4/13/26 Fix Your Finances: Budgeting, Mistakes & a Look at Agilitech

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Monday, April 13th 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: Bo Jones, Lead Renewables Developer/Business Development Leader for Agilitech website: https://www.agilitechgroup.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. Bo Jones & Agilitech 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.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  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're 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. Today, I am your host, Sharad Waite, along with producer extraordinaire, Steven.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Hello, happy Monday.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Happy Monday. Man, it's great, great to be here. It is so nice to be back on Kern Radio. This is, this was our home for many, many years. It's still, it's always been our home. We've never really left. We've always been part of the American General Media family. We're 20-plus years now doing this show, so great to have our listeners here today. Great time to send any questions or comments our way. Easiest way is to text, 661-396-1000, but you can also email us at [email protected]. Give us a call. We're happy to take it at any time. There is a few listener messages and comments. I'm going to start the show

• 1:55Speaker 02

  there. First one.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  First one says, "Welcome home back with Kern Radio. Where's the biggest mistake you see young people make that can really hurt them long-term?"

• 2:08Speaker 02

  This is a good question. Thank you, listener. There's, this is a, this is a broad topic. When you look at the problems or the, the mistakes that individuals make with their finances and even adults, adults and young people, essentially the, they're the same problems, the same issues that people make. It's like many, many of us, myself included, I'm not perfect, have lessons that still need to be learned from our childhood, from mistakes that we've made, you know, long ago when we were young. And sometimes we have a hard

• 2:49Speaker 02

  time sort of accepting those, those answers to the, to the problems that we've had. And finance is one that will, and all of us know this, everybody knows somebody who is always in financial stress or always under financial pressure, whether it's they're constantly changing jobs, or they're constantly going through a bankruptcy, or they're constantly borrowing money from you, whatever it is, you know, there's just no way to escape the, the problems that can arise with money, because it's just, it's just something that's needed. It's necessary to, to be able to just live. You gotta have money. And so there's constant

• 3:32Speaker 02

  problems. So basically, the biggest mistake that I see young people make that hurts them is, I mean, the biggest thing is just delaying their ownership of their own financial life and their own life trajectory. Responsibilities. Their own responsibilities. This is the, I, I'll ask you this as Stephen, as, as parents, like, what is the biggest issue that we have as parents in trying to prepare our young, our, our kids for adulthood? And it's, it's always this delicate balance as a parent where you, you, you want them to go out there into the real world and experience how hard the, the, the school of hard knocks can be, but you don't want them to fail completely,

• 4:14Speaker 02

  but you, you recognize they've got to go out there and make some mistakes for them to learn it. And the, we, I think the biggest challenge that we face as parents, honestly, with, when it comes to finances and teaching our kids proper financial principles, is the fact that we struggle with those principles ourselves. And when, and, and I'll, I'll throw myself in there. Like, when I was, my, my kids are now adults and, and out of the house, but when I was raising kids, was when my kids were real young, and I was living paycheck to paycheck, right out of college. I mean, fortunately, my kids were young enough, there was, there wasn't really a whole lot to like to teach them, but I was, I would have been, it would have been very difficult for me to try to explain to them the importance of

• 4:59Speaker 02

  saving for the long term when I wasn't doing it. I was just out of college. I was trying to figure out how I was gonna pay the rent, you know, let, you know, let alone, you know, how I was gonna teach my kids how to do it. And so I think the biggest problem that we face is, is, as parents and as adults, is making sure that our financial house is in order, at least is going in that right direction, so that we as parents can speak up and go, this is what you should be doing, and this is what I'm doing. And there can be some ways, now, you know, I'm a little bit older, I'm a little bit more wise, if I could go back to my younger self, my, my 22-year-old self with my baby in my arms, I would, I

