Speaker 1: What's Doge digging out?
Speaker 2: We're talking about fraud, waste abuse.
Speaker 3: CHET can't often for the latest. Fifty five krc D
Speaker 3: Talk Station eight oh five fifty five r c E
Speaker 3: Talk Station. Very Happy Monday to you. I always enjoy this.
Speaker 4: Time of the hour, eight o'clock on Mondays because we
Speaker 4: get to hear from all our financials Brian James and
Speaker 4: deal with money Monday, Brian James, Welcome back to the
Speaker 4: morning show, and Happy Monday to you, sir. Hope you
Speaker 4: had a wonderful weekend.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Brian Thomas, back at you, and hope you're
Speaker 2: doing well as well.
Speaker 4: I am doing great, other than the general frustrations of
Speaker 4: the political landscape and all the other topics got to
Speaker 4: deal with every day, most of which I have no
Speaker 4: control over. But before we get into the topics you have,
Speaker 4: I just wanted to know because I remember Nathan Backrack
Speaker 4: and I think, oh, I know, you know. They created
Speaker 4: what they called, I believe, the greased Palm Index, and
Speaker 4: they tracked the lobbying dollars the more the lobbying money
Speaker 4: was spent, and they put it into a particular fund.
Speaker 4: So the big contributors to political campaigns ones with the
Speaker 4: most lobbying dollars were putting funds to track them to
Speaker 4: see if they grew at a faster rate than say,
Speaker 4: other index funds, which I thought was kind of a
Speaker 4: brilliant thing. I don't know how I ended up working out,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to know along those same lines, is
Speaker 4: there a military industrial complex index like where you got
Speaker 4: all the defense contractors put in one single fund, because
Speaker 4: it seems to me those guys are probably doing pretty well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great observation, and yeah, I'm sure there is.
Speaker 2: That's not something I pay attention to directly, but I
Speaker 2: can guarantee you that there is somebody out there that
Speaker 2: has built a pile of investments around any idea that
Speaker 2: anyone might might assume is getting a lot of money
Speaker 2: thrown at it.
Speaker 5: So there are all kinds.
Speaker 2: Of investment products that focus on industries and things like that.
Speaker 5: And as you mentioned, yeah, I'm not sure whatever happened
Speaker 5: to it either.
Speaker 2: Maybe they don't pay attention as much anymore now that
Speaker 2: they're retired. Yeah, yes, I do recall the idea behind
Speaker 2: let's go follow who gets money thrown at them and
Speaker 2: in those different areas, And yeah, of course, anytime there
Speaker 2: is spending, there's going to be an equal and opposite
Speaker 2: reaction in the investment underlying value.
Speaker 4: No doubt about it. All right, let us move over
Speaker 4: to the topics you actually present it to me. Appreciate
Speaker 4: you indulging me on that. Though first quarter GDP growth
Speaker 4: looks like, according to CNBC, on track for negative growth.
Speaker 5: Well go figure.
Speaker 2: When you add a bunch of costs in things in
Speaker 2: terms of tariffs, and we start to get the talking
Speaker 2: heads and the projections coming out, we're starting to see
Speaker 2: the possibility of negative growth predictions. So Atlanta FED is
Speaker 2: now predicting that we're going to see the GDP shrink
Speaker 2: by about one and a half percent here in the
Speaker 2: first quarter of twenty twenty five. They're kind of known
Speaker 2: for this. This particular tracker is always leans toward the
Speaker 2: volatility side, and it usually becomes a little clearer later
Speaker 2: in the quarter. But still this is just kind of
Speaker 2: a warning of what shouldn't be too shocking. Even the
Speaker 2: President himself came out and said there could be some
Speaker 2: pain here on the front end as they implement the
Speaker 2: things that they want to do. So where this is
Speaker 2: coming from, consumers spent a little less than expected in January,
Speaker 2: and that led to a downgrade and growth predictions in
Speaker 2: the GDP. Exports dropped a bit too, and some other
Speaker 2: places as well. We've all heard about the egg prices
Speaker 2: and inflation popping up in certain places too. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this is all coming together to make it look like
Speaker 2: it could be a bumpy first Quarterbran.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I have to observe. When people's extra money,
Speaker 4: to the extent they have any disposable income, is being
Speaker 4: sucked up by increased property taxes and increase energy bills,
Speaker 4: you're not going to be participating in the economy and
Speaker 4: keeping our consumption economy going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. It all plays together. All the puzzle
Speaker 2: piece has got to fit one way or another. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of impacts here coming from a bunch
Speaker 2: of different directions, just all the data we have now,
Speaker 2: and we have a new administration that is shaping data
Speaker 2: and looking at it differently. They even saw a reference
Speaker 2: to the possibility that they may split out government spending from.
