Okay, your son and daughter in law just came to you and they're asking
you advice on their finances. This is what they make, this is what
they spend, this is what they have in debt, this is their debt
service and all that. And it was done in the size numbers that most
people can wrap their arms around. And what people said was, why tell
them they got some problems, they need to cut spending and all that.
And then I flipped the page after going through a lot of that, it
showed them all we did was at a bunch of zeros. This is a
national dint. This is the federal government, and they're all like miles of
gate going. I didn't realize it was that bad. And Carrie, that's
the problem. People don't realize how bad it is. You were listening to
Carrie. Let'sa's financial survival network where you get valuable information you just can't find
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You are listening to the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz.
Well, the economy, what's it going to be? We in recession?
Our rates coming down, inflation? Is inflation going to stay up there
and get worse or is it going to improve? And what are your alternatives?
What do you do when your dollar just isn't going as far as you
wanted it to and how's that going to affect your retirement? Well, our
good friend Brad Williams, financial expert, is with us now. Brad,
it's great to have you back. So, first, economy, recession,
is it here? Is it coming? If it's coming, when is it
coming? You often point to a little blue glass globe that I have on
my desk and tell my clients that that's the closest thing to a crystal ball
I have. But our government and the Fed has gotten so good at this,
uh, this dance around everything that it's murky because of the policy prescriptions
they always put in. I think we're seeing indications. You know, people's
people may be getting raises in their paycheck, but they're not commensurate with what
their increases and expenses are. So you know, as we see fuel maybe
go down, we've seen it come down. What a lot of people don't
realize is is that's also it's not just the cost of the fuel. That's
an indicator that maybe people aren't using as much of it. And if they're
not using as much of it, then they're not getting out and about and
doing things and buying things and all those things required for a consumer driven economy
life we have all right, So demand is down, well, it's it's
hidden by inflation by the cost of everything going up, isn't it. Yeah,
it is. And we see we see gold going up. It's you
know, it's hitting new eighs and that is an indicat too, of people's
fear bitcoin. You know, we're starting to hear some things in bitcoin.
I'm getting people asking me more and more about bitcoin. And I don't recommend
investing in that. I'm not saying you shouldn't. That's just not something that
that I'm licensed to recommend. So you know, I just tell people you
do what you do, what your heart tells you. But you know,
I'm not sure you know how how bitcoin works. But a bitcoins and indication
that people are losing faith in the dollar, and you know, we are,
we are the world power because we are ostensibly the richest nation. We
have the military power, and so a lot of people will pay our interest
rates for our dead instruments, our bonds and treasuries because it's cheap insurance for
the for the defense umbrella we provide. Well, the question we got to
ask ourselves is you know what happens when our military gets too expensive. Our
interest rates this year are going to cause our service on the national debt to
exceed our defense budget. And that's a scary thought, certainly is. And
the only alternative is to monetize QE to infinity right exactly. And you know,
and then we have all these We're in an election years, so we
get all these ridiculous proposals, like you know, the president that was doing
a speech, I think it was yesterday, we was talking about he wanted
to give free community college to all and you're not gonna have to pay for
it. Well, yeah, you are, your kids, your grandkids.
We have lived in a society that has been so affluent for so long that
we've forgotten that somebody's going to have to pay the credit card bill at some
point in time. You can't just take cash advances and put things on the
credit card for infinity yeah, sometimes you got paid back. Well, that's
what we've and doing, right. And you know, and with bitcoin,
they have this thing every couple of years called the having where right, the
amount of the bitcoin that can be mined is cut in half from like nine
hundred and fifty coins a day now to like four hundred and seventy five.
What if the Federal Reserve did a halving and they said every six months,
the amount of dollars that we create, we're going to cut in half.