• 5:42Speaker 02

  would, I would have a lot, a lot more mature way of, I'd be able to navigate this, you know, and be able to explain to my kids, like, there's a reason why, you know, we don't have nice things, there's a reason why we don't have nice cars, and, but there's a pathway forward that I'm working towards, to get us to a place where we're more comfortable. And let me explain to those, some of those things that I'm doing.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Understanding the process, and, I mean, what I, what I, I mean, I'm, I get all the text messages from our listeners, and I see a lot of it is credit cards.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  And just living off credit cards.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Building or digging and digging deeper holes in debt.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, like there's a few basic principles that we should all be like teaching our kids. And I, credit cards is one that I actually hear the most where they say, my dad always told me, stay away from credit cards, or my grandpa said, stay away from credit cards. And I have, I've done it. I don't have any credit card debt. Like, oh, that's good. You know, that, that, that's, that's, you know, there, there are some of these uh, common advices that we get that the biggest, you know, it's just hard for any of us to fathom what something is gonna, why something matters now in 30 years. And time matters so much more than the amount of money that you can save. It's really how much time you have.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  So, starting at, at, you know, age 22 versus starting at age 32 can literally mean two to three times more wealth later. Just by, just by starting that 10 years earlier in your twenties rather than your thirties. It, it, it allows your older self to not have to save nearly as much. And, and so it, that's one of the hardest principles to explain is that even small, consistent investing early, it crushes the late aggressive saving. It's so much better than waiting or not able to save until the end and then trying to catch up by being aggressive in the way that you're investing or aggressive in the way that you're saving.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  And so, you know, you, you, you can't let the kids go by by thinking, I'll get serious later when I make more money. When I'm making more money, then I'll save. Because that's the second biggest problem that I see is this lifestyle inflation. As income rises. Our lifestyles rise. You know, I got a raise. Fantastic. I make an extra 100 ducks a month. Perfect. Now I can sign up for all these subscriptions. Or now I can.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  I can eat better.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  I can eat. Yeah, I can eat better.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Eat out more.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, okay, well, that's, that's, you know, you do want to treat yourself, but what happens is that lifestyle eventually creeps up to where you're just spending everything that you're making. And that's why you'll see millionaires who are living paycheck to paycheck because they've had that lifestyle creep up. And now there, you, you would think, wow, how is it that they have these nice cars and this nice house and they're, they don't have the money for it? Oh, you better believe it. I mean, it's so common. It's so common. Somebody may have a lot of wealth or look like they have a lot of wealth, but you don't know what the debt side of it is.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  And, and so it's, it's really about you being able to control your, your, control that lifestyle inflation. And let your finances get to a certain point before you let that lifestyle gets to a certain point. You know, don't, don't start living ahead, ahead of what you have. You want to make sure that you've got your bases covered. A huge fan of our budget, of the budget that we recommend, the 50, 30, 20 rule. 50% of your money goes towards things you have to have. 30% of your money, of your monthly income goes towards things that you want to have. And then that last part of your income, that last 20% is going towards savings or debt.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  So those are, that can help you avoid some of that lifestyle creep. You go, as long as you know you're falling within your budget, knock yourself out because you're taking care of your long-term self. You're taking care of your short-term self and the medium term, taking care of those, those issues and getting ahead of it. Uh, so there you go. Great question. Love it. Uh, let's do this. Take our first break of the day and we come back. We're going to be joined by our guest. I believe our guests are here in the house. We're going to talk to them when we come back. We're Money Wise. Don't go anywhere.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Thanks for tuning in. I'm Sherrod Waite, your host today, here with Steven. We're joined right now by our guest, Bo Jones. He is Leeds, Lead Renewables Developer, Business Development for Agilitech. This is, uh, welcome to the show.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, Sherrod.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Good having you here.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Great.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  So you're, you're an expert in, uh, explain who you are.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm the Renewables Developer at Agilitech. Uh, we're an engineering and construction firm, been around since 2002 here in Bakersfield. And, uh, we do, I like to say we do all things power, but we do so much, uh, different things in terms of anything commercial and industrial related to power, automation, controls, um, that kind of thing. Uh, my focus is obviously renewables, so a lot of solar, batteries, microgrids, that kind of thing. And, uh, yeah, I get to be meeting with the business owners and business executives and anybody in, in that, in Kern County, California, you know, we, we work on those kinds of projects for them.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So maybe you can help our audience understand what is happening here in Kern County when it, when it comes to these renewable projects. Uh, maybe start with solar, cause I, I know, I know just, even just from my perspective, it seems as though the state has put a lot of investment, a lot of incentives for solar, like rooftop solar for residential, but they've kind of, now they're pulling that back.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And it, for my little pea brain, and maybe you can explain to our listeners, well, make, like, at some point, you can only, you can only produce so much solar as a state, and it, it seems like there is even a lot of these days where the state is exporting or just dumping excess solar.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  So maybe kind of, yeah, talk to our audience about that.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you, you bring up a really critical point right now. California is at a kind of a crossing point, a junction point in terms of its, its energy profile and its energy portfolio.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Renewables was pushed very, very hard by the state for a long time and mostly for, you know, attempting to go emissions free, right? And we wanted a big sustainability push. And the practical engineering that goes into what it takes to run a grid and for utility companies to actually maintain power supply all the time was kind of an afterthought at the beginning. And now we're sort of seeing that reflected in our rates. So we have really too much solar at daytime hours and then not enough renewables in the evenings and the nighttime because mostly it's solar, you know, that's generated during