Speaker 5: The GDP calculation. Yeah, purportedly to.
Speaker 2: Get shine a little a brighter light on where the
Speaker 2: money comes from and where it all goes. But that's
Speaker 2: going to be yet another indicator we all have to
Speaker 2: pay attention to when people are still struggling to understand
Speaker 2: the ones that come out every day.
Speaker 4: Now, I would love to know that figure. I'm surprised
Speaker 4: that hasn't been done yet.
Speaker 2: I think it gets done, it just doesn't get broadcast.
Speaker 2: We talk about GDP every quarter. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: websites out there. All this stuff is freely available to
Speaker 2: anybody who wants to dig it out, but the media
Speaker 2: doesn't pick up on that. We like our simple bullet
Speaker 2: points and our soundbites and things, and that's always been
Speaker 2: what is the GDP as opposed to all the different
Speaker 2: derivatives of the GDP.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, those numbers are out there.
Speaker 2: It would be good to see how much of our
Speaker 2: GDP purportedly is grown by actual little government spending, so
Speaker 2: that we know what the impact is going to be
Speaker 2: when we choose not to spend that way anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, I know, but I mean you think about like
Speaker 4: the green industrial complex as I called it earlier, that
Speaker 4: is basically fully supported by the government and government spending.
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of these companies wouldn't even exist
Speaker 4: but for the government and fusion of our taxpayer dollars.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of that
Speaker 5: out there.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, some of your largest companies, your your
Speaker 2: sexiest stories of the last decade have come with a
Speaker 2: lot of government investment and our you know, our President
Speaker 2: in chief, Elon Musk, is no stranger to that. A
Speaker 2: lot of the dollars that went into Tesla came from
Speaker 2: the same came from those same green budgets as well
Speaker 2: as heaving those that SpaceX has taken a lot of
Speaker 2: dollars from the federal government because they do a lot
Speaker 2: of things that NASA used to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but more efficiently.
Speaker 5: That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2: So there is a negative thing, but it's something we've
Speaker 2: never paid attention to before.
Speaker 4: To your point earlier, Yeah, those astronauts are still stranded
Speaker 4: up in space too. I must observe on that or not.
Speaker 4: Not a comical note. I feel sorry for those folks,
Speaker 4: but if you can't do it yourself, you've got to
Speaker 4: rely on outsourced companies and maybe do it more efficiently. Anyhow, Now,
Speaker 4: in terms of the first quarter being on track for
Speaker 4: negative GDP growth, is that an indication that the Fed
Speaker 4: might lower interest rates?
Speaker 2: Could be but not the other thing the FED has
Speaker 2: to worry about is we want to keep the economy running,
Speaker 2: but we also have to worry about inflation.
Speaker 5: That's really the Fed's job, those two things.
Speaker 2: Let's make sure everybody has a job, and let's make
Speaker 2: sure inflation is under control when you really boil it down.
Speaker 5: That's the goal.
Speaker 2: So when we're talking about inflation being a factor in
Speaker 2: all this in the slowdown, that does not indicate that
Speaker 2: we're going to see further rate cuts anytime soon. And
Speaker 2: I would say we're I don't think that has changed
Speaker 2: in the past several weeks because inflation really is it's
Speaker 2: very sensitive right now. It's not going to take much
Speaker 2: of an impact of anything, as we've already seen to
Speaker 2: drive prices back up where we were a few years ago.
Speaker 2: So I don't think we're at a point yet where
Speaker 2: we're on the brink of that happening. But we're also
Speaker 2: definitely not an environment where we're going to see a
Speaker 2: rate cut tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Well other than the real estate market, because if you
Speaker 4: lower the interest rates and it has an impact on
Speaker 4: the current real estate interest rate, how else is the
Speaker 4: interest rate from the FED? How does that impact inflation?
