Pod Insights The Moneywise Guys 6/12/25 Pickled Markets, Pension Talks, and the Power of a Good Name About this episode The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Thursday, June 12th 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
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 From the Garo Ellis padded radio room off Stockdale Highway, here is Money Wise.
0:06 Speaker 01 Call or text into the show 24/7 at 396-1000.
0:39 Speaker 00 Here is Money Wise.
0:40 Speaker 01 Money, money, money, money.
0:44 Speaker 00 That's right. Welcome to the Money Wise Show. I'm your host today, Chris Pelster. Joined by?
0:51 Speaker 01 Seth Perry. So glad to be in the padded radio room, Chris.
0:54 Speaker 00 There you go. We are in the Garo Ellis padded radio room off Stockdale Highway. We are on ESPN, Bakersfield, 1230 AM, 101.1 FM, and we're always streaming at your favorite podcast location and also can be found at MoneyWiseGuys.com. We have a website. It's like a, it's like an online storefront and you can search or enter in the address and it will take you to that website and that website contains information and shows and some info.
1:31 Speaker 01 Plus you can always.
1:32 Speaker 02 You can call the show or text the show. Just put 661 in front of it if you're going to text. So 661-396-1000.
1:41 Speaker 00 Mr. Garo Ellis, the golden voice. He graced the airwaves for many, many years here in our community, jumped into the podcast world. I mean, that guy took to technology so great. You know, I mean, just. I think he was the only one still in the office typing with his index fingers, but he still got it done and loved his clients. We miss you, G. We're thinking about you and everything else going on in your life right now. So you can call the show, join the show 24 hours a day, 661-396-1000. We have a great comment that came in. We are going to get to that here in just a second. It's going to spill into a lot of great discussion on retirement accounts, retirement types. Great question. Again, you guys make the show good because if
2:25 Speaker 00 we're covering stuff that we think is good, you actually should hear some of the ideas that Seth brings in here. I have to really tame it back.
2:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's got to trim me down.
2:34 Speaker 00 I have to pull it back and I'm like, money wise, guys, Seth.
2:39 Speaker 03 Yep.
2:39 Speaker 00 We're trying to make people money wise. So we're going to trim it up. We're going to talk about that. But before we get into, like I said, the listener question, we're going to talk a little bit about the market. So give us a little overview here, Seth. What was going on in the markets today?
2:56 Speaker 03 Well, we finished up 3% on the year, which is fantastic. I know that much. Year returns on the S and P 500, remember the S and P 500, 500 largest companies by market cap in the US. The one year return 11.5%. Big tech and AI stocks are really pushing the market up. Interest rates are still high. Job markets are coming out strong. So you know what, man? We were crunching numbers before the show, me and you, KP, and things are looking pretty good back compared to our shows we were doing in March.
3:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, in April.
3:34 Speaker 03 Things have changed.
3:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, you know, this is a tale of the markets and a great illustration of why panic selling and making changes when the first discussion came out about tariffs and you could almost feel the fear and panic in a lot of people, even people that are feeling like this, you know, maybe Trump is doing some of the things that needs to be done for the long term in the economy. You could feel the concern. And let me illustrate some things for you. Okay? S and P 500 is not everything and not everybody has 100% of their money in the S and P 500, but that's kind of the scoreboard that everybody looks at to say what's going on in the markets. It's typically what's talked about nonstop when you're watching, you know, one of the 19 24 hour
4:19 Speaker 00 day news cycle channels that is driving everybody in our country crazy. Let's talk about it. S and P 500. We opened the year at 5,881. What does that number mean collectively? The market cap or the, the, the, the value of each of those different stocks, you add it up, that's it. So if they go up, it goes up. If they collectively all go down, they go down. Some are up, some are down, but that's what we kind of look at as a scoreboard. Open up the year 5,881 trended upwards until its peak February 19th, which is still our all time high on the S and P 500. 6,144 15 we closed February 19th. From that point.
5:01 Speaker 00 Bomb dropped dude. 17.6% drop over the next seven weeks.
5:08 Speaker 03 What a pickle.
5:10 Speaker 00 That, I mean, seriously, if you, if, if you made irrational decisions, you really put yourself in a pickle. Okay. So the thing is, is from that point, that's when everybody was wanting to say, what do I do with my account? How do I change my account? This is no good. The markets just went down 17%. Now, most people, if you're in a 401k, you have a, a, a mix of mutual funds. You're probably not 100% in the S and P 500, but your account probably still went down. So when you're panicking, it's hard to make sense of how your account, how your mix is even being impacted, but still it sets in. If you got out, you missed out on a.
5:51 Speaker 03 21% gain from 4982 at the low up to 6045 is where we're at today.
5:59 Speaker 00 Right. Yep. So we're at 6045. I just mentioned the peak was in February at 6,144. This is, this is, I'm just trying to give perspective. I'm trying to.
6:09 Speaker 03 You're telling me it's, it was a good pickle to get into or to be in.
6:13 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you definitely want to. So, uh, so yeah, there you go. That's the S and P 500. One of the things that came out today and illustrated another investment situation that you kind of want to look at. So. Tesla, little car company here, here in, in the United States of America. They announced, they've been talking about it for a long time, but they announced for sure that the robo taxi service is going to be offered in Austin, Texas. We've talked about this before. I've actually gone on a taxi ride with Justin. We thought we were going to die. No, I'm just kidding. But we did the Waymo in Phoenix when we were there at a conference.