• 13:03Speaker 03

  the daytime. So the utilities end up having to procure way more backup power that's non-renewable for those after-hours times. And they have to pass that cost on, you know, someone has to pay for it. So, energy customers like you and I are the ones that have to foot the bill because we didn't really plan, you know, for the engineering constraints that come with renewables. But, you know, it was touted as the cheapest supply, like the solar was going to be the cheapest electricity. And that, in theory, is actually true. It is one of the cheapest sources of electricity. But you have to engineer the entire utility

• 13:45Speaker 03

  around that in order to achieve those cost benefits. And that hasn't really happened, but it's now starting to happen.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the biggest, one of the biggest challenges financially with solar is the fact that you, you know, the sun sets. And so you have to, you have to find a way to capture that energy, that overproduction when the sun is up. But there, there, it seems like Kern County especially has, has a lot of these like, almost like pilot programs or proposed programs of being able to store that energy during the day, whether it's through closed-loop hydro or underground storage.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Maybe, you know, talk about the state of where we are technically speaking and in those costs being dry or even like battery.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  You know, battery power is, is great, but my understanding is that we don't, we're not anywhere close to being able to make it financially feasible to have batteries, you know, like a peaker plant, like battery plants.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  At an affordable cost.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're getting more affordable. So it's trending in the right direction. When you achieve economies of scale for, at the utility level, yeah, it makes a lot of sense, but.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  And, and we're a ways away from that. We're, we're batteries are, make enough sense where you could literally have enough batteries to store the energy from solar during the day.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a balance to it. So the trick is that you have to, to produce enough excess that you have any to capture, first of all. So you have to sort of overbuild, oversize your solar enough. And then you, you gotta have the right amount of batteries to achieve your goal. Sometimes it's just, you know, I want to have enough to get me through that four to nine PM kind of peak demand window every day so that you're not paying those super high rates in the afternoons. Some people want batteries for resilience because of the grid. I mean, everyone here has pretty much experienced outages at some point in California. So for a lot of businesses, especially the, sometimes they, they, it doesn't have to have solar to accomplish that goal. They can just use batteries as, as

