5/2/25 Nester's Farewell, Money Basics, and Gary Ananian's River Rescue Mission

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Friday, May 2nd BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Manageme instagram: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Gary Ananian, Founder of the Kern River Conservancy website: www.kernriverconservancy.org/ email: [email protected] phone: (818) 984-8505

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From the padded radio room off Stockdale Highway, here is Money Wise. Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I need the dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Well, I need the dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Said I need the dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Securities offered through SCF Securities, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through SCF Investment Advisors, Inc., SCF Securities, Inc. and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  That's right, it's business time, getting down to business Friday. I'm your host today, Chris Pelster, joined by?

• 0:55Speaker 04

  Frank Lee.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Hey, have we?

• 0:58Speaker 04

  It's been a while. It's been a while.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  We did do one, though.

• 1:01Speaker 04

  We did, we did a couple.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  And it's been a crazy couple of weeks, months, here in the office. We got some changes, some of our clients understand what we're talking about, broker-dealer change, which if you know a little bit about the structure of our business, all advisors work through a broker-dealer. Ours got bought out by a different broker-dealer, so without necessarily choosing the change, today's the day, it is broker-dealer change for us here at Money Wise, so. Yeah, have you guys already changed all the intro music or the, because, right? Everything, like, it's crazy. And a lot of people understand that in different sectors, you know, oil companies get bought out by other oil companies, or even in the hospital world, you would think, well, that doesn't happen in the hospital, yes. At Venice Health, used to be a different name, and then?

• 1:47Speaker 04

  San Joaquin Hospital.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  San Joaquin Hospital, they merged, I mean, there's, this is normal, and it has entered our world.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  It's like the Rabobank Theater, which was the convention center, which was, I don't even know what it's called now.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  Mechanics and the dignity.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, mechanics used to be Rabobank, and there was two different banks that merged, and Rabobank, they actually got in trouble. So they

• 2:11Speaker 04

  Hence the name change.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they they're like, hey, let's go with our name, uh, mechanics. Not, I shouldn't say they got in trouble. There was some issues with money laundering, and I think that that's public news, so I'm not saying anything. And they had some issues with that. So then they're like, well, let's let's take this other part of our company that doesn't have that name issue. So anyways, before I dig any deeper of a hole, let's go ahead and get into the show. So we are in the the padded radio room off Stockdale Highway, the Gerald Ellis padded radio room. And I think we need to get Frank, maybe an umbrella over there because we got some we got some moisture dripping off the air conditioning unit in here. So I don't know exactly what's going on.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  It's a wet t-shirt contest, Dan.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Well, you're gonna win.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, you already won.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And we we do have some wonderful guests today. We're going to be joined by Gary Anion, who, uh, did I say it right?

• 3:02Speaker 00

  I believe it's.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, Nannion?

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, I just call him Gary.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  We're trying to find guests with names that can make me look really stupid. The wonderful thing is, he's a friend of the show. He's been on forever. He's the executive director and founder of Kern River Conservancy, right?

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  And he's got some stuff coming up. And so we've done some wonderful things with him, gone out and cleaned up the Kern. We're so lucky to have the Kern River running through this place. Sometimes we take it for for granted since it's in our backyard. He's going to join us later, so we're going to get down to business with him. But we're also going to get down to business with another special guest. Nestor Dadios is going to be joining us today on the radio show. Actually, right now, he's here. How are you doing?

• 3:43Speaker 05

  I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Good. So Nestor, if you've been paying attention to the show or listening to any podcasts, he is actually an intern at MoneyWise. He's been here this half of the the school year for him. So the first few months now of 2025 for us. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Which high school do you go to here locally?

• 4:05Speaker 05

  I go to Centennial High School. I graduated in about two or three months. So it's or two to three weeks, right?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Two to three weeks, yeah. So class of 2025.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's it's been a crazy, crazy year for me.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I don't I don't know if we've talked about this. Before cuz uh cuz I went to Stockdale and you're Centennial.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  And I feel like we've been really good friends and stuff and I mean that's a rivalry. Maybe I should have uh been a little harder on you around here.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  So tell us a little bit about so so just to let our listeners know, we've talked about CTEC before. The Career Technical Educational Center that's through Kern High School District. Um, we're big fans of it. We've, we've been around. If you're a taxpayer, some of your tax dollars or a bond that was issued is, is built a beautiful facility that's helping uh in a lot of ways, prepare um students. There's, there's different paths you can go on. Some are very college focused and you see, you have to have certain credits and this and that. And then there's also uh more of a career technical paths that you can go where you're getting more on the job training. It's part of the reason why, why, why Nestor is here um doing an internship.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  And so uh so here you're coming to the internship here. What, what, what have you thought about working or being here at MoneyWise for a couple hours a day? And what that's, what's that been like?