6:57 Speaker 00 And it was pretty wild to have a car pull up with no driver, drive us over to a restaurant where we hung out and then had a Waymo pick us back up. It's just, it's so weird. It has, it has, it has your, it has your, that was a dad joke. Has your name up on the top of the thing. And so you know, it's your car because sometimes there's two or three at a hotel that are picking people up. Pretty wild. They're starting that in Austin, Texas. So when you think about it, when they're like, okay, it's for sure happening, you would think what would, what you, I mean, you might think common sense says, what is Tesla stock going to do? It's going to go up.
7:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, man.
7:32 Speaker 00 It's going to skyrocket.
7:33 Speaker 03 Great news.
7:34 Speaker 00 Instead Tesla got not hammered, but, but had a little bit of a pullback today. So, and sometimes what that illustrates is sometimes people try to make sense of headlines. They go to websites or they're listening to the headlines and you're thinking, oh, this is what this is going to do. The stock, they're going to have this new robo advisor, like robo taxi going around and picking people up. And, and it actually, the, the stock went down because it's probably already priced into and baked into that. And once they fully say, okay, it's coming out, people are going to take some of their winnings or some of their gains and go, I'm going to jump out because for all we know, um, maybe right off the bat, somebody does get self-driven into a ditch. And that's probably not going to be a good look for Tesla.
8:15 Speaker 03 And it's a matter of time. I'm sure maybe it's already happened, but devil's advocate, how do you not just hack into these things and send them off a cliff? Man, I hate to go there, but.
8:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't know.
8:25 Speaker 03 Worried about you in that Waymo. Yeah.
8:27 Speaker 00 It is one of the safest cars out there, at least the Tesla's. I don't know about the Jaguar that Waymo's using. But, uh, but it, it is mind boggling because it literally, you do feel like I am literally living in the future. Like we used to talk about driving cars, self-driving cars or flying, you know, cars and these different things and, and literally it's becoming a reality. And, uh, but I'll tell you what, in a Waymo, when you're at, when you pull up to a road and you're turning left and you have to cross three lanes to get over onto the other three lane portion, that's where you're like, I don't like this. Now, if it's on a back road and this and that, it's pretty fun and pretty cool, but there was a few times where it starts creeping out.
9:12 Speaker 00 And you're like, is it gonna go? Is it gonna go? And there's a car coming and.
9:15 Speaker 03 What's the price like compared to, is more or less?
9:18 Speaker 00 I think it's about the same.
9:19 Speaker 03 Yep.
9:20 Speaker 00 I mean, they have a lot of risk. They have a lot of different things that they're working out. So it's not like it's way cheaper, but obviously if they perfect some of these things, they should be able to be much cheaper because they're not even having to pay um, a human being at all. The thing I'll tell you is unfortunately, the good, bad and ugly of the old Uber is it's paying people, but it's not like it's paying them tons of money.
9:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:42 Speaker 00 I mean, it's still pretty darn cheap to have other people be driving people around. Um, so anyways, yeah, you know, if you ever get in an area, uh, and if you're bored, I always, every, if tell me about Waymo, I'm gonna talk about it. Go look up the Waymo showdown in San Francisco when there's like six Waymos on a tight San Francisco street. And all the Waymos are self-driving and they're all don't know what to do.
10:04 Speaker 03 I wonder if they're gonna get taxed. You know what I mean? If you have, uh, Uber, are they contractors?
10:11 Speaker 00 Yes.
10:11 Speaker 03 So either way, you have all these robots starting to take jobs over. The government's gonna step in and probably have to start taxing them because if you have employees that aren't getting an income tax.
10:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, but maybe the government will just become more efficient and learn how to work with less revenue.
10:25 Speaker 03 Doosh. Maybe.
10:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think I think it's all these things are already being discussed because obviously right now California is a great prime example of we get so much of our revenue from the gas tax. Well, we've encouraged everyone to drive electric vehicles and lo and behold, we're getting way less gas tax now. So they're looking for different ways to charge by the mileage. That would be one way that you would do that possibly if, you know, the company owns the car. There's not even a driver, but the company is going to start getting taxed maybe per mile because they're not getting a gas tax. Except I think, I don't even know is the Jaguar electric car. I'd have to look that up. I think the Waymo, Waymo is a, is a gas car.
11:07 Speaker 03 Where do they, it's really got my wheels spinning. So, so they all just go home at night? They, you know, they're done with their routes. They go back to the garage and do they plug themselves in?
11:16 Speaker 00 They might meet up at the bar and have a drink before they go home.
11:19 Speaker 03 A little, a little radiator fluid shot, anyone?
11:23 Speaker 01 The, the Jaguar I pace electric vehicle.
11:26 Speaker 00 It is electric. Yeah. Yeah. And it drives itself back to where it charges. You know, it goes back in. So there are employees because somebody's got to plug them all in or they may actually have like a charging pad that they pull up on. Crazy technology, dude.
11:38 Speaker 03 You don't tip. I mean, unless you're in with like the robots and GPT and stuff like you don't have to leave a tip. It says it's like 40 to 80 cents a mile.
11:46 Speaker 00 Now, I don't want, I don't want to be conspiracy theorists here.
11:52 Speaker 00 There you go. It is technology. Like I said, we are living in the future. Here's the problem. You don't give tips, dude. Eventually when the robots take over.
12:01 Speaker 03 I always give tips. I always thank chat GPT. You've seen my, you've, hey, thanks, chat. You know, we want to, we want to stay, we want to stay on good terms, dude.
12:09 Speaker 00 You have a way weird relationship with your chat GPT.
12:12 Speaker 01 I'm the same way. I always say, thank you and you have a good day.