Speaker 4: Generally speaking?
Speaker 2: Well, any cost of anything has to do with what
Speaker 2: does it cost to produce that good or service it
Speaker 2: and to begin with So if there's a company out
Speaker 2: there that has borrowed money to pay its employees, to
Speaker 2: build its factories, to do whatever it needs to do,
Speaker 2: then that is a factor that's that will ultimately trickle through.
Speaker 2: Everything trickles down to the consumers. So you have the
Speaker 2: producers and the consumers. The consumer's got to pay the bills,
Speaker 2: including all the taxes. No different than if your property
Speaker 2: taxes go up and you're renting an apartment. You won't
Speaker 2: think that, hey, I got to pay a bigger property
Speaker 2: tax bill. No, you don't have a property tax bill,
Speaker 2: but your rent's going to go up because your landlord's
Speaker 2: going to take it from you. That's the same thing
Speaker 2: that happens to every consumer in every corner of the
Speaker 2: world everywhere, because all those costs get passed down. So
Speaker 2: that's where the impact will be seen and you have
Speaker 2: to look closely to see it sometimes.
Speaker 4: All right, fair enough, Well, I take an early break
Speaker 4: here because we want to talk about food prices and inflation,
Speaker 4: which I think has to tie in with the next
Speaker 4: topic we'll do in the next segment, which is expect
Speaker 4: restaurant bankruptcies. So we've seen quite a few of those lates.
Speaker 4: So let's pause a little bit early. We'll bring back
Speaker 4: Brian James and talk about those. After I mentioned my
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Speaker 1: Fifty five KRC a.
Speaker 5: U line they know first hand.
Speaker 4: Eight eighteen fifty five KRCD talk station. A very happy
Speaker 4: Monday too. You go here from the since Anava coming
Speaker 4: up for our KRC Care segment at eight forty In
Speaker 4: the meantime, all were financials Brian James offering his insights
Speaker 4: on money Monday, and sadly something I'm painfully aware of.
Speaker 4: I do go grocery shopping every week with my wife,
Speaker 4: and food prices have gone up precipitously, and most notably,
Speaker 4: I just look at the price of beef quite often.
Speaker 4: I'll just pick up a package just to see where
Speaker 4: it is in terms of how much price per pound
Speaker 4: and then put it back down to the beat section
Speaker 4: just because it's just like I just it's mind blowing eggs.
Speaker 4: Of course, we can blame bird flu for that. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's no I don't think there's a relationship with the
Speaker 4: price of eggs and inflation more so than they've just
Speaker 4: been slaughtering all the chickens because of bird flu. But
Speaker 4: what's the story from Walmart's CEO on food prices.
Speaker 5: Doug mc millan's not in a good mood this morning.
Speaker 2: So he's the CEO of Walmart, and he's highlighting that
Speaker 2: strain that's coming up on American consumers due to this.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're not shocked at this. I even paying
Speaker 2: attention to the headlines at all. It's been hard to avoid,
Speaker 2: whichever side of it you're on, it's been hard to
Speaker 2: avoid the discussion about egg prices. But Doug, who is
Speaker 2: paying attention, of course to how much money his company
Speaker 2: is making, as that is his job, is seeing he's
Speaker 2: a good predictor of what people are doing there at
Speaker 2: the cash register there.
Speaker 5: So we're seeing impact on things.
Speaker 2: Like beef and eggs, non alcoholic beverages, sugar and sweets.
Speaker 2: Sugar is up almost six and a half percent. We're
Speaker 2: seeing non alcoholic beverages up about four percent, a beef
Speaker 2: and veal we're looking at to be up about three percent.
Speaker 5: Now, these are all facts.
Speaker 2: And when we can find these anywhere, I think it's
Speaker 2: more impactful at least worth talking about.
Speaker 5: Brian to what should somebody do about this?
Speaker 2: This question comes up all the time and in the
Speaker 2: course of my day as a financial planner, people want
Speaker 2: to know, is it time for me to worry about this?
Speaker 5: What should I be doing about this? Inflation I keep
Speaker 5: hearing about.