• 16:02Speaker 03

  a great standby resource that gets, keeps their business operating through that term. But, but no, to your, to your point, it is now actually affordable. It does actually make economic sense to have an onsite microgrid for commercial and industrial businesses.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, for commercial, okay, that's what I was gonna ask, because it doesn't quite make sense. I haven't been able to pencil out how it makes sense for a consumer to have a battery.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it, the buy, you know, you're paying an extra 10 grand, for example, for a battery on your solar at your house.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yep. How long is it gonna take? It's gonna take you 10 years or more to recoup that.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Just that extra battery cost.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  If you're, yeah, because it's hard because you're only quantifying the electrical savings as opposed to the other less quantifiable savings in, in that equation. So for, for homeowners.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, you basically just want your power to be on. And if that's the case, then a battery can make sense. It's just hard to quantify that value.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  For a business, it's a lot different because if you're a cold storage warehouse facility and you've got millions of dollars in inventory, that's going to, you know, go bad if your power shuts off. It's really easy to quantify the value of having a battery there.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  To be able to keep operating. But for homeowners, it's different. And retail, you know, residential systems generally are always going to be the most expensive. And it gets more affordable and more economic as you scale up.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  But even then, on an industrial level, it's, it's, it can make sense financially to have as, have battery as a backup, but not necessarily a battery as a power source.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Right? We're not there yet.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. We'll, we'll see what happens. There are, as you mentioned, a number of pilot programs active in California right now for different battery chemistry makeups. So there is some really interesting battery technology. There's zinc bromide and zinc air. There's iron air and a bunch of really great, non-toxic, non-flammable. Like, it's impossible to get thermal runaway on a lot of these, these battery types. So they're much safer and, and they are potentially much more affordable. So there's, there's some good opportunities coming down the pipeline. It's going to take another year or two, I think.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Oh, really? That soon?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, because these are, a lot of these are projects that have been active under evaluation with the CEC.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  For, you know, a year or more already.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll see. I'm optimistic about batteries. I think, I think homeowners can really benefit from it once you start to see those prices come down a little bit. With, with electric vehicles, I think that's a huge, a huge point of momentum that we're going to see that stuff start to, to happen a lot more.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, because there's this, there's this idea with electric vehicles that you can Power, you know, you power both ways from the car, right? So you can power your house, which that means, well, you can power your house, you can power a grid with all these EVs that are plugged in all over.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  But it, it, it just, everything, I, I, I kind of look into this. I get the feeling though, this is five, 10 years down the road at least, you know, where, where the, where the money, the money has to make sense first and foremost. Like there has to be a business model where, where, where it's not being subsidized and it's being, there's a, there's a business economic incentive for people to have battery storage, for example.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Talk about the, the, the micro grids.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  That, that you've been involved in.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  There's a technical definition, but I like the, the simple version, which is that I think of a microgrid as, as any solution that gives you control over how and when you use power. So for, for some cases, if you're just running operations, you know, if you're a nine to five kind of retail business operation or something like that, then solar might be totally sufficient for you. That, that in and of itself can, can, you know, I would quantify that as maybe closer to a microgrid because it's giving you control over your power again. In other more sophisticated cases, you might have industrial operations. There's a microgrid we did here in Kern County that gives them a lot of control, the ability to island in the event of an outage.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  It gives them the, yeah, it just realizes huge cost savings. So micro grids can be very simple or very sophisticated depending on the user.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Very good. Well, I appreciate you taking the time, come on the show, talking about energy and, and some of these things here that we have going on in our state. And they're joined by Bo Jones. He is business development with Agilitech as a local engineering firm here in town.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Bo, thanks so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Great to be here.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  We're going to take a quick break right now, listeners. Don't go anywhere, we're Money Wise. We'll be right back.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Thanks for tuning in. We're Money Wise. I'm Sharad, your host today here with Stephen. Thanks for the messages, 661-396-1000. 24/7 you can send a message to us, text it. Just got one here, Stephen.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Says, "I don't know if I was smart to hold off on getting solar a few years ago. With all these changes in the state, will things get cheaper in California? Or are they still a bit lost when it comes to solar?"

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Cheaper in California?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  I'm sorry.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. I read that as, well, yeah, certain things are getting cheaper. Like, solar's getting cheaper. It continues to get cheaper. And that might come in the form of, like, you're still paying the same price, but it's producing more power.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  The problem, what has happened in California, is that they have changed the net metering rules. And so that, it used to be that if your system overproduced, if your solar on your home was overproducing, that money came to you, it came to your pocket as the homeowner. Now, if it overproduces, if you don't have a battery, you don't get jack. I mean, you get pennies for that overproduction. And it was that overproduction that was helping people offset their solar cost. So it's made residential solar not as financially viable for a lot of people.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Or it's pushed out that return on your investment several years. It used to be before, just this latest change, which just happened a couple of years ago, that people would get their solar paid off. The cost of the solar could be paid off in five to seven years, which is reasonable for an individual. But now, if you add on the cost of a battery that you have to put inside your house, it's pushing that out to 10, 12 years. And you have most people, they don't stay in their home more than a few years. You're never going to recoup that cost. And even if you recoup it in 10 or 12 years, it's like, well, whoop-de-doo.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  You know, like, I could, I could name, I could rattle off a dozen investments that are going to do way better than that, you know, like, meaning, put that extra money in, in a, in a, in a proper investment, and you're going to get a bigger return on it. Yeah, you're going to have a higher PG&E bill, but use that to pay for your PG&E bill. Whereas before, the economic incentives were there for us as homeowners to have, have it solar, right? You have solar on yours, right, Steven?