12:15 Speaker 00 There's a meme, there's a meme floating around where it's a bunch of robots killing people and there's like one person, they're like, don't kill him. He always said, please and thank you. So you never know.
12:25 Speaker 03 He calls me SP and the other day I said, hey, hey, I need a favor or I need something, you know, and it said, no problem, SP. What is it? Number crunching, something or researching dirt bikes? You know, it's like, wow.
12:35 Speaker 00 It knows you. It knows you. And by the way, you should buy your wife flowers is what it told. Did it tell you that?
12:40 Speaker 03 No.
12:41 Speaker 00 Oh.
12:42 Speaker 03 I will.
12:42 Speaker 00 Okay.
12:43 Speaker 03 Hundred percent.
12:43 Speaker 00 All right. Well, we're going to take a break. When we do come back, we are going to go over a wonderful listener question that's going to talk a little bit about pension plans and cost of living adjustments. COLA they're called. Stick around. We will be right back.
12:56 Speaker 01 Don't forget, Money Wise is more than a radio show. We're an independently owned, local wealth management firm with sixty plus years of collective experience. Our financial advisors are here to help you, Kern County. Together, let's be smart, be safe, be money wise.
13:20 Speaker 00 Ah, I know why this is playing. Rest in peace.
13:25 Speaker 03 Hmm, saw that.
13:26 Speaker 00 What is it? Rick, Rick Wilson?
13:28 Speaker 01 Brian.
13:29 Speaker 00 Brian, see, that's, you guys know how I am with, uh,
13:33 Speaker 01 Names?
13:34 Speaker 00 Names and, and bands and so, uh, that was, I love music, but never been the detail guy.
13:41 Speaker 01 I mean, that, you're an offensive lineman. I get it.
13:43 Speaker 00 Yeah. I, you're saying, cause I've been hitting head too many times?
13:46 Speaker 01 Probably.
13:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was my job.
13:49 Speaker 01 Were you O-line?
13:50 Speaker 00 O-line, baby. I played both ways in high school and.
13:53 Speaker 03 I'll bet you did.
13:57 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
13:58 Speaker 03 Yep.
13:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:59 Speaker 03 Cause offense and defense.
14:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:01 Speaker 01 That, what, were you a defensive tackle?
14:02 Speaker 00 Did you play, Perry?
14:04 Speaker 03 Left out.
14:06 Speaker 01 Were you a kicker? Like, how the way?
14:08 Speaker 03 No, I was just all about working and being a knucklehead. So, yep.
14:15 Speaker 01 And I did a, Seth has been helping me with my diet. I'm on, uh, day twelve, but I, last night was my cheat night. I had a, an In-N-Out burger with no pickles.
14:25 Speaker 03 Dude, all good, man. One, one or two cheat meals a week. Just don't let it blow the top off.
14:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was, it was incredible. It was probably the best burger I've had in a while.
14:33 Speaker 00 No pickle.
14:34 Speaker 03 No pickle.
14:35 Speaker 00 No pickle.
14:35 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. And you said no.
14:36 Speaker 01 Or onions.
14:36 Speaker 03 Yep, yep.
14:38 Speaker 00 Okay, anyways, we had a great, uh, question come in. We had, um, listener ask, hey, guys, longtime listener was wondering if you can explain the difference between SS COLA, so social security, cost of living, COLA adjustments, and pension COLA benefits.
14:57 Speaker 00 So there's a little, I don't know exactly when we're saying benefits, or if they're talking about the COLA adjustment inside of pensions. So because there was a little bit of ambiguity, I wanted to cover both of these kind of in depth, so everybody knows that we're talking on the same language and what are they? What are they not? And so we're going to jump into that. So Social Security, obviously you guys know, is a government agency that's been around for a long time. It has kind of three different arms. It has Social Security Retirement, Social Security Disability, and Social Security Unemployment. And so that's three different parts of Social Security. We all pay into it through our FICA taxes. When you have some of those taxes coming out, you only pay FICA taxes up to a certain portion of your income level.
15:41 Speaker 00 It kind of maxes out, and that's why there's a max Social Security Retirement that you get in the future. And it has on it Social Security COLA, Cost of Living Adjustments. And so what that is, it's a way that it makes adjustments as things get more expensive. We all know that to be inflation. It kind of goes up over time. I've had many clients kind of joke about how little the Cost of Living Adjustment can be at times, which I completely understand, and it can be frustrating. But it is not meant to be a pay raise. It's meant to be just a Cost of Living Adjustment to help kind of ease some of the burden of things getting more expensive.
16:24 Speaker 00 And so I tell people that if you look back, and even though they were small, if you would be making today what you were getting from Social Security 10 years ago, all those little raises add up.
16:35 Speaker 03 Absolutely. It was 2.5% in 2025 was COLA.
16:38 Speaker 00 So right now, we are seeing higher than normal Cost of Living Adjustments because we've had higher inflation over the last eight or nine years prior to some of this inflation we saw in 2022 and 2023 and beyond. You know, some of them were zero. So to help you understand that, Social Security uses what's called the Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. What a mouthful. So when you have a big old long mouthful like that, what do they do? They call it the CPIW. And so that, that's a barometer or a gauge that they use to say, this is how much of a raise we're gonna give.
17:18 Speaker 03 Isn't it something like going to the major cities and, you know, a gallon of, a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread and they kind of average everything out?