• 5:23Speaker 05

  You know, it's been a great two months, you know? Can't believe it's my last day here. So yeah, it's kind of sad, but you know.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  I told you, don't make me cry today, Nestor.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  But you know, um MoneyWise, you know, they've done great to me, you know? I'm forever grateful for this opportunity. You know, I've learned a lot, you know? So it's just, I'm very grateful for this opportunity. So.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  One of the reasons I was excited to have you on is cuz, cuz sometimes I was telling you that we've been talking about some of this stuff for 20 years. Some of us, you know, 10 years we've been in the industry or five years. And, and we talk this jargon and this and that. And so we always try to bring it back to the basics every once in a while. Gero used to be famous about, hey, we're gonna do a back to the basics day and just kind of talk about investments from, from the 101 or the very basic start of it, just to remind people. Because some people have been investing even. They have their money in investments and they still don't fully kind of understand some of the different products and things. So obviously we can't cover everything, but it's great to have you on here because one of the things I hear a lot from clients is, man, I wish I could have started earlier. I should have started earlier in this uh, you know, and it's true.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  All of us feel that, especially once you get going and you see it. And the other reality i- in our world, which is not talked about enough, is compounding interest. What compounding interest is, is when you invest and your money starts to make money. Little by little over time, the money now that you've put in there is still making money, but then now the money that you've made itself is starting to make money and starting to grow. And so it's kind of like a snowball. It's the compound interest effect. And a lot of times people I think get frustrated when you talk about it because they say, well, I don't, I don't feel like I'm experiencing that yet and I'm not seeing that yet. And it's partly because it really doesn't start to take off until year 20,

• 7:13Speaker 03

  year 25, 30, 35, year 40. People go on, you're 40, like I'm 40 years old. I don't have that much time. And that's why a lot of people get frustrated with investing because they unfortunately waited too long and it's still worthwhile doing it. You still want to put money away and invest it, but you don't get to really feel and experience that growth. So thanks for joining us, Nestor. We're going to talk a little bit about that. I don't know if you wanted to jump into the markets at all before we dive too much into the starting thing, but if you...

• 7:47Speaker 04

  I mean, we can just give a quick snippet. Markets turned out pretty good today and the week in the positive. We got Dow Jones up 139 basis, S and P 500 up 147, Nasdaq 151, and the Russell 2,225.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  There you go. So the markets moved in positive territory. You know, obviously bouncing off a little bit some of the lows after we pulled back a little bit a couple of weeks ago. We still not have got maybe up to the highs that we were at earlier in the first quarter, but moving in the right direction.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we're still about what 10% down from year to date roughly about. So we've still got some recovery to do.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So what I wanted to do is kind of go over one of these articles that kind of highlights investments. And I know that when we're talking about the power of starting early as far as investments, I wanted to go over the numbers and sometimes it's hard when you're not getting to show the graph because the graph really kind of illustrates it the most. But it is one of those things where if you start early, it is crazy the power of what compounding interest can do in a portfolio. So I'll just set the scene for Nestor and our listeners to kind of go over this. So regardless of how old you are, if you start now and you do $100 per month...

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Hundred dollars per month, that's only $1,200 per year. And you average a 7% annual return. So you have to do assuming that you're investing in something, uh, you know, whether it be mutual funds or stocks or bonds and a mix of them and you're averaging 7% a year. The reason why that's very achievable is the stock market, even with all its ups and downs and crashes, averages around 10% per year. So just put that in perspective. You're not even having to be like a genius or a day trader and picking all these different stocks. It's doing better than the stock market, just averaging 7% a year. You're doing a hundred dollars a month. You do it for years, zero to 10, and then you stop.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  What that means is that you have put in $12,000. $12,000 total you've put in there. Now say somebody else at that same exact time says, hey, I like what you're doing. I'm going to start doing a hundred dollars a month. Well, that person, you've stopped now. You're not doing anything else. That person starts putting in a hundred dollars a month. But they have to continue doing a hundred dollars a month from years 11 to 50. So that means now they have put in $48,000 over that time period when you only put in 12,000 and stopped. Now, if we look at what those two accounts would have done, you would think the person that put in $48,000 would have more money, right?

• 10:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Seems like it. Well, actually, the person that put in $48,000 has $264,000. And the person that put in 12 and then stopped has $283,973. Again, just highlighting the fact that starting that 10 years earlier, and again, this is, we're talking about 50 years and somebody says, well, who in the world has 50 years to invest? Well, guess what? Nestor does. Yeah. Right? Yeah. A hundred dollars a month for 10 years and then stop? You'd have 260, uh, 283,000 dollars even at just a 7% average. To where somebody else, starting after you've already been doing it for 10 years,

• 11:19Speaker 03

  would have to start doing a hundred dollars a month and not stop for that 50 years. Put in four times as much money as you and you would still have more money than, than them. So again, it's just highlighting the fact of that starting early and, and continuing with it. And how much power that, uh, um, compound interest can do in a portfolio like you. So, and it is overwhelming because you say, well, what in the world do I invest in? And what is investing and what is it all about? So, um, why don't we take a break real quick? When we come back, we'll just kind of go into some of the basics of the different things that we can invest in and some of the places that people can go that are just getting started out and they know they can at least get some good advice, or not even advice, get information