• 23:49Speaker 00

  I do.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  No battery, though.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  No battery.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Still makes financial sense. It made financial sense for you then. It still makes financial sense for you now because you're under that old net metering, myself and my home too. I've got it, so it, it, it makes sense. So, so the answer is, things will get chea-, like, solar is getting cheaper and batteries are getting cheaper. They've got a long ways to go before they're cheap enough to where you're going to get your money back for that investment. California is really trying hard to incentivize, well, take out, to properly incentivize the right, the right areas. And I think they've recognized what

• 24:32Speaker 02

  they're doing with changing the net metering with solar, rooftop residential solar, is they're saying, well, it's not, it's now, it's not to the state's advantage that our residents are overproducing because they're, the state's already overproducing solar production at its peak time. It's where, how do we store that extra production? Where do we store all that extra, all these rooftops are overproducing? Where is it going to go? And if it has nowhere to go, and it, then, then we've got it, things need to change course.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got mine about seven or eight years ago, and it was when, when I bought an older home, had a shake roof. So it was smart for me to do it all at once.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Oh, because you had a new roof, too.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  And I was able to get the loan when we were getting it all done at once. And, you know, there has been times, I would say, to where we had to do the upkeep. You know, if, if you just get it and then you're like, okay, wash my hands of it. You know, there was times where...

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Whether it was a leak with, with the roof or even the, the actual equipment not working a hundred percent fully. So there was times, but now that we've had, you know, the trees that fell on our house a couple of months ago. And now we're getting a lot more sun on that side of the house where the panels are. I'm seeing the return, you know, where we were paying four or $500. We had my mom living with us at the time. A teenager, you know, and, and now it's getting to the point where, you know, at that time before the solar, we were getting four or $500 in PG&E bills during the summer. And now we're a little under a hundred dollars.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Oh, I see.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  And with my solar payments, about 120. So it's evening out.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  I see.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  But it.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Was it, was it the trees before that? It was like the.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  It was like shading that whole area.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Blocking some of your panels? Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then the, they had switched with the solar company we use, they had switched in one of the, it was only using about 40% of what it should have been. And I wasn't, I didn't have the app because the app was, would have shown me. But they switched the app company that they were using. So it was all just keeping the upkeep, you know, following up with, you know, you invested in. And we, we did bring up this topic last week and I wanted to ask you because you've had solar longer than anyone that I've known. But the truth of cleaning your panels, how, how serious is that?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Have you ever cleaned your?

• 27:01Speaker 00

  I have never cleaned them.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Does your system show what it's currently producing like in real time?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  So this is what I would recommend you do is look at it and then go clean them. I know you say you've never done it.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  But, but it, it just take a hose to them. I know somebody's listening right now. Don't take a hose to it. Cause the hard wa, we have hard water here and so that can create like this film over your, over your panels. If you're doing it consistently over time. It will, it will, it's not the proper way to clean those panels. You know, you want to use,

• 27:33Speaker 00

  you want to use. How my house is, where my panels are, I would have to get on to my neighbor's yard, up on his fence to get up on the roof on that side where the panels are.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  So I've just never been on that side. I can see my neighbor's panels on my side of the backyard.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  So it's just how the houses sit, but I've seen companies, you know, I've been to Costco where the guys were trying to sell me on, you know, they go door to door and wash people's panels. And I've also seen solar companies that told me it's not that important. So I would probably have to do the, the science experiment to see, okay, well, we're at, you know, 98% now, if I washed them, would it go up at that 2%? Or was it, is it really that big of a deal?