What do you think that would? Oh? Well, and you go back
to when we came out of that high inflation time. You know, whenever,
whenever the government does something to solve a problem, they oftentimes exacerbate the
problem. I was old enough to remember that the WIN program, I think
it was under fool quip inflation now now, yeah, and all the things
that you know, the government did, Like you know, they wanted to
freeze the cost to certain cuts of meats. Did what did the butchers do?
Well? They created new cuts of meats. They weren't regulated, you
know. I mean, so the one thing you got to say about our
economy and our people is that typically we figure ways around the government. I
mean, oftentimes people say, well, the government did good under this president.
Well, the question is, did they do good under that president because
we figured out ways around his policies, or did he take barriers down to
allow us to So government either puts barriers up to the economy or they take
barriers down. And what Rayan did was he took barriers down. Now,
it also started with Walker, you know, really really tightening up. Interest
rates went up, you know, and the money supply decreased. But what
happened was they stayed the course and we're able to come into the eighties with
a strong economy after the first couple of years. And that took discipline,
It took adults in the room. The problem we have in Washington now is
we got no adults in the room. Yes, how do we get some
back in the room, that's the question, that's right. Well, so
when you look at it, some of the indicators, you know, even
China is starting to worry about gold. You know, they're limiting, uh,
the mar or they've raised the margin requirements, they're limiting price swings.
They're doing the same on silver because they're afraid of precious metals and uh,
because that that's always been the store of wealth. Now I'm not telling everybody
to go out and buy a bunch of gold. I'm just saying you probably
ought to have a little in your portfolio as an offset. And I'm talking
about the hard metal, not the paper. You know, maybe some silver,
that type of stuff. It's a good hedge. But you don't look
at those as investments. You look at them as a store of wealth.
And and that's where a lot of people I think go wrong is they watch
the they buy gold, and they watched the price of it go up and
down. They get nervous. We didn't buy it for that reason. You
bought it to stick in your safe and forget about it. And that's the
reasonable way to look at it. But if our government doesn't start getting it
spending in line, then we're going to go the way of Britain. You
know, they exhausted themselves in World War Two and came out of World War
two being taken down from the throne of the world power. Yeah, well,
all empires eventually die, right, That's exactly right. And we've been
blessed for a long period to be a strong, a strong government in spite
of all our flaws. And you know, one of the beauties of our
government is that our founding fathers when they wrote that document, they made it
hard to make hard shifts in either direction. You had to go through legislative
process and all that. Well, now you know, the executive branch is
figuring out how they just say, Okay, we're just going to do an
executive order and get around that. Then we don't have to you know,
then we don't have to pass that law. And that's danger, yes it
is. And that's led to all sorts of imbalances and government power between the
courts, the executive and the legislature. And well we all know that.
So so what are you supposed to do here? Well, what I what
I tell people is and because I deal primarily with retirees, it's all about
income and you know, looking at at at bonds and things like that to
provide you that retirement income that's consistent because you're you're not gonna be able to
count on growth, you can't. I guess the way I put it is,
we want to look at how we can live off the eggs and not
the chicken. And as we're in these volatile markets, these people that are
that are counting on their portfolio to grow a certain amount so they can take
a certain amount of income. Are creating a cancer that's going to ultimately eat
their portfolio. So people have when they switch into that retirement mode, they
need to switch their thinking and their investment strategy. Now, you know,
somebody like my daughter, who is who's my oldest daughter, thirty two,
she should have a long term approach to investing. In fact, I tell
a lot of young people like that, it's you know, buy an S
and P five hundred five and don't even open the statements. Just keep funding
it and then you know, twenty years from now, start paying attention.
You know, do the right things, but don't watch the markets go up
and down and try to time it. You're in there for the long run.
But when you get to retirement, you can't play that game. And
so because you don't have the time. So when I counsel people about what
next is, let's look at things that provide income. You know, maybe
like I said about gold, having a little store goal for for you know,
things get really bad, but you know it's it's really hard to predict
what's coming because we're in unprecedented times. We've never had this much debt and
it's it's kind of scary because it creates a lot of instability in the world.