17:26 Speaker 00 Yep, they average everything out. So, so I mean, again, it's not a big pay raise. You're not gonna like, hey, we got this big, huge pay raise. But it does help keep up pace as some of those goods and services get more expensive over time, like eggs and milk and different things. Uh, so they, they, they usually calculate that every year in October. It applies to benefits starting then in January, the following year. And inflation, if inflation is low or negative, which was about a 10-year, eight-year period prior to 2022, when we saw super high inflation, COLA can be very, very small or even zero. And so sometimes that can be a bummer because even if inflation is low, but if lo and behold Medicare
18:12 Speaker 00 goes up a little bit in cost, you technically went negative, right? Cause you got no raise. And Medicare could go up or down based on some different things, but you know, so sometimes people say, well, yeah, I got a, I got a COLA adjustment, but my Medicare went up just the same amount. Well, the good news is it's technically not more money out of your pocket. And I wish, you know, clients could all get tons of cost of living adjustments and move forward. But so that's the social security COLA adjustment. It applies to retired social security workers receiving social security benefits. It applies to disabled individuals receiving SSDI, which is the other arm of social security.
18:52 Speaker 00 And then there's survivor and others receiving benefits from social security, the SSA, uh, that also, so all these wages that, that people are getting for these different services, it all is tied to the CPIW. So there you go. You're in the know now.
19:08 Speaker 03 Right on.
19:09 Speaker 00 Okay.
19:09 Speaker 03 Just a, a quick fun fact, when social security was established back in 1935, it was designed for people with a life expectancy of 60 years old.
19:18 Speaker 00 There you go.
19:19 Speaker 03 That's why it just, you know, people keep living longer and it's, people say, oh, it's, it's gonna run out by 2035. All that means, if, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the, the surplus, they won't be able to maintain uh, the payments they're making per the schedule and people, if they, unless they make changes, are just gonna receive a smaller benefit, right? It doesn't mean all the money's gone.
19:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, so if you break it down and simplify it, so think about everybody getting social security retirement right now, say you're getting a thousand dollars. Two hundred dollars of your thousand is coming from a slush fund, a big savings account. And that is what will run out. So eight hundred's coming from workers, me, you, and everybody else out there working, paying into FICA, is going towards people that are retired. Two, 20% of it roughly, 20 to 24% of it is coming from the slush fund. That is what is headed towards running out based on data. It might even actually speed up a little bit now that we do have higher inflation. Why? Because now they're paying out more money, right?
20:23 Speaker 03 Yep.
20:23 Speaker 00 So that could actually speed that up. It is a fixable problem, but it takes Congress and everybody to agree on this is how we're gonna fix it. We're gonna change the ages a little bit. We're gonna increase taxes or FICA taxes a little bit. Split it between workers and employers or whatever you end up doing, they could fix it in a few different ways. The reason I say that is because this, they already had to do this in the eighties, I believe it was under Reagan. Um, and that's why it used to be retirement age was 65 and now it's 66 to 67, depending on your birth year. So they already kicked the can a little bit down the road. They could do that again. And as mad as I am about that, I wish they would just fix it and, and, and so then people can plan.
21:03 Speaker 03 So it, it's kinda easy to sit back and, and say, man, why don't they just balance that budget, you know? And I'll never forget when I was in college, me and a, a buddy, Brian and I, we were in, in a macroeconomics class together down south. And our job was to balance the US budget and they gave us all the numbers and dude, it is hard. Cause you're sitting there, okay, what do I, do I pull from education? Do I take away from military? Like, cause it just, it's impossible to balance.
21:28 Speaker 00 And nobody agrees on it.
21:29 Speaker 03 Nope.
21:29 Speaker 00 And I don't even know, you know, I'm not like the, the major government nerd out on that kinda stuff, but. How many, how many like congress people are there and how many in the senate and the how and imagine trying to get them all to agree on this.
21:43 Speaker 03 It puts you in a pickle. I mean, there's no doubt.
21:45 Speaker 00 It really does. It really does. This guy. Okay. So, uh, let's just jump now into, cause the other one said, what about pension cola benefits? So I'm not sure exactly what's being said there, other than maybe how does that differ from pension colas? And, and, and so now you jump into the world of pensions being offered through governments or through private companies or whatever it is, they may offer a pension where now you're getting an income stream for years of service. Each of these different programs has a whole outlined, you know, set of rules and different things that's put in place. It's the plans, rules.
22:23 Speaker 03 Weren't there a lot of pensions back in, back in the day, Chris?
22:26 Speaker 00 There used to be a lot of pensions and that's what's crazy is the changing tide of, of different things is, is, I mean, the historical trends is even back in 1998, almost 60%, 59% of the Fortune 500 companies, which are private companies that are traded on the stock exchange, they offered a defined benefit pension plan. New hires and, and all that stuff got to jump in there and hey, if I work here for 30 years, they're going to give me an income stream the rest of my life. Well, by 2017, the number of companies offering a pension dropped by 16%.
23:00 Speaker 03 Thinking of our local community, I know some of the oil companies, Chevron for sure, PG&E, right? But who else? Like what other companies from the, the clients we have walking in here are offering a pension these days?
23:11 Speaker 00 Not a lot.
23:11 Speaker 03 Not a lot, right?
23:12 Speaker 00 Not a lot. And, and even like, you know, even, um, you know, even government pensions are changing, you know? So like they've had to really kind of dial back what, what are offered, when you can get your pension, how much you're offered. Um, but, but governmental agencies have, have pensions. Um, and then even some private companies still and, and PG&E is technically a publicly traded company, but it still has such a, a relationship with the governmental agencies. Uh, you know, it's almost like it's a government pension kind of.