• 28:19Speaker 02

  It, it, you're, you know, you're probably right. Over the long term, it's, it's a, it's a big deal because I, I was gonna, let me finish what I was gonna say about my, my, cause I do occasionally go up there and I'll spray them off if I can see that they're like really dusty. And so I'll look at what it's producing before I clean them. And then I'll clean them and I'll watch in real time it increase and it does go up. It goes up a little bit. It's, you know, less than 5%, I would say, output. But let's say it's a, let's say it's a 3%. It increases your solar production by 3%. Okay, so if, if it's, uh, let's say in your case, it's 500 bucks a month. That would be what, 20, 30 bucks a month?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Something like that is what, when maybe it would save you by cleaning at, at best by, you know, peak, at peak summertime, but cleaning them off.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  So, but, but you only have to clean it once and then you go a few months. You, you've never cleaned them. I mean, but you know, clean them once or twice a year, then, you know, that could have over the years, a difference to, you know, 3 to 5% potentially. It kind of depends on what kind of panels you have, how, really how blocked, how dirty they are. I do question the companies that will do it for you regularly for a cost. Like, that seems like it, that's gonna be, it'd be hard to justify, like, monthly solar cleaning company, and they're gonna, I'm guessing they'd charge at least fifty bucks to do it.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  A hundred bucks a month?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Oh, is it a hundred bucks a month?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  I've got a cart on my, on my front porch.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  So, there's no way that you would save a hundred bucks a month by keeping them clean? Uh, no way. Uh, you'd have to have a way bigger system than that.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, mansion and hundred panels?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Huge panels, you know, for that.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Which might work for a big business, maybe?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, yeah, like, on the industrial, commercial side of it, I could, I could definitely see that being the case, but, um, don't, don't do it monthly, that just seems overkill. But, maybe, like, in your situation, once a year? Cause then if it's a hundred bucks, uh, and see, you're spending, let's say, fifteen hundred dollars a year, or the, now it's your hundred bucks a month, let's say, you're spending twelve hundred dollars a year, it'd save, well, even then, it wouldn't make sense. If, if you paid a hundred bucks to get them cleaned, you'd be saving about ten percent. Uh, it, you'd have to increase production by ten percent for it to cover that cost. So, it's still not worth it. Still wouldn't be worth it.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm not advocating, if somebody loves this, they're saying, "Just let your solar panels get dirty." No, I'm just saying, if your solar panels are dirty and you're losing five percent of production, why, why would you pay, you know, twenty percent of your...

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Losing six hundred dollars a year now.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, to, to increase it, like, oh, that doesn't, that doesn't make sense either. It, it, there, there, certainly, what, if anybody is considering rooftop solar for their home, that, there's a real easy way to determine whether it's worth it, worth it or not. You, you find, you get bids, you find out what it's going to cost for everything to get up onto that rooftop, and if, if, if it includes a battery, fine. Battery, the panels, the permits, all of the installation, you figure out what that is. Now let's say for simple math, it's $30,000. It's going to cost you $30,000. Don't worry about where the money's going to come from, what you're going to finance and what your payments are.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Don't worry about that. Just, just look at what it's overall going to cost you to get that system on your house. It's $30,000 and you are going to save $500 a month. You divide $30,000 by $500 and that will tell you how many months or years it's going to take you to pay off that system. Because you're saving, whatever your savings is, that savings for having that solar, that is what is paying off that system.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  So, $500 bucks a month, that means you're saving, uh, uh, five, so $6,000 a year. That's means it's going to take you, what, five, it would take you five years to get that $30,000 before you saved $30,000. And then you determine whether that's worth it to you or not. In, in the business world, the general rule of thumb is business investors and, and in, in institutional investors generally want to get their money back between three and five years. Like, that's a good investment. You got your money back, you're good to go.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  If you're an individual investor, that can be pushed out farther, especially if it's, if it's an investment like a home that you know you're going to be in it for decades. Then you, you can push out your return on that investment out a little bit farther, but you really need to determine that first so that you're comfortable with it. If you do the math and you find out it's 15 years before you're going to get your money back on that $30,000 that you put in for the solar, your rooftop solar, your battery? Do some real soul searching about that, you know, you're not going to be in that house for 15 years. It's not worth it. It's sorry, it's just not worth it. Now, if that's based off of what