Speaker 2: My question is always okay, what were you spending on
Speaker 2: all of these items before? Then we can figure out
Speaker 2: what the impact is going to be. And most of
Speaker 2: the time, and this is a necessarily bad thing, most
Speaker 2: of the time people have no idea because we've not
Speaker 2: kept budgets.
Speaker 5: We don't know where we are.
Speaker 2: So that's a great first step is to understand where
Speaker 2: your money's going in the first place, so that you
Speaker 2: can model out some impact and figure out whether you
Speaker 2: really need to worry about this or just be mad
Speaker 2: at the cash register.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess part of me. I want to react
Speaker 4: by saying, Okay, I'm glad sugary beverages are more expensive,
Speaker 4: and I'm glad people are buying fewer of them because
Speaker 4: that's a discretionary item. You don't need mountain dew in
Speaker 4: your life, right, I mean, I'm kind of been on
Speaker 4: a sugar tear of late. But in the final analysis,
Speaker 4: if you need nutrition to stay alive, you need certain calories.
Speaker 4: Hopefully your calories are coming from something that's good for you.
Speaker 4: But rather than buying mountain dew, maybe you just drink
Speaker 4: a glass of water. Is your life going to be
Speaker 4: really impacted to the negative for that, No, I would
Speaker 4: say it's going to be a positive result. I don't
Speaker 4: know if that's baked into this cake, if that's by
Speaker 4: design or intention, but you know, maybe it'll force people
Speaker 4: to make more responsible choices because your dollar is not
Speaker 4: going as far at the grocery store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we will see that impact. We've seen that
Speaker 2: happen before when we've had price bikes. People do tend
Speaker 2: to change their behavior, and I personally, I don't believe
Speaker 2: this is part of any engineered a change of behavior
Speaker 2: by any administration. It's just I think we've got an
Speaker 2: administration that truly just cares about's let's make this country
Speaker 2: as successful from a commercial and business standpoint as it
Speaker 2: possibly can, and they're making decisions to move us in
Speaker 2: that direction. These are again not designed results, but it's
Speaker 2: just simply what's happening.
Speaker 5: I agree with you.
Speaker 2: If people bought less sugar and less and less stuff
Speaker 2: like that, we're probably in a better spot. But the
Speaker 2: fact that we're seeing inflation increasing on those indicates that
Speaker 2: and maybe rising the companies. Companies may be buying more.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily people buying bags of sugar. It could
Speaker 2: be companies buying it more at a commodity level and
Speaker 2: because they feel like that's where they can make their profits.
Speaker 4: Fair enough. On that, I got a kick out of
Speaker 4: his observation that you see people are buying smaller pack
Speaker 4: sizes than they used to, but with shrinkflation, they were
Speaker 4: doing that anyway, even if they wanted the family sized bag.
Speaker 4: The family size bag now only contains twelve ounces where
Speaker 4: it used to contain eighteen ounces or something along those lines.
Speaker 4: I just thought that was an interesting comment, given that
Speaker 4: we all lived through shrinkflation.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 2: That's another cycle that we see too, when it's harder
Speaker 2: for companies to make money off of off of the
Speaker 2: original sizes and things that they were making. One way,
Speaker 2: and they know they can't push the button and sell more.
Speaker 2: Another way can be to make it cheaper to sell
Speaker 2: the same amount by putting smaller projects inside smaller products,
Speaker 2: inside little packages that they won't notice.
Speaker 4: I remember a commercial about that, the guy that saved
Speaker 4: the company one hundred million dollars a year by taking
Speaker 4: like one olive out of the olive jar, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and airlines make their take the tomatoes off of
Speaker 2: their off of their rubber chicken sandwiches and saved billions
Speaker 2: of dollars. Yeah, yeah, it does add up. It does
Speaker 2: does make sense in the long run. Every little bit counts,
Speaker 2: all right. Pivoting over to restaurants, and I've observed this also.
Speaker 2: Carry out has gotten really expensive compared to not that
Speaker 2: long ago. Even it's an Asian restaurant, and I don't
Speaker 2: think there was a single entree that was less than
Speaker 2: like twenty two dollars. And we're talking about just standard
Speaker 2: you know, Chinese food kind of orders and that that
Speaker 2: is just like mind blowing to me. But that's the
Speaker 2: direction that's gone. But more and more are going bankrupt too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're seeing that bankruptcy is coming out of but a
Speaker 2: lot of these are older names, so it's not I
Speaker 2: don't think we're yet at a point where all of
Speaker 2: it is totally their fault of inflation and so forth.