Look at what's going on with a lot of these countries that are looking
to create their own basket of currency. So far hasn't worked. But if
look, the IMF is warning, the warning of the United States, they're
warning Congress, they're warning the president, and how long can they go unheeded
for? And you're exactly right. I did a I did a presentation once
at a client event where I took the federal budget and I took a lot
of zeros off of it and put it in terms of, Okay, your
son and daughter in law just came to you and they're asking you advice on
their finances. This is what they make, this is what they spend,
this is what they have in debt, this is their debt service and all
that. And it was done in the size numbers that most people can wrap
their arms around. And what people said was, why tell them they got
some problems they need to cut spending and all that. And then I flipped
the page. After going through a lot of that, it showed them all
we did was at a bunch of zeros. This is a national this is
the federal government, and they're all like mouths of gate going. I didn't
realize it was that bad, and Garry, that's the problem. People don't
realize how bad it is. Yeah, yeah, yep, unbelievable. They
see those zeros and you know, you can pull up the deck clock.
I'm sure you have. You know that website that keeps clicking, But those
numbers, there's so many zeros there that people just they just they blank out.
They just blank out, you know. But if we just you know,
and we got a presidential election coming up, people need to quit voting
based on what somebody on some network is telling them, which most likely is
not even true anyway, or it's an exaggeration. And look at Okay,
what is this person really going to do? You know, if they're in
office now, what have they done? Are things better? You remember that?
When when was it? Ronald Ray said? Are you better off than
you were four years ago? Okay? He got what forty nine states?
And uh he lost one state in the district of Columbia. Totally changed the
electoral man because people felt it and they understood it. I think we're getting
close to that, but I'm not sure if we're very here, it looks
to me like we could be. But hey, you know, and Trump
was in office last time, he ran up the deficit by six trillion,
So you know, is he going to be a born again fiscal conservative and
really cut this the stuffing out of the budget. I mean kind of you
like the guy that they just got in Argentina and mule Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, he's he's really taking the knife to it. Yeah, and you
saw his speech. Cut cut cut, cut, yeah, grat you know
what to understand that that's that's right. And so what happens You're sitting there
at the table with your wife and you're going over your bills and you're paid,
and you know, and things are not moving in the direction you want
them to go. What do you do? You say, Okay, we
don't need the cable, all right, let's get rid of the cable.
You know, we don't need this, we don't need that. Okay,
you know, we need to confine eating out once or twice a month.
You start cutting things and being realistic based on the cash flow you got coming
in. You don't go now, we can just float some bonds. Oh
yeah, easy, easy to be easy, right, that's right. Yeah,
all right, So hey looking ahead, so gold we like, is
there anything else? I mean, do you trust any other currency, any
other foreign the stock market here? I think, you know, it's always
good to have some in an international as long as they're good companies. You
know, I'm a I believe in a balanced portfolio in that respect. I
think right now what people ought to look at is looking at good quality company
that pay dividends, because even in a down market, if they got a
consistent history of paying dividends, they're going to get paid, they're going to
get rent on their money. Okay, and so at least and in reality,
when you look at it long term, check out the dividend performers versus
just a straight growth, you'll get a surprise. Yeah all right, hey,
Rot, appreciate you coming on talking about these issues with us. Where
is the best place to find you these days? Well, the best place
is my website, which is www dot ask Bradwilliams dot com. If you
got a financial question, just ask Brad Williams. All right, Brad,
well, well, certainly keep that in mind when we get a question coming
up, and you guys out there should also you've got a question for Brad
myself. The email address is kl Atcarrie Lutz dot com. You'll find a
link to brad site in the show that to this interview on Financial Survival Network
dot com and will you there. Please sign up for your free newsletter,
Brad Pleasure. We'll talk to you again real soon. Always a pleasure.
Thank you, thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution
to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com.
Financial Survival Network now more than ever,