• 33:57Speaker 02

  your current costs are, your current PG and E bill, maybe if down the road, those bills continue to get more and more and more, well, then guess what? Your break even just got sooner. So it could make more sense, but you can do that math at any time. You get another bid. Now, maybe it's not a $30,000 system. Now you can get the same system for $15,000. Okay. And I'm still saving 500 bucks a month. Okay. Now, now I've got a whatever it is, eight year payoff. You can determine first, whether that's worth it based off of what that payoff is. So that's, that's the easy, that's the easy math to determine whether it's, whether it's worth it. Don't get so easy to get caught up with, whoa, I've just, I see my PG and E bill and I'm sorry, I'm tired of paying a thousand dollars a

• 34:38Speaker 02

  month to PG and E. And so you, because of that pain, you're willing to buy a $50,000 system? And finance it? So then you're, now you're throwing interest on top of, uh, you know, like, you know, I don't know.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Do the same thing with, because I'm seeing a lot of people complaining with the gas prices and their car payments and the same thing. Would you do that same math when it comes to getting an electric car or something like that?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yes, same math, same math. But here's the, here's the interesting with electric cars is because now they're pretty close to what you pay for a hybrid. And, and used EVs are the cheapest they've ever been. Because we've gone through this peak, um, electric vehicle craze that even all the manufacturers were jumping on a couple of years ago during COVID. And, uh, and, and it turns out that they're all backtracking Tesla. All the big manufacturers are cutting back on their EV manufacturing.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  I just heard a story right at the top of the hour before the show started. They're saying that, you know, they're, they're making new SUV EVs. They're going to start out at $35,000 cheaper.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Can you imagine that 10 years ago?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  I know. I know. It's insane. And it's coming down to this, what Bo was just talking about on the show. Battery technology, technology is getting better. And they're also finding these batteries are way more reliable than what we had previously thought. They're lasting longer, which makes used electric vehicles even more interesting and more of an interesting, uh,

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Investment potentially you've got there's other problems with electric vehicles like I get that but for the right for the right person like financially especially now with you know six seven dollar a gallon gas uh you know do the math you can you can save real quick I thought about it myself I thought about man you can get you can pick up like a used like a model three Tesla that has sixty seventy thousand miles on it and it's maybe five years old and you can pick it up for under twenty grand it you know okay if you're if you're driving a car that's getting you know ten fifteen miles a gallon

• 36:54Speaker 02

  you're gonna you're gonna pay that thing off quick you know but it also like where are you getting your power in my case and in your case too it I have free power because of the solar that I have on the house so you know I wouldn't have to pay it wouldn't it wouldn't cost me anything other than you know the the rebate I'm not getting back from PG&E because PG&E actually cuts me a check each year for my overproduction uh I know it's so nice

• 37:23Speaker 00

  So I mean for a normal person a regular person I mean how much is you know say you get the the charging equipment for your you know electric car at home is that a major upkeep or is it a higher cost

• 37:40Speaker 02

  No

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Compared to you know what we're gonna be getting to pay gas

• 37:45Speaker 02

  No, no

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Is there an extra couple hundred bucks in your PG&E or

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on how much you're driving you know and

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Some regular you know working back maybe a couple trips to LA or so once or twice a year

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it it it it can definitely be way cheaper it can definitely and it also it can be cheaper depending on when you're charging your vehicle if you you don't we wouldn't want to be charging during the peak hours like in the afternoon and the and early evenings because that's when electricity is the most but generally you can I know with our electric vehicle we used to have we could program it to charge it early morning hours when energy was the cheapest yeah And then, and then I wouldn't want our car charging during the peak hours because PG&E is going to pay me for that. I'd rather, I'd rather charge my car with a cheap energy that's, you know, the lower tier when it's like earlier in the morning. It's a little bit harder calculation

• 38:47Speaker 02

  to do to determine a breakeven on an electric vehicle because you also have to take into account maintenance. It's not just fuel savings. It's also savings on your maintenance because it's a lot less maintenance on an electric vehicle than a gas vehicle. Insurance could be different. There's, you know, there's, there's a little bit more that you need to calculate, but it's still, it's still worth doing. Can we just breeze through this?