23:43 Speaker 03 So in a nutshell, Chris, for Maybe a couple of listeners that are cruising around out there, they're picking things up. What is a pension exactly? What does it do when you go to retire?
23:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's an income stream just like social security. So I've talked about it before that when I first started studying to go into this industry, it was like retirement's a three-legged stool. You have social security, you have a pension, and you have your savings. And those three things all added together usually would compromise, you know, make up a really solid retirement plan. I got a little bit of savings, I got a pension from the company, and I got social security. Well, unfortunately, little by little, as those pensions all became less and less and less, the majority of people's retirement, um, how they take care of it now, is only social security and savings. And it kind of started to trend towards 401Ks.
24:31 Speaker 03 And it's putting, it's putting the, it's not the pressure, it's putting the responsibility on the saver. And as Americans were historically not saving very, very well, and that's why when people's pensions go away, you know, they're just barely putting, you know, a little 3% to 4% in, getting their match. But sometimes that's just not enough money when you go to retire.
24:50 Speaker 00 And so back to the question, just to let you know, pensions, a lot of times will have some sort of possibly cost of living adjustment tied to it. They're going to have that outlined in the defined benefit plan, how we're going to adjust for inflation. It may be tied to that same index that social security uses. It may be a different index that they use for inflation, and that's how they adjust on that pension. Each pension plan has its own set of rules that are outlined in the defined benefit plans documents. So that kind of helps you understand that a little bit. But some of them have no cost of living adjustment. So sometimes it's like you retire, you're getting 2,000 a month. That's what you get the rest of your life. It's never going to go up.
25:34 Speaker 00 That's less risk on the company or the agency that's offering that, because they don't have to keep paying more and more out. So hopefully that helps understand a little bit about some of those plans. Um, we thought about maybe when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the big global pensions that maybe you guys have heard about. We'll also talk about maybe a couple of other kinds of plans, and we do want to Kind of jump into some, some really neat.
25:57 Speaker 03 Interesting facts that came up between me and you yesterday and we're going to share them on air and, and we got a wonderful question that came in that, that we'll do a little homework. It's news to me, but we'll, we'll get you some answers.
26:06 Speaker 00 There you go. Stick around. We'll be right back.
26:07 Speaker 01 Need to get your financial fix on the go? If so, subscribe to the Money Wise Podcast and catch up on all past shows whenever.
26:16 Speaker 00 I thought you were going to try to hit that note, Seth.
26:19 Speaker 00 There you go.
26:23 Speaker 00 You know why I don't sing is these microphones are really good and it, it doesn't mask anything. We ain't got no filters. We ain't got no. What's it called?
26:34 Speaker 03 Autotune.
26:34 Speaker 00 Auto, we ain't got no autotune, Seth. I don't know if you can.
26:37 Speaker 03 Everyone always says when I tell them, yeah, I'm on the radio every now and again. Oh, you have a face for radio. And it, it took me a while to realize what that meant. But anyway.
26:45 Speaker 00 Hey, we were talking about pensions going out. We were going to talk about just what's crazy is some pensions are humongo. Uh, Netherlands has one coming in at third with about 500 billion. Uh, trades on, um, some different markets, uh, at about 500 billion. So that's like a government one. Cal PERS. Many, many wonderful clients here, many listeners, teachers. Uh, well, actually Cal PERS is not teachers. Cal PERS is just.
27:12 Speaker 03 Support staff though, right?
27:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, classified. Certified versus classified. Most people that.
27:18 Speaker 03 Fire.
27:18 Speaker 00 Yep. Most people that have PERS still participate, not everybody, but still participate in social security and you get both. And Cal STIRS doesn't pay into social security. So, and there's been some changes there, but anyways, long story short, that one's got a little bit over 450 billion. But topping the charts, a little bit bigger. At 1.5 trillion. I did say trillion. So almost, I mean, it is, it's three times as big as Cal PERS.
27:46 Speaker 03 Is that 12 zeros KP?
27:48 Speaker 00 Uh, you're lost. I have no clue. Japan has their, what's called their GPIF, 1.5 trillion in Japan's global pension. And what's crazy is that, is Japan like geographically, like it's much smaller than California, right?
28:04 Speaker 03 I think so.
28:06 Speaker 00 Man, they got a lot of money in that thing.
28:08 Speaker 03 They do have a lot of money in that.
28:09 Speaker 00 That is.
28:09 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm. And how much debt do we have? If you guys are ever bored, go to the US Debt Clock.
28:15 Speaker 00 Oh yeah.
28:15 Speaker 03 There's a website.
28:16 Speaker 00 If you ever want to get really depressed. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up.
28:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, sorry, man.
28:22 Speaker 00 If you're having a bad day and you want to make it worse. Jeez. So we did have a question or a comment came in. Yeah, it was really cool. The um, you got it there?
28:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, it says, what is the Lego type EV pickup part type truck that Bezos is doing? They seem to be a cheaper way to go.
28:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, and it is. It's, it's, I mean, they're going, you know, like Tesla came out and was trying to be kind of middle market. You had some companies like Lucid that if like, well, if people are going to drive an electric car, we're going to go for the high end luxury car. Even more expensive. You had companies like Lucid and stuff that came out. And then they're going the different route.
29:03 Speaker 03 Rivian.
29:04 Speaker 00 They're saying, we're going to partner with Rivian and some of the research there. They're kind of, they're, they're kind of trying to wage war with the Rivian and the Tesla Cybertruck. And this is called the Slate Truck. And Bezos isn't necessarily involved other than financial, you know, financial support. Maybe an early investor. So it's a startup that's going after like a very plain Jane, simple little two seater truck. Think kind of like old school, you know, the Azuzu or, or, you know, the, the many trucks that people used to fix up. It's kind of like that. Little two seater truck. It is not a lot to look at, but it's kind of cracks you up where it's like, you kind of see what they're going for.