• 12:04Speaker 03

  that's not maybe from some website where they're also trying to do something else or sell you something else. There's a couple of websites that people can go to that they know is, uh, in an effort to protect investors. So stick around, we'll talk about that when we get back.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Money Wise Wealth Management is the only locally owned independent firm that uses a comprehensive wealth, tax and estate approach. Working closely with a highly trusted CPA and attorney for information on how Money Wise can help you invest and plan for your future. Call 661-847-1000. That's 661-847-1000.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Is this like newer rap music? Are you playing this for Nestor or something? This is old. Yeah, this is OutKast. Yes. Wow. This is way before Nestor's time, dude. So maybe if you show this video or this, uh, this podcast to your parents, maybe they know OutKast. Show you some street cred for the old ones. And, and just, just throw us to, to make me feel really old. So, so who's like, who's your favorite artist? Like, who do you like listening to music wise or?

• 13:17Speaker 05

  As of right now, like the weekend.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  The weekend.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so like hip hop, R and B. But lately, I've been listening to Michael Jackson and then, uh, have you guys heard Deftones?

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Deftones.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Who's old now, huh? There you go. And if you haven't, uh, if you weren't here the first, uh, little segment, that is Nestor de Dios. He has been our intern here at Money Wise. Been wonderful to have here in the office. He came to us via the, the CTEC, uh, program. Um, has maybe some aspirations, stay here local, go maybe go to Bakersfield College. What do you think you're going to study at Bakersfield College?

• 13:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, um, as of right now, I'm going to be doing business administration and then after the two years, uh, switch over to CSUB to continue accounting over there. So.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I already have my classes already set. So just hopefully we'll see what goes on from there.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  There you go. And you can, uh, you can already start your investing world like we've been talking about because you don't even have to wait. Cause that's what sometimes people do is well, once I'm making money or once I get a job, you know, I'll have a, a retirement plan, maybe through my job, but it's like, start now because that power of time, that was what we were talking about last segment. Um, and then we talked about, uh, you know, like, oh, you have to get a 7% return. Well, what does that mean? Or how do I get a 7% return? Well, when you put your money into an account, you can put it in a banking product. You can put it in a savings account and get a savings rate or a money market, which they might give you a little bit higher rate on it.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  But you have to maybe have at least $500 in the account or a thousand dollars in the account before they'll give you a higher rate. Um, when we're talking about investing, we're talking about buying certain stocks or bonds or ETFs we can invest in. Um, and, and so it can be overwhelming. One of the things I wanted to say, there's a million articles and a million people and a million things floating around the internet. There are some government sites that do try to protect investors that you can go to. There's investor.gov that does have some real basic. Information where it's not, it's not like an investment company trying to sell you anything, or an influencer trying to get you to sign up for a newsletter.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  It literally is just basic financial information on different products and things that we have access to. It's through the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, investor.gov. So like an advisor like myself, I have to be licensed. I have to go through continuing education and that, this and that. This is who kind of governs and oversees all the investment world. It doesn't mean that there's not unfortunately, bad players in the world of advisors and this and that. But there are checks and balances that try to make sure that advisors and investment tools and products are following rules so that they are ultimately at the end of the day, protecting investors. So investor.gov is one of them. The other one that's a part of our world is FINRA. They've been around for 85 years.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  You can go to FINRA.org and there's another really neat tool for investors that you can click on. FINRA is another organization that if you're a financial advisor, or if you're selling products or investment solutions to clients, you have to clear through. So that's another one. And then one that is not government related, that most people, I mean, most people have heard of Wikipedia. Well, a long time ago, somebody came out with Investopedia. That's kind of like along the same lines. It's a good place to go to. It's kind of an encyclopedia of all things financial. There you are going to maybe, probably try to get sold a few things. They probably make their money through advertisements. But it is a really great, great place that you can really do extensive research on different things.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  The one thing that I thought might help our listeners and Nestor just to go over is from the investor.gov investor thing, they're, what is it? The investor tab? Yeah, the website. Different kinds of investment products. So what most people know about and talk about are stocks and bonds. Okay, so just real basic. Stock is where you get to own part of the company. You get to buy in at a certain price and if that company continues to do- Do well and goes up in value, you get to participate with whatever portion you own of that company or your stock share price goes up, then you can sell it to somebody else at

• 17:43Speaker 03

  that gain, right? So that's stock ownership. So we either own or we loan. When I say loan, what am I talking about? Bonds. Bonds are you are loaning your money either to a government or a company and they're saying, hey, instead of offering more stock ownership for our company, we want to do a project. So we're willing to pay people 5% per year to hold to use their money for our project and then we'll pay you your money back. So you give this company or a government, which treasury bonds and different things people talk about, that's actually loaning your money to the government. They're paying you an interest rate. They're paying you a little bit of a yield. It's typically viewed as a little bit lower risk. So the return is a little bit