Speaker 2: These are things that have kind of run their course.
Speaker 2: So the big one, big ones we've seen recently, TGI, Fridays, Any's, Ruby, Tuesday,
Speaker 2: Red Lobster, all of them have filed for bankruptcy protection.
Speaker 2: Hooters hit the headlines as of this morning. Their food
Speaker 2: sucked though exactly. You know, the only thing that I
Speaker 2: ever liked about Hooters They're mild sauce with it was
Speaker 2: a jar of death.
Speaker 5: But it was really good.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think you're got to say good buffalo sauce
Speaker 2: with butter in it, which is, you know, good in
Speaker 2: the long run, but not so much of the schwartz.
Speaker 4: So it had nothing to do with the wait staff.
Speaker 6: Now this is off the shelf and Kroger I still
Speaker 6: get it with Yes, they out of trouble, right, James,
Speaker 6: Well you know this this could be I mean, I
Speaker 6: understand the COVID they required to borrow money to stay open,
Speaker 6: and they got you know, debt service on that. I mean,
Speaker 6: I note the article says this meant companies accumulated debt
Speaker 6: they had to pay back over time plus interest. Someone
Speaker 6: wrote us government right next to that.
Speaker 4: Oh right, that was me. But there's more competition out there,
Speaker 4: and there are better products. Going back to Hooters. If
Speaker 4: you can go someplace down the street that has superior
Speaker 4: chicken wings, then you're going to go there, right, And that's.
Speaker 2: That's what I was hinting at before with these these
Speaker 2: are older chains. Restaurants do run their courses, and there
Speaker 2: are some icons that never go away. But if you
Speaker 2: just look over time, there aren't any restaurants that have
Speaker 2: been aside from these you know, ridiculously long family owned
Speaker 2: type stories that have been in existence for one hundred
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years. It generally doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2: They last a few decades at most. That's a huge
Speaker 2: success story, but eventually people's taste change something if things
Speaker 2: feel dated, TGI Fridays and Applebee's, which doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 2: I don't think. But anyway, they've all kind of run
Speaker 2: the course and become the butt of jokes after ten
Speaker 2: years it's very easy for consumers to change their minds
Speaker 2: and go somewhere else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the quality can go down as well, frishes
Speaker 4: and we end up losing our frishes locally. All right,
Speaker 4: let's pause. We'll bring Brien James back for one more
Speaker 4: talk about four oh one k balances. Which direction are
Speaker 4: they going? Stick around you? Right back?
Speaker 1: Fifty five krc.
Speaker 4: Lit Stark for the weather Channel nine says sunny day
Speaker 4: for the most part, forty eight for the high, down
Speaker 4: to thirty eight over night, under clear sky, thady tomorrow
Speaker 4: but warming up to sixty degrees. Rain shows up around
Speaker 4: nine pm. It'll drop to fifty one overnight and we
Speaker 4: get a lot of rain on Wednesday. They say rain
Speaker 4: will continue for most of the day. Windy, yes, gus
Speaker 4: up to forty to forty five miles per hour possible
Speaker 4: and a high at fifty four twenty seven degrees. Right now,
Speaker 4: let's hear about traffic editions from Chuck Ingram.
Speaker 1: From the UC Hout Tramphing Center.
Speaker 7: When it comes to multiple scleroses, trust the experts at
Speaker 7: the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute for Innovative and Comprehensive Care.
Speaker 1: Learn more at UC Health dot com.
Speaker 7: He spend two seventy five continues slow from Coleraine Avenue
Speaker 7: to Wreck before you get to Winton, the rec's end
Speaker 7: the media and so westbound slow's just a bit to
Speaker 7: get by. Southbound seventy five, break lights through Lachland, northbound
Speaker 7: seventy five and extra ten minutes out of Erlanger.
Speaker 1: Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRC the talk station.