29:44 Speaker 00 Plain Jane truck. You can drive around town. Probably doesn't have a huge charge where you're going to be driving.
29:50 Speaker 03 120 miles. They have battery options. One of them has a buck 20, one will get you 240 miles. And what's crazy is this brings it to a lot more homes because typically if you're going to have a custom car built, you know, it's expensive. You're having to buy a brand new vehicle, you know, super expensive, but.
30:05 Speaker 00 Well, I just think, I just think of the fact that like this, this does kind of meet a need. And if it's that cheap, I think a lot of people might jump in and try it out. You can obviously build it up. It's probably going to be one of those things where we're going to have this base model. And then there's going to be a million things that people are going to build that you can add on to it. And make it more customized and whatever you want it to be. They, it looks like they are even thinking about like a little, almost like a Ford Bronco sized little SUV eventually. And you can customize. And probably ramp them up, but, but trying to say, hey, you can get a really cheap little truck. And I was joking with you that, man, something like that to drive back and forth to work. And if it's not crazy expensive and
30:41 Speaker 03 You can get the, you can get the wrap called the Mud Master, which wraps only rear in red. You got the Snow Dog as a silver side body. So yeah, it's actually, I think this is could potentially be a big hit.
30:53 Speaker 00 Hundreds of accessories, you know, there's even a $5,000, oh, it's a kit. The SUV that I mentioned, it's a $5,000 kit that transforms. That's probably why it's a little bit weird looking because you can actually buy a little top for it. Uh, it's DIY friendly. You can add things to it, you know, and, and, uh, um, the thing I was going to say is it does look like price is going to be about 25 grand. Right now there are still some federal EV tax incentives. So it looks like if you qualify, you might be able to get it for about $20,000. So yeah, I, I remember hearing about this, but, but thanks for bringing that up.
31:30 Speaker 03 Thanks for the reminder.
31:32 Speaker 00 Maybe we'll see a bunch of slate trucks driving around.
31:35 Speaker 03 Yep.
31:36 Speaker 00 If it's small enough, we might see
31:37 Speaker 03 I remember the first Cybertruck, you know, you turn your head and you're like, whoa, man, what was that? It's so cool. Not so much anymore, but are you a Cybertruck guy?
31:46 Speaker 00 Um, no, not a huge fan. Not a huge, I mean, I'm just, it's kind of one of those things where it's like, eh, I'm not like a hater of it, but I don't fully get it. And I, I think if I was going to spend that much, even close to that much on the car, it would not be
31:59 Speaker 03 We went down south for a, a, uh, Angels game. My youngest son, Cooper, got to go out on the field at their game they had Sunday and, and do a little parade. And when we were on our way back, uh, so my, my other son did something like turned around and there was this, uh, gold, um, Cybertruck. And then, man, that thing was following us. So we finally saw that gold Cybertruck get off the highway and we were safe after that. What?
32:25 Speaker 01 We went to Morro Bay probably a year ago and they had one out downtown and they let people test drive them. So I got to drive it around for a couple of miles.
32:34 Speaker 03 What'd you think?
32:34 Speaker 01 It was, I mean, it was cool to test drive. I don't think I would pay my hard working money.
32:40 Speaker 00 Did you, did you get to stomp the pedal?
32:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I mean, the steering wheel was the more, it was kind of, it reminded me of Gallagher.
32:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
32:48 Speaker 01 Cause it was, it wasn't circular. It was just like
32:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's like a
32:52 Speaker 01 Video game.
32:52 Speaker 00 Rectangle.
32:53 Speaker 03 What about those 80 horsepower, uh, e-bikes, e-dirt bikes? What are they called?
32:57 Speaker 00 I don't know. They're sarons.
32:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:59 Speaker 00 There's sarons. There's a couple of different companies. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see where all this stuff goes. Cause we're still kind of in the infancy stage and it has become somewhat adopted. Uh, you know, but it's, it's interesting to see where these are going to go. So, well, there you go. Thanks for the, uh, the comment. You can, uh, join the conversation too. 661-396-1000. We love questions and comments from our listeners. Uh, it makes the show better. We, we kinda geeked out on some, uh, like some mind blowing stats this week. And we thought it'd be fun to kinda go over a couple of mind blowing stats that, that, that just make your head spin a little bit. Even like the 1.5 trillion dollars in the Japanese pension fund is, is pretty mind blowing.
33:41 Speaker 00 There's a couple more that we're going to cover and then we're also going to just talk about interesting business stories. I think sometimes
33:46 Speaker 03 Really cool stories, man.
33:46 Speaker 00 You just accept that this company's been around forever and it's crazy just to hear a little blurb about how it started or why it's named a certain thing. So, uh, so yeah, one of the things that started the conversation about mind blowing stats from old Wall Street was Steve Ballmer, I think is the name is.
34:03 Speaker 03 Yep.
34:03 Speaker 00 He's a phenomenal dancer, motivational speaker.
34:06 Speaker 03 Our listeners need to go, go to, actually, uh, can we make this happen, Stephen, before the show's out?
34:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:14 Speaker 03 Yeah. Pull up the Stephen Ballmer clip.
34:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. When he's motivating this, this, and who are we talking about?
34:19 Speaker 03 Sweating everything. I mean, he's just
34:21 Speaker 00 Profusely.
