like letters of recommendation, good MCAT scores, right? Clinical experience, clinical hours, shadowing hours, volunteer work that say that 150% you want to be a doctor. And you can't say, because I want to help people.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  Because everybody says that. So it's identifying that and that path to start in high school to start junior year. If we haven't done that yet, and then choosing schools that are going to serve that. So definitely call the office. Our phone number is 661-747-4514. You can text us as well, or you can schedule an initial free consultation on our website at mymarchconsulting.com.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  That's awesome. Thank you so much, Kat, for joining us today. You know, a lot of our team has used Kat's services throughout the years with our children. We have clients that we've referred to Kat, and we've never had a bad experience. I will just say that. So all of the information you just said, we're going to make sure that that's on the podcast notes, so people can get in touch with you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  And don't do AI for your brag sheet or your application.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Or to advise you.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Or to advise you. Probably a bad idea, just in general. Hey, so we have a couple of minutes to chat real quick, but I wanted to bring up, you know, being the 401K guy in the office, we do a lot of 401Ks through our office and manage quite a bit of those institutions and 401Ks. So we're always on top of what's going on in the marketplace and.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  You might have heard or might have seen in the news or whatever that Bloomberg

• 44:56Speaker 02

  was recently sued.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  I saw the headline, but I didn't see what they do.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  So they were recently sued for an ERISA lawsuit for bad fund performance. Okay, so now this.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Just real quick.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  ERISA.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Securities Act of 1974. Yeah, don't tell me I'm not a dork.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yep. Uh huh.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  I resemble that remark.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. But so anyhow, ERISA is the law that basically governs 401ks, 403Bs, your, your company and government retirement plans is governed most often by this law, which is ERISA. And within that law, there is a multitude, I mean, it is volumes for this law. And there's ways in which, you know, hey, as a, as these companies are trying to manage these 401ks, they have a fiduciary responsibility to the participants in that plan. Okay?

• 45:59Speaker 03

  So as a fiduciary, they have to act in their best interest.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  They have to act in their best interest. So if I'm Bloomberg and I'm the company and I'm, you know, running this 401k, and here's the menu of options that you have to choose from, all 401ks kind of have the same structure, right? You have these different funds that you can choose from. Well, if Bloomberg as a company is not doing their part to maintain that list to make sure that the funds that are available in that list are performing according to their peers or there's some kind of, there's some kind of metric that they're using to determine whether or not these funds should stay and remain in that fund or they should be replaced.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  They're looking at fees, they're looking at performance.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Correct. All of the above. There's, you know, when we do it, we're looking at probably 12 or 15 different, you know, qualitative and quantitative measures, you know, on a, on a quarterly or semi-annual basis, we're looking at all of these things. And we're ranking the funds. Well, Bloomberg, Bloomberg here was in a position where they had the same funds for a decade.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  No changes.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  No changes. And many of the funds were actually underperforming their benchmarks. Not by a small amount, by a large amount. And so there was a class action lawsuit that was levied against Bloomberg. Well, here we have a new one from today. Is that Stifel? Stifle, Stifel?

• 47:24Speaker 03

  I've seen it as, yeah, Stifel, I think.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Stifel? Stifel's 401k plan, subject to a new $134 million ERISA case over fund performance. So similar to this recent filing against Bloomberg.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  There's these attorneys that are out there that do this. They lick, because all of this data is, is basically public knowledge for these companies. And so, you know, these, these law firms are out there looking for, hey, what big, what big 401ks are out there right now? That we can go out and pay it, you know, get maybe a disgruntled former employee. And

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Or a group of them.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Or a group of them and put together a, a group lawsuit. Right?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  So, uh, Stifel breached fiduciary duties by retaining underperforming funds for over a decade. So basically what's happening is on behalf of more than 10,000 former retirement plan participants. The, um, the retirement plan has been accused of mismanagement. By not updating their plans and removing some of the underperforming, say, large cap funds, mid cap funds. You know, they, they left these funds in there with poor investment performance for over a decade and did not mimic any changes. And that they're even alleging that over the last six years, the American Century Fund lagged its benchmark, the Russell 1000 by over 30 percentage points.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  So we're approaching the end of the show here.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  What's an actionable kind of advice that you'd have for somebody that's maybe a business owner that has a 401k or?

• 49:04Speaker 02

  If you are a business owner that is maintaining and managing a 401k for your participants, for your employees, you better be talking to your advisor and making sure that they are actually doing this work, that they are, you know, that you might not get a report every week, but that your advisor on the plan is actually going through on a quarterly basis or a semi-annual basis and benchmarking all of your funds.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  You mean just not every 10 years?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  No, not once every decade, every quarter, every twice a year at least, going in and benchmarking these funds to make sure that they're still performing. If it's, if it's underperforming for a year, okay, that's fine. If it's still underperforming for two or three years and it hasn't been replaced, we've got a problem.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Talk to your advisors. Anyhow, we're going to take you into the weekend here. It's a couple of seconds left in the show. It's going to be a wonderful weekend, beautiful weather out there. It might be a little chilly for a minute, but otherwise go get some sunlight, go get it, go take a hike, you do something, get out, take a hike.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  There it is.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  You know, be smart, be safe, be money wise. We'll see you next week.

• 50:05Speaker 01

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