• 18:27Speaker 03

  lower. They tend to be a little bit more stable during market volatility. So again, stocks and bonds. Okay. Most people, if you have a retirement plan or something like that, you invest in these types of investments through what's called a mutual fund. What a mutual fund is, is there's a mutual fund manager. He or she or a team goes out and says, we're going to be a large cap mutual fund. They go out and buy all large cap stocks that they think are going to give people success. You buy a piece of that mutual fund and at the end of every day, if all those stocks, most of them all went up, at the end of the day, your mutual fund went up in value. If at the end of

• 19:09Speaker 03

  the day, most of those stocks went down, they calculated at the end of the day, you might have lost a little bit of value at the end of the day. But again, you can invest in all kinds of different mutual funds, stocks or bonds, or even a mix. There might be a mutual fund that has both inside of there. And so those are some of the investments that you end up saying, hey, I want to start putting money away. Like I talked about earlier, we were assuming a 7% rate of return in that little scenario we were talking about earlier. Well, 7%, you could have a mix of stocks and bonds. And if you stuck with it, 7% would be a very achievable rate of return over If you wanted to get even more growth, you would hold more of the stock side of things.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  But it is going to go a little bit more volatile for you.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  And real quick, before we move on to anything else, the reason why we talk about mutual funds and suggest some mutual funds and use that in our practice is because of a couple of things. Professional management, like you said, there's a team of people who have experience in looking at analyzing stocks and bonds and building up that portfolio. Two, there's diversification. If you're going out and buying stocks and bonds, you're doing it yourself. And you could be overweight in a certain stock or company versus being diversified, having multiple stocks of large cap, mid cap, small cap, whatever it is. And then affordability. So if you're doing a hundred dollars, it's hard to buy Apple or Microsoft or Amazon at a hundred dollars, right?

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  So you have mutual funds that have those type of stocks in their portfolio, whereas you can still buy a piece of that, like tech stock. So.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Cause sometimes stocks, stocks might be to buy one stock of a company, it might be $600. And the way that that value is derived is how many shares the company has and then what people think that that company's worth. Well, that stock is now, you have to spend $600 just to buy one stock. Well, if we're doing a hundred dollars a month, it's going to take you six months until you can buy one share, right?

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  And then you only own one share in that one company. So what he's talking about is if you buy a mutual fund, you can put that $100 into a mutual fund where now instead of buying one share of one stock, you're buying 100 or 500 or a thousand stocks. You get only a piece of the, the mutual fund and whether it goes up or down. And one of the things that's caught a lot of attention lately is it's like a mutual fund concept, but it's called exchange traded funds or ETFs. So what an ETF is, is now we take the professional management out of it, which can be a positive, like he mentioned. But we take the professional management out of it and we say,

• 21:58Speaker 03

  there are indexes that people follow, like the S and P 500, Standard and Poor's 500. And that's more like a scoreboard. Nobody's managing it. Basically, they're just putting the 500 largest companies on the stock exchange in there. And then, uh, and that's what we look at when we watch the news. We say, how did the stock market do today? We're looking at those scoreboards. Well, what an ETF allows you to do is I just want to hold those 500 companies. Nobody has to manage it. So when I put my money into an ETF that's maybe tied to the S and P 500, my hundred dollars goes in there and I get to buy a little bit of each of those 500 companies that are in that S and P 500, instead of having to go out and buy individual holdings of all those different stocks.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  So, uh, that's, those are ETFs. Um, but then as you, uh, eventually jump out into the work world, which you should start this before, right? We're not, we're not gonna wait.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  No.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Cause that's what, that's what everybody does. Once I finish college, then I'll start doing it. Get started now.

• 22:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Um, but yes, there are retirement plans that are through your employers that you can end up getting. And there's different ones. A lot of people talk about the 401K, which is like private companies, 403B, which would be like teachers or hospitals, a lot of times offer that. And it's a fancy sounding word, or where does that come from? Well, that's where you find it in the tax code. You said accounting, right?

• 23:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  You might end up knowing a little bit about the tax code then. Well, you go into the tax code into section 401K and it talks about the rules of a 401K for a company. Um, there's pension plans where that's where you build up credits and they're going to pay you the rest of your life based on how, how long you're with the company. If you're federal government, there's FERS, CSRS or TSP. So there's different governmental, uh, plans that are available if you take a job with the government. And then if you don't have any of those, or you run your own business, there might be what are called self-directed plans. Like an IRA, Roth, SEP or SIMPLE where you you are technically your employer.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  So you're actually opening up a a plan for yourself and there's all kinds of different rules and stuff. But those are kind of some of the basics of different types of accounts, different types of plans, stocks, bonds, you know, you could go into this, but these are some great websites to go to. So like I said, investor.gov through the U S Securities and Exchange Commission. You got FINRA that has a great website, FINRA.org for investors. Again, they are trying to have rules and regulations that ultimately are protecting investors so that you can have transparency, you can know more about investment types. And it is one thing that I'm a little bit passionate about because there's a lot of scams.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  There's a lot of kind of misguidance, you know, we're unindated with news nowadays. And and you go to the you, people go to the internet to try to find out about stocks and bonds. And it's they they scare you to death until they end up selling you something that you really probably don't need or won't actually solve maybe the problem that you're concerned about. So we want to try to help people be money wise in that aspect. So so Nestor, do you have any questions or anything or thoughts?