34:21 Speaker 03 He's co-owner of the Clippers.
34:23 Speaker 00 Yep.
34:24 Speaker 03 Yep.
34:24 Speaker 00 And where does he come from? He was one of the founders of goo, uh,
34:28 Speaker 03 Microsoft.
34:29 Speaker 00 Microsoft. And so him and, um, Bill Gates, you know, back in the day when they were trying to get engineers fired up to basically write the code and begin what is all modern computing and different things. Uh, anyways, long story short, uh, one of the things I was going to say is if you told somebody like, hey, I own 4% of a company. Would it be, would you, would we be like, oh, you own 4% of a company. Wow. You know, what's, what's the big deal?
34:56 Speaker 03 Four percent?
34:57 Speaker 00 Well, why do I say that? Because Steve Ballmer owns 4% of the largest company, one of them. Microsoft, he owns 4% of Microsoft. And one of the things that blew our minds is as a 4% owner, you get a dividend check every year for your ownership of these stocks. It's part of investing. There's the difference between growth companies that typically don't pay dividends and value oriented companies that pay dividends. Well, Mr. Ballmer, since you own 4% of Microsoft, your dividend check every year recently is just north of a billion dollars.
35:37 Speaker 03 One billion dollar check.
35:39 Speaker 00 One, and remember, remember I was going to tell you, I almost apprehensively said it because I'm, I'm pretty sure it was a billion, but I thought maybe it's a hundred million or something. Cause a billion is just ridiculous.
35:49 Speaker 03 We looked it up and we both started giggling. Cause if, think about that, that's a thousand million. You have a thousand million dollar checks. And you, I mean, so he's.
35:59 Speaker 00 Imagine if every year you had a thousand million dollar checks coming to your, to your mailbox.
36:06 Speaker 03 I bet he pays a lot of taxes.
36:07 Speaker 00 I bet he does.
36:08 Speaker 03 He's actually worth more than Bill Gates, it appears. That's interesting. He's worth 135 billion dollars. That's crazy.
36:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:17 Speaker 03 He's worth 135 million. No. Uh, how does it go? 135,000 million.
36:24 Speaker 00 What's interesting is I don't want to get conspiracy theory on us here, but I wonder if Bill Gates, all the money that he has put into the Bill Gates Foundation, he still has a lot of say so over that foundation, but it's not technically his wealth on paper anymore. Right?
36:42 Speaker 03 Yep.
36:43 Speaker 00 So, I mean.
36:44 Speaker 03 Do you know he, Bill Gates is the largest private landowner in the United States of America? That's very interesting. We're not gonna go down that path. We're not gonna go there.
36:53 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:53 Speaker 03 He does not want to bioengineer, uh, food for us to eat. Does not go there.
36:58 Speaker 00 This guy.
36:59 Speaker 03 Don't do it.
36:59 Speaker 00 Uh, hopefully, I mean, think about if you made bioengineered pickles.
37:04 Speaker 03 That would be something else. That, could you, could you imagine?
37:08 Speaker 00 That would be.
37:08 Speaker 03 Wonder what they taste like?
37:09 Speaker 00 Okay, so you, you brought up then the rest of the stories and some of these different things that I didn't even know about. Like, one of the ones being like a foreign company.
37:17 Speaker 03 So Ikea, and I actually knew this, did a little traveling overseas when I was in college and we visited the, the home office, the home base in Ikea. If the IK is the gentleman's first and last letter of his first and last name, the IK, and the E and the A have to do with the village and, uh, the town that he grew up in.
37:38 Speaker 00 Township.
37:39 Speaker 03 The township. Now.
37:40 Speaker 00 So, think about that though, like, I would, I would just assume like, oh, it's a foreign company. Ikea must mean something of a foreign, it's, it's a foreign word that I just don't know. And lo and behold, it's just a couple of different letters from his name and his township.
37:54 Speaker 03 Pepsi. Named after the word dyspepsia, which is indigestion. It was originally marketed as a digestive aid.
38:02 Speaker 00 Really? Which I wonder if there's any medical truth.
38:06 Speaker 03 And I think we know Coke, a cola.
38:09 Speaker 00 Really?
38:09 Speaker 03 We won't go into detail on that on the air, but we know the ingredient they were putting in there originally gave you a lot of extra energy.
38:18 Speaker 03 So you grab a, a Pepsi, a, a bag of fries and maybe some fried pickles and you just, you just got all kinds of energy. Starbucks, uh, let's see, Amazon, Jeff Bezos chose it because Amazon is the largest river matching his ambition to be the world's largest store. So then there's something else that's even more interesting than some of those cool names. Five cool company, uh, origin stories. Do you know how Nike got started?
38:47 Speaker 00 Uh, track.
38:50 Speaker 03 Tell me more.
38:51 Speaker 00 I don't know.
38:52 Speaker 03 So it was started by a track coach, Bill Bowerman and his runner, Phil Knight. So he's, he's track coach. He's got this runner and they're selling shoes out of his car trunk. And did you know Bowerman poured rubber into a waffle iron to make better soles? And that's Nike's, that was how Nike's first sneaker tread was born.
39:10 Speaker 00 There you go.
39:11 Speaker 03 That's interesting.
39:11 Speaker 00 There you go, Nike.
39:13 Speaker 03 I can just, I can just picture our listeners right now, just in awe and just like, this is good radio, man.
39:18 Speaker 00 Yeah. And then what's another one? Uh, Google.