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Because we've got another listener message, question says, how is oil progressing year to date? This is Oildale Trash. Thank you, Oildale Trash.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  I haven't heard that one in a while.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  I know. It's so great to be back on K E R N. We're back with Oildale Trash.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  And Michael Anthony. Hello, Michael.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Michael Anthony.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Long time no see.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Such great, such great listeners. Thank you. Good question. Yeah, oil is certainly in headlines today. Big news continues to come out of, out of, out of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, the latest being this morning, President Trump's declaration of the, of the, the blockade that has been ordered in the, in the Strait of Hormuz. I guess a move to sort of control the global energy path and route through Strait of Hormuz. Initially,

• 40:17Speaker 02

  the stock market was not happy about this, about this announcement. After hours trading, at least in futures, were pointing towards a negative outcome because of the blockade. But the markets right now, still just a few minutes away from closing, turning off of the lows, S and P 500 up nearly. One percent right now. Dow is up about a half a percent. NASDAQ up well over one percent. Oil prices come climbing back up, up to up over just over a hundred dollars a barrel. This is a, uh, obviously oil is a, a global commodity. It trades very, uh, twenty-four hours on the market,

• 41:02Speaker 02

  constantly trading. Year-to-date, oil is up about sixty percent. On a years basis, oil is up fifty percent. So it wasn't really until the end of February of this year that we saw a big spike in oil. Before that, oil was trading in the range of fifty to seventy dollars for a while. Uh, fifty to seventy dollars was trading in that range, all the way going back to, to two thousand and twenty-three. We had oil kind of within that range. Right now, oil is trading at, uh,

• 41:42Speaker 02

  I'm looking at the futures prices for oil trading at ninety-two dollars a barrel. Um, so, you know, this is a, it's such a, a widely uh, volatile time right now because of all of the geopolitical events that are going on. It's, you know, uh, what the problem is, is that locally, we'd love to see oil prices stay around this level. I know that might sound not great for us that are pumping, you know, gas at the station, but

• 42:21Speaker 02

  most of what the price of our gasoline is, isn't the, the raw material. It's not the crude oil that is causing California gas to be so high. It's the cost that we have in California to refine it and to transport it. And the taxes, the state and federal taxes are the highest that we have in the country, in the state of California. But that's the, that's where we're getting the bulk of the hit. For our gas prices in California, but oil, you know, crude oil, we want it to be at a healthy range. I think around, you know, ninety to a hundred dollars a barrel. Certainly,

• 43:02Speaker 02

  our local independent producers are going to be more happy and more comfortable and able to sustain operations at that. We just needed to calm down on the on the global level. We need that that to we need there to be more assurances as to where the supply is going to come from on a global basis before we start to see maybe some stability in the oil prices. In the meantime, man, the markets have just continued to shrug it off. We're now about even year to date, meaning the stock market since January 1st of 2026 till today, we're about even, you know, that means we've we've we've clawed back from all of the, at least so far, some of the fears that were in the markets regarding

• 43:47Speaker 02

  the war and regarding inflation. In fact, now inflation is certainly still a concern. And the it's as much of a concern now that we're turned or changing the conversation from the Fed reducing rates and when they're going to reduce rates to maybe the Fed isn't going to cut any rates to now today, maybe the Fed is going to increase rates before we know it, which would be very challenging for a lot of people. But it's that is the way that the Fed deals with inflation and inflation is still up and it's up bigger than what the Fed wants it. Numbers came out last week showing that inflation is up

• 44:29Speaker 02

  over 3.3% on an annual basis. The Fed likes to see that below 3%. So there's still a lot of work and a lot of uncertainty there. Earning season is starting to this month now or this week, earning season is starting mostly with some of the big banks. So we're anticipating a lot of volatility to continue in the markets until we have more clarification about what's going on. We want to thank all of our listeners for tuning in. If you would like to listen to this show or any of our past programs, go subscribe to the Money Wise Podcast. It's commercial free and on all major podcast platforms like iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Of course, as we leave, we ask you to do these three things. Be smart, be safe, and always be money wise.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  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.