• 25:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, so back to what you said about mutual funds. So let's say if you don't have the mutual fund, if you don't go into that route. So how would you recommend going to like a a bond or a stock where somewhere you could afford it? Like say like, you know, a hundred bucks a month, you know, so would it? Would you recommend going to a stock where it's like lower than that?

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so so well, that the stock is actually what's going to have an issue because the the stock may be $300.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  A mutual fund, there are some mutual fund companies that will allow you to start maybe as low as $25 a month as long as you link it to a bank account and you set it up automatically. And then there's also a couple of websites, you know, that are like for do it yourselfers where where this one is, I'm just going to put $100 a month into this and it's going to buy into the. ETF that we talked about. Yeah. Like the, like an ETF or something like that and you set that up and those, a lot of times they won't have income or, or, uh, minimums as long as you set up something to be a regular contribution. Now, if you called them and said, I have $12 that I want to put in an account, but I'm not going to put any more money into it, they're probably not going to open up an account for you. Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  But if you save up a little bit of money and you say, okay, I'm going to start putting in a hundred dollars a month or $50 a month, as long as you set up regular contributions, you, you can do that. Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  And, and one thing, always consult with a professional too, uh, when you're setting things up. Cause we want to make sure that you're aligned correctly and not buying into the wrong mutual fund or ETF. Because there are times where people who've opened the account, bought into mutual funds, but it turns out the mutual fund itself wasn't appropriate for them, right? It could have been super conservative when they thought it was, oh yeah, this will yield me 7%, 8%. It's like, ah.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Sorry, but no.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, just start as early as you can. You know that you have a, a team here that will, will jump in there with you and guide you along the way. But thanks for joining the show. Thanks for being around MoneyWise for the last couple of months. It's been really, really great. Thank you. We wish you nothing but the best in the future and it is really, really cool to share with our listeners, especially those local, uh, here in Kern, Kern County, uh, the CTEC Center and some of the great things that it is doing, um, for our students here in town. And now you have some experience inside of a financial planning, a financial advisor office. Uh, and even if you don't go down this path, it's just going to help broaden your horizons to, to different things. Okay. All right. We'll stick around when we get back. We're going to talk with Gary.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Are you curious to learn more about how you can be money wise? Check out the MoneyWise website at MoneyWiseGuys.com to get more info about what we do.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Welcome back. Got to get fired up. We talked about protecting the river, right?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Nobody better mess with our river.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Is that your walkout song?

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Some Deftones.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, oh, look at this guy. You see how on the ball he is? You see how good he is in his job?

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, he is.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  You mentioned him earlier. Now Steven's already got it queued up.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  I haven't heard that name in 20 years, so that's crazy.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  There you go. How do you end up getting turned on to Deftones? Like just?

• 28:40Speaker 05

  Uh, just randomly just saw it on TikTok.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Tried it out, yeah? Oh, you saw it on TikTok, so maybe like?

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Like freshman year, so.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  There you go. And so it turns on it. Well, there you go.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  What is TikTok?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. These kids nowadays. Uh, that's cool. Uh, but anyways, uh, so again, that was Nestor. If you weren't paying, if you weren't here, uh, earlier, um, our wonderful intern that's spending his last day here in the studio with us, and it was nice enough to appease us, talk a little bit about investing 101, getting started early and the benefit of that. So, uh, we wish him nothing but the best. But we are now going to get down to business with, we can get an answer to this question. I think I said the name right. Gary Ananian.

• 29:22Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  That's good?

• 29:23Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Hey!

• 29:26Speaker 06

  It's better than me calling Nick, uh, Steven, uh, Emily.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  In the email. I don't know why it says Emily in my email. I'm like, Emily. And he's like, sorry, Emily, it's Steven.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  I was like, who, what, what?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Well, you probably have them like linked or groups. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I told him, I'm like, man, I just seem like I always keep shredding these names. But he is a friend of the show. He's been on a lot. He talked about, uh, the beautiful Kern River, and he is the director and founder of Kern River Conservancy. Um, and so you have an event coming up that we're going to talk to about, talk about in a little bit. But before we do that, for those that have not heard your story, have not heard about what Kern River Conservancy is, why don't you kind of just go into a little bit about what it is and maybe a little bit about your story of, of why you got involved there?