39:23 Speaker 03 Google has to do with a name. And so they misspelled the, the number Google, which is a hun- one followed by a hundred zeros. That's spelled G O O G O L. They spelled it Google as a nod to their mission to organize infinite information.
39:39 Speaker 00 There you go.
39:40 Speaker 03 Nothing's as cool though, Chris, as air. Chris didn't believe me.
39:43 Speaker 00 I didn't believe you. I thought that has to be fake.
39:46 Speaker 03 Nope.
39:47 Speaker 00 I, I wonder if any listeners know, why don't we, let's do this. Let's take a break. Let's take a break and see if any listeners, and don't Google it.
39:54 Speaker 03 Without searching.
39:54 Speaker 00 Don't Google it. Don't, don't go to, does anybody know truly where the, where the name Airbnb came from? Shoot a message to Steven, six, six, one, three, nine, six, one thousand. We want to see if you know. If not, we're going to tell you when we come back.
40:08 Speaker 04 Okay. So what is the $64,000 question? Holy cow, I'm gonna have to tough it up now. Here we go. What's the $64,000 question for the field? What is the most asked question that I've received this week? What the hell are we supposed to do about .NET, Steve?
40:30 Speaker 04 It's a very good question and it's got a very, very clear answer. Developers, the key to .NET, the key to industry transformation, the key to success is developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.
41:02 Speaker 01 If you're a business owner who provides a retirement plan for your employees, contact Money Wise Wealth Management to see if you're maximizing your options and minimizing your liabilities. Money Wise 401k plans are customized to you and your company's needs. 661-847-1000.
41:25 Speaker 00 That's right. You were listening, going out to the break to Steve Ballmer, who we just mentioned gets $1,000, $1 million checks per year, just in dividends from owning 4% of Microsoft. His motivational speech, trying to grab the hearts and minds of the engineers in the crowd to tell them to be developers.
41:51 Speaker 03 So if I get overworked, or it gets a little stuffy in the office, I might get a little pit action going on, but he had it in the bend of his arm. It was everywhere.
41:59 Speaker 00 There was no like, should I take my blue shirt off? No.
42:02 Speaker 03 He was all in.
42:03 Speaker 00 He was focused. Developers, developers, developers. Love it. And we did ask if anybody knows where the name Airbnb came from, and I did not believe Mr. Seth Perry. He's a little bit of a joker. So I thought, no way. This sounds silly. It sounds made up. So share the story.
42:21 Speaker 03 So basically you had two broke roommates in San Francisco. Okay. And they literally couldn't afford their own rent. And so they just...
42:30 Speaker 00 Nobody's surprised about that. There's probably a bunch of those developers.
42:33 Speaker 03 A lot of developers, right? San Francisco's expensive. Oh my gosh. Anyway, they couldn't afford rent. So they literally rented out air mattresses in their apartment and offered breakfast to people. Mattresses.
42:47 Speaker 00 Filled with air.
42:48 Speaker 03 Filled with air. Hence the name Air Bed and Breakfast. Airbnb. Cause there's bed and breakfast out there, but they called it the Air Bed and Breakfast. And now they're probably doing, I think they can afford their rent.
43:02 Speaker 00 Possibly.
43:03 Speaker 03 Maybe.
43:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. That, I literally thought it was made up.
43:07 Speaker 03 I wonder how they would pick like their name.
43:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:13 Speaker 03 You know, that's how they did it.
43:15 Speaker 00 Well, there you go. So, so there is there was there, I think, I think we covered almost every single story.
43:21 Speaker 03 Crushed it. Yeah.
43:23 Speaker 00 There you go.
43:24 Speaker 03 Keep sending great questions, guys. That's what makes our show the best is when you're involved and you're plugged in. If you have any cool brand name stories and how companies got going, feel free to shoot those into so we can chat them up on the air.
43:37 Speaker 00 Yeah. And one of the things we were going to go over a little bit, we talked about pensions and social security, which is obviously a couple of big arms for people's plans for retirement. And if you have a pension, it's part of your income stream. Social Security, you have access to it at a certain age. 62 is the youngest you can take it. But we were going to talk a little bit about some of these, you know, most people know about other retirement plans through your employers or ERISA plans like 457s or 403Bs and 401Ks. That money's coming out of your paycheck and going into some sort of savings account. And like Seth mentioned earlier, it is more on your shoulders and some people hate 401Ks or think that it's you know, dumb that we don't have pensions anymore. And I might agree with you, but at the end of the day,
44:22 Speaker 00 it is still a great vehicle to have money flowing out automatically, which automating things is how you usually end up getting success over a long period of time. Cause made to, you know, left to decisions and trying to find money at the end of the month to save or invest, it gets so hard. Just automate it. 401Ks, 403Bs are for the public, public sector, churches and hospitals.
44:46 Speaker 03 And, and all those numbers are is the section in the tax code. If you're wondering where does that number come from? But guys, I'm telling you, the next time you get a raise, so you get a 3%, 4% raise, save 1% of that raise and keep doing that, you could potentially be wealthy one day.
44:59 Speaker 00 And even if you don't have a 401K, which most all companies, especially in California, almost required, you do Cal Savers, but you can still set up with a game plan to start saving money, even if it's into an individual retirement account, your own account, and just automate it. Every month, put a certain amount away, start it as soon as possible, do it as long as possible, and hopefully keep making progress. If you have questions about any of those other accounts or you're getting close to retirement, that's what we're here for. Give us a call, 661-847-1000. Let's chat. Thank you always making us a better show. Join us tomorrow. Be smart, be safe, be money wise.
45:38 Speaker 05 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.
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