Speaker 4: Eight twenty eight come to an eight twenty nine at
Speaker 4: fifty five KERCD talk station, A very happy Monday to you,
Speaker 4: Frien Thomas with more segment with money Monday's Brian James
Speaker 4: moving over to four oh one K balance is something
Speaker 4: he knows all about since he's an ancial planner. That's
Speaker 4: what it is all about. Hopefully everybody's investments are going well.
Speaker 4: Which direction are we going in four oh one K
Speaker 4: balances because the market seems to have been doing pretty
Speaker 4: well late now they've.
Speaker 2: Been going up and yeah, that's it shouldn't be too
Speaker 2: big of a shock.
Speaker 5: The market is the market usually goes up and not down.
Speaker 2: And we've seen, you know, the market hit an all
Speaker 2: time high in December and it's touched that twice once
Speaker 2: in January once in February, So the average balance for
Speaker 2: a four toh one K retirement accounts about one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty one thousand dollars. That's the second highest average
Speaker 2: we've had on Revered on record, So that's a good thing.
Speaker 5: But that does happen when the economy is going okay.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of scary headlines out there, but underneath
Speaker 2: that are a lot of people who are doing okay
Speaker 2: and making it through. And actually contributions are up too,
Speaker 2: So we've seen a we've seen a large amount of
Speaker 2: people putting more and more four oh one K dollars
Speaker 2: in and that's represented in the fact that we're seeing
Speaker 2: these balances go up. So when the economy is doing
Speaker 2: ok hey, people will put more money in. When people
Speaker 2: start to slow down on their contributions, that can be
Speaker 2: an indicator as well, because they're needing to kind of
Speaker 2: pinch pennies a little bit.
Speaker 4: Well, and I don't know how you Reckon saw more
Speaker 4: people putting away more money in a four h one
Speaker 4: K plan. When we talked about the other topics, which
Speaker 4: is inflation is soaking up a lot more dollars at
Speaker 4: least in terms of the grocery prices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair point, But that's what I was hinting at before.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of people out there who were
Speaker 5: doing just fine.
Speaker 2: We're in an economy, Brian, where we were in a
Speaker 2: country where we worry about the profit margin of our
Speaker 2: public traded companies. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: get hurt by that. There are a lot of people
Speaker 2: who make a lot of money off of it. I'm
Speaker 2: not here towag in on whether that's good or bad.
Speaker 2: But if you're somebody who's got the ability to put
Speaker 2: away more money than you spend every month, then you've
Speaker 2: been in a great environment really for the last several years.
Speaker 2: And I would say even prior to that. We had
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, which was one of the five worst
Speaker 2: years we've ever had in the stock market, but there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of years where it's been a lot
Speaker 2: better than that, And so that's why we're seeing these balances,
Speaker 2: highest average balances we've ever seen, meaning people are putting
Speaker 2: it in and.
Speaker 5: Allowing it to grow and not relying on it.
Speaker 2: The average contribution nowadays is about fourteen percent, which really
Speaker 2: that's an eye popping number, and I want to read
Speaker 2: a little more into that to see where that came from.
Speaker 2: But that's what's being highlighted here in the article.
Speaker 4: Well, as every good financial planner, I'll tell you should
Speaker 4: at least put something in it for no other reason
Speaker 4: then to make sure you get if you have one,
Speaker 4: the employer match. I mean, that's just sound financial planning
Speaker 4: right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that's free money that's sitting there on the
Speaker 2: table waiting for you to take it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, you have to make sure that you can
Speaker 2: pay your bills. None of this matters if you can't
Speaker 2: pay your bills. If you're running up credit card bills
Speaker 2: in for the sake of building up your four O
Speaker 2: one K, in the end, that's going to balance out
Speaker 2: and kind of work against you.
Speaker 5: So it all comes down to budgeting.
Speaker 2: And as I've been teaching my kids and their friends
Speaker 2: as it has come up, you have got to find
Speaker 2: your way to get yourself in a situation where you
Speaker 2: can spend less than you make. Do that for thirty
Speaker 2: five forty years and you'll be just fine, regardless of
Speaker 2: what the headline. And that's true for everybody as of
Speaker 2: right now as well.
Speaker 4: My wife and I've been trying to do that since
Speaker 4: when we first met. I think it's in my West
Speaker 4: Side genetics to spend less than we make. Just searching
Speaker 4: everywhere whenever you can save some money, even if it's
Speaker 4: just a small amount, all that adds up over the
Speaker 4: long haul. I mean, it really is. I remember just
Speaker 4: struggling with the reality when we were living in Chicago.