• 30:10Speaker 06

  Absolutely. So I am a native, uh, Angelina, born and raised in Hollywood, California. I spent my entire life down in LA, moved around a little bit here and there and just always ended back up in LA. And we always came out to the Kern River as a place for us to come and hang out and get away like every other tourist, right?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:30Speaker 06

  We all worked in the nightclub and bar industry in Hollywood, so we would always leave on the Monday after the shift was done for the weekend. Come up to the Kern River and just, you know, after five or 10 years of coming up here, we just kind of fell in love with the place. But that whole time we were coming up here, it was just like, man, there's trash everywhere, there's graffiti everywhere. And like you get this mindset where like we're leaving that back in LA to come here for something pure, right? Like the river and the forest. And what we were finding was just all the rocks were covered in trash, I mean, and graffiti. Fire pits were trashed out. It was just, it was nasty.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 06

  And, you know, after some time, I just started kind of thinking about like, oh, you know, maybe we should come volunteer because I would do a lot of volunteer work back in LA through our companies that we worked for. We would do like a group outing and kind of, you guys do that too, like you guys come out money wise and you guys do service work with the community. So we would do similar stuff. And so I was trying to get that going up there and there was no volunteer organization, the Forest Service had nothing going on. And there was no organization attached to the Kern River. And I was like, well, that's kind of weird. So the more I started educating myself, the more I started realizing that every wild and scenic river in the US has an organization attached to it to protect it. And the Kern didn't have one.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 06

  So of course I got back to LA and I was kind of like, you know, I think I'm gonna start a nonprofit. And everybody's like, what are you talking about? Like you don't know anything about environmental work, like you're the, you're the bouncer, you're the bartender, you're this and that. Like, but what I was really good at is getting people together, like promoting and social media was my thing.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 06

  And so when I got out there, I eventually started Kern River Conservancy in 2013. And it was really just a passion project, like I had no intentions of leaving LA, quitting my job to come up here and live full time. But as time went on and our volunteer base just kind of like grew and grew and grew and our social media just grew and grew and grew. And about 2017 and 18, it was just like, it got just too much and I was like, I have to actually quit my job in LA.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  Like I packed everything up and just drove up to Kern County, became a resident, moved to Kernville and started running Kern River Conservancy full time. And it's beyond full time, you know, I can tell you it's seven days a week.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 06

  It's like 10 days a week. There's just so much going on in the summertime with tourist season, wildfire season, all that kind of stuff, just kind of bunches all up.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, so now that you've been up there, you know, you, you enjoyed it even before 2013, but almost full time kind of running this and doing this. Talk a little bit about, or what has been your experience? So like, I think we've talked about this before. It doesn't seem like people in Kern County even realize what is in our own county. What is unique about the Kern River compared to maybe other rivers and things like that? And, and then I guess my other question was, when you talk about people coming here and trashing it, or, or, or the graffiti and all that stuff. Um, is it unfortunately that that's just kind of like normal behavior from people that come from out of town? Or do you think some of that is local? Or what's been your experience?

• 33:22Speaker 06

  Um, so this is our 12th year operating, um, and a lot of the residents up there will blame the tourists for everything, right? Um, and you know, the tourists do leave trash, but sometimes that's just, coming from the hospitality background, it's really like you have to take care of people, unfortunately, right? That your waiter, server, bartender, whatever is you want to make sure they come back. So when you have campgrounds that have no services, no bathrooms, no toilets, no trash cans, like where do you expect people to dispose their trash, right? And most people will say a pack it in, pack it out. Yeah, that pack it in, pack it out is a term for backpackers, for hikers. It's not for car camping.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:01Speaker 06

  Right? Especially when a lot of the families that are going up there are like 15, 20, 30 people, like the whole family, mom's side, that's everybody's over there.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 06

  Well, you're there for three days and you've accumulated probably 10, 15 large trash bags of trash. Well, who's packing that up back home when they're driving back to LA or Fresno, wherever you're coming from?

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Like it's just, it's a logic and the times have changed. And I think why we're ahead of the curve here on the Kern, compared to a lot of other forests, I think I've been able to use my hospitality background and put that onto the Forest Service and explain to them how this works. Cause no matter what, even it could be the year 3000 and the Forest Service is still operating in 1950. They just, they just have this failure of. Adapting and evolving, right? And the partners like us come in and show them that.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 34:46Speaker 06

  So I've kind of driven that into them that we actually have to provide these services unfortunately. This is just the way it is right now with society and culture. The bathrooms have to be there, the trash cans have to be there. It's just, just the way it is.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's one of those, it's one of those issues where you, you would want to say, well, like, hey, it's free or there's no cost to go up there. So everybody should take their stuff back. And, and while that may be true, the bummer part is, is if you don't provide the services you're talking about, it doesn't solve the problem because you guys are still picking up the trash. Or somebody is still having to pick up the trash in some way, shape or form. So you might as well be proactive instead of reactive is kind of what you're saying.

• 35:25Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Like I want to be one step ahead at all times, right? So on the Upper Kern River, um, you know, there's 16 campgrounds. Eight of those campgrounds were concessioned out. Those concessioned out campgrounds are fee sites. You have to pay to camp there. But those campsites also have bathrooms. They have trash bins. And guess what? They don't have merely the problems that we have. Because the services are there. It's the same type of people, the same people that are camping and the free, first come, first served are the same people that are coming to those sites. The only difference is one has amenities, the other one doesn't. So when you're in there with a large family, like, and your car is already packed with all your camping gear, where are you to put all these bags of trash?

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 06

  And so we're out there and we try to educate and we've had a couple of good years where the Forest Service was fully funded with recreation. They were able to get the dumpsters and the roll off bins out there. And it's worked and it's working. And the social media that we put out, if you guys follow the Conservancy's social media, you see like we're constantly drilling that and we're constantly showing what happens when people don't, right? And we want people to understand, not everything in nature is pretty sometimes, right? There's an ugly side to everything. And I get a lot of flack for this from other organizations because we're showing this kind of stuff that's happening. And it's like, I'm not going to hide it. Like there's actually a problem here and it has to be addressed. And we have to address this through social media for people to understand. Because at the end of the day, the Forest Service can wake up tomorrow and say, you know what? We're shutting that down.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 06

  And it's happened before. It's just too trash, too much graffiti. So we're gonna close it. We're gonna put a gate and nobody can camp there. Well, I don't want that because I recreate there. I live there. And a lot of the people that come up there to recreate love those campgrounds. So the last thing they want to do is drive three hours and find out it's closed. And it's happened, it's happened many times. Like, oh, man, it's closed. Well, you know, nobody, the Forest Service doesn't communicate it, right? They're all, this is closed. Don't come here.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so you mentioned, you're, you're kind of good at the whole social media thing. So, so what, what is considered successful in the social media world for a conservancy?

• 37:13Speaker 06

  Um, for me, it's the engagement on the post.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  Um, when we first started, there was just, you see that, I measured my comments, right? When I first started, the comments were always negative and it was really a lot of racial BS going on, right? People blaming a specific culture and a race or whatever. And that kind of irritates me because it happens everywhere.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 06

  Um, and it's every culture, every race has their problem. It's not just one. Um, and when I, what I see out there is like, our biggest problem is illegal dumping. And that comes from the locals. It doesn't come from the tourists from LA. They're not bringing a U-Haul truck full of home trash and dumping it on the river. You know, the, the trash that the tourists leave, it's like your Dixie cup, the solo cups, paper plates that they were using for their picnic or, you know, stuff like that. That's, I will take that any day.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:58Speaker 06

  But when we deal with the issues that the locals bring.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  Your refrigerator, your couch, your, we've literally had to pull a couch out of the river. Like, we had to put tow straps on it and use a bunch of whitewater wraps to haul that thing out.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, not that, I remember seeing like a, a washing machine or a fridge or something. And there was a funny post that you guys put on there about it, like, who in the world brings this?

• 38:18Speaker 06

  It was a whole kitchen. It was a refrigerator, dishwasher and oven all next to each other. Just dumped it all.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  So then that's, that's local people, like, using it as a dumping ground.

• 38:27Speaker 06

  Absolutely. And that costs us money because now we have to take that to the dump.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 06

  Right? And the dump is county.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  So, but the campgrounds are federal. So because it's coming out of a federal campground, we have to pay for that, the fees on that.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it's always so good to, to get an update and stuff. Let's take a quick break. We're, we're joined here with Gary Ananian, Executive Director and Founder of Kern River Conservancy, talking.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  About the beautiful resource we have right here in our backyard. I'm always blown away when I hear that somebody from out of town had to come and start this. Let's take advantage of all the wonderful things here in our beautiful community. We'll be right back.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Are you an employee with a company sponsored retirement plan? Do you fully understand how you're invested and whether or not you are maximizing your retirement plans options? For more information on a free assessment, contact MoneyWise's 401(k) Specialist, Justin Leland, at 661-847-1000. That's 661-847-1000.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  There we go. We got some of Nestor's favorite, favorite artists currently. So I was thought I was gonna hear about a bunch of people I didn't know. I even knew who the weekend was. So look at me. I'm in it. I know.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  He also named Michael Jackson, too.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  King of Pots.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Hey, so we are talking about the Kern River. We sometimes take this gym in our backyard for granted and it's so wonderful to talk about Gary and the Kern River Conservancy and the work that they've been doing and all the wonderful volunteers. We've volunteered before. Such a wonderful group that gets up there and takes care of that place and hopefully changing the tune of both people visiting and also local people that might use it as a dumping ground instead of taking care of their messes. But you had an interesting question or you had a good question. What was yours again?

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. As far as like funding goes, are you guys facing any sort of backlash with funding or are you guys potential funding issues in the future?

• 40:29Speaker 06

  We're not as an organization. Most of our money usually comes from like private foundations is who funds us most of the time. But on the US Forest Service end, they are facing a lot of staffing cuts right now, especially with recreation management is always the first one who gets cut from everything with the Forest Service budget. So recreation wise, you know, we usually were spoiled sometimes with six to eight people working on the river, cleaning, picking up trash. And this year we only have two. We're not going to have a trail crew. So the volunteers will be picking up a lot of the slack for sure this year. And I just have-

• 41:07Speaker 03

  You heard that here, volunteers.