Speaker 4: You know, we had a budget for our house, and
Speaker 4: I've talked about the interest rates and you know, the
Speaker 4: balloon mortgage we had to get. But we bought a
Speaker 4: comparatively modest home compared to what my peers at the
Speaker 4: law firm were buying. And I was just sort of
Speaker 4: just in amazement at you know, they felt the need
Speaker 4: to buy this huge monstrosity of a home. And I
Speaker 4: just like, I'm thinking to myself, why all the resources
Speaker 4: you got are going into your home. You become house poor,
Speaker 4: And that to me is the ultimate, you know, of
Speaker 4: financial sin from my perspective. Anyway, Yeah, I've.
Speaker 2: Got a similar story there too, related to housing. So
Speaker 2: we moved into a house in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and it would have been you know, normally probably your
Speaker 2: second home, and you know, then you kind of graduated
Speaker 2: one little more space, want a bigger house or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we got lucky and landed in a neighborhood with
Speaker 2: a bunch of absolutely fun, wonderful people, and none of
Speaker 2: us have ever left.
Speaker 5: So that occurred to me.
Speaker 2: As I've done financial plans for my clients. A lot
Speaker 2: of times, I'm seeing mortgages where they bought a house
Speaker 2: in their late forties early fifties, presumably for that reason,
Speaker 2: got bored, wanted different change of scenery.
Speaker 5: I didn't do that, and.
Speaker 2: I'm realizing now that our house is almost paid off
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to have that mortgage hanging over
Speaker 2: my head. And that's the reason. It had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with a conscious decision. It just worked out, But
Speaker 2: it had to do with the fact that we simply
Speaker 2: didn't have the desire to move because of the people
Speaker 2: that were around us. That not everybody has that fortunate situation.
Speaker 2: But there is a very very mathematical impact to not
Speaker 2: having a mortgage for the rest of your retirement.
Speaker 4: Amen into that, and Acto I pointed out earlier in
Speaker 4: my psychologically speaking, not having a mortgage was always just
Speaker 4: critical to me because I can't stand the concept of
Speaker 4: owing money. I just I just can't stand it. I mean,
Speaker 4: there have been periods on my time in my life, Well,
Speaker 4: you had to have a credit card balance. It was
Speaker 4: just required, you know, you had necessities and you didn't
Speaker 4: have the money in the bank, and it just loomed
Speaker 4: over me like this monster. So I'm just uncomfortable with debt,
Speaker 4: knowing people money, and so that's that's kind of driven
Speaker 4: my financial planning throughout my entire life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's when we do financial plans, it all
Speaker 2: worth well, we'll build into the plan a quote unquote
Speaker 2: spending goal of getting that debt paid down. Mortgages aren't
Speaker 2: necessarily the scariest thing. It's not the worst, not the
Speaker 2: end of the world if you have one. But if
Speaker 2: you're about to retire with thirty thousand dollars in credit
Speaker 2: card debt, then we need to sit down and have
Speaker 2: a and have a little bit of a come to
Speaker 2: Jesus conversation, because that kind of thing is going to
Speaker 2: blow up in your face. But it's understanding the situation
Speaker 2: that you're in, figuring out the resources you have with
Speaker 2: which to address, and then implementing a plan.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the beauty of having a financial planner. It's
Speaker 4: like having a responsible adult telling you what to do.
Speaker 4: And what not to do right. It's your You're the
Speaker 4: job is to be like a surrogate parent.
Speaker 5: That's absolutely true.
Speaker 2: As a financial I'm a human too. As a financial planner,
Speaker 2: I make the same mistakes. I just know exactly the
Speaker 2: impact of the bad choice I'm about to make sometimes.
Speaker 4: Brian James, appreciate your assistance every week with these issues
Speaker 4: and bringing things to our attention and providing some sound
Speaker 4: financial advice. I'll look forward to another edition of Monday
Speaker 4: Monday next Monday. Have a great week, my friend.
Speaker 5: Thank you, sir. Have a good week.
Speaker 4: All right, let's help out the VA since Ava going
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