• 41:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it's really about-

• 41:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, it's like every year, I don't want to burn the volunteers out, right? Like, you know, some, there's some groups that can do that and they have people coming out every week and I don't want to do that. You know, we try to do stuff every month, but it also depends what kind of season we're looking at, right? We've seen a huge shift with our, the crowds that are coming to the Kern. A lot of them have shifted and started hanging out in the San Gabriel River down in LA. And a lot of our camping traffic is now down there because that river is closer to them. It's not deadly, people don't drown in that river, it's like one feet deep. It's super accessible and it's cheaper for them just to drive 30 minutes from the house than four hours to get over here. So we've seen a huge shift, but that river is just getting annihilated and nuked over there by the crowds. So it's kind of given us a break here for like the last two years.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Lightened up a little bit.

• 41:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, the load's been lining up, but that doesn't stop the illegal dumping still, right? If you follow us on social media, you know, we've found a speedboat. We've, that was hidden, it was hidden behind a tree, like we weren't going to see this like 20 foot speedboat. You know, people will dump their trailers and it's just the propane tanks. I can, you know, I like, I can have a reality show about the weird stuff that we come across up there.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  Hey, maybe that could have some additional funding to you.

• 42:24Speaker 06

  I've been thinking about, so I was going to start a YouTube channel last year to kind of like, follow us around on what we're doing and you know, just the bizarre stuff that we come across on this river. And like I shot one episode and then we had the Beryl fire breakout and that kind of like delayed things for a little bit. And then by the time that was all over and settled down, it was like we were, the season was over for there was no content for me to go film. The season was over.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Do you have a TikTok as well?

• 42:49Speaker 06

  I have, so we do have a TikTok for the conservancy and stuff, yeah, so we do that. We just started that last year, so that's kind of still growing. But our main.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  I was just gonna say, that's where you do most of like your dance moves and stuff.

• 43:01Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, for sure. I, I will sit there and dance with a trash picker in my hand. You know, I find the most stupid things on the river and I'll, I'll wear like an umbrella or whatever and I'll dance and like, I just want to have fun, I don't want people, when the volunteers show up. You know, the one thing I tell them is I don't want you guys to get frustrated or angry or discouraged. Like I want you guys to leave here knowing that you made a difference. Right? Have fun with it. Like I see a piece of trash. I'll make a joke to the volunteers. Like, I wonder what they were doing with this. You know, something just to keep them lighting up and have a good time. And it works. You know, we've got our volunteer base is just over 3,000 people.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 43:34Speaker 06

  And a lot of those are returning volunteers that come back every single year. And so I know that what I'm doing is working because they keep coming back. They're having a blast. And we feed everybody. We feed pizzas and we do tacos.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 06

  Um, you know, I just want to make sure they're taken care of and they have a good time.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's. So, uh, you have something coming up though, pretty soon here.

• 43:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. Uh, this Sunday, we have, uh, it's so, you know, there's Give Big Kern, which is a huge day of giving for Kern County.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 43:58Speaker 06

  Um, so what we're doing this year, we're putting in a 5K, 10K race. It's called Run Big Kern. So it kind of runs with Give Big Kern. And it's our annual, like, so every year we try to figure out what we're going to do for Give Big Kern, right? And it's been a struggle. One year it works and next year it doesn't work. One year it does really well, the next year it flops. Um, so this year we're going to do a 5K, 10K, um, and it's already exceeded my expectations with registration. So, so far it's going well and I'm going to, I want to keep doing it because we live in an amazing outdoor recreation town. And we don't have any of these kind of events. We don't have triathlons or 5Ks or ultras. None of this stuff exists there, which is blows my mind.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 06

  We have all the beer festivals you want.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 06

  But we don't have like outdoor activities, which is crazy because you can go to Mammoth and Redwood and Bishop. They have all these cool events that are outdoor related. So this is one step for me to start doing this.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:50Speaker 06

  And it's already, like I said, exceed, I was, for me, if I can get a hundred people signed up, I'd be stuck. We're way past that already. Um, and so we're already starting to talk with a event organizer down in LA that puts on ultra races. So we're, we've submitted our, uh, uh, event permit application with the Forest Service and getting all that going on. And hopefully to have that in October, like a three day event, kind of like Mammoth Trail Fest. And so we want to do the same thing for Kernville.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it seems like you get a, a big crowd that would be willing to go up there to a beautiful part of Kern County, California and, and do some really exciting stuff there. So thank you so much for all that you do. For, for the Kern River and for our community. Thank you for all those volunteers out there that get out there and clean things up. And if you're the mess makers. Be warned.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Chris is coming for you.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  You are going to get caught on social media and you're going to go viral for not being a very good human. So change your ways. Well, thanks for making Money Wise what it is. Gary, thanks again for joining us today. Nester, we wish you nothing but the best in life and the future. Even though you're a Centennial student, I will still, yeah, Golden Hawks, I'm a Mustang. I'm still going to wish you nothing but the best. Thank you guys for making Money Wise what it is. Be smart, be safe, be money wise.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Securities offered through SCF Securities, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through SCF Investment Advisors, Inc. SCF Securities, Inc. and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.